Thursday, May 30, 2024

 Thursday, May 30, 2024

         I weighed two and a half pounds less than the day before. Today, I dropped another two pounds. That's weird. I have no idea why I'm losing weight in the first place, no less so rapidly. I'm sure it's not diabetes. I'm not drinking significant quantities of water nor peeing great quantities, a hallmark of diabetes.  I texted Yvette, asking to borrow her scale. I wanted to compare it to mine to check if there was a problem with it.  The difference was three-tenths of a pound. My scale only measures by the half pound.  I'll keep an eye on my weight. If it continues to plummet, I get to a doctor double quick.

     Dean and Nina stopped by to visit Elsa this morning.  What, no flowers for Elsa? No flowers. What kind of friends are they??

    I only did a short walk with Elsa. I didn't want to leave her alone yet. She was still recovering from the anesthesia.   I discovered I had to remove the Elizabethan collar when I walked her. She wouldn't do her business unless she could smell the ground and identify the best spot.  She can't do that with the collar on.  I'm with her the whole time. I can supervise. However, I still didn't know what I was watching out for. 

   I called the vet first thing in the morning and got answers to lots of questions. 1. She had to wear the Elizabethan collar to prevent her from rubbing her jaw against the ground or furniture and pulling out the stitches.  Yvette's blow-up pillow wouldn't do the trick.  2. I had to give her soft food for two weeks. Again, the concern is the stitches. Her usual hard kibble could rip them out. 3. I had to hand-feed her for two weeks to ensure no food was left in her mouth. Again, the concern is food getting trapped in the wound and causing infection. 

   The vet tech said giving her her usual food would be best. Since it was dry food, I had two choices. A) I could soak it in water, but that would take a long time. B) I could grind it up in my blender.  I chose the second. What a mess! First, I added too much water, and it came out more like a watery smoothie. Cooking is not my strong suit!

    I finally called my friend Melissa. She called about a week and a half ago to tell me she was home from her several month stint in the Australian Outback as a volunteer OBGyn. However, she was just packing for a trip to the mainland to visit with her five children and eight grandchildren.  We didn't have too much time to talk.

   I went to Ulu Wini, uncertain what I would find there today. It was the last day of school, and I couldn't imagine the kids would have much interest in tutoring. I spent the time talking to the head of the program, Josephine. I needed to know how they were going to incorporate my tutoring into the summer program. Josephine wants the tutoring to continue.  

I shared my frustration with Josephine over the response to my work. It is so successful, but no one is interested in learning it. Moreover, it is easy to learn. I have taught the basics to inexperienced volunteer tutors who had impressive results with it. It's easy to learn, easy to teach, and inexpensive. If you can figure out the method from my videos, it costs nothing. 

       Josephine is concerned about the poor English of the children. Most of the parents of the children at Ulu Wini are poorly educated Marshallese. Most of them had no need for education in the Marshal Islands. They lived on a small island or atoll with 75-500 people. What did they need an education for? There's little use for reading and writing. While the children are bilingual, their language development is limited in both languages. Their parents don't use language to express complex ideas.  Most conversations are scripted. That doesn't mean there is only one way to express a thought, but there are limited ways to do so. 

   Josephine was interested in having me teach the English language to the students. She is concerned about the poor language development of the children. I don't like teaching English as another language. I don't like learning other languages or teaching them.  I've learned through experience that people who excel in language learning don't like me.  The statistics are downright spectacular. I suspect people who excel in language learning love rules. They love discovering rules and figuring out how to apply them. I like to uncover the reason for rules and find other ways to address the issue.  I feel confined around rule based learners and, I suspect, I represent chaos to them.     

     I had no students today. Even Adolescent D canceled

   I have a new slant on the entitlement of millennials today. I've heard from others how difficult it is to work with them. They crave praise and think they should be running the company after two months on the job. They make it sound like they have an inappropriate sense of entitlement.  I heard a speaker on a YouTube podcast see it from a different light.  These kids feel they're supposed to be that successful and consider themselves failures when they're not. They have inappropriate expectations from life and from themselves. When they don't achieve, they panic.

 I've heard their mental state blamed on the inappropriate praise they received when they were kids. They got rewards for everything. They were told they were the best, special, capable of anything, etc. Rather than leaving them feeling confident, this burdened them with unrealistic expectations of the world at large and of themselves. They're in worse shape for all the praise. A realistic appraisal of one's place in the hierarchy of excellence is the best. Reality is always the best.