Saturday, November 23, 2013

Happy Days the Bald Soprano Swarms the Solomonic Engineering Ball: And Other Tales of DINKdom

Previously on A&A's Adventures in Cohabitation: Andrew's Nissan wasn't the only thing to stray off the track it has forged. Who needs to wait for the Christmas season for full on hystserical swarm-ball bacchanalia? Only the Cerulean Avengers can storm through it throwing ceylon to the wind and hiding furtively in her Pantry of Solitude. Weigh-ins stay in, but only by a hair. A minor nudge in a period of lull. The ballerina hive teems forth with carafes of choreographic caffeine, while Andrew reels from a weekend of work, and Adella drifts afield on tango-cirriform.

Coming up: Prepare! The end of pre-pre is nigh! Our hero shifts gears on his holy calendar just in time for wild-and-wacky work period. Does swarm ball count as cross training? Will he find the missives planted for him in the free weight section, or will those fall to the grunting sweaty men? A Trial Concludes. Will the Bald Birthday Party find Happy Days after all?? Trial falls into obscurity, as a new Most-Interesting Service Avoiding case chomps at the trial bit and begs to be let loose in the Solomonic Arena. Will the professionals stay safe? Will papers once again consume the office as three trials plant themselves between our heroes and the respite of 2014?? Will 11 pound hammers and colossal power tools be thrown into the swarming ball of engineers? And will the swarming ballerinas be able to take the swarming engineers? 

All that and more... 





To the  #Shoesday  Charge! 

Monday delivered on its steely promises. We staggered through with heads tucked and papers fluttering aloft of the abyss. But we staggered through, gosh darnit. At the end of a very questionable day, all of our clients appeared to remain present (physically present; I daren't comment on the components of mental and spiritual presence here) and accounted for. It was touch and go there for a while. More GO!!! than touch. 

After leaping on Ms. Most-Interesting-Service Avoider's Leviathon response as a golden opportunity to enter several valuable statements and documents that hadn't quite fit in the initial motion, I was beginning to fear that our client might go and muck up my brilliant declr... ahem his brilliant reply declaration, by having vanished into the ether with all vestiges of his highly cherished signature (and factual input, perhaps). Several emails, a few phone calls and - finally - a text message before tracking him down, but we did eventually get him in and our reply out.

In the meantime spent untold hours reading phone records with a list of relevant and repeating numbers before realizing that it's quite easy to simply block phone and text messages; if somebody does not want to be contacted, they don't have to be. Of course obsessing over number patterns so intently can leave one's brain in a state of synthetic schizophrenia. Ooooooh the patterns I kept seeing. I may have to ban myself from looking at caller i.d. for several days. And eventually I hope to even forget the phone numbers that I tracked down to, say, a random friend that the other party once included a declaration from several years ago. That's right, I am basically the analog version of that NSA program that hit the big-time earlier this year. 

In the Trial of No Return, there was a brief moment of panicked confusion (versus the more epitomal resigned confusion) when the judge himself seemed to think that trial was going on until Wednesday. It is not. Decidedly not. We did not and do not agree. We are oh so over this trial. There are other crazy other parties who have been thoroughly neglected and they deserve their spotlight days in court! Hell, we've got our own crazy clients who need a little airing. Cross-training insanity!

On the home front, things have been a pleasant sort of placid. This shan'
t endure. For one, +Andrew Wright has made the grand training-calendar leap from "transition" to "prep"! Um, the prep is for base which is preparation for the official actual training. It's all very complicated, but to condense it into a palatable spoonful of preparation pate, Andrew is increasing his "training hours" a bit. This means a whole 'nother night at the gym. Tonight! Given his inability to embrace moderation when it comes to physical activity, I expect he'll make it home some time after midnight looking pumped and craving a shower.

I think it's cute that we both have a "gym day" on Tuesdays now, even if mine is several hours earlier than his (befits our relative approaches to time, really). Perhaps I should take advtange and start leaving my little love notes and candy surprises around the gym. I'm sure some would last until Mr. (W)right made it there.

For another, there's a bubble about to burst at work. I am to understand that he is now in the binge-purge phase of the project cycle. This means alternating jags of harried rush and restless idleness. In the middle of one of these cycles, myself, I will blow kisses across the chasm and wish us both the best.

But enough of that, time for some shoes. I really rather love the shoes for the 8th. They remind me of fancy wrapping paper or origami napkins at a fancy restaurant. And I dig the 22nd as well for that sheer splash of color. The 15th have a certain draw. I think perhaps though, I am still going back to boots and opting for the 18th. That buckle with the spiked heel just sings to me. It has a surprisingly heady contralto timbre. I think I'm in love. 




Three Kois in a Fountain 

Each one seeking busyness. Thrown by two legs a lashing. Which koi will the fountain bless? 

