Monday, September 20, 2021
Otto, my neighbor two driveways down across the street, approached me as I did my morning walk. He had problems with a stray dog getting into his yard and disturbing his dogs. He asked me to be on the lookout and get information off the dog's collar so he could contact the owner. He thought I had a better chance of encountering the dog because of my frequent walks up and down our street. Lo and behold, I did have news for him.
I ran into Mary Ann on my early morning walk today. She told me the story of a dog that jumped her fence and interacted with her dogs. She got her hands on the dog and got the telephone number off the dog's collar. She called the number and left a message. She got a call back from the person, saying she didn't own a dog, only a cat. Mary Ann's stray dog was a collie or shepherd mix. I asked Otto if that described the dog he was thinking of. I had to tell him the contact information was a dead end.
In my conversation with Shivani, I told her there was a man, a 'friend' on Facebook, making overtures, saying I looked like a nice lady, and he thought we could be friends. Shivani warned to be on the lookout for scams. My new 'friend's name was Boris Kearney, and there was a picture of a white, middle-aged man. I thought to check if we had any mutual friends. Zero. Then I checked his Facebook page. Really?? This white man with an Irish name had pictures of people dressed in customs appropriate for the Middle East. Hmm! I blocked him. I checked another 'pursuer.' Sure enough, we had no mutual friends either. I blocked him too.
Judy stopped by. For some reason, I told her stories about my high school friends and acquaintances. I had no friends for the first year and a half after moving from the Bronx to Great Neck. I was a loner. I was always good with total strangers. One woman said about herself and me that we could hold a conversation (a real conversation, not a monologue) with a wall. I was also good with people I lived with (until the commune. Which didn't go so well.) However, I loved having bunkmates in camp. Whatever my social problems were, they were made worse by my mom.
The summer I moved to Great Neck, I ran into two girls in the local bakery, Karen and Terry. Realizing I must be about their age, and they hadn't seen me before, they asked me about myself. I told them where I lived. Two days later, they showed up at our front door. My mother opened it with me behind her. They asked if I could come out and play. My mother's reaction was fear. We both looked at them as if they were Martians. She all but slammed the door in their faces and then asked, "What do they want from you?" Some of my mother's reaction was just European. American social casualness was unfamiliar, judged as inappropriate, and suspect.
On the other hand, my mother was very sensitive and highly perceptive, but she always interpreted those signals in the most negative light. She was downright paranoid.
In March of my sophomore year, my father died. I needed contact with a classmate to get the school assignments. I have no idea how I got Jackie's number. I called her. She became my one and only friend. That was my pattern, only one friend. That had been my parents' pattern; only one friend could be tolerated.
I had one and only one friend before I moved to Great Neck, and that was Mary. Our mothers must have met in the playground when we were very young. Mary and I have known each other since we were two. Mary's parents were somewhat like mine. Her dad was Jewish and a lawyer, and her mom was Christian. Mary had a younger sister that was a year older than Dorothy. We occasionally did things together, like visiting a park, but we never had family dinners in each other's homes. Mary and I would sometimes stay for dinner in each other's homes, but not the rest of our families.
After my dad died, Jackie was a lifeline. We talked every night. I didn't know it then, but Jackie also had a tough time at home. Her dad was an abusive alcoholic. She did tell me a story of him shooting squirrels dropping into his burning fireplace from the chimney. I thought that was weird, but I didn't realize how weird. We did not live in a low-income area. Hiring an exterminator was an option for this family.
The last time I saw Jackie was at her wedding. It was a very small group of people. I was the only friend. It all seemed very depressing. I didn't realize how small the group was until we reconnected through Classmates.com fifty years later. She said she was depressed. She got married to make sure she got out of that house after she graduated. Her husband's situation was just as bad. His parents were negligent. They didn't come to the wedding. She said they had a reasonably good marriage because they were kind to each other: kindness- hallelujah for kindness.
I enjoyed renewing our friendship, but as time wore on, I learned that her only topic of conversation was complaints, something negative. Then she told me she had contact with another classmate of ours. Her situation was even worse than Jackie's. She married a man who insisted that they live as Buddhists. Then one day, he upped and declared he didn't want to be married anymore; he wanted to be a monk. He left his wife to deal with an adult disabled child on her own. If I remember correctly, that boy died shortly after I heard about her situation.
Jackie proposed I join her, Ellen, and another woman on a trip to England. A) I don't like traveling, B) I'm not traveling with someone I don't know, and c) I won't travel with a group when I already know that two of the party are deeply depressed. Not my idea of fun.
I had my Reading Office hour at 11 am. No one had signed up. I was prepared to sit there, as Julia did for her office hours. No one had signed up ahead of time. Since this is a Step-Up site, I have joined a Zoom meeting hosted by Step Up. When I went to sign in, the host never let me in. I should ask Julia to change this arrangement. She posts an ID number for her office hours on Zoom and waits for people to come. I assume she does other work as she waits.
