Saturday, January 21, 2023

Saturday, January 21, 2023 

 

  Jean, my Hanai sister, called at 7:30 am, just as I got up, to tell me that Wolfie had sent her flowers. I hadn't a clue as to what she was talking about. Her son, my stepson, sent her flowers for her eighty-first birthday from him, his wife and son, and Wolfie, a main character in the animated film Bad Guys. Damon was one of the movie's producers, and Jean's favorite character was Wolfie.

  I pushed Elsa through the doggie door when I got up. She was a little better; I didn't have to push quite as much.

  I had Mama K's crew at 9 am. It took a while, but I finally found a time when I could meet with them for the second time in the week. Twin E continued to struggle with automatic recall. She always returns to conscious decoding, a wonderful skill but only half the story.

  I had Twin A reading in third-grade material. No, she is not reading it on her own. I made an amazing discovery. I had already divided the words in the selection into syllables. I had her read each syllable as if it was a separate word. She could do it. She decoded di and no; I gave her the saur, and she blended the three syllables to get dinosaur.

  Kingston worked on writing. He had completed his essay on the wolf spider. His teacher emailed me the finished product. Wow! He could never have done it on his own. For the next writing assignment, he had to pick a topic, another informational piece. I picked surfing because I know something about it, and he has three sisters who surf. He said he didn't know anything about it. I said, "So surfing is climbing up Mauna Kea." He was confused about why I said that. He finally said no. I asked him to tell me how surfing differed from climbing the mountain. He said: 

 

Climbing a mountain is walking up there, but surfing is swimming with a board.

They're on top of the wave going down. Then they go inside the barrel. Then they go back up to the top and do some tricks.

 

  When I asked what was needed, he could tell me a surfboard. I asked him to describe what he saw in his mind. He said he had no image. I asked him the color of his blanket. He said, "Black on a white background." I asked if the black was a pattern. Yes, Batman. I asked which way he was facing; he said to the front. When I argued if he could 'see' the image of Batman, he could see the image of people surfing. He said he sees his blanket every day. His mother has taken him to the beach many times. She does it to get the kids out of the house; she loves the beach. Given that he hasn't had that blanket his whole life, he has seen the beach at least as often as his blanket. He did say he could visualize the Fortnight game. Very frustrating.

  Paulette stopped by to return the chairs borrowed for the family Christmas dinner. Then she asked me if she could keep one because they were expecting Judy's son Matt with his two children, Noah and Mia. Matt was coming to the Big Island for a several-day workshop. Since he's the stay-at-home dad, his wife teaches school, so he had to take the children with him. While attending his workshops, he has five adults and two other children to be with his two kids.  

    Paulette would have a hectic day, driving Mei's Turo cars back and forth from the airport. As she left, she pulled me into a hug. She is a great hugger. It is so lovely to have someone like that in my life.