Saturday, June 11, 2022

Saturday, June 11, 2022 

 

   Again, I slept like a baby. Boy, do I sleep well. What a blessing!   I stayed in bed a bit longer than I usually do. I felt like I had no reason to get up. I both love that I have nothing to do but meditate and nap, and I fear it. That lack of stimulation would not be good for me. 

   My sciatica was killing me today. Sitting in a chair was not an option. I lay down on the couch. But it was difficult to do any writing while prone, but my leg felt better. 

   Shivani called. She prefers Facetime calls. She does that because Sidney can participate. It is like being in someone's home with them. It makes the flow of conversation more relaxed. She was sitting out on her back patio. It is a delightful spot. She has a conversational sofa grouping and a dining room table. 

  I did get some work done on the updates and the blog. My daily numbers on the blog have jumped in the last two days- in China. If it lasts only one or two days, it may be a bot or a computer glitch. It means there aren't many people reading the blog; the computer counting the visitors just did its own thing.

   I was hungry for the first time since I got home from the hospital. Last night I enjoyed the meatloaf sandwich Judy sent over. This afternoon I craved some of Chef Eric's chicken alfredo with broccoli. I had a few mouths full. That was quite enough. I chased that down with a slice of the cake Shivani and Sidney made together.   It was good, but I couldn't eat all I cut for myself. I hadn't quite got to the point where I wanted chocolate. Once that craving returned, I'd know I was good to go.

     Thursday, I contacted the parents of the M & W sisters, saying I wasn't quite ready to come back to work. Their father responded that it was okay; they had had a death in the family. Today I learned it was his father, the children's paternal grandfather, who died. He told me there was a newspaper article about him. I discovered his father had been a professional football player. He was also a big deal in other ways.

  Yvette cleaned the bathroom, sanitized it, in fact, with some special spray she uses at work, and vacuumed the carpet in the guest room. Scott would sleep in the room where Shivani and Sidney slept. When Scott came, he was exhausted.

   I read more of Merzenich's book, Soft-Wired, on brain plasticity. It talks about how the brain is transformed through learning and the difference between the learning process for a newborn versus the aging brain. The newborn's brain processes everything. There is no filter. As a specific sensory input is repeated, there is an increase in the number of neurons that register that information. As the infant grows, neurons are pruned, dropped. The mature brain has fewer neurons than the infant's brain, as it should. If we maintained the infant brain with its high neuron count, we would be disabled. The object is a brain that can function in the environment it has to live in.

      As we age, learning does not happen passively, as it does for the infant. Our minds become gatekeepers. We get to make conscious decisions about what we learn. I knew about this process before. Each time I read about it, my understanding deepens. I planned to read this passage about learning to adolescent D.  He wants to learn passively as an infant does. Did he choose to avoid conscious learning because it made him feel bad from the start? That could happen. If he observed a friend who seemed to learn effortlessly as a child, he would interpret his need to make an effort as evidence of a deficit and avoid using it. The other possibility is that a neurological deficit prevents him from focusing his attention sufficiently. I don't know all the possibilities. Either way, I know from my meditation practice that the attention function can improve with effort.