Mike's death; Betty's life...: 09/07/26

Monday, September 7, 2026

Wednesday, November 6, 2024

I didn't get much done this morning. I was down in the dumps. I didn't have enough to do. Like my mother, I need to be busy to feel okay. Sitting around, reading, and listening to music leaves me feeling wasted. Also, I'm energized by social contact. Spending a lot of time alone isn't good for me.

Before my morning walk, I moved Jospeh's and my cars out of the driveway onto the strip in front of the house. I was expecting the county inspector today; I wasn't sure if Provision Solar was arriving to start installing the panels or if they would wait until after the inspection. It was a good thing I moved the cars. They were here. The Inspector also slipped in and out during the day.

My alarm went off at 10:50. Thank God I remembered to set it. I had an 11:30 hair appointment. If the alarm hadn't sounded, I would have forgotten about it completely. The lack of activity leaves me lost in time.

Jean, my Hanai sister, had an appointment with a neurologist coming up. She made it because of a tremor in her hand. The medical staff at the retirement community asked her to get a check on her mental functioning. I warned her to make sure she checked the day and the date before she met with the doctor. My lack of activity leaves me disoriented. I have no idea of the day, the date, or the time, even though I have Zoom tutoring sessions, and I write these updates. I get lost in the lack of activity.

I made it to my haircut appointment in plenty of time. Being in the presence of someone I hadn't seen in a while brought home how terrible I felt. I was in deep grief. It keeps getting worse instead of better over time. I'm not an embedded member of any social group. That hurts like hell. It rings the loneliness bells loud and clear.

Randee had dyed half her bangs and forelocks orange. I loved the way she looked before. Her hair was dark and shorter. She looked like Micelle Dockery, Lady Mary from Downtown Abbey. It was a great look for her. I told her I preferred her natural hair color. I don't think Randee took that well. Of course, my delivery may have reflected my terrible mental state and sounded particularly harsh. I explained I was in bad shape. She had an unusually indifferent to the annoyed response. Something might have been amiss in her life, too. She didn't look as cheery as the last time I saw her. She seemed on edge. I couldn't figure out if it was triggered by my mood or if I just made it worse.

One of the Provision installers warned me he would have to turn off the electricity for two hours to do rewiring. When I came home after my hair appointment, he told me the electricity was still off when he finished. He turned the electricity back on, but nothing happened. He said it looked like the grid was down. I called Paulette, who lives up the street, to check if she had electricity. I wanted to make sure it was the grid and not something the workers did. The electricity was down in the whole neighborhood. It was off for four hours today, from 10 am to 2 pm.

The crew was a delight to have around. One of the men told me I could sell the old panels. The cost for new ones was one dollar per kwh. These were 310 panels, worth $310 new. I could sell them for $100 each. It would be better than nothing.

I was only sure about the quality of seven of the panels. Their border design was different from the rest. Beth from Hawaiian Solar, the original installers, gave me the dates of the replacements and the number that were replaced at that time. Seven had been replaced in 2023. The edging on those seven panels was different from the edging on

That left me with 28 panels I couldn't be sure of. All the panels with the scored borders had the same final digits on their serial number: 11-02. Was that a date? Of the 28, six were already failing, and one was dead as a doornail. The men carried all the panels into my house. We tried to sort them from moss built up on the edge. It wasn't an effective way to tell the difference. They found seven with unscored borders they were sure were replacements. I posted them for sale at $100 a panel. That would be a good saving for someone and an unexpected profit for me.

Tuesday, November 5, 2024

Presidential Election Day 2024. I didn't listen to the news. No matter who won, I wasn't expecting a good outcome for the country.

I slept well last night. Even if I do think of issues that trouble me, I haven't been falling into virulent ruminating. The first order of the day was getting my car and Joseph's out of the driveway. Provision Solar was coming today to start work on dismantling the solar panels Hawaiian Solar installed in July of 2017. The panels that were installed were lemons. They started breaking down by 2019. The company was reliable and replaced them when necessary. Nineteen out of the original 34 were replaced. The company gave up as they continued to break down, and the 310s were getting hard to replace. They had an excellent warranty plan. I could continue with the original company, getting replacements for defuncted panels, keep the money for a college fund, or get the panels replaced. I chose option C. It's been a long process. I was hoping to have it all completed before the election. I was expecting chaos, the end of life as I had known it. they missed that date.

The installation team from Provision Solar arrived early in the morning. There was some minor confusion over the racks. Were they going to be replaced or used for the new set of solar panels? The old ones were 310s, and the new ones were 400s. When they called the company, that got straightened out. As I thought they were going to use the existing racks. Only one set had to be dismantled and used in a different configuration.

