Friday, December 31, 2021

 Friday, December 31, 2021  

 

    I turned off the lights before 10 pm and slept straight through to 4:30. What? That hasn't happened in years. The good news was I could sleep. The bad news was I didn't drink enough water that day. I would have had to get up and pee more than once if I had. 

    My ankle felt pretty good when I got up. I took an Ibuprofen to be on the safe side. The ankle was inflamed last night. I found that my ankle does better when I make sure it makes a full range of motion. Today, I did something different. I don't know if I can describe it.   To put my weight on my left foot, I pushed over to the left with my abdominals and allowed the left leg and foot to turn in as much it wanted to. When I did that, there was no discomfort. Worthwhile exploring. No, I'm not 'favoring' the leg. I'm looking for neutral to find a starting point for further change.   I use my walking stick not to get the weight off my bad leg, but I allow myself to put as much weight on it as possible. 

  I made a list and checked it twice. I have a very long list of things to do. Small things have accumulated over time and some that were current.  

   I ran into Judy and Paulette coming back from the airport after dropping off a Turo car. We talked for a minute. I was standing by the car; none of us were masked. Judy's family is unvaccinated. They believe all the fuss is overdone. She has to tolerate my unwillingness to share her point of view as she has to tolerate mine. Judy grabbed my hand and held it. It was the first time since Mike died that I felt touched. It's not. I have had several massages, regular ones from my acupuncturist. But Judy sent warmth, love, and caring in her touch. That's what being with Mike felt like. It reminded me of how much I missed his presence.

   I had a session with Shelly. I had been modulating my voice, so it's softer, more melodic. Today, I started working on my wording. With my students, I am careful not to box my students in, not to define what they think or perceive or what they need to do to be better readers. However, the change of tone or phrasing is hard. I associate that softer tone and wording with manipulation, not openness. While I was open to the idea of changed wording, my psyche brought me to a screeching halt. I have an aversion to vocal subtly. Most of the people I know who use it are control freaks. I don't want to be that person. I understand somewhere in my brain that I won't use it that way because I'm not that person. I have to think through what the problem is. 

     I left right after my session with Shelly ended for the dentist's office. It's on the second floor of an industrial complex. I always climb it. Some days I have to go very slowly, one step at a time. Today, it was easy. I could remember running up stairs. I was being fitted with a retainer. The dentist couldn't get it to fit. He examined it and found a spot where he thought the mold had been broken and crudely repaired. He commented that poor lab work was caused by people not working because of government support. I do know f some instances where that is the case. However, I also know many people were dependent on this support for food for their families. I didn't say anything because of the tone he used. I didn't want to get into politics. 

 I had a session with adolescent D, our fourth for the week. We usually only meet for three half-hour sessions a week. I thought to describe my work with other students who have problems with shifting letters. However, I wound up asking him for more details about his experience. The letters don't always shift. No, he does not know if they will shift before he starts reading. He says this isn't a constant motion problem. The selected letters make one shift to the right. He must see the word both ways to know they shifted. The more information we have, the better our chances of making a difference. The more peaceful he can be with the experience simply observing it, the better his chances of controlling the problem. 

     When I asked him what he remembered from the spelling of Mother and Father from yesterday. He remembered both words had her in them. Good. He didn't remember the th, but this is better than nothing. He got the initial letters from the sounds but could not remember the vowel letters in the first syllables. He did a pretty good job spelling the other words in the paragraph. There were several words repeated over and over in this passage. He could find the word and copy it. Great! Good skill.

      I almost forgot to work on the visualization game, preparing him to be the game master. I started with the instruction to ask the participant to pick the number of letters they wanted in their word. I did one word. As I did it, he created new challenges for me. He didn't just ask before and after questions (what comes before a, after a); he asked between ( what letter comes between z and b) and first and last letter questions. When I answered everything correctly, he expressed disappointment. If this exercise does nothing else, it will hopefully develop his confidence in himself and his spatial sense.

   My new toe things arrived. I bought two joined foam loops to deal with my hammertoe. When I read the instructions, it said, "Not for use with hammertoes." I put it on the way it was designed, the larger loop over the first toe and the second over the second. Well, that wasn't going to do anything for my toes. It would not stop the first toe from sliding under the second and the second from climbing over the first. I put the large loop over my second toe and the smaller one over the third.   The bands were thinned as they stretched and dug into my skin, cutting off my blood flow. I put a toe separator inside the large loop, distributing the force of the band over a larger area. I also put a smaller one in the smaller loop. Let's see how this works.  

   I have been recording the stats on my blog for a while now. The numbers are amazing. I'm not counting on this continuing. I still believe my blog is a class assignment. When the class is over, I lose all my visitors. Below are the stats on the number of pages read per country. How do people all over the world find this blog?

     

Blogger.com provides statistics. Below are the number of pages read by country. 

           Total- 19.8 K, which happens to be fewer than the number of visitors. I have no idea.

Germany-       7.29K

USA   -       4.3K I have no idea why people are reading my blog.  I suspect

Indonesia-       1.98K                      many are using it to improve their English. 

Hong Kong-   1.5 K

Israel       -     1.48 K

Turkey    -        853

Canada    -        570

 UK          -        349

 Sweden   -        261

 Ireland    -       246

Taiwan    -       229

France     -       106

Bolivia    -         69

Netherlands-      66

Russia     -        60 

Australia   -       59

Japan        -       56

 China       -        31

UAE-       -        28

Other       -      156

 

   By the end of the day, my left foot right beneath the ankle was swollen. I took an Ibuprofen and iced it. That was an easy fix.

  The firecrackers started by 6 pm. I had to think of Elsa. When she hears a loud noise, she runs to me and asks me to pick her up and carry her around. She is only 13 lbs., but that is still a bother to hold up. Instead of eating my dinner on the lanai, screened-in porch, I sat further back in the house. Elsa was in my lap for a while. She wasn't shaking, just lying there quietly. Later on, she was content on the floor by my side.   I watched Emily in Paris. I didn't enjoy it as much because it introduced frustrations for the main characters. I don't need that.

  I headed to bed around 9:15, my usual time. I hadn't completed my10,000 steps because Elsa wouldn't have done well on the street. I walked up and down through my bedroom- bathroom suite. I got most of the steps in that way. Then I went out in the backyard and finished off the rest while watching some firecrackers go off.

