On the edge

I have two great uncertainties in my life at the moment: My mums health and my supervised practice.
My mum is in hospital at the moment and not too well with what the nurses diagnose as being 'comfortable'. Old age and lorry loads of cigarettes have caught up with her in the lottery that theses things seem to be. What we are waiting for is a bit uncertain. I think her health improving so much that she can go home is not an option now.
The supervised practice is for the course. I need to do 25 hours of counselling before May. I have been talking to two local (for Garvagh) schools that agreed last year to give me a placement. Now some doubt has crept in. If I have not started a placement in the next week, I may have to defer for a year on the course. There is a good chance that this will all work out, and there will be lots of calls on Monday, but that nagging doubt is there, and it tends to grow with attention.
Both uncertainties have both Julie and I on edge. I am not alone, as I know both John and Roger are unsure about Mum, and others on the course are stressed about placement. They both are not far from my mind and it makes settling down to do any studying near impossible, with any distraction becoming irresistible (now you know why I am back writing the blog).
We are trying to have good Saturdays to de-stress. Charlotte has her Irish dancing in the morning (just learnt her '1,2,3' and '7's') and having a family activity. last week we got bird feeders for the back garden, borrowed books on birds from the library, and got very excited at one black bird in the back garden (last one we saw). Katherine had to get her step out to see out the window.

"Who would win in a battle between...?"

One of the hardest things about working with teen boys is getting them talking. Some are very hard to engage in any type of conversation is usually met with a grunt or two. Remembering what was taught to me by the great Linda Gould, that conversations have different levels, getting the boys to talk about anything is a start, and can lead to deeper conversations as a relationship grows.
So I sometimes come up with stupid questions. The most recent began with the question "who would win in a battle between King Kong and Godzilla?" and between Batman and Spiderman (that would depend on whose comic it was in but would have them fight each other until they discovered that they were being manipulated by the Penguin and the Vulture in an evil avian plot).I then started to ask more obscure versions of the questions, which ended up last night with "Who would win in a battle between Tony the Tiger and Snap, Crackle and Pop?" It was interesting to see them actually debate it for a moment.
I know two things about this. It would not work if they did not know my humour and it is only a starting point for getting them talking.