I learned today that I could resell my old solar panels. The going price is one dollar per kwh. My 310s were originally worth $310. I wasn't expecting that kind of money. It's too bad I hadn't been told that before they shut down the system. I could have determined which panels were defuncted and which were still functional using the online app. No, I couldn't put them in the usual trash. I would have to go to the electronic recycling center. I might have to pay something for them to take it.

I met with fourth-grade LG today. I see problems with his thought process. He keeps on insisting the 2-5=3. For the life of me, I couldn't figure out how to get it through to him that that was impossible. He doesn't see a connection between the abstract and the concrete. He gets it when I tell him he can't give someone more than he has. He's confused when I write that as an algorithm, 2-5=, and tell him it can't be done.

The algorithm is a story written with mathematical symbols instead of words. It is another language. I wrote several stories to illustrate the principle in words:

LG went to school with two candies in his pocket. The class bully approached him and said, "Hey, man. I know you have candy in your pocket. Give me six on them, or else."

LG said, "Hey. I only have two candies. I can't give you six."

The bully said, "Tough man. Give me the two you have, and you owe me the other four."

LG wants to buy a soda from Costco. The soda costs $6. He looks in his pocket and finds he only has $2. He needs four more.

He got the story when written in words but was still confused as to why 2-6 didn't equal four. I asked him to explain why he didn't get it. He said, "When I put 2-8 in the calculator, the answer is 6." Holy cow! The answer is -6, which means something different from 6. How long has this been going on? Given his intelligence, probably since first grade when subtraction was introduced. I showed him negative numbers on a number line. He finally got it. It took an hour and a half to break through his misunderstanding. While LG is a remarkable young man, he may have given me a clue about what may be confusing a lot of kids.

I ran into Josh in the driveway. I had told him last week that we would be without solar energy until the county planning department had inspected the job. That could be one day or two months. That would be a pretty penny since we run 45 to 60 kWh daily. I told him I would help cover the immediate bill. We could settle the difference when we did our annual reconciliation in April.

Monday, November 4, 2024

I’ve been sleeping well. I might wake up around 4:30, but that’s an acceptable time. I can always nap during the day. Napping is a favorite activity of mine. If I don’t get enough sleep during the night, I can make it up with a delicious nap during the day.

As I doze in the morning, I continue observing the vibrations in my body. I may be feeling them more because of the bodywork I’ve been doing. I’ve been correcting my posture with the Gokhale method. As a result, I’ve been releasing tension in my upper back, shoulders, and upper arms. When I was a child, I dealt with my fear by tensing my body, clamping down on those pesky sensations.

Lauren Bacall explains how she got her sexy look. She clamped her chin down to control the shaking in her body. Fear can make us look good, really good, given Bacall’s looks.

Eli, the gardener, finally came over to plan what we would do with the area where I had the Ficus trees dug up at great expense. I had several feet of mulch dumped on top to suffocate the remaining roots. I had to wait several months for the mulch to process. It’s time now. Eli calculated I would need three rows of plants with fourteen in each row. I planned to plant Hawaiian hibiscus, a shrub with a white flower. He gave me the name of the company that sells the black drip system. I will buy the hoses on my own and lay them down. There’s a faucet right nearby that works. I’ll hook the drip system up to that.

I worked with Twins. Twin E is progressing better than twin A, although she is still half a year behind her sister. The school repeatedly says they need more phonics. They don’t absorb what they hear. The more I encounter memory problems, the more I believe the problem is with the attention system rather than memory. Students have no idea how to pay attention to get the information sufficiently embedded in their minds to be remembered in the first place. Steve, who served as a principal in UN schools in Asia and South America, said he’d seen an increase in memory problems.

Telling the twins something repeatedly doesn’t work. It goes in one ear and out the other. I don’t know how often I’ve told them, “When you don’t know a word, you first find the vowel letters. Then you figure out which ones make a sound and what the most logical sound might be.” Then, when I ask them what is the first thing you do, they don’t have a clue. it seems to help when I tell them to repeat my words. I have to remember to do that. So many of these kids have memory problems. They remember little of what they see or hear that wasn’t triggered by a strong emotional response.

I usually work with fourth-grade MH on Sunday. She took off from school on Monday because her mother had to do work on the Big Island. There was no one to take care of her on Ohau, so she had to accompany her mother to the Big Island today. I agreed to a Zoom session at 11. I put it in my calendar, but I didn’t set my alarm for 10:50, giving me plenty of time to set up.

