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

Saturday, January 3, 2026

Tuesday, July 20, 2021

I had a wonderful night's sleep- no troubling thoughts. Thank God I have some good days.

Running into folks as I walk is always a treat. Each person who says hello or chats with me for a few minutes affirms my existence. It doesn't take much. I don't need a great deal from these loose relationships. However, for me, a more extended relationship requires some system for resolving differences. I can't imagine a situation where some point of difference or conflict does not come up over time. This is what makes the difference between a friendship and a casual relationship. I have met people who argue that you should never have to talk to work something out if you get along with someone. As far as I know, that is only possible if both accept one person as the voice of total authority and the way a senior officer is in the military. I don't like to live that way. I wouldn't want to be in either role.

K worked in a concentrated way on the writing activity. He responded very well to the repetition of the familiar, as do the twins. I had him write his first and last names every day. Initially, this took him a long time. With each repetition, the activity took less time. I introduced the word brown today. He wrote it separately after he had written "the fox jumps over the dog." I didn't have him use a capital T to start the sentence because I was still working on the lower case letters. When he wrote brown, he sounded out the word; then spelled it borown. The good news was we could discuss it, and he happily made the necessary correction.

I continued working on the letters and word families with the Twins. I had Twin E first. Again she raised her eyes to her eyebrows when asked her to see her blanket in her mind. I called her mom, saying I needed her help. In the past, I have written the words on students' foreheads to help them 'see' words in their minds. Doing so requires writing backward. Mom K was going to have to practice.

When I had Twin E, I decided to try BrainManagementSkills with her. She told me her blanket was yellow. When I asked her to 'see' the blanket in her mind, she closed her eyes instead of looking upwards as her sister had. What a surprise! She had stronger metacognitive skills than her sister. I had her write letters on the blanket, and she is the one who is behind in memorizing the letters of the alphabet. Enough for today.

I have known about the girls' memory problems since kindergarten, and now they're about to enter second grade. I am unwilling to do BrainManagementSkills with very young children. It doesn't feel right. I will not teach preschool children to read; I don't recommend that my audio file with phonemic transcription be used on very young children. I'm concerned it will push them to left-brain strengths before fully exploring right-brain development. I am on Waldorf's side; no child under seven should be taught to read. If there are problems, then they should be dealt with later. Unfortunately, Waldorf does not do that. This summer, I have had two students that went through Walldorf and had trouble reading, the two Ds I had been working with. Both needed BrainManagementSkills to resolve their problems.

Before I headed out to the Post Office after my session with sixth-grade D., I called the church. I was told that Fr. Lio had the name of someone who did cement work. I need a cement' pillow' to support the granite plaques I ordered. Susan had the number at hand. A few minutes after I hung up, I got a call from someone who worked in the office who had been a friend of Mike's. She said she had the name of someone to do the engraving. I was told it was hard to get someone to do that work here. The woman who used to do it retired, and the person who took over her job was impossible to get hold of. I was concerned it was the same person, but no. Wonderful! The woman who called me got another phone call she had to take. She said she would call me back.

I needed help at the Post Office carrying the four boxes with Jean's father's book to mail to her friend. I flagged down a fifty-year-old woman who helped me. Unfortunately, I had to take one home to repack. I used a Priority Mail box. I had scribbled over the marking identifying it as priority. The clerk said it wasn't enough. If I sent it priority, it would cost me over twenty dollars. If I repacked it, it would cost me eight. I took it home.

As I left the Post Office, the woman from the church office called back. I called her name, saying, "I'm driving!" She kept on talking. I must have said it two more times. Then I switched to, "Can you hear me?" I have had this problem with others who ramble on and are unresponsive to the sound of my voice. Still no answer. I finally yelled, "Can you hear the sound of my voice?" I got through. When she heard I was driving, she said she would text me the information. Perfect.! As she hung up, I heard her say, "She is so funny . . . . ." I wondered if she was having hearing problems.

I went to Target next. I needed more doggie bags and a USB cord. The one I had no longer worked. They only had 6-footers, too long for my purpose. I had to order a short one online. It would be here in a few days. After Target, I stopped off at Kaiser. My doctor said she wanted a blood sample to see how my cholesterol was doing, given that Hersey's milk chocolate kisses with almonds is one of my primary food sources. Ha! Ha!

I had an appointment with J. I worked on reading the Barnell Loft, Getting the Main Idea level G, seventh grade. It is a complicated language. I can hear more clearly how J struggles with expressing himself in English. He may, however, have the same problem in Spanish. I used a careful analysis of each sentence and the relationship of each sentence to all the others. He did better than he had done. There were moments when he didn't correctly use the information in the text but tried to make up something that made sense. Teaching students when to infer versus when to use the given information is challenging. They can't discern the difference. When he had to answer the comprehension question, he didn't have a good overview. I had to diagram the answer. When I did a second passage with J, it went more quickly. I teach students that language is a puzzle. You have to figure out how the pieces go together.

I sent Dorothy an acupuncture pen like the one Yvette lent me. She told me she used it on her glute muscles, and it helped. She said she was a little confused because she could feel the electronic stimulation in her hand as well as her glute. I told her that was how it worked. Both ends of the pen must contact some part of you to complete the circuit.

I have been using the pen on my leg, but it hadn't occurred to me to use it on my glutes. Today I used it on my lower back and finally on the saddlebag muscles sitting on top of my hips. Lo and behold, when I applied the pen to the muscles on my right side, it relieved the discomfort on the left side. I know this is possible, but I hadn't explored it enough.

I received a notification from Tesla on my phone to reduce my electric use because my solar system had so much trouble charging the batteries. "No, Tesla. It's not what I'm doing; it's what the sky is doing." We have sunlight in the morning, and it starts raining at about 11, and the sky is dark at noon when we can expect the most intense sunlight. Great!

The stats for the visitors on my blog are low. However, they are never down to zero or one as they used to be.

I found The Chosen, the story of Christ's life, on YouTube. I found the introduction annoying. The guy sounded like he was on uppers. His excitement was okay; his rambling and repetition didn't sound right. I watched it for a while. I thought it was well done, very professional. I just found it too scary. The Roman soldiers have so much contempt for the Jews. I can hear advocates saying, "That is how it was." Oh, I know. I can't watch contempt and cruelty even in a fictional movie. In this case, I knew what would happen to the main character. Very upsetting.

Monday, July 19, 2021

I had a terrible night's sleep. I suffered from an acute sense of loneliness. I feel unprotected. Mike was my shield. He not only loved me, but he also protected me and comforted me. What a gift!

On my walk, I called Dorothy. I wanted to hear about her adventures in Connecticut. She said Uncle David's stint with Sam during the memorial service wasn't a 100% success. Sam was agitated. He has become very clingy during this process. Let's see, he was 2 ½ years old; for the past two weeks, he had been around eight upset adults as they waited for his grandmother to die; he attended a wedding; Nancy died; he was trying to cope with her disappearance and process what it means for her to be 'dead;" the house has been filled with people every day as the family sits shiva; and finally, his parents completely abandoned him when they attend the memorial service. Given what the poor kid had to deal with, he was doing pretty well.

