Mike's death; Betty's life...: 01/03/26

Saturday, January 3, 2026

Saturday, July 31, 2021

I slept for six hours straight last night. That doesn’t happen. I think I slept so well because Yvette is back from a several-week trip to the mainland. I feel safer. I know Yvette is the best at watching out for my physical well-being. On a rate of 1-10, she’s a 12.

I called Jean M, my friend from Arizona, first this morning. She didn’t answer. She is dealing with a family emergency. I wondered how it was going. Then I called Jean, my hanai sister. Her husband, John, answered. Jean was napping; she had had a bad night’s sleep. John sounded cheerful. Wonderful. He’s preparing to move out of the house he has lived in for 55 years. Talk about stress. He said he was busy sorting through paper. I said something about his notes from high school, knowing him as I do. He said, “Some.” Many years ago, I learned that John saved his notebooks from his college. He said he occasionally still used them. He was currently working on rendering a timesheet to a company in Japan for some work he did for them. He said it required a signature. He had tried a copy and paste, but that didn’t work. I told him there was a way that he could get an electronic signature through his email. I was one up from him for knowing this was possible, but I had no idea how to do it. I recommended he consult his grandchildren.

Then I called Dorothy. I told her about my fall. She said that she could crouch down as she could as a child since her hip replacement. Wow! I called her back about an hour later and told her I thought I was ready to do this myself. Several things have come together. 1) the stem cell doctor told me about my bone spurs. I knew I had one, but now I have more. A stem cell transplant would not help with this problem. 2) the doctor told me to work on my turnout, and 3) the chiropractor advised me to do the clamshell exercises to strengthen my glute. Number 1 made me realize I’m at a dead end. Numbers 2 & 3 made me realize I was close to my goal of straightening out my spinal curvature- as much as possible, which I wanted to accomplish before surgery. Then I asked Dorothy if her hip felt weird. She said no. Dorothy doesn’t have my level of kinetic awareness; she may not be the perfect person to ask. A PT once warned me that I would hate the artificial hip. However, now I’m facing a dangerous physical limit. My choice is constantly discomforted by a strange feeling or risk breaking every bone in my body when I fall. Hmmm! Now, that’s a tough choice. Either way, it feels right now.

I emailed my doctor a request for an orthopedic consult when I got home. Now on to bigger and better problems. I’ve already settled the issue of someone to accompany me when I go to Oahu for the surgery. Dorothy has volunteered. I may be there for all of one day, or I may be there for two weeks. The question is, when will I be allowed to fly after the surgery? The next question, which I can answer, no one can answer, is will the hospitals be shut down to all elective surgeries for the next year because of Covid. Such an interesting life!

I had my first session with adolescent D after a two-week break. I asked him if he did any reading while gone. He said no. I asked him if he thought about words and reading other than agitating about it. Yes. I asked him if he read words on signs as he toured places. He said yes, a little. That’s a wow! He chose to work on the sight word sentences. At first, he rushed through a sentence. He got it right, but he wasted an opportunity to work on the neurological connection. He did reasonably well. He didn’t lose anything and maybe did a little better. At the end of the session, he had to decode a two-syllable word. He could accurately say each of the syllables and then didn’t recall the sounds accurately when he blended them. I asked him if he had trouble remembering sounds. Yes. Is this only when reading or in all situations? I told him this is something we must work on next. I tell students that if we can’t fix it, someone in their lifetime will figure out a way to do that. If we can’t fix it, his reading will always be labored until a solution is found.

You might ask, why haven’t I worked on this before? Good question. Sometimes, I start with the BrainManagementSkills right away. Other times, I have to wait until it feels right. I have pushed it inappropriately once-totally freaked out the kid. I think it helped ultimately, but I don’t like to have that impact.

I had a conversation with D’s mom after our session. We had to set up a schedule now that school had opened for the year. She said D did some reading over the vacation. He told me he hadn’t. But she meant the same thing he had; he had read signs in the museums they visited. This is a huge change.

I texted Tommy telling him that there was one slide where I had made a false start which I had to delete from the finished product. Should I tell him where the problems are before he corrected the out-of-sync problem or after? He said it would be better to do it before. The audio wasn’t just out of sync with my mouthing. It was out of sync with the slides. Also, I discovered there was one absent slide. Maybe that is what caused many of the problems.

I got more vacuuming done too. I seem more inclined to clean the house since Yvette is home. I do feel more secure knowing she keeps an eye on me. I finally cleaned a ceiling vent in the bathroom. I need to get in there with a toothbrush.

Friday, July 30, 2021

I slept beautifully, peacefully, and discomfort-free until four am. I go to bed around 9:30 pm. I have been using the acupuncture pen on my left glutes as I lie in bed reading before I sleep. Wow! What a difference. I also did a few clamshell repetitions on my left glutes.

I realized I could exercise those left glutes while I walked. I couldn't turn my feet out but could rotate on that hip while bringing the other leg forward. Because of the chiropractor's recommendation, I concentrate on involving those glutes in my left hip—quite a difference.

My doctor had given me a script for PT, as requested. The first problem was she gave it for another practice than the one I had before. I was very impressed with the lady I had at the first one, and I knew she was still there. My doctor wrote to tell me she had written a new script and good luck with my foot. My foot? No, I wanted the PT for my back, my spinal curvature. She said she would add that on. My foot is doing very well. It's not perfect, but it's down to a mere annoyance, easily improved with an ice bath and some massage with a golf ball.

I had Mom K's crew this morning. I had asked her to help me with her son, K. I needed help with his handwriting. I couldn't do what needed to be done on Zoom. He wasn't getting it. I had emailed her primarily paper and a photo of what I wanted him to copy via text because she couldn't get her printer to work. She created some primary paper on her own; only it wasn't correct. More seriously, she "miswrote" many of the letters. I put that in quotes because they were perfectly legible while they were not the standard form. The letters b, d, f, h, k, l, and t are the same size. She wrote b, k, and t in a single space, making them the same size as a, c, m, n, etc. These letters are perfectly legible. It is only the letters d and h where this would create a problem. The d would be confused with the lower-case a, and the h with the lower-case n. It might not make much difference under some circumstances, but this boy has terrible spatial problems. I want him to work with a consistent model. I wanted to resolve confusion for this kid. He carried too much on his own. Also, she wrote the words as an adult would, writing all the letters in a single space, not filling the lines on the primary paper. I was grateful she was willing to participate. There was no reason why she should understand what I wanted. To do that, she would have to have insight into her son's confusion. That's my job. That's what makes me the great teacher I am.

I called Mama K several times yesterday, but she hadn't gotten back to me. I asked her to call me before the session at 8:30. She did, and I explained what I wanted. She had the model of my writing in a text image. Hopefully, she'd be comfortable doing this. Her son desperately needs the model.

