Tag: I’m Neurotic and So Am I

Entropy

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For a dyed-in-the-wool control freak, the absolute worst thing you can do to them is to introduce mass chaos into their environment for which there is no solution but time. Welcome to my kitchen remodel.

The notion of this remodel has been some time coming, and after much deliberation and fiscal jiggling we signed papers in July with a contracting company. A dear friend warned me that contractors never, ever, ever come in on time and on budget, and so far we are finding that pretty much true. While the budget creeps are of our own choosing (Let’s do this light over that light! This countertop over that countertop!) the time overruns are not. My cabinets are in Canada somewhere and there they will stay until December, so we’re going with an alternate vendor. The cabinets being stuck meant the countertop can’t get cut according to schedule. The drywall guy has come and gone but can’t finish until the cabinets are in, and the floor finish can’t be sped-up. And so we wait for cabinets.

Meanwhile, seven large boxes of kitchen gear, and two sets of curtains and assorted wall decor, are stacked in the small available space of the study. Another box, a kitchen aid, and stacks of cookbooks impede on the library. Pots, pans, glassware, an end table, a wine rack, and a stack of coats take up the spare space in the bedroom. Dishes are done in a large blue plastic tub in my son’s bathtub. My current kitchen is the male person’s workbench plus a fridge, in the garage.

After I got over my initial meltdown (yes, I had one, get over it) I tried to look at it for the charm. It’s kind of like camping but with electricity, right? I get to really test my recipe mettle. At least it’s not the dead of winter and the garage is a comfortable 60 degrees. The boys can play radio control cars on the unfinished floors. Above all, this chaos forces us to be more organized , more cognizant of where we put things and how we use them.

Yet the change keeps coming. In my head I had a due date of 11/4 — on that date, I had a kitchen again. I had a dining room. My study and library would be cleared and I could get to my sewing machine. Then came the news that after you get your floors finished you must wait 30 days before putting furniture on it.  And so now I’m hopeful that by my son’s birthday we have furniture in place.

Which is not to say that there hasn’t been a bit of change in other areas as well. A recent re-org at work, while ostensibly relatively minor, puts into question overall vision and goals which of course trickles down to those of us “unaffected”. As the holiday season approaches I am reminded as well of all of the dire warnings from friends who had worked in the Retail sector before. At Expedia, things are relatively slow business-wise in November and December, the time is used to plan for the new year. At Sur La Table, the push and craziness starts mid-September and I’ve heard it ends sometime around January.

Layer The Rest Of Life onto this and I’m looking forward to a potential power outage or some other unseen force that will allow us all to take a little break.

AFTER I have my kitchen back.

In a World…

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Greetings from Florida, where the weather has been 90’s (or slightly less) via humidity or temperature, take your pick. It has been mahvelous, apart from a few work hiccups. (Yes, I check work email; yes, it’s a habit; no, I don’t intend to stop).

Highlights from the last 3 days include staying at the in-law’s fabulous new home, with 3 steal-worthy kitties and an enviable pool. Also, we saw our first palmetto bug (dead) and discovered that there is decent pizza in Florida. A comfortable bed, good company, and great hospitality sure kick-off a vacation properly.

No, I didn’t steal the cat (his name was Barney). But I wanted to.

But! Off we headed, in our Alamo Rental Car (WARNING: super ranty blog post coming on that soon, but right now I’m in talks with their twitter customer service people), down to Orlando. And found ourselves at the Art of Animation Studios.

It’s nothing short of perfect. We have a room separate from the boychild, so he has his own bathroom and his own TV. We are on the top floor. We are in the Finding Nemo themed room, on the building with Sharks on it, on the level with a ginormous shark mural. The poolside food includes sushi. The WiFi is free. The front desk clerk told me to have a Magical Day and SketchYa Later, which from a theme park about animation was so precious and yet cheesy and yet I had a huge grin on my face as I departed check-in. (The only time that has happened before was on late-night work trips when I realized the ordeal was over and I was about to get to sleep).

