Friday, March 10, 2023

 Friday, March 10, 2023

I called Pet Meds this morning to place an order. I tried to do it online the other day. I hit the place-order button and got no confirmation. I'm concerned it could have been a scam site. I had to give my address to the customer service provider. I couldn't think of how to pronounce Kailua. It came out wrong, or it just didn't sound right. The sounds got twisted in my head. This is what Adolescent D must experience regularly. It was scary. Is it a first for me, with more to come? What does this signal? When I was young, I had pregnancy scares; now they're dementia scares.

   I went to the bank to discuss the two withdrawals in my monthly statement. I never make withdrawals. I knew I hadn't in the last week or so. The bank official pulled up a copy of my withdrawal statement. My handwriting was unmistakable, but I was sure I hadn't made a withdrawal. I never do. I write checks.

   When I got home, I checked those dates in my daily updates. First, in my panic, I confused February sixth and seventh with March sixth and seventh. I knew I hadn't done anything recently. Driving home, I figured the bank had a problem clerk who figured out how to copy customer information from one form to another.

    When I read the updates for February, I saw that I did make those two withdrawals. It was for that scam artist who stained my wedges for the gravesite. He did a reasonably good job but charged me eight hundred dollars. That is more than any other single phase of preparing the gravesite. The most expensive was seven hundred dollars for two granite slabs. The rest didn't come close to eight hundred dollars with everything told. I had two hundred dollars on me. The guy wanted four hundred before he did the work and four hundred after he was finished. Since he was the only one in town who could help me, I felt I had no choice. I am encouraging friends who do handyman work to get into the business themselves. It's a day's work with good money. Not that they would charge eight hundred.

  I did the biggest Costco shopping I've ever done. I picked up several things on sale and some things on impulse. All Purpose Miracle-Gro contains "natural ingredients to feed microbes in the soil."  I'm sure. Margo recommended Osmocote plant food. Do I know the difference between one fertilizer product and the next? Not a clue. I searched the Internet for an answer but found none. Can you imagine? A question I couldn't find an answer on the Internet. Osmocote is a 14-14-14 product- whatever that means. What else is a 4-14-14 product? I finally broke down and texted Margo. Osmocote is a slow-release fertilizer. There's less chance of damaging the plants. Knowing my luck, I have a good chance of doing damage even with that.

  I posted one update to my email followers and did the Wordle puzzle for the day. I missed it. Was it rebel or revel? I chose the wrong one.  

  I had Adolescent D at two. I signed in and called to tell him I was ready. He usually signs on to the Zoom link without answering the phone. Today, he answered and asked if we could put the session off to five. I heard laughter in the background. "Sure. Have a good time." Then I took a nap. I woke up around four and checked my phone. D had texted to say he was ready at three-thirty. I called him to ask if he could sign on now.

   We were scheduled to do Phase II of The Phonics Discovery System. It's a repeat of every other time we do Phase I. However, today, I made sure he wrote the letters I dictated. Two remarkable things happened. First, I could dictate up to six letters at a time. He was able to recall them and write them accurately. This means his auditory processing problem has improved, or he never had a problem in the first place; he was misusing the system. Second, he was excited about his handwriting. He said, "You have to see this. It is amazing. My handwriting looks wonderful. I'm writing this without lines to guide me. It's almost straight."             He texted me a photo. Oh, dear. His handwriting looked terrible. When you compare it to what it was a few months ago, yes, it's better. The letters shapes and relative sizes are better. However, I don't know who this kid is. In the past,  anything short of perfection by grade level standards was 'no improvement.' Now, this! I can't complain; I'm just confused.

  I'm reading  Lisa Genova's book on memory, Remember. When someone is 'searching' their memory in an fMRI, you can see the brain firing as they search. It's a lot like searching a room. There is a difference. Things we remember are stored in multiple locations throughout the brain. If we're looking for an object in a room, it is usually in a single location. Things are stored in multiple locations because different aspects and associated memories are stored in different locations.