Girls' Weekend!

A few weeks ago, Maddie and I went camping with Amanda and Jackie. (Will was off on a fishing adventure with his fishing buddy, Chris.) We went to Sam A Baker State Park which is about 2 hours southwest of St. Louis. It was a great, relaxing weekend but was very hot. (Highs in the mid to upper 90s!) It was too hot to do anything other than lounge around, swim in the river and drink sangria.

Working Girl

Maddie is now (almost) officially a certified therapy dog. She took and passed the therapy dog test at the AKC Dog Museum on Sunday. We now just have to mail in her paperwork and she can start working. She will be getting a tag and bandana to wear when she goes to work. She can visit hospitals, nursing homes, etc. AND she can work with my adolescents as well. She's already been to work with me several times and has done really well. My clients love her! Well, all of them except for one. The 6 ft tall, 18 yr old that threatened me a few weeks ago is actually scared to death of her. Honestly, I'm okay with that.
Maybe he'll think twice before he comes to my office again to yell at me and threaten me ;)

Here's Maddie right after the test, standing next to a statue of a Newfoundland. (She has her summer haircut so she doesn't quite look like herself.)

New Fishing Blog

I started a dedicated, fishing-related only blog:

http://kingfisherking.blogspot.com/

Translations from conversations with teens

Shake= run away, get outta here
Used in a sentence: "I'm gonna shake." or "Let's shake."
Not to be confused with a threat of a seizure or a greeting of hands among acquaintances. Typically used when a teen is agitated and wanting to leave an area. After one has "shook" the police are usually notified and a run report is made.

On my ______ (insert a family member here.)= I promise or I swear
Previously known as "I cross my heart and hope to die."
Used in a sentence: "On my momma." or "On my cousin." or "On my dead baby sister."
If the relative who is used in the statement is deceased, the statement is to be considered more serious and really true like a "pinkie-swear."

Direction

For the past few weeks I've been toying with the idea of going back to school. I've been thinking about getting a certification to be a school counselor. I'm not super excited about the idea, but my reasons for doing it would be:

1) School schedule... meaning (probably) having summers off!

2) The salary would (probably) be higher

3) It would (probably) be easier than what I'm doing now

4) Did I mention summers off?

There are a lot of probablys that I need to figure out. I also don't know how long it would take since I already have a BS in elementary education and a MA in counseling. Or how much it would cost.

I'm trying to pray about it and make sure that I'm not just grasping at anything to get out of my current difficult job.

When people ask me what I want to do (meaning: career), I really don't have an answer for them. I honestly don't know. I do know that I want to be really good at something. And I want to help people (who actually want help.) And I don't want to be verbally assaulted or physically threatened every day.

I went to a therapist once who had been a school counselor for a long time and she was a REALLY bad therapist. (I didn't go back to her.) I'm honestly afraid that will happen to me.

So, do I just white-knuckle-it at my job for a while, look for another job (even though I haven't been at my current job for a year), or go back to school (while white-knuckling-it at my current job?)

Any opinions?

When the Body Just Doesn't Work Rightly

I'm sure that there are as many stories of this as there are people reading this (and more), but I had a moment of total frustration and confusion about the ability of my body to make the right decisions and follow sound operational strategy today. At work I was hit all at once with a feeling of extreme thirst....and extreme "have-to-pee." As I waited for an opportunity to fix both situations, I was struck by the irony and awareness that my body had just let me down in a failure of opposites. Obviously my body is not as adept at planning as it was once. I took the option to drink first and pee second...and I estimate that I drank exactly the same amount that I peed.

Thanks, body; great job working out the not-so-minor and obvious details of hydration balance today!

Grammatical Reminder

I am a very adamant believer that grammars are descriptions of language conventions and not rules that must be followed. The simplest "proof" of this is how a descriptive grammar can and does account for language change, that is to say, how a language adapts to communicate effectively in an ever changing metaworld. This does not, however, allow for a willy-nilly use of language; quite the opposite. Because language functions on the basis of shared linguistic conventions (i.e. "grammar"), for effective communication to occur each communicator (encoder-decoder) must operate within those conventions. There is, thankfully, enough flexibility in every grammar to allow for creativity, error, and ignorance, but in the main the conventions must be followed. If they are not, misunderstanding results. Part of the beauty of language is in its conventions (aside from the creative breaking of conventions for a specific rhetorical purpose). So here is another friendly reminder to the public that it sure would be nice to return to a long standing convention--the "was" or "were" use.

Indicative: "I was a young boy"; "I was at the post office yesterday."
Subjunctive: "If I were rich I would buy a boat"; "If I were you, I'd use a hammer."

The indicative reports on actual, historical reality that is verifiable in time. The subjunctive reports on possible or theoretical reality that may or may not become verifiable. By using the "was" first person singular verb in subjunctive constructions we lose the subjunctive descriptivity and clarity in communication.

If (no pun intended) a person is using the subjunctive marker "if" and is speaking in the first person ("I"), then "were" must be used. The difference is between "I am" and "If I am to become/do/etc." and the latter conventionally uses "were" as the verb.