Instead, we headed down to the pool. Two hours of Mommy reading the Economist and working on the obligatory burn (YES I USED SUNSCREEN MY SKIN DOES THAT OKAY?) and the boys swimming, and we’re back to the room showering and changing for dinner. Our towels were folded on the beds in Mickey Ears and Fish (with the whole Nemo theme). The toiletries are about level 4, with differentiated soaps.  I’m not sure I want to check out.

Tonight we are off to Downtown Disney, where we are to see the Percy Jackson movie (2nd one) in a dining-theater, I’m not sure which of the three of us is more excited, to be frank. The boy just read through all 5 original novels (and three of the sequels) right before summer started, we have seen the first movie, but the trailers for the 2nd look really good and the prospect of “dinner and a movie”, without having to hassle driving or timing (they serve dinner… at the movie), is really comforting.

Especially for someone who has spent 450 words, up to the beginning of this sentence, enjoying things and augmenting that enjoyment by sharing over the internet. Because in less than five hours, I’m going offline. Completely. Internetless, textless, foursquare-less, email-less, twitter-less, Facebook-less until Saturday morning local time. It will be a first in many years. My son looked at me agog as I patiently explained that our wallets, AND our cell phones, were going in the safe. It’s like I told him Aliens would land tomorrow. That said, he too is looking forward to the challenge.

For those of you who know my penchant for the Pirate League, and getting made up into a Pirate Princess (SPECIAL shout out to ExpediaManny), I WILL be doing that and taking pictures — but we scheduled for Saturday, so I could live-tweet it. I know you’re stoked, as I am.

Vacation: it means different things to different people, and mine is going to 11.

The Ultimate Driving Machine

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Just warning you: this post is a rant, mixed with a little bit of a whine.

On my way to work there is a nice stretch of straight road, maybe a mile long, that toddles along at 55 miles per hour, before it kludges up with traffic. It provides a nice counterbalance to the 25mph crawl I have through the suburbs before I get there, and it offers an opportunity to relax.

This morning as I drove along I let my left hand drop and it rested on my knee, the same one that I went in to get visco yesterday on. It felt damp so I looked down, and discovered that the injection site was seeping. Oh, joy. Back to the house to change bandages, change jeans, apply detergent to the stain, etc. Such are the joys of medical maintenance.

(Editor’s note: I asked for it. Now with an ultrasound machine and another six months of technique improvement, I was able to walk unassisted after the injection and by end of day my knee felt totally normal. So I didn’t exactly follow the instructions and went to the gym. I’m not a total idiot, all I did was upper body stuff, but clearly I had pissed something off.)

In the meantime, I’m struggling with a “decision” I need to make: my lower back. Arthritis isn’t uncommon in people over 40 (or, in my case, 39) and the PT should take care of the pain I have. Up until a week ago I would’ve said “what pain” because when I run, or indeed do pretty much anything else active, it’s not my back that hurts. My upper right leg hurts. Figuring that this was my body’s way of insisting I get a full set of x-rays, one body part at a time, I went back to the doc.

“So, my back is all better, but my upper leg is hurting, particularly when I run. The PT thinks it’s my psoas.”

“I think it’s your lower back.”

“No, no, my lower back feels great.”

“Yeah, I still think it’s referred pain from your lower back.”

“Well, okay”

Here she had me lay down on my stomach, flipped up my shirt, and started poking at my spine.

“Does this hurt?” (poke)

“No.”

“Does this hurt?” (poke)

“No.”

“Does this hurt?” (po-)“AAAAAAAAAARGH”.

“Yep, it’s your lower back.”

After brief consultation, here is the treatment plan: Go back to Physical Therapy (more time with my friend Dan, I see) and, if that doesn’t solve it in another month or so, start thinking about spinal injections.

Spinal. Injections.

I have no problem with needles (blood donation, tattoos, piercings, etc.) and I have no problem with my spine (apart from it being in pain) and one time in my life I didn’t mind having an injection into my spine (hello, Epidural!). But the idea of ongoing annual (or semi-annual) pokes into my trunk does not sound good, for a variety of reasons.

Being handed the ersatz ultimatum, such as it is, that if I do NOT get better with PT in about a month then we need to “look at this”, puts undue pressure (I feel) on the viability of the PT. This last two months’ worth have succeeded in radiating the pain OUT, in half that time we need to radiate the pain back in and start making it go away. It’s like being handed an assignment you’re likely to fail at. If I had that kind of control over my body I wouldn’t be IN this position.

