I like my job. I'm still learning, but next week once my CAPS are back (background check re: CPS reports) I will start with my own clients. I've been to a couple of people's houses and a couple of supervised visits for CPS. Makes me appreciate what I have materially and emotionally. It's so hard to imagine not having family or friends that you can count on. I go to a lot of places that stink and are hot. I am carrying a stool in my car because there was an incident that the only place to sit in a 5th wheel trailer would have crumbled if I had even stared at it very long. I've taught two parenting classes. Anything about child development or children's basic needs/nutrition that any of you would like to know...just ask. I think next week is on communication with your child. Ask me after Tuesday about that one.

The Beetle is finally being terminated as a family member. He is still on life-support in the hospital (read: Volkswagen service department). As soon as they get him running again, we are going to list him in the paper to sell. I now have a black Saturn Vue. He doesn't have a name yet, but we got a kick ass deal on an '04. Oh, and it has a XM Radio which really melts my butter. I love the 90's station.

School is kicking my ass. That whole thing they tell you that "once you quit you will never go back" is just not true for me. I have gotten 3 hours in the past 2 years. I have never read a textbook in my life. This semester, I'm ahead on my reading in ALL THREE CLASSES. I am also reading a book that I don't have to read, but am planning to write a paper on this man's theory so I thought I'd read his most famous work. I'm really excited about class tomorrow night because I'm working on controlling my heartrate through breathing. Yeah, it's in that neurofeedback class that I was dreading....but I'm really diggin this controlling the "involuntary" functions our bodies do. It's used for people with chronic pain and phantom sensations and such...but it's fun for me to be able to lower my heartrate just with breathing and thoughts. Anyway, this book that I'm reading is amazing.

Viktor Frankl - Man's Search for Meaning is just amazing to me. He was in four different concentration camps for years and while there developed this whole psychotheory (called logotherapy) about the meaning of life and how just having the ability to make choices, even if they suck, allow us to move forward. Very cool. These are cool things I've highlighted:

"The meaning of our existence is not invented by ourselves, but rather detected." p.157

"It did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life - daily and hourly. Our answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct. Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual." p.122

Anywho, I am busy. Probably more so than I ever have been before in my whole life. But I heard Ice Ice Baby, PM Dawn's Set Adrift on Memory Bliss of You, and Paula Abdul's Opposites Attract today on my XM so all is well.