And time yet for a hundred indecisions

Negotiation is in the air

2010-05-10T16:29:00.003-04:00

Hi! I popped back for a brief visit to blogland, with the idea of sharing some info about negotiating and what do I find? Prettier than Napolean and Magic Cookie both have posts up that touch on the same issue - what skills to use to get what you want. Is there something in the air?

Here's why it's been on my mind.

While googling ways to help my kid deal with a very tough year, I stumbled upon Professor Linda Babcock's research on gender and negotiations. Then I found that they've developed a Girl Scout badge called The Win-Win Badge to help young girls (8-12yo) learn to negotiate.
I thought that was pretty cool. Of course, I immediately went and did the badge with our troop (did I mention I'm a troop leader this year? interesting development...enjoying it)

It reminded me of something I'd seen on TV years ago, and again after much googling, I found it. Two video clips from Good Morning America talking about the wage gap and how women are less likely to directly say what they want during salary negotiations. Turns out, we're not too timid; we're appropriately gauging the audience's likely disapproval of a woman being assertive.

So the moral of the story, after much research on my part, is: go ahead and ask for what you want, but make sure you ask for it while remaining "likeable".

Ode to Q's Muchness

2010-03-15T13:18:00.010-04:00

Alice in Wonderland - my kid LOVED it.

Just before going to sleep, in the dim glow of the nightlight, she defiantly asks,

"Lost my muchness, have I?"

I imagine her entering Slumberland with a firm grip on the hilt of the vorpal sword.

Ode to Q's Muchness

There is much of much inside you, Q.
My muchness has grown dim or few.
Yours is still there and might grow more
allowing you to truly soar.

I see it clear and bright and strong
A light that fills my heart with song.
Your muchness is what I adore.
You're my muchness and much more.

I hope you never lose its touch.
Q, promise you will keep your much.
I hope that this is what will be:
Your muchness fuels your destiny.

(Could you perhaps spare some for me?)

Computer Engineer Barbie

2010-02-23T12:15:00.024-05:00

It's official. Barbie is giving the geek look a try! (complete with Bluetooth headset and nerdy/trendy glasses!)

“As a computer engineer, Barbie will show girls that women can turn their ideas into realities that have a direct and positive impact on people’s everyday lives in this exciting and rewarding career.”

"All the girls who imagine their futures through Barbie will learn that engineers — like girls — are free to explore inﬁnite possibilities, limited only by their imagination,” says Nora Lin, President, Society of Women Engineers.

Hmmm...free to explore infinite possibilities. Yeah, like leaving computer work for a different career. Magic Cookie did it ("Having a job I care about is a good thing."). How's THAT for an imagination?

Barbie doesn't make it look all that great, anyway. Just further confirmation that there's no dressing this up. You can even stamp a Mattel label on rubberized computer work, but that doesn't make it any less geeky. Would Ken be interested in her now? I wonder.

I'm better than this (or should be)

2010-02-10T14:17:00.006-05:00

I've been naughty and irresponsible. I anonymously posted something on a board somewhere and wow, was it vituperative. I guess that's what happens when you're bored and bitter at work.
Who knew I could get so worked up?

I went after these guys as if they'd spit in my kid's hair. And it's pure jealousy on my part. I admit it. I just wanted to take them down a peg or two.

So this is how my day has gone (drafting catty comments) and where my passions led me. Which is all fine and dandy until my husband or my kid or my mom asks, "How was work today?" and all I can remember is how I went off on somebody on some internet board and how fun it was and how guilty I feel about it now. And how desperate I am to read any follow-up comments! Bring it, baby. I'm ready to rumble, apparently.

My day? Oh. Yeah. It was fine.

--------------
Oh nevermind. The snide comments will be deleted by the board's admin before anyone sees them, I'm sure. Which is fine. I really AM better than that.

Another One Bites the Dust

2010-01-21T11:08:00.002-05:00

And another one's gone...Magic Cookie took me off her blog list. Sniff. Well, I was honored to be on there at any point, so thanks CM for helping me get started and putting me on there for a while. I can't really complain about getting the boot. I've essentially been offline for months, and I've abandoned the lawyer-esque musings that I once posted here. Not that I don't think about it still, but the reality is so distant from the wanting that it's self-defeating for me to continue to ruminate in that manner. This space has morphed into a mommy-blog by this point, because parenting issues are still very meaningful to my day-to-day reality and because they're pretty safe to blog about publicly. I don't want to write a mommy-blog, really, but I also don't want to overshare (gasp! gawd forbid!) all my angst and marital stuff and job stuff, etc.

OK, I really DO want to overshare, but I'm getting smarter about suppressing that desire.

Anyhoo... (and yes, I like spelling it that way...anywho? why would you use "anywho"?...seriously, the point of "anyhoo" is that you are making up a silly phonetic representation of anyway/anyhow/nevertheless/moving on/so-as-I-was-about-to-say, etc. It is NOT anywho.)

This underscores a truth about blogging: you get out of it what you put into it. I like that about blogging. It's a meritocracy.

But I am sad to be dumped by CM. She started this blog, really. I am indebted to her. Her kindness and openness and willingness to mentor and answer questions made a big impression on me. I wouldn't be here without her. She's amazing. As you will discover if you read her.

Home Alone and Broken

2010-01-16T19:07:00.003-05:00

This three-day-weekend, our little threesome had intentions of being out of town. Moments before we hit the highway, it became apparent that I had some work I could not put off another day. I told Leo I needed to stay home to get my work done, and now here I am. I am home alone, trying to get my work done, while Leo and Q are several hours away by car, enjoying a Daddy-Daughter weekend.

I feel like I'm doing an all-nighter to finish a paper, a common scenario for me during my academic career. If I finish soon, I can get in my car and meet up with them, as inefficent as that seems. They're at a new hotel and have already called to tell me all about it and yes, I suffered stabs of jealousy and self-pity as I listened to Q gush about their room.

My work is boring. My work pays our mortgage, our car loans, the electric bill, etc. I am both grateful and frustrated that I have this job. I am bored out of my mind. In fact, I am broken. I do not work. I do not work right, not the way I used to. But work I must. What a whiney-heiney I am!

Honk If You Can Read This

2010-01-07T15:54:00.006-05:00

.

This helped improve my attitude today:

AFI's 100 Years, 100 Movie Quotes (Musical Montage)

On the other side of things, I checked my kid's email account, something I rarely do. In fact, it's been over two months since I last checked it. It's been even longer since Q has used the account. Anyway, there was an unread message from early December that is troubling me. Her friend sent her an email asking Q if Q was mad at the friend. Then the friend said that if she didn't recieve a reply from Q by the end of the month, that she had five words for Q, and here are their initials: Y A W T J.

The friend finished off the note with "p.s. bye dead girl".

WTH?

The space above will reveal today's bad news, if you highlight it.

Have a Heart, Teach

2009-12-03T09:18:00.005-05:00

A 9-year-old kid (not mine) raised her hand in class one morning and said, "Mrs. Smith, I need to go to the clinic. I'm sick."

Her eyes were puffy and bloodshot and watery. She couldn't breathe through her nose. Her face was flushed a dark pink. The kid looked sick.

"Suck it up," responded the teacher.

The little girl had to wait until lunch time, when the class was in the cafeteria and she had access to other school personnel, to ask to go to the clinic. The teacher on duty in the cafeteria took one look at her and immediately excused her to go to the clinic. At the clinic, they determined she was ill. Her mother was called and the girl was sent home sick for the day.

The point: What's up with this teacher? Who says "suck it up" to a kid in fourth grade, especially one who's clearly under the weather? I mean, at least say something like "Try to hang in there, okay?".

What's with the tough talk? The teacher needs to take an empathy pill and drop the militant tough-guy approach. This is fourth grade, not boot camp.

Or am I just too soft-hearted?

Solemnity

2009-11-24T10:55:00.004-05:00

If anyone is still stopping by here, I bid you greetings!

Hi!

I've been absorped first in a school project which took a couple months (because it was interesting to me and a fun diversion and because I could) and now I'm absorped in a different sort of project, which is still kid-centered, but not as fun.

My showing up here today has to do with vocabulary.

Does this sound right to any of you?

"We all solemnly dislike her."

My immediate reaction is no, that's not right. It sounds like you regret not liking her. It sounds like the act of disliking her is a sad, mournful thing you are not exactly enthused about. In other words, it sounds like you dislike that you dislike her.

But I just looked up "solemn" and basically it means serious, mirthless. So, maybe "We solemnly dislike her" is equivalent to "We gravely dislike her" or "We take it very seriously that we dislike her."

And just so you know, the "her" is nobody I've taked about before. And the "we" is nobody you know. And my paranoia knows no bounds. Hence my solemn attempt to keep things anonymous and vague and irrelevant to anything of substance in my real life, leading to many months of silence here.

We solemnly dislike the need to watch what we say while blogging. Solemnly, dude. No kidding.

I just pulled a muscle answering the phone

2009-08-27T16:28:00.008-04:00

Yikes! August is almost GONE and I have only posted once this month so far? Yowza.

I say August doesn't count. In the blogosphere, there are only 11 months in the year.

And yes, I really did just pull a muscle in my back by reaching over to answer the phone. How sad is that.

I've been wallowing less, focusing on work (including housework) more. Things are pretty good.

I even mowed the entire lawn last Saturday!!! Which is a First Time In My Life event. My dad only let my brothers mow the lawn when we were kids, which was the last time I ever even thought about doing such a thing. But marital maintenance includes yard maintenance, it turns out. Who knew! (I do, now. Just call me Gud "Yes, dear" Nuff.)

Anyway, I'm about to go to some social thing and I was wondering: does caffeine help you be more pumped about cocktail party chitchat? Would quickly downing a can of Coke (or Coke Zero) immediately before departing for said socializing event help minimize my butterflies, while I wait for my post-arrival glass of wine to take effect? Just wondering.

Pathetic? Why, yes! Warranted? Yes, again. I want so badly to be the one smoothly working the room. But alas. I am much more inclined to pass the time sitting in a corner quietly evaluating everyone's choice of shoes.

I'd Rather Not Comment

2009-08-06T13:29:00.002-04:00

I just got a call on my office phone. It was someone calling to ask my opinion of one of our service providers. The first question: "On a scale of 1 to 10, how likely would you be to recommend our service to another potential customer?"

Me: Uh...[pause]...Is this anonymous?
Them: No. This is not anonymous.
Me: [silence as I think about the people whose feelings might be involved]
Them: It is registered in our database with your customer name, so no, it is not anonymous.
Me: ......................
Them: You don't have to do it.
Me: Whew! Really?!
Them: Yeah, that's fine. You don't have to.
Me: Yeah, okay, good. That sounds good. Thanks.
Them: Okay. You have a nice day.
Me: [quick interjection] For what it's worth, I think you're doing a great job! I mean, you personally. On this call. I'd give you a 10. If that helps any.
Them: Well, no, not really. But I appreciate that.

On my mind

2009-07-31T16:14:00.004-04:00

Quick list of stuff:

- I'm absolutely fascinated by the whole Gates-Crowley-Obama gathering at the White House thing. Lots to say, but little time for anything more than: yes, there's a teachable moment here, and it is this: if you're a cop, maybe you could show some restraint; and if you're not a cop, maybe you better show some restraint. But disorderly conduct is definitely a discretionary call.

- Q has a high fever that won't go away, and a throat too sore to talk, so she's whispering "I love you" or signing it with her made-up sign language, usually after whispering, "Is there any pie left?"

- The volume level in the house is greatly reduced (see second point above) and it's really, really nice. So a part of me wonders, how can I make this more commonplace? Not the sore throat part...just the silent part. Can pie be the answer?

- Project at work is keeping me busy, keeping me up late, keeping me focused. Things aren't so bad. I guess. For now. Feeling more empowered, but kinda disinterested, simultaneously.

- No other distractions, for those of you following along. (I wasn't late, so I wasn't super worried. It's just that things change as you age, including the way your body heralds certain events. So, it was different, in a way that reminded me of how things felt when I was pregnant with Q. So, I waited, because I wasn't late. And I waited, but wondered. Then, it was beginning to seem like, maybe I was late. Maybe this was exactly what it was the last time I felt like this. After more than a week of kinda wondering, I finally took myself to the store. I kid you not: an hour after I got home from spending the money (around $15), about half an hour after peeing on the stupid stick (there, I said it), then, I wasn't late anymore. WTH? It's like my system wanted me to blow cash on this question. Talk about annoying. I was like, "Seriously? You decide to show up NOW? Why not two hours ago??! WTH?!!" Such are the joys of womanhood.)

- Leo is completing his first full week of work. He leaves earlier in the morning than I do. He dresses better than I do. He is looking good to me. I like it! He goes to sleep earlier, too. And he doesn't beat me to all the household chores (because he's at work and just as unavailable to do them now as I am), so I get to do more without feeling like I have to race him. I like it! And when we see his first paycheck, I bet you can guess how I'll feel: I will like it!

- We have a second-hand piano and I've been practicing on it, wanting to show my folks that they didn't waste time and money on my childhood lessons. So, I played "Morning Has Broken" from my Adult Piano Lesson Book over the speaker phone for them yesterday, and they sounded truly impressed and really touched (it's a favorite song of theirs). That was fun.

French penpal?

2009-07-27T15:23:00.002-04:00

With both of us working again, we are focusing on paying off bills as soon as possible. Once we've managed to get rid of one or two of them, we will be able to increase our contribution to our savings account. Leo even mentioned that we could earmark a certain portion for our vacation.

He was talking to me on the phone when he said this. I was driving. My heart did a little pause, then beat really hard, as I followed his comment with this question:

Me: What vacation?
Him: For next year.
Me: C'mon, I just want to hear you say it. A vacation to where, exactly? (slightly holding my breath)
Him: Paris.
Me: Ooooh, that is so cool (I am still proud that I didn't squeal out loud when he said that word)

Now, does anybody have suggestions for how Q can get an online penpal who lives in France that is not a pedophile?

I think it would be cool for her to start to learn a little French, and cool to have someone to meet should we ever get over there. Another kid, preferably. Am I crazy to even explore this option?

Of course, this is more fantasy than anything else. It could well never happen. I've learned to accept that things often don't play out as you'd hoped. C'est la vie, n'est-ce pas?

Save Me, Pandora!

2009-07-26T16:02:00.003-04:00

Music, sweet music, is the only thing that will get me away from blogland and onto my feet. I turn to you, Pandora, as the source of my energy and focus. The network will run better on Monday because of you.

Sometimes I wish I had billable hours. Then I'd not be able to get away with this crap, where I come into the office to get work done, and I waste time reading and commenting hither and yon, like there are thirty-eight hours in a day and I can spend four to five of them on the web without consequence.

-----------

Ah, the Pandora, she mocks me. She plays "Back on the Chain Gang" to laugh at me, then she plays "Should I Stay or Should I Go" to mock my pain on so many levels (should I just leave the office now and go home for dinner (Leo has already called for a status check), should I leave this profession, should I quit blogging, etc.). Pandora...she's a cruel mistress.

What was I saying?

2009-07-24T16:52:00.004-04:00

I have the mental capacity of a gnat.

And the attention span of a...a....um.......anyway, I gotta work this weekend. Hope my brain makes a reappearance before then.

Plus, something weird is going on that makes me wonder if...if...um...how do I say this?...if Q will remain an only child, if you know what I'm sayin'. Probably nothing to worry about. But something weird is going on. That's probably why I'm so distracted, eh? That's a pretty distracting thought.

Random Wednesday - Censorship Then and Now

2009-07-22T13:02:00.003-04:00

Let the Random References romp freely!

Anybody else out there ever see the full version of the 1976 made-for-televsion movie Sybil, starring Sally Field and Joanne Woodward? I saw it. The whole thing. The original. Complete with kitchen scenes and piano playing moments (and if you saw it, you know what that's about).

I saw it when I was around 8 years old. Nobody saw it with me.

It was on tv. It was like the Saturday Afternoon Matinee movie on tv.

It was on tv again recently. Guess what? They cut the second half. They rolled the credits at the midway point, completely denying today's generation the privilege of the kitchen scenes.

My reaction: why was I allowed to see it back in the '70s? Why did they show the whole thing back then? (I just googled it, and discovered that the original television version was over three hours long. No wonder they didn't show the whole thing this time around!). And where were my parents? How come nobody stopped me from watching it? WTH?

Dad was probably working and Mom was probably doing laundry.

Not that viewing it totally screwed me up. But still. That is some messed up stuff, watching child abuse for free on tv in my parents' living room by myself, my 8-year-old self.

To be clear: as a made-for-tv movie, for what it is, it is excellent. I am a fan. Sally Field was excellent in Sybil. That's not what this post is about.

What this post is (partly) about is summed up by one reviewer's observation: "How these scenes got past broadcast censors in 1976 is a mystery."

It's also (partly) about the fact that I don't think they'd be shown today.

How funny, don't you agree, that tv censorship today blocks stuff like the second half of Sybil, but shows extremely adult-oriented content (sex and violence and horror) in movie previews (for instance) during primetime viewing periods?

I'm Okay, You're Okay

2009-07-20T14:42:00.002-04:00

On my way back from the bathroom just now, while passing someone in the hallway, we traded the obligatory, "Hey! How are you?"

I meekly replied, "I'm okay."

To which she replied, "Just 'okay'?" in a nice way, then added "Gee, I hope it gets better." (also in a nice way).

Which made me decide, hey, okay is pretty good! I'm glad to be okay. Okay is good enough (and gudnuff is okay!).

Then I thought, "In fact, I couldn't be better!" Which made me pause. Really?

No, not really. Can any of us truly say we couldn't be doing better? If your answer is yes (or should it be no? confound these negatively-phrased queries of mine!)...the point is...if you couldn't be doing better, then this is your best...it doesn't get any better than this. Really?

Why not?

And that, dear reader, is my point for today. Okay is good enough. But there is always room for improvement. Which you can work on some other time. Today, I'm okay with being okay.

If I Didn't Have A Kid...

2009-07-18T16:47:00.006-04:00

...I'd be at the gym right now. Instead of pacing around, trying to figure out what to do with myself while Q and her little friend enjoy their playdate in the back room with the Wii.

My pacing is more virtual than physical. I spend a lot of time (really, it's a shameful amount of time) reading Magic Cookie's archives and writing draft posts in response to them because comments have been turned off.

Leo is out of town this weekend, which explains both why I have to stay here with Q and why there is a friend of hers on the premises. When Leo is around, it's just the three of us - no little friends interrupt our weekends ordinarily. There's something about Dads and other people's kids. I remember being at my friend's house when I was Q's age, and the dad was never around (even on the weekends), or if he was, everything was sort of hushed and uncomfortable and you kinda knew you should go home soon.

Guess what else happens when Leo is gone? The dishes don't magically reappear in the cupboard! The laundry stays where I left it. In a way, it sucks and reminds me how little I do on a regular basis around here. But, in a way, it's awesome, 'cause things actually stay where I put them, and I remember (mostly) where I put stuff. In places that make sense to me. And it's good practice for me to get back on top of things (like running the dishwasher and emptying it and making the beds, etc.)

Well, I've decided that Q and I will go for a bike ride together after the friend leaves. That's the cool part about her getting bigger. I need to celebrate the good stuff about that.

In the meantime, I can imagine what else I'd be doing if I weren't babysitting. Like, studying. Or at least reading for pleasure (as in, a real book. TMI ALERT: yes, I'm tackling Team of Rivals two-pages-at-a-time during bathroom visits. I expect to be done reading it by this time next year). Or at some event with other grown-ups somewhere. Or at somebody's lake house. Maybe it would be MY lake house, because that's where I might have put the money that went into daycare and day camp and clothes and parties and hair accessories (I swear this house eats ponytail holders. Or else the cats are eating them). Also, I'd probably not have any cats (I got them because Q has no siblings and what is she supposed to say, at 5 years of age, when asked "Do you have any brothers or sisters? Do you have any pets?" No, no, no. It sounded so lonely and made that getting-to-know-you conversation rather bleak. At least she can talk about her cats, right?). Maybe I would be getting back from running a 5K. Because I would have gone to a doctor and had my knee looked at five years ago instead of just ignoring that crunchy sound in my left patella that still creeps me out and must be related to the sharp pain that accompanies running or walking up hill or up stairs. And in this kid-free fantasy I'm currently enjoying, I am also about eight years younger but farther along in my career, AND, I'm a Director on the Board of This and That, AND I have an award or three lauding my Community Service hanging on the wall.

I will close with something from Magic Cookie's archive, a song by Jonathan Coulter, about how kids ruin your life. And how wonderful it is that they did.

I'm Spooked, Are You?

2009-07-16T16:12:00.002-04:00

A number of things have me running scared lately, such as: The disappearance of nd (noo duuuuck), which lingers like morning fog in the back of my bloggy brain. (so it's blog fog...the fog-like ghosts of blogs past/passed, whatever). The fact that I have told someone from my Real Life the url to this spot. The fact that I posted an easily googleable thing that might actually be looked for by family members which could lead them straight here. I am spooked. I am wondering how hard it is to start over, and how I would go about it.

And I am missing people. I miss Hyphen, even though she's still around, just not as much. And I miss nd. And I miss ambimb. And I'm questioning this whole blogging endeavor, wondering whether it might actually be a mojo-blocker for me work-wise. I'm momentarily paralyzed. Like, movement will catch "their" attention (and by "their" attention, I mean the people that I don't want to find this blog). So, I've been frozen for the past week. And did y'all read A Lawyer Mom's excellent post about blogger liability and not-so-free speech?

Fear sucks.

(Thanks to Hyphen for unsticking me!!!! Muah!)

Good news, I think

2009-07-08T14:43:00.002-04:00

We are a dual-income family again! I'm so happy for Leo. The time off was starting to wear thin for him. I'm sad for me, 'cause now I really can't slack on the housework like I have been with him home all the time and constantly putting things away. Well, we need the money, and he's glad to get out of the house again, so it's for the best.

So Mr. Househusband (Mr. Wife?) is leaving, and I will miss him. It was nice while it lasted. But probably only because our money hadn't fully run out yet. I expect Mr. Grumpy, whom I do not miss, to arrive in about three weeks.

But who will be at the front door to hand me my martini and the evening paper and my pipe and slippers? And take the roast out of the oven ten minutes after that? And ask me about my day?

If you give a host a hug...

2009-07-06T15:07:00.003-04:00

I'm compulsive about two things: straightening tangled phone cords and hugging people hello/goodbye.

Most people are not compelled to do either of these. Yes, the hugging thing is especially problematic and often one-sided. No, I'm not in therapy about it. Yes, I've read The Five Love Languages and it's clear that Physical Touch is a big deal for me. But most other people? Not so much, it turns out. So, I'm often hugging people who clearly weren't expecting it. But it's often too quick to deflect and they just go with it out of a sense of polite graciousness.

How do you break someone of a habit like this? How do you get her to think twice next time?

You have her show up for a pool party and compulsively hug the host who just spent 5 hours working on his lawn. And is still "dewy" from the exertion. And hasn't had a shower in two days. And is much taller than her, so that her head gets wrapped in his t-shirt for about two seconds. Which is two seconds longer than either of them were looking for.

Palin is a flake

2009-07-03T22:28:00.002-04:00

She's quitting her job as Governor of Alaska. For a laundry list of muddled excuses. What other interpretation is there, other than outright flakiness? I mean, really? What I really want to know is, how many other governors have quit prior to the end of their term? And for what reasons?

Maybe It's The Heat

2009-07-03T10:44:00.004-04:00

Just a short post to note some changes. Firstly: New Duck has killed her blog, it seems. This is my first experience with such a devastating loss. I miss her terribly. It makes blogging feel like a looooong layover at a bus station or something, and you get to know the people next to you, but then they have to go their separate way eventually.

Blogging has its painful sides, to be sure.

As for me, I can't seem to gather my mojo for anything fun or interesting on my own blog, and I know it's been rather sucky lately. Luckily, I've found Suburb Sanity to help inspire me. And while I miss New Duck, I'm thanking all the others on my sidebar for still going strong. I love you guys!