This whole process feels a bit like my commute… slow crawling progression, nice coasting parts, followed almost immediately by infuriatingly gnarled systems.

An Open Letter to My Personal Trainer, David

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Well David, it’s that time again, where I’ve done something rash and signed up for something I probably shouldn’t do. There’s a timeline involved, and some frankly optimistic requirements; I figured I’d apologize now and get it over with.

You see, I let the Ms.Krieant sign me up for Tough Mudder, and I have a little under 13 weeks to get ready. It has some impressive obstacles, most of which have me scared out of my mind, but as you know once I’ve said I’ll do something, I’ll do it…

…as long as I get to whine a lot about it.

So I realize that up until now your charge has been mostly to try to get me stronger while avoiding the injury of the month; in our short tenure together this has meant occasionally avoiding my knees, my neck, my upper back, my lower back, or my right hip. Now we need to ignore all of that, because I will need all of those parts working and functional.

I also realize that this means that the chattiness of our sessions will have to reduce, that we can no longer freely evaluate others in the gym as you hand me five more pounds of something or have me do 15 more push-ups. It means that you’re likely to give me homework, that I will need to actually do weight work more than twice a week, and that I will be very, very sore these ensuing weeks.

But David, I’m turning 40.

I realize this isn’t much to you — I think 40 hit and flew by for you about a decade ago, not that you’d notice, being an ex-Marine and all. I realize this isn’t much to most of our early-morning compatriots, as I think the average age at the gym at our time of morning is mid-50’s. It isn’t technically even much to me in the sense that I’m not having a huge to-do over it, nor do I want to see black balloons, nor do I think the day after my birthday I will suddenly fall apart or feel older. The fact is, David, I’m tired of having my body feel older now.

Five years ago I entered into a half marathon, having never run, because someone told me I couldn’t do it. (Actually, he laughed and said, “yah, right”). Three years ago I entered into a 2-day, 160-mile bike ride because someone said I wouldn’t want to do it. Last year I did the STP pretty much under the same auspices. And each time, I injured myself either in training or in the event itself. But each time, I did the training without any professional help.

You’re here to fix that, David, because at 40, I’ve decided I’m tired of injuring myself. And this likely means I’ll have to do a lot of things I was heretofore unprepared to do, like go to the gym more than 4 times per week and maybe, actually, you know, stretch. Perhaps even do my regular PT exercises. I have a support group in my friends — one lent a very pertinent book (Supple Leopard, indeed), one gave me tips on how to deal with the electric shocks (or at least a realistic impression of what they’re like). But your job is to make sure I’m ready, and so I really do hope you’ll understand the bullet-pointed list you’re going to get when next we see each other.

I still reserve the right to whine, though.

Summer

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School is OUT! I fondly remember, as a child, waiting anxiously for this day to come, and revelling in the ten (or was it twelve?) weeks of summer. Summer, in my case, was summer camp, at the local YMCA. This was in California, and so I spent every day in the pool, if we weren’t going to Disneyland, Magic Mountain, Knot’s Berry Farm, or into the mountains to hike. Every summer I got a wicked burn, then a wicked tan (for those who know me today: yes, it is possible. I have proof.) At the end of camp in 4th grade I broke my arm skateboarding, at the end of camp in 6th grade I had a “boyfriend”. We held hands.

School seemed an interminable period of judgement, testing, studying, and BORING things. Fun fact: I like learning now, I did NOT like learning then. I have dozens of saved report cards from my formative years informing my parents that “Bobbie could do so much better if she just applied herself.”

When I hit 28, I was in full-on baby-mania. Actually, that’s not quite accurate, I was in “have a kid, change my life” mania. It wasn’t just the “baby” I wanted; I wanted the 9-year-old telling me he forgot he needs to bring 2 dozen cupcakes (the morning he needs to bring them). I wanted the cramming for the SAT’s, and the first trip to Disneyland, and reading books goodnight. And I felt sure that when I had a child, what with my academic-leaning parents, I too would become an academic-leaning parent and come to see the value of school.

