Mike's death; Betty's life...: 03/27/26

Friday, March 27, 2026

Monday, May 1, 2023

I took Elsa to the vet at eight-thirty this morning for a follow-up appointment. I assumed they would check her ears. I had done everything they told me, and she wasn’t scratching. I thought I didn’t need to see the vet, but I went because I wanted information about their recommended food. I hadn’t found it on the Pet Meds site. I found Royal Canin products on Amazon. I ordered a bag, then remembered they told me it was supposed to be by prescription only. I thought I had canceled it. Fourteen pounds of dog food I couldn’t use costing sixty dollars arrived. I tried to return it, but Amazon doesn’t allow returns on items listed as “groceries.” I wanted to be clear about the product before I tried again.

I got an earful from the vet. She told me that Elsa was in severe discomfort. Her ear infection had not cleared up. They found bacteria in her ears; the vet said she could smell the infection. Elsa looked fine. Dogs learn to tolerate chronic conditions. They look okay, but they’re not. I would be running to the doctor if I had that ear infection. The vet threw a lot of medical jargon at me that I couldn’t quite follow. I don’t know if I could have done better when I was younger. I attribute it to mental decline when I don’t get what someone is talking about. Am I losing it? I still prefer someone who says more than I can digest than less. This vet, as I said, gave me an earful.

I told her I was treating Elsa’s lesions with tea tree oil. What do you know? It’s toxic for dogs. When I looked it up on the Internet, I found the word ‘deadly’ in relation to dogs. Damn! Here, I thought I was doing the best thing for her. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. The doctor made it clear no treatment didn’t have some negative consequences.

She asked me what soap I was using to bathe her. I did better than I had done; I washed her every three days. She didn’t say if the soap was toxic, too. If not, that is the best path. For God’s sake, I’m home all day. I can get it together to bathe her during one of my favorite radio shows.

After giving me the skinny on my need to treat her ears, she told me they didn’t have the medication in stock. Supply chain problems. They wanted to hang on to what they had for medical emergencies to save a pet’s life. I got that.

I went out to sit in the car. I thought the vet had said to do that while the pharmacy would see what they could put together for Elsa’s ear treatment. I sat patiently for about twenty minutes. I didn’t call the receptionist for two reasons. I assumed the pharmacy had other prescriptions to fill and they would get to me when they could. The other reason was I had called reception after waiting in an exam room for twenty minutes. I got an annoyed response. “The doctors are busy with other patients. They will get to you when they can.” The words were perfectly reasonable; the annoyed tone was not. I just wanted to make sure someone knew I was there.

I finally set my alarm for an hour, after which I would call, and settled down with Elsa in my lap to meditate. She makes a great meditation partner. It was a sweet time.

I was startled when someone came to the car window. It was one of the employees. “Are you okay?” She saw someone sleeping in the car and was concerned. She may have thought I was a homeless person using their parking lot. I told her my story. She apologized. No one had told her. The pharmacy didn’t have the medication. I knew that. I thought they were going to Gerry rig something I could use instead. I don’t know if I got the vet’s instructions wrong or if the snafu was on their end between the doctor and the pharmacy.

When I got home, I took on the challenge of ordering the food. When I told the vet I couldn’t find what they recommended; she said, “Did you Google it?” No, I hadn’t thought of that. She wasn’t too nasty about it. We both probably thought, old lady. It’s true. I am old and happy to accept that as my excuse; I expect tolerance.

I had to make several calls to the vet for help. When I Googled the right food, I found it on several sites. I wound up ordering it on Chewy. I was directed there. The tech world is a challenging one for me. Then, I lost the site. Instead of Googling it again, I tried to find it myself. Good luck. I called the receptionist a few times, asking for help. She recommended Amazon, which ships for free with my Amazon Prime. (I couldn’t find it there when I just put in Royal Canin and looked through their products.) However, Amazon only offered me a nineteen-pound bag of dog food. Elsa weighs in at eleven pounds. She eats a cup of food a day. I didn’t think the food would stay good before I reached the end. A bag that size is suitable for a small herd of dogs, not just one. Chewy offered an eight-pound bag. They didn’t even bother listing Hawaii as one of the shipping options. I sent it to my sister in New Jersey, who will forward it to USPS.

I tried to nap but wasn’t that sleepy. I have so much more energy since I stopped wearing my glasses. I needed them because of my double vision. My eyes aren’t off on the horizontal plane; they’re off on the vertical one. They have always been off. I compensated by not using my left eye. While I didn’t have three-dimensional vision, I didn’t bump into things; I didn’t have car accidents. I was fine and dandy.

The problem surfaced when I had cataract surgery. With the somewhat improved vision in my left eye, it woke up and said what the f_ __k? It started a war with my right eye, resulting in full-blown double vision. If my brain learned to silence one eye in the past, it could learn to do it again. This time, the challenge is a little more complicated. Since I have a near-point vision lens in the left eye and a far-point vision lens in the right, my brain will have to learn to take turns. Now use the left eye; now use the right eye. My vision isn’t any worse without the glasses than with them. I have a slight astigmatism in the left eye, but I can see.

I worked on the updates for most of the morning. I also bathed Elsa; I had to wash her daily now.

I had Adolescent D at two pm. When I asked him what he wanted to work on, he said his defeatist attitude rather than on the reading. No, he hadn’t done the exercise I told him to do; he hadn’t broken down the tasks he did perform into subsets.

“Okay, tell me something you did today.” I was thinking of getting dressed in the morning. He told me he had asked for help in his math class. That’s all he had to say. I helped him break the activity down into substeps.

1. He tried to do the math problem on his own.

2. He recognized he had a problem and didn’t just collapse. (Huge)

3. He got out of his seat, walked up to the teacher in front of other students, and sat in a chair beside her. (huge)

4. He told her he needed help. (Huge)

5. He stayed engaged while she explained it to him. (Huge- .slips into unconsciousness when frustrated.)

6. The woman was more of a teacher’s aide and unfamiliar with math. When the math teacher walked into the room, she asked him for help. D remained attentive while the math teacher explained the math to the teacher’s aide. (huge)

7. He remained attentive while she explained the process to him again.

8. He still didn’t understand it and told her so. (Huge) to her credit, she tried to explain it differently. They complete the math problem together.

9. He returned to his seat and tried the next problem.

10. Again, he ran into trouble.

11. Again, he got up out of his seat, walked to the front of the room, and asked the math teacher for help with this problem. (Huge)

I pointed out to him each step was a choice point. He could have chosen not to try to do the problem; not examine what he had done critically and see that he didn’t have it right; not get up and go to the front of the room; not sit down with the teacher, instead turn around and go back to his seat; not just sit there mutely instead of telling her he needed help; not focus while she explained the problem to him; not listen while the math teacher explained it to her; not listen while she tried to explain it to him again; not tell her that he hadn’t gotten it; not try the next problem when he went back to his seat; not identify that he had a problem with this example too; not gotten up and gone to the front of the room again; not sat down with the math teacher; not asked him for help; not attended while the math teacher explained the process. Each step is a choice point. Each step counts.

I was almost in tears. I never expected the exercise I did with him on Friday to be this effective. According to him, he made no effort to do the exercise of breaking down a single activity into its parts, but something clicked.

I told him I needed to call his mom and tell her what he had accomplished. He didn’t protest. She didn’t answer the phone. I was concerned she was napping. He went out to check without signing out of Zoom. He wanted to be there when I told her what he had done. He discovered she had gone out.

