Filthy Farmers and Other Tales

Do I like my job? Depends on what day you ask me! :) This morning I had a court trial with a crazy, filthy dirty farmer running an unlicensed junk yard on his property for the last five years. Despite his assertions that the vehicles on his property were fully operational, I had 15 photos of the property taken over the course of five years showing that several of the vehicles were parked in the same spot (some without wheels) and never moved! Guilty. Then I had a court trial with a really bitchy woman who objected to the police pulling her over for failure to signal a turn because they were just "looking for drunk drivers because it's well known that the police have a contest going to see who can pull over the most drunk drivers." Guilty on signal to turn, not guilty of failing to update her DL address. And on and on, speed trials with people claiming their car "can't possibly go as fast as the cop says", or a teen this morning was explaining that accelerating is not speeding. Trials are better than sitting at a desk, though!

Drunken Catfight, Goth Victim

God, I get back from lunch, I'm eating my Hagen Daz raspberry cream sorbet bar, and my secretary comes in and tells me there's an assault defendant from out of town here to see me. Without an appointment. Can I tell you how much this irritates me? A lot. So I read the police report, and it was a drunken-brawl between sister-in-laws, and the defendant allegedly punched the other woman, giving her a bloody lip. Defendant tried to go into court today and plead guilty, but the judge wouldn't accept her plea because she wouldn't admit to the assault. So the judge sends her here to see if we can reach a plea so defendant can go back to Alabama. Oh, did I mention all parties were drunk? Yeah. So defendant and her husband with these thick, stupid-sounding southern accents come in here trying to plead with me to let her plead to disorderly conduct and pay a fine so they can go home tomorrow. But I have to contact the victim before I make any plea agreements. So I left a message on both cell phones numbers for my victim (two cellphones? Bad sign). And defendant says victim is a "goth" "satanist" "drug dealer" who burns herself with cigarettes until her husband does what she wants. So I look up the victim's DL photo. This woman looks like she bought out every black charcoal eyeliner at Target and applied them all to her face at once. Blond bangs, jet-black hair, eyebrow piercing. Beautiful. Welcome to my world. So I leave her two urgent messages to call me back. I'm not holding my breath. I told the defendant to call me back at the end of the day to see if I've heard from her. If she's ok with a disorderly conduct, I'm fine with sending Daisy Mae on her way back to Alabama after a plea to disorderly. I'm still trying to wrap my brain around this. She comes up to my town, gets wasted, assaults someone, and I'm supposed to get her into court as fast as I can so that she can plead guilty to a lesser charge and leave.

Day 5 of vacation

We are chillin' at the lake this week. I'm on my MIL's computer while doing laundry at her house (across the lake from the cabin). Last night we sat on the dock and saw a muskrat catch and eat a sunfish and heard the loons go nuts (they have two new babies!) I am currently stuffed to the gills, we just got back from A&W. Ava had her first root beer float, and was, in the words of Kramer, "LOVIN' EVERY MINUTE OF IT!!!" That kid loves her sugar, where on earth could she have gotten that? Totally windy today, not nice enough to swim. We went to the park twice today, and Ava, as usual, would have stayed on the swing for HOURS if we had let her. The walking is coming along, I just bought her a "popper" walking toy, but it's not sturdy enough for her tastes. DJ and I just celebrated our 7th wedding anniversary! Where does the time go?!? FIL took us all out to lunch, and I've got some funny video of Ava feeding him stars. He's a big ham, and she just eats it up! When I get home, I will figure out how to post it.

SHE'S MOBILE, LOOK OUT!

I went home for lunch today (that's the beauty of living 2 minutes away from the office). Baby A was fascinated with her nail clippers, but also wanted to me to walk around with her. So I held one of her hands and she held the clippers in the other. When I let go of her hand, she just used it to hold onto the clippers, and took about 4 steps on her own before gently falling on her butt. Her first walk! And I got to see it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I was so worried I would miss it. But that's not all, folks. I had previously taught her to give her stuffed animals a kiss, but could never get her to kiss me, I don't think she realized what it meant. I asked her for a kiss today and made the kissing sound and pointed to my lips, and when she wouldn't, I said "boo hoo hoo" and acted sad. She smiled, walked over to me, and kissed me on the lips!!! First walk and first kiss on the same day!!! And it's only the first day of summer vacation! By the end of the summer, she'll probably be reciting Shakespeare, performing long division, and jumping hurdles!

