I didn't sleep well last night, or at least not deeply. I felt agitated. I don't think I was more worried than I had been yesterday despite Trump's announcement that he won't accept the results of any election that didn't declare him the winner. Even Mitch McConnel had to speak out against this. We'll see how McConnel behaves when the time comes. (I don't think Trump's behavior is in question.) It does seem that his only goal in life is power. He doesn't have Trump's naivete. He is fully conscious of what he is doing and doesn't care.
Dorothy and I have developed a routine of walking together in the morning as we talk. Dorothy went to a nearby park today. She is relying on our morning walks to get her moving.
I called Acoustical Surfaces to make sure they got my return package. All I got was a voicemail. I am a little worried, but I think I'm also overdoing it a little. I will feel better when this is resolved.
The gable vent I ordered from Home Depot was supposed to arrive on the 23rd. It didn't, or at least it didn't arrive at the house. Fortunately, I remembered and looked up the order in my old emails. Sure enough, I was supposed to pick it up from Home Depot. They had emailed me, but it came at the same time as all the electronic emails from Scott's purchases, and I didn't check. I printed out the receipt yesterday. Today I called Home Depot to check up on the procedure. If I didn't order curbside delivery, I had to go into the store to the customer service desk and pick it up. As I expected, the package was light.
I drove down to the post office. I had four boxes of books to ship out and my fingerprint card to send to California's Step Up Tutoring program. I assumed the post office would be open by eight. Josh leaves for work at 7 every morning. No. It didn't open until 9. I had time to bring in my boxes at my leisure.
I placed the first box on a table in the anteroom and asked the folks standing there if they would do me a favor. I was going to ask them to help me carry the boxes in. Before I could utter my request, this man in his fifties and a young woman in her thirties told me, "No worries!" they would watch my packages for me. It seemed pretty brutal to say I wanted help, pointing out that they were not responding to the needs of an old woman. I just went back out to continue carrying in the packages.
When I got to my car, a man came up after me and asked if I wanted help. I sighed yes in appreciation. He understood that an eighty-year-old woman hauling good-sized boxes is probably asking for help. He grabbed two of the remaining boxes and carried them in.
The irony is I had chosen not to ask that man when he walked past me as I went into the post office the first time because I thought he was too old to ask. He did just fine, lifting two boxes together without difficulty.
On the way home, I called George, who sold me my car, to tell him of my experience on my drive to Hilo and back. I told him this was not a car for a little old lady with the onset of dementia. This car requires planning of a whole different order. With a 'normal' car, all you have to worry about is the gas; you can assume all other systems are go. With this car, you either have to plan and strategize.
I had driven the car in the hybrid mode from the moment I left my house until I got to the KTA, and their bathroom, in Hilo. However, when I got back in the car and drove first to the police station and then to Reuben's for lunch, I didn't deliberately switch the car to hybrid mode. I didn't know that the default mode for the car is electric. Now, I do.
Because the car was in electric mode while driving around Hilo, I lost 17 of the twenty units I had when I left the KTA parking lot. I forgot that driving around Hilo involves taking on some pretty steep inclines. I never assumed that my driving a few miles a would deplete the storage. By the time I started on Saddle Road and my trip between the mountains, I only had three turquoise bars left.
The car has four white bars and 24 turquoise ones. The white bars are necessary for the car to drive at all. The blue bars indicate how much electric energy you have available to drive the car all-electric without any gas. Here I was starting on the steepest part of the ascent with only three blue bars. When those were gone, I would be eating into the white bars. Once they were gone, the car would no longer operate.
I kept a keen eye on how my bars were doing. I continued until the white bars disappeared. Then I made a U-turn, got into the downhill shoulder, put on my emergency blinkers and the cruise control on the lowest mileage I could. Going down the steep hill, I built up bars again. I was just looking for the white ones so I could continue on my trip.
When I had one bar, I made another U-turn and continued on my trip to Kona. I never drove more than 45 mph on the upgrades to preserve energy, despite the speed limit being 60 mph. When I saw a car coming up behind me, I pulled over into the shoulder. I have had experience coming up behind someone who is doing far below the speed limit; it's disorienting. When the car had passed, I got back into the travel lane.
When I was on a decline, I pulled into the shoulder, turned on my emergency lights, put the car into cruise at the lowest speed possible, watched to see if I gained any bars. I should explain: the mountains here are nothing like those in Europe on the mainland. There up and up until the very top.
