Wednesday, November 2, 2022

 Wednesday, November 2, 2022

 

I've tried to explain the impact of widowhood. I'm not part of anything. I have no fixed place. I have friends, I have work, and I have family. But none of that makes up for losing Mike and the unit we created together. It's hard to explain the difference. It's obvious at one level. As Maggie Smith said, "You're not #1 for anyone." When the music stops, you no longer have someone's hand to hold.

   When your partner is there, you have someone who, if it means dying now, wants to do it with you. No, it's more than that. It's having a secure place in the world. While my home life as a child was difficult, my place was secure. We had assigned seats at the dining room table. The table was pushed up against the wall. My dad sat at one end, my mom at the other. Dorothy sat in the chair closest to my mom; I sat in the one closest to my dad. We had our places. We were secure. Mike gave me that security.

  When Mike's three-year-old, Damon, started to visit with Mike in our home in the commune, I insisted we set up a bed for him that stayed put whether he was there or not. He had a 'place' in our lives. It was always there. He was a fixed element of our lives.

  While the physical place is essential, it has to be backed by a psychological something or another. Mike and I made a family with Mike's first wife and her husband. There are people I am closer to genetically with whom I do not share that bond. They may not do it with anyone. They always float apart. Mike and I shared the need for family connections. We gave it to each other and built it with whomever we could.

  Not only have I lost my life partner, but I have no partners in other ways. I could have a business partner with whom I planned; we'd work together to build something. There's nothing like that in my life.

  My gums bothered me a bit more after the extractions. Chewing irritated them. I found the calendula rinse Shivani recommended for canker sores worked well for this problem. I put some water in my mouth and then a few drops of calendula oil from a dropper, hold it in my mouth for thirty seconds, and everything feels better. I wonder if it speeds up the healing process.

  It's been over a week since I sawed down the twenty-foot haole koa tree and started pouring a tea kettle of boiling water over it—still no new growth. I stopped treating the two-foot trees with boiling water a while ago, and still no trace of new growth. If I have found a non-toxic way to kill haole koa, I deserve a Nobel prize.

  I met with a new employee of Step Up Tutoring. She is an academic coordinator. She said she was interested in meeting with me to find out what I did and what suggestions I had to offer. She sounded like she was sincere. I don't think so. She was the one who canceled all the tutor support services. She wants to enforce a system she is introducing or being forced to introduce. She may not be comfortable with her assignment either. The contribution she wanted from me was information on what kind of help tutors were asking for, phonics or comprehension so that she could provide more activities. She had no interest in my input. I consider those categories too broad. Some can say phonics and some tutor is forced to work on a basic phonics program that's inappropriate for that student. I'm sure she is going to push me out. Too bad.

  While I was in the Zoom meeting with the academic coordinator, Elsa jumped up on me. It took me a minute to figure out what was upsetting her. My neighbor was using a nail gun to secure tar paper on his roof. While I had a grip on her, I checked her belly for lesions. I carried her to my ole-lady chair. We sat together for half an hour enjoying each other's company before I applied the salve to her boo-boos. She got off me as quickly as she could after that.

  I had a half-hour session with Dash today. I started asking him how his reading was going. He said he read a whole passage without assistance. I told him to tell his mom when he got off the phone. He does not appreciate how much they worry about him and how much news like that means to them.

 

 

Tuesday, November 1, 2022`

 Tuesday, November 1, 2022`

   

Patrick, Darby's husband, called in the morning to say her piano tuning gig was canceled, and they were available. Wow! Such lovely people surrounded me.

   Today would have been my mom's one-hundredth birthday. It was hard to understand that she had been gone for twenty years. She was still so vivid for me. She was a difficult personality but so alive, even at the end.

  I was up by 7 am. I called my friend Carol, who will visit over Thanksgiving with her husband and sister-in-law, to discuss food and plans to visit the volcano. She made overnight reservations. I would join them on this outing. I'm not someone who enjoys touring and sightseeing, but I have fond memories of visits to that area. I was there with Jean and John once and with Carol and John at another time. Mike and I loved the Thai restaurant there. The plan is to walk to the active volcano at night. It's a mile-long walk in the dark along a path called Desolation Rd. Doesn't sound good, does it?  

  Carol and John have a Havanese like Elsa. We got Elsa because of their dog, Zoe. Now, Zoe is producing lesions the way Elsa is. Carol washes her dog every other day like a good dog mommy. Not like me.

  My friend Melissa called. We had a long talk about Buddhism. We talked briefly about one of my favorite authors on the subject, Steven Batchelor. John recommended the first book of Batchelor's I read, Buddhism without Belief. In a later book, the author says he found evidence in the original texts that Buddha never intended to establish a religion; he wanted a social revolution. Buddha, like Christ, worked to establish a new world order to create a peaceful world. Good luck! Well, it was worth a try. The religious aspects of Buddhism were added. People associated ethical principles with religion and had problems relating to them outside that context.

  I was supposed to meet with second-grade L on Tuesday when she was with her father. He had taken over the literacy aspect of her homeschooling. L's mom felt he should give time for me to work with L, too. Her father canceled at the last minute. He had forgotten her laptop. I was too tired to argue. She could have used her father's phone or computer.

     I had an appointment with the chiropractor at noon. When I arrived, she was finishing off with another client. That took about half an hour. Then she worked on me for an hour and a half. I could hardly complain about her generosity to another client when I was also a beneficiary. I was there for two hours.

  Scott texted me to say he caught Elsa standing on my ole-lady chair eating my vitamins from a bowl on the end table. How long has this been going on? We saw her sitting at the dining room table, looking for something on the table the other day. Could it have been my vitamins? Scott checked to see which vitamins were dangerous for dogs, and we both kept an eye on her. She was fine except for throwing up her dinner and breakfast the following day,

  I had eighth-grade K later in the day. Today was his fourteenth birthday. I thought he was in ninth grade, but no, he was in eighth. I sang the version of Happy Birthday Mike and I developed together to compensate for his inability to sing. It's a lot of caterwauling, but it's fun and makes others laugh.

  K's teachers were complaining he didn't participate in classroom discussions. In my experience, he is quick to say, "I don't know," about any question you ask. I asked him if he was afraid to speak. He said no. Do you have thoughts in your head and decide not to share, or is your mind blank? He has thoughts. I explained his decision not to speak was driven by fear. He doesn't see it that way because he quiets the fear by keeping his mouth shut and avoiding being wrong. As I remember it, he saw my point. Either way, he agreed to a visualization exercise I use to quell social fears.

  I ask the student to picture 'a little them' in the middle of their heads just under the fontanel, the soft spot. Once I am sure the students know no one would kill them for being wrong (if that is not clear to the conscious mind, this exercise will not work.), I have 'the little them' turn around and face the back of their head. 'The little them' has to announce to every cell in the back of their brain that no one will kill them if they say something wrong. This is a very primitive fear that exists in all of us. If the student feels greater relaxation, the exercise is working. Most people who do it are surprised by the effect. We don't walk around aware of the low, persistent fear we live with daily.

 I had a ten-minute session with adolescent D after that. D had problems blending the sounds of two individual phonemes. I checked with other students. They didn't have the same problem, even over Zoom. They could hear the sounds, identify them, and blend them correctly. D couldn't even hear that I made a sound. I was concerned he had a hearing problem. I told his mom what I was seeing. Then it occurred to me that the problem could be with his computer. I checked if he could hear the sounds over the phone. He could. It must be something with the computer. I asked him to raise the volume. That took care of the problem.