A neighbor of Nancy and Steve's offered to put Dorothy up. She said she had luxury accommodations and barely saw her hosts. When she was up, she spent all her time next door with her daughter's in-laws.

Uncle David, Dorothy's son and Karin's brother had taken the train up to Connecticut Sunday morning to take care of Sam while everyone was at the funeral. That evening, Dorothy and Uncle David caught the train back to New Jersey.

At 8:30, I had K's crew. With K, I'm working on handwriting and spelling. With Twin A, I worked on having her recall a few letters she still had problems with and introduced the -at family. She read cat, bat, rat, sat. I asked if she wanted another or wanted to quit. She asked for more. Twin E did pretty well but not perfectly. She had trouble holding on to the sound differences between cat and cap, mat and map, rat and rap as she blended those words. I started her on a sight word today, THE. No, she didn't know what it was. Ow!

I was inclined to use the BrainManagementSkills with Twin E for the first time. She could tell me the color of her blanket, pink, but she could not 'see' where she held the memory in her brain. When I told her it was behind her forehead, she raised her eyes to see it. It looked like that yoga move when you raise your eyes to see your eyebrows. This meant she had no concept of 'seeing' an image in her mind. She believes all 'seeing' is done with her eyes. I've had only a few kids do that. Most have some concept of 'seeing' in their minds. I will continue with this. I may need her mother's help.

At 9:30, I had a session with sixth-grade D. We started with the BrainManagementSkills. I reviewed what we determined so far. He could hold the visual image steadily in a section toward the back of the brain on the left side. It sure isn't what I'm familiar with, but if it works for him, good enough. He pointed to his forehead when we looked for the auditory center today. That's the part of the brain I associate with visual processing. I asked him to focus on the part of the brain on the left side by the temple. He said he experiences zigzagging there. The words become compressed.

I knew a spin release would be good here, but it didn't seem right. I asked sixth-grade D questions about the area: what color was it? How big? And the area's density. How did he feel about it? I don't remember all the questions I asked. He did say there was zigzag movement in that area of the brain. The lines would compress. The compression had to do with creating order. However, that same compression mashed the sounds of the words together, making them unintelligible; it was hard for him to understand what his teachers said. It didn't feel right to instruct him to do the spin release then. I have no idea why, but better safe than sorry.

The zigzag pattern slipped to the back of his head as he focused on it. I told him he could release it from his head altogether by just permitting it to leave. He did that. I warned him it might feel a little weird. That was because it was unfamiliar, not because it was dangerous. I asked him if he found the process interesting or scary. He said interesting. Perfect. If it's scary, I tell them to stop. I assured D I could help him slow the process down or stop it altogether; he was in control. I have never had a bad outcome with this process. However, I don't think it will work if someone is afraid. If a student is afraid, they are battling against the release. Then it won't happen.

When he completed the release, he reported that the sound of my voice was clearer and easier to understand. His mind wasn't collapsing the words together. I followed this by reading words one phoneme at a time. I asked him how it felt. He said he wanted me to say one letter at a time. I saw he still didn't understand that English orthography is not a one-to-one correspondence with English phonemes. Then he said he wanted to say them on his own. I underlined each letter or set of letters that represented a single phoneme. He did a fantastic job sounding them accurately in accordance with his pronunciation. I told him he might experience other incidents of that spinning and compression. All he had to do was instruct his mind to allow the release of that zigzag. He had a minor occurrence as we continued working. He was able to release it on his own. He knew what to do before I even told him. This was going to be interesting. I would see him again on Wednesday.

At 11, I had my Reading support office hours. No one attended for the second week in a row. I advertised it on Facebook, but I don't think Julia announced it.

I planned to watch a Tv series Judy told me about on the life of Christ, The Chosen. I told her it was on Netflix. I downloaded that movie. Strange! It was a modern-day setting with a half-naked man being told to worship the one God and stabbed with a shard of glass from a broken bottle. Huh? I checked it on Wiki. This was not the movie Judy had recommended. When I looked up how to download the one she recommended, I saw it was some complicated process.

Sunday, July 18, 2021

I slept well with no troubling thoughts. Jean, my hanai sister and Mike's first wife called me first thing in the morning. Many years ago, Mike took some books from her library that had been her father's. Since I was emptying the library, she asked me what I would do with them. I had no idea. She told me to mail them to her. She would keep the ones she wanted and give the rest to this wonderful friend that wanted all these old books. She said he planned to donate them to some college library- the Isadore Blumberg Collection. Good luck! Mike had wanted his collection donated- intact- to the seminary where he taught. They refused all the books. I think they would have taken the whole collection if I had volunteered to build the Mike Ross Wing to the library. I think Iggy's books will find the same reception. Mike's books are at least current. Iggy's book date from the thirties through the sixties. They were easy to pick out because they all have those old covers, and many of them are discolored if not falling apart.

I called Jean yesterday to say that it was a ridiculous idea for me to send her the books now while she and John were frantically getting rid of stuff in anticipation of their move to a retirement village. I would wait until they were in their new quarters for a few months.

This morning she called with a better suggestion. She figured the books she allowed Mike to take were not ones she would hold as precious in the first place. I should mail them directly to her friend. Done! She sent me his address and phone number. I will text him to warn him about the six or seven boxes of books coming his way.

The swings between grief, loneliness, and being okay are interesting. I am delighted to see that I can have stable, contented moments. That's a good sign. Other times I'm fighting back the tears. I'm trying to stay with the sadness.

Some of the grief was old, relating to my difficult relationship with my mom. As a child, I had no idea what was going on. I didn't understand until shortly before her death. During my childhood, she was always putting me down. If I remembered something differently, there was a problem with my memory; if I perceived something differently, there was a problem with my sanity; if I knew something she didn't know, it was worthless information; if I didn't know something, she did know, how could I be so out of touch with the world; and God forbid, I held a different opinion from her. There was a standard back and forth n. "No one believes what you do." "I believe it." You're no one; you're no one." This was my whole childhood.

I once approached her and told her how she hurt me. She argued that she never did anything to hurt me; I told her this because I wanted to hurt her. How's that for totally crazy-making?

I figured it all out in my old age. I was over sixty. My mom and I were watching TV together. A model came on the screen. She said, "Isn't she beautiful?" I had just thought, "Wow! She's unattractive. I said, "No," anticipating an interesting conversation. She said, "Why do you always put me down?" Oh, boy. Is that what was going on? I couldn't imagine someone thinking that everyone thought the same. No, I never explained it to her.

I know my father tried to explain how people held different perceptions and opinions when I was young. Once, she walked up to me and said, "If two people always think the same thing, there is only one mind at work." Even at 12, I knew those were my father's words. My mother never thought in such abstract terms. Those words were a lifeline for me for the rest of my life. I couldn't conceive why anyone would expect everyone to think the same way they did.

