Thursday, October 19, 2023

 Thursday, October 19, 2023 

    Today was jam-packed. It started first thing in the morning. Elsa had an eight a.m. grooming appointment at Petco. I had set the alarm for 7:30, allowing half an hour to get to the store. I got home from my morning walk shortly before seven. I panicked when I saw the time. I needed to leave by seven, and it was a few minutes before. I packed up Elsa and hit the road. When I was halfway there, I realized I had the appointment time wrong; it was at eight a.m., not 7:30. There was no point in going home. By the time I got there, it would be time to turn around. I got to the mall shortly before seven-thirty. Elsa and I walked through the parking lot. She took a poop in one of the spaces; I didn’t have a poop bag, and there were none left in the bag Petco dispenser from of Peto. I made sure she did it in the middle of a parking space so someone could get out of their car without stepping on it. I would get a bag from the store when I got in.

   At eight a.m., I went to the door. It was locked. The store only opened at 9 a.m.The sign said they opened at nine a.m. I checked the text from Petco. It said my appointment was at eight. How was I supposed to get in? I knocked. Someone came to the door. “Do you have a grooming appointment?” 

    I got in. The groomer put a dog in the back room. I asked her if it was her dog. No,  she had a seven-thirty appointment. I could have dropped Elsa off earlier. How? I could have called the store. Someone would have answered.  

   I headed to the end of the strip mall to Island Naturals. They make a tuna salad to die for. I picked up a Japanese purple sweet potato and a lilikoi muse. I headed to Kia to get information on the recall of my Kia Niro, an electric/hybrid car. I wanted someone to show me where the warning sign would appear if an electric spark had ignited the oil. The sign-in guy said he would get a mechanic. The mechanic had no idea what I was talking about. He had no knowledge of the recall. He didn’t know where the emergency icon would appear on the dial. I told him I would come back with the recall letter. As I drove off, I remembered I had a copy of the letter in my photos. I didn’t feel like turning around. I continued on my way home.   

   I did more of the morning routine when I got home; I did Wordle, the NY Times Mini crossword puzzle, and made another stab at Connections. At 11:30, I got a text and a call telling me Elsa was ready.

   I stopped at Kia before picking up Elsa. The sign-in guy spoke to me this time instead of calling a mechanic. He had spent years as one and was more knowledgeable than the guy I had spoken to earlier. He told me there was little chance the car would ignite and burn. Kia corporate had to give that dire warning because the fluid was an oil and could ignite. However, there was nothing near that spot in the car 

that could ignite the liquid. The chance of the problem causing a fire was close to nil. Ah!

   I went to pick up Elsa at Petco. I picked up the receipt from the groomer’s reception desk and paid. Someone called my name. She looked like someone I knew from Princeton. She said her name, “ Nancy.” Still, there were no bells. When she said her last name, I got it. She had been the principal at the elementary school where I volunteered. She looked nothing like she had. Her hair, her face, her whole demeanor had changed. She had retired from a high-stress job, and it was transformative. She was unrecognizable.

   After paying, I stood at the reception desk, waiting for the groomer to notice me and deliver Elsa to my loving arms. I waited a while before asking another employee for help. She went into the groomer’s studio to find her.

   It was late enough for me to head directly to the vet’s for Elsa’s one-thirty appointment. The groomer confirmed she had an ear infection. I could nap in my car or read. It wasn’t too long a wait. The vet tech came in first and took samples from her ears with Q-tips. The vet checked all her vitals. Then, the bad news. Not only did she have a yeast infection, but she also had several bacteria making themselves at home in her right ear. The cure was no simple ear wash. To put anything in her ear at this point would be very painful. The procedure I had to follow was complex. She repeated it often enough for me to become concerned about her perception of my mental state. She gave me a week’s worth of Prednisone pills to be administered twice a day. After three days, I was to start the ear wash and drop treatment. I wasn’t to start it before then because it would cause her too much pain. I was to administer the wash and drops with syringes. I was to pull the plunger out and pour the solution into the syringe rather than sucking the solution into the syringe. If I did the latter, I would contaminate what was left in the bottles.

   I made it home in time for my appointment with Adolescent D. He continues to improve in his reading. However, the overall picture still does not look good. His mom told me he still can’t distinguish between a freezer and a refrigerator. When given instructions to look in one, he will try the wrong one. My question is, does he remember the words and confuse which is which, or does he not remember the words correctly? I think it’s the latter. Why doesn’t he try the other when he has no success with the first? That’s the more serious question. Why is he so passive? His mother, a college-educated woman, is similarly passive. D’s problems were evident by first grade. Why was I the first tutor she hired? At that, I almost had to bully her into hiring me. She had responded to my ad on Craig’s list the year before. I answered her; she never followed through. I assumed she hired someone else. But no, she had done nothing.

   The other day, she asked why he had to ‘learn to remember’ or ‘learn to learn.’ Isn’t that automatic? No. There is always some intentional learning going on in a good learner. Yes, it is p; possible to have all the skills needed to succeed in school developed at a young age. There are always choice moments in our lives. This process isn’t as smooth, seamless, and automatic as some would like.

  I had the Twins immediately after D. We continued working on automatic recall. I find so many incidents of memory problems these days. Is it a different population, or is there an epidemic of memory problems? Both girls are showing improvement, Twin A more so than Twin E. 

  When working on memory, I show them what parts of the brain to use. Waiting until the information is delivered from long-term memory to working memory is hard.