When the session started, I learned that K wasn't home anyway. He was at a sleepover. I had Twin A first. She rocked the letter recognition and did very well on blending initial continuant consonants with the -at family. I decided to start her on sight word recognition. I started with the word the as I had with her sister. I could see her sister in the corner of the Zoom screen. I told her to get in too. I asked her if she remembered the word the. She said "the" without batting an eye. Wow! She said the release had helped. I guess so.

We worked on blending all single consonants with the -at family. She did well with that except for the word mat, which slipped into the map. She still had problems holding sounds clearly in her mind.

At 9 am, I had my weekly appointment with my therapist/ life coach, Shelly. I worked on the terror I felt because of this friend. I know she doesn't mean ill. She was scared, and I was scared. We are also crazily incompatible. How did we ever get this involved in each other's lives in the first place, given our differences? Some of my encounters with her retraumatize me. It's hard to understand how much sadness and fear I lived with as a child. My mother adored her firstborn child; she just hated me. I had the image of her stomping me with an object with a flat metal surface about three feet across. She was 'stamping on me' in a frenzy. She was desperate to destroy me, annihilate something in me that terrified her. They were the same qualities my father nurtured in me. How's that for crazy-making? Facing this attack straight on was calming. At first, the attack was just on my heart; as it progressed, it was all on my body's left side, including my head. At the end of my mother's life, she was somewhat more peaceful about me, but she never could accept that I held different thoughts from hers. Oh, well.

At 10:30, I had sixth grade D. We only got through one paragraph in half an hour. He read slowly and skipped the function words and, every once in a while, didn't decode a longer content word correctly. While he makes mistakes on some content words, his bigger problem was his errors with the function words. While his reading was slow, his comprehension was generally good. However, today, he made a mistake on a Getting the Main Idea exercise. He picked a detail that was only mentioned once. I showed him how you could count the number of references to a topic to figure out the main idea of a paragraph frequently. You could, in this case.

I gave him a choice in response to his problems with missing function words. A) ignore the problem. His comprehension is generally good, and the likelihood of having to read out loud in seventh grade is slim. (I would not ignore problems decoding content words.) b) continue underlining the missed function word as he went along, and c) click a pen to signal when he missed a word. He chose the last one. It was a good choice. I believe that option would help him internal the necessary vigilance. However, there were several content words he decoded incorrectly. When he misses a word, he ignores one of the syllables.

I got around to housecleaning today. In the process, I moved an object and placed it on the floor. As I did, I pitched over. Because of my dance training, I knew to use my hands to break my fall. I didn't lock my wrists; I touched my fingers first, then my knuckles, then my palm, and only then took the weight on my forearms. It was something I did automatically. It was still a shock. Once down, I had to figure out how to get back up. It was a disconcerting moment.

Again, we had sunshine from 7 to 10. Then it became overcast, and it was raining by midday. We were socked in again. It's an unusually wet summer.

Sixth-grade D's mom called me to compare notes. She said she had seen improvement. She confirmed that he resents the sessions. I needed to address this problem. Resentment involves a lot of energy that doesn't go to the reading.

I checked my Step Up email account. One from Julia asked if people would be willing to mentor new tutors. I would work with a group of six, meeting with them once a week and being available for some extra help. I volunteered to head two groups. It is what I wanted to do. It won't last forever. Let's see how it goes.

While cleaning up, I found a slip of paper with a note about the slide that needed editing on the video. I texted Tommy to ask him if he wanted this information before changing the format or if it would be better if we worked on it afterward. He said before. I have to review the video to find the glitches I'm responsible for. On correcting the glitch on the video, I started my spiel and made an error, stopped with a few accompanying moans, and started again.

______-______-_______

Musings:

I'm reading Blueprint: The Evolutionary Origins of a Good Society by Nicholas A. Christakis.

He writes about our natural tendency to ethnocentricity and xenophobia. Four-year-olds arbitrarily assigned one of two shirts will bond with those like them. Each group bonded and became antagonistic toward the other group.

The people in a group support their fellow members and do not support members of another group. All that seems natural and appropriate. We favor those we know; we steer clear of those who are not like us. Giving more support to some versus others sounds okay. The problem is with xenophobia when we become antagonistic toward the other group because they're different. When all differences are considered intolerable, we're all in trouble.

Thursday, July 29, 2021

I followed my recent pattern; I woke around 4 am and spent the rest of the time in bed dozing and agitating. This internal disturbance is how I lived as a child. Not good.

I ran into Carol with her dogs, Luke and Max, on my morning walk. We observed a clutch of chickens on Kukuna. I have watched this mother hen raise her young. They were on their way to full grown, and all eight were still alive. Carol said there used to be a flock on Holoholo. Did I know what happened to them? I haven’t walked that way for a while. I realized she was talking about the house on the corner of Hiolani and Holoholo. It has a heavily wooded section filled with chickens. I spoke to the owner once about a year ago. She thought as many as 50 wild chickens were living in her yard. I haven’t walked in that area for about a year. I wonder what is going on.

Joe and I were the only students for driveway yoga this morning. We’re the most consistent students. Yvette would be back on the 30th and start leading the class again.

I had Mama K’s crew at 8:30. I started with Twin A. We worked on letter recall. She did it so easily that I checked that I had the right twin. It was. We also worked on blending initial sounds with the word family-at. I continued avoiding the stopped consonants (b, p, t, d, g, and k+; she has enough problems blending the continuants (f, h, j, l, m, n, r, s, v, and z).

Twin E did pretty well recognizing or blending all the words in the -at family. With her, I can use both the stopped and the continuant consonants for the initial sound. Rather than have her blend words in the -ap family, I worked on the sight word the. She couldn’t remember what I said from one minute to the next. When I did ask her what the word was, she said that. It was the right time to use the BrainManagementSkills.

She used the correct part of the brain for her visual working memory but used the same part of the brain for auditory processing. That’s up there with using your feet to do what you should use your hands for. Getting dexterity in the feet is possible, but it takes a lot more work to make it happen. I redirected her to use the correct spot in the brain for auditory working memory. I asked her if there was a disruptive movement in that area. Yes. I gave her the six patterns of movement. I always say, “or something else?” when if offer those patterns. She said, “ Something else.” It was a spiral. The illustrations are all spirals, just from different angles. I then asked her if the spinning in her brain sped up or slowed down. It slowed down. Yes, she liked it. I would too. It’s very peaceful. It just interferes with left brain academic activities. I have to learn to do what she does, and she has to learn to do what I do. I told her to let it slow down as much as she liked. She said, “Done!” I have no idea what happened. I’ll follow up tomorrow.

After yoga, I rushed to get my linens in the washing machine. The sky was clear, but I knew it would be overcast by 11 and raining by noon. The machine cycle ended after the morning session with Mana K’s crew at 9 am. I quickly took the linens out to the line and jumped in the shower. As I dried, I took the linens down again. They were just damp. I threw them loosely on top of my bed to finish drying. I had to leave at 9:30 for my 10 am chiropractic appointment.

