Life's a Carnival Sometimes... A really small one located in the parking lot of the local mall. Yes, inspiring, I know. Years ago, the Ski-to-Sea Carnival was a big deal. It spanned most of Civic Field in a manic whimsy of all things slightly creepy and reminiscent of several crime movies that end - naturally - in fun houses and Tunnels of love. Man, you know, a lot of exotic and fun crimes seem to peak at the Carnival. And yet, I've never shot anyone on the Ferris Wheel, something I suspect to be reassuring to +Andrew Wright (who treated me to a spin yesterday).
But yes, years ago, it was a grand affair. Over time, the space has diminished, the rides compressed, and the ticket prices nudged up. Technically the "Ski to Sea Carvnival" was never really owned by or directly related to the "Skit to Sea" proper, but until recently, the affiliation enhanced both events. Nowadays the touring company - which capitalizes on spare efficiency - breezes into the parking lot for a few days nearly a month after the Grand Ski to Sea hubub. Purportedly, this is to catch all the kids who are just out of school, but if so, I'm a little perplexed that zero promotion has been done. I could not find information about the Carnival anywhere in any of the usual newspapers and event guides. We stumbled into it, of course, but only a few hours after it's official opening day.
I can't say that the word-of-mouth has done the carnival any favors, either, since it was a bit of a ghost town. Of the roughly seven rides in operation, none had more than a single couple using it, and none of the carnival games were being patronized while we were there. Granted, it was about 4:00 p.m. on a Saturday, but I still remember carnivals past being chock-full at these times. Even the bright lights and organ grinder music seemed eerily muted.
But we carried on! At least long enough to spin about the not-so-big-wheel for our breathtaking view of the Bellis Fair Mall rooftops, and for what was purportedly a very satisfying corndog (please note, it improves greatly by mustard-dipping).
Had I brought more cash or if there'd been the swings, I may have insisted we buy an armband and do every ride once, but somehow the paucity of amusements allowed my inner adult to chaff at the proportionately high expense. It certainly whetted my appetite for the much larger amusement area of the Lynden Fair (where, incidentally I will be insisting on a birthday evening out at the Monster Truck Show with my husband and nephews). Until then, it was a lovely whiff of fried food and greasy corndogs to get the summer swinging in full gear.
Adventures in Lawyering - the Awful-Person Edition:
I am - Daddy you'll be so proud - the office pessimist. Give me three minutes, and I will tell you (1) the fifteen weakest elements of our case, any case, and why what we're asking for probably won't fly, (2) the top twenty tantalizing ways in which our client has screwed himself/herself and completely undermined any credibility previously built, (3) the odds on whether such a client will "turn on us" and insist that the home mortgage of a bill owed to us at the end of it all shouldn't be paid because the client didn't like the result.
I'm also surprisingly cold about these things, given my general bent for empathy, but I find it serves a purpose. Leslie, the office paralegal/manager, is a heart-on-her sleeve we're-sisters-in-this-mess kind of sympathizer. She doesn't know the law, per se, but she knows what's right. Until our clients really push it, she gives them a lot of leeway on credibility. She develops strong emotional dislikes of the other parties for "what they've done" and the trouble they're causing our clients. She relates. My mom needs to balance objectivity and empathy, but she also needs to have the confidence to push forward and take certain risks. Sometimes they pay off, sometimes not... but they are part of business. And she has to have faith in her ability to handle and address the needs of some of our needier clients.
That leaves a spot for an office skeptic in the Englettlaw environment, and I'm happy to fill it. For instance, when I write a declaration on behalf of a client, I see what they have to say and review the record with the same dubiety our commissioner would have after seeing fifty cases of squabbling not-quite-exes gnash their teeth in her courtroom. This gives me a chance to bake counter-arguments against those preconceptions into my cooption of our clients' "grief story's" like tasty chocolate nuggest of unanticipated reasonableness. The final product: our legal story. Mmmm mmmm good and half the calories! The voice of the client remains in part, but heavily affected with the voice of "perfect client" ... one who acts reasonably in a storm of irrationality, is cautious to a fault about maligning the other party, who cares deeply about fastidious honesty and who fixates on the interests of the children without any of the strains that will distort perception. A fiction. But a useful one.
