Sunday, November 20, 2022

 Sunday, November 20, 2022  

  I got up early because I wanted to attend the 9 am mass. I was home from my walk, taking a few minutes to post last year’s entry to the public blog, when there was a knock at my door. Nina and Dean were dropping off a papaya. The subject came up when I ran into them yesterday. Nina eats one a day. It’s good roughage. She took one to work one day to help a friend with problems. Dean and Nina had six ripe ones now. Nina couldn’t eat all of them before they went bad. She’d have to stay home from work and spend her day on the toilet.

  After mass, I stopped at Safeway to pick up cream cheese and a quart of orange juice and check if they had any Hersey’s milk chocolate nuggets with whole almonds. They didn’t. I stopped off at Long’s to see if they had any. I got two packages there.

  After Safeway, I stopped at the car wash. I do that regularly, well, semi-regularly. Today, I vacuumed the car, getting the sand Shivani and Sidney left there from their excursions to the beach in June in anticipation of my guests. My final stop was at Ace Hardware. I love this store. I have abandoned Home Depot. I returned the tape I bought to resecure the air conditioner vent. I also bought a new two-gallon garden sprayer. The one I had lasted long enough to wash most of the large lanai screens. Suddenly, it wouldn’t seal even though the seals looked good. I had no idea what the problem was. The one I had was an Echo; Ace carried an Ortho. I hoped this one would last longer. Someone suggested the seals were compromised by the 30% vinegar to spray the weeds. I also bought a new garbage disposal unit. Mine wasn’t working. I heard the motor run, but the blades didn’t move. I had the new one on hand in case the plumber or handyman I hired decided to replace it.

  I continued with my cleaning project. At four pm, I had sessions with the M & W sisters. For reasons I can’t remember, second grade M and I started talking about math. I discovered she couldn’t read three-digit numbers. Ow! I spoke to her mom after the session. She had noticed it, too, and was concerned. Her report card showed she was doing well in reading and needed help in math. I told the mom I would concentrate on math until she reached grade level. She was relieved.

  I continued working on Gating Game on Out of the Dust with sixth-grade W. She hadn’t started working on the book in class. I was already getting bored. She did well on the Gating Game. She demonstrated some comprehension problems, making assumptions contradicting the author’s words. I also see her occasionally misread ‘easy’ words. The school reports that she is doing fine, not outstanding. There is one area where I’ll bet she was exceptional- in Art.

   Sandor stopped by to help me with my blog. It was Sandor who encouraged me to set it up. He felt others could benefit from what I had to say. Nice. We started with one name, With Mike; Without Mike, and then I decided I wanted a different name, Mike’s Death; Betty’s Life. I started making entries on the Mike’s Death; Betty’s Life site. At some point, I noticed that the early entries were not on the blog site. Whatever! I had no idea what was going on.

  The other day, I was denied access to With Mike; Without Mike, where I’ve made my daily updates for over a year and had access to Mike’s Death; Betty’s Life. I had no idea what was going on. I was surprised that the latter site had 43,000 hits while the other had 56,000. I assumed my numbers were high because teachers assigned my blog. Eventually, the numbers would drop. They did.

  How were any of these blogs maintained? My credit card number had changed. Who was paying for them? I had no idea. Sandor discovered we registered the Mike’s Death; Betty’s Life site under a different email address than With Mike; Without Mike. We never figured out how these blogs were paid for. There is no one to speak to at the blog site. No customer service.