Saturday, April 23, 2022

 Saturday, April 23, 2022

 

  I slept well. I will never take good sleep for granted. I remember when the mere sight of my bed was painful. Insomnia is the worst.  

   I ran into Julie and Vince this morning, as I had hoped. "Vince, I want to ask you a favor." Before I asked, I turned to Julie and asked, "Can Vince say no if he doesn't want to." She gave an emphatic nod yes. "Vince, I need someone to drive me to the airport early in the morning." I know Vince often gets up a 2 am. He also goes to bed between 6 and 8 pm. He prepares his fish jerky. It's an elaborate operation. He often does his work in the middle of the night. "What time?" he asked. I said, "4:30." They both asked if it was an international flight. No. "If you go that early, no one will be there yet. You'll be fine if you leave at five for a 6 am flight." Vince told me to remind him a few days beforehand. This is great. I was creating the least disturbance for people.

    I told Lutz several times this German consulate wasn't like a traditional one. It was run out of someone's garage. Mike and I went there when I got my passport. I checked the German consulate in Honolulu online. It was closed every day of the week except Friday. June 3, the day of my scheduled return, was a Friday. How's that for good luck. I called Lutz to tell him. The penny finally dropped. This embassy was nothing like the ones he had seen in his travels. It is called an 'honorary' embassy. It is barebones. The guy who runs it has a tech business out of his garage. Lutz's ears perked up with that information. He realized he'd better make an appointment. He said something about calling on Monday. Well, if they're closed every day except Friday, what difference does it make when you call. 

   I went over to speak to Mei about summer camps. I thought I could put Sidney in one for the second week. Hopefully, he'd have a blast. I walked over to her house. As I was about to enter, I realized I didn't have a mask on. I wear one in all enclosed circumstances. Before surgery, I wanted to avoid getting sick with anything, no less Covid. Going back home was a long haul; I decided to take the risk.

  Mei and her family had just finished breakfast. I asked Mei what people ate for a Chinese breakfast. She offered me some 'Chinese bread." Yum. French toast. I compared recipes with Mei, Yep, eggs with a bit of milk. I told her French toast was eaten with maple syrup. Mei gave a look of displeasure. Chinese bread is eaten with salt. 

   Mei's five-year-old daughter wanted me to play with her. I made a deal with her. I would after I talked to her mom, but first, she had to let me do what I wanted to do. She cooperated.

     Elsa and I went up to Paulette's for Kangen water. I felt overwhelmed with sadness. It was a combination of the loss of Mike and his wonderful caring ways and the lack of satisfying relationships with some of the people who are in my life. I didn't expect a Mike substitute, just people I could laugh with and resolve differences. Sadly, some people cannot do it; they believe if shouldn’t have to resolve differences. I spoke to a woman recently who had this problem in her marriage. Her husband couldn't tolerate any form of discussion. I can't breathe around people like that.    

       During our visit with Paulette, Elsa pushed her to retrieve the cat's mouse for her to play with from under her bed. She had Paulette throwing it nonstop. Paulette and I talked about our neighbors, not in a bad way, just sharing updates. I feel it's a way of knitting a community together. Gossip tears a community apart, isolating people.

     I met with the M & W sisters this morning. Their mom was still on Oahu for work. Her internet link wasn't strong enough to forward the link I sent her. Their dad texted and asked me to send the link to him. 

   I always ask first-grade M what she wants to do, presenting her with a menu of possibilities. She chose story writing. She wanted to write about unicorns. She started, took a long pause, and said, "Can you help me?" Amazing! This is an eight-year-old child who said that. Mostly kids just sit in awkward silence when they need help. I have to offer. I gave more input as a result. 

    With fifth grade W, I continued working on automatic processing using the left side of the brain. Last week, I did an exercise where she drilled a word by silently switching between seeing the image of the word in her mind and hearing the word in her head. All this must be done silently, internally. She reported there was no difference in her reading. Today, I tried having her work on recalling words while focusing on the left side of her brain while I wrote words from the basic sight word list. The theory is that we can fire a particular part of the brain by focusing on something stored there, or we can fire it by focusing our attention on that part of the brain. Imagine a weak limb. The PT has you focus on it and get as much out of it as possible. It may not be as much as its mates, but you will never get it to fire if you don't demand it by keeping all your attention there. I thought I saw a difference. 

   I finally came to the end of my last four-pound bag of Hersey's Milk Chocolate kisses with whole almonds. It took me eighteen days to make it through that bag. Not too bad. That comes to 3.5 ounces a day. But remember, at least 50% of that is almond. That gets my sugar intake down to 1.25 ounces a day. I had another 4 lb bag on the ready. I went to order my next four-pound bag online. The sites didn't look the same. I thought, "Yikes, I can't get my chocolate anymore!" I figured it was the impact of some combination of Covid and the international political situation. I was impacted directly, no more Hersey's milk chocolate kisses with whole almonds. Meanwhile, there is an image of a starving baby in Somalia, unable to get food because of the current circumstances.