Monday, October 16, 2023

 Monday, October 16, 2023

 

   I used the TENS unit on my arm for a second night. It's a machine that provides electric stimulus to the muscles. During the night, my hand hurt badly enough to keep me up. Of course, I wasn't sleeping well to start with. It was one of those nights where I couldn't sleep. Fortunately, I don't have that many of them. Even when I do, I doze through most of it.

  I made a weekly schedule for the sections of my yard. I'm committed to doing one a day. Even if I do a little each time, it will add up. 

Wednesdays are set aside for weeding in my neighbor's yard. Their weeds run over into my garden. My neighbors do nothing. They had big plans to plant a vegetable garden. They lay down black landscape fabric and cut their breadfruit tree to a nub. That project didn't last long. Fortunately, the breadfruit tree came roaring back. It will be a key to our survival if times get tough.

   Today, the section off my bedroom was on the schedule. I have one haole koa tree that grew to twenty feet- a little too tall to pluck out of the ground. These trees put down deep roots. I cut it back and tried boiling water. Good luck! Lutz uses Round Up to kill these invasive, hardy trees. He drills a hole in the stem and fills it with the herbicide.  

   I stopped at Ace Hardware to pick up a cordless drill. 

Man, they are expensive. I had one with a cord. I should try Home Depot before I bought this high-priced one. I suspected Ace carried only the high-end equipment while HD carried a range. For my purposes, a cheaper one would do.

   As the clerk got the drill out of the case, he told me copper nails would do the job. They can kill any tree. For twelve dollars, it was worth a try. First, I tried hammering the nail into the stump, which already had put out new shoots. Hammering a nail into green wood is a challenge. I found my old drill at the bottom of the toolbox. I had two long orange extension cords. When I strung them together, I could reach the tree. I used a slender bit. The nails went in easily. The Ace Hardware man said it would take four months to work. I have my doubts since I drove the nails into the old stem. The new shoots may sustain the tree.

  I found information about Adolescent D's audio processing in an update from last year. I had to slow down the sounds tremendously for him to discern the word. He had trouble with three phoneme words back then. Today, he could handle multi-syllable words enunciated one phoneme at a time. His progress is truly remarkable. It's mostly to my credit because he never does any work independently. He is a passive student.

  There's also been substantial improvement in his memory. He repeats whole phrases and clauses as I articulate one phoneme at a time. Once I got him to 'hear' the sound of his voice in his memory, things started to shift. It took work to convince him to try it. He argued it wouldn't help. He either remembered or he didn't. He couldn't believe his active interference would make a difference. I got him to try it by pointing out he had nothing to lose. It wasn't going to harm him, and it might help. He's right; his auditory processing has been a problem, but we've seen improvement.

  He refused to accept that hearing my voice in his head helped him recall information. He believed he did it all by visual processing. He didn't even recall seeing consume + ed= consumed, and consum + ed = consummed the next day. He dredged up some other work from his memory. With continued effort, he finally cemented the rules for adding -ed to words based on their syllable structure- at least for now.

    I worked with both Mama K's Twins on automatic recall. Twin A's recall skills had improved substantially. Recently, I saw a breakthrough with Twin E. It inspired me to push automatic recall with both girls. I instruct them to imprint the image of the word in their minds and then wait until their mind tells them the name of the word. Twin A is better at this process. Twin E is reluctant to wait. She wants the easy fix. I have to coach her on waiting each time. Until the neural pathways are laid down, it takes time for the information to come up. More neural connections are laid down with practice, and the process speeds up. Until you see it speed up, you must wait for the mind to tell you the word.

   I used to tell students to ask 'their mind' to tell them the word, or to think of someone standing behind them telling them the word. I recently developed a new image: two parts of the brain, Mind/Brain A and Mind/Brain B. Mind/Brain A is the conscious mind; Mind/Brain B is the unconscious mind. Mind A isn't very bright. It can only hold 7 +/- 2 bits of information at a time. It's Mind/Brain B that holds the vast storehouse of all we've learned in our lives. A's job is to train B on new information or processes and tell B when it needs information. The latter process should become automatic. If B doesn't know the information or hasn't heard it often enough, that's when A steps in and figures it out.

      I got a recall notification from Kia. It warned me that if a warning light went on, I was to pull over immediately and call AAA. There was a flammable liquid that might leak into an area where it didn't belong. If a spark hit it, it would ignite. Sounded like fun. I called my local Kia dealer. What could I do? "Not drive the car." Who was responsible if the car burned? "Your insurance will cover it." Hmm. That means I am. This did not sound good.

  I scheduled a Sears repairman to look at the water dispenser on my refrigerator. It was not flowing fully. The repairman looked over my whole refrigerator. He said my newly installed gaskets weren't good. They were just installed this summer. This repairman seemed to know what he was doing more than the last guy. None of this sounds good.

   I watched a series on Amazon that was fantastic: Counterpart. It's a social science fiction spy story. The spy part is okay. The social science fiction part is off the charts. The plot proposes an incident that caused the current world to be duplicated. There were two of everything like there would be two of me and two of my one-year-old grandnephew. My life would proceed differently from my counterpart. The story explores how minor differences affect the outcome of people's lives. Fascinating and brilliantly done. I have no idea why it wasn't on everyone's lips when it came out in 2019.