Wednesday, April 26, 2023

 Wednesday, April 26, 2023

    I had Mama K's crew today. Twin A read the passage we read in the previous session reasonably well. She was a little shaky. I had her tell me what the story was about. She does a great job on this. Her verbal expression skills are improving daily. Mama K says she is seeing a difference. Some of this is just neurological maturation. Mama K's kids do really well in school after a while. But all start behind the eight ball. The whole family suffers from delayed development. They need the extra help because they won't get the instruction they need when they are ready to learn. 

    Twin E read the same passage as last time, too. She is still reading on a pre-primer level and gets stuck. She couldn't remember words she had seen a few minutes before. The word saw appeared repeatedly in the passage three times. She said it as was each time. I have to check if she has a visual perception problem. 

   I worked on comprehension with fourth-grade K. When I started working with him, he overused background information and his imagination to understand a passage. I pushed, getting him to understand the literal message of the passage said first. Now, he quotes the passage's exact words; I have to get him to express those ideas in his own words. I realize I have sent him a confusing message. I told him to use the exact words in the sentence. Then, when he did, I told him to use his own. I have to model what I mean: Use the same content words, not the exact same words as written in the text.

   It was a Kangen water day. I texted Paulette yesterday and again this morning, asking if Elsa and I could come up. There was no response. When I spoke to Judy, she told me Paulette often doesn't check her texts. I should call her. I did. She was available now. She and Judy haven't been driving the Turo cars because the business is way down.  

   Elsa and I always visit Paulette when we get water. Today, we watched Project Runway together. I caught a few moments of TV with her the last time I visited, but the TV was background noise to our conversation. Today, we watched the show and shared comments. This is the first time someone has sat with me and watched a show since Mike died. No, that's not accurate. Isaac watched TV with me one night. We watched an Oscar-nominated movie, CODA, about a hearing child in a deaf family. 

  As I was preparing dinner, the whole house shook once. This was the first time on my feet when an earthquake hit. For my first earthquake here, I was waking up. I just heard a thunderous noise at the front of my house. My first thought was a truck hit it. That would be quite a feat. There's a stone wall between the road and the house. When I figured out that was impossible, I figured a plane had broken the sound barrier. We have a military base on the island. They sometimes fly planes overland. It took a while to convince me it was an earthquake. I argued with the long-time residents. 

  The worst earthquake I witnessed was last year. I was sitting in my ole lady's chair. I could see the walls move back and forth. Nothing broke or fell in the house, but the cracks in the driveway got a bit worse. The epicenter of these quakes is never right under us. It's usually Kilauea or possibly Mona Loa, but never our mountain.

  I had two scheduled sessions today. Both canceled.

  It poured most of the day—it can rain hard here—so I didn't get my 5,000 steps in.