Mike's death; Betty's life...: 03/11/26

Wednesday, March 11, 2026

Tuesday, December 20, 2022

I had an appointment with Mama K's crew at 8:30. The plan is to meet every morning at this time over the winter break. They had trouble signing on this morning, so we got a late start. I started with fourth grade K. We continued with rounding. He had difficulty understanding why the line between the numbers was drawn between four and five, with five going to the higher number. He doesn't have words for what is troubling him. Children who have trouble like this are either cognitively deficient or cognitively gifted. I suspect he is in the latter category but not verbal enough to articulate it. I explained that the line had to be drawn between eleven numbers, not ten, and someone said, "Here! Between 4 and 5," and that's why it's there.

We are not dividing 10 digits, but eleven (not 1-10 but 0-10). If we were dividing 10 by 2, we would evenly divide them into two groups of five. Because we are dividing eleven integers into two groups. 0, 2, 3, 4,/ 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, the dividing point here is smack in the middle of 5. Since we must maintain whole numbers, we shove the five over the line. Why? "Because I said so," is the answer. No, it isn't me who said so, but someone did. It is a convention we all accept. Period end of sentence. K accepted that.

The next step was determining what to round the number to:

Given the number 17, what is the nearest 0 number below 17 and the nearest 0 number above 17? Answers: 10 and 20. What is 17 closest to, 10 or 20?

Then, I covered rounding to the nearest 100 and the nearest 1000. The whole lesson took 15 minutes, and K was off and running. Why does someone who can be taught to apply a difficult concept in fifteen minutes have trouble learning it in the first place? What is going on in this child's mind or not going on?

Then I had the Twins briefly. I start with identifying the vowel letters. They have to be learned in order, A, E, I, O, U, and sometimes Y. They should be learned in that order so they can say them when coming out of deep sleep. I started to cover the short and long vowel charts. I had asked one of them the other day if they had heard of long and short vowels. They said no, but it was clear today they had; they couldn't remember what they were—time to drill them.

I had second grade M at 9:30. I will work with sixth grade W once I get more information from her teacher. Her class hadn't made much progress in the book, Out of the Dust. In my last session with W, she knew what was going on in the book and what similes were versus metaphors.

I worked on math with second-grade M. We had worked on counting by 5s last time. She has to be taught patterns explicitly. Today, we were working on counting by 10s from any number: 17, 27, 37, etc. Not a clue. I did several rounds of 1 +10=, 11+10=, 21+10=, and 31+10=. When I saw she had the pattern and didn't need to add the numbers carefully, I gave her numbers without showing the equation. After adding 10+ a number, I switched to subtracting by ten. That came easily, too.

I switched to the next objective, adding and subtracting numbers up to 100. Oh, dear. She was not attentive to the operation sign. She adds when there is a subtraction sign and vice versa. Our discussion of operation signs led her to mention multiplication. She had no idea. I let her play with it because play leads to learning, and I didn't know how to guide her play without dumping on her.

I sat down for breakfast and read Paulson's first chapter of Hatchet. I loved that book the first time I read it. I selected it for vacation work for ninth grade K. I wasn't disappointed. I loved the first chapter. I can't wait to read the rest of the book.

I picked up the towels from the floor where we put them to soak up the water that flooded the laundry room yesterday with the heavy rain and threw them in the washing machine. We had a full day of storms. We never get weather like that. Well, hardly ever. It wasn't considered a hurricane, just a storm system. Sandor said the wind was at 140 mph on top of Mauna Kea and 70 mph where he lived, at a higher elevation than where we are. That wind ripped off the hinge on his iron gate. We had nothing like that here. Although Judy argues that we had gusts of 60 miles per hour.

The storm started in the middle of the night on Sunday. I heard the rain come down. Wow! I went back to sleep. When I woke, I found the rain had come into the laundry room through the wire door. Scott thought to put towels down. They served two functions: they soaked up the water and made the tile floor less slippery. The towels were dry now with no more threats of rain despite Dean saying a third storm system was on its way.

I was about ready to leave to make my noon appointment with my chiropractor when I got a text saying 12:45 would work better for her. I bathed Elsa. She stood right by my side while I cleaned the sink in preparation. She feels better when I give her a bath. She still shakes while standing in the sink for ten minutes while the medicinal shampoo does its thing on her skin, but she doesn't object. I no longer wrap her in a towel when I'm through. I tuck her under one arm, put her down on the bathroom floor, and open the door. She knows the drill. She runs out and does her thing. My shirt dries off in half an hour.

I left shortly after bathing Elsa. I stopped at Long's first to pick up some Hersey's milk chocolate nuggets with whole almonds. They had none. They had every other variety, and they were all on sale. I've cleared out their stock. I went to the chiropractor.

I was in a sucky mood, angry. Lisa wasn't ready to see me at 12:45. I had Adolescent D at 2:30 and needed to get home promptly. I was concerned and not just a little bit annoyed. She said it would be five more minutes. It was close to that. I set my timer to see. Someone had walked in off the street to make an appointment with her. Would I get out in time?

I did. I got out just at 2 pm. I had half an hour to make it home. I was cutting it a bit close, but I made it. In our last session, I talked to Adolescent D about using his unconscious mind instead of his conscious mind to read. Using the conscious mind is exhausting. It is a mere pimple compared to the size of the unconscious mind. Well, it may be more like a boil than a pimple. But the size difference is still impressive.

I told him about the research on Israeli parole judges. When the judges were tired, cases coming up at the end of the day had zero chance of getting parole. Make sure you get that first appointment in the morning if you want a favorable outcome. Likewise, after reading with reasonable accuracy for fourteen minutes, he missed most of the words in a sentence. He had switched to automatic processing and his old habits. Why isn't his unconscious mind learning this new system, and why isn't it working? I continued pursuing that question. No, his unconscious mind didn't want to learn this other system. Why not? He read turtle as trist and then trust. It neither made sense nor conformed to the letter sequence. He has discomfort with confusion. Well, that's a bummer.

I had sessions with J & I, a third-grade boy and a first-grade girl. The third-grade boy went first. His mother asked me to work with him on his anger. He was currently angry about having to meet with me. He had met with therapists before. He believed there was nothing to be done about his anger. He also said he didn't want to talk about it. We did some general talking but didn't do any actual work. I reminded him that he could set boundaries. No, he couldn't decide not to meet with me. If he did, he had to see another therapist. So it was me or someone else. In our last session, I felt some relaxation on his part when I said his parents were good people even though they fought. I had his mother tell him that I 'knew everything' about the problems in his parents' relationship; they were divorced. I didn't want him to feel he had to protect his parents from my judgment. I called her before I started the session to check if she had told him that. She had. Thank God. I couldn't have worked with him if she hadn't. No way I could have penetrated that need to protect them without revealing information he might not have known. Saying I know everything is ambiguous. None of the participants or observers know everything. I certainly don't, but I know enough to know how bad it had been at times.

We established he wanted to be less angry. I told him what Mike had told me. If something happens you don't like, deal with it without anger. It's a problem to be solved.

