Best Compliment Ever

I had a tough mediation today.  My clients were a group of tough New Yorkers with semi-intimidating Long Island accents whom I had not previously met. But it turned out that they were just the nicest people.

 And even though, as is typical in any mediation, nobody was thrilled with the outcome at the end of the day, one of the clients said, "You know, I've had to deal with a lot of lawyers in my life, and you are one of my favorites."

Thankful to be Home

I am so glad to be back at my home after our Turkey Day trip to Hometown.  I will admit that I much prefer staying home and hosting Thanksgiving.  I love to go all out and cook all of our favorite, delicious things. The trip to Hometown wasn't as bad as I was expecting, but it wasn't great, either.

We stayed with DH's sister, which the kids LOVED because they got to party with their cousins for three days.   But they like to stay up super late, and had company over super late most nights, so we are all wiped out from the late nights. 

We had Thanksgiving with MIL's family.  It was the first time we had seen many of them since her funeral, and her absence was noticeable.  The kids had a good time, though.  The hosts live in the country and raise horses.  All of the cousins had a grand time building forts out of hay bales and chasing the resident dogs and cats around the barn. And there were wild deer that would practically walk right up to you (Fortunately, it was a protected area, because the guys were planning their demise, since we're right in the middle of deer season.)

The next day was dinner with my Dad, brother and grandparents.  My dad and grandfather got into a rather loud spat in the middle of the restaurant.  My grandfather is about to turn 85 and has Alzheimer's, which become significantly more noticeable with every visit.  He knows it and it frustrates him, and although he has always had a bit of a temper, his fuse is much shorter.  His personality has just changed with the progression of this disease. My dad, who is also a hothead, does not seem to get that his dad is not the same anymore.  So he gets frustrated and angry when Pop gets frustrated and angry. And it just escalates from there. So yeah, that made for a nice family dinner.

We rounded out the day with DH's dad and siblings.  We just ordered pizza and sang (very bad) karaoke in BIL's new tricked out game room (complete with laser lights and a disco ball). That was fun, and I'm sure there is some very embarrassing video floating around now.

Then we woke up this morning to head home. And it appears DH has picked up a nasty stomach virus.  So we stopped at just about every little town on our 400 mile trek so DH could puke. I felt so bad for him being stuck in the car while feeling so miserable.  (And I am selfishly panicked that he will pass this on to me because I have a mediation on Wednesday and everybody except for me and the mediator is flying in from New York and it is my client so nobody else in my firm has worked on this case and I have no idea what I will do if I couldn't handle this mediation.)

And I got a speeding ticket. Because, when coming out of a tiny town,  I started accelerating when I saw the speed limit increase sign instead of after I passed it.  Damn speedtrap. I've driven this route at least 40 times in my life and I know not to speed in the little towns. The officer admitted that I was a block and a half from the speed limit increase and that I could clearly see the sign from where he clocked me.  At least it's about the cheapest speeding ticked I've ever gotten (and I get one every year.). Grumble.

But we're home.  DH is still in misery, but at least he's no longer trapped in a moving vehicle.  The kids are in  a  post-cousin-party hangover. And I'm just happy to be out of the car and back in  my own home.

Holiday in the Capital

This week I booked our flight to spend Christmas in Washington D.C. I am  ridiculously excited. I've been planning this trip for months, but it didn't feel real until I plunked down the cash to actually get us there.

This will be the twins' first flight. With five of us, it tends to be budget-breakingly expensive to fly anywhere. And the thought of flying with three kids and all their stuff just freaked me out when they were younger. But I managed to score a great deal on airfare (thank you Kayak and Bing travel), making it almost break-even with the cost of driving+two extra nights hotel+crazy parking costs in DC. To get this awesome deal we will be flying on Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve, which is not perfect, but it's ok.  I had already reserved passes for Christmas Eve services at the National cathedral, so my only concern with flying in on Christmas Eve was getting in early enough for that, and absent any major hiccups we should be ok.

I also contacted our congressman months ago to line up tours.  I was a bit surprised that anything was available that week, and sadly, the White House is not giving tours then. But we will get to tour the Capitol and I will get to tour the Supreme Court (they didn't have space for the five of us, and I think the rest of the family was relieved to get out of the Supreme Court tour, anyway). I also asked for gallery passes for both the House and Senate.  I don't really think they will be in session then, but with the Jan 1 fiscal cliff deadline, I thought it was within the realm of possibility.

We will be spending Christmas Day at Mount Vernon, which seems to be the only place open, and I'm thankful there's that. I think it will be pretty cool to spend Christmas at GW's house. I'm trying to talk the family into seeing White Christmas at the Kennedy Center that night, but they are resisting.  No one else shares my love of musical theater.