On the subject of her hurting me, we have a different problem. It arises in people who want not only to be good but are obsessed with the need to see themselves as a good person and who never does harm. They argue they can only do harm if they intend it. These folks are as dangerous as any sociopath. While they live by the code, "Do no harm, they are not on the alert for the harm they do- we all do. It's part of the human condition. If someone's good person status depends on doing NO harm, they must blind themselves to the damage they do. Very dangerous. Very harmful.

I remembered it was Jean's husband John's 85 birthday today. I called and offered to sing the "Ross "happy birthday song. It's an off-key, fa sol la version. John giggled in delight. He also told me they had a set of encyclopedias dated 1911. I thought Egad. But John told me it was a prized edition. He is going to try and sell them.

My niece's mother-in-law's funeral was this morning at 2 pm EST and 8 am my time. I signed in. The in-person attendees were milling around before the service began. I saw the back of my sister's head. I expected her to stay home and care for her 2-year-old grandson, who couldn't attend because unvaccinated children weren't allowed. I texted her without expecting her to answer. I saw my niece talk to her and check her phone. I immediately texted her. Yes, her mother was at the service, and her brother came from New Jersey to care for the two-year-old.

My nephew, David, had just visited Karin in Seattle the week before. That visit was scheduled before it became clear that Nancy didn't have much more time. David, Karin's husband, and Nancy's son went down before David, Karin's brother, arrived in Seattle. Karin came to Connecticut to be with the rest of her husband's family after David, her brother, left. The point is that Sam, the 2-year-old, was well bonded with Uncle David. He had been riding on his back, being the extra weight for David's pushups.

When the service started, there was still no sound on the Zoom. The Zoom participants were chatting, remarking on this. I texted every number I had, Karin's, her husband, David, and David's brother and sister. I figured if everyone texted everyone, one would have their phone on vibrate and respond when they got multiple texts. It was surprising that the temple didn't have Zoom down pat. Our church here and a synagogue in New Jersey Zoom their services. I would have thought this one did too. Eventually, we could hear the speakers, but the acoustics were so bad that we couldn't understand what they said. I suppose I'll find out why it went wrong. It was too bad too. I could hear the laughter as people gave their eulogies. I would have liked to learn more about this lady, although I only met her twice.

In the middle of this, Damon called. He was about to jump into the shower to go off to attend a birthday party for one of his closest friends, Eddie, a friend of over 25 years from Vassar. Damon is planning a trip next summer when Eddie will turn 50. Concerned that his good friend won't be there for the event, he did his big bash this year.

Eddie rented his favorite restaurant and sent out 230 invitations offering free food and drinks, expecting thirty people to attend. Damon said 130 had already RSVP'd, and there were a few maybes. Damon and another good friend, Mike, had already offered to throw in some money to help Eddie pay for it. I also offered to throw in some money if it became necessary.

I talked a little about how badly I was doing. The grief was strong upon me. I didn't know if it was full strength, but it was bad. I feel so alone. Damon recommended I consider moving into a retirement community where I will have more people. Of course, I don't know if that's the case. I love my home; I have friends in the neighborhood. If I move into a retirement community, I will be encased in my quarters, not out in the open as I am now. My house can't be closed off. I am always in nature. Also, there is no guarantee that I will find a like-minded person in a retirement community.

Judy's in-laws settled in a Honolulu retirement community. Judy said it was absolutely gorgeous. They hated it. They were east coast Jews living in a predominantly Asian community. They moved out of there and in with Judy. The kids had to give up their rooms and move into the garage. It all worked out.

I got a call from Judy right after I got off the phone with Damon. Don's, a worshipper from church, car brokedown. She needed my help in finding a car for him. The car rental agencies here were defuncted because they got rid of all their cars during Covid. Our next-door neighbor has set up a Turo cottage industry, renting out eight cars. There were currently six sitting in their lot. Our neighbors had to return to Canada because they never got their residence visas. A friend is running their Turo business in their absence. I left a sign on one of the cars asking them to contact me. Mei, the wife, texted me. I had forgotten that I could have contacted her directly. With a little back a forth between Peter, Mei's husband, Judy, me, and Don, we got Don talking to Peter. It's out of my hands now.

I had adolescent D at 3 pm. I've been working with him on the weekend because he's leaving tomorrow for 12 days. His mother had set up the appointment for 3 pm yesterday. At the end of that session, I told D I would ask his mother about Sunday. He set it up for 3 pm. I had to text his mother to make sure it was okay with her since she was paying for it. I'm thrilled with his attitude. He is happy to be working with me. Today I could say, "You missed one word in this sentence. Please, reread it and correct that word." I would never have said that to him two months ago. He would have crumbled in self-hatred. Now, it was just a mild challenge. He says he sees no improvement in his reading, but this change in attitude says otherwise. While he still makes mistakes, they're fewer, and he often catches them and self-corrects. I don't just teach reading; I teach metacognitive skills. I teach him to be aware of his mind, how it works, and how to make changes. His mom said she could see an improvement in his self-confidence.

I walked down to Adam and Jazzy's house to see if I could get a jar of sauerkraut opened. In the past, I have taken a jar on one of my short walks. When a car comes down the street, I stop it and ask the driver to open the jar. So far, so good, but no cars today. I headed to Adam and Jazzy's. She answered the door with Zion, her one-year-old, on one arm. She had to go get a towel to improve her grip. These jars present a challenge to a thirty-year-old. No way, I can open them.

If I hadn't written all this, I would have thought today was a day where nothing happened. It certainly feels empty but look at all I had to say about it. Thank God I have this writing.

Saturday, July 17, 2021

I called Jean on my morning walk. Give me a break. She wants to move into their retirement apartment in five and a half weeks. John has lived in the house for 55 years; she has lived there for more than 35. They have saved every book and every piece of paper. They are getting rid of what they can as fast as they can. I told her I wouldn’t send her the boxes of her father’s books that Mike took from her library to her current address. I would wait until she and John have been at their new address for a few months. That way, they should be settled and not overwhelmed.

Because adolescent D was going on vacation for 10 to 12 days, I met with him on Friday and today with plans to meet with him tomorrow. I continued working on the BrainManagementSkills. He still held the visual image of a word toward the back of the left side of his brain. In my experience, the best place for the visual working memory is behind the forehead. However, he says the image holds steady in this spot. The letters do not move around, either on the page or in his mind. The other day, he revealed his auditory images shift in unpredictable ways. His auditory perception center was also not where it should be in my experience. I asked him if he could hold the image of a flickering candle in that space I associate with auditory working memory. He could do that with ease. When he held sound there, it was comforting. I sounded out phonemes slowly, and he found that pleasant. That was a good sign. It was hard to know if I could have done this exercise with him before or not. I had done some work with him identifying images in his mind. I never felt it was time to do more. I would rather move slowly than too quickly. If I go slowly, there is only no change. If I move quickly, I might cause change, but it may be too much for him and cause a setback. The work today seemed simple small, and appropriate. I sounded out the phonemes of words as he listened. He said it felt good. He also said it was easier to hear what I had to say.