Believing that our clients are crazy, hysterical, misperceiving, and hyperbolizing allows me to rework the underlying facts in a way that specifically avoids any of these characteristics. But in doing so, I may be taking ownership of our clients' stories. This is to their benefit, but it is still a very strange thing to do. They bring in their most intimate lives - family, love, betrayal, hopes and fears - and let me pull a full-metal Kubrik on their magnum opi.
Depending on the client, this can either feel like having something ripped from their innards or that they've finally found the words to be heard. If, as happens ninety percent of the time, they look at the final product and realize that it sounds much better that way, we're still good. If they desperately need "their voice" heard in what I'd assess to be a self-defeating way (particularly if it's clear that they will be confirming every accusation that the other side has made about them), then I have no patience for them. I may even become somewhat proprietary of what has become my story.
The pessimism also helps, more naturally, for the legal research, briefing, memorandi and the like. As with all well-trained little attorneylings, I know that my conclusions should always be comfortably padded from either extreme, to couch all all conclusions in the murky gray area of "minisculely more or less likely than random chance... with a margin of error" I'm not always fun to talk to before a hearing or a trial because I will consistently voice the devil's advocate in explaining what the limitations of all that amazing research I did really are. In privater practice, this is sometimes detrimental, since it inhibits action and chance taking. But again, it's quite a useful reality check for an associate to bring to the table, especially early in the legal researching process.
And of course, it's useful - albeit occasionally casting me in the role of poor sad Cassandra - to see the red flags of a potentially sour attorney-client relationship. I get gut-feelings about certain clients either during the intake or early on. You can imagine I must, since I tend to start with the assumption that they're all crazy (only when I start working on their behalf), but certain of them seem directly counter to our bottom line. I often must resign myself to insisting that we will pledge to watch their bill and insist on keeping the retainer fresh, but I rally for firings with zesty exuberance.
Remember that people tend to lose the incentive to pay for work already done. That means once the initial retainer is gone, we often are stuck with clients who still require a lot of help, but will never pay us back in full. Some will try in earnest to keep up with payments. The ones that demand and create the most work frequently will not be of their number. They will be the ones who have called us at five minute intervals every day to vent. They will be the ones who insist on doing our legal work "for us" so poorly that we spend ten times the hours it would have taken to start from scratch trying to fix what they've done. They will be the ones who undermine their own cases and reneg on their agreements. And they will be the ones who insist they shouldn't have to pay us, because we were to blame for whatever shattered illusions they happen upon along the way.
Granted, "DROP 'EM" is not always advice to be taken. My mom has a history of handling difficult clients - you have to when your clients are DV survivors who often are in a phase of over compensating for that loss of power dynamic. And, often there are phases of the representation where it would be unethical to drop a client... or kids are involved and the situation without us would be even worse. I'm not the voice of that conscience. I'm the one who shrugs and says "pay us, or we'll send you to collections..." (in my boss' ear, of course).
In other "how being a lawyer makes you a bad person" stories, the other day our client forwarded an email from her (genuinely) crazy ex that sounded like a very twisted farewell note you might see splashed up on the news after a dramatic police stand-off. He's known to wax dramatic (and incoherently, of course), so it's likely nothing, but my first thought was: "wouldn't it be great if he just killed himself?" And I don't know that I mean that, but I kind of did. Given the suffering that he is in, as well as what he's put our client and their children through, having him just not be in the picture would be so much easier than this treacly slog of a legal process. But the worst part is that this isn't coming from the sweetest beneficent reasons. Not exclusively, anyways. Part of it does come from knowing that we have a lot more work coming up on that case and if he were to just disappear, suddenly July would become a whole lot less awful.In exchange for which, I suppose I will become just a little more awful?
But hey, at least I have happy socks (and therefore feet! Oh how I love it)!
