Saturday, June 22, 2024

 Saturday, June 22, 2024

     Slept very well.  Then I woke up at 4 am. I should have gotten up. I did some stinking thinking about whatever. I don’t think it makes much difference. Stinking thinking is natural to humans, as explained by evolutionary psychology theory. We didn’t have to think about what went well. There was no survival benefit. We had to think about near misses. We had to learn how to survive them. However, it doesn’t explain our excessive stinking thinking.  It’s up there with sweets, gambling, and all addictive behavior. There are biological explanations for each of these inclinations. It’s just they’ve lost their natural enemies. The environment no longer exercises control over our tendencies. We have to. Good luck! We’ve turned ourselves into Zoo animals. We have guaranteed ourselves physical safety- except from each other and ourselves.  Negative thinking is a virtue when faced with challenges to our physical survival.  Here’s the problem: we can’t get rid of these inclinations any more than we can get rid of the inclination to eat.  Food is a must. Probably all of us abuse it to some extent. No one had unlimited access to chocolate-covered almonds.  In my ‘natural habitat,’ my access would have been limited.  Now, I have to consciously control my impulses. Damn!

   Darby called to say they used my trash container as a pig block. Did I need it back today? To have a post installed for their new fence, they had to cut back on a shrub that acts as a block when it is in full growth.  Until it grows back, there is an opening around the installed post a pig can slip through. Some of you are wondering, pigs?  Yes, we have wild pigs, along with wild turkeys, partridges, pheasants, and the occasional goat wandering our streets. As my niece said, we live in a nature preserve.  Yes, I would like the trash container so I could reload it.

    I also weeded the mulched area where all the Ficus trees were excavated. I checked on the Shefflera Dan cut back. It was flourishing nicely- not what I wanted. Because Dan had left many cut-off branches lying around the tree, getting to it was treacherous.  I went and got my cane. No one likes to fall, particularly older people. I’ve been told all the metal in my body, one hip, left elbow, and left shoulder, makes me more vulnerable, not less. If I fall on my left arm, the rest of the bones in my arm will shatter. Scary!  I did make it to the tree. I’m beginning to understand why it is called the octopus tree. Besides the weirdly beautiful flower it puts out, the roots branch out like a spider plant, sending up new trunks.

   I had my cordless drill in hand and a squeeze bottle with Round-Up.  I managed to drill holes in some of the many trunks and squeeze controlled quantities of Round-Up. I cleared some of the debris Dan had left around the base of the tree so I could reach the rest of the trunks.

            Isaac emailed to say he brought up the 0-6=0 problem with his parents. His family likes to chew on a good conundrum the way my family does.  From a naïve perspective, 0-6=0 makes perfect sense. I come to you and ask you for 6 cookies. Sorry, you have none. How many cookies do I walk away with? None, which equals zero.  Question: how to help a naïve student make the massive leap into the abstract world of minus numbers. His family came up with the idea of using the image of submerging in water using the water’s surface as a zero point. The students I work with all come from islands; water submersion would be an ideal image. However, why bother with the minus number when you can say I was 1 foot under the water. Under serves the same purpose as minus. Why would I use a ridiculous word like minus when I can use an easy-to-understand word like under?  Good question. I thought of the TV program Six Feet Under, renamed as Minus Six. The whole minus business is beginning to sound pretty silly to me, too. 

 Adolescent D is flourishing.  He put in all the slashes in all the right places at all the right times with speed. Amazing! It’s only been three years. I’m not being sarcastic. He was almost fourteen when I started working with him and tested as a first-grade reader. I think that was generous.  He couldn’t consistently tell the difference between her and here and couldn’t recognize the word they.  He tested at a sixth-grade level last year and has since improved his accuracy and rate of word recognition.  Yes, it has only taken us three years.

   I invited Yvette to play Rummikub with me.  When she came up, I begged off that game and asked if we could play. Sorry. My brain wasn’t up for Rummikub. We played three rounds. A good time was had by all. I hope we can make this a tradition.

  I’m listening to delicious podcasts on the human condition- my favorite topic.  David Brooks talked about his book on the art of seeing others deeply and being deeply seen. Most of the talk was about saying the right things and asking the right questions to get to know another person. In the end, he said being truly seen is people's deepest desire, and he finally said it is the thing people fear the most.  I love it when people prescribe behavior. It’s not a one size fits all. What to do when people don’t want connection and don’t want to be seen. Those folks fear it not because they’re hiding something but because they’ve experienced people using that knowledge against someone. It’s tricky.  It took me years to learn to respect boundaries and believe I had a right to set my own. I couldn’t have had the marriage it did if I hadn’t learned how to do that.