I called his mom later in the day. I went through all the things he had done. His mom’s response was muted. She’s probably as put off by my enthusiasm as I am by her lack of emotion. She giggled at one point. I said, “That’s the response I’m looking for.” She told me that in his last evaluation, he was told that one of his problems was he never asked for help. Look what he did today. I only hope she says something to him about his success. I told her he didn’t sign out of Zoom but looked for her. He wanted to be present as she heard the litany of things he had accomplished. He recognized that he had accomplished something. Now, I have to figure out some way to help repair whatever is wrong with this boy’s memory. OMG!

I had second grade M at 4 p.m. We read the passage below.

“Beavers can knock down whole trees. They chew the wood at the bottom of the tree with their strong teeth. This weakens the tree at the base and makes the tree easier to knock over,” said Mr. Pratt. Mad/die and Jon/a/than followed their science teacher fur/her into the woods. Soon, Mr. Pratt and his students found a beaver’s home.

“Wow, little beavers built that big thing?” Mad/die asked.

“Hey, look!” Jonathan shouted. He touched a tree that was chewed up near the bottom.

“Watch out!” yelled Mr. Pratt.

When I asked her what it was about, she said it was about beavers building a dam. It was such a small part of the passage that I didn’t even register it. My solution was to underline all the references to the beavers, their home, and the trees. The beaver’s home is only mentioned twice in the passage, and the trees are mentioned six times. When summarizing a story, you must include the most frequently mentioned ideas. It’s purely mathematical.

Lutz texted me information that CBD is good for preventing and healing Covid. Its benefit is reduced if THC is in the mix. If this is true, it would be lovely. Is it another ivermectin scam? He says there’s scientific proof. But they said that about the other drug, too.

I started watching The Glass Castle. I read the book many years ago. It’s autobiographical. However crazy these parents were, they managed to produce four productive children. By their fruits, may you know them.

Sunday, April 30, 2023

When I checked the weather this morning before 6 am, it said it would rain for most of the day starting at 7 am. Elsa and I were home from our walk before six-thirty. I prepared the vinegar mix for the weeding. There was a chance half an hour would be enough time to kill those weeds. I picked up the remaining half a gallon of 30% vinegar from the driveway as Elsa and I walked back in the door; returning from our morning walk, I prepared the mix and sprayed it before I fed Elsa. I could feed her later. On the days I got up later, she did just fine. Seven am arrived, and there was no rain. When I checked the weather forecast, it had changed. Rain wasn’t expected until nine am.

After church, I waited to speak to Fr. Lio. I called on Monday to ask if I could put an ad in the church bulletin. I was told the ad section was full; Janice, the parish administrator, had to check with Fr. Lio. I had heard nothing, so I asked him directly. He fidgeted like a schoolboy caught doing something wrong. He said Janice would call me. I suspect she had contacted him, and he had forgotten to respond.

Fr. Lio asked all the lecturers to meet with him after Mass. I knew Judy would be waiting by the altar at the front of the church. I wished her happy birthday and proposed singing to her there and then. That drew a chuckle.

I stopped off at Mike’s gravesite before I headed out. Someone had put a lanai on it for Easter, and Judy had bought a plant. I was sure both were trash-worthy at this point. While I’m not into decorating Mike’s grave, neither am I into leaving decayed plants of it.

My first stop was Long’s. I had a $4 discount on any item. I picked up a 10oz bag of Hersey’s milk chocolate nuggets with almonds- they were no longer whole. With the coupon, it cost me $3.65 instead of $7.49. That doesn’t come to a four-dollar difference. I don’t know how to account for the discrepancy.

When I got home, I ate something, wrote a little, and did the Wordle puzzle, Monday’s NY Times Mini puzzle, and one regular puzzle. Then I went down for a nap. My alarm was set for three fifty for my session with third-grade KPS. I woke up shortly before the alarm went off. I had slept for three hours and could have slept more.

I had endless problems with the Internet when working with KPS , and it shut me down at least three times during the session. I told Grandma to consider it a fifteen-minute session instead of our usual half an hour. We still got a good deal done. I checked if she had retained the math we did on Thursday. She did fine on the long- -division. She didn’t make the same error she had made in our last two sessions. She said this should be our session where we “talk about life.” Her two significant problems seemed resolved. Her relationship with her mother had improved, her spirits were lifted, and she was doing better in school. The most striking difference was that she wasn’t defensive when I corrected her. We had done some work on that. Had it really made that big a difference in that short a time?

KPS challenged me to a sketching duel. Okay. I have zero artistic talent. She showed me how to draw a tree. She didn’t show much talent, either. She drew her tree, and I drew mine, following her directions. Okay, now what? I proposed we write. She asked, “You mean if I have to write something?” “No, I’ll do the writing; you’ll tell me what to write.”

KPS, who was just baptized the Friday before Easter, served as an altar girl today at Mass. Wow! She jumped in whole-hog. That wasn’t quite the story. She and her grandma were sitting in the first row when someone approached her and asked her if she would serve. She had no idea what she was doing. I got some of the details out of her before the Internet shut down again.

The instability of the Internet is driving me nuts. I called Brian somewhat hysterically. Why can’t he fix it? He told me he sees no problems at his end each time, and there is nothing he can do. He reminded me that when something on the computer seems funky, restart it. I did that. I didn’t experience the same problems in my four o’clock session with second-grade M. We worked on reading the passage. It was a third-grade passage. She was in second grade and had some problems with reading. I thought she was doing quite well.

I checked with B later in the day. He’s on a different Internet connection than I am, and he said his was unstable, too. Does it have something to do with our property? This is frustrating.

Saturday, April 29, 2023

When I was young, getting up and moving was preferred over being still. My body was spring-loaded. Now, getting the impetus to move takes conscious effort. Sometimes, I lie in bed and wonder which muscle to trigger to get up. Of course, if I have to pee, I'm up and at it just fine.

Plans to finish spraying the yard with vinegar were off for the day. Rain was predicted for every hour. Kona used to be the dry side. Hilo still gets lots of rain, but we've been much more than we used to. It's good because watering the garden costs a mint. It's bad because things grow too fast, and upholstered furniture feels dank.

When walking with Elsa this morning, one of my walking buddies asked if Elsa just had a bath. Nope. I was not using the steroid cream anymore. With more frequent baths, the tea tree oil worked better than the steroid cream, and it's less toxic. Elsa and I are in a morning routine. When I get up for the day, my first stop is Elsa lying next to Mike's pillows. I kiss and pet her. While petting, I'm also looking for lesions. I figure out if some rough pot is a lesion or just matted hair. Sometimes, the hair is matted because she's been licking on a lesion. I have a scissor sitting on the night table next to the tea tree oil. If I suspect matting, I clip the hair. When I'm sure it's a lesion, I apply the tea tree oil and rub it in. Elsa is great with both activities. She stretches out when I apply the tea tree oil to ensure I get a spot.

I got in another yoga session today with Yoga Go. They have this fantastic woman modeling the poses. Should there be any doubt, I look nothing like her. I can't sit cross-legged with a straight back- I never could, even as a kid. I sure can't do it now at eight-two.

I had Mama K's crew at nine am. She signed in late. I called to make sure we were on for the day. Twin E was the first up. When they were signed on and I knew which 'victim' I had to work with, I tried to put the correct file on screen share. Screen share was unavailable. I tried repeatedly. I had endless problems with Zoom. When I did get something up for fourth-grade K. I told them to get him. If I couldn't get the reading file for the twins up, I'd have to cancel for the day unless I figured it out.

K started reading a fourth-grade passage and flubbed several words. He read silently for slightly. I worked on decoding the word. That revealed another problem. He didn't recognize the -igh pattern. Oops! We had a problem.

I switched to a comprehension activity; I asked him to tell me what the passage was about. He quoted the words of the text. No, no. He used to give summaries that had little to do with the text. He used his background information, ignoring the text. I realized after the session I had been giving him mixed messages. I have modeled answering questions using the exact words in a sentence. I must teach him to use only content words when summarizing a passage.

