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

Saturday, June 20, 2026

Tuesday, May 28, 2024

I was eating constantly today- anxiety eating. While I’m generally in better shape, I’m still struggling. The grief over my loss of Mike has been coming on full blast. Some days are crushing. However, I can be distracted by contact with a friend or a good tutoring session.

Working with twenty-six-year-old S is not easy. She is in a chronic state of depression and helplessness. It manifests in passive-aggressive behavior. Knowing her life circumstances, I can’t say I blame her. If anyone has a right to be depressed and angry, it’s her. Unfortunately, that doesn’t make it a pleasure to work with her. Our situation improved when I returned to using The Phonics Discovery System Phase I. She wasn’t quite as hostile. She can do more demanding work, but it requires a willingness to risk failure. This way, I’m modeling the phonemic structure of every word, and she can just observe. If she doesn’t actively participate, the least she can do is attend with a questioning mind.

When I think of it, I must tell her what a questioning mind looks and feels like. She must ask, “What sound is that letter going to make in this word?” or “What letter or letters are going to represent this sound?” That’s what good learners do as they listen to a lecture or watch someone perform an action. That’s what curiosity looks like. The mind is full of questions. A curious mind is fertile ground for new information.

In the next step, she figures out the next word, the next sound or the letters that represent a sound within her mind. She wouldn’t have to tell me her answer. Only she would know if she was right or wrong when I gave the answer. Even that is too much for students with badly damaged egos caused by years of failure. Learning they did something wrong stings.

Frequently, students find it irresistible to blurt out their answers. That’s the third step. When they start doing that, I create more opportunities for them to participate, always letting them know I will take over if they need me to. That need may not be from a lack of knowledge but a lack of courage. That has to be respected, too.

I hadn’t been to the excavated area to weed for several days because of the weather. It rained every day. I can only do so much before my back starts hurting. I set the bucket with the pulled weeds aside for the next day.

It was a Ulu Wini day. Third-grade S, who used to avoid me like a plague, requests time with me. I am pushing phonemic awareness and decoding. That is what got him off his stuck place. He was enthralled when I showed him that words were made up of individual sounds. He subsequently went in another direction on his own. I can’t blame students who avoid decoding. It’s ‘obvious’ to them that good readers don’t do that. They just ‘know’ the words.

Fifth-grade RM came to me. We worked on comprehension for several sessions. Today, she wanted to work on math- long division. I invited fifth-grade ML to join us. Neither girl had a clue how to do long division. I gave them division problems, such as 40 divided by 5 or 400 divided by five, and had them use repeated subtraction. They showed some improvement in the half hour we worked together. I gave them a slightly more complicated problem at the end, like 432 divided by 5. Fifth-grade RM had no idea how to do subtraction with regrouping. OMG!

My final student was Kindergarten KP. Again, he wanted to demonstrate his mathematical skills. Sure, Go for it.

I had been binging on The While Collar series with Matt Bomer. It was repetitive and formulaic, and the characters were nasty. Not my cup of tea. I found Falling for Figaro on Netflix a delightful surprise.

Monday, May 27, 2024

When darkness came, so did the sound of that chirping coqui frog sitting in the shrub by my bedroom sliding door. Several attempts to kill it with baking soda and citric acid have failed. The critter proved to be alive and well to chirp another night. In all fairness, while the sound is piercing, it doesn't last all night long. There are long periods of silence, at least without coqui sounds. I may resort to cutting back the shrub, dowsing the branches in a citric acid bath, and throwing the branches into the trash barrel. These cuttings won't go to Darby. The coqui is sitting in a bougainvillea shrub. She has given strict orders I'm not to deposit anything with thorns at her door. These thorns can pierce a truck tire. One pierced right through my skin to a vein. I bled impressively,

I set my alarm to 5 am. When it went off, I was still tired. I tried to hit the off button but hit the snooze. I finally got it to stop. I assumed the sunlight would wake me. I woke up a couple of times during the night to pee. I was surprised it was still dark. Despite my sleepy state, I figured out I had set one of the am alarms for tomorrow at p.m. I checked my alarm in the morning. It went off at 10:50 pm. I went to bed around 10 pm. No wonder I was still tired when the alarm went off.

I didn't do my morning yoga in anticipation of the Chi Qigong class on the beach. Only two other people showed up today, both leaders of the Chi Qigong, Clyde and Denise. The repetitive movements of the exercise are relaxing. The view of the tide pools and the bay at 8 am is soul healing. I go for the view as much as the class. Today, I could smell the ocean. This smell bears a faint resemblance to the beautiful sea smell of the Atlantic on the East Coast. I miss that smell as I do the seagulls. Yep, there are no seagulls in Hawaii.

My computer lagged again. Every half an hour, I have to execute force quit and restart. I wanted to take it into Bailey at Jack Be Click again. There has to be something wrong with the computer itself. The computer repair shop only opened at 9:30. The Chi Qigong class was over shortly after 8:30. I set my alarm for a few minutes before 9 and watched the water. What a treat!

My first stop was at Bike Works. I discovered yesterday the pepper spray I carried to protect Elsa and me from dog attacks had expired. Someone told me the Bike Works carried it. They didn't. The clerk looked it up online: Target and Walmart carried it. I had to go to Target anyway for more raspberry jam. While there, I picked up several cans of lentil soup. I eat at least one can a week. Who knew I would be a fan of lentil soup? While Target carried pepper spray, the brand they carried was on recall. Someone said to try Walmart. I didn't have time. I needed to head over to Jack Be Click for my computer. The shop was locked. Bailey was out for Memorial Day. I headed home to make my appointment with twenty-six-year-old S. There was no response when I sent the Zoom invitation. Then I saw she had sent me one. She and her family were spending the day at the beach. That was a downer after I rushed home to work with her. I wish people would tell me before the session. Eh. I'm usually home. It usually doesn't make a difference.

I had a second cancellation later in the day Third grade M was too involved with a basketball tournament to do a session today. I did meet with Adolescent D. I had him continue instructing me where to divide the words into syllables and phonemic units.

Lutz commented on my improved walking pace. I didn't feel draggy the whole walk. I think it's because I've returned to abdominal breathing instead of chest breathing. Gokhale recommends 'chest' breathing because she thinks abdominal breathing defeats the rib anchor. If the abdomen is extended with each breath, the rib anchor has to be released. The rib anchor is core to good posture. I suspect she's right about the rib anchor. I think the solution is to suck the belly in when inhaling and relax it when exhaling. Sucking it in when inhaling strengthens the rib anchor. It draws the whole abdominal wall up into the solar plexus. I showed it to Lutz. He argued that the abdominal wall should project outward when breathing. All martial arts teachers teach that. So that's why all martial arts teachers have distended abdomens!

Sunday, May 26, 2024

My right shoulder and upper arm hurt at night. I knew that could be a sign of a rotator cuff injury. I checked the Internet for possible solutions. They gave a list of causes for my discomfort: rotator cuff injury or tear, tendinitis, or an inflamed bicep. The last one was the most likely since my problems started when the electric lawn mower rolled down the hill and slammed my upper arm into the fence. I was relieved to find this to be a possibility. I am sick and tired of surgeries. I may need another hip replacement. I'm not thrilled; I don't want any more anesthesia. I don't think I will get a hip replacement without it. Maybe if I wait a while, I'll feel differently.

