Wednesday, April 3, 2019

    When I woke up, I heard Yvette talking. I wondered where she was that I could hear her so clearly.  When I got up, I found her in my kitchen.  She said she had come up to use our house phone to call USSA to get the missing information on the mortgage because her phone wasn’t working.  I usually lock the two doors facing the driveway when I get home with Elsa after our late-night walk.  Guess I missed it the night before. 

    USAA gave her the same information they had the day before. She didn’t need that address.  USAA had sold the mortgage to another company and then did something else with it after that.  That mysterious company’s name was a leftover.  

    I called Raymond James and left Yvette on the phone with them to settle the situation while I took Elsa on her morning walk.  When I got home, I squeezed some limes because I was almost out of juice. Must have my nightly limeade.  

    The financial advisor said I would be receiving a call from their ‘back office’ so I could confirm the amount I requested.  She said they would call within the hour.  I drove to Bikram with the phone sitting on my lap, ready to grab it.  Halfway there, it was beyond the one-hour mark. I called Raymond James to tell them I hadn’t gotten the call yet. She said she would call them. I checked that they had the right number.  Everything seemed to be okay.  When I got to Bikram, I still hadn’t heard from the ‘back office.’ I was planning to set my phone by the door and sit near it, so I could rush out to answer.  Instead, I called Raymond James again.  She said she would set up a conference call.  That went through, and I confirmed the amount.  The lady at the other end said she had called.  At first, I thought my phone refused the call because I was driving.  It never does that for scam calls.  Was this something new?  But, when I checked my phone, I had no record of missed calls.  There was some other cause.  When I got out of Bikram, I called Raymond James again, and she told me that the mortgage payment had gone through. Now, that’s a real relief.

    I went home immediately because I was expecting Ace at 10 to scan more books. As I was driving down my street, I saw my neighbor from across the street, Marsha, taking her morning walk. She is on team Elsa when I need help. A  truck pulled up behind me, and I had to move on. The truck followed me into my driveway.  It was Ace. He got to work scanning books. I showered, started a laundry, took out the garbage and composting. 

    I Joined Ace in the library.  John and Ace are working with their phones, taking pictures of the bar codes of those books that had one. It is only the most recent books that have bar codes on the back cover. There are older books that only have ISBN numbers.  And then there are even older books that only have Dewey decimal numbers, and then even older ones that don’t even have that. While they were doing all the books that had bar codes on them, I worked with those books that were published before the bar codes came in. I have to type in the name of the book or the ISBN #, assuming that it has one.  Mike has books from the 1940s.  These are books he got from his first wife’s collection, which came from his father-in-law. 

     Ace got me into the program on my computer rather than my phone.  Thank God because while he could just run his phone over the bar codes, I had to type in numbers or the titles and authors.  You know, despite Mike being a Luddite, I think he would have loved this program.  It would have brought order to his world.   

    I was having one hell of a time with the program. I’d entered a book, but it wouldn’t show up on my cumulative list. Had I entered it successfully or not? We had developed a system for indicating those books that could not be directly scanned and had to be entered manually; we turned them on their spines while the scanned one remained upright. 

    I could imagine Mike feeling bad that I’m doing all this work for him, that he left me with this enormous task. It was a huge task.  I would do it slowly whenever I feel like doing it.  

    After Ace left, I worked on writing. Then I went back into the library to enter a few more books.  I couldn’t get back to the program. Fortunately, Ace returned to get his glasses and showed me how to get back into the program.  He brought a friend with him I hadn’t met before.  Someone who had left Catholicism and come back with a bang.  He was signing up to be a lector and a eucharistic minister. 

    I was already exhausted and in bad need of a nap but couldn’t because I was expecting a student.  I did a little prep for my tutoring session and sat down and worked on the blog.  Good occasion to get some back work done.  I called the student’s aunt to check if she was coming. On a previous occasion, she didn’t arrive and didn’t let me know.  I thought she had just decided not to come anymore.  Now, she agreed to pay me.  I charge what a massage therapist would charge: $60 an hour.   I think that going rate here for tutoring is $25 to $30 an hour; it’s a disgrace.  Now, if someone can’t afford this, I will take a lot less. In fact, for one family, I work with the kids for free, buy the school supplies for three children, and will addon the two youngest children when they hit school age. Money isn’t the issue. Respect for my background and skills is. 

    Then I thought of another reason she didn’t come. The girl’s grandmother is getting her degree in psychology.  Since she never heard of the techniques I was using, and I told her I had developed them myself, she may have told her daughter that I was a quack.  In fact, there was a married couple who taught in the same school in Ohio that referred to me as a quack.  Now I knew these two people liked me, if not actually loved me, and thought highly of my work – or at least the effects of my work.  I  told the wife that I preferred not to be called a quack. She asked me what I wanted to be called. I said, “Call me a mad scientist.”  That seemed to suit her.  Some people are uncomfortable with ideas that are generated outside the most formal setting.  Actually, Mike used to be one of those people.  Many years ago, he told me that if he was my boss, he would have fired me.  He even knew my work was effective. Go figure. It takes all sorts.  All my worry was for naught.  She just hadn’t let me know she was too busy to make it.  

