Work

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Exposing My Breasts in a Law Office

I read this story about a professor whose breastfeeding was made into an issue because people are ignorant and have too much time on their hands. See it here. It made me think of my own situation where my own breastfeeding became an issue for the same reason. Her points were so valid, I felt a kinship with her expressions of frustration that anyone actually thought her public breastfeeding was worth turning into an issue. And actually, the breastfeeding that became an issue for me wasn’t even in public, it was in the privacy of my own office.

I used to share my attorney practice with a small firm, but basically ran my own practice my own way, which included nursing my daughter during the day during my breaks. I was in a satellite location and worked in that space alone. A couple of years ago, I was in my office breastfeeding one afternoon between clients. After she finished, I handed my daughter to her dad, who took his parenting time with her while I worked. I entered my waiting room to discover that the potential client who had been waiting there had left. I called him and he told me he didn’t want anything to do with my “kind of outfit.” I made some joke to my baby’s father, saying that my clothes must have been too nice for the guy, then promptly forgot about it. I didn’t actually know it was because I had been breastfeeding because I had been in my office with the door shut and he could not see what we were doing. It wasn’t until a situation arose later that I finally got what made the man leave.

Two years later, two YEARS! while having a dispute with the firm over something completely unrelated, one of the old partners of the firm out of the blue and in a completely non-sequitur response to what I had just said blurted, “Well, you lost a potential client because you BREASTFED in front of him. He ended up hiring your old firm.” He spit the words at me. I was in such shock at this for so many reasons, I was momentarily speechless. Then the rage took over. WHY was this relevant? WHO the hell was he to bring it up? Why NOW? It wasn’t even true! I did not keep my cool. I angrily explained that this had not been what happened and told him that his even bringing it up gave me an idea of the sort of person that he was. “Seriously?” I said to him, practically yelling. “Are you actually bringing this up as evidence of my lack of work ethic? First of all, I bust my ASS, working full time AND I’m a single mother! And secondly, I did NOT breastfeed in front of a potential client, not that I would object to doing so OR that it’s any of your business.” He tried to backpedal and tell me that he was only “Letting me know what people were saying,” because theoretically my old boss had shared this story with him. Later he recanted this assertion. He couldn’t even own what he said, but no matter. I was ready to part ways at this point anyway; this situation was just one of many that made this clear for me.

Like the author of the article, I’ve breastfeed my youngest daughter everywhere, on two continents, in half a dozen countries. I’ve never once had anyone say anything negative to me about it. I did the same with my oldest until she was four and a half years old. Never a peep, and here was this old jackass using it to create conflict because he had no reasonable arguments in our disagreement. I completely lost any shred of respect I had for the guy at that point. I had never really liked him. He seemed to spend all his time worrying about all the work others were doing and never doing any himself. In the three years I worked with him, I never once saw him actually working. I saw him loitering in the lobby. I saw him playing with plastic toys. I saw him complaining about money. Never once did I see him at his desk, doing his job. Our conflict was over him wanting me to work more than I already did. Apparently my taking time to breastfeed my daughter interfered with that, at least that was the only point I could derive from his saying what he did.

Unlike the author, I have been more outspoken about women’s right to breastfeed. I wrote a law review article on it in law school (see that here). I have long felt that efforts to marginalize breastfeeding are anti-woman and anti-child. Ultimately, though the author is not an activist in her choice, I share with her the view that feeding our children as they were meant to be fed is a basic right of our biology, and should receive no more notice than menstruating, or growing hair, or doing anything else fundamentally human and female.

I’m still breastfeeding. It’s great for my daughter’s health and immune system. It provides comfort and nourishment. As an infant it was available on demand, with no effort other than pulling up my shirt. It’s free. It makes her very happy. That’s good enough for both of us.

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Pointless Rambling

I had the weirdest dream last night. A woman I know who is my counselor, friend, confidant came over to me to give me a hug, and as she did, I felt something poking me in the groin. I looked down to see that she had a penis. Fully erect, it was prodding me. “Oops,” she said. “He’s a little excited.” This was her response to my discovery that she was a man. I stared at her, incredulous, searching her face for some masculinity, for something I had missed in all the times I had sat with her, poring over my life. Her visage had not changed. She was exactly the same, but then, she wasn’t. She was not the same. I could not wrap my brain around this. She is a man? I also felt betrayed that she had not told me. She had shared with me other aspects of her life that were as intimate, why not this?

