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Posts Tagged ‘Paralegals’

Yawn

23 Oct

It’s 11:15. I worked until 9 and had to run errands on the way home. I swear, sometimes preparing for a vacation is more exhausting than anything else. Got the wrong colored pantyhose and had to go exchange it and now I’m home ironing clothes. Ugh. I rarely iron so of course since I had the iron out, I decided to run it over the rest of the badly wrinkled clothes hanging in my closet. I may have to wait until the morning to finish packing because I am so exhausted I can’t even think. I know generally what I need to take but my body doesn’t want to get up off this chair I just sat down in. Work is insane right now and I have way too much to do for school as well. I need to figure out what to take with me on the plane study-wise.

Blue Eyes’ plane was delayed tonight. Fortunately he has a direct flight. Mine stops in Vegas for about an hour and I have to change planes. Don’t get in until 9:30 p.m. (11:30 my time). Boo. Fortunately the hotel is less than 2 miles away. I told Blue Eyes he’d better rest up! I don’t want to be standing outside the hotel room banging on the door while he is passed out. LOL. Besides, all those cute undergarments (and the right shade of pantyhose for Pete’s sake!) can’t go to waste. Got to maximize the two days away.

The Roundup will either be up Saturday or Monday. I’m taking my laptop with me and will have access at the first hotel but not at the B&B. I’m not much of a sleeper and I’m on Mommy time (i.e., early wakeup) but Blue Eyes is the opposite so I may have some time Saturday morning to work on it while he sleeps. We’ll see. Hope all of you have a great weekend. Send me smooth work vibes tomorrow as I launch a MAJOR project across 117 countries using quirky technology that may or may not be friendly to me. Have to leave at 4 (early) so it had better go well!!! Now you know why I was at work until 9. Trying to anticipate every contingency. Sigh… Still have to pack Pumpkinhead’s bag for a weekend with his Daddy. But for now I am hitting the sack.

1 Comment

Posted in Dating

Getting Gone Again!

20 Oct

Not only am I going to spend this weekend in San Diego, but I now have to go to Fort Worth for a business trip the first week in November. Man, I’m getting around!!! Now I just need to see if my friend, Elicia, wants to get together for dinner since I will be in Fort Worth for three nights without a rental car and my colleagues are all old!!! She’s about 33 weeks pregnant, but she should still be up for some fun. Unfortunately I will have to miss class, but I managed to book my flight out for Monday night after my class is over. It will be late but definitely better than missing both classes that week. Unfortunately my two Tuesday classes are only once-a-week but I’m trying to make arrangements with those teachers. We’ll see. In the meantime, yippee. I love to travel!

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Posted in Uncategorized

Traumatized

24 Sep

The last 24 hours have been amazingly Murphy’s Law-ish. Mid-Very Important Conference Call, the cable goes out which means no Internet. Meanwhile all the batteries on the house phones have been dying one by one (not holding charges) so I had gone through three in an hour and the last one died right when my boss was saying, “PT-LawMom, what do you think about this Very Important Topic.” Fuck. We won’t even talk about the fire alarms going off in the background at one of the caller’s offices FOR AN HOUR! Needless to say, I had not printed out the call-in info so I was off the call for good.

This is after I spent almost two hours driving to and from fucking CVS to pick up medication for poor Blue Eyes. Between the evil pharmacy tech and the damn four-way stops, I was ready for a helicopter and a stiff drink by the time I got back.

Poor Blue Eyes is hurting bad. And the cable is out so now he has to sleep back in my room which is 10 miles from the bathroom. Then his dog peed IN MY BED. Then the kid woke up at 3 a.m. freaking out. Then the cat was up at 4:30 a.m. meowing to go out (she had gotten stuck in my room and I didn’t realize it). Then the kid wakes up again at 5:30 a.m. and drags me inside. We’re lying down and he says something overtly sexual that makes me wonder 1) WTF has he been hearing and where?!? and 2) am I dreaming? Then he says, “Mommy, your arm is very skinny. What does skinny mean?” I say, “Um, thin?” and he goes, “Oh, is thin the same as beautiful?” Okay, I am ready to hide under the bed now. But I’m late for work. Had to get this out on “paper” so I can process it all later. Argh.

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Posted in Mommy stuff

Survived

07 Jul

I made it through my first day back at work. Returned to huge bombshells, an overflowing inbox and a ton of urgent tasks, but I didn’t panic. I did, however, leave early to take a nap. By 3 p.m. my side was killing me and the Advil/Tylenol alternating schedule just wasn’t doing the trick. I drove home, picked up Pumpkinhead from the Y, made him dinner and then collapsed into bed for a two-hour nap. Then I got up and watched the most amazing episode of Al Diablo Con Los Guapos (OMG, I can’t take the suspense!!!) and I am now avoiding the pile of work next to me on the bed. Had to bring it home to rationalize my early departure (to myself, not my boss). Oddly enough (and this tells you how solitary my office is), only the people who sit immediately around me knew I was gone. Apparently gossip is not big around there (that or no one gives a crap about me…). It could also be that the legal department staffers travel a ton so people probably thought I was on a trip or something. Anyway, hopefully tomorrow will be a bit less painful. That is, if I can get myself to turn to this memo on my lap and make some progress!

P.S. Potential awesome school fall schedule news to come.
P.P.S. Site hits from my current town (and my former town, oddly enough) are way up since my “Busted?” post. Hola amigos!

