Monday, August 29, 2022

 Monday, August 29, 2022

I slept very well last night. I didn't wake up until right before dawn and fell asleep again. Sometimes, I stay in bed because I'm too lazy to get up. Today, I wanted to stay in bed because it was lovely snoozing.

   Elsa and I walked around the block, a 1.1 mile. We ran into Dean, Nina, and Nina's sister, visiting from the mainland. I had seen the sister on some of my walks during the day. I suspected she was a visitor. Elsa made sure all three had the opportunity to show her affection. When she does this, I always speak for her. "Take me home with you. You have no idea what she's like. She never shows me affection." As we came around the block, we ran into the three again. This time, Elsa had no interest in engaging.

  I saw a small piece of yellow Styrofoam in her poop this morning. Even if she consumed some when she chewed up the container holding the chicken, it wasn't causing an obstruction. Ah! It looked like she would be okay.

 When I got home, I meditated for an hour. I got in another thousand steps after finishing and lay down for a short nap. I read some of Barren Grounds, a book W had to read. These children's books are wonderful. Such a relief from adult problems, even though the kids' problems in these books are terrible.

 At 11 a.m., I had my Zoom Monday office hour. A young man came on shortly after I signed on. He still needed to meet with his student. As usual, I checked if he had Julia's toolbox with suggestions for the opening tutoring sessions. If so, he was done. I would make sure I reported his attendance to Julia.

  I had another session with Adolescent D. He was doing amazingly well. He took responsibility for the work. Wow! Wow! Wow! You cannot believe the difference. We continued working on the syllable pattern drill. He still had problems remembering the vowel in the VC pattern was short. He didn't know how to cue himself. While his memory was much better, he still needed to employ strategies to drill information into his memory.

  I was tired all day. I woke up and wanted to sleep; I walked and needed a nap; I met with a student and needed another nap. I dreaded the hour-long session scheduled with the M & W sisters because I was aching with tiredness. I think I was suffering from grief. Oh, boy. Do I ever miss loving and being loved!

  The half-hour with second-grade M went well. She loved doing the Gating Game, and her ability to project the next possible word using grammatical and semantic cues improved. Working with her was fun. With sixth grade W, the half-hour dragged. We get distracted by questions related to background information. We read a paragraph about the impact of oil spills on sea birds. Several questions came up. What was a seabird? Did any sea birds live far from shore? If so, how did they rest? How did the crude oil impact the birds? While asking these questions was interesting, this is not the purpose of our work. I didn't know how much more instruction she needed. I need to speak to her teachers at Hawaiian Prep to see how I can benefit her.