Mike's death; Betty's life...

Saturday, March 7, 2026

Saturday, September 24, 2022

I did a short walk this morning because I had my Saturday office hour at 7 a.m. No one signed up. I sat there because someone might have decided to join. No one did. I worked on updates and the NY Times puzzles.

On my walk, I conversed with a woman I had seen several times before but had never spoken to. I introduced myself. Sally lives on the property with her son and his family. I met her daughter-in-law, Hannah, when she was parked in the middle of the road trying to get a gecko out of her car. I introduced myself as the neighborhood yenta. I get to know everyone and connect them to the rest of the neighborhood. She told me she had a twelve-year-old and a four-year-old. I guessed she was on her second marriage. I have only caught glimpses of Hannah as she drives by in her black SUV.

Sally mentioned a duck had recently moved in with them. I told her the duck belonged to the family who lived above them in the corner house. They had a flock of at least six ducks. While we have wild chickens, turkeys, pheasants, goats, and pigs, we don’t have wild ducks in our neighborhood. I’m not sure we have any wild ducks in Hawaii; geese, yes, but not ducks. Sally said she would tell her son that the duck was a pet. I knew Sally’s family had a large swimming pool. This duck must feel like it died and went to heaven. His owner only provided a small plastic child’s wading pool. I was relieved to learn what happened to the duck since I saw him in the middle of the street a block from its home. I was concerned it was flattened by a passing vehicle.

A friend called. She gave me sad news about her sister’s husband. He retired from the medical profession and experienced a radical change of personality. He started spending money at an alarming rate from someone who had lived reasonably before. He bought three houses and six cars without consulting his wife. His family persuaded him to see a doctor. The MRI showed he was just fine. His whole family noticed the change in his behavior; his wife was in despair. She lost the husband she had known for so many years. This is not the first story I have heard from friends about their spouses showing signs of dementia. So sad. Mike would have been seriously impaired had he lived. Prolonged intubation causes mental degeneration. We both would have been miserable. Had he lived, he wouldn’t have been the man I had known for the last forty-five years. Moreover, he wouldn’t have been the man he wanted to be.

I improved my Wordle strategy. I started with three trial words: ready, stomp, and quick. That took care of all the vowels and nine consonants. I changed my strategy and only put in those trial words until I had at least two yellow letters. Then, I search for a word with those letters in different places. I was having fun with this method. I usually get the word, eliminating other possibilities.

I trimmed the toenails on both my feet for the first time in eighteen years. Make note. My surgeon was not optimistic that I would ever be able to do that. While the surgery corrected specific problems, it didn’t repair all the soft tissue damage from years of misalignment and the last eighteen years of compensatory movement.

The McCracken method for teaching phonics is closest to my method, The Phonics Discovery System Phase I. It is different because it provides lists of phonetically regular words. My approach works with natural language, even names. It comes closer to duplicating what students have to deal with. For many students, McCracken will do just as well as my method. It requires a purchase, but it is only one spiral-bound small book. Not a bad deal. It does not cover the Phase II of my method, which is free.

I finished The Westing Game. While it was fun keeping track of who was who and the relationship between the sixteen participants, it was a somewhat sadistic game. One of the characters says something positive toward the end of the book. She says everyone was partnered with the person who could help them the most. There is truth to that.

My right inner thigh spasmed when I went for a short walk. The muscles in my right leg need to change as much as those in my left, where I had the hip replacement.

I only worked on the updates; that’s it. Like a true extrovert, I find spending a day alone exhausting. All I had was a wonderful long call from Jean, my Hanai sister, some incidental contact with Scott as he came and went, and B when he brought up a bag of limes from my tree at the bottom of the property. I didn’t want him to come in because I didn’t want to be exposed to his pneumonia.

Friday, September 23, 2022

I didn't like the way my scale was going. I was gaining weight. I eat a ton of Hersey's milk chocolate nuggets with whole almonds. It's a staple of my diet. While It couldn't be the best for me, it hadn't affected my weight so far. Despite the weight gain, my measurements stayed the same. Could the weight difference come from increased muscle mass? That would be nice.

I ran into Dean on my morning walk. I asked him if he remembered to ask his wife about their electricity use. He pulled a bill out of his pocket. He had told me they only use six KWHs a day; no, they used twelve. We use between fifty and sixty a day. Of course, we are three households with three good-sized refrigerators, two free-standing freezers, three dryers, two attic fans, two water tanks, two air conditioners, various computers, and an electric car. Dean's house has only two small refrigerators and two TV sets. His in-laws share the house with him and his wife.

A large callus has developed on top of the first knuckle of my wandering second toe on my right foot. Because it is climbing over the first toe, it is raised and comes into contact with the top of the shoe, despite the Croc's rather large toe box. I had to pass on the Crocs and wear Oofos instead. That created its own problem. The space between my two first toes is numb. It's not the most comfortable either.

Elsa's skin looked better today except for one wound. I applied the medications. One's a salve she doesn't mind. The other is a foam she hates. She runs around like mad after I apply it. I assumed it burns on her raw skin.

I had homeschooled second-grade L at eleven. Last week, I told her mother I would start her on Starfall. Her mother said she refused to work on computer programs like Hooked on Phonics. L balked when she had to work at the Kindergarten level to learn the letter names. She is another student with severe memory problems. She can't remember something from one minute to the next. Sometimes, she will name the letter t correctly five times and then be blank when she sees it the sixth time. Mom described her as uncooperative. I suspect mom said, "Here, do this program," and assumed she would understand what to do. Starfall, designed for young children, even preschoolers, is challenging to navigate. L was pretty cooperative. She didn't get up and run away. A good sign. However, she was not ready to navigate it on her own.

Thursday, September 22, 2022

I restarted my morning exercises while lying in bed before getting up. I had skipped a day. I did a short walk this morning because we had driveway yoga at 7 a.m. Two people I knew from Bikram joined us. Carla had come before. Today, Jeff joined us. Also, Casey was back from his cruise. A friend of his husband’s paid for it as a condolence gift. It was lovely to have them. I love the class. I wish we had it at least twice a week. Maybe Yvette will start it up again. She is a spectacular teacher.

After the class, I picked limes at the bottom of the property. I had finished the many limes B had delivered long ago. I found a dozen accessible ones, ones I could reach without the picker.

I had an appointment with my acupuncturist today. She continues coming to my house instead of insisting I come to her office. I meet with people in their offices, including my PT, dentist, and primary care physician. However, her office is in a floatation tank facility. It’s a small room without a window. I don’t trust the ventilation system.

I showed her my walk. There had been a lot of change since she saw me two weeks ago. Some of this was thanks to her observation of how I swung my left leg forward instead of lifting and placing it. She let that information guide her work. The difference in my leg strength since then has been impressive. Today, she continued working on my inner thigh muscles. She noticed my left hip lifted whenever I bent my left leg. She did what she could for that issue. I planned to work on it when I walked. I also told her about the numbness in my left pinky. I had already discovered that it was related to my shoulder muscles. It was relieved when I applied pressure to the bottom of my neck on the left side. She did some massage in the area. She was impressed with how tight it was. I was sure it was caused by how much time I spent on the computer, writing or playing my beloved FreeCell.

