Mike's death; Betty's life...: 03/12/26

Thursday, March 12, 2026

I introduced Elsa to the doggy door a while ago. Mike and I installed it in our bedroom for our two forty-pound Portuguese Water dogs. Both died right before we left, not at the same time but within a few months of each other.

The door had been hidden behind a chest of drawers sitting kitty-corner. I moved the bureau out to slide in behind with Elsa in my arms. She wasn't crazy about being pushed through, forced to butt her head against the plastic flap. Someone recommended throwing a treat through the door. That didn't work. When I lifted the flap so she could go out unimpeded, she unhappily complied. Whenever she went in or out to the lanai off the bedroom, I insisted she use the doggy door. By this point, she was willing to use the door to enter the house, but I had to force her to use it to go out. I pick her up from the bed and take her right to the door each morning. This morning, I got involved with something else and forgot. She did her business on the indoor lanai. It was my fault.

This morning, I finished with the monitor for a WHI study. I wore a little gadget over my right hip held on with an elastic band around my waist for a week. I put the monitor and a record of my sleep schedule in an envelope provided and placed it in the mailbox. Done.

Saturday, I received three pairs of Oofos after receiving three pairs on Thursday. I was only expecting a total of two pairs. What was going on? Had I received four pairs I hadn't ordered? The clerk told me I had only been charged for two. She said she could not charge me for the other pairs or cancel the refunds. I had six pairs for the price of two. Of course, one pair wasn't even my size. I checked Yvette's shoe size first. Perfect. Now, I had five pairs. I had two sets of the same colors and one of the spiced chia from the original three pairs.

I received my Master card bill and was distressed that it was considerably higher than usual. What was going on? I couldn't find any single payment that explained the increase. Then I saw this bill included my end year's charity payments. Phew! I didn't have to be concerned that my buying habits had gone off the rails.

Hawaiian Solar still needed to replace defective panels. I call every few months when I think of it. The initial installment from this company included defective panels that stopped working. The company was willing to replace them. I had a few replaced earlier. That went smoothly. Since the pandemic, that hasn't been the case. They keep delaying. They say they have the parts in their Honolulu warehouse but don't forward them to the company.

I had an appointment with Adolescent D. at 2 pm after a quiet morning. I still don't do well with limited activity. I need to interact with a person, a plant, the kitchen floor, or something, and it needs to be energetic.

These days, I give D a choice of what he wants to work on, tracing letters to develop visual perceptual skills, healing work on his self-condemnation because of his handicap, reading Investing for Young Adults, the first book he got as a present in his life, or reading third-grade material that includes less challenging words and helps develop his memory for patterns. He chose to work on the letter tracing. I asked him why. He said it's a good start for the class. It is the only activity he chooses with some joy. It is relaxing.

I asked if he was seeing a difference in his reading. No. Was he seeing a difference in his attention? He said he didn't know. I asked if it was less irritating to listen to his teachers. Yes. That signals a change. I asked him if he had written anything during the week. He thought and said, "Yes, Once." Holy cow! This was the first time he tried to remember something he had done in school over the week – and he did recall. I asked him if he was seeing a difference in his memory ability. Yes. This would be incredible! One of his major problems is remembering anything that isn't very emotionally stimulating.

While there may be progress, I don't know what made the difference. It could be the psychological work we're doing, the letter tracing, or neither; perhaps it's nothing we are doing. Psychological work is a possibility. D's experience with failure has him avoiding trying to do anything he might fail at. The letter tracing activity can have an impact on focusing and attention. I have used comparable exercises with other students with success. I wish I knew so I would be sure of a tool to help other students. Oh, well.

We also worked on reading. D consciously decoded two words. I know it doesn't sound like much, but it requires great effort for this boy. I divided the word stable as sta/ble. He decoded sta-, keeping the sounds in the correct order. I gave him the -ble. It is a final stable syllable with an odd pronunciation. The second word was effective. I divided the word as ef/fec/tive. I had him decode each syllable separately without any thought as to what the word was. This is a huge challenge for him. He always tries to say the whole word instead of making sure he has every syllable before he tries for the whole word. Then, he tends to reverse the sequence of the phonemes or the syllables. It is hard work for him. However, he won't have any chance of changing how his brain works if he doesn't try. It's a lot like watching someone try to walk after a stroke. It is painful and requires a lot of effort and will. When he does this work, it brings up all those bad feelings about himself. We take breaks while I do more EFT on difficult feelings. It helps. It reduces the shame load.

It was damp and cold today with intermittent rain. We needed the water. We went through an extended dry spell. Between having little to do and the weather, I felt sluggish. I had plans to go out tomorrow, but I decided to get some of those chores done today -just for the stimulation.

I went to Bella Pietra to see if I could find another base slab for Mike's gravesite. Fr. Lio had picked up one that was grey. It didn't go well with the mottle brown granite I picked for the monument stones. I wanted to find a piece of similar material in another color. Grey was the only color it came in. The palette was made of compressed lava rock.

I mentioned wanting to stain the concrete wedges a compatible color. The employee said he knew nothing about it, but there was another guy who would be in tomorrow who could help me. I hope to get a lead on someone to do the work for me. That would be great. I'm concerned about handling the acid stain. You're supposed to wear protective gear. Where was I going to do the work without coloring other surfaces? I struggled with those questions.

I had second-grade M at 4 pm. I start each class reviewing addition and subtraction with regrouping. Today, I played a trick on her. I always use the same numbers in both problems. She has to pay attention to the operation sign. I usually put the addition problem on the left of the page and the subtraction on the right. I switched them today. She caught it. Wonderful! She struggles to remember the procedures. They don't come automatically. However, she sticks with it. She sees when she has done something incorrectly. When we started working together, she would be reluctant to try anything. If she experienced failure, she would get out of her seat and wander around the room, driven by anxiety. Now, she says, "Wait! Let me figure it out." How fantastic is that?!

I had time to start on a word problem. M couldn't figure out what operation she needed to use to solve the problem. I had her do one with numbers under 10, one she could do in her head. She understood the operation needed. I aligned the problem with the larger numbers with the one with the smaller numbers. She didn't see the pattern for love or money. She doesn't see patterns. Would she see them more if she looked for them, or is she blind to them?

Sunday, January 29, 2023

I ran into Rosemary today on my morning walk. I hadn't seen her for a long time. She explained she had been doing other things; pickleball was one. She said my hair looked cute. She was the second person who used the word cute to describe my hair. I have never heard anyone describe it that way before, and now two in a matter of days. I asked her what about my hair was cute. She said the color. People have told me I have a great shade of gray, but it's been this way for a long time. There is no radical difference in my hair color. The difference is in my face. My left brow is more relaxed because of meditation.

In my meditation, I focused on the sensations in the brow and let what happens happen. The first time I did it, I felt a shooting pain in my eyeball. It went away as quickly as it came and didn't return. My mental focus shifted to just above the eyebrow. After the stabbing sensation passed, I observed my brain's electrical activity; that's the best description. I remembered someone else describing meditation as an exercise in herding oxen. I didn't herd; I just watched in the style of Vipassana. Whatever was nagging at me calmed. The Vipassana meditation is a lifesaver.