Really, I swear there are three. Just, well, one is so darned koi that it's positively coy and won't come out to play with Andrew's training bible (yes, it calls itself this in advance so I needn't hyperbolize for comic effect).

As I mentioned, Andrew is making the first of several transitions in his training calendar (the transition from "transition" this time around). The training calendar is a year-long Veda containing the mysteries of peak performance and being totally obsessive in a way that somehow keeps one at least motivated to keep chugging away even if I'm skeptical that the exact contours of the program are not significantly more likely to produce the absolutely optimum training result than any other similar variation, but hey it kept ya on your bike so there's that. There are lots of plans and calendars and things that give my little lawyer loins a rush, though, so I'm almost as excited about the BIBLE as Andrew. 

Anyways, apparently the mountain biking lord called him to add in a second strength training workout last night. He obediantly answered the call. The transition and "prep" strength training regimens involve several thousand reps at lighter weights. After the prep schedule, he'll leap from that routine into only 6 reps of significantly heavier weights. Hopefully the book also explains the merits of grunting, contorting, and Lamaze breathing that perfectly ripped body into birth. 

Having found no holy text of training tao, I continue my regular workout routine. It goes something like this: run to the YMCA; wait for the A-team in the lobby while doing silly warm up exercises that are a blend of Andrew's PT and my tango drills; stand a spell in the changing room; run for ten more minutes on a machine; pump some silver sneaker circuits (not grunting much at all); roll around gleefully on the big bouncy exercise ball; stretch in the changing room while Azita changes; run back; and trot up the stairs. It's served me well enough. The socializing inherent in the changing room periods definitely could be considered cross-training for an introvert with her dazzling flashes of gregarious congeniality needing a prod from time to time.  I've been considering a mad-dash for the free weight section, if I could just work up my grunting powers, but then I start thinking that grunting muscle-men are still kind of scary and I have free weights at home already! Mostly I am motivated by the former. 

While my work cools down to a sippable temperature, Andrew's seems to be boiling back up. Our Bald Birthday Party Soprano to Take us to a Zoo Where We Can Have Happy Days: The Musical ended yesterday before lunch, shocking us all. Another trial scheduled for next Monday was settled (phew!), and the major deadlines for the remainder of the week have all been met. No doubt fate has more madness in store, but for the time being, we are back to just the usual frenzy of the pre-holiday season rush on insanity. Everyone still wants that darned wagon-wheel coffee table!!

+Andrew Wright, on the other hand, is playing several jaunty games of swarmball that seem to involve breaking several parts and realizing that designs that looked good in theory don't quite work in practice. So, you know, entering into that phase of the typical work cycle. Some people have legal papers that keep fading in and out of existence and changing content at each perusal; some just take 11 pound hammers to things that aren't drilled correctly.

Needless to say, it's a bit tense and not particularly well oiled on the shop floor right now. By his report lithium lubricant,is the best lube for most industrial applications. I suspect that the advantages of lithium may extend to the workers as well, perhaps in a different delivery method. I'm sure it will all work out eventually by some time in December, knock on wood. Hopefully before my next trial prep blitz, because there only needs to be one of us feeling the frenzy of the flurry at a single instance. Also, since there are a lot more dangerous things laying around than our usual array of sharp papers and staples, I hope nobody loses an eye during their mad rushing!

Oh and my duties as an IRB Board Member are being called upon! Speaking of mad rushing and papers flying!





A Very Number Tippy Toe Thursday to Us All - 

If it was unseasonably warm last week, the weather has more than made up for my minor cavil, perhaps a bit more emphatically than necessary. We didn't just get our first sub-freezing temperatures of the fall, we plummeted well below freezing for good gelid measure. This morning, it was below twenty degrees Fahrenheit. Which is a touch chilly to my lilly livered Northwesterner soul. The result is often the same as unseasonable warmth: overheated indoor areas. My office compatriots likely think I'm mad, but I had the window open and the fan blaring most of yesterday. I was also down to a tank top by the end of the day. Not to say that when I got home, I didn't immediately turn on the heated mattress pad and get into my warmest and fuzziest. No matter how warm I get while walking, my poor digits are unlikely to thaw until roughly mid-April. 

Of course the advantage of this cold (ooooooh) snap is that it stems from the lack of insulating cloud cover. So the days are exquisite at the moment: coruscate and crystalline luminescence capturing every glimmer of frost on the crimson foliage, all set against an azure backdrop. And set even further against my lilac hands because once again I've left my gloves somewhere inaccessible.... 