    She told me she would be here around 3pm because her niece was getting out of school early today, as is the case every Wednesday. I forgot she was in middle school and assumed she was in the elementary, which gets out an hour earlier.  I also kept forgetting that her school isn’t the one down the street where I volunteer but a good 20 minutes away.  I think I’m nervous because she didn’t let me know that she was canceling that one time. 

    While I was waiting, I finally cleaned the poop off the rug. I used the Rainbow vacuum cleaner as Yvette had innocently recommended. There was much more poop than I thought would be there.  I poured water on the half-dried poop remaining on the rug and used my handy upholstery attachment to suck up the water. It worked like a charm.  The strip of the rug I cleaned in this way stands out. Its colors are brighter than those around them. I could clean the whole carpet this way.  Being able to suck up the water means I don’t have to worry about mold setting in when the rug remains damp for a prolonged period.  It also means I can keep pouring water on until I get all the dirt up.

    Finally, the student and her aunt arrived.  I had illustrated the concept of before and after in time by using the physical model. If you are standing on a line, there is a student before you and a student after you.  In the middle of the night, I realized that this model for spatial sequencing didn’t work for temporal sequencing. One reason I love teaching elementary school is that I make these incredible discoveries about how concepts work. Now, look at this.  I think it is mind-blowing and shows why it is difficult it is to understand.

       

                  

                            Space                                               Time                                        

Beginning of line                                 A                                              Last event

                                                              B                                              

End of line                                           C                                               First event

    Notice that both the spatial and temporal examples are pointing in the same direction.  In the spatial example, the arrow is pointing in the direction the line is facing and may move.   In the temporal example, the arrow is pointing toward the future, indicating the march of time.  However, in the spatial example, A is before B, and C is after B. Where in the temporal example, A is after B, and C is before B.  The two patterns are reversed.  This is an incredibly complex concept.  Yet, we expect young children to get it as if it’s evident because it is evident to us. 

    Now, some kids learn it at home, “You’d better clean your room before I kill you.” Hmmm! Maybe not.  This means once you’ve cleaned your room, I’m going to kill you.  It doesn’t sound like a good motivational technique to me.  If that’s the only context a child hears a temporal before/after statement, you can appreciate why they are confused.  On the other hand, if a parent says, “Before you can have dessert, you have to finish your peas,” or “You can only have dessert after you have finished your peas,” they might have learned the concept correctly because in these cases dessert will follow the eating of the peas as day follows the night. 

    The student reported improvement in understanding what her teacher said because of the comprehension work we did.  In previous sessions, she had commented at least twice that she had trouble learning from her reading and math teacher because she couldn’t understand them.  Now, she said she understood her perfectly.  

    I have been in teacher workshops where this approach (see below) is overtly criticized as useless. Hmmm!  Maybe not.  On the other hand, I learned the technique in a workshop about 20  years ago.( https://printableworksheets.in/worksheet/question-answer-response.) At least, I learned the categories used.  As I remember, the emphasis was exclusively on content and not on syntax. My approach does a lot of work with syntax and includes content in a different way.  This does not mean that this process should be a replacement for other methods.  

    The process I use is a variation on the original program. Mine puts as much emphasis on the information which is carried by the syntax, the grammar, of the sentences as the informational content.  I have observed that many students don’t have a clue about how to use the structure of a sentence to help them infer the information contained. Content is also covered but differently than it is conventionally. In this procedure, every sentence is analyzed individually. The syntax in a sentence is important because it illuminates the relationship between the content words, the nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs.  Without an understanding of syntax, a reader is entirely dependent on familiar content for understanding.  How are they going to figure out what is being communicated if the context is unfamiliar? Watch how complicated this is. The following sentence is a high 4th grade or low 5th grade level from  Specific Skill Series, Detecting the Sequence E, Barnell Loft. LTD., 1973.

The rodeo seemed doomed.  (In the original QAR, the questions apply to the whole text.  In this work, questions are formulated about each sentences, one at a time.)

RIGHT THERE:(Uses only the exact words in the text. This is my variation.)

1.     What seemed doomed?

2.     What did the rodeo seem to be? (I find that I have to do some tricky footwork when it comes to States of Being verbs.)

THINK AND SEARCH (“While the answer is found in the text, the student is required to combine separate sections or pieces of the text to answer the question”)

THE AUTHOR AND YOU: (This involves using background information or asking the reader to recognize that they don’t have the necessary background information so they can find out what they need to understand the text  I don’t know is a good answer.)

