Tuesday, July 27, 2021

 Tuesday, July 27, 2021

 

Scott texted me while I was walking to ask if it was raining here. He said there was standing water where he was. Here the streets were still dark with residual water but not wet. When I ran into Carol with her dogs Luke and Max, she asked me if I had heard the rain last night. It was raining when I went to bed, but not impressively so. Apparently, deeper into the night, it poured. It poured so badly that lava mud several inches high washed down the hills from the rain. I've never seen that. It must have been impressive. I told Scott it was overcast here but drying. He said he would be over to lead the yoga class. As I came toward the house at the end of my walk, I saw his car parked out front.

I had Mama K's crew at 8:30. My objective with K was to have him start a sentence at the left-hand edge of the page instead of the middle, writing as many words as he could on a line, and then moving to the next one and writing the remaining words. I needed his mom's help with this activity today. After that, I worked again on writing the words quick and lazy. His spatial problems showed up big time. We discussed the q, and I believe he wrote it correctly. Then he wrote the u in quickly. 

When we were finished, he yelled out for the "next victim," my term. I had Twin A. She could remember several letters I had been targeting. I think she went back to figuring out the name for n by going through the letters in her name instead of using automatic processing. When presented with the letters in -at, she read them again as t, and then a. Again, I had to remind her that the letters on the left always come first. I think she did better blending letters with -at as in mat, rat, and sat. I only worked with the continuous consonants and avoided the stops. Blending a vowel after a stopped consonant is much more difficult.

Twin E was very distracted today. She brushed her hair the whole time, and her siblings were in the same room making noise. She could say at easily. However, she could not say ap in isolation; she said cap instead. I find she is distracted when she feels the work is too hard for her. It's a good way of getting out of doing the work without looking disobedient.

Classroom teachers often believe everything can be learned with effort alone. They drive me nuts. I want to hand them a pen empty of ink and tell them to write their names. When they can't, I want to tell them to 'try harder." Undoubtedly, lack of effort makes a difference, but it's not the whole explanation for a student's difficulty.

I called Hawaiian Solar to find out when I could expect to get my solar panel replacements for the dysfunctional ones. I didn't get a return call yesterday. When I called this morning to ask why it was taking so long, They told me they had just placed the order last week. I guessed the clerk forgot and had just put the order in yesterday in response to my call. This is a problem. I am not getting enough solar energy to fill my power wall with electricity to last the night. Yesterday, I was on the grid by 6 pm. Scott also says that my solar panels are dirty. When I called Hawaiian solar today, I asked about cleaning them. She said she would have them do that when they replaced the defuncted ones. It sounds like they didn't do that when they came to switch the panels around. Yuck service!

I got a laundry done. I needed to get it on the line while I still had some sunshine. I delayed getting to town to the Post Office and the transfer station to maximize the drying time before the rain hit again. I brought in the towels at noon and let them finish drying on the towel racks. Running the dryer costs a fortune.   

At noon I headed out to the yard to get the towels off the line. I was surprised to discover that it had already started raining. I yanked the towels off the line and hung them up inside. I have used the same towels since Mike died two and a half years ago. The towel he used last was still hanging there. I made sure to use the towel that matched his. I suppose someday my towel will wear out. I hope I'm ready to give up his then.

I headed into town to the Post Office, the cemetery, and the transfer station. Again, there was no line at the Post Office. I carried all three boxes in myself. I thought I would have another three boxes before I was done. Then I went to the church cemetery.

Judy had told me about a cement base for a headstone. I looked for something that Judy and I had seen together. The church cemetery isn't very large; the parking lot is larger. I didn't see anything that resembled what I had had in mind. When I called Judy, there was no answer. I called the church office. Brenda answered. She came out to help me find it. No wonder I couldn't find it; it was huge, nothing like what Judy and I had looked at, a beautiful large monument covered with marble and decorative tiles. Nah, I don't think so. Aside from the fact that it would cost a fortune, neither Mike nor I would want something that flashy.  

On the way home, I drove along Ali'i Drive to take in the ocean view. When I returned to the main drag, I headed for the transfer station to dump the recyclable cardboard for the Glicksteins and me. They have been dumping their cardboard out with their trash. No, no, no. That stuff is the one bit we can still recycle here in Hawaii.

I got a phone call from Tommy while I was in the graveyard. When I got home, I had to get on my computer, go to The Phonics Discovery System Facebook page, and find the revised form on the videotape. With his help, I did that when I got home. It didn't look the way I expected it to. You could see the PowerPoint toolbar. I was confused. Why was that there? Tommy said it had been there all along. I thought, "No!" He said something about my needing the toolbar. It took me a minute to realize he was right, of course. I needed the taskbar because I needed the draw function. I would have to redo the whole presentation to get rid of that frame. Oh boy. He started advising me on what I had to do. I said, "No, no. Not over the phone. I have no idea what I am doing."