I did some housekeeping, washing my kitchen floor with my beloved Bissell. I don't use it the way they instruct. Rather than use the piddling amount of water the machine can dispense, I dump several gallons of water on the floor and vacuum that up. Then I dump another several gallons in the same area. That floor is clean when I'm done.
It took me most of the day to complete Saturday's update. They seem to be getting longer. I have included more details. Am I becoming a better writer or just compulsive? Or am I just feeling lonelier? Probably some combination.
I also spent time combing and pulling out Elsa's dreads. This is a relatively new activity for us. We both loved it- until I pulled one too hard. Then I checked the time. Yikes! It was 1:30, and Elsa had a 1:45 appointment at the vet. What happened? Why didn't my alarm go off at 1:15? When I checked, it wasn't set. I grabbed Elsa, ran for the car, and drove to the vet.
Elsa loves riding in the car. She knows when I'm going to the car. She jumps up and down beside me when she sees me with my purse. If she is going with me, we head out the door. She runs straight for the car and stands by the door. We made it with time to spare. They weren't ready for us at 1:45 anyway. I called the receptionist to let her know we were there. Owners are not allowed in the facility because of Covid. I went in on our last visit, but since the resurgence of Covid with the new variety, they cut back again. Someone came to take Elsa from me and get any last-minute instructions or questions.
The vet called me on my cell phone for the consultation while I sat in my car. A month ago, to the day, Elsa got a shot for her skin lesions, which the vet thinks are caused by allergies. She had a shot the month before, and her skin cleared up miraculously. I wanted to know why this second shot hadn't had the same effect. The vet told me that the shot only relieved the itching; it was not a cure for the skin condition. She said all they could give was band-aids for the problem. Elsa was allergic to something. Whatever the doctor prescribed didn't address that. She said her case was serious. She should see a dermatological specialist. Theirs came from Portland, Oregon, once a month before Covid hit. Now, there was nothing. She went on and on about how severe her case was. She said moving to Alaska was an option. I finally said, "I'm not ready to put her down." I thought I was being funny. The doctor didn't respond. Oh, dear. She gave me a prescription for antibiotics and instructions to bathe her with a medical shampoo two to three times a week. Here's the problem. I have to leave the soap on for fifteen minutes. Guess how Elsa feels about it. Which is worse, her skin condition or sitting with the soap on?
For the second time today, my alarm didn't go off. I had adolescent D at 4:30. When I checked the time, by accident, it was 4:28. I called him twice, no answer. I sent him the link. When he got on, he apologized. He had been on the phone with friends. First, I reviewed the BrainManagement possibility. He had little recall of what I said. I explained the brain was a tool. If we used it incorrectly, it didn't work that well. I drew an analogy between a hammer and the brain. If someone held the hammer by its head and tried to hammer in a nail, hitting it with the handle, it wouldn't work that well. He understood that. While he understood my point, he still had nothing to share with me about what he experienced when recalling words when speaking or reading. It didn't feel right to do something with the BrainManagement.
I had him read the Sight word list. He could read the first four lists with a few errors, and the number of mistakes increased rapidly. He finally acknowledged that his reading was somewhat better because of the improvement in his decoding skills. Yay for that!
It did come out that he had a better memory for the letters than the sounds. I wrote a ten-letter word on the Zoom whiteboard. He closed his eyes and tried to remember the letters; he could remember six without difficulty. I didn't ask him to 'read' the word, just to identify the letters in the correct order. I wrote several six-letter words. He could remember the order of the letters going from left to right without difficulty. He did just about as well reciting them backward, going from right to left, and NLP exercise for strengthening visual processing skills. It sounds like D has a typical auditory processing problem. I asked him again if he had listened to the Phonics Discovery System 5 Stories audio file. No. He couldn't remember to do it. I told him how I would set up cues to remind myself and not count on my memory. He said he could put a sticky note on his pillow to remind him to turn on the audio file as he fell asleep. I didn't feel I had anything that I could use to change the way his brain worked yet. I switched to using Phase I on 8th-grade text.
Adolescent D remembered some rules that we had reviewed over and over again. He usually recalled that they in -ly is pronounced as a long /e/. Today, he had trouble remembering t why -ey made the long /a/ sound. He asked me to explain. Doing that shows a pronounced change in his level of participation.
My work with adolescent D makes me question the value of my approach with him. Maybe he needs the strict repetition/drill of the Orton Gillingham approach. It's like he takes no conscious responsibility for his learning. If it happens, it happens. It's the way infants learn. No, he makes even less effort. His passivity is maddening, and I am not doing well within myself and losing patience. I hope I mask it, but I believe that people discern underlying feelings whether we show them overtly or not, even when they are not aware of them
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