Monday, December 2, 2024

Monday, December 2, 2024 

                                  

    I watched Facebook shorts until 11 p.m. Good God, they're addictive. However, I slept very well, waking up at 5:30. That's six hours of sleep straight. I probably got up to pee sometime during the night, but I fell right back to sleep when my head hit the pillow.

     This morning, I weighed 135.5 lbs. The weight was coming on as fast as it went off. The trick was to only eat when I felt I needed to. Of course, I still felt the impact of a daily Haagen Das ice cream container for five days. I blame Joseph for my lapse. He lives on daily products. He will drink a gallon of milk and call it dinner. He follows some guru who argues for the value of dairy and sugar.  

      While the extra ice cream wasn't doing me any good, drinking more water was. Darby reminded me to drink water when my mind felt fuzzy. Boy, that works! How much memory loss in old people is caused by dehydration?  We don't drink as much because of our peeing problems. 

     I took an early morning nap. The distress caused by what the healer said to me yesterday hit.  I had to wonder why she framed my directness in negative terms.  It triggered great sadness and shame. This is what my mother always said to me. 'No one likes you. I'm the only person who does, and that's because I'm your mother. I'm the only person you can trust to love you enough to tell you the truth." That 'truth' was always negative.  

  I can handle negative feedback from someone who is generally positive about me. I don't expect people to like everything about me all the time. People who hang with me must enjoy my directness, but that doesn't mean they will like every direct comment I make. 

    Mike enjoyed my sense of humor, but there were moments he didn't think I was funny when I meant it to be.   He would say, "You're not funny." I would say, "What I said wasn't funny." The best professional comedian has duds. 

   I called Kia customer service to get confirmation that the hybrid motor wouldn't work if the high-voltage battery was down. She assured me the car would run.  I've had two experiences that contradicted that. 

    Aloha Kia called me a little later in the day.  The Kia corporate tech had contacted them.  They approved the repair.  Joe told me the previous local Kia management hadn't done what the corporate recommended.  The notes said the tech had argued for doing it. They cheated me.   Joe said that they would do everything corporate recommended this time. There was nothing more to be done until the parts arrived. He put in a rush order, and they should be here the following week.  He would call me when they came in.

    Joe sent a shuttle to pick me up. When I checked my car, it was only charged to 17 miles, when the maximum is 24. I asked if he could fully charge the car before I left, as I was concerned about losing all power. 

   Again, Joe assured me that wouldn't happen. I told him of my experiences. He said the gas motor without the electric-only has the power of a four-cylinder motor. With the electric, a floor-to-gas pedal start could snap your head back.

    Ironically, just last Sunday, when I got a ride home from the sound bath at Unity, I got to drive in a four-cylinder car. As Diane drove up Kaiminani, she felt compelled to explain her speed; her car was only a four-cylinder car. It got us up the hill and me home safe and sound. It was a reassuring experience.  

     I told Joe I had some shopping to do. I would walk. Fortunately, he offered me a ride. My first stop was at Lowes. Since I was still determining when I could get an electrician to come and install a dedicated line, I needed another 10-gauge extension cord. When we got there, I asked the driver if he could wait 10 minutes.

   I found an associate immediately and asked him to show me where the extension cords were. He knew less about them than I did.  He was looking at thin cords that couldn't possibly be 10 gauge. The thicker cords are usually on the lowest shelf. I found a boxed 10 gauge 25-foot cord. I grabbed it and was out of there in five minutes.  It was a good thing he waited. The cord was too heavy to carry in one hand. Using both hands down the steep hill on my way back to the garage would have been a misery if not downright dangerous. 

   As we headed back to the garage, the driver was in the wrong lane to make the left turn.  I pointed out the problem. He said he was heading to Target. He had called his boss to ask if he could wait for me at Lowes, and Joe told him to wait and to drive me to the store. I told him that wasn't necessary.  I could take care of those purchases on my way home in my car.

    At Target, I picked up three cans of lentil soup and five frozen meals on sale, a loaf of bread, and a jar of Smucker's raspberry jam for $35. That's eight meals, not including the salad I eat every night.   

   Frustrated with one of my students, I shared my concerns with my friend Jean about people who don't care about their interests. One of my students is always vague about her feelings. "I don't know." "I don't care." "It's ok." She always said five if I asked her to rate something on a scale of one to ten.  I encourage students to share how they feel about the work.  I'm looking for the sweet spot for learning. I can modify the lesson to suit their needs if they have some control and active input.  In doing so, I believe I am encouraging them to be aware of their own needs and teach them to speak up respectfully, knowing they can expect me to care and do my best, which does not mean I will succeed. I also hope I'm teaching them to find a way to get what they want in the world while respecting the needs of others in general.   When I work with children who deliberately withhold information, I'm shooting blind.  I'm uncomfortable using a formulaic approach and expecting the student to conform to a program that has passed an evidence-based standard. No human being conforms to a standard. Students who have not learned well in the school setting certainly don't fit that description.

       I had another session with fourth-grade GV. He was still confused about the letter/sound relationship.  In his case, he felt confused to discover that words were made of individual sounds.   It sounded like he never had a single phonics lesson.  Either that, or he didn't apply what he learned to all words. He may be very literal-minded, assuming only the words the teacher talked about were made of individual sounds and not others. If that's the case. Wow!  

     Since GV liked to draw, I asked him if he understood that every drawing was made up of individual lines, either curved or straight, and everything was a variation.    I may have to rethink how I work with this boy.  Suppose he depends on what people tell him and cannot apply what he learns from one context to another. In that case, he has a serious learning problem. I continued working with low-level material, a story with only single-syllable words. I noticed a significant improvement in his ability to hear the individual sounds of words, even if he doesn't understand what he is doing. 

       Eli, the gardener, canceled for the third time. Today's excuse was someone ran over this water pipe. That is a serious problem. I hope he gets it quickly. I also hope he gets here soon. I have forty-two plants sitting in pots waiting to be planted. I don't have the strength or the stamina to do it myself.  I decided to have the soil amendment on hand instead of relying on him to provide it. I may have it in the shed already. I remember doing something for the ulu tree. I provided it, and Rodney and his man planted it.   That tree is doing beautifully, by the way.