Friday, May 17, 2024

 Friday, May 17, 2024

  I missed today's hula lesson because I didn't remember to put it on my schedule. I scheduled the acupuncturist for the 10 a.m. slot. 

   I asked the acupuncturist to treat the pain in my upper right arm. Was the pain caused by arthritis, shifts in my posture because of the Gokhale work, a torn rotator cuff, or being crushed between the heavy lawnmower and the metal gate?  

    I pushed the lawnmower through the gate and positioned it so it wouldn't roll down the hill.  Once I had closed the gate, I squeezed between it and the mower and tried to push it. It rolled back and pinned my right upper arm against the fence. Ow!   The acupuncturist worked on my neck and trap muscles. While her work didn't provide immediate relief, it quickly dissolved after one ibuprofen.

     Elsa and I went up to visit Paulette and get water. Zi, Paulette's three-year-old grandnephew, was visiting too. He threw the mouse to Elsa today.

    I felt weird all day. I think it was because of the slight shift I made the other day, which had dramatic results. While the agony had ended, I felt very low-key. It's how I feel when I'm coming down with something. 

  I continued working on the Gating Game with Adolescent D.  The objective is to force students to combine the 'guessing' process, which happens as we read, with the 'checking process.'  Everyone's mind 'guesses' possible words as they read. That's how we read material faster when familiar with the subject. We do a rapid 'guess/check' process.  Good students don't grab the first thought that comes into their heads. They wait until they have confirmation. Poor students say the first word that comes into their heads and don't bother checking.

   I have made a small change with enormous consequences. Instead of listening to HPR talk shows as I write, I listen to the HPR classical music station. Sadly, I didn't do that when Mike was alive. He would have loved the change.  However, his taste in classical music was limited to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, with some allowance for the early nineteenth century. Me? I prefer music from the late nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries. While he hated that I listened to talk shows and played FreeCell, he might not been so happy with my eclectic taste. However, I also like listening to music better than talk shows.  I hadn't been prepared to listen to music versus talk shows before.  The talk shows distracted me more from the negative voice in my head and the painful feelings in my body. The human voices were more calming then. Now, they don't serve that function. I do better with the music and get much more work done.

    A coqui frog made his chirping perch in the shrub right outside my bedroom door. I need to hit that shrub with baking soda.  That's what kills these overwhelmingly noisy creatures.  The Puerto Ricans love them. The Coquis have natural enemies there. Here, they became overwhelming.  In an area where they have flourished, Hilo, it is impossible to hear anything over their racket at night.