I made it to the appointment just in time. I hadn’t seen Kim in over a year until two weeks ago when I saw her, hoping she would have some insight into my foot problem. She did. She did a little work on my back but didn’t have time to do much. Now my foot was much better. Massaging it with a golf ball as I type seems to have done the trick. Now, I wanted more work on my back.

It was becoming more evident that all the muscles on the left side of my body were very tight. I asked the chiropractor to work there. As she did, it occurred to me that she had done that work before. I’ hadn’t made much progress. She recommended the clamshell exercise; I was supposed to lie on my side with my knees bent and my heels together and raise my top knee into the air as much as possible. The purpose of this exercise is to strengthen my glutes. Interesting. She is the second person to push an exercise involving a hip turn out, particularly in my left hip.

At 3 pm, I had A. He balked again at my instructions. I confronted him directly on his strategy of avoiding anything that seemed abnormal in his desperate need to be normal. I asked him if he was afraid he was abnormal. “Yes,” I told him there was a good chance he wasn’t. He was just misusing his brain. You can see where I’m going; I’m introducing BrainManagementSkills. He said yes. I pointed out that everyone is concerned about not being normal in some way or another. His problem was just more visible. I told him what I had told most students I worked with. I tell them that if I can’t solve their problem, someone will in their lifetime. Cognitive and neurological approaches are big these days in scientific circles. They have entered the mainstream. People are talking about them even if they don’t know what it means or how to do things differently. I told A that he was either normal and doing things wrong or he was not normal. Avoiding looking at it wasn’t going to make a difference. As I talked about the two options, I had to draw a diagram with normal on one side and abnormal on the other. He finally agreed to do the BrainManagement with me.

I asked him for the color of his blanket, to see it in his mind, and then tell me where he held the image in his head. I can see someone saying, “I don’t know where I do that. How can she expect a young child to do it?” Some can’t, at least not the first time I ask them. Developing brain awareness is part of the job. I tell them, “I don’t know, is a perfectly good answer.” Usually, students can answer the question after one or two sessions. Why? Well, they start asking themselves that question and eventually discover the answer. A pointed to his forehead. Great. In my experience, this is the best place for visual working memory. (I have one student who uses a space further back in the brain. It seems to work.)

Then I made a sound and asked him to remember the sound and where he held that memory in his brain. He pointed to his forehead. Well, that’s a clue as to why he is having problems. I took two pencils. I used one to point to a spot just to the left of my soft spot and a second to point to my temple. I told him that if I pushed those two pencils into my head, where they would meet is where I should hear sounds. He made the switch, and there was an immediate change.

The first time I saw this child on Zoom, I thought there was something wrong with him. He looked confused like he was dizzy. He exhibited some uncomfortable behaviors, moving his head around in strange ways. When we started this exercise, he exhibited those head movements. When I asked him why he moved his head that way, he said it itched. I have no idea why making movements with his head helped with an itch. However, everything changed when he switched his auditory processing to that spot I indicated. He held his head erect, and he looked clear-eyed. I asked him if it was easier to understand what I was saying, harder, or the same. He said easier. I asked him if his head felt weird. He said yes, Great. That means there was a change, hopefully, a change for the better. I helped him practice using that center for hearing speech sounds first by speaking to him briefly in German and then reading to him without asking him questions about what I said. The initial objective is just to experience speech sounds in that area of the brain, regardless of language or content.

I watched something on Netflix last night. A documentary on a French woman who was murdered in a small seaside Irish town. I want to watch several programs on the masterpiece channel, but I’m so pissed by the extra charge for the local PBS channel that I’m denying myself the pleasure. I may have to change my tune.

I hadn’t heard from Tommy, my tech, for a few days. I wanted to know if he could salvage the video. The way it was now was unacceptable, unusable. I went back and checked the original videos as posted on Zoom. They were crystal clear, and the sound was in sync with the images. Could he achieve that for the YouTube version? I texted him the question. He sounded annoyed. I can imagine. He already put in work on the video, only still be stuck with it. I suspect he thinks I was not going to pay him for his unacceptable work. He charges much less than much less experienced people, a lot less. He’s experimenting himself. As long as he can get a good quality, I’m happy.

In my evening walk, I saw Mei in her front yard. She and her son David are back. David has a student visa because he was accepted at the Parker School. Mei was allowed in as his mother because David is a minor. Her husband, Peter, and her daughter, Anna, are stuck in Canada until their visas come. The other day Mei asked me if I knew anyone who would be interested in a job helping her deliver their Turo cars. I asked around and found someone. I told Mei that Steve would call her. She asked me if he was a boy or a girl; "Steve is a boy". She then told me that Peter only wants girls. I wonder why. Either way, a) she didn’t tell me that, and b) I don’t know of any girls. As I think about it, I might be able to find someone interested through the Bikram community.

Wednesday, July 28, 2021

It was not a great night’s sleep. I wrestled with that problematic relationship. Is there any way to improve communications and reconcile the relationship? Our respective styles of communicating may preclude a resolution. Too bad. It’s an important relationship.

I had Mama K’s crew at 8:30. I started with Twin A. She knocked the letter recognition out of the park. We also got work done on correctly identifying the letters in at, from left to right. Yay! She did it on her own without a reminder. She could blend initial continuous sounds with the -at family with some help.

Twin E was more attentive today. Instead of moving back and forth between blending initial sounds with -at versus -ap, I went through all the options for -at and then -ap. That worked.

With K, I worked on aligning his words on the lines. He doesn’t get it; I needed his mom to work with him.

I had sixth-grade D at 10:30. He said the brain changes he made were holding. He said his mother heard him read and was impressed. We are reading 7th-grade material. He reads the big words well; he misses words like a, the, how, and and. He also had some trouble when he had to decode words consciously. That he can do it unconsciously is great, but he needs the conscious process backup.

I spoke to Jean, my friend from Arizona. She was exhausted from a family issue but reported that physically she felt great. She has been going through some physical challenges for the last year. Now she is on the mend.

As we spoke, her voice broke up a lot. The rains had finally hit Arizona. They only had one monsoon last year. This year they are being hit hard. They are experiencing flooding. There are times when there are warnings to shelter in place. The thunder and lightning disrupted the phone signal.

I noticed that I left out my work with A yesterday. Too bad, it was amazing. We reviewed a sight word list. Before he left on vacation, he had continuing problems with a few words, particularly those with ds in them. He got them all correct; I didn’t cover them in our last session. I asked him if he practiced reading while he was gone. He said no, he just thought about them. That is studying. Not only did he ace lists 1 and 2, but he also went right through list 3, which we never covered. He then made it through half of list four. This is a major improvement.

