Monday, July 26, 2021

 Monday, July 26, 2021

 

            Okay, I had a weird dream this morning. It felt like one of those moments when college dorms empty as everyone leaves for a break. I felt alone. Someone asked me where I was going. I thought of visiting a friend in Massachusetts. Then I decided to head home to my mother's house and stay with her and my sister. I woke with the realization that my mother was dead, had been for years, and my childhood home was not an option.  

            Somewhere in the dream, there was the death of my father. It gets weird here. "He" went into an incinerator voluntarily while alive to be turned to ash. I watched it happen. He wasn't being hurt; he just disappeared. Now 'my father' looked nothing like the man I knew. It took me a while to figure out what I had seen. "My father' looked like a man I dated briefly in my twenties. We were both in a college play. I remember thinking, "He looks just like Hansyenkline,(SP!)" the image of my father as a very young boy. One of the weirder dreams I remembered. I'm sure most of them are weird. 

            When I ran into Carol with her dogs, Luke and Max, she told me of problems with pigs on her property. Hogs are nocturnal. As they wander around people's property, they often disturb them. They make noise as they wolf down mac nuts or avocados or trigger motion detection lights. Many people object to them because they dig up their property. Steve, one of my walk contacts, is putting up a fence to protect his property. Scott lives out in the woods and says he is often kept up at night as twenty to thirty pigs munched on mac nuts. Carol said the pigs are vicious- yeah when cornered. The difference is these babies can do damage with their tusks. They're not rabbits going to their death without fighting to survive. I love when an animal is labeled vicious because it objects when you try to kill it. While I wouldn't want pigs in my backyard and don't have any because we are fenced in, I also feel sorry for these animals as they lose access to food because of us.  

            I had a 7:30 dental appointment. One of my bottom teeth broke the other day, or at least I felt a sharp edge I hadn't felt before. It warranted checking. Yes, indeed. I lost a filling. The dental assistant took an X-ray. She returned after consulting the dentist to say he saw a few other spots. She took three more X-rays. The dentist found four additional cavities in my remaining five bottom front teeth. He said those teeth were usually spared decay. This was unusual. I knew exactly why I had this problem. As I lay down to nap, I popped a Hersey's milk chocolate kiss with a whole almond into my mouth. My teeth were marinated in a chocolate sauce as I slept. Good work, Betty. My idiocy rivals that of mothers who leave milk or apple juice in their babies' mouths as they sleep. He asked me why I did it. I said because I was crazy. It may be the truth. 

            I only had K and Twin A this morning. Twin E was still asleep. I have now shown K the whole sentence with all the letters in the alphabet. "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog." The next challenge is to have him write the sentence starting at the far left of the page, rather than toward the middle, and write as many words as he can on one line with appropriate spacing instead of writing one or two words on one line in the middle of the page.

            Twin A is doing a better job remembering the letters of the alphabet she was having problems with, and we continued working on the word family -at.

            Two people signed up for my Zoom Reading support office hours. I must rely on what these inexperienced tutors tell me about their kids' problems. I ask questions to determine if the problem is with basic decoding, decoding multi-syllable words, recalling sight words, or comprehension. Most of the time, the problem is with some form of word recognition. I have so much fun teaching these folks. They are primarily inexperienced teachers. Trained teachers would be much harder to teach; they come with fixed mindsets. I'm half teacher, half standup comic in these sessions. I generally get thanks and comments on how helpful my suggestions are. Sometimes I get follow-up questions, or tutors tell me they had success.

   Yesterday, I texted Tommy, my tech, about the poor quality of the video. He said he could fix that. It has something to do with the sd versus hd quality. He had it on hd, and it got changed automatically to sd. He said it wouldn't be a big deal to change it back.

            I called Jean, my hanai sister, only to get hold of her husband, John. He said she was already in bed. He also said that Damon, her son and my step-son, had just called. He told John he would be calling me next. Damon does his duty to his moms. I always go for walks when someone calls. It's a good way to get my steps in. I waited a few minutes for Damon to call. When he didn't, I called him. I always enjoy talking to him.

            Amazing news: My leg didn't hurt after sitting for long periods today. Whaddaya say to that?