Friday, March 26, 2021

 Friday, March 26, 2021

            I woke up at 3 am; my mind was writing an article on what to do when your students ‘read too fast,’ making many mistakes. I tried to go back to sleep. Three was much too early to get up. I failed; My mind was in writing mode. I finally thought, “I’m in labor; might as well birth this baby.”  I worked until the alarm went off at 5:30. I had written quite a bit by then. This was a rough draft, of course. I must sort out what I want to include.

            I had a session with Shelly at 8 am. I was angry. There were issues with others dumping blame on me prophylactically to prevent me from blaming them. However, I had pretty much accepted the situation without attributing blame. I managed to deal with my reaction as my problem. I couldn’t see a positive outcome confronting the situation with the others. I knew they were protecting themselves. It still twisted my gut. 

            While the anger was on the surface, I could feel the grief beneath it as the more current feeling. The anger was an easy override of sadness and grief. The latter two leave me feeling helpless; go anger. I feel invigorated and strong- So much better. Sadly, so much worse in the end unless I want to create unnecessary drama in my life. 

            I went back to what I worked on last time: sadness about being different. I think the world is divided into two poles: those who see everyone as unique and those who see everyone as the same. I’m in the former group, with consequences for myself. I’m sure all choices have consequences. We each have to deal with the outcome of our own choices.

            The sadness came back to my mother’s reaction and treatment of me. She was brutal. She was distressed by my behavior. She said I was like a “colorful dog,” everyone knew who I was. That was terrifying for her. To protect her child, she tried to destroy what made me so visible to others. Others may not have been crazy about aspects of me, but they also presented no danger.

            When I was nineteen, I finally said to her, “Why don’t you just accept that you hate me, and we’ll start from scratch.”  She was shocked that I would think that she hated me. I don’t think it was me she hated, or not at least what she thought of as me. She hated aspects of me, and she hated parts of herself. To relieve her stress, she attacked me. I have a friend whose husband is not doing well since she left him because he no longer has her to attack. My mom all but said that she used us for that purpose. Toward the end of her life, she once said, “I didn’t need therapy; I had children.” I understood that to mean she felt comfortable relieving stress by using her children as ‘whipping boys.’ From what I can make out, I got the worst of it. BBBBB

            Whenever I told her she was hurting me, she not only denied that but insisted that I was saying that only to hurt her. I can believe that she didn’t intend to hurt me, but neither was she willing to acknowledge her impact on me. She made it clear that to think such a thing would be devasting for her. She saw herself as a good person who only did what was best for her kids. Oh, well. 

            In this session, I was able to sit with the pain she caused. I just experienced it without telling her about it. I saw her reacting to this information. It was devastating for her. If there is any impact from these imaginings, I can only hope that it will ultimately benefit her. There is no question that it would have caused/is causing her great pain.

I sprayed four gallons of vinegar on the backyard area. Ah, it already looks much better. I also watched the video of my Zoom presentation for the StepUp Tutoring group. I had some positive responses, people saying thank you for the information. However, I found the presentation painful to watch. It was a hyper old lady with a Bronx accent complicated by a slight speech impediment, waving her arms around like a windmill and misspeaking any number of words. It was humiliating. I thought I could use this video to post on YouTube. No, way. I will have to redo it and work on a calmer, more dignified presentation style. I wonder now if I come across as such a crazy lady usually. I wouldn’t listen to me. Too much.

After eating nothing but Hersey’s Milk Chocolate Kisses with whole almonds for two days until dinner and seeing the scale reflect my bad choices, I decided to find something else to sate my hunger. I chose hard-boiled eggs- one a day. I know that Darby and Patrick eat a lot of eggs each day and survive. I thought I’d give it a try—only one problem. I hadn’t cooked a hard-boiled egg in at least 45 years. 

    I looked it up on the Internet to find that it was nothing like my mama used to do. “Place the eggs in the bottom of the empty pot; then pour cold water over them. Bring the pot to a boil and turn it off immediately. Let the eggs sit in the water for three to 15 minutes, depending on the preferred degree of hardness. Put eggs into ice water, not just cold water, immediately. Crack shells for easy peeling. Leave them in the ice water for an hour.”  I remember my mother bringing the water to a boil, lowering the eggs into that boiling water, taking them out, and running them under cold water, period end of sentence. I called Judy to tell her what a culinary disaster I was; I didn’t even know how to boil an egg. She laughed. I learned how to boil an egg is a hotly debated topic. Who knew?

   I sent Judy the slide show accompanying the audio file. The emailed version looked very different from the one I had on my computer. The designs were fuzzy and, in some cases, downright different. I have to modify one of the slides, giving more explicit information on how to contact me and get a copy of the transcript.

   I have a follow-up treatment from the stem cell folks. It has been about three months since I got stem cells injected into both my hip joints. The release forms were scary. Yikes!   Look how many things can go wrong. I had a bad reaction when I got the stem cell injected. I was in scary pain for two days. I’m committed to following through. We’ll see.

    I had an 11 am appointment with Daniel. We’re continuing with the inferencing. He is moving slowly. I think his word recognition skills are improving. He is using the strategies I taught him independently without me reminding him. We are working on a beginning fourth-grade level. I had that work prepared for M and used it for D. He is moving through them slowly. With M., I can go through 10 exercises in half an hour. With D, if we make it through three, that’s good. 

    I’s mom called to cancel her four o’clock. They were heading to the beach. I think she is progressing nicely with her word recognition skills. That’s all we’ve been working on. She does the exercises I recommended on her own.