I thought of Mike as I lay on the table after the session. I felt his love pour down and fill me. Boy, do I miss regular doses of that beautiful energy!

I called my friend Melissa. She had just returned from a three-week vacation in France, walking the Camino Frances, a Catholic pilgrimage route. She walked it during the day and stayed in comfortable accommodations at night. Through some connections she had since college, she knew an archaeologist who had access to caves with primitive paintings not open to tourists. Her guide had the key to get into the area. They had to bring their own lights and walk over slippery rocks. It sounded like an awe-inspiring experience, seeing these drawings from 30,000 years ago unmarred by the energy of hundreds, thousands of tourists walking well-lit areas on carefully constructed walkways. All the images were recognizable. The artists used the contours of the cave to create 3D images. The Europeans rediscovered three-dimensional art during the Renaissance; these folks had it back then. Stunning. To be that close to the energy of people from thousands of years ago. Wow!

Melissa said she caught up on the local news. We had a kidnapping. A fifty-year-old man forced a fifteen-year-old girl to tie up her boyfriend and took her at knife point. This was the first amber alert ever issued on the Big Island. Fortunately, the girl was rescued from the man, but not before he sexually assaulted her. We assumed he planned to sell her into the sex trade. Melissa worked with another elderly woman from the church to break a sex trafficking ring here on our island. Yes, we had a big one on the island.

A church member confessed to one of the women that her husband was the leader of the sex trafficking ring. The FBI was brought in and busted the ring. The woman got an annulment and returned to her country of origin, New Zealand. The two women from the church who were involved with this case are not the people you would think could take on a challenge like that. Nonetheless, they were successful, with the help of the FBI.

I got three phone calls while I was talking with Melissa. Lutz called once. Paulette called. I knew she was calling to tell me when Elsa and I could visit and get water. Jean, my Hanai sister, called three times. I was concerned about a problem and got off the phone with Melissa. Everything was fine. I do love talking to Jean.

When I got home from visiting Paulette, I continued reading The Westing Game. I was getting involved. There are sixteen characters with various relationships with each other, Westing, and Westing’s family. I started writing down the connections. I needed a chart to keep track of everyone. It was like reading a Russian novel.

I fell asleep as usual. I was awakened by a phone call from Dr.Hiranaka’s office. They had made my original appointment, assuming I had only one extraction. They hadn’t even gotten the order or the second. Now, I was up to five extractions and two posts. With one extraction, they said I didn’t need a consultation. The situation was different now. Could I come in tomorrow? You bet.

I had a 4:30 appointment with ninth-grade K. His class was working on Raisin in the Sun. The language in the introduction is unnecessarily complex. It contrasts the language in the play, which is colloquial and conversational. Hansberry wrote the play in the fifties. However much bias black people face today, it is nothing compared to what it was like back then. Hansberry probably used the complex language deliberately to make sure people knew she was educated and could sling difficult-to-read language with the best of them.

Wednesday, September 21, 2022

I lay in bed and did three hip opener exercises before my morning walk. I planned to do it every morning. Wish me luck!

For the second time, Dean accompanied me on my walk. Yesterday, we discussed solar panels and electricity use. We use between 50 and 60 KWhs a day. He said his household only used 6. I thought that was impossible. When I saw Dean this morning, I asked him if he had checked his numbers with his wife, Nina, who was more knowledgeable. He pulled an electric bill out of his pocket. He was off, but not by that much. His household uses 12 kWh a day versus the 50-60 we use daily. There are five people currently in our household. There are four in Dean's: him, his wife, and her parents. We have three good-sized refrigerators, two freezers, at least one air conditioner, several fans, three washers and dryers, and several computers. Dean's household has two small refrigerators and two TVs.

Dean rents his solar system. It guarantees a fixed monthly bill. I don't know how the companies who provide these systems make money, but they must. We bought our system. It's all paid for. It definitely brings down our monthly costs.

Nina wasn't with Dean this morning. She has a regular job and a job where she substitutes when the employee is out. He's out with an injury, and Nina is on duty daily. Dean joined me on my path this morning. I did 4,000 steps. My leg was getting stronger.

I felt a desperate need for sleep. Was I tired because of grief over a lost friend, the five teeth I will have extracted, or tired because of a bad reaction to the vaccine? I had no reaction to the other vaccine shots.

Judy called. Then she got a call from Mei. She had to take that because her calls are usually about some change in plans related to Turo. A car or a customer came in earlier than expected, and Judy and Paulette had to go immediately. Their schedules are dependent on the airline arrivals and departures. They're in constant flux. The unpredictability makes it a stressful job. They're on constant call.

Judy called me back. She wasn't needed immediately. We talked about dentists. She loves hers and says his prices are reasonable. Mine is okay, but I no longer have dental insurance, thanks to Medicare. Medicare is now the insurer. Most dentists don't accept their insurance because they don't pay up. One dentist I know applied and waited and waited and waited for approval. It either never came through, or they just gave up. We're all in much worse shape than we were before. I needed teeth extracted. My regular dentist sent me to an oral surgeon to have them done. Judy's dentist charges half of what he charges for an extraction.

While I had been fatigued, my conversation with Judy energized me. I went out for a walk. The path for my short walks during the day is usually up and down my street on relatively flat ground. Today, I decided to include a steep hill. I turned down a street intersecting with my block. I walked halfway down the incline and back up. Both directions build up my leg muscles.

Judy and Paulette passed me, returning home from a chore as I headed home. They stopped to chat. I remembered it was Paulette's birthday and regaled her with the Ross rendition of Happy Birthday. It brings a smile to most faces. It's pretty off the wall, and each one is different. In true Hawaiian style, we all stood chatting in the middle of the road. A few cars passed and drove around us without comment. I remembered what Josh said about driving patterns here in Kona. Two cars traveling in opposite directions can stop in the middle of a two-lane road to chat, and no one will honk. I love this place.

While we were talking, the phone rang; it was Mei. There had been a schedule change; were they available? Judy said, "We can do it. We're right in front of Betty's house. We'll be right there."

I had an appointment with adolescent D. I reviewed the word shared. He had missed it in our last session and could not decode it. Yes, the e makes a sound. He recalled something about the t and d rule before the final -ed. He just got it backward. He said it did make a sound because there wasn't a t or d. I asked him if he had done mental rehearsal. Nope. He never drills himself. Wait! His mother said if she tells him to do something, he keeps repeating it to himself as he goes to do it. You can't interrupt him. That is rehearsal, but it doesn't work for him. I asked if he refused to drill himself because he thought only stupid people did that. He said no. I realized he doesn't do it because he can't remember what to drill. Does this fall under an auditory processing problem, a memory problem, or both?

