Tuesday, September 21, 2021

 Tuesday, September 21, 2021

 

   I broke down in tears on my morning walk, upsetting poor Olga. All she did was tell me that the high school had found the letter they received from the National Merit scholarship people, telling them that Olga’s daughter had qualified as a semi-finalist. She needed that letter to get the application to be a finalist. The deadline was on October 6. Their indifference and the possible consequences of their disregard for Alexandra’s life hit me. Poor Olga. I had been on the verge of something for a while. I have been easily irritated and overwhelmed. I felt irritated and ineffective in the tutoring sessions. It all felt meaningless. Grief was weighing heavily on me. Tears don’t come easily to me. This crying broke the tension, and I felt somewhat better for the first time in a while. 

    I think that was the way I felt in my childhood-constantly. It’s a lousy feeling. I wasn’t comfortable anywhere or able to enjoy anything fully. I can appreciate why people do drugs.

   During morning yoga, I asked Scott if he could help me assemble my new weed whacker. As far as I could make out, the assembly directions started with “Make sure the motor is turned off.” Hmm! I finally remembered to tell Scott how much I appreciated his little organizational touches. Where I had dumped Elsa’s refuse bags on the ground, Scott had gotten a five-gallon Home Depot bucket with a lid. Where I had the charger for my electric car lying on the ground, Scott set up a hook. Each time I use one of these arrangements, I think how much Mike would have loved them. I told Scoot, “Mike would have felt like he died and went to heaven.” No one laughed. Yvette only commented on Scott’s talents. I repeated the comment for her benefit. She got it then. Okay, it’s a bit dark.

    At 8:30, I left to drop Elsa off at the groomer’s. This was her first time there. Her old groomer just shut up shop without telling any of us. I loved him. He also charged $40 an hour, if you can imagine. It was my first time with the new groomer, Doggie Detail. Dick’s grooming shop, the old grooming place, had the look of a homeless encampment. Everything was Gerry rigged. This new shop looked like a high-end Spa, beautifully decorated with all the best equipment. Just one woman, the owner, ran the whole shop. She told me she had another groomer working with her, but it didn’t work out. I imagine no one would live up to this lady’s expectations.   

   While I was there, I asked her if she did family plans. Yvette had just taken her two dogs to Petco. I didn’t care for them. I had to drop Elsa off whenever and then pick her up when they were ready. I didn‘t like it. With Dick, I had to drop her off before 7 am and pick her up before noon. If she was anxious, I found her sitting on his lap. Now, how’s that for loving care? This groomer didn’t do family plans or tender loving care. I’m prepared to try Petco again. Yvette and I can produce photos from fifty years ago to prove this is not a fly-by-night connection.

 I got home from dropping Elsa off shortly before I had my 10 am client, sixth grade D.

       I edited the story D and I had written together on boogie boarding in the ocean. He didn’t want to read a story with me. He wanted me to send it. He had mentioned the other day that the lines moved when he read if there was more than one line of print. I asked how much he feared making mistakes when he read. He said on a rate of 1-10 a three. A three is what everyone feels. It’s the default level. Everyone lives with the concern of making a mistake. No, no, no. His has to be much higher. He’s Mexican; Latinos do not feel fear. Maybe I should use a different word – concern. I suspect that his level of ‘concern’ for making a mistake makes him hypervigilant in his reading and causes some of his current reading problems. I thought of doing EFT tapping with him, but nothing felt right. I switched to a regular reading activity. 

      I selected something at a fourth-grade level and applied The Phonics Discovery system Phase I. I got funny vibes from him. “Do you think this is a silly exercise?” Yes. As I suspected. He said he could always read the big words; he had trouble with the little ones. I switched to sixth-grade material. Trust me; he didn’t do well with that. He missed whole sections of words, misreading middle or final sections. I told him Phase I aimed to sharpen his perceptual skills, so he didn’t miss whole chunks of words. He said the exercise made more sense as we went along. I discussed phonics rules with each word. While he was familiar with the rule for the pronunciation of c, he hadn’t learned the same rules applied to the pronunciation of g. I’m hoping this process will speed up as we go along.

   After my session with sixth-grade D, I did a few clerical chores before I headed out to pick up Elsa. The groomer said she would be ready around 11 am. I checked my email and saw a Facebook friend invite by someone whose name I didn’t recognize. Today, I checked if we had any mutual friends before I accepted the friend request. When I checked Boris Kearney, who pursued me to be an online friend, I discovered we had no mutual friends. When I checked his page, he had pictures of friends and family from the Middle East. I don’t think so. I blocked him. I got a request from another man today. Not only did I have mutual friends with him, I finally recognized the man’s name too. Ah!