I incidentally checked my phone. There were two calls from MH’s father. OMG! I had forgotten about the session. I continued with E.B. White’s The Trumpet of the Swan when we connected. The language is much more complex than Stuart Little and the story is more engaging. Working on this book exposed her cognitive weakness. She doesn’t use the information provided in a sensible way. She picks out isolated bits of information. Other students do that, but hers feels different. I think this problem plagues her in interactions with friends and family as well as in reading.

Sunday, November 3, 2024

Church was interesting today, or should I say watching a family interact was interesting. A woman sat with two of her children and a man I had never seen before. The kids looked a little like him and seemed very comfortable with him. I suspected he was their father. The mother looked subdued.

The first time I saw the woman was in church when I attended Mass at a small church that held no more than 75 people. She came with a different man than the one she was with today. She sat toward the front of this small church where she was easily seen. She couldn’t keep her hands off him while he sat there stoically. I was struck that she behaved that way in front of her child. That compelling attraction was a sign of a new love. He was not the father of her children.

One day, while walking through the neighborhood, I saw her coming out of a driveway. “ Do you live here?” No, she lived somewhere else. I assumed with the hunk from church. This is where her children lived. I subsequently ran into her ex-husband’s grandmother, who lived with him. I mentioned the woman’s name; Grandma had a few choice words. I concluded the woman had left her husband for a new lover.

Today, she stood with the man I assumed to be the father of the children. He kissed her lightly on the lips and held her hand during the Our Father. He looked joyful. I could feel his love for her. She looked depressed. I can’t begin to imagine how the other relationship panned out. She left him because while he was sexually exciting, that was it. Or he left her for whatever reason. Either way, she’s back with her husband, recovering from a failed adventure.

The sermon today was on love and forgiveness. Love in today’s sermon was wishing someone well for their sake, not ours, wishing our worst enemy a good life, and being happy for someone you have nothing to do with and wants nothing to do with you. That pretty much eliminates wishing our kids well. We’re too invested.

I generally wish others well. However, I have trouble when I resent them for having something I don’t have. In my case, that’s always the nerve to pursue something I want. I want to broadcast the information on the reading methods I have developed. If I did that, I would be okay. It is possible I would be okay even if no one paid attention. At least, I would be there for me.

When I think of self-centeredness, I remember an ad for the Yellow Pages, which ran in the 80s or 90s. It could never be run today. The ad was for the Yellow Pages, illustrating some items in the phone book. This ad illustrated vanity cases, a heading in the directory. It featured an effeminate gay man saying, “Well, enough about me. Let’s talk about you. What do you think of my outfit?” I roar with laughter whenever I think of that ad. It was clever and spot-on- but it had nothing to do with the vanity cases in the phone book.

One slight misunderstanding between me and another person, and I’m off and running. As I write this, I don’t even remember who the contretemps was with. I don’t see people as judgmental unless they tell me they are. I see people as not responding well to something I said or did. I don’t like to make people uncomfortable, but I do things meaning to be funny. Sometimes, people don’t find what I do funny. Mike would sometimes say, “You’re not funny,” when the reality was that he hadn’t found something I said not funny. Otherwise, he often found me amusing. Like any comedian, I must adjust my behavior to my audience’s taste or find another audience. That’s what compatibility is about.

I’m willing to make adjustments, but some people find that abhorrent. Most people like that I have known have trouble in intimate relationships. Relationships either work or they don’t work. When they work, all’s good; when they don’t, they’re out of there like a shot or prepared to stick with it unhappily. I had a happy marriage. I loved it.

I met Mike in a therapy group. It was my first day in the group. Mike came rushing in late, wearing a jacket and carrying a briefcase. I thought he was cute. He apologized for being late. He was visiting his girlfriend in the hospital, who just had a hysterectomy. I thought, “Forget him. He’s in a committed relationship.” That day was the Wednesday after the 4th of July 1973. Our first date was November 8. The rest is history.

Mike might not have been quite as satisfied as I was. The more controlling someone is, the less likely they are to be happy with life circumstances. They have difficulty adjusting. Where I’m brittle, I am unhappy. Ah, it comes back to craving and aversion. Being controlling is another way of categorizing people who crave having things go their way and have an aversion to things not going their way.

It would be hard to know where I fit on the scale of reactivity. I think we all feel discord, literally two chords that don’t harmonize. No two people can be in constant accordance. What are the variables? There’s our internal one; some people are hyperreactive in all situations because they’re controlling. Some people are selectively reactive. I think I fit into that category. I have worked hard in therapy to be less sensitive. There are external causes; some situations are more injurious than others. The death of a family member probably gets a pass. If someone laughs at us rather than with us, that gets high points for being a cause of distress. If someone shuns us, good luck with not reacting to that. We’re wired to be sensitive to shunning. When someone does something that triggers rejection, that’s a tough one for all of us.