It is therefore with a mixture of embarrassment and wonder that I report that while I do truly cherish the value of school, and I am that academic parent (that was me, putting my kid in tutoring), I also could not wait for summer. Because it meant a reprieve.

A reprieve from parent-teacher conferences, from enforcing homework revisions, from watching the frustration on his face when he didn’t get a concept or (in the long tradition of my family line) didn’t get it exactly perfect the first time. (He carries that trait to everything, skateboarding and electric guitar have been recent lessons in “no one is perfect the first time”). It’s a reprieve from emails from the teacher, from looking for lost hoodies in the Lost and Found, from waiting for the June Box (items taken by the teacher go into a box and are retrieved… in June), from nights filled with homework, projects, and the dutiful requirements of school.

By the time the end of August rolls around I will revert to the feelings of my youth and delight in back-to-school shopping, even if my son doesn’t. I will feel re-invigorated and redouble my PTA efforts, all the more excited as this is our last grade school year (and I’m chairing the Science Fair). I will be all excited again.  And the boy… the boy will have had ten weeks of fun, and sun; he will have a wicked tan (bless his Father for giving him better skin than I had, the kid does not burn). Even he will be looking forward to school and seeing his friends on a more regular basis, if not the excitement that being a 5th grader (and therefore, top of the heap) brings.

But here we are excited and grateful, officially, for summer.

Urgent (?) Care

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There comes a time in one’s life where one will find oneself in need of Urgent Care, but one is mindful of one’s health insurance and still has some steam, so one goes not to the ER but to, well, Urgent Care.

This is the predicament I and a friend found ourselves in last night, and went thusly to the Urgent Care clinic that is about 5 minutes from her house.

Now, to my mind, and I realize I’m picky, “urgent” means, “right now, or as close to right now as you can get”, and so I would imagine that all things that happen in an Urgent Care clinic happen “right now”, or at least with the attempt to make it as “right now” as possible. Urgent Care to me denotes moving quickly and with purpose, not frenetically but also not languidly.

In their defense, their doctor was very “right now”. My friend got a room, a bed, and within about five minutes an initial evaluation, some trial meds, etc. The Doctor Was Doing Something, and Doing Something Urgently. Check.

The front desk staff (and indeed, the telephone staff I called in advance) were Not Really Into My Definition of Urgent. As in, “Oh, if you don’t know her date of birth/social security number/mother’s maiden name/location of her baptismal socks” we can’t put you on the list of people we expect to see in the next fifteen minutes.”  As in, “Oh, you need directions to the ER we told you to go to? Here let us go to mapquest and wait, print, um, wait while I answer the phone, now wait some more while I attend to someone else, continue waiting as I pull the pages from the printer and carefully, carefully staple them together, etc. — and wait some more”. As in, after the doctor said to pull up and double-park so they could walk my friend out to the car, “wait a second while I look at you strangely whilst you are double parked, then wave in recognition, but continue to not go and get your friend because I totally forgot we said we were going to do that.”

My recommendation therefore is if you find yourself in need of Urgent Care, sick a friend on the front-desk staff and get yourself in front of the doctor. And then try to have the friend find decent parking in front. You know, so she’s not double parked, like an idiot.

Brand New Year, Now, With More Crazy!

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As much as I’d love to blog about the FiscalCliff, Cliff 2, Cliff 3 First Blood, Child of the Fiscal Cliff, Return of the Fiscal Cliff, Fiscal Cliff Revolutions, etc., I’m not going to, as others have written much better prose and admonishment of it than I could ever hope to do. Suffice it to say that the “deal” currently discussed in the house (and passed by the Senate) doesn’t address any of the problems that need addressing, and the cliff itself is largely a fabrication of this broken legislature we have and so applauding any sort of garbage-pile-at-the-bottom-save they’ve managed to create is an exercise in self-delusion. I’ll save my self-delusion for better use.

(For really excellent writing and explanations of Why This Isn’t A Save and In Fact Is a Huge Ream of BS, Regardless of Which Side of the Political Spectrum You Are On, see: this and this and this. I also recommend following Heidi Moore and Ezra Klein on Twitter. Their play-by-play is excellent.)