I dropped everything and went back to the basics. I reviewed each word in the first three sentences of the fourth-grade passage. I had K identify the bounces in the word (the syllables) and then the individual sounds in a single-syllable word or each syllable in a multi-syllable word.

He needed help understanding the difference between the bounces, the syllables, and the individual sounds, the phonemes, in a word. By the second sentence, he was moving along nicely. Compared to Adolescent D, he was a wiz. D is the most disabled student I have ever had.

Twin A was next. I started her in material considered the end of second grade. She didn't read smoothly enough to pass an evaluation of her word recognition, but her comprehension has been excellent. She should be reading at the beginning of third-grade instructional level by the end of this school year. I went through the same process with her as with her brother. She also had trouble distinguishing between the bounces in a word (the syllables) and the individual sounds. She caught on quickly.

Then, I worked with Twin E. She is still on a pre-primer level, struggling to consistently get the word saw right, even after seeing it earlier in the same passage. She did surprisingly well, distinguishing syllables and phonemes, the individual sounds- much better than I expected. I have to remember to check her visual perception. Is she experiencing visual distortion? Are the letters moving around on the page or in her head? I have a remedy for that. Hopefully, it will work for her.

I dusted the furniture on the lanai while listening to the Moth Radio Hour. Some describe the dust here as grime. They have no idea what grime is. Grime is what I cleaned off the windowsill in my uncle's Manhattan apartment in the sixties when NYC had its worst air pollution. That was grime. Grime is greasy; it smears. The dirt on my lanai furniture is fine soil, ground-up lava rock. That stuff will someday be fertile ground for planting. It is now, but there's too little on the Big Island. It's the youngest in the chain above the water line. There is a new island hatching to the south of the Big Island, but it hasn't yet broken through the surface of the water.

It poured most of the day again today. I mean, it really poured. The island was under flood watch. That's not a problem for me. I live on the side of a mountain. The water runs right past us on its way to the ocean. A friend from California asked if I was worried about mudslides. What mud? There's a thin layer of soil on top of the lava rock. If you want to plant a tree, you need a jackhammer to break through. Neighbors just had a stretch of land stripped of haole koa trees. Huge rocks came up in the process. There's a massive pile of them at the edge of the property.

I bathed Elsa. Her skin looked good, but then it broke out big time. I suspect she may be allergic to blueberries. That's too bad because she loves them. I usually give her three as I'm preparing them for myself. I see an experiment in our future.

. I fell down the Begin the Beguine hole. I never get tired of watching Eleanor Powell and Fred Astaire dancing. Everything about the experience is terrific. I found other videos of her dancing alone. It's not that great. I recognize her choreography from her work on Broadway Melody. Eh! But what she does with Astaire! Oh Wow! It's on YouTube if you're interested in a treat.

Friday, April 28, 2023

I had another restless night with nightmares. I was sure they were triggered by all the uncertainty in the world. When Elsa and I went on our morning walk, I focused on the beauty surrounding me. I am often awestruck. I can't imagine being happier anywhere else in the world. I can't imagine being this content in an enclosed house in Hawaii. As I write, I sit on a screen on the porch, lanai, which serves as my living room. There are no doors to close out the elements in the common spaces, the kitchen, and other living areas.

I did an online yoga class today with Yoga Go. I signed up a while ago but had yet to use it regularly. It would help even if I just watched the video when iI didn't feel I could do it. I modified the postures anyway. I get strength exercise in doing it. I also mountain pose when I walk, working my muscles when Elsa takes a sniffing break.

I had my weekly appointment with Shelly. I was in a great mood. Dealing with my mother's attacks, even when I had tried to do my best, was helpful. I still feel the pain of having a good effort greeted with anger and contempt. It's the worst.

Everyone has their own style of dealing with interpersonal relationships. My style is through reconciliation; others do it through acceptance. It comes back to the Serenity Prayer. The courage to change what can be changed, the serenity to accept the things I can't change, and the wisdom to know the difference. I figured there had to be a way to resolve the difference between my mother and myself. I was ultimately successful. There were things in our relationship that were never resolved- our ability to converse. However, we had many loving moments, and she didn't berate me constantly. We found a mutually comfortable strategy for dealing with our difficult moments with each other without discussion. Of all my accomplishments in my life and my successes helping students, the two that make me feel the best are my relationships with my mom and Mike. That they went well fills me with endless satisfaction.

I don't remember how I got on the topic of reconciliation with Shelly, but I worked on how frustrating it was when people wouldn't try to work things out. Nowadays, the talk is about how people must talk to each other to maintain a good working relationship. Good luck with most people. Some people consider such a proposition a personal threat. Talking about it means being pummeled into doing it the other person's way. I do know people who deal with interpersonal relationships that way. Some people assume their way is always the right way.

Mike met me in group therapy. He saw me "take on" the therapists. He saw me at my most combative. He walked away from that, concluding I was bright, and I was as concerned about the other person as I was about myself. God bless him. He didn't change his mind about that during the forty-five years he lived with me. That is not to say there were unresolved issues. They weren't big enough to be deal breakers, at least not for me. Since he consistently professed his love for me, not only to me but to the world at large, I believe I was good enough for him, too.

Back to strategies for resolving differences: mine is to work for resolution. I push for that. I have the unconditional support of current theories of maintaining good relationships. So much for theories. What to do if you want a relationship with someone who doesn't operate that way? I've had to learn other strategies. Give up or give in. Sometimes, the give-up strategy brings resolution. It did with my mom; we found a way to be with each other. It only works with some people. My mom really loved me and wanted to be in a relationship with me. Others either don't care or would rather have me out of their life. People tell me, "Relationships work, or they don't. they never require effort." Good luck. Those folks have a hell of a time with me. I've had to learn to respect that some people are just not up to working out a resolution. It's this silent push-and-pull strategy. I observed that those people cannot have intimate relationships with other adults. It doesn't work out for them. Of course, it often doesn't work out for me either. There is no single solution.

I do know couples that never discuss their differences. When Mike and I announced we were going for family therapy, friends of ours were completely open that if they went, it would be the end of their marriage. It could not survive overt discussion of differences. That couple is functional. The relationship may not suit me, but it suits both of them. That, after all, is what counts.

Elsa jumped on the bed as I napped. I felt the bed move slightly with her movements. It was comforting. It reminded me of Mike getting up to pee and getting back in bed at night.

I met with Adolescent D for an hour to compensate for the class we missed on Wednesday. His mom texted me on Wednesday to say he needed to cancel because he had schoolwork. Yes, he completed it. I discussed the problem of making an effort and failing big time. Yes, he recognized that feeling. It's devastating. Your best effort isn't good enough; worse yet, it is received with intense negativity. It is so painful. I started having him recognize that he had survived the experience, literally. Survival is an issue at a primitive unconscious level for all of us. That's how our brains are wired.

I asked him if he thought he did anything well. He said no. It's one thing to have a realistic appraisal of your abilities; it's another to hold such a high standard that everything you do is inadequate. Some people fit that bill. I told him what I did when I sank into a slump in graduate school. I started noting everything I did. "I got up. I brushed my teeth. I washed my face. I combed my hair." He said he did something well in school today. He communicated an idea effectively. I told him he did two things well. He chose to participate, and he successfully communicated his thoughts. He wanted to conflate the two into one thing. I have read that the brain doesn't know the difference between saving the world and washing a dish. There must be one part of the brain that registers our activities that way and judges everything harshly. Unfortunately for modern man, our brains prefer to dwell in the land of negative, stinking thinking. This is to our benefit when survival is an issue. If things went well, great; there is no reason to give it another moment's thought. If something went poorly and we survived, we had to learn from the experience to use that knowledge next time. Our brains were designed for survival.