The rest of the week we will be hitting the museums and monuments.  We love museums, but I'm a little bit afraid we might get museumed out. If anyone has any suggestions for not-to-miss attractions, I'd love to hear them.  I've never been to DC before, and I'm a bit overwhelmed by how much there is to do.

Now, if we can just survive Thanksgiving.  It is truly my favorite holiday, and I love cooking Thanksgiving dinner.  But this year we are going to Hometown and I am not cooking and not at all excited about that trip. I can do anything for three days, right?

Boys and Cars

So PS has made a whole new batch of friends in high school--mostly through her robotics club.  Which also means that most of her new friends are boys.

I am not at all excited about this. She claims that they are all just friends.  But still--boys? And she is so private, I don't think she would tell me if any of them were more than friends. They are also mostly older boys.  Juniors.  Boys who can drive.  Boys with cars.

One offered her a ride home from Robotics last week.  He lives around the block.  It would be oh so convenient.

Um, no. 1) I don't want her in the car with a new driver. 2) I don't want her in the car with a boy. 3) I don't want her in the car with an older boy.

DH thinks I'm being a bit to spazzy about this.  That's because DH was a nice boy.  He actually asked before he tried to kiss me the first time.  But I dated lots of other boys and they were not so nice.  I dated a senior as a freshman, and it was a constant battle to keep his hands from roaming under my clothes. And he was not the only one.  Nope, there is no way in Hell my freshman daughter will be going anywhere with junior or senior boys. At least not in a car.

Interesting...

So when I was leaving the courthouse in Hometown last week after proving up my brother's divorce, I ran into my 5th Grade Arch-Nemesis.  I knew he was a lawyer in Hometown, so I wasn't especially surprised to see him, although he looked shocked to see me. We chatted for a minute and then parted ways.

Arch-Nemesis and I spent most of the 5th and 6th grades tormenting one another.  We were in a full-day GT program that mingled with other classes only for Art and PE. Being a GT class, it was much different from most of the other classes I  had.  Instead of desks, we had tables, grouped together in little sections throughout the room. We chose where we sat, and my group of friends always sat on one side of a long table, with Arch-Nemesis and his buddies on the other side. I have no idea why we endured this arrangement for two years--or why our teacher put up with our bickering all that time. We were also given much more freedom than standard classes, and had many, many debates over those two years.  I knew a whole lot more about politics and current events in the 5th and 6th grades than most adults did.

This setting left ample opportunity for Arch-Nemesis and me to relentlessly argue and hurl insults at one another. It is not at all surprising that the two of us grew up to become lawyers.*

But we each moved on and grew up. We had fewer classes together and didn't really have much to do with each other after those two years.  Interestingly, we both transferred from our original high school to another high school our junior year.  Even with us both being the new kids, we continued to ignore each other.

But he did become buddies with my future DH.  And so DH knows Arch-Nemesis in a completely different way than I did. I knew him as a 12-year-old pain in the ass, and DH knew him as a 16 year-old crazy teenager.

Then I went off to college. And Arch-Nemesis went to the same college.  DH and I would occasionally run into him. He worked at Sears selling vacuums, I worked for a satellite television company and set up his account.

And then he eventually became FB friends with DH, because they were casual friends in HS.  But he never friended me and I never friended him (because I never friended anybody--all my friends friended me first--I guess I have a fear of rejection).

Sooooo, anyway, after I got back from Hometown, Arch-Nemesis send DH a message saying, "hey, I saw LC, it was great seeing her, tell her if she has something like a prove-up again to let me know, I'd be happy to help out." And that was nice and I though I would send Arch-Nemesis a friend request, because the professional connection wouldn't be a bad thing, but then I cancelled FB before I did it.

But then tonight Arch-Nemesis sent DH another message via FB that said something like, "Hey, I don't know if LC has said something about it, but I was a real dick to her in 5th grade, and it's really been on my mind lately."

 So I guess I should respond.  The funny thing is, I truly don't harbor any ill will for Arch-Nemesis. It was kind of like battling with my brother.  It's not like I felt bullied and am holding some secret resentment. But I guess I should let him off the hook and tell him that.

Besides, I get it.  There were a couple of people in my school years that I could have been nicer to. I have apologized to some of them, but I hate the fact that I might have made someone's junior high or high school years harder than they should have been.

So I understand wanting to clear your conscience. It just seems strange to be coming via my husband.

Over and Out

So, I deactivated my Facebook account this week. I've been thinking about it for a while, but the political maelstrom is what finally drove me over the edge. You would think it would have happened before the election, but in fact, it was the aftermath.The self-righteous, covertly-racist, you-must-be-an-idiot-if-you-don't-see-things-my-way pre-election posts were awful.  But the-sky-is-falling-and-Obama-supporters-made-this-happen posts afterward were truly intolerable.