   I called Doggie Detail to see if Elsa was ready. She said it would be about another twenty minutes. I headed to Home Depot to pick up the three half-cinder blocks for my mailbox. No, I’m not going to put them in the mailbox; I’m going to stick the mailbox post through the cinder block holes to keep it upright. While some mailbox posts are buried in the ground, most are not. You have to dig through solid rock. There’s a reason there are no basements in Hawaii. 

   Judy called just as I turned onto Kaminani from Queen K. After Mike died, Judy called me daily to check on me. She was fantastic. In the past two weeks, she hadn’t been as regular. She had a lot going on in her life. I didn’t take it ‘personally.’ However, I did suspect that this triggered the dip in my mood. I asked her if she could make a point of calling daily. It seemed clear that this was very important to me. We didn’t have to have a long conversation; I just needed regularity. This is what I had with Mike. Of course, with Mike, I was number one. We had our eye on each other; we had each other’s backs. Judy asked if I would consider coming over for dinner. I have been avoiding situations like that unless they are in open areas. I don’t need that as much as someone who checks on me daily. I think desolation closed in on me when Judy stopped calling regularly. All my other problems closed in on me. Life became pretty dark.

     I arrived home in time for a session with Canada A. A is a fourteen-year-old boy. His mother found my information on Facebook and knew someone I had worked with many years ago. She said A had been diagnosed as dyslexic. His mom said his big problem was his lack of organization. The first thing I discovered was his speech problem. At first, I thought he was speaking with a Canadian accent that I had difficulty understanding. But no, he has an actual speech impediment. The first thing I wanted to check was his reading. He read a passage at grade level. I didn’t see any signs of dyslexia. I got to work on the organization problem.

   I talked to him about the relationship between the prefrontal lobe and the rest of the brain. If we only follow impulse, there’s no one at the wheel driving the bus. It just careens down the road, swerving left and right in response to the pitch of the terrain. 

    I also talked about how taking charge and using our conscious minds can be unpleasant. Most people prefer to do what feels best, often easiest. Everyone loves it when things fall into place and require no effort. When we spend our lives doing only that, we’re screwed. At least in our modern world. Canada A prefers to play video games over anything else. We’re talking about addiction. 

   I suspect that giving little conscious thought to what we do works in a highly structured social environment. There’s always room for individuality, but the range is much narrower. If someone gets out of order, the social group takes action quickly. The preservation of social order is paramount. Otherwise, there is chaos and anarchy. We are living at the edge of social anarchy. All options are open. There is not a single variant of human existence that is not possible—Conservative groups battle against this; liberal groups for it. We can make it, allowing for all the variety if we achieve a new order of social organization. If not, we’re screwed. That social order does not have to be rigid; it has to be all-inclusive. Of course, regardless of the cause, we may be screwed anyway, given what is happening to our environment. 

    Canada A rescheduled for next week. Hopefully, I gave him something to think about. 

     The A I have already been working with will now be called third grade A because I have to distinguish him from Canada A. I sent the link and notified his mom. She said he wasn’t home yet. He was so delayed that his mom canceled for the day. I needed the break. I curled up with the Elephant Whisperer. It is not as warm and fuzzy as I had hoped, but it is still a good book. The author describes one life and death crisis after another. Fortunately, all are resolved; it’s a comedy. Let me tell you; elephants are control freaks. It’s their way or squoosh. They can turn a human being into hamburger meat with a single step. They can take down a home with a good shove. While the author has many good, ecstatic moments of blissful communication with them, he keeps reminding us, dear readers, that he is always in a life-threatening situation.  

     Then I had the M & W sisters. I started with M. She had spent the day at home, sick. She wasn’t feeling well. She made more mistakes than usual. She forgot one of the long vowel rules, and then a few minutes later, she recited it. She and her sister had extensive phonics training with an Orton-Gillingham instructor. It served the girls well.   

   I worked with W on 2nd-grade material to foster automaticity. Mom came along and asked if that wasn’t too easy for her. I explained my theory of automaticity all over again. I then switched to 4th grade. She read that more fluently after we had practiced automaticity on the 2nd-grade material. I had used 2nd grade because I wanted her to feel comfortable reading in a relaxed way, making no effort. 

    On my before-dinner walk, I ran into Isaac. He’s a young man doing a year of volunteering teaching in a local religiously based school. I learned a little more about his role. He teaches everything to everybody. It is a two-room schoolhouse, k-3rd, and 4th through 8th. He was struggling with how to teach. He was teaching Kindergarteners the alphabet. The principal sounded untrained and wanted the kids to learn the alphabet by writing scripture. With my methods, he can use scripture because he can use any text. He sounded excited to use me as a resource. Let’s see how it goes.