I asked him if he wanted to continue working on this defeatist mental state or the reading. He chose the former. We didn't get very far, other than to recommend he notice everything he did in detail, break down every action into the smallest parts he could, and make note of his success in completing tasks. I went through an example with him. He may have a problem remembering to do it. He has trouble remembering to brush his teeth.

I switched to reading. I asked him what he wanted to work on. He said, 'The book," referring to Investing for Young Adults. I asked him if he wanted to work on Phase I or II. He didn't remember what they were. I told him to remember anything. I was trying to teach him to use a miscellaneous related memory to trigger more. He remembered reading the word investing in the book. He read it in the text; then, I wrote the word, and we worked on the decoding steps.

What did he remember? He remembered something about the syllable types (VC), and they told you if the vowel was long or short. Great! He had chosen to work on Phase II when we start with seeing the word and figuring out what it is. What were the steps? Did he remember any of them? He knew it began with the vowels, but not what he had to identify. I can't begin to tell you how many times I've been over it. I reviewed the first six steps in decoding words. 1. VL -identify the vowel letters; 2. VS – Identify the vowel sounds, 3. Sy – divide the word into syllables, 4. SyP- identify the syllable pattern and the vowel sound, 5. Identify the sounds of each letter in a single syllable; 6. Blend those sounds, 7. Repeat 1-6 for each syllable. 8. blend the syllables. I had him repeat the sequence 1-4 several times. I'd take a break, changing the topic for a distractor, and then test him again on items 1-4 to practice retrieval.

I noticed we were fifteen minutes over. I commented about it and asked D when he wanted to meet on the weekend to make up for our missed class on Wednesday. He said, "I told you we would do it today." Oh, I hadn't understood. He meant to make it up today; we did an hour instead of half an hour.

Around 4 p.m., it started to rain, and it rained harder and harder. We get some impressive rainstorms. Yvette texted me to say this would go on until 8 p.m. The forecasts are rarely correct. The worst they forecasted for today was a light drizzle. This was as far as you could get from a light drizzle. It was just short of a hurricane. It cleared up by six. So much for that forecast. Elsa and I did our walk.

J. asked to meet with me today. She had a decision to make. Should she spend two hundred dollars to accept admittance to a college so she could get her degree? She got married before she completed her undergraduate degree. She had only one semester left and dropped out. She was pregnant and figured she would spend the rest of her life as a mother and wouldn't need the degree. Her ten-year grace period had expired long ago. The credits she accrued may count toward her current degree. The school won't evaluate her credits before she has committed. The question was, should she spend the two hundred dollars of her hard-earned money when she wasn't sure what she was going to do? She would have to pay $16,000 a year of money she didn't have on courses. Given she wants to tutor, it's easier to do something in this field with a degree. In the meantime, she may be doing better than I am. I recommended she put out the $200, see how many credits were accepted, and then decide.

It was raining while I was on Zoom with J. I had to show her what this rain looked like. She couldn't hear it. Earlier in the meeting, her printer was running. I couldn't hear it. I've experienced this before when I can't hear a noise on the other end, or they can't hear one on mine. Mechanical noises are filtered out. It would make it hard to hear the other person if it was over the drone of an air conditioner.

Thursday, April 27, 2023

I had a weird nightmare this morning. I dreamt I had to attend a conference and needed someone to cover for me. I was sure what my job was; it had something to do with a preschool class. I had the bright idea of asking my mother to do it. She had never taught, no less taught, a group of children. If she was noted for anything, it would be her poor teaching skills, mostly because she lacked patience. Her instructions usually involved yelling at me that I should already know how to do it. I had two contradictory thoughts in my head. She would love to be involved with a group of young kids, but she wouldn't be able to control them and would smack them. That would result in a lawsuit against me, and I would lose everything. Somehow, the option of not involving her didn't come up in the dream. I suspect the dream reflected my worry about the world's financial state, particularly in the USA.

Elsa and I were up and out bright and early this morning; it was driveway yoga day. Without fail, when Yvette starts the class and says sit up tall, my body chemistry transforms. I enter this delicious, altered state. Yoga gets me there better than meditation. While yoga offers an escape from stress and negative thinking, meditation provides a way to transform stress and negative thinking.

Yvette had to leave early to teach her online yoga class to a group of Montessori preschoolers in Connecticut. Last year, the school adjusted to our schedule. This year, they didn't. Scott took over. He doesn't do what Yvette does, but it's all good. Among other things, Yvette watches us like hawks, making sure we're not doing anything harmful.

Scott helped treat Elsa's ears after class. I've been doing it twice a day for a week. I have no idea if what I've been doing is good enough. The vet who saw her last told me her ear infections are part of her allergic reaction that causes the lesions on her skin. I've been taking Elsa to the same vet for five years; this is the first time someone told me that. I sometimes see different doctors. There are a bunch of young ones, fresh out of vet school, full of themselves and their prescriptions.

Scott holds Elsa while I pour a liquid into her ear. After twenty minutes, I have to 'inject' another liquid with a syringe. I don't know what either liquid is for. When I applied the first liquid, I squirted too much out of the nozzle-nosed bottle. It got all over Scott, but I wasn't sure how much got in her ears. I thought she wasn't shaking enough after she was released. I realized I could use the syringe for both applications. Doing so, I waste less and feel more confident. I got it in her ear instead of just her ear lobe. She's not as happy to have Scott hold her now and shakes her head more. Have the previous applications done anything? I wish the doctors would give better directions.

The weather was clear enough for long enough for me to get some spraying in today. I changed the vinegar formula. My friend Carol pointed out that if I added a gallon of 5% vinegar to a gallon instead of a gallon of water to 30% vinegar, the gain was only 2 ½%. My first response was the 5% gallon is cheap, so why not. It made me think. The 5% vinegar is inexpensive. The 30% vinegar is expensive, $25 a gallon. I used to use just 5% vinegar for the weeding. It worked pretty well and was much cheaper. Ah ha! I changed the formula to one gallon of 5% vinegar and only half a gallon of the 30%, with a handful of salt and a squirt of Dawn dish detergent. It worked just fine, and I saved myself $12.50.

I saw an excerpt from Broadway Melody 1936 with Eleanor Powell. She was considered an amazing dancer. I love her in her duet with Fred Astaire in Begin the Beguine. I was intrigued by the dance scene from Broadway Melody and watched the whole movie. It was nominated for three Oscars, including best screenplay. It would never have won today. The plot was thin with huge holes. I could have written a better script. It was unsatisfying. Even the dance numbers weren't that great. The choreography was a weak Busby Berkeley. I searched for the name of the choreographer, but none was listed. At the end of the film was a list of miscellaneous facts. One was that Eleanor Powell did her own choreography. The blurb said she had a limited vocabulary. She shone in Begin the Beguine because she got out of her comfort zone with Astaire's choreography. Neither of them was happy dancing with the other. She preferred being a solo performer, and he because he found her too masculine in her dance style. By today's standards, there is nothing manly about her in their duet. She's fluid and graceful, genuinely amazing. Astaire's complaint was that 'she laid it down like a man." He was scared of her. A woman who could do what a man could was considered a threat to masculinity in those days. To many men, it still is.

I started counting the number of Hersey's milk chocolate nuggets I eat daily. Today, I had four—not too bad. Yesterday, I had sixteen. Oy vey! I recently checked the calories—150 calories for every three nuggets.

Wednesday, April 26, 2023

I had Mama K's crew today. Twin A read the passage we read in the previous session reasonably well. She was a little shaky. I had her tell me what the story was about. She does a great job on this. Her verbal expression skills are improving daily. Mama K says she is seeing a difference. Some of this is just neurological maturation. Mama K's kids do really well in school after a while. But all start behind the eight ball. The whole family suffers from delayed development. They need the extra help because they won't get the instruction they need when they are ready to learn.

