i before e, except after w?

I mean we're shrinks, we deal with the weird everyday. If anyone knows weird, it's us.

So I get this email from Roy. Stop spelling it "wierd" it's "weird" you have it stuck in your head wrong. He's right and he gave me a long list of places on Shrink Rap where weird is misspelled as 'wierd.' Only they weren't all me. Clink did it a couple of times. Sarebear did it in our comment section. I did it a bunch. This is weird. But it is "i before e except after c"...right? Why is weird spelled weirdly?

Maybe I need a new word. Strange. Unusual. Unconventional. Odd. That's a good one, even I can't spell "odd" wrong.

From Wikipedia:

Old English wyrd is a verbal noun formed from the verb weorþan, meaning "to come to pass, to become". The term developed into the modern English adjective weird. Adjectival use develops in the 15th centrury, in the sense "having the power to control fate", originally in the name of the Weird Sisters, i.e. the classical Fates, in the Elizabethan period detached from their classical background as fays, and most notably appearing as the Three Witches in Shakespeare's Macbeth. From the 14th century, to weird was also used as a verb in Scots, in the sense of "to preordain by decree of fate".

The modern spelling weird first appears in Scottish and Northern English dialects in the 16th century and is taken up in standard literary English from the 17th century. The regular modern English form would have been wird, from Early Modern English werd. The substitution of werd by weird in the northern dialects is "difficult to account for".^[1]

The now most common meaning of weird, "odd, strange", is first attested in 1815, originally with a connotation of the supernatural or portentuous (especially in the collocation weird and wonderful), but by the early 20th century increasingly applied to everyday situations.^[2]

Enough. It's all too weerd. The chinchilla is for Jesse because his preoccupation with the little rodents is kind of ....different.

I Haven't Gotten There (Yet)

A psychiatrist I know is going through a phase-of-life change. It's one you only get to once. He's made the comment that in looking back, he made some mistakes and said some things he shouldn't have to patients who were going through this same phase-of-life change, long before he did. The event of it has made him more empathic to what his patients were feeling, something he didn't comprehend until he was in the same shoes.

I know the feeling. People look to their psychiatrists for wisdom, and you know, we don't always have it. Patients will ask for suggestions about marriage or child-rearing from psychiatrists who may be single, childless, or on their eighth divorce. It doesn't mean we don't have the answers-- sometimes these things are better dealt with from a safe distance-- but sometimes it might. I look back at some of the things I said to the parents of teenagers, back when mine were oh-so-cute-and-loving toddlers...and I wince...oh, my, I was so clueless back in the day. Can I recall my patients? I'm sorry, I said some stupid things back then. I shrug a lot more than I used to. I don't know if it's helpful, but I do know it's more honest.

Places I'd Rather Be

Addendum: Here is an old post on "No Shows" which is a completely different phenomena than leaving early....

I've vowed never to put real patient stories on the blog. Tonight, I'm saying, "What the hell." The following is not confabulated.

Over the years, I've been stood up for oh so many reasons. Martial arts class sticks out among them. Forgotten meetings, forgotten dates, forgotten children...they've all been reasons to forget a therapy session. No one that I'm aware of has ever canceled an appointment at the last minute for a hair dresser's appointment, but maybe I just don't know. Today a patient left early. Why? Had to get those fantasy sports picks in. This was a first. Roy would have passed over the iPhone and been done with it. I'm not so accommodating and I don't have an iPhone, 2g, 3g or otherwise.

I hate it when patients simply don't show up and don't call-- when I spend an entire session pacing back and forth to the waiting room and can't use my time. If people opt out because life is busy and the choices are too many, I can't say I mind. It's their life, it's their right to define priorities, as long as my time isn't wasted or someone else isn't left wanting for that session, then hey, Fantasy Picks, what can I say? I'm not one for being judgmental or shoving down someone's throat that therapy needs to be their top priority: that's for them to decide, especially in a long-term therapy with a stable patient. Sorry, there's no pro-rating for judo class, fantasy sports, whatever. Life is busy and we all have to make choices.

Sometimes I think people should cancel their sessions. Get your hair permed at a different time, but for someone who's had trouble finding or maintaining employment, well...they should cancel therapy sessions (or schedule outside of work hours) for the first few weeks of a new job. "Gotta blow this crab feast for an hour" the first week on the new job just doesn't feel wise.