He told me how a kid in his class called him weird. That hurts. One of my nieces always called me weird. When Mike and I visited her, she started in on me on the drive home from the airport. Her comments were about my Crocs. I said, "You can call me weird three times a day; that's it." I was calm and just set a limit. She didn't do it again.

I asked him where he felt the anger. He felt it in his hands; they balled up into fists. I instructed him to observe how his hands felt; if the tension spread up his arms, across his upper back, into his lower back? I watched it to see where it went and found it interesting. He did that and found he was more relaxed afterward. I told him I would sit with him and watch. I did. We spent several minutes like that. Then I asked him to see himself with that guy who called him weird. Hear him saying those words; did he feel the same or different? He felt slightly different. This might be an easy fix.

Then I had his sister, first-grade Iz. I discovered she had trouble using context clues, using the other words in the sentence to figure out what a missing word might be. I started using Barnell Loft-prepared materials. I read a sentence and gave her three options for the missing word. She was completely off. In subsequent lessons, she showed improvement. She consistently chose the correct word. Then we progressed when I had her guess what the word might be. She had to make a logical choice; it didn't have to be the same as the book gave. She knocked that out of the park. Today, I switched to having her read higher-level material. The only thing I had readily available was Barnell Loft's third-grade material. I thought I would have to read most of it to her, but no. She had a good sight word vocabulary and had started using decoding strategies after our first session. The first selection in the book is probably at a high second-grade level rather than a third-grade level. When she decoded a word following the rules but did not get the actual pronunciation, she could use context clues to figure out the word. When she ran into trouble, I gave her three choices. This is a child without a learning disability. She just needed to be taught in a meaningful way. If they use the principles of Reading Recovery, she was just given opportunities to read more and has received no explicit instruction.

Mr. Lemus returned for the third time to discuss my irrigation system. Even though Josh had drawn a map of the irrigation system for Scott to present, Lemus still didn't have all the information he needed. He decided he would replace one zone at a time.

I asked him about the nozzles. The ones we have now put out a wide spray. He said they were designed for watering lawns, not beds. He would set it up so the system watered plants, not rocks.

Lemus said he saw snow on Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa. We get snow on Mauna Kea every winter. It's our air conditioning system; as the winds blow down the mountain, we have colder weather now than during the summer. The surprise was that Mauna Loa had snow on it, too. That doesn't usually happen.

I finished the last of my 10,000 steps late in the evening. I ran into Steve and Shannon. Steve was the principal of an English-speaking school in South Korea. It hurt to think of these two lovely people being apart that much of the year. Steve said he had just handed in his resignation. He was tired of being separated from Shannon and was in conflict with the board. Steve and Shannon remind me of me and Mike.

Monday, December 19, 2022

There were warnings a bad storm was coming with high winds, but, oh boy. It poured during the night. It rained the rest of the day. I did my walking inside.

At 8:30, I had Mama K's crew. The Twins were available, but fourth-grade K was out with his dad. I worked with comprehension with Twin A. I read a Kindergarten level story. Her comprehension was good, although I had to pull information out of her. Her mom says both girls act like dumb blondes, protesting they know nothing. I asked Twin A if she felt she couldn't understand a story when someone read it to her or if she couldn't understand it because she couldn't read the words.

Twin E read the 5th of the Carpenter stories. It was slow, but she did reasonably well. She had more incidents of automatic recall. The next step would be to teach both girls the vowel sounds. This is going to start with a drill. With Twin A, I planned to move away from the phonetically dedicated stories of Carpenter. I know this is what she encounters in school.

Wearing a winter jacket, the acupuncturist braved the weather to come to my home for a 1 pm appointment. I told her to come in through the side door. The front walk was flooded and very slippery. The floor just inside the side door was also flooded. I only have a screen door there. I vacuumed the water up several times, but it was still treacherous. Scott thought to put bath towels on the floor. That solved the problem.

While the screened-in lanai was bearable at 8:30, the mist hung heavily by noon. It was like sitting in the middle of a cloud; it was cold and damp. Yvette came up and moved the table into the library. I closed the door and enjoyed my treatment in the more sheltered atmosphere.

I showed the acupuncturist what I had been working on and where my muscles needed work to allow for a greater range of motion. Having done that, I told her to follow her instincts. She does good work. She is currently getting her doctorate in acupuncture.

At 2:30, I had adolescent D. His mother told me he had a parent-teacher conference where he reviewed his strengths and weaknesses. He did an incredible job, comfortably describing his weaknesses and strengths. This would not have been possible a year ago. He is increasingly more comfortable with himself. Fantastic!

D chose to work on reading for accuracy. He read at least three paragraphs on a 3rd-grade level with decent accuracy and then collapsed. He had to expend a great deal of conscious thought to read accurately. His strength gave out, and he relapsed into old strategies that never worked well. They certainly didn't today. Why isn't his conscious mind learning to pay attention to the letters? D's been working on this problem for a while. Why isn't there more transfer? There are many incidents where he reads with fluency that he wouldn't have before. The old habit of looking at a word's first and last letter and then guessing still pulls at him.

My Christmas present to myself arrived today- a four-inch chain saw. I was so excited. I have been sawing through thick branches with a hand saw. It's a lot of work. I fantasize about cutting down the haole koas in my neighbor's empty lot that obscure my view of the ocean. Let's see how it goes.

I had the M & W sisters at 4 pm. With sixth-grade W, I talked about the book she was reading for class. She does just fine.

Scott interrupted the tutoring session to tell me the wind had shifted and flooded the lanai. He moved all the furniture away from the screened area. Nothing looks damaged. With a clear day, everything will dry quickly. In the meantime, I sucked up as much water as I could with my Rainbow vacuum. I dumped the container out three times.

Instead of working on reading with second-grade M, I worked on math. I discovered she was having some problems. I couldn't get information from her teacher; I checked the Hawaiian DOE standards. We worked on counting up and down by fives and tens, where the last number is either a five or a zero. Her father told me her teacher said she was seeing improvement in her math. I asked her if her progress in math came before I started working with her on it or after. She said after. I was surprised. She caught on so quickly, and I thought she must have made some improvements before I started working with her on math. I don't know why she didn't catch on with the classroom instruction.

Sandor called. We talked about the weather. He said there were 140 mph winds on top of Mauna Kea and 70 mph at his place. Judy thinks there were gusts as high as 60 mph in our neighborhood.

I continued watching the Bhutanese film Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom, which is about a young man who reluctantly goes to teach in the remotest school in the world. The views alone make it worth watching. At the time of the shoot, no roads led to the village. I read the government was putting them in as this movie was being shot. They captured the last of that lifestyle.

Sunday, December 18, 2022

I woke up before dark but didn't do my in-bed exercises until it started getting light. Since I wanted to shower and make the 9 am mass, I had to go through them quickly. Then, I leashed Elsa and headed out for our morning walk. I walked as quickly as I could and completed 2,500 steps in less than half an hour.

I left the house precisely at 8:30 after editing and posting last year's update entry on the blog site and checking my numbers. The blog visitors keep plugging along.