  I started using two-syllable words for the blending exercise. Where D had mastered blending five and six-phoneme words, he couldn't blend three phonemes when working on two-syllable words. Huh? Oh. He couldn't bear to blend sounds that didn't produce a meaningful word. His mind balked. He twisted the sounds to something familiar. Most syllables that are part of multi-syllable words are nonsense. Some teachers argue that it makes no sense to teach nonsense words. The reader has to learn to blend the individual syllables, retain them in working memory, and then blend them. D had to learn to overcome his discomfort with nonsense syllables.

Monday, October 31, 2022

 Monday, October 31, 2022

 

 I was up at 4 a.m. I did my in-bed exercises. I set my alarm for 5 a.m. because I had to drive B. to Waimea this morning for his rotator cuff surgery. I got out of bed shortly before 5, tried to turn off the alarm, and discovered the phone was locked. I figured I'd take care of it on the drive up, but then my phone rang. It was B. I hoped the phone would work for incoming calls; it didn't. B. called again while I was walking Elsa. B. had to be worried about what was going on with me. Was I still in bed? Would I get up in time to drive him? When I got home, I finally dealt with the phone. I knew what to do to reset it. I had tried it once already without success. I took the cover off this time before going through the button routine. I have an iPhone 12; first, I have to press the up-volume button, then the down-volume one, and then the on/off button. Without the interference of the cover, it worked quickly and easily. I called B. to assure him I was up and ready.

 We had to be there by 6:40. I thought we would leave around 5:45 to be sure we got there. We left at 5:30. I think B was anxious. His first scheduled surgery for the shoulder was canceled because he got pneumonia. He didn't want to miss this one. 

  B drove. I rode shotgun with Elsa. She hyperventilated the whole way. I perched her on my shoulders; she made an excellent headrest. It took her a while to settle. She lay down on my shoulders, but she never stopped panting. 

  The drive up to Waimea offers fantastic views. We saw dawn come up over Mauna Kea. It was worth getting up that early.

  When we arrived, I took Elsa for a walk in the parking lot. When I came back to the car, B signaled me frantically. He had thought the surgery would be at the specialty clinic. When it wasn't open by 6:30, he figured he had to be at the hospital. Fortunately, the hospital was within view. B pulled up to the entrance. He got out; I took care of the car. I told him I would wait until I heard from him to know he was okay. Elsa was calm on the drive home. Apparently, she was disturbed I wasn't the driver.

 When I got home, I got a call from a nurse at the hospital. B had named me the person who would care for him when he got home. He would be recovering from the anesthesia and had a sensory block on his shoulder. I had to watch he didn't walk into doorways and bang his arm. I told the nurse to tell B that I would call the police if he didn't cooperate with me. If he named me as his caretaker, his caretaker I would be. The nurse told B what I said and added, "She was only kidding." B said, "No, she wasn't."

   I called Netta, the friend who was picking him up, to tell her to make sure he came to my house instead of his. He underwent surgery around 9 and was released from the hospital at 11. Holy moly!! No wonder he needed someone to watch him.

  The nurse told me the best situation was for him to sit in a recliner. I had Mike's old one sitting on the lanai. Scott helped me move it into my bedroom. B. would have privacy there and easy access to my bathroom. The doorway is extra wide to be wheelchair accessible. Mike and I designed the bathroom to accommodate our end-of-life needs. Scott noticed that with the tile floor, the chair might slide as B got in and out of it. He put a large, heavy object behind it, and we put rubber pads from the kitchen under the front feet. B. likes it cool. Driving up, he set the temperature on his side at the lowest possible number. Scott and I set up two fans to keep him cool.

 B was reasonably cooperative. He had to go down to his quarters to get his medication. I walked him down and carried the bag with his provisions on the way up. B. spent most of the day sleeping. I let him go home to be on his own toward the end of the day. This was his third rotator cuff surgery. He knew the drill. He was stable when he walked. I walked him down, carrying his things so he could concentrate on navigating.

  I had an appointment with adolescent D. at two p.m. He did a good job blending four sounds.

  M & W's mom called as I signed into Zoom to tell me they were caught in Halloween traffic. Could they cancel for the day? Of course.

  I had the Sears serviceman coming tomorrow, and I booked a chiropractic appointment at the same time. Scott had a PT appointment at the same time. There must be an adult in the house when the serviceman is here. B probably wouldn't be able to do it. He would be recovering from his surgery and couldn't come up. The block would have worn off, and he would be in pain. I called my friend Darby, who lives down the street. She had a piano tuning appointment (She is the tuner.)  She said she could adjust if necessary.

  B came up before dark because I told him he had a package from his stepmother. I didn't expect him to come up immediately. It was clear he could come up to greet the Sears serviceman the next day. I called Darby to tell her I didn't need her; B could do it. I am so grateful for all the wonderful, generous people in my life.

  I finished watching Raymond and Ray. It was wonderful.

 

Sunday, October 30, 2022

 Sunday, October 30, 2022   

 

   Yvette stopped by to say goodbye before she left this morning for a week in Portland, Oregon, for her father's eightieth birthday. She would stay one night with each sister, one night with her brother and his girlfriend, and a few nights with her dad and his wife.

  I went to church this morning. I felt well enough and didn't want to break the habit of regular attendance. It's partially for Mike's sake and partly because it gets me out of the house. The ritual is comforting, and I see people I know casually and have several short conversations.

  I felt off-kilter during the service. I remained seated for a good part of the ceremony. I was fine by the end. I stopped at Target to pick up some Hershey Milk Chocolate with whole almonds.

  I was supposed to have the M & W sisters at 2 p.m. They didn't sign in. I called both their mom and dad; and neither answered. Dad called me back to say the girls were at a polo match. Could we meet at 4:30? Sure.

 I had second grade M first. We continued with the Question Game. Her participation is always good, and her skill level continues to improve. I would love to get feedback from the teacher.

 After half an hour, M called sixth-grade W to come to the Zoom meeting. I heard W say something in an irritated tone. Her mother had told her to get into the session in an annoyed, critical tone.

   W was distracted during the whole session. She frequently draws while we work, but her participation is fine. Sketching is like breathing for her, and it comforts her. Today was different. I asked her several times not to draw while we worked. She apologized.  

      I realized afterward that W was distracted by her negative interaction with her mom. I wouldn't think much of it, except her dad and sister said mom's behavior is problematic. Dad told me that mom yells at the kids all the time. He said she was raised that way. I can't imagine she thought it was a pleasurable childhood that she would want to pass on to her kids. She may believe it made her a better person, as my mother thought she benefited from her parents' constant criticism.

  Besides the dad's comment about the mom's overly critical behavior, M said her mother was known as a crazy person in the family. It sounds like she is very reactive. W talks back. Her mother criticizes her attitude and frequently banishes her to the garage. The banishment is not as bad as it sounds. There is a van with a bed in it. Sometimes, M chooses to join her. While the banishment may not be damaging, the constant need to defend herself is. She is a bright firstborn as I was. She is affected by the interaction. When dealing with a difficult parent, there is no way to escape paying a price.