1.     What is a rodeo?

2.     What does doomed mean?

ON YOUR OWN: (“Requires student to think about what is already known from their reading and experience (prior knowledge) to formulate an answer.”)

1.     Why does the rodeo seem doomed? What are the possibilities? (Predicting: Reader can come up with possible answers or just hold a space created by the question.)

The rodeo seemed doomed. Heavy rains had made the ground too slippery.

RIGHT THERE:(Uses only the exact words in the text. This is my variation.)

1.     What had made the ground too slippery?  

2.     What had the heavy rains made?

3.     What had the heavy rains made too slippery?    

4.     What kind of rains had made the ground too slippery?

5.     Had the heavy rains made the ground too slippery?

6.     Had the heavy rains made the ground too hard?

7.     Had the heavy rains made the group too slippery or too hard?( The ‘or’ question structure is included because I have seen many students who don’t know how to respond to it .

THINK AND SEARCH (“While the answer is found in the text, the student is required to combine separate sections or pieces of the text to answer the question”)

1.      What was the ground going to be used for? (In the case, the only answer is the rodeo. That can be determine from the syntax even if the reader doesn’t know what a rodeo is.)

2.     What might happen to the rodeo because of the heavy rains? (Use a word from sentence #1). It would become slippery

3.     What was the ground too slippery for?  (This is the same question but using different words. Students have to learn that there are many ways to express the same idea.)

THE AUTHOR AND YOU: (This involves using background information or asking the reader to recognize that they don’t have the necessary background information so they can find out what they need to understand the text  “I don’t know” is a good answer.)

1.     What does slippery mean?

2.     What is the opposite of slippery?

3.     Who or what would slip on the slippery ground?

ON YOUR OWN: (“Requires student to think about what is already known from their reading and experience (prior knowledge) to formulate an answer.”) 

                  Sometimes a question doesn’t come to mind.  It may for you. Include it.        

The rodeo seemed doomed. Heavy rains had made the ground too slippery. Cowboys refused to take part.

RIGHT THERE:(Uses only the exact words in the text. This is my variation.)

1.     Who refused to take part?

2.     What did cowboys do?

3.     What did cowboys refuse to do?

4.     Did cowboys refuse to take part?

5.     Did cowboys want to take part?

6.     Did cowboys want to take part or refuse to take part?

THINK AND SEARCH (“While the answer is found in the text, the student is required to combine separate sections or pieces of the text to answer the question”)

1.      What did the cowboys refuse to take part in? (Students have to use information from a preceding sentence.)

THE AUTHOR AND YOU: (This involves using background information or asking the reader to recognize that they don’t have the necessary background information so they can find out what they need to understand the text  I don’t know is a good answer.)

1.     What are cowboys?

2.     What does refuse mean?

ON YOUR OWN: (“Requires student to think about what is already known from their reading and experience (prior knowledge) to formulate an answer.”)

1.     Why do you think the cowboys refused to take part? 

(Students may say because the ground was slippery.  I would push for a cause and effect answer: they were scared, they were scared their horses or they might be hurt.  I would run a whole mental image of what could happen if the horses slipped on that ground. OW!)

THE ORIGINAL TEXT INCLUDES FOUR MORE SENTENCES.

The rodeo seemed doomed.  (In the original QAR, the questions apply to the whole text.  In this work, questions are formulated about each sentence, one at a time.)

RIGHT THERE:(Uses only the exact words in the text. This is my variation.)

1.    What seemed doomed?

2.    What did the rodeo seem to be? (I find that I have to do some tricky footwork when it comes to States of Being verbs.)

THINK AND SEARCH (“While the answer is found in the text, the student is required to combine separate sections or pieces of the text to answer the question”)

THE AUTHOR AND YOU: (This involves using background information or asking the reader to recognize that they don’t have the necessary background information so they can find out what they need to understand the text  I don’t know is a good answer.)

1.    What is a rodeo?

2.    What does doomed mean?

ON YOUR OWN: (“This requires students to think about what is already known from their reading and experience (prior knowledge) to formulate an answer.”)

1.    Why does the rodeo seem doomed? What are the possibilities? (Predicting: Reader can come up with possible answers or just hold a space created by the question.)

The rodeo seemed doomed. Heavy rains had made the ground too slippery.

RIGHT THERE:(Uses only the exact words in the text. This is my variation.)

1.    What had made the ground too slippery?  

2.    What had the heavy rains made?

3.    What had the heavy rains made too slippery?     

4.    What kind of rains had made the ground too slippery?

5.    Had the heavy rains made the ground too slippery?

6.    Had the heavy rains made the ground too hard?

7.    Had the heavy rains made the group too slippery or too hard?( The ‘or’ question structure is included because I have seen many students who don’t know how to respond to it .)