Darby asked if I applied MakesNoClaims (publicly known as Intrasound). I was introduced to it by a therapist in the 1990s. I have used it for years on skin tags, burns, pimples, and bruises. It's close to miraculous. I recently gave a jar to a walking friend who showed me a large keloid scar. For the last ten years, she received steroid shots into the scar tissues every two months. It reduced most of the scar temporarily and eliminated the itching. The scar was flattened in a tiny area. With the Intrasound, the itching was eliminated, and the scar, six inches across and a quarter inch high, was reduced in height. The Intrasound works better than the steroids. Al, the guy who manufactures and sells it, tells me it works on broken bones; why hadn't I been applying it to my bruised arm? It's hard for me to believe its effectiveness. With Darby's push, I started putting it on my right arm and shoulder.

At church, the woman with her dog was again on the south patio for the nine a.m. mass. Seeing her makes me think of bringing Elsa. Her dog looks just like her. But then I imagine the two dogs barking at each other for the whole mass. That would be a mess. They could meet beforehand to see if they get along. Elsa is calm around dogs she has had positive contact with.

I accidentally came across a video of a youngish woman, April McCurtrey, describing three hacks for reading. I watched it. It sounded very much like the one I teach. She introduces the 'pencil tap' method. Students tap on each consonant, twice each vowel, and one or two of the following letters. This goal is getting students to pay attention to each letter so they don't 'guess' the word based on the first letter, a common problem with poor readers. The double tap on the vowel is used so they can stop and determine the syllable pattern to figure out the vowel sound. The vowel sound is determined by the letters that come after it, not the ones before it. The vowels are the most significant challenge for readers of English. She also feels she is teaching students how to learn to read rather than just memorizing phonics rules. It sounded very much like my method. My first thought was that I could die in peace now.

My method of teaching reading is novel. It includes phonics. Unlike McCurtrey, I do not use controlled text, where the student reads only words with the letters and sounds that have been explicitly taught by the teacher. She argues the need to do that so students know they can trust phonics. Phonics in English is not trustworthy. It doesn't have a consistent one-to-one correspondence between letters and sounds like Italian. English can be crazy, with its bizarre relationship between letters and sounds. The best that can be hoped for is a statistical likelihood. A letter or combination of letters most likely represents this or that sound, and its inverse: it is unlikely to represent this or that sound.

English vocabulary is also context-based. What does the word 'cook' mean in this sentence? Is it a noun, a verb, or an adjective? Students must learn to cope with uncertainty if they are going to become good readers of English. We must train our students to cope with uncertainty.

McCurtrey pointed out that if students don't know how to decode with complete accuracy, they will come up with a pronunciation that makes no sense. That's correct. Then, using the consonants and making a good guess on the vowels, they have to figure out the word in the context of the sentence. Look at the word every. It can be decoded as e/v-e/r-y, e/v-e-r/y, e-v/e-r/y and e-v/e/r-y. All those are correct ways of decoding the word, and none is pronounced as it is in speech. Some might say, every is a sight word and should not be taught phonetically. Most words have some letters that accurately represent a sound.

We want to use all our mental tools for reading. While none of the decodings I provided would produce the standard pronunciation, students learn to figure it out with the use of context clues. They have to be trained to do this. I have found that the weakest students can learn to do this.

It poured again today. It's been pouring daily. It's unusual to have rain that lasts all day, but that's what we've been getting.

I tried my new Ryobi 10" chain saw on the fallen Bismarck palm frond. I love it. It's easy to handle and light enough for me. I cut off the two ends of the stem: the fan and the buckle.

After listening to McMurkrey's presentation, I am returning to my roots, the Phoniics discovery System Phase I, figuring out the relationship of the phonemes to the letters that represent them. I did it with Adolescent D. I don't think I could have done it much sooner. He was resistant to most of my methods. If I'd done it earlier, he would have seen the process as an insult to his intelligence. I have him tell me where to put the dashes, demarking one phoneme from another. It is revealing all sorts of phonics concepts D is still missing. The process is genius if I do say so my self.

My Apple Mac Book was lagging again last night; I did what Bailley had done when I brought it in the other day. He thought the problem was caused by the recent update.. he thought Microsoft was sending out updates that would jam Apple Computers. That didn't make much sense to me. If they are doing this, it's goodbye to Microsoft programs. I'll switch to Google Docs. I had to perform a Force Quit and a Restart every hour tonight.

I heard a Podcast on love. The speaker described the difference between Romantic love and maternal/paternal love. Romantic love is self-involved. The other persons love for us allows us to love ourselves ina highentened way. That always fades because as with all moods, we slip back too a default level. What happens when the blinders of first love fall from our eyes. How do we relate to each other then? The speaker said we switch not into a platonic mode but into a maternal/paternal mode in which we become caretakers for each other. Darby told me it took ten years of marriage before she started thinking about what would be best for Patrick; she married when she was twenty-two. I was thirty-two when I met Mike. What allowed me to become a caring partner? I learned to take care of my boundaries and say no without compunction. As I got better at it, I learned to say it gently but decisively. I also leanred to not only ask for what I wanted, but more importantly to cope with not getting what I wanted. To this day, the most painful part of not getting what I want is when I'm preventing it. I can live with not getting it, but not my own interference.

Saturday, May 25, 2024

For the past several days, I have been dragging. Walking up the hills took more effort. I needed more short naps. I wasn't sure what the problem was. It may be the shift in my breathing pattern. I learned the rib anchor through the Gokhale method. It made sense posturally, but I had to give up a lifelong habit of breathing with my abdominal muscles and learning to breathe with my chest muscles. I couldn't figure out how to breathe deeply using just my chest muscles. I've been trying to make that change despite the medical advice posted on the Internet. It says good breathing is abdominal. Chest breathing is a sign of anxiety. Perhaps it induces anxiety, the anxiety I've been feeling of late. Laughter triggers the lower abdominal muscles. I will figure out how to combine abdominal breathing with the rib anchor. I have confirmation of the rib anchor when I watch athletes and dancers. It makes a huge difference to someone's posture. Today, I tried abdominal breathing to help calm anxiety. The difference is whether you push out your belly to inhale or suck it in. I find if I suck it in, I maintain the rib anchor, while I can't if I extend my abdomen to inhale.

I can now tell Twin A and Twin E apart. They are identical twins, so much alike that their mother has trouble distinguishing them. The good news was that I could; the bad news was the why. Twin E is cheerful; Twin A is gloomy. Twin A is the one who shared her feelings of sadness because of her academic inadequacies. Her reading was steadily improving. The rich get richer; the more we know, the easier it is for us to improve. Twin A has been ahead of Twin E. That may be part of the problem- survivor's syndrome. That may make her feel bad. However, Twin E is gaining. Their mother says both girls are reading books at home now.