 I bathed Elsa. Her skin was a problem. I could feel her belly was badly infected.

 I watched the Netflix movie Raymond and Ray. I only have high praise for this film. It was wonderful in every regard.

Saturday, October 29, 2022

 Saturday, October 29, 2022

It was another day for recovery. I finally got started working on the legal document I had to retype. I had to retype it originally because of changes I wanted to make. I did that a while ago. Then, I ran into a formatting problem that stymied me. The margins on pages one through three were one-way. Then, they changed on pages four through six. I tried everything I knew to fix the problem. I copied and pasted the whole document to see if the bug affected the original document. Nope. I tried copying and pasting the last three pages and modifying it. Nope. I finally retyped pages four through six in a separate document. That looked like it worked.

   I did some housecleaning and read a lot of Katherine Newcomer’s book, Tatiana and the Hidden Land Discovery, a science fiction fantasy story. It is not the type of story I would typically like, but I loved it. Newcomer’s writing is wonderful. Her images are vivid and keep me in the action. I couldn’t put the book down.

   I got a lot of sleep today. The after-effect of the extractions finally caught up to me.

 

 

Friday, October 28, 2022

 Friday, October 28, 2022

     I canceled everything for today, figuring I would need time to recover from the five extractions I had yesterday—nothing of the sort. I felt just fine. Elsa had an appointment with Petco for a grooming. I had asked Scott if he could take her down. I felt good enough to go myself. It would be less stressful for Elsa if I took her than if Scott did.

   Our appointment at Petco was at 9 a.m. We got there early. The store didn't open until 9. We walked up and down the strip mall sidewalk so I could get my steps in. Good thing. Elsa had an attack of diarrhea. I could pick up some of it, but some was just liquid with a little bit. When we headed back toward the store, Elsa tried to pull me back to the car. No, this was not one of her favorite activities.

   When I dropped her off, I asked for something to wipe up the poop on the sidewalk. The groomer gave me a clean cloth. I asked for a paper towel. She said this is what they used to clean up messes in the store. Okay. It worked.

  I stopped at Target to pick up a microphone I could plug into my computer. I wanted to see if adolescent D had trouble hearing any sound when I made the /s/ sound with this improvement to the sound system. I had tried making the sounds with other students, and they had no problems. Not only could they identify the word, but they also identified the individual speech sounds.

  When I picked Elsa up a few hours later, she was delighted to see me. She leaped into my arms and wrapped herself around my neck.

   On my Hanai sister Jean's advice, I started watching In the Dark on Netflix. I liked it. I like the main character, Murphy, a tough, blind lady, was fun to watch. I like a touch of snarky. I'm not comfortable with those movies where every character is a wise guy.

Saturday, October 29, 2022

Thursday, October 27, 2022

 Thursday, October 27, 2022 

     It would have been Mike’s eighty-second birthday. Oh, well. I scheduled myself to have five teeth extracted today. I worried about it. Losing any teeth is sad. Losing five is downright freaky. What will I look like? How will I speak? Will I cancel my tutoring class until I get my fake ones installed? I slept well despite those concerns. I got up early because I wanted to get a lot of steps in before Yvette’s driveway yoga class.

      Another concern was a possible break in my daily step count. I had completed ninety-six consecutive days toward my goal of three hundred sixty days straight. I got up to three hundred thirty-seven days in a row before a problem with my foot stopped me from walking regularly. I was twenty-three days short of my goal. It was heartbreaking.

  I got four thousand steps in before I went home to feed Elsa and prepare for class. Scott was driving me to the dentist.   We could leave at eight, once the class was over, and make it in time for my eight-twenty appointment. I changed my mind and told Scott that I preferred to leave early.

  It had occurred to me they wanted me there early to take the antibiotics I needed to take before any dental procedure because of my recent hip replacement. I called the surgeon’s office promptly when they opened at seven-thirty. No, they would not give me the antibiotic when I arrived and have me sit for an hour. I would go right into surgery prep at eight-twenty. The doctor would administer the antibiotics intravenously. My primary care physician told me I had to take the meds an hour before the procedure. I chose to take the prescribed pills immediately.   

  Scott and I arrived early, and we had to wait. The nurse ushered me into a surgical suite. I got on the gurney. No, I couldn’t wear my hooded sweatshirt; they needed access to my arms. One nurse put the intravenous drip into my left arm; another put the blood pressure cuff on my right. Then, one put electronic sensors on my chest to monitor my heart. On the doctor’s advice, I chose complete anesthesia. I had done one extraction a few years ago with only Novocain. I asked the doctor what he would do given he would extract five teeth. He said, “Total anesthesia.” That’s what I went with.

  The doctor had told me it would take about an hour. I didn’t ask how long it had been when I regained consciousness. A nurse told Scott I was ready and that he should pull the car around the back of the building. They ushered me out the back door. I got a glance at myself. I had two blood-soaked gauze pads sticking out on either side of my mouth to staunch the flow. The pads forced my mouth open in a ghoulish grin, exposing my crooked, discolored bottom teeth. I was a sight.

  It only occurred to me afterward why they ushered me out the back door. Can you imagine the response of patients waiting in the reception area? They would have run for the hills.

  I had to pick up an antibiotic. Scott drove to the Kaiser clinic. I gave him my Kaiser card and driver’s license. He went in to get the meds while I sat in the car. I expected to sleep for the rest of the day. However, the post-operative directions were not to sleep. I was supposed to sit and walk. I did take a nap. The instructions said I was allowed to if I was tired. I was.

 

 

 

Wednesday, October 26, 2022

 Wednesday, October 26, 2022    

 

I changed my walk because of something I learned in Yvette’s yoga class. She had us put some padding in the crease between the buttocks and the top of the leg while lying down on our backs. She had us straighten our legs while pushing the padding down. It made me aware of muscles I hadn’t considered before.   I understood using my glutes when I walked but not using the area at the top of my thigh.

   I joined Juli as she walked this morning. One of her embossing machines was down. She had to subcontract the work to someone who didn’t have the same type of machine she did. Hers pins down the item to be embossed by creating a vacuum. The man she gave the work to a man who had to hold down the item with his strength. He can’t do the embossing of the whole image at once. He has to do a small bit at a time. From what she said, he screwed up the job. I had completed 3,000 steps when I got home from my morning walk.

   My eyes bothered me as I got the public blog post ready. After I finished it, I was exhausted. I went out and got another thousand steps in before taking a nap. I slept for a good two hours.

   The other day, I observed that my left eye had wandered. Ah, that would make images blurry. I told Sandor. He said he would see what he could do about it. The eye exercises Scott gave me helped. I used them for a while. Once my vision was better, I stopped doing them. It is only a few minutes a day. I will have to do them regularly.

   I have so many activities that are ‘only a few minutes a day.” They add up. There are my in-bed exercises in the morning before I get up, spending 10 minutes on the vibrating platform, I have two apps I want to do to keep my mind active, Brain HQ and learning German on Lingopie, Wordle, and the NY Times mini-crossword puzzle for the day and at least some of the regular one. Add to that meditating an hour a day. Retirement is a terrible challenge. I got more done when I worked full-time.

