Wednesday, November 3, 2021
My leg was bothering me a bit early in the morning. I reached under my pillow to retrieve my acupuncture pen. I applied it to various parts of my body: glutes, abdominals, outer thigh, inner thigh, and calf muscles. When I pointed it at the top of my right thigh, I felt the impact in my right foot with some cramping along the outer edge of the left foot. The person who applies the pen has to have contact with both ends to complete the circuit. I discovered that if I lay the full length of the pen against my skin, that satisfies the full contact needed. I pinned it between my calves and fell asleep. It impacted both legs at once. The walk was good this morning.
As I came out of my driveway for my morning walk, I saw a package sitting in the middle of my neighbor's driveway across the street. They would have run it over as they pulled out their driveway. The driveway has a sharp decline; they wouldn't have seen the package. I couldn't find their number on my phone. Charlie came down the driveway as I was struggling. He must have been informed about the package drop-off.
I checked my new hibiscus. I had problems with the buds dropping off the plant before they fully opened. I texted my go-to horticulturist. She told me I had some bug that caused the problem and told me to buy a product to apply to the root to kill them. I did that. I got some to bloom. It's this fantastic multicolored flower. I sent Margo a picture. However, she noted that the leaves looked pale and recommended I get a 'soil amendment,' like I would know what that is. Although I think she recommended that once before. She recommended Kellogg's, which "used to be really popular."
I didn't have a lot of appointments now. I enjoyed the leisure. I did more house cleaning. I was shocked by how little I got done. I do a little bit at a time. I moved my Bissell vacuum plug from the living room outlet to one in the bedroom, and I pulled my shoe rack away from the wall to clean behind it. I discovered three pairs of Crocs I forgot about. I compared the heel wear on those old ones with my newest red ones. I think there is a difference. It looks like on the new pair, both shoes are being worn down equally. That would be phenomenal. The difference used to be huge. I the Crocs, but I didn't get the vacuuming done. I left the shoe rack away from the wall for cleaning some other day. Mike hated my half measures, leaving everything akimbo. He needed order. However, he felt he couldn't complain since I was doing the work. Straightening up was his job. When I do weeding, I leave everything lying right there. When people ask, I tell them, "Clean-up is Mike's job." No one blinks an eye.
I did clean another section of lanai screens. The top one is 8' x 4 and the bottom half 8' x 3'.
After trying various ways of cleaning the screens, vacuuming, applying water on rags, I discovered I could spray them with my Echo two-gallon garden sprayer. I apply the water horizontally (?) so the spray goes across the screen instead of through it. I save the through shots for a problematic area. I hadn't cleaned the screens in a while. They were not as dirty as I expected them to be. I think I finally found a way to get them clean in the first place. Yes, they had been thoroughly cleaned since I moved in. We had the lanai rail painted. The screens came out then. I took them into the driveway and washed them with soap, hosing them down. The spraying method is an easy, effective way of maintaining the clean.
I found a spot where Elsa must have wee-weed as I cleaned the screens- a tell-tale dark, circular spot. Easy clean up with Nature's Miracle, followed by a good dousing with water and vacuuming it up with my Rainbow vacuum. The suction on that thing is something else.
I had my weekly appointment with Momma K's crew. She had to use her phone. Her computer was broken. Her middle school daughter had tripped while walking with it, and the screen cracked. It worked for a while and then died. I have two old computers of Mike's. I asked Tommy, my tech, if he could get into the computer so someone could use it. I plan to give it to this family. While it is a laptop, it is large. I'm not optimistic it will last long. One of the kids will drop it.
I started with the Twins, E & A. I had to enlarge the letters as big as possible because of the phone's small screen. Twin A struggled today. While she completed the whole story last week, she didn't today. Today Twin E was the better reader, recognizing all the words in the Carpenter #1 story, Sassy the Cat, except there and very. I don't expect the kids to recognize ate and tail. A had more problems, not easily recognizing words that she could read last week. Our minds fluctuate as our bodies do. Sometimes we can run a mile; other days, a walk around the block feels like a challenge. An uptick promises improvements to come. If someone can do it once, it raises hope that they will learn to do it with greater frequency. Fluctuations down are not a concern unless that becomes a trend.
After the girls, I worked with the Twins' brother, third-grade brother, K. He wrote the sentence "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog," which includes all 26 letters in the English alphabet. We only checked that he had formed the letter a, y and z correctly. He had. I was going to dictate a new sentence but was tired after struggling with that small screen. I asked if his teachers were still using the primary paper I emailed them. No, they were using some other paper. I don't know what that paper is. I hope they are doing the right thing.
After the tutoring session, I went to the bottom of the property to check the lime tree. It was close to bare. That was a surprise. I remember seeing plenty left on the tree after I grabbed the ripe ones. The tree looked painfully dry. Since the volcano started up again, we have had less rain. Apparently, the vog blocks rainfall. We don't have a way to water the lower section of the property. The tree will be on its own. I will have to buy lemons from Costco.
Judy called to tell me her day had been a disaster. My first thought was she had a car accident either with a Turo car or her new one. But no, nothing that serious. She lost her phone. One minute she had it and then it was gone. Mei and she went back to the airport to look in the car Judy had driven, but no. No luck. They tried calling the phone, but it had been shut off. What could have happened? Did someone pick it up and shut it off so no one could find them. Or was the phone run over. It’s a mystery wrapped in an enigma. As Judy was calling, she was on her way to T-Mobile to get another phone.
The Netflix series Offspring is wearing thin right now. Nina's neurotic behavior is annoying me again.
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Musings: critical race theory
People overtly object to critical race theory because it emphasizes differences instead of commonalities. That's one interpretation. The other is that people don't want to acknowledge their own racism and the institutional racism and how it has affected minorities in general and Afro-Americans in particular.
However, I think a better name for this phenomenon is A Critical Bias Theory. We all suffer from this. We all feel more comfortable with people like us and less comfortable with people who are not. We all minimize the negative aspects of those in our own group; they're really good people and exaggerate the failures of those not in our own group: they are fundamentally evil.
In the 1960's I heard a white man on a call-in show saying he had moved to the north because he was so uncomfortable with the way black people were treated in the south. He discovered that the biases in the north were just as pervasive but not as blatant. He concluded we all had to admit that we were racists. We were raised in a racist country; we couldn't escape it. That made sense to me.
Expanding that idea to the Critical Bias Theory means we all have to acknowledge that we, and all the members of our groups, are no more fundamentally good than the 'other group.' Ingroup bias is part of the human condition. We have to acknowledge it. It was functional when we lived in small groups wandering the savanna. We were at odds with the 'other tribe' when we weren't using them to fertilize our stock; inbreeding is deadly for a group.
As a woman, I was raised to think of men as a breed unto themselves. Yes, in some way, they are. However, all bell curve studies have shown there is more difference within any cohort than between two cohorts, in this case, men versus women. To counter my own bias, when a man did something that bothered me, I always ask myself, "How would I feel if a woman did it?" I did the same thing with women. It was a freeing discipline.
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