Saturday, March 27, 2021

 Saturday, March 27, 2021

             Yvette came in after yoga this morning and put the pressure sleeves on my legs. This is the new thing. Everyone was wearing them and raving about how good it makes them feel. When she put them on me the other day, they did feel pretty good. They felt okay today- until I went for a walk. Then my right leg hurt. I came home immediately. The discomfort was scary. Something was wrong. I called Scott because I thought Yvette had left already. He didn't answer. I called Yvette. She came right up and got that sleeve off my leg. I think the problem is water retention in that leg. Why would I have it in one leg and not the other? Yvette put tape on my right lower leg. It performed a similar function to the pressure sleeve without putting pressure on the tissues around my ankle. The left leg continued to feel good. The pain I felt in the right leg was scary. If I hadn't been able to get hold of Yvette, I would have gotten in my car and gone to neighbors to see if I could get one of them to help me.

            I had two tutoring sessions this morning. My first was with the adolescent D. I had him do some expository writing. I had to drag it out of him. He does not provide the details on his own. Then I worked with transcribing the words phonemically. He continued to blend the vowel sound with the following consonant or with the preceding one. No phonics program teaches the latter; I suspect it is counterproductive. Good readers can read sounding out from the initial letter(s) if they have already chunked the vowel with the following consonants. In the meantime, it is essential to know that vowels make distinct, separate sounds. Once that is clear, chunking the vowel with the following consonant works just fine. Once someone is secure with the individual sounds, I push for the chunking, seeing the vowel with the following consonants as a unit. All phonics lessons teach starting with the vowel with the following consonants, not the preceding ones.

            I had an appointment with Aiden. He must have been exhausted. He was writhing in the chair as we worked. He made more reversals than usual. However, he did well in the Using Context Clues exercises. I called his mom afterward and recommended that he work on oppositional movement. 

            I had a 1:30 pm appointment with the folks from the stem cell company. This was a follow-up to the stem cell injections. Today, I was to get ozone injected into my hips. I had asked Yvette to come with me since I had such a bad reaction to the cell injections. I was in debilitating pain for two days. This was a quick in-and-out treatment. As the doctor injected the ozone into my hip, I thought, "What the hell am I doing?" Mike would have been beside himself. These folks rent a massage therapist's room in a flotation business. Really? The space is less than sterile. Does this procedure need sterility? Then again, my acupuncturist puts needles into me. How sterile does the room have to be for that? I could just imagine what Mike would have thought of all this. The injections hurt. 

L-o-ng needles were pushed into my hip joint. As if that's not bad enough, then a substance is forced into that small space- In my case, it is very small because most, hopefully not all, of my cartilage is gone. While the needle hurt when the r put t in the right hip, the left hip was much worst. I was finished in a few minutes. Yvette was sitting on a chair in front of the door. I came out and drove us home.

              I wasn't incapacitated by the ozone shot as I had been from the stem cell implant. I was able to do more vinegaring in my backyard. Also, I cut back a flowering shrub that I've had my eye on for about a month. I just love torturing myself about things I have to do instead of just doing them. 

            After watching a documentary on 'the real' Audrey Hepburn, I watched Funny Face, a movie she did with Fred Astaire. It was a ridiculous movie. She did more dancing than he did. When I checked Wiki, I found out that Funny Face was almost the last musical Astaire did. I suspect his body wasn't up to his standards anymore. She had several dance scenes without him. Hepburn said she was scared to dance with him knowing he was out of her league. I suspect he wanted to dance with her because she wasn't out of his league due to his age. Of course, they looked silly as a romantic couple. 

            Besides these updates, which I email to friends and family as I finish them, I have a blog, "Mike's death; Betty's life." I post updates that are exactly one year behind. I check the stats daily when I post. In the past two years, the numbers have run, 0,1 or 2 a day, occasionally, 3. Recently, the numbers have been increasing. I never see a zero reader for a single day. I sometimes see a one, two, or three, but the numbers are frequently higher. Very interesting. Am I becoming au current? We'll see. I hope my thoughts are helpful to someone.  

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Musings: 

            Since I've finished with A Very Short Introduction to Spinoza, my dinner-time companion has been A Very Short Introduction to Theology by David E. Ford. He speaks about three types of evil: personal, structural, and natural. When they talk about evil these days, most people are focused on personal evil. I don't hear people talking about natural disasters as a form of evil anymore. Death of a loved one, natural disasters just are. They are not seen as manifestations of the devil.  

            Personal evil is discussed as an outcome of personal trauma. It is assumed that everyone would be good if we could heal all traumas. Hmmm! Maybe, maybe not. Moreover, structural evil is ignored altogether. What is structural evil? Ford doesn't define it clearly for me. But I would consider Nazi Germany an example, only the most blatant one. There are concepts of the nature of man that can get out of hand and become forms of evil.  

            I find it interesting that the Marxist optimistic vision of what man is capable of, absolute goodness, leads to evil. Yes, from what I've read, Marx's idea that if the government didn't get in the way of man and we all had an opportunity to live as equals, we would embrace this and have a utopian society. Marx's ideas are often used as an excuse by the leaders to treat the population worse than almost any other form of government. It unleashes true evil.  

            When I hear people around me speak in optimistic terms about the nature of man, I shiver in fear. These people not only see the potential for good in others but also see themselves as examples of this arrived, woke state of mind, perfected man. Oh, boy.