Sunday, May 5, 2024

 Sunday, May 5, 2024 

   I parked on the strip in front of the church instead of one of the parking spaces in the back or on the front lawn.  I proudly made my New York City parking moves to get a perfect parallel park: pull up, stop, turn the wheel, pull back, stop, and turn the wheel. All these moves get the car as close to the curb in a small space.  When I got out, I found I had ripped up the grass in the strip with my wheel-turning antics.  Oh, dear.  I’ve seen other spots torn up like that. I always wondered what some idiot did to create that mess. Now, I know.

  I gave Judy Darby’s information on the digital organ with a sounding board someone donated to a church south of us. Judy had asked me if Darby could provide the name of someone who could tune it. Darby said, “Have someone haul it to the dump!”  The digital ones are replaced by newer versions within years, but Darby also gave me two names. 

   I stopped at Costco for four items: Q-tips, salad, a tooth-whitening kit, and a battery-powered vacuum/broomstick. I raced around, but the only item I found was the salad. The lines were short, so  I checked out with one item.

  This morning, I had third-grade M. Something was clearly wrong. She was distant and disengaged. I opened a window on Google and talked about it. I hadn’t shared it with her, and she had said nothing. Wow! I didn’t use Stuart Little today. She needed a greater challenge. I was surprised by her poor reading fluency when she started reading. It got better with the second passage. 

  I did the Gating Game with Adolescent D today. In this game, I see the passage, but he doesn’t.  I reveal the following word in the passage, one letter at a time.  I started giving him clues as well as letters. Some clues are unrelated to the context; they are grammatical cues or definitions like synonyms or antonyms.

  Damon called while I was finishing up with D. He told me to call him back, but I knew better. I might miss him, and I love talking to him.

   I wrote about the problems created when someone demands perfection from themselves.  It’s a dead end.  If the goal is perfection, failure is guaranteed.    

   We’re in trouble if we are the perfectionist or we are connected to someone who is.    Whether the latter demands perfection from themselves as well as others is mostly beside the point.  They are brutal to those around them. They blow up easily when things don’t go their way.  They are genuinely distressed. 

   The perfectionist can be confused with the control freak. The control freak just wants to dominate. However, when I talked about surrendering the perfectionist stance, Adolescent D associated it with power. The perfect one had the right to dominate over others. Oh, boy! I wonder where he got that attitude from.