I dreamed about Obama last night

2009-06-30T20:45:00.008-04:00

WTH? That was a new experience. He somehow had recently become the CEO of our company and was so new to the place that he still didn't know where all the departments were located or how to file his paperwork, etc. This was at the headquarters of a national organization, and in the dream I was like, "Huh? Why would Obama take a job HERE?" My duties involved operational support, and in my corner of the corporate world, we seldom saw anybody from the front office (I'm throwing terms around as if I use these everyday. What IS a front office, anyway?). When he sort of accidentally explored his way back towards my part of the operations (it was some industrial/textile type place...again...wth?), I suddenly became all flustered and bumbled everything and dropped stacks of papers and basically was a total dork while he was taking a tour of the facilities to meet all the staff and he graciously acknowledged me and I was mortified by my incompetency in front of him. It bemused me and ticked me off too, 'cause I was damn good at my job, and I knew it, and I knew other people knew it...except for him.

I never dream about celebrities or politicians. I don't seem to dream much at all, lately (that I can recall by morning). What the heck was I doing dreaming about Obama? And as I type up this post, I see all kinds of parallels about him being in charge and being new and not knowing all the details of how the place was run. But I'm a supporter of his, in my waking hours, and I get kinda bristly when people make cracks about his competency or lack of experience, so that just makes it all the weirder that my dream would highlight those qualities/circumstances, like I'm internalizing the perspective of his critics, of the people who disagree with his ability to lead.

In the dream, I made sure to put his time sheet in the right slot (I just happened to be walking by and noticed it lying there on a table...other people's timesheets were nowhere in my job description, so this was a totally gratuitous act on my part), because he had not known to put it there and it was probably not going to get processed if I didn't take care of that for him - which just furthered my annoyance that I was behind-the-scenes competent and in-front-of-The-Boss-incompetent...but I did it anyway. 'Cause I'm nice like that.

I Dislike You! I Really Dislike You!*

2009-06-18T13:54:00.010-04:00

*A twist on the 1985 Oscar acceptance speech by Sally Field, Best Actress for "Places in the Heart," after having won in 1980 for "Norma Rae": "I haven't had an orthodox career, and I've wanted more than anything to have your respect. The first time I didn't feel it, but this time I feel it, and I can't deny the fact that you like me, right now, you like me!" But usually it's misquoted as "You like me! You really like me!"

............................

Leo sent me 8 tips for liking someone better (or disliking that person less) this morning. It was his way of helping me deal with some stuff at the office this week. And by "stuff", I mean:

There are 2 "consultants" at the office working on this project (the project that got in the way of my Master Plan to study for the June LSAT. My husband's unemployment got in the way, too, sort of, but anyway...).

Yesterday I was terrifically frustrated with one of the consultants in particular, and of course, Work Husband was there to add to the misery. (And no, I'm not talking about the kind of frustration that we all crave once in a while, the kind that makes you rub up against doorknobs or sit on top of a washing machine during the spin cycle. I'm talking you-are-really-pissing-me-off frustrated. And "Work Husband" is just not capturing the essence of our relationship. It's more like how you would feel about an ex-husband. Does Work Ex-Husband make sense? 'cause that's what he is.)

I was so annoyed/frustrated/angry by the time I got home, that I kvetched mightily about it to Leo, who just really doesn't want to hear much beyond the first 300 words.

Still, trying to be supportive, he sent me the article. What I liked most, though, were the comments.

You'll see that several commenters disagree with the author's advice. I love them for that.

Here are two of my favorite responses:

"I prefer to not like them. If I try to like them, then I'm stuck tolerating their obnoxious behavior. I'd rather not :)"

"This has to be the dumbest article I have read in such a long time. Why isn't it OK to dislike someone... We don't have to like everyone!"

This is why Trannyhead's weekly rants are so popular, I presume. Because it feels good to vent, and it feels good to know that I'm not the only person sipping a strawful of screw-you cider.

A House Divided Cannot Stand Itself

2009-06-13T22:32:00.017-04:00

So for some reason we watched Song of the South last night, a bootlegged version with Japanese subtitles that Leo's uncle gave us yesterday. My mother-in-law was here and watched it with us. There was a heated discussion after we watched it about the film's general offensiveness and why people had urged Disney not to make the movie in the first place. Leo's Mom got quite upset with us for criticizing the film. She kept saying it was a story about a little boy and about the rich oral tradition of storytelling among the slaves on the plantation, and we kept saying it was unnecessarily cheerful about plantation life and of course it's offensive to depict that period of time as pleasant and desirable and that only white people (like her, like us) would wonder why anybody would object to the film. I tried to shift the focus. I told her, imagine a film that was set in the sex trade, and some nice old woman (forced into a life of prostitution), too old for tricks but with a kindness of character, was the one telling the stories to the little boy - the grandson of the pimp/matron of the house - how would she (my MIL) feel about the film then? Would she still insist that we were missing the point? Or would she think the film was offensive?

She got very grumpy. She pointed her finger at me and said, "Have you read Team of Rivals?" (which she loaned to me about three months ago). And I said, sheepishly, "I'm just up to Chapter 3." And she looked me dead in the eye and said, "Read Team of Rivals!" and went into her room and shut the door. This morning, she immediately began packing her car very purposefully.

I see her point, too, of course. She's saying, well, that's how it was, why try to lie about it or hide it or deny it happened? Why couldn't there be some good things to say about that time, and why not celebrate the folk stories of Uncle Remus featuring Br'er Rabit, Br'er Fox, Br'er Bear?

Uh, because, really? Was plantation life really like that? You were there?

Anyway, I can't have this discussion and not link to Cracked's list of The 9 Most Racist Disney Characters.

Race in America. Whew, what a loaded issue. I'm a northerner, raised in the Midwest, schooled in the Northeast. My husband grew up in Orlando, a place I tend(ed) to view as non-regional, or uniquely regional (can central Florida be considered its own cultural region of the US?). His parents? Multi-generational non-land-owning southerners. Rural/small town, deep south kind of southerners. A fact I didn't fully grasp the significance of for quite a while. My husband speaks with a similar dialect to mine. He speaks it whenever he's around me and when he's around my family, that is. When we're around his family, suddenly it's "y'all" this and "y'all" that. It's boiled peanuts and collards. I am reminded of the scene in "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" when they first escape and are eating the horsemeat-stew-about-to-spoil with the southerner's relative and he's recounting all the bad things that have happened to their extended relations. It often feels like I've just walked into the filming of that scene when I'm around them. The lesson I've learned here is that when you go on a date with somebody, and the guy totally blasts his family and has very few nice things to say about them, it would be wise to take him seriously.

Also, I just need to say that Leo's mom is a sweetheart. She is the very personification of The Giving Tree. She was upset by our disparaging reaction to her perspective of the film, and totally ready to hit the road this morning. Then we discovered that Q woke up with a raised temperature, sore throat, stuffy nose, and MIL stayed all day, went to the store for food, cooked some split pea soup at Q's request and typically does everything she possibly can at the slightest indication of being needed. We all have so many facets to our makeup. I try to stay on the positive side of things. But I'm also going to put up a fight when it comes to opening Q's eyes - and my own and Leo's and my MIL's - to the damages of racism and the dangers of remaining blind to it due to white privilege. If pointing out the inherent racism of Song of the South means that my MIL gets upset enough to cut her visit short, so be it. Clearly she's defensive about it, otherwise why would she be THAT upset?

She's right, though, that I need to get back to work on Team of Rivals.

..........................

Addendum: She just said to me that thinking about black/white issues is painful for her. She said she remembers a black guy she worked with at a library when she was in her early twenties (about fifty years ago), and that he was trying to explain to her that the military was his only real option. She said she didn't truly grasp at the time the import of what he was saying to her. She said, "People can be living right there, in the middle of it, and be blind to what's happening. I'm bothered by that aspect of Southern culture. And there's no way to be free of it. The only way my sons can be free of it is to marry someone outside the Southern culture. And the grandchildren...they need to be kept away, too."

That is deep, people. That is huge. Think about what this woman is saying, about her own heritage. About her children's legacy. That's some pretty powerful stuff.

Work Husband Defined

2009-06-09T16:37:00.004-04:00

One of the search terms that brings people to this space is "Work Husband". I tend to throw terms out there and seldom bother to define them, but this one deserves some effort, because how I define my Work Husband is not, apparently, the accepted norm.

According to a CNN article (which I found via this WorkItMom.com article), there are seven signs that indicate that you have a "work spouse", such as:

1. You depend on a particular co-worker for office supplies, snacks and aspirin. Yeah, he's good for stuff like that.
2. There are inside jokes that you and a specific co-worker share. Only that he's a PITA and we are often openly irritated or possibly hostile toward each other. Which is not funny-ha-ha.
3. You can be bluntly honest with this person and his or her appearance, hygiene or hair (and vice versa). You're comfortable enough to point out that the other's hair is sticking up - or that someone's fly is down. Yes, I'm bluntly honest because I'm not terribly concerned with upsetting his freak of an emotional ecosystem. He's a 6-foot-2-inch three-year-old capable of ridiculous self-indulgent tantrums.
4. When something eventful happens at work, this co-worker is the first person you seek out for a de-briefing. Hell no. I seek to avoid contact with him, in fact. He's a back-stabbing manipulative snake-in-the-grass and I wouldn't trust him for a second, including, I wouldn't trust him to relay the gossip he knew in anything other than a self-serving manner that would probably screw me somehow.
5.At breakfast, lunch and coffee breaks, your closest co-worker knows what to order for you and how you like your coffee (and vice versa). He only drinks Diet Coke. Yes, he could probably order for me.
6. You and your co-worker can finish each other's sentences. Good lord, if I didn't step in sometimes, he'd STILL be talking, seriously.
7. Someone in your office knows almost as much about your personal life as your best friend or real-life spouse does. Okay, absolutely NO. I put up barriers a while ago and am proud to note that I've maintained them. In fact, they've gotten even stricter within the past six months. These people are NOT the people to share anything with. That's why I have a blog! Seriously.

Yet, he is still my Work Husband, if you ask me. Mostly because of this: "Work spouses often complement each other in terms of skills, abilities and their approaches to work. The two of you can make a very productive team." We can and often do make a very productive team, while also a VERY contentious and tense team.

But mostly he's my Work Husband because, much like my Real Husband, he isn't going anywhere and I have to figure out how to live with him. Isn't that marriage in a nutshell?

Birthday Fail

2009-06-09T10:24:00.005-04:00

I made my daughter cry on her birthday (the actual birthday date was yesterday). I feel like such a schmuck. She was not out-of-line to be hurt and upset. She could have used her words a little better, which would have curtailed some of the events that hurt her feelings, but some of it was undeniably mea culpa. The twist of the knife is that instead of serving as an advocate for her, I trivialized her feelings, then I started talking to somebody and truthfully kinda forgot about Q for a span of 5-10 minutes. Not a big deal under non-birthday circumstances, one might argue. She spent those 5-10 minutes alone, huddled on the floor of the backseat of our car, sobbing. The car was parked in the parking lot. We were with friends. We had just left a restaurant. Another, much littler girl, had been chasing and pestering Q as they ran around the parked car and wouldn't stop when Q told her to stop, so Q sought refuge inside our parked car. The littler girl kept trying to get into the car to continue the game, but Q had locked the door. I had the remote entry clicky thing and I kept unlocking the door, because I (mistakenly) thought they were both having fun with this. Until, when I opened the door to let the little one "get" Q, Q shouted "STOP, MOM!" at me with utter frustration and anger and pulled the door shut again. The little girl (almost 4) then started mimicking Q, yelling at the top of her lungs into the nearly empty parking lot "Stop Mom!" over and over again, and the other mother and I laughed because it sounded funny to have a little 4-year-old saying that. (Reading this after the fact, I don't understand why we thought that was funny, and why we didn't tell the little girl to stop.) And of course, the more we laughed, the more the 4-year-old said it, with a big ol' grin, looking cute and so pleased with herself. I was totally focused on her. Q? Q who?

Boy I feel so stupid now. Because of course Q heard it as the little girl mocking Q, and maybe she was, and why I was not tuned into that, I don't understand. If anybody present were to have acted as Q's advocate, it should have been me. Instead, I contributed to the actions that hurt her feelings, and then, I walked over to the other person's car and talked to her for those 5-10 minutes, totally not tuned into the fact that Q was still inside the car, alone, ignored, dismissed. I was sharing something personal with the other mom and totally focused on myself. When I walked back over to my car, that's when I saw Q huddled on the floor, and I knew instantly that she was upset and probably crying about something. I still didn't know what or why. I finally cajoled her into opening the door, and she was all hot and sweaty and tearful and her face was red and puffy from crying. It wasn't until we were alone together on the drive home that she fully explained the many things that upset her. Plus she said she'd been waiting to hear me say "Happy Birthday!" like I had when I woke her up that morning, and I never said it again, apparently. Plus she was super-tired, but of course, she didn't want to hear that.

I balance these facts against the just-worked-my-tail-off-to-throw-her-a-party fact. My conclusion is: forget the party next year, especially if it doesn't fall on the date of her birthday. Focus on the day itself. Start preparing her for what birthdays are like as a grown-up: on the actual day, you get maybe a free cupcake and a smile from restaurant staff, at best. I call my newly adopted birthday policy: The Unspoiling of Q. Is such a thing possible?

I Know It's Not Me

2009-06-08T15:26:00.006-04:00

It's not me who turned lunch into yet another wtf-fest. It's not me who started melodramatically shuffling papers and stamping them together loudly on the table and sat back in the chair with arms folded across my chest with a wounded pride sniff.

This guy has some serious issues. Even my placid, well-meaning boss told him, "There's no need to emotionally react to this." It's not me who feigned innocence, who feigned nonchalance while pulling off one elephant-sized pouty-pout extravaganza. Where is this coming from?!

Try as I might to distance myself from what's going on across from me, the repercussions are acute. Everyone at the table is affected. My boss and I are both still trying to shed the wtf-ness of it from off our shoulders. But it stays with you, like a dark cloud. I sorta want a stiff drink right now. Or some emergency yoga, some deep-breathing exercises.

We're all left feeling like we just watched something very upsetting, like we took part in some very upsetting episode, but it's unclear exactly who did what to warrant such behavior. Where did that come from? Was it me? Am I such a bitch, is my bitchiness so deeply ingrained in me that I am unable to recognize it anymore? What did I do to upset him so? Am I that bad??!

No, by gawd. No. It's not me. I know it's not me!

Party Over Heeyah

2009-06-07T23:10:00.002-04:00

I have survived another birthday party for Q. I am exhausted. It was fun. It was hectic. It was a slumber party. Keeping the number of guests to a minimum helped. My proudest moment was when she burped "Mary Had A Little Lamb" for the enjoyment of her guests. Such class.

Post-party, Leo's cleanliness habit kicked into full swing, and he guided all three of us through an exhausting purge session of all of her toys, gadgits, gizmos and accessories. We filled a trash bag with, um, trash basically, and we have two piles of things for Good Will, and a LOT more closet space now. Leo is very disciplined about getting Q into the habit of purging at Christmas and birthdays. If she gets a present, she must make a home for it, which usually involves removing an older object.

Pre-party, I cleaned the back porch, which never ended up being used or really even seen by most of the guests. But I worked up a fantastic sweat cleaning it, had to take a couple of breaks, used about an entire roll of paper towels and have conquered mold and mildew and cat hair.

We are enjoying our house even more now. Again, it's all about the discipline. For me, that usually requires inviting someone over before I find the necessary motivation.

I'm too tired to make this post interesting or funny. And tomorrow is going to be a challenge. Work Husband is in town. I gotta get some rest, 'cause having him in town is never very pleasant after the first hour. And nobody at work is gonna give an iota of empathy about the fact that I cleaned and cooked and hosted and sweated and fretted at an intense level all weekend long. This is where it really truly feels like I'm working two jobs and wonder how a day off might ever be possible. I just thank god that Leo is here to help me. Without him, I would be looking at one crazy mess of a house right now.

Stalked By My Own Blog Post

2009-06-04T22:49:00.007-04:00

So I post that picture (which I think is totally cute and fairly haunting and am now a bit hurt that nobody made a single comment about the picture itself...I thought people always commented about pictures...?) (not to take away from the thoughtful, funny and very much welcomed and appreciated comments that I did get prior to my whining here - thank you Hyphen Mama and CatrinkaS!) and I'm thinking about my childhood and what it meant to be a doctor's daughter, the pros and the cons, both then and now.

Well, then, Leo calls me just before 5pm today to say we got our carpets cleaned and they were still wet and let's just go out to dinner since all of our furniture is in one massive pile in the kitchen, leaving us with no where to sit until the carpets dry.

Okay, fine, so I meet Leo and Q in the parking lot of where we're going for dinner, and hey, there are my parents, too. Leo likes to invite people along on such outings, and that's fine with me. And I'm feeling all nostalgic about my parents, because of yesterday's post and also because of the comment I left over on Bea's blog about growing up as a doctor's daughter. I'm feeling especially nostalgic about my dad, and I give him a big kiss on the cheek as we walk into the place and I tell him I'm proud of him and he is both tickled by the show of affection and the flattery and also kinda wondering if maybe I've been drinking before dinner.

There were a whole bunch of people there, at this place we were eating. We ate in the back room, because the big front room was occupied by An Event. With a lot of little girls, like mostly between 4-10 years old, and their parents, and the girls are in party dresses and looking semi-formal and very pleased to be there. Guess what was going on, y'all?

It was the Doctor/Daughter Dinner for the local medical society! How freaky is that?!!!

And I don't talk about my blog to my folks, so I had to keep my astonishment on the down-low until I could sneak away tonight and tell you guys about it.

Seriously, that is kind of a funny coincidence. I mean, I have really not talked about that part of my life on here ever before, and then the day after I finally post about it, BAM! there's a whole room full of people living out the post I had just written, experiencing what it's like to be a doctor's daughter. Celebrating that very thing, no less.

And who else but my fellow bloggers would appreciate how much that would affect a person who had just written about being a doctor's daughter on her blog the day before?

Of course, I had to say something about how they never had one of those in that little town we lived in back in the day when I was the cute little doctor's daughter. But Dad said, yes we did, and I took you, and he wasn't even upset, he just said it very matter-of-factly. Well, Mom didn't recall it at all either. Then Dad said, "Yes, I took you and you wore a mu mu." At which point I was certain he was pulling my leg. But no, Mom backed him up on the mu mu thing...told me it was yellow and orange and I looked cute in it. Said she was surprised I liked those colors.

I was only 7 or 8, or thereabout. I WAS NOT FAT (that came later, with puberty). So why a mu mu?

Because, I have the great misfortune of having grown up in the '70's. When things like mu mus were in fashion. That's why. And it sucks. Because wonderful memories like that one get ruined by words like "mu mu". Ugh. The shame.

But anyway, see? I totally love my Dad (and Mom) and I'm still totally impressed with his incredibly sharp memory and no one, NO ONE, can beat that man at Trivial Pursuit and at 75 he still remembers what I wore to the Doctor/Daughter Dinner and he has earned every bit of goodness that he has gotten in this life. And more. I just wish, as I've made painfully obvious to anyone reading this blog, that I were one-quarter the person he is.

Doctor's Children

2009-06-03T15:48:00.009-04:00

That's my oldest brother with the stethoscope, checking out my my other brother. I wasn't born yet.

I had forgotten this picture. It's hanging in the hallway at my eldest brother's house. I happened to be over there on Sunday and snapped a picture of it with my phone. You can see me taking a picture of the picture.

My father was a physician. He first went to dental school, graduated, then went to medical school. My mother was a Registered Nurse, which "in those days" as she likes to point out, often, "that required a four-year degree." Not one of my parents' three children grew up to be doctors. Or lawyers. Or stock brokers, accountants, professors (ahem) or dentists. Or any other well-known white-collar category. All three of us are in the IT field in one way or another. Well, both brothers are business owners, with varying success. I'm sure I don't give either of them the credit they deserve.

I struggle sometimes, with who Q is, with what Q is capable of, compared to what I project onto her, what I think she is capable of, what I think she should be capable of, who I think she should be or could be or might be. Like, I think she might be a smaller version of my mother-in-law, sometimes. I see parts of myself in there, too. And her patience...that's Leo, for sure.

What were my parents thinking of their eldest when they took this picture? And how does it feel now, at 75 years of age, with that little guy nowadays pushing 50 years of age, to reconcile today's reality with yesteryear's unknown potential?

They would say, we are happy, we are healthy, we have our own families now, that's all they ever wanted for us. I'm not sure I believe them. But I understand. I look at Q, and I love her, and I accept her (most days).

Somebody recently said, kids (families, in fact) are a crap shoot. That is so true.

So...discipline...yeah...

2009-06-02T17:29:00.003-04:00

June 1, I was all gangbusters. But my gangbusters busted me. I stayed at work doing real work things until 3am. Things I coulda shoulda woulda been doing last week, last month, if I weren't blogging all the dang time. So I finish something that I had promised would be done by Tuesday, with quite a few other projects thrown in (and a wee bit of hulu watching, while I wait for updates to download, to install, for servers to reboot...good lord, the wasted minutes! this is my life I'm watching slide by on the 63%-complete-status-bar...hulu made it tolerable)...anyway, I finish just before 3am and walk my lonely self to the parking garage, looking over my shoulder every so often.

Then of course, because I promised him I would, I had to stop at the store on the way home and buy Leo something for his morning workout/bike ride...at 3:30AM!!! I am too nice, really...I mean, really, c'mon, that goes in the above-and-beyond category, don't you think?

So I'm shopping because once I'm in a store, the shopping/hunting gene thing must be fed by at least 30 minutes of browsing the warehouse-size aisles, dodging anyone I might make eye contact with, certain my car is being vadalized as I seek out quality onion bagels (there were none).

So I get home around 4am. Finally get to sleep around 4:30am. Don't ask me how this is possible, but my feet are the first ones on the floor, at 8:30, this morning. Leo is still asleep, and so is Q, as I make my coffee. I have to go wake up Q, who is all smiles and hugs and absolutely a little smitten kitten about seeing me again (since I didn't come home last night until after she was asleep), so that part was super nice.

But now it is June 2, I'm still at work (finally got here mid-morning), and I have yet to exercise even once this month (or read my $%^$*@ book!).

Well, there are about three hours of daylight left. Where there is light, there is hope. I am visualizing me walking around our neighborhood, at the very least, after dinner, or maybe before. And if you can dream it, you can do it, right?

Hello, June!

2009-06-01T07:46:00.002-04:00

I did it, people. The first words I uttered on the first day of the month (at around 1am last night) were "Rabbit, rabbit, rabbit". Does anybody else do that? It's something I learned in high school: if the first thing you say is "rabbit, rabbit, rabbit" on the first day of the month, then you're supposed to have good luck all month long. I haven't managed to do that in years. Hmmmpf. We'll see if June turns out to be a good month or not. Lord knows I have plenty on my plate and I could certainly use some good luck in the next three to four weeks!

I'm Putting It In Print

2009-05-31T21:56:00.005-04:00

This is the first year that Q will not be spending the entire summer with the after-school camp folks. Since Leo is home all day twiddling his thumbs, we're keeping her home with him except for a week here and there. Should be interesting.

As for me, the work project is headed into full swing starting tomorrow with a kickoff meeting. It's the first time my Work Husband has ever worked with a real Project Manager and I'm looking forward to him seeing a more professional approach to things. Should be interesting.

I've also slooooowly been gaining some weight back, so I am going to try very, very hard to be disciplined in both my eating and my exercise. I will try to do a midday workout at my gym, and read Team of Rivals, five days a week (Monday through Friday). This clashes with the work project kicking into high gear, and may force me into a pre-work exercise schedule (shudder!) rather than midday, but one way or another, I AM NOT BUYING THE NEXT SIZE UP! The best tool to avoid wrong-eating is sleep. Sleep is the best friend of the calorie-conscious. Getting plenty of sleep, plus working longer days while the consultants are on site, plus adding another hour and a half for working out results in some rather fuzzy math. Should be interesting.

Q and I signed up to go on a weekend camping trip to a Girl Scout camp in mid-June, with the other Girl Scout leader (whom I really like) and her daughter. Anybody remember Sally? Yeah. Should be interesting.