My friend Sandor called last night. Did I know an Uber driver I could contact for him? He needed a ride to the airport. He tried to arrange for an Uber to come to his house and learned they don't travel out that far. He had no one to help him. I assumed it was a polite way of asking me to give him a ride. No worries. I was happy to do it.

He said he wanted to leave at noon. While he made the trip from my house to his in fifteen or twenty minutes, I figured I would need half an hour. I arrived shortly before noon. He lives in a gated community. I called him for the passcode and directions. I got a little lost because I remembered his house being at a dead-end. It's not. It just looks that way from his yard.

He was rushing around taking care of business. I wandered the property, taking in the view of Mauna Kea and figuring out the lay of the land. Eventually, I went to my car to listen to the Saturday shows on HPR. It started to pour. I called Sandor to tell him I couldn't remotely open the car's trunk. He didn't answer. I called again. Still no answer. It was close to one p.m. I feared he had fallen and couldn't get up. I planned to check on him if he didn't come out soon or answer my call. He came. I can't remember what he said he was doing that he couldn't answer my calls. I don't know what would have happened if he had gotten an Uber. No one would have waited an hour for him to get ready. But that's Sandor. I love him to death, but he's always in a mad rush. What a way to live.

I drove back toward Kona and the airport at the speed limit. It would be what it would be. I wasn't risking life and limb. Sandor regaled me with stories on the ride. His nephew, his wife's blood relative, just graduated from Hawaii Preparatory Academy. Sandor hosted a celebratory lunch at his house for close family, a mere twenty-five people. Nothing like my family. My mother was an only child. My father had one brother who never married so much for the extended family.

Sandor's wife had been in Miami for several days, having had some dental work done. He called her while we were driving. She had gone on a boat ride with some of Sandor's friends or family from Miami, where he is from.

The last story was about his neighbor across the street. Holy cow! Boy, that's a scene and a half. The couple that live there both suffer questionable mental health issues. The man is constantly bringing charges against his neighbors. He exhibits generally strange behavior. Sandor said his problems with him started when the man approached him asking for support for his complaint about another neighbor having a tractor on his property. The development is zoned for agriculture. He has every right to have a tractor, several in fact. When Sandor refused to cooperate, the man started calling the cops on him. He finally took Sandor to court.

They were refer to meditation to start. When the mediator got the details of the situation from Sandor's neighbor, she ended the sessions, saying, "This is a stalking situation." The case against Sandor was dropped.

Today, he told me about a new wrinkle. He mentioned the man's name to a family member. As it winds up, the man and his female partner rented a home from his wife's family on property primarily as a family compound. I think there are nine homes with a public street carrying the family name. The man's name was recognized, "Don't you remember. He's the Peeping Tom." He went around the compound spying on women showering or changing. He was finally asked to leave.

Sandor got to the airport at 1:30 for his 2 o'clock flight. While the Kona airport is international, it is still small. He got through check-in and security and had no trouble checking his luggage and making the plane.

I had two responses to an ad for tutoring I posted on Next Door. One was a mother looking for reading support for her two children, one going into Kindergarten and the other into First grade. She wanted to be ahead of the game. I don't like working with children younger than six. I'm with Waldorf; children shouldn't be made to read before the age of seven. I disagree with the push to have them read by the time they enter Kindergarten.

The second was from a mother whose son was in third grade and had problems with letter reversals. This is my cup of tea. Unfortunately, I was so anxious I made two serious mistakes in my response. First, I gave her my telephone number forgetting it was posted in the ad. The second was a doozy. I confused her name with her son's. Would you want to hire a reading teacher who mixed up people's names? Oh, well. I feel I have to post another ad. If I leave this one up, it clearly condemns me as incompetent at one and all.

I have a funny story about mixing up names. In my sophomore year of college, I had to compare two early American authors on an English exam. The teacher called me into his office. He said I had written the best exam but mixed up the names. He should fail me, but he couldn't because I had demonstrated such an excellent understanding of the material. He apologized and gave me a C. The whole situation baffled me. looking back on it now, I thought," What a pedantic!" The critical point was that I understood the literature. Getting the names right was trivial. I still made Dean's List.

One of the fronds finally fell off the Bismarck palm tree in my front yard. It is a gorgeous silver-blue palm with huge fronds. Dean says the palm comes from Madagascar. It must have been a German who named it, thinking the magnificent tree deserved the name of a powerful human being. I asked Darby if she wanted the frond or if it was too much for her to handle. She suggested I give it to Dean. When I arrived home this morning at the end of my walk, I invited Dean to look at the frond. He suggested I offer it to Darby. These fronds are huge, and no one wants to deal with them. While I know people respond that way because they're uncomfortable saying no to a request- in this case, it was an offer. Many respond to an offer as if it is a request. I was the proud owner of a pruning chainsaw and knew I would cut those fronds down to a manageable size.

Oblique language drives me nuts. Once, many years ago, while Mike and I were visiting Princeton for Thanksgiving, I stayed with Jean, my Hanai sister, while Mike stayed with this obnoxious friend. One afternoon, I was curled up on the sofa by the fireplace. Jean said, "Wouldn't you be more comfortable upstairs?" I took the question literally, thanked her for her concern, and assured her I was comfortable. She then asked me directly to go upstairs because she had a Skype visit with her husband and wanted privacy. I asked why she didn't say that. "I was being polite." I found her request confusing. Oblique expressions are part of a language. I doubt many people in their twenties would understand expressions like, "I have to powder my nose." (It means I have to go to the bathroom. in those days, ladies did go to the bathroom to refresh the power on their noses.) You have to learn what those words mean as much as you do any other language convention. When Jean started with, "Wouldn't you be more comfortable…," someone raised with that language would have understood the speaker wasn't concerned for their comfort but their own.

The empty gel capsules I ordered from Amazon arrived. I ground the green tea leaves into a powder using my coffee grinder. I found a YouTube video showing me how to fill those capsules effectively.

I have heard about the health benefits of green tea from several sources. I used to include it in my smoothie after grinding the leaves with the flax seeds I also put in the drink. The green tea affects the taste of the smoothie unpleasantly. I switched to drinking the tea. I noticed the few remaining natural teeth I had left became considerably more stained. Really quite unsightly. Sure enough, green tea stains teeth. I started a teeth whitening regime. It didn't make sense to do that at night and drink green tea in the morning, which darkened my teeth again. Ergo, the green tea capsules. They solve two problems.

Monday, June 15, 2026

Friday, May 24, 2024

I dreaded going to the hula class. I left on the late side but made myself go. I was so stressed about it that I was struggling to stay awake. It was concerning but not so bad that I had to turn around and go home. The teacher was teaching a new dance today. I followed pretty well. I still felt like I was dragging. I didn’t know what was wrong with me. I understood that the hula was hard on my arms. I was only eleven months out from a reverse shoulder replacement. I may never be able to lift my left arm over my head with the ease I once had. Doing the hula is a good way to explore it. I have to accept it’s a process. I sat down for a while. I got up again but limited the movement to my feet.

I saw my walking buddy, Elaine. She told me about the class. I went up to say hello. She introduced me to a woman who was visiting her. Jeanette was French and spoke less English than I spoke French. I pulled out the French I learned in my sophomore and junior years in high school. It was far from perfect, but I could do some basic communication.

