Dr Appts and on to Finals

Our Doctor appointments went well. Our blood looks great. My walking has netted some gain in the good HDLs. Its kind of hard to do since the lipitor is nailing both kinds of cholestrol. No more urinary concerns for me.. must have been caused by exercise. We had a talk about health care. The next appointment in March will be the complete physical for each of us on separate days. He is not too excited about the weight we are carrying and talked about a plan to reduce carbs by one third in every meal we have.

My students are having a time getting through December. Some are accused of promoting fights. Some are just trying to find a friend on campus. One has taken up with trying to get adult friends instead of student friends. Not a good idea on a high school campus. I think that this might have been more permissible in junior high. Trying to get many of them to take the other side of the conversation is difficult. We have been picking up hidden language cues in movies and reactive language. In many ways they don't have the memory to pull what they learned into new situations. I was listening to some of the Mind Institute podcasts coming out of UC Davis. Susan Bookheimer lectured on the abilty of the brain to make distinctions regarding emotions on the face. The non autistic brain has non cortex brain activity for face recognition that is moderated by the frontal cortex when the person labels or categorizes it. In the autistic brain there is little dampening of that area by the frontal cortex with a label. This is why it is so hard for my autistic clients to read faces and make the right decision as to proceeding or retreating.

Thanks to my sisters that responded to the Gunnison snow memory.

Love Pat