Tomorrow is June 1. I'm going to get my game on, people.

Is It A Promise Or A Threat?

2009-05-30T21:31:00.003-04:00

This post is primarily for my own informational purposes, however, any comments that might serve to enlighten me are always welcome.

--Yes, I'm beating a dead horse. It's what I do. You can watch if you want.--

There's a big difference between defining what a promise is versus defining what happens if a promise is broken.

A promise is a promise.

What happens when a promise is broken is NOT a promise.

So, is "assumpsit" a promise, or does "assumpsit" mean a promise has been broken?

I think the term is used to argue that first of all, there was a promise to do or pay something. That promise is pretty much a simple contract between two parties. Basically, assumpsit is establishing the existence of this assumed contract. Then, I guess farther down in the case, it is argued that the simple contract was breached. But I don't think the term assumpsit, in and of itself, has much to do with stating that the contract was not upheld. I think the breaching part is separate from the assumpsit part. But you can't accuse someone of breaching a contract without first establishing the existence of the contract. So that's where assumpsit plays its part.

It's just confusing when you read that assumpsit is an action. An action, to the uninitiated like me, sounds like something you charge somebody with. Like murder. I mean, why bring an action against someone for making a promise? Well, no, that is of course not the way it works. The action is brought for breaking the promise. And yet, an assumpsit itself is not the breaking of the promise, but the laying out of what was understood to be promised in the first place.

Strange that breach is not part of the name of the action. I guess that the breach part is a no-brainer, doesn't need to be part of the name of the action, even though that's why the guy went to a lawyer in the first place. Unless I've got it completely wrong, and that's certainly possible/likely. Or maybe it's a historical thing, and they don't use assumpsit anymore. I mean, in today's world, who HASN'T heard of breach of contract? The Smother Brothers certainly have.
.......

Which reference you rely upon can make a big difference! (duh!)

Compare the definition below (from http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/Assumpsit)

ASSUMPSIT ("he has undertaken," from Lat. assumere), a word applied to an action for the recovery of damages by reason of the breach or non-performance of a simple contract, either express or implied, and whether made orally or in writing. Assumpsit was the word always used in pleadings by the plaintiff to set forth the defendant's undertaking or promise, hence the name of the action. Claims in actions of assumpsit were ordinarily divided into (a) common or indebitatus assumpsit, brought usually on an implied promise, and (b) special assumpsit, founded on an express promise. Assumpsit as a form of action became obsolete after the passing of the Judicature Acts 1873 and 1875. (See further CONTRACT; PLEADING and TORT.)

with the definition given previously in the comments from the preceding post (from http://definitions.uslegal.com/a/assumpsit)

"Assumpsit is an express or implied agreement to perform an oral contract. An express assumpsit is where one undertakes verbally or in writing, not under seal, or on record, to perform an act, or to pay a sum of money to another.

An implied assumpsit is where one has not made any formal promise to do an act or to pay a sum of money to another, but who is presumed from his conduct to have assumed an obligation to do the just and fair thing. Common or indebitatus assumpsit is brought for the most part on an implied promise. Special assumpsit is founded on an express promise or undertaking."

What's "assumpsit" mean?

2009-05-28T11:20:00.002-04:00

Being obsessed with people's career development, especially my own, I read blog archives. They are a great way to watch the progression, the transmogrification (btw, if anybody has any pull with Transmogriflaw, please ask her to post an update, or start a new blog, or get permission to post an update about her, even, maybe?). This kinda sucks because I totally want to comment on somebody's observation from three years ago. I feel like I'm hobnobbing with ghosts.

So, define "assumpsit". Who cares, right?

It's a word. And it matters. I love that it matters. I love that a WORD matters. I love that Prof. Warren's first utterance on the first day of her 1L class at Harvard is something along the lines of "Explain what the first word in the case means." And the first word is "assumpsit".

Sigh. (...the kind of sigh where you smile and gaze up longingly at someone, like a real dork, exactly the kind of dork that should be beaten up on a daily basis, just as Tranny says.)

Of course, it's easy to love from a distance, with nothing at stake personally. As long as she's asking somebody else, it's wonderfully thrilling. Not that I'll ever meet her (she'd chew me up and spit me out if she even bothered to breathe the same air as me) or step foot anywhere near HLS, nor do I deserve to, but still...aaahhhh...that is cool. I must remember how cool I think that is. I must remember how much I love words, and how much they matter.

9 Reasons For Leaning Toward Law

2009-05-27T15:32:00.009-04:00

For Reason #1, see the previous post. For most of what I'm talking about in this post, go check out Cee's post over at Starting To Melt about career direction, professional motivation and the passion that drives us.

Then check out the comments, because half of this post is contained in her comment section.

Or...to ease your clicking burden, I guess I can reprint it here:

"Your post, and the comments contained here, [are] a big, big part of what makes the idea of being a lawyer appealing to me (OH...I just posted Reason #2! Rock on!) It's people like you that make people [like] me LIKE people like you. And want to be one of you. And work shoulder-to-shoulder with you. You're smart, dedicated, articulate, ambitious, educated, focused, determined, [disciplined,]...plus you understand the whole working mommy thing, along with all the other commenters here...why wouldn't I want to be a part of that? Why do people ask me why I want that? Better to ask: Why would I NOT want that? Why would I NOT want to be a member of that team?"

So! There you have it. Reason #2: Because I Want To Be One Of Those Cool Chicks!

I want to be among smart, focused, educated, intelligent, disciplined, ambitious, articulate wordsmiths. I want to be respected by them, to work with them, to go to gatherings with them and I want to argue against them and I want to be influenced by them and inspired by them and I want it to matter to my bottom line. I don't want to be just a groupie.

Reason #3: I want wordsmithing and analysis to be a part of my paycheck.

And then here comes Reason #4 (yes, I totally hogged up her comment section, essentially writing this post...sorry Cee!):

"...You know where you say "Last year...I loved the crazy complication of litigating construction defect claims" and the other stuff you got to do/learn/try? Now, after [gaining] some experience and the confidence that comes with it, you find yourself thinking, "So what?"...well...

Yeah. Exactly."

Reason #4: I don't want building a test server to be a part of my paycheck anymore. (That totally gets the big "So what??!!!") Although that is really more of a reason to leave my current job, and not so much a reason to go into the legal profession in particular.

And while I'm on a roll, here's Reason #5 (but my current job does this already, sorta...this is more along the lines of "Why did I leave my Ph.D. program?"...well, because...see below):

I want to have the problem presented to me, I don't want to have to be totally creative and frame the question out of thin air, as academicians must do. I want the question to come to me already fleshed out, with an accompanying set of applicable rules and precedent just waiting to be matched to it. And I will be the match-maker. Or that is part of what I suppose I might be able to do as an attorney.

Reason #6: Intimately Knowing (and personally possessing some agency within) The System

I want to know more about The System, things like Civil Procedure, Estates and Trusts. I want to be INFORMED, to feel like a true grown-up who understands how things work. This knowing-the-system thing was actually one of the reasons Obama briefly mentions for his motivation for going to law school in Dreams From My Father.

Reason #7: Working With People

I want to have to talk to people as part of my paycheck. Yeah, go ahead and laughingly answer "Oh, poor naive gudnuff...you say that NOW..." But really...I want more face time with people, either with clients (meh...not a LOT...clients are clients are clients...I already provide a service...I know what clients are like...) or with other lawyers. Ideally, I'd like to work on a team. But I realize that is not very likely to happen.

Reason #8: Flexibility, Professional Options

Do y'all see what Cee is proposing? She can go in so many different directions professionally! I guess I could sorta do that in IT, too, if I loved, loved, loved the work. I could voluntarily help people with their computer problems, I guess. Well, HA! That's a laugh. Just ask my mother. Her printer stopped working, and the only way she got any help was, Leo took pity on her. Sorry, Mom. Unless you want to pay me, oh...$200/hour...then MAYBE I'll drag myself over to your house to look at a stupid printer problem. Of course, there's an hour's charge, minimum, even if it only takes me ten minutes to fix it. Why? Because I so don't want to do this anymore! And don't get me started on your complete inability to grasp the concept of a file system.

Where was I?

Reason #9: The Benefit Of The Doubt/Recognition/Respect

If you're an attorney, people assume a lot about you. They assume that you are literate, for instance. (They often assume you are an asshole, but I'm one of the many converts who has learned that that's not always so and I'll be happy to continue showing people the fallacy of that belief if I were to join the profession.) They assume you are smart. They attribute to you all kinds of abilities and aptitudes that might just as well apply to any member of the citizenry. Yet other non-lawyer citizens must prove beyond a shadow of a doubt their own astuteness. I guess this bugs me. I feel like, because I tell people I'm in IT, they don't see me as a possible wordsmith. For once (okay, maybe two or three times?), I would LOVE to see how people react to you when you say the magic words, "I'm an attorney" or "I'm a lawyer" instead of "I'm a computer network engineer".

Seriously...what is that like, saying those words? And which one is your preferred phrase? And why?

Okay, that's all for now. Feel free to poke and prod me into providing a more coherent defense of my desire to switch from IT to law. I'm highly doubting this really answers why. Did it?

Should I duck and cover now? Am I going to get blasted?

With Enough Crumbs, You Get a Cake's Worth of Crazy

2009-05-27T08:33:00.006-04:00

Somebody threw me a crumb yesterday, and I cried, people. CRIED! Tears brimming over my bottom lashes, to be gathered into the absorbent fibers of my sleeve. Why?

(...well, partly because I was alone in my kitchen at the time and knew it was safe...?)

Pathetic!

Because I was given the slightest bit of validation as to my worthiness by a fellow blogger.

Pathetic!

Is this what I've come to? Is this what Good Enough has come to mean?

Settling. You settle. You accept. You lower your standards and your expectations. You take what you can get. You give up hope of better. This is your life now. This is gonna have to be good enough. Accept it. Try to accept it.

And then you cry like a baby when somebody tosses you a crumb of respect, of consideration.

"Maybe I'm better than this?" THAT is my trip wire. And I've been gingerly raising one foot at a time (for fourteen years) and stepping ever so carefully over it and around it, ever cautious, trying hard not to tug on the line, not to trigger the ensuing avalanche of thwarted ambition from firing in my brain and ricocheting off the thousands of nooks and crannies of my gray matter.

So what's the alternative? I have a couple of friends who have insisted on never settling. Now they have less than I do, in terms of what's most important to me. And I feel sorry for them.

I'm in a bad place, people, as you can clearly see.

But I will continue to seek ways to rise above (while struggling mightily with how to implement them without sinking the boat that carries our family, our house, our stability).

OMG...I think I'm about to post, officially, Reason #1 for wanting to go to law school:

Because I want better than what I've got. Because, dammit, I'm better than this.

OMG...does anyone actually come out and SAY IT like that? Is anyone else stupid enough to openly admit their pretentiousness? (insert maniacal laugh here)...on the freakin' INTERNET, no less??!? (Not that I can find...except maybe for No Reins Girl...and she makes it work for her, and I admire the hell out of her for it, too).

Oh, jeebus, mary and joseph, I am a head case.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot Wednesday

2009-05-21T17:14:00.013-04:00

Crap...it's Thursday, isn't it? Well, anyway...

...I just ordered a copy of my undergrad transcript.

WTH?

I had no idea, even two hours ago, that I was gonna do that today. Or do that ever again in my life, period.

Hmmmf. Go figure.

Look what else I played around with today:

http://studentdoc.com/law-schools.php
Amazing what a difference one or two points can make!

And the debt at my local state school is not as high as I've been thinking it'd be.

Hmmmf. Go figure.

There's a major project at work that will kick off soon and there was no way I could keep my paying job AND do a decent job of studying for the June LSAT, so I had to toss the June LSAT goal in the trash can for this year. Today, I dunno, something sorta snapped and suddenly I found myself ordering copies of transcripts and figuring out what kind of minimum score I'd need for the local law school. Not for the June LSAT. Just...for whenever. If ever. Whatever!!!

I'm like an animal who's ready to chew off its paw to free itself.

BTW, I talked to a BigFirm lawyer (Texas for law school, now working there) about a month ago. Here's a picture of us talking:

.................

LagLiv, CM, PBB, dgm...what big teeth you have!

Where's MY margarita?

2009-05-21T08:57:00.008-04:00

The pushing that I saw at the picnic? That happened long after the jump rope incident. The pushing happened, I've concluded, because my kid wasn't tuned in to what the group was doing.

They were playing 4-square. I was too far away to hear anything. What I saw was everyone shift position except for Q, who just stood there with her gaze locked on some pebble or bug or who knows what. So everybody shifts positions. Q doesn't move. Doesn't know she's holding everybody up. So the kid (unfortunately the same one that kept pulling on the jump rope) reached over and gave Q's shoulder a little shove. Basically, a kind of, "Hey buddy, wake up and take two steps to the left already, we're trying to play this game here and you're holding everybody up."

I see Q respond to being pushed with the good ol' side-to-side head-shake thing, in that let-me-tell-YOU-a-thing-or-two attitude, because after all, who likes to be awakened with a shove?

But people...what are the kids who are playing with her supposed to do? It has got to be exasperating to deal with an inattentive playmate. And then to be told off because you tried to get her to tune in? Sally walked away with her arms crossed and sat on the edge of the playground, and I don't blame her.

Yes, I obsess about this stuff. But just ignoring it is not the answer. Letting the kids "go work it out" is not the answer. What in the world do THEY know about "working it out"? I think that's kind of dumb, frankly. And irresponsible of the adults.

In short: unsupervised play time? Not such a great idea.

You can't have the adults pooled at one end of the park and have the kids too far away to intervene in a moment's notice. Hyphen-Mama got it right in her comment about the parents who just go sit on a park bench and yap away, essentially leaving their kids unsupervised.

I'm not saying you stop the kids from falling down. I'm not saying you stop the kids from interacting with each other. I'm saying, you have to BE THERE. You have to HEAR what your child said, what the other kid said. You have to SEE what happened and how. And as things turn ugly and poor choices are made, then you intervene as necessary.

But what sucks about this? While you're still on kid patrol, the other parents are kicking back, building rapport, getting friendlier with each other. And you're at the other end of the park, alone with the kids. Like you're the lifeguard on duty.

How many lifeguards on duty actually look like they're having any fun?

If You Cry, You Win

2009-05-18T11:16:00.005-04:00

Things I've recently learned:

Conflict Resolution is a misnomer. You don't "resolve" a conflict. Conflicts happen. Things go wrong. People make poor choices. Girl scouts fight over a jump rope.

The point is not that you can "fix" the elements that went into creating a moment of conflicting desires. The point is, once those desires have crashed against each other, what do you do?

So, Cindy brought a jump rope to the picnic. Sally tried to take it away from Cindy. Cindy told Sally to let go. Sally and Cindy ended up pulling on opposite ends of Cindy's jump rope. Cindy told Sally the jump rope might break because Sally wouldn't let go of it. Sally still doesn't let go.

Then Q yelled at Sally to let go, says Sally might break Cindy's jump rope.

Sally and Q end up in a physical altercation.

Q's mommy ends up buying books about Conflict Resolution on Amazon.

Q needs to learn how to cry. The person in tears wins everybody's sympathy. Sally is good at crying. And then pushing Q when nobody's looking. Nobody, except for me. I saw it.

Q was pissed. Q said nobody was helping Cindy, so Q helped her. Q was standing up for a friend in need. Due to tears, Sally was seen as the victim and Q was the bad guy. Q was very angry that she was now the bad guy, when she didn't do anything wrong, she just stood up for a friend.

Mommy is hating girl/youth/group dynamics.

--------------
What DID I do, in actuality? I told both girls that they are both nice, sweet girls, that Sally is not mean, and that Q is not mean. I told Q that she is not an adult and is not the one to fix the problem. I told Sally that you don't keep pulling on a jump rope that's not yours. I made them say sorry to each other, which each delivered with an accompanying eye roll.

If this were a tweet, I wouldn't have to title it

2009-05-15T17:01:00.004-04:00

This should be a tweet, but screw that.

This is me feeling good about the following things:

........(1) I have gone to the gym twice in two consecutive days.

........(2) I was on the treadmill for over an hour each time.

........(3) I have read a chapter of Team of Rivals each time.

........(4) Lincoln kept a messy office. I feel so validated by that simple fact.

The advantage of using twitter for shtuff like this is, you don't have to think of a post title. Tweets are title-less.

Suddenly, I see the allure.

Parking Lot Epiphanies about Facebook

2009-05-15T11:09:00.007-04:00

Facebook is weird. For a LOT of reasons. I am kinda thinking of leaving it, but probably won't. Mostly, I really like being mentioned on the news, when they say the fastest growing demographic of people joining/using Facebook are people over 35. Ha! That's me...talkin' 'bout my generation.... So, apparently I get jazzed about being a follower.

Today's Facebook rant is (mostly) about people who go missing from your Friends list.

I saw a mom at school drop-off today, and it dawned on me that I hadn't noticed any of her FB updates lately. Not that I check FB frequently or consistently. I go in spurts of checking it and spurts of completely forgetting to check it. Anyway, a few months ago, she had posted about tattoos or something. Well, I saw her that morning several months ago, and I said, "Now you've got me thinking about tattoos!" or whatever and she laughed and said something about drooling over this one guy or whatever.

So, I see her today, say hi to her as we pass each other, no biggie. As I walk to my car, it dawns on me that, oh yeah, I haven't noticed any of her FB updates recently. That's weird. She used to post a status update twice a day or more.

I check FB, and yep, sure enough, she has disappeared from my Friends list.

Which means, she must have removed ME from HER friends list. Right? Isn't that how that works?

I wouldn't know. Once I add you, I keep you. I don't know anything about removing people.

[Added Bonus: Here's a Rant-Inside-A-Rant!
I do know about blocking people. I've blocked some people, who were never on my friends list. My block list is something I update consistently. It just keeps growing, person by person. Like, yesterday, I blocked my boss. And that Work Husband guy. Can't believe it took me THIS long to figure out that I should block them. Duh! I wanna block Work Husband's real wife, but it won't find her, for some reason, even though she is on other coworkers' Friends list, big as day, front and center. Whatever. Facebook is stupid. Where's their 800 number, anyway? Stupid Facebook.]

This lady's disappearance from my Friends list brings the total count of Disappearing Friends to 2 for me. As far as I know for sure. There may be others that I'm just not remembering.

I'm trying to take a page from my husband's book and not take it personally. Perhaps she's decided to prune her FB world down to close friends, or long-distance family relations. No biggie. She has the right to tweak FB to her particular needs. The most we ever do anyway is say hi to each other at school. I have mentioned to her in the past that I think it'd be fun to get together for drinks or something. But she's of the Stay-At-Home-Mom variety, with three kids 9 and under, and I'm of the Works-FullTime-Outside-The-Home-Mom variety, with one kid, who's not available to help watch HER kids when she needs a break or to run to the store or whatever. In that regard, friends-wise, I think my variety is at a disadvantage. I just am not as available to put in the time to cultivate the social ties among other moms, especially those moms that I've been passing in the parking lot for the past 4 years. But still, after accumulating 4 years' worth of acquaintanceship, you'd think it'd be possible to have a margarita together at some point.

Which brings the discussion back to Facebook. Facebook allows me the chance to be linked in a little more to the PTO-ers, to the parking lot chatterers who linger next to their cars in their sweats and flip flops and ponytails as I swing my car past them on my out of the parking lot to get to work. I watch them wistfully just for the time it takes me to arc my car into the exit lane, wondering what they're talking about, what meeting they are dissing somebody for, what groups are their kids in that mine isn't that would cause them to have that much to discuss? Or are they just lonely, just needing to connect? And how can I join them? Alone in my car, I focus on my commute and listen to Morning Edition instead of joining them. And think, well, I can kinda join them, via Facebook.

So, I sent the friend invitation, she accepted, and then two or three months later, she disappeared. No margaritas for us, it would seem.

As you can tell, I don't have a high number of friends on my Friends list, so yeah, I notice when someone goes missing....well, I will eventually notice. Give me a month or two and I'll figure it out one morning in the school parking lot.

Don't Take It Personally

2009-05-07T11:08:00.004-04:00

Somebody keeps placing their phone on hold, which blasts new-age, groovy music onto the call for the rest of us to deal with. After three days of this, it was time to identify the one responsible, to avoid future occurrences. My assumption was they had no idea they were causing problems for others.

I thought it was a certain person, and finally said so. The guy immediately yelped, "It's not me!" To which I immediately replied, "Oh, sorry!"

Then the trainer guy says I'm "picking on" that person, who happens to be male. In fact, it is said I am picking on "men", that it is now "the girls against the boys" and that, because another female admitted she also had thought it was that same person (because he seemed to disappear from the call when the music came on), the trainer guy claimed we were ganging up on that guy.

Wha? Where did THAT come from?

How did this become a gender-based discussion?

Am I too insensitive? Or are they just too sensitive?

Meh. I am so sick of IT people. I want to belong to another group of professionals. The kind that doesn't use "irregardless" as a word without flinching.

Fortunately, Unfortunately

2009-05-06T17:49:00.000-04:00

I just wanna go home, hang out with my kid, before another growth spurt chases this incarnation away and she becomes a new person, again.

By the way, I'm in class all this week.

Fortunately, it's available online and I didn't have to chance catching H1N1 via mass transit travel.

Unfortunately, I have to sit here and listen to my speaker phone ALL.DAY.LONG.

Fortunately, there aren't any (major) technological glitches so far.

Unfortunately, not being able to whisper to the person sitting next to you, "Pssst, what page are we on?!" kinda sucks.

Fortunately, the instructor tells so many personal stories, I don't think it matters WHAT page we're on.

Unfortunately, there's nothing to stop me from playing Word Challenge on Facebook during lecture time, since he reads each slide anyway and I can listen to him just fine.

Fortunately, my Word Challenge skills are getting pretty hawt, baby.

Unfortunately, there's a test at the end of this training, and it's not on Word Challenge.

Memo From My Quads

2009-05-05T10:53:00.005-04:00

To: gudnuff
RE: Bike ride on Sunday morning

WTH??? You never ask for anything, you sit at the kitchen table blogging, you sit in your car, you sit at your desk...and suddenly, you expect us to power you up hills on rough pavement with a major head wind, for a 25 mile bike ride? Are you serious??!?!!

Be advised you will be hearing more from us about this for the next several days. We may articulate our complaints into the evening hours, even if you are trying to sleep. In fact, we may end up screaming at you, unless you drown us out with Advil.

The next time Q has a sleepover, we highly recommend that you and Leo choose something other than a 25-mile road ride for your child-free activity. Or at least give us a little more heads-up. Go for some smaller warm-up rides a couple times in the week ahead. That way, we won't fail on the last major hills and Leo won't have to push you up the hill, riding beside you with his hand on your back, powering both of you up those hills.

Yes, we know that you had a crush on your own husband by the end of the ride. But really, you basically outsourced us. You'll be hearing from our union rep if that happens again.

Filler, filler, chicken killer...wha?

2009-05-02T19:04:00.003-04:00

I don't have much to say at the moment. Leo is kvetching about my hours on the laptop ("You've been on that thing for what, four hours today? Are we gonna have to limit your laptop time? Hmmmm?"). Q is at a sleepover for the night, and Leo and I are stumbling around trying to think of what to do with ourselves without her. We are a bit askew.

I'm posting this because I don't want the previous post to be sitting at the top of my blog like it's important or something. So basically, this post is just filler. And I'm in a hurry. I have to get off the laptop and onto a bike to go for a ride with my husband before the sun sets to prove to him that "us" time is as important to me as blogging.

Marital contentment hinges on decisions like that.

CBS vs. Smothers Brothers

2009-05-01T23:33:00.004-04:00

In a jury trial, if the jury blatantly hands out a wrong verdict, can the judge be the judge of whether the jury was nuts?

Let's say I shoot my husband dead and it's captured on video tape.

For some reason, the jury says I'm not guilty whatsoever.

Can the judge basically judge the jury's verdict as being just plain wrong? Just throw it out?

