Interlude

Do you want to know the sexiest thing about Jen? She used to work at the Diary Queen.

This Dairy Queen as a matter of fact:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

BTW – I am eating a Wendy’s hamburger while I sit in the parking lot. Oh America, how I love you.

I vaguely remember something about a pit bull with lipstick

Jen is in her 3rd trimester, and she looks adorable. She is pretty uncomfortable but she’s been hanging in like a champ. I carried our first baby. It’s kind of interesting being the “other” party in this pregnancy.

This semester has been insane, and I haven’t gotten to as many meetings. I ran into a woman from the halls. My son and I were hanging out in town. She was there with a guy I didn’t know. I had gone into Dunkin Donuts to get a coffee but I wouldn’t let my son have a donut because I knew he would eat some Halloween candy. This didn’t fly. He was walking up and down the street crying, “I’m so hungry…I’m so hungry.” He was giving a pretty good performance. Luckily, he is built like a linebacker so I don’t think anyone really thought he was starving.

Sarah Palin at 7 months

The lady looks at my son, and then says to me, “I didn’t know you had a kid. He’s adorable.”

I tell that yeah, I do have a kid. I then tell her that we are having another one in January. I don’t think she knows who “we” are.

But she congratulates me. We talk for a little bit more, and then its time to move on.

Walking away, I heard her say to her guy, “Did you hear her? She’s pregnant!”

Yep. I’m looking pretty good. I’m carrying it like Sarah Palin!

Dishes and Therapy

I have a first draft of a 30 page paper due tomorrow, and I am taking the MPREs on Saturday.

This is my problem.

And I should be focusing all of my mental energy on just getting through the next 72 hours. But I keep having panic attacks. The house is total fucking mess. Jen’s watching Parks and Recreations, and I just want to tell to pick the shit up already. But that would be terribly unjust because she worked all day, and it’s really my mess because I have been so consumed with the paper. And she’s 7 months pregnant.

But its really bothering me. Do you think there is any way I could get away with it? Would you divorce me? I don’t know if I would divorce myself, but I would definitely have a word or two with me.

Also, I have been having a hard time finding a therapist. I don’t want to go into the details but it has been a bit of nightmare. It’s totally a back burner problem. But I am kind of tired, and in the middle of reading endless cases and law review articles, I get this anxious feeling. OMG – I don’t have a therapist! But then I try and remind myself that it is kind of ok because I don’t have time for therapy right now, and if I had the time, I wouldn’t go lie on somebody’s couch – I would do the fucking dishes.

P.S. Virgin criticized my iterant hyphen use, which of course made it all that much appealing. See why I need to be in therapy?

Smashing Pumpkins

When I was growing up in Arizona, our pumpkins were smashed every year. Everybody’s pumpkins were smashed. I thought it was part of the social contract. If you left your pumpkin accessible to the public, that would be the end of it. It was also a useful tool for disposing of them. November 1, no need to think about your pumpkin again.

Imagine my surprise upon moving to Boston, and waking up on All Saints Day to find my pumpkin perfectly in tact. Not once has my pumpkin been smashed. It is very mysterious to me. I’m sure it is fun to destroy them, but the Boston kids hold off.

The end result of this is that I generally forget about the pumpkin until it’s rotting on the porch and Jen yells at me to get rid of it already.

Here is this years pumpkin. Yes, I’m very proud of the spider. Next year I’m going to attempt a portrait of Britney Spears.

And gratuitously, here is the cutest pirate to ever sail the seven seas.

Opposite Day

Somebody told me that today was Positive Attitude Day. I decided it was Opposite Day, and sported my pissy mood. I actually yelled at my clinic supervisor. I think it surprised him because usually I am pretty sweet. By the time I was done I had snapped at the police prosecutor and snarled at the defense attorney.

This morning, I went to court. The defense had filed a motion to dismiss. It was a situation where the police could have charged an couple different ways, and they went with the more serious charge. It was pretty arguable about whether or not we met the elements of the more serious charge, but I felt that I could make good faith argument.

I stayed up late last night dutifully writing the opposition. I have to say, I can’t remember when I had such a bottleneck of work. I had a paper due last Friday. I have a 30 page paper due next Friday. I’m taking the MPREs Saturday after next, and it’s Halloween. But I took the time out to think about this.

I get to court and find out, the defense didn’t bother to work on it at all. But she wants it dismiss anyway. And she is one of these Yorkshire terrier types that just keep yapping at you. Mind you, she doesn’t want to argue the motion. She just wants the prosecution to dismiss the case.

To my surprise, my supervisor agrees with her. He doesn’t think that we can meet the elements. I make my argument. We drag out a dictionary to look up words in the jury instructions. I point out the police prosecutor doesn’t want this dropped. He changes tactics. It’s going to be dangerous for me to try and find witnesses (for real).

Finally, he says thinks it’s a waste of the Commonwealth’s resources to pursue this.

And that is when I lose it. Because you know, what about my fucking resources? If I had known that this was such a bull shit case, I would have watched Madmen last night.

I snapped at the police prosecutor because he tapped on my shoulder during this fight, and I thought it was the defense attorney. I apologized, and he laughs and says women yell at him all the time. But the defense attorney has gotten to him. He has agreed to drop this.

I just couldn’t help but wonder, “If she is so damn persuasive at getting people to see her way, why didn’t she just go argue her motion in front of a judge?”

