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

Thursday, March 12, 2026

Tuesday, January 3, 2023

Today was a fully booked day. I had eight tutoring sessions scheduled, plus a chiropractic appointment. I woke up around 2 am and dozed on and off for the rest of the night. I was on the road for my morning walk with Elsa by six-forty-five.

My first session was at nine am with Mama K’s crew. I only had the Twins. Fourth-grade K wasn’t home. He had gone somewhere with his father. I did the same thing with the girls I had been doing. I think there has been some improvement since the beginning of the winter break. I am sure there is with Twin A. She recalls words she couldn’t before. However, we still haven’t made it through a primer-level story.

At ten am, I had second-grade M. We have been working on math since I discovered she couldn’t read three-digit numbers correctly. Yesterday, we reviewed many of the concepts in the second-grade core math standards. She demonstrated competency with ease. Then we hit addition with regrouping. On, boy. Everything we had gone over went right out the window.

Today I worked on two-digit addition problems with regrouping. When M saw the four-digit sum, she couldn’t read the number. She had no idea what to do. When I isolated the number 5,642, she had no problem reading it and representing it with expanded notation (5000+600+40+2). Why did she have a problem representing the number 42 with expanded notation? The best I could make out, she became confused when she saw something in an unfamiliar context. Everything had to be presented discreetly.

I figured she was traumatized because she had to repeat first grade. I said something about it. She said she had to repeat it because of Covid. Her mom told me she had to repeat first grade because of her poor memory. Ow! I dropped the topic. Well, not quite. I asked her if other classmates of hers from first grade had to repeat it too. She revealed she had moved to a new school. She didn’t know if the other kids in her class had also repeated first grade. However, she did realize her best friend was in first grade for the first time. Oh, boy. Something is going on that has nothing to do with memory. This is the third child I see as mentally closed off- literally close-minded—someone who has difficulty taking in something new. As I conceived it with fourth-grade K the other day, he was enclosed in a bubble that didn’t allow any intrusion.

I got around to pouring boiling water on the sprouting sucker limbs on the base of the twenty-foot haole koa I reduced to a stump. While the boiling water trick was successful with the smaller tree, would it also work to kill a much larger tree with its much deeper roots? Maybe, if I keep pouring boiling water on it for a year whenever I see more sprouting. We’ll see, won’t we?

I planned to leave early for my noon chiropractic appointment. Just as I was walking out the door, I got a text from Lisa, saying she’d been there at twelve fifteen rather than twelve. That was okay with me—the chore I had planned before the appointment might take longer anyway.

Yesterday, I learned the cement paint I was considering using wouldn’t last more than eight years in Hawaii. The guy at the paint counter was downright rude when I said I needed something that would last at least forty years. He said you’ll have to go to another store for that. While he was rude, he was also correct.

When I got home, I looked up cement stains. There is a product that stains cement, acid cement stains. I called a company in Utah that carries it. The technical advisor wasn’t thrilled to have to deal with me. He usually dealt with professionals, not little old ladies with zero product knowledge. I learned that the cement had to be ‘thirsty’ to take the stain. Thirsty means it had to absorb water, not allow it to pool on the surface. Paint wouldn’t adhere to cement unless the ‘pores’ were open. I had to deal with a distributor of the product. There were three listed on their site. Lowes and Home Depot were two, and possibly Sherwin Williams. I checked Lowes. Never heard of it. I stopped off at Ace Hardware. They’re always worth a try. They had oil-based stains designed for wood, not cement. When I got home, I checked the site distributors. There isn’t one in Hawaii. Now what?

I arrived at my chiropractic appointment at 12:15 on the nose. The office was locked. I went to sit in this open-air atrium with a lovely breeze blowing through to read my Kindle until Lisa arrived. She texted me at twelve forty-five to say she was in. She wanted to show me the new floor her husband had laid over the weekend. She was prepared to go into great detail when I asked if we couldn’t get started. Lisa does good to great work. I see a difference, but she yaks about her private life in more detail than I do in the updates I write. It’s non-stop chatter about life’s little challenges. I usually like to listen to people’s stories. Something about hers doesn’t sit quite right with me.

I had texted Adolescent D and his mom, saying I might be late. When I got home at 2:30, half an hour late, I signed in immediately. I asked him if he wanted to continue working on the knot in his stomach. The other day he asked me if I was a therapist. I told him no, but people have told me I had a gift for it since I was young. We continued working on his hatred of his hatred of his hatred of the knot. I don’t push to the central issue. Too scary, which promotes resistance instead of curiosity.

At 3:30, I had my session with the J & Iz siblings. I started with third grade J. He continued arguing with me about the value of our work. His objection is he doesn’t want to talk about his anger. I asked him if his anger was any better after our sessions. We only had two so far. I couldn’t do the work until the second session. J acknowledged yes; it was a bit better. I asked if anything else had worked. No, but that made no difference. He wasn’t ‘better,’ which means perfect. I compared learning this skill with learning to surf. After the first three lessons, would you argue they didn’t work because you weren’t as good as your dad, who’s a wonderful surfer with years of experience? He seemed to calm. I was yelling- not so much at him as to him to get him to hear me. He said very calmly. Don’t yell at me. There was no anger. Wow! I stopped yelling. He was in the right and had the right. Delightful!

I only worked with first-grade Iz for fifteen minutes. I had her read another passage on a high second-grade level. She was a piece of cake. I called her mom afterward to explain I just did fifteen minutes with her daughter. She didn’t need more than that. Mom told me she had her read something to her before the class. This was the first chance she had to listen to her read. She was impressed with the improvement. She could see that she no longer relied on memory exclusively. She could figure things out.

I asked mom to tell the teachers about my method. When we spoke, she said something about saying something to both children’s teachers. I called her back. I advised her against saying anything to fourth-grade J’s teacher. I’m working with him specifically on his anger issue. Mom had taken him to a certified child psychologist to no effect. I advised mom against telling his teacher about me. I am not licensed in anything to do with psychology. I’m just good at what I do. If she told the school she was taking her son to an unlicensed practitioner, we’d have child protective services down our necks. I want her to tell people about my teaching methods, not my healing ones. Those we’ll keep under wrap.

I had a 4:30 with ninth-grade K. His mom texted me; he didn’t want to do it. I’m ready to throw in the towel. He needs more than I can give him or something other than I can give him. I’ve seen evidence that he has the necessary basic intelligence. He is not a deep thinker about anything. He is one of the shallowest people I’ve ever dealt with, and that’s saying a lot. I have worked with the cognitively impaired, the autistic, and one person with schizophrenia. K is in a class by himself. Is he just locked in, or does he lack the basic capacity to do better work? Everything must be pulled out of him. No wonder he hates working with me. Maybe someone who has a structured program he can follow would be better for him.

Monday, January 2, 2023

I slept through most of the night. I woke up before my 5:30 alarm went off, did some in-bed exercises, and got out of bed at 7:30. I assumed I dozed off. Elsa and I did a shorter-than-usual morning walk. I didn’t want her to wait so long to be fed; it was already late for her.

