Monday, August 15, 2024

 Monday, August 15, 2024 

   Today would have been my dad's 121st birthday.  He died in 1956.  I've been without him for a very long time. My mom died in 2001.  It's been a while since she died, but she's no competition for my dad.

 In my morning contemplations, I thought I had to call the vet and get Elsa on an antibiotic. Then, I thought I should try the infrared lamp. I looked up using infrared on dogs and watched several videos on it. One said you can leave it on for only three minutes. The other said the animal would know when to move. When I sit in my old-lady chair, Elsa usually lies on the floor at the side of the chair. That's a perfect spot for trying the lamp. 

 She responded well. She stretched out and relaxed. I was concerned about the light getting into her eyes. It's not good for us either. She turned her head away from the lamp.  Perfect. Let's see how this goes. It's supposed to help with almost everything that ails her and me.

 Elsa's Royal Canin Ultamino dog food arrived on Friday, the 12th. I just opened it tonight.  I ordered royal Canin hydrolyzed protein dog food by accident. When I noticed it, I compared it to the Ultamino and saw it was less expensive. I thought, why not try it.  Her skin started erupting again.  I checked with the vet; they said the hydrolyzed protein should be okay. Her skin condition didn't improve. I took her off the new food and fed her only Dr. Marty's food, which I had been feeding her with the Ultamino before with no negative results. That didn't do much. Tonight, I finally served her the Ultamino. What a difference in her response!!! 

 When I fed her the hydrolyzed protein with Dr. Marty's combination and Dr. Marty's alone, she begged for something else. I gave her a greenie pill pocket as a treat, and then she ate the food. Tonight, I gave her the Ultamino. She scarfed it down without even considering another treat. This pup knows what's good for her. 

 I started watching Call the Midwife on Netflix. I caught an episode once before and found it too grim. Jean, my Hanai sister, has been touting its merits. I finally made another effort. It's wonderful. It's warm and loving above everything else. It gives a glance into poverty in London in the 1950s and 60s. It shows some rough domestic situations and loving relationships amid all that poverty. I had to wonder if any of that really happened.

 I've been listening to various books and podcasts on psychological states: Attention Deficit Disorder, adult immaturity, and narcissistic personality disorder all have the same symptoms but are labeled as different psychological disabilities. The perspectives are interesting because they look at the impact of these problems from various perspectives. 

One of the books I'm listening to is Ellen Langer's book on mindful learning. She differentiates between drill learning, resulting in automatic processing, versus mindful learning. She considers automatic processing the enemy of mindful learning. Once we learn to add, subtract, multiply, and divide automatically, we are no longer mindful learners of math.  I think mindful learning is excellent, but I'm afraid I have to disagree with her view on the advantage of mindfulness over automatic processing. 

 Langer argues we lose contact with the basic elements of a process; we perceive things in larger chunks. For instance, when we learn to tie our shoelaces, we learn steps. Once we can do it automatically, we unthinkingly tie our shoelaces while doing six other things simultaneously. For her, this means we should never learn to do anything automatically. Ridiculous on so many counts. First, we couldn't function if we had to perform every act mindfully instead of unthinkingly. Second, we can always retrieve, relearn, and revisit the basic elements of an act.  Pablo Casals was asked in his 80s why he still practiced the scales daily. He said to get better. Going back to the basics makes us better, whether we do it mindfully or mindlessly.  Casals could never have been the cellist he was if he couldn't play his instrument automatically. I agree that if you want to deepen your knowledge of anything, you must mindfully go back to the basics.

 Moving from automaticity to mindfulness is riding a mental elevator up and down the options, from the most atomized to the largest chunk. The smallest element in language, the phone is only worth focusing on if you're a linguist. The one after that is the phoneme, selected phones used to create a language. The next larger unit is the vowel in its context, the surrounding letters, which determines the syllable. Then, additional consonants are added to make the syllable a large unit. Those units are combined with other syllables. In the case of single-syllable words, to create a phrase. In the case of multisyllabic words, to build a word.  etc., to larger and larger units. 

 The twins can now identify the phonemes in a word. They sometimes have trouble holding on to the sound when they blend it with another phoneme. I discovered yesterday how much trouble they both have comprehending unfamiliar phrases. That is the unit size we have to work on now.

 

 

 

 

 

Friday, August 16, 2004

 

  I had several chores to do before I had Hula at 10 a.m.  I left at 8:30 to finish them before the class at 10 a.m. My first stop was at Farm and Garden. I noticed discoloration on one of my hibiscuses, and all the leaves and flowers had disappeared on my pink-flowered jade plant overnight.  The wonderfully made-up lady who seems entirely out of place in a store that sells to farmers and commercial gardeners diagnosed the problem was slugs in both cases. She sold me a container of Captain Jack's Slug and Bug Killer. 

   Then I headed for Office Depot to fax my dispute claim against Lucasie, the skin care company in town that scammed me, to Elan, the agency that handles credit card theft and scam charges.  I intended to send copies of all the articles Cylin sent me about this company. When I discovered the fax fee was $2 a page, I decided against two of the articles since they didn't mention this company by name. I faxed 11 pages as it was. Cylin wrote a letter to Elan supporting my claim. When I got home, I called to confirm they received the fax. They had.

   I drove to the church parking lot to park for the Hula class across the street at the community center. Odd. The community center parking lot was empty. Ah, yes. There was no class today. It was Hawaii Statehood Day; everything was closed. I was relieved because I was already exhausted.  I only had to make a quick stop at Costco to pick up Lox before I headed home. I took that desired nap.

   I only had Adolescent D today. We worked on the decoding exercise. He identifies the vowel letters quickly these days and remembers to determine which vowel letters represent vowel sounds, even though he persists in referring to the sounds as noise. He finished decoding the passage we had been working on and read the annotated words. He is still slow in processing them, although faster than he used to be. Realistically, he has only started to learn to read three years ago. Unlike children in school, he hasn't put in 10 to 20 minutes of reading a night. This puts him way behind where other children would be.  Some kids take off in kindergarten. D would never have been like that. He needs to work hard to become fluent.

   I opened Zoom for my appointment with fourth-grade L. I hadn't met with him all week because the laptop had to go to school with his older sister.  His mother promised he would be available today. When I contacted her to tell her I had sent the link, she texted they went to town and wouldn't be available. She said L was actually looking forward to the session. She offered to pay. That won't be necessary. 

   Darby was available for a walk tonight. She hadn't been because she had injured her upper arm while working in the garden.  It was a serious injury. It did more than inhibit her work in the garden; she was in so much pain she couldn't lie down comfortably. She'd been slowly improving.  Tonight was the first night she was up for walking Elsa. We joined up with Lutz. We had a scary moment.  

    As I walk Elsa, I listen carefully for oncoming cars and pull in her retractable leash when I hear one coming. Darby waited a bit too long. A car came by, and Elsa lunged after it. I screamed, "No! No! No!" Darby said she had it. Elsa was unharmed, but it was a bit closer than I liked.