Too many toys, too many continuances, boring Sopranos

It was torture leaving A and Erik home today and going to work. I've been so paranoid about having stuff for her to do while home with Erik all summer, I bought her a toy lawnmower and a kiddie pool and a water/sand table, and a used burley. Ridiculous. We finally took out the little tykes plastic car we inherited from the inlaws. She is obsessed!!!! Last night I walked her up and down the sidewalk in it for at least a half hour and she cried when I took her out of it. We have to hide it so she won't cry when she sees it and can't play with it--like when we're taking her in and out of the car.


Work is insane. I am so tired of work, I'm exhausted. I was on the jury trial list yesterday. I was 11th! Everything else went away except for Dan's drug case and Scott's DWI. Turns out Dan's case was up, they were gonna pick a jury this morning. So I say to Dan, are you sure your case is gonna go? You've talked to all your witnesses? He says yes, and I call off my witnesses. I left work a little early because I had worked over the weekend and came in early. I get home, and I'm on the toilet, and I hear the phone ring. Shit. I knew it was Dan. Sure enough, one of his witnesses was not served with the subpoena, and was going south on him, and he might have to dismiss the case, but was not positive yet, but he just wanted to let me know. I talk to one of the secretaries and tell them to call all my witnesses back and tell them they MIGHT be on the hook for wednesday (did I mention I have 9 witnesses?). So instead of a relaxing night, I'm thinking, will it go or not? If so, I really should do more work on it, I'm not totally ready. But I'm too tired to work, so i just watch some tv and go to bed early. Get to work early this morning, and I don't find out until about 9:30 today that the jury was sent home and my trial was continued. My trial that was NUMBER 11, should have gone, but didn't. I've been here only 3 hours today and it feels like 9. Gotta love telling witnesses, you are on, now you're off, no wait, you might be on again, oh never mind, you're off. See you in August, when it's set again.

Could this season of the Sopranos have been any MORE boring?!? The only storyline worth watching was gay Vito in New England, and they cut it all short! They could have made a whole new series about Johnnycakes! Why did they name Julianna's character after her real name? Why didn't Christopher get whacked? How could Carmela be so stupid about not knowing Tony had Adrianna whacked? What was the point of Tony's coma if he wasn't gonna change his life afterwards? Why have Carmela go to Paris? Those writers have a lot of 'splaining to do.

I'm taping "The Closer". I think I might be into that show, Sedgewick is pretty entertaining, and I love the accent and the sweets addiction. "Lovespring International" looks promising, love the tall chick from the Christopher Guest movies. Speaking of which, when's he gonna put out a new movie? I'm dying for some improv, people! Just went to the actual movie theater (instead of renting, like usual) and say Prairie Home Companion, which I was shocked to see was playing here in our little movie theater the first week it opened. Must be because it was a Minnesota movie. Garrison Keillor has a face made for radio, but it was a sweet movie. Woody Harrelson and John Reilly had the most memorable scene, in my opinion, when they sung a song about bad jokes. Linsday Lohan is NOT pretty without all the usual hollywood makeup and her singing is amateurish, at best.

Migraines suck

I was diagnosed with a migraine for the first time in my life. The only med that worked was Tylenol 3, which made me feel like I was prosecuting while under the influence, so I went home early twice this week.
DH and I have totally gone nuts with the money and bought a dining set and new sofa. Can't WAIT until they arrive! I also bought some really sweet mod pillows for the sofa. http://www.2modern.com/productimages/inhabit/scribble-winter.jpg Decorating makes me happy! I also got a new rug from Pottery Barn that looks like jute but is really wool.