We decoded shared. D successfully blended sh with ar as in the word are. That gave him shard. When he reread the sentence saying /shard/, he immediately saw the correct word was shared.

Then, I returned to the text and had him read it from the top. When he came to the word shared, he read it as shattered. That made no sense in the text. How did he get that? We had gone over the word shared a few minutes before. It was the second day we had worked on it. He had remembered shard and thought it had something to do with shattered. The bad news is this kid has terrible processing problems. How do I help this boy? If I get frustrated and annoyed, how can he not? He has to live with this 24/7. I only have to deal with it for two half-hour sessions a week. The good news is he is finally letting me see what is going on instead of just saying 'I don't know," when I ask him what he was thinking. I sat there and prayed out loud for guidance. " How can I help this boy? What should I do?".

Other professionals must think that bizarre. I don't mean I do a formal prayer to a godhead. I just sat there and asked, "How can I help him? What do I need to do?" I asked that question with all my heart and soul. It is a genuine question. Kids respond very well to it. I admit I don't know. They don't know anything all the time. It's good to have some company in the land of not-knowing. The other part is I don't blame them. Not to say I haven't occasionally with D. He is so hidden it is hard to know how much of his problem is caused by ego defense and how much was caused by processing problems. Now I know; there is no question in my mind I have never seen a case this bad. I'm sure there are others out there. Come to think of it, I have three kids I'm currently working with who have similar problems. They can't remember something they've heard two bloody seconds before. What is this about? Is this a growing problem due to something in our contemporary lives that is destroying memory, or is it just my dumb luck?

In my session with Mama K's kids, I started the twins on Starfall, training them to do it independently so they could practice during the week. I only work with them for fifteen minutes a week. That's all the time Mama K can give me. It's not about the money. I do their session for free. Then I met with fourth-grade K. Oh, my. He hit it out of the park. I'd been doing the WbyW comprehension exercise with him for the last few weeks. We met for about 15 minutes once a week. That's all I get. He had been doing better answering the many questions on each sentence, but today, it was of a different order. He was confident. I asked him if he saw a difference in school; did he understand everything better? He said yes. Did he think this exercise helped? Yes. I get amazing results with this exercise.

I was supposed to have a makeup session with ninth-grade K. He never showed. He never called to explain. I will make sure he has my telephone number so he can contact me directly if he has a problem while at his dad's. So far, we have done everything through his mom.

I got a text from Lutz telling me not to prepare dinner. He would be dropping off a dish of his homemade spaghetti. He stopped by late to deliver a closed-cover Pyrex dish. He continued on his evening walk. Fifteen minutes later, I headed out on mine. I start out walking in the opposite direction he does. I run into him since he is going around the block for 1.1 miles. When I do, I join him in his walk. Lutz is a walking fund of information and opinions. He is fun to talk to and argue with,

B texted his rotator cuff surgery scheduled for Friday was canceled. I wondered why. He called tonight. He had pneumonia. Oh, dear.

I put the yoga toes on my left foot before turning the lights for the night. The chiropractor had suggested I use the toe separators used when polishing toenails. Those didn't do anything for me. My wandering toe just pushed it aside and continued doing its thing. The yoga toes worked. That toe didn't have a chance. Let's see if it makes a difference.

Tuesday, September 20, 2022

I saw a wandering duck on one of my midday walks. Ducks are uncommon here. A flock of six live at a house I pass on my walk. While they’re pets, they wander freely. I often see them on the road in front of the house. The duck I saw this morning was a good quarter of a mile from his home. I tried to force him back up the hill. He ducked my efforts. I hadn’t planned on a long walk, but I headed up the hill to speak to the owners. They needed to get out there and rescue their pet before he got hit by a car. There were two cars parked out front and a motorcycle in the garage. While it looked like someone must have been home, no one was. Oh, well. I did what I could. I wound up doing a second 3,000 walk around the block.

The long walk is usually my first walk of the day, getting in 3,000 to 4,000 steps. After that, it is 1,000 steps at a time. I need the breaks. Otherwise, I’m just sitting on my bottom. When I taught in the classroom, I was always up and moving. It was the same when I volunteered here in Hawaii. Working on Zoom forces me to stay in place. While I love working on Zoom, the lack of movement is a downside.

I met with ninth-grade K. We started working with Raisin in the Sun. The opening section, which sets the stage, literally, is written in complex, no, convoluted sentences. The play’s dialogue is written in the black dialect using what was known at the time as non-standard English. I used WbyW, a process of asking detailed questions about each sentence, one sentence at a time. It was hard work for both of us. Hansberry wrote this play in the fifties when white people were more than happy to assume African Americans were intellectually deficient. People would hear the dialect and say, “They can’t even speak English correctly.” I still hear some people say that. Some British people assume Americans don’t speak correct English. In the introduction, she used convoluted language to show people she could produce complex sentences with fifty-cent words. She wasn’t writing in the dialect because she couldn’t use ‘correct English.”

We wrote a story in our first session, working on putting visual images into words. We were now working on converting words into visual images. His mother told me his English teacher reported she was seeing a difference after an hour’s work. He was more engaged and participated in the classroom discussion. His mother expressed concern about our time together when he had school assignments. I told her I was working on the material assigned by his English teacher. The educational support person, JL, told his teachers that my job was to teach him comprehension and verbal skills, not help him with homework.

Judy and I had a very long discussion about I don’t know what, but it is lovely to have a friend I can hold an hour-long conversation with.

While my before-dinner walk with Lutz and his son Brian, Carol passed with Luke and Max and yelled, “Hey, Betty. Stop walking so fast!” Yes, indeed, my pace has picked up. Everything I have done and others have done for me has contributed. Still, a big change happened after my last session with the acupuncturist. She observed my walk. I was swinging my left leg through instead of swinging it. She did some work on the leg and back. I could focus on lifting the left leg. It changed the way I engaged my thigh muscles. There was a dramatic increase in muscle firing and muscle development. Will I be able to resurrect my atrophied muscles? Will I be able to defy predictions? Keep posted.

Monday, September 19, 2022

I got 4,000 steps in on my morning walk. Part of the way, I walked with Tom and his dog Kai. He complained about one of our neighbors who walks two dogs and doesn't pick up after them. Luke is a good-sized dog and leaves good-sized dumps; Max is much smaller. Usually, the dogs do their business on the verge. Elsa likes to do it in the middle of the road. She's thirteen pounds; her dumps are not huge. I always pick up after her. Tom asked me if I knew who the woman was. I told him her name. He told me to talk to her about her behavior, give her a piece of my mind. The only thing I would accomplish is alienating her. You can't convince someone to do what you want by laying into them. You have to determine if someone is open before you start a lecture. Zero positive. I ran into Tom again at the other end of my walk. I had thought about it. I warned him that she would say, "My hands are full of the dogs' leashes. How do you expect me to pick up poop?" I have heard her say that the poop dropped in the neighborhood is washed away with the rain. We have plenty of wild animals in our neighborhood who poop wherever they wish, chickens, turkeys, pheasants, cats, dogs, and, of course, two-hundred-pound wild pigs. When I walk with this woman, she complains about one source of aggravation or another. I assume I will hear about her encounter with Tom. If I can find an opening, I will say something.

