if, when we are on the record in open court, you really and truly feel the need to comment on the judge’s admittedly horrible mood by concluding, She sure ain’t gettin’ any!!, please do so by passing me a written note or just mutter it under your breath. Do NOT, however, blurt it out loud so that everyone in the room, including the judge, can hear you. The state does not pay me nearly enough money to deal with that fall out on your behalf.
Again, how am I not an alcoholic?
I wanted to go back into private practice. Had my long list of reasons why. And slowly it’s getting there. But I forgot… private family law practice often means late nights of preparing emergency motions that have to be filed yesterday for new clients that are paying out the wazoo for your services so, NO, you can’t just wait to do it until tomorrow.
Fortunately, X stepped up in the middle of the chaos that landed on me at 4:15 pm today and agreed to take the N-Man this evening, instead of making me wait until our usual exchange tomorrow morning, so I could trudge through my piles of documents and get my shit together without having to listen to The Wiggles in the background, on a child distracting DVD, singing the most incredibly annoying version ever of Monkey Mantwenty times in a row or having to pause to peel a shrieking, attention needing preschooler off my leg. And the N-Man, frankly, was pretty excited to be heading out the door for an extra night with his Tata. Praise the Lord that, despite the stupidity that still happens, we’re slowly learning to work together.
Yes. This is definately what I still want, but boy it’ll be nice when the private part picks back up fully so the contract workload can taper back down. In the mean time , the over lap is just killing me!!
The N-Man’s blissful first day of preschool was apparently an anomaly. Yesterday he cried when I left. A few tearful sniffles. Today he grabbed on to his car seat when I tried to take him into the building and shrieked in desperation for his old teacher, his beloved Miss Holly, to come save him. Leg clinging, prying out of mommy’s arms, the whole dog and pony show. He does love me, need me. But I liked it better when he confidently, rejected me. I’m sure by now he is happily reading a book, singing songs, and darting about the playground but I’ll never know. I abandoned my wailing child and will not see him, be assured he in fact did survive emotionally intact, until Saturday evening when X brings him home. It’s taking an awful lot of strength to not pick up the phone and call to check on him.
****
On the other front, I’m officially up and running, back in the private sector. Well, I’m set up in my new office, where I can at least sit by the phone all day waiting for that first new client to call while I do other things. While I love the idea of working out of my house, the reality is that it’s just become too distracting. Even when the N-Man is not there I have the dogs, the TV, laundry, other things on my to do list, the bed. Zzzzzzzzzz.
I’d forgotten how much more focused and organized I am when I keep home and work 100% separated. I love that I’ve added a new semi-social aspect to my life of going to a building where I am surrounded by other people. I’m excited about the prospect of increased productivity. But already, three days in and I’m recognizing just how soft working from home has made me. I’m not used to the all day routine. Yes, I realize just about everyone in the world does it, but when you get out of the swing it wipes you out to start over. 2:25 in the p.m. and I”ve hit the proverbial wall and am trying to resist the urge to crawl under my new desk and take a nap…or go home. Why did I have to go with the cute, high heeled boots today? Otherwise I’d take a stroll over to the gas station for some caffeine.
One of my simple pleasures in life came in the mail today. The Pfaltzgraff spring catalog. I have long been a Pfaltzgraff fan. The whimsical patterns, blend of colors, the long term investment in collecting the never ending, fun pieces of a favorite pattern. But today as I sat in court, waiting and waiting and waiting again, pouring over the new season of dinnerware, I came to a sudden realization. I hate my dishes. Ok, I don’t really hate my dishes. Actually I still really love them. The mix and match patterns and colors that whisper of homemade, pesto gnocchi with fresh baked bread and a bottle of red wine in a centuries old home, wrought with flaws and character, in a remote Tuscan village. But…
When X and I separated we divided our best worldly possessions based on logic. Who gave them to us as our wedding gift? He kept the wonderful, perfectly shaped and weighted, twelve place silverware setting that his mother gifted us and that, to this day, I still covet. The gorgeous, handmade, silver serving bowl that doubled as art came from his father, and thus stayed behind as well. Our beyond complete set of matching stoneware- serving dishes, hostess pieces, place settings, wine and water goblets - a generous blessing from my mother, followed me to my new abode. However lately, as much as I truly do love them, more and more I realize that they are not me, do not reflect who I am. The design. The colors. Instead they are absolutely a stylistic reflection of the blending and morphing of personalities and cultures that we once undertook. They are very much the “us” that was short lived and no longer exists. They are a three times a day reminder of something I am not.
