Tuesday, September 14, 2021

Tuesday, September 14, 2021

 

      I woke up this morning remembering something about Mike. He had to pass four (4) language tests for his Ph.D. program. He was scared he was too old to learn a language. For his German, he went to Berlin to study at a Berlitz for six weeks. My mother was born and raised in Berlin. He sent her a letter every week about something he had done there. At one point, he said, "You know those letters to your mom are love letters to you." I sure did. I understood that perfectly. He knew that giving my mom pleasure was a great gift to me. How did I ever get so lucky to have a Mike in my life?

  On my walk, I ran into Julie and Vince, as I do most mornings. Again, Julie and I were dressed for winter. September and October are our warmest months, not our winter. Julie always smirks, "See, there's is no climate change." Strangely, the rest of the world is getting blistering heat waves, and here in Hawaii, our days are getting cooler in the tropics. I said something about the changes in the rest of the world. Julie said that there had been periods of climate change throughout history. She referred to the 'little ice ages.' I found there were three of those.   I said those are still examples of climate change. I have heard three causes for what we are going through now: a) fossil fuels and cow fart, etc., 2) the natural changes that happen over time, and 3) a shift in the earth's axis. Why can't it be all three? And why can't we be committed to doing what we can where we can? We can't control the natural shifts of the earth's atmosphere. We can't control a shift in the earth's axis. But we can control our use of fossil fuel usage. Will complete control of that be enough to stop the impact of the changes we are currently experiencing?  

    As I walked, I got a text from Yvette, saying that everyone was sleeping in today and not coming to yoga. She was looking forward to seeing Elsa. Then at 7 am, she wasn't in the driveway. I called her. I had prepared to go to the class. When she didn't show up in the driveway, I called. She said she assumed I wouldn't come for yoga because I had once said I didn't want to be the only student. Miscommunication.

    I had an appointment for my TB test for my job application for Kealakehe Intermediate. Kaiser had a precheck-in app. Signing in when I got there was a challenge. I did my best to follow the directions, but I didn't get any reassuring click or bleep to tell me the code had been processed. I checked at the main desk; yes, I was signed in. I had to go upstairs and go to the left. 

   No one else was there, and a nurse called me shortly. The nurse took care of me. She came in with a kit for administering the irritant. Her needle looked scary. She assured me only the tip went under my skin. I was in and out. I headed home.

    I only had half an hour before I had to leave for the bank to see the notary. I spent the half-hour sending out the morning blog from a year ago and working on the updates for my private email readers.

    I arrived at the bank at precisely 10. I signed in and looked for a chair for those waiting to see the bank officers. Others were waiting, three people in the three available chairs. I leaned on one of those bank desks they provide for customers to fill out their deposit forms. A middle-aged woman got up and offered me her chair. I told her to sit. Two twenty-year-old men were sitting in the two other chairs.   One was engaged in something and didn't see what was going on. The other realized the problem, jumped up, and offered his seat. I took it. The other twenty-year-old got up and just left.

     One of the officers came up to check the waiting list. An officer came out to check the list. None of the others were there for the notary. It was already after 10 am, and she didn't call me. I could have waited but was confused because I had to make an appointment for a specific time. She asked me when it was. 10 am. She took me first since it was already beyond my appointed time by then.

     I showed her my paperwork. She asked if these were all the pages in the documents. One was just a single page, but the other was two pages, and I had only brought the signature page. She pulled out the single-page document. She couldn't sign a document unless she saw all the pages. I made another appointment to do everything at once. She looked at her schedule, and I looked at mine. I set an appointment for Thursday and 10:30 and left.

   I went off UPS to drop off the box of Styrofoam that had been sitting in the passenger seat of my car since last Wednesday when I pulled it out of Judy's trash. It's how I recycle Styrofoam.

    My next stop was at Malama Compounding Pharmacy to pick up my order of Ivermectin. No, I was not going to use it preventively. Yes, I was vaccinated to the fullest extent. Judy convinced me to get it. I have it now if I get Covid D and feel desperate. It seems to be harmful only if taken in horse-sized doses. Mine is by prescription and sized for my 140 lbs. sized body. 

     I called Jean while on one of my short walks when I came home. She heard through Damon that I was getting Ivermectin. She remained calm as she asked me not to use it. There was a major crisis in her family when her 50-year-old stepson, who had just returned from Honduras, refused to get the vaccine after he promised he would do so within 24 hours of getting off the plane. He planned to use Ivermectin instead. Jean's health is compromised; She had good cause to be concerned about being exposed, even having her husband exposed. 

       Julia texted me and finally cleared up the confusion created by her message to me. Julia had told Shiree, the other tutor, that all she had to do was contact me, and I would know what it was about. Julia forgot that I had three irons waiting in the fire, and I didn't know which one this was. Julia's message introduced Shiree and Alan to me as a fantastic tutor. I thought they were both tutors who wanted suggestions from me. Shiree expected me to help her work with E by giving her an hour a week, and Alan is E's father. 

    I met with E and Shiree at 2 pm. Oh, boy. This may be the worst case I ever encountered.    She can spell, but she can't read it. When I asked her to sound out words, she aced it. She could make the sounds – and name the letters that made the sounds- for the word was. However, when she saw the word in a story, she couldn't read it. Aylett Cox of Alphabetic Phonics, the most severe case she ever saw, was a student who could spell but not read. This describes E's situation. 

     I tried some BrainManagementSkills with E. She had a very compressed spiral at the top of her head, which was a pretty red. I guided her to release it and let the spin get bigger. It went beyond her head to each side. She said it was as big as the city. This is an unusual case. I will have to see how it went. I may choose never to do anything like that again. I don't know what her problem is. 

   From what Shiree said, E is in a small group with a teacher and an aide all day. If that is the case, she is in a self-contained special ed class. That is for the most serious cases. The schools are committed to inclusion; special ed students are placed in regular classrooms with support. If E is in a self-contained classroom, it suggests her case is severe.

  When I worked with A later in the afternoon, he worked on ignoring the input coming from the right side of the brain. I saw an improvement. He followed a procedure I have taught him repeatedly to start with vowel letters instead of the first letter in the word. I don't know why the kids have trouble remembering to do that. I keep thinking it doesn't make sense to them, and they refuse to do it at some level. Drives me nuts. Of course, you only have to do that if you have trouble decoding that word. That usually happens because the relationship between the vowel letters and the following consonants doesn't come to mind automatically. But I heard him reading better.

        After A, I had two sessions with the sisters M and W. M read to me from the Carpenter stories. She did well. I asked her mom if she was better or was she just more comfortable with me. Her mother said she was better. In our last class, I had her switch the source of her visual image from the right auditory center, which she was using to process visual information, to the middle of her forehead. It made her dizzy. I asked her if she wanted to get rid of that sensation. She had mixed feelings. She was able to observe it a bit.   After we did that visualization, her reading sounded somewhat better. I thought she was reading well enough to progress to the second story, The Little Lad. She struggled with some of the words, even if they were in the -ad family. 

       W, the fifth-grade sister, worked on releasing zigzagging between her left and right hemisphere she identified in our last class. It sped up and got wider; it slowed down and got narrower. I encouraged her to release it, but I'm unsure what happened. However, her reading was much better afterward. She went through 7 paragraphs after having spent half the session on the zigzagging and some sidebar interruptions. She even called me on it. I asked her if she practiced saying the letters before reading the word in one sentence a day. She said no. Then she asked if she did it in school did it count. My goodness, yes, yes, yes. I told her just thinking about it helps.