Twin E read the same passage as last time, too. She is still reading on a pre-primer level and gets stuck. She couldn't remember words she had seen a few minutes before. The word saw appeared repeatedly in the passage three times. She said it as was each time. I have to check if she has a visual perception problem.

I worked on comprehension with fourth-grade K. When I started working with him, he overused background information and his imagination to understand a passage. I pushed, getting him to understand the literal message of the passage said first. Now, he quotes the passage's exact words; I have to get him to express those ideas in his own words. I realize I have sent him a confusing message. I told him to use the exact words in the sentence. Then, when he did, I told him to use his own. I have to model what I mean: Use the same content words, not the exact same words as written in the text.

It was a Kangen water day. I texted Paulette yesterday and again this morning, asking if Elsa and I could come up. There was no response. When I spoke to Judy, she told me Paulette often doesn't check her texts. I should call her. I did. She was available now. She and Judy haven't been driving the Turo cars because the business is way down.

Elsa and I always visit Paulette when we get water. Today, we watched Project Runway together. I caught a few moments of TV with her the last time I visited, but the TV was background noise to our conversation. Today, we watched the show and shared comments. This is the first time someone has sat with me and watched a show since Mike died. No, that's not accurate. Isaac watched TV with me one night. We watched an Oscar-nominated movie, CODA, about a hearing child in a deaf family.

As I was preparing dinner, the whole house shook once. This was the first time on my feet when an earthquake hit. For my first earthquake here, I was waking up. I just heard a thunderous noise at the front of my house. My first thought was a truck hit it. That would be quite a feat. There's a stone wall between the road and the house. When I figured out that was impossible, I figured a plane had broken the sound barrier. We have a military base on the island. They sometimes fly planes overland. It took a while to convince me it was an earthquake. I argued with the long-time residents.

The worst earthquake I witnessed was last year. I was sitting in my ole lady's chair. I could see the walls move back and forth. Nothing broke or fell in the house, but the cracks in the driveway got a bit worse. The epicenter of these quakes is never right under us. It's usually Kilauea or possibly Mona Loa, but never our mountain.

I had two scheduled sessions today. Both canceled.

It poured most of the day—it can rain hard here—so I didn't get my 5,000 steps in.

Tuesday, April 25, 2023

I had my appointment with Lex Brodie to get my safety check before the month was up. I wanted to check if I had an up-to-date insurance card earlier. I forgot. Fortunately, the one I had expired in June 2023. I had everything I needed. Last year, I had to call Geico and have them email a copy to me while I waited for the inspection to be completed. It was an automated system. Easy peasy.

After I signed in for the safety check and gave them my key, I walked to Target, about a mile away. I took on more than I could comfortably chew. My bruised foot felt worse today than it had. The walk wasn’t pleasant. I thought walking on the road closer to Target rather than on Kaiwi would be faster. It was an unpleasant trek. It was just cement and a barren field with no shade. I was uncomfortable the whole way until I got to the front of Target.

Approaching Target’s entrance from the loading deck side, I discovered this shaded section to the side of the front door. I never suspected it was there. I found a pergola-covered area with large planters beautifully tended. A magical spot.

I had only a few items to buy at Target. I walked there to get in my steps for the day. I looked for a single onion, Hersey’s milk chocolate nuggets with almonds, over-the-counter magnifying eyeglasses, a pepper mill, and Dave’s multigrain bread. Target had a loose onion. Yay! I did buy one bag of nuggets even though they weren’t on sale. The price was the same as at Long’s, over seven dollars. A year ago, it was in the five-dollar range. Ow! They had a pepper mill; I got that. I found a collection of eyeglasses, but none of them were magnifying. I bought a pair claiming to dull the blue light from screens. Dave’s multigrain bread wasn’t available.

While at Target, I ran into two groups of people who had been in line with me at Lex Brodie’s. They had walked over, too. The company called to let me know my car was done. It hadn’t taken an hour, only half that time.

I decided to take Kaiwi on the way back. Shops line the street, and there are some trees providing shade. It would add two-tenths of a mile to avoid the walk along the barren strip because I would have to walk in the other direction for a stretch to get to Kaiwi. Instead, I used the through street from Loloku and Kawai at the halfway mark. I also did some j-walking, using the shortest distance between two points. My foot held out. Kaiwi was more pleasant.

I stopped off at Island Naturals before going home. I planned to get two bottles of tea tree oil. I use a lot on Elsa’s lesions every morning. I also wanted arnica. I found those two items quickly and could have quickly exited, but I was hungry. Never go into a food store hungry. I bought a tuna fish salad and a tapenade. They were both expensive, but they would last more than one day. I just had to remember to eat them.

When I got home, I lay down for a nap. As I was falling asleep, I heard the doggie door flap. Was it Elsa going out or some miscellaneous animal trying to get it? It was Elsa. She was taking a pee break. I have confirmation she will use it without getting a treat or my stamping feet.

I bathed Elsa while listening to the NPR show On Point with Meghna Chakrabarti. I love the way this woman conducts an interview. Aside from her obvious intelligence, she is excited to be engaged. She asks challenging questions, not to humiliate her guest but because she is interested in the response.

Today is the day I stopped wearing glasses. I haven’t been thrilled with them since my cataract operation in 2014. When I fell last week, my glasses were scratched and bent. I discovered I could see just as well without them as I could with them. My vision isn’t what it was in my youth in either case. But I don’t have headaches and don’t get quite as tired when I ditch the glasses.

The problem with my glasses is all the modifications to improve my vision also interfere with it. I have progressive trifocal lenses, which means I have three small windows to look through: one for reading, one for looking at the computer, and one for distance. Getting my eye lined up with the focal point was hard. My head needed to be at just the right angle, and the frame must be in tip-top shape. My frames regularly get maladjusted. The second is the three treatments to the lenses that interfere with a clear image. I have transition lenses that get darker if I want them to or not, an anti-reflective coating, and a film applied to the lenses to compensate for my double vision.

When I had my cataract operations, I tried to get adjustable lenses that move from near to far-point vision as our natural lenses do. The doctor inserted one in my left eye. It didn’t work for me; it only afforded me a near-point vision. She then put in one for far-point vision in my other eye. Having two different lenses in each eye means my eyes never see the same thing. Whatever I look at, my eyes are not going to coordinate. I needed classes because of the double vision. It is a problem. With one eye doing near-point vision and one doing far-point, my brain would have had to learn to use one eye at a time anyway. If my brain can learn to do that, the problem with the double image will disappear over time. Right now, it is a challenge. It is a little confusing and sometimes downright disorienting. Whatever the drawbacks, it is still better than wearing glasses. Looking through those glasses exhausted me. I feel so much better now.

I got the paperwork done. I renewed my car registration, sent Shivani my blurb for her to post on local sites advertising my tutoring, and a few other letters I had to get out. By the end of the day, my updates were written and ready for editing.

Scott heard me vacuuming my indoor lanai and asked if it was a good time to move the furniture back to its rightful place. One-half of the lanai looked like a furniture store in disarray. Scott had moved it away from the screens when we got threatened with a heavy rainstorm. Before I could get it back in place, Elsa started using the exposed rug as her preferred pooping ground. I’d clean one area up, and she’d poop on another. I finally got it all clean at the same time. Scott heard me vacuuming up the last of it with my Rainbow vacuum and offered to move the furniture back in place. Done.

I was scheduled to have an appointment today with third-grade J and first-grade I. Their mother canceled because they had another appointment. I hope J is hanging on. Whatever I do, it has been effective, but only temporarily. His situation with his parents had to change before anyone could expect a nine-year-old boy to remain calm.

