Thursday, January 30, 2025

 Thursday, January 30, 2025 

   We were under a weather alert all day. Honolulu had 60 mph winds.  We had strong winds.  The wind blew the fronds of the palm trees so hard they were all on the north side of the tree trunk. I didn’t go out for a walk with or without Elsa. When I went  to the mailbox, I put on glasses to protect my eyes from debris. Elsa made it out the doggy dog for her pee but chose the lanai carpet for her bigger business.  She was okay going out the doggy door because it was on the north side of the house and protected from the strong winds.  By the evening, the effect of the wind on the yard was evident.  I didn’t lose any plants. The wind had a positive effect; it did a lot of pruning. For the palm trees to look good, we need gardeners to saw off the drooping fronds and the spent ‘flowers’ and fruit.  My palm trees all looked lots better but the yard was a mess.

    Five of the large Bismarck palm fronds came down.  They weigh a good 10 lbs a piece, basically the weight of a bicycle.  Darby asked me to limit the number I pack into the trash barrel I deliver to her home.  I packed in three last time.  It was too much for Patrick.  Two is the limit on those babes.

    I had an appointment with a cranial sacral therapist Darby and Patrick see. I had a very good experience with a cranial-sacral therapist at Hawaiian Rehab. My PT recommended I see her.  She made a huge difference in my back pain. Darby sings Tomi’s praises each time she sees her, actually ‘they.’ I don’t know if Tomi’s sexual orientation is ambiguous or if she is just supportive of those whose is.  Either way, I concur. She is a spectacular.  

     As I left Tomi’s office,  she recommend I do a lymph drainage series.  Nothing she does is cheap. She recommended it particularly because of all the surgeries I had had: rotator cuff,  two cataract, hip replacement, shoulder replacement and elbow reconstruction.  The first three were short, sweet outpatient surgeries. The last two were three and five hour surgeries, a two week stay in the hospital and a three week recovery at home.  The amount of toxic  chemicals pumped into my bodies for those five weeks left me feeling like I had smoked four packs of cigarettes.  I haven’t smoked for 45 years, but I did for 19, often finishing off two packs a day.  I know what it feels to have poisoned  myself.  Flushing my system sounds good to me.

   I made two stops before I went home. First, I stopped at Farm and Garden to get the formula for the horticultural oil to spray some shrubs that were blighted by some insect or another. I think the oil suffocates them. 

  I got the highly made up clerk at Farm and Garden. She’s my favorite.  She is the most meticulously made of woman I’ve ever seen in my life.  it’s a work of art. She also wears earrings she makes and sells there.  I once asked her how she got into the business. She had been a sales rep for some agricultural company.  She didn’t answer the question I asked. How did a woman so involved with her  appearance wind up in this field in the first place.  Whatever. She knows her business cold. Darby told me it was this woman who came in and organized their business. At any rate, she looked up the formula online.

   I had looked  it up online under the company name without success. It looks like they weren’t selling the product I had anymore.  Mine is undiluted. All they showed were the spray products with the diluted solution.  This woman typed in formula for horticultural oil in the address line. Bingo! She got her answer: two table spoons to a gallon of water.

   I got a text from Shauntel as I left Farm and Garden.  Today was food pantry day.  The session with the kids is shorter.  I was glad for the excuse not to go. I needed to get home and recover from the session I had with Tomi.

    I did stop at Diamond Sprinkler to get instructions on how to insert the plastic connectors into the tubes. I was in no hurry.  I was still hand watering each of my 42 shrubs. I needed to do that anyway to check the wild chickens hadn’t torn up the roots when they dug a depression for the dirt baths. 

   The only student I had today was fourth-grade GV.   We continued to work on his problem with the visual distortion of the letters.  They moved around in his head. Sometimes, letters are obscured.  He presents with symptoms I have never seen before. They’re a form of the spin.  It moves from in to out but more as a loop than a spiral, as he sees it, moving from right to left.  The loops follow the right hand rule pattern,  which should be positive but are not. The other unfamiliar pattern here is the speed of the loops.  They don’t accelerate or decelerate. The speed stays constant.  I have never seen this before- or no student has ever described it that way before.  I always asked if the spin speeds up or slows down, but I have never given the option of the speed remaining constant.   

  I experimented with some psychological work. I’m inclined to move very slowly with him. I’m not sure why.  I sense a fragility  that makes me cautious. Instead of leading him through the work, I describe and propose to see if it feels right and propose we do it in the following session. The psychological work were the releases.  “Release anything bad about your hatred of this movement in my brain, keep anything good about your hatred or anything you still need.”  Then, we do the same thing releasing the love we have of that brain behavior.  I find that just describing the work has an impact. It becomes an option the student hadn’t considered.  If it’s right, the unconscious will do the work in the student’s sleep. 

   I texted my local doctor with questions about the difference in the calculations in my heart function. The results of echocardiogram showed and EF of 60-65% and the results of the stress test showed and EF of 74%. Since the echocardiogram tech told me a reading over 70% indicated a problem, I was concerned. Dr. Reed cleared the problem up. The 60-65% was my resting heart rate; the 74% was my heart rate under stress. It was a good thing that it could up its pace when needed.

   At the last minute, GV mentioned his mind always presents two visual images.  I’ve done work with that before.  I have the student write each word in a designated column.  One with the right spelling, and the other they way they want to spell it.  It’s cleared up problems for a number of students.  I think it’s a developmental delay. While both sides of the brain receive the sensory data about the letters, the left is the side of the brain designed to process the letters ‘correctly.’  Dehaene says the information from the right brain gets passed over to the left brain in the functional reader. 

   I went down to Diamond Irrigation to get a lesson on how to insert the connectors into the irrigation tubing. One of employees showed me. Take a lighter and gentle warm the open end of the tube; insert the connector.  He made it look easy.  I tried to do it myself and had no difficulty.  Then I tried to start the lighter. I couldn’t do that. The guy removed the child safety. I still couldn’t do it.  He went out to his car to get another lighter he thought would be easier. It was a barbeque lighter. I couldn’t work that one either.  Judy turned me on to a lighter I could operate. It’s a rechargeable lighter with a small electric charge. You put the wick between the two terminals. The charge moving between the terminals ignites the wick. The guy told me to buy a citronella candle at Target to use.