THINK AND SEARCH (“While the answer is found in the text, the student is required to combine separate sections or pieces of the text to answer the question”)

1.    What was the ground going to be used for? (In the case, the only answer is the rodeo. That can be determined from the syntax even if the reader doesn’t know what a rodeo is.)

2.    What might happen to the rodeo because of the heavy rains? (Use a word from sentence #1). It would become slippery

3.    What was the ground too slippery for?  (This is the same question but using different words. Students have to learn that there are many ways to express the same idea.)

THE AUTHOR AND YOU: (This involves using background information or asking the reader to recognize that they don’t have the necessary background information so they can find out what they need to understand the text  “I don’t know” is a good answer.)

1.    What does slippery mean?

2.    What is the opposite of slippery?

3.    Who or what would slip on the slippery ground?

ON YOUR OWN: (“This requires students to think about what is already known from their reading and experience (prior knowledge) to formulate an answer.”) 

    Sometimes a question doesn’t come to mind.  It may for you. Include it.     

The rodeo seemed doomed. Heavy rains had made the ground too slippery. Cowboys refused to take part. 

RIGHT THERE:(Uses only the exact words in the text. This is my variation.)

1.    Who refused to take part?

2.    What did cowboys do?

3.    What did cowboys refuse to do?

4.    Did cowboys refuse to take part?

5.    Did cowboys want to take part?

6.    Did cowboys want to take part or refuse to take part?

THINK AND SEARCH (“While the answer is found in the text, the student is required to combine separate sections or pieces of the text to answer the question”)

1.    What did the cowboys refuse to take part in? (Students have to use information from a preceding sentence.)

THE AUTHOR AND YOU: (This involves using background information or asking the reader to recognize that they don’t have the necessary background information so they can find out what they need to understand the text  I don’t know is a good answer.)

1.    What are cowboys?

2.    What does refuse mean?

ON YOUR OWN: (“This requires students to think about what is already known from their reading and experience (prior knowledge) to formulate an answer.”)

1.    Why do you think the cowboys refused to take part? 

(Students may say because the ground was slippery.  I would push for a cause and effect answer: they were scared, they were scared their horses or they might be hurt.  I would run a whole mental image of what could happen if the horses slipped on that ground. OW!)

THE ORIGINAL TEXT INCLUDES FOUR MORE SENTENCES.

    It doesn’t take much exposure to this procedure to produce a dramatic change.  With this student, who is bright but just missed a lot of school and wasn’t exposed to complex sentence structures or complex topics of conversation in her home, it only took one exposure in which we cover a single paragraph about six sentences in length.

    I can imagine some object to what I’m proposing. I would love to hear from you.  I will be writing a whole chapter on this subject when I write my book on comprehension. I am currently working on my book on word recognition skills.

    While I had been exhausted before she arrived, I was only mildly tired afterward.  Do I love teaching? I find it wildly exciting. 

    I asked Josh for butter.  He brought up a quarter-pound made in Germany from free-range grass-fed cows. But unsalted.  Also, I found my extra quarter pound of butter in the fridge.  Must return theirs to them.

    I walked Elsa, had a salad with avocado, then the last of the whole grain bread from Safeway with butter, and what was left of the scrambled eggs that Damon made on Monday.  They were dead and tasteless, but they’re a source of protein, and they weren’t spoiled.  I can just imagine how Mike must feel seeing the way I eat. He always made such delicious food, and he made an effort.  I just try to put together enough to keep me alive.  Foodies live to eat. While I was married to a foodie and enjoyed his cooking, I eat to stay alive. I’m not too fussy about what it is as long as it won’t kill me, and it isn’t junk. I can imagine Damon complaining about my eating habits, as well.  I have dedicated one of the vegetable drawers to leftovers.  I found one remaining piece of pizza from Friday night.  Pepperoni isn’t my favorite, but it sufficed. 

    I was having trouble getting into Netflix. I was about to call customer support when I  figured it out on my own. I had to press the on button on the DVD player to get to the right ---------- I watched Shtisl while I ate. Dorothy had recommended it.  I understand it is very popular. It looks okay. I don’t really like the main character.  Too wishy-washy for me.  No sense of direction in his life other than sketching.  Also, it’s in Hebrew, obviously, and I use TV time to enter books into Collectorsz.com.

    I tried to add some books to the catalog tonight but couldn’t get into the program.  The user name and password wasn’t saved on my computer.  Back to the drawing board. I watched Frankie and Grace, season 5.  I’m finding the characters of Grace and Frankie degenerating into caricatures.  The boys are somewhat better. I still enjoy the characters from the next generation.  The script builds in surprises there.

    I walked Elsa, made notes for today’s entry, washed my face, brushed my teeth, went to bed, read a little, and turned off the light. Good night, Elsa, Goodnight, Mike.

