Saturday, October 16, 2021
Another wonderful night’s sleep. I am so lucky. A few complaints from my left leg, but I completed 4,000 steps. How bad could it be? The problem is the muscles around my hip joint don’t fire. The question is, why?
I ran into a woman I hadn’t seen in a long time on my morning walk. I recognized a familiar gait as she walked toward me, but I couldn’t figure out who it was. Paulette. No, not Judy’s sister, just some woman who lives in the neighborhood I haven’t seen in a while. She had been in Europe, Croatia. She has a family home there. Loves to visit. She said it is more open and relaxed there. People walk around unafraid of Covid. While they have a low vaccination rate, they don’t allow anyone who isn’t vaccinated and tested. For now, they have a low vaccine count; I hope their luck holds out. Eventually, that strategy gave out in Australia.
I had a productive day. I gardened, washed the kitchen floor, and talked to Damon. I told him Mei, my neighbor, offered to lend me their futon over Xmas. I wanted to buy one for the library so August can invite a friend to join us over the Christmas vacation. Judy said Costco has a good one, but it’s not in now. I have to take a look at hers. Damon and his mom bought an expensive one for her new house so Damon and Cylin could stay there comfortably. I don’t know that I’m prepared to go that high-end, but I want to check out the style. It is different from the traditional futon Mike and I had before replacing it with those miserably uncomfortable leather recliners.
Then I showered and had a session with adolescent D. We took on some hard words today. Yesterday, he had a breakthrough. He rocked it. I warned him, and myself, not to be disappointed if he didn’t do as well today. The learning trajectory doesn’t go in a straight line up. It goes up and down. Also, today we had particularly hard words, Smithsonian, Institution, Centennial. I used the second method of Phase II of PDS for word decoding multi-syllable words. I asked him to name all the vowels in the words, and I wrote them down on the Zoom whiteboard – just the vowels. Then he decided which consonants to add on and in which order. If a consonant can be added on the right after a vowel, that’s a good place to start. He did somewhat better in holding on to sounds and blending- somewhat. It’s still a dramatic improvement from where he was when we started.
He still gets stuck on the most common sight words. I used to think it was because they went wrong when these students who have trouble started reading. But adolescent D or sixth grade D gave me a different point of view. They are overlooked because the student puts all his focus on the next ‘difficult’ word. That means it is an attentional problem. The image of the word doesn’t make a sufficient imprint on the visual working memory. It’s a lack of sensory input, and the brain can’t respond. I asked him if he would be willing to work with sight words in clay. This is a traditional multisensory approach. Also, Ron del Davis developed a method of teaching using professional modeling clay. I bought that stuff. It’s tough to work with. Struggling to form the letters with this material teaches the mind to attend to the word and make a deep sensory input. Adolescent D said yes; I contacted his mom and asked her to buy modeling clay in the local art store. (We have a fantastic one here.)
I had both of the sisters today. We did it a bit later because W, in fifth grade, had a soccer game. When they did come on the Zoom an hour later, M, the first-grader, was sitting in a car. They were still at the park. Okay. She did an amazing job focusing despite the new context and distraction of her sisters and cousins playing in the park while she worked. We read the Carpenter stories, #2-5. She can read stories #2-4 easily at this point. She has to work to read story #5, but she reads it better and better each day.
Today I started working with the first story she wrote. I just had her read the words she could recognize. I circled them. I wanted her to see how much of the text she already could read.
Then I had her sixth-grade sister, W. Her word recognition, decoding, and reading voice have all been good if a little slower than ideal. We are mostly just practicing the skills she already has in place.
Judy called to ask me if I would be free in the next hour. Adam, Jazzy, and the kids had all driven to the vet to have Zander put down. Zander is a German shepherd Adam and Jazzy took in when his owner moved into a condo and couldn’t keep him. Zander was diagnosed with a badly enlarged heart. They would have put him down a while ago, but he kept perking up and going up to Judy and Paulette’s house to play. He was an amazing dog. The sweetest, most loving dog you could imagine. His loss was particularly hard for Judy. While he wasn’t her dog, he lived on the same compound, and she saw him daily as he went around with her six-year-old grandson. Judy saw Zander as the dog she had always wanted. He was just like Rin Tin Tin – a perfect dog, loving, playful and loyal. I experienced Zander’s wonderful personality when I met him while walking Elsa. He was everything Judy said he was.
Judy called to say Adam and his family were on their way home. I walked over to their house just as Judy, Howard, and Paulette’s came down the driveway. We all gathered on the front lawn. Adam had dug a hole large enough to bury Zander’s body. Adam carried Zander’s wrapped, limp body from the car and placed him in the hole. The pickaxe was lying nearby. Paulette had gathered flowers for all of us to throw in the grave. Judy had a prayer for a deceased animal which we all read. Then Adam used the pickaxe to pull the loose soil over Zander, covering the hole. Leon, his six-year-old son, had his own pickaxe and worked by his father’s side to help fill the hole.
I left shortly after the end of the service. My leg made a dramatic turn for the worse. Michael’s muscle was spasming. I made it down the steep driveway and walked home. I spent the next hour lying on the sofa, moving the acupuncture pen over my left leg and left lower abdominal muscles. When I was through, I felt great. Better than I had in a long time. As usual, this scare with my leg was a precursor of an overall improvement. We’ll see. What else can I say?
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