I no longer had the numbers I had when a teacher made my blog required reading, but I rarely have zero visitors. I also rarely have more than ten in a twenty-four-hour period.

I had several viewers of my The Phonics Discovery System videos. I posted the videos on Facebook yesterday. That regularly wins one or two viewers, not more.

I felt weird as I drove to church. Was this a good change after my bout with vertigo or a bad one? I felt somewhat off while at church. I was concerned that the vertigo returned. That would not be good. I did some work on my neck. That relieved the problem. We were in the Advent Season. The homily was about the coming of Christ. I don't consider myself a true believer in any metaphysical doctrine. But I respect the story's impact and welcome it if it can be positive. The stories in religious teaching last because of their impact. I don't need to take them literally. However, I don't eliminate the possibility that they are true.

I planned to stop at Long's and pick up some Hersey's milk chocolate nuggets with whole almonds, but I had forgotten to pull out a new mask. I didn't want to go into a store without one. I went home.

The radio reminded me that Covid and RSV were both spreading. China was in an impressive bit of trouble with Covid. All the isolation has reduced the body's capacity to resist the virus. Damned if you do; damned if you don't. I am so happy that none of the decision-making fell to me.

The radio also warned of an impending storm with 60 mph winds hitting the islands. We have solar panels and two Tesla solar batteries, but that won't last us through the night. The system had already gone on emergency status and sent all the power to the batteries. They were at 100%. I told all the residents on the property to conserve electricity after the sun goes down. We never make it through the night on the two batteries. If the grid is down, we'll be in trouble if the sun doesn't come up. Even if it does, more is needed to power high-demand activities.

I was supposed to work with the M & W sisters at four. Their dad called and asked if we could do it later. I had just arranged with Mama K to work with her kids at five. Dad pointed out that the girls were off all week. We canceled for today, and I would see them tomorrow and another day during the week.

I moved Mama K's crew up to 4 pm. I started with Twin A. She said she had trouble understanding what she read. I started with an early pre-primer selection from QRI-3 testing materials by Leslie and Caldwell. She did just fine understanding the passage. It was so good that I wondered if she needed clarification about recognizing the words and understanding the passage. I knew she had problems with speech. Both twins were seeing a speech specialist.

Next, I had fourth-grade K. I discovered last week that he didn't understand before and after. I had two sessions with him already. I found his problem when I taught him rounding. I started by drawing three people in a line facing to the right and asking before and after questions. He did alright with that. Then I had the same people face left and asked before and after questions. Oh, dear. His mother said he had problems understanding which events came before other events.

Today, I started drawing the three figures again to represent the before/now/after concept by representing time in a spatial image. I checked on the Internet and followed the suggestion that I start making sure he understood which character was first, second, and third. Then, I asked which character is in front and which is behind. He got both of those. Then, I explained a complication with the before and after concept. There are two contexts: which goes first and which comes first.

When you are looking at a line of people or animals in a line, you ask which one goes first. When it comes to people, you can also ask which one comes first. If you are talking about a line of people sitting in cars at the Taco Bell take-out line. You can talk about which car comes to the window first. While the concept of coming or going can be applied to lines of people, even people in cars and animals, it cannot be applied to abstract symbols.

When we talk about which word comes before and which comes after, we can only apply the concept of coming. Words don't go first or second. They come first or second. We speak about the order of words by which one we read first or wrote first. One word can only come before another word or after. The same applies to numbers and time. One number comes before another or after. It never goes before or after another.

I listened to several interviews with Stephen Batchelor. I am very comfortable with his point of view on just about every theory he brings up.

YouTube started playing a video on a debate between two physicists on the multi-universe and string theory. I don't know much about either topic. I doubt I understood much, but I loved the tone of the discussions; they were really arguments. It was a debate. Loved it! I found it so comforting. Mike would have loved it, too. I wish this was available while he lay in the hospital. It would have made him so happy.

Saturday, December 17, 2022

I went to bed before 9:30 and read a little before trying to fall asleep. I had slept most of the day because I wasn't feeling well. The vertigo had cleared, but the lousy feeling hadn't. As a measure of how bad I felt, I didn't want any Hersey's milk chocolate nuggets with whole almonds. That's an accurate measure of my state of being.

I wasn't surprised to find I couldn't fall asleep. I planned to meditate through the night. Lying down provides physical rest; meditating provides mental rest. I was in a rested state but couldn't shut my mind off. I have been more anxious since Mike died. He was my safe place. He protected me from my mother. He didn't have to do anything; he once quietly sat by my bedside while I napped at her house. That's all he had to do. My mother respected strong statements from men with pleasure. Now that he's gone, I feel I have no one to protect me or comfort me when I am attacked. All attacks, even from my mother, were and are verbal. I am more anxious now because of his absence. It's harder for me to blow off bad interactions.

I spent a good part of the night wrestling with what the Buddhists call "the monkey mind" and what neurologists call the 'default brain,' the one that buzzes away unless we're focused on something else.

I must have dozed on and off. I didn't have an insomniac night because I had accepted that I couldn't sleep. I was peaceful. In the morning, I was aware of that sense of stress inside my body, which meant something was pressing uncomfortably on my soul. Looking at it, it felt like I had a pile of ash inside me. I followed the mindfulness technique and watched it without either craving or aversion. (It's a neat trick. Everyone should learn it.) I had a moment when I felt so empty and useless and lost. Then, I experienced myself as empty. The shell of my body was there, but there were no insides. I know it sounds horrible, but it wasn't. It was wonderful. The source of my reactivity was gone, not because I denied it or pushed it away, but because I accepted it with a peaceful mind. For the first time, I understood the Buddhist concept of emptiness.

I experienced the empty space inside of me as invulnerable to reactivity. The Christian hymn Blest Be the Lord is about not fearing the "and the arrow that flies at day." That arrow cannot cause harm. That's what this was. The arrows and swords would pass right through me. There was nothing to latch on to.

As I understand it, people with locked-in syndrome experience life that way. Despite their desperate condition, being locked into bodies without sensation means they can't experience inner distress. They're happy as they are, even with active minds.

I doubt I can maintain this mental state, and I don't think I want to. I heard Batchelor speak about it in a YouTube interview. Buddhist meditation is sometimes referred to as "the opiate of the middle class." Knowing when to be active and when to be passive is an art. I always refer to the AA prayer. No Buddhist teacher I have worked with has advocated 100% peaceful resignation. Buddhism only teaches how to create change in ourselves- a very valuable skill, but never the whole ball of wax.

It was water pick-up day. Elsa and I drove to Paulette's to get the water and visit. I told Judy I wanted to write my material for beginning readers. I use Carpenter's stories with my students but can't share them with other teachers. If I write my own, I can give them to whomever I want. I planned to base the sequence of letter inclusion on the Orton-Gillingham sequence. I don't believe phonics needs to be taught sequentially as Orto-Gillinghmam recommends. Still, it is a convenient framework for me to use.

Judy said she had material I could use. While I was visiting Paulette, Judy ran upstairs to find the material for beginning students. I was looking for something else. It was pictures with single sentences underneath them.