I spent a lot of the day sleeping. I have been devasted by a friend who has questioned my mental capacity because we remembered something differently. It has retraumatized me. My mother did this to me nonstop. If I didn’t remember what she did, if I remembered something she didn’t, if I liked something she didn’t like, if I didn’t like something she liked, you name it, if it wasn’t her way, there was something wrong with me. Only now did I realize how lonely I was as a child living with her incessant attacks.

I once told her that her attacks hurt me. She was outraged. She said I only said that to hurt her. I am sure she never meant to hurt me. I am sure this ‘friend’ doesn’t intend to hurt me. They were both only protecting themselves from what they accused me of, the fear that someone would ‘know’ there was something wrong with them. When Mike met me, he said it was as if I had been tortured. He said one day, I would start crying and not be able to stop. I am overwhelmed by sadness now. This is the first time I grasp how lonely I felt as a child.

Judy passed me on her way to church as I took my walk. I shared I was having a bad day. She said she was sure the person only meant well. I called her when she got home and asked her not to say that to me My mother insisted she meant me well by tearing me down. That meant I had to suffer her abuse and be grateful for it. That’s a total mind f—k- crazymaking.

Yes, I have good days when I am perfectly content to be alone speaking to whomever, neighborhood friends I meet as I walk, friends I talk to on the phone, whoever shows up for the yoga classes, and my students. Besides that, I have a house and garden to maintain and my videos and article to work on, not to mention the updates.

When I’m up for it, I look for more books to get rid of in the library. I found two more today for Note Dame. I also loaded the car with the butcher paper Judy gave me after her bird died to wrap the boxes of books for mailing. I wind up liking the Amazon boxes best. I don’t have to wrap them; they are not covered with product information and don’t have to be covered with paper. I also grabbed a string of Christmas lights sitting on the grill since last Christmas for donation. I checked if they worked. I took a picture to show the person who accepted the donation.

B called and chatted. I like talking to him. We just talked story, but he is someone I can speak with honestly. I feel I can be myself. Unfortunately, that’s not true with everyone.

Friday, July 16, 2021

It was K's crew at 8:30 am. I had K first. I had him write his first and last names. I waited and waited. I finally realized he was just sitting there. He had forgotten my instructions. Then he wrote just his first name. He was still struggling with forming the lowercase s, so it looked as good as the other letters. I told him to write his last name too. It's only four letters, but he still finished it faster than he has done in the past. I've been concerned about how slowly he writes. At some point, this had to be sped up. Because I couldn't observe what he was doing, I couldn't correct his body mechanics. Hmm. Maybe I could have mom videotape him writing so I could observe him. But then, how would I correct him over Zoom?

His concentration was good. I told him to write, 'The fox jumps over the dog.' I modeled it and then removed the model from screen share. He wrote fox on his own, commenting on how he formed the f. When it came to jumps, he said he didn't know how to write the j. It took a minute to figure out what that meant. He didn't know how to spell it. I led him through sounding out to discover the spelling. I didn't have time to check what he did. I was in a hurry today.

Next, I had Twin E. We always had to review the direction of the print. I numbered the letters, so there was a one above the a and a two above the t in at. I introduced a second word-family the other day, -ap. Now she had to identify both word families correctly. I worked with cat and cap. The big thing is getting her to use the cross-body blending and holding the sounds as she does.

Lastly, I had Twin A. I reviewed some of the letters she is still having trouble remembering. She could correctly name i, c, and r but was still having problems with n. However, she had a good strategy. She said the letters in her name. Yes, there is an n in it. It would be good if she could remember it without this trick, but the trick is a strategy she developed. It's worth its weight in gold.

I tried Dorothy again. When I called her the first time, she was racing to catch a train. She was heading for Connecticut. When I tried her the second time, her train was arriving in Greenwich. Her daughter, Karin, was picking her up. The memorial service for Karin's mother-in-law was scheduled for Sunday. The temple had strict rules that everyone had to be vaccinated and had had no contact with anyone who might be sick ten days before. No children could come because they are all unvaccinated. That means 2-year-old Sam wouldn't be able to go My best guess is Dorothy will stay home with him. Everyone else was closer to Nancy than she was. Sam was familiar with Dorothy. That part will be fine. However, he knew his Nan was no longer available and was distressed.

At 10:30, I had sixth grade D. He said he saw some improvement. I had him read the sight word sentences, designed to practice those words students often confuse. Out of the seven words in the first sentence, he missed three. Ow! Something wasn't working. I checked his auditory processing center.

I had already worked with D's visual working center, but not his auditory one. He repeatedly told me that no disturbing movement was interfering with his visual processing. Now, that was the question with his auditory processing.

He processed sounds way further back in the brain than the auditory processing center I have seen work. He tried to use the point by the temple toward the center of the brain. He couldn't hold the sound there. I had no clear instructions on how to proceed. Those 'instructions' have something to do with my intuition. I am careful not just to follow a prescribed procedure but wait until I think of something that feels right. I will sit in silence and pray until I get a sense of what to do.

I asked him the color of his currently preferred region toward the back of the brain. Blue. A pretty blue or an ugly one. Ugly. Then I asked him the color of the auditory processing center toward the front of the brain. He said orange. Pretty or ugly? Pretty. Okay. Where to from here? I asked him which he preferred. Definitely the blue area. We established that he felt cozy there, comfortable. The orange center felt like nothing. I led him through a release on the blue area," "Release anything negative about your love of this blue area and keep anything positive or anything you still need." He did that. It didn't do much.

When he tried to use the orange section, his focus slid back to the blue section—looking from the top of the head, the slide formed in a C shape. No, it did not continue spinning; the arch stopped dead at the blue patch.

I finally thought to ask if there was disturbed movement inside the blue patch. Yes. It moves in a zigzag pattern confusing the sounds and substituting one word for another. I often do a spin release at this point, but it didn't feel right. It came out that D could compress the zigzag pattern as you could a slinky. He said it made it feel organized.

I don't know how we got to the next step, but he said he didn't like confusion. I talked about the difference between confusion and anticipation. They both involve a state of unknowing or not-knowing. Confusion is a negative response to not knowing, and anticipation is a positive one. I drew a SUDS line from 1 to 10. I showed him that people responded differently. One person will experience a small amount of confusion and a great amount of anticipation. For others, it is the opposite. An extreme in either direction isn't good. I'm with Franklin: moderation in all things. We also respond differently in different situations. Mike responded with confusion in his private life but responded with anticipation in an academic context. He loved to learn something new. He hated to be in an unstructured social setting. I believe we are best in those contexts where we have a higher tolerance to confusion and not knowing.

While I 'know' a procedure I could have used with adolescent D to reduce that confusion, the disturbing movement. It didn't feel right to use it yet. I had him read a few of the sight word sentences. He read them all accurately, but I could feel he was exercising control. I asked him if he had seen his parents drive on a rocky road. Did he remember how they had an iron grip on the steering wheel? He said yes. I told him it felt that was how he was now, holding on to dear life to control his brain. He agreed. It was time to end the session. I wouldn't see D again until Monday. I looked forward to seeing what he did over the weekend. Once I tell them that brain organization can be changed, they often do something on their own. Do they do this consciously? I doubt it, but something often happens anyway.