Tuesday, April 2, 2019

  The alarm went off at the usual 6 am because I had plans to go to Bikram.  I hit the snooze button. The house felt so empty.  Not only no Michael, but 4 young, lively people had left yesterday. I was aware of the empty rooms as never before. It's not that it's a bigger space.  I don't think it's even the size of the area. It's just that no one is in it except me. 

    I called Raymond James and tried to arrange for an electronic pay off of the mortgage. Mike and I had started working on this before he died, having the financial advisor at Raymond James pull money out of stocks gradually.  Mike didn't really want to do it.  His belief is/was that money is always better in his pocket than someone else's.  He thinks debt is a great idea. Me, not so much. Quite on the contrary. I hate debt.

    On my first date with Mike on November 8, 1973, he told me that he was $2,000 in debt.  He might as well have told me he was a drug addict. For me, it was a deal-breaker for any long-term plans, which was too bad.  I remember standing in line with him and feeling completely comfortable on our first date when we went to see the movie The Way We Were.  We were good with each other from the start.  What a shame I couldn't be his lifetime partner.  Needless to say, I changed my tune while he stayed the same.  I accepted his penchant for debt.  However, the first thing I did when I had to deal with his credit cards was to pay every one of them off. I was planning on doing that even if he lived.  I knew he would be out of commission for a while and I would have that chance.  Okay, so neither one of us is perfect.

    Paying off the mortgage serves me even better now that Mike is no longer around.  I won't have the monthly expenditure. Mike and I paid the down payment, 2/3rd s of the cost of the house, plus some other miscellaneous expenses.  The kids got the mortgage.  Yvette is an army brat who got the mortgage through USAA.  Our names couldn't be on the deed for them to get the mortgage because we weren't military.  Some people go pale when they hear what we did.  But that's what my mom did with us.  We would never have abandoned her or pushed her out of the house.  When Mike got into Catholic University in Washington, D.C., it virtually never occurred to us that we would sell the house and move to D.C., never.   It only occurred to me recently that it would even have been a possibility.  Besides our original trust in them, they have continued to demonstrate their commitment to Mike and to me.  The kids will be paying me back, which will cover all my monthly expenses having to do with housing.  Mike and I, and now me alone, were fortunate people.  I have no children of my own, but I have the commitment of children in whose lives I played a role. 

    I came home late from my walk with Elsa and discovered I hadn't prepared my Juice Plus smoothie last night and had to rush to do it now. I put one in the freezer so it would be cold enough when I got home. I did my oil rinse while making it. 

    I stuffed the 1099 form from Tiaa Cref in my purse last night, so I didn't forget it in the morning. I didn't have time to do the dishes.  I gulped down my two cups of water in preparation for the Bikram. I didn't want to be dehydrated in the class. 

    This was my first class since Damon and company arrived.  I obviously didn't go the day of the funeral, Saturday, or Sunday or Monday because I made family the priority while I had them here.

    The class went very well. J.J., who teaches the Tuesday through Friday classes, has a fantastic knowledge of how to do these postures and gives excellent directions.  I now have a different understanding of the cobra pose. I have been making keeping my hips on the ground my priority.  He said to make pushing up as high as you can with your arms, getting as much of an arch in our back, and then working on letting your hips drop to the ground.  I don't know if this is best for everyone, but I doing it that way strengthens my shockingly weak arms and gets more of an arch in my lower back.  Doing a posture with the emphasizing the right sequence is so important.

    After class, I drove down to Miss Kitty's bookkeeping office to deliver the 1099 and a voided check so she could record the routing number.  I will be getting some money back from the state and just owe the Feds $4,000 and something. I thought it would be much worse.  I wonder what next year will look like. Kitty handed me the tax return. There was a letter on top addressed to Michael Ross and Elizabeth David-Ross.  I realized that next year it would only have my name on it.  It felt like I would be losing half of myself.  I don't feel that way usually, but perhaps it will become stronger as time goes on.

    When I got home, I got the smoothie out of the freezer, and put it in the frig, rushed into the shower.  Yvette had written out the mortgage account information for the electronic transfer.  There was the name of one mortgage company that didn't have an address on it.  The contact at Raymond James said he needed the address for them, or the transfer wouldn't go through.  I frantically called Yvette and Josh, trying to get the information.  No go.  They were both unavailable. Finally, I calmed down. It would be what it would be. If we missed the two-day deadline, we would have to start over again.  We only have today and tomorrow to get it done before the amount we owe changes. I assume it doesn't change by much, but they will have to recalculate. Very annoying.

    I then called Tiaa Cref beneficiary department before they closed at 5 pm E.T. to find out how much money is in that account. Question: do I want it to go into checking account or IRA? How will that affect my tax situation for 2019?  I need to ask my accountant before I decide what to do.