I called his mom in the middle of the session to let her know what was happening. She answered the phone because I might have needed help but couldn’t talk because she was in a meeting. She texted me when she got out, asking if I had time to talk. ”I told her he not only lost nothing over his vacation, but he had also improved.” I told her how he ‘thought about the words.” She was beside herself with joy. She could appreciate the significance of his improvement even though he was nowhere near grade level. This woman shares my ability to rejoice over small improvements. She said, “He is moving out of Kindergarten and into the first grade.” A was starting 3rd grade in the fall.

I got a call from Hawaiian Solar to update me on what was going on with the replacement panels. The woman told me she had placed the order on June 16 and had made several follow-up inquiries. That’s what I thought should have happened. The other woman I spoke to yesterday probably only referred to the last inquiry, or she just panicked. I did feel better with this information. The woman also told me it takes a long time, but the company has proved reliable in delivering.

I packed the last two boxes of books from Jean’s father’s collection to send to her friend in New Jersey. I will mail them tomorrow.

At 2 pm, I participated in an online Gokhale Workshop. It was amazing. Esther works with many of the theories of exercise I have adopted. She talked about psoas exercises. She says doing 20, 50, or even 100 repetitions is helpful, but the best thing is to learn to walk correctly, which involves using the psoas correctly. If you do that, you exercise that psoas with each step. If you do 10,000 steps daily, that is 5,000 repetitions per psoas. Yes, yes, yes. Gokhale works on proper alignment and movement. Gokhale now offers individual consultations through Zoom. Wonderful1. Initially, they were only available in person. There was only one practitioner in Hawaii; he lived on Maui. He was willing to come over a lead a class on the Big Island. However, I had to pay for the flight and accommodations for him and his whole family, as well as his instruction. I don’t think so. Given they do private consultations online, I plan to get this service.

Tuesday, July 27, 2021

Scott texted me while I was walking to ask if it was raining here. He said there was standing water where he was. Here the streets were still dark with residual water but not wet. When I ran into Carol with her dogs Luke and Max, she asked me if I had heard the rain last night. It was raining when I went to bed, but not impressively so. Apparently, deeper into the night, it poured. It poured so badly that lava mud several inches high washed down the hills from the rain. I've never seen that. It must have been impressive. I told Scott it was overcast here but drying. He said he would be over to lead the yoga class. As I came toward the house at the end of my walk, I saw his car parked out front.

I had Mama K's crew at 8:30. My objective with K was to have him start a sentence at the left-hand edge of the page instead of the middle, writing as many words as he could on a line, and then moving to the next one and writing the remaining words. I needed his mom's help with this activity today. After that, I worked again on writing the words quick and lazy. His spatial problems showed up big time. We discussed the q, and I believe he wrote it correctly. Then he wrote the u in quickly.

When we were finished, he yelled out for the "next victim," my term. I had Twin A. She could remember several letters I had been targeting. I think she went back to figuring out the name for n by going through the letters in her name instead of using automatic processing. When presented with the letters in -at, she read them again as t, and then a. Again, I had to remind her that the letters on the left always come first. I think she did better blending letters with -at as in mat, rat, and sat. I only worked with the continuous consonants and avoided the stops. Blending a vowel after a stopped consonant is much more difficult.

Twin E was very distracted today. She brushed her hair the whole time, and her siblings were in the same room making noise. She could say at easily. However, she could not say ap in isolation; she said cap instead. I find she is distracted when she feels the work is too hard for her. It's a good way of getting out of doing the work without looking disobedient.

Classroom teachers often believe everything can be learned with effort alone. They drive me nuts. I want to hand them a pen empty of ink and tell them to write their names. When they can't, I want to tell them to 'try harder." Undoubtedly, lack of effort makes a difference, but it's not the whole explanation for a student's difficulty.

I called Hawaiian Solar to find out when I could expect to get my solar panel replacements for the dysfunctional ones. I didn't get a return call yesterday. When I called this morning to ask why it was taking so long, They told me they had just placed the order last week. I guessed the clerk forgot and had just put the order in yesterday in response to my call. This is a problem. I am not getting enough solar energy to fill my power wall with electricity to last the night. Yesterday, I was on the grid by 6 pm. Scott also says that my solar panels are dirty. When I called Hawaiian solar today, I asked about cleaning them. She said she would have them do that when they replaced the defuncted ones. It sounds like they didn't do that when they came to switch the panels around. Yuck service!

I got a laundry done. I needed to get it on the line while I still had some sunshine. I delayed getting to town to the Post Office and the transfer station to maximize the drying time before the rain hit again. I brought in the towels at noon and let them finish drying on the towel racks. Running the dryer costs a fortune.

At noon I headed out to the yard to get the towels off the line. I was surprised to discover that it had already started raining. I yanked the towels off the line and hung them up inside. I have used the same towels since Mike died two and a half years ago. The towel he used last was still hanging there. I made sure to use the towel that matched his. I suppose someday my towel will wear out. I hope I'm ready to give up his then.

I headed into town to the Post Office, the cemetery, and the transfer station. Again, there was no line at the Post Office. I carried all three boxes in myself. I thought I would have another three boxes before I was done. Then I went to the church cemetery.

Judy had told me about a cement base for a headstone. I looked for something that Judy and I had seen together. The church cemetery isn't very large; the parking lot is larger. I didn't see anything that resembled what I had had in mind. When I called Judy, there was no answer. I called the church office. Brenda answered. She came out to help me find it. No wonder I couldn't find it; it was huge, nothing like what Judy and I had looked at, a beautiful large monument covered with marble and decorative tiles. Nah, I don't think so. Aside from the fact that it would cost a fortune, neither Mike nor I would want something that flashy.

On the way home, I drove along Ali'i Drive to take in the ocean view. When I returned to the main drag, I headed for the transfer station to dump the recyclable cardboard for the Glicksteins and me. They have been dumping their cardboard out with their trash. No, no, no. That stuff is the one bit we can still recycle here in Hawaii.

I got a phone call from Tommy while I was in the graveyard. When I got home, I had to get on my computer, go to The Phonics Discovery System Facebook page, and find the revised form on the videotape. With his help, I did that when I got home. It didn't look the way I expected it to. You could see the PowerPoint toolbar. I was confused. Why was that there? Tommy said it had been there all along. I thought, "No!" He said something about my needing the toolbar. It took me a minute to realize he was right, of course. I needed the taskbar because I needed the draw function. I would have to redo the whole presentation to get rid of that frame. Oh boy. He started advising me on what I had to do. I said, "No, no. Not over the phone. I have no idea what I am doing."

Monday, July 26, 2021

Okay, I had a weird dream this morning. It felt like one of those moments when college dorms empty as everyone leaves for a break. I felt alone. Someone asked me where I was going. I thought of visiting a friend in Massachusetts. Then I decided to head home to my mother's house and stay with her and my sister. I woke with the realization that my mother was dead, had been for years, and my childhood home was not an option.