Meali'inani called while I was still at Paulette and Judy's.

It was a good thing she called. She was twenty minutes away. She wanted me to confirm my address. She was stopping by to drop off some vitamins I bought from her at a discount. One was a large bottle of cod liver oil, which she recommended to help with my dry eyes. Elsa put Meali'inani to work throwing balls for her. One of the balls got under something. Elsa had my guest on her hands and knees looking for that ball. Elsa has no consideration.

I spoke to ninth-grade K's mother about the vacation schedule. I recommended I see him daily. I planned to work with him using the book Hatchet. He does well with outdoor activities like fishing and hunting. Hatchet is a survival story of a thirteen-year-old boy who finds himself alone in the Canadian wilderness after a plane crash. While she ordered the book for him, she not only didn't agree to more sessions during the Christmas break but also reduced our sessions to half an hour twice a week instead of three times. It was a tense conversation. Again, I expected her to fire me. It might not be a bad idea. I don't know how to help her son. Does he have an intellectual disability, or is it an emotional problem? I swing back and forth between the two.

On the other hand, K would benefit from an educational evaluation. I estimate his verbal ability is at a 7- or 8-year-old level. Some of his mother's anger is toward herself. She put him in a school that didn't require verbal skills in any language. It is supposed to be a Hawaiian emergent school. According to K, none of the students learned enough Hawaiian to converse in the language. I can imagine she believed he was just quiet; he had thoughts he chose not to share. He had no thoughts, at least not ones that could be expressed with words. I would love to know what a speech and language therapist would do with this boy.

My plans are to have him talk about the book Hatchet. I will have him read a passage and then put what he read in his own words. Wish me luck!

Friday, December 16, 2022

I woke up with bad vertigo. I nearly fell over on my way to the bathroom. It was a day for staying in bed. I texted Scott and Yvette to tell them I was out of commission and needed help with Elsa. Scott was the first one up. He walked and fed her. He also brought the walker to me. That was a great idea. I wouldn’t have to worry about falling.

I did some tennis ball massage. My shoulders hurt. I started there and moved the ball down to the inside of my left shoulder blade. As I pushed the ball into that muscle, it felt like cold water was running through it. Then, it felt better. I moved the ball up from there. I ended with the ball pressed into my head just in back of my left ear. Again, I felt cold water running through that part of my head. The vertigo passed. I canceled all tutoring sessions for the day and slept.

The news announced a fixed-wing plane used to fly medical emergencies to Oahu was lost. The crew was flying to Maui to pick up a patient. That’s what Mike and I flew on when we flew to Oahu to get Mike to the hospital after his pancreatitis attack. He died life five weeks later. It might be the same crew that flew us.

Lemus returned to get more information on the irrigation system. He was supposed to come at three. I contacted Josh and B., who had information on the layout and asked them to be available when he arrived. Lemus arrived late; both Josh and B had left. They had other engagements. Scott talked to him. He arranged with Lemus to get the layout information from Josh and go over it with him the next time he came.

Thursday, December 15, 2022

I got up early this morning to walk before 7 am driveway yoga. Yvette used to offer three days a week. Now, it is only on Thursdays. I love it. I would love more, but it’s not worth Yvette’s time and effort. I can appreciate that. I could do some, if not all, of the asanas on my own, but I don’t.

I planned to get more limes first thing in the morning. I put on gloves, grabbed a bucket, and headed down to the bottom of the property to my lime tree. Elsa was with me. As usual, as soon as she was through the gate, she headed for Yvette’s house. Yvette says Elsa likes to take a dump there. She also likes to bother their senile cat, leaving him upset for hours. She got in the house. I was close behind. I called her to come out and slid the screen door shut. The cat and the floor would be safe for now.

This was the second time I’d been down to the tree to pick limes since it was trimmed. I had enough from the last collection to last me a good month, if not more. The tree was almost bare. I picked limes up from the ground. While the trimmers had trimmed the outside edges of the tree, they had left the limbs too long. They may have done that because they were loaded with flowers and the promise of fruit. Now, the limbs were bare, and I could trim back the long ones. That should hopefully make the tree grow fuller.

I washed Elsa. It was a busy day. I had ten minutes between tasks. Naturally, this is the day I got it done. I was shocked to find infected areas on her neck, belly, and tail. Her back looked great.

My next appointment was with the optometrist. My vision has been getting worse by the day. I got there via the Mamalahoa bypass instead of Route 11. It doesn’t save much time, but the view is spectacular. I was twenty minutes late and in plenty of time. I brought a book and my computer with me because I was used to having to wait. One of the tech assistants/receptionists worked with me first. I told her that I thought it might help if the frame was adjusted. They easily get bent out of shape. Adjusting my glasses did nothing. Meali’inani met with me. She tested me for dry eyes. She put a chemical in my eyes and then some additional drops. She told me that the drops dried up within three seconds. Dry eyes affect vision dramatically. If the moisture on the eye dries up in less than six seconds, there is a problem. Meali’inani prescribed a teaspoon to a tablespoon of cod liver oil once a day and moisturizing drops four times a day. I had been using Refresh most mornings and nights before bed. I had to increase my applications. Meali’inani did not prescribe a stronger medication. Judy said Paulette used that, but it was too expensive to continue.

I had a haircut scheduled after the optometrist appointment. I thought I was going to have time between the two appointments. That didn’t happen. I made it there just in time. Randee gave me her usual brilliant haircuts.

I had two tutoring sessions scheduled for the late afternoon. Both were canceled. One was because the mother made other plans at the last minute; the second was because they were at a funeral. After running around a lot, I suddenly had free time. Ah! It was a well-balanced day.

Wednesday, December 14, 2022

I included bending my legs back in my morning exercises as per the chiropractor's comment yesterday on the unevenness of my legs when lying on my back.

I was tired all day. I used my vibrating platform while I read. It did make me feel somewhat better despite my reading Shivani's book about the death of her beloved husband.

I had a session with Shelly. I dealt with my mom's confusion between affection and cruelty. That confusion was understandable, given her experience. For the first six months of her life, she experienced a medical treatment to save her life that could be seen as torture. They administered this painful procedure every other day for her good. I'm sure they did it with great love and care. No wonder she was confused.

I got the image or feeling of tremendous loving energy from someone with whom I had a problematic history. This sensation overshadowed the negative one with my mother. Shelly encouraged me to return to my mother's image, but this loving one surpassed it. My intuition was to stick with it.

After five minutes, my mother entered the scene. Something about her entry shocked her and left her badly confused. Shelly proposed that she felt terrible about the way she treated me. No. That didn't feel right. It was more transformative than that. It was like learning the sun was the center of the universe when she had thought it was the Earth. She was experiencing cognitive dissonance at a deep and active level. I could do nothing to help her except be there, observe, and love her. She hadn't resolved that confusion by the end of our session.

Many will argue that I was experiencing an aspect of myself. That's possible. But I'm psychic with enough correct 'guesses' to be impressed with my statistics. I like that my mother was experiencing that transformation, not me. There is no way her transformation could not affect me, too. I see no harm in viewing it that way, and it gives me pleasure.