At two, I had an appointment with adolescent D. He read some material from school appropriate for his grade level, 9th grade. He did very well, reading accurately and fluently. Then he hit the word shared. He read it as structured. Wow! That's a leap. It didn't fit the letters or the meaning. He stopped sharing, and I opened up my Zoom whiteboard. I wrote the word shared. "How many vowel letters?" He got those right. "Does the e make a sound in this word?" Yes. How often have I reviewed the rule that the e in the final -ed is silent unless a t or a d precedes it? If he could remember PEMDAS, the order operations, why couldn't he remember this rule about the pronunciation of the final -ed? Is he lazy? Arrogant? What is going on? Why doesn't he do self-drill like everyone else? I view this as an honest question, not a rhetorical one. I had him repeat the rule two or three times.

The next step was to figure out the sound of ar in shared. He had no idea. He tried -er. Er, ir, and ur make that sound consistently, and ar and or make the /er/ sound at the end of a word. I wrote are a familiar word, one he would never misread in a sentence, one he would immediately recognize. He tried to decode it. Holy cow! I realized either he recognizes a word automatically or nothing happens. There was no coordination between his working memory and his unconscious processing. It was either one or the other. He couldn't toggle back and forth. His automatic processing could be quite good – until it hit a bump in the road. Then nothing. No wonder he argued with me about my methods. He could not apply conscious thought because he had no access to what was in long-term memory. All the rules, all the patterns he learned, were unavailable.

Saturday, September 18, 2022

I spent most of the day sleeping. It felt great. It was these deep satisfying periods of sleep. It may have been a reaction to the two shots I got yesterday. It may be grief as well. I stopped talking to someone I had known as a child about a year ago. I thought they would be nothing other than relieved. They have repeatedly told me that they don’t like me and think I am a terrible person. Whatever the problems are between us, it is clear they are all my problems.

Maybe someone else could do okay with this; I’m not. My mother constantly told me everything I did was wrong or bad, no one liked me, and I was a terrible person. “You, you, you. Leave it to you!” “You’re nobody!” But she never told me what I was doing wrong or how to do it correctly. It was Kafkaesque. (Kafka wrote “The Penal Colony,” a story about a prisoner who is constantly told he’s guilty but not what he is guilty of.) This is the situation I’m in with this person. I have gotten some information over the years. “Never talk about feelings or personal history. Only talk on intellectual topics.” I guess it’s a little like the conversation between men: - only sports or politics.

We both have developed coping systems that have gotten us through life. We both have gotten some of what we considered most important. That’s the purpose of any person’s life choices: getting as much as we could for ourselves while doing the least damage to others. Unfortunately, our respective styles are as incompatible as can be. Unfortunately, her strategy in dealing with me is like my mother’s: I’m wrong and a fundamentally bad person. I can’t do this again. I just can’t. It hurts too much. Maybe I could ignore it if it weren’t Deja Vu all over again. I’m not wired that way. Too bad for both of us.

I found my set of yoga toe gems sitting next to my old-lady chair. Yvette must have put them there. She had them with the yoga class equipment—what a great idea. I tried them on my right foot with the wandering second toe, resting uninvited on the first. It made a difference. If I put them on every day for a few hours, I may be able to control my toe’s progress to the left.

I’d been hearing anger at the monarchy for their colonialism. I can appreciate the anger about it. It was evil. It is responsible for many of the problems those countries have today. What I don’t get is how dismantling the monarchy will accomplish anything. We in the USA don’t have a monarchy, an icon representing hundreds of years of political decisions. However, we have done immeasurable damage to the world. What do we tear down?

The monarchy does represent the institutionalized social hierarchy. Will dismantling the monarchy bring down that hierarchy? India’s Hindu religion institutionalized a social hierarchy. It has no icon comparable to the English monarchy.

Elizabeth functioned as the perfect icon. She was as inscrutable as the Mona Lisa. You could see in her what you wished. She was stable, constant, humble -and devoted to her job. I don’t know if Charles can follow suit. The most stable elements in the current crowd are Princess Ann and Camila. The latter is underappreciated.

Charles looked devastated. Yes, he lost his mother. My money says that part of his grief is the loss of his life as the prince in waiting, shielded by his mother from having to assume the role of king. I don’t think he ever wanted that role. William will do a better job if the monarchy continues until he assumes power. Hopefully, Charles doesn’t abdicate and dump the job on his shoulders now. Let him enjoy his family life.

Saturday, September 17, 2022

I spent most of the day sleeping. It felt great. It was these deep, satisfying periods of sleep. It may have been a reaction to the two shots I got yesterday. It may be grief as well. I stopped talking to someone I had known as a child about a year ago. I thought they would be nothing other than relieved. They have repeatedly told me they don’t like me and think I am a terrible person. Whatever the problems are between us, it is clear they are all my problems.

Maybe someone else could do okay with this; I’m not. My mother constantly told me everything I did was wrong or bad, no one liked me, and I was a terrible person. “You, you, you. Leave it to you!” “You’re nobody!” But she never told me what I was doing wrong or how to do it correctly. It was Kafkaesque. (Kafka wrote “The Penal Colony,” a story about a prisoner repeatedly told he’s guilty but not what he is guilty of.) It is the situation I’m in with this person. I have gotten some information over the years. “Never talk about feelings or personal history. Only talk on intellectual topics.” I guess it’s a little like the conversation between men:- only sports or politics.

We both have developed coping systems that have gotten us through life. We both have gotten some of what we wanted out of life. That’s the purpose of any person’s life choices: getting as much as they can for themselves while doing the least damage to others. Unfortunately, our respective styles are as incompatible as can be. Unfortunately, her strategy in dealing with me is like my mother’s: I’m wrong and a fundamentally bad person. I can’t do this again. I just can’t. It hurts too much. Maybe I could ignore it if it weren’t Deja Vu all over again. I’m not wired that way. Too bad for both of us.

I found my yoga toe gems sitting next to my old-lady chair. Yvette must have put them there. She had them with the yoga class equipment—what a great idea. I tried them on my right foot with the wandering second toe, resting uninvited on the first. It made a difference. If I put them on daily for a few hours, I may be able to control my toe’s progress to the left.

I’d been hearing anger at the monarchy for their colonialism on the news. I can appreciate the anger about it. It was evil. It is responsible for many of the problems we have today. What I don’t get is how dismantling the monarchy will accomplish anything. We in the USA don’t have a monarchy, an icon representing hundreds of years of political decisions. However, we have done immeasurable damage to the world. What do we tear down?

