Saturday, October 22, 2022

 Saturday, October 22, 2022

   

      I slept well and woke up at 6 a.m. After completing my in-bed morning exercises, Elsa and I did our walk. My left ankle wasn’t 100%. It hurt in a different spot than it had. Shifting pain is considered a good sign something is changing.

   Once I posted my daily blog post and completed Wordle for the day, I needed a nap. I hadn’t been needing daily naps earlier in the week; it was back again. When I was busy enough, I was full of energy. I get tired quickly when my eyes get tired. Straining to see is exhausting. I went down for a two-hour nap. Why two hours? Who knows. 

  Once up, I got to work on my current cleaning project. I have guests coming for Thanksgiving. This is a brilliant motivation for doing a thorough cleaning. I did some of the deep cleaning for Damon and Shivani’s visits, but I didn’t clean the lanai screens or the windows in the front of the house. 

Cleaning the lanai means cleaning the screens and the sliding double doors to the guest bedroom. On the lanai, there are fourteen-six by four screens and fourteen- six by two. The other day, I cleaned one set, top and bottom, and planned to continue cleaning that section of the lanai, including the sliding glass doors to the guest bedroom. Once I had the glass cleaned and the frame washed down, I had to vacuum that area before putting the furniture back. I would vacuum the furniture right before they arrived.

  I had another ten-minute session with adolescent D. OMG! I can’t give him three words with three sounds. I learned that in our last session. He had trouble hearing and blending two sounds. He got better at that after our first session. Three sounds were too much for him. Today, I tried giving him two sounds from the word before adding the third. In the word keep, I gave /ee/ and /p/; he blended those with ease. Then I said /k/,/ee/,/p. He tried to add the /k/ to the end of the word. He also did that with the word take. He did fine blending /a/-/k/, but when I gave him the initial /t/ sound to add on, he said /a-te/. I had already seen this problem when he decoded words while reading. He did well when I added consonants to the end of the sound unit. I started with /e/ and/n/in the word friends. He blended those. When I gave him /e/,/n/, and/ d/, it was easy for him to add on the final /s/.

  I went to Hilo with B. to see his grandson in a production of The Lion King, Jr. We took my car. It would be more comfortable and require less gas. We left around three p.m. We wanted to eat dinner before we saw the show. I proposed going to Reuben’s Mexican Restaurant. That’s where Mike and I always went when on that side of the island. We loved their food.

  There were empty tables when we arrived. I ordered a deluxe nacho plate and a lemonade. B ordered two dishes. It looked like they had redecorated. Murals were painted on the walls I didn’t remember seeing. There used to be many pictures of Mexican revolutionaries. That was the theme. There was one picture of Poncho Ville. I remember a picture of Che Guevarra and Frida Kahlo; those were gone. The old lady who served as bartender wasn’t there. She was always there. I asked the server about her. She has passed, but her husband and son still ran the place.

   I noticed that different waiters would ask us what we needed. I saw camaraderie among the staff. I asked the server about that, too. Yes. It was a wonderful place to work. Everyone had everyone else’s back.

   We had plenty of time to walk to the theater around the corner. As we left the restaurant, several groups of people were waiting to be served. We had parked down the street. I wanted to get something from it. B went to get for me as I stayed on the sidewalk. I took a step toward him, not remembering the curb. My left foot rolled over the edge. I thrust out my right leg and caught myself. I was shaken but unhurt. It was scary because it reminded me of the fall down a long flight of stairs I took when I was thirty-five. 

The length of the fall wasn’t comparable, but the sensation of my foot rolling over the edge of a step was.

  The theater wasn’t open yet when we arrived. We waited outside. To get to our seats, we had to climb stairs. I was concerned that we would be far in the back, but no. The theater was a small one built in the early nineteen hundreds, as much of the town was. None of the original buildings have been torn down and replaced with modern structures.

    B and I are both into construction, B professionally, and me as a DYI. We wondered how they changed the lightbulbs in the ceiling and in the sconces. There was nowhere to put a cherry picker. Also, we both saw signs of leaks and realized the ceiling wasn’t painted; it was wallpapered. We also noticed the audience as the theater filled up. It was a two-to-one ratio of kids to adults, and those kids were mostly under ten. They screamed when the songs came on. This was their Rocky Horror Show viewing. It was a fun evening. His grandson was the Warthog.

   After the performance, the cast met the audience in the lobby for pictures. B’s grandson was in costume, which was a little like a small boat. His costume was hot and heavy. As we started walking back to the car, a man approached me in a friendly way. I thought nothing of it, assuming he was from the audience. Then he tried to put his hat on my head. That changed the tone. Next thing I knew, B was by my side, and the man was screaming, ‘Don’t touch me!” Anything B said or did only made the man more agitated. Elijah’s mother came, “ Move on! Don’t bother them!” and he went. As he walked down the street, he kept screaming, “Don’t touch me!” I wanted to wait until he was well ahead of me.

     My car was parked on the main shopping street on this side of town, just down the block from the theater. As we approached, B said, “They will have set up house for the night.” Apparently, this is where many of the homeless setup camp every night. We walked out into the street, approaching the car from the back. We got in safely and drove home without incident. I got home around 11 p.m. and went straight to bed. I didn’t get in my 10,000 steps today.