Those mountains were formed from flat plates pushed up. Our mountains are formed from flowing lava. Think of melting ice cream. The roads are more like roller coasters but not as extreme. (For those who are old enough: not as extreme as the road to Montauk Point was when I was a kid.) Anyway, the up-down pattern gave me a chance to catch some energy along the way. On the way up, it's mostly up; on the way down, it's mostly down.
Needless to say, this way of driving made the trip longer. It usually feels like a long trip. However, yesterday, I came across the sign "Caution. Test your brakes. Steep high," and thought, "That's weird. I've only seen that sign on the final hill going down into the Kona side." It took me several minutes to realize that I was there. Vigilance made the minutes fly by.
George, from the Kia dealership, reminded me that they have charging stations in Hilo. Maybe, but it takes an hour to fully charge the car. This was way more fun, a challenge requiring some ingenuity.
For some reason, I felt full of energy today. I started washing the hallway floors. I had a tutoring session at 11:30 with D. I was somewhat concerned about how he did after Wednesday's session when I dealt with the blocks that may have been developed in defense against grief. I knew his dad had died but not how. Today I found out.
He had gotten in a car with someone who "was not a good person." His dad insisted he knew the man, and he was good. I didn't push, but I suspect the driver was drunk. Both men died that night in a car crash. D. was still a baby. The man left his wife with four very young children. She held it together and did a great job. Even D. is a good person.
Other than asking him how he felt now, "Good," and how he felt after the last session, "Sad and happy," I didn't discuss all the sadness that came up.
He chose to work on reading Socks. We never cover a great deal of material. I believe in chewing the language thoroughly to get every bit of nutrition out of it. D.'s responses vary; sometimes, he shows great insight; at other times, he's completely off the mark. I would say he is more frequently on the mark these days than off- even if I have to push sometimes to get what I want.
D. got stuck on a number issue. Socks got tossed into a mailbox. (Read the book if you want to know why.) Debbie freaked out, realizing he was in danger. Her brother George said the mailman was coming at 11:23, and the store clock said it was 11:15 now. He was able to connect the numbers to the correct events. I set up a subtraction problem. 11:23-11:15= 8. I wrote the answer. I asked him what the 8 represented. He had no idea.
However, he was able to say, "15+5=20, and then there's three more." Good so far. Then he said 5+3= 9, 7, 6, ahh, 8. Then he attributed the number 8 to something else, not the amount of time they would have to wait until the mailman came along. It took forever to get that out of him. Huh?
I take kids through a process over and over, slowly, in hopes of creating a pathway in their minds. Fortunately, I find it interesting every time. Patience is not a problem for me.
I had an appointment with M. at 2:30 pm. We worked with a piece on the Colonial Times that I found online. Again, I took her through the process one sentence or one paragraph at a time. I think she did very, very well except at one point.
The text talked about boys doing a 7-year apprenticeship to learn a trade such as a tailor, shoemaker, blacksmith, Cooper, or a wheelwright. When I asked her to infer the meaning of the word 'trade,' she said, exchanging property or money. I asked her if this made sense in this sentence. She really didn't have the background information she needed to make a correct inference. However, she couldn't just say, "I have no idea," either. Once I gave her some background information, she was able to successfully come to the correct conclusion.
I told her mother that she is doing very well and didn't expect to work with her much longer. Her mother was distressed. She said she sees her daughter is not performing as well as the other students in her class. When the class wrote an opinion piece, M. didn't have as much to say as the other students in her class. I told mom, "They're Americans." She said her daughter was raised here. But I know as a first-generation American, it's not that simple. I told her how my mother wanted us to be thoroughly American and was appalled at what we were like. The mother laughed. She recognized herself. She was giving her daughter mixed messages.
I napped after that busy day. I did do some vacuuming of the hallway. I got some house cleaning done.
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Musings:
The difference between addiction and healing:
We all want relief from our darkest moments, our darkest thoughts. If the criterion is immediate, complete relief, that's the pathway to addiction. You get a few minutes of relief from the drug. If you can use this method repeatedly for a while, and then . . . things get worse and worse and even worse.
The criterion for healing is not how you feel during the process but how you feel afterward. Do you feel slightly better? Again, if you are looking for 100% relief, you are looking for immediate total healing; you're heading down the rabbit hole.
Anything can be used as an addictive remedy. Some are more immediately destructive than others. They usually guarantee the most immediate complete, although temporary, relief: drugs, alcohol, and gambling.
But anything can be used addictively, reading, meditation, a religious pursuit, work, parenting, loving someone, giving, worrying, yes, anything. When we use activities to get relief from our worst feelings, they are being used addictively.
Healing requires facing our worst fears and accepting the slow process of recovery.
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