Monday, April 24, 2023

I was awake before the five-thirty alarm went off. I felt energetic. I stayed in bed to complete my in-bed exercises. I did them briefly. I usually hold a pose longer to allow my muscles to relax and stretch.

Elsa was ready for her morning treatment. I clipped knotted hair where she licked to scratch an itchy lesion. I found one on the back of her legs yesterday I hadn't detected or treated before. After one application of tea tree oil, it was already better. I love the tea tree oil, and so does Elsa. She rolls over, making her belly available, or stretches out her neck, guiding me to find a lesion under her chin. I wondered if the tea tree oil feels good when I put it on or if she understands this makes her lesions better in the long run. Are dogs capable of the latter?

I had a nine am appointment with the dentist. Today, he removed the temporary acrylic bridge and put in the permanent porcelain one. He was going to fill some cavities and replace the single temporary post cap with a permanent one, too. Adjusting my bite took too long. I had to make another appointment for May 8 to get the rest done. In the meantime, the permanent bridge was sealed off with temporary filings. The dentist will put permanent fillings in next time once he's sure I'm comfortable with the bridge bite.

I was supposed to have an appointment with Lex Brodie this morning at 10:30. It was initially set for eleven. I called and changed it to 10:30. I got a text message last night reminding me I had an appointment at 11. I called at 7 am to figure out what was going on. The scheduler said I had an appointment for 10. He had someone at 9 am for a two-hour appointment. None of what he said made a lot of sense to me. Either way, a one-hour appointment starting at 11 was too late for me. I had a noon appointment with the orthopedic surgeon; the car inspection would take an hour. I rescheduled Lex Brodie for 9 am Tuesday.

I went home after the dentist's appointment and worked on my updates while I had miso soup with wontons. This combination was new for me. One of the ladies at the sample carts in Costco was offering the wontons. She saw packages of tofu miso soup in my cart and said the wontons would go well with them. Protein. I have to microwave the frozen wontons before I toss them into the soup. It did something to slake my hunger but not enough to overcome my craving for Hersey's milk chocolate nuggets with almonds. I started keeping count of how much I eat a day.

I napped until 11:30, when my alarm went off, warning me to prepare for my appointment with Kaiser. I made it there in plenty of time. The nurse called me in shortly after I arrived.

Dr. Salassa's first question was about the THR she did on my left hip last June. I squatted and stood on my left leg, swinging my right leg out to the right. She was duly impressed, or that is what I want to believe. I'm sure she wasn't surprised. She saw who I was when she met me before the June surgery.

Then we discussed if it was appropriate for me to have THR on my right hip now. The X-ray made it clear my hip was arthritic, but was it necessary for me to have surgery now? She asked me why I wanted it now.

I had experienced some pain reminiscent of my pain with the left hip before the surgery. I told her the other reason was, "You, you, and you." She smiled. Dr. Salassa is the first doctor I trust. She doesn't seem ego-invested; she is more focused on me, what I want, and why I want it. She was also the only doctor out of four I saw who offered me an anterior approach. There was another reason: my age. I am eighty-two years old. I assumed I would heal faster now than when I was much older. Dr. Salassa told me that was not true. Because the appliance is cemented into the femur, no healing was involved. It's done. I questioned whether there were shifted muscles and incisions in the skin. My upper left thigh is still somewhat numb from the THR I got last June. It continues to get better. I pointed out a bit of 'thread' still sticking out at the bottom of the incision on my upper thigh. She felt it, squeezed, and out it came.

The doctor said there were two reasons to have the surgery: severe pain and limitations to what I wanted to do. My upper thigh muscles are hurting when I walk these days. Is the problem because my hip is worse or because I've changed my gait because of my bruised foot?

I showed her the foot and asked if I should be concerned about a break. She said if I could walk on it in my squooshy Oofos, there was no way I could have a broken foot. A bruised foot takes a long time to heal. All that blood has to be pumped up and out, and I put my weight on it.

We agreed I would make an appointment for the surgery. The doctor thought the earliest date would be in July. I could cancel a month before. I'll make the decision when I schedule the pre-op medical clearance.

I had a session with Adolescent D at 2 p. I was reading two books on learning and memory. Memory is a big problem for him. He also makes zero effort to remember, mostly because he doesn't know how.

First, I asked him what he wanted to work on. He said, reading. Okay. Which reading activity are we doing? Blank. He couldn't remember what they were. I can't begin to tell you how often we have gone over the steps. This is where his bad habits show up. What do we all do when we have trouble remembering? We keep searching our minds to find any trace of anything related to the question. Sometimes memories come to us fully formed, like Athena springing from Zeus's head, but just as frequently, it's vague, and we have to work to bring them into focus. We remember an image, maybe only tangentially related, like where we were when we learned a fact or some related fact- even one. That acts like a thread pulling up the rest of the memory. He does nothing. It either happens or it doesn't. I asked him what he did to help himself. He always says nothing. Some of this is the normal state of unawareness. Some of it is downright stubbornness. He either does or doesn't remember; he makes no effort and feels he shouldn't have to. I'd be bald if I pulled my hair out every time he responded that way. If it requires conscious awareness, he's out. Yes, we all love it when it comes easily, but not everything does. Sometimes, we have to work for it.

Today, I had a second student who is not open to change, second grade M. In our last session, I saw her go brain-dead when she couldn't immediately understand my questions. I started today's session with a story.

When I was a sophomore in college, I went out on a group blind date. A group of girls from my school, Cortland State Teacher's College (now SUNY at Cortland), was set up on a blind date with a group of guys from Cornell. We were in a bar, sitting around a table. The guys made fun of us. They were, after all, Ivy League students with a bunch of girls from a vastly inferior school. It wasn't great. I don't remember feeling frightened, but I do remember that I suddenly couldn't make sense of what they were saying. I mean, I didn't understand a word. I had never had an experience like that in my life. I see brain freeze like this in my students. While I didn't feel fear, I understood I must have been afraid.

The story provided good access into M's mental state. Yes, she understood going brain-dead like that; nothing makes sense. I offered her ways to change it so she wouldn't experience that mental state. She refused. First, she said it was okay because her teacher gave her something to help her calm down when she got into that mental state. Then she said she didn't want to change. Wow! Eight years old and ready to make a declaration like that. I asked her if she wanted the world to change to accommodate her. Yes, that is what she wanted.

Now, in all fairness, I can remember one therapist saying I needed a complete personality change. I snarled at him. His presentation lacked compassion. He had no tolerance for me. I don't bring out the best in most therapists. I might have been open if he hadn't made such a sweeping generalization but pinpointed a specific aspect of my behavior.

When did I understand I could change and still be me? I was an undergraduate. I understood that change meant I was adding something to my vocabulary of me. There are things "I was" that have taken a back seat to other things. It was interesting and enlarging. The only thing I couldn't bear was being around people who had contempt for me or were so frightened that they had to attack me- my mom. I want out of there the moment I detect that in a person. If my personality were big enough, I would find a way to tolerate that behavior and blow it off. Not there yet.

I watched Tourist's Guide to Love. The banter was fun, and the actress in the lead role delivered the lines well. The movie was shot on location and provided some great views of Vietnam—my idea of touring a country. There's much I miss, viewing the world from my easy chair. The touring style in the movie is more to my taste, where you savor the environment instead of getting in as many sights as possible. I hate running from pillar to post to see sites. Not my thing.

Sunday, April 23, 2023

For the second Sunday in a row, I avoided the temptation of a donut after church. When I was in my fifties, I got in the habit of eating one order of fries and one muffin a week. I gained twenty pounds. Are those donuts my undoing?