I did the morning work of editing and posting last year’s entry in the public blog. While working on it, M & W’s father called. Yesterday, he asked if we could skip today. Now, he asked if we could do it today. He thought her school started tomorrow. The Hawaii Public School System’s teachers start tomorrow; the students begin on Wednesday. We schedule M for 10 am.

He asked if I was planning to see sixth-grade W. I thought she was doing fine. I was surprised she had a B+ in English on her report card when she had As in every other subject. I asked him about it. He said she had been getting Cs most of the semester. I asked her if she needed help with anything. She never did. I told him to tell me if he sees she needs help so I can get in there and take care of it.

I had a 9 am appointment with Mama K’s crew. I started with third-grade Twin E. She is behind Twin A in her reading development. When I started with them, it was the other way around. I anticipated E would move ahead, leaving A in the dust. No one is moving ahead so rapidly to leave anyone in the dust.

I have been emphasizing automatic recall with E. I started using a passage from my updates. Neither girl could read what I wrote. I was sharing nothing of myself with them. The other day, I couldn’t find something in a timely way and used passages from Barnell Loft’s sixth-grade text to do a sight-word search. I was surprised to discover a wider selection of sight words embedded there. I started with the same passage I had last time. E labored through it even though she was faster than when we started.

Getting Twin E to understand that we use two systems for reading so she would learn to use the one she was weak in was difficult. Both girls are taking surfing lessons. I used that as an analogy. You use one set of skills to paddle out to the wave and another set to ride it in. You don’t use the paddling skills when you are riding the wave, and you don’t use the riding skills when you’re paddling out to the wave. You get the point. Automatic recall and decoding skills have to be separately learned and practiced. The overuse or misuse of one versus the other causes many problems in reading.

My next ‘victim’ was third-grade Twin A. I used the same material with her as I had with E. I just started doing this with her in our last session. She zoomed through using automatic recall. She went through faster than Twin E and recalled more words. I then had her reread the primer passage from the testing materials. She read two paragraphs of that with reasonably good speed. She recalled words she had seen from our last reading. She recalled words she saw in the first sentence when she encountered them later in the passage. Yes, that’s a significant accomplishment for her. She sometimes guessed a word with zero relationship to the letters in the word using context clues. I wondered how much of that adaptation she had made to compensate for her poor reading skills and how much because a teacher, following the Reading Recovery method, taught her to do that. I did some decoding with her.

She drew a blank when I asked her to identify the vowel in the word. When I asked her to name the vowel letters, she started with the letter O. I told her to name them in order. She had no difficulty. Interesting. Why did she choose not to use that skill if she had it? After I wrote the vowel letters she had dictated, she had no trouble identifying the vowel letter in the word. I had to give her the keyword for that vowel sound. Then, she blended the sounds smoothly. When it came to words with consonant blends, she often dropped one as she combined them with a new sound. Those consonant blends. I understand why teachers want to teach them as single sounds. Teaching them that way works for some kids and causes problems for others.

I had fourth-grade K last. I spoke to his older brother the other day. He told me he would argue with you if you said anything to K that contradicted his thoughts. He is not open to learning anything new. I hadn’t thought about him in those terms. I wasn’t sure why he had so much trouble learning something new. I see him as a bright child. From the conversation, I thought it might be a problem with discomfort with confusion.

Every time we hear or see something we have never heard or seen, our brains search for the familiar to help make sense of it. Our heads spin. They continue spinning if we don’t find a familiar association. If we can’t, we can have one of two reactions. We can respond with anticipation, “I’m going to learn something new!!” or with confusion, “Something is wrong with me or the situation!” Anticipation feels good; confusion feels bad. We do whatever we can to avoid the nasty feeling. From what K’s brother told me, K responds with confusion and blocks all incoming information.

My first question to K was, “Does your head spin when you hear something you never heard before?” His answer was clear, “No!” Interesting. I would be surprised if that weren’t his reaction. I considered that he was so defended that he could block that feeling immediately.

I opened up the whiteboard on Zoom. I wrote a K on one side and a B for my name on the other. “ When I teach you something, I have to reach out to you,” and drew an arrow from the B to the K. “When you don’t understand what I taught, I try to figure out why you might be confused and try again,” and drew a longer arrow. I did that two more times. Then I said, “While you will do what I tell you to do, you don’t try to understand what I’m saying.” No arrows are coming from you to me. He agreed with that.

At the end of the session, he agreed that he didn’t mentally reach out and try to understand what the other person was saying. I should say here I do not think K is cognitively challenged. I think he is a bright child. Even very bright people can be closed-minded; he is quite literally closed-minded and makes no effort to understand what someone is saying. He conceded that he didn’t like this in himself. I always ask if someone wants to change. Children often understand that question to include, “If you do, then why don’t you?” But that is not what I am saying. I know he doesn’t have a clue how to change. I’m not sure I have a clue how to help him change. But I know that change is impossible if he isn’t on board.

At 10 am, I had second-grade M. I hadn’t met with her since Friday. She was going back to school on Wednesday. I reviewed the material we covered. She was good with counting by 10s and 100s, identifying the odd and even numbers, and expanded notation. Then, I reviewed addition and subtraction with regrouping. She was right back to square one. Given a two-digit problem, she drew a vertical line between the 10s and 1s columns. Then, she started adding the tens column before the ones. That works well when doing math in your head but not when working on paper. She was confused about which way to regroup in the addition problem. She didn’t have the concept.

While fully engaged when tutoring, I had little energy for anything else, including talking to friends. I took a deep two-hour nap after completing a short walk to get my numbers up. I am somewhat concerned about my tiredness and my need for sleep. However, if I am finally processing the grief over my father’s death, that would explain a lot. This is the first time in sixty-seven years that I miss him.

I had a session with Adolescent D in the afternoon. D has serious auditory processing problems. In our last session, I asked him if he could remember something his mother asked him to do without repeating it to himself out loud. No. Could he remember the lyrics to a song? Yes. But when I explored it today, he only remembered the repeated phrases. He didn’t know all the words from any song- back to the drawing board.

I asked him where in his brain he remembered the words. He said right under the fontanel. From my observation, the best spot for recalling words is a little deeper in the brain. I showed him how to locate that spot. I took two pens; I placed the point of one in the area of the fontanel and the other at the temple. The best spot is where these two pens would meet if I pushed them into my head. I asked him if he could picture a candle burning at that spot. He could. I asked him to hear my voice in his head. He could. He said it felt weird. That’s good. It means it is something other than what he usually does. I asked him to recall something I had said. He could do that. When I asked him to recall the same words a bit later, he couldn’t. I asked him how he felt about my pushing to solve the problem of his auditory processing. He said he felt good about it. I believe in the mind’s plasticity, especially in a young person. It’s worth a try.

We switched to another activity. D chose reading. I asked him to say and write each letter in each word before he read the first sentence. He then read the words. I heard a difference.

