Saturday, April 6, 2024

 Saturday, April 6, 2024

     Today was my last Gokhale Foundations course class with Lisa in Havi. I was concerned; my stomach had been upset for days. As I loaded the car with the three pillows, yoga mat and food I would need for the trip, Yvette entered the driveway, returning from her morning walk with Little. She said she was returning the bottle of 5-HPT I gave her. She read it caused stomach problems.

    My doctor had recommended it as a substitute for Lexapro. While the drug blocks serotonin uptake, the herbal supplement helps the body produce serotonin. It sounded good to me. It was having a positive effect on my emotional state. I had attributed the stomach problems to postural changes causing a release of stored toxins. When I checked the internet, I got the low-down on the negative side effects. While the stomach issue was listed as a problem, there was also a solution. Take a low dose of 5-HPT after a good-sized meal with plenty of water. I took a pill first thing in the morning with a sip of water. I planned to take my next pill after I had dinner. In the meantime, it cleaned me out.

  I didn’t do my gentle seated yoga this morning. I hadn’t done it for two days. My back, right behind the left armpit, was killing me. I didn’t know what I had done to myself, but I wasn’t going to continue the exercises until I knew whether this pain might be permanent or not.

  The drive to Hawi was gorgeous, as usual. There was only one other student in the class besides me today. Lucas, our third student, would be away for three weeks. The other student was an older Japanese lady. Very sweet. She always brought treats for the rest of us. I learned today that she had been her husband‘s caretaker for several years. I didn’t ask what his problem was, but it did involve physical strength to move him. She was taking the course to help her with her tasks.

   I got a nap in while Lisa worked with the lovely Japanese lady, reviewing all we learned and taking the ‘after’ pictures to compare to the ‘before’ ones. Lisa did a great job teaching the course. She was very responsive to the students.

    It finally occurred to me to use a heating pad on the sore muscles. 

It worked like a charm, where massage and Tylenol had failed. The good news was that the relief confirmed that my midback ache resulted from pushing my shoulders back. Lisa confirmed that’s where it commonly hurts when you’re doing/overdoing the right thing.

Friday, April 5, 2024

 Friday, April 5, 2024

    The backache, which has had its moments, went full-on yesterday. I woke up this morning with a full-blown backache. I hadn’t had one of these since 2003 when I had my rotator cuff surgery, which stabilized my shoulder and removed all the stress from my neck. However, this one is not where it used to be in my lower back. No, this one is at my bra line on the left side.

   It is probably caused by all the changes I’m making. I didn’t have a backache before I started making all the changes to my body recommended by Gokhale. Of course, I’ve gone somewhat beyond her recommendations. I worked on stretching my spine, realigning my hips and shoulders, and correcting my spinal curvature. KC, my physical therapist, warned me that correcting my curvature could cause me problems. My posture had worn down bones and straightening it out could cause me pain.

   Nonetheless, I can now feel my whole lower back making contact with the floor when I lie down with my knees bent. I never knew my back didn’t contact the floor until I felt it doing so recently.

  The pain was bad enough for me to take a Tylenol—it had to be bad for me to do that. The pain interfered with my editing. I couldn’t concentrate. I napped. When I got up, I went on a shopping spree.

  My first stop was Home Depot. I needed a hammer. I had one; it disappeared. I just need a small one to hammer copper nails into trees to kill them. It takes time, but it does the job. I also bought a pickaxe. Digging a hole in the ground here is a job in a half. I wanted a short-handled small one. HD only had long-handled ones. I took one. When I got home, I checked on Amazon for a short-handled smaller one. I ordered it. I’ll keep the longer one for when I hire someone to plant the Hawaiian hibiscus shrubs where the Ficus trees used to be. I also picked up a container of Stump-Out to kill the stump once Dan cut down the Schefflera tree, tearing up my driveway.

  I went to Costco next. It was 10:30. They’d only been open for half an hour, and it was mobbed. Judy says more people are shopping there because grocery store prices have soared. They’re clearly higher, but does that account for the dramatic leap in customers? 

 

Thursday, April 4, 2024

 Thursday, April 4, 2024

    I saw a dark spot on the lanai carpet in the dark when I got up at 5 a.m. I hoped it was a shadow, but no. Elsa had peed on the carpet. She hadn’t done that in a while. Why was she starting it again? I have seen her go out the doggie door independently, but  I have to give her the sink-eye and order her out. I think she hates how the flap feels when she pushes it open.

   I did more weeding in the mulched area where the Ficus trees were extracted. Only a few more were coming up from seeds. The soil was still wet from the rain, and they were easy to pull out by the roots.

   I got the lawnmower out and mowed the strip of grass along the street. I also mowed the neighbor’s strip in front of their empty lot. Darby loves the way the groomed strip looks. She can see it from her driveway.

  Yesterday, when I called the extension center, they couldn’t tell me if there were any long-term effects of using boiling water to weed. I called the master gardeners who work for the extension. I was told with complete confidence that boiling water would not do any long-term damage to the soil. Yes, it would knock out some microbes, but they would be replenished within two days.

  Today was a Ulu Wini day. I worked with four children. Fourth-grade BE has good word recognition skills. We worked on comprehension. She was missing the before/after concept with time.

 I had met with 1st grade J once before. We worked on memory problems then, We continued with that today using the first 25 words of the Fry Sight Word List. She was still struggling.

   When I worked with third-grade AR, I got a nasty surprise. I hadn’t worked with her in a while. Last week, she joined a group of girls as we worked on comprehension of The Hatchet. She was easily distracted. I guessed she had trouble understanding the complex language and planned to work with her on compression. What I discovered today was a big surprise. Her English is very limited. I should find out when she moved here from the Marshal Islands. This information will help me determine how much of her problem is caused by a lack of exposure to English versus an auditory processing problem. I also discovered her word recognition skills were poor. I did manage to take her through the WbyW process with some of the sentences. It should be interesting to see if it impacted her understanding of what people say.

   The Marshal Islands comprise 29 coral atolls and five islands with a population of 70,000. There are islands with only a few people living on them. There is no need for complex language structures and an extensive vocabulary. You know everything there is to know by the time you’re five. Language is formulaic. These people aren’t linguistically limited because they’re stupid; there is no need for complex language. To say they’re like a fish out of water here in the States would be an understatement. I grieve with them for the loss of their simple life. Loneliness and despair are diseases of the industrialized nations. Yes, we are more ‘advanced.’ I put that in quotes because our destruction is built into our advancement. We may live longer, but we’re not happier or more fulfilled. We‘ve turned ourselves into zoo animals, living lives sheltered from physical danger in worlds we are unsuited for.

   I worked with third-grade BR for the first time. She read slowly. 

i concluded she was consciously decoding every word. I showed her how to use her automatic system. She proved to be an excellent student. She got to work practicing on her own in the session. So far, she is the only student who initiated intentional learning. She should go far in the educational system. Hopefully, the world won’t disappoint her.