Sunday, July 28, 2024

 Sunday, July 28, 2024

   I couldn’t sleep. I was disturbed by a neighbor’s dilemma with her husband. He sounds capable of destroying her for crossing him. I was afraid she could knock at my door in the middle of the night, seeking shelter.  I didn’t want to get in the middle of that situation. The husband scared me, too. I got up and looked for information on a local women’s shelter. The nearest one was in Hilo. When I spoke to my other friend about it, she said there was no way the woman would walk away without her daughter in hand. Horribly, I am only relieved I won’t have to be involved. I have no idea what else I can do.  

   The skin on  Elsa’s belly looked worse. Nothing was working. Her skin was worse than before I changed her food, and her skin problem completely cleared. When I changed her food, her skin cleared up. I date the return to the bad breakouts after her dental surgery. She was under anesthesia and had ten teeth pulled. It’s been a while now. The chemicals should be out of her system.

   After Mass today, I spoke with Joseph, a young man Judy knows well, who is looking for a room to rent.  Judy was involved with his conversion to Catholicism and thought the world of him.  I liked him too. He’s twenty-eight years old and currently living with his parents. He has to move because they want to move to the mainland. He was born and raised here.  His parents were both cradle Catholics who abandoned the faith.  Joseph put himself through college, earning a bachelor’s in philosophy. That makes us somewhat compatible, but not necessarily. Mike had his PhD in philosophy, but our approach to learning was very different. He found me very frustrating. 

  I was direct with Joseph about my personality. I’m straightforward; I prefer people I can negotiate with rather than overpowering or being overpowered. Judy said that makes me very unusual. Concession is always part of any relationship, but how do you know when it’s necessary if you don’t discuss it. Some people argue ‘you just know.”  Research has been done on that theory. The results show that we don’t know our intimates as well as we think. Since we assume we do know and don’t explore, we may be even more inaccurate in guessing their thoughts than we are in the thoughts of others.

   I had a session with going-into-fourth-grade M today. She was very subdued. She looked downright depressed.  I asked her what was wrong. When she gets in this state, she doesn’t function well. She can’t remember anything that was said. She usually remembers where we are in the book Stuart Little better than I do, but she remembered nothing today. I heard her mother ask, “Is the dress uncomfortable?”  She was readjusting it a lot. I have seen her in this mental state before, but this is the first time I got the impression that this is how she responds whenever things don’t go her way. I called her mother after the session. She left a busy message and never called back.  

  I thought I would be finished with  M. She read fluently and comprehended well. However, with the insight I gathered today, I changed my mind. This mood problem of hers has to be addressed, or she won’t succeed in her new school.

    I stopped at Target after church to pick up a few things. I looked in the cutlery section for a sharpening tool. When I asked the employee at Home Depot how I could sharpen a scythe, he said that’s what he used, and I could get one at Walmart. I realized it was probably the same tool I had in my knife set to sharpen the knives.

     When I spoke to Adolescent D’s mother. She asked if he could improve his reading by practicing the discipline I taught him. I told her yes. My skills continue to improve as I work with the students. Anyone’s reading skills can improve. The problem is he won’t do it on his own.  He will do nothing that requires conscious cognitive skill on his own. It either happens or it doesn’t. 

  However, he does read well enough to manage most life circumstances. He just doesn’t read well enough to go to college. I am concerned that he won’t want to hang on for the next two years in school to secure a high school diploma. That could be important if he wants to advance beyond entry-level positions.

    He has a second problem: he doesn’t have a driver’s license. He needs to be independent. Given his poor study skills and memory, this is a concern. However, I learned that the twenty-six-year-old woman who can’t read well passed the test. It was read to her, and she got enough correct answers to pass. Mike, with his straight As in two Ph.Ds., failed his test. Go figure.

       D got a summer job at Costco and loves it. This would be a possible avenue for him to earn a living. She wants him to do something creative based on one video he made and his sense of humor.  To be in a creative field, you have to be highly self-motivated. D is not that. She wants to discourage him from working at Costco, fearing he won’t explore creative possibilities.  I think if she pushes him in that direction, she is condemning him to a life of pure misery.  If he has a creative urge, he can work at Costco and develop his art during his off hours. If he’s good enough, it will happen. I know about seven people who have their foot in the arts.

      Only two of them earn a good living wage. One survives on grants. It’s hard work.  One wants to be the new great American novelist. He earns his living by working entry-level jobs. He finds it hard to send out what he does write to publishers. You need a cast iron ego to be in the arts. The rest don’t think of themselves as professional artists. It’s a hobby. One has written two books, both I have enjoyed. Both books are self-published on Amazon; one ranks in the 2,000,000 and the other at 6,000,000; another wrote a wonderful book. I don’t know what she’s done to make it available to a broader audience.  D doesn’t do any work on his own. How does she think he will survive in a job involving creativity? The woman drives me nuts.  She’s a blithering romantic.