I told Rosemary I bought a box of rubber fingertips because I had misplaced the one she had left behind when she came to my house to notarize a document. As it turned out, she couldn't notarize it; it was a Xerox copy of my driver's license. Come to learn, Xeroxed copies of official documents can't be notarized.

The church was crowded again this week as it had been last week. Sandor was the deacon of the mass. He hasn't been doing the nine am because he was needed for the Spanish mass. He's the only one who speaks Spanish fluently. I called him the other day to ask for the extra glasses he had made during Covid. He said something about glasses being in a tray at work. Everything was confused during Covid because of the messed-up supply chain; anything is possible.

I wasn't exhausted after church as I usually am. I stopped at Safeway to pick up cream cheese, lox, celery, and an onion. I didn't buy more Hersey's milk chocolate nuggets or kisses with whole almonds because I am overeating them. It's showing on my scale and my measuring tape.

I had second-grade M in the late afternoon. She did an addition and subtraction problem with regrouping on her own correctly. It was slow going, but she got it. I tried to get the word problems her teacher sent me on the shared screen but got another document instead. I highlighted the correct one, but it kept bringing up the story from QRI. Fortunately, it was the one I wanted to work on. She read the story reasonably well. She made mistakes and stumbled but self-corrected. This passage is low first-grade, although I can't imagine a first-grader reading it. More significantly, she needed help with basic understanding.

I read another chapter in Shivani's book. It is wonderful. It could be a best seller. I could have screamed when she described her mother-in-law's behavior toward her as her husband was dying. I was so upset I had to stop reading. Her mother-in-law didn't like her and believed she should be the beneficiary of Shivani's husband's life insurance and death benefits. Are you kidding?

Saturday, January 28, 2023

At 9 in the morning, I had a session with Mama K’s crew. I tried the Fernald approach to memorization with Twin E. on a few words. With the Fernald method, you write the word, cover it, and write it again. You repeat this procedure five times. Then, I switched to identifying sight words in a third-grade passage. E reverts to decoding strategies rather than using automatic recall. When I pushed her, she tried the latter and did well. She had to be constantly reminded to use it.

Twin A reread the third-grade passage on a creature seen in Africa that looks like a cross between a dinosaur and an elephant frightening the natives. She tried to use her recall of the text rather than the letters on the page, making mistakes. She had to be reminded to stick to the print.

I asked fourth-grade K if his teacher had given him a printout of our written material on Wednesday. No. I was surprised at first. Then he told me he couldn’t write about a violent video game. Ah. That’s good to know. I wrote the teacher. I was glad of her rule. While I am freaked out about videos that use violence for entertainment, I was also pleased because I could use it to practice his verbal expression skills. I used the subject of Fortnight because it was something he knew and was passionate about.

Later in the day, I joined a Zoom meeting Damon arranged to celebrate his mother’s birthday on the 22nd. He did try for one last weekend. I was in church when he called to ask me to get on. I found out today that the event was a technological failure. While last week, there were many more people, this week it was just Jean, her husband John, her son Damon, and me.

Jean commented it was an ‘alta cockers’ group. Except for Damon, we were all over eighty. Jean started off the conversation with current medical tests and treatments. Damon and I made our contributions. A big part of the ‘alta cockers’ social life is with medical personnel. John had nothing to add.

Scott brought in two large bags and placed them on my kitchen counter. They were both packages from Oofos. One contained the two pairs I was expecting. The other contained the three pairs I had been expecting since December 27. When I called last week, the customer service guy made it sound like the order for three slippers was held back because they didn’t have one of the colors, but they failed to let me know. I now had the two I was expecting after the last phone call, the one they sent me in error, and the three I had ordered in December. I now had a total of eight pairs of Oofos. The question is, how much did they charge me?

Friday, January 27, 2023

I slept straight through till the alarm went off. Incredible. I also had none of those uncomfortable feelings in the morning that set me off on the wrong foot for the day. I started my in-bed exercises late.

Yesterday, during driveway yoga, Yvette showed us a different way to do a stretch. When drawing a bent leg against my body, I usually started with both legs straight. Now, I started with both legs bent, pulled one up against my chest, and slowly straightened the other. It was more impactful. The other day, I varied how I had been doing another of the exercises. Instead of just leaning one leg inwards over the other, I twisted that leg over the other, Eagle Pose style. I always do a savasana between each exercise, which means I doze.

When I got out of bed this morning, it was around 7:30- very late for me. By the time I had completed my morning libations, it was 7:50. I fed Elsa before going on our morning walk. It was too late for her to wait until we got back.

My interest in Stephen Batchelor's talks on Buddhism has led me down a rabbit hole. I found Robert Wright, who also talks about 'secular' Buddhism but sees no reason to call himself a Buddhist as Batchelor does. Love the ingroup sniping.

Robert Wright interviewed Paul Bloom, an academic psychologist. They talked about his concept of empathy. Ah, I found a like-minded soul. Bloom distinguishes between emotional and cognitive empathy. Empathy is often used to refer to emotional empathy. Bloom points out that emotional empathy is usually biased and can be dangerous. I emailed Bloom, hoping he would champion different terms for emotional versus cognitive empathy.

Dear Dr. Bloom:

I have just become familiar with your argument against the value of emotional empathy. I have held this opinion for quite a while myself. I'm glad to know I'm not alone.

I have looked up the definition of empathy on different sites; there's little agreement.

I propose that emotional 'empathy' be called sympathy. To feel with.

Cognitive empathy is called empathy. To think outside of. I would love it if the prefix em- meant 'out of' in empathy as it does in emigrate, to go out of, versus immigrate to go into. But the meaning of the prefix in empathy is 'in.'

I prefer defining em- as moving out of because with cognitive empathy, you have to move out of the limits of your own state to understand the condition of someone different than yourself. I wish you'd champion the use of these terms, which I think will go a long way to clarify the terms' meaning and use.

Unbelievably, he answered me. I'm in love.

Thanks, Betty. You might be right, but I doubt that language can be changed like that. The word "sympathy" has its own meaning — roughly, to feel caring for someone in pain — and if you used it to mean emotional empathy, it would just cause a lot of confusion. But I agree with you that the terminology is a mess.

Best,

—PB

Paul Bloom

paulbloom.net

Encouraged, I sent back this response:

Thank you. How do you define emotional empathy if not to feel what others feel? Betty

As those who have followed My blog, you know this is a huge bug-a-boo for me.

After reading his response, I realized I had never checked the difference in the dictionary definitions between emotional empathy and sympathy. I did and sent another email to Bloom.

I admit I had never checked the distinction between emotional empathy and sympathy. Eh! You'd be a great person to suggest ways to clean up the categories. I haven't had a chance to read your book yet. In the meantime, I do what I can. You'd be vastly more influential and better positioned to clarify definitions. Go for it! What do you have to lose?

