Sunday, October 10, 2021

 Sunday, October 10, 2021

 

 I didn't have the best night's sleep last night, but neither was it the worst. I slept straight through from 10 pm to 1:30 when I got up to pee. Three and a half hours is pretty good.  I got up again an hour later, thinking it had only been a few minutes. I must have fallen asleep the moment my head hit the pillow. It's often that way. I was up again an hour later for another pee. After that, it didn't go as well.  It wasn't horrendous. It was just dozing and wakefulness. When I was awake, I varied between unpleasant thoughts and meditating.  The unpleasant thoughts didn't dominate, but I can feel the vestigial residue of those thoughts in my body even as I write now.  In this case, the physical followed the mental. I was doing just fine, symptom-free until those thoughts crept into my mind.

    The moment I got up, I sent Yvette a Happy Birthday message. She's 52 today. I've known her since birth. Wow!  I have plans to join her and her friends at her favorite bar.  I bought earplugs for the occasion.

     I followed Elsa's lead this morning, turning left going out of the driveway. I walked the length of the street I've been avoiding because of the crazy loose dog for fear of Elsa's safety. As I turned up Hiolani to go to the neglected street, a car came down the hill slowly. I thought, "Ah, this is what it looks like when someone drives the speed limit." As the car passed me, the driver's window opened, and I got a huge hello. I recognized the woman but couldn't remember her name. When I came to the end of the neglected street, she came up behind me. I had to ask her name again. Rosemary. She didn't ask mine. Did she remember it? I found out she lives a good half mile further up the Kaiminani and drives down here to walk. There is another woman, Tammy, who drives up from below us to walk here.  It seems our neighborhood is a favored walking spot. 

    My foot feels fantastic today, not perfect, but better. I think the acupuncture pen made the difference. I didn't use it on my foot; I used it on the outside of my left thigh and left calf. That's all. The one that made the most significant difference was the work on the calf. I could feel the charge traveling down to my foot.  Today, I had less numbness. Amazing! 

    I started my day as I always do, posting last year's updates on the public blog.  I had nothing for October 10, 2020. This has happened before. If I can't find an update in my word file, I look for it in my old emails. I have always found it in the past. Nope. No October 10, 2020.   When I checked, I had entries for the 11th, 12th, 13th, and I then had two for the 14th. I realized I had messed up my days and dates.  I relabeled them and posted one for the tenth. 

     I had the M and W sisters this morning. We used to meet during the week. Then they got involved in baseball, which met on the same afternoons we did. Their mom asked me to meet with them on Friday afternoon and Saturday and Sunday morning.

     Yesterday I learned the M, the younger sister who is repeating first grade, has problems with episodic memory as well as associative. She could not remember the details of a story she had created two minutes earlier.  I called the mom immediately after our session yesterday. Yes, this is a problem. This is why she was left-back.  She and her husband were very worried about it. I led the mom through the fear release, a parent's fear for a child that doesn't function as expected.     

Today, I started the class with M as I usually did, with the first Carpenter Story.  M closed her eyes and recited the first two paragraphs from memory. Up to now, she hasn't been able to remember the words and decoded them all. She then asked if we would work on the story about Pepper and Salt, the dog, and the cat. Wow!!!!!  She had a perfect recall of the details of her story.

 When I started working with M, it took her the full half-hour to read the first story. Now, she zoomed through the first four stories in less than fifteen minutes.  Yes, it's part reading and part memory of the story.  I am using that memory to support her reading.  Most of these words should become part of her 'sight' vocabulary. Carpenter has structured the stories, so each subsequent story includes words from the previous ones. 

I had the session with W, who is in fifth grade.  Her word recognition skills have improved considerably. We have been working on a middle fourth-grade level. Today I couldn't get the fourth-grade material up on the Zoom screen. Instead, I pulled up the 5th-grade material I prepared for our work in the future.  The words were much longer, more complicated. The vocabulary was at a higher level and had a more complex sentence structure. It was a leap. She could read most of the words, but it was hard work. She got sloppy every once in a while.  I reviewed the meaning of the words and the passages, pulling out logical possibilities.  She did pretty well. One paragraph took most of our time.  I will have to find out if she would like to continue at this level or go back to the fourth-grade level.

