Got up at 5:30 without my alarm. Who needs one at this time of the year? The birds make such a racket; we’re lucky we can sleep through it. Not. I sleep just fine if I’m tired. I can sleep through my alarm clock. The bird noises are a delight.
Elsa and I headed out. She pulled back. I pointed out that I was the larger of the two of us and made the decisions. She came along. I only completed 2,500 steps before I went in. My leg was bothering me. I sat down to meditate after laying out my mat for the morning’s driveway yoga. I knew I would hear people when they arrived and join them. Yvette called my name. She said no one had come today; did I want to do yoga with her? I told her to take the day off. I guess no one wanted to come because it was the holiday.
Damon set up a Zoom meeting with his mom, me, and himself. We started this on Father’s Day, three people, all highly invested in Mike, two wives, and one son. It’s a new format, and it’s a little bumpy. I enjoy speaking to them independently more. However, I get to see their faces. Damon sits under a pergola at the side of his pool. His skin looks great, glowing, luminous. It’s a great background, greens, flowing fabric draping down from the pergola.
I went to do a light vacuuming of the kitchen. I had walked on it barefoot after I allowed ice cubes to melt to fall on the floor and get it dirty again. My Bissell is great. It allows me to wash the floor with minimal effort.
I called Progressive to check my premiums over time: January 2018, January 2019, and July 2019. I have not been able to get information from Progressive as to why my premiums have been so high. They claimed Mike’s accident in November 2018, Adam’s accident in February in 2019, and mine in November in 2019. I wanted the three dates because Mike’s penalty should have been dropped in April of 2019. Our premiums should have fallen to the original price until November of 2019, when Shivani and I volunteered information about my accident, not realizing that the insurance company would have been recorded as an accident even if I never made a claim. Every time I asked someone at Progressive why things are the way they are, I get a different answer. Today I was told that Adam’s accident would have counted against him even if he wasn’t responsible – no fault. This would mean that if my car is parked in a shopping parking lot, sitting empty while I was in the store, and it was hit, and the other driver took responsibility, it would still count against me on my insurance. Yikes!
I called Geico to get confirmation. I spoke to someone in the claims department. He told me that he didn’t know, but he would connect me to service. Did you get this? Unlike progressive, Geico referred me to an expert rather than giving me a bullshit answer. Then it came out there is a state board that oversees the insurance companies. If I have a complaint, I can have them look into it. The fellow in service gave me the name of the department in Hawaii and the telephone number. The difference between Geico and Progressive is legion.
I took another nap. When I got up, I gave poor Elsa a bath. She is poor Elsa because I gave her a bath. She hates them. Afterward, I washed the bathroom floor. Dinner was in the library with the tv on. It’s July 4th- firecrackers. This is not Elsa’s favorite day of the year. We closeted ourselves in that room, closed the door and all the windows, and hid out. When the noise is bad, Elsa jumps in my arms and clings to me rather more like a monkey than a dog. She grips me with her arms.
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Musings:
What constitutes a learning disability? I have written that it mostly means “no one knows how to fix it,” except by offering compensatory strategies. Since I have been giving the matter more thought. If a person is described as learning disabled or disabled in general, they do have a limitation. However, that limitation is only about a societal standard.
When we roamed the savanna, no one would be considered learning disabled because they couldn’t read. It wasn’t a skill anyone was expected to have. I suspect that expectation is a relatively recent convention.
My husband couldn’t carry a tune. It was not considered a disability. If our culture found singing well a social requirement, it would have been.
While cultural expectations are one of the parameters for considering something a learning disabled, the other is the availability of services to remedy or minimalize the lack. I need to wear glasses for all activities. Before glasses were developed and perfected, I would be considered disabled. I wouldn’t have been able to see well enough to perform many tasks. I don’t think anyone considers vision impairment a problem up to a certain point. The certain point is our inability to correct the vision. If we can’t correct it, then it becomes a disability.
I just learned that people with cleft palates were once considered mentally impaired. That was the case until someone discovered a tube filled with fluid. That fluid distorted their speech sounds. Once a doctor figured out that when the liquid was drained, they no longer had problems learning speech and reading. People with cleft palates were never cognitively impaired.
There are two factors: 1) societal expectations and 2) our ability to help those with ‘learning disabilities’ overcome them, determining whether or not we consider someone to have a learning disability. There is no absolute measure.
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