Wednesday, August 4, 2021
I was up for more hours than I liked before the alarm went off, agonizing again about bad relations between friends. One big problem is that I like to resolve differences; others want to ignore them. I think I do both. There's no way we can work through every kink in a relationship. I know there were things about Mike I never liked and things about me he didn't like. However, we had enough resolved so we could absorb some of these differences. I guess it has to do with percentages.
Sixth grade D. worked on accuracy. I used BrainManagementSkills to help him determine which part of the brain he was using, direct him to use the correct parts, and clear up any disturbances in those areas. That activity helped clear up some of the problems. But he still needed to force himself to focus on each word as it came up. He tends to slide over little words, leaving them out or misreading them. I continued queuing him when he missed words. He still wasn't catching them himself.
I had an appointment with my acupuncturist at 10. She concentrated on my psoases, particularly on my left side and my lower legs, where I hold a lot of tension. It is hard to know if the cause of my problems is the lack of cartilage in my hip joint and bone spurs versus soft tissue tension created by years of bad habits. Jennifer always starts with hands-on bodywork on tight muscles and ends with the needle treatment. I found the needle treatment particularly relaxing today.
After I finished there, I headed to town to make several stops. My first stop was Office Max. I needed a new USB cord for my Kindle and my earbud. My first stop was Target. They only had a six-foot cord. I passed and ordered the cord online. I discovered the insert wasn't suitable for either of my devices. Who could imagine there are that many different shapes for USB cord plug-ins? Office Max was my last hope.
I asked someone for help. The clerk told me where to go; someone would be with me. I stood there for a good five minutes. Not only did no one come, no employees even passed by. Then I saw the lady I had initially asked who told me someone would come to me. She was busy on some other errand. I wasn't optimistic that she would know much when she did come to help me. Surprise! She knew exactly what I needed and where to look. She got me the correct UBS cord and found an adapter for my new Apple computer. Apple has decided to change its outlet configurations. Thank you, Apple. What was the point of that?
I had several other stops planned after I left Office Max, but it started to pour. I went home.
I had Moma K's crew at 2 pm. They didn't sign into Zoom in a timely way. I called. Moma K had forgotten. Everyone is complaining of temporal disorientation. I needed K to work on copying mom's model for spacing purposes. Twin A. couldn't remember the name of the letter j, but otherwise, she was pretty good at letter identification. However, she looked very distracted; she was wriggling in her seat. I asked her if her head was spinning. She said yes. She was in school today; her head was exhausted from the strain. It requires a great deal of energy to fight a counterproductive spin. I asked her if it sped up or slowed down. It slowed down, making her mind sluggish. It came from the back of her head. I had her watch the spin slow down more and more. I saw it move to the front of her head. I instructed her to release it from her head. She followed my directions. She said her head was clearer. I ended the session there. I thought that was enough for one day—the follow-up instructions for her to use the release at school when she felt overwhelmed.
Twin E did pretty well with the -at word family words when she worked on 'feeling' the difference in her mouth between the -t in the final position versus the -p. That seemed to help. However, there was no recall of the word the. We did some brain management. I told her to let her mind tell her what the word was. At first, nothing came up. Then something came up, but it was the wrong word; it was that instead of the. She confused that, there and then. I wrote the words and assigned each a number. I said each and had her give me the number. She made some mistakes, but it gave her a chance to discriminate between the three words.
I started watching Harlan Coben's Safe on Netflix. It's not as good as the English mysteries, but at least it didn't add to my current stress. I was looking forward to watching the rest.
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Musings:
More on Blueprint: The Evolutionary Origins of a Good Society by Christakis
He writes about the human behavior that leads to a good society. He puzzles over altruism. They ask why someone would do something for another person if there is no direct benefit to the person or their offspring, material benefit. Huh? Their interpretation of human motivation contradicts the experience of most of these researchers. They have chosen their field because they want to contribute to human knowledge and possibly help societies learn to adopt practices that assure the best lives for most people. We all want to make a contribution. Lucky the person who can live with a sense of higher purpose, who feels their life has meaning. I can't think of any example of a life having meaning when it doesn't mean that what we do has value to others- and we are valued for it rather than exploited.
I just heard a story about Andre Agassi. At the top of his game, he was one of the most successful competitive tennis champs, but his life felt empty. Then he realized that what he did gave pleasure to others. That realization turned his life around. I don't know what these sociologists are thinking of.
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