Texts with a 12 Year Old

The Scene:  Harried working mom on her way home after a 12+ hour day, about an hour longer than she planned with.  The mom is wrought with guilt, feeling the pressure of months of a heavy work load.  She is concerned that her family is starting to get sick of it.  At the same time, said Mom is kinda tickled over her new iPhone, and is fussing with it in the backseat of the taxicab when she receives a text from her daughter:

E:  When are you coming home?

M:  I should be there by 7:30. Why?

E:  I just wanted to know.

M: Are you mad?

E:  No.

M:  Sorry that I’m running late.  It was a busy day.

E:  It’s okay.

M:  Are you sure?

E:  MOM!  I’m watching Heroes!  Stop texting me!

M:  So, here I am, feeling guilty that you’re missing me because I’m working too much, and in reality, you just want me to stay gone long enough for you to finish your television show?

E:  That about sums it up.  Now can you stop texting me?

Harumph.

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Shopping

I went shopping today.  My wardrobe has been feeling oh-so-tired, and I really needed some new things.

Unfortunately, so did the girls, so the bulk of the clothing budget went to them, and I was not left with much to toy with.

Also unfortunate – I can’t find the perfect clothes for Lawyer-Zuska.  I am trying to find the right style, the right look.  Hasn’t happened yet.

Well, I found some stuff I absolutely LOVED.  But I can’t afford it.

I feel stuck between a hip young thing and a stuffy old maid.  I can’t pull either off. I’m looking and looking for a place that I can find affordable classic pieces that mix and match and don’t make me feel like I’m pretending in some way to be someone that I am not (like Ann Taylor makes me feel).  I need Ann Taylor on Tweed.  Or something.  I wish I knew.

I ended up at Gap.  I bought a few pairs of trousers and a few sweaters, and felt like I took care of the immediate need, but that’s about it.

I shall keep searching for the perfect Zuska attire …

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My Blog

I do not write this blog to educate others.  I am not here to give you instruction or advice.  There have been times that people have read my blog and thought perhaps I would have some advice, or experiences to share, and they’ve written to me through my publicized e-mail, and they received the advice and they’ve received more details. Through a private conversation.

If you want to know what it’s like to be a lawyer-mom, then you’re going to have to find people who want to tell you what it’s like.  You don’t have the luxury of just browsing the internet and stumbling on this blog, which is MINE (not yours), and having that particular detail of my life exposed to you.

Blogs are public.

My job is important to me.

It is not the fodder for public commentary.

Regardless of the “honesty” that you feel I have somehow committed to just by using up this URL.

Having a blog has NOTHING to do with my livelihood.  I will not risk one for the sake of the other.

If you want “honesty” from people – dig a little fucking deeper than clicking on a link.  That’s not where real sharing comes from in my life.

Real sharing comes from a give and a take – from an investment in each other’s lives.  From some sort of trust which – in my opinion – cannot be built amongst strangers.

Hell – in my experience – real trust can barely be built through years of friendship.

So if you want more – give more.  Make a fucking effort.   Don’t just sit there whining about other people’s choices and other people’s refusal to hand you your life’s research on a platter.

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The end of vacation

I had a delicious time off.  It was absolutely rejuvinating, and a great time for the girls and I.  We had a lot of together time, including conversations, games of Monopoly, Frisbee sessions, walks, frappucinos, smoothies, races, long drives to Connecticut, a day in New York City, time with the grandparents and with the baby cousin, etc.

Now they’re singing, and it’s giving me a headache.  They’re bickering, and it’s like fingernails down the chalkboard.

Tomorrow, I head back to work ….

WOO HOO!!!!

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Marathon Madness

This is the first year that the girls have been home during a school vacation week.  My higher income gave me a bit of a bargaining chip in the child support/visitation department.  He pays less, I get to play with the kids more.  We were going to go to D.C., but instead choose to syphon funds into the new apartment and furniture therefore.  I think it’s for the best, because the girls often complained about traveling for the vacations, preferring to STAY AT HOME.  D.C. is not home.  I think if we planned a week long trip, they would have been upset.  They also really needed the week of downtime, after the play last weekend having sucked all of their energy for the past 3 months.

This means it was also their first time seeing the Boston Marathon.  Beloved and I saw it in 2005, and had a great time wandering down Beacon Street, watching the “elite” runners, and even having one front runner woman collapse at our feet – seconds after we scrambled to move our sandwiches as she hovered above us looking peaked.

Today, I took the girls.

They were enthralled.