That's been on my mind ever since I watched Pioneers of Television recently and they were highlighting Variety Shows. Specifically, the half hour I watched was focused on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour.

In short, it was the 1970's and The Smothers Brothers kept pushing the envelope on what was "appropriate content", using satire to target racism, the President of the U.S., and the Vitenam War. Wikipedia does a much better job explaining all of the details if you're actually interested.

Well, CBS cancelled the show. The Smothers Brothers sued CBS for breach of contract.

Apparently there was language in the contract (or was there? this is the part that's unclear to me) about the tape getting to CBS by a certain time, and the Smothers Brothers were violating that part of the contract that stipulated that the tape was supposed to be delivered to CBS within a certain period of time. CBS needed time to censor/edit the tape before broadcast time.

So The Smothers Brothers sued. And they won!

I was shocked.

Apparently, so were the CBS lawyers.

Does anybody study this case in law school? Is this a famous case, or does it not rank as worthy of discussion? Just seemed to me to be a blatant abuse of power by the jury. Couldn't the judge say, hey jury, you're full of it, I'm throwing out your verdict 'cause obviously you're not paying attention whatsoever to what a contract is or what the language stipulated.

I thought I heard ('cause I remember being surprised) that just 'cause a jury says you're guilty or not guilty, that utlimately, that is just a recommendation that the judge does not have to base his ruling on. The judge can overrule a jury. Is that bs? Or is that possible?

What Other People Think

2009-05-01T15:53:00.004-04:00

Q's solo performance in the school talent show went well. She sang "Tell Me Something I Don't Know" by Selena Gomez (who plays Alex on the Disney Channel's show Wizards of Waverly Place). One person (in my family) questioned the appropriateness of the song. -OK, he didn't question it so much as his eyes popped out and his jaw fell open in shock and disbelief.

Being a proud mama, I thought he was blown away by her talent.

Um...no, not so much.

He thought she was being a hoochimama. An 8-year-old hoochimama.

I wonder how many others (not in my family) shared this concern? (And so what if they did? I dunno...I'm in a weird place today. All paranoid-feeling and whatnot. Meh.)

I struggle to defend the song and Q's choice to sing it. As far as I can tell, it seems pretty basic: stop discouraging me, stop belittling my efforts, start taking me seriously. Well, it seems I'm not the only one with this interpretation. The folks at commonsensemedia.com seem to agree. Which actually made me feel a lot better.

I'm not going to embed the video. I don't like parts of it (okay, I don't like where Selena is singing to the camera through the legs of that other lady...seriously, what is the point of that? who came up with THAT idea?...). Because of those shots (and a few other fleeting poses here and there), the video walks that strange border between straightforward self-expression and the exploitation of the hyper-sexualization of young girls. (pretty fancy-pantsy, eh?) Or maybe it's just me.

What IS the hyper-sexualization of young girls, exactly? I'm trying to sound all edumacated and whatnot (are you buying it?), but that phrase has me perplexed, bemused and bewildered. It brings up images of Jon Benet Ramsey, of 3-year-old Beauty Queens with lipstick and hairspray and heels. THAT I understand as hyper-sexualization of girls. But what about adolescent girls like Selena? What about girls in their tweens? What is considered sexual and what is just basically fashionable?

Well, anyway, what do you guys think? Here are the lyrics.

Where is Generation Z?

2009-04-29T15:34:00.001-04:00

As April, my beloved birthday month, draws to a close, I am a year older and my tag needs to be renewed. But what I really want to talk about is:

Did you know Gen Xers are old enough to have kids, and did you know that Gen Yers are old enough to be out of college and working in an office where they are annoyed by Gen Xers having kids? According to Penelope Trunk (whom I seem to like a lot lately), "Here’s something Gen Y really hates: when Gen Xers bolt out the door early to deal with their kids."

Funny how the people most annoyed by kid-related-issues-interfering-with-work seem to be those people closest to being kids themselves. Until they get pregnant. Yeah. Cosmic justice, baby.

Review: Take Your Child To Work Day

2009-04-28T11:27:00.005-04:00

The night before Take Your Child To Work Day (TYCTWD), I was on the phone with my very good friend from high school. I told her that Q would be going to my office with me the next day for TYCTWD. My friend said, "Oh, fun! Are you going to take her around and introduce her to everybody?"

Which brings up Misconception #1 about TYCTWD: This is the first time the child has visited the parent's workplace.

For about 80% or more of us working parents (I'm willing to bet), our kids have already been to our office, probably more than once. In Q's case, my sweet little one has been here more times than I can count. She knows where every candy dish is located in the building. She knows who is glad to see her and who isn't. I've had this job for over six years. Do you really imagine that there has never been a situation which required me to both be at the office AND watch my kid, simultaneously? There are "Teacher Planning Days", for example, which means the teachers work on that day, and the parents work on that day, but the kids do not attend class. So, what to do with the kid? What if you don't have someone who sits around waiting for this one day out of every three months to watch your kid for you while you go to work? What if you actually have work to do? At the office? Yeah...you take your kid to the office, where they annoy you and others, and you try your best to get through the day without screaming at them in front of your boss. Fun for all.

Misconception #2 about TYCTWD: The working parent is available to focus on the child's learning opportunities throughout the day.

The thing is, sometimes, in spite of blogging, complaining, pretending to care or pretending that you don't care, etc., most of us really do have certain job duties that we have to perform, nearly every day. And they aren't always things we can schedule as we'd prefer. The day I brought Q in for TYCTWD, I had a conference call scheduled for 1pm. What was I gonna tell the other six people on the call? Let's do this some other time 'cause I have to figure out how to keep my 8-year-old fully engaged or at least busy with work-related activities throughout the day? We have financially-determined deadlines that aren't going to change. So Mommy was on the phone. The call started at 1pm. The gabby guy didn't stop talking, mostly off-point, until after 3:30. Where was Q? Nestled on the couch in the main suite area, reading her assigned book for the week. Waste of her time? No. Mommy get her work done? Yes. Everybody happy? Yes (sure, why not, I guess so). Good use of TYCTWD? No.

Misconception #3: TYCTWD is the same as anytime child goes to parent's work.

TYCTWD did not "exist" for Q last year. Although, again, Q had been to my work several times last year, it was never for the official TYCTWD reason. In fact, the actual day of TYCTWD, I wondered why so many other parents had brought their children to the office. I felt like, well, crap, what did I miss? Did I not read a flyer (yet again!)? Well, no. I had missed nothing. Because nothing was sent home for Q, because last year, Q was in 2nd grade. Q's school only permits 3rd-5th grades to participate in TYCTWD. So this year was her first year officially partaking of this activity. It was a big deal to her. Because it was an official school assignment for her, and she was proud to be involved in it.

Misconception #4: All that down time made the day a joke and a waste of child's time.

This one's for me. This is the lesson I learned. There WERE opportunities for Q to learn. I taught her some things about how computers connect to the network. I made her setup her own laptop. I took her into the computer systems room and explained what would happen if I just happened to unplug this wire right here. Mommy's phone would start ringing. Do you know why Mommy's phone would start ringing? Because without me, they can't use email or get on the internet, etc. At which point, I was proud that she already had experience with her own gmail email account and knew her way around a laptop, etc. It meant something to her. And by the end of the day, I even had her finish the final touches on that computer in the empty office from earlier in the day. And she wrote a note on the whiteboard, letting the person know she could now do this neat thing on her computer that she'd been asking for. Whoopee. Yay. Q learned. She was involved. She had a sense of accomplishment. She is not jaded yet.

And then we went home. She wrote about it in school the next day. I found it interesting that the teacher/school does not do a public sharing of what each kid experienced. They just wrote quietly about their experience, and turned in the paper. Interesting. Only the teacher gets the benefit of the cumulative knowledge of what each participating student did at the respective workplaces. Not sure that that is the most effective use of TYCTWD, either.

Take Your Child To Work Day: Penelope, I feel ya

2009-04-23T11:33:00.005-04:00

You know how much I love my kid, right?

Well...

Even so, I must agree that she'd be better served by spending today at school instead of here at the office with me. Basically, Penelope Trunk's post about abolishing Take Your Child To Work Day is dead-on right about this activity being of problematic effectiveness.

I wrote a comment on her blog that I rather liked, so I'm copying it here:

I'm at work, with my daughter, right now. She's down the hall, playing her DS in somebody's empty office that I'm doing some work in. I had to come back to my office for a second to do something. As soon as I sit down at my computer, to do what I need to do for the person down the hall, my fingers automatically take me to my blogroll, because that's what they do. Every day.

Do I want my daughter to know that my fingers take me to my blogroll, every day, while I'm "at work"? No, I do not.

This is why I do not like Take Your Child To Work Day. Because I do not want my child to figure out exactly what...uh..."work"...I do at my desk, necessarily, while she is slaving away at school learning how to divide and what "simple machines" are, taking spelling tests, meeting her reading goal for the week.

It should be Take Your Child to Your Kickass Job Or Else Stay Away While We Slack Day. I mean, if she got to see me save the world or something, that'd be one thing. But watch me write another blog post? Meh. I'd rather she didn't know, thank you very much. Actually, what I'm doing for the person down the hall is pretty cool, if you care about unified communications and even know what a fax is. But she doesn't. And she couldn't care less. I know, because I tried to explain the relevancy to her. I basically got a big fat "Is it time for lunch yet? Oh, look! I just earned the diamond gem stone by killing Eviltor and now I'm on the top level of this game!" response.

Yes, this is an enlightening experience. But not for her. For me...in a does-my-job-totally-suck-and-is-my-kid-THAT-pathetic kind of way. So, yes. I'm with you. Let's abolish this thing. This TYCTWD is not helping either of us.

Semi-Hawt, Semi-Nawt-Maintenance Men

2009-04-22T10:51:00.015-04:00

This post is brought to you by Blognut. OK, that's untrue, because it's still me (gudnuff), but I owe the impetus for actually posting these pictures to Blognut, who just may or may not post her own picture of her own version of a semi-hawt maintenance man on her own blog. Now, I'm not sayin' these are some hawt pics. I'm just sayin', check out my maintenance man's interesting use of technology.

This guy has a cute face, but it's not visible in these pics. This is how he spends his days:

He is not a Maintenance Man in the facilities-management kind of way. He is a phone/telecommunications tech. I took these pictures on the sly when we had a T1 line go dead about a month ago. People called up saying their internet apps were dog-slow. Turned out, we were operating with one less T1 line than normal. Two guys came out from the phone company, found a pair of wires that weren't connected properly in some metal box somewhere out in the alley, used an alternate pair of wires for our T1 connection to by-pass the problem pair, and we were fixed.

Don't you love how he hangs that...that...meter reader thingy off his belt so it bumps his butt when he moves? What's up with that?

Luckily, he didn't walk around like that, with it attached to his belt that way. He just snapped it on while we were hiding out, er, I mean, troubleshooting the problem in the phone closet. I just thought it was weird, but smart, but nerdy, but attractive in that "Ooooh...shiny!" kind of way (except it's not shiny, just motion-y...movement tends to attract my ADD brain's attention as much as bright, shiny objects do), to have that thing hanging there like that, swinging back and forth between his legs.

Yes, I said it.

It's time for a low-brow post, and this is it. I'm a year older since yesterday, and have embraced that whole I'm-too-old-to-bother-with-being-socially-acceptable thing (for today, anyway). Bring on the semi-hawt, not-really-a-maintenance-man-but-close-enough pics. Bring on the pandering to the populace. Bring on the google searches. And Blognut, bring on YOUR semi-hawt maintenance man. I bet yours is better than mine.

Today's My Birthday

2009-04-21T16:01:00.004-04:00

Today is my birthday.

In a way, I got the best birthday gift ever, from Leo, last night. He's been thinking that we, all three of us, could go to Europe next year!!!

I love to travel. I have not had the chance to travel for over twenty years. I yearn for it. I miss it. I miss it every.single.day. I've missed it every single day for a couple of decades now.

I almost squealed when he said it. Especially when he said the word "London" and then "Paris".

O.M.G.

Leo has never before uttered the word "vacation" without the word "Disney" preceding it.

This is all pie-in-the-sky planning at this point. This may not happen. But that Leo is even talking about it...holy cow. You could have knocked me over with a feather.

If only he could get a job. If only we had the money. I have no idea how he thinks we can afford it. Because we so cannot afford it. But just that he is even willing to plan it...whether it happens or not...wow, it would be so cool to travel with people I love. People I LOVE. Have you ever traveled? In a group? With people you know from school? Or with strangers? Or alone? So not the same. No where near the same.

This is huge. Imagine traveling with people you LOVE. To a foreign country. For no reason other than to spend time together, as a family, in a different place, experiencing it together. Are you kidding me?!!

Best birthday gift EVER. Just the thought of it. Wow. It'll never happen. I have to keep saying that, to keep myself grounded, to keep myself from getting carried away. Oh, but the thought. What a fantasy. Way better than anything else I'm dreaming about otherwise. I would stay in my yucky-spot ("yucky-spot" = current job, IT career, no more school, no hopes of changing for the next twenty-four years...TWENTY-FOUR YEARS...oh god...dear lord in heaven...twenty-four years of this same thing...somebody get me a paper bag to stop my hyperventilation)...I would stay, I could stay, in my yucky-spot if I knew I could do things like travel to Europe with people I love, every couple of years. Every three years, even.

Anyway, today's my birthday. Leo already picked up my cake from the store, and brought home some special candles to put on it. In the shape of question marks. Smart man that he is, there are only two of them.

Ever Feel Like Scarecrow from Wizard of Oz?

2009-04-16T11:22:00.007-04:00

Scarecrow: "First they took my legs off and they threw them over there! Then they took my chest out and they threw it over there!"

Tinman: "Well, that's you all over! "

I've been blogging a lot lately, but you'll not find much of it here. On my blog! (Doh!) Rather, I'm leaving pieces of myself at other people's houses, er, blogs.

See? I don't just leave my shoes under the coffee table, I leave blog-bits all over the web.

.....................Messy, messy. Don't get stressy.
.....................Just clean up and be impressy.

So, here are some discussions I've been having with myself, on other people's blogs.

Church at Easter: We don't really attend church very often, although I insisted that all 3 of us go last Sunday to sit there with Grandma and Grandpa. Why? Because I'm scared, that's why. I'm scared about Q being uneducated and possibly socially disadvantaged by her lack of church exposure. So, for any of you non-church-attending parents reading here today, how do you handle your kid's lack of religiosity? I had a boyfriend once who got beat up on the playground as a kid because he didn't believe in God. Now, I doubt it'll come to blows for Q, but I am concerned about stigmatism (HA!). Q-The-Unsaved or whatnot. How have your kids dealt with this issue? How has it manifested itself in their lives? Do they sneak out on Sunday morning without your permission and secretly attend youth group meetings? Do you catch them singing hymns in the shower that they learned from kids at school? Have you noticed a certain sneer when they say Darwin's name? Are they hiding bible verses under their mattress?

Pleasure In The Rearview Mirror: Is there such a thing as a Good Boss? Should we view each bad boss we have as a learning opportunity, as something we get to move away from eventually so that later we can be glad we're not still at that job with that sucky boss even though the one we have now also sucks but in a totally different way? Besides your boss's suckiness, and my horrible Work Husband, is there anything else you can only appreciate now because it'll be nice to see it go when you leave?

Someone's Got To Believe

2009-04-11T23:52:00.006-04:00

Tonight was the night. Tonight, about an hour ago, in the car, in the dark, after a wonderful, friend-filled, fun-filled day, I finally told her the truth.

"Yes."

Yes, I am the Easter Bunny. And it took her less than a minute to ask if I was Santa, too.

"Um..."

That was enough. She knew.

And she was fine with it. FINE. She was just glad I'd told her the truth finally.

I'm not fine with it. I'm sad about it.

Well, we agreed to keep going with our traditions. I'll still be hiding eggs tonight. She'll wake and and look for them. Happily.

Here's what she said to make ME feel better about this new world we now share:

"It doesn't matter who did it. It's just the fun you have with it."

Then she smiled. "Hey, that rhymes!"

And I hugged her more than once for telling me everything was alright still. I feel so guiltily grateful that she is fine with knowing and able to comfort ME about the situation. Really, I was quite upset about the big unveiling. I had dreaded it for a long time. Another death. Another corner turned, no going back. Welcome to this side of the world, where there is no magic.

And the best part of all is that she said, "Just don't tell Daddy that I know, okay?"

And we haven't. And he is waiting for me to finish hiding the eggs. Because he believes that she still believes. And that is all the belief we need to keep this thing going for at least one more year. I think she is so smart and so cool and so fun. I feel a little bit in awe of her right now.

From several years ago, but still, it captures her well:

Q, I love you more than words can express. And I hope your Work Husband is not an uber-douche.

Such sad news, such loss, so much to process

2009-04-11T10:09:00.003-04:00

What in the world was going on last Thursday?

I was not familiar with Maddie Spohr prior to Thursday. I can’t seem to find out what happened other than that this little almost-2-year-old girl died. Was she sick? Was she murdered? Did she suffer from a known condition? How unexpected was it? (The Spohr web site is hard to reach due to the high volume of traffic it's receiving.)

These questions are on my mind because a little boy died on Thursday in our town. He was 9 years old, in the 4th grade. He goes to, no, he went to my daughter's school. He had a known heart condition. Everything was going as normal on Thursday, a typical day. At some point Thursday morning, he fainted/passed out at his desk. The teacher performed CPR, in front of the rest of the class. He did not regain consciousness. They called an ambulance. He got to the hospital and died shortly after he arrived there.

He was fine in the morning, went to school like any other day, was dead by 2pm.

I don't know his name. They aren't releasing it. My daughter didn't know him directly. Every parent of a student at that school on Thursday received automated phone calls to our cell phones and to our home phones. We received emails. The local paper gave out breaking news updates every two hours. It was shocking. It was unexpected. It was very, very sad.

What happened to Maddie? Not that it matters, ultimately. But in a way, knowing the circumstances leading up to the death helps us put it in broader perspective. Thanks.

Stolen Lines, like, totally

2009-04-10T17:43:00.008-04:00

Now that I've opened Pandora's Box and mentioned Work Husband here, it makes sense to continue along that road. Because I feel like it.

I sort of mentioned in yesterday's post, and went into some detail in my comment to that post, about this Work Husband guy with whom I have to work.

One time, when he was conducting a training session on the new version of Excel, he setup a sample spreadsheet with columns for Name and Title and Office Location, etc. He put his first name in the Name column, and for his title, he put "God". I kid you not.

So I've been swearing to him all this time, apparently.

And just now, I saw the following post over at It's Easy to Complain. Fun too. The poster doesn't allow comments, as far as I could see. So I'm reposting his entire post below, and telling you all this: his uber-douche describes MY Work Husband pretty accurately! Only at my work, if I said “You have got to be fucking kidding me," I'd be the bad guy. So I just say it under my breath and read blogs on my phone while he blabs and blabs and blabs.

From It's Easy to Complain. Fun, too:

Don't Waste My Time
Yesterday, in my quarterly review, my boss said he loved how I do my job, and encouraged me to be more of a leader on the team.
This morning, I was sitting at my desk, minding my own business, when the uber-douche I work with tapped me on the shoulder. “Do you have a sec?” he asked. “I am holding an ad hoc meeting and I wanted you to participate.”
I sighed loudly and begrudgingly agreed. I go into a conference room. He sits at the head of the table. Everyone in the room is on the same level within the organization; no superiors are present.
“Thanks for coming, guys,” he said, voice dripping with self-importance. “I wanted to do an impromptu brain storming session for ways that we can enhance the company image in relation to hot button issues of the day, like the green movement, etc.”
The room sat in silence for two seconds. “You have got to be fucking kidding me,” I said, and I got up and left. Everyone else followed. That is good leadership.

And yes, Work Husband loves to do the tap-tap on the shoulder, or suddenly pops into your office, never asks if you're already working on something, etc. He is 51% why I hate my job. He is about 40% why I am thinking of law school, because he is most likely going to be my boss once our current one retires. And I'd rather incur $100,000 in debt by going to law school than stay here for that fun little experience.

Real Husband vs. Work Husband

2009-04-09T12:39:00.007-04:00

[These are the facts: "Real Husband" and "Work Husband" are two different people in real life. A guy I work with is "Work Husband". He has about three years of seniority at this job over me, but we are peers otherwise and we have to check with each other over almost everything we do (because our boss wants consensus on everything). He and I have worked together at this same job for over six years now. I'm not a big fan of his. But he's a hard worker and saves me from having to do a lot of grunt work and a lot of travel. He is a necessary evil, as far as I'm concerned. "Real Husband" refers to Leo, the guy I really am married to, the father of Q. We've been married, in the real-life traditional sense, for ten years.]

They can both be super pissy people. I often fight with both of them. But I need both of them. I need each one to do his job so that I can do mine. And I need to coordinate and collaborate with each one. What's weird is when I work with one within minutes of working with the other.

When I am "discussing" a contentious issue with Work Husband, there is a point where I am awaiting his response, after a couple rounds of question-and-answer. There is slight tension in my neck muscles and I'm squinting my eyes (even though we're talking on the phone) and I'm just stressed in a Is-he-actually-going-to-give-me-a-substantive-response-this-time-or-what kind of way.

When that point is reached with Work Husband, I am used to him coming back with an off-hand dismissive tactic, or with outright defensiveness, or sometimes a direct attack (these are getting more rare, thank god). I've gotten so used to this (we've worked together for over six years) that I have a timer ticking off in me, waiting for his withdrawal from the actual conversation. I am conditioned to expect a lack of resolution and lack of agreement.

I brace myself for this moment. It's like waiting to return a serve in tennis. And that's fine. It's not debilitating stress. But then the ball is not served. He just pretends like he's gonna serve, but he really just starts packing up his gear and is getting ready to walk off the court. It's very unsatisfying and you're left with all this anticipatory energy that just stays in your knotted up neck muscles, even after you've hung up the phone.

I didn't know there was this concomitant tension until the same moment would arise with Real Husband. Same scenario. We're having a contentious discussion and I've thrown out some point or some query and I'm awaiting his response but am really just expecting more contention. But Real Husband actually lobs the ball back! In a collaborative, thoughtful, substantive way. It knocks the tension right out of me. I'm so surprised to feel my shoulders fall, my eyes un-squint. Aaaaah. An answer! A real answer without attitude or strategy behind it. Just an honest-to-god, substantive response. And it is such a moment of simpatico. Like he just gets me. Like, I had forgotten that talking to somebody could be this easy.

It is the most relaxing sensation. And it is an absolute surprise every time, because each time it catches me off-guard how tensed up my muscles are and how good it feels to have them relax instantly, unbidden, unintentionally. Naturally relaxed. Suddenly at ease. Comfortable.

And it is those moments when I know how compatible we are. We are not strangers fighting to mesh two disparate, jagged natures. We just "get" each other. This is the part that works, effortlessly. This is the core of "us". This is when I know there is no mistake, that he really is my Real Husband. And this is when I know how glad I am about that.

Lunch was a ketchup packet

2009-04-07T22:45:00.007-04:00

I picked up Q very late, like with 2 minutes to spare before they start charging a dollar a minute. But she'd been forewarned about this, since I knew I had a late afternoon meeting that would probably last past 5pm. My husband was out of town for a job interview. He's been averaging about 2-3 job interviews a week, for about three weeks straight now, and has gotten no offers. This job interview was a five hour drive away. Not sure what I think about that. Meh.

Anyway, she gets in the car and announces she's starving.

Q: I wanna eat FAST. I'm soooo hungry! Hurry up so I can eat!

Me: Why are you so hungry? (as I'm pulling out of the school pickup area, headed home)

Q: All I had for lunch was a ketchup packet.

Me: What???!?

Q: The only thing I ate was a ketchup packet.

Me: Don't they give you something to eat, though? (I knew this meant her lunch account was at zero - usually they call and leave an automated message, but we didn't listen to the messages the night before due to getting in late after a Girl Scout meeting - and they serve some kind of limited lunch offering if you're out of money on your account. It's not much, but it's usually more than a packet o' ketchup!)

Q: Warm bread with cold cheese in the middle.