I wakened from the dream slowly, existing in that place you do sometimes right on the edge of sleep, meandering between consciousness and unconsciousness. The dream stayed with me all day. I rose and performed the usual morning mundanity, then headed into work where it felt like many others I had to deal with were experiencing inner turmoil or something and wanted to hook me in. I just couldn’t get interested in the drama. I had a hard time focusing on work. I wanted to lie around reading a book. I slogged through the spate of emails, finished up some files, poked around, took a trip to the post office, finished up a few other things, and finally gave up and came home. Now I’m writing this. Not sure why. Not sure to whom. WordPress was open when I turned on my computer so I started typing and this was the result. How profound.

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Rick Santelli is an Idiot…Still

I posted this a while back.  See it here.  I was responding to this moron the first time he opened his idiot face and let venom spew.   Of course, since he’s still slithering around out there, the post continues to garner hits, over two years later.  I reread what I wrote, and I can’t really improve on it.  All I said is still true.  So I’m posting it again.

Rick Santelli is an Idiot

I can’t believe this guy.  I heard him spouting off about how Americans shouldn’t pay for their neighbor to have one more bathroom.  I wanted to reach into the screen and slap his ugly head.  What an idiot.

Here’s a clue, Mr. Smarty Pants:  People who are in foreclosure are in foreclosure because the system is a mess, not because they are “deadbeats” and want a free ride from the government or their neighbors.  Want to point fingers, idiot?  Point them at the banks that overvalued properties in the first place to get people into questionable loans so brokers could collect bigger fees.  Point those fingers at the lenders for telling consumers that their ARM loan wouldn’t be a problem because they would be able to refinance in three years when the rates change (and hey, rates have been going down forever, so  why shouldn’t this continue? Your payment will be lower!) while simultaneously neglecting to point out there would be no way in hell any traditional lender would refinance property that is mortgaged for more than it is worth.  And oh, be sure to keep it a secret from the borrower that refinancing will not be an option if you lose your job.  How about pointing the fingers at lenders who convinced people to take out that second mortgage or a HELOC to “consolidate their debt” without pointing out that trading unsecured debt for secured debt would make bankruptcy pointless should the need arise?  How about pointing fingers at the pathetic and useless Bush administration who drove us into an economic crisis and higher unemployment than we have seen in decades?  Let’s just blame the victim for losing their job.  They should have known to move to China or India ten years ago so they would be there when their jobs were shipped overseas.

I heard the jerk in an interview claim that buyers should have hired lawyers.  Guess what?  Lawyers aren’t free.  And assuming someone could afford $225 an hour to hire one, a lawyer wouldn’t hire an appraiser to know that the bank overvalued the property.  Plus hiring an attorney when you buy a house is theoretically unnecessary anyway.  Mortgage brokers and lenders have a fiduciary duty of care to their clients.  This means they are held to a higher standard of care in dealing with the public.  They are expected to act EXTRA honest because it is expected that they have greater knowledge about the mortgage industry than consumers.  How does this work, Mr. Santelli?  Are the consumers supposed to suddenly educate themselves so they can catch dishonest bankers and brokers?  Would you hold a patient to the same duty before going to a doctor?  Am I supposed to go get an MBA before I go to a financial expert to ensure they are upholding their fiduciary duty?  Should I get an MD before going to the doctor?

I can’t stand the mentality that we are not obligated to help one another.  Guess what?  We are all in this together.  We can sit in our foreclosed bunkers with our guns aimed at our neighbors and barbed wire wrapped around our hearts to protect us from the enemy, ensuring we keep that property because, hell, it belongs to us, right?  We don’t need to share.  Or we can grow up and realize that society at its heart means social.  It means taking responsibility for one another.  It means what we do for each other we do for ourselves. It means we care for and protect one another and when someone is down, we offer them a hand up.  Taking care of one another is the stuff life is made of.  The alternate choice is to live like Rick Santelli, cold and alone with his gun pointed at everyone, dragging his loot into the afterlife.  Good luck with that, Buddy.

P.S. Being a stock-broker might be a high risk financially, but it is not hard work.

