Monday, September 5, 2022

Monday, September 5, 2022

   On my morning walk, I shared time with Julie and Carol. Carol only had Luke. I forgot she was leaving Max home because of his limp. She had an appointment with the vet on Wednesday.

    Last night, Yvette told me this would be her thirtieth day of Bikram in honor of Jared, a recently deceased friend. Krista said she would livestream the class so Jared's friends and family could watch. Yvette got me into the studio Facebook group. This morning, I made several attempts to access the video. Then a friend called. I gave up.

  While on the phone with my friend Jean, l cleaned up gecko poop from the sliding door rail. It is a particularly favorite spot of theirs. Better than having it all over the house.

   I realized I had booked Elsa's Petco grooming appointment in conflict with my office hours. My Petco appointment was at noon, and my office hour was from eleven to twelve. I hoped I could be a little late. It couldn't be that to-the-minute appointment. I called to check. The groomer could handle it if I arrived fifteen minutes later, but no more. I planned to leave the office hour fifteen minutes early.

    The tutor who came to my office hour struck me a bit on the self-centered side. She assumed what she knew was good enough and what she did when she read was what should be done. I agreed with her on the latter; we disagreed on how to achieve what she had achieved. She said her student had problems pronouncing r and l. I told her first to make sure the student could pronounce the phonemes in isolation. She asked if it wouldn't be easier to give him words to say. If he couldn't produce the sound in isolation, why did she think it would be easier in a context? I told her to watch the YouTube video to teach students how to decode words. "Isn't that overthinking the process?" The goal is 'just knowing' the correct sound or word. It's automatic for you. How did you get there? How do you get your students there? I doubted she would follow my advice; what she planned to do might work. She just wanted to tell the student the correct word each time. It's called the Grandma method. It works for some kids. But he probably needed more if she worked with a third grader with problems reading.

  After making arrangements to arrive at 12:15 instead of 12, I arrived before noon and had to wait. While we stood there, Elsa pooped on the floor. She had gas while we were driving. I suspected she might have needed to relieve herself. I waited in a little grassy patch before we went inside. Nothing then. As we were standing at the counter waiting to be served, an employee came up behind me and warned me not to step back. I offered to clean it up. She insisted on doing it herself. As I left Petco, I found more poop on the sidewalk before the entrance. It looked just like Elsa's. I cleaned it up as best I could. Some of it had melted into the sidewalk already.

  I was supposed to have Adolescent D at 2 p.m. His mom called and asked if we could do it another day because he had to catch up on homework. I tried to nap. I got a call from B, telling me he had finished unpacking the engraved granite slabs from the wooden shipping boxes. They were in the back of my car, still wrapped in plastic. He asked if I had done anything about the gravestone pillows yet. He suggested he take a look at them. I told him I had to return to town later to pick up Elsa from Petco. We could go to the cemetery then. "Ah," he said. "That's why Elsa didn't bark while I unpacked the slabs in your car."

    I got a call around 2 p.m. to tell me Elsa was ready for pickup. It was a good thing D had canceled. I called B as I turned onto Queen K to go into town. He said he was there already and had found the pillows. I was overwhelmed by his help. I assumed he had forgotten about it. Better yet, he avoided thinking about it. I had proposed he ask a friend of his to help. I was asking a lot.  

  I had the M & W sisters at 4 p.m. Second-grade M asked to work on the Gating Game. When she looked distracted, I asked her what was going on. She said she had things on her mind. What? She had to write poems for her grandfather's funeral. Sixth-grade W overheard and corrected her. She had to write letters to her Granddad. I suggested we work on that. It was hard pulling out anything meaningful. Her grandfather had been sick for several years. The last time she had real contact with him was five years old. That was something like three years ago. That's a lifetime for a child of eight. I managed to get some information out of her. She talked about him in the third person. I reformatted what she said into a letter using the direct address. I hope she got the instructions correctly.

  Sixth-grade W wanted to work on the Gating Game, too. I selected a paragraph in which we had done a comprehension activity. She asked to have a different passage. I was working on a fifth-grade Barnell Loft book. I took the opportunity and went to the highest level exercise in the level E book. I had already entered. I dreaded working with the girls, but we all had fun today.