No, I'm not expecting an ongoing dialogue. I was shocked I got a response the first time.

Thursday, January 26, 2023

Today was my third day wearing a movement monitor just above my right hip for WHI research. I also had to record when I got up and went to bed daily. I almost forgot to note the times when I got up this morning.

The scale had been going in the wrong direction. I was 144 pounds this morning, up from 138 pounds a few months ago. I'm unsure if it's the chocolate intake finally catching up with me or the noodle soup I recently started having each morning. It's probably the noodle soup because the weight gain correlates with my eating it. Cutting back on chocolate wouldn't hurt, either.

Meghna Chakrabarti of NPR's On Point had a guest talk about the evolutionary purpose of anxiety. We need it to prepare for an uncertain future. Statistically, anxious people perform better. I always found that true. I worked to find a way to function without anxiety. Anxiety is natural. It helps us take action in potentially risky situations. It tells us we have to take action. I realized that I surrender to anxiety in many ways by avoiding scary actions instead of taking them. I've got to post my ad for tutoring on Craigslist. That's how I got several clients in the past. Once I have finished my dental work and no longer have significant gaps in my teeth, I will work on the videos with teaching hacks for reading. I need to get more activity in my life in general. Too much leisure is not a good thing.

I got a delivery from Oofos for the two remaining pairs they had in stock. I started ordering four pairs. They were the wrong size. I called to arrange an exchange. They said they were out of one of the colors. I requested a refund for the one pair and expected to receive the three remaining colors in my size. The other day, I called to find out what happened to the three I was expecting. I was told they no longer had a shoe in one of the other colors. "Okay. Give me a refund for those shoes and send on the two remaining ones from my original order". Today, I received two packages from Oofos. One contained the two shoes I was expecting. The other had a pair I didn't order that wasn't my size.

Thoughts on avoidance as a coping strategy. Many years ago, a friend asked why I was so angry at my mother. She was difficult. The friend's parents made mine look like saints. Her parents were absolute nightmares. I asked her if she was angry at them. She said no. I asked, "If you think about what they did to you, you're not angry?" She said, "Oh, if I think about it, I'm furious." We had very different ideas of how the human mind works.

My friend assumed that if something was not in her conscious mind, it was not a problem. I believe all that is hidden in the unconscious mind has an impact. Our behavior is controlled by that, whether or not we're aware of it. I learned the concept of the human mind at my father's knee. Unfortunately, he didn't give me the tools to deal with that knowledge. I learned those through Vipassana meditation.

S.N. Goenka, the founder of the form of Vipassana I fortuitously became involved with, taught that awareness and equanimity were like two wings of a bird. They had to be equal. My awareness was much greater than my equanimity. Some people, like my friend, emphasize equanimity over awareness but confuse denial and avoidance with true equanimity. And then there are the poor souls who lack both equanimity and awareness.

Wednesday, January 25, 2023

I had an appointment with the acupuncturist. She worked on my upper back again. I have this muscle running parallel to the left side of my spine. It would do well as the deepest note on a bass cello. It contracts everything on the left side of my body. She didn't know the name of the muscle; it's a superficial one. This 'superficial' muscle ran from the top of my head to the little toe. Not so superficial. I get headaches on the left side of my head. Now I have an explanation. Of course, I still don't know why this pattern developed.

The chiropractor used cupping on me for the second time. For those who don't know what that means: She has a set of glass 'cups,' more like drinking glasses. She holds a lit match inside the cup and then places the mouth of the cup on my skin. A vacuum is created as the heated air cools. She moves the cup around on my skin. The vacuum causes the skin to be lightly drawn into the cup. I don't know the theory behind it. I believe it is used to break up fascia. She worked the area at the top of the shoulder. I had some interesting-looking hickeys afterward. Hickeys are the usual outcome of this procedure. Scott, who had them applied differently, had two rows of those circular black and blue marks lining his spine.

I was supposed to have Adolescent D today. At the eleventh hour, his mother called to ask if we could move the class to Thursday at four.

Then, I had Mama K's crew. I discovered that fourth-grade K's teacher had rejected Fortnight as a topic for his essay; no violent video games allowed. I wrote his teacher:

Kingston told me you rejected his work on Fortnight. I'm delighted to hear it. These video games freak me out.

On the other hand, I was delighted to be able to use a topic he is passionate about to get words out of him. I will use anything. The more I get students to talk, the better they verbalize their ideas.

Here is the work we did today on Rocket League. I hope this will be okay. This is not an organized piece. My goal is to get him to articulate his thoughts. Mostly, I still have to pull the information out of him with questions. However, there were a few incidents today where he went into detail on his own.

The work with the girls continued as usual. Twin A is progressing. We are reading the same third-grade passage every week. She started guessing words. This is a good development and a big one. It's good because she uses her background knowledge to help guess the word. It's bad because she is ignoring the letters on the page.

Twin E was ahead of Twin A a year ago when I started working with them. She knew more letters of the alphabet and learned new ones more quickly. Then, it reversed. Twin E took conscious decoding to an extreme. Both automatic processing and mindful decoding skills need to be developed.

Tuesday, January 24, 2023

Today, I had no clients, but I was a client. I had an appointment with my chiropractor. I left early and stopped at Farm & Garden to buy more local honey. I'd transferred the last of the honey from my quart jar to the small jar I keep on the counter. I use two teaspoons of local honey in my nightly drink. If my lime tree is producing, it's limeade. If it's not, I use lemons from Costco.

When I pick up two quarts of honey at Farm and Garden, I drop the empty bottles off for reuse. Two people were ahead of me in line. I noticed a few three-ounce-sized bottles on the counter, but nothing larger. I said, "Excuse me," and interrupted to ask if they were out of the larger bottles. Yes. They were expecting another delivery within a few days. I left the empties and headed to my appointment.

As usual, the chiropractor was running late. She does good work, but her informality can be annoying. She had already told me that her ex-husband and the father of her only child lived with her. Today, I learned he hated her. Now, why would you have someone who hated you live with you?

Her current husband asked her son why his father hated his mother so much. She didn't say if her son had an answer, but she answered it. She is a joyful person; her ex-husband is walking negativity. She is a scatterbrain. I'll attest to that. I'm not a rigid thinker, but her lack of focus gets on my nerves. She'll launch into a conversation, showing me something she ordered on Amazon. I will have to push her to get to work. I leave several hours open for this appointment. I like her work, and she takes my insurance- a winning combination.

I stopped at Long's to pick up more Hersey's Milk chocolate nuggets with whole almonds. I had a coupon. It was 40% off but only for one item. I also picked up a new tube of athlete's foot cream. That was the most expensive and received the discount.

I was going to go to Costco on my way home but was too tired. I went home directly and then directly to my couch for a nap. The chiropractic work knocked me out.

Monday, January 23, 2023

I was up reasonably early, before seven, and out hoofing it for my morning walk. After my walk, I meditated, sitting in my old lady chair instead of in bed.

