Wednesday, December 18, 2024

 Wednesday, December 18, 2024

  I slept through the night until 3:30.  My shoulders and arms hurt, so I spent the early morning hours giving that area a ‘tennis ball massage.” Whenever pain starts, I worry if I’ve finally pushed too far and am relieved when my muscles relax again with a bit of massage. I completed some of my yoga exercises in bed and the rest when I got up. I continued the practice of lying down for a short nap after my yoga exercises and before my morning walk. 

  After breakfast, I watered the forty-two recently planted bushes, which will require a lot of water until they are properly rooted.  After I ate my breakfast, I felt exhausted and took another two-hour nap. My alarm went off at 11 a.m., reminding me to call my friend Jean for our water meditation. She just had cataract surgery and needed a lot of sleep, too.

   I still felt tired after the call. Sometimes, I feel better with physical activity. I went out to do some more weeding and collect green waste. I loaded a trash barrel with the green waste to take to my friend Darby’s house. I didn’t walk it down at that time because the sun was high and it was too hot.

  I had four clients scheduled this afternoon. Mama K proposed I meet with the Twins at 2 p.m. When I sent the link, she called to tell me that both girls had gone to bed the moment they got home and were sound asleep. I took the opportunity to bathe Elsa and wash the kitchen floor.

  I had fourth grade GV at 3. He said he was seeing improvement in his reading and spelling.  He was reading faster, and his spelling had improved.  While he can figure out a word using an approximate pronunciation and context clues, he’s not comfortable doing it.  He may be very literal-minded.  He still thinks he should get the correct pronunciation of a word he doesn’t know how to read. Decoding an English word with that degree of accuracy is often impossible. You need to use additional strategies, like remembering words or spelling patterns and using context clues.  GV is getting better at dealing with uncertainty when the teacher introduces something unfamiliar, a trait more important than reading or writing. Once that’s in place, he can learn anything.

    I was supposed to have fourth-grade LG at 4:30.  He never showed up. I got a text from his mom saying she had been out picking up her daughter from school. When she got home, she couldn’t find her son anywhere. This is the first time this has happened, and it’s fine with me.  if it happened at every session, I would be disturbed.