My eyes were bothering me no end. The vision out of my left is usually, but not always, blurry. It's exhausting. I finally called Sandor's office to say I wanted to come down to have my glasses adjusted. I doubted that would do it. I had to slant them to see through them clearly, so I saw out of the bottom left inner corner of the lens. I didn't know what the problem was. It could be my wandering eye was wandering more.

I had Adolescent D at 2 pm. He chose to read rather than do spelling. They are two roads, both, hopefully, leading to Rome. He did much better. He wasn't error-free, but he made fewer mistakes, and his response was different. I perceived him as focusing more on the individual letters as he read.

Tuesday, December 13, 2022

I applied a meditation principle Batchelor wrote about. All Eastern meditation emphasizes, "Watch your breath." I learned that in my Vipassana training. S.N. Goenka instructed us to watch the breath move over our upper lip, feeling the air cool as it went in and warm as it came out. That never worked for me; my nose is too big. The breath doesn't hit my upper lip. We were instructed to watch our breath, not to control it. Focusing on the breath and not trying to control it is a challenge. Batchelor says to watch the breath with curiosity and to be surprised by what comes next. This I could do.

I had a problem with my Surface Pro tablet today; the screen was dark. I used the tablet for my Zoom tutoring sessions because it had a touchscreen, which my Mac did not. I contacted my tech support person frantically. He didn't get back to me in time. I used my Mac without a touchscreen. It sufficed. My tech told me, "Turn the tablet off and restart it." It worked like a dream.

I had an appointment with my chiropractor, Lisa. She does good work, but boy, she yaks away and not about something interesting. She talks nonstop about problems in her personal life. She doesn't want my advice; she is just talking story. That would be okay. But she often stops what she is doing while focusing on her story. However, she does good work. Today, I was not in a good mood. It was hard to listen to her. Fortunately, she continued working while she talked.

I went to buy a mat from an art store at Christine's suggestion. Christine, one of my guests over Thanksgiving, is an artist. I talked about how I love to see outdoor scenes framed. I associate this image with Magritte's pictures. When I checked his paintings online, I could only find one such picture. It must have had an impact on me.

I started with the art store in the old industrial area. They only carried made-to-order mats. I went to Pictures Plus near Lowes. They had ready-made mats, but they were a little small. I bought the largest one they had. The opening is eighteen inches by eighteen inches. I held it up against the lanai screen overlooking the Pacific Ocean. The frame wasn't big enough. I will try it on my bedroom sliding doors, looking at the back garden.

I had planned to nap when I got home. Instead, I read more of my niece Shivani's book about her relationship with her husband, particularly the time before he died of brain cancer. I enjoyed reading the first six chapters. The writing was good, and I loved learning more about her story.

Lemus, the man I had contacted to restore the irrigation system, called to say he was in my neighborhood. He was planning to arrive before my three-thirty appointment. Scott was prepared to meet with him if I couldn't. He came before my scheduled meeting. He wanted to have the water turned on to see where the leaks were and figure out where the pipes ran. This didn't make sense to me. How would he figure out where the pipes were if there weren't any leaks? We agreed he would come back when Josh and B were here. They knew more about the system than anyone else did.

I had my first appointment with third-grade J. His mother asked me to work with him on his anger. He worked with a therapist to no effect. She hoped I could reach him. She had me work with him once during Covid and was impressed with how I related to him. He didn't want to work with me.

Among other things, he thought he would do tutoring with me as his sister was. His mother had told him I would do life coaching. Therapy and life coaching are different. In therapy, we focus on what is wrong with us; in life coaching, we work on becoming better without viewing ourselves as deficient.

J's problem was that he didn't want to talk about his anger. While talking about something, particularly excessively, can be counter-productive, so can not talking about our problems enough. He said he hated thinking about himself more than he hated the anger. That can sound like selflessness or not.

I tried to get him to focus on body sensations. The direction he was going in was disastrous. I believe in respecting someone's boundaries. If it's too painful, it's too painful. His mother said he would have to work with someone else if he didn't work with me. Avoiding the problem was not an option. I proposed story writing. He would give a topic, and we would write together. He could set limits about what I write. I talked to his mother about it. It's the best option I have right now. The therapists he saw did play therapy. It did nothing for him.

Then, I had J's first-grade sister. In our last session, I discovered she needed help with the most basic form of inferencing. She could not use context clues. I do not advocate the exclusive use of context clues as some reading programs do. But you can't read English if you don't use context clues at all. I teach the student to start with phonetic decoding and supplement with cueing.

I used Barnell Loft's Using Context Clues. I. is a bright child. Her problems with inferencing came as a surprise. I asked if she was afraid of making a mistake. Yep. There is no surer way of being error-prone than being afraid of making mistakes.

The first item in the Using Contexts workbook was, "Here is a _________ for you," said Tom. The possible answers were 1) ball, 2) jump, and 3) how. She chose jump for the answer. This was going to be interesting. We finished ten items in Unit 1. I asked her if she wanted to continue. No. I switched to decoding using the Carpenter materials. She struggled with Story #4. She made mistakes with several words and couldn't use context clues to correct her errors. When she mispronounced a word and couldn't infer the correct one, I gave her three choices for the word, sticking as close to her mispronunciation as possible. This looks like a fruitful direction.

We had time to read Story #5. She zipped through that. Got it! She has a good memory. She over-relies on it. She thinks she should 'know' everything and that learning is memorizing. She needs a little push in the other direction. I'm glad I caught her young. Kids get caught in cul du sacs and have terrible problems learning. They overuse a strength. Her memory is just that, a strength she is overusing.

I had eighth-grade K immediately afterward. He had a written assignment to write about an incident in his life in blank verse, incorporating some metaphors and similes. Fortunately, I was in touch with his teacher. She told me the objectives and sent me a copy of what he had written in class. I knew what to ask him when the session started. It was like pulling teeth. I couldn't even get a straight answer from him about the sequence of events. Did he sign in before he went to the gym or after? I put in more than I should have. I wasn't the soul of patience. If I believed he was cognitively impaired, I might be more patient. But I don't. I don't seem to have much patience with his 'I don't know" responses. I sometimes think he would respond, "I don't know," if I asked him if he was alive or dead.

His teacher got a good start with him. I finished it off. I required pulling some teeth. But he did come up with the 'as wind.' I don't know if his teacher will accept that metaphor; I think it's great.

It was my first tournament

for jujitsu.

I flew to Oahu

with my dad and my brother.

I was feeling nervous

Like a mahi was flopping around in my stomach.

When I got to the tournament,

I had to sign in.

We went to the gym.

I watched the people

I had to go against.

I wanted to know

what they would do

when I versed them.

After the first match,

I had to go against

the loser.

He was easy

as wind.

I won.

I gained

My confidence.

I was like ( I expected him to finish this in class.)

Then I had to go

against the winner

of the first match.

I felt good.

I felt like

I could beat him.

I won again.

I was proud.