Tuesday, October 25, 2022

Tuesday, October 25, 2022

   

I slept last night, but it was not that deep, satisfying sleep that makes going to bed a joy. I had been under unusual stress; my hair was falling out. I didn't have a handful every time I touched my hair as my new friend Jackie did. Her hair started falling out after she had Covid. I only find strands on my keyboard. The THR surgery would be one source of stress. The upcoming tooth extractions worried me because I would have to walk around without replacement teeth for two to three months before my gums settled and I could be measured for the new teeth. This would impact my tutoring. I might not be able to speak clearly, and I would be unsightly. Being without that stimulation for several months, either because I couldn't speak clearly or because I'd be unsightly, is scary. I need the activity, the contact with other human beings, and the challenges of teaching, which I love. The extractions were on the same day as Mike's birthday. I miss him more every day, not less. Just being with him relieved built-up stress. There's nothing like a hug and a kiss from the right person. I talk to him nowadays more, not less. Will I sink into morbid grief eventually? At the rate I'm going, who knows?

  My body did well this morning. Elsa and I went around the block instead of just up and down our street. My legs gave me no trouble at all. The morning in-bed exercises were helping, but I still couldn't bend my left leg much more than I could before the surgery. I believe Mike damaged a muscle in my inner thigh when he wrenched my leg eighteen years ago. However, I remember not having the full range of motion in that hip in a yoga class doing the salutation to the sun before I ever met Mike. It couldn't be all his fault. He just made a bad situation a lot worse.

   On my early morning walk, I ran into Vince and Juli on the last leg of my walk before turning into my driveway. I turned around and walked with them. Vince walked ahead, and Juli and I talked. She told me she just got two large orders for hat embroideries after a fallow period. She also asked if I would consider joining a group to play Mexican trains. It sounds like a bridge or mahjong group. I have never participated in anything like that. 

  However, Juli is a lot like me. She is interested in everything and always has something to talk about. The Mexican train group would meet every other week for three hours at 4 or 6 p.m. If it's at four, people will bring food; if it's at 6 p.m. we have to come pre-fed. I told her four was out for me because I tutored. She said she would tell the group they had to meet at 6 to accommodate me. I'm expecting the other participants to be very culturally different from me. I wondered if I would fit in comfortably. I was willing to give it a try. Jean, my Hanai sister, told me she joined a mahjong group in her retirement community. It sounded like fun to play games with a group of people. It was worth a try.

   Juli talked about her favorite author, an orthopedic surgeon who writes young adult books with no cursing and no sex. I enjoyed the children's books I was reading with my students. She told me this author also wrote advice for other doctors, short paragraphs of insights. She said a good doctor must be an engineer and a construction worker. He told people they could purchase one of the surgical tools at an automotive parts store.

   I told the M & W sisters I might not meet with them next week as I recovered from the extractions. I also told them I would probably not look very good and would not appear on the video. M said she wouldn't mind me being without teeth. It was so sweet and loving.

  I felt stressed about visiting friends I hadn't seen since Mike died. We always related to each other as two couples. I would have to renegotiate our relationship. Today, I finally realized how I would feel without Mike there. This would be my first situation when I couldn't see his absence as temporary; he was out shopping, walking, or napping. I would have to face he was gone, permanently gone.   

   I told Yvette how I felt and could feel a good cry coming on. I got off the phone and sobbed for a good five minutes. Those deep, wracking sobs were wrenched from the depths of my body. Someone who heard me cry like that on the phone said it sounded like I was laughing. I've cried like that less than a dozen times in my lifetime. It was good to face it.

   My mother-in-law cut everyone she knew from before her husband's death out of her life when he died except her children and her brother and his family. Her friends were confused and dismayed by her behavior. When I heard that, I thought, "Leave it to Lee to do something like that. What a bitch!" Now I understand her motivation. Judy told me that many people do that when their spouse dies. I could understand it, but it didn't seem like a healthy response. I would blow off relationships with people I'd known for forty years. Aside from preferring to keep old friends, I think facing the pain of that loss is healthier than avoiding it. 

     I may have more strength than Lee. My whole identity wasn't wrapped up in being someone's wife. I didn't stop being a person when he died. That attitude wasn't all Lee's fault. It was the social attitude at the time. Widows were seen as threats to the marriages of their friends. Really? Well, in the bad ole days, you needed to be married to have a bank account or a credit card. The morality police didn't reinforce the limited position of women in society as it is in Iran right now, but it was pervasive. That all changed in my lifetime. It had changed in Lee's, too, but only after the death of her husband. I was still young and unmarried. I had a chance to adapt to the new world.

    One of my walking buddies came over. She is a mobile notary, and I needed something notarized for a lawyer in Germany to claim an inheritance. I needed proof of my name change from my maiden name to my married one. I never did anything official. I changed it two years after we were married to a hyphenated name. Somehow, the Department of Motor Vehicles, which issued my license, the Department of Social Security, and the Department of State, which issued my passport, all accepted my name change. I Xeroxed copies of my marriage certificate and passport in preparation for notarization. Rosemary looked at that and said, "I can't notarize those Xeroxed copies. You have to get official copies from the issuing departments." I contacted the law office and told them what Rosemary said. They said just send the Xeroxed copies as is; we'll see if that is good enough." I found a temporary driver's license and threw that in, too. I mailed them all by registered mail. It cost $20 instead of $1.50 to mail them to Germany.

  I saw the last of the Ted Lasso episodes. So sad. I didn't realize it was that as I was watching it. I only understood what it was at the end of the series when the 'next episode' displayed was not a Ted Lasso.

   The episode was brilliant. It wasn't a happy ending; they didn't resolve conflicts and all personal difficulties. Neither was it an ending designed to force the powers that be to produce another season. Shows that create a crisis for every main character invite the audience to pressure the production company to continue the show. In this final episode, there were significant changes in everyone's life. It could have been a season's final episode, but I was surprised it was the last-ever. A truly amazing series. It deserved every award it received.

 

Monday, October 24, 2022

 Monday, October 24, 2022

  I went up Kukuna and turned onto Punawele on my morning walk. My leg was doing well. I called Jackie to say I was in her neighborhood if she wanted to join me. She said she had her jeans on but was in her pajama top. She would throw on some clothes and join me. I saw her down the block, but she was facing away from me. I called her to say I was coming up from the other side. I was wearing a pink sweatshirt. She saw me and walked my way. These are long blocks; think crosstown blocks in Manhattan. We walked down the street together. She said she got her exercise walk walking toward me and now was getting her social walk. I learned she had Covid and was losing hair by the handfuls now. She was going to consult her doctor. I'd been losing hair, too. I was constantly dusting stray hairs off my keyboard. Randee, my hairdresser, confirmed my hair was thinner. Fortunately, I started with a lot. I hoped the increased loss resulted from stress: my total hip replacement, thoughts of having my five teeth extracted, the three-month wait before I can get my replacements, and a fresh infusion of grief over Mike's death. I would recover from all three and regain my equilibrium.

   I had two tutoring appointments today. My first was with adolescent D. I made a small change in the work. Instead of just saying each sound, I had him repeat what I said- sound by sound. I reinforced them by extending a finger for each one. Linda Mood-Bell uses something like that. It helped somewhat. While he didn't try to attach the first sound of the word at the end of the sequence, he had problems holding on to the sounds. He would change the sounds as he blended them. Also, he couldn't hear the difference between the sibilants/s/, /z/, /sh/. /ch/, /f/, and /v/. They can be difficult to tell apart. I tried this process with another child because I wondered if the problem was hearing them on Zoom. They had no problems identifying the sound. D has trouble even hearing that I made a sound, any sound.  