Me: What do you mean? (I guess I wanted to hear the phrase "grilled cheese sandwich that had gotten cold" but then how would the bread still be warm? I was perplexed!)

Q: I mean the bread was warm and the cheese was cold.

Me: Yeah. Okay. (At least she's consistent. But I still can't quite "get" how that could be.)

It's been a frustrating, very annoying day, with a twist of satisfaction at the end because my meeting went well. But now I'm over-analyzing a sandwich. And wondering how bad it must have been if she chose to eat only a packet of ketchup instead.

Q: Hannah was really nice to me, though! (delivered with a really cute smile)

Me: How so?

Q: She snuck me crackers under the table.

Well, thank god for Hannah. I actually know who Hannah is. I went to Lunch Bunch earlier in the year and Hannah sat across from us. She was the one who kept putting slices of lunch meat from her brought-from-home meal on her face. At one point, she forgot she had left a piece of ham on her cheek. As she got up to leave with the rest of the class, she said, "Oh! I still have meat on my face!" And, to steal a line from dgm, she laughed and laughed.

You can tell dgm's kid and my kid go to very different schools.

Things I've accomplished recently

2009-04-03T23:20:00.003-04:00

I finally finished Obama's first book Dreams from My Father. It took me forever to read it. I actually finished it last Sunday, before we left for Disney.

Again I ask: how do you people make time for reading??!?

Thoughts on the book: so much to say about race. Mostly, I came away feeling resigned. I am one of the multitude of White People, the nameless, faceless throng enjoying our white privilege. I cannot be seen as an individual, much less heard, or have much validity in a conversation between myself and a non-white about race. Little of what this white, middle-class working mom has to offer would bear any weight.

I guess it bugs me that my white liberal guilt is meaningless. But it's pretty much all I have to offer. Which is pretty close to offering nothing.

Besides my vote, of course. I can contribute to change in a nameless, faceless way by voting for it, choosing it, supporting it, sending in money to make it happen. But that doesn't change how whites and non-whites interact at my job, to be specific. It's disheartening. I feel like I'm on the team, but barely tolerated as a water/towel girl or something. My support is still overshadowed by my color, or lack of color, to be accurate.

As for other accomplishments: I am making progress at work. I've started some research and am gaining momentum on a major project, so that is huge. Looking forward to this coming week. What a shocker! So, that's good news. Feels like I'm waking up from a long stupor.

And....I have unpacked my suitcase!!! Wahoooo!

Back and Blue

2009-04-02T22:43:00.009-04:00

As we drove farther and farther away from Disney this afternoon, my daughter cried for almost twenty minutes with tears dripping off her chin. Poor Q! (In her defense, we had told her we would go into the park and ride some rides before leaving, but our plans changed, so that was a bitter disappointment for an 8-year-old to accept AND we had also told her that maybe we would stay an extra night, but that didn't work out either, so she was dealing with a double does of disappointment.) And in part it's because she's an only child and has nothing to distract her from such moments. These moments make being an only child more of a burden than a privilege.

She said she was sad because she was remembering the fun we had. She looked at me with her watery eyes and specifically mentioned the memory of me jumping up and down on the Delete key as one of the fun moments.

Aaaaahhhh! That is so cool! And, I hope, the life lesson I was trying to impart took hold as deeply as the memory of her mommy being silly.

There was a giant cement keyboard on the ground, and as we were walking past it, I was fondly calling out some of the keys, remembering times when they played a significant role in my life (like the F1 key for Help or the F2 key to get to the system menu...things I don't use anymore, but I can remember when they mattered to me...not that she'd care about any of that). We were almost to the end of it when I saw the "Del" square, and I just HAD to jump on it. I jumped up and down on it and called out "Delete! Delete! Delete! I LOVE the delete key!"

As I was jumping up and down, probably embarrassing my husband, I was mostly thinking about an earlier post wherein I cited things I was grateful for, and the delete key - and sometimes knowing when to use it - had definitely scored a place on that list. (Such thoughts aren't uncommon. I think about blogging a lot throughout the day. Remembering things I've written can really help me do the right thing - like unpack my suitcase! - or feel grateful for delete keys.) So yeah, if you were there and you saw some crazy lady jumping up and down on the giant keyboard, that was me.

So of course Q asked, "Why do you like the delete key?" as we continued on our way toward the elevators.

And I said, "Well, sometimes you know, you're typing something to somebody, maybe sending them an email, and you're all like, 'I hate it when you do that and if you ever do that again I'm gonna be so mad and your hair looks crazy and I can't believe you told Ryan I think he's cute...' and then before you send that email, guess what? You can hit the delete key! Just hit that old delete key...delete, delete, delete...the delete key is awesome! It's like a great friend who stops you from saying stuff you probably shouldn't say and maybe hurting someone's feelings. I love the delete key."

And that was one of the fun memories she told me about the next day. What a great moment for me. I'm all happy about that.

Then she gradually cheered up and told me that she realized that it was fun because we brought the fun with us. And Daddy said we could all go see Monsters vs. Aliens the next day when we were back home, and that helped cheer her up too. Then she put her headphones on and started watching dvd's on her laptop and all was right with our little family for the rest of the ride home.

We're back, and she's still a little blue about it. She's having a hard time transitioning from all of us sleeping together in the same room while at Disney to being back at home, where she is banished to the other side of the house all by herself when bedtime comes along. So, I'm gonna go lie down with her. For tonight, anyway. Just until she's asleep.

(P.S. I saw a sweater for sale there for $540. WTF???? Imagine buying it, and then having your cat piss on it...OMG...)

When Bad Smells Attack

2009-04-01T22:25:00.010-04:00

Previously entitled: "Disney Does Not Smell Like Cat Pee"

This is a sister post, without her knowledge or consent, of Cee's post entitled "The Smell" that I dearly loved and often think about, for reasons that are obvious once you read what's below.

I haven't blogged for over a week. I have numerous posts I've started, but haven't had the time to finish, let alone edit. I've been reading all of your posts, though, and commenting as circumstancs allowed. But it's been weird, ever since my trip a couple of weeks ago to New Orleans, in fact. I don't like being away from blogging so much, and it probably shows. I might as well be wearing a "I'd rather be blogging" t-shirt!

And the truly sad part is that I'm pouting (quietly) about my bloggy-depravity, er, I mean deprivation, whilst in the middle of Disney.

It's spring break this week for us, along with millions of other folks in the USA. And yes, we're at Disney. Again. For the fifth, maybe sixth, maybe even the seventh time since Q was born.

I.am.so.over.Disney.

AND, Disney smells. Or so I thought. Disney smells like cat pee. But of course, that's not true. Disney does not smell like cat pee. But do you know what DOES smell like cat pee? My suitcase. The one I took to New Orleans. The one into which I put a bunch of clean clothes for this week's trip to Disney. Those clean clothes went into the suitcase smelling like, well, clean clothes. They came out of the suitcase smelling like cat pee.

Why? Because when I got back from New Orleans, I left my suitcase open on the floor of my bedroom for days and days, maybe for over a week, probably. Guess who thought my suitcase was a fun place to visit? Maybe even a place to relieve herself? Yeah, one of our two cats. I think it was Nibbles, which especially irks me 'cause she's my favorite and I don't like being mad at her. Stupid cat. Stupid me for leaving the suitcase out and open and available. Argh.

So the night we arrived, I discover where the funny smell is coming from. I sort out my clothes and realize I'm gonna have to wash whatever has gotten the pee on it. The next day, I wear a shirt that doesn't match anything, but I think is fairly safe. I was wrong. Everywhere I went, I kept catching a slight whiff of cat pee. And had to switch from automatically thinking, "Man, Disney has really gone downhill. It doesn't even smell clean. Ugh!" to "Oh yeah. That's me. How nice. It's nice to know I'm the kind of person who shouldn't be allowed in the park with all the clean people."

That night, I washed everything I brought. Yep, doing laundry at Disney. Funny how that makes a vacation feel kinda less vacation-y. My husband was highly amused and felt very vindicated. I got several versions of "Maybe now you won't wait so long to unpack" from him, all delivered with sublime satisfaction and whatever that German word is for enjoying other people's misfortune. ["Schadenfreude"]

And I kept hearing my mother's voice from my youth, "Gudnuff, when are you going to learn to take care of your things??!?!!!?!"

Well, now we have the answer. We finally know it's March of 2009, dear mother. I will learn the necessity of getting my suitcase unpacked and put away in March of 2009.

Not this particular suitcase, though. Not from this trip. This suitcase is headed for a trashcan. Disney does not have trashcans large enough for a medium-sized suitcase, though. So, Hyphen-Mama, how does one recycle a smelly suitcase?

Right Now and Not Right Now: A Matter of Choice?

2009-03-23T11:21:00.010-04:00

This post's alternate titles: "Why I Hate The Weekends" or "How to Lose the Few Readers You Have In One Post". Watch how my post about organization slowly unravels from an organized, sequential order of points to purely random, unorganized, stream-of-consciousness idiocy. Nice. Only found here, at gudnuff. Enjoy.
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For those among us who are NOT "born organized" as FlyLady would say, organizing stuff requires enormous mental effort. Mostly in the form of remembering to do this foreign thing: to choose to organize your stuff. Because it's so easy to not even think about it. Stuff just falls where it falls, and you remember where it fell. That's it. That's how you know where your stuff is. My shoes are under the coffee table. I mean, duh. Where else would they be? I sit on the couch, I kick off my shoes, they are under the coffee table so no one trips on them. Simple. Easy. Obvious. Functional.

Proper organization requires re-ordering the natural distribution of things. For the non-born-organized folks, re-arranging the natural order of things does not come automatically. It is a choice you make (strive to make, anyway). A conscious choice that you must choose to think about. Oh, you mean I should move the shoes, to the closet in my room? Because shoes do not belong under the coffee table, it turns out. Oh.

To organize or not to organize. It's a constant tug-of-war within your consciousness. Not fun. Not obvious. Not easy. Often not very functional.

And if I choose to organize, where do I start? What do I pay attention to first? The shoes? But what about dinner? What about Q's school papers? What about the laundry? If you are not born organized, there seems to be a concomitant difficulty with prioritization.

Prioritization is an exhausting process for those of us not-born-organized. It's why I hate the weekends, in particular. And it's why I would FAIL miserably at being a Stay-At-Home-Mom. Here's a taste of what it's like:

Saturday morning, I awake naturally or from my daughter tapping me on the arm, usually around 9-ish either way, and I immediately begin to wonder: do I clean the house first, take my shower first, go to the store super-quick to buy cleaning supplies first (without even taking a shower because I'll just get grimy while cleaning and will have to take another shower later even if I take one now and why waste the time with the first shower when I could be on my way back from the store already by the time I got out of the first shower which is sort of a waste except who wants to be one of those grimy, unwashed people at the store and what if I see somebody I know who knows other people I know and tells them how gross and unwashed I looked at the store...)...?

I haven't even gotten out of bed yet. I'm already exhausted. My daughter is probably still standing there, blinking, patiently waiting for me to get up and walk with her to the couch and watch TV with her. Daddy is still asleep on the other side of the bed. If she gives me a kiss on the cheek, all thoughts stop and I spring out of bed and go with her. This is not conscious on my part. Springing into action is not something I think about when I get a kiss on the cheek (especially from Q). It just happens automatically. Q knows this. She figured me out long ago. She kisses my cheek. My feet immediately find the floor. Hand-in-hand, we're off to the couch together.

For folks like me, there is only Right Now and Not Right Now. What should I be doing Right Now? And how do I know? Should I be taking a shower Right Now? But Q will be an obnoxious teenager soon enough...watching TV with her head on my lap as part of our Saturday morning routine seems like what I should be doing Right Now.

Who actually has to spend more than half a heartbeat consciously thinking about stuff like this? Sounds crazy to people like my husband, I'm sure. I call him The Reverse Tornado (I'll send you a $20 money order if you come up with a name I like better. For real). Leo can walk through a room and in his wake, leave it immaculately organized, neat, pristine, well-ordered. I know not how he does this. It mystifies me. It is his Super Power, I suppose.

Overall, I've gotten better. I try harder than I used to. I tend to put my shoes away as a matter of course these days. I try to clean up after myself and keep the kitchen counters cleared of the day's activities. I put my dirty laundry in the hamper. Some things become a matter of routine, such as putting away all the groceries as soon as you walk into the house.

So, with all this in mind, how do I function on the job? I mean, the job that does not involve domestic duties, that is (the domestic one, I suck at, obviously). I function very well, as long as the priorities are clearly defined. Usually by someone or something other than me.

Which is one of the reasons I dropped out of the Ph.D. program I was in so long ago. Are you kidding me? Academic careers are all about the Ph.D. person choosing what to focus on Right Now. Ugh. It was torture. Especially theoretical linguistics. I mean, c'mon! Playing around with some grammar data set never lent itself a Right Now quality, as far as I was concerned, outside of some class assignment deadline. I guess the whole wide realm of Research and Development, in any sense, in any size, shape or way, would be applicable to this same condition of not having to be done Right Now. Unless you were trying to finish something before the competition did, of course. Assuming you cared about it to begin with.

Now, emergency medicine...there's something that has to be done Right Now. Or my current job...if the network goes down, holy smokes, you better believe it'd be my Right Now thing. But the funny thing is, with my current position, if you're good at what you do, you'll be bored, because the network won't go down. And it doesn't (oh gawd...if it goes down now just because I am writing that...). It's been stable for years at this point. Fairly stable. Shtuff happens, usually out of our control, but we're affected nonetheless. Little here-and-there things, but anyway, it's stable. It's reliable. Things are good. Good and boring. There are no Right Now things anywhere around. Somebody shoot me. I hate boredom more than anything. Any. Thing.

Oh, I know. I should submit my travel voucher for the trip to New Orleans. Duh! I could do that Right Now. What a concept. And it would make my husband so happy. Look honey, a reimbursement check. A real-live reimbursement check and there's still like, weeks, before the deadline! Weeks! Wow. How much do you love me now, eh?

Nothing sexier than a reimbursement check.

Except maybe actually depositing it. Like...Right Now.

And that's why I don't have my homework. Wait...what???!?

Pink Mailbox Update and Award Response

2009-03-19T12:43:00.022-04:00

[This is a belated response, thank you and acknowledgement of the very kind, very generous award that Teasingly Diverse bestowed upon me last week. Thank you, Chere!!! See the bottom of this post for compliance with award stipulations. I'm trying to live up to being Kreativ! This is also a follow-up post to the Pink Mailbox Poetry Slam Event of 2009 wherein I attempted to get all cute and clever with Q while I was out of town last week.]
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I was sitting at the computer last night, fingers poised over the keys, awaiting inspiration. My husband was moving around, getting his gym bag ready, locating his ipod, packing an extra towel, etc. I looked up as he walked past and I said, "Give me a noun. Something I can rhyme. Like, what're you going to do at the gym? Don't say basketball. I can't rhyme basketball."

Of course, the only word he said was, "No."

Hey, turns out, it was enough.

........Daddy said, "No."
........as he got ready to go
........to the gym
........for a swim.
........Glad I'm not him.

........No, not really.
........I'm just being silly.
........He went for a run.
........Hope he had fun.
........Look, my favorite show's begun!

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By the way, while in New Orleans, remember those five poems I wrote to Q and asked Leo to please put in the little pink mailbox each day? Well, of course he did not do that. Luckily, Q had already figured out where they were stashed, high on top of our dresser in the bedroom. So the first night when she called me at bedtime, I told her to go ahead and get the stool from the kitchen and take it in there and grab the first note. And that is how Q got her daily poems. She liked them, for the most part. Although, she's also very polite, and wouldn't want to hurt my feelings by telling me they stank, so even if she thought they were awful, she'd probably keep that opinion to herself. As for how Q responded...she enjoyed them, but I had to ask her twice for a poem in return. The one very good result is that she now spells "rhyme" and "answer" correctly, consistently. (She used to spell them ryme and ancer.)

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Here are the award rules:
List 7 things that you love, and then pass the award on to 7 bloggers that you love! Be sure to tag them and let them know that they have won. You can copy the picture of the award and paste it on your sidebar letting the whole world know…you are Kreativ!

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..........................................Okay, let's see...7 things I love:

1) silly poetry by Ogden Nash, Jack Prelutsky, Shel Silverstein... (any others?)

2) chips-n- salsa (addicted to 'em)

3) Bacco's in New Orleans (okay, now I'm hungry and just focused on food)

4) chocolate/oatmeal/peanut-butter/coconut no-bake cookies
(I can't find the exact link that I printed out years ago and stuck to my frig, but this one is pretty close, and I see that it was posted by somebody called "CM", coincidentally. Hmmmm... was this you, CM?).
These are some seriously ugly-looking cookies, I admit, but they are an absolute favorite of ours and I make a batch almost every week and we all eat them shamelessly.

5) my paycheck!!! (these days, I really, really like it...I wanna hold its hand, even)

6) swing jazz, like "Is You Is Or Is You Ain't My Baby", and I totally LOVE, LOVE, LOVE this cd I picked up in New Orleans at The Court of Two Sisters by the Charlie Fardella group that was playing live while we ate brunch there...it was awesome...and the cd quality is fantastic.

7) These shoes. They're called Clark's Womens Apple Jane Pumps. They are dressy and comfortable. A real win-win. (And if you buy them at Amazon, they're under $40!)

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Now for 7 bloggers that I love (...only 7??!?...this is gonna get me in trouble, I think...my aplogies to anyone who is offended one way or the other)

1) Cee at Starting to Melt
2) A Lawyer Mom's Musings at A Lawyer Mom's Musings
3) Shelley at The Menagerie
4) googiebaba over at Mommy on the Floor
5) dgm at sunny side up
6) Hyphen Mama at Mommy Needs 5 Minutes
7) Christie over at My Life - A Work In Progress

I have to also point out the following three bloggers who each comprise their own unique category and who put out consistently great quality stuff that makes me feel like my blog is a pig pen of less-than-average hog slops (or just slightly above hog slop quality):

+ Bea at Finding Equanimity - a visual delight, so clean and crisp and focused
+ Shinyung Oh at Because You Never Know... - some very excellent writing
+ Julie Q. at Mental Tesserae - (I especially love her post Why I Cry)

I'm not including some, like Patois at Whee! All the Way Home, who openly admit to not being jazzed by awards, and Trannyhead, who doesn't need awards to know she's hawt, and CM at Magic Cookie and LL at Lag Liv who are such classics that they rise above the level of award-dom. And of course I love Teasingly Diverse, as well as Random Real Estate at Edge of Treason, plus New Duck and Namby Pamby. Hell, I love my whole damn blog list. I really do.

Whew! That is my first-ever, real-live response to an award. I should get an award for that!

Doctors at McDonald's

2009-03-17T16:44:00.009-04:00

Recently, upon entering a McDonald's restaurant, I passed a couple of McDonald's employees on my way to the counter to place my order. I noticed them briefly. They were sitting across from each other at a side table. They appeared to be on break, or about to begin their shift. One was a young Latina woman with a pretty face, a shiny ponytail and a new McDonald's visor on her head. The other was a young Asian man, similarly dressed in his McDonald's uniform-with-visor. They looked like they were waiting for a photo shoot to begin, like they were going to be featured in a McDonald's commercial; they seemed so crisp and clean and composed. I overheard the young woman telling the young man the following:

Her: "In my country, the way they train doctors is very different. I was delivering babies in my second year."

That is all I was able to hear as I passed by.

I knew I had not misheard what she'd said, but I found myself struggling to accept what I'd heard. As I began to place my order, they were walking into the serving/cooking area, behind the counter. The young Latina took her position by the drive-through window and the young Asian man disappeared into the back of the grill/cooking section and I could no longer see him.
I placed my order with the even younger-looking (teenager, probably), and very pretty African-American girl at the register (I'm not kidding, this place was surreal! everyone was good-looking, except for the managers, who looked more like your everyday, typical McDonald's employee). After the order was taken and the money was exchanged and we'd been handed our cups (I was with a couple of friends), I asked the young woman who had taken our order if she knew if the woman working the drive-through window was a doctor. She wanted to know why I thought that, and I told her what I'd overheard. So she yells out to the Latina at the window:

"Hey [I couldn't tell what name she called out], are you a doctor?"

And the woman at the window turns around and smiles and says, "Yes."

I motion her over and repeat (again) what I'd overheard. I felt like a stalker at this point. She was very pleasant about it (almost in a Stepford Wives' overly-pleasant, overly-efficient, overly-patient kind of way...it kind of creeped me out). She explained that she was Colombian, that she attended a Colombian medical school and that part of the curriculum required a three month cultural exchange type of experience. Hence, she was here in middle America for three months. Working at McDonald's.

The Stepford Wives' pleasantness, combined with the weirdness of my having no business asking her any personal questions whatsoever but doing so nonetheless, finally got the better of me and I stopped the interview. She returned to the window and I took my food and got out of there.

I never found out why she was working at a McDonald's, and I really wish I knew more about that. I wonder if that particular McDonald's was a special case (there was certainly something different about it). Perhaps it was used by McDonald's Corporation as a sister-restaurant to a McDonald's in Colombia, to make cultural exchanges easier? But that seems unlikely. Or just dumb, on my part. Or perhaps it was a total fluke that her cultural exchange requirement resulted in employment at McDonald's. But anyway, this brief encounter has left me pondering many things, such as:

Did it ever occur to you that some doctor took the spot at McDonald's that your high-school kid was hoping to get as their first after-school job?

Did it ever occur to you that the same hand that holds out your mega-sized Big Mac with fries and a drink through the drive-through window at McDonald's was once used to deliver a baby?

Did it ever occur to you that anyone working at a McDonald's would be a doctor, or even a doctor-in-training? Or a doctor-in-training from another country???!?

Did it ever occur to you that doctors-in-training from other countries would end up in the U.S. working at a McDonald's, just for kicks?

Did it ever occur to you that somebody came to the U.S. and got their cultural education by working at a McDonald's? And maybe that was a pretty good/bad way to approach our culture?

None of these things ever occurred to me before, I'll tell you that! I mean, seriously, that is some unique stuff in a globalization, sociological, economic, cultural exchange kind of way. It's a little freaky if you think about it for more than a second or two. At least, I think so anyway.

Mojo a No-Go

2009-03-16T12:09:00.002-04:00

[Warning: This is a very negative post. I have a lot to say, but I've been avoiding saying it because a lot of it is negative, and I've been trying very hard to keep this blog more on the positive side of things. But maybe if I vent here, spew my poison here, I'll rid myself of it enough that I'll be able to get my mojo back. This here job done stole my mojo, dammit. And I need my blog to help me get it back. So I am posting this with some regrets for the negativity contained herein, and I hope somebody overcomes the cynicism and submits a comment nevertheless. Plus, I have an interesting thing to share once I get this post over with.]

[Just sayin': I reserve the right to completely reverse my mood and my position in future posts. Today, it's all eff this and I'm-too-old and forget-it-already, but next week, who knows?]

I just spent a lovely five days and five nights in New Orleans (yes, as a tourist in the French Quarter). I went there for an annual conference. I got back last Thursday night.

It reinvigorated my attitude toward my job. I've returned to within normal parameters of giving a crap about my job performance and what people think of me. What I think of myself.

But still, I've not rediscovered my working mojo. Normal parameters aren't worth getting excited about, it turns out. I think the difference between pre-conference me and post-conference me is merely that I'm so turned off by my own belly-aching that it's no longer an option. Plus, I got a taste of enjoying the company of smart people for a couple of days. That was very refreshing.

For example, I spent an entire morning's session sitting next to a senior level person from another part of the country who surprised me by how much he shared with me in casual conversation. The two of us spent about three hours huddled together, whispering our way through multiple sessions, paying almost no attention to the presenters. I was secretly thrilled and flattered to have his attention for so long. I didn't even leave to go to the bathroom, even after he brought me - and I drank! - a second cup of coffee.

Later he said he thought I was the boss of my peer. Which explains why he had been so at ease, so willing to let his hair down earlier in the day.

Which brings me to why going into management is a worthy goal.

