Sunday, November 28, 2021

 Sunday, November 28, 2021  

 

    Another great night’s sleep!  I am so lucky. I woke up around 5 am without the alarm clock. My body’s on a schedule. I get tired shortly after nine pm and wake up around 5.  When Elsa and I left for our walk, it was so dark out I wondered if I got the time wrong.  No, it was 5:45. 

    I had sessions with the M & W sisters today. They were both cranky. I wondered what went on. Their cousins arrived on Friday.  W said something about not being allowed to eat a donut until she had breakfast. That may have been the problem.  They were hungry.

    First grade M had more trouble reading today.  Again, she had problems separating the vowel sound from the following sound. I asked her if her Orton Gillingham tutor had her identify the letters and the sounds using flashcards. Yes, she had. How did you like that? It was good. With the flashcards, she had to make the sounds separately. She could do it. However, she had trouble hearing those sounds in words.  Hearing those sounds is crucial. Phonemic awareness is the single best indicator of reading success. She made the same mistake repeatedly. She was frustrated. 

    I also had less trouble getting W to separate the sounds. However, we came across words that were difficult to decode, iron, which has an extra sound, and a deleted sound, i/e-r-on, hatchets, where the t sound is lost altogether, and axes, which is a two-syllable word.  However, the letter x, the only letter in the English language representing two phonemes, k, and s, was divided into two syllables.   The k sound is in the first syllable, and the s sound is in the second. Also, W didn’t know the meaning of several of the words in the paragraph, avidly and bludgeon.  It made me wonder if I should have her working in 8th-grade material.   I had her infer the meaning of bludgeon from context.  The paragraph talked about the Indians avid interest in the pioneer’s axes and hatchets.  They wanted to give up their bludgeons for these new weapons.  What might a bludgeon be, a food, an article of clothing, a weapon, a piece of furniture?   She figured out it was something you can hit someone with. That’s close enough to successfully understand the meaning of the passage.  When we see the word in a variety of contexts, we figure out the precise meaning. No, she should be able to infer the meaning of a word from the context.

    The rest of the day was spent napping and working on the updates. I wanted to get some gardening done. I’d been putting it off forever. That was partly because I’m not sure what I’m doing and partly because I don’t have enough to do, so I work efficiently.  I actually napped for two hours.  Was this avoidance? If so, of what?  I haven’t done much with my article. Maybe that’s it. So sad.

   Damon called. We made arrangements for a Zoom meeting for next Sunday, my eighty-first birthday. He also told me about a friend who damaged his eyes from the bright lights he used during his Zoom presentations. He is a performer. This was how he kept his business going. As a result of the eye damage, he had to spend three months in total darkness.  Just before he got his diagnosis, he started dating a young woman from another town. She had visited him and returned home. When he got his diagnosis, she came back to take care of them.  Now, they have become a couple, are planning to have a baby and get married. Yeah! I think in that order.  I wonder how many couples were formed during Covid.  My nephew and his wife moved in together because of that and wound up getting married.  Happily, they seem to be very happy.  

    Damon asked me if I got a rush when I saw the numbers go up on my blog. Not really. I did wonder what was going on. I believed most of my readers were students learning to speak English. I was sure that my numbers would drop precipitously to the single digits again once the semester was over. While writing the updates and maintaining the blog takes a lot of time, I sometimes wondered what I was doing. Writing gives structure to my day.  I think my life would feel very empty without it. Just sitting down to do it fills my day; since I write about my day, it makes me aware of all the moments of it. Both have the effect of making my day feel full.

   Yay! I finally did something with the hibiscus I’ve been worried about. I’m always afraid when it comes to gardening because I don’t know what I’m doing.  I had Margo’s text to check to figure out which chemical I was supposed to use for the problem; the buds fall off before they open.  I had to mix a toxic chemical in water and pour the mixture as close to the base as possible. I did that before but probably not sufficiently. This time I saw it was a quart of the mixture for every foot of the plant. I had a jar that held two cups of water.  I filled it, poured it on the plant, and repeated that process three more times. Let’s see.  

  I tried to find something to watch tonight since Offspring was over. I found a show on the abuse dished out by the leader of the Scientology organization.  Then I found another video on people who are trying to break free from the Hasidic community.  Both were too stressful.  I had enough stress in my life, thank you.  I finally settled on Love Hard.  It seems a little silly but not stressful. My friend Jean had recommended it.