   I asked his mother if a hearing test was part of his evaluation for his special education evaluation administered by the school. Yes, it was. I suspected the school nurse administered the test; an audiologist's test is more complete. I will have to check again if he really can't hear any sound versus if he can't identify the speech sound.

   We had a full half hour today, not our ten-minute drill on phonemic awareness. I reviewed the long and short vowels using a vowel chart. D had to give the keyword and make the vowel sound. I had him review it, saying the keyword and vowel sound while looking at the chart. Then I covered it, and he had to remember. I asked him if he used forced recall to study. Nope. Many students think that just looking at the material is studying. They need to learn how to study. I told D there was no way I could have passed tests in school if I had studied the way he had. Few people have ideographic memories and only have to see something once to remember it. I'm not one of those people.

   I called Paulette to see if she was home so Elsa and I could visit and get water. Her phone went to voice mail immediately. I figured she was on the phone and would be home. I headed up there. She wasn't home. I knew where she kept a few mice on tap for Elsa; they were on one of the ladder steps in the garage. I found one and threw it to her. I didn't want her visit to be a total bust. I left my empty bottles there and went back home.

  I had the M & W sisters in the afternoon. It was a continuation of what we have been doing. I love the work with sixth grade W because we have to analyze what the author did and how they used language to communicate the information. 

  W showed me something else she had drawn. It was an abstract piece all in black against the paper's white background. It was too small for me to make sense of it. She told me it contained malformed shapes, circles, squares, ovals, and triangles. You had to find as many of the shapes as you could. Holy cow! This kid is something else.

  I spoke to her father yesterday. They had a parent-teacher conference at W's high-end private school. Her teachers said she was doing well. She was getting As and Bs. Their only concern was that she was a perfectionist. She wanted to redo it if she didn't get a good grade. I talked to W about this. "I'm not a perfectionist. I just want to get the best grade I can." I heard she was competitive, not compulsively perfectionistic.

Sunday, October 23, 2022

Sunday, October 23, 2022

 

  I woke up early despite going to bed late. The only down note from Saturday was I still need to get my 10,000 steps in. My pedometer app will only start the accumulated daily count from zero after I miss two days. One miss, they call it a day of rest. 

  I went to church. I wanted to keep the pattern; going felt right. It doesn't impact me the way it does devoted Catholics. I came to the party much too late for it to have that effect. That may not have been the case for Mike. I think he found church deeply moving. We never explored what it meant to him or how he felt when participating in the service. Interesting! I love exploring how people perceive and interact in different situations, but I didn't explore this with Mike. I never felt the need to. I don't regret not having asked now. I was happy that I felt content with his choices while he was alive. I was happy to support him in pursuit of his interests. They seemed good for him; they brought him joy. 

  I had a ten-minute session with Adolescent D at noon. It was evident yesterday he had an easier time adding consonants after the vowel. For example, he had no problem adding the /d/ to /e-n/ to make end. But he had a terrible time adding /t/ in front of /a-ke/ to make take. He kept adding the /t/ after /a-ke/. I got a new appreciation of the challenges he faced. Now I understood why he fought starting with the vowel/consonant pair and then adding consonant to the front of the unit. He couldn't do it. He always wanted to start with the first letter and work through the word sequentially. But that never worked for him.

  I had the M & W sisters at two p.m. I had sixth-grade W first. She was sitting in the passenger seat of the car. One of the girls had a basketball game today. W was in a foul mood. I asked her if she wanted to skip the session today. She said, "I have to." Yes, she had to, but she could share how she felt. We all must do things we don't want to do. It is easier if we don't pretend we're happy to do it. That doesn't mean I don't expect myself to do my best and find a way to enjoy it. 

   W and I continued with the Gating Game on a passage from Westing Game. In the Gating Game, one person gives clues, sometimes based on the content of the meaning, sometimes on semantic or syntactical clues. For the word get, I gave "the present of got." It was the first time she had to find the present tense form when I gave the past. She was used to getting the present tense form and figuring out the past. Her mother sat next to her and called, "Give." W got pissed with her mother for "correcting her." Second grade M, sitting in the back of the car, also called out a word. I didn't think anyone was 'correcting' W. They were playing the game. It's engaging.

  Much of the passage we worked on required understanding the characters and the plot. "What would Turtle do in this situation? What would she say?" I had fun. W admitted she had, too.

  When it was second-grade M's turn, I saw her peering from the back seat from under a board. It was a large canvas for W, an incredible artist with a serious talent. She is already of professional quality, and that is without training. M got in the passenger seat, and we did her half hour, doing WbyW, another comprehension activity. She loves our work. 

  I continued watching Ted Lasso. Coach Beard was the focus of a weird, Felliniesque episode. It was dark. The demons were out. It resolved well. I suspect the rest of the cast needed a week off. 

 

Saturday, October 22, 2022

 Saturday, October 22, 2022

   

      I slept well and woke up at 6 a.m. After completing my in-bed morning exercises, Elsa and I did our walk. My left ankle wasn’t 100%. It hurt in a different spot than it had. Shifting pain is considered a good sign something is changing.

   Once I posted my daily blog post and completed Wordle for the day, I needed a nap. I hadn’t been needing daily naps earlier in the week; it was back again. When I was busy enough, I was full of energy. I get tired quickly when my eyes get tired. Straining to see is exhausting. I went down for a two-hour nap. Why two hours? Who knows. 

  Once up, I got to work on my current cleaning project. I have guests coming for Thanksgiving. This is a brilliant motivation for doing a thorough cleaning. I did some of the deep cleaning for Damon and Shivani’s visits, but I didn’t clean the lanai screens or the windows in the front of the house. 

Cleaning the lanai means cleaning the screens and the sliding double doors to the guest bedroom. On the lanai, there are fourteen-six by four screens and fourteen- six by two. The other day, I cleaned one set, top and bottom, and planned to continue cleaning that section of the lanai, including the sliding glass doors to the guest bedroom. Once I had the glass cleaned and the frame washed down, I had to vacuum that area before putting the furniture back. I would vacuum the furniture right before they arrived.

  I had another ten-minute session with adolescent D. OMG! I can’t give him three words with three sounds. I learned that in our last session. He had trouble hearing and blending two sounds. He got better at that after our first session. Three sounds were too much for him. Today, I tried giving him two sounds from the word before adding the third. In the word keep, I gave /ee/ and /p/; he blended those with ease. Then I said /k/,/ee/,/p. He tried to add the /k/ to the end of the word. He also did that with the word take. He did fine blending /a/-/k/, but when I gave him the initial /t/ sound to add on, he said /a-te/. I had already seen this problem when he decoded words while reading. He did well when I added consonants to the end of the sound unit. I started with /e/ and/n/in the word friends. He blended those. When I gave him /e/,/n/, and/ d/, it was easy for him to add on the final /s/.

  I went to Hilo with B. to see his grandson in a production of The Lion King, Jr. We took my car. It would be more comfortable and require less gas. We left around three p.m. We wanted to eat dinner before we saw the show. I proposed going to Reuben’s Mexican Restaurant. That’s where Mike and I always went when on that side of the island. We loved their food.