I had a 10 a.m. Zoom appointment with the Step Up Tutoring Office hours for help with the Near Pod math program. I was out of it during the session. I missed the verbal instructions. I wasn’t interested in what the instructor was talking about. She explained how to connect to the program and get it running. I wanted to see the lessons so I could learn more about how to teach math. I wanted to see how they teach particular concepts. I signed off after clarifying my interest and asked her to forward the training modules.

I had my Literacy Office hour at eleven am. I had two participants. One had met with his student and wanted help teaching him accurate word recognition and vocabulary. A second came on. She wanted to know how to get her tutoree assignment and how to shadow another tutor. She signed off early.

The young man who wanted support for his teaching started by saying he was in a lab. I asked what kind of lab. He was a neuroscience major at UCLA. I told him how interested I was in the topic. My interest is limited to the intersection of neurology and learning. Dahaene is the only neuroscientist I know who has written nonprofessional books on the subject. I’ve read each and every one. I love the topic. Talking about my approach to teaching was fun, at least for me. I find teaching very exciting. I always learn something new with each student about the material I teach and the learning process.

As I came home from one of my short walks, B drove into the driveway. He told me the other day he had an appointment to go to Oahu for a medical examination. I asked him when it was. He said the second of next month. I said, “December 2.” We were both alarmed by my response. B asked me if I was okay. I have no idea why I had that reaction.

I had Adolescent D in the early afternoon. We started with letter tracing. Then, we switched to reading the text of Investing for Young Adults. He did not follow my instructions. He balks when I ask him to isolate each syllable or each phoneme before blending it. He worked on decoding the word secure. I told him to isolate the syllable -cure. He kept trying to say the whole word. He admitted to feeling an aversion to the work.

I started him on an EFT tapping series: “Even though I hate the work, I love and comfort myself.” Then it switched to, “I forgive myself.” And then, “I forgive myself for being stupid.” He resisted that term until I clarified that I referred to the feeling interfering with his learning. It was not a statement of fact about him. It was his feelings about himself.

I told him reducing the impact of these feelings might help him learn better. It could make a difference. More importantly, it will free him to adapt if we can’t lick his memory problem.

I called Oofos customer service this morning. I ordered four pairs in different colors. When they arrived, I discovered they were the wrong size. I had misordered. I asked for a size 8. Being a woman, they reasonably assumed I meant a woman’s size eight. Nope. I needed a man’s size 8, a woman’s size 10. I had to return all four pairs. I could only get replacements in the correct size in three of the colors. I asked for a refund for one pair and ordered the remaining three. Then I waited and waited.

Today, I called. The customer service person told me they had never sent out my order because only two colors were available. I had never received a notification. I told him to refund one pair and send the other two.

I finally got through to the Hawaii Radiologic Associates to make an appointment for my Dexa. I went to see the doctor for a full-body skin check. While there, I mentioned a weird experience with pressure in the center of my chest and back. If it was a heart attack, it was mild and short-lasting, but it was worth mentioning. She ordered an EKG immediately, a stress test, and a chest X-ray. When the orders came through online, I saw an order for a bone density test, a Dexa. That was a surprise; the doctor hadn’t mentioned that. I thought there was some confusion. She told me my last one was five years ago; I was due for a new one.

I had second-grade M later in the day. She did addition and subtraction without regrouping well but continued to have problems when regrouping was required. She is still trying to do it in her head. That works reasonably well when there’s no regrouping. She added 37 + 13=. She correctly got 40 and 10. She concluded the answer was 51. Hmmm! I also worked on subtracting by counting up. She doesn’t get it. I modeled. I am going to have to force her to copy what I do.

I am listening to YouTube videos on Buddhism. Wright says that you can think of dukkha as dissatisfaction. Batchelor continued this until a native speaker told him that dukkha means pain. He went back to preferring suffering as the meaning. As I see it, our response to dissatisfaction leads to dukkha, suffering. That makes them both true.

Sunday, January 22, 2023

I was up by 7:00 am and did three thousand steps by 7:30. I called my Hanai sister, Jean, while walking. It was her eighty-first birthday. When she heard my voice, she started singing Happy Birthday. I asked if she was singing to avoid having me sing. Yep! I do the famous Ross -version, designed to compensate for Mike's inability to sing. It sounds a bit like caterwauling, but it's fun. Something to look forward to. I would. Each one is different. There's listening to it and wondering what is going to happen next. I don't even know. I follow my instincts.

I got ready for church and then had a last-minute emergency. I arrived at the library parking lot a little after nine. As I approached the church, I heard the first reading. Since I had the second large box of diapers in my hands and would have to work my way slowly up the stairs, I figured I'd be good and late for the mass.

Before I started on the steps, I spotted a donation box for contributions for expectant mothers. I put my box of diapers on top and was free to make it up the stairs quickly.

The south lanai, which is usually empty, was packed today. Finding a seat would have been easier if I hadn't wanted to avoid sitting close to someone. I found a bench free.

First, a woman joined me. There was plenty of room; it was a three-person seater. When the deacon started reading the gospel, she went inside the church. A bit later, a man sat down on the bench. While his behavior suggested he was devoted, he didn't know much about our parish. He asked, "Isn't the parish house done yet?" No, there was a problem with the flooring.

While sitting there, I turned around to look behind me. I never do that. I saw a man with a four-year-old in tow, looking confused. I figured he wanted the bathroom. I pointed in the general direction. After mass, a woman approached me and asked where the bathroom was. I have never given directions to the bathroom before and wouldn't be surprised if it never happened again. Very strange.

I stopped at Mike's gravesite after church. I had a paper copy of the color chart from Direct Colors. There were few choices. It looked like the coffee brown would be the best. Then I checked again. I found a different internet site that offered an antiquing product for grey concrete. Now, that sounds the best. There is a company in Oahu that stains concrete. I will call them tomorrow. Hopefully, they will be glad to give me advice.

I published last year's update on the blog site, washed the kitchen floor, and went to my neighbors to get some Chinese food. When I ran into Mei this morning on my walk, she told me her daughter was having a birthday party. They were ordering a lot of Chinese food. I should come over and get some. These folks went all out. They ordered enough for two hundred people instead of the twenty that were there, mostly kids under the age of eight. How much were they going to eat? I looked forward to having Chinese food for the rest of the week.

Second-grade M. was in a totally different mood today than last week. Her dad was right; she was upset about everyone getting ready to leave for Oahu while she was stuck working with me. I told her I owed her an apology. Did she want to know why? I apologized for dismissing her statement that 'everyone was packing to go to Oahu.'. They went on Monday night and returned on Wednesday; the kids missed two days of school. She knew why this happened. Her parents had meetings in Honolulu, and no one was left to care for her and her sister.

Her work today was the opposite of what it was last Monday. She executed the double-digit addition and subtraction without regrouping perfectly. She made some errors in the addition with regrouping, but she wasn't thrown by it and pushed ahead to figure it out. She had more significant problems with subtraction with regrouping but was much better than last Monday; I felt I was working with a different child.