Somewhere in the dream, there was the death of my father. It gets weird here. "He" went into an incinerator voluntarily while alive to be turned to ash. I watched it happen. He wasn't being hurt; he just disappeared. Now 'my father' looked nothing like the man I knew. It took me a while to figure out what I had seen. "My father' looked like a man I dated briefly in my twenties. We were both in a college play. I remember thinking, "He looks just like Hansyenkline,(SP!)" the image of my father as a very young boy. One of the weirder dreams I remembered. I'm sure most of them are weird.

When I ran into Carol with her dogs, Luke and Max, she told me of problems with pigs on her property. Hogs are nocturnal. As they wander around people's property, they often disturb them. They make noise as they wolf down mac nuts or avocados or trigger motion detection lights. Many people object to them because they dig up their property. Steve, one of my walk contacts, is putting up a fence to protect his property. Scott lives out in the woods and says he is often kept up at night as twenty to thirty pigs munched on mac nuts. Carol said the pigs are vicious- yeah when cornered. The difference is these babies can do damage with their tusks. They're not rabbits going to their death without fighting to survive. I love when an animal is labeled vicious because it objects when you try to kill it. While I wouldn't want pigs in my backyard and don't have any because we are fenced in, I also feel sorry for these animals as they lose access to food because of us.

I had a 7:30 dental appointment. One of my bottom teeth broke the other day, or at least I felt a sharp edge I hadn't felt before. It warranted checking. Yes, indeed. I lost a filling. The dental assistant took an X-ray. She returned after consulting the dentist to say he saw a few other spots. She took three more X-rays. The dentist found four additional cavities in my remaining five bottom front teeth. He said those teeth were usually spared decay. This was unusual. I knew exactly why I had this problem. As I lay down to nap, I popped a Hersey's milk chocolate kiss with a whole almond into my mouth. My teeth were marinated in a chocolate sauce as I slept. Good work, Betty. My idiocy rivals that of mothers who leave milk or apple juice in their babies' mouths as they sleep. He asked me why I did it. I said because I was crazy. It may be the truth.

I only had K and Twin A this morning. Twin E was still asleep. I have now shown K the whole sentence with all the letters in the alphabet. "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog." The next challenge is to have him write the sentence starting at the far left of the page, rather than toward the middle, and write as many words as he can on one line with appropriate spacing instead of writing one or two words on one line in the middle of the page.

Twin A is doing a better job remembering the letters of the alphabet she was having problems with, and we continued working on the word family -at.

Two people signed up for my Zoom Reading support office hours. I must rely on what these inexperienced tutors tell me about their kids' problems. I ask questions to determine if the problem is with basic decoding, decoding multi-syllable words, recalling sight words, or comprehension. Most of the time, the problem is with some form of word recognition. I have so much fun teaching these folks. They are primarily inexperienced teachers. Trained teachers would be much harder to teach; they come with fixed mindsets. I'm half teacher, half standup comic in these sessions. I generally get thanks and comments on how helpful my suggestions are. Sometimes I get follow-up questions, or tutors tell me they had success.

Yesterday, I texted Tommy, my tech, about the poor quality of the video. He said he could fix that. It has something to do with the sd versus hd quality. He had it on hd, and it got changed automatically to sd. He said it wouldn't be a big deal to change it back.

I called Jean, my hanai sister, only to get hold of her husband, John. He said she was already in bed. He also said that Damon, her son and my step-son, had just called. He told John he would be calling me next. Damon does his duty to his moms. I always go for walks when someone calls. It's a good way to get my steps in. I waited a few minutes for Damon to call. When he didn't, I called him. I always enjoy talking to him.

Amazing news: My leg didn't hurt after sitting for long periods today. Whaddaya say to that?

Sunday, July 25, 2021

With a change in stride, pushing my hips even more to the left is causing a shift in pain/discomfort in different parts of my body. I woke up this morning worrying that I couldn't avoid THR, given the bone spurs in my hip joint. The doctor who injected the ozone into my hips yesterday said he saw two bone spurs, a small one and a large one. The bone spur limits my range of motion but doesn't cause pain. It just acts as a door stopper.

After one of my walking stints, I experienced discomfort in my lower right abdomen. It was bad enough that I was concerned about appendicitis. I knew the test for that. I pushed hard on the left side of my abdomen. I felt nothing on the right side; I had no inflammation. This was just muscle pain. I used those muscles to push my hips over to the left. I think this is what I should have been doing forever. Is it too late to start now? If I perfect myself in this lifetime, does that mean I won't have to do it again in my next- if there is one?

The plan for the day was to be at Sandor and Meali'inani's house for a late lunch and early dinner. I have to get most of my steps in before I leave. Sandor changed it to a 3:30 start. With the change of time, I worried about coming home late for Elsa-dog's dinner. Sandor said I was welcome to bring her along. Great. However, he has two dogs of his own. I hoped they would get along. I took her food with me to feed her around 6 pm. Also, I had to work hard to get in at least 8,000 steps before leaving for the evening.

Elsa road in my lap the whole way to Sandor and Meali'inani's house; it took about 30 minutes. They live in a gated community. I had to get out of the car to press the code box. Elsa wanted to get out of the car with me because she was scared. I was wrestling with her while figuring out the code. At first, I just put in the number. The gate didn't budge. Then I pressed # as an afterthought—still nothing. Then I tried again, starting with the #, and then the number worked. I quickly hopped into the car to get through the gate before it closed on me. Once through the gate, I stopped abruptly to orient myself. Oh, boy. There were two cars behind me. The one right behind me had to veer not to hit me. All's well; that ends well.

When we arrived at the house, Elsa was shaking and smelling gas. I figured she had to go to the bathroom badly. Sandor was out in the driveway trying to get his driveway gate open. Once inside, my priority was getting poor Elsa out of the car onto the grass. Yes indeed. She had a craw full. I had a bag on me and picked it up. I left the bag along their walk. I didn't want to bring it into the house.

The house is magnificent. They live on three acres with an inground pool. The house has high ceilings and is open to the outside. We ate on the lanai. An uncle of Meali'inani's had built this twelve-foot blonde koa wood table. Unbelievably beautiful. We had a delicious dinner and great company. These in-person contacts are all the more meaningful for their dearth over the last year and a half. Both Sandor and Mealiinani looked fantastic. They are both so happy in their new home. Sandor looked more relaxed than I had ever seen him. Of course, from the time I met him until the last time I saw him before today, he was studying to become an ordained deacon in the Catholic Church. That's over, and he has a better living situation for himself. He loves gardening, and this property offers him a lot to do. Meali'inani also says this situation is much better than the one they were in.

Elsa and I drove home after dark, not a favorite activity of mine. We made it home safe and sound. This was a good day, empty except for my planned social event. I had to organize my time to get my steps in and some writing.

Saturday, July 24, 2020

I spent the morning writing and doing a little cleaning. At noon I left for the Post Office to mail three boxes of Mike’s ex-father-in-law’s books to a friend of Jean’s. Getting these books out isn’t too bad. They’re a finite number; it’s getting rid of all the rest of the three thousand books that weighs on me.