Elaine and her husband met Jeanette and her husband while traveling in Japan. They hung out together for three days, and Elaine and her husband invited them to stay if they came to Hawaii. Jeanette and her husband were just married; this was their honeymoon.

The last time I used French was in 1962. I was traveling in Europe with a student tour group. While visiting some city on the Cote D’Azur, I rented a moped and took it on a highway to meet up with my group, who had traveled to another town for the day. I had an accident.

I was wearing a head scarf. I took my hand off the handlebars to brush the scarf back. The wheel turned sharply first in one direction and then another. Then, the wheel jammed in a turned position, the bike came to an abrupt halt, and I was thrown forward. I survived with a torn skort pocket and a mild abrasion burn. The moped was unusable. A couple stopped to help me. They got me and the bike to the side of the road and were discussing what to do. I saw a bakery truck coming down the road. I stood up, walked past my Good Samaritans, and put my thumb out. I wanted a ride to the next town to meet with my group. The couple explained what I wanted to the driver. He agreed. They loaded my bike into the back of the van and me into the front. I chatted amicably with the driver in French. I nearly failed French in high school. I was not a good language learner. The driver dropped me off where my group was. The tour bus driver fixed my bike. It was loaded on the back of the bus for the trip home. I returned it without a hitch.

After class, I went to Island Naturals to see if they had some of their great tuna fish salad. They don’t usually have any out in the morning, but they prepare it then and make it available in the afternoon. It was my lucky day: they had plenty of salad and their orange raspberry strudel bites. I ate some tuna salad in the parking lot. I was hungry.

I was shocked while checking out. My wallet wasn’t in my purse. Had I dropped it, or had I left it at home? I headed back to the community center where the hula class had been. Judy called just as I pulled into the lot. She told me her son, Adam, cut back the large root that broke their water pipe and fixed the pipe. They had water again. I told her about the wallet. I was surprisingly calm. Thanks to Mike, I learned not to respond to incidents like that with panic. “It’s a problem to be solved;” just take it one step at a time. What a gift that man was to me.

Before walking over to the center, I checked the passage side of the car, not just the seat but the floor. There it was. My purse was open, and the wallet had slipped out and fallen between the seat and the passenger side door. I went home.

My right shoulder has been bothering me as much as my left. Was it caused by my changes, or was arthritis advancing on its own schedule? I felt the problem was coming from my upper back. I used the MELT roller to see if I could get some relief. I rolled back and forth, applying the roller to my thoracic spine. I heard the loudest crack I had ever heard. Had I shifted the metal plate in my shoulder? Had I done some damage to myself? No. It was all good, and my shoulders and upper arms felt better.

I had no students today. Adolescent D was supposed to meet with me but wandered off to do his own thing. I like to think he is having a great time when he doesn’t show up. He has been doing that more lately. It is the end of the school year, so I think there are more social activities. I don’t get that he doesn’t want to do the work. It’s more that he has something fun to do. At least, I hope that’s what’s happening.

Darby didn’t walk this evening. She anticipated a hard day’s work tomorrow and wanted to husband her energy. Lutz had texted to ask if I wanted a mango. No, I fear those critters. The sap from a mango is the same chemical as in poison ivy. I am allergic. He said he would set out around 5:30. I set out at that time, figuring I would pick up Gayle, and Lutz would catch up to us. I ran into Xiu. She said she saw the two of them walking down the road. I didn’t know which way to go to catch up, so I just kept to my usual route. I missed them. Lutz texted me; they had stopped by to pick me up. Maybe we’ll meet up tomorrow.

Thursday, May 23, 2024

I had a challenging session with twenty-six-year-old S. When I asked her to use a strategy, she didn't do what I asked. I asked her why she did what she did. This was not a rhetorical question; it was literal. The difference is important, very important. Does she have difficulty understanding what I said? Is what I asked her to do too hard, and she tries to do something else? Is this a psychological problem? Does she feel insulted by what I am asking her to do and simply refusing to do it? S is defensive.

To communicate the work's objective, I asked her if she could tie a shoelace. There are reasons she may never have learned: her grandmother, who raised her, only bought shoes with Velcro fasteners, or no one bothered to teach her. She assumed I asked the question because I thought she was too stupid to know how to tie shoelaces. While I understand her dilemma, we must deal directly with the problem.

S was put on Adderall at the age of four. She experienced an unusual, but not unheard of, side effect. She had seizures. The pediatric neurologist I got her to see just before she turned 18 explained that seizures reset the brain. That means anything she was taught during the day was erased whenever she had one. Very little ever went into her long-term memory. She presented as 'stupid.' She was regarded as stupid by everyone in her life. She saw herself that way. What is true is that her skills are limited. Life trained her to feel helpless. Interpersonally, she presents as passive-aggressive. While I don't blame her, it severely blocks her learning. We have to deal with the psychological piece directly. She needs to recover from the trauma of her life.

What S doesn't understand or doesn't trust is that I believe intelligence is largely taught. Can I bring her to her full potential at conception? Unlikely, however, I have taught others the necessary skills to learn to read and comprehend. S is unusually behind the eight-ball in terms of her life circumstances. But to help her, I need her to know what is blocking her each minute. I will work to solve it. Suppose it's neurological, meaning her learning or lack thereof is because of some problem in her brain other than lack of exposure to good teaching. It will take time in that case, but it can be done. My belief in the plasticity of the human mind is absolute. If her problem is primarily emotional, that is more difficult to work with. That problem isn't rooted in the neocortex but in the limbic system.

I hounded her today, trying to convince her of my intent. (I do not promise anyone I can accomplish whatever they are hoping for; I've just worked with many students with severe problems and helped them.) Why do I think I'm someone's best shot? Because my position on the learning process is rooted in the belief that intelligence is learned.

Coincidently, I encountered another retired teacher who also volunteers at Ulu Wini. I told her that several of these kids cannot count by five. I noticed a lack of pattern recognition skills. J's reaction: how many of these kids are classified as special ed? My guess is she thinks they're all stupid. Most teachers present material and leave it to the student to figure out how to learn it. If they can't, there's something wrong with them. That attitude drives me nuts! Students have to be taught how to learn.

Most teachers present information; they don't teach students how to learn. To teach students, you have to diagnose the learning problem and teach that. When I saw that second-grade MV didn't see patterns, I taught her how to do it. She successfully used pattern recognition to count by fives. Next, I have to see if she will apply it in an unfamiliar context.

Many of the Marshallese children don't look for patterns. Why should they? The Marshall Islands consist of twenty-four populated islands or atolls. The capital has a population of 23,156. Sixteen of the remaining 23 islands or atolls have a population of under 500. One island has a population of 75. People have lived in the exact location for generations. They encounter few new problems. Everything is dictated by tradition. A group like that doesn't need more than one or two people who can think strategically. They're the group's wise men and women.

In our modern lives, each of us must learn to solve problems. We constantly encounter novel situations for which our tradition-bound elders have no solutions. We're all on our own in a world that presents us with something unfamiliar every day, whether technological or social. My heart aches for these people who lost their relatively peaceful lives because the US government thought their islands would be a convenient site to test nuclear bombs.

