Tuesday, March 23, 2021

 Tuesday, March 23, 2021

      Dorothy woke up with a cold. To be Covid or no to be Covid? She's had both shots. She had a Covid test after arriving in Seattle, but she didn't have the results. She's not nervous about having the virus. She was concerned that she wouldn't be able to participate in family events, the reason she traveled across the country in the first place.

      I find myself picking fights with people in my head. Underlying that is this ongoing grief. In the past, I had waves that came and went. Now, it's continuous. I had heard that 'the bad period' of grief hits people at different times. I guess this is mine. The sorrow is mostly about the loss of me, the me that I knew with Mike. That 'me' was mostly love and laughter, with some seasoning of annoyance and occasionally anger. I don't think I ever didn't smile when I saw him. I miss being that loving, joyful person. And I miss being loved by him. He told me I was beautiful, and he loved me every day until they stuck a tube down his throat.

      I hired someone to locate my cesspools in preparation for replacing them with septic tanks. I had heard all cesspools had to be replaced by 2030. That would be 10 years from now. When I spoke to someone at the Health Department, in the process of securing blueprints showing where they are located, he said, "No, the deadline is 2050." That changes the picture. I'll be long gone, and the kids will be in their 80s. I decided to go ahead and have the cesspools located anyway. The guy who did this work came today. While he was at it, I had him check how the cesspools looked. Ken, who had done contract work on our house, told us we probably wouldn't have problems if we were not having problems yet. However, when I checked cesspools versus septic tanks on the Internet, it said that both had to be cleaned out periodically. He found the exact locations of the cesspools with a snake with a camera at its head. When he was finished, the engineer called me to show me where the cesspools were. I asked him how they looked. He hadn't checked the shape they were in, but he could. Ours were in excellent condition and shouldn't be a problem- for us. The only problem is the environment. 

      If Yvette and Josh have to decide what they would prefer. Getting the septic tanks puts a continuous burden on them. Those do have to be cleaned out regularly. If it's just the three of us, it could be ten years before it has to be done. Unlike cesspools which can go on forever, septic tanks must be pumped out. There are other problems with the septic tank route. It sounds like the environment be damned.  

      The engineer told me that if I'm not going to get septic tanks to let him know. He will have to refund half of the money I gave him. The price he quoted me included permits for the septic tanks as well as his survey.                

            After the engineer left, I called Darby to tell her how my presentation had gone yesterday and that I would walk to her house to return the book she lent me. I know it is very precious to her. She offered to buy one for me. While I found some of the information about Hawaiian life before the white man arrived interesting, it's not a significant interest of mine.

           I got a text from Dorothy. She got her Covid test results. She was clear; she just has a cold!!!!!

           I had a session with E, the young girl in LA. I'm covering one hour a week for her usual Step Up Tutor for a few weeks. I never had a good feeling about this gig. Then I had terrible problems connecting through Zoom. It was downright weird. Every time I dialed her mom's number, it dropped. I have never had that happen with any other number. In our second session, it came out this kid has a tutor at least 5 days a week. She said that some of them are from a 'public service.' It sounds like it's another free service. StepUp tutoring is free to all LA students. It's supposed to serve students whose parents can't afford tutoring. The other service she uses may be free, but I suspect it costs money. That means this family can afford tutors for their child and signed up for this program depriving some poor family of support. Yuck! It also looks like she has all these tutors because she is so insecure that she can't do the work independently. I asked her outright if she was put under pressure. She said yes. She may do this to herself, but I doubt it. She must have approval from her parents for all these tutors. Her parents must have submitted her name for a Step Up tutor. I am pushing her to try to do the work on her own and have the tutor review the work.  

      She had to write an essay on the history of Swing Dance. She couldn't do the necessary research because her dad had blocked all the sites. She wasn't supposed to use Wiki because it gave fake news. All the encyclopedias I read as a child were in the same boat as Wiki. They weren't written by experts in a field. They were written by researchers who summarized what they read. In fact, Wiki may have real experts making entries. The whole situation is twisted. I consider it a form of abuse.  

       I see E as a bright child frozen by demands for perfection, which either she places on herself or her parents have placed on her. I pushed her just to summarize whatever she found in Wiki. That's what I did as a child. She is only in sixth grade. A more complete understanding of the world should not be required. She may be plagued by some intuition the world is more complicated than what she just read in a brief essay on the Internet or her history textbook. She is damn right, but we all do just the best we can. 

            I had J, also from the Step UP program. We worked on reading and math. He said he was only seeing a small improvement when working on his own. He always did better when he worked with me. Damn! When he works with me, I don't help him. I just sit there. Sometimes, I even do something else when he's working on the reading. I find his comprehension quite good. 

         We did some math work today, too, order of operations. There was one problem that had me baffled. I would have to consult the family math expert; my hanai sister, Jean, has a master's in math.

            I had A at the end of the day. I continued working with the A (first grade) level Barnell Loft context clue book. While his responses weren't great, they were better than the first time. He still suffers from b/d confusion and does not use the memory tricks I taught him, although they work when I push him.    

        Tommy, the techie I hired, arrived at 5 pm. I heard him pull up on his turquoise motorcycle. It seemed to take him forever to come in. He said he was being attacked by a turkey at the mouth of my driveway. It was going after his legs. I have never seen one of our turkeys get aggressive with a person. He said it was the motorcycle that got them worked up. 

      We discussed my slide show for the audio file. I couldn't find the one I modified. I was confused.   Tommy told me how to set it up. I worked on it after he left and got it in order pretty quickly. I listed the tracks for each of the five stories. 

        I got an email from Julia from Step Up. I hadn't been able to find where she posted the video of the presentation. She said she was going to do it on Wednesday. Here was a copy for me in the meantime. I had to give a username and password. Nothing I put in worked. I suspect all the tutors will have the same problem. This may be the first time she tried to do something like this. She'll figure it out.