After Mike died, I had a young woman living with me for a while. It was perfect timing. She was a thirty-year-old that Yvette met at the massage school who needed a place to stay. Yvette asked me; I said sure. Yvette thought she would stay for a few days until she found another place to live. She was here for six months.

In the beginning, I loved having her here. She had some infection on her lower legs, a staph infection she got from scraping her legs on lava rock. Because she didn’t want to treat it with antibiotics, she worked out this elaborate cure that took at least a month. She would sit on the lanai soaking her wounds in some poultice. She was here, and she was a delightful presence. It couldn’t have worked out better for me. I had recently lost Mike and loved having the company.

Then she got involved with a boyfriend. That worked out okay for a while. Then they became more involved, and I hardly saw her. At first, I had fantasies of the two getting married and living in the converted library. IT sounded wonderful to me. It didn’t work out that way. As they became more involved, they avoided me more and more. Living with them became the opposite of companionable. It made me feel even lonelier. Eventually, I asked them to leave.

At the time of my fantasies of having them living here permanently, I was happily finding books to mail out. Now, I Was facing the prospect of an empty room. It was not so joyful. I found myself reluctant to do more. I have to write John Coughlin and see if I can convince him to let me take over the monthly expense of the online catalog of the books. I know I have someone who will take all the books to do with religion and philosophy, Matthew Horowitz of St. Patrick’s Seminary. That would only leave me with history, politics, and science books. I may be able to sell them online. However, now the idea of that room devoid of Mike’s books, just an empty room, fills me with sadness.

Where I expected the Post Office to be crowded on a Saturday morning, I found it exceptionally empty. The two clerks were already serving the two people before me. A third showed up and helped me immediately. I left with time to spare for my 1:30 follow-up appointment with the stem cell crew.

I took this opportunity to visit a beach. There was one I could stop at briefly just beyond the turn-off for the new Industrial district where I had to go. I just stood a distance from the shoreline and took in the water. I wasn’t close enough to hear the waves crashing. Also, they weren’t doing much crashing at that moment.

I made it just in time for my stem cell appointment. I received my last stem cell transplant in January. These folks do several follow-ups with ozone and platelet injections. Today it was ozone. That’s a fast in and out. The last time I was in, the doctor told me he could see a bone spur on my femoral head. He has a small ultrasound gadget to determine where to inject the needle. He looked. He saw one small one and a larger one. Depressing. He said it would take a year until he could see a difference in the cartilage from the stem cell transplant. I asked about his success rate with hips. He said 80%. However, the existing damage and the patient’s age make a difference. My left hip is almost devoid of cartilage, and I’m eighty—depressing prospects. Again, I had to consider if I should get a THR while I could.

The good doctor advised me to exercise to promote turn-out in both legs. Did he think that exercising would make a difference? I thought that wouldn’t do much good given the damage to the joint. Well, it’s worth considering. He also told me my left glute hurt because it was tight. He took away all hope with one hand and opened several new doors with the other. Wow! He inspired me to push for an even greater change in my walk.

Some blueberries fell on the floor as I was making dinner. Elsa gobbled them down. I grabbed my computer to check if dogs could eat them without being damaged. They’re okay. I’m wondering if eating these will help slake her appetite for grass. We’ll see.

I spent some time this evening checking the final version of the video Tommy compiled for me. I thought I would check how well he spliced the video sections together so it looked smooth. I found a much more serious problem. Everything was blurry, and in some sections, my mouth movements weren’t in sync with my speech.

I watched a Kate Winslet movie, A Little Chaos. I loved it; Mike would have loved it. It’s not only a period piece; it’s based on a historical event. However, the Kate Winslet character is a total fabrication. Good luck allowing a woman to lead a team of men in designing a section of the Versailles gardens at that time. But it was a fun movie.

Friday, July 23, 2021

Mama K's crew didn't come online at the appointed time. I texted Mom K, telling her to get hold of me when she got the message. I went out and gardened. She called shortly before 9 am when I had another appointment. We agreed to do it after 11. Then I got a text from her saying they had just heard from the Board of Health, and no one had Covid. They were free to go out. Did I mind if they canceled for the day so they could head for the beach? This family lives on the beach whenever they can.

I had an appointment with Shelly, my life coach/therapist. The subject at hand is loneliness, not just current but my forever loneliness. I think this was an emotion I denied most of my life. I remember a roommate my freshman year saying she saw me as living a lonely life. She didn't mean it as a loving observation. It was kind of scary. I thought she was saying she could see me being lonely for the rest of my life. Since I had a mom who always told me no one liked me, hearing it from a peer was distressing.

I do remember relating to loneliness in grad school. I read T.S. Elliott's play The Cocktail Party. One character says everyone is lonely. Some people know it, and some don't. I wonder if this is true. Could the difference be when we first experience loneliness? Even a loved child experiences abandonment when they don't get the attention they need immediately. Is that loneliness? Is it just part of all our lives? Is there a way to live so thoroughly embraced by a larger community that one never experiences loneliness? A relative attended my thirtieth birthday party in the commune. He said something about never having to feel lonely living there. It wasn't a stable group. If it had been, would the absence of loneliness have been possible? The loneliness of my childhood resulted from my endless conflict with my mom. I felt like I was living under constant threat. I suppose she did too.

In my work with Shelly, I'm just trying to sit with this feeling without running away. I know dealing with the feeling won't make my situation worse than it currently is. I'm not as vulnerable as I was as a child. I'm not even as vulnerable as I was before I met Mike. Whatever his failings, he made me feel loved and valued. Whatever my failings, I was able to feel loved.

I was reminded of a funny incident with Mom. While living with us in Princeton, she became distressed about my housekeeping. She told me that Mike was unhappy with it. I said he hadn't said anything to me. She said he wouldn't, but she could tell. I told her if he hid this information from me, our marriage was in so much trouble that my housekeeping was a nonissue. She walked away defeated and didn't try that crap on me again. Sometimes I think I developed as a verbally clever person as a survival strategy. If I came up with the right thought, expressed correctly, I could stop my mom in her tracks. At least I had some agency.

A, a student going into third grade, returned from his visit to the mainland with his grandparents and every amusement park within 100 miles. I had my first appointment with him on Wednesday. I have been fretting about this boy. The first time I saw him on Zoom, I thought he was odd. I spoke to the parents about it, and they denied any problem other than his problem with reading.

After several weeks off, A maintained the level of reading we had reached at the end of the school year. There may even be a slight improvement. However, he feels like someone who is constantly swimming in a swirling soup. I see him as having a sensory processing problem. I spoke to his parents once about him. I have been concerned that they have information on their son they are not sharing with me. I felt very frustrated. I decided I would call the parents and confront them on this issue. If they didn't share their information with me, I would recommend they find another tutor.