But it doesn’t matter. I see that I’m not going to win this one. On the way out the door, the defense attorney coyly asks me, “But don’t you think I’m right?” And I respond, “It doesn’t matter if you are right, because you would just keep at it until you got your way.” She smiled and walked away.

Law should be entertaining

Listen, I am so busy I can’t see straight. I’d blog more, but I am busy feeling sorry for myself.

But I will tell you this. I had my schedule all worked out for next semester. It was going to be Homicide, Sexual Minorities, and my nod to convention, Corporations.

But the girl who sits next to me in the clinic told me today that Entertainment Law is all sex tapes and sordid affairs gone wrong. And it is taught by a professor who has no hands and brags about banging girls in the back of the campus bar. So I put myself on the wait list.

PS – what kind of karma creates a sexually deviant person with no hands? Probably what I’ll end up in my next life.

Sign of the times

Jen and are beginning the stressful journey of trying to get our son into the right Kindergarten. If you live in Boston you know that Boston is on a “lottery system.” Its a very high stakes lottery where you could end up in a magnificent school or you could end up in a disastrous school. The process is complicated and thank god I am sober because I don’t think I could navigate it if I were drinking.

Part of the fun is that some of the better schools do not have before or after care. One of the best ones starts at 9:30. So the lucky parents who won the lottery and get to send their kid to this school also get to figure out who is going to drop their kid off mid morning. If you both work 9 to 5 you have a problem.

I pointed this out to Jen. She thought a moment and said, “Well, maybe you won’t have job. Then you can take him.”

That would be one advantage of unemployment.

This is probably a whole ‘nother blog topic, but job thing has been pretty scary. Which isn’t to say I’ve been looking, because, I haven’t. I’ve just been obsessing about the fact that I haven’t been looking. And then I forget about it. Then I will remember at a random time and won’t be able to sleep at night. I need to get a plan, or at least start thinking about developing a plan. But whenever I do, I just feel so overwhelmed. I am watching my classmates zip off to interviews here and there, but I don’t get the feeling that it is actually getting them anywhere.

So I decided I needed to make a manageable goal for myself. I decided to send out two resumes on Friday. I should be able to do that. My cover letter is written and my resume is up to date. I will let you know how it goes.

By trying to not act like my mother, inadvertently, I turn into my mother

Halloween is my favorite holiday. This is weird because my mother died on Halloween, and my asshole father’s birthday was on Halloween. In spite of this, I still love it. Love dressing up, love trick or treating, love jack o lanterns. Love.

But when I was growing up, my mother would never let us buy a store bought costume. Ever. She was perennially worried about money, so we always made our costumes at home. They looked like crap, as you can imagine. But I have vowed to change all of that, and have gone out and got store bought costumes for my son.

This year, he said he wanted to be a pumpkin. I was thrilled. We went to Pottery Barn to pick up the costume. I knew he would look adorable. But when we got to the store, he refused to try it on. This after I made the store clerk run to the back to check on a size and then rip the costume off the mannequin when they didn’t have the one in back. But P stubbornly refused to try it on.

I could see the other mothers begin to snicker. As much as I like to think I am immune to social pressure, I was getting embarrassed. I got really mad at him, but he just crossed him arms and insisted that he wasn’t going to be a pumpkin. We left the store in a huff. I probably won’t going back.

I was so annoyed I called Jen at the hospital. “What are we going to do about Halloween?” Jen was in the middle of getting the ward ready for a seriously important person that was coming. She just laughed and said, “We’ll get another costume. Maybe my sister has an extra one.”

On the way home, I wondered what was up my butt. I just wanted him to understand that this was really special. My mother NEVER would have spent $29 on a costume. I’m trying to make the holiday perfect. But of course, this means nothing to him. Instead, I had gotten irrationally angry. Which was exactly like my mother. She was always flying into rages. The real reason for her anger could only be glimpsed at.

So, I have decided to delegate the costume getting to Jen. Because apparently, this is too loaded for me. I’ll bake witch and bat cookies instead.

A Disney Pictorial (of sorts)

Sometimes I give my son my Iphone. He likes to take pictures, and I always find it interesting to see what he sees. We spent a week in Disneyworld. Here is the Happiest Place on Earth as seen from a stroller.

It wasn’t like this on Law and Order

It’s been a summer of files thrown at me as I walk into court, witnesses who say they are going to show and then don’t, and the constant pestering of defense attorneys. But I have been trying to think of an anecdote that captures the entire experience of being an intern at the DAs office. Here is my favorite story.

I was given a motion to suppress the night before. The geek in me loves motions to suppress. I think they are incredibly interesting. This one involved a search of a student in a school. I wanted to do a good job so I stayed up until midnight reading case law and outlining my argument. We had a case right on point, and I was excited

The next day, the defendant shows up. I think this is going to go.

But note, dear reader, it’s the summertime. Ever wonder what school police do when school isn’t in session? They don’t show up for court.

I ask for second call so I could run down and call the unit. I called twice before I get an answer. My officer is on vacation. I go up and tell the judge, and he dismisses the case.

Three days later this young cop waltzes into court. He tells me he is there for the motion to suppress. I explained to him that it was dismissed. He folds his arms, and looks intimidating. He wants to know why I didn’t get it continued. I explained I had no idea what was going on with him. He is pissed off, and protests that he comes to court all the time. This is completely irrelevant, but I’m stammering.

He then gets so pissed off at me he stomps out of the room, and slams the door!

I’m sitting there completely flummoxed. He ignores his summons, and then he comes and yells at me. Furthermore, no one else in the office thought anything of it.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is what it is like to be an ADA.