Friday, October 1, 2021

 Friday, October 1, 2021

 

   This is Saint Therese of Lisieux’s holy day. She has a lot of meaning for me.  I slept until 4 am.  I was a good sleep, but not as downright delicious as it had been the night before.  I considered getting up. Instead, I treated the muscles of my left leg, top and bottom inside and out, hip and back with the acupuncture pen.  This little gadget is amazing.  I sent one to Damon for his birthday. 

     There was a crashing sound outside around 4 am.  I wasn’t too worried. I assumed Josh had gone out the back door and banged into something. Elsa responded, a worrisome signal, but she quickly came away from the door and returned to bed.  When I got up, she made her way to the outside shower door. That was unusual.  When I opened it, she tore out and charged about the yard, obviously chasing some animal, probably a cat.  This was a ‘get out of my territory’ tear.  I have no idea what kind of an animal it was except that it moved fast; Elsa couldn’t catch it.

   I was up before the alarm went off. I headed out. My leg felt weak because of the work I had done on it with the pen. Once I get those muscles to relax from their rigid grip, I have to give them a chance to build strength. 

    The acupuncturist said my piriformis was tight because the muscles at the front and top of the left thigh were too tight, pulling that glute muscle beyond its capacity.  She said the left hip was forward of the right. Now, that is the opposite of my experience.  I feel the right hip is higher and further forward.  I think my lifelong habit of pushing my right hip far out to the right has caused all this strain.  I focused on contracting the lower right abdominal muscles as I walked, so the right hip was pulled over to the center. We’ll see.

    I usually make a right turn out of the driveway when I do my morning walk. Today, Elsa insisted on making a left. Just as well.  I think Kukuna, a particularly steep hill, would have been too much for my leg today. The hill at Hiolani is gentler.  I had no problem waking it.

    My friend Melissa called to tell me that Larry, her husband, had put out a supply for avocados by their fence. They were drowning in avocados. Before the pandemic, they brought them to church, but that system no longer worked. 

       Melissa will be leaving for a stint as a volunteer OBGYN in Washington State on the 18th.  She wasn’t going to go, but the governor made vaccination mandatory for medical personnel.  She felt it was safe enough to go. Her husband, who accompanies her on her Australian outback stints, will not be going with her.  While she is there, all she does is work and sleep, 24 hours of work followed by 24 hours of sleep.  How is it possible that the medical profession has a schedule like that when science knows about the impact of sleep deprivation?

   I had an appointment with Shelly, my therapist, at 10.  I was doing so much better than I had been a few days ago.  We continued working on the issue which had come up last week, speaking gently when discussing differences.  I don’t have a good association with that. When my mother spoke softly, she was always up to something nefarious, convincing me I was unliked by everyone, wrong about everything, mentally incompetent, something negative about me.  My dad was soft always spoken. He was also manipulative. I believe they both thought they were doing something for my good. Lack of self-awareness can be lethal.

    I texted poor Damon to tell him I had regained my emotional balance and to call while I was still in good shape. I didn’t expect this improvement to be permanent.  The disturbed state just seems to happen.  Hopefully, I get better at dealing with it. 

     I did a little work on the updates and headed to the middle school to drop off my

 application.  No, I hadn’t gotten hold of the woman in charge to get the information I needed. This application is bizarre, and no one can help you with it.  I called the middle school, asking when I could get hold of the woman in charge of the application process. The clerk I spoke to was wonderful.  She explained that the woman currently handling this work already had a full-time job in high school and was doing the best she could. I asked when the woman who usually had the job was coming back. Oh, boy. This woman has been delaying her return, leaving the school high and dry.  I don’t know the reason for the delay. I suspect it’s Covid. I don’t get it. She can do most of this work at home, stopping by when she to pick up paperwork. The rest can be handled on the phone. I’m never going to see the woman who’s pinch-hitting in her absence now.  Any meetings can be attended remotely. This clerk also gave me the information I needed to finish filling out the form. 