I'd say I long for that life, but I'm too mired in the modern world. I doubt I could live in such a limited environment.

It was Ulu Wini day. No one came to work with me for a good fifteen minutes. I sat quietly at my table and worked on the updates. I thought I might have no one. Then, fifth-grade RM came over. She wanted more help with reading comprehension. We worked on a grade-level passage. I drew out of her what she thought the passage was about in general, then the details, and then how all these facts connected.

A young boy, KP, whom I had never seen before, said he wanted to work with me. He said he didn't have much time; he had to go to his uncle's house. He calmly announced his mother had died. Yes, he lived with his uncle. So sad that he referred to it as 'his uncle's house' instead of home. His sister stood by as he worked with me. He wanted to work on math. He didn't want me to help him with anything. He just wanted to show me what he could do. I encouraged him. Someone who thinks math is fun and his accomplishment a source of pride needs to be nurtured. I gave him several sheets of paper so he could do more problems at home.

First-grade JM wanted to work on reading today. She still struggled to recall the basic sight words, list 1-50. In the past, I worked with her on drilling exercises. That did some good, but she was still slow and struggling. Today, I asked her if she was figuring out each word. Yes. I worked on drilling the automatic processing: See the words in visual working memory, ask your long-term memory to tell you the word, pay attention to auditory working memory on the left side, and wait for 'your mind to tell you the word." With the kids, I point to the part of the brain they should focus on rather than name it. I can appreciate why shifting from conscious to unconscious processing is difficult. Good learners move back and forth as needed. It's a little like knowing when to use a spoon versus a fork.

Years ago, I taught the process of automatic recall to a fourth-grade student with Fetal Alcohol syndrome. When she experienced it, she said, "I feel like I'm psychic." Yep. That's what it feels like. The words mysteriously pop into your head. Those of us who were taught by our parents or learned accidentally to move back and forth between the two processes before we got to school take the shifting for granted. Children who did not learn it from their elders or don't come across it by accident must be taught how to do it and supported as they learn to tolerate that shift.

I grabbed second-grade MV for more math work. She stalled when transitioning from the double digits to the hundreds when counting by fives. I pushed her to count the two hundreds by fives. She didn't look at me like I was from Mars, but she still needed help. She told me her teachers noticed the difference. She was pleased with herself, as she should be. I was still waiting for her to approach me for help instead of having to track her down.

Wednesday, May 22, 2024

This morning, when I ran into one of my walking acquaintances who I knew wrestled with her body image, I was moved to share Laughter Yoga with her. I don't know if it was primarily developed as a form of breathing exercise or a mood elevator. I experience it more as a physical exercise. Either way, it is also good for developing abdominal muscles. If you sustain laughter for a minute, those muscles let you know they were activated. Yvette finds the exercise tiring.

I am sleeping better; I wake up less frequently and sleep through the morning. Last night , when I woke up at 1:30 to pee, I was wide awake. I didn't look forward to the rest of the night. I planned to get up and meditate if I couldn't fall back to sleep. No worries. I woke up again shortly after 4:30.

I had an appointment with my therapist/life coach this morning for the first time in three weeks. She was touring Morocco. I asked her how it went, expecting to hear a great story. Hmm! Not so much.

She got Covid and was thrown off the tour. When Shelly came down with a cold, her friend insisted she take a Covid test and ran to the leaders. Shelly was put into a cab and sent into the world alone. I would think the host country would terminate touring rights for a company that sends a contagious person into the general population without support.

Shelly was on her own in a country hostile to Americans and unaccompanied women. It didn't get all the details, but she continued traveling and touring. It cost her twice as much as the original plan. The tour company did not reimburse her. I assumed she wouldn't have anything more to do with this supposed friend. But no- Shelly is into forgiveness. She understood her friend was panicked by her Covid diagnosis. When I spoke to her today, she still suffered from 'a cold.' She wasn't meeting with clients in person, just remotely.

I told Shelly all that had happened in my life over the interim. I told her how a video on empaths helped me solve one of my problems. The agony created by longing was resolved. That was a significant change - on to bigger and better issues. Issues around my work were always lurking. That I am a superior teacher and have developed remarkable method for teaching my work doesn't get recognition. While getting more recognition for my accomplishments from the educational community and those I work with would be nice, the main issue is getting the work out there for other educators and parents to use. I'm my own worst enemy.

I watch others promote their products shamelessly. What is there to be ashamed of? But I wasn't raised with that kind of entitlement. If I advocate for myself, I'll feel a lot better whether others respond. When I think of calling schools to put my name on a list of tutors, I feel a combination of shame and humiliation

That got Shelly and me into a discussion: How do shame and humiliation differ? They feel different. Shelly said humiliation is triggered by some external action—someone says or does something that humiliates us—while shame is generated internally. But they are linked somehow.

I experience humiliation in my upper torso, particularly on my upper back. I feel shame in the lower half of my body. I don't know if anyone else experiences it this way. It is those feelings that stop me from extending myself. I have a list of topics I want to make videos on. My fear prevents me from even envisioning a coherent presentation. Now, generally, I'm pretty comfortable playing the fool. I'm a risk taker.

I tried out my 4" chainsaw yesterday. It didn't work. I recharged the battery. It still didn't work. I tried the second battery. It still didn't work. Anxiety hit. I am more vulnerable to anxiety these days. There are so many possible causes I'd have trouble choosing.

I described the feeling of anxiety to my friend Jean. It feels like there's a racing motor inside me while I'm standing still. I dealt with it as a child by moving as fast as that internal motor. While it kept me sane, it wasn't the best solution.

My response to my current anxiety: I hopped in my car and headed down to Home Depot, determined to buy another pruning chainsaw. I love this little gadget. It's good for branches less than six inches in diameter.

I started searching the tool aisle and was directed to aisle three with the motorized gardening tools. Everything was under lock and key. An employee was in the aisle, but he was helping someone else. He said he'd be back in a minute. Ten minutes later, I was wandering the aisles, looking for help. The same man came out of the outdoor gardening section, saw me, and apologized. He got caught up in something else. I decided on the Ryobi 6" chainsaw. It was $99 without the battery. It said I had to order it online at the Home Depot site. The clerk turned to leave and said he'd be right back. Where was he going? Over to the tool aisle. But they don't carry chainsaws. He knew that- but they might carry the battery. All Ryobi batteries are the same. Hey, I had a Ryobi drill at home. What did the battery look like? I couldn't remember. He said all Ryobi batteries were the same. If I had one, I could use it with my new purchase.

Judy called on her way to work. She had quite a story. She got a call from the water company. They read our meters once every two months. Her household had used an enormous amount of water. There must be a leak.

Paulette, Judy's sister, does the maintenance work around the house. She knew where the pipe was. She set about following it looking for the leak. She heard it before she saw it. The PV pipe was only a few inches underground. When she uncovered it, she discovered it was gushing water with a large root pressing against the pipe. However, the ground around it wasn't supersaturated, and there were no above-ground puddles. They would never have detected a leak until they got the bill. The bill for three households on that property is usually $200. This last bill was for $2000.