    The tax accountant emailed me that something was missing from Mike's Social Security form. How much had he paid for Medicare Plan D?  What to do? She said to call the Social Security Department.  No, they could not give me any information about his account.  Could they please speak to Mike?  I told them I would love that, but it wasn't going to be possible.  They told me they couldn't give me the information because he was dead.  Okay, what now?   I tried calling our insurer, Kaiser Permanente.  I got the same response. Boy, he died at an inconvenient time. Everyone wants to speak to Mike.  I have sent everyone his death certificate.  What am I supposed to do now?  Miss Kitty said we could file without the information. It wouldn't change the outcome of the taxes.

     I had received an encrypted email message from Kaiser Permanente through Voltage.  I couldn't remember my password. It offered me a secret question. What high school did I go to? I put in every variation of it I could.  Great Neck. Great Neck High School. Great Neck H.S., Great Neck North, and Great Neck North High School.  None of them worked, and it was the only high school I attended. Although, I was the last class to graduate from the one and only high school in the community. The new building was finished and opened the following September, and my old school became Great Neck North.  The tech support person told me to forward the original email to an address she gave me, which would cancel my old registration, and I would receive a new invitation to register. With a few glitches, I did it.  It was my prescription account.  A big whopping $58.75 in prescriptions for the year for me. I had estimated $50.  What I needed was Mike's, which was much more extensive. But before I could get that, I needed to file additional paperwork, proving he was dead, and I had a right to see his information.  I took a ballpark estimate of $200 for him.  He was on tons of medication for his blood pressure, his anxiety, and his eye.

    I took a much-needed nap after all that excitement.  Everything is new, unfamiliar. Everything is frustrating and takes time.   I slept for an hour, got up, and did a laundry.  I have a ton of towels to do and my Bikram stuff.  The sheets were done yesterday. I hung up everything on the laundry line. I love to hang the laundry on the outdoor laundry line rather than use the dryer. Besides the physical pleasure, it saves tons of money on electricity.  The sheets dried quickly in the sun and moderate wind/ strong breeze.  I went out to get them down.  These moments of wrestling with sheets while their blowing in the wind makes living here magical.

       A student I am tutoring arrived.  The school evaluated her reading and concluded she was reading at a 1st-grade level. She's 12. Her family didn't send her to school consistently, and she is now living with an aunt who is responsible. When she read for me, I could see she had trouble with multisyllabic words, but her decoding skills on single-syllable words were good as were her use of context clues (figuring out what a word means from the sentence.)  She had trouble with before and after in time, necessary if you are going to be able to determine when one activity happened before another. They're tough concepts until you get used to them.  Learning them is as hard as learning to ride a bike or ski, but once you have the skill, it's there, and you can't imagine why you had trouble in the first place.  She seemed to be able to follow my presentation of the concept. We'll see.  I also discovered her made mistakes reading numbers, which suggests some perceptual problems.  I think there are just a few problems interfering with her reading close to grade level.  I had her reading material on a low 4th-grade level.  She read slowly, but she could figure out most of the words.  I also started working on her comprehension skills and some math.  She can perform operations at about a 4th-grade level, but then it came out she did not understand place value.  I went through a quick lesson. She's bright, but she may still not understand it.  I introduce place value as a game.  When a numeral lands on a particular spot, it assumes the value of the number it landed on.

The key is I randomly distribute place cards or pieces of paper with the place values written on them:, 1000, 100, 100, 10, 1.  Instead of the order they are usually presented in, I place these papers randomly on the floor or table.  Then I give students a numeral for them to hold and place on the various spots.  The game works best when there are the same number of students as there are place value holders. Students scrambled to get to a place, somewhat like Musical Chairs. They then have to identify the value of the numeral they are holding based on the place where they landed. It's called place value for a reason. Do all students carry over from the understanding of this game to the context of formal math? Give me a break. But some do.

    She left around 4:15. I played some FreeCell. It was an exhausting day with a lot of frustration.  I walked Elsa, saw Josh was home, and texted, asking him to come up with the mortgage document so we could find the address of the company on it. He had it on a flash drive. Simply plug it into my printer, and it's done.  It seems my printer can search on the flash drive.  

    We walked back to the lanai and discovered that I had poop on my shoes.  Where did that come from?  Josh located it on the living room rug. It's a multicolored Persian rug, and the poop blended in nicely.  I had noticed the other day that the floor mat by the back door looked like it had a water stain.  I figured that sweet Elsa had used it to pee that day when I forgot to take her out around the dinner hour  I thanked her for being so considerate.  I didn't detect the poop because of the multicolored rug and lack of smell.  It must have been there at least a day, maybe two. I can't remember which was the day I became so distracted that I actually forgot to walk her at the dinner hour.  I remember walking her later around 9 and thinking, wow! How come she has so little pee and poop to deposit.  I got my answer.