I won a katana.

I told my friends I won.

I felt proud like

A champion.

Below are his original notes. I don't know how much his teacher put in to get this out of him.

When we got in the gym, I watched the people I had to go against so I knew what they will do if I verse them. Then I had to go against the loser. Then I won and gained my confidence. After I won, I had to go against the winner. I won again. I was proud. I won a katana.

Monday, December 12, 2022

I returned from my morning walk just as B. pulled up the driveway. He stopped to hand me something. He said it was a gift from Mama K, a mutual friend. She expressed gratitude for my listening ear the other day as she complained about the burdens of her life. They are considerable. The talk relieved some of her stress. That was easy. I was glad I could do something to help her. I can't help her learn to set limits except by blowing up ineffectively.

As usual, no one showed up for my Step Up Tutoring Office hours at 11. The program got off to a great start. They changed the policy because they had to show their sponsors' results. They insisted that each session be forty-five minutes to an hour. They introduced scripted lessons. They demanded that students report what they did to the students weekly to the parents and the student's classroom teacher. I do half-hour sessions unless I feel more can be accomplished by doing longer ones. Students are all climbing a steep incline. They're exhausted. I get tired of pulling them up that hill.

Elsa and I went up to Paulette's to get more water. Ideally, we get refills every third day. That hadn't happened in awhile. I had guests, and then I was just lazy. Whenever we go up, we visit as well as pick up water. I like sitting with Paulette, talking about nothing in particular, working on a jigsaw puzzle, or shelling mac nuts.

I told Paulette about the Christmas present I bought myself. I was excited- a four-inch handheld chain saw. It sounds like a fantastic little tool. Paulette said she had one but wasn't that thrilled with it. She sawed down a slender branch. It took a minute. I thought it would be better. Then I saw the blade was rusted. I don't know how old it was or if she didn't do what was necessary to take care of it properly.

I had a session with adolescent D. I worked with him on copying letters. He could hold up to five letters in his head. He also needed help with handwriting. I started with the classification activity, categorizing print letters by their spatial orientation. Uppies (b, f, etc.), downies (g,j, etc.), and the regulars ( a, c, e, etc.). From what he says, he has no problem with letter formation. He had trouble controlling his hand. It is too tense.

Sunday, December 11, 2022

After church today, I asked Fr. Lio if he could help me get the engraved gravestones out of the back of my car, place them on the grave, and get the cement wedges I want the gravestones to rest on in my vehicle. I hate the way cement looks over time. It just looks dirty. I want to paint the wedges before the gravestones are attached to them.

I had to take my car from the library to the church parking lot. I waited until the church parking lot was mostly empty before pulling in. I had one idea of where to park; Fr. Lio had another.

This cemetery is small; no roads are running through it. We park in the church parking lot and walk to the grave sites. Rather than park by the entrance to the cemetery, Fr. Lio wanted me to park in a parking spot close to the site. He told me to back my car into a spot. I insisted he park the car, explaining that I had a bad track record when driving under five mph.

Fr. Lio’s idea was the better one. There was a low rock wall separating the cemetery from the parking lot. With the help of another parishioner, the two men took the engraved stones out of the car and placed them on the rock wall. Then they picked up the two 200 lb. cement wedges resting on the gravesite, placed them on the wall, climbed over it, and placed them in the back of my car. Then, they put the two engraved stones on the gravesite. While the job wasn’t quite finished, people could find Mike’s grave until I was ready to do the next step.

I have been agitated. I focused on the screaming I heard in my mind. Not of someone screaming at me, but my screaming in pain. Mike once said that one day I would start crying and wouldn’t be able to stop. I cry more easily these days. When I do cry, it’s these deep, racking sobs that sound like laughter. And where is Mike when I need him? Of course, his absence has brought this to the surface.

I saw Mike as a refuge, a sanctuary, and a shield. He protected me from my mom. I only recently wondered if her behavior would have reverted to the worst if he had died before her. She understood and respected him as a shield. He’s gone now, and my tolerance for endless correction, criticism, and verbal attacks has shrunk. That is not to say that Mike was never angry at me or I at him. I would be suspicious of any relationship where that is true. As my father said, “If two people are always in agreement, there is only one mind at work.” It’s just that neither one violated some bottom-line agreement that was the basis for our deep trust in each other.

Now, I am without him. I feel endangered. Realistically, I am no more in danger now than when he was alive, just more vulnerable. That is my reality. I have to accept it in myself and set appropriate boundaries.

That screaming voice in my head quieted when I envisioned my mother saying things to me to hurt me. She had a sadistic streak. She liked frightening the cats and startling us. She’d whack us on the rear end, making us jump sky-high and call it a love pat. She did mean it lovingly. I think she was a little confused between kindness and cruelty. An understandable confusion, given her experience.

My mother was born with a benign tumor in her upper back. If it hadn’t been treated, it would have grown at the same rate she did and crushed her heart and lungs, killing her. In 1903, medicine wasn’t that advanced, no less pediatric medicine. Her mother brought her to the hospital every other day. Alcohol was injected into the tumor and the area around it. The area was sore and infected. She must have been in constant pain. This pain was inflicted by caring people. Caring people sometimes have to inflict pain to make you better. We are all lucky she didn’t come out crazier than she did. Both her children survived and made good lives for themselves. That’s pretty good statistics.

Sitting with this aspect of her quieted by internal noise. Ah! She didn’t do anything to me in the image. It was like watching a large cat snarl at you from behind cage bars. I felt safe. It hurt to see my mother be that way with me – to anyone. But it’s over and done with. She’s been dead for over twenty years. That leaves me to work out my PTSD.

Saturday, December 10, 2022

I got up early because of an 8 am session with part of Mama k's crew. There was no response to the Zoom invitation. I called, but I got no response. Mama K called around 8:30 to apologize. The woman lives a crazy, stress-filled life. Fourth-grade K came on first. On a diagnostic test, he was found to be functioning on the first-grade level in Number and Operations. Last time, I saw a possible problem with estimating when he said 10 +10= 20 and 15 +15= 20. When I compared 51 + 43= versus 54 + 45=, he immediately understood the second problem would have a bigger answer than the first because the addends were larger. His tone questioned my intelligence for asking such a stupid question. He was exhausted during our Wednesday afternoon classes. Mama K explained her kids wake up early. That's why they're tired when they come home from school. I also know he watches videos when in bed. The tablet is his blankie, his comfort object.

He had no problems adding two-digit numbers with regrouping. Then I tried 2-digit subtraction with regrouping. Oops! First, he added the numbers together, ignoring the operation sign. Then he tried subtracting the top number from the bottom instead of regrouping. He had trouble with regrouping. He had the principle but needed help understanding how to apply it to all the digits in a three-digit problem.

Ah, then I discovered he didn't readily know the answer to N-1=. He believed he had to have them memorized. I asked him to count back from ten. He had no problem doing that. He did just fine when he used that knowledge to answer the questions. His problems may be because of a misunderstanding of what learning means. He assumes he has to memorize everything.

