I had one of those dreams last night. This time it wasn't a scene where Mike sat down with me to tell me that he no longer loved me. No, this time, he was with another woman. I watch them be a couple together. I had never met this woman. I watched them with much sadness in my heart. I miss his love for me. His loved filled every cell of my body. He would smile at me in delight. He was so glad I was by his side. I was so happy he was by mine. I miss his love for me. I miss my love for him.
I got a text from Dorothy before I left for my walk. She could not talk until later; she had to clear her walkway and car from the six inches of snow that fell last night. She had been afraid that it would be a bad storm and she would lose electricity. That didn't happen.
I called my friend Carol in Ohio. My first Christmas card of the season always comes from her. It's a Christmas postcard with pictures of her five grandchildren. I love watching them grow up; they are beautiful children. Three of them live near her. She is still allowed to chauffeur them around despite the Covid scare. They have to sit in the back seat, they have to wear masks, and they have to tolerate a cracked window despite the freezing cold temperature.
I have only been completing 4,000 steps in my morning walk instead of the 6,000 I had been doing. My leg isn't up for more. This means I get home a little earlier. I had time to feed Elsa and do the dishes. Yoga was a struggle.
I'm experiencing the type of discomfort the doctors warned me would signal my options had run out, and I would need THR. I struggled for a while, walking with the walking poles to take the weight off my hip. Then I treated myself with the trigger point massager. Working on my abdominal muscles is what did the trick. I was as good as gold after a treatment. If the problem is lack of cartilage, leaving me bone against bone, how can massage on my abdominal muscles relieve the discomfort? I don't get it.
When I came in from yoga, I got right to work making some changes in my PowerPoint for my presentation on The Phonics Discovery System for the Step-Up Tutoring Program. I called Dorothy to say I was ready to make the presentation to her.
We must have spent an hour and a half today. We worked until we both couldn't stand it anymore. Dorothy is worth her weight in gold. She makes sure the text makes sense to her. This is what I have been asking people to do. No one did that for me, including Mike. Dorothy's gift is very unusual. I am encouraging her to market her skill, not just to earn some money but because what she has to offer is invaluable.
I was more confident today as I did the presentation. I wasn't tongue-tied. It all flowed easily. When I did the demonstration of the method, Dorothy was enthralled. She has helped me edit parts of the book and helped me extensively in editing the article. She said she never got what this process was about until she saw it demonstrated.
She realized it was enthralling. It is so engaging. Kids love it – unless they have a bad audio processing problem. Their negative reaction to the process reveals the existence of this deficit. All I have to do is s-l-o-w the process down until the student feels comfortable. I do it slowly for a sentence or two and then start accelerating. This usually fixes the problem. If not, other things need to be done.
Dorothy said, "Are you happy that your sister is such a nerd?" I am thrilled. She is not only a nerd, but she is a nerd that complements my talents and skills. I had to get off by 11 because I had a session with D. at 11:30.
D's mom canceled yesterday, something about us having to work on the phone. I thought something was wrong with the computer, or it wasn't available for him when he visited his grandmother, where he was on Wednesday. I finally understood his mother wondered if I had gotten the necessary clearance to get on Google Meet with him.
The Hawaiian schools have set it up, so there is restricted access to the students' computers. They were all given Chrome tablets with access blocked except by people with a school email address. It's to protect the students from inappropriate adults. I have called and emailed his school principal to ask her to give permission for me to get such an email. I haven't heard from her. I'd assume this is just a no, but she's done this to me before; it wasn't no; she just couldn't find the time.
When we first moved here, I volunteered at Daniel's elementary school. I heard nothing. I got in because I ran into a third-grade teacher at an afterschool program. She said I should volunteer at the school. I told her I tried and heard nothing. She said, "Just come to my room." I have gotten lots of positive feedback for my work. At one point, I confronted the principal telling her that I got into the school without a security check because I had to 'sneak' past the unresponsive administration. She told me that she had run a check on me. Here we are again. I have no idea why she doesn't respond to my messages. Whatever, Daniel and I were stuck working on the phone again.
