Wednesday, July 28, 2021

 Wednesday, July 28, 2021

 

     It was not a great night’s sleep. I wrestled with that problematic relationship. Is there any way to improve communications and reconcile the relationship? Our respective styles of communicating may preclude a resolution. Too bad. It’s an important relationship.

      I had Mama K’s crew at 8:30. I started with Twin A. She knocked the letter recognition out of the park. We also got work done on correctly identifying the letters in at, from left to right. Yay! She did it on her own without a reminder. She could blend initial continuous sounds with the -at family with some help.

      Twin E was more attentive today. Instead of moving back and forth between blending initial sounds with -at versus -ap, I went through all the options for -at and then -ap. That worked.

      With K, I worked on aligning his words on the lines. He doesn’t get it; I needed his mom to work with him.

     I had sixth-grade D at 10:30. He said the brain changes he made were holding. He said his mother heard him read and was impressed. We are reading 7th-grade material. He reads the big words well; he misses words like a, the, how, and and. He also had some trouble when he had to decode words consciously. That he can do it unconsciously is great, but he needs the conscious process backup. 

I spoke to Jean, my friend from Arizona. She was exhausted from a family issue but reported that physically she felt great. She has been going through some physical challenges for the last year. Now she is on the mend.  

     As we spoke, her voice broke up a lot. The rains had finally hit Arizona. They only had one monsoon last year. This year they are being hit hard. They are experiencing flooding. There are times when there are warnings to shelter in place. The thunder and lightning disrupted the phone signal. 

        I noticed that I left out my work with A yesterday. Too bad, it was amazing. We reviewed a sight word list. Before he left on vacation, he had continuing problems with a few words, particularly those with ds in them. He got them all correct; I didn’t cover them in our last session. I asked him if he practiced reading while he was gone. He said no, he just thought about them. That is studying. Not only did he ace lists 1 and 2, but he also went right through list 3, which we never covered. He then made it through half of list four. This is a major improvement.

      I called his mom in the middle of the session to let her know what was happening. She answered the phone because I might have needed help but couldn’t talk because she was in a meeting. She texted me when she got out, asking if I had time to talk. ”I told her he not only lost nothing over his vacation, but he had also improved.” I told her how he ‘thought about the words.” She was beside herself with joy. She could appreciate the significance of his improvement even though he was nowhere near grade level. This woman shares my ability to rejoice over small improvements. She said, “He is moving out of Kindergarten and into the first grade.” A was starting 3rd grade in the fall.  

      I got a call from Hawaiian Solar to update me on what was going on with the replacement panels. The woman told me she had placed the order on June 16 and had made several follow-up inquiries. That’s what I thought should have happened. The other woman I spoke to yesterday probably only referred to the last inquiry, or she just panicked. I did feel better with this information. The woman also told me it takes a long time, but the company has proved reliable in delivering.

     I packed the last two boxes of books from Jean’s father’s collection to send to her friend in New Jersey. I will mail them tomorrow.

    At 2 pm, I participated in an online Gokhale Workshop. It was amazing. Esther works with many of the theories of exercise I have adopted. She talked about psoas exercises. She says doing 20, 50, or even 100 repetitions is helpful, but the best thing is to learn to walk correctly, which involves using the psoas correctly. If you do that, you exercise that psoas with each step. If you do 10,000 steps daily, that is 5,000 repetitions per psoas. Yes, yes, yes. Gokhale works on proper alignment and movement. Gokhale now offers individual consultations through Zoom. Wonderful1. Initially, they were only available in person. There was only one practitioner in Hawaii; he lived on Maui. He was willing to come over a lead a class on the Big Island. However, I had to pay for the flight and accommodations for him and his whole family, as well as his instruction. I don’t think so. Given they do private consultations online, I plan to get this service.