Then I recalled the other day, he said he didn’t follow the decoding procedures I asked him to follow because it felt terrible. Doing it was a reminder that he had a problem with reading.

I did an EFT tapping series: "Even though I can’t read well, I love and comfort myself. Then, “I love and forgive myself.” None of it had meaning for him or produced greater relaxation. But I felt a difference. I could feel the knot in his stomach. He confirmed my observation. Yes, he hated that feeling in the pit of his stomach. I led him through a release, “I release anything negative about my hatred for this feeling and keep anything positive or anything I still need.” This produced a big change. He felt greater relaxation.

I went for another brief walk to get my step count up to 6,000 and then sat down to work on this update. I have so little time to get things done these days. Sleeping takes up most of my time. I hope this isn’t forever.

Sunday, January 1, 2023

I woke this morning almost doubled over in grief. Everything hurt. I finally did a release. I released everything negative of my hate for this pain and kept everything positive or anything I still needed. This works like a charm almost every time. I have no idea why I don’t use it more. The grief didn’t go away, just the overlay of suffering from hating the feeling. “What we resist persists.”

Something unexpected followed. I grieved the death of my father for the first time. The man died on March 26, 1956, when I was fifteen. I couldn’t afford the luxury of grief at the time. I had to deal with being alone with my mother without his protection and support. I had to deal with my terror. (Note: my mother never abused me physically. She just delivered endless criticisms and put-downs with the sharpness of a cattle prod.) Sitting with this grief calmed my mind, which had been getting a little out of hand, racing ahead with uncomfortable thoughts as I dealt with real or imagined awkward social situations.

I made it to church just in time. I parked in the library parking lot as I always do. I checked the wall to see what happened with the graffiti I saw last week, “Kill all white men!” Since it was the public library’s parking lot, I couldn’t imagine they wouldn’t have dealt with this. They had scrubbed all the graffiti, particularly the one declaring war on white men.

I always sit on the south lanai for mass. I prefer the outdoor setting because the church is painfully air-conditioned, and the open air reduces the risks of viral infections. The greeters told me that the chairs were all on the north lanai; we were all to sit there and not on the south lanai. It’s dark and cold there. They set up benches on the south lanai instead of the folding chairs. I have no idea why they chose the arrangement. They weren’t close enough to each other for conversation. I had no idea what they had in mind. I chose a chair facing the altar. The sun bore down on me. A gentleman sitting on the bench in the shade offered me his seat. I think he was an usher. I took it.

After the first reading, an elderly woman was wheeled onto the lanai. She comes to mass every week. She is always late; I’m sure through no fault of her own. Today, I was sitting closer to her than I usually do. She didn’t have a bulletin or handout with the day’s songs and readings. I offered her mine and got another set for myself.

I got hot from the sun beating down on me and moved further under the overhang. I asked the woman exposed to the sun if she preferred the shade. Yes. I pushed her right up to the glass doors lining the sides of the church.

Then I saw her struggling to get something out of a bag hanging over the handles of her wheelchair. I offered to help her with that.

During a part of the mass, I finally released my hatred for the pain I felt from grief. I experienced some peace. I heard someone say, “Excuse me.” There was the little old lady right in front of me. Did I have an envelope for her to put her check-in? No, I didn’t, but I would take care of it after mass.

Right after mass, I headed for the sanctuary. I had put a copy of Mike’s doctoral thesis on Simone Weil in one of the drawers as a gift for Sandor. He hadn’t texted me to say he’d gotten it. I wondered what the mix-up was.

When I checked the drawer, the book was gone. Had someone else taken the book? It was no big deal; I would order another one for Sandor if someone wanted Mike’s thesis that badly.

While there, I asked TJ for an envelope for Claire’s check. TJ looked for one but told me it was unnecessary when handing in checks. They would record the donation. I will tell Claire that next week.

Those chores taken care of, I texted Judy to see where she was. I had asked Judy and Paulette to accompany me to Mike’s gravesite to help me pick a color for the cement wedges the gravestones would rest on. They were very helpful. I had been thinking of a brown color, close to the gravestones. They saw base platforms that the cement wedges and the gravestones would rest on and thought a color closer to that dark gray would be better. I agreed.

Then I went to Long’s to buy more Hersey’s milk chocolate nuggets with whole almonds. I thought they would be on sale. That didn’t work out. I’m not quite sure why. I downloaded the coupon from the email.

Then I went to Lowe’s to pick up paint for the cement pillows supporting our gravestones.. I decided to do all the steps recommended in the Valspar brochure with the color samples. I picked up a prep solution and a semi-transparent paint. When I went to the desk to get the paint mixed, the guy said, “You know this will require two applications.” Yeah, it said so. He said it meant a second application with a different color paint. Then he said the paint job would only last eight years. I said I needed it to last forty. He said, “You need to go to a different store for that,” sarcastically. I figured it was more like a different planet. With a little more exploration, I discovered a stain for cement comparable to a wood stain. It lasts a lifetime.

My last stop was at Office Max to get two copies of a will printed, one for me and one for Damon to put in the safe. I bought him to store all the legal will documents from his mother and me. A sign on the desk announced. “Only open from 8 am -4 pm on Mondays-Fridays due to staffing shortages.” It hadn’t been a very successful day.

On my way home, I called my Hanai sister Jean to wish her a Happy New Year. She had her new hearing aids. Her hearing is worse now than it was before.

When I got home, I napped for a good two hours. I was exhausted. I got up and Googled a few questions. One- how do people who believe in reincarnation explain the enormous increase in the human population? Lo and behold, they do have an explanation. People can have been animals in their last lifetime. There’s plenty to draw from.

I continued watching Rumspringa on Netflix. I found it mildly annoying. I find myself easily irritated these days. Fortunately, that isn’t showing up in my tutoring sessions. If it did, I would have to stop doing them. That would not be good for me or my students.

Saturday, December 31, 2022

Damon called just as I woke up. I went out for one of my short walks while we talked. I try to walk whenever I’m on the phone. That’s how I get my steps in.

My sister texted me that she had to put down her beloved cat, James. He was one of those cats that makes an excellent companion. He slept pressed up against her back. He sat on her lap at night as she watched T.V.

Elsa has only recently accepted me as a loving companion. I can’t imagine losing her now. My heart went out to Dorothy.

I did almost nothing all day. I was dealing with grief. It physically hurt. I wondered if I was just ill. If so, with what? I wasn’t running a temperature. However, I had that weird feeling you get under your skin while running a fever.

When I walk these days, I move through my toes. I push off from the tips after rolling through all the joints. Besides being good for my feet and legs, I cover ground more quickly.

I remember Gokhale saying the tribes she observed took small steps. If they needed to move faster, they increased the number of steps they took, not the width of their stride. However, the distance between the footfall of the first step and the next is much greater if you push through on your toes than if you don’t. If you walk with flat feet, putting down the whole sole at once, you need to increase your stride to gain distance.