I discovered two major weaknesses in her grasp of math. While she knew 7 +7 = 14, she could not figure out what 14-7 was. I showed her pattern with fact families: if 1 +1= 2, 2+1=?; if 2+1=3; 3-1? & 3-2=; and 2+2=4, then 4-2=? etc. It took a lot of work to get her to focus on the pattern rather than try to figure out each answer by counting. Counting on or up was also a problem.

I tried to teach her to use counting-on to solve subtraction problems. Instead of trying to recall the answer or count down from the larger number, count up from the lower number. For example, if subtracting 10-4=?, make a fist, touch your chest or the desk, and say, "4." Then count up 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10 on your fingers. The number of fingers is the right answer. As I write this, I realize I never asked her why she doesn't want to do it as I recommend. I will have to do that.

I ran into several people as I walked around the neighborhood. First, I joined Phil and Carol with their dogs, Luke and Max. Carol talked about how they participated in a pickleball game on the site of the community pool in town. It is a lovely, relaxed process. People of all ages play. The court is a narrow tennis court. It only involves a little running. The person who loses sits down and waits for their turn to come up again. People who always win will sit out to get a break. Anyone can participate.

I continued on my walk as Phil and Carol turned into their driveway. Mei was walking up the other side of the street. I caught up with her as she made her turn onto Hiolani. I thought she was going to visit Cha, but no. She had parked a few Turo cars there to make room for more cars to park on their property during the party.

A child pushed another off the trampoline. She must have pushed her hard enough to go right through the net. The trampoline was several feet off the ground, then she fell another six feet off a rock wall. The girl who did the pushing has anger problems. Mei said her daughter often cries because this little girl gets angry when she doesn't do things her way.

I ran into this little girl's mother as I left the party with my food earlier in the afternoon. She said that Anna was her daughter's best friend. She also told me that her daughter's second-grade teacher in this private school told her she would have to go back to first grade because she had made no progress in reading. I know the teacher. She can be stern, but I have also seen her deal compassionately with severely disturbed children. Listening to the mother, you would think there was nothing wrong with her daughter. All the problems were caused by other people. I mentioned that I did tutoring. After my conversation with Mei, I knew I didn't want to work with this child. I might have been willing to deal with the little girl; it was the mom that I didn't want to deal with. She is cultivating a sociopath.

Mei was distraught. She was badly frightened by the incident for the little girl and herself. I gave her a big hug. She resolved never to invite the pushy little girl to another party and ensure that Anna had nothing to do with her.

Mei got in her car to drive it back home, and I continued around the block. On my last stretch, one of the neighbors came to the fence and called to me. Joe had moved into the neighborhood fifteen months ago. He found it a friendly place. The woman standing by his side was his mother. They bought a small prefab house for her. It is about five hundred square feet. It's fully hooked up to utilities, electricity, and water. Joyce said it has two bedrooms. All the rooms are small, but how much space does one person need. I've seen expensive Manhattan apartments that were smaller. Besides, Joyce spends time with his son in his house, and her home sits on half an acre. In addition, she has moved a large container onto the property for storage. Joe said she moved to be with her favorite son. I could hear them laughing together in the evening. How lovely!

Saturday, January 21, 2023

Jean, my Hanai sister, called at 7:30 am, just as I got up, to tell me that Wolfie had sent her flowers. I hadn't a clue as to what she was talking about. Her son, my stepson, sent her flowers for her eighty-first birthday from him, his wife and son, and Wolfie, a main character in the animated film Bad Guys. Damon was one of the movie's producers, and Jean's favorite character was Wolfie.

I pushed Elsa through the doggie door when I got up. She was a little better; I didn't have to push quite as much.

I had Mama K's crew at 9 am. It took a while, but I finally found a time when I could meet with them for the second time in the week. Twin E continued to struggle with automatic recall. She always returns to conscious decoding, a wonderful skill but only half the story.

I had Twin A reading in third-grade material. No, she is not reading it on her own. I made an amazing discovery. I had already divided the words in the selection into syllables. I had her read each syllable as if it was a separate word. She could do it. She decoded di and no; I gave her the saur, and she blended the three syllables to get dinosaur.

Kingston worked on writing. He had completed his essay on the wolf spider. His teacher emailed me the finished product. Wow! He could never have done it on his own. For the next writing assignment, he had to pick a topic, another informational piece. I picked surfing because I know something about it, and he has three sisters who surf. He said he didn't know anything about it. I said, "So surfing is climbing up Mauna Kea." He was confused about why I said that. He finally said no. I asked him to tell me how surfing differed from climbing the mountain. He said:

Climbing a mountain is walking up there, but surfing is swimming with a board.

They're on top of the wave going down. Then they go inside the barrel. Then they go back up to the top and do some tricks.

When I asked what was needed, he could tell me a surfboard. I asked him to describe what he saw in his mind. He said he had no image. I asked him the color of his blanket. He said, "Black on a white background." I asked if the black was a pattern. Yes, Batman. I asked which way he was facing; he said to the front. When I argued if he could 'see' the image of Batman, he could see the image of people surfing. He said he sees his blanket every day. His mother has taken him to the beach many times. She does it to get the kids out of the house; she loves the beach. Given that he hasn't had that blanket his whole life, he has seen the beach at least as often as his blanket. He did say he could visualize the Fortnight game. Very frustrating.

Paulette stopped by to return the chairs borrowed for the family Christmas dinner. Then she asked me if she could keep one because they were expecting Judy's son Matt with his two children, Noah and Mia. Matt was coming to the Big Island for a several-day workshop. Since he's the stay-at-home dad, his wife teaches school, so he had to take the children with him. While attending his workshops, he has five adults and two other children to be with his two kids.

Paulette would have a hectic day, driving Mei's Turo cars back and forth from the airport. As she left, she pulled me into a hug. She is a great hugger. It is so lovely to have someone like that in my life.

Friday, January 20, 2023

I got up around eight am and then took a three-hour nap in the early afternoon. Is this pattern because I'm old and have too little to do, or is it what I've always tired easily but couldn't indulge in? I just powered through. I remember thinking," I'm never tired."

Adolescent D read well today but still showed problems with short-term memory. Since listening to the videos on memory, I am more convinced there is a problem with D's amygdala and hippocampal formation. Things get in through a different route, as with HM.

HM had his temporal lobes surgically penetrated to get to the amygdala and hippocampus beneath. It was to stop his severe epileptic seizures that would have killed him if he didn't have the surgery. After the surgery, he had no explicit memory; he remembered nothing he experienced after the surgery. He remembered things from before the surgery clearly. This is called antegrade amnesia. If a doctor spoke to him, left the room, and returned two minutes later, HM would have no memory of ever meeting him. Sadly, he could never remember his wife's visits either.

D's case is not that serious. He can remember events; his episodic memory works well. He needs help remembering the spoken word or words he has seen a line or two before.

I don't know why he should have this problem. Assuming it is with his hippocampal formation, it can increase in size. London cabby drivers are required to memorize the London streets. (Or they used to before GPS systems) London expanded in a very haphazard way. Their hippocampal formations are all large.

