Monday, October 4, 2021

Monday, October 4, 2021

 

    I had another night of long, luxurious deep sleep.  I was even in doze mode until after 4 pm. 

Ahh!

     I got an email from Jen, the tech support person at Step Up Tutoring. I need her help with translation.  I am having a terrible time straightening out technical issues with California E’s parents. Their English is close to non-existent, and my Spanish is inadequate. 

      I know you can be an adult living in LA and never have to learn a word of English. We had a priest assigned here. He had lived in LA for 9 years. Hello was a challenge.

       I got a ghost text from Dorothy.  It said, “Will you be making a jack ‘o lantern?” I thought it was an odd question to ask me.  What was even odder was that it disappeared. I couldn’t find it on her thread.  I texted her, asking her if she sent me such a text. She said she had made that comment in response to a picture of her grandson on that picture app. She had not sent me a text. It seems like everything is getting screwed up. 

     I finally dropped off the job application to the Middle school.  Ginger told me she would be out today but said someone would Xerox all my documentation. Looking back on the other day, I don’t think she looked on the verge of tears.  I think everyone who works in that office is stressed to the max. That would explain that strange telephone call from the principal at 6:30 one morning. Geez, she sounded like a wired New Yorker. The remaining clerk, Sidney, has been consistently helpful, downright kind to me, and giving me information that made me understand what everyone is going through. Sidney Xeroxed all my documents: passport, signed social security card, birth certificate, driver’s license, Covid passport, and college transcript. 

      Yesterday, I was inspired to take my rings off. Good luck!  My knuckles have dramatically increased in size. No way could I get either of the two rings I was currently wearing off.  I called a jeweler before I left the house to drop off my application to the middle school. Yes, they cut off rings that could no longer be slid off the finger. They suggested I try Windex first. Apparently, it is the most effective lubricant. 

     I didn’t have Windex, but the jeweler did.  As I suspected, my knuckles were too large for anything to help.  He could get the little ring off my pinky with wire clippers, but my wedding band was too thick for that. His Black & Decker gadget for sawing through the ring wasn’t working. He said he would call me when he had it up and running. 

    I got a phone call from my friend B. He was helping his daughter move into a dorm at the start of a college year.  They only recently reconnected. What a joy!!

    In my session with adolescent D, we continued transcribing the words into their syllables and phonemes.  He still makes mistakes that I wish he wouldn’t, but he sticks with it, he takes more risks and gets more things right.  He read weather as water. The two words share many of the same letters and in the same order. I felt down about it. As I think of it, I’m giving him mixed messages. I tell him to use his automatic processing, but I criticize him when it doesn’t produce the correct response. I have to revise my response. All the letters of water were in weather and in the right order, nor did he add any letters. That’s an improvement. Then he came upon the word expected. He just gave up.  I did something different; I wrote just the vowel letters. Then I added on the consonants behind the vowels and then in front.  Doing that isolates the vowel letters more and more concretely demonstrates the process of decoding these multi-syllable words. 

   I jumped from video to video on Netflix.  When one prompts a surge of anxiety, I switch to another.  The documentaries are the easiest on my nerves, even the one singing the praises of Richard Carpenter. Yuck!