We had a great time.  We just wandered around our town, cheering the runners on, feeling first bewildered at the “elite” and their absolute lack of fat (and seemingly a lack of muscle – some of them looked like refugees!), then enjoying checking the “normal people” runners for those that we know.  I must also admit to a wee bit of mockery toward those who were still jogging/sweating/puffing 6 hours later.  Just a wee bit, because I know that would be me, if I were doing the marathon.  I mean, I could do a 1/2 marathon, and certainly a 1/4 … but not a 26 mile run.  But I also DID NOT do it.  I would rather put in the time and train and then run it in 3 or 4 hours than spend 6 or 7 hours miserably trying to keep up.  What a FULL DAY of huffing and puffing.  Ick!!!

It was a great day, though.  Beautiful weather, fun kids, relaxation.  I had one 25 minute phone call with work about some stuff that I have most knowledge about, but I don’t think it interfered too much with our day.  I knew it was probable that it would come up, because some big stuff is happening in my absence.  Considering everything – my interruption was tiny.

I just had to call it quits on a game of Yahtzee because the kids were going NUTS – so very hyper and looney.  I kicked them to the park, and am trying to take deep breaths in the quiet.

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Recap

It was a busy weekend.

1. E had a friend sleep over on Friday night.  It went well.  It is a friend who I have had some issues with before – her behavior, her negativity, her influence on E.  There was none of that this weekend.  She was flexible, fun, and really pleasant to have around.  It was very nice.  She’s the daughter of a friend, so it was good that it went well.
2. Both girls had basketball games on Saturday a.m.  Beloved took J to her early game (where she scored a basket, and was very proud, because it was against the Tall Team).  E and her friend walked to theirs alone.  No.  I did not go. There are only two teams in their age bracket (b/c it’s 6-8th grades, and 7th and 8th graders can play for the school teams, and usually choose that over the town team).  Every week, the two teams play each other.  It’s very casual, not competitive, and frankly — boring.  E doesn’t care if I’m there or not, just enjoys running around with her friends.  If I am there, she spends more of her energy monitoring my conversations with other parents (to be sure I don’t say her name …. even if I say “Oh, E is due for a teeth cleaning” or “E’s birthday is in September” she hears her name and has a fit) than she does playing the game.
3. My parents came in at noon on Saturday.  Mom was having some back pain, so they were a little slow-moving, which was fine with us.
4. E went to a movie with friends.
5. J had a girl scout meeting – where she baked bread.
6. Me, Beloved, Mom and Dad went to see a three bedroom apartment that is for rent. It was pretty nice, but short a bathroom and probably one room.  I also was totally put off by the other occupant of the 2 family house, which may or may not be the owner’s mother-in-law.  Things were a little fuzzy. I think that the space issues could have worked out, but the downstairs person was the deal killer.
7. Once we collected the girls back at home, we all went out to dinner.  At your typical chain steak-house, which is the sort of place we always go with my parents.  They don’t like my favorite places, they find them “weird” – but I’ll take a steak any day.  J had salmon, and E ate a 1/2 rack of baby back ribs.  The food was pretty good.  My dad got all sappy on me when I offered to pick up the tab …. something about being so proud that I am now in a position where I can do that, but that he won’t let me until I’m “caught up.”  I don’t know waht that means.  Do I have to catch up with HIM?  Catch up with my bills?  Pay off all my school loans?  Whatever he meant – thanks for dinner, dad.
8. Then, this morning, we cursed the time change as Beloved trudged off to a Sunday morning meeting and my parents and I left two sleeping children to go and see my office.  My parents were duly impressed.  They liked my view, the name plaque on my door, and the building at large.  I think my air-conditioning-fixing dad was a bit proud of his eldest child.  He couldn’t have said so more times.  Mom was just happy to see all the pictures of E and J around the room (and both her nephews, as well).  I think she was reassured that my job does not mean that I’ve forgotten that I still have 2 kids.
9. We then came home and I dragged the girls out of bed at ELEVEN AM!!!  Shit!!  I know it only felt like 10 them.  And 10 is a normal weekend wake up time for them.  But today it was ELEVEN.  Which does mean that now, at 11:28 p.m., I can hear E tossing and turning and sighing heavy, frustrated, insomniatic sighs.
10. My dad made waffles.  I don’t know what he did, but the house still smells like syrup.  What the fuck?  We had pancakes yesterday, and the house didn’t smell like syrup all day.  I think it’s because despite the real Vermont maple syrup that we stay stocked in, Dad brought his Aunt Jemima’s, and those artificial flavorings have chemically attached themselves to the paint.  Even Beloved’s stir fry couldn’t rid us of the smell.
11. I did 8 loads of laundry.
12. Mom, Dad and I went to 4 open houses.  As in – homes for SALE.  There were several nice ones.  I am not going to push to buy right now.  Even though our jumbo mortgage limit in the Boston area was raised to the point that I likely can buy a few of them.  I’m just not willing to do so just to find myself upside down in a year or so, wanting to move b/c my condo is too small for 2 teenagers and all their friends that they keep dragging home.  I’m resigned to be a renter for a couple more years.  Just not here.  It’s too small.
13. Then they left.  My parents.  And I was going to go with E to a play, but I was quite frankly exhausted, so I bowed out, and spent some time organizing my ridiculous amounts of clothing, hanging out with J and Beloved, and resting for a minute, because I knew I had to …
14. Go to the “let’s talk about our 6th graders” meeting that was scheduled for tonight.  Ugh.  That was stressful.  It was about relationships and dating.  About whether or not kids have sex in high school, whether there’s kissing in 6th grade, and whether kids are “grinding” on the dance floor at their little dances this year.   This requires a post of its own.  Because from that discussion came at home discussions, and things just went spiraling off into weirdness (as J called it, until I told her it was NOT weird, it was normal, because it all happens to everyone, and if it didn’t, then there would be no people).  Oh yeah, we had a sex talk, baby.  Replete with erections and ejaculations and the difference between semen and urine.  Beloved was dragged into it, and was stellar.  I shall try to remember to post more about this tomorrow.
15. It’s a little more stressful that next time, I somehow ended up the chair of the meeting.  Ugh.  We will be talking about Freedom for 6th graders.
16. Then E caught me snooping around on her phone.  I tried to turn the volume down, and was looking at who she called and who called her, and she came out of her room.  I had time to hide the phone in a towel, and she said, “I’m looking for a book.”  And Beloved told her to go to bed.  But then she found her book and said, “oh, I should put my phone in my purse.  Oh.  Where’s my phone?  I thought I put it right there.”  Dammit.  She totally heard me before I turned the volume down.  All I could was laugh and say, “fine, it’s right here, you snot, stop erasing your text messages.”  She laughed at me and said, “mom! They were all to you!!”  But she didn’t erase her call log, and there’s no denying that a certain boy has been calling her almost daily.  The calls are quick.  Not long.  She tells me that they involve questions about homework and such.  Hmmmm.

