PT-LawMom

I’m grouchy today.

I got up at the crack of dawn to drive Big Ass Truck an hour (yes, an HOUR) to where we purchased it so that they could do install a part we’d ordered. Had to drop Pumpkinhead off at my mother’s house at 5:45! I made it to the dealer at 6:55, but didn’t get the rental contract settled until almost 7:30! A quick stop at the Starbucks drive-through (I was dying!) and I was back in bumper-to-bumper traffic. I ended up arriving at work a half-hour late and was racing through my day with nary a bathroom break. I couldn’t get a fax to go through, couldn’t get anyone to answer me about a reimbursement for one of my attorneys, and couldn’t get my partner to give me five minutes to respond to a client who Would.Not.Stop.Calling!

I was so busy that I COMPLETELY FORGOT I had lunch scheduled with a friend. A pregnant friend! Who drove all the way to the restaurant only to find out that a) it had shut down three weeks ago and b) I wasn’t there. Of course she didn’t have my cell (which she would have needed had I actually remembered ). In any case, she called my work and got me and I apologized profusely but felt so, so bad that I stood up this starving pregnant woman. Ack!

The day didn’t get any better. I went to call a coworker and her number had disappeared from our Intranet directory. Yep, she was fired. It was sad and unexpected (and scary that she would be treated that way after many years of service).

I still have not heard from HR about my request to transfer to a paralegal desk. Little did I know when I sent it up on Friday that it would arrive at the same time the HR director was firing my friend. Hopefully she’s had a chance to read it and consider it and I won’t get a Friday at 4 p.m. call telling me to leave in 5 minutes. I know, I’m a worrywart. Always have been; always will be.

I’m skipping class right now. Bad girl! Seeking comfort in a cup of spicy chili at a restaurant near work with a good Internet connection. I should have picked better — I didn’t even consider the fact that this particular restaurant does not serve alcohol of any kind. This is definitely a wine day. Wish Chapin wasn’t home because I would sooooo go get a bottle on the way home. He doesn’t drink (alcoholic parent) and isn’t a big fan of me doing so, so I rarely do.

Hopefully I will wake up tomorrow with a brighter outlook. Spent all day furiously working on billing (wouldn’t have made lunch even if I HAD remembered because I had to work through) and tomorrow (last day of the month) is more of the same. Plus I have to get the house cleaned for the housecleaner and get Pumpkinhead dressed in his costume for his school’s Halloween party. I should have skipped the chili and headed home to sleep, but rush hour traffic is sooooo not worth it.

I have sent emails to three different people at school about various issues and no one is responding to me. What’s up with that? Plus my career counselor is now driving my friends batty, so I’m not the only one. Time to throw the covers over my head!

The NY Times has a scathing editorial that shows how, mere days after vetoing the SCHIP bill, Bush requested additional funding for Iraq. When is he going to start putting his own people first? It’s shameful that so much money is being spent to fight a losing battle over there when the injured troops back home can’t even get their medical care or basic financial needs met without waiting for months on end. And don’t even get me started on health insurance.

Mr. Bush is threatening to veto most of the 12 domestic spending bills now before Congress because Democrats want to provide $22 billion more than the $933 billion he has requested. His argument? Something about the president’s responsibility to rein in lawmakers’ “temptation to overspend.”

This from a leader who turns federal surpluses into deficits, believes that the Iraq and Afghanistan wars can be financed on a separate set of books with borrowed money, and keeps having to go back to Congress for “emergency funding” because he cannot or will not tell the truth about what it is costing to fight these wars.

Mr. Bush’s latest emergency request is for $46 billion. That would bring the 2008 price tag for Iraq and Afghanistan to $196.4 billion. Starting at Sept. 11, 2001, war-fighting expenses total a staggering $800 billion or more. The nonpartisan Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments says that by the end of the year spending on Iraq will probably surpass that on the Vietnam War.

I had a bad experience today with a colleague that got me wondering why some people step on others to raise themselves up. My colleague portrayed me in a bad light to another colleague in order to make her motives seem innocent and make me look like the bad guy. We probably all do it sometimes if we think we can get away with it, but it can come back to bite us. In this case, my colleagues negative remarks were exposed when my other colleague spoke with both of us about it and it turned into kind of an awkward scene.

I’ve noticed that men especially seem to do this with women, perhaps to make themselves feel big and strong. I have a good recent example of this. A female attorney friend of mine went to her male boss seeking additional work because her latest deal had closed. He advised her to go see one of his partners. So, doing as she was told, she asked for an appointment with the other partner and asked him for work. He seemed eager to use her and she left the meeting feeling happy. However, later that day one of her friends overheard him telling her boss that she’d come to him for work. Know what her boss said? He told the partner NOT to give her work and said “That girl is always complaining. She needs to understand that she is my associate and that when I have work, she will have work.” So you can guess what happened. The partner didn’t use her and probably lost some respect for her, thinking she was crying wolf. Her boss totally and inexplicably stabbed her in the back.