The twins did very well today. I had Twin E first. I knew which one it was because she greeted me cheerily. Twin A is more subdued. She is more restless in the sessions. She is also considerably more advanced. While both girls are reading in a grade-three level book now, Twin A's word recognition and fluency are significantly better. I have done work with Twin A on figuring out what a word really is when she decoding of a word is correct but does not provide the accurate pronunciation of the word. I'm just starting the process with Twin E.

A friend called to ask for advice. She has a difficult relative, an alcoholic who hurles insults - a real joy. My friend read me a text exchange. She wanted my advice on how to respond. The exchange consisted of the other party criticizing my friend, her defense, and his attacking her on a different issue. My advice: stop reading the texts. There was an issue here, the well-being of a child. All the rest was nonsense. She'd started reading the text again. She said she wanted to fix the problem between them. It's unfixable. She has to keep an eye on the real problem, her access to the child and his well-being. The rest has nothing to do with anything. It's noise, pure distraction. She should ignore those attacks. She went back to reading the text to me. Again, I told her to stop. This is addictive behavior, one I'm familiar with in myself. I know how hard it is not to go down that rabbit hole. I hear Mike's advice echoing in my head: it's a problem to be solved; keep your eye on the problem, not the distractions.

I know it's addictive because I do it. Negative thinking is the default mode of the human mind. The argument is that as our brains developed, we had to contemplate dangerous experiences to learn from them and figure out alternative ways of dealing with them. There's no point in dwelling on positive experiences. There's nothing to fix.

The problem with rumination may be worse now than it was in the past, but since both Buddha and Christ addressed this issue, it is clearly not completely new to the human condition.

It's worse now because we in the Western world live such isolated lives. I think the primary feeling of loneliness is fear. We know no one is committed to our protection. Each person lives in their own social pod. So many of us have no one. We weren't designed to live that way. It puts us in a constant state of hypervigilance because no one else is watching out for us. In a group of committed people, everyone is watching out for everyone else. There's a crowd protecting us, and we're ready to protect anyone and everyone in that crowd. That's security. Not just a firm base but a wide one as well. No one person has to assume full responsibility. Everyone is equally on board. Ah. Sounds so relaxing.

But we don't have that option anymore. It's every man for himself, so our rumination tendencies run amok. I recommended we start an RA group, a Rumination Anonymous. Rumination is more akin to eating than alcohol. Alcohol, you can give up entirely and survive, but not so with eating or rumination. They both serve survival functions. That's the problem.

Tuesday, May 21, 2024

I mowed the lower lawn. Darby was right; the lawn gets thicker the more you mow it. For the first time, I could see where I had mowed in the grass. Before this, the only evidence of my efforts was fewer seed stalks.

I think I found a way to work with twenty-six-year-old S that won’t torture us both. I used the original Phonics Discovery System approach. We analyzed each word in the text for its phonemes and the letters representing them. using the sentence above as an example: ‘What is the first sound in we?” /w/. “What letter represents that sound?” w. What is the second sound in the word we?” the long /e/. “What letter or letters represent that sound?” e. I do that with every word in the sentence, whether a word is regular or not. If students have difficulty with it, I may model the process. I always start modeling. Often, students start doing it with me or take over. This develops phonemic awareness, the best indicator for reading success. She responded well to this exercise.

I suffered a bout of anxiety today. I described it to Jean as feeling like I have a racing motor inside me when the rest of me is neutral. When I was young, that was my constant state. I solved the problem by talking and moving as fast as my anxiety. I didn’t notice it that way. Sitting still in the bad ole days was torture.

It was a Ulu Wini day. Fifth-grade ML asked to work with me. She’s been asking almost every day I’m there. She sees improvement in her reading comprehension. I think her reading fluency has improved. I’m teaching her how to form questions as she reads. We read a passage on how police use footprints to identify criminals. She identified footprints immediately. I had taught her to look for the most oft-repeated word or words (pronouns or descriptive words) that referred to it to determine the main idea of a passage. I asked for other words that stood out. She came up with police, investigate, criminal, and identify. I asked how these words fit together. Reading comprehension is figuring out how the pieces of the puzzle fit together. She did two passages with me on grade level.

While I worked with ML, third grade SP passed and said, ‘I’m next.” Wow! That’s some change in attitude. Of course, when I was through with ML and called him, he was nowhere to be found. He passed me when he went to the bathroom. I asked him if he wanted to work then. No, he was involved in something else.

I saw second-grade MV. I grabbed her. She was reluctant to work with me. My objective for the day was for her to learn to count by fives using the pattern. I wrote a column of alternating ones and fives: 05050505050,,,, what comes next? That was hard for her when we started. I was shocked. Then, we put the numbers in the tens place. What was that pattern? It required some repetition, but she got it. She could count from 5 to 95 without a hitch. She got caught at 100.

I also reviewed counting-on. When I gave MV the first addition problem, she didn’t use it. But she used it in all subsequent problems. She produced those answers quickly. Then, she wrote a few subtraction problems for herself. I was concerned she would write a subtraction problem requiring regrouping or, worse yet, an undoable one. But, no, she did well and solved them well. She only blanked out on me once. Her brain freezes when she gets scared; she gets scared whenever she doesn’t understand something immediately. I asked her if she was doing better in class? She admitted that the teacher had commented that she was improving and was proud of herself for her improvement.

First-grade JM asked to work with me on math. Come to find out, she’s good at math. She just wanted to show off. I gave her a pen and paper and told her to show me what she knew. She did about 15 simple addition problems. If that’s her best, I think she’s below grade level. I’ll have to check.

It was Store Day when the kids buy items cheaply or get them for free if they accumulate enough points. They get points for working with me or helping others. The kids are excited about this monthly event. The noise was deafening, and the sun was beating down on me because we were seated at the edge of the overhang. I moved the table against the wall, tucked into a corner by the bathroom. We were protected from the sun and the noise. Perfect! Why didn’t I think of this sooner?

Monday, May 20, 2024

I listened to the book Yvette had recommended, Momentous Events in the Life of a Cactus, on Audible. It’s a fictional book about the life of a teen girl born without arms. When I finished it, I looked for the book I had been listening to, Undistractable, a book on attention deficit disorder, and couldn’t find it. Had I lost that book because I had switched to another? Were these books only rented and expired, or could I only have one active book at a time? I checked on the Internet. All the books I downloaded on Audible were mine forever, even if I stopped my subscription to Audible. Nice to know.

Nir Eyal, the author of Indistractable, argues that attention deficit disorder results from poor parenting. Parents who are inattentive or unregulated produce children who are inattentive and unregulated. Modern-day parenting puts a terrible burden on parents. That any kids come out functional is a miracle. No human being is perfectly attentive or regulated.

