Wednesday, May 25, 2022

 Wednesday, May 25, 2022

 

  I had a 7:30 PT appointment with the therapist who wasn't exposed to Covid. She told me that service providers must quarantine if they are not vaccinated or not wearing a mask when exposed. I know the other one didn't wear a mask. I wore one when I saw her. One day when I said I was having difficulty breathing because of the mask, she said, "Why don't you just take it off," in that dismissive tone. Oh, dear. 

   Katie worked on my left arm again. She told me I held my shoulder in a defended position. She gave me ways to hold it that would open the shoulder. She told me to keep my hand with my palm forward instead of backward.

  After PT, I went to Safeway to pick up the remaining food items on Shivani's list. While I was there, Judy called. When she found out where I was, she asked me to get her a box of Campari tomatoes; none other would do. The taste, she said, was in a league of its own. I couldn't find them at first. When I did, I got a box for me too. I picked up around ten items, fresh vegetables, and a whole chicken.  

  My next stop was Kaiser to get another hip X-ray. I brought the refrigerable food in rather than leaving it in the car in the sun. Wait time at Kaiser is always short nowadays. I tried to figure out whether it was shorter since Covid. Come to think of it. More was being done by phone and Zoom than before.  

   I'd seen the X-Ray tech several times in the last year. In January, the podiatrist ordered an ankle X-ray. When my knee went, Dr. Reed ordered one for that joint when I requested it. Katie figured all my leg joints were arthritic. Guess what! In the case of both the knee and the ankle, there was no serious arthritis. The doctor said my ankle didn't look like a twenty-year-olds, but there was no serious breakdown. By this time, the tech and I were forming a friendship. I asked her what made her become an X-ray tech. It's always interesting to learn about what motivates people. She had planned to go into the law but discovered she didn't like the people in the profession. A friend of the family suggested she try X-ray tech. She loves it. She's involved with people and uses her hands.

   My last stop was Costco. I arrived there around 9:30. I couldn't take the food from Safeway into the store. I sat in the car and ran the air conditioner on high until the store opened. I only had three items to buy: blueberries, lox, and poke.

   I went home to do more cleaning. Shivani wouldn't be a harsh judge, but one must always use a guest as motivation to get the house cleaned.

  While it sounded like I had broken the Bose radio yesterday by getting water in it, I decided to try it. I plugged it in and turned t on. It was just fine. I had no idea what happened yesterday.

   I had a session with Adolescent D at 4:30. He was out of school already, but we hadn't moved to a summer schedule. I started working on having him identify the phonemes in words just from the sound. He tended to give me letters instead of sounds. He seemed frustrated. I asked if he felt that way and wanted a break. "Frustration is for babies," he spat out. I ran a lecture on frustration. I told him everyone encountered it. The difference in people is how they deal with it, not experience it. You only push through frustration endlessly if you face a deadline or a crisis. It's important to know when to back off and take a break.   

   Then I worked on one of the words he had trouble learning because he confused it with another, went versus want. I had him identify the similarities and differences between the two words. I had him decode went, which has the more common vowel-consonant pattern. Since he could do that, I told him to think, "If it is not went, then it must be want." We did some other work and then came back to identifying them. He got them correct. I asked him if he had used the strategy I showed him. He contemptuously said, "No. I just knew it." It was becoming clear he just forget to use my strategies, he resisted using them. I reminded him he had a memory problem. He should use his intelligence to compensate for it. He wants to rely on automatic recall, as he sees others do.

   I had to pick up Shivani and Sidney at the airport at 7:30. She texted me when they landed. I headed out. When I arrived, I learned they had checked luggage to pick up. I went to the cell phone parking lot to wait for her. There was a lot of traffic pulling up to the curb. I pulled up behind the last car to pull up to the curb. We had problems finding each other. I was just north of the arrival sign; from her description, she was just south. I got out of the car and screamed her name. No response. Finally, I got close enough. I put on my emergency lights so she knew where I was. We finally connected. 

   Yvette and I had made the double bed in the guest room and library. She decided to sleep there to avoid disturbing Yvette and Josh, whose bedroom was beneath the guest room. They slept together there. Sidney was only five and still crawling into bed with his mom.