    Josh bent down and cleaned most of the poop up and left a piece of paper towel to mark the spot on the rug and wiped up the smears on the tile floor as best he could.  I couldn't be bothered to deal with it at the time.  Yvette asked me if I was going to use my Rainbow vacuum cleaner to get it up.  It had never occurred to me before, but I thought that was an excellent idea.

    Elsa and I did our before dinner walk. I'm not going to forget that so easily again. Yvette came up and did Graston and massage on me. My leg muscles are super tight. Yvette said she would call USAA in the morning at 5:30 am., then we would call Raymond James together. I ate dinner, salad, an egg sandwich with the left-over egg from Monday, and the left-over cheesecake from yesterday.  I probably watched some T.V. and entered more books into the Collectorz.org app, which John Coughlin set up for me.  I walked Elsa, washed my face, brushed my teeth, went to bed, and did a little bit of reading before I put out the light at 10 pm.

 Good night, Elsa, Good night, Mike.

Monday, April 1, 2019

   I woke up whenever and walked Elsa. No Bikram today because I wanted to be with the family before they return to California. Damon and Cylin went out to get coffee from Pines Trees café and toasted bagels with cream cheese, each in their own take out packaging.  Yvette came up and joined us while Damon made eggs for everyone. 

    Damon proposed I take advantage of having three strong men around, Mowg, August, and himself,  to do something around the house. I had Mowg unscrew my blender, filthy between the base and the container from the Juice Plus chocolate drink I mix every other day.  Mike wasn’t able to get it apart. It’s lovely to have it clean for a change. I will have to remember to ask Damon to do this for me whenever he visits. 

    Damon and Cylin worked on taking apart Mike’s old toothbrush that I decided to adopt, which needed both a new head and new batteries.  I hadn’t been able to get that open either. 

    Damon went through a lot of the kitchen stuff to sort out what we could get rid of.  Then he and Cylin went through Mike’s old spices. Some were so old, they were clumped.  They also cleaned the drawers they were in.  Damon then vacuumed the lanai where the dining room table sits, and Cylin stripped the beds and started a laundry. This is more help than they ever offered before.  I usually did the clean up after they left.

    B. called to tell us the poor Elijah had both a strep throat and the flu.  How’s that for luck? He was so sad not to join us last night. He had to be down in the shed and hear us talking and laughing up here. 

    I worked on my taxes in preparation for my 1:30 appointment with Miss Kitty.  I redid the non-Kaiser medical expenses.   I called Tiaa Cref to ask about the tax form they said they sent me by express mail.  They told me it would arrive that night by UPS, too late for my appointment, but not for the April 15 deadline.

    I drove Damon, Cylin, and August to the airport. I was sad to see them go. I am feeling closer to them.  Hopefully, my relationship will continue to develop with all three of them. Mowgli was going to go with us to the airport, but I had other chores to do afterward, and he didn’t want to be dragged along.

    My first stop was at Habitat to Humanity to drop off those checks that had their name on them.  I wanted to make sure that I put them in the hands of someone I knew.  I asked for Isabel, who Mike had worked with closely as a member of the board and then as President of the board.  She had a terrible cold as a result of an airplane flight. She gets sick every time. We avoided a hug.

    Then I went to St. Michael’s to drop off checks made out to them and the cash. I was going to give whatever cash I got to the St. Michael’s debt relief fund.  Cynthia asked me how I was handling the thank you notes. Thank you notes?! You got to be kidding me. I was under enough stress. Thank you notes to everyone who sent a card or contributed money? No, no, no.   I think it was Cynthia who proposed that I write a thank you to go into the bulletin. Brenda could help with it.  She was sure father Lio would be good with it.  

    I picked up the photographic panels which Damon had made for the funeral.  I asked the ladies in the office if they thought Fr. Lio would enjoy having the one of Mike illustrating his role in the church.  They thought he would love it. 

    Fr. Lio had done the funeral mass. I was so glad it was him and not the Bishop.  The Bishop is a wonderful man who respected Mike, but Fr. Lio is a wonderful man who loved and depended on Mike.  A much stronger bond.  If there had been any question if Lio cared about Mike, his final tribute to Mike at the end of the mass made it clear he did.  For those of you who haven’t watched the funeral to the end, he was so choked up he couldn’t go on. What an incredible moment!  I wanted Mike’s funeral to be a celebration of his life with an emphasis on how much he was loved. That is what the funeral was, every moment of it.  

    Then I drove down to the tax accountant to pay for my return.  I paid the feds electronically. Done.  The state owes me a small sum of money.