You know why? Not because I want to have the final say. Not because of the ego-driven issue of saying you're somebody's boss, or the boss of forty people, or whatever. It's because, to put it crassly, you have a greater chance of spending more time with a better class of people. And by "class", I don't mean socio-economically. I mean, smart people, focused people, non-burnt-out people. People who are driven. People invested in what they do on a daily basis. People who are privy to special training sessions. To off-site manager meetings. To dealing with a more holistic view of the job. People who generally give more of a crap on any given day than the schmucks like me who have settled and are only thinking of their paycheck.

People more on top of their game, who make me want to be more on top of MY game.

I'm not so sure law school is the path to that destination for me. After months of reading law school blogs, law related blogs, the overwhelming impression I have is that I'd be a fool to completely jump ship and swim toward the shores of the legal profession. The debt is staggering, especially with only twenty years to pay it off (at the earliest, I'd be in my mid-40's when I graduated). Plus, ending up with a satisfying law career seems to hinge on how lucky you are, and again, that kind of strategy has seldom worked in my favor.

I'm no CM or LL or Andrea. That much is clear to me. To the victor go the spoils. They deserve all the good stuff that has come their way and I've no doubt more good things will continue to find them.

But as for me? It's time to accept some basic facts. I'm too old; it costs too much; my husband is too unstable career-wise to carry the family through such an endeavor; my daughter is too unfocused to push herself, on her own, to achieve. And I'm just not feeling the necessary selfishness to ignore all those issues and focus solely on my own ambitions. It is what it is. I'm too fat, dumb, lazy, and bitter, and too damn old, and just too invested in my current life, quite honestly, to do much more than to collect a paycheck and nurse my seething resentment and angry bitterness. Et voila.

On a lighter note, I have at least decided to care about my job. I have found Workplace911 which I kinda like. I have decided that I will strive to have one thing, just ONE THING, to point to at the end of each day to say, well, at least I did that. And that one thing is NOT allowed to be a blog post. And we all know I'm not kidding about that. Because I know you are just like me, and that one seriously good blog post can justify your existence for up to 48 hours at at time. Well, okay, first I'm going to post this, and then I'm going to actually install an OS on this box that has been collecting dust on my desk for months. And now that I've said it, put it out there on my blog, maybe it'll actually happen.

So, not a lot of mojo found here, but it seems the necessary ingredients are lying around, are available still. Maybe I can brew up a batch by the end of the week. I think that by working harder, I'll start to care about work more. I think first must come the work. I almost titled this post "Work will set you free" but that was already taken and not in a good way. Which totally pisses me off (and I'm choosing not to link to a reference to the well-known example of where and how this phrase was used because that would totally change the mood and point of what I'm saying here).

Because for those of us who wallow in despair and suffer from analysis-paralysis, getting busy with work truly does set us free from our malaise, our apathy. Work can set your mojo free. I truly believe that. And so, having written it, I shall now go live it. Wish me luck.

Bad Poetry Slam, Family-Style

2009-03-06T14:55:00.008-05:00

Q's poetic attempts are as bad as mine, but a little more excusable given her age.

Here's her response which she placed in the mailbox for me:

.......Once upon a time
.......I made a rhyme.
.......But that rhyme spent too much time.
.......I never knew
.......how the time flew. by.

.......I wrote about my mother
.......that was a hugger.
.......She was the nicest person around
.......that I knew in town.

.......This is the end of my rhyme
.......about my mother
.......who was a hugger.

.......XOXOXO ...Q...

She wrote an equally quick and simple ditty for her father after he complained that he failed to receive a solicitation for correspondence from her. Last night she went to him and apologized and asked him to please write her a note, and he said, "No." (He likes to be sneaky like that: disappoint, then follow-through and relieve the despair. Classy, no?)

She magnanimously chose, nevertheless, to write a poem for him. All you need to know is that "Daddy" was paired with "never saddy". This thing is going downhill fast, I'm thinkin'.

Can't wait to hear Daddy's contributions....

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I've almost finished with the five poems to be doled out while I'm away.

I'm posting them here and now mostly for my own record-keeping purposes. If you feel inclined to add or improve upon them, feel free to do so in the comments. Just don't be mean and hurt my little feelings. Also, I guess this is where other people with content worth copying say something like: this is copyrighted material and you can't use it unless I say so. So consider that said regarding this material, in the very unlikely event someone may find it tempting to filch it. I wrote these while sitting in the chair getting my hair done so I'll be beeyootiful for my trip and so I wouldn't have to talk to the lady cutting my hair. I'm so productive!

Poem #1 (because she usually misses me the most that first night):
Whenever you miss me
And wish you could kiss me
Or I could kiss you
Here are things you can do

Heave a deep sigh
Or stick your finger in your eye
Or grab a pen and write a note
About a funny anecdote.

Just try to laugh as much as you can!
Create a secret tickle plan,
one that'll make you feel good
inside your head just like I would.
(Better, even, than I could.)

Poem #2:
Watch that caterpillar climb
Onto a branch in order to dine
On fresh and crispy leaves that crunch
Between her teeth as she eats lunch.

Poem #3:
Winky pinky hoopie wow
Missy-Miss is our brown cow
She loves clover
She loves hay
She's why we drink cafe au lait! (thought I'd teach Q a little French)

Poem #4:
Ha-ha, hee-hee, ho-ho-ho!
There's a lot you already know.
As you learn and your brain grows
other things will have to go.
This will happen more and more.
It's really bad when you're 44.

Poem #5:
This is the day that I return home
(go on, get excited!)
With presents and pralines and Styrofoam
(you'll soon be quite delighted!)

Whimsy With the Written Word

2009-03-05T13:00:00.025-05:00

Around Valentine's Day, my kiddo and I spotted this pink metal mailbox. It was in the dollar section at Target.

Q loved it at first sight. I saw it as the perfect opportunity to inspire both of us to write more. It invited me especially to work on holding onto whimsy, to keep a spark of creativity in our relationship. So I bought it. For Q. But for me, too. Of course, once we had the mailbox, Q wanted to actually use it. And I kept forgetting about it.

Until finally she wrote me a note asking me to please write her a note and leave it in the mailbox.

It says:

"Please write a note to me and put it in my mailbox! I love you.

P.S. Can you put it in there when I'm asleep and put the flag up so in the morning I can see it!"

So I finally remembered to write a little note, which was a sappy little I love you sweetie-pie kind of thing. She liked that there was a note in there. But I think we need to graduate beyond simple little I-love-you notes.

To that end, I have decided to write her a poem. I decided that whatever I write, it cannot take a lot of time. So, we're going for quantity over quality, I'm afraid. Here's my first attempt, which took me about ten minutes to write, and you can totally tell, 'cause it blows:
(Once upon a time
I needed a dime
So I sold lemonaid
So I could get paid.

I earned enough money
to buy milk and honey
So I went to the store
And bought groceries galore.

When I got home
I tripped on a comb
And was in a bad mood
'Cause I'd dropped all the food!

Now the house is a mess
And I've torn my dress.
The food is all gone
And this poem's a yawn.)

I'm going to be away most of next week on a business trip (to New Orleans...woooooo!) and I've decided to ask Leo to place a note from mommy in the mailbox every morning of my absence. He has grudgingly agreed to do so (but don't be surprised if this turns out badly...I've been burned by him before on this kind of thing).

So now I am faced with the challenge of writing five days' worth of cute stuff. Why do I do this to myself?! And for that matter, what did Q ever do to deserve such awful poetry?

Is this a bad idea?

Stolen from a tweet

2009-03-03T14:12:00.001-05:00

Prelude to this post:

Yes, another mommy post. But with poetry! Poorly done poetry, but hey, it's an attempt. The thing about haiku is, when *I* write one, it ends up sounding like a stupid headline, like:

............Child shot on playground.
............Community is frightened.
............Film at eleven.

And while Patois is able to write three little lines that drip with the juices of evocative sensations, mine manages to wring the sentiment out of it completely, leaving the event stone cold and dry, dry, dry. (Not sure I'll continue with haiku. Or perhaps I'll start a "Shoulda Not Been Published" line of posts.)

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I just tweeted about my kid's latest drama, wherein she gets a phone call, on a school night, from her friend Sarah. Oh-so-excited (and just a tad bit impressed with herself) that the phone is for HER! "It's for ME?!!"

"Oh, Hi Sarah! Yeah, tomorrow, uh-huh..." She starts walking around and around in a tight little circle as she talks. We're sitting at a folding-table outside a grocery store selling Girl Scout cookies. The phone call was placed to my cell and is a surprise to both of us.

I'm watching her face and it slowly morphs from ecstatic to reassuring, cooperative, collaborative (I can think of some people at work who could take a few pointers from her approach at this moment, probably I'm one of them):

"You don't like the song, because we didn't practice enough? Well, that's alright. We can do another song. We don't have to do that song if you don't want."

...and then from reassuring to confused:

"Oh...not at all? Like, the whole thing?"

and finally from confused to just absolutely crushed, as her voice gets quieter and then starts to quiver, and her face flushes into a splotchy mess of pink, especially around her eyes, but she holds it together (thanks to her father's DNA, I must assume, since mine is made of less stalwart stuff). She manages to speak in clear tones, with an upward lilt as she says:

"No, I understand. No, it's alright. Yeah, I know you are. It's okay. No, really, it's okay. Alright, well, 'bye."

...and now she is off the phone and she has tears in her eyes and she is so, so sad, so let down, so newly disappointed. She seems to be stuck in place, completely overwhelmed by this new feeling, so much so that she doesn't know what to do or what to say. She just looks at me, partly confused, trying to process what just happened, as she blinks the tears out onto her cheeks.

Her partner for the school talent show has called at 8pm the night prior to the auditions and canceled. My daughter is not brave enough to go through with the audition without a partner. I am feeling really not very nice feelings about the other little girl named Sarah at this moment. And I am aware that I am watching life happen. To a smallish person that didn't even exist on this earth nine years ago and is only here now because of me (well, plus a few other factors). And now she is walking and talking and getting phone calls and finding out that friends can let you down. And now I have to just take it and let it happen to her, as it happens to all of us, just as each of us, to varying degrees, has caused such things to happen to others, sometimes to our friends, and to loved ones, too. But this is a new thing for her. And for me, to have a front-row seat, to watch it happen.

And out of this are the bones of a haiku, that I stumbled upon while trying to express this experience via twitter. I'm not good at this, quite poor at it compared to Patois, and this is my first haiku attempt since 7th grade, I think, so take it for the feeble attempt that it is.

...........................I seethe when Q's friend
...........................backs out of the audition.
...........................Husband shrugs it off.

Haiku's are not for long-winded types like me, because there's so much more I want to express in those restrictive seventeen syllables than the part about the call and Q being understandably hurt and disappointed, but dealing with it rather well, and my subsequent anger/frustration/protectionistic response.

I forgot to add, in my narrative above, that this totally pissed me off (well, you probably picked up on that little factoid), and I tactfully shared my reflection of the event with my husband, who blithely responded, "Good. It's just a little After-School talent show. I mean, c'mon." and told me that The Evil One (3rd grader formerly known as Sarah) is just a little girl, too, and that I tend to get worked up about these things and that it is NOT alright to punch an 8-year-old in the stomach on the playground, especially when you're a mom, hence supposedly a grown-up who is able to keep some adult perspective on these types of situations. Harumph.

I'm thinking about changing the last line to:

.........................Family shrugs it off.

Because Q got past the teary part kind of quickly - cookie selling proved an excellent distraction - and because Q was empathetic to The Evil One's discomfort about performing.
It totally sucks when your own kid handles these things with more emotional maturity than you do. Not that I would let her know that (probably she already knows it on some level, but I don't have to come out and openly admit it directly to her in so many words...not yet anyway...I'll let her call me on it when she's a teenager and not one minute sooner!). Oh, not me. I'll just keep that info between me and a couple million people on the internet. Jeez-o-pete, I love blogging.

Twit-like Twittering in the Twilight

2009-02-26T09:54:00.004-05:00

Primarily in response to No. 634's post about twitter.

Well, what *I* wanna know is not so much how twitter works, or what client is best, or what it's for, because I think that is easily found and quickly understood. What *I* want to know is: What method is best suited for what purpose?

For example, ABC News did a little twitter expose the night after Obama's speech, to explain twitter to us, but most importantly, why bother? Because DURING Obama's speech, a LOT of the senators and congresspeople were sending tweets while sitting there in the room with Obama. ABC News thought it was interesting (as did I) that all of these people had their heads bent down with their thumbs and fingers clicking away ON THEIR PHONES, sending out tweets about what they were hearing, thinking or who they were seeing...there were a lot of star-struck tweets such as: OMG...Justice Ginsberg is here or whatever (something like that). We know WHAT it is and what it does...but by what means? In the case of the senators/congresspeople, they were using their PHONES. Not to follow anybody else's conversation or to follow a thread or whatever you call those #text terms, but simply to post in a very unidirectional manner. They weren't actually listening/reading anybody else's tweets, they weren't gathering info, taking anything IN (like that's some big surprise! ha). What they were doing was sending info OUT to the world. So that tells me how twitter is used in that situation.

That's the kind of detailed info i seek. Not from you personally, as in privately, but from you as in, how you as a generic Everyman/Everyperson law student, perhaps, is likely to use it, when in class, when back at the dorm, etc. My computing habits differ depending on context and purpose, so I'll do one thing at work and another at home. Well, actually, I'll do the same thing, but use different approaches, different methodologies, in each place.

Anyway, that is what I've been trying to gather more info about. And I disagree with that twitter video that says the primary idea is to answer "What are you doing?" The primary question is actually "What are you paying attention to/reacting to right now?" People tweet much more often about what they're thinking than about what they're actually doing. Who cares what you're doing? Instead, tweet about what's on your mind, and send me that tiny url! Right?

Open Appeal to Twitterheads

2009-02-25T10:49:00.001-05:00

I'm trying to get deeper and deeper into twitter. (Sounds x-rated, or w-rated anyway) So, pride, shmide...I'm a tweeter ignoramus and I'm not gonna take it anymore!

Here's an open call to All Twitterheads to PLEASE tell me a trick or two about twitter that helps you love it so. I'm learning slowly, but I think I need people to clue me into some tips or tricks.

Obvious example: twitter is best accessed via COMPUTER, not phone. I base this on the fact that I see a lot of "updated via web" tweets out there.

Anybody disagree?

Computer-based-tweeting is less dynamic, though. I always have to hit refresh on the Home button. Whereas on the phone, the updates I allow to come through to my phone just come on through, dynamically, in real-time. I like that. But there's so much you can't do via the phone's basic SMS functions (I have a Palm Centro).

I just found search.twitter.com. So THAT's how you track all those #searchterm tweets. But again - no dynamic updates. Is the answer to setup an RSS feed from search.twitter.com to Google Reader or something? (starting to feel boxed in by feeds to google reader!)

This is a pretty lame-o post. The last time I appealed for technical assistance to the blogosphere, I got zero, zip, nada response from anybody. Let's see if that record stands this time. Go ahead, I dare ya. Say something. Say something smart. We're waiting.

Bar Exam Karma

2009-02-24T10:21:00.004-05:00

For Trannyhead and ambimb: you're in it, right this second. The blogosphere sends you well wishes. All is calm. All is triumphant. You shall reign supreme. You shall pass the bar, puff yourself full of hard-fought and hard-won self-satisfaction (and I say that only because I know that's what I would do and rightfully so), and seldom pass this way again, quite likely. Well, so be it. I'm still cheering for you both. Good luck. Good brain waves. Good results. All for you.

Sahara Special

2009-02-22T14:54:00.005-05:00

My daughter has a book report to turn in this Friday. She's been reading (in tiny little fragments) Sahara Special by Esme Raji Codell for the past couple of weeks. The one thing she HAD to do today was finish the book. There were about four chapters remaining. I managed to get a proper lunch on the table and then into our tummies, after which we settled down into my big fluffy bed and we read. I made some progress on Obama's Dreams From My Father and she eventually settled into Sahara Special. I only had to totally yell at her to stop making farting sounds with her mouth once. Progress.

After an hour, Q was ready to move on to the next activity. With just two chapters left to go! This is what kills me. Your one assignment that you MUST FINISH TODAY...c'mon kid...just get the job done already! Geesh. So, I offered to read aloud to her.

Forty minutes and three tissues later, we finished reading the book.

OMG, ya'll. I am such a cry-baby. It is so embarrassing! But this is one seriously good book. Well, I can only speak for the last two chapters. They were powerful. I cried. Like I usually do. I can't imagine what it must be like to have a cry-baby for a mother. I said, "It's really saaaad! Don't you think it's sad?" I got a clear-eyed, steady, "No." for a response.

Fine.

At least she has not inherited this burden of excessive sentimentality from my side of the family. My brother has been known to tear up from watching a McDonald's commercial. We are pussies. (Yeah, I said it. I've earned the right, after a lifetime of weepiness.) You don't know how many times in my life I was desperate to find some private corner in which to hide while an attack of leaky-eye-syndrome overcame me in public. It totally sucks.

As Miss Pointy says in the last chapter: "...the main character is the one who changes." I just hope that Q remains as unsentimental (yet without true snarkiness) throughout her post-pubescent years as she is now. Despite being her own main character, for her sake I hope that part doesn't change.

GarAttitude

2009-02-21T17:38:00.013-05:00

GarAttitude...the best thing since Garanimals.

My brother was laid off a couple of weeks ago. That, plus Black Thursday, plus the tens (hundreds?) of thousands of layoffs and lost jobs in all corners of the global economy has forced me to wake up and smell my paycheck.

Really, I'm trying to focus on gratitude. It's kind of a fad these days, actually. There are articles and websites and a somewhat recent book all touting the health benefits of gratitude.

So I'm trying to be grateful for what I have, instead of thinking of what I don't have or what I don't like. So here's an attempt at identifying things that make the glass half full.

----------------------

I am very grateful to have a secure, well-paying job. I appreciate knowing that even in these bleak economic conditions, job openings are currently being posted that seek the duties, skills, and expertise required by my current position. That's a big deal. That is not something to ignore. But am I listening?

I'm very grateful that blogger does not charge me anything for this blog. Because it would suck to feel so blogfully incompetent AND go into debt for it.

I'm grateful that twitter lets me ignore it without consequence, unlike Plurk which is really good at making me feel like I suck at being human and I couldn't bum a nickel from a stranger if I had to.

I'm grateful for my house and my family and the sound of my daughter cackling at the 147th episode of Hannah Montana that she's watched today while waiting for mommy to think of things to be grateful for so mommy can finally end this post, step away from the computer and finally fix both of them a decent meal today.

I'm grateful the ground turkey didn't get stuck to the pan when I left it cooking while I snuck back over to the computer to quickly finish this post if I could just think of one more thing to be grateful for.

I'm grateful we don't have a dog, because letting a dog sit around the house all day with nobody home just spells disaster in the form of chewed up woodwork, digestion problems, vet bills, even more pet hair and the guilt I would feel for making it sit around the house all alone all day.

I'm grateful our cars are still under warranty. For the next three months. Maybe four.

I'm grateful my husband has a job, a part time job with lousy hours, so that we don't see him all weekend long, and is barely above minimum wage and has no benefits but brings in almost enough so we only have to use the credit card a little bit each month.

I'm grateful that my husband seems to care about the fact that we have to use the credit card.

I'm grateful I don't eat lunch. Seriously. Lunch is a pain in the butt.

I'm grateful for each and every comment I get on each and every post I dare to publish on this stupid blog that I love, love, love and which has broken my heart at least five times because I was apparently hoping I'd written something full of divinely inspired brilliance and was expecting the validating comments proving as much to come pouring in by the dozens and when that didn't happen I was forced to acknowledge that I just wasn't that interesting afterall.

I'm grateful for the delete key and that sometimes I know when to use it.

I'm grateful we found a girl scout troop without all the drama and stress of the last one and which has a leader who really likes me.

I'm grateful for the DVR's pause button and fast forward features. I really am. Shut up. It's the little things.

I'm grateful I snuck out of work Friday to go to a lunch thing with my mom and that she felt good enough to go and that we both found the energy to mix and mingle a little bit.

I'm grateful my parents live nearby, are alive and well and don't need in-home care and can still drive. And are able - and willing - to swing by school and pick up Q when I leave the office too late to make it to afterschool pickup by 6pm.

I'm grateful that the worst thing I can think of is that I stay at my current job for the next couple of decades. Cry me a river, already. If that's the worst thing I got going on, I'm fine.

I'm grateful that the whole law school question remains in the realm of fantasy for the moment, that I can research my options without jeopardizing my family's welfare.

I'm grateful for every contact, every supportive word I've found through blogging. I'm grateful for the money I've saved on therapy because of blogging. I'm grateful for avoiding the many fights my husband and I might have had if I hadn't already expressed my thoughts and feelings on the blog so that I didn't try to share them with him only to have him walk away for the thousandth time and totally piss me off because I suddenly find myself talking to an empty room in mid-sentence.

I'm grateful for the opportunity to be inspired. To get out of my own head. To feel connected.

I'm grateful for Cadbury mini-eggs, too.

Yes, the answer is 43

2009-02-20T19:25:00.005-05:00

A lawyer friend of mine told me law school sucked because it really comes down to opinion and how well you argue it. There are no absolutes, there are no ultimate truths. You're not right or wrong. You're just persuasive. So, in this hypo, is there a right answer in terms of an exact number of liabilities to be identified?

(from here) ... Finding Nemo tort hypothetical:

Marlin, a clown fish, discovers a pair of snorkeler goggles. Marlin's friend Dory, greatly desirous of the goggles, grabs the goggles from him; Marlin grabs back. In the course of the struggle, Marlin accidentally lets go of the goggles. They hit Dory in the face, causing a nosebleed. Assume that Dory has no title to the goggles.

Blood from Dory's nose wafts up to Bruce, a shark and recovering blood addict. Marlin and Dory are well aware of Bruce's addiction. They are further aware that blood causes sharks to go crazy. The blood induces an insane rage in Bruce, who then chases after Marlin and Dory, destroying property from a derelict ship (owned by Ships, Inc.) along the way. Bruce's chase also causes enormous emotional distress to Marlin. Dory, a more relaxed fish, simply takes Bruce's insane rage in stride.

Marlin and Dory flee into a torpedo shaft. Neither of them are aware that the metal cylinder behind them is a torpedo; nor are they aware that the "balloons" outside the derelict ship are mines. They are in no danger within the torpedo shaft, but Bruce continues to rage outside. Rather than waiting for Bruce's blood lust to wane, Dory triggers a switch that causes the torpedo to slide out, jamming itself in Bruce's mouth and causing at least one broken tooth. (Bruce, however, regularly regrows broken teeth.)

In an attempt to rid himself of the torpedo, Bruce swings his head back and forth. Unfortunately, his final swing hurls the torpedo out over the minefield. Unlike Marlin and Dory, Bruce is aware of the mines outside the derelict ship. The torpedo hits one of the mines, and they all explode. The derelict ship, which already lies on the bottom of the sea floor, is knocked into a nearby trench, causing more destruction. The mines are all obliterated. On the surface of the ocean, a pelican is disturbed by the gaseous discharge from the explosion.

Who may be liable to whom, for what, and why? Please note: Dory is perhaps mentally incapacitated due to her lack of short-term memory, and Bruce has a history of childhood neglect. If your legal conclusion depends on additional facts not provided here, identify those facts and discuss how they would affect your analysis.

On Choosing Yourself Over Your Child

2009-02-19T14:02:00.010-05:00

LSAT studying has not really been happening for me. I just will not get less than seven hours of sleep a night (I often get eight hours). So that's constraint number one. And going to the office for eight to nine hours a day is contraint number two. (Unless I could study online for the LSAT. That'd be the only way I could sneak it into my work day.) And keeping Q on schedule pretty much eats up most of the evening, until after 9pm. She just will not or can not settle down and go to sleep like she used to. It's very frustrating and tiring.

By 9:30 (lately it's been closer to 10pm) I'm tired and my attention is fractured. Plus, if I'm ever going to finish Obama's first book, then I need to put in at least half an hour of reading. After doing that, it's time for bed.

The most obvious solution, although some risk of discovery exists, is to stay late at the office and study from 5-7 and get home around 8 (which then allows my husband time to go to the gym). But that means almost no quality time with Q throughout the week. It means not knowing the meaningful bits and pieces of what's going on in my kid's life. This is a major stumbling block.

