Friday, February 2, 2024

Friday, February 2, 2024 

 

 I slept straight through from 9:30 till 4:30. I don’t think I’ve done that since I turned thirty. It was pouring at 6 when I usually head out for my morning walk. So much for getting my 1000 steps in today. It rained until 10 am. Ah, but I was undaunted. I got them in.

  Today, it was six weeks since I brought my car into Kia to be serviced. My car was in serious trouble. It’s an electric car that wouldn’t charge. No charge, no power. Tyler called me at the end of week four, telling me he would call me next week. That would have been week five. Now, it was at the end of week six. I called. “I was just looking at your paperwork and was about to call you.” Yeah. 

   We tried a second fix; it didn’t work either. A field representative will have to look at the car. Okay. I’m happy with my loaner. I like it much better than my car.

  I spent most of the day reading a draft of Cylin’s new book before she sent it off to her agent for editing. It’s her first adult book. It’s a romance wrapped in a mystery wrapped in a romance. I got hooked.

   I had Mama K’s crew this afternoon. I concentrated on automaticity. With Twin E, I worked on Fry’s sight word list 1-50. E had done well enough to make it on List 151-200. I chose to go back to the earlier list work because I wanted to concentrate on the process of automaticity, not the words. My objective is to get her to trust her mind to remember. We’re working on the speed of recall.  

  Twin A can call most of the words through list 300-350. However, there are words she still can’t get- like the word area. She gets it wrong every time, saying around or other. She doesn’t apply the study strategy I taught her. She reverts to assuming if she just looks at the word without making a special effort, she’ll get it.

   I was disappointed with all of Mama K’s kids’ report cards. Fifth grade K’s report card did show a small improvement in narrative comprehension but none in informational reading. I downloaded a nonfictional piece on a fifth-grade level from the internet. He could answer the questions, but not on the first go around. I had to tell them his answers were wrong and sometimes direct him where to look before he got the answer. He just floats in indifference. His mom cleaned the house. She found six missing bowls in his room, tucked in drawers and under the bed. He skates through life.

   Jean, my friend, and I have been consistent in doing our water meditation almost every night. It helps us both to deal with our lives.

  I use the word negotiation to refer to reconciling differences. Darby said that for her, negotiation means business people duking things out. She says that’s what it means to people of her generation. To me, it means reconciling differences. Mike and I would discuss differences to find a common point of view. Some people think our discussions were bickering. Bickering to me means each person fights to have it their way. Our discussions/negotiations were a way to find a solution that would be good for both of us. We didn’t consider it compromising. We thought of it as co-creation. We looked for a third possibility that was better than either of our own. We were happy with our way of operating. We loved considering each other’s needs and making choices neither of us had considered.