Monday, May 20, 2024

Monday, May 20, 2024

     I listened to the book Yvette had recommended, Momentous Events in the Life of a Cactus, on Audible. It’s a fictional book about the life of a teen girl born without arms. When I finished it, I looked for the book I had been listening to, Undistractable, a book on attention deficit disorder, and couldn’t find it. Had I lost that book because I had switched to another? Were these books only rented and expired, or could I only have one active book at a time? I checked on the Internet. All the books I downloaded on Audible were mine forever, even if I stopped my subscription to Audible. Nice to know.

  Nir Eyal, the author of Indistractable, argues that attention deficit disorder results from poor parenting. Parents who are inattentive or unregulated produce children who are inattentive and unregulated. Modern-day parenting puts a terrible burden on parents. That any kids come out functional is a miracle. No human being is perfectly attentive or regulated. 

 The problem is the shrinking social network that supports children. Ten thousand years ago, a child was born into a group. All the adults were responsible for all the children. That was a broad support base. If one piece of that base was off, the rest of the group maintained the stability. Think of a jigsaw puzzle. If one piece is missing out of 20 or 150, the image is still recognizable, and the world is stable. If you shrink the base, the world becomes more vulnerable. If it’s a ten-piece puzzle, and one piece is missing, the image is still stable but in jeopardy. The stable image is gone if you have a two-piece puzzle and one piece is skewed. Nowadays, you have single parents who live alone without community support. That parent has to maintain the equilibrium for themselves and the child. It is hard enough for an adult alone in the world to feel safe, no less a child with only one adult. We’ve turned ourselves into zoo animals, all living in our individual cages. We feel sorry for the animals. Why don’t we feel sorry for ourselves?

 When I arrived at the beach at Old A, only Clyde was there. We stood side by side in silence, enjoying the view. Clyde pointed to the line of dead greens; it had been an unusually high tide. Water had covered the area where we usually stood, and the sand trailed parallel to the shore.When we were about to start, Diane arrived.

    Clyde did a perfectly good job leading us through the exercises.  When Susan is there, he defers to her knowledge. He almost appears to have mild dementia. He can’t remember what to do. He did perfectly well without her. His bumbling must come from insecurity. We briefly talked after we were through. Diane told me she does water jogging on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays at 7 am off the pier in downtown Kona. It’s open to everyone. 

  I stopped by Jack Be Click before I went to Target to check when it opened. The first thing on my Target list was something for my athlete’s foot. How could I have athlete’s foot? I always wear slippers (flip flops), my feet don’t sweat, and I treat them with a Clorox rinse once or twice a week. I should be fungi-free. On, well. Athlete’s foot cream it is. I also picked up a box of strawberries and pastries I wasn’t planning to buy. I had Febreze and a windshield sunshade on my list. Target had Febreze air spray but not for fabrics. I bought the other brand. I went to the automotive section to find a windshield sunscreen. They didn’t carry one. A clerk told me I could find one at Napas. 

   I found Napa on the map; it was right around the corner. I found a female clerk stacking the aisles. She took me right to the sunscreens. There were a few options. She showed me the one she used and liked. We tried to figure out which side should face out, the black or shining silver side? The directions said either.

  I arrived at Jack be Click around 9:45. Bailey immediately attended to me. I told him I had contacted Brian, who told me he couldn’t help me that day but thought the problem with my computer was something trivial. The lagging had gotten worse, and it was scary; I thought it was a virus. I couldn’t use any of my computers because everything is linked through iCloud and OneDrive. I was calm now; I was out of my mind with concern about my computer situation when I woke up early in the morning. I got up at 3 am. and meditated for an hour. It helped a bit. I did make it back to bed to doze some. I think I looked sane as I went about my day. When I was a kid, I certainly didn’t.