Monday, November 15, 2021

  

Monday, November 15, 2021

 

   Every morning, that weird feeling comes over me. It is my heart that feels weird. Since I have no other symptoms, I think it is loneliness and grief.  My leg persisted in being annoying.  As I worked on editing and posting on the blog site this morning, I finally applied the acupuncture pen to the muscles on the outside of my left thigh. Bingo!  The pain disappeared.  I have been putting off that treatment approach for days.

   The weather forecast said heavy rain for yesterday. Not a drop. Well, maybe a drop. Isaac texted me to say he felt a few as he walked. That was it. Apparently, Hilo got hit hard but not the rest of the island.  We are in a drought.  This is scary. Judy shared her concerns for all our wild animals.  We have wild goats, pigs, sheep, turkeys, pheasants, and of course, birds.  Many of these animals live on my blocks. My niece, Karin, said it sounds like I live in a nature preserve. Close. I live in Hawaii, where nature is valued above all else.  

   Judy said she put water out for the turkeys that come on her property.  I found a lidded plastic container, put it on the edge of the empty lot next to us, and filled it with water.  We have two pigs who live there.  I also put out a shallow bowl for the birds.  I figured the container was too deep for them.  I carried water to the spot in a Home Depot orange bucket. 

   I had an online math workshop through the Step Up Tutoring program presented by the LAUDS.  I love learning about the current strategies for teaching math.  It combines so many of the previous attempts to revise math teaching, incomplete attempts in their thinking. What I am hearing now makes sense to me.

   In the middle of the Zoom session, the sky opened- finally, and we got some rain. Not nearly enough, but some. I could hear Yvette celebrating downstairs. I called to her that I knew what caused the rain. Well, obviously, it was because I put water out for the animals.  I’ll leave it out there. One short cloud burst won’t remedy the impact of two weeks without any rain.

   I called the local middle school to see what was happening with my application. I was asked to apply; they needed someone to tutor adolescent D in their name.  It was their legal responsibility. It wouldn’t make much difference to D; there would be no change in his tutoring schedule. It would relieve his mom of some financial burden.  I had already called twice to see what was happening. I left at least one voicemail for the principal. Nothing.  No response. Today, I got through to the principal. She told me what was holding up my application; she hadn’t received my TB test results. I handed that in on September 16.  The principal called me to say I needed it; I made an appointment immediately; I was poked on September 14, did the follow-up on September 16, and drove the results to the school directly. No, I’m not upset that they misplaced it. That’s understandable. I don’t get why someone didn’t answer my calls to tell me what was going on. Now, I have to worry it will be another month before they tell me they can’t find the original. Maddening! I couldn’t resist calling the principal back and giving her the exact date I had handed it in. I’m turning into a spiteful person. This is what my mother was like. When her nerves were raw, she struck out at others; hurt begets hurt. 

     It’s a day of endless frustration.  I called the woman from the inlay company. I was supposed to receive an email from the company telling me if they could do the inlay on the piece of granite I already had or if I needed a larger piece.  Nothing. I called the dingbat in the sales. Nothing.  I will have to track her down. Yikes!

     I called Spectrum to cancel their service. Hearing I was quitting, the special offers flowed like water running downhill.  I have no idea if I’ve done better with this new service or not. It was expensive to install. The monthly expense isn’t that bad.  It will take 26 months of reduced bills before I see the financial benefit of this system. Hopefully, I will see an improvement in the connectivity. Either way, the owner is a family friend of Judy, and he lives right down the street.  Breathe!

    Rather than clean the broken screens, I thought it was time to get them repaired.  One screen was broken when a bird flew into it and bent the frame. The other one just has a tear in it.  The shop said I had to bring them in.  I hoped Scott o bring me plastic sheets to hang over the unprotected areas when the screens are out. I will also need help getting them down and into a car, either mine or Adam’s truck. 

   I called Hawaiian solar because I needed help reconnecting my solar panel monitoring system to the Internet. Enphase sent me an email telling me that I was no longer connected.  I finally got hold of the company. They told me I had to do something to the envoy. Envoy?  I had to call the company to find out what and where it was.  Beth gave me some directions, but I couldn’t find it. 

   I wanted to print the instructions Enphase emailed me, but I couldn’t get the printer to connect. Ah! Right. I had new Internet service, everything had to be connected again.  I had this problem when Sandor modified my service with the eero system.  I texted Brian to tell him I had a problem. They said they would stop by at the end of their day. 

   My niece in Seattle texted me. “Oops! I thought you were settled for Thanksgiving. You’re welcome to join us.” Right. I find traveling further than four blocks from the house a challenge.  Going to Seattle sounds like my vision of hell. Besides the travel, I would have to stay in a hotel room by myself. No, no, and no.  I made it clear to Jean, my hanai sister, that I wouldn’t come to New Jersey if I had to stay in a hotel. It’s never been my favorite. Without Mike, alone in a hotel room. Impossible.

     Brian and Tommy came over to deal with everything that needed to be connected to the Internet.  They worked for quite a while and had no success. They announced they would be back tomorrow and hard wire everything. Huh?   It took a while for me to register the possible significance of what he was saying.  I thought I was getting a more powerful system, and now I learned it wasn’t strong enough to cover the footprint of my house.  I had to speak to them before they proceeded with hardwiring my printer and my solar monitoring systems.

   I continued watching Offspring. It was a catchup show. Everyone had a different hairdo.  The siblings had let their hair grow out, and their mom had hers cut.  There were changes in castings.  Characters that were in play to become main characters were being dropped.  They had to give them exit excuses.  All this was handled in this one show. It was reasonably well done but obvious.