Fiscal-political brinksmanship aside, I find myself as many do, the first day of the year, wincing in readiness for the email onslaught as brought by January 2nd; in full knowledge that school starts tomorrow (for both the boy and I, I get Macroeconomics and the last PreCalc class); bracing myself for the inevitable deluge of resoluters at the gym. All the classes will be full and the instructors will be randomized.

I’ve used the past few days off to catch up on my OCD; my rock collection is now digitized (I can look up rocks by family, size, or color), the undercroft is organized (2 thousand plus books are packed up to go to my parents house), the fridge is cleaned out (literally and figuratively), the study is reconfigured, I finished two knitting projects. In typical fashion, this is because I’m avoiding something.

I am avoiding my annual review.

Every year I am asked to write a series of paragraphs (or oblique sentences) about my performance, and every year I’m startled by two things: 1, how much I (and my team(s), when appropriate) have done, and 2, how it bears no resemblance to what we thought we were going to do. At the onset of each year we craft goals based on the plans of the company, and, in the form of companies everywhere, things change. Constantly. It’s got to the point where we should have t-shirts that say “the only constant is change” or “entropy always increases”. I may do that with my morale budget.

There has GOT to be a better way. 

This year, we have attempted to frame our goals in the context of the purpose of the exercise rather than the exercise itself; instead of talking about creating XYZ report or accomplishing ABC task, we’re focusing on the end result: how do we make the company more successful, which thereby (frankly) increases the bonus pool, which thereby (frankly) makes its way into our own microeconomics. That is the part of this exercise the company wants and needs, and that’s great.

It occurs to me however that a lot of us are thriving off of the variety, the change, and the volume of things to do for the sake of the variety, change, and volume. Each new email brings a challenge, almost baiting you: are you up to it? Some crisis has erupted, can you handle it? Can you delegate it? Can you deal with it? I’m happy to say that in the ensuing year I am confident I can do all of those things, this is the rare comfort of someone who has really excellent people to rely on at work. 

And with that, tomorrow officially brings the crazy for 2013. School, school, work, home, and all the entropy that can increase. There is no room for triskaidekaphobia, there is no room to wallow. And so I will write my review, take a deep breath, and acknowledge 2013.

Bring it!

So You’re Going to Get a Lawyer

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It’s happened.  Something has happened that makes your current situation untenable and you need advice or action from an attorney. Congratulations in making this important decision! Now don’t screw it up.

As previously indicated, I’ve just spent the last (temporal period) in the murk of family court, and learned a few things about how to select an attorney, how to work with an attorney, and how NOT to work with an attorney. NB: This advice is built out of my own personal observation and experience, so it’s entirely possible you may find exceptions to the rule.

 

Step 1: Find a Lawyer

This is so easy, right? There are tons of attorneys in the phone book; just pick one, right? Wrong. Things you need to look for in your attorney: 

