Thursday, January 14, 2021
Yvette always said the “OM” three times at the beginning of the class. Today, I thought, “I feel like an old bag-pipe.” I giggled and had to share.
This was a fantastic day. I got all sorts of things taken care of. I got an email from Amazon telling me that my Amazon account had been reinstated. When I signed on yesterday to purchase something, I was told my account was shut down because of an irregularity. I assumed someone hacked my account. Then I got an email from Amazon telling me that my credit card hadn’t worked to pay for some item. I suspect that I had purchased the retractable dog leash before I shut down my old credit card. I just had to send them an email authorizing the charges on my new card. Easy peasy.
I spent some time working on my updates when the phone rang. Ah! It was the higher-level tech from the Hawaii Department of Education. OMG! I have been working on getting access to Google Meet to use with my Hawaiian student for something like a month. First, I had to convince the school principal where I volunteered for four years to issue me an email address. Why do I need this? The Hawaii DOE has been super cautious about protecting its students. It gave all the students Chrome notebooks and blocked all access except through a portal controlled by the DOE to Google Meeting and Google Classroom.
After being issued a DOE email address, I still couldn’t access Google Meet. Google refused to recognize my account. Yesterday, I spoke to two people who bumped me up to higher-ups. I got the call this morning. It took an hour to sort it out. Honestly, it could have been done in ten minutes, but the twenty-five-year-old who helped me went around the long way. To his credit and my joy, he found me funny. All was forgiven.
The problem: I had to sign in on Chrome instead of Safari. When I used Safari, it only recognized my yahoo account. When I signed with Chrome, it all went well.
I had topped off the box of books I had sitting on Mike’s desk, waiting for a full load. I was off to the Post office to mail it along with the unwanted package from Dr. Marty’s. I had to hand it to the PO and say I refused delivery. I was worried that I would have trouble with the return because I had waited so long. I wanted to mail the box of books at the same time. When I got to the clerk, I just said, “The usual.” He said, “Media mail.” I am known.
I stopped at Office Max to return a roll of wrapping paper on my way to the PO. I had a roll of butcher paper Judy gave me after her bird died. I avoid using wrapping paper where I can. It makes the package vulnerable. If the paper rips off, the address is lost.
Then off to Home Depot to find a way of dispensing Sevin on my shrubs. They had a small shaker container. I grabbed that. I will return the large bag Scott bought for me.
My last stop was Costco. I started in the pharmacy, looking for the large box of Poise. I was concerned about buying a giant economy-size when I wasn’t sure I would like that style. Then I thought, try it. Wouldn’t you know it? Costco was out. We live in Hawaii. Not everything is available at all times. You have to grab while the grabbing is good.
I was so delighted to have all these chores behind me and my appointment for the 30th for the peri-natal stem cell transplant set. I picked up a few other items and headed home for a nap before J’s Thursday session.
His mother asked if she could take a picture of J and me on Zoom. Okay. I wasn’t at my best, but I’m not posing for a dating site. J. wanted to work on reading. Before we did, I reviewed the study habits I had introduced on Tuesday. I am showing him how to organize information to help him remember details. CAM for Cortes, Aztec, Mexico. And SIP, for South American, Inca and Pizzaro. He did a pretty good job recalling what we had covered before I showed him the mnemonic trick.
We went back to the reading exercise—most of our work was on background knowledge and vocabulary. I can talk for a full forty minutes defining words. Wow! Vocabulary words, chivalry, proud, just, integrity, and compassion. I asked him if he knew what they meant for most of the words. When he said no, I launched into my lecture. When we hit compassion, I asked him if he had ever heard the word. I know he goes to church every Sunday; he must have heard the word compassion. Yes, and he could give me a definition. Being kind. I expanded the definition somewhat, giving examples, but it expanded his understanding. I asked if he ever heard the words just (justice), loyalty, proud, etc. He said he had. I kicked myself for not having asked. Besides always wanting to work from the base level of his understanding and knowledge, I want to teach him to use his existing knowledge to figure out words in a new context. The definition of a single word is different in every context. It’s always different. The loyalty of the knights of the Round Table is different from J’s loyalty to a friend.
When I got off the phone with J, I called E for our weekly appointment. He had been quite down last week. I worried about him. I did speak to a relative of his who knew about his possible depression and said he sounded better during the week, more relaxed. E confirmed that he was doing better.
I asked him what he wanted to work on now. I told him to think of something that annoyed him, anything. It didn’t have to be a big deal: the way his hair sat on his head, the color of his blanket, anything. He picked his homework. He said he found it overwhelming. He was at the top of his class for his freshman year of high school. I remember he was shocked.
He released anything negative about his hatred of his homework, keeping anything positive about his hatred or anything he still needed; and then did the release on anything negative about his love of his homework or anything he still needed. The biggest release was on the latter. No surprise. It’s usually on the one you don’t think will be anything.
As he did his homework, he continually told himself he was stupid and incapable. Well, that will make doing the homework more of a chore, a little like carrying a load of rocks with you up a hill. We worked on releasing those negative feelings.
Self-hatred was underlying. I don’t remember how we got there, but it was clear this was a long-standing feeling. E was born to two teenagers from a one-night stand at a party. These kids were not ready for a child; they did not want a child. It was clear that E wouldn’t want a child now, but he would accept responsibility. His teenage parents did not do that. They did not make him their top priority. That feeling stays with a kid. (His mother became a fully committed parent. She does her best.)
The first task was helping him to see it from their perspective and realize their attitude had nothing to do with him. He was a normal healthy infant. While having responsible parents is undoubtedly the preference, even that can be taken too far. All work makes Jack a dull boy. If we’re lucky, that’s all it will make him.
Once I thought E’s frontal lobe was clear of the blame for what happened to him as an infant, I went on to the next step. I used the homunculus image. I had him see the little him right around the soft spot. I explained the location of the soft spot and its function. The little ‘him’ was looking out into the world. I had him turn around, face the back of the head, and then address every cell back there. He told all those cells that his parents’ neglectful ways were not his fault; he was not a stupid, worthless nothing. He said he felt better, and we stopped for the day.
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