Of course females do this to each other, too. What is it that drives us to exploit others’ weaknesses or gossip about the latest rumor. Is it that it makes us feel superior? Do we think that making someone else look bad or exploiting their weaknesses will get us ahead? At least with men I can chalk it up to a pissing contest but with women it is so destructive. Shouldn’t we be helping each other? It often seems like women are each others’ worst critics. When a friend of mine came back from maternity leave for a month and then made the decision that she’d rather stay home for a few years, the men seemed fairly accepting (as if that was “her place”) whereas the women were up in arms. How dare she make it harder for them by making the executives think that women will take maternity leave benefits and then just leave anyway? Why couldn’t they see the other side and understand her point of view?

This isn’t well thought-out, but it is my rant for tonight. I’d love to hear other people’s examples and ways they have stopped doing this to others and also protected themselves.

A few notes:

1) If you ever ask a doctor, “Will this hurt?” and her response is, “Um, people’s reactions differ…”, brace yourself.
2) If anyone ever wants to stick needles into your nerves/muscles, just say no!
3) In this age of cell phones, never give your doctor your home number! Although they typically have the sense to call your office phone during daytime hours, the one time you actually NEED results, they will call your home and leave a message which, of course, you will get too late to return the call. And inevitably there will be a whole weekend ahead of you before you can call back.
4) Sometimes you just can’t do it all. I have a baby shower for a good friend to attend today and I can barely scrape myself off the couch. I also have a contract editing job to finish this weekend (couldn’t turn it down - big $$$$, but maybe I should have!). Pumpkinhead has a birthday party at 4:30 for one of his classmates and we still don’t have a present. I really just want to head back to bed and my poor legs have absolutely no desire to drive anywhere. I know, whine, whine, whine. Just stop reading my blog already. It’s depressing.
5) Pumpkinhead brought me a piece of paper and said, “Look, Mommy, I wrote ‘trampoline.’” The paper said “GALT.” He’s so smart! The brand of trampoline he has is a GALT nursery trampoline. It’s awesome for indoor exercise but the stupid screws keep falling out of one side. It has a little silver tube that holds the pieces together. I can’t really explain it, but when the screws fall out, the tube falls down into the pipe. I’ve replaced it twice today. I am so going to get Super Glue and permanently affix those suckers. Grrr.

The doctors upped the pain meds (bleech!) and are sending me for a full-body bone scan (detects arthritis, cancer, and any other nasty bone/joint abnormalities) and a full-body EMG (detects abnormalities in the nerves). They feel confident that these will help narrow down the diagnosis. I had some abnormal bloodwork, but it was inconsistent and, taken together, wasn’t helping them see a clear treatment path. Fortunately I was able to get in for both tests next week so I should have some answers soon. I also finally decided to get a doctor’s note because the Vicodin-induced weaving walk makes me look like a lush. I’m going to schedule a therapeutic massage for tomorrow to see if that will help some.

I need a conclusion, people! The doctors keep coming back with “inconclusive” test results and now they want me to come in tomorrow for MORE tests! In the meantime I’m taking narcotic painkillers and the sucky prednisone and still hurting despite both. Thought I was doing better, but I went to push a door open with my knuckles this morning and just about screamed, not to mention the pain that driving inflicts (moving my sore big toe and all). The doctor’s response is “Let’s raise you from Darvocet to Vicodin and perhaps you should take a few days at home to rest.” Not sure what the difference is between hurting at home and hurting at work so I won’t be taking a few days off, although I will try to rest some this weekend. I’m so disappointed about this!!

I wanted to try out for the mock trail team and now that’s looking unlikely. My hope was that if I made the team, I’d be feeling better by the time I had to really participate but now who knows? I also want to feel better soon so I can go drink a few glasses of wine with a certain lady in Bohemia, meet up with an immigration attorney who has agreed to have a mentoring lunch with me, and make a good impression on my new attorney assignment who starts next week. Hopefully tomorrow will be the turning point and I will be able to do all of these, starting with the wine.

Why are so many law school moms having such crappy luck this week? Boo!

Apparently my body doesn’t respond well to stress. In the past week, my carpal tunnel has come back with a vengeance and my sciatica has flared up so much that it hurts to walk. Woke up yesterday with a horrible yucky something — ear infection? sinus infection? strep throat? Not sure, but I feel crappy. I have yet another problem on top of that but it’s TMI so I won’t go there. Let’s just say that I’m off to the doctor this afternoon to be checked from head to tail. I’m blogging this so I can check back at my next finals period to see if I’m in the same condition. With all the vitamins I take, you’d think this wouldn’t happen.