I briefly participated in a Step-Up Tutoring event, Annenberg PetSpace. I had no idea what it was, but Julia said they were anxious for participants. Knowing how I feel when no one signs up for my office hours, I agree to join. I had no idea what it was. I'm still not sure. It was a medical facility for cats and dogs. Someone took us on a tour, interspersed with videos about their service. I learned it was a high-end pet adoption center. I don't know if a volunteer tutor works there or volunteered to give this tour to advertise their service. I thought it was chaotic, and the videographer wasn't trained. It was not a professional job. I blocked a video image of myself and left to do something else. However, some children on the zoom asked questions and found the presentation interesting.

At 1:45, I had an appointment with my primary physician at Kaiser. I showered and drove down there. When I checked in, I was told I didn't have an in-person appointment but a video one. How the hell did that happen? I didn't even know it was an option. I tried to do it on my phone but couldn't - very frustrating. I wanted the doctor to see a spot on my leg. The receptionist was banging away on her computer keys the whole time. She finally said they would see me upstairs in person now. I ran up there.

It was so lovely to see my doctor. She is so warm and friendly and appreciative of me as a patient. She laughed and said she expected my blood pressure to be through the roof because of my frustration. It wasn't. It was 139/77 on the first trial. I knew I had to go quickly. I showed her the growth on the outside of my left thigh. She said it was benign, and there was no way to get rid of it. I told her about my problems because of a tipped something or another in my abdomen. She made an appointment for me with GYN. I asked her to write another script for physical therapy for my spinal curvature. Done! And then I showed her my foot. I told her what the chiropractor diagnosed, Morton's neuroma. It looked like that to her. I told her I was icing it and applying magnesium oil to the leg and foot at night, besides having a magnesium drink and massaging my foot with a golf ball. She ordered an X-ray and gave me some exercises.

I was home for my 3:30 with J. He didn't respond. I called him. He was canceling again. He said he had to do some cleaning. He has canceled several classes. It was all after that one class where he was working on material that was hard for him. He had successfully completed all the exercises in the Barnell Loft, Getting the Main Idea series through the end of grade six. There is a huge jump in difficulty between grades six and seven. He would be starting grade seven in a few weeks. He didn't know how to deal with complex language.

I signed up for Masterpiece theater. Their shows look like something I would like. However, when I tried to open one of the advertised shows, it asked me if I lived in Hawaii. Yes. Then I had to pay an additional $50 -$60. Huh? I don't think so. It would have been one thing if I had been told before I ordered the subscription, but afterward? It does look like I have access to some shows without this extravagant surcharge. I turn to Halifax: Retribution on Amazon Prime. I usually avoid serial killers and psychopaths, but I watched the first episode and enjoyed it.

Thursday, July 15, 2021

Today would be my father's 118th birthday. He died 65 years ago when I was 15. It's hard to imagine that I haven't seen my dad for 65 years. A loss like that never fully penetrates. Same with my loss of Mike, I suppose.

I had K's crew at 8:30. Their grandfather called me the other day to say he heard about how amazing I am. I think the work I'm doing with eight-year-old K will be significant. He works in a concentrated way; paying attention has been a big problem for him. The only thing that held his attention was video games. Now, he can concentrate on his handwriting. He's only working on his name and parts of the sentence, "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog." The sentence includes every letter in the alphabet. I haven't gotten to all the words in the sentence yet. So far, he is only writing, "The fox jumps over the dog." It still requires him to remember the sentence as he writes it. His handwriting looks incredible now. The girls, Twin A and Twin E, also show pretty good concentration. I have to call their mom to see what is going on in their reading, remembering the letters in the alphabet for A, and learning to decode words for E.

I Zoomed in during Julia's office hours to ask her a few things. Someone else was on the screen, a woman named Jen. She said she was taking over for Julia while she took a phone call. Jen said, "Hello, Betty," in this friendly way. I asked if she knew me. She gave an emphatic "Yes!" She said she was in the Zoom class when I presented the principles of the Phonics Discovery System. She said it was awesome. Wow! I asked her if she was able to use the information to help her student. She said yes. Wow again! When Julia came back on, Jen said StepUpTutoring should have another class from me. There was a whole new crop of tutors. Few of the people who signed up to be tutors had attended. There were 25 or so participants, and there were over 500 tutors. Now there are more.

I told them I had made a video of my approach to teaching reading on YouTube. Julia said, "It will go viral." I thought I would be lucky if anyone viewed it. Julia said they would post it in the Step Up Tutoring library so it was available for everyone.

At noon I had an appointment with my chiropractor. I haven't seen her for several years. I had a script for physical therapy. I was getting wonderful benefits there and didn't see a need to continue with the chiropractor. Then Covid hit. Now, I'm having problems with my right foot—something with the metatarsals. Kim, my chiropractor, said she could feel the neuroma between the joints. I've had this problem before. It's a nightmare. Kim manipulated the foot and had a treatment for it and suggestions. She told me to order metatarsal supports online and find transverse arch exercises. It's not as bad as it was back then, but it's scary- a bad left hip and right foot.

I had Dash at 2 pm instead of the usual 1 pm because of my chiropractic appointment. It was more of the same, pushing him to use and develop the best neurological pathway.

At 4 pm, Elsa had an appointment with the vet. Today, I was allowed to go into the clinic with Elsa. For the last year, no one could go in. the humans had to stay in their cars while our pets went inside alone. The last time I brought her in, the doctor gave her several expensive shots without asking me. One of those shots was for her ear affection; the second was for her skin condition. These were costly shots. It is common for dogs to get allergy-caused lesions. A friend I met in Hawaii and returned to the mainland told me that her dog developed those lesions here and persisted when they returned to Arizona. I have no idea what the trigger is.

The vet was a young woman. She used medical jargon when speaking to me. I thought, Jeez, how do the locals cope with her explanations. I did agree for Elsa to get another shot for the lesions. She suffers so, and the shot seems to have fewer adverse side effects than the pills she's been taking. She also gave me two salves to apply to local breakouts. They're to be applied once a week if the lesions are not too bad; two to three times a week if they are. Why didn't someone tell me about a local application before?

Wednesday, July 14, 2021

Mama K canceled. Someone in her family was Covid positive. He got it through one of his friends. If she could show that the rest of the family didn't have Covid, only one child would be quarantined for 14 days, not the whole family. If the entire family had to be quarantined, it would mean her husband couldn't work. That would put a financial strain on the family.

I planned to vinegar the garden. Today was garbage day; I put the vinegar bottles in the trash as I used them. When I finally came inside, I had a text. Sixth grade D's mother asked if we were still on for the day. Oh, boy. I hadn't checked today's schedule, only yesterday's. I hadn't set my alarm, and now it was after 10:30. When I went to turn my computer on, it was being updated, and I didn't have immediate access. I texted Ds mom to tell her I would contact her when I was ready.

