Tuesday, June 11, 2024

 Tuesday, June 11, 2024

I did better last night. I put on the Tapping Solutions to assure a calm mind. When I first put on the app, there was no sound.  I thought it might be the app's fault. I called Kona Vet not to speak to them but to check whether my earphones were connected. They were. I switched the phone to the speaker mode. Still no sound. I tried another call to Kona Vet. Again, the phone was in headphone mode. I switched it off, but it still got no sound.  I got up, found the nearest headset, and turned it off. Still no sound from my phone.  I found the other headset and turned it off. Finally, I had sound from my phone.

When I want the earphones connected to my phone, it's erratic. The earphones are on my head, the phone is on an end table at my elbow or in my pocket as I walk, and the earphones will disconnect. It will take me a minute to figure out what happened. It's most annoying. Then, I have the opposite problem of needing help disconnecting them when I want to. Grrr!

I had Mama K's twins this morning at 7:30 a.m. I work with them for a few minutes every morning. Research shows short, frequent sessions work better than long, infrequent ones.  That's my experience too.  With Twin A, the goal is to get more fluent reading.  She doesn't process the words automatically but pauses before each word.  She self-corrects when she reads, which is a good sign of automatic processing. She had difficulty with one sentence because the syntax was awkward.  I thought it was a poorly constructed sentence, too. However, I didn't have trouble reading it. A is doing very well analyzing the phonemic structure of each word. She hears the sounds and identifies which letters make those sounds accurately.

While Twin E is still behind Twin A in decoding unfamiliar words, her reading is more fluent on the words she recognizes easily. There's been an improvement in her comprehension, too. However, she repeats details instead of summarizing or expressing her thoughts in her own words. I started modeling summarizing.

    Today was Elsa's follow-up appointment. Two weeks ago, she had ten teeth removed. Some spots required sutures because holes were opening into her sinus cavities. Her sutures were healing nicely. She didn't have to wear the Elizabethan collar, and she could resume her long walks. Still, I should continue grinding up her food. Hard kibble might get stuck in one of the holes, interfering with healing. I didn't ask but assumed I no longer had to hand-feed her. 

The first few days, I hand-fed her with ground-up kibble. I ground it up in the blender and then put one tablespoon at a time in my hand. I quickly figured out I could use two bowls and scoop out a tablespoon at a time from one bowl into the other. That was much easier. I also tried the coffee grinder instead of the blender. That worked better, too. No, I don't grind up fresh coffee every day. I haven't had a cup of coffee since 1975.  I had a reaction to the caffeine.

An old problem cropped up. Elsa's lesions were back. She used to have a miserable case. The doctor said it was an allergic response and put her on steroid medication and Science Diet for digestive allergies. None of that worked. One of the vets finally recommended Royal Canin Ultimo. Wow! That worked like a charm. Her skin problems cleared up completely. She had a setback due to the stress of the dental procedure and the anesthesia.  I've been treating the lesions locally. They clear up quickly. The vet recommended bathing her with medicinal soap.  I still had plenty.  She is recovering her lovely, clear skin quickly.

I had a twenty-six-year-old SL today after she returned from her trip to Las Vegas.  She still does no reading, not even labels or road signs.  She is unresponsive to print and makes no effort.  While she can read at a low level, she makes no effort alone.  While I appreciate why she is the way she is, I have limited tolerance for her passivity.  When I see it in children, I work on it with them. They're young and deserve every chance. SL is twenty-six.  I told her I would eventually quit if she didn't try.

Adolescent D continues to make minor improvements.  He catches most of his errors automatically and tries to correct himself. Whatever it is, it is progress, however slow and painful it may be.

I finally made it to the skin care store to pick up my monthly supply. What!! The only thing I was entitled to for two hundred dollars was a jar of night cream and a body lotion.  I was furious and demanded my money back. I was told the owner, Giovani, was away for two months.  Apparently, the two hundred covers a facial. Giovani told me he had sent a skin sample to the Mayo Clinic. He heard back that I had severe eczema. I went to my doctor. She told me I had no signs of eczema. I know Giovani never took a sample of skin to send for testing.  That changed him from a hustler, which I accepted, to a scammer, which makes me sick.  I don't want anyone there touching me.

I am distraught because I want the 'loving' attention only a sociopath or a loving mate can provide.  These folks with the skincare company are good.  I knew what was going on at the time. I recognized my vulnerability.  I 'played' along.  I don't mind the substantial loss of money as much as I mind the reminder of my tremendous loss since Mike's death. He loved me. He liked me. I loved him. I liked him. His foibles were cute even when they sometimes made me good and angry. But the good outweighed the bad by a country mile. This incident triggered my grief. Is the only place I can get that quality of attention now from a sociopath? How tragic is that!  Boy, I miss that man!

After I was through with the skin care store, I drove to the Humane Society to drop off a 14 lb. bag of Royal Canin dog food I had ordered incorrectly and couldn't return. I tried to sell it through various sites for half price, but I had no takers. I took a long, winding road with a low-speed limit to get there, not realizing there was a much faster way.  I took the quicker way to go home.

There were two deeply upsetting pieces of news on HPR today. One was about the decision to close the schools during Covid. Apparently, there was plenty of evidence that it was not passing quickly through the schools.  So much damage was done by closing the schools. The response to Covid was hysteria, mass hysteria. Those who resisted saw the government in evil terms regardless of what they did- not exactly rationally based either.

While not all government is evil, a single governing agency over a larger and larger population is a problem. We were designed to live in small groups of under one hundred fifty people. A few leaders would emerge, but the rest of the group carefully monitored them. Their proximity made it easy to do. Their behavior had to serve others, not themselves. 

They think the small bands of hunter-gatherers lived lives with complete equality among the group members. Even men and women were considered equal.  I don't know how much of this a wishful fantasy that humanity is even capable of such a thing and how much of this is an accurate assessment based on anthropological analysis of the few remaining hunter-gatherer groups.  We are not designed to live in large groups under a single leader or leadership agency. The voice of the individual gets lost. While I see the problem. I don't see a solution. I think some feel that if each individual had more freedom, that would solve the problem. Here comes anarchy.  

The primitive solution is unavailable because too many of us are in too small a space. The original hunter-gatherer groups lived with plenty of open land between groups. They didn't run into each other at Target. The government is there to negotiate rights between people when they can no longer do it face-to-face. The ability to do so ends when we don't know each other and aren't forced, by circumstances, to settle differences directly with the support of the other group members—or not.  

Modern religions developed to deal with the expanding population. Judaism and Islam are both religions designed to unite warring tribes under a single head. The purpose was to eliminate open conflict and find a peaceful way to live together. Both religions proposed rules of behavior that everyone agreed upon. With those agreed-upon rules, there could be peace.

The second piece of upsetting news was a proposal that proof of citizenship should be a requirement for voting. The rule is not inappropriate. Still, suppose it's enforced in the November election. In that case, they estimate only 10% of the population will have the necessary documentation to vote. I have a birth certificate, but my passport has expired. I bet only the rich who regularly jet-set from one country to another are guaranteed a current passport.