In the meantime, I managed to piss off one of my teachers yesterday. The teacher has been really preoccupied and distracted all semester, to the detriment of me and my classmates and did something that really got my back up so I finally said something. Now I’m on the wrong side of that teacher coming into finals and, due to the nature of our exam (see, this anonymous thing is hard!), the teacher will probably know which one is mine. Just setting myself up for greatness here.

It was one thing to raise to $135, but then $145 and now $160 in the space of, what, three years? Does anyone else think this is getting a bit insane? Surely GCs can read the paper. I think the Snark got it right. Next time you think about complaining about the price of something (the car insurance on your BMW, dry cleaning charges for your designer suits, your five daily Starbucks drinks, nanny salary, etc.), consider your audience. Your secretary might be nodding and smiling but inside she’s probably thinking, “*(&*^#^^%^&@*(&!”

In this age of blogs and Internet forums, while I’ve seen my share of kind gestures, more often I see snarky, downright nasty behavior and it has me wondering whether something has changed about our society. I’m a nice person. Yes, I get irritable and frustrated but I tend to be very trusting of others, generous and kind-hearted (modest, too!). It is my approach to the world that makes it hard for me to understand why people would choose to make mean, nasty comments on others’ blogs/web forums or only find negative things to say. Is there a small segment of the population out there so insecure with themselves that they need to rip others down? Do they find it easier to be nasty online? Would they say the same things if the person was in front of them?

Why am I thinking about this today? Fortunately it’s not due to any of my lovely blog readers. First off, my good friend, Christa, sent me a very thoughtful, measured editorial about the failure of the immigration legislation written by one of her family members. From the comments to that piece, you’d think his work was an act of treason! People were really hateful. One of the comments legislators made about the failure of this legislation is that those who supported the bill didn’t speak out but those who opposed it came out in force.

Those comments were nasty but the ones that really got me going were those cited by the author of yesterday’s On Parenting blog on the Washington Post. The author had written about the childcare dilemma she was facing during her nanny’s sudden trip out of the country and commenter trolls completely ripped her up one side and down the other, asking why she couldn’t just stay home and take care of her kids like a “good mother”. Yes, of course. Why didn’t she think of that? Cause it’s so easy to just take a few weeks off of work.

What I don’t understand is why they couldn’t frame the comment like, “Could you possibly negotiate a few weeks off of work?” Why does it have to always be a character assassination? Especially in regards to everything to do with parenting, the comments can fast get heated and mean. I joined and quickly unjoined an iVillage birth group when I was pregnant after faced with nastiness. I have a great parenting group now but sometimes the “in crowd” on that board can get snarky and judgmental and make me want to leave.

I read with horror a few months back about the death threats one blogger was receiving and how she shut down her blog to keep her family safe. Who are these people?!? Are there monsters lurking behind the “normal” exteriors of the people we meet every day? At what point do we stand up and say that this harassing hate speech just isn’t acceptable? Sometimes free speech just goes too far. Where are peoples’ moral compass directing them?

Fortunately I have “met” many wonderful, kind, tender-hearted souls out there in the blogging community and I’d like to think there are more of “us” than there are of “them”. It’s just discouraging to see so much nastiness out there. I’d love to hear your thoughts.

If you’ve read my blog, you know I have a fairly liberal view on immigration and immigrants generally. I’m writing on immigration not because I want to debate my views but because it’s my way of speaking out and kind of journaling my off-the-cuff impressions of these events as they take place. Don’t try to comment on my blog entries about those “evil criminal immigrants” because I won’t approve your comment. This is my immigrant-friendly bloggy home, not a place for the right wing to vent about all that is wrong with “those people.”

If you’ve read my “About Me”, I think you have a pretty good sense of where I stand on things. I have immigrant friends, GLBT friends, Muslim friends. My sister-in-law and best friend are both African American (as is my nephew) and my husband is Hispanic. I’m Episcopalian (a faith that embraces both female and gay/lesbian clergy). I believe strongly that women can do anything men can do and that we should be afforded equal treatment under the law and by society in general.

I have a personal relationship with God but I’m not a Bible thumper and I don’t like it when people use the Lord or the Bible to try to make me feel ashamed about my views or my life choices. I believe in living your life as a witness to God in terms of your demonstrated compassion and care of others. If people see you living that way and know you have faith, then you are demonstrating your faith through your actions. Ultimately I’m just a tender-hearted girl. If I want a fight, I’ll find a social justice issue that matters to me and direct that negative energy into a positive outlet. I don’t need negativity here, thanks.

And, of course, for those of you who have only wonderful, constructive comments to make, thank you! My blog life is much richer from your input.