It was about 10:45 before we finally connected. I didn't remember what I had worked on with D in our last session. Then it came back. I had drawn a picture of the brain from above so we could clearly see the left versus the right hemisphere. He didn't see the words in his head at the front, behind the forehead. When he tried, the image slid toward the back of his head. I checked again if it stopped midway, around the ear, or went all the way to the back, the primary visual cortex. The mid-way point may be the audio processing center.

Today I asked D. to look at the part right behind his forehead- what color was there? He said it was red. I asked if it was a pretty or an ugly red. He said, pretty. Good. I told him to write the word on the red surface. When he did that, he was able to hold the image there. Wow! Great! I had him retrieve words automatically. He did much better but still made mistakes with here versus there, when versus went, her versus here. What is it with these words that makes them so challenging? I know; they look somewhat alike.

Sixth grade D worked hard and seemed tired. I offered to model the process for him. I consciously waited until I had the image in mind and then until I 'heard' the word in my head. Wow! That was different. I didn't think it was what I usually did. What does this mean? I know I'm not the fastest reader in my family; I'm probably the slowest. I come from a family of reading maniacs. He said what I was doing helped. I don't think we can understand why yet. Did not expecting him to say the word make the difference? Did my waiting before I said the word give him more time to process the word in a relaxed way? Did he observe what went on in my brain, and did that help?

At 1 pm, I had adolescent D. We're working on the same thing I was working on with Sixth-grade D. Both boys are Waldorf school students. I love the Waldorf approach for most kids; it just doesn't help those who get stuck.

I watched Marriage Story. Well, I started to watch it. While it was clear the husband was a self-centered piece of work who saw his wife as his subordinate, I saw that he was also a caring and loving person. Hmm, maybe capable of becoming a caring and loving person. I wanted their relationship to work out. I checked the plot on Wiki and decided I couldn't handle it. I don't need sadness in my life. I have enough on tap as it is.

Tuesday, July 13, 2021

I woke to find a text from Dorothy telling me that Nancy, Dorothy’s daughter’s mother-in-law, had died at 7 am. It was expected. It was just a question of when. Sunday, her middle child got married in her backyard. They spent eight days putting together flowers, caterers, etc. A lovely gift to his mom, her children all settled in marriages. She had only one grandchild—my niece’s two-year-old son. Nancy’s husband caught a shot of her looking at Sam and smiling.

I ran into one of my neighborhood contacts, Mike, with his dog Sweet Pea on my morning walk. We had a long talk today. He told me a story about his sister-in-law, who died of heatstroke. She and her husband were driving through Nevada. Their air conditioning gave out. They continued driving with the windows open. She seemed to be sleeping. At one point, her husband tried to wake her. When she didn’t respond, he called 911. The EMT workers felt how hot she was and took her temperature- 1090. I didn’t know that was even possible. They tried to revive her. I imagine her brain had been fried, and it wasn’t worth being brought back to life. She died. That body temperature of 1090 gets me! Can that be accurate?

Scott led the yoga class this morning. Joe showed up to participate too. I was concerned that no one would. Scott did a wonderful job. He followed the basic format that Yvette uses. He promised us some stuff that he was learning in his Kundalini training.

I had K’s crew at 8:30. Twin A still has trouble consistently identifying some letters in the alphabet. Today, I started talking about the name of the letter versus the sound it makes. She already has most of that under her belt from what she learned at school. The big problem is having her read from left to right instead of whatever direction suits her fancy at any time.

With Twin E, I started working on the -ap family in contrast to the -at family. While she can pronounce the sounds individually, she can’t blend the words correctly. The sounds seem to slip and slide around for her. How am I going to solve this problem?

With K, I continued working on handwriting. I reviewed the vertical alignment of the downies, g, g, p, q, and y. He wrote his first and last names and the words the fox jumps over. We’re heading for the complete sentence. His handwriting looks gorgeous. If you didn’t count the lowercase j and s is. He did more sounding out of the words as he wrote them.

I was very down today, feeling very alone and lonely. My mother always told me that no one liked me. When I get down, that’s what I dwell on. Otherwise, I focus more on how much I like others, not how much people please me, but on how I allow myself to be pleased and delighted by them.

I do find liking others somewhat more difficult now. When Mike was here, he was my go-to human. Everyone else was just gravy. Now I find myself looking for characteristics in others that can make them a Mike substitute. They don’t hold up well. I suspect Mike wouldn’t either if I just met him now. The solidity and safety of our relationship resulted from forty-five years of perfecting the system, honing the relationship. We were better and better for each other as the years progressed. How do you find a substitute for that?

Adolescent D’s mom texted me to ask if I could see him at 5:30 instead of 1 pm. Sure. I had the day to get myself together and video the final slide for the reading instruction video. I have been putting it off for days. I finally asked Dorothy if she had any ideas of what to say. She had the perfect words. They just rolled off her tongue.

I had plans to shower and dress appropriately to do the Zoom video with that last slide. I was walking toward the bathroom when my phone rang. A friend who was down needed a little solace. She’s in the middle of clearing out the house she’s lived in for over thirty-five years and moving into a retirement community. I try to tell her how tough this move is; any move is. She was dealing with it on a strictly material level- so much junk to take care of. She didn’t appreciate that her soul and her husband’s soul had seeped into the walls of that house. They were moving to a newly renovated apartment where the walls didn’t even know what they smelled. It’s a huge change.

Once I was off the phone with her, my friend Darby from down the street called. I saw her husband out in the yard trimming a tree yesterday. I told him I wanted to call her. I’m reluctant to because they are generally out working in the yard and don’t use their cell phone; yes, just one cell phone for the two of them. How do you get hold of people like that? At 3:20, my alarm went off, and I had gotten in the shower yet. I texted J in California, telling him I was running late.

I was in and out of that shower and ready for my session with J shortly after 3:30. I spent the weekend preparing work for him. I noticed that he couldn’t make generalizations or categorize things. We worked on the Getting the Main Idea series of Barnell Loft on the 3rd and 4th-grade level and started the fifth. He had some problems yesterday on the third-grade level, but then he got it and sailed through to the 5th. That’s where we started today.

I asked J if he saw a difference in his reading. It was the first time he gave a clear, unambiguous yes. He said it was a big difference. Again, he sailed through the material I had prepared. He went right through to the end of the sixth-grade material. In the last unit, some questions about vocabulary came up. It was quickly resolved. We moved on to the seventh grade. Here he got stuck. The sentence structures were more complex, and the vocabulary unfamiliar:

I was pushing for longer sessions with J making sure he got sessions completed the StepUp Program requirements so he could get a restaurant gift card to take his family out for dinner. I prefer doing shorter sessions with J. The Step Up program requires each session to be at least 45 minutes. I would rather do several twenty-minute sessions, but they won’t count those. Working with J as long as I do is too much for us.

At 5:30, adolescent D signed on to our zoom session. His reading seemed to go back to what it was before our breakout yesterday. I was disappointed, back to the drawing board. Then he announced he was nauseous. I asked if he always got nauseous when he read. No, he was reading in the car. Oh, boy. He has enough trouble reading when the image isn’t moving around and the world around him isn’t whizzing past him. I told him to call me when he got home.

