Friday, July 9, 2021

 Friday, July 9, 2021

 

I had a busy morning, no yoga, but one appointment after another. I got up a little after the alarm went off. Once Elsa was fed and watered, I tucked her under my arm and headed for my car. We were going to the groomer. She sat comfortably in the passenger's seat on the way there. Dick came out to the car to pick her up. I told him I would be back shortly after 10.

At 8:20, I had my appointment with Mana K's crew. I started with the seven-year-old K. I instructed him on how to form the lowercase s before he began to write. He did a good job writing his first name. The letters were well-formed in both his first and last name. There was only one problem. He reversed the vowel letters in his last name. I had him say his name, spell it out loud, and then compare that with what he had written. He was able to correct it easily. 

I wrote the lowercase letters that dropped below the baseline, g, j, p, q, and y. We talked about which ones had the curled fishhook. He can distinguish left from right easily. (This is something Mike could not do. I would have to direct him to move using external clues; move toward the sofa or the chair.) K wrote the fox jump(s). He wrote jump as jup. However, he could hear the sound of the m when I asked him to and could change the spelling. He formed the hook of the j correctly; only he had the letter fill the top two lines instead of the bottom two. We will have to start again on that.  

At 9 am, I had an appointment with Shelly, my therapist/life coach. While I felt desperate earlier in the week, I felt fine today. Something shifted. I remember thinking I wasn't a helpless child at this point in my life. However, I anticipated that I would be equally as vulnerable at the end of my life. Laws protect the elderly as there are children for a reason. For better or worse, I anticipate a long, long life, maybe 106. My mother died two weeks before her 98th birthday, and I am in way better health than she was at the same age. Of course, I can always be hit by a bus or some miscellaneous virus no one anticipated.  

I did what I could with the therapy session since I had scheduled it. I always advise my clients to focus on what is most annoying for them at the time. I use the word annoying instead of troubling because it should be something trivial. I felt sad. Four of the nine people I am working with have serious memory problems. I never made any inroads with sixth-grade D's memory problems. Now I have the twins, A & E, who are about to start 2nd grade and still can't remember all the letters in the alphabet, and adolescent D, whose mind slips around the way my aging mind does. While BrainManagementSkills often makes a considerable difference, nothing helps everyone.

Shelly sneezed. She asked how it impacted me. She, like me, believes that everything has significance. I didn't feel a difference, and then I started to yawn. I had a session like this before. I yawned over and over during the session. Shelly and I just observed the yawns.  

This woman is fantastic for me. She feels as I do; if something comes up, follow it – unless you think it could be damaging. Shelly said one reason we got along well is that we both can sit with not knowing at the moment. Neither of us had any idea what was going on with the repeated yawning, and we were happy to observe it without having to know. We thought it could do no harm- the only limit we set. Everything else is a go. I yawned and yawned for the entire session. My jaw muscles relaxed, and I experienced a significant adjustment in the cervical spine. I have no idea what the psychological impact was, if there was one.

I should have had an appointment at 10:30, but sixth-grade D's mother emailed me to cancel; D had a dental appointment. I went down to pick up Elsa from the groomer. Dick passed Elsa to me right through the open car window. He said she never took her eyes off him, but she was looking for her mommy. Once in the car, she was in my lap the whole ride home. Typically, she prefers riding in the passenger seat. 

Tommy called. Did I get his text? There was a problem with the last slide. I had cut it off too soon. I had to redo it. Tommy said just wear the same shirt, and no one will know the difference. I told him I had a radical haircut; people would think I had a sex change. He laughed. Since it was the last slide and only provides information on getting more information, I can redo it without my image. No problem. 

I felt blah for most of the day. I took a long nap. I worked on the updates and the blog. At night, I watched more of Manifest. I'm getting worn out by the drama. I checked Wiki; there are three seasons with over a dozen episodes in each. I read some of the summaries. It's endless. It's a nighttime soap opera on steroids. I told Judy about it. She had heard of it and said it sounded like the series Lost. She was a devoted follower. Then the series just ended -without a resolution. She said the fans were beside themselves. She is not willing to follow this show if it's like Lost. Looking through the episodes, I believe it is. There is a difference when you have the main characters solving a crime someone has committed against someone else versus against the main characters. We need to know how it works out for the show's protagonists.