Elizabeth functioned as the perfect icon. She was as inscrutable as the Mona Lisa. You could see in her what you wished. She was constant and humble -and devoted to her job. I don’t know if Charles can follow suit. The most stable elements in the current crowd are Princess Ann and Camila. The latter is underappreciated.

Friday, September 16, 2022

I bruised my bad toe in my Croc today. The second toe on my right foot climbs over the first. My grandmother had this problem. It was bad. Usually, I hadn’t had a problem with the Crocs. Some days, the toe is worse than others; it assumes an almost horizontal position, and the first knuckle becomes inflamed. Today, I put up the back strap on the shoe. That pushed my foot forward, so the bad toe squeezed into the flatter section of the shoe. The top of the toe rubbed against the shoe. I raised a blistered and irritated the inflamed joint. I applied some ointment. It’s supposed to be miraculous for arthritic conditions. As long as I didn’t wear the back strap on the Croc, I thought the toe wouldn’t hit the top of the toe box.

This morning, I took a long route, going up Kukuna to the first mailbox and turning right on Punawele as I returned down the hill. I ran into two people on my walk. A man on a bike passed, stopped, and gave me a lengthy description of his ride. He drove his car to the bottom of Kaiminani and biked up the hill. This is a healthy bike ride. It’s a good two to three-mile climb up the mountain.

Then I ran into Tom and Kia and the intersection of Punawele and Hiolani. I’ve been running into them a lot of late. It’s weird how I suddenly start running into people I hadn’t before, although we both walk regularly. I learned that the huge tree on the corner was on his property. It is a beauty.

When I got home, I ate quickly and drove Scott to the imaging place. He needed an X-ray before his Monday follow-up appointment with his doctor. I went over to Kia to see if I could find out why I couldn’t find the Siri button on my steering wheel anymore. What was I doing wrong? The guy at the service department had no idea. “Check with sales. They open at 9.”

I got a call from Scott. The imaging place didn’t have the prescription for the X-ray. He would call his doctor’s office at 8:30 when they opened. It was all good. I didn’t have to be home until 11 for my appointment with homeschooled second-grade L. It was still cool enough at that hour of the morning to be comfortable while I sat in my car. I read a little and slept. My eyes are not working that well anymore. I get exhausted quickly. Eye strain is tiring. We got home at 10 a.m.

I was ready at 11 a.m. I got a text from L’s mom asking if we could delay until after she had her lunch. Sure. Then I got a second one. Pizza Hut’s delivery was running late. Sure. Call me when you’re ready.

L still couldn’t consistently recognize the letter t. Her memory is a huge problem. She needs a class daily with lots of drill. I thought to open the Starfall site and get her started on that. She could work on that site on her own. I did some work on it. Her mom came on and told me there was no point. She wouldn’t do any work on her own. Wow! She subscribed to several reading sites, and L wouldn’t do any of them. I told Mom I would try to work with her on it so she would. Mom argued with me. L is a lot like her mother. I hope her mom is wrong. I hope to get her started on this site and get her interested in doing it independently.

I spoke to my hanai sister Jean. I had a problem with a family member with whom I am sadly incompatible. In addition, she has told me that she thinks I’m a terrible person. Very painful. I’ve tried everything, but my approaches to resolving the problem are offensive to her. Her solutions don’t work for me. It is incredibly sad. I would have said just for me, but I had some outreach for the first time in fifty-five years. The outreach proposed her solution. Too painful.

After I finished the session with L, I went to get my shots. There was a sign they were out of the booster. I signed up for the flu shot. Somehow, they were out of the Moderna, but they did have the Pfizer. I returned to the entry and filled out the form for the booster. I felt ambivalent. People weren’t dying of Covid as they were before. However, I was in a high-risk group because of my age. Also, Damon was excited that I was getting another booster. Hopefully, there wouldn’t be any negative consequences. I knew two people who had bad reactions and got quite sick. One was a Step-Up tutor who needed a year to recover. Holy Cow!

On my evening walk, I told Lutz I had gotten both shots. He promptly told me it was better to get the flu shot later when they knew more about the strains coming through. Leave it to the dear man not to calculate the impact of his words on his audience.

I continued watching Extraordinary Attorney Woo. The Koreans have fantastic hair. The romance is heating up. How can a person who cannot tolerate holding someone’s hand for a minute tolerate sex? The problem for the autistic is they quickly suffer from sensory overload. How would sexual contact not be a problem? I don’t know enough to evaluate the situation with complete accuracy. But from what I know, this romance doesn’t make sense.

Thursday, September 15, 2022

I forgot I had yoga on Thursday mornings from 7 to 8 am. I scheduled a dental appointment for 8 am. I had to leave the house around 7:30 to get there in time. I have problems with time. I once planned to drive my mom to the doctor, and I had dropped off my car at the garage for service. I remembered my promise to my mom. I just didn't register that I didn't have a car to do that with. Last night, I texted Yvette, "I added 1 +1= ½," and told her I would have to leave early.

We started late because one of the participants was delayed. There was only Scott, me, and that student. Of course, we were going to wait or her.

When my alarm went off, I got up to leave. Scott headed to the gate to open it for me. Elsa was by my side, ready to go with me. I didn't want her running on the road without a leash. The girl is suicidal when it comes to cars. Scott was going to pick her up. Absolutely not. He said she didn't weigh more than a gallon of milk. True. But his neck would be at an odd angle when he bent down to pick her up. For some reason, I didn't feel I could do it. Yvette grabbed her. I hopped in my car and was off.

I wound up arriving in the area fifteen minutes earlier than I expected. I was all set to go when my alarm went off and could leave immediately. I usually have to collect myself together before I leave. I stopped off to get gas at Costco while the lines were nonexistent. I still arrived early. I had to fill out a medical form today. I hadn't filled one out for several years.

When I arrived at the dentist's, the hygienist came out. I told her I had taken my antibiotic. She said, "That was going to be my first question." I thought it was a little late for her to ask that question. I have to take four pills an hour before any dental treatment for at least two years after my hip replacement surgery. Infection from my mouth can travel to my hip. After two years, the muscles will have encapsulated the new hip joint, insulating it from wandering bacteria.

She asked me if I wanted a complete checkup. Yes, she took a full set of X-rays and called in the doctor. He and I had trouble understanding each other. I asked him how much it would cost. He said if he did it one way, it would be $8,000. If he did it another way, it would be $6,500. I asked him to tell me what was involved. I wanted to know what he was going to do to my mouth. He tried to explain, but I didn't get it. His hygienist recommended we work with a model. The proposal was to extract five teeth. One didn't need to be removed but was between a tooth that needed to go and an existing post. He proposed putting in a bridge between my already posted tooth and the post furthest away. So there would be two posts and two teeth in a bridge. I would have to use a water pick to clean between the bridge teeth and my gums. The dentist was talking dentistese to me. He didn't respect that I didn't have his training or experience. It becomes very difficult to communicate with people when they assume you should know what you do. I agreed to the bridge and all it entailed.