   I headed down to the school to drop it off.  As I stood in the office, the woman I was to speak to gathered some papers.  I thought she was doing it to deal with me, but no.  “I have lunch duty now. I have to go.”  When will you be back? “In an hour. You can just leave your paperwork here.” No way.  Leaving my paperwork meant leaving my passport, social security card, birth certificate, Covid passport, and college transcripts. No, no. I was not leaving original copies of anything in this discombobulated office setting.  I left with plans of stopping at Home Depot to look for a large flower pot for my mailbox.

     When I looked at the time, I thought I wasn’t going to have time to do all I wanted to do at Home Depot and make it home in time for my noon appointment with California E.  I made it home in time to sign, but she never did.  I contacted Julia to tell her all the problems I’m having. She gave me the telephone number of the woman who was supposed to help me.  When I asked that woman how to work with E, she said on Zoom. Duh! That I knew. The problem is working it out with the family.  I also had another problem.

      I volunteered to work with a group of new tutors, supporting them in their efforts.  I got some information from the organizing committee, but I didn’t know how to use their form.  I could fill it out, but I didn’t know how to send it.  Julia told me just to write my own email. I did. I composed something and sent it to the four people in my group.

     In the late afternoon, I had appointments with the W & M sisters. I always start with M. Her mother always sits in on the session. I’m not sure why. I’ve been having her read the same passages each week. I hadn’t seen the progress I expected and couldn’t figure out the problem.   Today, it became clear that she confuses letters more than b, d, p, and q.  She confuses r and f, and r, n, and h.  We spent some time discussing the differences between some of the letters. I already instructed her mother to buy molding clay so she could form the letters that confuse her.  Because she has problems with the relative size of the letters, I suggested she draws the primary lines on a thick layer of clay and have her carve the letters.  I also planned to send her a deck of the lower-case letters written on the primary lines for classification. It was easy to email the primary paper and the categorization, but the cards had to go by hard mail.

     I continued working on fluency with W on 2nd-grade material.  She was reading the words correctly but not using appropriate intonation.  I told her it wasn’t how fast she read but the rhythm she used. She told me that her teachers were telling her to read with ‘empathy.’ I think she meant meaning.  Unfortunately, this is often the best instruction classroom teachers can give. She made a modification, varying the pitch of the words. Fluency in reading is largely due to reading with the correct rhythm.  Eventually, she got it.  She even got the idea of sustaining the last sound of a word while she figured out the next one.  I said I felt like I was giving acting lessons rather than reading ones.  Her mom, who is someone connected to the film industry, agreed.  I don’t think she understands this is a standard criterion teachers use to evaluate reading performance. They have no idea how to teach it other than saying that it should have meaning or be like ‘normal’ speech.  While it is closer to normal speech than reading word for word, the reading voice differs from the conversational voice. It’s a different register, at least for most people most of the time.

     On Wednesday, Kilauea started spouting fumes and plumes of fire, one five stories high. While this is exciting and a lovely site, it’s also a downer for those of us living here. It means this island and those to the immediate north are plagued with vog, volcanic fumes (sulfur), ash, and cloud cover.  This means that my views of the ocean and mountain are obscured.  Vog was fully active when we moved here. You can always tell how bad the vog is by how blurry the horizon is.  If it’s bad, you can’t tell where the ocean ends and the sky begins.  When it is vog-free, the line is crystal clear. 

    My neighbor Mei, her son, David, and her friend Shia had plans to visit the volcano tonight. Going at a reasonable hour is ridiculous. There are thousands of people at the viewing site. Their goal was to be there at 1 am; they hoped the crowd had thinned out by then.

.     I ordered an ear wax removal gadget on Amazon. It comes with a soft plastic spiral tip. It can only go into a certain controlled depth.  The ad said ear wax builds up over the years and gave a dramatic demonstration of a removal.  Mine came today. I tried it. I didn’t get the slightest hint of ear wax.  I clean my ears regularly with Q-tips.  I can’t imagine how anyone’s ears get so filled with wax at the depth to which this gadget goes.

     It was time to place my next order for Hersey kisses with whole almonds. All the sellers on Amazon have stopped dealing with this product. OW!  It may have to do with some combination of the increased price of sugar and the supply chain. Either way, I think I will shortly have to live without my primary source of calories.