Wednesday, March 5, 2025

Wednesday, March 5, 2025   

 

  This was an action-packed day. I planned to attend the 8 –10 am. Kupuna meeting, but I got up at 6:30 and only got home from my morning walk at 8. Paulette passed me on the road as she was on her way. I told her I would be there later, but I changed my mind. I texted her to say I'd try for next week.

  I spent the morning dealing with garbage, gardening, and working on updates. I'm still behind.

  When I spoke to Judy this morning, she reminded me it was Ash Wednesday. I make a point of attending significant Masses. I do this for Mike because it makes me feel connected to him.

   Mass was slammed. I don't know what I was thinking. I arrived a few minutes after Mass started. The cars were still coming, and the parking lot was packed. Robert was in the parking lot directing traffic. I bid him hello. He said, "Straight ahead, take that spot." The car was in front of me, passed on the space. It must have had my name on it.

  Because the church was packed, the air conditioning was on. I sat on the south lanai, as I always do, because I don't like refrigeration.

   Claire, who is usually on the lanai every Sunday for the 9 am Mass, was there, too.  Then, the woman sitting on my other side was helping Claire get up. While she sometimes uses a cane, today, she leaned on it heavily. Francis told me Claire was sweating. She looked wobbly as she walked away. I decided to follow her. This behavior was not typical. She went into the bathroom.  Since she needed help getting up from the chair on the lanai, I didn't see her getting off the toilet alone. She would be locked in the toilet stall with no way to get her out. I told her not to lock the door. I would hold it closed from her. 

  Before I could close the door, she lifted her dress and pulled down her pants.  I couldn't get the door closed. She was exposed.  I stood in front of her with my back to her. Then I turned around and stroked her head. I asked her if that felt good. She said no.  I stopped. I intended to make her feel better. If it didn't, I did not need to do it.

   I was anxious to get help but couldn't leave my post. Some women came into the bathroom, but I didn't recognize them. I wanted T.J. Then, she appeared. Someone did go to get her.

  T.J. does everything at church, and I do mean everything except what an ordained person can do. Today, she served as the MC for the Mass and Claire's nurse. First, she brought Claire a cold towel to cool her down. Then, she disappeared and returned a while later with another towel to drape over her shoulders. Claire was sweating profusely.

   On her next visit, she asked if she had an episode like that before. When Claire said no, she said she would call the medics. Shirley said she would take over from me and stay with Claire. I started to object when I saw the ash mark on her forehead. She had been to the 7 a.m. Mass, while I was in the middle of mine.

   I saw the ambulance arrive as I came out from communion. I was there when it pulled up.  I pointed to the bathroom and went back to my seat.  Francis was there. She told me she hadn't received the ashes. T.J. had told her to stand out at the entrance to the parking lot to direct the ambulance. I offered her some of mine. It was the best I could do.

   On my way to my car, I saw a woman pulling out of a tight parking spot. I stopped to help her avoid hitting the car behind her.

    Then, an elderly lady came up behind me. "Are you Deacon Mike's wife?" "Yes, you look much thinner. That's sweet. Only my waist is getting wider, regardless of my weight.

   I stopped at Target to pick up a new container of slime for my kids at Ulu Wini.  They're happier working with me when they can squoosh it between their fingers. I'm good with that as long as they work.  I picked up some frozen meals on sale, and Haagen Das was on a buy-one-get-one-free sale. Yep. I got two.

  I arrived home just in time for my 2 pm appointment with fifth-grade GV. I asked him if he wanted to work on the spelling-dictation exercise for auditory processing, reading comprehension, or writing.  I pulled up fourth-grade reading comprehension exercises on IXL. The first selection was just three sentences. The student had to discern the main idea. He had to select the answer from three choices.  He said he saw two possible ones.  One reflected the main idea; the second was a detail.  I went over why the second answer couldn't be correct. I teach the main idea as a mathematical concept.  Generally, it is the person, place, action, or item mentioned most.  

   The second selection was a passage saying Antarctica was the largest desert in the world.  He got stuck on the word precipitation  in the sentence, "…it receives less than 10 inches of precipitation a year."   First, he couldn't decode precipitation. I pushed him to do one syllable at a time. He got stuck, saying per over and over and not pre.  I had him do a backwards-build-up. In the backward build-up, you start with the last syllable and add on the preceding one, etc. He had no trouble reading

-tion.  He pronounced ta with the schwa or relaxed u.  Then, using cross-body blending, he blended those two syllables. Progressively, he added one syllable at a time, working backward. He got a reasonably close pronunciation of the word. That's the best we can hope for in English decoding. He didn't know the word. It still made no sense to him.