The hygienist continued cleaning my teeth once the dentist had finished his consultation. She told me to be sure to floss. There was some area between my teeth that was not being properly cleaned. There was a serious degeneration in my teeth over the last year. A year ago, the dentist had enthusiastically recommended I use a brush pick to clean my teeth. I thought I was supposed to use that instead of floss. Not so. The brush pick cleaned around my gums, but it did not clean where two teeth came into contact and captured food. I assumed the toothbrush would deal with that. Nope. Another misunderstanding, a pretty expensive one too. Except for the problem area between my teeth. I had less plaque than usual, except in the areas where my teeth came into contact. I credit my Spin Brush toothbrush for that. I am in love with that toothbrush.

I went to Kaiser afterward to donate blood for research and get my flu and Covid booster shots. Giving blood took two minutes. There was a long line waiting for the shots. I thought, why not get it over with now? I had a book. I learned the line was unusual; it was the first day the booster shot was available. I decided to go home and come back in the afternoon after the 2 pm session with second-grade home-schooled L.

When I got home, I was ready for a nap. I had to recover from sticker shock from thedental bill. I signed on to my 11 am zoom session with L. There was no response. I called her mom. Our class was on Friday. Somewhere I got my days confused, thinking today was Friday.

I found this funny poster on Facebook about retired people. "How many days are there in a week? 6 Saturdays and Sunday." Isn't that the truth? I decided to wait until after my session with L on Friday to get my shots. That would give me all of Friday afternoon and Saturday to recover.

I spoke to my friend Jean in Arizona. We shared life's strife. We comforted each other. Her sister's husband recently retired and started exhibiting some very strange behavior. His wife and children pushed him to get a brain scan. He possibly had a stroke and could no longer inhibit his behavior. But no. His brain looked just fine. He bought four cars and a new house in the last month and was planning to buy two more cars. He is blowing through their retirement money at a fantastic clip without consulting his wife.

I felt lousy. It could be because I gave the blood samples. I needed lots of naps.

At four-thirty, I had a session with ninth grade K scheduled. There was no response. I called his mom. This time I had it right. She had forgotten, and they were out biking. She would call when they were home. She texted instead. Unfortunately, my phone doesn't always bing when I get a text. Even worse, sometimes the phone doesn't ring. Drives me nuts.

I continued working with Harry Potter. This passage describes some actions of Harry's. 'He put his hand on his burning scar, got up, ran across the room, opened the wardrobe, and looked in the mirror. A fourteen-year-old boy looked back at him.' "Who looked back at him?" K didn't have a clue. I walked him through the image. "Who does Harry see in the mirror?" Then he had the answer.

I asked K if he thought the brightest child in the class looked stupid if he asked a question. He said yes. Where do people get ideas like that? It means all forms of inquiry are a reflection of a deficit. Non-learners unite! You always don't know something when you are learning something new. "Feeling stupid because you don't already know something is an absolute disaster. That makes you feel lousy and prompts you to run away instead of sticking around to learn."

I asked K if he thought he was stupid. Yes. That meant when he came up with an answer, he assumes it must be wrong because he had thought of it. Yep. I told him to cut it out. To give me the first answer that came to his mind. It might be right; it might be wrong. Either way, I could only help him if I had his answers so I could figure out what to teach him. "If the answer doesn't give me information about what you have in mind, I can't help you," I told him not to do this yet in class. If he gives the wrong answer, his classmates may laugh at him. There was an immediate change in his rate of correct answers. He looked different. His expression changed from a frightened, confused child to someone who thought clearly. Amazing! Hopefully, we can ride this home.

Wednesday, September 14, 2022

The gardeners called yesterday to ask if they could come. I pruned in the back lanai, which I take care of, in anticipation of their arrival. I wanted to cut down a small dead tree. Cutting it was unnecessary. A few good tugs and it came out of the ground. I clipped some of the bougainvillea. It was out of hand. I was cutting it back a bit each month. The clipper locked. I tried WD-40 first. It did nothing. I threw it into the trash for pickup today.

I checked on the haole koa this morning. New leaves were coming up on the one branch I didn’t hit with the boiling water. That means the roots and trunk are still pushing nutrients to the leaves. Oh well. So much for that experiment. I guess boiling water won’t be the solution to these trees. We can add boiling water to the long list of chemicals that cannot kill the plant.

I showered and headed out to my optometrist appointment. I ran into road work on Kuakini Highway. I called to warn them I would be late. The tech who was going to administer the retinal test said not to worry. I made it there only a few minutes late. Then I had to wait a good fifteen minutes. The exam only takes a few minutes. At one point, she said she would take pictures of the back of my eye. I said, “Do you want me to turn around?” She laughed appropriately. She said she loved my sense of humor. All Alia did was administer the eye test. Sandor would call me with the results this evening.

We talked about an upcoming Duerte wedding. The Duertes are a huge family in Hawaii. Some of the family lives on a single piece of land, like half a dozen homes with Duerte Road running through it. Alia would not be attending. She did not expect to be invited. While her mother married a Duerte, she was too far removed from the bride’s family. That relationship would be close in my family because we are so few.

I have no first cousins. My mom was an only child. As far as we know, my dad had one brother who had no children. (I’m waiting for something to show up on 23 and me.) My mother has one cousin who was 21 years younger than my mom and is now 97. He had two children, one of whom had two children. Those two children have produced a total of six grandchildren. Our nearest relatives on my father’s side are the descendants of his first cousins. This is unusual in Hawaii, where large ohanas are common. Alia’s story was similar to my own. Her mom had been an only child—no cousins on that side. And there were no first cousins on her father’s side either. She was one of three children. She and her two siblings had planned on creating an extended family.

While I thought a checkup was worthwhile, I was not as concerned about my failing eyesight as I was when I renewed my driver’s license. I realized I did poorly on the eye test because I had to press my face into a viewfinder. That meant I couldn’t choose the optimal place on my progressive lenses for clearly seeing. Sandor also asked me if I put eye drops in my eyes regularly. Dry eyes interfere with vision. He instructed me to put drops in at least every morning and every night before I went to bed. Who knew?

B called while I was driving home. He just had rotator cuff surgery scheduled for Friday next week. It wasn’t immediately clear, but it came out that he was in Oahu and would be on a return flight landing around 2:30. I would be in session with his grandkids then. Their mom can only give me once a week.

I stopped at Lowe’s to pick up a new pair of clippers and gardening gloves.

When I got home, I read more of Fish in a Tree and slept a bit before my 2 p.m. appointment. I kept checking the alarm. As it wound up, I hadn’t set it. But I got up in plenty of time.

I told Adolescent D about the exercise I designed with the hope of helping him improve the way he writes numbers on a page. His mother told me he is very neat and organized in his room. He straightens objects when they are out of place. I designed an exercise to help him use his excellent 3D visual-spatial skills to improve his poor visual-spatial 2D skills. He didn’t understand why my exercise would work, but he was willing to do what I told him to. He had success with my methods; it was worth a try.