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Attitude Adjustment Bureau

I have got to do something to my brain so that instead of finding my job annoying, I re-appreciate the things about it that are so much more worthwhile than they could be. Probably a vacation would help. I haven’t taken one since I started a year and a half ago. I really want to go to Spain. Or France. Hell, right now I would love to head to Japan and help with cleanup efforts. Anything but the same old complaints from clients all the time all the time all the time. Gads, here I am wishing I could have a better attitude mainly because I’m wishing my clients had a better attitude. Not all of them, mind you. But the ones who drive me nuts obliterate the other 95%.

That said, I have several who are sweet, kind, and wonderful. One couple even baked me cinnamon rolls. That was good.

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Rick Santelli is an Idiot

I can’t believe this guy.  I heard him spouting off here about how Americans shouldn’t pay for their neighbor to have one more bathroom.  I wanted to reach into the screen and slap his ugly head.  What an idiot.

Here’s a clue, Mr. Smarty Pants:  People who are in foreclosure are in foreclosure because the system is a mess, not because they are “deadbeats” and want a free ride from the government or their neighbors.  Want to point fingers, idiot?  Point them at the banks that overvalued properties in the first place to get people into questionable loans so brokers could collect bigger fees.  Point those fingers at the lenders for telling consumers that their ARM loan wouldn’t be a problem because they would be able to refinance in three years when the rates change (and hey, rates have been going down forever, so  why shouldn’t this continue? Your payment will be lower!) while simultaneously neglecting to point out there would be no way in hell any traditional lender would refinance property that is mortgaged for more than it is worth.  And oh, be sure to keep it a secret from the borrower that refinancing will not be an option if you lose your job.  How about pointing the fingers at lenders who convinced people to take out that second mortgage or a HELOC to “consolidate their debt” without pointing out that trading unsecured debt for secured debt would make bankruptcy pointless should the need arise?  How about pointing fingers at the pathetic and useless Bush administration who drove us into an economic crisis and higher unemployment than we have seen in decades?  Let’s just blame the victim for losing their job.  They should have known to move to China or India ten years ago so they would be there when there jobs were shipped overseas.

I heard the jerk in an interview claim that buyers should have hired lawyers.  Guess what?  Lawyers aren’t free.  And assuming someone could afford $225 an hour to hire one, a lawyer wouldn’t hire an appraiser to know that the bank overvalued the property.  Plus hiring an attorney when you buy a house is theoretically unnecessary anyway.  Mortgage brokers and lenders have a fiduciary duty of care to their clients.  This means they are held to a higher standard of care in dealing with the public.  They are expected to act EXTRA honest because it is expected that they have greater knowledge about the mortgage industry than consumers.  How does this work, Mr. Santelli?  Are the consumers supposed to suddenly educate themselves so they can catch dishonest bankers and brokers?  Would you hold a patient to the same duty before going to a doctor?  Am I supposed to go get an MBA before I go to a financial expert to ensure they are upholding their fiduciary duty?  Should I get an MD before going to the doctor?

I can’t stand the mentality that we are not obligated to help one another.  Guess what?  We are all in this together.  We can sit in our foreclosed bunkers with our guns aimed at our neighbors and barbed wire wrapped around our hearts to protect us from the enemy, ensuring we keep that property because, hell, it belongs to us, right?  We don’t need to share.  Or we can grow up and realize that society at its heart means social.  It means taking responsibility for one another.  It means what we do for each other we do for ourselves. It means we care for and protect one another and when someone is down, we offer them a hand up.  Taking care of one another is the stuff life is made of.  The alternate choice is to live like Rick Santelli, cold and alone with his gun pointed at everyone, dragging his loot into the afterlife.  Good luck with that, Buddy.

P.S. Being a stock-broker might be a high risk financially, but it is not hard work.

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No Wonder People Go Postal on the Post Office

And I don’t even care if I sound like a lunatic.  A more incompetent bunch of losers never occupied the earth (oh wait, there was the last US administration).  Useless useless useless.  You might think I would be sympathetic since my mom works there.  I’m not.  They steal every second the possibly can from her.  She is a rural carrier.  This means they do “mail counts” to determine how long a route should take and pay accordingly.  Every year during this count, all the bulk mail magically disappears!  Isn’t that amazing?!  During most mail days, she has between eight and twelve feet of bulk mail.  During count it is only one foot tall or less!  Unbelievable.  The net result is they claim her route should take seven hours when it takes over ten, and she is fast.  She’s been doing it for twenty years.  It’s been this way the last several years; every count the amount paid for each route goes down.  Now they are making those with the most seniority work six days a week.  Ever wonder why workers go postal?  This may contain the clue.