Thursday, December 30, 2021

Thursday, December 30, 2021

 

    Yesterday, I thought of an old college friend who lives in Maryland. When I picked up my mail, there was a Christmas card from her. Before I went to bed, I found her name in my address book. I wanted to leave it open, so I remembered to call her on my morning walk. I accidentally dialed her number and hung up immediately. She called back immediately. I apologized for having called her at 2 am and hung up.

    I had a good night's sleep. My ankle was stiff when I woke up. I'm confused why it's considered a problem with the joint when it's the muscles that are tight. I was concerned that I couldn't call my friend because I needed a hand free to hold the phone. On my morning walk, I always have Elsa with me. I have her leash in one hand and my walking stick in the other. When I have her and want to be on the phone, I tuck the walking stick under my left arm. I have Elsa leash in my right hand, leaving a hand free to hold the phone.   It took a while for my ankle to be warmed up enough to feel comfortable not using the stick.

     I called my friend. She didn't answer. I thought that was funny; she answered at 2 am but not at 11 in the morning. She texted me later. She had been in the shower and now was heading out to lunch. She would make this conversation happen later. 

    Having time and a free hand free, I called my friend Jean in Arizona. She hadn't been in good spirits yesterday. I wanted to check on her. She just had an incomplete medical procedure and was having trouble with the doctor's office. She was having trouble with a real estate transaction, a nasty realtor representing the seller. Today,  she was in a much better mood. So glad.

   For yoga this morning, it was only Yvette, me, and Deb. We all knew the routine and did the work on our own. Lying on the concrete is the best. It does wonders for my back.

   I continued working on representing the variables in fifth grade's W'sstory. I looked up the two-by-two chart. I realized this is not a two-by-two design. I'm not sure what it is or if I just don't understand the pattern. This is what I came up with.

 

 

 

Ate the real food              Ate the dream food```                 . . .and what happened	Didn’t eat the real food        Ate the dream food.          . . .  and what happened.
Didn’t eat the real food        Didn’t eat the dream food            . . .  and what happened.	Ate the real food          Didn’t eat the dream food             . . .  and what happened.

Mom:

    W and I are working on modifying a story she wrote. Clever girl! She turned the whole story into an experiment. She wrote about two of the possibilities and their outcome already. She wanted to include more.   I suggested she draw the possibilities as a way of organizing her thoughts. Please, share this graph with her. 

    My friend Carol Z. will know how to chart or diagram this. I don't know the correct words. I took only one statistics course. I busted my ass, got my A, and promptly forgot everything I had learned.  

    

   The man who was coming to inspect my house from the termite company called. He wanted to come over now. I had a 1 pm scheduled. That wasn't going to work. Then I had a text from my 1 pm asking to change it to 1:30. Sure. I called the terminate man back and told him it would be good if he came now. He arrived precisely at 1:30. I showed him the concerning area and went to my zoom meeting with adolescent D.

     D had a bad day focusing. He just loses his place. It's like he's walking along and falls in a hole where he can't be seen or see what's above the ground. I see it as a stress response. I don't know why. The words were easy today. He can spell a lot of single-syllable words. However, he has terrible problems if he can't sound them out. He had trouble remembering something I showed him one minute before. Two of the words were mother and father. He could remember the second syllable ther; he could figure out the initial letters from their sounds, but he couldn't remember the vowel letters in the first syllables. 

     Today, we identify a number of his learning problems:  1. The letters move around on the page and in his mind; 2) he has poor to no visual recall, having no memory for the spelling of words he has seen and worked on minutes before. 3)  has problems maintaining his attention; he slips away into a dozing state. I assume it is a stress response, but I can't be sure.

    I  asked him about the moving letter problem periodically since we started. He always denied he had such a problem. This is the first time he is admitting to it. This is amazing. I had to handle him very carefully. He is so fragile. He also has a lot of problems.   I would normally dive right into using healing visualizations to resolve many of these problems. I listen carefully if that feels right. It didn't feel like the right thing to do with D,  but I got a different idea.   

     Thirty years ago, someone trained in Neurolinguistic Programming taught me a trick. Visualize the letters in a word. Say the letters forward, and then say them backward from the image in your mind. When I started, I had to respell the word every time. Now, it all happens automatically. I just 'see' the word in my mind. I can quickly just 'read' the letters as if I am looking right at them. I start this exercise by numbering the letters. Then I ask the student to name the last, the fifth, the fourth, etc., to guide them to name them backward. This worked reasonably well with the four letters in his name.

   I modeled the exercise with D using my own name, Elizabeth. As I did it, I tried something I had never done before. I was both the gamemaster and the participant. I said, "The letter before b is a. The letter after he letters after l is i."  D's mom walked into the room as we were ending the session. I asked if she could facilitate an event where this is a game that other members of the family play. D should ONLY be the GAME MASTER, never a participant.   He must ask, "What letter comes before ____?" and "What letter comes after ___?" on a chosen word. As I wrote this, I conceived of a necessary restriction. The game master has to ask the participants, "How many letters do you want in your word? Or How long should your word be?" I fear D will create challenges to force the participants to fail. That would be a normal impulse for someone who has faced endless humiliation because of his own limitations. 

    I told mom this could help D. Our brains synchronize when engaged in the same activity. My theory is we copy the brain patterns of people around us. We are most comfortable with those whose brain patterns are close to our own when we meet them. That is the definition of harmony. While we can find people who already share our patterns, we can all adapt to those around us. Even our pets become more like us, and we become more like our pets.

   I watched a documentary on Tia Notaro last night instead of additional episodes of either The Durrells in Corfu or Emily in Paris.   I first encountered Tig in the film One Mississippi. I love her comedy. She is present and leaves room for me to breathe. This documentary only confirms my opinion of her. She is so completely herself while being thoughtful and kind. What a great combination. She talks about her relationship with her wife: she said, "I was in love before but never like this." I think the 'like this' means a comfortable relationship filled with love and laugher. It's what I had with Mike. No, it was not perfect. No, it was not always its best moments. It was just there were enough of those to make the relationship more a source of joy than a source of grief. Even his death hasn't wrecked me. I still carry his love and delight with me. How lucky am I?! 