Well, I hope my patient got the good players.

HBO In Treatment....Some Other Links....And How Sad Is It That I'm Blogging On Vacation?

Greetings from The Big Apple! Kids are still asleep, husband's getting ready to head to TKTS so we can see a show tonight.

Before I start talking about In Treatment, I have some links.

The New York Times has an article on So You Want to Be a Star Blogger. We're doing okay here at Shrink Rap, I think. We've passed the $100 mark on Google Ads (can we go to KoKo's for crabcakes, now???) and we get a couple thousand visitors per week. I'm happy. Oh, I'm on vacation, that always makes me happy.

Gerbil is having a baby soon, and still she took the time to send us This Link about In Treatment. Apparently 38 people are still watching it. I'm one of them. Best wishes for a happy, healthy baby Gerbil.
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So for the other 37 people still watching, the show has gotten better. I've only watched through Tuesday, and with vacation, I may be behind for a bit. It ends next week, so I imagine I'll catch up. I'm also working on John Adams, but no blogging on it, and I'm an episode behind on LOST.

At the end of their Couples' session on Friday, Paul's phone rang-- it was clearly something awful and I was worried that Sophie had committed suicide. My husband thought it was Alex. He was right. Oh, he's always right. Monday we meet at Alex's funeral. Paul talks with Alex's son Roy and offers the boy some kind words and support. He then finds Laura there (wait, who goes to a funeral of someone they've had a brief fling with??) Paul knew she'd be there, he'd called her, and he talks about his own childhood losses. Alex's father mistakes Laura for Paul's wife.

Tuesday, Alex's father shows up in Paul's office. He wants to know what drove his son, is fearful of losing connection with Alex. He's just like Alex--- challenging one moment, pleasant the next. He compares psychotherapy to prostitution then later apologizes. He implies that the psychotherapy dredged thinks up and left Alex vulnerable, so vulnerable that he died while on a training mission. A question was raised as to whether the death was a suicide. The session is intense, painful at moments, well acted. Personally, I think Alex's narcissism would have protected him from suicide, I'm voting that it was an accident. I know: it's just a show.

My best to all. Clink, Max misses you.

HBO In Treatment....Parents & Children...Week 7 begins

No Laura this week. Her session is filled with Paul's attempts to talk to his teenage kids about....their romantic lives, his marriage. It's like he's never spoken to these people before. His teeny bopper daughter asks, "Are you worried that I'm sleeping with him?" Right, this is what Dads and their teen girls call casual conversation. And then Rosie pops on him that she knows her mom's been to Italy with another man. "Fix it" she cries.

Son Ian drops by in search of his pillow. He's slept with 5 girls. Cool with Dad. And so Paul tells him that he's been thinking of another woman, but he hasn't slept with her and he lies and says she's not a patient. Ian understands, Mom's a martyr, and after 23 years Dad/Paul must need a change. Not a prob for Ian. Oh, but Paul gets angry that Ian is critical of Kate-- she's cared for Ian, put her career on hold to raise him for 15 years, taken him to baseball and guitar, Ian should appreciate this, and he tells Ian how he empathizes with his distress over his parent's marital problems. Paul, I seem to remember, is the child of a divorce after his own doctor dad cheated on his mom with a patient and his mother died when he was 15; he lives feeling he didn't do enough for her. So, Ian doesn't feel his father's empathy, he feels patronized. It's never quite clear in these exchanges who's talking about who.

Next day, enter patient Alex, back to his fighter pilot life now. He talks about his father and his son and power and humiliation. He can out do all the other fighter pilots but he can't beat his son at chess and his own father calls him pathetic, leaving him as the outsider at his son's birthday party.

Sophie is next. She talks about her telepathic bond with her absent father who loves her and is always there for her, her hatred of her mother, the one who remains with her through thick and thin. Funny, she has this dream that she's in a hotel room chatting with Paul, except that he's not her shrink, he's a serial killer waiting to kill her father. And Dad, of course, was unfaithful to her mom, which Sophie discovered when she found him in bed with one of his many nude photography models. We're back to the issue of boundaries, and of course we hear Paul tell teen patient Sophie of his dreams of being stuck in a chair and unable to help his own mother.