    I asked him to infer the meaning of the word from the context. The passage said the Antarctic was a desert with less than 10 inches of _________ a year. "What word would make sense in that space?"  He had no idea. While GV is a deep thinker, he can't think his way out of a paper bag. I drew a box with four sections.

  Antarctic wet Lots of rain

  Antarctic dry

 GV had to fill in the empty box. Not a clue.  I had my work cut out for me. However, once he understood how the parallel format worked, he formed a box with the four compartments.  It may be easier than I thought. If there is such a thing as too much right-brain thinking, GV is an example.

   What these kids can't do fascinates me. There was MH yesterday, who assumed if a room had wall-to-wall carpeting, it had no floor.  Today, it finally dawned on me, was she saying that you couldn't see the floor, or did she think there was no floor under the carpet? A third option flashed through my mind and then was gone.  The question is, is her problem one of understanding of the physical world or a problem with appropriate language expression? To be explored.  I love doing this work, seeing how other minds work, and figuring out why. 

  Next, I had the Twins A & E.  They couldn't meet with me on Monday afternoon because it was their mom's birthday, and they were off for a cow cuddle. Today, I texted mom, "What's a cow cuddle?" She sent me a photo of her three daughters lying down with their heads on resting cows. You have to be kidding me.  What about the cow poop? This is up there with yoga with goats.

   I started with Twin E. I selected a third-grade exercise on the main idea from IXL. She got stuck on the directions with the word paragraph.  I tried to get her to decode it. Her eyes started closing.  I asked if she was tired. No. This was a trauma response.  It's the same pattern I see in many of the kids I work with. They panic when something doesn't make sense to them. The problem is that nothing makes sense whenever they learn something new.  When you have to decode a word you don't know how to read, you will have to make sounds that feel like nonsense. They are.  What is the meaning of par no less an as in paragraph? These are meaningless sounds.  Ah!  I just understood why reading multisyllabic words is much more complicated than reading single-syllable words.  You have to go through more single syllables that make no sense. They can't tolerate it.  That limits their ability to learn. Ow!

   I asked her how she felt when she didn't understand something. I gave her several choices. Was she afraid she wouldn't get the correct answer? No. Was she afraid she was stupid? No. Was she afraid someone would think she was stupid? No. Was she afraid someone would yell at her? Yes.

   I found her lack of self-judgment fascinating. Her fear is only of what others might do to her. It's a very young response, and it's alien to me. I'm not better off with my self-awareness.

    I went through a list of people who possibly yelled at her, including her parents and current teachers. No, but there was a preschool teacher who yelled at her. I can imagine. Neither girl knew all the letters of the alphabet by the end of first grade, so a preschool teacher must have been exasperated. I hope she did better with the other children.

    I did a trauma release with her. Did her prefrontal lobe (I pointed to the area under the forehead) understand that she didn't die when this teacher yelled at her? Yes. Then, see a little 'you' under the fontanel. Turn the 'little you' around so it's facing the back of your head, and tell every cell in the back of your brain that you survived. Her eyes keep closing.  Hmm!  I chose to stop and told her to take a nap.  Let's see if her unconscious mind processes this automatically.  This is a deep trauma if her response is to go into freeze mode.

   Fifth-grade Twin A knocked my socks off. We worked on a fourth-grade reading selection from IXL. She read it fluently and answered it clearly and accurately. 

    At the end of the day, I finally had fourth-grade LG. On Monday, the sixth anniversary of Mike's death, I got confused. I thought Monday was Friday, and I don't meet with LG on Fridays. I canceled the class after sending a Zoom link. LG's mom probably thought something came up for me and just said, "OK." She was used to punctuality, so she knew it must be something serious. It was. I was confused.

   I asked him if he wanted to work on reading or writing. He chose writing. First, he had to find a topic. When I told him to name the first thing that came to mind, he did so. This was already an improvement. Something always comes to mind when you ask someone what they want to write about. The difference is between those who are aware of it and those who are not.  Most kids block that image. They discount it as irrelevant because they can't imagine developing that thought into a story or essay.

   I asked him questions. Was the cat his or a wild one? The island has many, many feral cats. People move away and set their pets loose.  It was his cat, Rufus. By asking enough questions, I got a lot of information about the cat from him.  The information was good.  He did not make an effort to generate the language for the story.   It wasn't that he couldn't do it; he actively avoided it.

   While I was on my evening walk with Elsa, the vet called with the results of her blood work. She is in the pink of health. We had it checked because of her occasional peeing on the lanai carpet. There is no physical health explanation. I'm delighted. I still wish she wouldn't do that. She has a doggy door and uses it when she wants to. This has nothing to do with training or what she needs.