Trust is a significant factor in our reactivity. How much can we trust the other person to be committed to our well-being. I trusted Mike to want to be with me as much as I wanted to be with him. Our dependence on each other, mutual respect, and caring made the relationship work. Others saw him put me down. I heard it, too, at the beginning of our relationship. I assumed he was venting a bit but never assumed he could possibly mean the things he said. My blindness got us through the first few years, maybe the first ten.

Mike was arrogant when I met him. I saw that in his expressed opinions of others. I didn’t like it. But I trusted his attachment to me. Sometimes, a dependence like that can make a person horrible. The dependent person hates their dependency and seeks to destroy their partner, so it’s clear they’re the one lucky to be in this relationship in the first place. Mike may have felt that way at times, but he didn’t push it to the point where he made his position clear to me. I was shielded by a positive set of assumptions. He eventually became the man I thought he was. He never betrayed me or put me down in ways that were irreparable. Lucky me.

I wasn’t with Mike because I trusted him to agree with me, but I did expect him to respect my point of view. As it turned out, he admitted he thought he was right about everything at the beginning of our relationship. Really. That’s crazy. Not that he disagreed with me, but that he actually believed he was the only one capable of being right. He couldn’t have been as happy in the relationship as I was if that was his point of view. He had to see himself as someone who gave in to me even though he knew better. He was right about many things, but assuming you’re right about everything is pure hubris. Holy cow!

I went to Petco after Mass to look for a new brush for Elsa. The one I had broke. It has a plate at the bottom of the metal bristles. When I was through brushing Elsa, I pushed a knob at the back of the head of the brush. The plate slid down the bristles. The hair sat on the plate, free from the bristles. The one I had broke because I pushed the plate too far. It passed the tips of the bristles. There was no coming back from that.

I was going to Costco to pick up some items. I was nearly there when I decided that having the food sit in the car or even in a bag while I did the sound bath in air-conditioned Unity wouldn’t work. I turned around. I arrived at Unity at 11:30. I shared some food the members brought after the service. It’s always a potluck.

Sadly, I was still in rumination mode during the sound bath. I never got my mind under control. However, later in the day, I could remember some of the sounds and feel the impact on my body.

I drove Joseph to the airport. He’s off visiting a friend on the mainland for ten days.

Saturday, November 2, 2024

I’ve been listening to Why Fish Don’t Exist by Lulu Miller. The subject of her book, David Star Jordan, was an advocate of eugenics, the policy of sterilizing ‘misfits’ to prevent them from passing on their genes. I was shocked to learn that the US Supreme Court made it legal to forcibly sterilize those deemed misfits. The US beat the Nazi government to the punch with this legislation. The Nazis copied us. The policy was in place and acted upon in the USA in the 1960s and 70s. I was in my twenties and thirties. People selected for this treatment were those who behaved in ‘socially inappropriate ways.” It hit women hard. If they cursed or were promiscuous. We are talking about the 70s. Promiscuity came into its own in those years. It was also generously applied to non-white races. The woman who was the test case for the Supreme Court who ‘proved’ mental incompetence was inheritable had a daughter, who was also sterilized, who made the honor roll in school. The law making forced sterilization legal is still on the federal books.

Man is the only animal that chooses to control ‘natural selection.’ Dean says that fragilities that lead to disease and death are eliminated in the rest of the animal kingdom. These animals don’t choose who lives or dies. Perhaps you can say God does. My opinion of my species is sinking daily.

Several people in my life have perfection issues: students, friends, and family. One young man used the word perfect six times in a single breath. I told him I would wash his mouth out with lye soap if he uttered it again. Students argue they haven’t improved because they feel they are not doing something perfectly. Students mentally collapse when they don’t understand what someone said ‘perfectly.’ I have friends and relatives who need to be seen as perfect, as in always right.

Perfect can never be used with the future tense, as in I will do it perfectly or even it will be perfect. Used in the future, it guarantees failure because perfection is impossible. Perfect can only be used in the present tense, as in this newborn baby is perfect, and in the past tense, our vacation was perfect. In that context, it always means it was good enough. That’s all available to us, good enough. Good enough can be delightful, a great joy, but it can never be perfect. That’s God’s domain. In God’s domain, everything is perfect by decree. If it is from God, it is perfect. Those who expect that order of respect or acceptance think they should be God. They live with a great deal of disappointment. They are hoisted on their petards. (I learned a petard is a bomb. I had thought it was a sword.)