Wednesday, December 29, 2021

Wednesday, December 29, 2021

 

   I slept well for the first part of the night and then dozed on and off. I used the cramp-release strategy during the night. The pain in my ankle had shifted from below the ankle to above it. It was uncomfortable walking this morning. It was better when I went through the full range of motion in the joint. The discomfort feels like it did when I sprained it while living in Ohio. Horatio, aka Horrorshow, butted me from behind, knocking my leg out from under me. I twisted my left ankle. Horatio and I didn't like each other. 

   Susan from the dentist's office called to say that my dental mold was in. I needed to make an appointment for a fitting. First, she made one for Thursday. She called back later to say she had to change it for Friday. 

   Today was garbage day. I have two containers in pull-out 'drawers' in my kitchen. I have one of those in my bathroom. We designed our home with two Portuguese Water dogs in mind. Then there is the covered pail in the driveway we use for dog poop. Soon I will need more small one-gallon trash bags. I use them for my bathroom pail, the poop pail, and packing the books in Mike's library for shipping. The books travel by boat. They can get wet. These were bags I bought when my mom was still alive before 2001 when she died. The industrial-sized quantity I bought is finally running out. 

    At 9 am I had the third session for the week with the M & W sisters. First grade M had problems reading the word after even though she had read the passage in our last session, reading it as other. This triggered a burst of insecurity in me even though she correctly read every other word in the passage. She just had problems with two-syllable words at a higher level. It was time to incorporate Phase II, decoding multi-syllable words.

   Fifth grade W did a great job with Phase III. Today we covered the punctuation with quotation marks and the overall organization.  

   W wrote a story in which she ate a lot of food in a dream after eating a full dinner beforehand and didn't want to eat for the next day. She proceeded to set up an experiment in which she didn't eat a real meal or a meal in her dream to see how she would feel the next day. That was the only experiment she did. In the middle of using this material for Phase III, she decided she wanted to change the wording in one paragraph to change the experiment. I told her not to do that but instead to expand the story with another form of the experiment. 

      I was surprised; here I was doing high school or college-level work wither. I knew it was a two-by-two experiment, but I found myself scrambling to figure out how to express the idea. I thought if I had laid it out as a two-by-two to start out with, it would have saved me time and aggravation. That's what I did when I wrote papers in college; I would create a chart outlining the paper's organization, but I couldn't figure out how to do it now. I struggled with the design and finally told W to draw the various options to make sure she knew what she was doing. I planned to create a chart to show her what the drawings should be about. I am encouraging her to use her love of drawing to help her organize her written work.

     Judy called while I was out walking. She was on her way home from the dentist. She turned onto our street as I was walking toward the intersection. It was weird talking to her on the phone and simultaneously talking directly. We switched off our phones, and I walked beside her car as she inched down the street. I told her how the two sessions with the M & W sisters made me feel inadequate. Just talking about it calmed me.  

     Mowg called to tell me he had Covid. The other day he told me he was exposed and tested. Now he had the results. I wasn't particularly concerned because I knew Omicron was mild, and he was jabbed up to the max.   He said he had mild symptoms. It was nothing to be concerned about. His biggest problem was he couldn't go into work. He's a general manager at a local restaurant. He feels like he's abandoning his staff. While he doesn't wait tables, he pitches in if his staff feels overwhelmed. He sounds like a great boss.

    At 12:30, I left the house to go to Holualoa to pick up the Sundog sourdough bread I ordered. I arrived just at 1. Today, they were already distributing the bread. Last time, their opening was delayed by a late setup. Today, they started a new arrangement where the preorders were picked up in a different spot than retail. The guy who was doing the preorders was scrambling and apologizing for the confusion. He had 30-50 slips of paper in his hand. He had to go through them to find my order. I suggested he divide the slips of paper into alphabetic groups A-D, E-G, etc. He would have fewer pieces of paper to scramble through and would be less likely to get them all out of order. He asked if I would like to come work for them. When I got my two loaves, I walked away. I had a thought about how to improve the system. Place a colored piece of paper on top of each pile with the letters of the alphabet contained within that pile. I walked back to his table, waited until he was through serving the next customer, and made my suggestion.

   When I got back, I saw Judy's car parked on the street in front of Mei's house. I went into the house and got all the trays, plates, and containers I had from Judy's food contributions, so I didn't starve. I put them in the front seat of her car. Then I walked to my car, picked up the loaf of sourdough I bought for her, and put it on top of the plates. 

   I finally washed the kitchen floor and the tiled hallway. Ah, did that feel good! I haven't even been sweeping the floor regularly in anticipation of washing it every day. I also got up-to-date on my updates. The blog numbers are going up instead of down. I have no idea. I requested to learn more about my readers, asking them to make comments, but there had been no response. 

Tuesday, December 28, 2021

 Tuesday, December 28, 2021

 

    A good night's sleep, no discomfort. Yay! Interesting. The problem with my ankle has shifted to my calf just above my ankle. The ankle itself feels fine. Last night before I went to sleep, I did more of the cramping cure. What is that? Instead of stretching tense muscles, I move the joint to induce a cramp. I know some cramps can be so bad that they can leave you screaming. This doesn't do that. It is easy to modulate the cramp. I can relieve the degree of discomfort if I need to. I maintain the cramp to the fullest extent I can tolerate it until it releases on its own. It works to heal the problem. 

   Driveway yoga today was just me and Yvette. (Yes, I know this in 'bad 'grammar, but I love the form; it's the alliteration. The m in me and the n in and are both nasals. And then, when you have me and my; three nasals in a row. Enough to bring joy to anyone's soul.)

  Yvette was out playing with our sliding gate before we started. It gets stuck. She carefully examined the gate's movement on the rail and noticed that it was rubbing against the trunk of a tree. A groove carved into its base where the gate rubbed against it. She pointed to a spot on the tree base that was already shaved out. We need someone to do the same thing on this spot of the tree.

   I had the M & W sisters for the last time this week. First grade M was very distracted today. She looked away from the screen frequently. Now, she had a few distractions. Her mother was on the phone nearby, speaking in a loud voice. M claimed the real distractor was her sister in the kitchen preparing breakfast. I asked her if she had problems paying attention in school. Yes. I turned my attention to her inattention problem. She is easily distracted by activities around her. 

   I developed a method for helping students with that variety of ADD over thirty years ago. The image of a bullseye came to mind. That was my vision of the attention mechanism in our minds. I saw it working much the way the eye does. We have objects in the center of our vision, the fovea. Those are the clearest. The rest are visible but not as sharp. I told the boy I was working with to put me in the center of the bullseye. There was some distracting noise. I asked him if it pushed its way right into the center of the bullseye. He said yes. I suggested he push it out to one of the peripheral rings. He tried. It felt as if he was trying to lift a car. It wouldn't budge. 

