Friday, June 21, 2024

 Friday, June 21, 2024 

 Another good night's sleep. Yay!

   I started listening to Gabor Mate's book Scattered Minds for the second time because I had nothing else to listen to. It was as if I was hearing it for the first time. Mate diagnoses a whole slew of symptoms as ADD and attributes most of the problem to poor attunement with the primary caregiver. The attunement is up to the caregiver, not the infant. It concerns how well the primary caregiver responds to the infant's needs. Obviously, it can't be 100% perfect. The infant learns to survive disappointment and abandonment, which is what is for them in that early stage. I am sure my mother didn't attune to my needs. I watched her with her grandchildren. Oh, boy. She was as well-intentioned as any human being could be; it wasn't in her wheelhouse. I recognize myself in many of the problems he describes.  I must admit it's a little like seeing a Rorschach ink blot. You can see anything you like in it. However, it gives me insights and possible ways to approach my remaining wounds and those of others.

   I work with Mama K's Twins every day I can. I continue working on 'fluency' with Twin A. Fluency is reading, so it sounds good. The teachers often think it means reading faster and tell the students to do that. It doesn't. It means connecting words to sound like one word – to a foreigner. Learning the rhythm and melody of a phase, clause, or sentence. This is not metaphorical. I don't know if speech developed out of song or singing developed out of speech. Someone must have a theory about why we don't just say one word at a time in a monotone but 'sing' instead.  A's word recognition is still better than E's. Both are doing remarkably well with comprehension, particularly given where they were when I started working with them.  Mama K says she sees a difference in their speech at home and how they solve daily problems. All good news.

  I mowed the large lawn in the lower half of the property. I love, love, love that battery-driven lawn mower. What a pleasure! It makes it a fun chore.

   It was a Ulu Wini day.  Only two students came to work with me,  going into-first-grade-TR and going-into-fifth-grade CL. CL came running across the open lawn from the playground when her name was called.  She had a big smile on her face. Wow! That was some change from the day before when she couldn't talk to me or even look at me while I tried to explain subtraction with regrouping. Today, she followed me perfectly. Once I dealt with her fear, everything she had already learned from her schoolteachers was accessible.TR continues writing simple one-digit addition problems and counting on her fingers from one. I keep modeling counting-on using a number line. The change was close to miraculous.

   I talked to Shauntel about counting objects in the environment instead of ones commercially made to help the younger children associate numbers with familiar objects in their environment. Another important exercise is a +/—one activity for all children and +/—10 and then 5 for the older children. I'm thinking about how to make this into a group activity. Developing group activities. 

    Our house is near the airport. I can watch airplanes take off and come in for landings from my lanai. Usually, I  don't hear a sound. Of late, we've been hearing loud airplane noises. When we heard them in the past, we always thought they were military planes. The domestic ones don't make that kind of noise. There have been so many of them lately,  and I thought a change in the atmosphere must have caused this effect. But no, it was military planes. The military 'rents' the Kona airport for take-off and landing practice for their aircraft, which are larger and heavier than the piddling domestic ones.

  When I passed my hall closet, I noticed a blue liquid oozing onto the hallway floor.  A giant economy-sized bottle of Dawn Dish Detergent had cracked and leaked its contents. I had quite a mess on my hands. I cleared out all the bottles on the floor and took them to the bathroom shower with plans to hose them down. I took out 10 blue microcloths and sopped up the amount of the soap I could without adding water.  I rinsed the soap out of those cloths, wrung them as dry as possible, and did several more rounds of that exercise. I didn't do it all in one day. I was in no hurry. Just rinsing the bottle and boxes I had in the shower was a several-day project.  When the dry/very damp clothes weren't picking up a lot of soap anymore, I started using slightly wetter clothes to wipe up what I could. After doing that for several rounds, I poured water into the area. I sopped up the soapy water until the clothes rinsed out quickly and easily. The final step was to pour a generous amount of water into the closet and get that up with the Bissell wet/dry vacuum. The container quickly filled with soap bubbles. I did that repeatedly until there was more water than soap bubbles. Then I was done.  I learned one thing from this exercise: washing white tiles with a large amount of Dawn Dish Detergent gets them clean like nothing else.

  I finished the season three of Bridgerton.  I thoroughly enjoyed it. Some complain about the false depiction of blacks in noble society. They fear someone will believe blacks had it good. If they do, I have a bridge to sell them. (That's a New York City joke. It means they are so gullible to believe a fictional story accurately represents what happened in that time.) There are other anachronistic touches in the series.  I doubt women were given the freedoms depicted in these scenes. 

   I went to Pet Co. to ask about Elsa's haircut. When I picked her up yesterday, I was shocked at how long it was. I asked for a puppy cut. That was always close-shaven before. Fortunately, I spoke to Judy, who said that's what a puppy cut is.  She basically didn't cut her hair at all.  It was very upsetting. I get her hair cut when it gets tangled. Her hair will get tangled at this length. I spent $90 for nothing.  When I spoke to the groomer, she confirmed what Judy said. I was so glad I talked to Judy first. It prevented me from putting on the irate customer act and upsetting the groomer and myself. This is the second incident where I haven't read

the 'fine print' and screwed myself. The PetCo incident wasn't a hustle/scam like the skin care incident. The groomer said she pointed to the hair length sample display.  I hadn't looked.