I signed into Zoom for my appointment with Mama K’s crew. They didn’t sign on. I called Mama K and then their older sister. They finally got back to me and asked me to cancel. I was happy not to have any sessions. I didn’t want any contact with another human being. I was dealing with grief again. It comes in waves.

I worked on the updates and cleaned up poop from the lanai rug. I figured Elsa had done her business there at some point. She hadn’t pooped enough on our walks.

The firecrackers started right after dark. Elsa asked to be picked up and clung to me briefly. Then she lay on the floor at my feet and went to sleep. She figured out these loud noises were no threat to her.

I started to watch White Noise on Netflix. I love Adam Driver. He projects a depth of character, which is my type of person. I checked out the plot on Wiki. I don’t think so. I do not need additional stress in my life.

I went to bed at my usual time, around 10 pm. New Year’s Eve held no meaning for me. It hasn’t since my dad died. I never had a New Year’s Eve date except for this one year when I had two offers. However, my mom had bought tickets for a Broadway play for me and my sister. I realized I would prefer to spend the time with someone I knew well. I went to the play Ready When You Are J.B. with Dorothy. I don’t remember the play. I do remember being on the Long Island Railroad, heading home at midnight. At midnight, I saw people running out into the street from the train window. Dorothy was asleep. No one in the car said a word. I was happy to be where I was.

At midnight, the sounds and smells of the firecrackers invaded my bedroom, and I woke up. I watch some of the displays from my bed. Elsa slept through the whole thing.

Friday, December 30, 2022

I woke up at 5 before my alarm went off and started my in-bed exercises. I got up at 7 am without having completed all of them. I was in a hurry because I had an 8 am appointment with ninth-grade K. I expected him to miss the session. What adolescent gets up by 8 am when they don’t have to?

Surprise! He signed up on time. I asked him if he knew what character development was. I had to pull it out of him. After a minute’s thought, the first thing he said was, “I don’t know.“ I asked him if he envisioned something. Yes, I pulled this out of him. He had a vision of the story of a girl whose mother died, and she had to step in as the caretaker of her younger siblings. What was the change in character? He had no idea. He is not a deep thinker.

I talked about character development in relation to him. The school is asking how we can help him to become more independent in his work. I spoke of becoming more self-sufficient as Brian was in Hatchet. K thought he could have done what Brian had done if he had been in that situation. Could he have made a bow and arrow as Brian did? He said yes. I see him as out of touch with reality. I don’t know if this is a lack of experience, immaturity, or a cognitive problem. I work with six-year-olds with more depth.

I asked him if he was a person who tried to solve problems on his own or as others to do it. Whenever he said, “I don’t know,” he asked someone else to do the work. He has to choose: will I ask someone else to do the work, or will I try to do it myself? Being the other extreme, never asking for help is also not good. We need to be balanced. His teachers talked about helping him to become more independent. This is what I was hired to do. This may have been the first time he looked at his behavior critically. If his character developed, he would change from a dependent character to a more independent one.

I had Mama K’s crew right afterward. I started with fourth grade K. I covered all the math standards he hadn’t met. Today, I discussed sequencing in narratives. He listed the things he did in preparation for going to bed in their order of occurrence. I numbered them one through six. Next, I moved the events around so that drying himself preceded showering. “I dried myself after showering.” He found the conflict in the sequence of presentation versus the temporal order of occurrence confusing. Why would you do such a thing?

I list the birth order of the children in his family by the order of occurrence. Then I wrote, “Fourth grade K was born before the twins and after his two older siblings.” He didn’t understand why I would do that. I was emphasizing information about fourth-grade K. He said he understood. We’ll see.

I continued working on automatic recall with Twin E. I used sixth-grade material today, underlining the words I wanted her to recall. Wow! There had been an improvement since we started. The difference was so great that I decided to do the same thing with Twin A. She could name the words I underlined, but Twin E was slower. I will have to continue with this with both of them. They both have serious memory problems.

At nine-thirty, I had second-grade M. I couldn’t remember if I had done addition with regrouping with her or if I was confusing her with fourth-grade K. (I checked my notes. I had worked on it with her. She can do an exercise one minute, which looks completely unfamiliar two days later.

Memory was a problem for her in first grade. The school and her parents chose to retain her because of it.

After getting some steps in on a short walk, I went down for a nap. I woke up remembering I had agreed to meet with Jana at noon. It was ten after. I hadn’t even set the alarm. I called her instead of Zooming with her. Jana is interested in my teaching methods. I talked about the work I did with Adolescent D on his discomfort around his disability. Thinking about it induces feelings of shame. I talked about my theory of the function of shame.

Shame warns us of social dangers, as pain warns us of physical injury. Humans are social animals. Our brains were developed when we were only a few members of our species wandering the savanna in search of food and shelter. Our groups were still small, and survival was the goal. When survival is the goal, alignment of purpose and behavior is vital. Conformity is expected of everyone. When someone can’t or won’t conform, the options are limited: exile or death. Exile pretty much equaled death. If children couldn’t conform, they had to be left to die. Accommodating people with disabilities is a luxury of abundance- and it is a luxury. We are so lucky to have enough to share our wealth with others.

Children who cannot learn at the same rate as their classmates feel the sting of shame. I realized that shame reminds us that our lives might be at stake. I have a protocol for relieving that fear with most children. I point to the front of their heads, the prefrontal lobe, and say, “I’m going to ask you a silly question. (Hopefully, it’s silly.) Do you think anyone will kill you if you never learn to read?” So far, so good; all children have smiled at the ridiculousness of that question. Then I tell them, “See a little you, sitting in your head (right under the fontanelle). Ensure ‘the little you’ faces the back of your head. Now, tell every cell in your brain back there that no one is going to kill you even if you never learn to read.” I have been doing this exercise with children for over twenty years. So far, without fail, children report feeling more relaxed after doing it. The alertness to societal expectations is built in. It is so far from what our lives are now; it is hard to imagine that such thoughts take up space in our minds. But they do, not in our conscious minds, but in our unconscious minds.

This concern for difference slipped out of our conscious minds at least 3, 000 years ago. Why? Because two religions I know of, there may be many more, addressed this anxiety big time, Buddhism 2,500 years ago and Christianity 2000 years ago. Other religions address threats from sources from outside the tribe. The two more recent religions address threats inside the tribe caused by personal differences. These religions offer more than just that. But, interestingly, the salvific religions developed around the same time. In human history, five hundred years is a mere blip.

I spent most of the afternoon printing out the receipts from my charitable contributions. I did it all through Charity Navigator. I was swayed by their ratings to not give to some of the charities I had in the past. Instead, I looked for a comparable charity that had a better rating. Now, I worry if those ratings are bought and paid for.

We live in an uncertain world. I don’t like it.

I told Judy about the graffiti I saw in the library parking lot last week when I went to church. “Kill all white men.” Judy said I should call the police. They would take care of it. Being from NYC, that never occurred to me. Graffiti is everywhere. Of course, this was one promoting violence. I planned to check it when I went to church the following Sunday. However, I thought someone from the library must have taken care of it.

