Tuesday, April 26, 2022

 Tuesday, April 26, 2022

 

   I shared my Netflix password with Judy briefly. She quickly ordered her own subscription. However, I would get blocked when I wanted to watch because she was on the account. I called Netflix yesterday to find out why Judy was still considering password sharing with me when she had gotten her own account. The agent said she had never signed out of my account and into the new one. I went to my account. Her name was still on it. I was able to delete her name. I watched Anatomy of a Scandal. My friend Jean said I would love it. Nay. It made me tense. I don’t do well when the main characters are in peril. At first, I thought the charges of rape were a political maneuver. As the show went on, it was clear that neither of the main characters had a clean bill of character health. I checked out the plot on Wiki. Okay, I’m done.

   I woke up feeling lousy this morning. I struggled with the significance of my osteoporosis in my recovery from a total hip replacement surgery. With osteoporosis, the bone doesn’t grow around the implant. This makes the connection weaker, and the hip can pop out. That would not be good. I was also suffering from a wracking bout of grief. 

   As Elsa and I left our driveway, we ran into Vince and Julie. Vince said, “Did you say you would need a ride on June 2?” Yep. “Ah, that’s my fishing day. I can’t do it. I’ll have my taxi service drive you.” The taxi service was Julie, his wife standing by his side. I protested. I picked Vince because I knew he got up in the middle of the night, at 2 pm, daily. The whole point was I didn’t inconvenience someone. Julie assured me that she got up early. There were just some days she lingered in bed. I was used to hearing Vince complain about how he couldn’t get her out of bed to take her morning walk. 

        Julie apparently runs a taxi service for friends and family. We live within minutes of the airport. People drive from all over the island, leave their cars for free in Vince, and Julie’s yard, and Julie drives them to the airport and picks them up. She said she was concerned her car seat would be too low for me to get in. “Do you drive a sports car?” “No, a Subaru sedan.” I have trouble getting in my SUV. It’s a little too high. If I lose more height, it may become a struggle for me to get in. She suggested I stop by and see if it fits.

    There was a steep drop in visitors to my public blog. Only nine visitors by this morning and the total number for yesterday was only 159. Boy, am I ever spoiled? When this started, I was thrilled when I got two visitors in a day. The English language teacher must be on vacation. If my champion is retiring, I will no longer be a phenom.   

   Yvette came up. She wanted to thank me in person instead of on the phone for assuring her of stable housing. The housing problem in Hawaii is wild. No one can find a place to live. Landlords raise rents and throw out people, families, and single mothers so they can sell their homes now at inflated prices. We have our house free and clear. We have to pay taxes. I remember when people lost their homes in the Great Depression because they couldn’t pay their taxes. I doubted Yvette knew that. I planned not to tell her. One of us worrying about problems is bad enough. 

   I brought up another problem I wanted to discuss with her. It came to my attention that getting home health care here is impossible. It may be hard everywhere because of the heightened standards, reduced Medicare reimbursements, and the lack of recent immigrants willing to do that work. Yvette said she knew the situation and that the job would fall to her. Wow! Mike had said she wouldn’t have to do it. She was aware of the situation and had resolved to step up to the plate.

   When I saw my PT Katie today, I asked her why she thought I wouldn’t be happy with a THR. She said it was because of my overly contracted inner thigh muscles. My body won’t know what to do with the new hip. I asked if that contracted muscle couldn’t be released. Apparently, this is a hotly debated topic in her field. She gave me a list of post-op exercises to start working on so my body would know what to do when I was struggling with recovery. She worked on my kneecap. It was very tight. Was it tight because of problems within my knee, or was it tight because of the surrounding muscles?

    I washed the vegetable oil off one side of the shower glass door with Dawn dish detergent. The oil dissolves water stains leaving a clear glass. I still had oil on the other half of the door. I let it sit for a day.  

    I had Adolescent D in the afternoon. No, he had done no reading in school. How come? “We played games and watched videos.” Was it a special day? No. He gives that school a bad name.  

    Had he listened to the audio file with the 5 Stories? Yes. Did he put it on, or did his mom? He did. Great!!! We started reading the phonemically transcribed text of the Hawaii Driver’s Manual. Today, he made it through all the ones we’ve been working on and two new ones. Yes, he used his familiarity with the text to support his reading. However, he is still saying the words correctly. His memory isn’t good enough to remember the text word by word. I once had a student who could do that. She could recite a whole text from memory. When I told D, I was impressed, was he? 

   I still have problems getting him to pay attention to every syllable in unfamiliar words. I had an idea. I would say the word if he said every syllable. I can model the blending process. He will never succeed if he ignores the letters on the page and glosses over them. Let’s see how that goes.

    I finally did some work on the Phase III video. Jana’s feedback was invaluable. I was making it too complicated. 

   I searched Netflix for feel-good movies. I found one about a dog. I was watching it when I was bumped. Judy must have signed on to watch Bridgerton. I texted her to tell her our problem wasn’t solved. I watched a documentary on Amazon about historical injustices made right.