      I called mom right after I was through with both girls for the day. Was M's demonstration of memory a surprise to her? Yes!!! Fantastic! It is possible that the simple release of fear exercise I did with mom made this breakthrough possible.  Being afraid that you're not going to be able to do something makes it more likely you won't. Children are sensitive to parents' feelings. They know how their parents feel about their problems. Now, at least mom's fear had been lifted.  I told mom to make sure that everyone who holds any fear for this child should do the release. The only fear that she should have to carry is her own.  Then we can release that. Even if there is still a residue of a memory problem, it will be easier to resolve.

    On the NPR show On Being, Krista Tippet interviewed  Mike Rose, an educator, who has a different take on how we should be teaching than what is going on in the schools today.  I agree the emphasis on learning academic skills through memorization is deadly.  I also believe this was a necessary phase the educational system had to go through so that it took responsibility for teaching all students equally. The evaluation system is in place. Now, they have to figure out how to teach.

   As I sat working on my updates and the blog, the house shook, once and then once again.  An earthquake.  I don't worry about them. So far, there's been no serious damage, even though we've had one as strong as 7. Today's was a 6.2. Public announcements came on immediately, telling us there was no threat of a tsunami. The problem with earthquakes is they're a warning that we are getting closer to a volcanic eruption. That's a concern. Today's quake was off the southeastern coast, on the other side of the island. If it's from Kiloua, all's good. It is already erupting. If it's from Mauna Loa, it's not so good. Some day, that mountain will blow again. Then we will all be in trouble. When I spoke to Judy about it later, she said no one knew yet which mountain was responsible for the incident.  I called Jean, my hanai sister, so she didn't worry when she heard about the quake on the nightly news,

    While I put it off forever, I listened to the video of Phase-II I made yesterday. The first few slides were good, and then it fell off a cliff. I did some editing of the slides, changing words.  I also saw that the final slide with contact information wasn't clear. I called Tommy to ask for the details. He said he would set it up so a link is available when someone plays the audiofile.

    Once I had done the editing, I was ready to work on making the video. I got dressed, put on make-up, and set up in the library.  I made mistake after mistake. Each time, I had to end the Zoom session and start a new one.  You can't stop and restart a video.  When I was on a roll, Elsa barked, and someone road their farthing motorcycle down the street. I ended the session and started again. The farting motorcycle came back down the street.  I decided it was a sign this wasn't a good day to work on the video. I resolved to try again tomorrow.

    Yvette was ready to go out for her evening birthday celebration. She often hangs out at MyBar in downtown Kona. She told me about the gathering without expecting me to come. I thought, why not? I'd get to see where she spent her time. I had my earplugs in anticipation. 

    I follow Yvette there.  I was surprised at how small the bar was. I think I had visions of clubs I'd seen on TV with large spaces packed with dancing people, often drunk or drugged. This was nothing like that. It was small. Remembering the bars I peeked into on my way to and from school in the Bronx, I have to wonder why I was surprised. They were all narrow spaces with the bar on one side and booths on the other. They all smelled of stale liquor. They were all depressing.

     We were all there early in the evening on a Sunday night. The group gathered for Yvette's celebration made up half the occupants, including the bartender.  We were about seven at that time. Yvette gave me a tour of the place. There was a small back room ad a wraparound porch/lanai that could be used. Besides that, Yvette told me that they blocked off the parking area in front of the bar when it was pack. 

    I left early.  We were mostly masked; some were drinking. I did a little dancing, and then I was ready to go. Someone walked me to the car, very chivalrous.  I pull out of my space easily- and then – keep in mind, I'm doing under 5 mph- you got it. I scraped the right underside of my car on something while making a right turn out of the parking lot.