Judy also told me a story of her sister-in-law’s encounter with some evangelicals. They tried to convert her. When she said she was Jewish, things turned ugly. A Mexican man came up to protect her. He told her to leave. She didn’t want to because she was afraid of what the police would do to him.

Apparently, she had managed to press a button on her phone that called the police. They could hear what was going on and sent a patrol car. The Evangelicals ran away when they heard the sirens. The rise in anti-Semitism is alarming. I am so glad Mike is dead, and he doesn’t have to even hear what has been happening in our country and the world.

Thursday, December 29, 2022

I slept well last night. I set my alarm for 6 am, planning to get up earlier than usual because we had driveway yoga at 7. Yvette canceled because she hadn't slept well. I got the message at 6:30 when Elsa and I were in the middle of our walk.

I had an overwhelming schedule: eight students in one day, plus a therapy session with Shelly. Oh, boy. One after another, I had cancelations. Thinking I had double-booked at 10 am, I canceled the session with Mama K's crew. I signed in at 9:30 for my session with second-grade M. Her father texted to apologize for not contacting me sooner. Her maternal grandfather had taken both girls to visit cousins on the other side of the island. Ah! Fantastic.

My appointment with Shelly was at 11, not 10 am. That gave me more time. I told her what I had heard about trauma being passed on through epigenetics. My mother's traumas were the most prominent; she suffered many profound losses before my birth. My gene selector had plenty to choose from. I told Shelly for the first time that my mother wasn't just endlessly critical, which she was in spades; she also delivered her criticisms with sharp cries. When I demonstrated her outburst, everyone who heard it jumped. It was a cattle-prod-driven life.

Adolescent D and I have been working on him coming to terms with having a disability. He may have to make peace with his condition without hating himself. I teach him he will be fine if he doesn't hide it. While it is true it's society's job to make things more accessible for the disabled; it is also the job of the disabled to make people comfortable with their condition. It's unfortunate, but that's the way it is.

We also worked on auditory recall. D can't hear his mother's voice in his head as he remembers her instructions. He still must orally repeat them to himself. I asked him if he could hear the words of a song in his head. Yes, on the left side. What!!!!??? This means he has auditory working memory. Why can't he use it to remember the human-speaking voice? Trauma. Maybe not his. Maybe something epigenetic. His mother told me his dad was abandoned as a child. When he was a teenager? I can't remember. How to work on epigenetic trauma without inducing trauma?. D is now fifteen years old. That makes it more difficult, not less. I can tell a story to a young child and evoke those emotions and resolve them. I can't do that so easily with a teenager.

Ninth-grade K didn't sign on in time. I called his mom. She texted that they were helping move a friend. It's rude not to tell me beforehand, but I don't demand it. I'm at home for the most part. It makes little difference to me. An apology would be good. I sense contempt from K's mother. It may be toward me, a hireling. It may be toward herself for not having done something much sooner about her son. I did confront her on the seriousness of the problem. She agreed. I suspect she is overly protective of him. I can understand her sentiment. Unfortunately, this may not be the best thing to help prepare him for his adult life.

Wednesday, December 28, 2022

I woke up in the middle of the night and couldn't fall back asleep. I had a night like that a while ago. I just meditated. Meditation provides the same mental rest as sleep. I must have dozed on and off, but I never fell into a deep sleep.

I worked with Mama K's crew and second grade M every day I could over the winter break because they were way behind. I didn't get feedback from second-grade M's teacher on what she needed help with in math. I used the published Hawaiian Common Core standards for second grade. We worked on addition with regrouping. She had trouble with this. I started working with her on math when I discovered she couldn't read a three-digit number. She mastered that. When she saw a four-digit answer to an addition problem, she had no idea how to read it. I reviewed how to read multi-digit numbers.

I had Mama K's crew right afterward. Fourth grade K did much better with addition and subtraction with regrouping. I met with both Twin A & E and continued doing what I had been doing.

I started trimming my out-of-control shrubs along the edge of the driveway. I got up on a step ladder to get to the top branches. The part of the branches just above the edge of the fence was within my reach. I grabbed two-to-three-foot branches as they fell and lay them on the driveway. The gardener will collect them with the remaining green waste when he comes later this month.

Adolescent D revealed that he hates to use my procedure, starting with the vowel when decoding a word, because it makes him feel stupid. He has perceptional problems. He is not the only person I've worked with who indulges in self-hatred in response to personal issues. We've addressed his problem of self-hatred and shame before. It prevents him from working on his problems. Thinking about his inadequacies is so painful.

For the second year, I used Charity Navigator for my end-year giving. Using the site influences which charities I gave to. When I found one I usually contributed to with a below 95 percent rating, I looked for another that served a similar function. After donating to nine or ten, my credit card was denied. I assume the fraud detection system kicked in. I will have to call tomorrow if they don't call me. The credit company called the other day to check for possible fraud after I had donated to my first round of ten charities. I leave charitable giving to the end of the year, except for the one or two charities I give to monthly. That way, I don't drive myself nuts wondering what I have and have not given. The appeals are endless.

Tuesday, December 27, 2022

I felt more withdrawn. Was it a good sign or a bad one? It would be good if it was a sign that I felt less afraid. I felt fear all my childhood. Not only was my mother overly critical, constantly critical, and never affirming, but she delivered her criticism explosively, verbally, and emotionally. I demonstrated her behavior in a therapy group. Everyone jumped. I once made the sound she made when a youngster tried to grab my handbag. He ran for his life. I was subjected to those outbursts many times a day. My sister described her as excitable. She didn't respond as I did or as anyone else did. For me, her attacks felt like body shocks. As Mike said, I looked like I had been tortured.

Second-grade M canceled again this morning. She plays basketball with her age group regularly. Today, she was asked to play with the older group, too. They must have been down a player. I assume they asked her because she was good enough to join them.

When I met with Mama K's crew, I started with Twin E. I continued working on the automatic recall of familiar words. I continued working with the pre-primer material with Twin A. Progress is slow with both these girls.

I canceled my noon appointment with the chiropractor. She asked if I was busy. I said yes, but that was not the case. I was overwhelmed with sadness today, flattened by grief. The idea of being roughly handled didn't appeal.

I got out and spayed my weeds with one gallon of 30% vinegar and one with 5% gallon. I covered the front yard and the strip along the front fence.

When I met with adolescent D, we worked on embedding the visual information of letters more deeply in his brain. The visual sensations of letters don't make a deep impression on his sensory system. I don't know if this is because of a problem with his perceptual processing system versus his attention system.

We worked on his handwriting problems. He 'wrote' letters on his desk with his finger, following what I did on the screen. When he did it alone, he rushed through it, barely making contact with the desk. The idea is to use enough energy to make an impression on the nervous system. I have described how he perceives letters and phonemes as a boat skimming the water's surface, sometimes bouncing in the air as it hits a wave.

When I switched to cursive writing, that was the most effective. D said it felt strange. Often, it is a good indication something unfamiliar is going on in the brain.

