Monday, May 6, 2024

 Monday, May 6, 2024  

   If I'm early enough, I sometimes run into Tom on my morning walks.  As he turned right onto Kukuna from Holoholo, he stooped and swooped up Tripper. Tripper is a cat who winds himself between walkers' legs, tripping them.  Tom didn't name him. Someone else did; we all call the cat Tripper now. Tom's routine is to pick Tripper up and deposit him a bit further down the road with a handful of food to keep him occupied while Tom gets away. He never bothers me because I walk with Elsa.

   On my way to Chi Qigong this morning, I stopped at Target not just to make a quick trip to the bathroom before the session but also to buy a box of Q-tips that I couldn't get at Costco the day before. I almost walked out empty-handed again. 

   I asked a clerk where I could find it. "On the headers in the cosmetic section." I couldn't find it. "Oh, yes. They moved it. It's in the section beyond the barriers." They were doing some work.  I checked the headers there. Nothing. I asked again.  Someone pointed directly at them. Ah, success! I was beginning to think Q-Tips were not in my future.

   I found both roads leading from Target to Old A closed, where the Chi Qigong class was held. There were workmen on one of the blocked roads. I asked, "How am I supposed to get to Old A?"  "Go by the other roadway."  "It's blocked."  He promised to tell the workmen to open it.  I drove back over to the Makala.  The workman I spoke to was there removing the "Road Closed" sign.  There was no work going on that road. 

    The Chi Qigong participants had started the first exercise, so it was easy to join in. Today's class was very short because Richard wasn't there to start his Hula dance warm-up exercises. When the class was over, I asked Clyde if we could do more exercises. I want an extended class.

    I sat on a bench overlooking the bay for a while, enjoying the view before I went home to catch a quick nap. Then, I had a tutoring session with twenty-six-year-old S.  She read Reading Roots 27. She looked down and distant. I wasn't expecting her to do well. She didn't when she started reading. I stopped her. I told her to relax in her tiredness and see what her automatic processing could do on its own.  It did very well. We were both pleasantly surprised.

   S still wasn't doing crossbody blending. She had one major glitch. She identified the sound of ar as /r-a/. She couldn't hold the sounds in the correct order for love or money. I push the students to work on the problem for a while. It is a golden opportunity to force the brain to change. It's hard for my students to understand the concept of brain plasticity, which is a relatively new concept. 

  I had a dentist appointment later in the afternoon. I dropped my cosmetic snap-on last week for an adjustment. While they covered my unattractive lower teeth, the snap-on substituted one distraction for another.  My natural teeth were badly stained from years of eight cups of coffee and two packs of cigarettes a day; the new ones were whiter than the veneers on all my other teeth and reflected the light as my other teeth did not.  I don't think of people noticing my teeth one way or the other in face-to-face contact.  My teeth are only a problem when I make videos on Zoom.  I unwittingly solved the problem with the two videos I already had on Zoom by filling the screen with images and having my image in a small box, too small to notice a detail like my teeth.  Perhaps most people don't notice other people's teeth. Just those who are self-conscious about theirs, dentists and orthodontists. 

    The dentist thought he could solve the problem by applying a darker color to the snap-on.  That was bound to do something. Currently, they were stark white.  He painted them so they matched the color of the rest of my veneered teeth.  That was an improvement.  He didn't charge me for the service or the office visit. He said it allowed him to be creative. 

    Knowing I tutored, the receptionist, the dentist's sister-in-law, commented on how lucky the kids I worked with were. She talked about one of her nieces, who, at 10, continues to have learning problems. I expected her to say it would be good if I worked with her.  I don't think so.  The girl's mother brought her son to me.  His grandmother, who had worked as the dental receptionist, told me she thought her grandson would love me.  I assumed a compatibility that wasn't there. When I introduced BrainManagementSkills, he freaked out. That type of introspection was just beyond him.  In addition, the girl's mother, the hygienist, talked to me about the girl's speech problems.  She talked about how she and her husband would make fun of her speech problems. Oh, boy.  I said nothing because I perceived a degree of blindness to the impact of that treatment that would make anything I had to say fall on offended ears. I didn't think I could help the girl.  Working with her would be to deal with the negative impact of that hurtful treatment.  The receptionist talked about how the girl sat alone on a rock for hours doing nothing. Hello, Houston. There's a problem!

    I met with  Mama K's Twins. I saw a massive difference in Twin E's word recognition as we went through the 151-175 word list. They were all holding. She got each one correct, although she still had to do conscious decoding on some words. Sometimes, she had to be reminded to start with the vowels. 

   I had a few bad nights. I tried to open the Tapping App to soothe myself.  It said my free sessions were over, and I had to pay to get more.  I emailed the company to find out when I had paid for a year's subscription but heard nothing back. I resolved to pay the annual fee for the tapping solution app again.  I had no sense of time. Perhaps it had been a year since I paid for the subscription.  I pressed the subscribe button.  It announced I was a paid subscriber; my subscription would expire in December 2024. I guess it's not a scam.

   Adolescent D announced he was doing his school assignments.  Had he told his mom? "No big deal!" he'd been doing them for a while. What was a while? One week.  I asked his permission to tell his mom.  He said ok.  I sent her a text message.  I heard nothing from her. It is possible she said nothing to him.  Another avoidant personality.  Not my type.