Seriously?  You seriously believe that armageddon is coming because Obama was re-elected?  You truly, in your hear-of-hearts believe that we will be under Chinese rule within 4 years?  That you need to start stockpiling guns and staples?  Seriously?

Indeed, there are people on my feed who believe all of that bullshit.

I grew up in a mid-sized city that was, in a word, it was homogeneous. Mostly all while, mostly all protestant. There were a few Hispanics thrown in, along with a small Catholic population that was barely tolerated. (My own grandparents told me I was going to Hell for marrying a Catholic.) I didn't go to school with any black students until high school--and they were bussed in from another part of town and were not in any of my honors classes.  I think we had one Asian kid and one Indian kid. No Jews.  No Muslims. No Mormons. Everybody went to church, usually on Sunday morning and evenings and on Wednesday nights, too.

It is not surprising that area is strongly right-wing Republican. Practically the birthplace of the Tea Party. And I saw the world through the exact same lens as all of them until I got the hell out.

I've said often that the smartest thing I've ever done is get out of of there.  To raise my children in an area where they have friends of many faiths and colors and political beliefs. My kids were stunned when they learned about slavery in school.  They couldn't imagine that people could be treated that way because of the color of their skin.  I grew up in an environment where the "N-word" was thrown around freely and open racism made slavery not such a big surprise. Today, the racism is more subtle, but intolerance still abounds. My aunt recently announced that it was just too bad that a dear family friend was going to hell, regardless of the many charitable works he has done, because he just came out of the closet.

And so the election brought back all the reasons why I will never go back to Hometown. Because I learned to think for myself, instead of just accepting the crap I had been spoon-fed my entire life. I guess I though that my peers from Hometown would have similarly evolved. Not so much.

Interestingly, those that still live in Hometown, still follow (literally) the party line. Those that have moved away, generally, do not. They are more open to at least consider the other side of the story, no matter which side they come out on at the end of the day. Those that are still there seem stunned that there is another viewpoint. Did the ones that moved away do so because they were more open-minded to begin with?  Or did breaking away from the homogeneous bubble of Hometown make them more open-minded?

For the record, I am an Independent.  I voted a split ticket, after researching all of the elections on my ballot. My presidential vote was largely decided by social issues and by who would likely be making Supreme Court appointments over the next four years (especially in light of Ginsburg's health).  I am intolerant of intolerance. Of legislating religious beliefs with no other legitimate support. And I don't really care how you voted.  But don't act like I'm a moron because of the way I voted.  Like my vote is leading to your demise.   I am many things, but I am not stupid and I put a whole lot of thought and research into my vote.

So I gave up Facebook because I was starting to hate people that I had previously liked and respected.  And because it seemed better to end our cyber relationships before they infected the real ones.

We'll see what happens.  If I will eventually go back, or if I'm truly done. PS has staunchly refused to get on FB--perhaps the only 14-year-old girl in the world to make this decision.  She may be the smartest person I know.

Divorce Flowers

I haven't fallen off the face of the earth.  Life just got really busy. 

So, I've been handling my brother's divorce. Generally, my mantra is "I don't do family or criminal law." I only got involved in this one because of my nieces.  Otherwise, I would have left him to handle is on his own. Anyway, it was set for trial last Friday. There was a whole lot of unnecessary drama that caused my stress levels to escalate through the roof. But in the end, there was a last minute agreement, and it was good to have it done.

So I drove to Hometown late Thursday afternoon, had the hearing Friday morning, filed my mother-in-laws probate proceeding (it will be 3 years in February) had lunch with my grandparents and their friends at the Dairy Queen where I was introduced as "this is our beautiful granddaughter, she's a lawyer" was grilled by the friends on why I wasn't traveling with a firearm since I was alone.

I finally drove home late Friday night, and was up early Saturday because DH and the girls had a race followed by TT's double-header softball games.  

Because of the divorce mess, I had procrastinated on another deadline for Monday, and spent all day Sunday at the office.And on Monday my dad sent a huge bouquet to thank me for handling my brother's divorce.  Everyone who asks about the flowers finds it quite amusing that I got them for ending my brother's marriage. My new mantra is "I will never do another divorce."  I've done two before and didn't like it then, but this one was truly awful. But the flowers are pretty.

In other news, a student at PS's school was murdered last week, so that threw us off kilter.  Our little town has only had two murders. Ever. There's really not much crime here and maybe we all have a bit of a false sense of security. It was truly shocking and tragic.

There was also a murder less than a block from my office in Big City, and the next day a kidnapping at a mall across the street.  That does not leave me particularly excited to be leaving my building alone after dark.

And then our guinea pig died.  The twins took it much harder than expected, so tonight we buried it and had a little memorial service and the girls wrote poems about her.

So, yeah, it's been a little crazy around here.  But crazy is the norm. The good news is that this coming weekend is our first free weekend in a couple of weeks.  Yay!