He said he wanted to work on math again. I continued the work I did with him for the last two weeks. Writing parts of numbers and letters, having him guess what they were, and working on memorizing two multiplication facts. His memory is an ongoing problem. He says the work we're doing with the numbers and letters is helping. He can't articulate how it's helping. He is enjoying the work, and he is getting better at identifying fragments of the numbers of letters and naming them correctly, which was still a problem when we started this exercise.
After the work with Dorothy and D, I needed a nap. I set my alarm for 1:20, so I was up in time for my Friday session with J. I woke up earlier. I wanted to take a shower. I texted him, warning him I might be a little late. Then the gardener arrived. I had to tell him to clear all the refuse I had created from my weeding work in the yard off the bedroom. Also, I wanted to do some more weeding before he removed the waste. I got a little bit of work done before the rain started.
When the gardeners arrived, I saw Rodney, the head man, carrying a large plastic container with rice. When I went to speak to him, I saw all the men clustered under the silver palm in the front yard, eating out of that container. It looked as if it only had rice in it. I was concerned. These men are still working. Their situation shouldn't be worse than it was before Covid set in.
J and I are reading passages from John Muir's journals and books. OMG! The language is so dense. I don't know if I'm just viewing it through J's eyes, or I would find it that way on my own. The vocabulary is challenging, the language is rich with metaphors, and the sentences are long and complicated. Is this really sixth-grade work? I checked its reading level through the internet. It says it's beginning sixth grade. Sorry, I've read more accessible work in college, in graduate school.
I saved some time at the end of the session to do some of the phonemic awareness exercises. Today, J was willing to participate. He did a pretty good job identifying the syllables and the basic sound units of each word. I wrote the letters, sometimes asking him to tell me what to write. Next time, I'll have him write them himself.
I asked J. if he wanted to work with me over the winter break. He said he would have to ask his mother. I sure hope so. I love tutoring. I hope I'm not going to wind up with no one. That won't be good for me. Of course, I will continue working on the presentation for the Step-Up program.
I had to do some indoor walking to make sure I was above six thousand steps before I did my-before dinner walk. I did some catching up on the updates and went for my walk. Darby passed on joining me for the evening. She was in elf mode. I don't know what that means, but it sounds delightful.
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Musings:
On Hidden Brain tonight, they discussed a philosophy that helps people feel good about the lives they have: it's stoicism. Huh?? Sounds like a grin-and-bear-it approach to life. It's not quite that bad. As the speaker described it, I have incorporated elements into my life.
One of its exercises is negative imaging: imagine losing what you have. No problem. I did that every day with Mike. My dad died when I was fifteen. People whose parents die when they are children are prone to burying their loved ones every day.
Mike would tease me, saying, "Don't bury me yet!" or "She's trying to kill me off." Nothing of the sort. I was preparing myself for the possibility. I would think of my life without Mike. It made me feel every day was precious.
You know, having done that may now be protecting me from the pain of his absence. I pictured myself without him when he was there. Now I' when I imagine myself without him: Is he here or is he not? This was a common thought when he was there. I don't know the difference. Nice trick.
He said another stoic trick is to see the adversary as a challenge created for you by the Stoic gods. I never did that, but I think of a new situation as an adventure. There is a promise of something good. Nothing is exclusively bad. Well, maybe not nothing; I'm thinking of the Syrians. Even I can't think of anything good about that situation. Others are coming to mind. Hopefully, I will never have to face a situation like that. I hope no one does. I'm not optimistic.
Sometimes I think God is looking down on us and thinking as he did once before, enough of this experiment; humans aren't worth the effort. Maybe there's another Noah in our midst that will help preserve the species. However, if He follows that plan, the rest of us are goners.
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