Friday, November 22, 2024

 Friday, November 22, 2024

    I was determined to do some gardening daily.  The plumbago Eli tamed after it grew 10 feet high, climbing my neighbor's fence, needed to be trimmed.  I set out with my battery-driven tool.  It didn't work as well as expected; the branches and leaves got caught in the machine. I thought, "This isn't very well designed." I stopped working because my friend Carol had called from the East Coast. I couldn't speak on the phone over the noise of the machine. It was time to leave for my Friday Hula class anyway. I continued my conversation with Carol as I drove to town. 

   Carol has the same breed of dog as I do, a Havanese. Zoe suffers from the same skin condition as Elsa.  Carol bathes Zoe regularly with the same antibiotic and antifungal soap I do.  I told her of the fantastic solution the groomer gave me. Carol bathed Zoe twice, adding the oatmeal conditioner, and saw a small improvement.  It took two or three baths before I noticed a big difference. Sharlane said to bathe her only once a week instead of every other day and to leave a residue of conditioner on her to help protect her skin. 

    While I'm participating in two Hula classes, one through the church and the other through the county senior citizen program, Carol and her husband, John, are taking ballroom classes.

    I arrived at my Hula class early for a change. I usually get there when they're just about to start.  I enjoy the opening practice of the standard steps the most. I don't have to raise my arms high. That still bothers my bad arm, the one with the reverse shoulder replacement. Instead of using back muscles to raise it, I now have to rely on my deltoid and upper arm muscles. Coincidentally, the husband of one of the instructors, who always comes and sits at the sideline, came up to me to say how much better I was doing. He saw that I could do more and last longer before my arm gave out.  This is the second unexpected compliment I've gotten in this class.

     I spoke to Kayla, one of the younger participants. The class is only open to those over 50. I don't know her exact age, but she doesn't have much grey hair.  Her hair is even finer than mine.  With hair like that, all you can do is select a hairdo that will let it do its thing. Hair like ours won't even hold a permanent easily. 

   I told Kayla how a friend of mine in college begged me to set my beautiful hair so it looked luxurious. I told her there was no point, but sure, go ahead and try. She said, "See how good it looks," when it came out of the rollers."  I said, "Wait an hour."  She never tried again. I told Kayla, "Wait till your hair goes grey. It gains body, and it stays in place."   

   I stopped at Target to pick up a few items. I checked if  Haagen Das was on sale. It was, but not chocolate chip cookie dough, the only one with that fantastic vanilla taste. Ben and Jerry's was also on sale. They had that flavor.

   When I got home, I was set to saw some large branches off the shrubs along the edge of the driveway. I went in search of my six-inch chain saw.  I couldn't find it.  I wondered if someone could have stolen it when I spotted the hedge trimmer. OMG! I used a chainsaw to trim the plumbago this morning. No wonder it didn't work well and got jammed with leaves and wood.  I could have done some severe damage to myself. I cleaned the chainsaw, oiled the blade, and cut down the large branches.

    I called the vet to make an appointment to get Elsa's ears checked.  The receptionist was very friendly. I don't know if she remembered Elsa or quickly brought up the file, but her response felt good.  The earliest appointment she had was on December 14.  She told me to call at 7:30 in the morning to try for a same-day visit.

   I got a follow-up call from Jovian, the Provision Solar tech who solved the problem with my newly installed solar system.  I told him I had a problem with the Tesla app. He asked if I had an iPhone and knew how to quit the app. In fact, I did. Joseph had just taught me. The folks at T-Mobile told me to swipe, which I tried repeatedly. It worked sometimes. Joseph is the one who showed me that I had to start at the horizontal bar and the bottom of the screen and only swipe up halfway, leaving the shrunken image of the app on the screen.  If I swiped too far, the app would disappear.  He said most people didn't know how to do that. How can that be?  Jovian has been a treat to deal with. 

    At two p.m., I packed up and got ready to tutor at Ulu Wini. When I started the car, I saw that the charge had failed completely. I only had three bars left. I was concerned I wouldn't make it there and back, so I texted Shauntel to say I wouldn't be coming in.