I felt like I did nothing today but did some significant things. I gardened and wrote a lot. I reviewed my ad for Craig’s List and published it. Mama K posted her endorsement of me, singing my praises. She rewrote my blurb, deleting my comments on her twins, as was appropriate. I had included information that they were in fifth grade and still three years behind to be posted anonymously, and then I sent her that version. She didn’t want to broadcast their deficits.

Three people responded to K’s post, two for kids in high school having trouble in math. I told both that I didn’t feel qualified to tutor high school math. One parent responded her son’s problem was with reading. I assume he didn’t understand the directions. I felt confident I could help and told her so. I asked her to call me. We’ll see.

A third has a twelve-year-old with severe learning disabilities: dyslexia, dyscalculia, and dysgraphia. Holy cow! I want to see his evaluation. He must have had one if she had all those terms at her fingertips. Is he cognitively impaired as well? I have difficulty believing he isn’t, but we’ll see. I asked her to call me. If nothing else, some of my approaches may be helpful. Since she is homeschooling him, she would be an ideal candidate for using my methods.

Friday, November 1, 2024

My mom would have been 121 today. I'm so glad my parents and Mike are dead and don't have to deal with the current political situation. My parents were both refugees from Nazi Germany. They watched a dictatorship rise. My dad talked about preventing it from happening again. Good luck! The voices of objection are loud and clear here. How do you stop a tsunami?

I just finished listening to Tied Up in Knots, a biography of Don Knots written by his daughter Karen. The last chapters are somewhat interesting as she talks about performers and shows I knew. The book's first part reads like a third-grader's report on their parent's childhood. It's a list. It goes something like this. Dad was president of his graduating class. His dad's dad became mentally ill and threatened his dad's mom with a knife. Dad went to the lake with his friends and got dirty. His brother Shadow died of asthma. Each item was given equal weight.

The book has a point of interest that has a bearing on the current political situation. People voting for Trump want life to go 'back to normal." Karen writes about Mayberry festivals all over the country. Everyone thinks life was really that peaceful once, that free from strife. It certainly was more predictable. But it's not always better, aside from that. Unpredictability is a huge stressor for all of us, but worse for some than others.

When I moved to Ohio in 2003, I got a job in a rural town just outside of Columbus. I taught English to children from Somalia or born in the US to Somali parents. Somali was their first language. The woman who hired me told me the school was all white and Protestant five years earlier. There weren't even any Catholics in the school. The rural population suffered a significant shock. Many small rural towns have contact with people of different cultures right on Main Street, USA.

Ten thousand years ago, we traveled in small bands. Everyone knew everyone else. The rules of conduct evolved and changed in the interaction between the group members, the same way language developed or changed over time. Everyone was under the watchful eye of everyone else. They all conformed to the agreed-upon set of rules or else.

Once groups got large enough that everyone didn't have regular contact with everyone else, some form of government developed. The rules were codified and enforced by an overseer, a chief and his council, a king and his.

When the population of the groups or tribes got big enough that the different tribes had frequent contact with each other, conflict arose. The rules were different for each tribe, and each tribe was out for itself. There was anarchy at the tribal level instead of the individual. Someone came along and organized all the tribes under a single head. What the majority of the tribes accepted or were forced to accept became the rule of law. Many groups were organized under religious banners.

We're too diverse now for most people to cope. I don't recommend the Chinese method; destroy any group that doesn't conform and send them to reeducation camps. Or the one the US government used when forcing the American Indians to stop being so Indian. Why couldn't they go on being what they were? I'm unsure why their ways of being were considered such a threat. The pursuit of 'purity' motivated the Germans in the 1930s.

We see whites as being the major enforcers. The Chinese in China aren't white; they've done a bang-up job eliminating challenges to the Chinese culture as dictated by the Communist government. I have no solution. I'm not very optimistic. Prayer is the only thing I have to offer, and money for the least bad option.

I met with fourth-grade LG this afternoon. The other day, I spoke to his father, and he supported my theory that LG panics when he doesn't understand something perfectly and blocks all input. His brain freezes, and he is in a state of painful confusion. I introduced an aspect of the BrainManagementskills in this session. I drew a picture of a head from a side view and two blobs, one representing the conscious mind and one the unconscious. Whew! That threw him for a loop. His panic is definitely a problem, but I don't know if he has learned to panic because of an actual learning problem or if all his learning problems can be attributed to his panic.