In 2011, Eleanor Mcquire led a team that published the results of a five-year study of London cab drivers. The question was, were the hippocampal formations of the successful cab drivers enlarged before they became cab drivers, or due to the grueling training, they had to pass the London cab driver's licensing test? McGuire took periodic MRI images of the participants' brains. She observed that the rear of the hippocampus grew in all cab drivers. The successful ones had the most significant enlargement. This means the brain changes in response to training. This means D. can expect some changes in his brain.

I didn't make my ten thousand steps for the day. One missed day won't damage my streak.

I've been watching a Japanese TV series on Netflix: Makanai: Cooking for the Maiko House. It's hard to follow in spots. Why is this one woman on a sofa in a high-end apartment? Why does she wear her hair naturally when all the other maikos have to wear it in the traditional style? However, the tone is loving, kind, and caring.

Thursday, January 19, 2023

I needed to get up early this morning for driveway yoga. Elise was back from her visit to her family in France. It was good to have her join us again.

I emailed the co-writing I did yesterday with fourth-grade K to his teacher. She wrote back immediately, saying how impressed she was with his writing and his recall of the information on the wolf spider. The next assignment would be a topic of their choice, something they knew about.

B asked if I could drive him to town to pick up a truck from the repair shop. Sure! I stopped off at Hope Services for the homeless before heading home. People were lined up at the gate waiting for breakfast. A woman approached me as I sat in my car and asked if she could help me. Is there any use for quilts? I know it gets cold in the winter, and the homeless appreciate something warm. I didn't know if a large object like a queen or king quilt would be useful. They can cut it in half. She said she was sure someone could use it to drop it off once the gate was open.

I planned to get a urine test on my way home. I reminded myself before starting to stop at Kaiser. It required turning off right after the harbor road. Naturally, I drove right past the turn. I realized it quickly and made a U-turn at the next light.

I arrived at Kaiser as it just opened. It was a simple in and out for a urine test. The lab receptionist checked my referral, handed me a cup and a wipe, and directed me to the public bathroom. When I finished, I just dropped the sample in a tray at the receptionist's desk. None of this waiting around to be seen by a lab tech the way it used to be. They've streamlined the process.

When I got home, the gardeners were there. Rodney had already picked up most of the green waste I had left in the driveway from pruning the shrubs. I went in, got my beloved birthday present to myself, my four-inch chain saw, and cut down a few of the larger branches at the fence side of a plant. One of the men trimmed the top of a shrub I couldn't easily reach.

I went inside and edited the blog post for the day. I had plenty of time today to finish things, but I didn't do much. I tend to be inert if I'm not throwing myself into an activity. I want to be slow - and steady.

I made another attempt to get Elsa to use the doggie door. She wasn't happy as I pushed her through, but she went. Fortunately, she is small and passive enough so I can get her to 'cooperate.'

I had a session with the J & Iz siblings. I started with first-grade Iz. Her mother received a report from the teacher. She said she had never seen such a difference in such a short time. While she was thrilled with a 20% improvement, I was disappointed. Iz was not yet on grade level. Today, I saw some of the problems. She had a problem holding on to the original sound when blending. It might be helpful if she listens to the 5 Stories audiofile.

I worked with third-grade J on his anger. I asked him to think of a time when he was angry this week. Again, this puzzled look came over his face. He struggled to think of a time when he got angry. Then he came up with something.

There was only one incident. In J's judo class, a bully came over and attacked him. He put his hands around J's throat. "What did you do?" "I got his hands off me and went and sat down. The teacher came over and asked me what happened and went and talked to the bully." Holy cow! Can teaching him the basics of a meditation exercise solve this problem? I can't imagine it solved it permanently. It's not that anger will or should go away. Anger in the situation, as he described it, would be appropriate. The goal is not to have anger control us. I started this meditation process when I was forty-nine. It's been a long, slow slough to get control over the emotions that controlled me when I was younger. My plan is to check with the boy once a week. No one doesn't experience anger.

One side of the meditation is getting to the point where we're not overwhelmed by our feelings. The other side is also significant. To get to the point where we do not ignore, deny, or suppress our feelings excessively. Both extremes are a problem.

I started reading Why Buddhism is True by Robert Wright. He is so funny. He writes about how the truth will make you free. Yeah, but it won't necessarily make you happy. Looking at human nature through the lens of evolutionary psychology doesn't give a flattering self-image. Buddhist meditation gives you the means to deal with it.

He also spoke about the term 'mindfulness." In Western thought, it means 'smell the roses.' However, in the Pali texts, mindfulness means paying attention to the unattractive aspects of yourself and dealing with that calmly, with compassion. What a scream! I'm right in my interpretation of Vipassana. Or better said, Wright holds the same point of view as I do. Many people are pissed with me when I talk about always having to know your selfish reason for doing everything. Don't ever assume you don't have flesh in the game; you're never doing it solely for the other person. Believing that you do makes you a dangerous person. Boy, espousing this point of view is a great way to make enemies. There are so many who want to see themselves as pure love and pure giving.

Wednesday, January 18, 2023

I only had two sessions today, one with adolescent D and another with the three children in Mama K's crew.

I started with the letter tracing exercise with D. I've given this activity different names. Tracing may be the best. I slowly form/write letters with a broad font on the Zoom Share Screen; D follows my movement, 'writing' the letters on a flat surface with his finger. The objective is to enhance letter perception.

We only did the tracing activity briefly at the beginning of the session. Then we continued reading Investing for Young Adults, the first book D ever received as a gift. Today was a good day. He remembered more words. That skill comes and goes. We're looking for some way to access it on a steady basis.

I had Mama K's crew next. Twin A can switch back and forth between implicit memory and explicit. Many words just come to her; those that don't, she decodes. She doesn't get stuck in one modality versus another. I started her with third-grade material. She needs a lot of support but can figure out at least 75% of a passage.

On the other hand, Twin E is still struggling with automatic recall and switches to decoding. She has made strides with automatic recall, but I can understand her resistance. The automatic processing is weak, so she avoids relying on it. She won't try it first as she must if she is going to improve. You can't read on conscious decoding alone. It's too labor intensive. It involves a lot of attention and energy. You lose the meaning of the words. Today, she struggled. It was painful for me as well as for her. Besides that, the erase function wasn't working on the Zoom Share Screen function and couldn't erase the underlying I had done with Twin A. I was happy to quit. So was she.

I finally had a session with fourth-grade K. He said he was still working on the spider story. His topic was the wolf spider. He had almost nothing to say. I had to pull it out of him. I went to a website on the wolf spider on my other computer. I asked him questions based on what I was reading. He could answer all of them correctly. He had the information he needed. He wants the text to come to him fully formed. Neuroscientists now believe we all think in images and translate those images into words. When I pushed him to 'see' the wolf spider in his imagination, he produced something interesting. He had the spider hiding from a predator. He didn't know what that predator might be. It was still interesting.