He canceled because a friend asked him if he wanted to go to the movies. He had a play date. Love it! I’m a great supporter of playdates. Once he was settled, I asked him, as I always do, if he saw a difference in his reading today in the summer school program. First, he said no, and then he said a little bit. It was the first time he had acknowledged any improvement. It was huge. I was concerned about his working with the teacher in the school. Rewiring takes attention, careful attention, and not rushing. How would he do that with this teacher working for reading fluency? Somehow, he got something in. Again, he was able to go back to the process we started the other day. See the word on the ‘blanket,’ visual working memory, ask your ‘mind’ for the word, and wait until you can ‘hear’ what it has to say. He could do the work he did yesterday in his familiar home environment.

Monday, July 12, 2021

I slept beautifully. I wasn’t in any discomfort until early in the morning. It has been bad of late, mainly when I sit. The muscles in the back of my left leg seized up. I have been concerned about my prospects for the future. Will I be an old woman, confined to a chair in constant pain? I took acetaminophen yesterday., just one during the day. It cleared up the problem immediately. I can live with taking an anti-inflammatory a couple of times a day. Mind, I only took one pill. Before I went to bed, I took another and drank some of the magnesium powder-mix to help soothe muscles. Things were so bad yesterday that I thought I would have to try Total Hip Replacement. I’m not optimistic that the surgery will fix my problem. It will make it easier for me to stand up after sitting for a while. That I will do.

I had an appointment with my primary doctor at Kaiser on Friday for my foot. Last night, I thought it might be a good idea to schedule a surgery appointment, just in case. It will be a good three to four months out, so I will have time to change my mind.

I spent the morning going down a Quora rabbit hole. I can spend hours reading their blurbs. I particularly like the ones about the British royal family and celebrities. What the hell is wrong with me?

I had Mama K’s crew at 8:30, but they didn’t sign on. I called. Mama K was still asleep. She jumped up and got the kids on in minutes. I started with E, one of the twins. We have been working on reading words that end in-at, using all the single letters in the alphabet for an initial sound. Last time, I started her on finding those words in a story. She does reasonably well, but not 100%. She read fat for hat and had this weird pronunciation for cat, pronouncing the /k/ sound as /kee/. I asked her if she says she has a /kee-at/ or /cat/. She corrected herself.

As we went through the story, she said there was another word she knew -tap. She misread the word. She confused tap with pat. I wondered if she even understood that the order of the letters made a difference. It isn’t clear yet that she understands that the letters represent sounds. She made the individual sounds and blended them into words -but it wasn’t clear that she understood the principle. However, she has given me a new activity. I have been struggling with what direction to go next. I planned to work with words ending with -ap, as well as words ending in-at.

Then Twin A came on. She could now remember some of the letters she had problems with. But she still had problems remembering the name of the letter i. I told her to instruct her mind to remember it. Why not? She said the words out loud, “Mind, I want you to remember the name of this letter is i.” She did better for the rest of the exercise. I would have to do more BrainManagementSkills with her and twin A.

Their brother K came on last. I had noticed that he had trouble with the vertical placement of the lowercase j last time. I reviewed that and then had him write the word jump in his lined notebook. He formed the letter well but confined it to one space. I went over the spacing with him. He easily corrected his error. I only had him write his last name again. Last time he had reversed two of the letters. If you’re wondering how all this is supposed to help him, know that sometimes I do, too.

I know that he concentrates as he does this work. This is the only activity other than video games- that commanded his attention this way. I knew he enjoyed this work. His mother said he never objects to attending our sessions. I knew from what I learned from another teacher that handwriting is linked to attention. I know that holding the letters in the correct order is important for reading and writing. I know that writing the letters in the right order is preparation for writing words in a sentence correctly. I convinced myself I was on the right track.

I went for a quick walk before I had 6th grade D at 9:30. Something about his reading has been troubling me. His jerkiness is not just from the inference of the Spanish intonation pattern. Today I had him read simple sentences, one I prepared for 2nd grade A and adolescent D to help them learn missing basic sight words. He read the as a and read showed as should. These are mistakes he made in the first two sentences. There was a processing problem. I began working with him on BrainManagementSkills.

I asked him to remember his blanket. He thought about it for a while and announced it was green. I asked him where in his brain he saw the blanket. His first response was he didn’t know. I showed him what I have learned is the best place to use for visual working memory, right behind the forehead. He couldn’t see it there. He tried, and the image slid toward the back of his brain. I drew a picture of the top of his head with a line down the middle, marking one half left and the other right. He said the image slid from the front of his brain toward the back on the left side. I made a mark showing where it stopped. He corrected me, saying it was further back. I assumed this would be a spin pattern. He said it was a curved line but did recognize it as a spin. I stopped there with BMS and went back to reading the sentences.

I had him write the words on the green blanket where it was in his brain. This helped somewhat. He continued misreading here for there and vice versa. He also added on letters where they didn’t belong. He was a great student to work with. He found the activity fun. He is learning about how his mind works along with me. He can laugh about what his mind does. What a contrast to 2nd grade A, who fought anything that looked unusual. He limited me. Poor kid, his priority was being normal. I couldn’t convince him that his only hope was this somewhat unusual path or some other unusual path. The easy, fall-off-the-log path was not an option for him.

At 11, I had my Reading support session. I had advertised it on the StepUp and my personal Facebook pages by accident. I still only had one person attend. The volunteer tutors in this program are amazing. Many are students working on advanced degrees. That was the case with the young man today. He said his student had trouble pronouncing words. It sounded more like his student hadn’t heard the words before and didn’t know how they were pronounced. In English, you have to have a word in your listening vocabulary, if not your speaking vocabulary, to know how to pronounce it. The tutor had already turned his student on to looking for repeated patterns. I may have added something to his bag of tricks. However, if you have a student that doesn’t have basic processing problems, it doesn’t take much to push them over the line.

I had a session with adolescent D at1 pm. I continued working with the sentence I had created for drilling the basic sight words. I did some more with the BrainManagementSkills. I had him identify the color of his blanket. His visual working memory was where I think it should be, right behind the forehead. I had him ‘write’ a word on his ‘blanket’ and wait for his mind to tell him what the word was. This made a big difference. Wow! He saw it too. Now, we have to continue with the activity until the neurological circuit is secure. The problem was the difference between how he had been doing it and this ‘new’ way was subtle. It was a small difference in ‘mental depth,’ concentration, and attention. How do you describe that switch in the mental state? How do I keep him aware of the difference and keep him searching for the one that works?

At 4:30, I had an appointment with my acupuncturist. My foot was still swollen. She said it was edema. She said she didn’t think it was my kidneys because it was only on one side of the body. Kidney problems show up bilaterally. I see my chiropractor tomorrow and my primary doctor at Kaiser on Friday.