   The image of a pinball machine came to mind; specifically, the spring-loaded knob called a plunger. The player pulls the plunger and releases it, sending a small metal ball flying up the shooter's alley on its way to the amusement park of obstacles. I instructed the student to pull that knob and 'shoot' the intruding event to an outer ring. Then I told him to put the 'intruding 'event in the center and my voice on an outer ring. This exercise aims to give the student control of their attention mechanism, not to teach them what to pay attention to. 

    Unfortunately, first grade M had no idea what I was talking about. She didn't get the image of the bullseye representing her attention. When I told her to move her sister's distracting presence to an outer ring, she thought I meant to tell her to move to a different room. She also had never seen a pinball machine, so that image didn't work either. I think I was able to help her understand that the bullseye represented something going on in her head, not in the world outside of it. That image will do the trick with any luck, and she will develop a method for removing distractions from the center of her attention. 

    I did some work with Phase III with M,  just the reading phase. She had a lot of problems with just reading today. She couldn't follow anything I was saying.

    I worked exclusively on Phase III with fifth grade W.  She has an excellent memory for long, complicated sentences. Her spelling is generally good too. Today, her mother provided a keyboard so W could add on the physical aspect of writing. It didn't work. She was able to write it by hand on the screen. When she did, I typed in what she wrote. There were a few occasions for instruction. She wrote decided as decited. I was able to tell her why her choice was a good one, even if it wasn't correct. All medial t are pronounced as /d/ in American English. My name, Betty, rhymes with beddy. There is no way of knowing which letter is the correct one based on the sound in the word. However, spell check will give the writer the correct spelling if the writer's spelling is close enough.   She also started to write making as makeing. She caught herself. I asked her if she knew the rule. No. Her visual recall is good enough to have noticed the pattern without knowing the rule.

    After the session, I headed out for a short walk. I went left out of the driveway, passing Darby's house. I heard some noise that sounded like someone was trying to put up a ladder coming from her backyard. I called out her name. While she was working in the yard, she was not wrestling with a ladder. She told me to hang on; she would go get a mask and accompany me on my walk.   

    The other day, Darby told me that her husband Patrick commented that I hadn't had the genius that everyone is born with knocked out of me. I wondered what he was referring to. People have often commented on how smart I am, and I'm left wondering what I said or did create that impression. Darby asked Patrick directly. It was in response to my behavior when they came to my house to use the Internet to connect to their Kaiser doctor. There were problems making connections. He said I took charge; I was efficient and competent, and then I knew when to get out of the way and leave them to it. I think he confused genius with east coast style. 

   While I had been walking well when I started my walk. After a while, my ankle was bothering me. When Darby and I came to my driveway, I began to turn in. She called my name. She told me she almost bought me a Christmas card which said, "You are the perfect amount of inappropriate." I can't think of a greater compliment.

     I lay down for a nap. My ankle gave me serious problems even while I lay there with my leg elevated. This was scary. The ankle problem causes more serious limitations than my hip did/does. Now, the pain is in a different spot. I iced it and treated it with the acupuncture pen. It wasn't perfect, but it was better. 

     I had an appointment with adolescent D at 1 pm. He texted me if we could do 1:30pm. Then his mom texted, saying they were at the dentist. We started shortly after 1:30 and continued with Phase III. This winds up being an amazing process. It serves as a diagnostic tool as well as a teaching one. D spelled for as of. When I encouraged him to hear the first sound in the word, he couldn't identify the /f/. When he finally did, he spelled the word orf. I would never in a million years have guessed that this was going on in his head if I was using Phase III with him. A few minutes later, we came across the word could. He spelled it as cud. That was pretty good. He showed a good grasp of the possible sound/letter relationship. I showed him the correct spelling. I blocked his view of the written word and asked him to spell it. Silence. "Sorry, I wasn't listening." He does that when he's overwhelmed. Started again. He wrote culd. I had him write the word on his forehead. Culod. Oh, dear. Those letters must be moving around in his head.

   I asked him if they were moving. I have asked this question at least twice before. He always said no. Today, he admitted that the letters do move. I asked questions about how they moved. They moved from left to right in a zigzag pattern speeding up as it went. The up-down motion is limited, not huge. I established that he hates this in himself. It makes him angry at himself. Great! I told him if I thought self-hatred helped with the reading process, I would push for it. I believe that self-hatred is counterproductive.   (Not that all self-hatred and/or shame is all bad. Not at all. I believe they both serve a positive function. But my reasons for that are for another day.)

   My first question to m was; was he interested in getting rid of that self-hatred? Yes. That's a good start. I had in mind to start the release phrases: release anything negative about his hatred of his anger toward himself and keep anything positive or anything he still needs. And its opposite: release anything negative about his love for his anger and keep anything positive . .. . . etc. However, I didn't get a clear signal to move ahead with those protocols. I always wait until things feel right. When I'm in my professional role, I'm golden. When in personal contexts, not so much. In fact, I can spit out accusations like an AK47. It's not pretty when I get scared. For today, I got to do nothing with him. If things go well, he will solve the problem on his own. That's what happened with auditory processing. I never led him through the change process. All I got to do was introduce the concept that the brain activity could change and help him become aware of the pattern, particularly the negative aspect of his existing pattern.

   I did some work on my ankle. I used the acupuncture pen on as much of my calf as I could reach. I saw clearly this morning that my spine was out of whack in the region of my shoulder blades. My right shoulder was curved forward in a way that made my spine crooked. I applied the acupuncture pen to that area. Voila! My ankle felt better immediately. Go figure! You never know what is affecting what. 

   Later in the afternoon, I had third grade A. My first question was about his Christmas. What did he get? He mentioned large objects, like a bike. I asked how he got it to Hawaii. It took several questions to figure out that he was still in Florida. A looks neurodivergent.  His parents either don't knowledge it or just won't admit it to me. He often rolls his head around looking at the ceiling and giggles inappropriately. In our last session, I noticed a change. Some of that change held. However, he clenched his fists when he made a mistake while we worked. I asked if he was angry at himself for doing it wrong. He said yes. I told him if I thought for a minute anger at himself would help him become a better reader, I would encourage him. Not only don't I think self-directed anger or self-hatred helps, I think it is counterproductive. Was he interested in letting go of his anger? He was hesitant. I presented the release protocol:"  Let go of anything bad about my hatred for my anger toward myself, etc, and then let go of anything negative about my love of my anger toward myself. He reported degrees of relaxation. That's what we're looking for. That's what tells us the work is going in the right direction.  

