Thursday, July 15, 2021

 Thursday, July 15, 2021

 

   Today would be my father's 118th birthday. He died 65 years ago when I was 15. It's hard to imagine that I haven't seen my dad for 65 years. A loss like that never fully penetrates. Same with my loss of Mike, I suppose.

            I had K's crew at 8:30. Their grandfather called me the other day to say he heard about how amazing I am. I think the work I'm doing with eight-year-old K will be significant. He works in a concentrated way; paying attention has been a big problem for him. The only thing that held his attention was video games. Now, he can concentrate on his handwriting. He's only working on his name and parts of the sentence, "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog." The sentence includes every letter in the alphabet. I haven't gotten to all the words in the sentence yet. So far, he is only writing, "The fox jumps over the dog." It still requires him to remember the sentence as he writes it. His handwriting looks incredible now. The girls, Twin A and Twin E, also show pretty good concentration. I have to call their mom to see what is going on in their reading, remembering the letters in the alphabet for A, and learning to decode words for E.

            I Zoomed in during Julia's office hours to ask her a few things. Someone else was on the screen, a woman named Jen. She said she was taking over for Julia while she took a phone call. Jen said, "Hello, Betty," in this friendly way. I asked if she knew me. She gave an emphatic "Yes!" She said she was in the Zoom class when I presented the principles of the Phonics Discovery System. She said it was awesome. Wow! I asked her if she was able to use the information to help her student. She said yes. Wow again! When Julia came back on, Jen said StepUpTutoring should have another class from me. There was a whole new crop of tutors. Few of the people who signed up to be tutors had attended. There were 25 or so participants, and there were over 500 tutors.   Now there are more.  

            I told them I had made a video of my approach to teaching reading on YouTube. Julia said, "It will go viral." I thought I would be lucky if anyone viewed it. Julia said they would post it in the Step Up Tutoring library so it was available for everyone. 

            At noon I had an appointment with my chiropractor. I haven't seen her for several years. I had a script for physical therapy. I was getting wonderful benefits there and didn't see a need to continue with the chiropractor. Then Covid hit. Now, I'm having problems with my right foot—something with the metatarsals. Kim, my chiropractor, said she could feel the neuroma between the joints. I've had this problem before. It's a nightmare. Kim manipulated the foot and had a treatment for it and suggestions. She told me to order metatarsal supports online and find transverse arch exercises. It's not as bad as it was back then, but it's scary- a bad left hip and right foot.

            I had Dash at 2 pm instead of the usual 1 pm because of my chiropractic appointment. It was more of the same, pushing him to use and develop the best neurological pathway.

            At 4 pm, Elsa had an appointment with the vet. Today, I was allowed to go into the clinic with Elsa. For the last year, no one could go in. the humans had to stay in their cars while our pets went inside alone. The last time I brought her in, the doctor gave her several expensive shots without asking me. One of those shots was for her ear affection; the second was for her skin condition. These were costly shots. It is common for dogs to get allergy-caused lesions. A friend I met in Hawaii and returned to the mainland told me that her dog developed those lesions here and persisted when they returned to Arizona. I have no idea what the trigger is. 

            The vet was a young woman. She used medical jargon when speaking to me. I thought, Jeez, how do the locals cope with her explanations. I did agree for Elsa to get another shot for the lesions. She suffers so, and the shot seems to have fewer adverse side effects than the pills she's been taking. She also gave me two salves to apply to local breakouts. They're to be applied once a week if the lesions are not too bad; two to three times a week if they are. Why didn't someone tell me about a local application before?