As for me personally?  I think someone somewhere is just fucking stupid.  I sent three packages parcel post from Honolulu, Hawaii, on 10/28/2008.  I have a receipt for these three packages.  Two of the packages arrived a week and a half ago.  One did not arrive.  I went in and asked about it and was told it could not be tracked because it was parcel post, even with the receipt.

Today, DECEMBER 1, I receive a postage due, FINAL notice that if I do not come pick up the package by DECEMBER 1, the package will be returned.  I received this notice AFTER the post office closed December 1.  This is the ONLY notice I have received, EVER.  I called the post office to attempt to ascertain what was going on.  I was informed after an extended hold that the package was still there and they would hold it (good thing because the wrath they would have incurred had they sent it back would have been that of the devil).

And the cherry on this little sugar cake?  I was informed the package had NO POSTAGE on it and I would have to pay AGAIN to get my package even with the receipt.  I paid over forty-five dollars to send this package.

I have had so many problems with the post office, and now it wants to STEAL forty-five more dollars from me.  It is the WORST organization ever created (next to Enron and Walmart).  No wonder people go postal–the morons who can’t figure out how to deliver a package or affix postage really ought to be removed from “service.”

Assholes.

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Toxic Snake Pits and Hateful People

Imagine starting your work day every day going somewhere and never knowing what you will encounter upon walking in the door. Some days you may be able to go to your desk and do your job and nothing out of the ordinary happens. Most days you have to walk by someone who, depending on her mood, may or may not say hello. If it’s a bad mood, then the silence is louder than a hello would have been. All days you know that your steps are being monitored, that if one of the people who take pleasure in causing others harm can see you, they are reporting your actions to another person who likes to cause others harm, the two of them deriving pleasure from their perceived power in knowing your whereabouts. Imagine too that if you have to interact with someone who is supposed to help you in your job, most likely any requests you make will be met with hostility for sure, and probably require more than one attempt on your part to get the needed request accomplished. Add to this mix that the boss of the place does not stop any of this sort of activity, but would prefer to pretend it does not happen. If something must be done and you finally must ask the boss for intervention, he will sympathize with your plight and do nothing further than ensure it gets done. In the ensuring, he will sympathize with that person’s hating you for no reason, but just plead for a bit of assistance. Top all of this off with the fact that the type of work you do requires you take personal responsibility for all the actions of all the staff because you took an oath that requires such personal responsibility. This means that ultimately, the buck stops with you. If something is not done or not done correctly, you are responsible, even if you were not aware of the misapprehension.

This was life where I worked for several years, off and on. This was the place that forced me to reevaluate who I am, forced me to grow a spine of steel, made me more cynical, and threw a wrench into my faith in humanity. If tough situations make you grow, then I’m the beanstalk. And that’s okay, at least on some levels. But it is a fucking nightmare on others. It would be amazing indeed, if I could actually put that place behind me and never have to have anything, and I mean anything ever to do with it again.

I worked at this law firm immediately upon graduating law school and passing the bar. Within six months of starting at the place, I was utterly miserable. It was a horrible place to work, toxic and cruel. Kindness was not a part of the lexicon there. After a year my doctor told me that if I did not quit, the likelihood of a heart attack and even death was a possibility from the stress of it all. I quit, claiming hostile work environment, and the state paid me unemployment. The owner of the firm where I had worked seemed geniunely sorry for this state of affairs and gave me quite a lot of contract work. I also started practicing on my own and did quite well until the laws changed and my practice evaporated into thin air.

I spent a year looking for work. I took a job for a few months as in house counsel at an internet marketing company, but worked myself out of the job. A few months after that I took a job as a paralegal at a collections firm. During this time other monstrous things happened in my life that demanded my focus. Perhaps it was best I wasn’t working for a firm. I don’t know. Throughout this time I stayed in touch with the owner of the firm where I had started. I’ll call him Fred. I liked Fred and respected his knowledge as an attorney. All the lawyers I worked with there had become close friends. We had all been in a place that was almost like a war zone, comforting one another and celebrating each time one or another found a job elsewhere.