So everyone's lives-- doctor and patients-- play out in this ongoing cycle of abandonment, infidelity, failed expectations.

Will they all live happily ever after?

2008 Hair Days

Happy New Year everyone, I'm back. I'm not sure how I feel about it yet, but I'm here. I had a wonderful break, the Fall of 2007 was a very stressful time here, and so I'm hoping for calmer days in 2008. It started out pretty good dancing on the beach at midnight as the year began.

So warm weather zones, while wonderful for the soul, are just not good for frizzly hair. I was at breakfast, a few days after 2008 rang in (I lost track of the days on vacation) and the waiter at breakfast took one look at me and said "Your hair, it stands straight up, it's like a cat that's scared!" Oy. These things bounce off me, humidity, I forgot to pack a brush, I'd slept on it. But then I snuck away after breakfast to check my e-mail (I was good, I only checked it twice) and I see that ClinkShrink and Roy are doing a superb job keeping up the blog, and that Clink has wished me a year of good hair days. Funny, but I felt like maybe this wish, on the heals of the waiter's comment, might not be such a good omen for 2008.

Can't We All Speak English?

To The Maryland General Assembly: Can’t We All Speak English?



I was so pleased to see House Bill 885: English Language- Formal Recognition. At last, I thought, a bill that would require our state legislators to write statutes in something that resembled plain, easily comprehensible English. I was disappointed to read the synopsis of HB885: “Designating the English language as the official language of the State of Maryland ; and making provisions of the Act severable.” The proposed bill has nothing to do with the creation of laws that we can all understand. The purpose of House Bill 885, from the best I can figure, is to assert what already obviously is.

For the past three years, I have been a Bill Screener for our local shrinkiatric organization. This means that every day during the legislative session, I read a portion of the proposed legislation—specifically any bills ending in the numbers 81 to 90-- and I flag those that might pertain to the practice of psychiatry or might have an impact on the care of psychiatric patients.

Reading proposed legislation can be a challenge. Take, for example, Senate Bill 687 Youth Services Bill—Services. The synopsis reads: “Repealing a provision that makes the provision of specified required services by a youth services bureau subject to the availability of funding; etc.” And that means? Okay, if I think about it long enough, and if I wait a few days for the First Reading of the bill to be available on-line, I might get it, but I’m left to ask why this has to be so complicated.

As a committee, when we look at proposed legislation we try to figure out what exactly the language means. Legislation is written in grammatically incorrect, wordy, obscure, and nonspecific terminology that defies understanding by anyone not used to reading it, and perhaps even by those who are used to reading it. We are left to ask, what is the intent of the bill and what might the unintended consequences of its passage be?

I wonder why legislation isn’t written in short sentences with obvious intent. If you’re not sure what I’m talking about, I invite you to look up Senate Bill 821: “Prohibiting a person from tethering or confining a pregnant pig for a specified amount of time in a specified manner; providing exceptions to the prohibition; establishing specified penalties for a violation of the Act; and establishing that each instance of tethering or confining a pig constitutes a separate offense.” This 3-page bill declares that it will be illegal to tether pregnant pigs except, of course, for specified reasons. “Pig,” “farm,” and “turning around freely,” are defined, but oddly, “majority of any day” is not defined and there is nothing to indicate how a farmer might be expected to know his pig is pregnant. I’ll readily admit that I didn’t look up the 1999 Annotated Code this will serve to supplement. Can I wonder whose agenda this is, why just pigs, and why just pregnant pigs? Granted, a subject I know nothing about, but it seems there could be a law against restraining pregnant pigs that the average psychiatrist could understand with a single reading. It took me three readings, slowly, and the language, which tries so hard to be precise, remains vague and leaves plenty of room for pig-restraining violators to wiggle free.

Apparently, I’m not the first person to complain about “legalese.” The Plain Language Association International has members in ten countries and The Plain English campaign has existed in London since 1979. Most discussions of the use of plain English, however, refer to legal contracts, only a few to the language of proposed legislation. Shouldn’t our laws be written with language that includes, rather than excludes, the citizens of Maryland? Simply put, any member of the Maryland General Assembly who proposes a law requiring that our statutes be constructed in simple sentences will get my vote.