When I spoke to the mom, I didn't get stonewalling. However, the parents don't see the child as I see him. They say he appears normal as he plays with other children. He wasn't their first child; they have experience with children. Also, the mom and dad are two educated, articulate, thoughtful people. I told the mom about the BrainManagementSkills. I don't usually wind up telling parents about it before I use it. I have used this process for over thirty years and never had a bad outcome. However, I wanted to know what I was getting myself into in A's case. I had to consider that their perception is the accurate one. I had one incident where I was dead wrong already.

Given A's reading problems, I had reason to believe he had problems with bilateral movement. Several schools of thought associate bilateral movement, which coordinates the brain's two hemispheres, with reading problems. I told the mom to work with him on marching in place, ensuring that the opposing arm came forward with each leg. She assured me he had no problem. I couldn't believe it. I had him demonstrate. Not only did he not have a problem, but it was also clear that he was excellent at this task, a natural athlete. I had to consider that I'm off base on this other issue as well.

As I type, I'm considering another possibility. Dehaene says that the unconscious mind deals with all the details available. The unconscious mind then wrestles these details into some order. The conscious mind then cherry-picks the best choice for the external circumstances. What if A perceives at the deep level of the unconscious; that amounts to too much information. His head would be in a swirl.

I am going to describe the process to him directly. He is a bright child, very aware of himself and his surroundings, but it is not immediately apparent. Possibly, he's a genius who hasn't mastered his mind yet.

While on the phone with A's mom, I realized my alarm hadn't gone off for my 10:30 session with Sixth-grade D. I got on Zoom a few minutes late. I asked him if the release we had worked on had held; had the problem with sound compression stayed resolved. He said yes. With this success, he jumped from reading fourth-grade material to seventh-grade material in a flash. He read most of the words at this level correctly, including words he was unfamiliar with. He had trouble with sight words, high-frequency words, like was, and, because, for, etc. There was only one unfamiliar word he had difficulty decoding, the word fiscal. He kept reading it as physical. He couldn't let go of the familiar pronunciation for the unfamiliar sound of a word he had never heard before. It took time and effort for him to get it correctly. He could infer the meaning of fiscal with a bit of coaching. He was missing vocabulary but picked up on inferencing quickly.

The gardeners arrived. In preparation, I did some weeding and clipping. I just leave the waste lying around. It was Mike's job to clean up. The gardeners take care of it now.

Tommy came by around 4 to review the complete video on my reading method, Phase I, with me. I had him look at Mike's laptop. The man died without leaving me his passwords. I, fortunately, had the password for his tablet because he had me do something on it. The password is also my name; that makes it easy.

Sandor called to invite me to lunch on Sunday. Sandor was born in Cuba; his family came to the US as a child fleeing the dictatorship. He speaks to family members in Cuba and has on-ground information on what is going on. Much of what he had to say hadn't been in the news, at least not the news I'd heard. He said the riots were not inspired by a bad response to Covid and food shortages. They are a response to a change in some money exchange. I couldn't follow it all; it was something like dollars had to be exchanged for Cuban currency at a price. But now, somehow, they were demanding a second exchange, something to do with the Euro, and imposing a second surcharge. The government relies on citizens receiving money from relatives in the US. However, there are many Cubans who do not have that support. These people are made progressively poorer by the circumstances. These people were rioting; they were dying anyway and had nothing left to lose.

Sandor reported that the government was shanghaiing adolescent boys and forcing them to mix among the rioters and hit them with sticks. They were thrown into jail as traitors if they or their families resisted. I don't know if I got this next part right: I think he said the government was forcing these boys into those roles so they could claim that the rioters are just youth gangs in conflict with each other.

He also said that an ex-wife of one of Fidel's sons made public the corruption among the head of state. They are squirreling away money in foreign banks while the people starve.

Wednesday, July 21, 2021

I woke up this morning feeling lonely, just ordinary lonely, which means my body wasn’t racked with fear intensifying the loneliness. Today, I just looked over to Mike’s side of the bed and wished he was there. I loved living with that man. He was such a comfort and a joy.

When working with Mama K’s crew this morning, I started with third-grade K. He wrote his first and last names in no time. He observed that if you add an extra line, the s can become an 8. Thrilling. Look at the observations and connections he was making. Today, I had him write, “The brown fox jumps over the dog.” He remembered the sentence as he wrote. He remembered where brown came in the sentence. He struggled a little with the spelling of brown but thought it out. I had asked him to write all the words in a single line instead of a vertical list of words. He tried. He wrote the first word in the middle of the page so that he couldn’t fit many words on one line. This may be too hard for me to deal with over Zoom. We’ll see.

I had Twin A first today. She is still working on remembering the alphabet. I only started introducing the -at family. I decided to try the BrainManagementSkills today. I asked her the color of her blanket. Yellow. She closed her eyes when I asked her to see her blanket in her memory. Wow! Twin E had looked up, straining to see the word in her memory with her eyes. Twin A got it. However, she saw it toward the back of her head, where she would wear a headband. I instructed her to see the image on the inside of her forehead. She easily made that switch.

Then I proceeded to check her auditory processing center. She pointed to behind her ear, indicating where she stored the memory of the sound. Again, I redirected her to use areas of her brain that I have experienced as more suitable. Again, she was able to make that switch.

Then I guided her through encoding information into long-term memory and retrieving it. I told her to hold the image of the letter i on her blanket and ask her mind for the name of the letter. She named several letters that she had been having problems with correctly. I asked her to do the same with several other letters she had trouble remembering—even the letter n. Up to now, she figured out the name of the letter by saying the letters in her name, one of which is the letter n. Today, she could “ask her mind” for the name and get it directly from memory.

She had trouble with the letter w. I hadn’t covered it up to now. ‘Her mind” didn’t know it. I had her hold the visual image of the letter in her mind and hear me giving the name of the letter. I instruct children to ‘push the save button,” her nose, and make a clockwise motion above their ear gong to the back of their head. She followed my instructions but used a counterclockwise motion instead of clockwise. I was anxious to have her correct it. She did.

Then I instructed her to hold the visual image and ‘ask her mind’ for the name of the letter. She said, “He doesn’t know it.” I have never had a child identify their unconscious mind as something outside of themselves, no less something of a different sex. I will work to help her understand that ‘her mind’ is part of her in response to “her mind” not knowing. I told her to ask her mind to repeat what I had said it was. The answer came up. All very, very exciting.

Then I had Twin E. I reminded her of the work we had done. I was going just to do the routine work, and then I had an idea. I asked her about her blanket—pink as before. When I asked her to remember it, she looked up as she had before. But this time, I told her to keep her eyes closed and see the blanket in her mind. I learned this from Twin A, and it worked like a charm. I reintroduced the word the. She wrote it on her blanket, held the sound of the name of the word in her head, pressed the save button, and sent the information to long-term memory. Then I asked her to retrieve the information using the reverse process. It came up. I hadn’t given her a distractor yet, but yesterday she couldn’t even do this.

