Monday, May 2, 2022

 Monday, May 2, 2022  

   I slept well last night, waking up with the alarm at 5:30. I continued pushing my right shoulder back when my right leg was forward while I walked. I got a good cross-body stretch and, more importantly, a stretch in my left hip joint.

   I spoke to the friend I had in-person contact with the other day. She had a killer cold. Damn! I couldn’t afford to get that. Also, it might be Covid. I asked Yvette for a rapid test. If I had it, it would be a significant problem. It would mean canceling Damon, Cylin, and August’s visit,  my PT appointments for the next two weeks, and the THR surgery. They want you to wait for seven weeks after Covid. I asked my friend if she had taken the test. She did. It came out negative. Hopefully, mine would be negative too. I would have had to let Damon know if it came out positive. He had already canceled three planned visits. Two because of Covid, and one because of an opportunity to visit England, which was canceled because of Covid.

   I had three people for my Reading & Writing Office hours for the Step Up Tutoring tutors. Two people came on because they were told they had to sign up for an office visit in the first two weeks after they were assigned a student. The program has become much more structured. Now all tutors are required to administer survey tests in ELA and math. Wow! One of the women spoke English fluently but was grammatically incorrect. Given the nature of her mistakes, I suspected an auditory processing problem. Hopefully, the work she does teaching her student will also help her. Two of the visitors were young women. I told them I developed the reading method I showed them in the late 1990s. “Were either of you alive then?” Nope. 

   I had an appointment with Randee Jennings for a haircut today. I left at 12:30 and was held up briefly by what looked like a bad car accident on Palani. There was an ambulance and a firetruck. I would read about it in the paper on Tuesday. I made it to my appointment just in time.

   When I got home, I napped. Getting my haircut always tires me. Then I had the M&W sisters. I worked with both of them on story writing. For some reason, I find the work with them grueling. They’re not difficult to work with. They have made good progress. We worked on advanced story-writing skills. With first grade M, we did research on rabbits. She’s the one who proposed we do that. Today, I discussed story structure with her. She introduced the characters, set up a problem, proposed solutions, and then abandoned them to start a new track. She is in first grade. This work is more appropriate for a third or fourth-grader.

   With fifth grade W, I researched RV trailers and the rules for the game of Sorry. We didn’t need all that information for the story, but I think it helped her visualize the details.

    B came up after I finished. I asked him to install the air conditioner in the guest room in anticipation of Damon’s arrival. He brought the screen and the plexiglass piece in from the back lanai. There were filthy. I was going to have to clean them first. That chore got postponed. Then Josh arrived. He and B would move the futon from my office to the library, where August could sleep in the comfort of air conditioning instead of just fans. I had created an obstacle course. I put all the furniture from one of the seating areas in the front hall area so I could clean the rug. I got the sofa vacuumed, the floor washed, and all the surfaces dusted. The obstacle course made moving the futon a challenge. Both chores would have to wait for tomorrow.

     As I left for my before-dinner walk, I ran into Olga and Alexandra. They told me the dates Shivani proposed for childcare for Sidney would work out just fine. As I talked to them, Lutz came along, doing his evening rounds, going around the block six times. He’s always a fund of information.