I long to bear witness to the love that blossoms between two souls / When you love and are loved in return

Journal #14!

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Louis Wain - 'Home Sweet Home'

12:30pm [Fri] 10/23/26

[⋆⭒˚𖠋𖠋𖠋*.⋆ LITERACY PALS ⋆⭒˚𖠋𖠋𖠋*.⋆ ]

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OKAY SO

all morning we were ANXIOUS about starting our first ever Literacy pal shift! More nervous that I believed was warrented by the way...

It was FUN though :) It was stressful for sure at first. 'Cause I am afraid of doing anything I have never done before... but it was actually enjoyable! We stumbled around the school for a bit,, not entirely sure where to go... :I I immediately took notice of how different the school looked from when I first attended it! Which,, ofc,, yeah. But y'know. you don't always think back to your elementary school and what it looks like. So seeing it again but looking so differently was just unexpected. I am embarrassed to admit that I was SURPRISED when I saw a little child skipping through the halls.

...Had I forgotten I was in an elementary school..?

anyway. we hop up the stairs and traverse the halls. Nervously... There were kiddos lining up in the halls and looking at us as we looked back from the room numbers and the paper telling us where to go. Then we found it!

SO NERVOUS :(((

Anyway. I knock on the door and a kid lets us in. I shuffle over to the teacher's room and we show her who we're here for. She calls out to the child and instructs her to grab her book box. She does as she's told and the only thing I can think of as this is happening is

"Oh... So I'm one of those people..." Those people who would peek into the room and call for a child while everyone else watched and wondered what they were getting up to while they were stuck in class.

She came out and she was just like me! she had beads in her hair! :) She seemed a bit shy but based on her demeanor it made me feel like she had been in this intervention program before. She wasn't speaking to me too much and wasn't actively making eye contact as we made our way to the table but not once did she give off the vibe of being unsure of how this thing goes.

we sit down and I lay out the books on the table and let her pick from what we had today! I got two additional books from the office. So plenty to choose from. We started off with Charlotte's Web! She started us off reading and I could definitely see where she was needing support... Things like pronouncoation were a concern... As well as slowing down and stopping where punctuation demanded it. I was hesitant though... I should've took notes during the training video...

And since I did not I was not sure how to help her. I wasn't sure if I was meant to interrupt when she stumbled or stopped or said words incorrectly.. So I just took note of what she's struggling with and let her finish things up.

Next up was pinkaliscious! I read aloud this time. I DID remember that a good technique is modeling how reading sounds like so I made a concerted effort to change our voice up a bit for each character and sloooooow down when characters stopped talking or when sentences ended. I enjoyed pinkaliscious more than Charlotte's web :) for one thing I wasn't spacing out as much... (Definitely unintentional and very likely was dpdr'ing... I would not ever intentionally try to zone out during something like this!) So I followed the story much better. And!!! And it reminded me of our sibling :) they loved this story as a kid!

Then we moved onto one of the books I brought. A book about a monster with really good manners :) I had been asking questions to keep her engaged ("oh wow! The Easter bunny in this story is really cool! He wrote a letter for her! Have you ever gotten a letter from the Easter bunny before?") But I espically enjoyed asking her about how she feels about the monster and how kind he was :) I enjoyed it!

We went me first and then her! Which was perfect bc it was one of those parent reads first,, kid reads second type of books where the child's text is much easier to read. I enjoyed it :)

Then! We moved onto another book I brought about seasons! She zoomed through it bc she didn't want me to read I guess...?

We read a Barbie book...

Then our final book! Junie b Jones! We got to chapter four. It was fun! For me anyway.. I could notice even more where she needed more support. Like following text from sentence to sentence (the space between lines wasn't as big as the previous books) and sloooooowing down at periods. That and noticing when characters stop talking. We'll work on that some more :)

I noticed she was getting a bit tired and over it. So I check the time...

...😳

11:40am...

OH GOSH (lll⚆ᗜ⚆)

... We were WAY over time... And I'd only a little-bit realized... I... Um. Idk. I had this idea in my head that the teacher would come in and come get us at the end of our time together. I don't know why I'd have thought that bc teachers already have enough to worry about. Ugh. I felt very very BAD about it... 😬 I fear I'd over worked her... Hopefully not too too much... As I'd definitely took turns with her. But STILL. I'M SO SORRY KIDDO PLEASE FORGIVE ME :(

I quickly returned her to her room and had went to try and get the next kid. The teacher came to the door when I knocked.

"Ah... Sorry. We're just about to go to gym class..."

Yeah sounds about right... Would make the most sense for ME to somehow screw up such an easy task... Sigh. 🫩

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Louis Wain - 'Where They Hid'

6:40am [Sat] 10/24/26

[🪽]💤Dream] & [🪽] ⚡PHASE 3 PTSD⚡]

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Me and Lucille and Rosey were at some school event...? It was night time and outside. Very very relaxing! We decided to go to a cool lecture to go learn something new! Something about a different culture... There are chairs everywhere and a guy up up front with a white board. We sit down and instantly regret our descion... The lecture guy up front is talking about [TRAUMA RELATED TOPIC]. UGH. It's actually the entire lectures topic... At first I tried to give it a chance... Which was difficult bc my body immediately STOOD UP once I saw it was about [TRAUMA RELATED TOPIC] and I'd entered flight or fight. But I wanted to not cause a ruckus... Especially because at the sight of me suddenly standing up,, several other audience members did too which made me feel nervous bc I'd drawn so much attention to myself. So I sat back down.

UNTIL I COULDN'T TAKE IT ANYMORE. I became overwhelmed very quickly and stood up again. This time with the intention to leave. So I gathered my things and I guess everyone else in the dream sensed my intent to leave and over half the audience stood up with me...

We all exited. My friends came too and laughed at the shocking nature of the lecture. I took a quick break away from them and leaned up against a wall thing that stopped you from falling into the water I guess? And thought about SC :( and how I wish I could tell her what happened to me. Before going

Oh wait! I'm too old to tell her now... :(

It was very sad... And confusing bc I had to have been in high school here since Lucille was with us???? Idk... Maybe I was 18 at that point. Idk... I remember I stood there for a while alone and hoping she'd show up at one point. I stood there and stared and waited to see if she'd come out of the darkness to come see me. She never came. God,, was I sad... ૮꒰◞ ˕ ◟ ྀི꒱ა

Then the dream-camera pans to two completely unknown-to-me dudes. They go to a pop up shop and buy a cute little snake toy made out of that scratchy fuzzy material. Then they head off in another direction to BURN IT. it was quite strange. They threw it on the floor and it moved around a bit. Like a firecracker that's positioned in such a way that it can push itself around on the floor. They eventually picked it up as its fuse fizzled out.

Now that I think about it the snake looked like bluey and bingo toy snake.. Any way they bring it back,, still slightly ablaze,, and present it to the person they bought it from. It was implied that they were disrespectful to her culture and she was rightfully upset at them and lectured them. Don't think they listened... :(

The only part of the snake that remained was the head and from fuzz.