Then a year ago the last of the lawyers from our original group of 7 found another job. The practice was bustling and Fred was desperate to fill the spot with an experienced attorney. He had too much work and could not afford the time to train another lawyer. My friend suggested he hire me back. Our area of law is highly specialized and there just aren’t lawyers out there looking who know it. I figured after the year I had been through, the people in his office would not faze me. Plus he had two offices and I would be in the one away from the people who were especially unpleasant. I took the job with my eyes wide open and thought I could make it in spite of what it had been like previously.

I was so wrong. In the last year I came to realize that the bitter and nasty office manager and all the miserable staff members were that way because Fred allows and in many ways encourages their actions. He knows how his office manager handles things. When situations come up, he disappears and lets the shit hit the fan. When one employee comes to him to complain about the other, he doesn’t try to find out what happened. He appeases the complainer by agreeing with them about how bad the other person is. Then when the other person comes to him to discuss the same situation, he turns and criticizes the original person who complained. He is always playing both sides of the fence. I believe he does this because he is so conflict averse, he can’t fathom telling one person or another that they need to change their behavior, to put up or shut up. Instead he lets them continue to act the way that they do and even goes along with it.

As an example of the kind of Lord of the Flies nastiness I’m talking about, the office manager routinely sends disparaging emails about other employees, “accidentally” sending them to the wrong person or the whole office. She once “accidentally” sent an attorney in the office an email meant for one of the staff members who is often as nasty and passive aggressive as she is. The email said that yet another staff member was fat, smelly, and smoked too much. Another time, she sent an email saying that having me as an attorney working for them was “scraping the bottom of the barrel.” Of course, the way things are in that office, another employee printed it up and put a copy in my box. Another time several of the staff members did not like the post-maternity clothes one of the female attorneys wore after she had a baby. They thought they made her look fat. In “protest,” the group of them wore jeans to work for a week. Since the office manager was part of the group “protesting” it was not likely any of the staff members would have been sanctioned for failure to adhere to the dress code. Such a pleasant place to work.

Clients too are constantly being short-changed, ignored, patronized, and generally get nothing for the money they paid. Over and over and over I would get a call from a client who had tried for weeks to reach someone who had not returned their call. They finally changed their tack and asked for someone else in an effort to get an answer to their question. As an attorney, I was responsible for correcting files paralegals had put together. The paralegals who did not like me would not make the changes, leaving the client to stammer and stutter to the trustee why something in their petition wasn’t right. The disparaging names for clients around the office were bitter and laced with hate. It was a poisonous place to work.

Finally in November when another employee who had no business monitoring me at all called me a liar over a trivial situation, I threw up my hands and said I quit. The culture of disrepect in the place was more than I could bear. Fred asked me to stay until the end of the year, which I did, but only because I genuinely cared for the clients I worked for. I wanted things to work out for them. I wanted their cases to proceed smoothly.

Ours is a small legal world. Everyone knows everyone else or someone who knows that someone else. I had a case where my client ended up filing for bankruptcy because of the actions of another attorney I knew from law school. Not only did she screw up the case on which she provided representation, she also advised him to pay her with a credit card before filing. This was against the law. Legal action ensued against my client. The response stated he lacked intent to defraud, and that the attorney who took the payment was responsible; she knew better, or should have. The attorney who had taken the payment went berserk. She claimed the client was a liar. She claimed I lacked “professional courtesy” for standing up for my client instead of her. She danced around every which way and even brought the partners of her firm in to bat for her.

During the middle of all this, I left my firm. The new attorney handling the case was as upset by the facts as I was. The client was in a particularly precarious position because the trustee in his case could have taken a malpractice award from him to pay other creditors, leaving him still owing the credit card company. He was doubly screwed.

Several weeks ago, Fred called me to ask about facts I had discussed with him about eight times previously. However he’s not exactly a dedicated listener, so I wasn’t surprised I was reiterating this information to him yet again. He had a settlement conference scheduled with the other firm and needed the details again to understand our client’s position. I genuinely cared for the client and wanted to do right by him since so many attorneys had failed him in their “assistance” even though I had no desire to do anything for free for Fred ever again. Another charming facet of Fred’s character is his absolute unwillingness to part with his money. When I left the firm, I had grossed for the year two-thirds of what I had netted when I worked there previously. He claimed he paid me less because business was slow, but I knew better. I knew the filing numbers and client numbers. The fact is, he’s cheap and lots of attorneys leave because of money as well as the toxic work environment. Anyway, I answered his questions and discussed the case because I really care about this client. He’s a nice guy who got totally screwed as far as I was concerned. It was up to us to help make things better.