  There were empty tables when we arrived. I ordered a deluxe nacho plate and a lemonade. B ordered two dishes. It looked like they had redecorated. Murals were painted on the walls I didn’t remember seeing. There used to be many pictures of Mexican revolutionaries. That was the theme. There was one picture of Poncho Ville. I remember a picture of Che Guevarra and Frida Kahlo; those were gone. The old lady who served as bartender wasn’t there. She was always there. I asked the server about her. She has passed, but her husband and son still ran the place.

   I noticed that different waiters would ask us what we needed. I saw camaraderie among the staff. I asked the server about that, too. Yes. It was a wonderful place to work. Everyone had everyone else’s back.

   We had plenty of time to walk to the theater around the corner. As we left the restaurant, several groups of people were waiting to be served. We had parked down the street. I wanted to get something from it. B went to get for me as I stayed on the sidewalk. I took a step toward him, not remembering the curb. My left foot rolled over the edge. I thrust out my right leg and caught myself. I was shaken but unhurt. It was scary because it reminded me of the fall down a long flight of stairs I took when I was thirty-five. 

The length of the fall wasn’t comparable, but the sensation of my foot rolling over the edge of a step was.

  The theater wasn’t open yet when we arrived. We waited outside. To get to our seats, we had to climb stairs. I was concerned that we would be far in the back, but no. The theater was a small one built in the early nineteen hundreds, as much of the town was. None of the original buildings have been torn down and replaced with modern structures.

    B and I are both into construction, B professionally, and me as a DYI. We wondered how they changed the lightbulbs in the ceiling and in the sconces. There was nowhere to put a cherry picker. Also, we both saw signs of leaks and realized the ceiling wasn’t painted; it was wallpapered. We also noticed the audience as the theater filled up. It was a two-to-one ratio of kids to adults, and those kids were mostly under ten. They screamed when the songs came on. This was their Rocky Horror Show viewing. It was a fun evening. His grandson was the Warthog.

   After the performance, the cast met the audience in the lobby for pictures. B’s grandson was in costume, which was a little like a small boat. His costume was hot and heavy. As we started walking back to the car, a man approached me in a friendly way. I thought nothing of it, assuming he was from the audience. Then he tried to put his hat on my head. That changed the tone. Next thing I knew, B was by my side, and the man was screaming, ‘Don’t touch me!” Anything B said or did only made the man more agitated. Elijah’s mother came, “ Move on! Don’t bother them!” and he went. As he walked down the street, he kept screaming, “Don’t touch me!” I wanted to wait until he was well ahead of me.

     My car was parked on the main shopping street on this side of town, just down the block from the theater. As we approached, B said, “They will have set up house for the night.” Apparently, this is where many of the homeless setup camp every night. We walked out into the street, approaching the car from the back. We got in safely and drove home without incident. I got home around 11 p.m. and went straight to bed. I didn’t get in my 10,000 steps today.

Friday, October 21, 2022

Friday, October 21, 2022

 

I didn’t sleep that well last night. I slept but woke up around five a.m. I wasn’t as deeply rested as I usually am. I stayed in bed doing my exercises and got up around seven. My leg was doing well. Elsa led the way around the block via Punawele. Since we would pass Jackie’s house, I called her. She asked me to call her when I walked so she could join me. Since I didn’t walk her way regularly, this would require planning. I told her I thought the logistics were complicated if we were to do this regularly. I expected she would help me figure out how to do it. No, she accepted it was difficult and said, “Oh, well.” As I entered the street today, I called. I knew she was up by four thirty in the morning. She would be up now. She was on her way out to a doctor’s appointment. “Please, call again.”

  My walk felt completely different. This is the impact of the work Lisa, my chiropractor, did on me on Wednesday. I felt a big difference in my left ankle.

 Second grade L’s mom canceled because the girl was sick. That was my only scheduled appointment for the day except for my fifteen-minute appointment with Adolescent D.

     I have seen improvement in him since yesterday. He responded better, blending two phoneme word pairs. When we started, he couldn’t blend /t/ and /oo/ to get the word to. Today, he blended a few three-phoneme words and then lost it. He blended /n/ and /o/ to get no but was thrown by /n/, /o/ and /t/ to get not. I went back to only giving him two phonemes at a time.  

   I checked with D’s mom to see if his hearing was tested when the school diagnostician tested him. His ability to hear nonspeech sounds was fine. His problem is neurological; it was in his perceptual system.

  I can hear he has problems distinguishing one phonemic sound from another. I got this image of blurry vision and thought, “That’s what it must be like for him. The sounds are fuzzy. He can only understand a word if he hears it in a sentence. If he hears enough of the words accurately, he can figure out the word, but he never hears it clearly. My vision is fading now. If I see a word alone without context, it is sometimes hard for me to figure out what it is. When I see it in context, and I see what makes sense in that sentence, the letters ‘look’ clearer. That’s because I know what I’m looking for. It’s top-down rather than bottom-up, which is reliant on perception.

  I understood poor auditory perception in a new way today. Since I struggle with my vision now, I often figure out words through blurred vision using top-down thinking, using context to infer what the word must be. Just as blurred vision makes reading a challenge, “blurred” sounds make listening a challenge. Just as blurred vision means not seeing the basic units of objects or letters clearly, blurred sound means we don’t hear individual phonemes clearly. When phonemes are blended into words, their sounds are altered. It’s the effect of connected speech. Hearing and processing a sequence of phonemes is necessary to understand what others say. Relying heavily on top-down processing, either visual or auditory, is exhausting. 

Thursday, October 20, 2022

 Thursday, October 20, 2022

 

  I had seven scheduled appointments for today. The first was with my therapist/ life coach, who I hadn't seen in five weeks. She traveled with a spiritual group of some sort. I suspected it was a pilgrimage; she confirmed it. I had no idea what the trip entailed, but I planned to ask. I got a text from her saying she had trouble with her return flights and was delayed by two days. She would have to reschedule. That was fine with me. I had too much on my plate for the day as it was. 

  A week ago or so, I would have given my eye teeth for an appointment. I pulled myself out of that slump. Now I was okay. During that period, something shifted. I had grief about several things. Now, I was generally more at peace.

  At 11:45, I had an appointment for a haircut. Randee had on this incredible Halloween orange jumpsuit. With her dark hair and black apron, she looked fantastic. I told her I was shedding worse than my dog. She said she could see it was a bit thinner. I speculated it was because of the stress of the total hip replacement operation. On the twenty-seventh, I would have five teeth extracted. Would I be bald by December? Randee recommended a vitamin supplement, biotin, to help with hair regrowth. I hoped it would work.

  After my haircut, I continued on my way south for my eye appointment with my optometrists, Sandor and Meali'inani. Instead of using my usual route down the Kuakini Highway, I went via Ali'i Drive. I knew a bypass had been built. I had seen the other end of it, where it intersected with Kuakini Highway, but I didn't know anything about it from this angle. It would be an adventure; it certainly was that. It was this beautiful drive on the highspeed Kona bypass with a gorgeous ocean view. I had no idea where I was, but I knew I couldn't get lost. We're on an island, for Heaven's sake. If I follow the ocean, eventually, I would come to something familiar. I came to a traffic light and recognized the intersection with Kuakini. I went straight through the intersection, continuing south to Volcano. It didn't look right. I pulled off the road and checked my GPS. Sure enough, I was supposed to turn left onto Kuakini instead of going straight through. I did a U-turn. I was only minutes away from Sandor's office. 