     I found Lily in Paris for free on Netflix. Was I watching it on Netflix to start out with? I don't think so. I have no idea what happened.

Monday, December 27, 2021

 Monday, December 27, 2021 

 

  My ankle hurt while I did the first walk in the morning. I couldn't move my left foot through the full range of motion as I did yesterday as I walked through the Costco parking lot.

    My replacement visa card finally arrived, and I could shop at Costco again. As I walked through the parking lot, I was inspired to push my feet through their full range of motion. Wow! That felt great. Again, after a bad bout of discomfort or pain, I experience a burst of improvement. I couldn't execute that move this morning because of the tightness in my ankle. 

Then when I got home, I needed Ibuprofen and iced the sore joint. When I went out for my next walk after posting the day's blog, it was a different story. I was cruising along like a young girl, well, a younger girl. 

    I am suffering from loneliness. I miss continuous companionship to the point that I feel physical discomfort. I guess I'm in another period of grief. I haven't had anyone who just does their own thing in my home for close to a year now. The last time I had anyone in the house like that was when Damon, Cylin, and August visited for Mike's interment. I have visitors in the house, but they come for a purpose. We exchange conversation, and then they leave. The only moment of sitting quietly with someone was the moments I shared with Paulette sitting with her on their lanai. Also, I helped her shell mac nuts. That was another shared moment.

    Jean, my hanai sister, and her husband John moved into a retirement community in New Jersey, in a neighboring town. They are incredibly happy. They like the apartment they moved into. I'm sure that just getting rid of a house full of stuff was part of the relief. John lived there for 55 years, Jean since the early 80s. They were both collectors of books and papers. They had raised three children in that house. You get the picture. Now, they can go to the cafeteria and get food and see other people. There's a medical team on staff if it should be needed. I'm beginning to wonder if Mike and I didn't make the wrong decision. If Mike had lived, it would have been a disaster. Because of his kidney failure, we wouldn't have been able to return home. Mike would have to have gone to a nursing home on Oahu. We couldn't do dialysis at home. He didn't have the necessary port. They couldn't have installedl it because he was too weak. I wouldn't have been able to get him to the dialysis center. He would have been too weak. Not to mention, the whole process would have been torture. Dialysis was torture before he fell ill with pancreatitis. While in the hospital, he had to have dialysis regularly. To say he hated the process would have been somewhat of an understatement.

  When I think about the situation as objectively as possible, I don't think I could be happier someplace else, in a retirement community the way Jean and John are. I would still be alone, and I wouldn't be in nature 24/7 as I am here. I would still have only functional contact with other people. I would see other residents to hold conversations or the staff to get something done. I guess loneliness is just in the cards for now and maybe for the rest of my life.

    I must say, Elsa is becoming more companionable. She always came to be held when she heard a loud noise. She would be tense in my arms, standing on my lap. Recently, she started relaxing in my lap, laying down, resting her head on my chest. This is a huge difference. 

    I had the M & W sisters this morning. I am doing Phase III with both. I could hear mom in the background. I don't know if she observes every class.    If she does, I don't know why. Is she monitoring me? Does she find the work interesting? I have no idea. I suspect she is a grade-A control freak. Both the girls were tense with me to start. I think they have both relaxed.

   When I started with first grade M this morning, I was concerned that I was too overwhelmed with grief to function well. But it subsided. I have been working on producing a melodious voice.  

    I have often said speaking is a form of singing, and singing is just speaking writ large. Today, I worked on talking as if I was singing. I created a different vocal tone, which is more soothing for me and hope for the people I'm speaking to.

     I continued with Phase III with M, using the story she wrote a while ago. She read a sentence in the text, selected how much of the sentence she wanted to work on, a phrase, a clause, or the complete sentence, and then without looking back, dictated each word to me, spelling it. I use this process to teach students to use their knowledge to figure things out. 

   I did the same thing with fifth grade W.  While I introduced the comma to M, W already knew about it. Today, we talked a bit about dependent and independent clauses, why "I woke up" became a dependent clause when you added the word 'when' as in, "When I woke up, …."

    Let me tell you, the more I use this process in Phase III, the more I realize what a gold mine it is. There is so much I can teach using this single vehicle. 

a. Auditory recall, which impacts both writing and listening skills.

b. Correct grammar and/or complex sentence structure.

 1. Punctuation

       2. Sentence structure, phrases, clauses versus complete sentences.

       

c. Spelling

d. Reading accuracy and fluency.

W had problems reading the little words and suffixes accurately. Today, she reported that she is seeing improvement in those areas. I asked mom about it. She said she is inconsistent but admitted she's better. It's been hard to get Mom to say anything positive.

 

      When I came home from one of my short walks, I took a nap. As I woke, I noticed my breathing. It has been much faster since Mike died. I would watch his breathing when he was alive. For every one and a half or two of his breaths, I would take one. Now, I hear my breathing pattern is as fast as his. This is fear. In my talk with Mowg, we had discussed how religion serves as a coping mechanism for many people. I hear people talk about God's love. That's what I miss from Mike. No one makes me feel loved as he did. I don't know if his love was better than anyone else's. It was a good match for my love receptors as I was a good match for his. Well, Mike is gone. I need to be loved to be at peace. I just said, "I welcome God's love." I felt a stream of light flow into me from above. My breathing pattern changed immediately. I recalled Elizabeth Gilbert talking about asking for support from the universe and getting love as a response. It's definitely helpful.  

When I woke up, I saw a text from adolescent D's mom, saying that we were on today for 1 pm after telling me that we weren't meeting today. It was already 10 after. I sent D a text, saying that I would be on in a minute. Once I send the link, I call D. He never answers but signs in shortly after. I was not sure he got my late text message, so I called his mom. While I was on the phone with her, he signed on. 

  Before we started the session, I asked him about his Christmas. Again, I noticed him struggling to find the words to express himself. This is a problem. It will interfere with academic success. 