As promised, the trial concluded yesterday. The judge gave his findings, and they were fairly favorable to our client. It cemented my already keen understanding that I do not have a taste for litigation. Despite having the vested personal interest of having drafted a very involved trial brief and argument for the case, I didn't care too much to hear my arguments adopted. It was mostly sad. Sad that it couldn't have concluded in some way other than this trial. Sad that because of the circumstances that forced it into the trial track, these issues won't conclude, but will instead continue on so neither party will stay out of court too long. Sad because of the impact on the child that all of this has had and likely will have. Just sad. There was relief. Definite relief, but no heady sense of victory or righteous justice.

Nonetheless it won't be our last this season. Our Monday trial may have settled, but a hearing yesterday all but assured that the early December case will be going (shy of a bump, but we've had better luck in winter for whatever reason). This was Ms. Most-Interesting-Service-Avoider. The hearing yesterday was for a restraining order against her. It was granted, despite the fact that apparently all of the professionals were being paid off to lie about her and our client was the mastermind liar king of them all. She subsequently and immediately violated it to say something snarky to our client. She then accosted the GAL (verbally this time, but that may not hold forever) and had to be dragged away by her sister. She was still shrieking as the elevator doors closed.

There's a settlement conference on that case today. I just get the feeling that she will not be interested in signing any finals prepared on behalf of our "lying" client and his cadre of well-financed "lying" professionals. I was hoping by some mad caprice that this case might settle, because it is another one of those "several years of lunacy" type shindigs. In fact this one originally started fourteen years ago! So that's going to be a fun fact section to write! Y'all authors may have your novels to write in November... I kinda will too, from the sound of it. Too bad it's all confidential and whatnot. 

But in the meantime, I can live in denial and pretend she'll accidentally sign all the finals thinking it's a petition to behead our client and all his minions, and I won't have to draft the ultimate family law edda. And maybe, just maybe, I'll glance out my window and smile at the icy calm of a heimal sun and sessile nimbi. 




Of airborne swine and other implausibilities - 

Well, this has been the month to inspire Don Quixote to keep on dreaming. First an actual family law case went to and finished trial. And then - and I tell you now the end is clearly nigh - the case that was never going to settle settled. This is the one I mentioned yesterday. With the Ms. Most Interesting Service Avoider and her agile vocal chords. I guess she had some time to lapse into a more fatalistic and less homicidal dissociative identity (I jest, I don't think she's the kind of "crazy" that has a diagnosis and a treatment plan at hand - this is more of a not otherwise specified banshee possession)

The important part is done. The parenting plan part that has consumed these last two and a half "blissful" years for us and the last thirteen odd years for the parties: it has been signed. It's not totally over. But the trial that was licking its lips and snarling at my Thanksgiving dinner has been kennelled. Given that said trial was supposed to commence two days after the Thanksgiving holiday and we had yet to seriously prepare, due to a series of intervening emergencies in the case that took more immediate precedence, this was a fairly daunting exigency to contemplate. I had more or less blocked out all of next week and possibly the weekend to wade through the decades of documentation clogging up our shelves' arteries. Between this case settling and the previous trial concluding, I am fantasizing about the paper we get to destroy soon (no originals, but trial begs several copies of every little thing)

And with that, I toss aside my tablet with a very affected "aaaaand I'm spent." I did very little - other than contributing to a pretty kick-ass case on the prior contempt and restraining order issues - to bring this finality about. However, since I spent all of lunch baiting fate with dire diatribes about the utter impossibility of settling this case, I do think I may have had more to do with the final result than natural laws of causality and physics would have you believe. Fate is a sucker for reverse psychology. 

At any rate, the office is still madly busy, but in a thoroughly more routine fashion. We went from having 4 trials pending before the end of the year to 1 trial. It's highly possible that - in time - we may even get back to our regular status meetings and maybe even talk to each other casually instead of reserving our communications for frenetic inquiries about where such and such a document is and what is Client X talking about with this document from 2009 that says her first born child/-ren will be awarded as back maintenance to a Mr. Rumpelstiltskin, and why did we notarize that??

Andrew's work remains a dull delirium with eensy little bouts of lalochesia standing between them and the gaping maw of utter anomie. Given the gargantuan machine parts and plethora of power tools laying about, I'm just glad that things stay at a solid simmer shy of eruptions just yet. The mood and flow seems to depend on the ornery compliance of physical reality and tangible object. As we all know, tangible objects are obstreperous little imps, ever anxious to rebel against their pre-conceived theoretical conceptions. So, sometimes they do not want to play ball, even if its swarm ball.  Sounds like there are good and bad days. And when they are good, they are fairly fairly good, but when they are bad, well again I'm just glad no power tools are being used on rampages of stressed out engineer wars. 

And we both remain on steady trajectory towards THE WEEKEND! Finally! I have obligations to help host a party at my father's house on Sunday, so I intend to milk Saturday for all that it is worth. There will be running. There will be a tear-jerker of a massage. There will be blues dancing. There will canoodling. By golly there shall be that!

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