I had one of the third-grade twins after my session with K. I thought I had Twin E. Twin E had more problems with reading than Twin A. I selected two stories from the Carpenter materials. A lower level one for Twin E than Twin A.

It wound up I had the twins confused. Twin A zoomed through the story I gave her to read, which was intended for Twin E. I was thrilled, thinking it was E. This was incredible. When the second Twin came on,. t discovered I had them mixed up; I wasn't disappointed. Twin A's performance was also amazing. She read with fluency.

Twin E read the more difficult selection I had selected for Twin A. She did better than I expected. She struggled but did reasonably well. Slow and steady won the race. She read with limited automaticity. After she struggled through a paragraph, I asked her if she wanted to stop or continue. She chose to continue. Wow! That was incredible.

I called Mama K to give her the good news about her children: K's problem was not that serious, and both girls sounded better.

I got a call from Adolescent D's mother to share good news. D had attended a dance at school. Parents came up and told her how D participated in the event. Then on the way home, he interrupted his sister to announce that he wanted to talk about the event- and then he did. He gave a detailed description. This was an amazing turn of events. This was out of character for him, both asserting his desire to talk and sharing the details.

I got a call from a mother interested in tutoring for her fourth-grade son, who has reading problems. The private school the W sister and eighth grade K attend recommended me. Unfortunately, she wants in-person sessions. I only do Zoom sessions. I told her I had good results on Zoom. She said she would look for someone else or get back to me after the holidays.

I spent the day reading Out of the Dust. I want to have it finished before my session with sixth grade W. I have been reading two similar books, one for W and one for K. They are both told in blank verse; they both have girls as the main character, and they both have the death of the mother and the resilience of the adolescent main character.

I did some work on updates. I needed to catch up in posting my email updates. The blog updates are easier to keep up with. I wrote those entries over a year ago. They still need to be reread and edited, and run through Grammarly, but I don't have to compose them from notes. They take less time.

Yesterday, I posted my YouTube videos on The Phonics Discovery Method. It had an impact. I had three hits for both Phase I and Phase II videos.

Friday, December 9, 2022

I called Kia headquarters, hoping to get more information on the car. The woman who answered the phone had no technical knowledge. She told me to call the dealership. I had, but the people who worked there have poor communication skills. The clerk who initially took my information didn't report what I said correctly. I discovered this only after I called to find out what they had learned about the unexpected acceleration of the car.

On that first phone call, they told me it was normal to happen on an incline. If you drive on flat land, it doesn't happen. There is no flat land on the Big Island in Hawaii.

I had a session with adolescent D. He had done nothing with letters. He chose to work on the spelling exercise. I dictate from any text, and he tries to figure out how to spell it. He sounds out the words and applies some of the spelling rules he remembers. He gave the wrong letter for the /n/ sound in spelling standing. His error shocked him. I told him to breathe. I talked about a student who had excellent word recognition skills but didn't have verbal skills. Verbal skills are more valuable than word recognition skills. I also gave him the statistics on the illiteracy rates in the country. Fifty-four percent of adults read below the sixth-grade level. Eighty percent of poor children cannot read well. I assured him he was in good company. He was able to calm himself. I was pleased that he was shocked that he made that error. He expected himself to get it right. Sadly, he didn't catch his mistake on his own.

Today's news announced the lava wouldn't reach Saddle Road, the highway across the island. Road traffic across the island would have been impossible if the lava had crossed the road. People would have to drive the roads around the island's outer edge. The economic impact would have been bad. The island was already under enough stress.

I watched Wedding Season on Netflix last night. Close to the end, I recognized it; I had seen it before. Getting old is great. I don't remember anything and enjoy movies as I'd never seen them.

Thursday, December 8, 2022

I was up early this morning. I didn't do my in-bed exercises because I had driveway yoga. Vince, one of my walking friends, was up early, too. He had to go into town today.

I called Kia headquarters to check on the information on the car. I took a careful look at the paperwork for the car service. I told the guy there was an unexpected acceleration. That's all he wrote. Did I not make clear that it was above the limit set by the cruise control, or did he not accurately record what I said? Either way, it explains some of the confusion. Of course, the car accelerates on an upgrade. All automatic transmissions do. The car shifts into low gear and pulls harder to climb the hill. I called Kia headquarters customer service. The fellows here may be decent mechanics, but their communication skills could use some improvement.

I asked a question of a representative at Kia headquarters. Good luck! It was a call center at an office. They were unqualified to give technical advice. The woman said she would ask someone else. She hung up on me. I was unhappy about the situation but am making peace with it. I was adjusting to the need to be constantly on the alert. I already monitor the automatic stopping feature. It's not set to my comfort. I like to start breaking sooner.

I had an appointment with my therapist/life coach today. I worked on my extreme reaction to the car situation. I felt betrayed and abandoned by the car. I counted on its safety features. They saved me at least once. I'm ultimately responsible, but I loved that the car had my back. No more! Even as I write this, I feel the loss. I am as sure as I can be this is not all about a car. It's a car on top of Mike's death. Mike promised he wouldn't leave me. Where is he now? Do I understand logically that he didn't abandon me? Of course. But my nervous system only experiences loss. The grief has gotten worse over time, not less. I feel like I am constantly on the verge of sobbing.

Early in my relationship with Mike, he said one day I would start crying, and I wouldn't be able to stop. I was to call him immediately, and he would come home from work. Where is he now that the sobbing has hit me so hard? Is he here? No. Do I know rationally he didn't 'leave me?' Yes. He had a few other issues, like a failing body and his death. He tried to stay alive for me way beyond the point where he wanted to. God, I miss the man.

Many years ago, I told Shelly I was afraid to put my ideas on teaching reading out there because I would be attacked. She said nothing but probably thought I was more than a little paranoid. In the podcast Sold a Story, one woman talks about making a presentation advocating teaching phonics and opposing Clay's approach, and participants verbally attacked her. People came up to her and yelled; it was a moral issue.

I went to the church for Mary's Tea. Zola had invited me to her table. Judy reminded me I had to bring my own teacup. I brought one that my friend Jean gave me years ago. It's lovely. It is almost unusable without the saucer to stabilize it, but it is beautiful.

I knew two women at the table besides Zola, Mindy, and Karen. We were all old ladies except for Karen. The food is homemade finger sandwiches and cakes and cookies. I enjoyed the company.

After the tea, I went home for a nap. I had first grade I at 3:30. I continued working with the Carpenter materials and decoding. Then, I discovered she had difficulty figuring out words using context clues. It is only possible to be a good reader in English with that skill. She decoded the word was with a short /a/ and a final /s/ sound, so it rhymed with ass. She couldn't figure out what the word was. I made several statements with the word using her pronunciation. "I /wass/ in school yesterday." She still couldn't figure out what the word might be. Ah! This must be the problem the teacher identified. It is a vital skill, as is accurate decoding. She also told me that I was applying what she learned about decoding to everything she was reading. She would be a short-term client.