After church, I stopped at Long’s to pick up one onion and Hersey’s milk chocolate nuggets with almonds – if they were on sale. Other Hersey items were, but not the ones I wanted. The onion was a bust, too. They only sold bags of small yellow ones. I have no use for that many.

I worked happily on the updates most of the morning while sitting on the lanai. My eyes were bothering me. I think my glasses are shot. Besides being scratched, the film on my glasses to correct my double vision is wearing off. It’s impossible to clean. Between the transition

lens and the smudges I can’t remove, it is hard to see through them. I need new glasses.

My bruised foot bothered me more rather than less. My foot is clearly swollen now. Concerned, I checked the Internet to see how long a bruise took to heal. A bad bruise can take between two to four weeks. Tomorrow, it will be two weeks since I fell. The foot is discolored.

Next, I checked how to deal with a bruise. I learned something new; put cold on a fresh bruise and heat on an old one. The cold reduces blood flow. That means less loose blood floating around where it doesn’t belong. Once the bruise is established, apply heat to increase blood flow and flush it out. I took all those cold packs out of the freezer. I wouldn’t be using them anymore.

According to Buddha, the conscious mind isn’t one of the mental modules. The conscious mind uses words. It reminds me of Wittgenstein’s distinction between see and say. For both men, the supposition is that images come up only from the unconscious mind and words from the conscious. Hmmm! Really??

I was looking forward to my session with third-grade KPS at two pm. Her grandma asked if I could change it to three. Sure. Then she canceled because she wouldn’t be home, and her husband couldn’t cope with the Internet. I bet KPS could. Grandma asked if we couldn’t reschedule.

I had second grade M at four. Wow! While she read the well, she was jammed up again when explaining the passage. She was uncomfortable. That response to not knowing is a disaster. I thought she had overcome it. I guess not. She goes brain-dead; nothing makes sense. She can’t even remember experiences from her own life.

Saturday, April 22, 2023

I slept well, very well. I went to bed early, woke after six, and could have stayed longer. Elsa waited for me to come around to the other side of the bed to apply tea tree oil to her remaining lesions. She is doing incredibly well. Did the vet do something behind my back, or did my commitment to bathing her more frequently make a difference? I've only held to my promise twice so far. I should keep doing it. Will I? We'll see.

I signed on at 9 a.m. for a Zoom session with Mama K's crew. There was no response, so I called. Mama K said she was heading home to get the kids online. Mama K usually sleeps in on Saturday mornings.

It was a disappointing session with all three kids. Fourth-grade K wasn't interested. He spent the time examining his face in his video image. I got something out of him, but not much. I had both girls, Twin A and Twin E, read the same selection they read in the last session. Neither showed much improvement. Twin E didn't slip backward. That was a significant deal.

Kindergarten Steven loves math and astronomy and hates reading. This six-year-old boy, doing fourth-grade math, argues that he doesn't have to learn to read; he can learn whatever he needs from YouTube. Good luck! Using the Phonics Discovery System, I got him started decoding. He and his mom play games using the approach. Last night, I conceived a way for him to drill the sight words that might be fun for him.

It's a sorting activity with some review with Mom of what the words are as a refresher. Mom bought a deck of fifty sight word cards.

Suggestions for studying sight words:

Sorting activity coordinated with math.

1. Have him sort the cards by as many categories as you or he can think of.

a. First letter. All words starting with a, b, c, etc.

b. If the letter is present in the word. Is the letter any place in the word?

For Steven, relating the activity to math.

2. Which letter is used the most. Which the least.

3. Greater than/less than:: more a than e; a>e

4. Fractional of the whole? Out of ten cards, the letter appears in 4 out of 10 words. 4/10; 2/5

Objective:

Even if he doesn't read the words, he keeps his eyes on them and observes spelling patterns.

Modified Sight word drill:

You show him the card, but DO NOT ask him to tell you the word:

Tell him he doesn't have to tell you if he got the word correctly. We do want him to do a mental word search. He may only know for sure after you tell him what it is.

He has to signal to you that he wants you to move on. Do not ask him if he got the word correctly or had any other word in mind.

When he signals to move on, you tell him the word.

Then, move to the next card.

You could combine this activity with a physical action. After you show him the card, he runs around the yard from one point to the next. When he reaches the second point, he tells you if he knows the word by hearing it in his head. Too much activity may be counterproductive. But you have nothing to lose since he won't cooperate anyway.

Objective: If nothing else, he will become aware of whether a word comes to mind. It's metacognitive activity.

Because he has to report if it comes to mind, he has to mentally search to see if it's there. This is also a metacognitive activity.

The first of my favorite Saturday NPR shows came at 2 p.m. The Moth Radio Hour, then the TED Radio Hour, and finally, Selected Shorts, where short stories are read by performers. I listened to one of those shows while I bathed Elsa. Bathing her is such a pain because I have to leave a medicinal soap on her for at least ten minutes. She's miserable; that makes me sad. The poor dog shakes the whole time. Lutz tells me warm water is the solution. If it's warm enough, the dogs don't shake. Great! How do I keep an application of soap warm for ten minutes? This stumped even Lutz.

My scale has been moving in the wrong direction dramatically. I started having ramen soup every morning—that's 350 calories. I also started eating a fruit salad of apples or papayas, bananas, blueberries, cashew yogurt, and granola. It's absolutely delicious. Too much?

Yesterday, I went without any Hersey's milk chocolate nuggets with almonds—not one. I survived. Today, I had eight. Well, that's better than a whole 10-oz bag.

Elsa and I went to visit Paulette and get Kangen water refills. Again, I let Elsa out of the car at the bottom of the long driveway. No, not at the very bottom, about a fifth of the way up. I wanted to get her away from the road where cars might pass. Again, she waited before she took off. She took off when I opened the car door to check where she was. What a blast watching her run up that driveway to Paulette's door. Seeing her so happy is a treat.

Paulette and I sat on a two-seater gliding bench and talked as always. Among other things, I proposed some activities she might do to help Leon move on with his reading. I don't think she responded to it. She told me things she was doing. They were great but didn't address his need to improve his reading. You can't make people do things that make no sense to them.

Tonight, I had the other half of the salmon steak I broiled last night with a salad. After dinner, I watch Ticket to Paradise with George Clooney and Julia Roberts. It was a silly rom-com. I can't for the life of me figure out why these actors would bother to do such a film. Maybe no one is offering them good roles anymore. Do they need the money or miss the activity of acting? The movie was set in Bali. The scenery was spectacular. Maybe they wanted a paid vacation. I wonder if they took their families with them.

Friday, April 21, 2023

Elsa and I did our morning walk. The goal for today was still only 5,000 steps. Monday, it will be two weeks since I fell and hurt my foot. I reduced the number of steps to allow the foot to heal. I did a few things this morning; I posted the daily blog and sprayed two gallons of vinegar, one gallon of 30% and one of 5%, with a dash of Dawn dish soap and a cup of table salt.

I had an appointment with Shelly today. I was in a great mood and had nothing specific to work on. She instructed me to observe my body and see what came up. My inclination to put off doing anything came up. This is an old pattern, something I've been working on for years and years. I want to do something; I can even enjoy it, yet I put it off. It's weird. I have often mentioned that my mother yelled at me a lot. Her criticisms of me started with my birth, "Leave it to you to be born at seven pm instead of seven am." Also, she concluded, "I rejected her' because I wouldn't nurse. I had a broken nose. Can you imagine how painful it must have been to have my nose pressed into her breast? How do I know my nose was broken? I was told that I smashed into my mother's hip for several hours before delivery. My dad told me my nose was bright red and pressed against my face when he saw me. No, he didn't see me minutes after I was born. He saw me a good half hour afterward. Men were not allowed in the birthing room at that time. My mother was out cold. He was sitting in the waiting room, where all the men sat, waiting to hear the outcome. Then, a boyfriend pressed the tip of my nose and expressed surprise when my nose collapsed under his touch. Since I had no facial injuries since my birth, I assumed that was the cause of my nose job. The cartilage was compressed and never completely bounced back.

