Thursday, February 22, 2024

 Thursday, February 22, 2024

   I woke up in deep grief this morning. It comes and goes. The trigger was a bad interaction with a friend that forced me to see that I was safe game now that Mike was no longer around to protect me.

   No one set out to hurt me, but they did, and badly. It was a big shock. No, it wasn't retribution. They wanted restitution for what they saw as old ego injuries. Nonetheless, it was a powerful shock. I hadn't previously considered that aspect of Mike's loss. It was a devastating realization. For the first time, I considered what it would have meant if Mike had died before my mom and left me alone with her. I hate to think of the monster that would be released. Given my reaction to my friend's behavior, I know now I would have been as helpless with her as I had been as a child. How terrifying! Again, my mom never meant to hurt me. She only meant to shore up her own damaged ego. When I told her she was hurting me when I was a child, she insisted she wasn't. I was only saying that to hurt her. How's that for a twisted sheet.

   I met with Shelly today. I wanted to work on my intolerance of people with a different cognitive style than me. I'm committed to the position that all cognitive styles are of value. My analytical, intellectual style has value, but it's not the only way to live. I'm lucky it's currently valued. In previous eras, I would have been burned as a witch or as one possessed by the devil. The very idea of a woman thinking would have been abhorrent. The acceptance of a woman's intelligence as normal occurred in my lifetime. There were always exceptions in earlier periods. Many wrote under male pseudonyms, think George Elliott. As a child, I was often told I thought like a boy or a man. This was not a compliment. I was being censored. My future did not look rosy. How would I find a husband? Missing out on a conventional relationship predicted a bad life. I don't know when the comments stopped, but they did. Thank God.

   However, it is hard for me to be patient when someone's mental style differs significantly from mine. They're black-and-white thinkers. I could defend my intolerance of the Gokhale instructor whose responses to me were robotic at $200 an hour, but I was also annoyed by the occupational therapist at Hawaiian Rehab. Unlike the Gokhale instructor, the OT knew her field well enough to answer unanticipated questions. She responded to my questions, observations, and modifications of her exercises, incorporating them into my daily life, using objects at hand, without surprise. She often commented, "No one asked me that before." it was hard for me. I was frequently a little edgy around her, although I didn't think she deserved it. She was a lovely lady and excellent at her job.

   While I wanted to work on my intolerance, I wound up working on something else. For some unrelated reason, I told the story of a friend who went into an altered state when talking about her passion. It frightened me. I wondered why I had that reaction. I remembered I had seen someone in that state only once before in my life. I was in high school. My grandmother was telling her experience during the bombing of Berlin at the end of WWII.

  She told how she and my grandfather went to the basement of their apartment house when they heard the sirens. And there they sat as they listened to the bombs whistling through the air, wondering if it would hit them. When the all-clear was sounded, they went out to the street to find the buildings on either side of theirs had been flattened, and everyone in the other buildings was dead while theirs was intact. My poor grandmother was in that altered state, reliving the experience, and I was sucked in. I wasn't very kind to her. I didn't comfort her or acknowledge what she had gone through. I called my mother and said, "Make her stop." I knew something was wrong. The whole experience was weird. 

I sobbed while talking to Shelly, both for having to experience the trauma with my grandmother and for the terrible way I treated her.

  My grandmother also told the story of the invasion of Berlin by the Russians. All the people who lived in her housing were collected on the first floor. They took a young girl to the second floor and gang-raped her, forcing everyone to listen to her cries. The Russians seem to have a taste for cruelty. While this is a horrible story, my grandmother wasn't in an altered state as I recalled it, and I wasn't as affected.

   I worked with five kids at Ulu Wini today, with two on comprehension. The big problem with most who have problems with comprehension is to get them to look back at the text to find the answer. They think they're supposed to generate it from memory. That would be nice, but I always check the text. I worked on memory with the two others. One first-grade boy's nose ran while he stuck his fingers in that nose or in his mouth. Oh, boy.

   Yvette texted and told me to check out the sunset. They're all impressive, but this one was of particular note. I don't know if they're more impressive here than anywhere else, but we get a better view of them. Tonight's was unusual. A dark bank of clouds sat on the horizon, making the ocean look like a large lake with hills on the far side. The light broke through the cloud cover above the water. I sat and watched it until dark. It is so beautiful here.

 

Friday, February 23, 2024

 

 I woke up early in the morning hours in a terrible mood. I worried about the Gokhale group workshop. Yesterday, I received notification of my registration for the class. I was shocked to see the text was Esther's book, 8 Steps to a Pain-Free Back, instead of the Essentials Handbook. The handbook is more detailed. The book-book is available through Amazon; the Elements Handbook is only available to folks who sign up for the private classes. Had I signed up for another disaster? I hoped the group workshop would cover the same essential movements the private class covered or was supposed to cover. I was in a tizzy.

    Shelly recommends EFT to calm unwanted emotional states. She recommended it when I brought up the image of my grandmother's ordeal during the end of WWII. She shared her experience in a transported state, which upset me then, but I had no idea it had stayed with me until now. The theory is we can clear those images and their emotional impact by tapping while holding on to the image. We can do other things, but tapping is quick, easy, and readily available. I used it. It calmed me. I got up and meditated.

    Sitting in the chair meditating, I worked on my posture, straightening my spine. The stretchsitting and stretchinglying recommended by Gokhale have a fantastic impact. When my spine is aligned correctly, it is very calming.

    Yvette and I cleaned out the shed today in preparation for storing the battery-powered lawnmower Patrick and Darby are lending me. I mowed the strip in front of the house immediately. Wow! Pushing that mower is a dream. It's lighter than a gas-powered mower. It doesn't make as much noise, and it doesn't smell- and it starts every time.

   Yvette helped move everything out of the shed onto the driveway. We found several items that we could get rid of. One was a 6'6' level. I suspect it belongs to Scott, who forgot it when he made his hasty exit. I checked the price. The cheapest is $43, and the most expensive is $129. I  can't imagine why there is such a big price range. We found a large black bucket and several bags of insecticides. I had no idea where they came from.

   I swept and then hosed down the floor covered with rat feces, dead ''worms,'' millipedes. Most of the containers were intact. Once the floor was dry, I moved some of the stuff back in and moved the items for trash and donation near the car. I drove the trash to the transfer station, expecting a long wait. I've been on that line before with ten cars ahead of me. Not today. One bay was open when I arrived.

   Everyone backs up to the shoot. Not me. Backing up is not my thing, even with a wonderful backup camera. I tried parking once using it. Let's say my car didn't wind up between the lines. I pulled up to the bay front end and carried the trash from my trunk to drop. Now, I have to drop off the rest of what we pulled from the shed to Habitat for Humanity. Also, Yvette brought up things she and Josh had set aside to donate.

   I combed through the Brit Box and Acorn TV on Amazon to find my evening's entertainment. I found Deadloch. The mystery was interesting, but many of the characters were downright obnoxious. Female homosexuality was a big theme. The series was written by two women. Given the obnoxiousness of the female characters, I assume they were homophobes. I have never heard that many f-bombs in a given time in my life. I can curse with the best of them, but this was over the top.   I discovered the show was an award winner. Huh?