    I went to Safeway on the way home; I returned the two jars of peanut butter I had just bought for Damon.  As it wound up, I had a jar of Adam’s all-natural creamy peanut butter in the frig, and, moreover, no one used any peanut butter or any of the whole wheat English muffins I bought. I also returned a large unopened jar of peppers Mike liked.  I will never use that many before they go bad.  I have to keep things simple.  I bought two bags of kale salad with dressing, a bag of pumpkin seeds I have been wanting to add to the salad, and 5 Hersey’s Milk Chocolate bars with whole almonds.  Then I went home.  

    When I got home, I sent Damon and Cylin an email thanking them again for their consideration.  When driving them to the airport and told them how much I valued small acts of consideration and how angry I can get when there are no acts of consideration. When people are unable to see things from my point of view at all, and I do mean at all. Wow! Keep me away from them.  And they generally prefer to keep away from me.  

    I also told them that I spoke to Susan, the parish secretary, about the internment.   I’ve decided to do it over Christmas vacation when Damon, Cylin, and August are here.  Apparently, Fr. Lio will be digging the grave himself.  Here in Hawaii, any sort of digging involves breaking up rock.  Apparently, Lio loves to do it. I can’t think of anything better than having Lio dig Mike’s grave. Ah!  No, that’s not strong enough a word.  Then Cynthia told me that when he buried a woman who was a nun, he knelt down to throw the dirt into the grave.  I was sitting when they told me this and dropped my head on the desk.  Fr. Lio makes my heart so full.

    Mowg and I chewed the fat as Mowg, and I do. We talked about big ideas. Love to talk to this boy, 42-year-old boy, 6 ft. 4’ boy, but always a boy to me.  He raised the issue of male toxicity.  How sad to have to think of yourself as toxic just because you were born a man.  I suppose the traits that were genetically favored during our prehistoric period aren’t useful today. There are so many impulses from that early period that are not useful in the zoo life we have created for ourselves. We’re living in an environment we weren’t designed for.  Yes, it’s safer. Yes, the most dangerous thing in this zoo environment is just us.  I’m not recommending that we go back to the era of living in caves and using sticks and stones, but it is a tough adjustment.    If there is male toxicity, can female toxicity be far behind?  And, I am not referring to the age-old accusation that women tempt those poor men to be less than they should or be that they are witches, either.  

    I called John Coughlin to propose sending out an email to everyone in the diaconate community to thank them for whatever they have done.  He said great idea, and Lina, who is a gifted wordsmith in her own right, will fix anything that has to be smoothed out.  Phew!

    Then I called Lio, first to thank him for everything he did to make the funeral possible. Fr. Lio is a stickler for procedure and timeliness.  He cut us some slack, which I deeply appreciated.  Also, I told him how happy I was that he did the mass instead of the Bishop because he knew Mike so much better, loved him, and valued him.  It was a completely different vibe with Lio on the alter, one I much prefer. I was going to offer him the photograph panel but forgot.

    I also asked him if I could post a thank you note to the church community in the bulletin.  He said absolutely.  What a relief. I said I would rather have everyone think I’m an ingrate and reject me that write all those notes.

    I worked on the blog.  I love sitting still in my living room writing. I love writing. Actually, I love writing the blog. Narrative writing with a few abstract thoughts thrown in is much easier than straight expository writing, which I have to do to write my book on my teaching methods. 

      Mowg called from downstairs and said he and the Yvette were thinking of going out to dinner, did I want to come.  I am so happy to be home and quiet. Going out to dinner didn’t suit me at all.  I had enough food in the house for dinner.  Josh came home from work and agreed to join them.  Yvette and Mowg sat in my living room while I wrote, waiting for Josh to change and join them.  Mowg said goodbye because Yvette was going to drop him off at the airport after dinner.

    Elsa is much more loving with me.  I feel a change in our energy.  I think she can only connect deeply with one person at a time.  

    There is something weird going on with Elsa.  Since we got her, she has had some sort of eczema. The vet recommended a medication that didn’t do much.  Right after Mike died, and while I remained in Honolulu for a few more days, Judy took her into Petco for a grooming.  She came back without a single sore on her.  We thought it might be the soap they used, and I ordered it on Amazon because Petco didn’t have it in.  However, the soap didn’t come quickly, so I washed her with the old soap. The rash has never come back.  I am beginning to think her rash was a reaction to Mike’s stress.  He suffered terribly with the hemodialysis, particularly when he was still trying to use the fistula before he got a port put in.  He was scheduled for another procedure to get peritoneal dialysis that would be gentler that he could do while he slept when pancreatitis hit.  It all makes me so sad that he suffered so.

    As I went to walk Elsa before dinner, there was the UPS man with an envelope in his hand. Such relief.  When I got home, I did some work on the blog and watched ‘Catastrophe’ on Amazon Prime while I ate my dinner. I walked Elsa, washed my face, brushed my teeth, and went to bed.  Good night, Elsa.  Good night, Mike.