. In our last session, I worked with I's brother, third-grade J, on his anger. Today, he refused to work with me. I thought it was because I pushed too hard. But no, it wasn't that. He had a bad day at school. He got blamed for something he didn't do, which triggered his anger. Join the human race. He told his mom that I was doing therapy with him. His mom had told him I was a life coach. They're both true. My therapist has to classify herself as a life coach. When people think of going to therapy to fix something wrong, it sucks. It is a way to be a better person. That often involves changing things about myself.

Eighth grade K. worked on the main idea of a section of a poem. We worked on understanding the relationship between the metaphorical terms and the events. It took effort, but he got some of it. This fourteen-year-old boy is functioning on a second or third-grade level. Oh, boy.

Adolescent D signed into Zoom to do a ten-minute session. I give him the individual phonemes, and he had to figure out the word. D has problems with basic phonemic awareness, a predictor of reading problems. I had forgotten all about the session. I was on my vibrating platform doing the alphabet exercise with my ankle when I remembered our meeting at 5 pm. We met. He still struggles, reversing sounds and losing whole syllables as he blends them.

Wednesday, December 7, 2022

I added the alphabet writing with my foot to my morning in-bed exercises. It wasn't as hard as I thought it would be.

Today, I had my Kia service appointment to check my car out. I stopped at Atlas Recycling to drop off the bag of soda cans. I also asked about my broken beach chairs. I had cut the material off them, but Scott told me I had to remove all plastic. I couldn't do that. The attendant said he would do it. I told the guy to give the money to someone homeless. He said he would. Afterward, I guessed he might be the homeless person he had in mind.

I brought the car to the Kia dealership because I had a concern with the car's operation. A friend drove it and experienced a sudden, unexpected surge in speed above the limit set by the cruise control. He declared there was something wrong with my car. I had never experienced it. He never experienced it again. There's a good chance he did something with the cruise control that caused the unexpected increase in speed. Since he couldn't remember doing anything, there was still a chance it had something to do with the car. I recalled the days of the Audi mishaps when the car bolted out of the driveway. It caused seven hundred accidents and six deaths between 1982 and 1987. The prospect of a runaway car was frightening. That's why I took the car in.

While it was there, I had them do a routine service and checkup. When I got home, I called about another issue. Sometime after I got the car, I pulled into a friend's driveway at night and got a large (over 1 foot high) boulder stuck under my car. (His nine-year-old son had rolled it there.) When I took it in to be checked, they told me the battery shield had been damaged. They would order a new one. That was the last I heard from Kia. Today, I called them to remind them of this needed repair. They called me back to say the shield was scratched but not damaged enough to interfere with service. However, my alignment was out. I don't think the boulder did that. I suspect it was one of my awkward right turns when I went over a high curb. For $89, they could fix it. Sure, go ahead.

I got a ride home from Kia in their tow truck. The step was too high for me. I could hardly get my foot up on the running board. The driver, an older man himself, had to come to the passenger side and push me in once I got my foot in place. We chatted as he drove me home.

Greg asked me first how long I had been on the island. He came in 2002. He had been a professional poker player and won a big pot. A trip to Hawaii was part of it. He stopped at the Kia service and gave them his resume. They immediately offered him a job- and he stayed. He loves the climate here.

He got married and now has a seventeen-year-old child. He told me he had dyslexia, and his son had problems with autism when he was young. He and his wife worked with the child, and he was "no longer autistic."

His son recently asked his dad what to put down for his racial category. His dad said, "Heinz 57 varieties." His mom is Hawaiian, Chinese, and Filipino. His dad is one-quarter full-blooded Cherokee with Scottish, German, and Eastern European in the mix. Sounds like Heinz to me.

When the car was finished, they called to give me the bill. They charged me for the basic maintenance service. I thought that was covered for ten years. No. The warranty was good for ten years but not for the basic services. Oh. That was upsetting because I thought it was otherwise. When I bought the car, I should have taken a knowledgeable man with me. They could have sold me anything. I asked if it would void the warranty if I used a local shop. No. I just needed to keep all the receipts to demonstrate I maintained the car.

I called back. The mechanic said nothing about the issue that made me bring the car in the unintended speed surge. All the stories about the Audi 500 flashed to mind. I had calmed down, but the thought was terrifying. I called Kia back to ask what the result of their check was. They said it is normal for the car to accelerate up a hill. What!!??? He said the car was designed to do that. "What??!!" I said. Then you can't use cruise control in Hawaii because you can't drive without going up and down hills. I should have been told that before I bought the car.

I called the owner of the dealership, who sold me the car. I told him what the mechanic said. Cruise control should not be used in Hawaii because of the hills. I finally said something explicit about the car accelerating to speeds beyond the top limit of the cruise control setting. He said it was normal for the motor to accelerate on a hill. However, it would not be standard for the car's speed to go beyond the cruise setting- the issue with my car.

A friend helped me calm down with a statistical approach- right in my wheelhouse. What was the statistical likelihood of that happening? That helped. That's how I usually think about things. I was off my pins. I have recovered reasonably well. I still feel raw and know I must be alert when driving.

I had an appointment with adolescent D. I talked about his resistance to any form of actual practice. I wanted him to work on copying letters, with or without reading the words, saying each letter aloud, and writing the letter with his fingertip on a surface. This is to heighten his perception of letters. He hates doing it because it is a painful reminder of his disability. I understand, but the choice is between this momentary pain and the long-term pain of never improving. I can understand the dilemma, too. D isn't the only one dealing with choices like that. I can't think of anyone who hasn't made that choice in some area of their life. I encouraged his mom to remind him to do the exercise even one minute a day. Besides whatever resistance he has, he has memory problems. She doesn't like to push him. I don't blame her. A battle royal could ensue. I told her to be just a reminder. It should be his choice.

I had a session with Mama K's crew immediately after adolescent D. Twin A was reading away. I saw a few moments when automaticity set in, and she read fluently. So far, she had been completely reliant on conscious decoding.

Twin E is still dependent on conscious decoding. However, she did remember the word there. It was unclear if it was automatic or if she used the decoding trick of pronouncing the word the, and then adding the /r/ sound. You wind up with the Scottish pronunciation for the word there, but it gets you there.

I switched from reading comprehension to math with fourth-grade K. Mama K texted me a copy of his report card. It needed to give more information. I determined he was good at reading numbers up to 100,000 and representing those numbers with expanded notation. His teacher sent me the results of his i-Ready diagnostic report. I needed a little help interpreting it. It gave me the information I needed.

For my last session of the day, I met with eighth-grade K. I worked on a passage from Under the Mesquite, an extended metaphor. It took a lot of work, but in the end, he connected the symbolic reference, smoke, and the actual reference, the father's shifting mood. I don't know what this boy's problem is. I have worked with the autistic, the intellectually deficient, the perceptually impaired, and the inexperienced. K is in a category by himself. His inability to articulate his thoughts is stunning. Or is the problem that he has no thoughts? He functions at most on a third-grade level in his thinking. He has trouble answering basic questions about his behavior. He is always lost. I want to recommend a speech and language evaluation.

I started watching Slow Horses on Apple TV. I don't know how much of it I can take.