It took me a few minutes to get information out of him about the work he had to do. He finally copped to an assignment of his PE class on health, the circulatory system. I was rusty on the topic. I wouldn’t have been much help to him without access to the Internet. He read from the text. Many of the words he read fluently. But when he didn’t automatically know a word, he got stuck on the word circulation. He couldn’t remember that a c before i makes an /s/ sound. Then he couldn’t remember what sound ir made. Then, he couldn’t blend the two. He kept trying to produce a word he was familiar with- stir- instead of cir. He worked on cross-body blending. He followed my directions as he hadn’t before. He made a serious effort. Not knowing how to help him, I asked for help from the powers that be. I finally asked him if all his activity was on the right side of his brain. He said yes. When he tried to focus on the left, he became absent. The left is fallow. Nothing was going on there, nothing. He kept disappearing on me. I think he does that when he gets scared. He even said he goes into freeze mode when frightened. Fight is my first choice. Everyone has their own defense mechanism.

As the session ended, I asked him to focus on the left, if only for a few seconds, while watching TV, playing a video game, or eating. I didn’t think he could hold it for over a few seconds. When he focused on the left, his attention was repelled much as when the same poles of a magnet repel each other.

After giving the final instructions, I asked him if he understood. There was no response. I called his name. I yelled his name. Nothing. I realized he had fallen asleep. Later in the day, I texted him my instructions with compliments on how hard he had worked. He confirmed my suspicion. He had fallen asleep. I assured him that was not a problem.

I had Mama K’s crew afterward. They were at the beach doing a clean-up. The kids sat in the car while they worked with me. We always work on the phone. They don’t have a functioning computer.

I worked with fourth-grade K first. I asked him how he was doing in school. He told me he had a test tomorrow on body parts. I asked all sorts of questions about the subject and format of the test. He didn’t have a lot of information. “It’s on parts of the body, bicycles, and plants.” I suppose this is possible, a conceptual exercise in understanding that things are made of parts that equal the whole. I had no idea; it didn’t look like he had much of an idea. It was frustrating. I wished I could speak to the teacher. I instructed Mama K to make sure he studied the parts of the body, bicycles, and plants on the Internet. She said okay. She’s got five kids with various needs and two additional adults living in her house besides her and her husband. Oh, did I mention she works six days a week? We’ll see what happens.

Then I had Twin E. She still couldn’t remember the word there or how to figure it out (the+r). While that’s not the accurate pronunciation, it will get you to the word when you hear it in context. She read the rest of the passage slowly. I don’t have a clue how to help this child yet.

Twin A was my next ‘victim.’ I always call out ‘next victim’ when it’s time to switch. The kids adopted it. I assume they know what it means. Maybe not. But it’s funny.

I started with the third Carpenter story. She didn’t remember the word there either but did well with the rest of the passage. While she is still on a kindergarten level, she is light years ahead of her twin,

I got an email from Joe Ludes of Hawaiian Prep about a student I was working with. He asked me to contact his science and language art teachers so they could tell me what they were working on.

Tuesday, September 13, 2022

I did one of my around-the-block walks. I went up Kukuna to the first fire hydrant. I could easily have gone further, but I didn’t know how long my legs could last. The climb to the top is challenging for people younger and stronger than me. I went home via Punawele instead of walking down Kukuna to my street. I saw a woman in front of her house weeding. I guessed it was the woman Isaac had met whom he thought I would get along with. I stopped to chat. Sure enough, it was Jackie. Isaac had given me her number, but I never got around to reaching out.

Jackie was a widow, as I was. She had been living alone since 2018 when her husband died. Mine died on March 3, 2019. It did seem she would be a kindred spirit. Let’s see how it develops.

When I got home, Scott came out of his room with Yvette. She did a remarkable job tending to him as he recovered from neck surgery. There had been a disturbing incident last night. While Yvette was visiting, he passed out. Worse yet, his arms twitched as he lay there. They asked me if I didn’t hear Yvette scream. I must have been out walking at the time. If I had heard, I would have been there like a shot. He came to quickly. Yvette proposed getting him to the hospital immediately. Scott said no. She tormented herself, wondering if she had done the right thing listening to him.

They called the doctor’s office the moment it opened in the morning. The nurse who answered the phone was unconcerned. He had gotten the wrong instructions from the discharge nurse to take Aleve. He was on another medication that conflicted with it and caused whatever he experienced. He looked much better than he had once he was off the Aleve.

Someone talked about the prevalence of loneliness on NPR. She used to think she had been depressed as a child. She now realized she was lonely. That’s how I felt as a child. The feeling predated the birth of my sister when I was four and a half. My mother was very involved with my physical care, but there was no affection. Thinking of myself as lonely instead of angry impacts me.

I had a dream about my work. It wasn’t that I didn’t know how to promote my teaching methods; That was the problem at some level. I didn’t want to promote it. I dreamt I couldn’t move. My feet were locked in place by grass that reached the top of my sneakers. I was locked in place. This relates to my early childhood experiences. My mother wouldn’t allow me to do anything because I couldn’t do it well enough. What three-year-old can do anything up to adult standards? She would scream at me for trying. You would think it was a life-or-death matter. I was treated like a precious doll whose place was always on the shelf, away from everything else. I hated it.

In the late afternoon, I had a phone call from JL, the educational support teacher at the high-end private academy who recommended me as a tutor. I shared some insights about ninth-grade K.

While he could generate visual images about his experiences and even the spelling of words; he had difficulty translating his visual images into words and words into visual images. This was not going to be an easy fix. I recommended that K listen to the 5 Stories audio file on YouTube in hopes that it strengthen his auditory processing skills. It is K’s first year in this rigorous academic school. I worry about him. JL also told me that the sixth-grade W was holding her own. I suspect she is going to be just fine.

Monday, September 12, 2022

I started listening to my audio file on YouTube, The 5 Stories. I found it irritating tonight. One of my parents refused to play the audio file for her son because she couldn't stand it. I associate irritation at that order with an auditory process problem. Now, I sympathized with her. I listened to it while I slept, hoping it would have the same beneficial effect on me as on my kids. My word-recalling skill is not what it used to be. All people of my age complain of this loss. I put the volume on low. I could hear it, but it didn't disturb my sleep. I listened while awake and wondered how this audio file could work. I couldn't hear all the individual sounds, the purpose of listening to the audio file in the first place.

At 9 a.m., I had my initial interview with Linknow Media, the website company Shelly uses.

Damon pushed me, saying no one would take me seriously if I didn't have one. I had no idea what I was going to do or say. These folks could help me set it up. I was conflicted. It left me frightened about what I was getting into. I pushed through. I made a deposit. It would cost several thousand to design the website and another thousand yearly to maintain it. I wasn't looking to make money, not enough to cover the annual fee. I finally decided this was ridiculous. If my YouTube videos don't attract a lot of attention, how will a website help? I chose not to do it. I had to call the good folks to see if I could get my money back.