The problem is the shrinking social network that supports children. Ten thousand years ago, a child was born into a group. All the adults were responsible for all the children. That was a broad support base. If one piece of that base was off, the rest of the group maintained the stability. Think of a jigsaw puzzle. If one piece is missing out of 20 or 150, the image is still recognizable, and the world is stable. If you shrink the base, the world becomes more vulnerable. If it’s a ten-piece puzzle, and one piece is missing, the image is still stable but in jeopardy. The stable image is gone if you have a two-piece puzzle and one piece is skewed. Nowadays, you have single parents who live alone without community support. That parent has to maintain the equilibrium for themselves and the child. It is hard enough for an adult alone in the world to feel safe, no less a child with only one adult. We’ve turned ourselves into zoo animals, all living in our individual cages. We feel sorry for the animals. Why don’t we feel sorry for ourselves?

When I arrived at the beach at Old A, only Clyde was there. We stood side by side in silence, enjoying the view. Clyde pointed to the line of dead greens; it had been an unusually high tide. Water had covered the area where we usually stood, and the sand trailed parallel to the shore.When we were about to start, Diane arrived.

Clyde did a perfectly good job leading us through the exercises. When Susan is there, he defers to her knowledge. He almost appears to have mild dementia. He can’t remember what to do. He did perfectly well without her. His bumbling must come from insecurity. We briefly talked after we were through. Diane told me she does water jogging on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays at 7 am off the pier in downtown Kona. It’s open to everyone.

I stopped by Jack Be Click before I went to Target to check when it opened. The first thing on my Target list was something for my athlete’s foot. How could I have athlete’s foot? I always wear slippers (flip flops), my feet don’t sweat, and I treat them with a Clorox rinse once or twice a week. I should be fungi-free. On, well. Athlete’s foot cream it is. I also picked up a box of strawberries and pastries I wasn’t planning to buy. I had Febreze and a windshield sunshade on my list. Target had Febreze air spray but not for fabrics. I bought the other brand. I went to the automotive section to find a windshield sunscreen. They didn’t carry one. A clerk told me I could find one at Napas.

I found Napa on the map; it was right around the corner. I found a female clerk stacking the aisles. She took me right to the sunscreens. There were a few options. She showed me the one she used and liked. We tried to figure out which side should face out, the black or shining silver side? The directions said either.

I arrived at Jack be Click around 9:45. Bailey immediately attended to me. I told him I had contacted Brian, who told me he couldn’t help me that day but thought the problem with my computer was something trivial. The lagging had gotten worse, and it was scary; I thought it was a virus. I couldn’t use any of my computers because everything is linked through iCloud and OneDrive. I was calm now; I was out of my mind with concern about my computer situation when I woke up early in the morning. I got up at 3 am. and meditated for an hour. It helped a bit. I did make it back to bed to doze some. I think I looked sane as I went about my day. When I was a kid, I certainly didn’t.

Sunday, May 19, 2024

I slept well again. I had slept through the night for several nights now. Was this because of the Laughter Yoga?

When I called Jean, my Hanai sister, this morning, I learned she had Covid. John, her husband, had come down with it several days ago. She became concerned when he slept for two days straight. She called in the medical services in her retirement community. They tested him; he was positive. Jean expresses joy at the advantages of living in this community. However, there is one major possible disadvantage.

Jean and John live in a two-story apartment complex on the grounds. They might have caught Covid through the heating and cooling system, not in-person exposure to other residents. I hope she doesn’t figure that out. She is very protective when it comes to exposure to airborne diseases.

When Covid was raging, she wouldn’t allow John’s grown children to visit with him at a neighborhood park, masked and twenty feet from each other. She was terrified. We all thought her position was extreme. But nothing would budge her. John never got to see his kids when they visited the area for that whole period. If she were to discover their vulnerability in their current living situation, I hate to think of her reaction.

I spent the day alone. I do reasonably well but get down when I am only working on writing. I need physical activity throughout the day, even more than social contact. I can’t stand endless sitting still.

When I was a kid, sitting still was hell. It physically hurt. I was constantly bobbing a foot. When I was twenty-three, I drove to attend the university from Long Island, New York, to Madison, Wisconsin. It was in the late summer or early fall. It was still warm out. The car was a 1956 Biscayne Chevrolet. I had to stop every two hours to stretch my legs. It had no air-conditioning. I drove with the windows open to get a breeze. That breeze was hard on my legs; I wore leg warms to help with the cramps. Just before turning fifty, I found a solution to this problem.

I discovered Vipassana mediation. It sounded like something I had been looking for all my life. It was everything I hoped it would be. I sat through the pain, and it went away. After completing several meditation sessions, I drove for seven hours straight with no pain.

Saturday, May 18, 2024

I had another wonderful night’s sleep. The Laughter Yoga is tiring. This is a remarkable process. Yvette introduced me to it. One of the hotels called the yoga studio where she works and asked if anyone could come and lead a session of Laughter Yoga. Yvette was aware of it and watched some videos about it. She decided to take the certification course because she was preparing to lead a group. She got me involved when she needed to make a video of her laughing with someone else. I joined her in the forty-day challenge, laughing every day for forty days. The yoga was developed by a doctor from India. The instructional videos are annoying, but the process is brilliant.

While I don’t enjoy doing the laughing exercise, I can appreciate the benefits. The founder discovered that the body doesn’t know the difference between real, heartfelt and fake laughter. Laughter lifts the spirit. I don’t know if he started with this premise or realized it as an added benefit.

I don’t usually laugh; I chuckle. Deep laughter is used in this yoga. What are its benefits? Lung expansion and reduced health risks, particularly coronary disease. The yoga exercises include arm movements to engage all the lobes of the lungs. Orchestra leaders who wave their arms around have a lower incidence of coronary disease. The arm movements must do something to improve circulation in the upper body and move plaque right along. Besides good respiratory and coronary health, laughter tightens the abdominal and pelvic floor muscles. It’s an all-in-one exercise for the body and the mind. Yvette will be a great leader of this yoga here on the Big Island, leading groups at hotels and beaches. She had a great big laugh before she discovered this yoga.

I went to the vet to pick up a second order of meds for Elsa’s ears—$51! The first one was supposed to last for two weeks, but it didn’t make it through the first week, so I was not sure what I was doing wrong.

I drove down the hill from the vet to go to Costco. I got my steps in wandering the aisles. They rearrange regularly. You never know where something is going to be. I get my steps in, wandering up and down all the aisles.

The lines weren’t too bad, although the parking lot was full. I don’t bother looking for a spot. The Costco parking lot was never full in the past. Now, there are only a few left at the far end. I have no idea why the change. May be more island residents are coming from all over the island because of the higher grocery prices.

I walked to Darby’s to pick up the trash barrel I delivered the other day full of green waste. I wanted to fill it up immediately. However, a light rain started to fall. It wasn’t a good time to collect the greens, but I did trim some of the shrubs.

Friday, May 17, 2024

I missed today's hula lesson because I didn't remember to put it on my schedule. I scheduled the acupuncturist for the 10 a.m. slot.

I asked the acupuncturist to treat the pain in my upper right arm. Was the pain caused by arthritis, shifts in my posture because of the Gokhale work, a torn rotator cuff, or being crushed between the heavy lawnmower and the metal gate?