DINKs have a Swimmingly Sporty Saturday - Andrew and I checked out the Padden Triathlon this morning. Some call this a good "beginner" triathlon. I'm not exactly sure why, except perhaps that you can do a fairly short version in the afternoon (1/4 mile swim, 10 mile bike, and 2.5 mile run). What they don't add is that there are a lot of hills for the biking and running portion, regardless.
Andrew, being insane and a touch more Manichean, is doing a duathlon at Padden in a few weeks. While he habitually mocks triathletes on myriad fronts (being the bike-purist that he ultimately is), I still suspect that Andrew will someday embrace the sport wholeheartedly and with every bit of silly gear in tow. There is a lot of silliness in the gear for triathlons. I could expound, but I'm not sure I fully grok the gear sufficiently to do so. Funny bikes, funny shoes, funny clothes, funny everything to enable funny transitions between legs.
But yes, Andrew and his eventual triathlon obsession. He bikes, of course. And in the last two years, he has conquered running into sniveling submission. Swimming seems to be the least emphasized leg of the tri-trifecta, and enough of a great cross-training workout, that I sincerely doubt he'll go much longer without attempting to vanquish it as well. Since I grew up with a nationally ranked swimmer for a dad and as a member of the swim team until my decided doffing of all sports to focus on ballet (followed by my doffing of dance to devote myself to being a surly shiftless teenager), I wouldn't mind getting back into the pool with him if he went down that road - er - lane. I've even looked around a bit to see if there are any adult swim lessons for him in the area. There theoretically are, but not particularly in practice. Ah well. Andrew has a good eight years before his true midlife crisis and triscendence...
While Andrew stays at the dual-level of sporty obsessions, he thought the staging areas might be the same as for the duathlon, and that he could benefit from checking it out. So, we considered our spectating to be a bit of a scouting mission.
We got there just as the slowest swimmers of the "competitive" (1/2 mile swim, 22 mile bike, and 5.9 mile run) were finishing up. At that point - watching some fairly peaked athletes struggling out of wet clothes and staggering forward with bikes propping them up - "competitive" looked to be quite the misnomer... until about fifteen minutes later when the leaders of the race swooped in from the bike portion. It was a lot of fun watching them glide off their funny-looking bikes, throw bike stuff aside (shoes often still attached to the bike), and slide on running shoes and sunglasses in a couple of seconds as if they've conjured such gear to simply manifest via tri-voodoo.
It was also interesting to note the wide variety of body types even in the front of the pack. The first guy was built like a dancer: long and lean, but thoroughly chiseled in all regards. The second guy looked far more like a marathoner: -3% body fat and more sinew than brawn. Between that, there were some stocky folks and every imaginable variety of arm-textures.
As the first fifteen competitive competitors streaked off along the running trails, we said adieu (quietly and to ourselves) to get on with the day and do our own EPIC sporty thing. The something else, rather typically, being the YMCA and strength training nonsense. I continue to take off like SWEETPEA after a deer around the halfway mark, but have learned to circle back far more effectively. Andrew, bless his strange little heart, has learned to tolerate his sweet little ball and tether boinging in and out of his paceline, rainbow socks (now in the wash) flashing and ponytail bobbing before she weaves once again into an intricate series of passes and is lost in the crowd of wanderers. He keeps his own pace with the help of that nag of a pace guide watch, and maintains his magnificent security in his own masculinity (we both know that if he wanted, he could take off in a sprint that outdoes my lope... but we also know that he might injure himself eventually doing so, or at least screw up his training schedule). He'll have his revenge when we start doing his speed workout together. He can go lightening fast up hills and I can anticipate exploding lungs and burning thighs for me in the near future!
It's apparently warm enough out and we're running far enough now (just under 6 miles) that I'm getting the faintest whispers of blisters to come. When I ran more seriously, I tended to have an arsenal of different bandaids to combat the problem. My Kinvaras have been good to me, but no shoe quite accomodates my particularly shapely feet. I feel particularly relieved that I did not attempt to try out my new Saucony Virratas, beautiful as they are. I would inevitably have blistered and inevitably have blamed the shoes more harshly than otherwise warranted.