Well, last week I discovered that Fred, at the settlement conference, sold me up the river to avoid conflict and to settle the case. He advised the other lawyer’s firm partners to pay to settle the case because it would cost too much to fight. The lawyer I knew from law school complained about her actions being listed in the response to the complaint. The firm owner told them he was sorry how things had gone, but that I hadn’t “known what I was doing” and that I “didn’t understand the law.” However, I didn’t work there anymore and it would just be best to settle and get out of it, the implication being that I didn’t work there anymore because of how I had handled this case.

What a fucking coward. Rather than stand up to this attorney who should have her license suspended for putting the client in bankruptcy in the first place and to appease her wounded pride, he puts me on the chopping block and blames me, implying that I had somehow involved the other lawyer, instead of standing up for my decision to answer the complaint truthfully and openly fighting for the client. He got the result he wanted, which was settlement, but he did so by placing my character, integrity, and morality in question to do so. In his mind, the end justifies any means. Again, what a coward.

I have long said the human characteristic that I most despise is arrogance. I have to amend that and add cowardice. I have always thought of cowardice in terms of things like someone not going bungee jumping or something, but that’s not it. That’s just good old-fashioned healthy fear. Cowardice is not standing up and doing the right thing in spite of what others will think. It’s standing back and letting things happen to save your own ass. It’s being so afraid of what might happen you don’t make something right. It’s making someone else who can’t defend themselves look bad to protect yourself. All of it. I know there is more. I know there are exceptions. But in general, it’s just fucking what it is: cowardice. And Fred is a coward.

I was so upset when I heard about this. I sobbed. I know I have integrity. I know I handled that case properly. I know the other lawyer did not do a good job. And it seemed like it all just didn’t matter. Since this happened, I have spoken to a few trusted attorney friends. They told me not to worry, that my integrity and honesty are intact even though a dishonest and cowardly person used me to protect his own ass from having to deal with conflict. It is the perspective of my friends that in the end a person who is moral will prevail. I hope this is true. The whole thing still bugs the shit out of me. I know the next time I run into Fred I will let him know that I am aware of this situation. I will watch him try to talk his way out of it as I have a thousand other times with other people. But I know better.

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Love and Pointlessness

I just put my daughter on a plane bound for Colorado.  As I sat there in the airport, I looked out the window at the plane, watched as the ramp to the door was pulled back, saw the door close to the luggage hold, gazed upon the trucks that delivered the luggage pulled away.  Everyone moved away from the plane as it readied to leave except for the truck that pushed it backwards out onto the runway to taxi off into the distance.  I thought to myself, how weird it is that I’m sending my child, the love of my life off into the sky.  Soon she will be miles above the earth and I am not even slightly afraid.  How odd it is that we place ourselves in the sky like that.  How bizarre that we transport ourselves, airborne.  And I was not afraid.

I wondered whether I would have a premonition if the flight were in danger.  If I ever strongly felt such a premonition I would not allow my child to fly.  I would believe myself.  But I wondered, sitting there, whether I would have such knowledge to honor.  Odd thoughts these.

My brother commented on my blog on him.  I reread what I wrote and as I did tears came.  I read Derek’s comments and felt sad.  That boy I love so much who I suppose isn’t a boy.  He wants to do better.  I genuinely believe that.  But sometimes I think he does not think himself capable.  I’m trying to teach him about living in the moment.  I’m trying to show him that concerns about the future that keep him awake keep him from enjoying where his is right now.  So much of his life is worry about what will be or self-loathing at what has been.  He laments his luck and I want to show him that so much of it isn’t luck, but choices.  I want him to see that he can make different choices and perhaps end up with a different result.  It seems so clear to me, yet so murky to him.

He came to me last night and said that Sarah read my blog and said I called her dumb.  I knew the moment that he said it that it was true.  I remember writing it and thinking she would never read my words.  But she did and I am sorry.  I did not want to hurt her.  I want to be honest, but I don’t want to hurt anyone.  I do not know how to reconcile that.  I think if my parents read the story of Derek, they might see my version of them as a criticism.  I suppose in some ways it is there.  My judgment.  Is it possible to observe and report without judgment?  I do not know how to do that.  I have my opinions, my observations.  Whether or not they are accurate or fact isn’t always possible to ascertain.  Perhaps there is a bit of truth and fiction in them.