My meme ( i don't even know what that means)

These are some subjects bloggers have been tagging each other with:

Four jobs I’ve had
1) I don't know what my job title was, but I worked at a large farm stand on LI where I would sort through rotten fruit and veggies and ring up purchases for obnoxious people from Manhatten. The free fresh corn at the end of the day pleased by parents, though. Little did I know that all the employees manning the "pick your own" fields were stealing from the till. So not only did they have more fun because they were totally unsupervised, they also helped themself to extra cash.
2) Dishwasher, cook, cashier, hostess, and waitress at the Riverhead NY Pizza Hut. You had to work your way up the ladder to waitress. Which actually is a good system, because if the cook screwed up my order, I could run back and make it myself.
3) Summer associate at a large law firm. Loved the perks like good tickets to the ball game and fancy golf club outings, hated the work. They didn't offer me an associate position, even though my performance reviews went fine. I was never very good at sucking up to partners, anyway.
4) Worked at law library during law school. Studied in between signing people up for study rooms. Good for gossiping, I ran into everyone in my class all the time.

Four movies I can watch over and over

1) Sixteen Candles--my teen years were ruined because I always prayed for Jake to come pick me up in the red Porshe.
2) When Harry Met Sally
3) Mother --love Albert Brooks!
4) Sorry, out of ideas.

Four places I have lived
1. London, England for half a semester during college(Earl's Court was my tube station)
2. Florence, Italy (the other half of that semester)
3. Shoreham, NY (born and raised)
4. St. Paul, MN (right off Grand Ave. during law school)

Four TV shows I love
1. Seinfeld (the penultimate) 2. Everybody Loves Raymond 3. King of Queens (starting to sense my East Coast sense of humor yet, people?) 4. Breaking Bonaduce (that guy is a total whack job and I hope his wife divorces him soon).

Four places I’ve vacationed
1. Rome, Italy 2. San Francisco (with DH) 3. Paris (not the one in TX) 4. Vegas, baby! (with DH)

Four of my favorite dishes
1. chicken broccoli alfredo (hence my big ass) 2. shrimp scampi 3. crablegs 4. PIZZA!

Four sites I visit daily
1. Dooce 2. midwestgrrl 3. msn.com 4. metrodad

Four places I would rather be right now
1. on a beach with a good book and a blue moon beer with a slice of orange
2. playing with my daughter (but only if she's in a happy mood and not cranky and sick and teething like the past 2 weeks)
3. seeing a broadway show with DH
4. anywhere but work

Is there no end to the sickness?

It is now a week and a half after the ER visit. We've been battling a fever off and on ever since, she's lost 2 pounds, and she's back on the nebulizer because the cold or virus or whatever went into her chest. On Thursday I was home all day with her, she was battling a fever, at one point it was 104 degrees. She would not let me put her down the whole day, she just clung to me lethargic and stared off into space and whimpered. But the scariest of all was last night when she woke up and... hard to describe it. It was something between fever chills and a seizure from the fever. Luckily she snapped out of it, but it was a scary half hour. DH was late coming home from his play and not answering his cell and I was panicking and holding A and trying to figure out how to text him with my cell phone, which I've never done before. Luckily, he picked up and came home and I was on the phone with the blue cross health line and he was on the other phone with the local doc on call. We didn't need to take her into the ER again, thank goodness.

Work happenings--the med-alert bracelet thief pleaded guilty. A new attorney started in my office this week, female--straight out of law school, no family or friends in town and no apparent boyfriend, so I'm sure her life will be entirely about the job. We went out to lunch, and have some parallels in our personal lives--both of our moms are widows who never remarried, we both have sister who are 8 years older than us with a lot of kids and less education than we have. Both of our sisters were married to total losers. She doesn't like Seinfeld, though. I don't think I've ever hung out with anyone who doesn't like Seinfeld. For me, everything in life can be related to an episode of Seinfeld.

I bought Baby A a white shirt at Old Navy. It was marked down to 97 cents, and I was so excited. But when I brought it up to the counter, I noticed it had a pink spot on the lower side, and I told the clerk i didn't want it, so he said he'd give me 20 percent off, so I figured, she's just gonna get the thing stained at daycare the first week anyway, why not? So I walked off with a 78 cent shirt, feeling like George with the white cashmere sweater with the red dot. Then I get home and show the shirt to Erik and he says it looks like the Seinfeld puffy shirt ("but I don't wanna look like a pirate!") See there, two episodes out of one piece of clothing! What's not to love? It's chocolate, it's peppermint, it's delicious!