When do you let go of the little details of your child's experiencing the world? How do you stand aside, focus more on yourself, and know that the nuances of today will not be known to you?

Divine Intervention Near the Baked Goods Counter

2009-02-12T13:05:00.018-05:00

Feeling lethargic and depressed, I was seriously eye-balling the huge cookie sandwiches in the bakery case at the grocery store the other night. The middle consisted of about two-and-a-half inches of cream filling. Cream filling....mmmm. It was whispering to me that all it wanted to do was cheer me up if I'd only give it the chance. I felt myself leaning towards it while my daughter, still wearing her soccer practice attire, was handed her free cookie by the nice hairnet guy.

Suddenly I realize somebody's saying something nearby. I jerk my eyes away from my love interest, whipping around with a "Who, me?" attitude. I see that it's one of Q's schoolmate's mothers standing there with her cart and her three kids, cheerfully saying hi. Q and her eldest were in the same kindergarten class three years ago. We (the two moms) were both a lot heavier then.

She looks good. Well, she's in pre-dinner, full-kid mode, so she looks good in a quick-trip-to-the-grocery-store-with-three-kids-to-wrangle kind of way. Neither of us are sporting made-up faces or well-coiffed hair. Still, I am struck by how much skinnier she is than she used to be. Her body's parameters have drastically changed. This is the second, maybe third, time I've seen her looking this way. The first time, I did not know who she was until she spoke to me. Now I recognize her, but my mind again registers how much different she looks. And she looks pretty happy, too. She's got a big smile on her face.

Looking at this woman, my mind's eye jumps from the come-hither creaminess of the cookie sandwich to this newly-skinny-mommy-figure. By seeing her, I see the things the cookie sandwich cannot give me. She is happy. She is healthy. She has energy. You can tell she feels good about herself. That is what is important. This is a freaking sign from gawd, and I know it. The cookie sandwich could not give me those things.

I tell her how great she looks, ask her what her secret is. She tells me she's been exercising a lot. I tell her it's great to see her, take care, see you next time.

There is no way I can count on a second messenger from gawd to intervene were I to, oh I dunno, maybe meander through the snack food aisle. How many gifts from gawd does a girl get in one night? As Q happily munches on her free cookie, I head straight to the checkout lane, with quiet determination and no looking back.

My new mantra while shopping: "Walk away, girl, just walk away."

Turning Point?

2009-02-08T23:08:00.003-05:00

I'm tired of thinking about this, talking about it, worrying about it. Critical mass has been achieved. I found a lot of helpful folks over at nontradlaw.net (thanks for the tip LawIngenue) and rather than be a complete poser, I will at least sit for the lsat, probably the June one. Lookee there, a decision.

I bought Law School Essays tonight. Also am in the middle of Obama's first book Dreams from My Father, which has nothing to do with me going to law school, but might be why I don't post for a while. My recent posts have disappointed me anyway, and other things need to be done.

I'll still be around, as I hope you all will be. I just have to find a healthier balance.

His Highness, Michael Phelps

2009-02-07T00:17:00.050-05:00

I got nothin' against Michael Phelps. I am rooting for him. Really. I mean, put him at the end of the line behind a number of former Presidents if you want to castigate somebody for smoking pot. He should be the last one sentenced. No soapbox about that here. He just popped into my mind because of this post's subject matter. I'm going to talk about a bunch of unrelated things that somehow are connected in my mind (which doesn't need pot to free associate, obviously). Good luck following me as I segue from pot smoking to Hyphen Mama's darling Wynnie (NO connection between them whatsoever) to my own messed up hynace from early childhood, back to pot smoking, then back to Hyphen Mama and Butterflyfish. Try to keep up. You're embarrassing me.

We are here for the love of language. We are here in response to Hyphen Mama's post about "pershy hate", which is so cute I have to show it to you:

................After Wynnie finished picking up toys
................in the playroom the other day she said,
................"Mommy, do you pershy hate me?"
................To which I replied, "No baby, but I do appreciate you."

How cute is that?!! I find it amazing how willingly children accept whatever phonetic sequence you give them. They just roll with it, just take it as they hear it.

Instead, being able to fully accept some strange new sound sequence is not so easy for me. It's hard for adults in general. We adults have well formed ideas of what's a possible word or sequence of sounds and what isn't. And we can't just stop knowing all that at will. It's hard to block out.

But young children don't have preformed linguistic filters for what's possible and what isn't. Clearing your throat could mean something, something like "Eat your cheerios." Why couldn't it, right? They have to sit back and listen and watch very carefully. To see what it is WE pay attention to. The stuff we don't react to must be meaningless...well ma'am, toss that out already! And they do.

But until it's clear that something (like throat clearing) means nothing, they don't rule it out.

For example, I wonder if Hypen Mama's daughter Wynnie thought of it as "pershy hate", with "hate" being the same "hate" we're thinking it is. Because what else could it be, right? Well, to a child just learning, it could be anything. It could be "hayit" possibly, or "h-eight" (long "a" sound, as in the number "eight"). It might not be the verb "to hate" that she hears when she strings those sounds together:
per-shee-h8. Then again, it might, but let's explore the first possibility anyway.

Here's an example: the term "Your Highness". Pretty simple:
high + ness. OK.

Except I always thought of it as "Your Hynace"...kinda like "furnace". To my ear, the first syllable ended with the "n", and the second syllable was a simple "us", like "hine-ous" or "hien-ace". Which makes no sense and I don't know how I could be that dumb, but whatever. It just sounded like a special word, unique, that meant "a royal person". They're so special and royal and important people, they have their own freaky word just for them. Again, anything goes when you're first hearing this stuff.

It never occurred to me that the term included the -ness suffix. (Doh.)
From here: "The suffix -ness is added at the end of an adjective to indicate the state, condition, quality or degree of something."

High-ness. Ok, makes sense. Royalty, kings and queens, high above us all. Gotcha.

So, we're agreed that "highness" means the state or condition of being "high".

Yeah, we're starting to come full circle back to the beginning of this post. When you think of the "state or condition of being high", do you think of Queen Elizabeth? Uh...not so much. At the moment, the first person I think of is poor Michael Phelps. His highness, Michael Phelps.

High-ness...not hynace! Seriously? And yet there are no high-ness jokes? Why in the world doesn't it get applied to people experiencing a high from drugs? I am so in the highness, dude. Ride the highness, my friend. Enjoy your highness. If I said, "Her highness won't last much longer", who would you think I was talking about, Queen Elizabeth or the stoner girl from homeroom?

I learned about kings and queens and princesses, heard the phrase "Your Highness", when I was still very young, from children's fairy tales that were read to me. I can only conclude that before my language filters were fully formed, when I heard the words "Your Highness", the suffix ness hadn't quite registered on my linguistic radar.

Which really is okay, all things considered. Because for a kid, if you're young enough, anything is linguistically possible. Until your mom clues in to the mix-up and realizes what you're doing (except in my case, of course, not so easily detected) that it's NOT pershy-hate and it's not fun-TEST-icles, and she patiently (or not), maybe smirkingly, but always lovingly sets you straight.

Think how many more fun-TEST-icles and pershy-hates and hynaces would be stuck forever in adult brains if not for the parent's ever vigilant linguistic guidance.

Hat's off to Hyphen Mama and to Butterflyfish for their linguistic vigilance, and their awesome blogs. And...what the hey...hats off to Michael Phelps, even though I have no evidence of his linguistic vigilance, blogging prowess, or parenting skills. He's awesome too, disregarding his recent brush with highness.

False Bravado

2009-02-06T23:14:00.015-05:00

Dr.Cox: I love this moment so much, i want to have sex with it -

later in the same episode: This moment is so great, I'd cheat on that other moment from before, marry this one and raise a family of tiny little moments

Sorry if my last post offended anyone. Guess I took the metaphor too far. This is really just a case of false bravado. I'm much too insecure to pull off this kind of attitude in real life. You'll see that's true if you take a minute to read a prior post I wrote called "I Am So Hawt". You'll see that I don't even have the nerve to comfortably mingle at a charity's open house event. I'm even less comfortable with casual flirting or checking people out on the street.

I got the idea for the earlier post from an episode of Scrubs I saw a long time ago, where Dr. Cox says, "I am loving this moment. I love this moment so much, I want to marry it. Then this moment and I can have a bunch of little moment children together." ...or something kinda like that. [found the quote, see above...anybody out there know what episode it's from?] I found the metaphor amusing (when Scrubs did it, I about died laughing, but my attempt?...not so much) - if it even is a metaphor, which I'm not 100% certain is the correct term for this type of narrative device. Hence my suggestion that the whole thing is derivative...I really think I got the "joke" from somewhere else.

Obviously, there was a day or two this past week when the thought of getting pregnant again and having another child really did seem like something worth considering seriously. For about a moment. I flirted with the idea. I talked to my husband about it. He is in the middle of some life changing choices himself right now, so besides my age being a negative factor, so is my husband's situation. Anyway, it all crowded together to create the perfect storm of adjectives. So how do you address a midlife crisis, other than to toss aside a perfectly valid career to go to law school? Well, you can always try to have another baby. But after briefly flirting with this unattractive idea (unattractive for me, at my age, in my current circumstances), I quickly dumped it. STOP right there: "flirting", "dumped", "unattractive"...it was hard to resist pursuing the whole concept of attraction and the decsion to act based on attraction.

But no, I make it sound like I know a lot more about this stuff (threesomes, for example...caveat lector!) than I really do. I've allowed myself to succumb to certain influences that I've stumbled upon out here in cyberspace, influences that I've found to be quite infectious in their fun, light-hearted yet audacious approach to just about any issue. Exposure to such influences makes it all too easy to adopt a breezy confidence that I only wish I had in real life.

Now let me speak plainly: I am a big fan of those influences. They cheer me up. They make me laugh. I like them. But as for me, I can only exude such chutzpa through the written word. I am barely able to flirt in public with my husband...so even though I can talk such talk in the blogosphere, there's no way I could walk the walk (wink, wink, nudge, nudge) in reality.

Bottom line and closing argument: It's all Trannyhead's fault. Well, Tranny and Scrubs.

Now For Something Completely Different

2009-02-06T11:18:00.017-05:00

...or maybe completely derivative. You tell me.

You know, there is more than one way to skin a midlife crisis. Number One option that is so mainstream, so trivially obvious, is of course the Law School Question, which I mean, c'mon, EVERYBODY toys with that one even when things are going great. The Law School Question should open its own adult toy superstore, that's how playfully distracting it is. There is our own sweet Everyday Reality that we know and love, but we sneak out at lunch time to meet the Law School Question at a cheap motel for a quickie. Please, like you haven't done it yourself.

Many of you have already let it knock you up (=sent in a seat deposit, signed student loans, paid tuition, bought books, etc.) and now you're stuck with an abusive partner who only cares about its own needs. Yeah, I know how Law School Question rolls, once you've let him go all the way with you.

But a new toy has shown up and it's turning my head. Just a quick glance as it passed me on the sidewalk. Yeah, I checked it out from behind as it walked on by. I'm not ashamed to admit it. Hey, I'm barely 40-ish, I'm not dead, ya know?

You want to meet it? I'm not sure how it looks without its makeup on. I have my doubts that it can still get me excited when direct sunlight is showing every blemish on its face and its split ends are looking frizzy. It's name is Getting Pregnant and Having Another Child. At MY age? At this point in our lives? Crazy, I know. Insane! But still, there's just something about it that I find alluring.

I even tossed it out there to Leo while we were having some green beans one night. I thought maybe he'd wanna try a threesome. Maybe he'd want to play along. His biggest objection is that Everyday Reality was needy enough. Was it a smart idea to complicate the situation? How would Everyday Reality feel about this, anyway? Besides, Leo already has his own little fling going on the side. Oh, it's okay. I know all about it. He's been dallying with Going Back To School pretty steadily for over three years now. Sometimes I'm a little jealous, it's true. Sometimes I wish I had Leo all to myself, but it is what it is. If it makes my man happy, who am I to judge? Let him have his fun. As long as he comes home every night to Q and me, it's all good.

The funny thing is, I'm not even that attracted to this Having a Baby thing. But I remember the last time we hung out together, and I remember how special it made me feel. I remember how my whole world revolved around it. Nobody and nothing was as important as that. But then...phew! Talk about a high-maintenance relationship! OMG, Getting Pregnant and Having a Baby is the neediest thing you'll ever knock socks with. Leo is absolutely right about that.

Well, as Maggie says, it's my blog dammit, and it's called "And Time Yet For a Hundred Indecisions" for exactly this reason. And if certain people in the cybersphere find it annoying that I can't make a decision, then pppphhhhhht on them. The Blog is turning into a hot and heavy little fling all on its own anyway. I'm not the kind of girl who can juggle multiple lovers simultaneously. When I try, bad things happen. The Baby and The Blog would just cuss each other out if they ever ran into each other in public. I'd be out at a nice restaurant with The Blog, and we'd be twittering each other under the table and giggling whenever the waiter came over to refill our water glasses, and The Baby would show up and make a huge scene and dump our plates on our heads and storm off. Everything would be ruined. And I'd run after it and apologize, my napkin still tucked into my waistline. I would chase after The Baby and just abandon The Blog. Which would be so unfair.

Like I said, it was just a passing fancy. Not even that hot. I've seen better, if you know what I mean.

This one's for the MILP's or MILP wannabe's

2009-02-03T16:58:00.008-05:00

I went to the local law school's orientation session last fall (and started my blog shortly after that). They put on a class demonstration, a very gentle run-through of the Socratic method, a moot court demo (or trial court demo...are they the same thing?) and ended with a question-and-answer session with some professors and 3L's telling us to remember to take showers and write down your reasons for applying to you can remember why you're putting yourself through all this.

There was one professor who had an impeccable paper pedigree, very prestigious and intimidating. And he was really young, from my point of view. This guy loved to start every sentence with, "So...". He struck me as incredibly pretentious. It went like this:

Potential Applicant: "How would you say law school is different from undergrad?"

Pretentious Pedigreed Genius: "So...it's a process of infantilization, right? So, you have people telling you where you need to be and what you need to be doing and there's very little unstructured time afforded you while you're here."

Ugh. If I want pretentious and pedantic, I'll hang out - gawd love 'im - with my husband.

And then I thought, wtf? "Infantilization"?!! That's a six syllable word that he chose to whip out during orientation, where he's supposed to care about wooing us. Are you kidding me? So what is he like when he's NOT wooing us? omg...This guy is not living in the real world!

Now, my conclusion is correct of course, and most of you know this, because if he were living in the real world and not in some made-up, cloistered, Latin-centric La-La Land of Concentrated Brilliance, he would know that the last thing on this earth that is structured, that accepts being told where it needs to be or what it needs to do, is a freakin' INFANT. He has no clue. And so his fancy-pants use of a six syllable word backfired completely; it showed not that he was brilliant but quite the opposite: that he has not experienced the mind-churning challenge of caring for an infant and lived to tell about it. He knows nothing of life. He knows words. Kinda.

And so I dedicate this post to all of you struggling with this kind of over-the-top bs as you travel slowly but steadily through each case, each paper, each brief or motion, and each lecture. In particular, I'm thinking of A Woman In Law School's post from yesterday. The professor who loves to hear himself talk. And keeps the class late. That is just not right. Is he indefatigable or something? (had to throw MY favorite six syllable word out there)

Truth be told, even while I ranted silently to myself about his pretentiousness, something of his style permeated my brain. Now I hear myself doing it! Somebody called me the other day asking why the spam filter was blocking one kind of email but not another, and yes, this is what I heard myself saying:

Me: "Soooo...you know it's an automatically-generated message, right? That it doesn't use the same form as a regular message? Soooo...the message format is unique; it's missing required information in the From: line, soooo...the filter thinks it's spam and blocked it."

I should have said, "...ergo the filter thinks it's spam..." geesh.

Yeah, that lady isn't going to call me back any time soon.

And you are surprised that the first 9.6 seconds of THIS* is part of my morning ritual?

(yes, Cee beat me to posting this. Everybody's faster than me. And everybody's seen this by now - over a million hits on youtube already. But I just had to put it in here for posterity.)

----------------------
Oh people, I figured out how to separate out the first 9 seconds of just the lady screaming and re-post it to youtube, but then realized, if I ever do apply to law school, or more importantly, submit a bar application, a charge of copyright infringement on my record would be a baaaaaaaaaaaad thing. Rats.

Jokes Only a Parent Would Love

2009-02-01T13:46:00.010-05:00

This is why my husband hates it when my family gets together. We're all like "Did you hear the one about..." This is also why my husband is so much cooler than I will ever be.

Nevertheless, some of you have children who will eventually approach the age of joke-telling, and it is a very challenging time for parents, because kids have no idea why things are funny (much like a lot of bloggers, myself included) but want to make everyone listen to them and laugh regardless of whether the content deserves an audience or not. So they tell "jokes" that go nowhere and make no sense. Here are two that have lasted.

What's brown and sticky? ...a Stick !
(I love that one for some reason)

The punchline is there, but it's in white font. If you want to see it, highlight the entire line.

Person A: Knock, knock.

Person B: Who's there?

Person A: The interrupting cow.

Person B: The interrupt...

Person A: Mooooooooooooo! (you have to say it fast before the other person finishes asking "The interrupting cow WHO?")

Lag Liv beat me to it

2009-01-31T21:54:00.006-05:00

Lag Liv beat me to it, but a good idea is a good idea and so, I also present you the list of 25 random things about myself. There are probably a lot of people on Facebook who are tagging people or got tagged with this since each taggee is supposed to turn around and tag another 25 people. I'm not surprised it's showing up in the blogs. I mean, LL is right: why not use it for a blog post? Posting it here is kind of a no-brainer, especially since I can post this anonymously here. I can't think of 25 banal things that would be acceptable for real-life posting on Facebook that would be worth writing or worth reading. This list is fairly tame, but still, there are one or two facts that I'm not sure I want the mothers from the Girl Scout troop to know, you know? And so I post it here, on my Faceless Book.

1) I learned how to say "whilst" instead of "while" by watching Super Nanny.

2) I always chat with whoever cuts my hair and I never enjoy the conversation.

3) Of my two cats, my favorite one is Nibbles because she yells at me the most.

4) My 8 year old daughter has already outperformed me athletically because she scored a goal in soccer last Thursday and I have never scored a goal in soccer.

5) When I was 4, I performed a double flip off the high-dive at the YMCA for a watching crowd. I remember the applause. I remember psyching myself up to not be scared and I wasn't scared. I just did it.

6) I have kissed the Blarney Stone at Blarney Castle near Cork, Ireland. (After I kissed it, someone told me local teenagers often sneak out to the castle at night and pee on it.)

7) I have been to Liberia, Ireland, Italy, France, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands.

8) The last time I left the United States was over twenty years ago.

9) I double-majored in French and Linguistics and used to speak French pretty well, especially after spending time there. I haven't spoken French...in about twenty years.

10) I was an overnight guest at a private residence of a French ambassador and his wife inside the walls of Mont St. Michelle. They took me home with them from the train station because I had nowhere else to go.

11) I spent the night in "The Tumbleweed Hotel" at Shakespeare and Company in Paris and the proprietor, George Whitman, kissed me good night on the lips. He was like 70 years old. Blech.

12) I am the youngest of three children and the only girl.

13) I have always been compelled to prove that girls can do whatever boys can do.

14) I played soccer and lacrosse in high school, and the trumpet and piano.

15) My mother says I was always smiling as a child and wonders what happened (it's called hormones, mom).

16) My parents grew up in the same town and have been happily married for over 50 years.

17) I met my husband online.

18) We've been married for over 9 years and although we were married by a Presbyterian minister, we don't go to church (other than holidays) and our daughter has never been baptised.

19) I told my Women Studies professor in college that I never wanted to be a mother because mothers all seem a little crazy.

20) The proudest moment of my life was when my daughter first latched on to breast feed, on the day she was born. I'll never forget that moment. (Is that a little crazy?)

21) Last October, I flew to Washington, DC and walked 60 miles in the 3 Day Walk to fight breast cancer in support of the Susan G. Komen for The Cure campaign. I was on a team of other women techies.

22) I started work on a Ph.D. and left the program at the end of the first year, about 14 years ago. I've been in the IT field ever since.

23) I cringe inside whenever I hear the term "techie" applied to me (even if it's me saying it). I actually wince in discomfort.

24) I talk on the phone at least once a week with my best friend from high school who has dual citizenship with the United Sates and Liberia and now lives in Brooklyn. (She scored many goals in soccer!)

25) I wear the same pair of shoes to work almost every day until they are visibly worn down then I throw them away.

she hates me, in black and white

2009-01-27T15:03:00.017-05:00

So Q got mad at me the other night, because...ahem...I, uh...was like, totally completely hooked on this blogging stuff and could NOT tear myself away from the computer. It was bedtime and she was wanting me to follow her into her room and listen to something SHE had written in her journal, the shiny metallic blue one with the "I heart My Friends" tattooed on the upholstered cover below a little heart-shaped mirror.

I kept saying, "I'll be there in a minute. Just give me, like, five more minutes."

I could hear her in her room, singing the same little bit of monotonic melody she'd been singing for the past fifteen minutes. She's been writing songs since before Christmas. She wanted me to come in and listen to her latest lyrical updates. But I was working on my own updates, and I was kinda more impressed with my efforts than with hers. Because I'm a mean, selfish, evil woman. I didn't know I was those things, but I'm discovering that comment-crack does this to a person.

Okay, so she finally got so mad at my blowing her off that she got quiet.

There's nothing as effective as silence if you want your parent's attention.

Quiet. It was quiet. Too quiet. I looked up just in time to see her stalking silently to her room, arms crossed in frustrated resignation across her chest, her gaze levelled directly at me, nothing but rage in her eyes. She never took her eyes off me as she turned the corner. It was like her head rotated around like that girl in the Exorcist. Then she disappeared into her room.

Uh-oh.

I soon hopped up - it took me a minute or two to fully disengage - and went in there and apologized profusely for not keeping my word that it would only be five more minutes. I think it had stretched into twenty minutes by that point. Maybe thirty-five. She was still so angry she wasn't speaking to me at first. Then she said I had lied to her. Which, basically, yeah, I had. I had no defense. There was no excuse. I was ashamed of myself, ashamed of what my addiction to comment-crack had driven me to, how it was tearing my family apart. This had to stop.

I apologized multiple times, she slowly relaxed her body language, softening up to me. Before two more minutes had passed, we had made up, although I could tell some resentment still lingered. She said it was okay. Hugs and kisses were exchanged. I begged for one more chance to listen to her song. She looked me square in the eye and asked with utmost earnestness, "Do you WANT to hear it?"

A quick, deep jolt of mommy guilt shot through me. My child doubting my interest in her. Boy, that moment really sucked. Without getting emotional, without burdening her further by unloading, selfishly, how rotten I felt at that moment, I assured her that I did. I really did want to hear it. I mean, if she still wanted me to.

So she sang her latest version of her latest work. Meh. The problem is, she really thinks she can sing. I don't discourage her, but at the same time, I'm not DVRing episodes of American Idol for her so she can check out the competition, either.

"That's great, honey. I really liked it. Sounds like it's really coming along. Thanks for sharing it with me." That last part I really meant.

I sat down in the rocking chair next to her bed because she always begs me to and because she goes to sleep faster (usually) if I do, as long as we don't talk. If we do talk, this is when I find out that she still has a crush on Joey, and if Beth blew her off at lunch that day or actually waited for her this time. It is at this point in the day when she loves me the most, this ten minutes of letting go, with her head on the pillow, her eyes half-closed. I get a lot of "I love you Mommy" and "You're the best Mommy in the world. I'm lucky to have you as a Mother."

At eight years old, it's a mix between, "Aaawwwwww!" and a bit of, "...uh, yeah, pull the other one."

But she really means it, during those ten minutes of each day. It's kind of like knowing what she'll be like when she's drunk. A little side-window view of my daughter in an altered state.