And that is what happened on yet another weekend where Zuska brought her work computer home just to leave in her bag all.  weekend.  long.

Fortunately, there are no deadlines until Wednesday.

I don’t blow off deadlines.

Really.

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night secretary = best friend

I spent several months working at my firm hearing some distant chatter about night staff.  I have left the office between 6 and 7 on several ocassions, and saw very few people on my floor slaving away, and none of them looking for secretarial assistance.  What the heck is night staff FOR?*

I found out on Friday night.

I was working on a project which I thought I could bifurcate into two pieces:  finish one piece on Friday, and come in on Monday (officially a holiday, but the girls are on their way out of town, and I have more than enough work to do, so I’m putting in a full day) to finish the second piece.

At approximately 4 p.m. on Friday, however, I realized I could bifurcate the project, and had to just do it all at once.  I called Beloved, wrangled through the details of what it would mean to the family for me to miss Movie & Ice Cream night, and settled in for the long haul.  I could have, instead, gone home at 5 and then spent Saturday a.m. (6 a.m. until 10, perhaps?) finishing the project.   I preferred to have Saturday to sleep in with the family, and enjoy an entire day with nothing hanging over my head.  Beloved agreed, when the options were laid out.

I scrambled from 4 – 5 with my secretary to make sure I had all the pieces that I needed to finish my project.  Tabs?  5 inch binders?  Copy center forms?  There was a chance I’d be having to send a messenger to a partner’s house on Sunday, so I was asking her about the process for that, and she said, “You know, we do have 24 hour coverage, all you have to do is call the receptionist.”  Huh.  Really?  And then she reminded me of our floor’s night secretary.  Really?

At 6, I couldn’t find any “A” tabs.  We had tons and tons and tons of every other letter, but no A’s.  So I went to the night secretary.  She arm wrestled the folks on other floors until she had a few A tabs in hand.  Phew!

And when I finished my part of the project at 10 p.m., I was able to hand the package over to the night secretary with detailed instructions as to the assembly, the copies, the delivery locations, etc.

I could have used her more, if I didn’t have so much secretarial experience in my own background.  I felt like my requirements were so specific that it would take a lot less time for me to just type my own index than it would for me to explain it to her, and then have to review/revise it according to my own peculiarities.