   I called Kia to complain about the situation. The guy who answered the phone said. Yeah, intermittent charging.  It's a problem with the Kia Niro. The prongs in the mechanism corrode. Wow!  That's a freakout.  I bought the car to save on gas and the environment and prepare for Armageddon. It wouldn't fit the bill if I had to replace the charging unit every two years.  I had a minor freakout. He said I could try and clean the prongs, but that wouldn't be very effective.   

    I planned to drop the car off on Monday. I had enough to make it there with ease. Did he have a loaner?  Not until next week.  He wasn't sympathetic.  He just said this is the way it is.  Kia may come out with a replacement part that isn't as vulnerable as the one I have now. He didn't sound very hopeful.

   Something finally clicked.  Both fourth-grade GV and seventh-grade LV made the same mistake.  They thought the i in the second syllable of animal was silent.  When GV did it, I thought, "Ah, an auditory processing problem," and started thinking of ways to remedy that. But today I got it. Both these kids said the sound of /n/ was /n¶/,  adding the schwa to the /n/. The letter doesn't represent a short or long i sound, so they figure it's just part of the /n/ and not a separate sound.  The importance of 'pure' sounds became more apparent. That's why they don't think the following vowel letter represents a sound.  I have to give a lesson on vowel sounds in unstressed syllables.

    I had an appointment with sixth-grade RC.  I'd been getting frustrated with her.  I felt she was passive-aggressive and withholding, downright punishing.  Today, there was a change. She showed her face on Zoom, where she usually hides it.  She spent a lot of time preening, checking out her image as if she were alone looking in a mirror, unaware that I saw the same image. I've only seen that behavior in one other student.  It indicates a troubled psyche.  I didn't know how long I could deal with that. it is one of the behaviors that triggers me, that and arrogance, even though I know it's a sign of a deeply troubled soul.

   I continued working on the decoding exercise, identifying the syllable pattern for each word. While RC consistently denied there was any improvement and couldn't remember the steps in the decoding process from one minute to the next, her reading showed improvement. I suspected she had a serious memory problem. I also felt she was withholding. 

    Addressing the auditory processing problem, I tried an exercise today to determine how bad it was.  I gave RC a phrase to repeat, "patrolled the streets at night."  She had no trouble repeating it perfectly.  I created distractors. I continued working on the decoding for a minute. Then, I asked her if she could repeat the phrase. She did it perfectly.  I created a longer distractor. Again, she did that perfectly.  Then I told her the first step in the decoding procedure, identifying the vowel letters,  and asked her what it was. She didn't know. She didn't have an auditory processing problem.  I called her on it.  She was deliberately denying she knew the procedure. I didn't reprimand her for her ruse. I told her she was getting in her own way. She acknowledged it. She knew she could do more than she pretended. I thanked her for letting me know what she was doing. Let's see where it goes from here. Now, my concern with RC is her vulnerability. I suspect she doesn't feel she can trust many people. People who lack trust have an inaccurate estimate of their ability to tolerate the bumps and scratches of regular human interaction. I will have to handle the situation with kid gloves.

   Passive aggressive behavior has its place.  Slaves use it to defy their masters.  They pretend to be incompetent rather than disobedient.  How else do you find a way to declare your autonomy in that situation?  It's perfectly understandable. Defacing yourself is your only course of action. Why does this twelve-year-old girl feel so helpless that she has to undermine herself to feel she has some control over her life? 

     I had an epiphany today.  Fourth-grade GV and seventh-grade LV assumed the I in the word animal was silent. That could be because they don't pronounce the phoneme n as a pure sound; they add a schwa.  The phoneme n is a continuant; it is one mouth position and can be sustained until you run out of breath.  These two kids add the vowel to the /n/, concluding that the I doesn't make a sound. The sound of that I is neither a long nor a short /i/; it's the schwa, used in unstressed syllables in English.

    Darby arrived with her friend Tracy while I was finishing off with GV. They waited for me on the lanai. Then the three of us, plus Elsa, went for our evening walk. Tracy is an old friend of Darby's. They met when Darby was 19. Tracy was a philosophy student of her dad's. Darby hung out with students from the college even though she didn't attend.