  1. They should either have been in practice for ten years, or be working directly with/for someone who has. This is because the first five years of post-law-school is spent in the fog of “Holy Crap I Need To Remember All This Stuff” and it takes some getting used to. Doctors have residency, attorneys do not (formally). You do not want a newb.
  2. They should specialize in the field you need. This does not mean they do this sort of law and that sort of law and some other sort of law. If your attorney says they do tax law, family law, disability law and criminal law, for example, this is not a good sign. For one thing, it’s nearly impossible to keep up on all the legal precedents that change in those fields, and some of those fields operate so wildly different from one another they would serve you WORSE if the attorney switches methods. Case in point: in criminal law, if you have a warrant to search a house and the address is one digit off, or the name of the street is misspelled, or the name of the recipient is misspelled, it can be (usually is) grounds for dismissal. In criminal law, the exception drives the decision. In family law, the court looks down on attempts to draw exceptions based on a misspelling or single unchecked box.  The practical upshot is you wouldn’t go to a cardiologist for your brain tumor, and you wouldn’t go to someone who says they’re a cardiologist and oncologist and gastroenterologist for anything because there’s no way they’re an expert in all three. And the rules of the game are interpreted differently.
  3. They should be honest. I know, right? Honest attorney? Like any other public practice there is likely a certain finessing of some truths, or dramatic characterizations, to prove a point. Fine. But if your attorney lies in big, easy-to-detect ways (e.g., “I’ve been in practice 30 years!” when they were admitted to the bar in 1991), it’s not a good sign – because they will lie as easily to you as they will to the court (or others).
  4. They should have a publicly available reference. Use sites like Avvo or Justia to see what former clients have said – the good, the bad, and the ugly. Avvo has a ratings systems for attorneys provided by clients, along with reviews and testimonials. (Full disclosure – Avvo was built by expats of Expedia, the company I work for as of this writing).
  5. They should be able to give you full alternatives. That is to say, there is no guaranteed legal outcome, ever. A good attorney will have a game plan going in, and you will know what it is. The discussion goes like this: If they do X, we will do Y, because of this and that reason. If they do A, we will do B, because of this and that reason, etc. Remember, it’s your dime: you are paying them for professional services, to advise you, and a good advisor is always aware of alternatives and should have contingent plans.
  6. Speaking of dimes, they should be able to tell you how to minimize your fees. For example, in my case, I racked up some fees early on in the process by sending an email for every little question I had; instead of saving it for a fifteen-minute phone call (despite warnings from my attorney, who in her defense tried to train me out of this habit). The time it takes to read the email, formulate the response, and send the response (to multiple missives) is typically longer than you can get the same information via phone. A good attorney will point this out to you.

 

Step 2: Get ready for some discomfort.

Once you’ve got your attorney, there are some things you should know and understand about the process:

  1. Attorneys are expensive. Rates vary from $200/hour to $500/hour (or more)– and typically the more experienced your attorney, the higher the rate.  Here’s some basic math: let’s say you hire an attorney to help you go to mediation. S/he sends 2 or 3 letters, preps for mediation, goes with you to mediation, and then does the clean up. That would run you about $7-10k, not including the mediator fee (which is usually attorney rates as well). Take a long look at you bank account, your savings, etc. and be prepared for some nasty drains.
  2. Justice is swift… but only sometimes. There will be periods of frenetic activity (filing motions, entering pleadings, etc.) and periods of waiting. It’s hard to tell which is more frustrating – the weekends spent digging up financial data for the last 3 years (I held the process akin to a colonoscopy in terms of preparation and comfort), or the seemingly interminable waiting on SOMEONE to do SOMETHING – a court-appointed evaluator, the other side to make a move, your side to make a move, the court date or mediation date or settlement date to arrive. You’re juggling the calendars of the court, your attorney, their attorney, and any experts called in. In my case it was complicated by a school year. So don’t expect this to be “I hired an attorney this will all be sorted in a few weeks”.
  3. The best way to not go to court is to be prepared for court. In my case, we were two civil parties trying to reach an agreement outside of court, but in order to do that, we had to follow the court schedule. In a family law case, before your actual court date – mine moved 3 times, the last one was the 14th of January – there are a series of “assignment due” phases, as doled out the court. There’s the list of witnesses. Then a little bit later you have to supply your first (1st) batch if interrogatories and requests for production (basically, here’s everything we’re going to look into in the court case and you have to answer it like you’re sitting in front of the judge). Then, you usually have to supply YOUR answers to THEIR “rogs”. Then there’s the inevitable follow up (hey, this is missing, or hey, what’s that). Then there can be depositions (mine didn’t make it that far) and/or a second round of rogs. Then there’s all the paperwork and letters and facts and case stuff you hand to the judge BEFORE the actual trial – so all the Perry Mason-like things you expect your attorney to say, quote, or reference have, in essence, already been forwarded to the judge ahead of time.  Keep in mind every one of these steps comes with a price tag – yours and your attorney’s (for you spend a not inconsiderable amount of time getting ready for these steps), and theirs and their attorney’s.  Each of these steps though gives you a bit more information to work with, and the price tag (and time, and information) can help drive parties to WANT to settle, as you get a very good idea of what all would be covered in a trial.
  4. Speaking of “you answer their rogs”, the notion that you have any sort of privacy should go out the window. Like, now. In the course of this process I got a very basic set of “rogs”, probably boilerplate, adjusted just a bit to suit the circumstance. I think it was 20-something pages. I’ve seen rog requests top 50 pages, 110 questions, and 25 requests for production. There are no sacred cows – in mine, I had to answer about my health and health history and every possible thing about my finances you could conceive (really—including did I have offshore bank accounts, a trust fund, etc.). In others, you can be asked about your alcohol consumption, any felonies/misdemeanors, if you are or have ever been in counseling, what you “feel” about the situation, etc. Therefore, as of present, my embarrassing purchased coffee habit is not only known to the world through foursquare, it’s also known through the courts system.
  5. Do not ever bluff, and do not let your attorney tell you it’s okay to bluff. If you indicate you are going to do something, do it. If you say you’re going to bring a motion for example, do it. Saying you are going to do something and then not doing it pretty much undermines your whole position and renders any prospect of being taken seriously in jeopardy.  Corollary: do not assume anyone else is bluffing, either.
  6. Your faith, and trust, in your fellow man will be tested. You’ll be tempted to “just talk” to the other party, surely if you just used the right words to explain yourself, THEN they’ll understand, because it’s just not possible that you can both be so far off, right? Surely it’s all just a big misunderstanding? That may be: but any discussions you have will likely get twisted horrifically and thrown back at you, probably in a court document, and it will sting like the bejeezus. Save discussions and attempts to explain for after, for your attorneys, or for mediation.