I pushed the lawnmower through the gate and positioned it so it wouldn't roll down the hill. Once I had closed the gate, I squeezed between it and the mower and tried to push it. It rolled back and pinned my right upper arm against the fence. Ow! The acupuncturist worked on my neck and trap muscles. While her work didn't provide immediate relief, it quickly dissolved after one ibuprofen.

Elsa and I went up to visit Paulette and get water. Zi, Paulette's three-year-old grandnephew, was visiting too. He threw the mouse to Elsa today.

I felt weird all day. I think it was because of the slight shift I made the other day, which had dramatic results. While the agony had ended, I felt very low-key. It's how I feel when I'm coming down with something.

I continued working on the Gating Game with Adolescent D. The objective is to force students to combine the 'guessing' process, which happens as we read, with the 'checking process.' Everyone's mind 'guesses' possible words as they read. That's how we read material faster when familiar with the subject. We do a rapid 'guess/check' process. Good students don't grab the first thought that comes into their heads. They wait until they have confirmation. Poor students say the first word that comes into their heads and don't bother checking.

I have made a small change with enormous consequences. Instead of listening to HPR talk shows as I write, I listen to the HPR classical music station. Sadly, I didn't do that when Mike was alive. He would have loved the change. However, his taste in classical music was limited to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, with some allowance for the early nineteenth century. Me? I prefer music from the late nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries. While he hated that I listened to talk shows and played FreeCell, he might not been so happy with my eclectic taste. However, I also like listening to music better than talk shows. I hadn't been prepared to listen to music versus talk shows before. The talk shows distracted me more from the negative voice in my head and the painful feelings in my body. The human voices were more calming then. Now, they don't serve that function. I do better with the music and get much more work done.

A coqui frog made his chirping perch in the shrub right outside my bedroom door. I need to hit that shrub with baking soda. That's what kills these overwhelmingly noisy creatures. The Puerto Ricans love them. The Coquis have natural enemies there. Here, they became overwhelming. In an area where they have flourished, Hilo, it is impossible to hear anything over their racket at night.

Thursday, May 16, 2024

I had a wonderful night’s sleep. I didn’t even get up to pee till after 4 am. Then, I was up by 4:30, petting and brushing Elsa as part of our new morning routine when B called. I thought he had said he needed to leave at 5:30. He was anxious and wanted to get to the airport early. He did. We got there before the Mokulele Airlines office opened. He would make his flight with time to spare.

I continued watching the Laughter Yoga videos. The cajoling voice that bothered me in the first video seemed less. Was I getting used to it, or were they less, whatever it takes to be less cajoling?

I accidentally came across a video about empaths, people who can feel other people’s feelings. I watch a bunch on the topic. Most of the videos were sympathetic to the social plight of the empath. The first one gave me helpful information. It theorized that empaths develop because of a desperate need to connect with people due to a mother who never attuned to them. The speaker also said that if there is an empath in the dysfunctional family, another child will go in the exact opposite pattern; they will become encapsulated.

The empath chooses the path of searching to find attunement with others. Their energy is projected into the world as they search for that connection. That sounded right. They are also hypervigilant. They want connection but don’t trust people.

The speaker said unattuned parents develop kids with extremes of introversion and extroversion. Those words are literal descriptions of what people do with their energy. Extroverts send their energy out constantly, searching for connections; introverts contain their energy and avoid energetic attunement. Then there’s that fantastic state when both are going on, the anxious-avoidant attachment pattern where one constantly reaches out, searches for a connection and rejects it when it happens. I think my mom was that way, very conflicted, downright crazy-making. I remember being that way myself, putting out come-hither/go-away vibes. I know what I did to modify that behavior- at least for myself. Berthold Brecht’s play The Measures Taken gave me a way out of that dilemma.

I understood my behavior as searching for connection and not trusting anyone enough to allow for the connection I sought. Resolving the trust issue was how I started to free myself from the pattern.

The theme of The Measures Taken was to keep your eye on the goal and not become distracted by side issues. I have no idea how that theme led to my solution. Was it to ignore the more minor conflicts, not getting myself into trouble with every relationship? I think that was it. I didn’t have to resolve every difference between myself and another person before I could share time with them. I learned to accept what a person had to offer me, even if it wasn’t the whole enchilada. To accept that intimate attunement would only be a 30% connection. 100% wasn’t possible. That made my life and probably the lives of people who knew me much easier.

The second thing I learned was to set my own boundaries. Ah. What a relief! My mother recognized no boundaries. I don’t think my dad did either, but he showed an interest in what I thought and felt that my mother didn’t.

The healing message I got from the video on making an empath was about the extruded energy, like a pod out into the world searching for something to fix the wound.

I have been told by three or four psychics that I have an enormous aura. They were not praising me. One asked how I managed to walk down a crowded street, as I was constantly bumping into others. Huh? No one offered me any help or a definition of normal or why what I was wasn’t good. I knew nothing of my aura. It was my normal, whatever it was. Putting all I knew about myself with this new information, I allowed the extruded energy to reenter my body. With that, the wound immediately closed. It was the one in my solar plexus that felt like loneliness and yearning, which I’ve lived with since before my sister was born. I had hoped her birth would solve the problem. It didn’t. Neither did it make matters worse except in bringing home the hopelessness of the situation.

I started meditating on drawing the energy back into my body. It brought a sense of peace.

Mike provided some peace for me, as I did for him. We were both denied maternal attunement. Energetic attunement brought us together and was the most vital part of the relationship, the ground zero on which we built our marriage. We may both have been infantile in our needs, but getting them allowed us to function as adults in our marriage. Mike liked to say our marriage worked because there was always one adult present, and it wasn’t always the same person. We were good complements.

I had an appointment with twenty-six-year-old S. She was late as usual. Her mom told me it was because she slept in late. S always denied that, saying she had been up for a while. I told her about the possible way to get driving lessons. She just said no to all my suggestions. She can’t conceive of possibilities and can’t tolerate disappointment. I appreciate her point of view; her life has been filled with disappointments. Nothing has gone well for her.

I can’t get her to strategize when reading. She got stuck on the word arm today. I wrote the word car and asked her to figure out what sound the ar made in the word. The point is to look for familiar words with the same pattern of letters when having trouble figuring out a sound. She said nothing. When I asked her what was happening, she couldn’t tell me. It came out that she was telling herself that she didn’t know the word. That’s all she was doing, listening to those words in her head over and over. I told her to say ar and then m repeatedly until they blended, to ask her mind to give her the word. She locks out the possibility of figuring it out; she either gets it or doesn’t. She has never learned problem-solving skills. It’s all a nightmare for her, and it’s a nightmare for anyone who has to deal with her.

When I told her good news, she received it negatively. I told her she wasn’t required to take an authorized driver’s ed course because she was over twenty-one. Someone in the family could teach her to drive. She said no one was available. They all had their own lives and problems and couldn’t spend an hour a week teaching her to drive. If her estimation of her family is accurate, what a tragedy!

I was tired on our evening walk. Darby helped me tackle a hill by laying a hand on the small of my back—a hiker’s trick my mom taught me. She belonged to a hiking club in Berlin, where she learned it. My weakness was the impact of the change I felt the other day. I don’t know where it will go.