Monday, December 6, 2021

 Monday, December 6, 2021

 

     I made myself stay up until 9:30. Despite getting to bed somewhat early, I slept long and well.  The electricity was still out when I woke up. While the sky threatened and there were forecasts of rain, it was dry long enough for Elsa and me to walk to the end of the block and back. 

      My phone was very low because I could not charge it last night. I sat in my car editing the blog entry while my phone charged. My computer had enough charge to work on the updates and the blog, even if I couldn’t run them through Grammarly and post them. The work went much faster without the radio mumbling away in the background. 

     Last night, I noticed the electricity was out just on our street. It wasn’t out on the roads running perpendicular to ours or the one parallel and above us.  I called Helco around 10 pm.  It was a good thing I did. This morning, I heard from several people they had tried to call and couldn’t get through.  People freaked out when the power was still off when they got up.  Everyone must have called at that point, and no one could get through.  I assured everyone I had reported our local outage. 

       After rereading the blog entry for today, I walked down to Lutz’s house. Lutz lives on one of the perpendicular streets.  I thought his house was on the south side of the street.  I was about to enter the driveway when I saw a car pull out across the street. I checked with the driver if Lutz lived in that house.  It was Lutz’s son, Brian.  Well, that gave me my answer. I crossed the street and walk to down the driveway to the house.  He had electricity but no Internet.  He said he thought it was out for the whole island because the transmission came from Maui, which had been hard hit by the windstorm.

    When I got home, I got a message from Isaac telling me he had no water.  I discovered he was home. I expected him to be at school today. They had canceled, anticipating more bad weather.  He had electricity and a good Internet connection.  I had an LAUSD workshop scheduled for 10 am.  I asked him if I could come over and watch it there. He watched it with me. It was perfect for the work he was doing in the school.  I love these workshops.  Over eight hundred tutors are volunteering for the Step Up Tutoring program, but only 26 participants today. Of those who spoke up to answer questions, two attended my Reading Office hours and got help from me. It’s always the same crowd looking to learn something new. Tragic.  After the workshop, I headed home. It was time for my mid-morning nap.  I slept well. I have been dealing with many negative feelings, mostly shame resulting from people rejecting me and casting me in a bad light.  My mother did that to me in spades.  I believe she did that as a way of dealing with her own shame.  I am doing much better just sitting with it of late. But also, I‘m doing better at avoiding situations where people feel I deserve to be shamed.

   I used my internet connection at Isaac’s, so I checked if anyone had signed up for my Reading Office hours.  If they did, I would have to return to Isaac’s. No one signed up today. I might have had to return at 4:30 for my zoom session with adolescent D.

    I know shame gets a bad rap these days.  I’ve heard people say no one should feel it. Indeed, no one should feel it inappropriately. No one should be subjected to a situation where they are symmetrically shamed either as a manipulation or for “their own good.”   Shame is one of our primitive emotions, along with fear and love. We’re stuck with it, whether we like it or not. I believe it was a survival tool.  It served as a signal that we were not doing what was expected. The degree of shame increased with the degree of deviation from the norm.  In a primitive culture, conformity was vital.  Those primitive groups operated on a survival level much as the military does in combat situations. There’s a hierarchy; there’s a right way to do everything. Period end of sentence.  We don’t live at that survival level. Neither do we live in a social situation where the rules are consistent and clear-cut. We can be wildly deviant in any situation.  We have to learn to deal with the shame feedback loop. We’d better figure out a positive use for it.  I believe it serves as a signal that we have done something ‘socially inappropriate,’ whether to violate some social norm or just make another person uncomfortable.  We can drown in shame these days.  We have to learn to appreciate the value of the signal without interpreting it as a signal that our lives are in danger. In our day age, that shame signals alerts us to the discomfort of others, which can be interpreted as danger or responded to with empathy and compassion. We have been presented with quite a challenge.

     On one of my walks, a Helco truck drove by. I waved him down.  He asked if I had electricity. Nope. He said he was looking for the source of the problem.  I saw a repair truck come down the street and park at the far end. Yay!  The electricity went on shortly. Ah! However, I didn’t have an Internet connection. I texted Brian to tell him. He had to go home and reboot his battery which supplied the connection for everyone in this area. Hmm! That’s not good Brian is one man. If something happens to him, we’re screwed.

    Now I had an Internet connection for my session with adolescent D.  I texted his mom earlier in the day. She said their Internet was inconsistent. Our connection was good enough to get us through the session. I apologized to D for having pushed him too hard.  He said, “No, you didn’t.”  Since we started to work on spelling, I told him I thought it would be better to go to lower-level reading material. Would he be good with this? I have been working on an eighth-grade level to protect his ego.  It was slow going, but this work can be done at any level, and he got some exposure to multi-syllable words. I started at Unit 1 paragraph 1 on a second-grade material.  He was able to read every word, slowly for the most part and quickly for a few phrases. He made only one mistake; he was able to catch it on his own and correct it.  As far as I’m concerned, there were a few miracles. 

    Judy planned to bring over a lox, cream cheese bagel for my birthday, but the weather had everyone’s attention. She planned to bring it over tonight, but she was off-the-charts busy.  Mei was out of town, and she and Paulette were running the Turo business single-handed. I was fine.

   I watched another Grantchester.  I finally realized why I’m not enjoying it as much.  They started introducing edgier content.  The characters have been affected by criminal actions and prejudicial laws.  I don’t want edgy.  I want Murder She Wrote, Diagnosis M.D., etc. Life is edgy enough, thank you anyway