 

Step 3: Try to enjoy the process.

I’m serious. Try to, at least if for no other purpose than to recognize you never, ever want to be in this position again, and you’re paying a lot for the privilege. Try to look at the process as a learning experience, watch how it works, and so forth. It helps take some sting out of the fact that you are spending a lot of money and time.

 

One final note: as I sent out the news to family and friends who had been asking near daily how it was going, I was asked a lot if I “won”. You don’t win in a family legal battle, any more than you win at a family argument. Damage is done, beyond finances, that is fixable but the scars remain permanently. In this case, it’s damaged trust. I didn’t “win”. I did however manage to get written down, and ordered by the court, the things I found important. That is defined, then, as a “good outcome”.

 

Moving On

Bobbie3 Comments

It goes to show that it’s been a while since I’ve blogged that the entire user interface of WordPress has changed since I last visited. Apparently I’ve been gone for a couple of months, courtesy of the legal quagmire I was in.

Now, to address the usual questions, NO I hadn’t done anything illegal and NO it wasn’t anything that impacted anyone else but my immediate family — such is civil law. But the entire affair — which could be measured at 15.5 months or 19.5 months or slightly over 3 years, depending on whose ruler you use and how petty you are — was exhausting. My ability to blog and post was limited to the most vanilla of subjects, as the process proved when you are in civil court the “other side” (or, more likely, their attorney) will write and say and twist things truly ridiculous given any length of rope.

I therefore had visions of scenarios like: “Bobbie posts about how stressful her job is, therefore she spends too much time working, therefore she is an unfit mother”. Or, “Bobbie posted about her recent dental appointment, where her dentist suggested teeth whitening, therefore she drinks too much coffee, therefore she is an unfit mother”. Like it or not, I was able to successfully (?) imagine in some weird six-degrees mental exercise all roads leading to the “other team’s” desired output, namely their contention that I am/was All Things Evil, Ever.

Now that that is finished, I’m free to post about whatever. Which, I am happy to say, I’ve actually given some thought.

My mother-in-law-to-be recently spent time with me in my kitchen and was extolling the virtues of a gardening blog she happened upon. When asked why I blog, I deferred to my older blog (which was divorce, and then dating, therapy), and then the current one (which before the Event was about physical triumph over a traitorous body and mental exercise over that which occupied me at work). The only consistent running theme has been “this is something that is occupying a percentage of my brain space”, but there was no consistency in the volume of the space it occupied or the genre of space. Nor, I must say, is it terribly useful (per se) to read. It’s more of a voyeuristic window in the frenetic ramblings of a mid-30’s (or, nearly 40) single mom with an interesting (to her) career and an inability to finally decide, once and for all, if she should get chickens.