Yesterday, I moved the chest of drawers blocking access to the doggie door Mike, and I had put in when we were planning to bring our two Portuguese Water dogs with us. We were without a dog for several years after arriving in Hawaii. Then we got Elsa, our thirteen pounds of fluff. Having her push through that door seemed too much. Having her use my lanai carpet as her deposit area became too much. Especially since it happens when her bowels are loose. Today, I squeezed behind the bureau with Elsa in my arms, opened the door, and pushed her through.

She was very resistant. At first, I thought it was the discomfort of pushing on the large plastic flap. When I got the flap high enough, I saw I had forgotten to move the chaise lounge away from the door. I was pushing her into the padding on the chair. She escaped once I had it open enough to reveal the cushion's top. That was a bad start.

Stephen Dubner discussed Adam Smith on Freakonomics. Adam Smith was an eighteenth-century philosopher considered the father of economics and capitalism. People of all persuasions quote him in support of their point of view. Milton Friedman cited him as an advocate of capitalism.

Apparently, Adams was a prolific writer. To have read all his work, one must be a devoted scholar. While he is quoted as a capitalist, saying man is invested in his own advancement, he also contradicts that point of view. He says man needs to feel loved by his fellow man. That leads to the inhibition of total self-interest or expands it to include the interests of others. I prefer the latter statement. I can use Adams to argue my point of view, too.

Tuesday, January 17, 2023

Wow! What a morning! I woke up long before the alarm went off at 5:30 am. I did my exercises but didn’t doze the way I usually do. My mind was at work. The first thing that came to mind was my relationship with Mike. In some critical way, we were on the same page. More precisely, our brains were synchronized.

Brain synchronization is something we crave. Research has shown that when people hear the same lecture, all their brains show the same firing pattern. It’s why we value common activities in person, like team sports, singing in a choir, a pep rally, or being part of a murderous mob. Sadly, that last one has the same effect on our brains as the other activities. That’s what makes mobs so dangerous.

I felt that commonality with Mike. I’m not quite sure what aspects of us produced the synchronization. Lord knows we were as different as day and night in much of our thinking. Mike read to fully understand what a great mind had to say. I read to find ideas that would affect my thinking and my life. I didn’t care if I understood what the author had to say. I still don’t get the importance of it. If they were alive and needed me to understand their thinking, as Wittgenstein needed others to understand the difference between seeing and saying, that would be another thing. There has to be a purpose to fully understand what a dead white man said a hundred years ago. It’s not that I don’t think I could benefit from a greater understanding. I do. If someone has an idea worth pursuing, I will read books by them. I want to have my thinking illuminated by theirs. I follow an instinctual feeling about what is right for me.

As I write this, I can hear the problem with my approach if I apply it to what is currently going on in my life. I am embracing confirmation bias as a way of thinking. Confirmation bias is when we only accept information that affirms what we already believe and reject information that contradicts it. We all suffer from that to a certain extent. I prefer information that gives me new insights, even blows my mind, and shows me a whole new way of seeing the world and myself in it. How accurate is that view of myself? Your guess may be better than mine.

The difference between Mike and me might be that one of us was a deductive thinker and the other inductive. But I don’t believe that is true. Both of us were inductive thinkers. Mike limited his research to the texts of famous thinkers and writers. I was a phenomenologist. I observed behavior directly and drew conclusions.

We were both affection junkies. God forbid I had lived with someone who didn’t share that need. I had forty-five years of it. How lucky was I?

The other thing I thought about as I lay in bed this morning was an incident from over fifty years ago when someone falsely reported me as a

venereal disease contact. It took me years to figure out who did it.

My first thought was of Mike’s ex-wife. He assured me she would never do anything like that. Jean, my Hanai sister, is now one of my best friends. We love each other. She wouldn’t have done something like that to Donald Trump. Mike, Jean, and I were all concerned with questions of ethics. Mike and I shared a philosophical approach to the subject. I don’t mean we were casual about ethics; quite to the contrary. Ethical behavior was fundamental to both of us.

I took me many years to figure out the culprits. It was hard to imagine someone I knew well doing such a thing. HK worked for the health department in the VD section. JF called me while Mike and I were on vacation, telling me I had to come home immediately because I had been listed as a VD contact. Really? Why was she going through my mail? Why did she open the letter? I wouldn’t assume I should open the letter to check the information. Lastly, when I came home from my visit to the health department in shock because they zapped me with a heavy dose of penicillin, DF was clearly distressed to learn I hadn’t refused the shot. I hadn’t realized they would administer it without getting the results. I was in shock about the whole thing.

The only reason for doing it was to force Mike to break up with me. If he had, my whole life would have been ruined. Thinking about it makes me so sad. My life would have been so empty without him. I spent forty-five years loving someone and being loved. I can’t think of anything I could possibly value more. I think dwelling on what might have been easier than dwelling on what no longer is. God, I loved that man. I loved my life with him. I hope I made him half as happy as he made me.

There is no longer any question in my mind about who reported me. HK initiated the idea, and JF gleefully got on board. DF joined in with a wan smile. SG, HK’s wife, walked away, saying, “I want nothing to do with this. You do what you want,” recognizing she could do nothing.

They completely underestimated me and Mike. I had been single for thirty-three years and quite active when I met Mike. I told him I didn’t know if I could be sexually faithful. He said, “If you have to, go ahead. Just come back to me.” This is from a man who was utterly committed to sexual fidelity at all costs to himself.

Mike laughed when I told him I had been reported as a VD contact. “If you had, you would never have kept that information to yourself.” He understood I was a compulsively honest person.

The question in my mind is why they did it. At first, I thought HK did it as revenge or something he thought I did to his wife. Both HK and SG had been commune members. They met there. They bonded over the mutual discomfort in their interactions with me. When HK was assigned to a California VD office for a year, SG stayed in a little room in the commune with banks of windows on two sides. She was freezing cold in the winter. I didn’t understand why. It hadn’t been that cold during the winter before.

In the spring, she asked me how to open the windows fully. I discovered they had never been latched when I went to unlatch them. I laughed. I would have laughed if it had happened to me. I laugh at absurdities. She had closed the windows but didn’t latch them. That neither one of us thought to check was ridiculous- an absurdity. I thought my attitude might be why HK initiated it.

Then I thought it might have been because of Mike. While he loved me, he was also somewhat of a prick in the bad ole days. He saw most people as a waste of space. I can see he related to the other members of the commune with an air of contempt. He often spoke disparagingly, even to me. I thought he was being funny. He used to say to me, “What does your little, measly heart want?” I thought it was a form of affection. It only came out several years later that, no, he was dead serious. What!!!??? Are you kidding? It took me several more years, but I was able to knock that contempt out of him- convince him it wasn’t good. Afterward, he was like a born again. He often referred to his bad ole days when he was arrogant. Once he dropped it, he dropped it altogether. He exceeded me in his compassion for others.

The question is still, why did those people report me as a VD contact? HK has been coming to mind a lot of late. (Usually, when people I am not in contact with come to mind a lot, I discover afterward they were also thinking of me. A most annoying vulnerability.)