   He showed me the pictures of my retina a while back and a week ago. He told me there had been an improvement; what I saw knocked my socks off. There was a 75% spontaneous improvement. The macular had reattached. Holy cow! Sandor had told me he had seen it before, but only with medical intervention. He asked his receptionist to scan my retina again to make sure. It came out the same. Great!

  Meali'inani examined my eyes. The image was the same. Sandor recommended I get glasses with a larger frame rather than the golden ones I had for my extra pair. He picked one out for me that I liked. The top of the frame is a light grey, while the bottom has a slight copper tint. It's very subtle. As with many Hawaiian practitioners, every visit is social and business and takes time.  

  I got home in time for my appointment with Adolescent D. We started our daily short sessions, ten to fifteen minutes. D has to blend individually articulate phonemes to identify the word. This is very hard for him. As we started, he had problems with /t/, and /oo/ as in the word to; he heard told. He missed many of the words. It was scary. Was this exercise too difficult for anyone, particularly over Zoom?

  My next appointment was with ninth-grade K. We continued with the comprehension activity of the short, grade-level passage. He reported he understood more of what people said. His mother reported he was speaking more.

  My final appointment for the day was with Jana. While we discussed work, we also discussed our personal lives. I told her about my work to help D with his auditory processing. This is still experimental. I don't see it doing harm; the question is, will it work to resolve his issues?

Wednesday, October 19, 2022

 Wednesday, October 19, 2022

     My ankle continued to bother me; I still got close to 4,000 steps on my first walk of the morning.

     After pouring a teakettle of boiling water over the haole koa stump left after I cut down a twenty-foot tree, I checked on the shorter haole koas I first tried the boiling water trick on. I saw something green growing at the base of one of the trees. Oh, no. Was my experiment a failure? I boiled another pot and poured it over. Then, I cut back the remaining stems and pulled up all the surrounding weeds to see what was growing there. Ah, it wasn't new haole koa shoots. My experiment was still proving effective.

 I had a 10:30 appointment with my chiropractor. For some reason I will never understand. I set my alarm for a 10:30 departure. I called her office as I was driving to town- no answer. Lisa is a very relaxed person. I was there half an hour before she served me the first time I was there. She combed her hair and searched for a syringe to administer insulin to her diabetic dog while I waited.

   When I arrived at her office today, I was late, and her 11:15 had already arrived. It was just as well that I missed my appointment. She was too busy in the morning caring for her animal children, Flo the dog, and several fish. We made another appointment for 4:15. I was available because ninth-grade K had canceled for the day.

  I went to the bank to deposit a monthly check from one of my clients. There were unmatched chairs and a sofa set up along the line. There was a sign, "Please, be patient. We're working as fast as we can."  

  I stopped at Long's for Hersey milk chocolate nuggets with whole almonds. It was on sale. Yay! I bought four. Then I went to Costco. I hadn't been there in a while, at least a month. I had enough food in the house but needed more frozen veggies. They didn't have any broccoli in stock. That was okay. I had several heads of romaine lettuce to work my way through and ten Compari tomatoes to eat before they went bad.

  I was home by 2 p.m. for an appointment with adolescent D. I started with a story of a 19-year-old's fentanyl death. He had never heard of the drug. I warned him never to take a pill from a friend or stranger. If the formula is off, it could kill him.

  I asked him if he told his mother that he would do a short session every day so we could work on his phonemic awareness. He didn't remember. We had spent a long time talking about making choices. I asked if he remembered that he liked figuring out the words from the sounds. He said yes. It sounds like he's the sort that remembers what pleases him and forgets what does not. After reviewing them on a chart, he was slightly better at naming the short and long vowels.

  We also worked on identifying syllable patterns using the six types identified by Noah Webster. I assumed someone involved with Orton Gillingham identified the six syllable types. It was probably someone with that background who brought it to the attention of reading teachers. As I apply this principle to every word, I find endless exceptions. There are more than six syllable patterns. However, learning these six is a good base. They are the most common. I was working with natural language instead of a prepared word list that conforms to some rules. Adolescent D says he likes this work. On a rate of 1-10, he gave it a six. Wow!

   I told him I spoke to his mom about the extra time. Did he remember he agreed upon it in our last session? No. Had he changed his mind? No. It was okay. I want to keep Monday and Wednesday to work on the vowel sounds and syllable identification and have fifteen-minute sessions every other day of the week to work on identifying words from the phonemes. I say each phoneme separately, and he recognizes the word. His mother had suggested extending our sessions by adding time to our existing sessions. I think short and frequent sessions are better.

   I told D and his mom I wanted to do it daily now because I probably wouldn't be able to after the 27th. I will be having five teeth extracted. It will affect my ability to make the sounds clearly.

  I had Mama K's crew next, starting with Twin A. She was sitting in the car using a phone instead of an iPad. She was falling asleep as we worked. I asked if she had had a rough day in school. She hadn't gone. Why? There was no bus this morning. Our schools still need help finding bus drivers. Parents drive their kids to school. It's a big mess. The line of cars at the beginning and end of school is not to be believed. Nor is the traffic that affects the rest of us.

  Despite her exhaustion, Twin A struggled and completed a unit of work. This would be my last day training the girls to use Starfall. I am confident they can use it for their benefit.

 I worked with Twin E on identifying words from the phonemic units. She had trouble with the sibilants, /s/,/f/, /z/, etc. She did pretty well reading the material from the Starfall selections and directing me to manipulate the site. Both girls are ready to do Starfall on their own.

   When I spoke to Mama K the other day, she said she wasn't seeing much improvement in K's understanding. She cited his not following instructions and washing his dishes as an example of his problems understanding what is said. I asked if that was a problem with understanding or willingness. She hadn't thought of that. She rules with an iron hand. The kids don't seem to suffer. I tested K on identifying the word from hearing the individual phonemes. He had trouble with the sibilants, too. I made sure he could see my face. He couldn't see a difference between the facial formations of/s/ and /f/. The difference is radical. His phonemic awareness may be a problem, even though his decoding and word recognition skills are good. I told Mama K to play the audio file for him at night again. This helped him overcome a serious speech problem.

  I also texted to see how well K could repeat a sentence without seeing it written. He did pretty well. In the next session, I will test his recall by asking in-the-book questions on material we have already covered.

  I left shortly after three to return to the chiropractor. I arrived early. It was rush hour, and I didn't want to risk missing another appointment. She was running late. She started with me at 4:40. I left at 6:40. She worked on me most of the time. She is incredibly generous with her service. She told me I was her last client for the day and she would be able to give me extra time. Most people want to get home at the end of the day, not spend extra time at work. I don't know how she makes a living. She did give me the second laser treatment for my toe fungus. Yvette cut my toenails two weeks ago for the first of my two laser appointments. Lisa said I should cut them closer. She cut my nails for me. Again, incredible.

   I got home to an anxious Elsa. I fed her immediately rather than forcing her to walk first—poor baby.

