Grammar Lesson

As an English teacher, I find myself studying the English language making sure I understand the ins and outs before I teach it. I often find myself doubting or wondering why something is the way it is. For instance, I never stopped to think about the rules for the simple present tense in English. I understand the rules for the same thing in Spanish, but I had to learn them by trial and error so I could teach them to my non-English speaking students. If you're wondering, the verb stays the same except for the 3rd person singular (he/she/it), which gets an "s" at the end. I jump, you jump, he/she/it jumps, we jump, you all jump, they jump. Interesting...not really, but it's how I spend my days.

When I got married, I had to stop and study how to write my new name, Brooks. Jenny Brooks is only one person, but it ends with an "s", so what do you do when it suddenly becomes plural and there are more than one Brooks? Well, here is what I found out...

Jenny Brooks (Singular)
The Brookses (more than one Brooks)
Mrs. Brooks's classroom (singular possessive)...looks funny, but it's correct
The Brookses' house (plural possessive) ...looks even funnier

Who would have thunk...

If you're interested in other common errors in English, this website by a WSU professor Paul Brians is amazing. http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/errors.html. I'm hoping to get his book or desk calendar for Christmas. I'm a dork.

Snugglebug

Since it's now quite cold outside, Lucy has become quite fond of the indoors. She spends most of her time napping, pacing until her next meal, and being cute. She enjoys snuggling, but it's become a bit more difficult now that she's 50 pounds. One of the first things we learned in puppy class was to flip her onto her back and hold her there until she submits. It takes a bit of effort for me to flip her now, but she doesn't fight nearly as hard as she used to. She actually doesn't fight at all...she passes out...and then starts snoring.

What is this white fluffy stuff??

So after our smelly and messy experience with the dogpark, I went out and promply bought some rubber boots that could withstand the smelliest poo. Lucy was a big fan of the new rubber tire smell that came with my boots.

The boots came just in time because we got a nice dumping of snow last weekend. It was little Lucy's first snowfall and she looked out the window wondering what the hell was going on out there!

We let her outside and she started jumping and trying to catch all those little flakes. She couldn't quite grasp that the little flakes melted in her mouth (kinda like M&Ms but different). She ran around like a banchee around the yard revelling in the newness of the whole thing.

We took her over to the park across the street and let her run and frolic in a little more space.