6 Comments

Posted in Health

Go Shinyung

01 Jun

In the midst of finals, I missed this story about a Paul Hastings associate laid off mere days after suffering a miscarriage. According to a parting e-mail she sent out to members of the firm, she had an excellent track record with the firm until she got married and then pregnant and, in hard economic times, PH found a way to get rid of her. Who knows what the real story is, but I applaud her for having the guts to stand up to the firm and refuse to sign the non-disclosure agreement.

I alluded to a legal staff friend being “asked to resign” from a BigLaw firm a few months ago after she got on the wrong side of a partner (I swear she didn’t do anything wrong, just pissed him off and he decide to exact revenge). Like Shinyung, my friend had excellent performance reviews until she made the partner mad, at which point all the things she’d apparently done wrong came out of the woodwork from everyone she worked for in a coordinated blackballing effort. Since then, she has been interviewing all over town and can’t find work. One of the firms she interviewed at was THISCLOSE to making her an offer and then suddenly backed off. When she confronted the firm administrator, she found out that someone at the firm had been talking negatively about her at a party attended by one of the new firm’s attorneys. She called old firm to ask them to put a stop to the blackballing and was told they would do nothing. So they can get away with basically ruining the career of a $60k legal staff member? Nice. My friend may never work in this town again.

Have I mentioned how happy I am NOT to be working for a law firm anymore? Vengeful bastards. I could share story after story after story about the way female and minority associates are treated by large firms but instead, because I don’t underestimate The Firm, I will just cheer for Shinyung Oh’s courage in the face of discrimination and wrongful termination. Good for her for sharing her story with the masses. The more women that stay away from these black holes after reading cautionary tales such as Shinyung’s, the better.

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Posted in Women in Law

Busy Girl

29 Mar

Work continues to go very well. Lots of projects heating up and my business cards are on their way – yippee!!!

School is getting crazy busy as well. My new commute is actually faster even though I’m further away, which is just nuts. So far, so good. I’ve been very busy the past two weeks working on a large paper for one of my classes. I also need to get moving on practice tests for my other class so I have a shot at passing my main substantive class.

I did take time out last night for a rousing game of Chutes and Ladders with Pumpkinhead. Fortunately the ladder at #81 shot him to the top and he beat me in no time!

On a low note, my pain has not resolved with the additional medication. But I did hear back from my PCP and she said that she thinks she knows why. For those RNY readers who care about these detailed health updates, my Ferritin (serum iron) level has dropped from 8 last August to 4 now. My B12 is also in the basement despite weekly shots. Last time the Ferritin was that low, I had to undergo 10 weeks of IV iron infusions at the local cancer center. This time I really can’t afford to take time off work, plus my health insurance ends on Tuesday. Soooo…. Looks like we’re going to try upping the Ferrous Gluconate pill to twice daily with 1,000mg of chewable Vitamin C for a month until my health insurance kicks in May 1. I’m also going to try to add in a sublingual B12 and switch to twice-weekly B12 shots. Bleech. On the plus side, my Vitamin D levels have come up with the addition of the Dry D3.

As much pain as I’m in, I have kept to my resolve not to let anyone at work know. Thank God for an office with a door I can close and a boss who works on another floor! Fortunately I’m doing a lot of reading and reviewing documents right now (not a lot of writing) and I am also not having to run around much because my legs are killing me. I’m also working on meditation and “staying in the now”, as my psychologist says, so that I can stay positive and not dwell on the pain and feel like it will never go away or will keep returning (like it has every 6-8 weeks for the past 9 months). I am also considering seeing a naturopath and trying some different treatments.

Okay, off to study. We’re going to the zoo this afternoon. Chapin took the day off to hang out with us and have some family time so I told him I would spend a few hours on concentrated studying this morning and then we’d have a family day. Yay.

6 Comments

Posted in Health, Law School, Mommy stuff

How I’m Feeling

22 Mar

After starting my new job this week, this is how my heart feels. The position (so far) is better than I could have imagined. The people are friendly (but not in an intrusive way). I’ve managed to present myself well and do a good job so far. I’ve also managed to overcome the arm pain hurdle and get permission to use a laptop in meetings, citing a preference to get the info down in the most rapid method possible (versus using a medical condition as the reason) and my boss went for it. He’s really behind all my ideas and I’m excited about the road ahead. Plus you should see my amazingly large office!!! That’s about all I can say about work, but there are so many reasons why it appears to be a great fit for me now and in the future. I think I’ve made the right choice and I am soooooo pleased. Yay!

Medically, my pain started to come back last week. Boo hiss. I was hoping it was just stress-related, but it kept getting worse so I finally called my neurologist on Wednesday and fessed up. He upped the Topamax to 75mg twice a day (from 50mg), which isn’t the 100mg I was on before that was causing all the problems, but it is a 1/2 step away. I’m cautiously optimistic that the side effects won’t be too bad but I also know I can’t function well with the pain and it just kept getting worse. I’m hoping that I can keep my head low and that no one will notice anything at work. I’m working on listening a lot and hoping they will just take it as a sign that I’m trying to learn. I’m also writing down questions before meetings so that I have a list to read from (to avoid the aphasia issue). That helps.

In the meantime, I have TONS of homework and I have been exhausted this week so I haven’t been blogging or e-mailing. Right now I’m off to work on my homework. I’ll try to get to the Roundup tomorrow morning.

3 Comments

Posted in Health