Thursday, October 10, 2024

 Thursday, October 10, 2024 

      Today was Yvette’s 55th birthday. I sang her Mike’s and my version of the birthday song, which involved a lot of improvisation. Some people look forward to it. One friend called to hear it when I forgot to call. One or two asked me not to sing it.

    I only met with Twin A today. Sometimes, one or the other of them is sound asleep at the time of our appointment. There’s no point in waking them. The session is over by the time they get their minds in gear. Besides misreading words without the awareness that she is doing so, Twin A does not recall the procedure I teach: the five steps to decoding multisyllabic words.   1. Identify the vowel letters, 2. Identify which letters or letters combination makes a vowel sound or is silent; 3. Divide the word into syllables 4. Identify the phonemes in each syllable and blend those sounds, 5. Blend the syllables. Every time, I have to walk her through the steps as if she had never heard it before.

    After I finished the session, I left for a beach date with Jean.  We met at Pine Trees. It’s a lovely beach but not suitable for swimming.  Few beaches in Hawaii are good for swimming. All the ones I’ve been to have dangerous rock formations surrounding them, and most have boulders in the middle of the water you can bump into as you swim.  There is one beach that is relatively free of boulders.  The water never gets higher than your waist. You can swim in it, but it’s not an ocean experience. The other problem with Hawaiian beaches is that sudden drops often make the water dangerous.  These beaches are gorgeous and fabulous for surfing but not the best for swimming.  Kua Bay is the best of the lot. They have lifeguards there now. The last time I was there, I asked the lifeguard about any incidents. Sure enough. He had just pulled someone out with a broken back.  He had been surfacing, and a wave caught him wrong and dashed him on the rocks. 

    Jean and I had no plans to swim. We didn’t even put on bathing suits.  We sat on the beach, walked a bit, and enjoyed the view and each other’s company. 

    I don’t say much about people other than my students in these updates. Since the first readers are friends and family, I must honor everyone’s privacy. 

    Jean had to be home by 11 because her son-in-law had an appointment.  The kids were home from school. She would watch them while he was out.  She wanted to stop off at Target before she went home.  I went with her because she wanted to meet Judy. The hope was she would be working at that time.  She was there checking people out. Her line was busy. I stood behind her, smiling. The woman who was checking out pointed to me. Judy ignored the signal.  She did it again, and Judy finally turned around. I gave her a quick hug and went on my way. While there, I  checked if the Haagen Das ice cream was still on sale.  It was.  

     While I indulge in the Haagen Das ice cream, I am very disappointed in the taste. I’m not sure how much of this is due to the change in my taste buds with age and the change in the recipe from the last time I had ice cream, which must have been before Mike died over five years ago.

       I stopped at Farm & Garden on the way home. Bill at F & G hadn’t recognized the shrub I showed him that was in trouble.  I texted a picture of it to Margo.  It was a plumeria shurb and it was suffering from scale. She told me to cut off the infected branches and treat the plant with Bayer’s All in One.  When I told the clerk at F & G what I wanted, she got me Bio advanced  Tree and Shrub Protect and Feed.  They said it was the same. It was no longer called Bayer’s because it was associated with Monsanto.  I hope so. They usually give top-grade service. They are a trusted company in a heavily agricultural area.

      I went home for a small lunch before heading to Ulu Wini. I only had sixth-grade ML today. We continued working on comprehension. After working with her, I stayed at the community center. I pulled out my computer, checked emails, and worked on updates. I love the atmosphere there.  

     It is a community.  Someone donated a park playground set to the community.  It acts as a central focus for all the kids.  I watch children of all ages play there and interact. They have no idea of how lucky they are to have that. 

     Of course, no one can call the Marshallese children lucky. They were forced to leave their island homes, which provided an even stronger sense of community, and are long gone in most of the US.  I had the last remnant of that when I was a child. I lived in one of the first projects in NYC.  All the kids hung out in front of the building and on the street.  My sister had it even better. When we moved to the Long Island community of Great Neck,  she played in an undeveloped field that provided drainage for the area. There were several children her age in the immediate vicinity. While there were at least three other children my age, we were all freshmen in high school. Running around the neighborhood playing tag was out. 

        I had an appointment at 3:30 with Dr. Reed.  She used to be my primary physician. She switched to same-day care after she gave birth to spend more time with her baby.  Since she is the nicest lady in the world and the best physician by far, I see her rather than the other doctors.  Reed avoids extreme treatments when possible. She searches for simpler answers.  I came to her because I was concerned about my mental state, that internal shaking, and my fear of an impending breakdown.  

    I had spoken to Dr. Reed about my mental state before this.  She had said it didn’t sound like depression; I took pleasure in things and felt better after contact with others. The problem was grief and loneliness.   An antidepressant did seem appropriate.  She recommended an over-the-counter pill, 5-HTP, which provides serotonin rather than just preventing its uptake.  She asked me how many I took. Two a day. That was too much. Too much serotonin was just as bad as too little.  I had to cut back to one a day.  The L-Theanine she recommended I could take up to 8 pills a day, two pills four times a day, but I should start with one at a time. 

    Dr. Reed also checked my breathing with her stethoscope. She could feel my intercostal muscles shaking. She recommended abdominal breathing. That made an immediate difference. 

   I had been an abdominal breather all my life.  Whenever someone observed me breathing, they commented on my deep breathing. That is with the exception of therapists, who watched the movement in the chest instead of the abdomen.  Then, a year ago, I signed up for individual lessons in the Gokhale approach to posture. I spent a lot of money on an incompetent teacher.  There was nothing individualized about her program.  She read from a script and could make no adjustments for me. She gave me a reason to believe she hadn’t even read my intake form, which stated I had a spinal curvature. She never commented or acknowledged that problem. The day she worked on my feet, she was surprised I had arches when most of the people she worked with didn’t. She then showed me a picture of a baby’s foot to show me the correct shape of the human foot. That was the last straw.  

  When Doreen taught the lesson on the rib anchor, I complained I couldn’t hold the anchor and do abdominal breathing.  Since I believed then, as I do a year later, that the idea of the rib anchor is correct, I made an effort to change my breathing to chest breathing as she directed.  Doing so undermined my well-being.  Her directions should have been to find a way to do abdominal breathing while holding the rib answer.  The same holds true for the shoulder position. You have to work to keep the rib anchor while rolling your shoulders back.  Too many of us have collapsed our shoulders and chests.  Our ribs stick out, and along with it, our bellies and our shoulders roll in and down.   The ribs should be down, and the shoulders and neck should be back. 

    I asked Dr. Reed to recheck me with her stethoscope after I did the abdominal breathing. She said she no longer felt the shaking. I felt light-years better.