So, flash forward to the next night. I'm much more diligent about the bedtime routine this time. I don't even lift the laptop's lid; I don't go anywhere near it. I stay on her and with her, making sure she picks up her towel and puts her dirty clothes in the hamper and brushes her teeth. We go into her room together and she hops up onto her bed. She asks for the journal. I hand it to her, although I really should insist on lights out. She looks at me with an expression I've not seen before on her little freckled face.

"I was really mad at you last night," she says.

I knew this, but was still surprised that she was mentioning it a day later. I say I know she was, and she was right to be, and I should have stopped what I was doing when I said I would.

She hesitates, then says, "I wrote about it in here."

I pause. She pauses. I'm not sure what I should do with this information. Then I say, "Well, good. That's what journals are for. You can talk about how you feel about stuff and write about it in there." I'm satisfied with my response, purposely respecting her privacy, helping to erect appropriate boundaries for her, for us. I make a move to start tucking her in but she doesn't accommodate my efforts by snuggling down. Instead, she stays seated on top of the covers and asks, "Do you want to see it?"

There is no guile in her question. She is a little excited, and a little bit scared, to show me what she wrote in the depths of her anger the other night. But the honest desire to share it outweighs all other needs, and this is obvious to me, because I can see the raised eyebrows and the almost-happy expression as she looks up at me, waiting for an answer. And she waits now. She doesn't just plod ahead, thrusting it in my face like she used to. She waits. It'll take time for her to once again assume as a matter of course that I'm interested. Another brief jab of mommy guilt, there.

And here, I struggle for a second. What's the right answer? Yes, of course, I am interested, I love you, I care about you and everything that is important to you, yes, I am here, I am your mother, yes, yes of course I want to see it. Like, duh. Are you kidding me? And also, I AM your mother, I am not your pal, your buddy, your playmate. I am trying to erect healthy and appropriate boundaries, now that you do things like write in journals. You should have a sense of privacy, you should have the strength to listen only to yourself sometimes, to realize there's a line that separates each of us from each other. Except, this line has been blurred quite a bit by me, and probably will be again, and it's a weakness of character that will not serve her well, so the experts say, and I see how she respects her dad more than me because of this blurred line between us, but she doesn't share her journal with him and HE has never even heard of Joey. So I just don't know, and I struggle for a second, and then I cave. I cave in to the fun of sharing, because that is what she most wants in this moment, and because I'm aware of the stain that is still on my record from the previous evening, where I just wasn't interested enough. I need to prove that I really am interested, that I really do care. That is what my mommy guilt is telling me, anyway. Boundaries, shmoundaries. I need this one.

I give the smallest of shrugs, raise my eyebrows and say, "Sure, okay. You can show me if you want." Another brief pause, then I quickly add, " Are you sure you want to?"

She has already opened the book as she answers, "Yeah," then she says, "Look. See? I was really mad."

In letters bigger than half the page are the words, "I HATE HER!" which I do not need any help seeing. But the rest of the page is full of smaller print, and she graciously points out the word "Lyer" [sic] and the phrase, "She lied to me. I've been waiting and she said it would be one more minit and she is not comeing." There was more...including a picture of her hitting me with a baseball bat, while smiling. OK, that part was a bit much.

I gotta say, though, that it really did hurt. I really did wish at that moment that, for MY sake, I had insisted on forging and respecting those new boundaries. I still do not believe she showed me this out of vengeance. But nevertheless, it had the same effect on me. I tried to hide the momentary flash of pain I was feeling, and I think I was successful. I've paid for my callous, self-centered disregard of her needs, and she's had the chance to vent and share, to feel me out as to whether I really do care or not, and to hopefully feel fully avenged. And I hope, for both of us, that it's over and done with now. But I know that I am the "HER" and that those words are written in a journal and they will be there for a very, very long time. Because I still have my journals. And it's one thing when they are YOUR journals. But it's a very different thing when it's someone else's journal and you are the "HER" that is hated on a page that you cannot erase.

Freakily Fighting Hollywood

2009-01-25T19:53:00.003-05:00

No wonder I don't go to movies anymore.

Yes, I understand the concept of willing suspension of disbelief. I'm just not good at it.

I just saw Hotel for Dogs with my 8-year-old daughter. We enjoyed it, in as far as not walking out nor wanting our money back. But it scared me, from a mother's perspective. Yes, hooray for the kids sticking together, standing firm against opposition, following through on what they believed in. But how to explain to my kid that she is not allowed to ever do about 80% of the things those kids did? I started to explain what breaking and entering was, but got as far as, "That's against the law. The police could arrest them for that. Don't go into buildings without permission."

I felt old, like somebody's mother. What a surprise.

I always take movies and their relationship to reality way too seriously. You should have heard me on the way home after seeing The Matrix. My rantings after that film got me banned for life from my husband's Movie-Buddy list. So I caught myself this time. I sorta slumped down in my seat and tried to be cool about the whole thing. Let her figure it out for herself. Let the police call me five years from now. She can tell me from jail how she saw this movie when she was eight and was sure that prancing around abandoned buildings was no big deal.

Then I started wondering, just how many crimes DID those kids commit?

If there is anyone who falls into the Bermuda Triangle of (1) reading this blog (2) having viewed Hotel for Dogs and (3) knowing something about criminal law, I welcome and encourage you to cite the various crimes committed by the kids in this film. A prize to anyone who sums up the total number of years behind bars if convicted that any one of them would have earned.

Technolawyer grows on me...sorta

2009-01-21T12:52:00.003-05:00

Are law firms just screwed when they do a discovery motion? I mean, as a techie, sometimes we have to scramble around and produce stuff because some lawyer somewhere took half a second to poorly word their request. We send them *our* best efforts at "discovering" what they're looking for. Often, we give them more than is needed. Just to be safe. Just to sure there *won't* be anybody knocking on the door saying, "Wait a minute. We need full access to your network files and email system and archival system." Whoa, Nelly.

This approach can often lead to a situation described by a technolawyer.com Technical Release newsletter (yes, I subscribe, and thank you for not charging, and thank you for the great job you're doing which is anything but worthless...ahem...are we clear on this point now?) called "TR: How Many Discovery Documents Can You Review in 30 Days?‏". In this instance, one of the case studies highlighted in the newsletter addresses how "a federal agency involved in a contract dispute with one of its suppliers, had just received its opponent’s discovery production—48,747 documents in single-page TIFF image format, with document breaks but without digitized text."

At which point I had to stop reading because I was laughing so hard.

Hahahahahahahahahahaha. That is funny. I'm sorry, but I think that is hysterical. A single-page TIFF image format? Are you serious? And you guys have to accept that? Seriously?!!

Yes, I'm waving my nerd banner now, see me wave it high overhead? What I understand this "single-page TIFF image" to mean is: they sent a ginormous picture of the almost 50,000 documents to the federal agency. They basically screwed the federal agency.

So the truth of the matter is that you have to take whatever we give you? And then you have to go out and hire another company to decode/decipher/decompress/deduplicate/digitize the opponent's discovery production? What a process. Borders on scam-artistry. So when my boss walks into my office and says, "We need to produce anything with the word "avulsion" in it between March of 2001 and today. Put whatever you find on a cd and send it to our general counsel and me when you get the chance. I'm going to lunch." I can send whatever I find in any format I choose?

I'm thinking we can produce a picture of our computer room as discovery. See? Here's a picture of where the data is. Here's a picture of 200 million documents. Now that's hawt!

Carrying it forward

2009-01-20T17:06:00.003-05:00

Can anyone my age (or thereabouts) on up truly imagine what the world looks like to those of us born at the turn of the millenium? I want to know if my daughter, my little lily white daughter (notwithstanding the freckles across her nose and cheeks), I want to know what it's like for her and her peers... I mean, like, duh...a black man is president...so what already?! Geez mom, get with the times. Like that's a big deal or something. Puhleeeze.

In his speech, President Obama (Whew! it's exciting to write that!) said:

"This is the meaning of our liberty and our creed -- why men and women and children of every race and every faith can join in celebration across this magnificent Mall, and why a man whose father less than 60 years ago might not have been served at a local restaurant can now stand before you to take a most sacred oath."

I want today's children to not be able to imagine a time when someone would be refused service based on skin color or cultural differences. I want racism to be a distant, and seldom visited, memory. What I'd like to see is the day when this is all so standard, so typical, so usual.

Truth be told, what I'd most like to see is Michelle Obama's acceptance speech. I mean, duh, of course a woman can be president. Geez, mom. What year do you think this is, anyway?

Let's not focus on the past. Let's move forward. Let's keep moving forward.

MLK legacy

2009-01-19T22:16:00.004-05:00

I just left my daughter's room. She stayed awake longer than she was allowed to, reading a Nancy Drew book my mom got her yesterday.

She wanted another glass of water.

I went to the kitchen, returned with the water, and tried to leave.

She wanted to say prayers together.

I returned to her bedside, dutifully clasped my hands together and bowed my head.

This is what she prayed:

"Dear God, today was Martin Luther King [slight pause] Junior [slight pause] 's birthday. Please tell him that I hope he had a great birthday today. He did so many good things for so many people, and he wanted to help people, and he wanted people to do the right thing and be nice to each other like they're supposed to. I just think he was really nice and please tell him that I hope his birthday was great. Amen."

On the eve of the historic inauguration of our first African American President of the United States of America, I just want it to be known that little white girls in middle America, without any prodding or compulsion by politcally correct adults, are spontaneously wishing Dr. King a joyous birthday celebration in their nightime prayers. How awesome is that.

Grammar for idiots, by idiots

2009-01-19T21:05:00.008-05:00

So my husband Leo, my daughter Q and I were sitting together around the dinner table, sharing our nightly repast. My husband was telling us about how much he has improved the lives of the three of us by doing so much housework today. He was especially interested in pointing out that both his daughter and his wife have benefitted from his efforts.

Him addressing both of us: "You are really lucky that your husband and your father does so much work around here."

Me addressing him: "You mean "or"...as in 'You are lucky that your husband OR your father does so much work around here.'" (any help with the quotation marks is welcome)

Him: "No. I am both a husband and a father."

At this, I roll my eyes.

Then he leans back in his chair a little bit so he can draw a boundary in the air around both Q and me with his hands and says emphatically: "Yooouuuu...as in plural." Like he's explaining a difficult concept.

Him, with his hands hovering in the air sorta like bestowing a blessing upon us: "Yooouuuu (waving his jazz hands over us) are lucky to have a husband and a father to clean up after you all the time."

Me: "Yes, but the quality of having you as a husband does not apply to each member of this group, nor does the quality of having you as a father. They don't distribute transitively among the members of the group. The group is a singular thing, even though there are multiple entities within it, and the separate relationships of husband and father do not apply to the group itself, because both qualities do not apply to each member of the group. Therefore, you should use the exclusive "or": 'You are lucky to have a husband OR father who cleans up after you.' " (again - quotation marks here - comments welcome)

At which point he sighed and started clearing the table.

The trick is to change the subject and wear him down.

Now, even as I was saying it, I wasn't sure I was right. I felt I was right, but thought I kinda sounded like an idiot. Not that I shared that thought with Leo, of course.

Economic Realities

2009-01-17T09:02:00.003-05:00

...

(I'm procrastinating packing for this camping trip. I am dreading it. We are due to leave in 25 minutes. I'm not ready yet. I do not want to go, I do not want to go, I do not want to go...)

Found this article. Not sure why everything I google returns with a reference from 2005 or 2006. Am I seriously three years behind the times? What are people worried about in early 2009? Why aren't any good references to "paying off law school debt" from more recent times?

The ultimate sticking point: to get as far away from student loan debt as possible. To avoid it like the plague it is. What makes THAT so attractive, all that debt? Who says there's prestige in THAT? Selling our futures for what? For respect? For prestige? This is what I struggle with.

Fire, fire in the night

2009-01-16T22:03:00.004-05:00

My daughter has discovered the inherent fascination of a flickering flame. She wants to keep a tea candle lit in her room tonight. She likes the smell. This is all well and good until her father comes home or the house burns down. She's blown it out and relit it about five times at this point. I just explained the term "pyromaniac" to her. Doesn't seem to have phased her in the least.

"I love this candle!"

We're headed to a Girl Scout sleepover tomorrow. The cold temperatures mean we'll sleep together as a troop in the big lodge instead of individual cabins or tents. The big lodge is where the huge, walk-in fireplace is. I'm sure you can see where my anxiety is centered this evening.

Here goes Trip #2 with the Hip Cool Moms (and my pyromaniac daughter). God grant me the strength.

Career change pays off, eh?

2009-01-14T11:34:00.003-05:00

First thought: SHE SENT OUT 685 RESUMES??? Are you serious?!

And 40 is too old to be an associate, they said. 40 is too old for a lot of things. Yet here we are, 40 and beyond, still participating in life, fools that we are. One day we might even turn 50. Egads. Who will put us out of our misery then? Little left to do but shoot us at that point.

I wonder what the numbers really are in terms of her career change "paying off". She cashed in her retirement, people. Now she's in solo practice (read: no "retirement plan" other than what she can scrape together from her take-home...can she afford to make consistent/regular contributions to a retirement account?...or will she have to work into her 90's after her hearing has failed her? And health care costs...how will she pay for her hearing aids?). It doesn't mention whether she has a husband or children. Which makes me think she probably doesn't have a husband or children, most especially children. Which makes this less helpful to me than I initially thought it would be. I am, seemingly, grossly aberrant. Comparing apples to apples in my case feels futile.

Anyway, here's the article (from http://blog.technolawyer.com/2005/09/career_change_p.html via Magic Cookie's 2005 archives. Thanks CM!)

Career Change Pays Off for Techie Turned Solo and Author

By Neil Squillante Wednesday, September 21, 2005

TechnoLawyer member Diana Brodman Summers was earning a good living as a database administrator, but yearned for a career change so she used her retirement savings to invest in herself and pursue a law degree at night. A few days before the bar exam, her employer downsized her out of her job.
Fortunately, Diana still managed to pass the bar exam despite this bad news. Unfortunately, she could not find a job as a lawyer. "Out of 685 resumes I got three interviews, two of whom told me to my face I was too old [at 40] to be an associate."
Instead, she started contracting herself out to law firms on a per case or per month basis. Eventually, she earned enough money and developed enough of a reputation to open her own solo practice in Lisle, Illinois, a western suburb of Chicago. Diana primarily represents employees in employment discrimination matters, and also serves as an arbitrator for Cook County and DuPage County's Mandatory Arbitration Program.
Diana is also a best-selling author. Her current book How to Buy Your First Home has become the top-seller in its category. She recently spoke about the book on her local ABC TV station. Her other books include Illinois Landlord's Legal Guide, How to Write an Illinois Will, and How to File for Divorce in Illinois. Her next book, How to Start a Home Based Business will hit bookshelves in a few months.
As for her favorite technology tools, Diana lists Word and WordPerfect, Adobe Acrobat, Netscape, and especially Stamps.com. "It enables me to print postage whenever I want, and it keeps a records of when I printed the postage and a file of names and addresses."

I found this via a link on Magic Cookie's archives from 2005, which takes you to another 2005 link at Technolawyer.com (full link shown at top of article).

Final thought: I was initially thrilled to stumble upon a site called Technolawyer.com because I thought it would be about the direct application of tech skills to lawyerly/client-related matters (emphasis on "direct application"). Alas, it seems to focus on "practice management" which is the legal profession's term for business administration, it appears. In other words, it's all about "use these tools to track your time" and how to do backups, etc. Blech! I already do that stuff, to the hilt. That's the stuff I'd like quite a bit less of, thank you very much. So my quest for info on how being a techie helps you be the best darn e-discovery lawyer around is still full on.

What type of lawyer are you?

2009-01-13T12:27:00.005-05:00

In my continuing quest to learn more about the legal profession and what it's like to do that as your day job, I stumbled upon the list of categories below. I wonder how many people truly think about what their career as a lawyer will be when they decide to go this route (i.e. law school). From what I can tell, it seems like most of it happens by accident. Maybe the type of law you practice is much less important than the role you play within that category? I dunno. My boss's daughter graduated from law school a couple of years ago and she's doing insurance defense, but with an eye toward being an elected official, a goal she had claimed for herself before she even entered law school. So I wonder what insurance defense has to do with being a public servant (i.e. governor some day).

So, where does Insurance Defense fit in the following categories? Insurance law or Business law?

Accident Law
Auto Accidents
Aquatic Water
Bus Train
Construction Accidents
Slips Falls
Traumatic Brain Injury
Wrongful Death

Admiralty Maritime
Boating Injury
Cruise Line
Maritime Contracts
Maritime Worker Injury
Salvage And Treasure

Aviation Law
Commercial Airlines
International
Non Commercial Airlines

Bankruptcy Law
Business Bankruptcy
Collections
Consumer Bankruptcy
Credit Problems
Creditor Rights

Business Law
Corporations
Franchise Law
Partnerships
Starting A Business
Trade Regulation

Criminal Law
Arrests And Searches
Drug Crimes
Drunk Driving
Parole Probation
Violent Crimes
White Collar Crimes
Juvenile Law

Employment Labor Law
Hiring
Firing
Job Discrimination
Insurance / Retirement / Benefits
Sexual Harassment
Wage & Hour
Workers Comp

Estate Planning
Asset Protection
Elder Law
Probate
Trusts
Wills
Living Wills / Power of Attorney

Family Law
Adoption Law
Child Custody
Child Support
Divorce Law
Domestic Violence
Pre Marital Agreement
Spousal Support

Financial Law
Banking Law
Broker Disputes
Commodities Law
Investment Terms
Raising Capital
Securities Law

General Practice
Contract Law
Guarantees
Legal Remedies
Lemon Law
Licenses
Suing Being Sued
Traffic Law

Government Law
Civil Rights Law ADA
Education Law
Environmental
Military Law
Public Contracts
Social Security Law

Immigration Law
Asylum
Citizenship
Permanent Residents
Student Visas
Tourist Visas
Work Visas

Insurance Law
Auto Insurance
Business Insurance
Long Term Care
Disability Insurance
Health Insurance
Insurers Bad Faith
Life Insurance Law
Property Insurance
Viaticals

Intellectual Property
Communications Law
Computer Law
Music Law
Copyright Law
Patent Law
Trade Secrets
Trademark Law

Litigation
Appeals
Arbitration
Civil Law Suits
Class Actions
Mediation

Personal Injury
Defective Products
Drug-Toxic Chemicals
Libel And Slander
Malpractice Law
Property Damage
Structured Settlements

Real Estate Law
Agricultural Law
Buy Sell A Home
Commercial Real Estate
Construction
Condemnation
Landlord Tenant
Mortgage Matters
Zoning

Tax Law
Corporate Tax Law
Estate Tax Law
Gift Tax Law
Income Tax Law
Property Tax Law
Tax Enforcement

Small Claims

I found these categorizations at http://www.freeadvice.com/all_topics.php

Broken resolution

2009-01-12T11:37:00.002-05:00

Twice today already (and it isn't even noon yet!) I've broken my New Year's Resolution to not apologize. I apologized to my suitemate for talking too long and too much to her this morning, which she waved away graciously, and I apologized to my dad about them having to drive to the doctor's office this morning for no good reason since they have to go back again at 2pm (since Leo won't be back in time afterall). I said, "I'm sorry if you're annoyed about the wasted trip down there" but my aging father heard "I'm sorry THAT you are annoyed" which actually did annoy him until I repeated the "IF" part of my apology.

You see? I just get myself in more trouble. And I want to say I'm sorry about that. Maybe if somebody slapped me everytime I said the word sorry...kind of reminds me of that last line from Flannery O'Connor's short story "A Good Man is Hard to Find":

"She would of been a good woman," The Misfit said, "if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life."

Ugh.

Strep and other maladies

2009-01-12T09:56:00.003-05:00

My daughter is with my parents this morning. She said it hurt to swallow yesterday afternoon, and she was coughing about once an hour throughout the day. Towards 7pm she started to feel warm. By 9pm her temp was 99.4. I was determined she would make it to school today at that point. By 11pm her temp was over 100 and I was forced to revise my plans. This morning, while still in bed in her pj's, her temp read 101. By the time she got dressed and my parents were standing in our kitchen ready to take her to the doctor to have a throat culture done, it had gone down to 100.2. Of course. She never has a fever when she is actually at the doctor's office. At this point, the three of them are chillin' at Village Inn. Doctor isn't available to do the culture until 2 this afternoon. By then, Leo (I've decided to call my husband Leo) should be back in town and he can take her. My parents are 74 years old and it can be a struggle to have the energy to run all over town multiple times a day. This morning, my mother especially, looked fragile bathed in the flouresent light in the kitchen. I wish my husband had known them when they were younger, when they were more vibrant and less temperamental. In a lot of ways, I've already said good-bye to them. They are still here, but not as they were. Just as my sweet baby is gone, and my toddler is gone, and my pre-schooler is gone forever. It seems aging is a constant exercise in saying good-bye.

For future development

2009-01-10T22:58:00.006-05:00

Sorry if this is tacky, but I'm sick of running out of time to post various posts/thoughts/queries. Hence, a quick list that I intend to come back to asap (where p= who the heck knows) to fully flesh out in their entirety when time permits (insert laughter).

My daughter is a stalker (shudder)

Musical heirs

I rock as a mom (scored a playdate with stalker victim)

All guys named Tim suck (re: Tim Ferriss article by Penelope)

Marriage vs. motherhood re: hardest job going (my vote is for marriage, but the massive number of variables makes this a less interesting question, more of a moot question)

Going to beat my kid if she doesn't start taking school a whole lot more seriously...and buy her a pony if she does (the ol' carrot vs. stick dilemma)

New Year's Resolution: I resolutely refuse to apologize in 2009. To anybody. For anything.

Friends of my daughter who have older brothers = an unfair advantage? disadvantage?

Lucky me

2009-01-07T11:27:00.008-05:00

Thinking of law as a career, the last thing I'd want is to spend my time searching for things and not finding them. Case law examples are one type of thing I imagine people spend time looking for but not finding. You can't cite a case if you don't know about it and can't find it or it never existed and isn't available to be found in the first place. And to spend time looking for something that doesn't exist....oooooooooh, that would burn me up.

Because I'm not a lucky person. I never win door prizes. I never win coin tosses. If I call heads, it'll come up tails. I'm pretty good at rock-paper-scissors against my daughter, but that's the extent of my luck. So looking for a relevant case citation, for me, would be likely to result in frustration without citation. That's like taxation without representation. You put the work in, but get nothing for your efforts. Oh heck no. No thank you.

Is finding a relevant case something you spend a lot of time doing as an attorney?

How common is it to not find what you need? How lucky do you have to be?

There are such things as lucky people and unlucky people. I'm certain. Read this. It backs me up on this claim. But not in the way you'd think.

The part where he puts the large insert into the middle of the newspaper, and some people don't see it...which he then attributes to anxiety or only finding what you're looking for...OMG that has happened to me a gazillion times. That old phrase "If it were a snake it would have bitten me" which alludes to not seeing something that is right in front of you, that applies to me a thousand times over. I'll read the fine print on an advertisement, but miss the headline. I'm wondering what people are talking about. "Where'd you see that?!" and the inevitable "Right THERE!" with the accompanying annoyance/dismay/disbelief/dismissal. Not fun. I think it's related to ADD. To hyperfocusing on the tiny details and missing, literally, the large print items. Overlooking things posted on bulletin boards. It's not Attention Deficit, it's Attention Misdirection. And it affects your "luck", for lack of a better term.

But all that aside, where I put my attention has little to do with whether I win the door prize. Or the coin toss. Or true/false questions like "Obama's favorite color is blue: true or false?" Some things have nothing to do with effort, focus, open-mindedness, gut instincts. Some things require good luck. Which I seldom experience, in the realm of fifty-fifty chances.

Careers where luck matters less than pure hard work: problem-resolution that is centered around a well-established skill set. Examples include ER doctors, furniture restoration, refrigerator repair, tour guides...okay, I'm making this up, obviously. But you get the idea. Luck is never completely out-of-the-picture in any career. But you need much more of it to become the next Brad Pitt than if you're trying to succeed as a librarian or car mechanic.

The important question here is: should unlucky people steer clear of the law as a career?