So glad to have spared them such possibly public calumny. I will have to try them out soon, though. They are so very pretty!
Adella and the Ongoing Quest to Burn the House Down - I've often thought it would be nice to have a dinner-bell. I would ring the bell for more than just dinner, expanding the concept to include at least breakfast if not lunch. I try to finish breakfast at precisely 5:58 every morning, but there's often a lot of variety in Andrew's morning routine. Sometimes I hit the mark, sometimes he's ready and waiting early, and sometimes I have to run upstairs to alert him that the food is ready.
I rather dislike eating luke warm anything, so timing breakfast to be ready just as he emerges from his morning preparations is of quite the high priority to me. I renuke my coffee at several intervals per cup, for instance, and have been known to reheat food after a few minutes of letting it cool. Unfortunately reheating toast really does not do well. So an immediate alert would certainly serve my purposes.
Apparently, I have discovered a rather handy dinner bell substitute: THE FIRE ALARM! Oh yes, it works wonders. And yes, yes it is going to be one of those days.
This morning I came downstairs, made coffee, dragged myself over the foam roller kiddie-land torture device for a blissfully agonizing eternity or two, and set about with this breakfast nonsense. So far so good, but the morning was young yet.
Our toaster - well, technically I brought it into the marriage so it really is my separate property but I'd happily re-deed it to the community if Andrew asked, because that's how much I love him - is a relic. I believe that my dad acquired it in the early '90's for his first post-dissolution bachelor-of-a-certain-age pad. Given that said toaster roughly predates the Pleistocene, it's got a rather impressive track record of competently toasting and occasionally burning bread (and/or mysterious paper products). But as it advances into the twilight toaster years, it's starting to show its age.
In the last few weeks, the handle has been falling off. It's not too hard to reattach, but every time attempt to spelunk the bread into toasterville, it flips off and the lever bounces ineffectively. The bread bobs up and down merrily along, but without any of this so called toasting occurring until I've reaffixed the handle and tried again. So there's that.
There's the fact that the sensors occasionally decide that the toast is done, dammit, and there will be no more discussion. And there's the times, like this morning, where it just doesn't feel motivated to continue working. I managed to toast all of Andrew's bread, before El Tosterela went on strike. My bread didn't have a fighting chance of emerging from its toasty chrysalis. First the handle flipped off, gleefully skipping about the kitchen crevices. Then ... well, not much. At that point, my bread was expelled from the bowels of the toasting abyss several times and that was pretty much that.
I replugged. I cleaned out crumbs. I gave up. I thought maybe I could go old school and at least brown my bread on the frying pan I'd been using to make Andrew's eggs. So I added some more oil, and left a piece of bread to brown. It didn't much, but some crumb fell too close to the fire and blandly smoldered. I barely noticed the smoke, but boy did the fire alarms. Yes, both of them. The one downstairs and the one upstairs set to screeching histrionics for roughly the next fifty eons.
And yes, Andrew did respond in a very timely manner. And after the extended serenade of BLEEEEEEP BLEEEEEP BLEEEEEEP BLEEEEEEP concluded (roughly five hours later - I expect that DIE FIRE ALARMEN CYCLE is one of Wagner's lost operas), we had a very - er - refreshing breakfast of luke warm bread and eggs with the zesty cross-breeze from every door in the house being open and the fan being on.
My coordination continues to exceed all expectations today. My first task at work was to open the microwave door into a cup of coffee and send ebon ebulliance flowing about the countertops. I've also set about testing gravity in a number of fashions by dropping and throwing things this morning.
It probably is not the most advised day to go to a gym and surround myself with very heavy metal lodes and loads of pinchy pokey machines. But goshdagnabit if I'm not gonna risk it anyways. I've plans and it's my day to try out the new Sauconys. I already suspect I should have gotten a half size smaller, but with my feet as long as they are, well... we'll see. At least when I'm pulled out of the YMCA on a stretcher, my feet will be very attractive!
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