Tuesday, October 18, 2022

 Tuesday, October 18, 2022   

As I lay in bed doing my in-bed exercises and dozing on and off during savasana breaks, I reviewed the math problem I did yesterday, adding 999 twelve times. I came out with the same answer as my calculator. What had I done wrong? When I got up, I found the piece of paper I had written the problem. Ah, I added one and zero and got nine. That would throw off anyone’s calculations.

        I was up by 7 am. I joined Tammy on her walk today. We ran into each other, going in the opposite direction, and stopped to talk. I proposed we walk with each other. Tammy doesn’t live in our neighborhood. Like many other walkers from other neighborhoods, she prefers to walk on our street. Tammy said it is her favorite. It’s well-shaded, and it has good neighbor vibes. Elsa made a consistent stride impossible with her constant need to check out the peemail. Tammy took off on her own. Her pace is much faster than mine.

   I was exhausted after editing the public blog posting for the day. My eyes gave me trouble. That’s always exhausting. I needed a nap before I left for my appointment with a new esthetician. She had an impressive suite, two closed rooms, one for facials and one for massages, and a beautifully decorated L-shaped reception area. She offered me a choice of exfoliation methods. We settled on the scalpel scraping. As I thought, men look better than women because they shave every day, at least if they use a manual razor. I don’t know how well the electric shavers exfoliate. She would be shaving as well as exfoliating. It felt good, relaxing, and not scratchy. When she asked me to lift my chin so she could do my neck, visions of Sweeny Todd danced through my head.      

   I got home just in time to shower before the acupuncturist arrived. I see her once every two weeks. Each time she is surprised by how much straighter my left leg is. She asked if I was seeing the physical therapists. No, I still haven’t gotten a prescription from Kaiser. My primary care physician has been on leave for quite a while now. She was supposed to be back on the job by October 4, but there still was no prescription. I suspect my morning exercises are making a difference.

   The acupuncturist asked me to point to where the pain in my left ankle was. She put a needle in on the inside of the ankle. I howled. It took a good thirty seconds for the acute pain to subside and over a minute for it to disappear. I thought my body had adjusted to the needle, but no. She said she pulled it out the moment I yelled.

   I spoke to ninth-grade K’s mom. She needed to cancel for Wednesday and proposed skipping a makeup on Friday. I saw it as a sign she was happy he was doing better. She said no, he still needed more tutoring. Did she feel less concerned because she had seen his progress and knew he could learn? She said yes to that. 

  I continued doing the WbyW comprehension exercise with K on the passage I got from adolescent D, also in ninth grade. K reports he is continuing to see improvement. I tried the process I started with Adolescent D, where I pronounced the individual phonemes, and the student had to figure out the word. I wanted to see how K did for two reasons. One was to check his auditory processing. The other was to check on the method. Adolescent D was having terrible problems with it. Was D having issues because of his perceptual problems, or was I asking too much of someone to understand the sounds over Zoom? K did much better. Where D couldn’t blend three sounds, K could discern the word sixteenth after I said it a second time. How’s that for a difference? Maybe K doesn’t need this activity at all.

   I recommended the Ted Lasso show on Apple TV to everyone I met, only to discover they knew about it long ago. Thankfully, Damon told me. It is a wonderful show. It’s upbeat without being sappy. The writing is fantastic.

Monday, October 17, 2022

 Monday, October 17, 2022

  I woke when the alarm went off at 5:30 a.m. but got up close to 8 a.m. I fed Elsa immediately, walking her afterward instead of before.

 I got around to gardening, cutting back bougainvillea in the backyard. The gardeners were coming today. They take all the green waste.

 I called Hawaiian Solar to tell them my whole system was down. They checked it on their end and said the system looked fine. The problem was with the Enphase app. I called them and got a person to speak to right away. It was an easy fix.

 I didn't have that kind of luck with Microsoft. A glitch in the program messed up the margins in one of my documents. I had no idea how to fix it. I tried several things, but nothing worked. Microsoft no longer offers in-person customer service. There's a customer service number that only deals with hardware problems.

  I was thinking of how to teach addition and subtraction to kids. "All you need to know is how to add and subtract the numbers up to 10." Then it occurred that wouldn't be true if you had a long enough list of numbers. I created problem 999 twelve times. Yeah, I know. The easiest way to solve that was with multiplication. But I wanted to figure out what happened when I had to carry a number greater than nine over. That didn't follow the principle of needing numbers between 0-9 to add and subtract. I checked my answer on my phone's calculator after I discovered Excel is no longer a free option in the Microsoft Suite- at least not on what I have on my computer. Huh! My answer did not correspond to the answer on the calculator. I called Jean, my Hanai sister. She has a Master's in math. She didn't have time to talk. I told her I would call tomorrow.

   I felt busy all day, so I did more than usual. As they say, "If you want to get something done, give it to a busy person." I feel sluggish when I don't have enough to do. Is this because I'm extraverted, or is this true for most people? Nothing is true for everyone.

  I posted the blurb, advertising my Phonics Discovery System videos on Facebook. The transcript of the 5 Stories showed up at the bottom. It wasn't what I copied from my Word document. I have to call Tommy for help. He sent me a link so I could access the YouTube videos directly. I haven't even opened his email, no less checked what it allowed me to do. I needed help.

 When I told adolescent D's mother he sometimes didn't protest when the sessions ran over, she asked if I thought he was ready to do longer ones. She proposed it to D. His immediate response was no.

     In our session today, I asked him why- not because I thought he would change his mind, but to help him develop critical thinking skills. His conclusion might still be different from mine.

  I asked whether he knew why he said no to the additional time. He said the thought made him uncomfortable. Anything new or unfamiliar makes us uncomfortable. We have to be prepared to override our feelings with judgment. If we're offered an opportunity, the first question is, "Is it dangerous? Can it cause harm?" If chances are good, we should say no. Once we have determined something isn't harmful, the next question is, "Could this be beneficial?" We have to decide whether to do it based on the activity's value versus the discomfort it causes us. Sometimes, I don't want to do something because of some ill-defined feeling. I have to decide whether it's just neurotic or the discomfort warns me of something dangerous. We can't always do what is most comfortable for us. I drilled the six main syllable types and the short and long vowel sounds using the keywords for the rest of the session.

   Elsa and I went to Paulette's today to get more Kangen water. We both love visiting with her. I look forward to a relaxing visit. Elsa is beside herself, looking forward to eating cat food and chasing after a stuffed mouse Paulette throws to her nonstop. Often, Elsa doesn't want to leave. Paulette has to shepherd to the car. 

     I had a scheduled appointment with the M & W sisters. When second-grade M signed on, she was in a moving car with her father, driving to a basketball tournament. No, no, and no. I couldn't even get consistent reception. We rescheduled for Friday.

  I ran into Karen walking Cookie Dough and Maverick on my evening walk. I knew Cookie Dough well. She was a sweet dog. Maverick charged at me, nipping at my hand. He was an undisciplined puppy. He wasn't hers. He belonged to a woman living next door, squatting in the house. She was a negligent dog owner. Karen felt sorry for Maverik. She said it wasn't the dog's fault he wasn't disciplined. Karen took him to the vet and got his shots; she bathes and walks him. Karen and I couldn't walk together because of Maverick's behavior. While his teeth never pierced my skin, he bruised my knuckles.