Wednesday, March 13, 2024

 Wednesday, March 13, 2024

   I did my Gentle Seated Yoga video. I only completed 2,000 steps on my morning walk because I had driveway yoga. As I walked, Casey arrived for the class. Elsa chased his car. She has never done that before. She charges cars from the side but ignores them once they’ve passed. I figured she smelled Casey and knew it was yoga time. She loves our driveway yoga.  

    We were at a full house this morning. Casey, Carolyn, me, Deb from Seattle, and Yvette, who taught the class, were on video. Yvette announced this would be the last class until her Montessori kids were on break. She teaches yoga online to a group of preschoolers. It was all too much from her. I get a great deal from her class.

   I planned to go to the Kupuna meeting at 8:30. I had mixed feelings about going; I wasn’t feeling 100%, and I still had to eat something. 

I finally left at about 9:30. I had only made it a few blocks before the negatives outweighed the positives. I turned around and headed home.

   I had Ulu Wini at 1:30. The table faced the building. It was a grey day, so I wasn’t concerned about the sun washing out the computer screen images.

   I had 5th grade L first. Last time, I covered decoding multi-syllable words. She needed some more work on comprehension. I used the book Hatchet. The main character is 13 instead of 10, but the book is considered suitable for ten—or eleven-year-olds.

   I saw 5th grade M watching us. I called her over to join us. She said she had seen some improvement in her comprehension from the work we did yesterday. Both girls have problems understanding the relationship of one word to another in a sentence. They will interpret a word out of the context of the sentence. Working with the two girls together was a blast. I repeatedly asked them if they wanted to stop. They both were eager to continue. I was the one to call it quits. While I had fun, it was exhausting. I must have worked with them for an hour.

   First-grade K came next. My notes said he was struggling at a pre-primer level. I worked with him in a Reading Roots book #20. What a difference in so many regards! His focus and concentration were completely different. Before, it was hard to hold his attention for two seconds. Now, he was completely concentrated. He diligently decoded any word he didn’t know. He did an amazing job. It would be hard to know if I had any effect. The Reading Roots program is fantastic. The teacher who works with these kids came by. She said the school is seeing a dramatic improvement in reading levels with the Success for All method. The books are fabulous. They include both phonics and good stories.

   I called Zola, offering to meet her in town to help her learn the Gokhale foot exercises.

   I am seeing a difference in my mental functioning since I broke my shoulder and elbow. It’s the impact of the 8 hours under anesthesia for the surgeries and three weeks of opioids for the pain. There are two areas where I’m seeing a difference. In the past, I could always write and listen to the radio simultaneously. Now, I can’t hear lyrics without it interfering with my concentration. I can only listen to instrumental music. The second impact is on my ability to make connections. That was a particular mental strength of mine. I wasn’t good at attending to or remembering details. Still can’t do that; if anything, I’m worse at that, too, but that happens with age. But now, I don’t make connections between two pieces of information. Yvette spoke about staying home Saturday to be with Little. I thought she wanted to spend time with her while she sent Masha to doggie daycare. It only occurred to me later that she made these arrangements because she anticipated Dan coming over to cut down the Schefflera tree. He canceled for the day. I finally got it. Yvette wanted to stay home in case Little was upset with the noise.

   I watched Oppenheimer. Wow! I had planned to watch it over two nights. I watched it all the way through and headed to bed at 11 instead of  9. I was spellbound.