I had only one tutor for my Monday morning office hour. She had met with her student already. There were two problems she identified: decoding multi-syllable words and summarizing. I showed her the six-step procedure I use for decoding words of more than one syllable and directed her to watch my Phase II video if she wanted to see it again.

It took a minute to identify this student's problem with summarizing. She said she could do it when they talked about it. She reverted to a complete retelling when she wrote about it. I suggested she dictate it to the tutor while she typed it. That could free her from her compulsion to retell rather than summarize.

I had Adolescent D at 2 p.m. I reviewed the mathematical relationship of 3 to a in the expression 3a. His mother said she had told him repeatedly it was multiplication, and he consistently forgot it. His memory was a problem. He remembered it today. I still wanted to review my prepared lesson because it was clever. I speculated that he had trouble with 3a because he confused it with the relationship between 3 and 4, as in 34. He understood the relationship between 3 & 4 was not multiplication, but he didn't know what the relationship was. Yes, he knew what expanded notation was. I asked him what the 3 in 34 stood for. He didn't know. I displayed the relationship in an addition format. 30 +4-=

I reviewed 6M + 3 = 2 m + 15. He could give me a lot of it, but not all. I asked him how he thought he did. He said he did some of it, but not all. It was the first time he gave me a realistic view of his performance. I was relieved. In the past, he would claim to know something when he didn't. I started to worry that he wasn't in touch with reality.

His mother told me his physical space was always neat and organized. I asked him why he was neat and organized in space but not on paper; while his room was neat, he didn't organize his writing on paper. I asked him why. He didn't know. He speculated that it was because he was used to working in the 3D world and not on paper. It was good thinking. He probably had trouble with all the 2D work. That is Orton's theory; the learning disabled are 3D thinkers, not 2D. Several neuroscientists believe a left-brain deficit causes learning disabilities. Students have difficulty with all 2D representations.

I had the M & W sisters later in the afternoon. Second-grade M wanted to work on the question' game. I love that she considers this rigorous intellectual work a game. It is way above her grade level. Today, we spent a lot of time working on the word 'except.' It took a long time to get the concept through. She finally generated the following sentence: "I like the dress except for the zipper." We got into set theory and Venn diagrams. She was at the beginning of second grade and reading third-grade material fluently. She was doing just fine.

I reread my updates for the year before daily. In the last two days, I came across my early work with M & W. M was struggling with reading material at a kindergarten level. She has indeed come a very long way.

Sixth grade W showed me some work she did for her art class. She had to make a map showing her activities for the day. Wow! It was gorgeous. I knew the girl was into art, but I had no idea she was this good. I told her her art teacher must feel like she's in heaven with a student like her. She nodded in agreement. W doesn't need any help now. Her mother told me the educational evaluation on her showed she had a pronounced deficit. I've been trying to get a copy of this report for six months to find out where it is.

I knew the McCracken method of teaching reading had something in common with my approach. I finally checked it. It is similar to my Phase I; it has the students sound out every phoneme in a word when spelling it. It resembles my Phase I in that regard. It differs from my Phase I because it only works with words selected because they conform to a phonics principle; they are all phonetically regular. That will help students to learn to read like 'good readers,' figuring out words independently. My method uses natural language, emphasizing decoding what you can combine with using context clues to figure out the word.

I continued watching the Extraordinary Attorney Woo. The main character is supposed to be autistic. I have never seen an adult autistic person look the way she does. She is physically awkward, but not in the way I've seen. Things confuse her, but it makes her look cute, adorable. That's not usually our reaction when we see an adult in perpetual confusion.

I find myself feeling her movement in my body. I have no idea why my mirror neurons are firing as they are.

Sunday, September 11, 2022

I left early for church but arrived at the same time. I saw Judy and Paulette in the parking lot. Judy begged me to join them inside the church. I prefer sitting outside on the south lanai because of the continuing presence of Covid and because it’s freezing cold inside the church. Judy chose where she usually sits because she likes to be close to the altar and supports a young military vet with PSTD. He recently moved to the Big Island to live with his mother. He was reconnecting with the church in a big way. He liked sitting up front, too. He was surrounded by some of my favorite people in the church, all invested in supporting this young man.

After mass, I said hello to Sandor and got my hug. He agreed that my eye exam at the DMV was probably inaccurate. The viewfinder distorted my eyes’ relationship to the glasses. It forced me to view the numbers through the middle section, designed for computer viewing. However, he was concerned that I might be experiencing some macular degeneration. He would call me later and schedule an appointment to get testing.

I had my Sunday appointment with the M & W sisters. They both do great work. Second-grade M could probably use more writing practice. Her verbal expression skills are weak. She has asked to “play” the Gating Game in the past several sessions. Today, she asked to “play” the question game. She has trouble with some of the abstract concepts. I wasn’t sure if this was a problem specific to her or if I was asking something unreasonable of a child her age.

Sixth grade W wanted to continue with the Gating Game. She is in her first year of a high-power academic private school. It’s a big change from the public school. So far, she is doing well. I asked her how she was doing with the reading requirements. She said she liked reading. “Words are patient.” What a remarkable statement. I shared it with Judy immediately. I will share it with all the children I teach.

Saturday, September 10, 2022

I got up early because I had 11 a.m. office hours. Only one tutor showed up, diligently checking in as prescribed before they had contact with their students. She said she didn't anticipate any problems because she tutored in college. What did she tutor? Chemistry and biology. Oh, boy. I warned her she would be teaching something completely different. It would be like having to tutor French when you were good at tutoring Chemistry and Biology. I suggested she approach her tutoring with a beginner's mind. I do that after sixty years of teaching. I just confronted a situation with a student I had never seen before. We all need to approach new teaching situations with a beginner's mind.

I spent most of the day napping, but I did get around to trying to kill a haole koa with boiling water. This is experimental. Nothing kills haole koas trees, no chemical, no matter how toxic. You have to pull it out by the root, and they have deep roots. Good luck if you don't pull them out when they're one or two inches high. It will be revolutionary, an effective, non-toxic solution if this works. Right now, I only tried it on two-foot-high trees, mere saplings, but the roots of those trees have already sunk too deep to be pulled out by hand. Also, if even a trace of the root is left in the ground, it will send up another plant. These trees are resilient.

I came across this on the Internet and howled.

Why I like retirement?

Question: How many days in a week?

Answer: 6 Saturdays, 1 Sunday

Question: What is a retiree's bedtime?

Answer: 2 hours after falling asleep on the sofa.

Question: How many retirees does it take to change a light bulb?

Answer: Just one, but it may take all day.

Questions: What is the biggest gripe of retirees?

Answer: There isn't enough time to get everything done.

Question: Why don't retirees mind being called Seniors?

Answer: The term comes with a 10% discount.

Question: Among retirees, what is considered formal attire?

Answer: Tied shoes

The bolded items have particular meaning for me.