Besides my mother finding fault with everything it did, what was particularly painful was when I tried to do it right, and she went ballistic. "You! You! Leave it to you to do ….!" This happens to everyone at some time. In my case, it was nonstop. There's trauma, and then there's endlessly repeated trauma. Lutz talks about using psyllium to reset the nervous system before the trauma. There is no before the trauma for me. Should there be any question, my mom was an amazing, brave woman. She had suffered her own traumas, the first shortly after she was born. She did the best she could. I sat with the lasting impacts.

Then I thought to release all the fear and pain I was carrying for my parents. That's a common response. Children figure if they can help their parents, they'll be better parents. They have to keep those folks alive and functioning for their survival. I felt such sadness and love for my parents as I released the pain. They loved my sister and me passionately. They just passed on their sins, the ones they hadn't resolved. If everyone who saw themselves as flawed didn't have children, the human race would have died off years ago.

I took a nap after the session. When I got up, I remembered all my thoughts on the video on blending speech sounds I wanted to make. I wrote a rough draft. Let's see if I get further than that. Adolescent D and I have a lot in common. I'm not quite as stuck as he is. I learned courage and fortitude from my family. Push through. Do the best you can. Survive! They did. They were part of the great generation.

I texted Brian that my Internet was glitching every few minutes and shutting down completely when I left the computer. He texted back that everything looked fine on his end. What did his end have to do with mine? I asked if there couldn't be a problem with the transmission from his house to mine; maybe a tree blocked it. There could also be a problem with the wiring within the house. He called me. When he said 'his end,' he meant he checked out my complete system. He suggested that I shut down my computer periodically. Windows can interfere with Internet transmissions. Brian has taught me if something is not working right, I should restart my computer. That solves most problems.

While I had him on the phone, I told him about the problem I had with Yahoo. When I got on to Yahoo to send an email, it didn't automatically give me the person's email address. I had to go through my old emails to find the missing addresses. Brian said he would be over in an hour.

He didn't know exactly what the problem was with Yahoo, so he reverted to the classic iteration. Yahoo had updated me and erased me in the process. You've got to love those updates! He showed me where the address list was. There was a clear heading, "ADDRESSES." I hadn't seen it. That's when he showed me how Yahoo had made that file inaccessible, too.

I told him I had texted Tommy and had no response. Tommy helped me edit and post the videos for my reading method. He had administrative access to the YouTube account; I didn't. I planned to do a video of Phase III showing how to apply the process to spelling. I put it off and put it off; I'm still putting it off, an example of my heightened procrastination skills. Brian told me Tommy had moved to Seattle. He gave me Tommy's new number. No wonder he didn't respond when I texted him on his Hawaii number. I wonder why he got a new phone already. It took me two years to switch from my Ohio number to a local one.

I had an appointment with Adolescent D at two. He called minutes before he was to sign in to ask if we could postpone until tomorrow. He had something to do today. Minutes later, I got a text from his mom, saying D and his dad got their wires crossed. The plans were for tomorrow, not for today. Could we still meet? We started the session at two thirty.

D told me he was hiding something from everyone that would make us all hate him, including me and his mom. While it's none of my business, it also drives me nuts. What could he be hiding from us that is so monumental? I had already proposed his academic failures, something to do with his sexuality or his anger. He said none of those. I felt like the princess in Rumpelstiltskin. I kept guessing. I don't have to know what it is to help him; only he does. It's just me feeling I have to know to know. It's an itch I need to scratch. Today, I guessed he felt like an alien. He had no idea what I was talking about. While I didn't have to know the answer to that question, I did have to get him to a point where he did something for himself, anything other than turn on a video or play a computer game.

I heard D's mother in the background. I called out to her to ask if she wanted to observe the session. I couldn't do the deep psychological work if she did. (Yes, she knew I was doing that work with him. It helped somewhat. She had seen some changes.) D said she had no place else to go. Someone was cleaning their house; she needed to hide in his room. I asked him if he would prefer not to work on the psychological issues while she was there. We worked on reading.

I gave D three choices: 1) we could read third-grade passages for fluency; 2) we could do Phase I, where I say the word, he figures out the number of syllables in the word, says each syllable separately, figures out the individual sounds within each syllable and what letter(s) might represent that sound. I gave him the word resources. He first said there were only two syllables. When I asked him what each sounded like, he corrected himself- three. He pronounced the individual syllables as re/sours/es. It's not the way I say it. Each person says it somewhat differently. He had to discover this for himself if his division didn't work. If he needed help, I would pitch in.

He got all the sounds correct in the first two syllables. He had no problem re. On sours, he heard the /or/. I was so excited. He wondered whether to spell the /s/ sound with an s or a c. I recommend using the most common spelling for a sound when in doubt. Someone will still be able to read it. The -es at the end of the word was the most difficult. While pronounced as a short/i/, it is spelled with an e. D got it. Then, he spelled the final /s/ with a z. In this case, it doesn't make a /z/ sound. I did the test for this word; did spell check recognize it? It didn't work with the z at the end; I changed it to an s. Bam! Spell check identified it.

I don't see the purpose of targeting perfect spelling with a child like this. It's good enough if someone can read it; it's even better if spell check recognizes it and gives you the correct spelling.

We did one word in Phase I and two in Phase II. We only had three minutes left when I gave him the second one. "Will we have time to finish this in the time left?" He tried to worm his way out. "We'll get done as much as we can." The word was consultant.

He quickly identified the vowel letters and that they all made sounds. He told me there were three syllables because there were three vowel sounds. Yay! He put lines, separating the vowel letters into separate syllables. He identified the syllable type of the six standard ones. He had trouble remembering if a vowel was long or short. He'd make the right vowel sound and then misidentify it.

Regarding sul, he correctly identified the vowel sound and tried blending su instead of ul. Vowel sounds are determined by the sound after, not the one before. I don't know how often I've told him how to do it.

Moreover, he gets it wrong every time he blends the vowel with the preceding consonant. When he uses the consonant behind the vowel, as long as it is in the same syllable, he gets it right. When he did the third syllable, he said, "I recognize ant," and blended it with the /t/ sound. Then, he had to blend all three syllables. That was a challenge. It's easier to juggle two balls at a time; it's a whole different thing to juggle three or more. That's what it was like for this kid. He kept losing the middle syllable, /sul/. I used backward build-up to solve this. Blend /sul/ with /tant/. Once that was secure, he added on the /con/. It is a neurological trick. He got it in three minutes. I was exultant.

I called his mom to let her know. I thought she heard us working. No, she hadn't heard a word. She had earphones on, and the housekeeper was running the vacuum. D and I hadn't worked on phonics decoding for a while. I was focused on getting him to complete his school assignment of a video interview with someone who lived on the island. I made some progress. I got him thinking about who he would interview and what he would ask. That's as far as we got. He remembered much more than I expected about the decoding processes. I thought I was going to have to start from scratch. The break may be just what we needed. Some of the procedures I've been teaching must have gotten consolidated in long-term memory.

This reminds me: His mom told me a frustrating story. She bought him a driver's manual and placed it on his desk. She walked into his room one day and saw him reading it. She expressed pleasure. His dad walked in right behind her. He also expressed pleasure. D's response, "Well, now you ruined everything." He put the book down. Let's see if he ever picks it up again. Knowing him, he would rather never drive than deal with their hopeful expectations.