It is still funny, though.  That someone sits there until midnight every night just in case someone has a freak out moment where they realized their planning wasn’t good enough, and they have to work until movie-time and needs help.  I was grateful for it Friday.

And for those who were wondering – Beloved and the girls had a great time.  They watched The Party and ate ice cream and when I asked them if they missed me, they looked at me like I was from Mars and E said, “we were watching a movie, so we were sort of distracted.”

*I do hear that my friends in other departments are regularly in the office until 10 p.m., and sometimes have been working until 3 a.m. several nights in a row – this does not seem to be the case in my department, and if people are required to work that late, they are typically able to do so at home.

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Give and Take

For almost 4 years now, I have been riding a wave of utter spoilation.

I have done what I needed to do in order to make it through school, through the bar exam, and through the early days of full-time lawyerdom while trusting that the rest of life would work out around me.

This was because of one thing:  My Beloved.  He has cooked, he has coordinated, he has covered sick days, snow days, busy days.

This past week, I did without him entirely.  I was tired.  I was stretched (a snow day? really?  THIS week?).  But you know what?  I did it.  I met all my obligations, I took care of the girls and the house completely.  Hell, even the cats were fed twice a day.  I even cleaned out their litter box.

It’s a good thing.

Because it appears my free ride is over.

Beloved was able to take on all of the slack I let go during high stress times because we long ago decided I would go to school; then he would go to school.

Now, he’s in school.

Because he’s in a low-residency program, he was (still is) only gone for 12 days (my heart couldn’t take more, I don’t think).  But when he comes home, he has work to do.

And it’s not yucky ewie work.  It’s what he loves.  What his personal circumstances have required him to put off and put off and put off.

He isn’t putting it off anymore.

It is time for my Beloved to do the things that were put on the back burner twenty three years ago.   Things he is supposed to do.

Wow.

Has he deserved this, or what?

So yeah, I’ll need to cook more.  And I’ll need to take the driver’s seat on school projects more.   Not only can I do it, but I could do more, if I had to.  I can do it all – just like he could (and did).

I think it’s likely that we’ll have some growing pains.  There will be times my work is pulling me to stay in the office for later than we’d planned; and there will be times that his deadlines hit at the same time as a filing deadline for me.  But I think we have the foundation that we need.  I think we respect each other, and each other’s work, and we can make it work.

It helps that we also have OLD kids, who can do things and go places and work stuff out without the same intense parental supervision that was required of them in their younger years.   (I realized today that J is almost 10.  Almost 10.  This means that I almost have ZERO kids in single digits.  They are BOTH old.  J is already drooling over which cell phone she’ll get, and wondering what activities she’ll do in high school.  E is running a newspaper, texts like a pro (has yet to go over our limit), and went to a restaurant with JUST her friends for lunch on the snow day.  They had to figure a TIP, and to split the bill!!  By themselves!!)

So now he should come home so we can work it all out.

I still miss him.

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The other side of the coin

Holy shit.Work is just –  INSANE.I feel like if anyone who works in a big firm reads this, they will just laugh at me:Oh my god!  I billed 67 hours this past week!Yeah, it felt like a lot.  I’ve admitted to the fact that I’ve been spoiled up until now.Work and kids were hugely intertwined over the weekend; but I got a lot done.It’s been crazy but good.I know my weaknesses – they haven’t changed.I need to slow the fuck down.  I need to double check myself.I need to take less on.It’s hard, though.  Especially as a beginner.  Us newbies had a hard time getting a full plate.   I kept getting assignments with the promise that it would be “oh-so-busy” and instead, the matter was stayed for one reason or another.  So I’d ask for another.  And that one would be stayed.So I ended up with a list of 6 or 7 cases that I was on.On about Christmas time, all stays were lifted.I’m now the world’s most busy-est woman.  [oh, i guess i know that’s not true.]I don’t really mind.I just wish my husband was home.I miss his adorable face, and his apple-cheeks, and his overall presence.

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9:24 p.m.

That is what time I called my husband to say “I’m coming home, now.”

Definitely a record.

My first LATE night.

I felt I owed it to the girls to explain that I wasn’t going to make it home, so I spoke with each of them on the phone.  E said, “okay, bye” (really not caring.)  J turned the screws pretty hard.  She was not happy with me.

So what happened?

3 things have converged at once.  Each one deserving my full time attention, and each one getting 1/2 my attention instead.

That’s 3 halves.

That’s a long day.

Especially when you factor in the fact that I was sitting at my desk before 7:30 a.m.

This week will stay tough.  Next week will see two of the three matters over and one with, and the other on hold.

The timing actually could be a hell of a lot worse.

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