  We did Phase III with the paragraph, where he had to read a sentence, remember it, and dictate it to me, spelling each word. He did an amazing job. There were moments where he took my breath away, not because he got the word correctly but because he was able to make an effort, take a risk,  and take correction. I could never have done that with him nine months ago. He was all self-protection. On the other hand, he continued to make mistakes, ignoring letters or sounds in words.  

 I asked him if his mom told him she had listened to the recording of him reading I sent her. She said no. I called her to ask her if she had listened to it. Yes. Please, give him positive feedback no matter what you think. I have many parents who don't give their kids positive feedback. Drives me nuts. In this case, she was concerned about his shyness. She thought she was respecting his boundaries. I told her I was teaching risk-taking and self-teaching as much if not more than the essentials of reading, the relationship of the sounds and the letters. She said she saw impressive differences in him. He received several cards for Christmas. His mom asked him if he wanted her to read them. He said no and stood up in front of his parents and sister and read them himself. Wow! Wow! Wow! on so many counts. First off that he took the risk and let others see him. Secondly, he was able to read the cards. I told her that he spelled boat at bote. She was thrilled. Yes, I know that's not the correct spelling. It gave me the opportunity to review all the spellings for the long o. Ote is one of them when you have a consonant sound after the o sound in the same syllable. Oa, and oe (as in toe) are two more off the top of my head. There are probably a few more. It's English. His mother was thrilled. There is no way he could have come close to sounding it out before. Every time he came close to spelling a word correctly, I ran his spelling through spell check and had him select the correct one. He spelled both, bofe. I asked him to check his pronunciation. Did he say it with his teeth pressing into his tongue or his lower lip? He said, his lower lip. I tried pronouncing it that way in a sentence. You can't tell the difference. I bet we do usually say bofe for both in conversation. It takes less energy to pronounce the f than the th.

  I left for Target after I was through with adolescent D.  I needed a new toothbrush, more dental floss, and a bigger bottle of Ibuprofen. I had their smallest bottle, 24 pills, and went through it in two weeks. I took one or two pills a day. That is more than I've taken in a lifetime. I bought a bottle with 200 pills now. I was afraid of running out. While my ankle is better, and I'm optimistic it will be completely okay in a month, it imposes serious limits on me for now.

   The more I use Phase III with the students, the more I realize its value as a teaching device. It serves as a diagnostic purpose as well as a teaching one. The student reveals what they know and don't know as we work. I do impromptu lessons as we go along. Today with adolescent D.  the word 'asked' came up in the text. I instructed D to isolate the base word, ask, to make the spelling easier. It did help. He was able to spell the word by sounding it out. He got stuck on the -ed. The -ed is pronounced as a /t/in the word' asked'. You have to know when to use the suffix -ed. We talked about verbs. Did he know what a verb was? Yes, a person, place, or thing. Those are nouns. We talked about what a verb was how to tell a verb. Now, sometimes a verb acts as a noun. Complicated and confusing. It's English. 

Sunday, December 26, 2021

 Sunday, December 26, 2021

 

      Another night with zero pain or even discomfort during the night. I slept like a log until about 3 am. I do go to bed early. I get more than enough sleep. 

  I checked the temperature before I walked out the door this morning at 6 am- 620. As I walked in one direction on my morning walk, I saw seven-year-old Leon, Judy's grandson, zooming up and down the street on his new electric two-wheeler bike. On my way back, Jazzy, his mom, was out in the street with Zion, who is about two, on his new electric tricycle.

  On Being Krista Tippet, "On the days that I believe . . ." Rachel Held Evans. Evolving in Monkey Town. The show had already started when I tuned in. A quote of hers was the first thing I heard. "When I believe . . . . "Then she described her reaction to moments in her life: her children's laughter, the sunset, an opening flower, etc. Then she said, "When I don't believe . . . For her, there is less joy in life. 

    Evans opened the door to faithful doubt. She was raised in a rigid evangelical church where doubt was not acceptable. There was one right way to do everything, and her church knew what it was.  

   Mowgli's life partner wrestles with how intelligent people can believe in a God. Mowgli's position is more like mine. Belief provides people with a coping mechanism. If you believe, you are never alone. After the fear of physical death, being alone is one of the worst for all social animals. At its best, religion provides people with a source of endless love and belonging. It also reminds us that we are flawed beings, never perfect. A belief in God makes it safe for us to admit we are not perfect, we are flawed, we make errors -and feel safe. At its worst, people use religion as a device to elevate themselves to the deity status by claiming that their God is the one true one and use that as an excuse to condemn or even kill anyone who doesn't believe as they do.

  I have become increasingly aware of how alone I am with the work I create in the fields of education and psychology. I have no champion. I have people who admire the work or sometimes only the result of the work. I have people who are freaked out enough by what I do to call me a quack despite knowing the success of my work. I have no one who helps to midwife the work. No one gets it, or they take it for granted. My clients' parents are impressed by my work, but I have no idea what I do and have no interest. It's more than no interest; they have no idea what teaching a child who didn't get it is about. I'm reading more about people whose contributions are acknowledged had peers who nurture their efforts. Mike supported me in whatever I wanted to do, but he was one of the people who was somewhat freaked out by it. He understood that I did original work. He liked to stay within a frame.

    On an up note, I worked on the Phase III video today. I tried a run-through just to see how it felt. It is far from ready. Going through it helps me know what I want to say.

     Damon called today. Yesterday, when I finally got hold of him, he said, "But we spoke for an hour yesterday." Okay. I'm heard he was overwhelmed with the length of our conversations. I live alone. I'm often my only conversational companion. I love hearing the sound of someone else's voice. However, Damon works for a major film studio. He spends his whole workday in conversation. Talking to me is a busman's holiday. I told him to tell me when it's too much for him, and he wants to get off. He said that was too hard. "Okay, if you can't set your own boundaries, I'll set them for you. I'm setting the alarm for 15 minutes." At one point, I said, "You have one minute left." He turned to Cyclin and said, "I only have one more minute. Do you have any questions about Mowgli's son?" You got to love it. I would so much prefer having a conversation with someone who doesn't have to fear being swallowed whole. Fifteen stress-free minutes is worth more than an hour of someone trying to pretend they're comfortable while feeling waterboarded. 

