Tuesday, December 3, 2024

 Tuesday, December 3, 2024

      I went to bed around 10 and was wide awake by 1:30. I got up at two. There was no point staying in bed and practicing insomnia.  The political situation was weighing on me.  Musk openly declared there would be a period of hardship brought on by the cutbacks in government spending planned by Trump. Many people voted for Trump, hoping he would improve the economic situation. I anticipate the opposite.  I got up and ordered more rice and beans in plastic twenty-five-pound containers.  Then, I worked on the updates. I had fallen behind. 

   I had been up and sitting in the living room chair since two, wearing shorts, a T-shirt, and a light shawl. At 5:30, I felt a chill. The sun was moving in our direction, pushing the cold air off the mountain.

  Once I had completed my morning exercises and walk, fed Elsa, and watered the forty-two Eldorados sitting in pots waiting to be planted, I took a two-hour nap. I had been up since 1:30; no wonder I was tired.

   One thought that tormented me in the early hours was how to prepare the soil for the planting.  I looked it up on the Internet. I came across two articles advising against soil amendments when planting, arguing that doing so creates more problems than it solves. I texted Margo, who is considered the best expert on gardening in the area.  She said she had never heard of that and came back with suggestions.  While Eli, the gardener, said he would prepare the soil for planting, he had canceled so many times that I no longer trusted he could come prepared. I thought having the products here when he arrived would be better.

    My first stop was Farm and Garden. The wonderfully groomed lady was at the counter today.  She's a pleasure to deal with.  Her makeup and outfits are a work of art.  I don't see her as vain.  She uses herself as a canvas for her pleasure and the pleasure of others.  I told her I was looking for soil amendments for forty-two shrubs. She asked me which ones. I told her Eldorado. She suggested Thrive. I pulled up Margo's text and told her what she recommended. How much did I need? I said I was hoping she could tell me. I didn't have a clue. She figured it out.  I had four large, heavy bales, two of Garden N Bloom and two of black cinder.

   I continued on into town after Farm and Garden to Office Max.  I ran out of toner for my printer.  After my scare when I couldn't find the 2019 and 2020 Blog Book files, I printed out the completed books. I don't know what I'm going to do with them. Maybe I'll publish them on Amazon, as Judy suggested. I can't imagine anyone reading them. But who knows.  The 2019 book was over six hundred pages. I was going to need a lot of toner.  I bought the largest cartridge available, TN 770, promising to print 4,500 pages.  I reduced the font size from 12 to 9 to save on ink and paper.  It was still over 404 pages.

  I had one more stop, Target. I had forgotten to buy eggs. After that I headed home and got a bit of gardening done in the yard off my bedroom.  I clipped back the bougainvillea. I planned to continue clipping the vines off the side of the rock wall facing my neighbor's property.  Darby had pointed out this insidious vine was climbing up the wall. Anything that grows on a rock wall threatens its integrity. Plants can destroy cement driveways once they get a foothold. These rock walls don't last forever.

  In order to access the vines, I have to walk over uneven, slanted terrain. I did okay doing it the other day. The rock wall was low enough that I could hold on to the top of it. As I go further down the slope, the rock wall rises a good two stories. Well, out of my reach. I planned to move slowly. I take the tools I need in a bucket since I can't rest them on the top of the rock wall. I put the bucket down a few paces before me, then carefully take the few steps to be beside the bucket. I will work my way down the slope in this way. I'm still scared. I will text Yvette and Darby to let them know where I am in case something happens.  I had no trouble the other day when I worked on the vines. I probably won't encounter any problems when I go down again. It's this old-age crap.  I am vulnerable because of osteoporosis and the metal holding my left hip, elbow, and shoulder together. If I fall and impact one of those joints with that brittle material in them, all the surrounding bone will shatter. Sounds like fun, no?

   I had a session with sixth-grade RC today.  I've been very nervous about working with her. She is reluctant to share her true thoughts. I don't want a total reveal of her deepest thoughts; I want to trust she can set her boundaries instead of relying on me to know what she thinks and feels.  This was the third session since she told me she 'lied' when she said she didn't know something.  I struggled to find a better word to describe what she did. She withheld information as to her own thoughts. I'm not talking about withholding her feelings on some profound personal matter; I'm talking about her saying she didn't remember anything when asked if she remembered a math fact.  It is possible she doesn't remember. I see increased memory problems with all my students.

    I asked my friend Steve about it. He worked as a school principal in UN-sponsored schools in Asia and Latin America.  Yes, he also saw increasing problems with memory over the years.  From what I can see, students don't know what to do If they don't get the correct answer instantly.  The problem isn't neurological; it's a missing skill. My best guess it comes from not having to rely on their memories anymore. They can always get the answer from the Internet, which provides immediate and correct feedback. They conclude this is how their minds are supposed to work.

    Our minds are more complex and powerful than any computer. But just as we have to learn how to get information from the WWW, we have to learn how to encode and decode information from our brains.  This is not being taught.  In the past, we learned it by observing our parents. But most parents of school-age children grew up in the information age, with access to computers and the web.  The children I work with are now second-generation web users. The internet models memory; it always gets the answer right. It's a machine, and most users are not programmers. We are the programmers of our brains. We decide what information goes in.  Much of the encoding is automatic, mainly when we are young. In a nonacademic environment, information can be learned through repetition; most of what they need to know is encoded by the time they are six or seven. The rest is details.  In the academic world, we are subjected to the unfamiliar daily. Much of which we have to cram into our minds.

   When I started with RC today, I asked if she recalled having told me in the two previous sessions that she deliberately didn't reveal what she did know when asked.  She did. I would have taken it as a signal to drop the subject if she hadn't.  I felt I had to be super cautious with this child because I couldn't rely on her to set her boundaries.   I spent some time sharing my concerns with her.  She acknowledged it was tough for her to do so.  Great! How do I proceed?

     I returned to some work we had done with memory.  Did RC remember the multiplication fact we had worked on, 6 x 7=42?  Her recall was flawless after at least two weeks. Did she remember the spelling word we had worked on in September? She remembered the word, people, but spelled it peple. That was better than her original spelling. I showed her the strategy of noticing what was correct rather than dismissing the whole word as wrong because of a mistake.  The goal was to build on what she did right.

   Given how well she did. I told her I thought it unlikely she had a neurologically driven memory problem. She needed to learn how to get information in and out.   She was missing a skill. Memory, like a muscle, must be exercised to be strong. I drew a rough picture of two neurons. I showed her how each time she encountered the word, no less worked on learning it, she laid down another connecting strand between the neurons. Of course, the network connections are much more complex than the ones I drew.  But she got the point.