There is another possible reason HK had it out for me. HK, L, and I made a trip across the country together. It was an arrangement of convenience. I knew L from graduate school in Wisconsin. I do not remember why I was in touch with L then. The objective was to see the country. The relationships were a matter of convenience.

We traveled in a Volkswagen bug. I’m not sure if it was HK’s car or L’s. We made the trip on the cheap. We bought a three-person tent and slept in it every night. Seemed reasonable to me. Two days out, HK and L became sexually involved. Huh? Never occurred to me as a possibility. HK held no appeal for me, and L was engaged to be married in September. They became a couple in more ways than sexual. They conferred with each other, making plans and leaving me out of it. I accepted the situation and pretty much stayed to myself. What was I going to do? They didn’t approach me to confer with me about anything. I just kept my mouth shut and made do.

When I walked along a road in Big Sur, a young blonde man came running up behind me. We talked and became involved with each other. He was a blonde Adonis, a straight Tab Hunter. But that wasn’t his appeal. His appeal was that he liked me. We exchanged numbers. It must have been 1972, well before cell phones. He visited me in Brooklyn at least once. He showed up at the commune. I can’t remember if he called first.

I remember throwing the I Ching for him the night before he left to show up at a military base for training. Death came up. I remember being upset and saying it could be some change in his psyche. A week after he left, I got a call from his parents. A car had run a red light and sideswiped his car. Everyone was killed. His parents said he talked about me a lot. Huh? Did I underestimate him? Who was he? I didn’t see him as a deep or complex person. Pleasant but not good for the long haul. I was shocked on so many counts to get the news. The I Ching, his death, that his parents thought I was significant enough to call me to tell me. It was all pretty distressing.

I thought about Roger this morning. I let his energy merge with mine. It’s probably the first time I really let him in. I plan to focus on this more. It’s the least I can do.

Back to why HK reported me as a VD contact: At some point, HK explicitly asked me if I would have sex with him. I said no. I never found him attractive in any way. He may have done it in revenge for being spurned. Who knows? I will probably never be clear on that issue. It was over fifty years ago. I’m still appalled that I had people in my life capable of this act of malice.

I Googled HK, JF, and DF to find out where they were. HK died in 2016. It looks like SG & HK had a child; she was born before SG turned 45. JF is gone- breast cancer. DF is thriving.

When I first found HK’s name, I read that someone with that name was implicated in an embezzlement scheme. When confronted, he went home and died of a heart attack. I had a surprising response. I was in grief for him and his wife, SG. While the possibility of him being involved in corruption wasn’t too much of a surprise, this man was prepared to use a government agency to wreak his revenge. That he went down a rabbit hole of corruption wasn’t a surprise. But that was not my reaction. I was heartbroken.

But it wasn’t the HK I knew. My HK died in 2016. The other one died in 2021. I was relieved.

Before you think I’m so kind of a fantastic, forgiving person, I didn’t have the same reaction when I heard of JF’s death of breast cancer. I thought, “Good!” I have no idea why I would forgive HK so much and not JF. They were both involved; the instigators would be my best guess. Who knows! May they both rest in peace.

Elsa and I went to Aunty P’s to get more Kangen water. Today, Elsa waited until she was sure we were heading up to Aunty P’s house before she got herself in position to leap out of the car the moment we arrived. Aunty P was sitting on the lanai with her two-year-old grandnephew, Zion. She cared for him while Judy, his grandmother, gave his 7-year-old brother a reading lesson. Zi played with Mr. Potato Head, tolerating Elsa’s demand, and he threw the stuffed mouse again and again.

Aunty P had to go out and buy another mouse after Elsa ate the insides out of the last one. That freaked me out. How was she going to pass that mass of stuffing? She did.

When Aunty P, known to me as Paulette, went into the house to fill up my containers with water, Elsa went in with her. I heard Paulette shout, “No, Elsa!” She went into her house and peed on the floor. She’d been running around for a good forty minutes outdoors. She waited till she got inside to pee. Oh, boy!

Yvette closes her door when Elsa comes down to her part of the property. Elsa loves to poop in her house. She will poop in mine only when desperate. Today, I finally opened the doggy door we had put in in anticipation of bringing two Portuguese water dogs with us. They died before we moved, but the doggie door was already in. It’s behind a dresser. I had to push the dresser aside to get behind it to the door. Now, I have to teach Elsa how to use it.

Carol dropped off fifteen lilikoi. Some are yellow. Most are a rust color flecked with yellow. I’ve never seen that before. I find them sourer than the yellow ones.

Monday, January 16, 2023

I got up around 7, after waking up well before my alarm went off at 5:30. I started the in-bed exercises almost immediately, dozing off between sets.

I walked a new route this morning. It was a longer route. I walked to the end of Kukuna and then made the right on Paiaha St. I thought I would walk all the way to Hiolani before I could find a road to Nehiwa. That was not the case. I came to ‘Ilau and cut through. This was the route Mike used to walk. I had never done it before.

I did work on the blog and updates and some gardening. I had an appointment with Adolescent D at 2 pm. I asked him if he wanted to work on the letter perception exercise I developed or go right to reading. He chose the letter exercise.

I write the letters v-e-r-y slowly with a broad line on the Zoom Shared Screen. I don’t know if it helps with anything, specifically letter perception, but it is relaxing. D finds it that way, too. I only did a few words. Then we switched to reading the book Investing for Young Adults, which D is passionately interested in. It was a tough slough today. He made endless errors. He read very few words smoothly. He couldn’t remember words he had read a line or two before. It was grueling – at least for me. There were some good moments when he used the strategies I taught him, and they worked. I’m not usually impatient with students- except for eighth-grade K, which is why I had to drop him.

At 4 pm, I had the M & W sisters. Sixth grade W had almost straight As on her last report card. Yesterday, I checked if she needed anything. Making a fuss over a B in English didn’t make sense. She seems just as happy not to work with me. Second-grade M was another matter. I could see she was in a bad place right away. She wouldn’t admit to her mood, no less allow me to comfort her.

I continued working on double-digit addition. M was getting worse instead of better. She was adding things up wrong and messing up the addition procedure. The only thing she got right consistently was the expanded notation. She wouldn’t let me help her. She shut down more and more. It was a very upsetting situation. I didn’t know what was bothering her. There is a possibility I caused this turnaround.

Last week, I said something about her being left back. She said she stayed back because of Covid. Her mother told me it was because of her memory problems. Ow! Is this what has upset her? I both hope it is and is not. I would hate to be the cause of this upset. But if this is the problem, I may be able to fix it. I can tell her the story of another student who repeated first grade who I started working with when he was in second grade. When he was a freshman in high school, he was first in his class at the end of the year. He was shocked. A story like that will give her hope about her own potential.

On the other hand, she often says strange things. Today, she told me the rest of the family was packing to go to Oahu. She has school tomorrow. Why is she going to Oahu? It is possible. There may be some family issues requiring her to be there.