I have noticed fewer stray hairs. For a while there, I saw stray hairs all the time. I was losing hair at an alarming rate. It was probably because of the stress of the hip replacement surgery and the five extracted teeth. I could feel my hair was thinner. Randee, my hairdresser, recommended I take Biotin. I started; the hair loss stopped. I don't know if my lost hair will grow back, but at least I'm not losing more.

I finally got a good description of a scene from Hatchet from ninth grade K. I learned two things from him. He has difficulty sitting still. He has to move. He gets easily bored and has to be warned when there is a change in topic. This boy is not a deep thinker. While he could describe the scene where Brian retrieved the survival kit from the plane, he couldn't tell me what psychological characteristics Brian needed to survive in that environment. The author mentions patience over and over. This all goes over K's head.

I started watching Treason on Netflix. That was overly optimistic. I don't like it when the main characters are in danger; it causes me too much stress.

Monday, December 26, 2022

I have been listening to YouTube Talks on Buddhism. I started with talks by Stephen Batchelor, whose books I love. YouTube was so kind as to let me know about other speakers on the subject. I listened to a talk that came out of the Harvard Divinity School. The speaker made several interesting points. He says Buddhism is less concerned with social justice than the Abrahamic religions. I could argue that it is not the core issue in Christianity. There are Christians who would agree with me. The speaker did not argue against the importance of social justice; he just said it wasn't a central concern of Buddhism. The focus is elsewhere.

He argued the central issue of Buddhism is dukkha, the suffering caused by birth, illness, old age, and death. However, the speaker put a slightly different spin on the idea of dukkha. Dissatisfaction with anything is the cause of dukkha. Anything can include the way your steak turned out. That's how I've heard it described by S.N. Goenka. He repeatedly says that we all have to deal with things happening we don't want and not getting what we want. Disappointment.

Neuroscientists now back the idea that dissatisfaction is the default mode of the human mind. If everything is going well, who cares. If something is going badly, that grabs our attention. Scientists point to primitive man's survival needs when our brains were formed. There was nothing to report if we didn't run into a tiger or a snake. If we had a narrow escape, that was a story worth discussing. If someone died in the encounter, it was worth long cautionary lectures, reminding one and all what not to do. Those talks and experiences should be burned into our brains and rehearsed regularly so we don't fall into a similar trap.

If dukkha is dissatisfaction, the opposite is gratitude. In gratitude, we remember all the moments that went right and the outcomes in our favor that made us happy. We have to choose to remember them. They don't come to us naturally.

He talked about how other institutions address the universal human sense of lack. Christianity says the problem is sin. Modern America says it's a lack of money, fame, or power. Every social institution addresses this aspect of the human condition.

Second grade M's father canceled her tutoring session because she had a basketball tournament at 9 am. I had Mama K's crew.

I continued working on the math objectives with fourth-grade K. His iReady Math evaluation showed he was still on a first-grade level with math operations. We did some work on addition and subtraction with regrouping. I can understand why he tests at a first-grade level. He cannot consistently add or subtract correctly, even without regrouping. He follows directions but does not see the pattern involved. He says he finds learning in class confusing. I believe that. K is a bright child. This is an interesting puzzle to be solved.

K did a good job rounding numbers. I wrote a three-digit number and asked him to round to the nearest 100 and then the nearest 10. However, he was back to square one regarding addition and subtraction with regrouping. He 'borrowed' from the number in the tens column when adding two two-digit numbers. Oh, dear. I had trouble figuring out how to get the concept through to him. He didn't understand it mathematically. I created a story.

His mom is at a store and wants to buy something that costs $6. She has two dollars. She looks at you and asks for four more. You have it and give it to her. When adding, you are standing south of her. In subtraction, your mom has $5 on her and wants to buy something that costs $8. You are standing west of her. All you have on you is a ten-dollar bill. That's all you can ever give her.

Next, I had Twin E. I continued working on automatic recall. I used my updates file for this exercise. She couldn't read it. I had no worries about revealing anything. I pointed to those words I thought she might be familiar enough to recall automatically. She is still struggling on a pre-primer level.

While I have seen progress in her ability to recall automatically, it is hard to convince her not to try to decode a word when she's unsure. Twin E surfs. I pointed out that she uses different skills and muscles when paddling out to the wave than when she rides the wave in. Both are necessary skills if she is going to surf. She has to concentrate on each one separately. She can't work on standing on the board when she is paddling out. While she might do some paddling to catch the wave in, she won't continue that once she's caught the wave. Then, she has to concentrate on a different skill.

The skill involved in conscious decoding differs from that in automatic recall. The two skills involve different parts of the brain, just as paddling out involves other parts of the body than riding the wave. E struggled but did reasonably well.

I worked with graded QRI testing material with Twin A. She still struggles on a pre-primer level.

Sunday, December 25, 2022

It was a day of almost nothing. I had no clients today, only a few phone calls, although I got several texts wishing me Merry Christmas. I worked on updates. I was eleven days behind. I fell behind when guests were visiting. These blog entries take up a stunning amount of time- so does procrastination. Procrastination is also exhausting, requiring a lot of long naps, which also eats up time.

I went to the 9 am mass this morning, as I usually do. The Hulu ministry was dressed in red and did a couple of dances. When I returned to my car in the library parking lot, I saw graffiti saying, "Kill all white men." Merry Christmas. In Hawaii, the resentment toward whites comes from the Polynesian community. White imperialism took its toll here. It was still a shock to see the graffiti. Our community is somewhat insulated from the tensions on the mainland. We have all the factions represented; it's not as in your face as on the mainland. I always knew it could come here. Is this the first sign of things to come? It will be interesting to see if the sign is still up next Sunday.

My friend Carol Zim called. She had visited me over Thanksgiving. We updated each other on our holiday plans. I told her how I was progressing on finishing off the leftovers from their visit.

Despite her dysfunctional hearing aid, Jean called to wish me Merry Christmas. A phone call came through for her while we were on the phone. I figured it was Damon. I told her to tell him to call me afterward. I had tried to reach him earlier to no avail. I had the same problem last year. I called Damon, Cylin, and August, each on their own phone. No one answered. I emailed Damon's good friend, Eddie, asking him to check on the family. I was concerned they were all right. Damon called back almost immediately. Eddie was at their house. The family was taking a nophoncaction. But this year, it was a different story. The family had just returned from a long hike, their holiday tradition. They had no reception.

Damon had called his mom. He told me she would call me back in a few minutes. While on the phone with Damon, a call came through for him. It was his friend Eddie, whom I had texted, telling Damon to call me. I love talking to this boy, this fifty-year-old boy.

Scott made dinner. He had proposed it a few days ago. I had planned to be alone for Christmas. It would have been an interesting challenge. Instead, I had a delicious dinner with Yvette and Scott.