I asked the acupuncturist if she saw a difference in my body alignment. She said definitely. She is very understated. I would be announcing every improvement I see, jumping up and down. She says nothing. I don’t get it. I believe giving feedback helps move things along. People respond when they know what they’re doing is working. Maybe she thought it was all due to her work. Nonsense. Her work was undoubtedly part of the picture, but there was also the yoga and what I did with body mechanics. I’m not an inanimate object to be manipulated.

Sunday, July 11, 2021

The sky was cloudy by 7 am today. Usually, it's clear in the early morning, and clouds over by 10. Yesterday was bad. We were on the grid by 6 pm. The solar batteries were at 0%.

I used my glutes to initiate every step as I walked this morning. I always come back to something a dancer said to me when I was in my twenties. Beth was a dance major and became a professional dancer. She was a nasty piece of work. Her answers, at least to me, were always snide. I asked her if she used her turn-out muscles in some context. She replied, "I use my turn-out muscles when I walk." I sure as hell didn't. Over and over, the opportunity to learn to use them more when I was younger. I always thought turn out started at the top of the thigh. Now, I see they start with the glutes. Maybe I'll yet discover another set of muscles is involved. I always think I've finally understood, and I'm doing it correctly, only to learn otherwise. Using my glutes felt right because when I use my glutes, the movement goes down my leg to my foot and up my back to the opposite shoulder.

Between the two long naps I took, I got some work done in the house. I polished all the stainless steel in my kitchen. It's a little more labor-intensive here in Hawaii. Stainless steel rusts. I don't just have to polish the surface; I have to rub off the rust spots gently. It all looks good. I also cleaned the silverware drawer, washed all the utensils, and cleaned the inside drawer and the organizer.

I feel consistently sad and weighted. While I'm in better shape than I was after having someone I rely on telling me they were concerned about my mental condition because I didn't remember something they did that triggered a historical trauma. Of course, there's also Britany Spears's dilemma. People do like to take control of your life. Having someone build a case for my mental incompetence doesn't make me feel safe.

I called Dorothy to get advice about what to say on the final slide of my reading video. She had a great suggestion. When I first called, her phone was turned off. Dorothy remotely attended a wedding today. Her daughter's mother-in-law has had a resurgence of her cancer and wasn't expected to last long. David's brother Alex had a quickly put-together wedding in his parents' backyard. He was already engaged; it was just the wedding that was a rush job. They were probably planning to wait until all Covid restrictions were dropped. They got engaged last year.

Alex and his girlfriend were walking through the NYC streets when everyone banged pots and pans out of their windows, thanking first responders. Alex was a doctor working in an NYC hospital during the worst of the crisis. In the middle of this chaos, Alex dropped to his knees and asked her to marry him.

Dorothy said there were about twenty people at the wedding. David, Karin, Sam, their two-year-old son, and Alex's sister were already there. Her husband flew in from Texas. Of course, there was the bride's family. Friends of the bride and groom were there too. They threw the whole event together in eight days. There were flowers, and it was catered. There were two videographers. The whole shebang. It's wonderful that Nancy saw her kids settle before she took her last breath. Now, the question is how much longer she will last. She will be surrounded by family when she goes. I hope she goes peacefully.

Saturday, July 10, 2021

I sleep really, really well for the first several hours. It was the same as when I napped. I have this wonderful sleep that lasts an hour or two, and then I’m up. When my nap ends, I’m refreshed and good to go. I’m not prepared to do that at night. I usually fall asleep again after getting up to pee. Then, it’s more like dozing in the early morning hours, with lots of interruptions to pee. At 5:30, I’m up and ready to go, with or without the alarm.

The sky was a beautiful blue, with the sun shining brightly until about 9:30 or 10:00 am. Then the dark clouds came over the mountain, and we had another day of little sunshine and some rain. I can’t complain about the rain. Other islands have a water shortage.

I had some face-to-face contact on my morning walk. Also, Judy came to pick up three folding chairs. Her son Matthew was visiting with his wife, Keri, and their two children. I was welcome for dinner, but none of the family that lives here is vaccinated. I don’t know about Matthew and his family. Worse yet, Judy’s son, who lives here, and his wife had a bad flu. Was it Covid? No one knows. They didn’t go to get it checked. They’re young, in their early thirties. Hopefully, they will be fine.

I can concede that we don’t know the long-term effects of the vaccine. However, we do know the immediate effects of the disease. Everyone has to take their chances. From what I heard in the news, there was a dramatic uptick in the number of cases; they were all among the unvaccinated. I could imagine that some people believe those numbers are lies. Could I believe the government lies to us? Absolutely. I did the best I could, as everyone else did.

I worked on the updates and blogs but spent most of my date copying material for J in California. He has trouble getting a general idea. I used the Barnell Loft material on Getting the Main Idea. I started working with him on a third-grade level. I could move through all the material I had prepared up through fifth grade. Today I worked on preparing sixth-grade material. We’ll see if this helps.

I noticed that J made small mistakes when reading out loud. I didn’t correct it. He seemed to grasp the meaning of what he read. With his Spanish background, it was hard to read English out loud. The rhythm of Spanish is very different from English. Spanish is regular; English is syncopated. If someone maintains the Spanish rhythm, it makes it difficult to fit in the English words.

I checked the final slide. I did okay until the very end. I wanted to say goodbye and wish folks well in using this method. I flubbed the last part. I texted Tommy just to cut it off where I flubbed. I think I can create an additional slide wishing folks well on their efforts to use the method.

Dorothy called. She got the acupuncture pen I sent her. She opened it despite my instructions not to. I also sent her a text telling her we didn’t have to return it. Maybe I tried the wrong one. I would have to check. I knew I didn’t have to return the one I got with nothing in it. I would have to check again. I ordered Dorothy a more elaborate one. She could give the other one to her friend Susan.

I bought the pen for Dorothy because the muscles in her right leg were bothering her. She had a total hip replacement in that hip. I told her to have a physical therapist check out her body mechanics. Her hip became a problem because of her bad body mechanics; the THR didn’t change her physical habits. I told her she should get herself checked, so she didn’t recreate the problem. Today Dorothy got back to me and told me she had solved the problem. She hadn’t been using her right glute muscles enough. She had to do more bridges. My problem was with my left hip and left leg. I looked at what I was doing with my left glute muscles. I changed my walk pattern immediately. I’d only been practicing today, and I already felt a difference.

I planned to work on the article about the reading method. I wanted to compare what was in it to what I included in the video. I got as far as to print it out.

I got around to picking up the poop or vomit Elsa had deposited on the lanai rug. By the time I found it originally, it was already dry. I wasn’t up to cleaning it up. Today I got down there and scraped it up with a knife. It was bone dry. I found ants busy harvesting what they could from the deposit. I wondered if they would do the clean-up job for me. I would haul out my Rainbow vacuum cleaner to thoroughly clean that spot.

I thrive on interaction. It makes me feel sluggish when I don’t have it.

I watched Inside Out last night. I didn’t think I would enjoy it as much as I did. The representation of the mind was fascinating. From what I read in Wiki, they had neuroscientists advising them. They must have had a blast.