I can’t decide if I need to just get over it and be thankful for such a lyrical table setting or if it’s time to start putting money aside and, somewhere down the road, in one grand motion and gesture, purge what’s left of the past and resurrect me in my kitchen.
*****
The N-Man is officially enrolled in preschool. I want to cheer. I want to cry. Ever since his first visit he has yammered on and on and on about Miss Sloane, the director. I think he has his first crush. Today I had to leave him at his current, drop-in day care for two hours. I tried to convince him Miss Holly was still the bestest ever, but he wanted none of it and wailed, Miss Sloane! Miss Sloane!! as poor Miss Holly loving carried him away, despite her sudden demotion. I just can’t believe that he’s already found a place in this world that brings him so much joy away from Mommy. I can’t wait to burst into tears the first day I walk him down the new hall, with his lunch box, and kiss him goodbye and leave him to his business.
*****
The word of the day is REPRESENTATED. My job brings me such joy in small, unexpected moments. Such as today when a client (not my client) yelled that the judge that he wanted a new attorney because his current court appointed counsel had not representated him right.
When I was six years old I went to the swimming pool with my older brothers. They were determined that would be the day I learned to jump off the diving board. I tried. I really did. But that slick, undulating plank, towering a dizzying height of three feet above the water was not on my agenda. Well, it was, actually. I very much wanted to jump. But I spent an inordinate amount of time that hot, crowded day teetering on the edge, staring down at the beautiful, clear, cool, blue water below me, fully aware of how luxurious it would be the moment I hit, but doing nothing. The lines grew behind me. People yelled at me to hurry up. I walked backwards to the ladder, got off and went to the back of the line again. Repeat process countless times.
Eventually, fed up with my six-year-old-girlness, the oldest brother, eleven years my elder, grabbed me by one arm and leg and quite publicly stomped to the edge of the board. I screamed at the top of my lungs for help from anyone who could hear me, thrashed for all I was worth. Where were the lifeguards in all this? And then that big jerk threw me off the edge and dusted off his hands with smug satisfaction. A loud cheer arose from the angry mob that witnessed the assault. I spent the rest of that day gleefully jumping and splashing for all I was worth, so excited to have finally, rightfully claimed my place in the diving board line.
Sometimes that’s all it takes. One little thing to take you to the edge and push you off into something you know you want, know you can have, know you can accomplish, yet are afraid to spring into. Swimming is easy. Leaving the security of that board, not so much.
And so it goes with work. For a year I have been teetering on the edge of a diving board slick with frusration and insanity. Tired of being tied to a never ending courtroom schedule that keeps me away from my clients’ phone calls, my files… the hoofed one and the N-Man. Tired of the rigor of just sitting and sitting and sitting for hours a day, doing nothing while waiting for one stupid, two minute case to be called, as my work elsewhere piles up. Tired of hours spent driving all over the metro area and state for home visits and staffings when I, allegedly, work from home. Tired of burying children. I have done private pay cases in the past. I know how to find the clients. Not so hard in the cyber age. I know good and well that I can make twice, possibly probably three times, the money in half the time I’m currently putting in. I know, in the age of e-filing cell phones and lap tops, that I could once again control my schedule, control my life. I know all this, want it, crave it. Yet for a year I have done nothing but minimally prepare and talk about how I’m going to do it, and then just stare at the prosect of a freer future before backing away to the security of my state contract, content to deal with it all some other day. Today, someone threw me into the pool.
I got an email around noon. The official word on state contractor job security? We can all keep our contracts. YAY! Our hourly rate will be the same. YAY! Our dedication to these kids is so very much appreciated. YAY! Oh, but by the way, we’re attaching a very long list of things you are no longer allowed to bill for but still must do anyway. Thanks so much for all your efforts. Bull shit!
So it’s official. After five years, I have decided that I will NOT be renewing my contract as a Guardian ad litem. I’m saying it out loud, holding myself out there for public accountablity on my follow through. I will miss the kids but it’s time for me to move on, hang my shingle back up. I need what I once loathed, the stability of something that requires me to just sit at that neglected desk in my house and make phone calls, draft documents, and talk to clients on MY time, my grossly shortened amount of time. Something that pays the bills quickly so I can focus on living my life. Yes, I DID go to law school for this. I can’t begin to express how amazing it felt the moment I hit that mental pool of beautiful, clear, cool, blue water.
Oh dear holy mother of God! I just spent one full, insomniac hour putting together the most beautiful, award worthy, piece of literature in the history of all man kind, and with the simple mis-swipe of one foul key, it all went down the shitter of unsaved cyberspace, delete delete delete. Well, since I’m up and can’t sleep, I may as well bang my head repeatedly against the nearest hard surface.