Going forward, this blog will have three aspects: initially, I’m going to brain dump about all of my learnings of Court. It was a fascinating process, from beginning to end, and I certainly got my money’s worth (which, at best guess, is somewhere in the mid-priced luxury vehicle range). There will likely be a spike in Economics posts as I pursue my degree. There will be the occasional work vent, and possibly a vent or two in the parenting line, as my son is at the interesting and challenging age where I spend a lot of time playing chauffeuse, financier, and guidance counselor. You are hereby put on notice. With that, we begin again… seven years after we started the first time.

Welcome, again.

Silver Linings

BobbieLeave a comment

The last 24 hours have unquestionably been a series of Silver Linings.  (Note: I’m on a plane – leg 3 of a 3 leg sojourn to Heathrow – so I finally get to blog).

My day started on Monday, March 5th at about 4:30am. That’s when the eyeballs snapped open and steadfastly refused to close. Not being able to sleep is, I think we can all agree, a bad thing; but if it happens on a Monday morning you can at least attend to the deluge of email that Europe’s and Asia’s Monday morning delivered. Silver lining number one, then: clean(ish) email inbox before I hit the office.

I got the boy to school to discover he was the recipient of a C-slip on Friday afternoon but due to the last-minute nature of it the C-slip would not be sent home until Monday (a C-slip is a “Communication slip” – if you have inferred the communication is rarely positive you are correct. Typically C-slips are to indicate behaviors the school would like to stop, now, please. For example: chasing one’s classmate with a pencil). I spent the day agonizing that I had let the boy child have TV on Sunday night because I didn’t know of the infraction, only to discover (when I finally had a chance to talk to him) that he had already ‘fessed up at his father’s house and punishment had been delivered. Silver lining number two: he didn’t attempt to hide it and instead demonstrated true remorse and honesty.

At the point I entered the office I was 3 conference calls in, with no coffee; I stepped into the office of a colleague to discover she was leaving the company (she is a wonderful asset to the company and she’s been around for years and years). She is doing this to spend more time with her family – not because of any real dissatisfaction. Fair enough: silver lining number three – she made the right choice for herself and there is no argument with Family First.

The workday was about on-par for a Monday (which is saying both a lot and very little),  and I went to retrieve the boy child so we could go hang up Science Fair posters at the school. I thought this would take a long time, but it turns out the opportunity to spend time with him NOT doing homework or study or projects was incredibly welcome, and he took great pride in his taping skills. Plus, we finished early (and hello Silver lining number four).

We got to karate where he has steadfastly opined that he dislikes all Sempais and only wishes to train with the Sensei. Sensei is travelling back home so we had a Sempai: Silver lining number five was that my son has now declared that “THAT Sempai is okay. I like him.”

Dinner cooked mercifully in short time, I actually got to spend time with my son before I left (technically after his bed time). I rolled into SeaTac feeling especially reticent to fly and discovered that my flight was delayed 3 hours, meaning I would MISS my connecting flight at Dulles. I was rebooked to a flight that left at the same time for O’Hare, which would then meet up with a second flight for Dulles, to catch my third to Heathrow. At this point, all restaurants (even the Starbucks and the bars) at the airports are closed, and I have just enough time to get through security (where I got the complete feel-up even though I went through the perv machine) and catch my new flight.

I know what you’re thinking…. Where’s the silver lining there?

It’s here: my flight to Chicago was practically empty and I didn’t share a seat with anyone; I could stretch out and sleep.

My flight to Dulles was also practically empty and I could stretch out (across 3 seats!) and sleep.

And I type this now from my flight to Heathrow. Incidentally it’s the same flight the Seattle folks were trying to make and wouldn’t have; as a result I have changed my window seat for a middle/middle… with no one on either side of me. I have three seats to sleep in, work at, eat at, and I can watch 3 different TV programs if I was so inclined (I am not, however).

There are a lot of things of late that have me deliberately looking for silver linings: continued adventures in civil court, an overactive volunteering gland resulting in a very intricate Outlook calendar, the increasing realization that time moves much more quickly than it did when I was younger and there’s a definite crest to this hill.  I am very glad, then, that I can still find them.