I asked Scott to get the prepared stuffed turkey from Costco my guests and I had for Thanksgiving. It was delicious. I also asked for asparagus and local purple sweet potatoes. Scott went out this afternoon to do the shopping. He texted me the shelves were bare. The prepared turkey was gone, and he couldn't find Hawaiian sweet potatoes. He returned with a large salmon steak, regular sweet potatoes, and fresh asparagus.

He boiled the sweet potatoes and mashed them. When I saw the asparagus come out of the oven, I was ready to be disappointed. They looked shrunk and stringy, but they were delicious. He said he had the same reaction when he saw them. He had put them in the oven without oil or butter, just a bit of salt and pepper. They were amazing.

Before we sat down to eat, Yvette took a plate of food to Josh. He does not enjoy social gatherings. Respect for his needs was one of his Christmas presents. I had a wonderful time with Scott and Yvette. There was laughter.

I heard a talk on the epigenetic impact of trauma. It shows up three generations on. They subjected a rodent to a shock preceded by a smell. That rodent's offspring responded to the smell, although they had never experienced the shock. The reaction was passed on to the next generation as well. Ow! How do any of us survive? I can't imagine a family without trauma in its background.

I have believed that trauma is passed on for a while, but I assumed it was just interpsychically. Now, I learn it can be passed on genetically as well. The interviewer asked why various offspring respond differently. The scientist explained that not everyone received the same genes from a parent. Fortunately, our genetic makeup can also be changed through healing. If not, I would be in deep despair.

Saturday, December 24, 2022

I started my in-bed exercises around 3 am when I woke up. I got up at 7:30. While I got all the exercises done. I must have dozed off in between.

As I started my morning walk, I found a dead rat in the driveway. I left it for someone else to clean up.

I called my Hanai sister, Jean, this morning. She had problems hearing. The doctor had misadjusted her new hearing aid, and she was worse off than before. While it is now possible to buy hearing aids over the counter, it doesn't sound like that will eliminate the prescription hearing aid business. A cousin of mine had one in the 1970s. I suspect his was a much simpler version. They weren't digital then.

Jean and I talked about the amazing weather. The bomb cyclone hit the east coast. The temperature dropped from 57 to 9 degrees in a matter of hours. The east coast was free of snow. However, my sister, who also lives in New Jersey down the road from Jean, said there was black ice.

Jean and John live in a retirement community. Community activities are planned for every night during the holidays. They love living there.

I received a text from an old friend wishing me Happy Christmas Eve this morning. I met Carol in 2004 when I started working at Licking Heights Middle/High School. We've kept in touch ever since. She lives in Ohio in the Cleveland area. The Midwest got hit harder than the East Coast. It was seven degrees there with four feet of snow. Yesterday, there was a fifty-car pile-up on the Turnpike around Sandusky. What were all those people doing on the road? They were warned. I spoke to one friend on Thursday. She said a sixty-degree drop in temperature was predicted for Columbus, plus snow. She made sure she was tucked in for the duration.

I got off the phone with Carol because I had an eighty-thirty appointment with Mama K's crew. They never showed.

I had an appointment with second-grade M. I gave her a four-digit addition problem. When she did a two-digit addition problem the other day, she drew a line between the ten's and one's columns. When doing the four-digit problem, she drew only one line between the hundreds place and the tens. She didn't understand the significance of the line. It was there to help her focus on solving one column at a time. The answer was a four-digit number, which she couldn't read, even though she had been reading four-digit numbers with ease.

My renewal of Elsa's skin ointment was available at the vet. Elsa loves to ride in the car. I told her to come, and she eagerly ran for the car. She sat in my lap, focusing on the bottom of the door, anticipating my opening it. She thought we were going up to visit Auntie P. We go up there to get more Kangen water and visit. Elsa loves visiting Auntie P. She has a cat, cat food, and a stuffed mouse, which Aunite P throws for her the whole time we're there. I love it, too. We sit together, enjoying each other's company. But we weren't going there today.

Elsa, aware that something was wrong, started hyperventilating. She clawed frantically at the door. Concerned she had to go to the bathroom, I pulled the car over. I keep a leash in the car. I put it on her, stopped the car, and opened the door. She leaped out and sniffed the ground. She didn't need to go to the bathroom. She realized we were not going to Auntie P's. She got back in the car and was peaceful for the rest of the trip.

I had to return the Oofos to get replacements. I thought earlier in the day that I would wait until after Christmas. What was I thinking? People would be lined up to return Christmas gifts. Once I dropped Elsa and the medication at home, I headed to UPS. As I assumed, there was no line. I was in and out.

I started watching the new episode of Emily in Paris. Lily Collins is a delight to watch, but the show's a little too silly for me.

Friday, December 23, 2022

I was up at 5:30 when my alarm went off; that was not when I got up. I lay in bed doing my morning exercises and dozing. I was surprised when I finally got out of the house. It was close to 7:30.

I had an 8:30 Zoom appointment with Mama K's crew. She signed in on time this morning. I started with fourth grade K. I tested his recall of rounding, asking him to round one number to the nearest 10 and another to the nearest 100. He did well with both.

Then, I reviewed what we had covered yesterday: addition and subtraction with regrouping. Oh, boy. He reverted to 'borrowing' from the tens to add it to the ones to solve an addition problem. Nothing we had done yesterday stuck. When confronted with 52-45=, I discovered he wanted to subtract the two from the five in the one's column. I showed him 2+8= and 8+2=. Are they the same? Yes. Then I wrote 5-2= and 2-5 equals. Are they the same? Yes. Oh, boy, a fourth-grade boy who doesn't get this. I said, "If your mom wants to buy something that costs five dollars. Does she have enough money?" No! She can't take five dollars from two. How does this boy's mind work? How do I get these concepts through to him and resolve his confusion?

I was beginning to understand why he had trouble learning in class. He could do the work at the moment by just following the directions. But he couldn't retain it. He sees ambiguity or contradictions at some unconscious level. I have to address those issues before he can retain the information. He had no idea what he was confused about. It was up to me, the teacher, to figure it out for him. I love working with kids like that. I get to see the ordinary and straightforward in extraordinary and complex ways. It's one reason I love teaching children who have trouble learning. I learn so much.

Next, I had Twin E. She is the twin with the memory problem. I started her Carpenter #7 story. She struggled with decoding all the words. I decided to concentrate on automatic recall. I only pointed to the words I thought she would know in the story. She could name words like she, it, at, that, was, and very. Getting her to the point where she could recognize very took months, but it happened. Then I asked, "What's your sister's name?" That came up automatically. "That's what it feels like when you remember words automatically. You don't have to think about it. It's as if someone told you the word." I gave her the word there. She did something different. She closed her eyes and focused. She recalled it. It just came up as it should. This would be a game-changer.

Then I had Twin A; she is the better reader. She read the pre-primer story Spring and Fall. She was in third grade and struggling to read at this level. She didn't have problems with comprehension.

I had second-grade M immediately afterward. Yesterday, when asked what 900 was less than 100, she answered 90. Today, I started having her count forwards and backward by 10s up to 100 and by 100s up to 1000. Then, I reviewed subtracting any number by 10 or 100. She did well. We'll see how she holds up in our next session.