Also a couple of days ago I wrote about Valentine’s Day.  I said that my blog friend admired my blog for its lack of a point.  I read him wrong.  He did not mean that, but the opposite.  He wrote to me and quoted what he said again.  He was right.  He did not say I have no point.  Perhaps it was easier for me to accept that version of reality because it is what I already believed to be true.  So often I get started, type like mad as the words flow effortlessly from my brain, then arrive somewhere unsure how to conclude.  In that, I find my lack of a point.  Perhaps it is there, but in my inability to conclude in a tight and concise manner, I ascertained a pointlessness.  His observation of my mistake made me laugh. He was right.  How quickly we assume we know something when we bring our own prejudices to it.

So here I am again at the end wondering how to conclude neatly and cannot do it.  All the previous words flowed from my fingers.  Now my fingers stutter.  I type a sentence, then pause.  Type another, then pause.  How to end this?  I suppose it’s easy.  I need to go clean my daughter’s room and while she is gone, send stuff away she never plays with.  Plus I need to build drawers under her closet and attempt to put part of the window back together.  Oh, and paint.  Lot’s of paint.  So that is how I will sign off, by begging off because I have to go and work while it is still light, moderately sunny, and I feel the desire.  There is something in the sun that makes me want to work.  So I will.

Adieu.

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Diversions

Lara sits at her desk at work and has quite a difficult time focusing on the tasks at hand.  She does not want to be there.  She wants to be snuggled in her bed taking a nap attempting to drive the cold virus from her poor, tired body.  She wishes she were wearing thick socks and flannel jamma pants with a couple of warm t-shirts instead of the nice dress shoes, slacks, and turtleneck that look attractive but are binding and uncomfortable when the body isn’t well.

As she sits at the desk, she keeps checking her email, kind of like checking the regular mail at home, hoping someone in the world besides advertisers wants to chat or say hello.  But no.  Everyone else is busy living their own lives and doing their own thing on this rainy and cold afternoon.

Every so often she turns to the file she is working on and puts in some effort, but cannot do so without difficulty.  The sun has just peeked through the clouds and touches her head through the window next to her desk.  She looks up and sees the droplets sparkling in the light and wishes it were warmer and that she were out of doors.  But this is wishful thinking.  The tree next to the window is leafless and moves ever so slightly in the wind.  It is cold out there.  Even the light is cold.

Daydreams fill her thoughts as her head drops to her hand, her elbow on the edge of the desk.  Her eyes close slightly.  She imagines a spa, a spa in the desert of California.  She’s going to have a massage. After the massage, she will lie in the sun and relax, drinking warm tea.  Later she will soak in a hottub, tendrils of damp hair curling at her neck.  Warm hands press into her aching should …..RRRRIIIIIINNNNNNNNNGGGGGGGG!!

The phone in her office rings, slamming her back into reality.  Crap.  The phone. She does NOT want to answer the phone. She wants to pretend she’s getting a massage from a beautiful man at a spa in the desert.  She does not want to speak to some unhappy client who is pissed off that another attorney in the office did not return her call.  “Yes, I’m sorry he did not call you back.  Oh yes.  I would be angry too.  Of course.  I KNOW you paid us eight hundred dollars and that IS a lot of money.  You are correct.  Yes.  Well, that really isn’t an emergency, although I can see how you would think that it is, but it’s not.  I can assure you.  All you need to do is tell that creditor you filed for bankruptcy.  Give them your case number and the date you filed and they will leave you alone.  Yes.  Yes.  I promise.  Believe me.  In 99 percent of the cases they go away.  Yes.  I know.  I know.  Well make sure this is one of the 1 percent of cases before getting all worried about it.  No.  Yes.  I know.  Give them our number then.  Yes.  Of course.  No.  Yes.  Yes, we’ll be out on Christmas.  I know.  I know.  Okay.  Happy holidays to you too.  Yes.  Goodbye.”

Fuck.  The vision of warm desert air and beautiful male hands lovingly massaging her shoulders is gone.  She coughs, pain wracking her chest.  Reality.  Yuck.  No wonder people take drugs.