I had sixth-grade D at 10:30. He said the work we had done with the BrainManagementSkills held. He reported that speech sounds remained clear; they didn’t compress as before. Wow! Great! He said he saw a significant improvement in his reading. I had him read fourth-grade material from Barnell Loft that I had transcribed (t-r-a-n-s/c-r-i-b-ed). He read it perfectly. He read so well that I thought it was time to challenge him to work on decoding longer words. I brought up seven-grade reading material from Barnell Loft. He read the transcribed words perfectly. He said he thought he would have an easier time reading the material without the transcription. I had both prepared. He again read perfectly. Wow! Guess his initial problem has been solved.

However, he had problems with his vocabulary. Because of his reading problem, he had not had the opportunity to learn comprehension strategies. He had trouble reading the word fees. I guided him. “Start with the vowels. Give your best guess for the sound ee might make. Could it make a long /o/? Could it make an /f/ sound?” I think it is as important to know what sounds are not possible as the ones that are. Figuring out a vowel sound in English is a statistical task. He correctly said the long e, the most likely sound for that digraph. He then blended the initial f and the suffix s. I asked him if he knew what the word meant. He said no. I asked if he understood that his mother paid school fees. Yes, he knew what that was. He was not used to using his background knowledge. That’s something I would work on.

As I walked this evening, my foot didn’t hurt at all. All the numbness was gone. It bothered me this morning. The big difference is I treated the right side of my back with the acupuncture pen. Can you believe it?

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Musings:

Dehaene on the role of the conscious mind from his book Consciousness and the Brain.

He argues that the unconscious mind processes all the incoming data. It formulates some simple choices, and the conscious mind makes those final choices. He disagrees with Kahneman that most decisions are made before the conscious mind becomes involved. According to Kahneman, we start the actions before the conscious mind comes online.

I see the conscious mind as having two functions. First, it vetoes choices. The conscious mind observes the choices of the unconscious mind and intervenes when things look bad. Its second function serves as a gateway between unfamiliar information and the unconscious mind. I would guess that choosing what new information comes in is a joint choice; the conscious and unconscious minds consult if they have a good relationship. Their union is much like a marriage. In a good marriage, both partners have input. Each has veto rights in case of emergency. Once the two parts of the brain have made a joint decision, the conscious mind must take the lead until the process becomes automatic. Then it is the sole domain of the unconscious mind again. Our genius rests in the unconscious, not the conscious mind.

Thursday, July 22, 2021

As I awoke, I felt alone but not lonely. As I dozed again, I had a weird dream that Mike left me because he didn't love me anymore. That was upsetting. Since he died, when I had dreams like that, he took action. He'd move the towels in the bathroom, if not some large piece of furniture. In my dream, he was still alive. I ran into him on the street. All our connections were gone. We were strangers. It was weird and disconcerting. Worse yet, I didn't feel his presence as I have since he died. I was dealing with loneliness. What can I say: bring it on.

I had Mama K's crew at 8:30.Third-grade K was my first' victim.' Someone was yelling at him to take his iPad out of his pocket. K begged to be allowed to hold on to it. He said it was only in his pocket; he wouldn't use it during our session. The voice insisted. Poor K started to sob but relinquished his iPad. It wound up the mysterious voice wasn't his dad but his 18-year-old brother, acting out the role of the big man in the house. While big brother was saying he was assuring K gave all his attention to our session, it had the opposite effect. He spent several minutes arguing with K, The boy was desolate without it, hardly in condition for a tutoring session. I talked to him for a minute, comforting him. I asked him which was more important, his best friend or his iPad. He said they were equally important. It winds up he sleeps with his iPad. It sounds like his iPad is his 'blue blankey;' it's a source of comfort for him. It is steady and reliable. Amazingly, he calmed down quickly and did a great job in the session.

Twin A had a perfect recall of letter names, even g, and q, which I had never covered with her except when I originally surveyed her knowledge of the alphabet. She remembered this from what she heard in school. I started working with her on phonics. She was able to identify the letters and the sounds in -at. However, she has problems blending. Bat came out as brat and sat as slat.

I teach starting with the vowel, then working to the end of the word, and only then adding on the beginning sounds. Now I have to think of how to help Twin A articulate the transition from /b/ to that short /a/. The folks at the University of Florida Reading institute say, "say the sounds quickly." That's what she did, and she added an extra sound. How do I teach her to blend a consonant with the following vowel? /B/ is a stopped consonant. Blending them is a challenge. To make the /b/ in isolation, you press your lips together, create some pressure with your breath, and then release your lips. The /b/ explodes from your mouth; it is called a plosive. When you blend it, you have to do steps one and two, but step three is different. As you open your mouth to release your breath (and the sound), you must form the vowel sound immediately. Very tricky. I model it. I ask the student to form their mouth with me. Let's see how this goes with A.

Twin E.did better with holding the sounds of-at versus ap when blending different initial sounds. However, she had no recall of the word the.

This wound up being an easy day. I didn't even have J from California. J started ghosting me. My first reaction was to get angry. Among other things, I had been pushing like mad to complete 12 sessions this summer so he could get a gift card with enough money to take his family out to a restaurant. I contacted the Step Up Tutoring program. He completed 12 sessions; he could get the card. This poor kid has been in school nonstop. He went to summer school and didn't get home until supper time. We both needed a break. I love the tutoring problem, except they require me to be involved with a student for two hours a week. During the summer, they require sessions to be at least 45 minutes long. Research shows that shorter, more frequent sessions are more effective than longer sessions. I first wrote to J's mom, who speaks no English, asking her what she wanted to do. After I learned we had satisfied the 12-session limit. I wrote that we were taking a break. She didn't answer my first email. She did my second, thanking me for helping her son. My best guess is that she didn't want him to continue but was afraid to speak up.

I did a few hours of garden work. I always put it off and then love wrestling with the vegetation. All I'm good for is weeding. Planting or feeding is out of my reach.

I finally started work on writing a new version of the article on my reading method. Rather than edit the one I had already written, I chose to start from scratch using the organization of the video for the article's structure.

I read something about the film Euro Trip being a good movie. Matt Damon has a cameo in it; so does Lucy Lawless. I thought it was pretty stupid, or let's say, adolescent. Its humor is all based on sexual references and events. I like British comedy, at least the ones they made before being influenced by the American movie machine.

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Musings

Others are to us what they illuminate in us. I don't mean that others don't have a separate existence worth learning about. I don't mean that the needs of others are irrelevant; everyone is just at our service. I mean that people are important to us because of their role in our lives. That's just reality. Mike was more important to me than almost anyone else I know. Surprise! I think the person we become is deeply influenced by the people we hang out with. We respond to their positive and negative reactions to us. Aspects of ourselves are illuminated by particular people, just as there are aspects of us that fall into neglect because we have no one to illuminate them.