Monday, September 26, 2022

 Monday, September 26, 2022

    I ran into a man attending to his fancy blue car with matching blue hubcaps. He had the hood open and was peering inside. "Is your baby not feeling well?" I asked. He explained he thought he had put in too much air conditioner fluid. Too much fluid downgrades the air conditioner's function as much as too little. 

  Tammy commented on the day. "I didn't know we had seasons here. It feels like fall air." It did. I was surprisingly cool for this time of year. September is one of our hottest and most humid months. It's a good time to be somewhere else. When we first moved here, I walked around in underwear from August through mid-October. One year, it was so hot that kids passed out at the high school; there was no air conditioning then. That clear, cool morning air was probably a result of the massive downpour we had last night that washed away all the hot and humid.    

      We get some fierce downpours here, but this one was exceptional. When I heard it, I wasn't sure what it was. I had to check if it was raining or something I had never seen or heard before.

  Six people had signed up for my Monday office hour. All six followed orders and signed up for someone's office hour. I still hadn't asked Julia why they had the volunteers do this. None of them had met with their student yet, and only one had a question. She wanted a two-semester course on teaching reading and math in one hour. They didn't expect that, but that's what she was unknowingly asking for. I was done within half an hour. I sat there for the rest of the hour if someone else showed up.   

  I started my massive house cleanup. Eddie, one of Damon's best friends, was visiting the Big Island and planning on a brief visit. I wasn't too concerned with his judgment of my housekeeping; I was using him as motivation to get long overdue housecleaning done. Mike used to say, "Where's a guest when you really need one?" Eddie was visiting on Thursday; I had a four-day cleanup planned. I started with one side of the lanai.

  The persistent pressure on the left side of my face and head comes and goes. It did look like a sinus condition.

     At 2 p.m., I had an appointment with adolescent D.  I planned to work on auditory recall, remembering the other person's words by hearing them in his head rather than repeatedly saying them. His mother told me if she tells him to do something, he will repeat it to himself as he does it. He cannot be interrupted. He has no short-term auditory recall.  

  I asked him to hear my voice in his head. He couldn't hear anything, not my voice, not his mother's, not his sister's. I instructed him to hear a child screaming while he rode a rollercoaster. I asked if it made him feel good or bad. He said excellent. I asked if his body felt like it was vibrating. He said no. until I explained I didn't mean shaking; I meant an inner body vibration. Yes, he felt that. Did he feel it was fear or anger? No excitement.

     D could spontaneously generate the image of a twenty-year-old man singing Hooked on a Feeling on a stage. He could hear him singing. Hearing music came easily. This confirmed something I suspected; he did all his auditory processing with the right brain, which is not designed for processing words. We have tried to awaken the left-brain auditory working memory without success. Today, I had him describe his image as I wrote it. I had him provide dialogue. The working memory pulls in information from at least three sources: the real world, our memory, or our imagination. If I could strengthen his imaginative use of auditory processing, maybe I could get him to develop his auditory processing from memory and external sources.

   I had already sent the M &W sisters the Zoom link when I found a text from their mom telling me they wouldn't be home in time. They were getting back from their grandfather's funeral and would be on the road coming home from the airport.