I have only enough mental energy left to tell you that my thoughtful, brilliant parable did include amongst its perfectly planned cadence and profoundly, socially significant moral, this very prophetic, Oscar worthy film clip and that I expressed my dismay and fear that we are already too late. And just like that, I have now officially found myself living as one amongst those for which I sought such bitter judgment. Karma, thou art a cruel, cruel mistress.
GAH!!
I’m throwing this one in now too, just because I’m so mad and well, because I feel like this at least three times a week, which really was the point of my original attempt.
I promise to return to coherent single parent blogging sooner than later. But my brain hurts tonight and I just need to ramble about me me me instead.
I’m helping plan the funeral for a four year old boy. Enough said. This will be the third child’s funeral I’ve attended in nine months. No one should ever have to sit through even one. The biological parents seem to be focusing all their hatred and grief on their attorneys, for not doing their jobs better, thus causing the children to be in foster care, and social services for just being. Somehow I have been elevated above the other professionals, when really we’re all the same. Actually, shouldn’t this be more my fault since it was my job to look out for these kids and keep them safe? None the less I’m the one, by default, who will escort the two surviving children, 3 and 7 years old, to the services, since they are still not allowed to be with their parents unsupervised. I can do it. But first I need to buy a drape floral arraignment for a coffin that is too small. I wonder how much of my willingness to be so involved with this is out of a sense of guilt for something I had no control over in the first place. I’ve resolved that there truly was nothing I could have done to have prevented what happened to this poor little boy. All the home visits and phone conversations with a foster parent in the world cannot prevent a horrific accident in an otherwise safe home. But still, I wish I’d done something, anything, differently. Maybe he’d still be here…
*****
If I ever scrap actual law practice for the bubble of legal academia I, unfortunately, have my first torts exam question ready to go. Now pay attention here…
The hoofed one, who is young , dumb, and green was lame and had to be hand walked for exercise. I was sick and couldn’t do it. My trainer was out of town so she called trainer #2, who is the hoofed one’s old owner, and asked her to walk him for me. Trainer #2 was walking the hoofed one in the dirt area between the outdoor ring and barn. Horses walk through this area all the time. Barn clients also park their cars in this area, up against the wall of the barn. It was a windy day and a near by tarp suddenly came untied and started to flap in the breeze, scaring the hoofed one. In the hubbub, the hoofed one kicked a car parked away from where the rest of the cars usually park, causing a yet unknown amount of damage. The barn is owned by yet another person.
Do I have to pay for car owner’s deductible?
If you can’t wrap your brain around that perhaps instead you can just answer this simple LSAT question for me: if five monkeys walk into a bar and Monkey-A orders a beer, Monkey-B gets his drink on the rocks, and Monkey-C can’t sit next to anyone drinking hard liquor… what is Monkey-D drinking, who does Monkey-E sit between, and most importantly, where are can these drinking monkeys be found so that I may please please join them?
Two things :
1. As I type I am missing the Chris Tomlin concert. I’ve had those tickets for four months, since the day he announced he was coming to Denver. I bought two more tickets for my favorite foster kid who is about to be adopted and is the kid you’d better pray you get in your home should you ever decide to foster teenagers. She’s the most amazing kid I’ve ever known and I’m really bummed out because she’s there having a blast and I can’t share it with her. But all logic says that dancing, yelling, and singing do not mix well with lingering respiratory illness. In the over all course of my day this is so selfish and petty, but go on and read #2 and you’ll understand why, right now, I need some fellowship with one of my success stories and the comfort of a worshipful space.
2. I was exhausted all afternoon and slept from 2:00 until almost 5:00. My work cell rang at 4:45 and woke me up. I rolled over and saw that it was a call coming in from social services and let it go to voice mail, figuring the social workers usually leave me comprehensive messages and I would follow up later. I rolled back over. Twenty minutes later it rang again. It was one of the attorneys I work with, somewhat disconnected and not making much sense. Something about how sorry she was, she can’t believe it, but is sounds like an accident. OK, I’m awake! What the hell are you talking about?
One of the children I represent, a four year old boy, died in a trampoline accident in his foster home today. His three year old sister found him. The call I sent to voicemail was the social services director calling to tell me. This is the second child on my case load to pass within just nine months. At least the other one was a baby born four months early with no chance at any quality of life, who we fought for for over a month to have his life support removed and let him go peacefully. I could stomach that. Understand it. A bubbly, vivacious, sweet, loving, little boy with huge brown doe eyes and a smile you could see from the space station, not so much.
Please hug your children tonight.
For A.D. …