At the end of the day, I had a session with Jana, a volunteer tutor with Step Up Tutoring. She asked me to mentor her. She is the only person who has understood the value of the methods I have developed enough to consider them worthwhile pursuing. Other tutors have used them and had success. Jana wants to be a professional tutor in LA. They make a good living.

B stopped by and asked if he could drive my car to his area to unload the cement wedges for the gravestones and power wash them. He brought them back up in his truck with his grandson Elijah and his friend Seth. The two boys unloaded the wedges onto a dolly B had brought up. I stored them under the eve to dry before I painted them.

I tried out my new four-inch chainsaw. I lubricated it first. I cut down a bush branch that blocked my access to the stump left of the twenty-foot haole koa I had cut down and was trying to kill with regular boiling water applications. The chainsaw worked. I could handle it without jeopardizing my life.

Thursday, December 22, 2022

I had to get up by six today because we had driveway yoga at seven. Besides Yvette teaching the class, Scott and I were there and Deb by Facetime from Seattle.

At 8:30, I had my morning session with Mama K's crew. They were on time today. I started with third-grade Twin E. She remembered the names of the vowel letters. She could name all the images representing the short vowels: apple, elephant, igloo, octopus, and umbrella. I had them memorize the pictures rather than the sounds. With Twin E needing more help learning to read than Twin A because of memory problems, I continued reading the Carpenter materials. I had her reread the fifth story. I was looking for some degree of fluency because of familiarity. While she remembered very, a word she had trouble learning, she labored over each word, including is.

On a good note, after I showed her how to use her knowledge to decode the word when, She knew the word ten, could isolate -en, and blend the wh with the -en. When she came across the word again, she said "ten" to help cue herself. Fantastic!!

With Twin A, I also reviewed the vowel names, the pictures for the short vowel sounds, and the phonemic sound represented. I started using different materials with her, including stories from the QRI reading inventory. These stories are used to evaluate the students' reading; they are not considered teaching material, but why not?

The second word in the text was lost. I asked what the vowel letter was in this word. Twin A said, "L?" I wrote the vowel letters on the paper. "Remember, these are the vowel letters. Is L one of them?" No. Which vowel letter is in the word? She got it. I taught her to blend the word starting with the vowel and blending on the sounds after before blending the sounds that come before the vowel sound. She read the whole first passage at a low pre-primer level. We started on the second story at a slightly higher level. These passages are not oriented around phonics. They reflect the philosophy of the Whole Language approach. Students are supposed to use the first and last letter of the word and guess it. Oh, dear. Twin A did that with one word. It was the correct meaning but bore no resemblance to the word.

Fourth-grade K was next. Twin E was supposed to get him. He didn't arrive in a timely way. I had to call Mama K to get him to the meeting. Twin E said, "K, you're the next victim," and walked away.

I asked K if he remembered the addition with regrouping we did yesterday. I set up a two-digit addition problem with regrouping. Nothing. I represented both numbers with expanded notation. Then he got it. Within five minutes, he could do addition by regrouping with four digits. I have no idea why this boy has problems learning in class. It takes me fifteen minutes to teach him a concept. He said he finds the lessons in school confusing.

I had second-grade M immediately after. She is a different story. We worked on adding and subtracting by tens yesterday. We had worked on adding by hundreds; she had no problems with that. Today, I asked her to count down by 100s. "What is 100 less than 900?" Her answer was, "90." Oh, boy. I had her add by 100s and wrote them down in a column going from the bottom up. Then, starting from the top, I wrote 900 again. "What is 100 less than 900?" All she had to do was look at the numbers in the other column. She got it. We'll see if it holds.

Immediately after my session with M, I had a session with Shelly. I told her of my vision of emptiness when I saw myself as hollowed out. It was a lovely, relaxing image rather than one evoking despair. I had some confidence the image wasn't all bad because I arrived at it by confronting pain rather than running away from it. Aside from sharing that image, I sat with grief and heartache.

Four pairs of Oofos were delivered several days ago. They sat around my feet in their unopened plastic bags as I sat in my old-lady chair. I finally opened them and tried them on. They were too small for my feet. At first, I thought the European sizing didn't match the American sizing. I saw it said clearly on the package 6/8, signifying a women's size 8 and a men's size 6. I had wanted a women's size 10 and a men's size 8. I gave the wrong information. The customer care clerk was wonderful and arranged for me to return all four pairs. They didn't have one pair in the color I wanted. I got a refund for that pair and replacements for the other three. Having made a mistake on the ordering last time, I was concerned I had made a mistake again. I called to check. It was a good thing I did; the order was for a women's size 12 and a men's size 10. That would have been too big for me. This mistake was not mine.

I read the directions for my new four-inch chain saw carefully. This is a dangerous instrument. I wanted to err on the side of safety. I did learn to be careful to oil the blade before each use and clean it afterward to preserve the edge.

I had a 4:30 session with ninth-grade K. He was sitting in a car on the phone. He did that regularly in our Wednesday afternoon sessions when he met me in a break between his judo classes. I asked him where he was. He was at home. I asked why he was sitting in the car. "I'm drawing." This is how he answers. The answer is accurate but unrelated to the spirit of the question. Why does he respond in this way? Is he cognitively or psychosocially impaired, or is he just hostile? I grilled him to get the whole story.

He had just returned from a trip around town while his mom delivered Christmas presents. He had been drawing when they arrived. He didn't want to stop and, therefore, didn't get out of the car. The boy drives me nuts!

Wednesday, December 21, 2022

Another busy day. I persuaded some parents to give me more time with their kids over the vacation break. I was waiting for a response when I signed on at 8:30 with Mama K's crew. I called her. She was away; she would be there in ten minutes and sign them in. I worked with fourth-grade K first. We worked on math, the only focus of our current work. When we started with rounding, I discovered he needed help understanding before and after at the most basic level. I presented it in a way that made it clear to him. He learned it quickly and had no further problems. That took half an hour. It took another half an hour to help him understand and master rounding up to the thousands' place. Today, I worked on addition and subtraction with grouping. He assured me that he knew about regrouping. I gave him 24 + 56=. First, he subtracted four from two. Ignoring for a moment that it wasn't correct, he tried to borrow from the tens place to do the addition problem.

When I posted the update from December 21, 2021, I was surprised to read that I wrote about my hammer toe a year ago. I remembered it happening after I had my hip replacement.

I continued to work daily with second-grade M on math. She learns quickly and forgets just as quickly. She looks at the work we did yesterday as if she has never seen it before.

I had Adolescent D. We continue working on reading third-grade material for accuracy and fluency. He seems to ignore the letters in a word. He reads a word and confuses it with another one that shares a few common letters. I write the word he said and compare it to the word on the page. His perception of letters barely skims the surface of his brain. It's like they're not worthy of his attention. I imagine a speed boat skimming over the surface, often bouncing in the air without contact.