    I've been watching Emily in Paris. It took me several episodes to get into it. It is a total piece of fluff, pretty people in a pretty place doing pretty things. After several episodes, I started to invest. I was enjoying it. Last night, in the middle of an episode, Emily in Paris disappeared from my screen, and a preview for another series appeared. Elsa was sitting on my lap. I thought she had accidentally pushed a button. I tried to log back into the show. I discovered it was no longer free with prime when I found it. Now an episode costs $2.00. Shit! The whole season was $15.! That's a dirty trick. They wouldn't even let me finish the episode. 

December 25, 2021

December 25, 2021   

 

  I woke up before the alarm went off. I expected to hear it ring while I was out walking. It never went off. I thought, "Wow! It's set so it doesn't go off on Christmas morning!" then I realized it was Saturday. It's not set to go off on the weekends. 

   Worked on the blog daily entry and the updates. I had the 21 and 22 pretty well finished yesterday. I ran them through Grammarly and posted them to my email recipients. These recipients get the current versions. The bloggers get everything one year to the day late.   I have started recording the stats. Either later today, or more likely sometime tomorrow, I will hit 20,000 views. Unlike Facebook and YouTube, which only counts a viewer once no matter how many times they view the video, Blogger.com counts each visit. I have been expecting the number of viewers to drop, but no. There were 136 visitors, and it was Christmas. I never expected that. 

      The first large viewership came from Egypt. Tommy and I both assumed someone teacher assigned my blog to his class. My Egyptian readers disappeared as suddenly as they appeared. Not a single Egyptian is viewing my blog now. I was expecting the same from my German and Indonesian viewers. So far, not. I don't know if they have a heavy assignment over the vacation or have picked up the habit for themselves. 

     I check my numbers on my YouTube videos regularly. I wind up watching other videos. I've been feasting on videos with Fosse's choreography and those about the Durrells, Lawrence, and Gerald particularly. I love Lawrence's use of language. I may try to reread him. 

   I also check my numbers on my YouTube The Phonics Discovery System videos. Those numbers have remained steady for days. On the other hand, on my Blogger.com site, the number of visitors passed 20,000 today.

     On Thursday, Yvette announced in the yoga class that she would be at Kua Bay on Christmas day and invited people to join her. I decided I wanted to go. Judy doesn't think we should limit our activity because of Covid. I'm not quite so glib. I'm not glib at all. I don't see a reason to dismiss Covid as a trivial illness and not worry about it. I'm not willing to go to church, Bikram, or someone's house, but the beach sounded doable.

    Yvette said she would be at Kua Bay by 7 am. at the far north end and hold a space for others. She would only stay for a few hours, but others could use her space. Kua Bay. doesn't have a large beach area; on Christmas, it gets as crowded as Jones Beach at the height of the summer. You can't take a step without putting your feet on someone's ground cover. It's bad.   I decided this was a must-do.

    By 7 am it was still cold. Yvette's car was still in the driveway. She left shortly before 8 am. At that point, I got myself together. I texted Yvette to let her know I was on my way shortly after 8 am.   When I went through the entrance to the beach area, I texted her to let her know I was about to pull up. The plan was for her to meet me at the drop-off circle and grab my stuff to carry it a few tenths of a mile to the north end of the beach. I would park my car and walk over the rocky path with my walking sticks. She was just arriving as I pulled up. She grabbed the chair and bag loaded with my stuff from the car's trunk. I hopped into the driver's seat. I pushed the starter button and got the message, 'Key not detected."  "Yvette!!!! Yvette!!!" She heard my distress call and headed back to me. I got my key out of the bag I had given her.

    I went to park the car. The paved area is quite small. The spill-over parks at the edge of the roadway. I anticipated a hike. But no. I found a spot right next to Yvette's, on the paved area near to the beach. It was an unpaved area the size of a parking spot initially reserved for a tree. I don't know if they cut them down or were run down by desperate drivers. I didn't know if someone had already left or if no one had parked there. Either way, it was a gift. 

    My first stop was the bathroom to get my bladder as empty as I could. Then I did the walk. It was easy. I took videos along the way to send to the Damons. Damon and August love Kua Bay. I think they come here more to see it than me. When I arrived, Yvette was sitting in her tent and had my chair already set up. 

    I sat, enjoyed the view and the breeze, read, and napped a bit. Then Yvette walked me into the water. The water here is so clear; you have a crystal clear view right through a wave. That's both good and bad. It's that clear because seaweed doesn't grow here. That makes the water clear, but it means there's no food for the whales. Those animals come to our shores to breed, but they don't eat while they're here. Amazing.   

   When I first got here, I was struck by the smell- or lack of smell of the ocean. It's nothing like the coasts of the mainland. I associate the scent with the salt. As it winds up, it's the smell of the rotting seaweed. I still miss it.

    Yvette commented the water was so calm today it would make Cylin happy. She doesn't love watching her husband and son taking on the big waves at Kua. Hawaiian waves are more dangerous than the waves on the west coast of the mainland. We have bad shore breaks. People get injured and killed regularly in our waves. 

    When we went into the water, I wore a hat and my glasses. Fortunately, Yvette ran my glasses back to our spot. The waves were large enough to challenge my balance when we got out a bit deeper. I was able to hang on to Yvette. She proposed going out a bit further to get beyond the point where the waves broke. The water stayed shallow enough for me to remain standing. Then a set of large waves came in that broke where we were standing. These babies were over my head. I dove into a few of them. I hadn't done that in years. Yvette proposed that we start heading in once the set of waves was complete. While the water was shallow enough for me to stand, I couldn't get my legs under me. Yvette saw that I was concerned but thought it was because of the waves. It's scary not to have control over my own body. I called out to two ladies who were swimming nearby to ask for help. 'we had had a brief conversation with them a few minutes before. They rushed over. Just by holding my other hand, I gained the leverage I needed to get my legs under me. 

  I sat a bit more and then decided to head home. I left my chair, the weights, and my heavy sweatshirt, wrapping the towel around me and packing the shopping bag with my phone, car key, Kindle, and food I brought with me. I slipped the handles of the shopping bag over each shoulder like a backpack. The walk back was great. On the way out, I had removed the trekking pole rubber tips so I could dig the bare points of the poles into the gravel and rocks. I had both of them with me. When I walk in the neighborhood, I only use one. 

    When I got to the car, the person next to me was also packing up to leave. We were giving someone a great Christmas present of these surprise parking spaces. I asked the other driver if he could help me get out. I explained I was an absolute hazard on the road at speeds of 5 mph or less. He guided me out of the space. He said the people coming down the road would wait for me. When I came in, cars were parked along the roadway just beyond the dedicated paved area. Now, the nearest parking was a good half mile up the road. It was going to be busy. 

  When I got home, I called Jean, my hanai sister. I had spoken to her briefly while driving to Kua. I had to get off and text Yvette. She is doing so well. Each time I talk to her, she tells me how happy she and John are living in this retirement community. I am somewhat jealous. I don't think I would be as happy. Being in an enclosed space is a deal-breaker for me. My home cannot be closed off. I can close off my bedroom, Mike's library, the guest room, and my study, but the common living area literally cannot be closed off. I love that element of living here.  

   While I walked out to the beach this morning, I took pictures of the area and the bay and sent them to Damon, Cylin, and August. It was now 5 pm, and no one in the family had responded. That was unusual and concerning, particularly since Damon promised me they would call me every day. I tried the house phone, only to discover it had been disconnected. I tried Cylin's and August's phones too. Nothing. I thought they might have gone on a hike and been in a no reception area, but it was after six pm in LA already. I was concerned. I search for the email address of one of Damon's good friends from Vassar. I asked him if he had any information. I got a call from Damon in a matter of minutes. Eddie had been sitting in their living room when he got the email. They had taken a vacation from the phones, a nophocation. Problem: they had promised they would call me daily over the holiday, and then they didn't call on Christmas Day. Oh, well.

    I got a bunch of texts from friends wishing me a Merry Christmas. I hadn't heard from Darby for a while. I was somewhat concerned.   As I passed their house, I heard her voice in the yard. I called out Merry Christmas. She apologized for not reaching out to me. She explained she had been swamped. Since Patrick's surgery, she had to take over his chores. They both do a lot of work on their property daily. Besides being a lot of work, Darby isn't used to doing it. She's in the figuring out phase. 

   Mowgli texted me to ask if I would be available for a phone call. I called immediately. We talked for a while. We have overlapping interests; we're both of a philosophical bent. 

   The plan was for Judy to drop off Christmas dinner. I didn't join them because they were eating indoors, and none were vaccinated. Earlier in the evening, I got a text from her saying she was tired; could she drop the food off tomorrow? Of course. While I was on the phone with Mowg, I heard her voice at the door. She decided to drop off dinner. I hadn't had anything to eat yet because I wasn't that hungry. Besides a few slices of rib roast, a few tablespoons of mashed potatoes, and some broccoli, Judy had made individual lava cakes. She told me one of the wrapped containers held Haagen Daas vanilla ice cream. I haven't had any ice cream since Mike died. I couldn't think of a better brand to break this fast with than Haagen Daas. It was all delicious.

    I watched the end of The Ricardos.  Kidman did an amazing job. While she impersonates a real person, it always feels real. There are scenes from the TV show where I thought it was old footage. I was convinced otherwise when I saw Bardem in the scene. Was he born yet when the original was made?  

December 24, 2021

 December 24, 2021

 

  I'm in deep grief today. I miss Mike. Being with him was so easy. I loved and was loved. 

 How much better could it be?

     I went out to check on the Christmas lights decorating our front yard fence. Judy had asked about it. It had been a project of Yvette's in commemoration of Mike. He put the lights up originally. Mike loved to decorate for Christmas. Yvette bought all new lights and strung them. It was a good project. Last year they were on all through Christmas and beyond- and then they went off. I assumed Yvette had turned them off, or if there was a problem, she would solve it. However, it winds up she didn't turn them off. It just stopped functioning, and she didn't care. I checked all the connections. Everything was plugged in. Beyond that, I had no idea.

    Yvette called me for help closing the driveway gate. Ours is not automatic. It slides on a metal rail. The rail is bent and rusted. It has to be sprayed with WD 40 regularly. Scott is strong enough to move it on his own. Yvette and I did it together. Later in the day, I sprayed the mechanism. I couldn't budge the gate. I texted Yvette, but she wasn't up for working on it today. I sprayed it. It won't hurt to get another blast.

   I did some work on the updates. When my eyes gave out, and I couldn't see the letters on the computer screen clearly, I grabbed a pruning tool and headed down to the bottom of the property to clip dead wood off the orange tree in hopes of saving it. New green sprigs and a few leaves were coming out already. I clipped off whatever I thought was dead,  checking the ends of the branches after every cut to for greenwood. I think my tree will survive. 

   I texted Yvette to ask her to come up and sort out the bagels with Damon and Cyclin sent us. I had asked them to order Zabar's Kosher bagels from NYC and bring them with them when they came. They mailed them instead. They're not Zabar's. They come from the 2nd Street Deli also in NYC. Damon said these are as good if not better. Good thing they mailed them since they decided not to come. 

   I opened the package when Yvette came up. They sent 24 bagels of various sorts, everything, onion, sesame, plain and salted. We divided them half and half. This is a perfect gift for Yvette. I just learned the other day after speaking to Damon that she eats bagels every morning. 

   I picked out three with plain ones of taking them over to Judy. Yvette had seen Judy and Paulette next door at Mei's, cleaning the cars for her Turo business. I walked over there to deliver them. They were cleaning one of their cars for a drop-off at 2:30.  

    They usually park the cars and leave the keys under the wheel. They said they're having problems now. A record number of people have been flying here and flying out from here. The parking lots were full. Paulette said many cars were parked illegally. Because of it, they were having problems finding spots for parking their cars. They text the renter and tell them where it is parked; they leave the key under the wheel. They anticipated driving the cars down instead of dropping them off for a handover. Mei, Peter, and the kids arrived tonight with a three-year business visa. Now, they have to start applying for a green card.

    When I came back from a long evening walk around the block with Lutz, I found a container of soup and a bag of sweets with a Christmas card on the counter, left there by Judy. I haven't enjoyed the gift exchange for years. It seems so forced. I don't even enjoy them on birthdays. I tried to think if I ever enjoyed them. Yes, when I was a child. Maybe specifically when my dad was alive. As I write this, I remember one Christmas when my mother declared, "Why do you bother giving me gifts? I'm going to commit suicide anyway." Maybe that's when I learned not to like gift-giving. I don't remember it as a trauma. She was just being annoying. I couldn't conceive of her committing suicide, no more than I could have conceived of her giving me up for adoption, as she threatened when I was nine or ten. There were things my mother was simply not capable of. They weren't in her wheelhouse. Tormenting others was.