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In the good news...I had an awesome holiday weekend with my family! There was reading, crocheting, eating all of my mom's awesome food, going to the dog park with the dogs, hanging out and chatting with my mom, and also playing with my adorable niece. We drew on the driveway with chalk. We had a water gun fight at the splash park downtown. Also we had fun in the garden. My niece "harvested" from my mother's garden. Admittedly, few items actually ripe for the picking, so we just stashed some full-grown vegetables from the supermarket in the garden and let my niece "pick" them. Some of the food from the community garden was ready to pick, so my niece picked those and put them in a basket. Also, mum gave her a child-sized spade and rake so she could plant some carrot seeds. Then, while my niece wasn't looking, we put a couple of carrots in the ground for her to "harvest" later. She was so excited. It was adorable.
My husband has been mainlining Brandon Sanderson books like crazy, especially now he has my iPad to borrow (we lost the charger for his Kindle and need to either find it or buy a new one) and also my mum's old iPod touch to take to school so he can read while machines run in the lab. We read Warbreaker to each other on the drive home. I read some Sanderson, but I am on a non-fiction kick at the moment, so that was fun. Also, my sister wants to co-write some fanfiction, so we got started, and then we churned out an outline so she can write for one character and I can write for the other, and then in the editing phase we can smooth things out so we have no continuity errors. It's been a great learning experience for both of us.
I was super proud of me because I left my work phone at home (despite walking away from a disaster in one case) and also a work-related book at home (even though it is part of my non-fiction kick and during breaks between court I burned through about half of it this week so far). Getting away from work was nice.
Last week I ran into my first full on scary felon. Not multiple thefts felon or too many DUIs felon. An actual child rapist felon. In court. Apparently wearing an ankle monitor since he has been released pending trial, but there at court. I am so glad my client - one of his victims - was not there. I wasn't sure if said client would be there and pretty much no one else on the child's team expected him to be there. It was frightening. And uncanny. To sit in a room with that man and breathe the same air as him and know, in terribly, horrifying detail, what he'd done. I was shaking afterwards. I've been around teen sex offenders, and they don't scare me, not like he did.
So far this week has been crazy busy. Lots and lots of court. Several cases having major explosions (one kid ended up with a concussion due to an altercation at a placement, another kid had a petition filed in the case that will make things crazy, multiple sets of parents getting the hammer dropped on them for failure to adjust). Me needing to get my fierce on. I used to like it in high school, the adrenaline rush, amping up for competition. Like sparring. Now, I don't like having to get fierce, especially when it puts me at odds with other lawyers afterward (because it shouldn't put us at odds; it's not supposed to be personal for us). I think I hate when I have to get fierce because as a general rule it means a parent has failed a child and I have to get up there and convince a judge that the parent's chance to rehabilitate is over, that what's best for the parent isn't necessarily best for the child, and what's best for the child comes first.
The government recognizes that relapse is part of substance abuse recovery and treatment, and that's why an extra 90-day extension was granted. 90 days - not a big deal to an adult. But for some of my kids, that's a quarter of their entire lives up to this point; an additional 90 days of instability while the parents try (and in a particular case, fail yet again) to get their act together is 90 days too much. I can be sympathetic to the parents, because oftentimes they are victims of the same poor parenting as my clients - the behavior is intergenerational, cyclical. But my kids shouldn't be punished because their parents deserve sympathy for having had poor childhoods. We're trying to break the cycle. And sometimes breaking the cycle means breaking unhealthy bonds.
I love my job. I do. I loved dancing tonight. I really needed it. We did an exercise that required a lot of visualization and imagination, and it really helped me relax and let go of so much tension and stress. And then I came home and my husband had dinner in the oven, which was wonderful.
Here's to hoping my mom feels better - she's in a lot of physical pain right now - and to me doing what's best for my kids at court.
My husband has been mainlining Brandon Sanderson books like crazy, especially now he has my iPad to borrow (we lost the charger for his Kindle and need to either find it or buy a new one) and also my mum's old iPod touch to take to school so he can read while machines run in the lab. We read Warbreaker to each other on the drive home. I read some Sanderson, but I am on a non-fiction kick at the moment, so that was fun. Also, my sister wants to co-write some fanfiction, so we got started, and then we churned out an outline so she can write for one character and I can write for the other, and then in the editing phase we can smooth things out so we have no continuity errors. It's been a great learning experience for both of us.
I was super proud of me because I left my work phone at home (despite walking away from a disaster in one case) and also a work-related book at home (even though it is part of my non-fiction kick and during breaks between court I burned through about half of it this week so far). Getting away from work was nice.
Last week I ran into my first full on scary felon. Not multiple thefts felon or too many DUIs felon. An actual child rapist felon. In court. Apparently wearing an ankle monitor since he has been released pending trial, but there at court. I am so glad my client - one of his victims - was not there. I wasn't sure if said client would be there and pretty much no one else on the child's team expected him to be there. It was frightening. And uncanny. To sit in a room with that man and breathe the same air as him and know, in terribly, horrifying detail, what he'd done. I was shaking afterwards. I've been around teen sex offenders, and they don't scare me, not like he did.
So far this week has been crazy busy. Lots and lots of court. Several cases having major explosions (one kid ended up with a concussion due to an altercation at a placement, another kid had a petition filed in the case that will make things crazy, multiple sets of parents getting the hammer dropped on them for failure to adjust). Me needing to get my fierce on. I used to like it in high school, the adrenaline rush, amping up for competition. Like sparring. Now, I don't like having to get fierce, especially when it puts me at odds with other lawyers afterward (because it shouldn't put us at odds; it's not supposed to be personal for us). I think I hate when I have to get fierce because as a general rule it means a parent has failed a child and I have to get up there and convince a judge that the parent's chance to rehabilitate is over, that what's best for the parent isn't necessarily best for the child, and what's best for the child comes first.
The government recognizes that relapse is part of substance abuse recovery and treatment, and that's why an extra 90-day extension was granted. 90 days - not a big deal to an adult. But for some of my kids, that's a quarter of their entire lives up to this point; an additional 90 days of instability while the parents try (and in a particular case, fail yet again) to get their act together is 90 days too much. I can be sympathetic to the parents, because oftentimes they are victims of the same poor parenting as my clients - the behavior is intergenerational, cyclical. But my kids shouldn't be punished because their parents deserve sympathy for having had poor childhoods. We're trying to break the cycle. And sometimes breaking the cycle means breaking unhealthy bonds.
I love my job. I do. I loved dancing tonight. I really needed it. We did an exercise that required a lot of visualization and imagination, and it really helped me relax and let go of so much tension and stress. And then I came home and my husband had dinner in the oven, which was wonderful.
Here's to hoping my mom feels better - she's in a lot of physical pain right now - and to me doing what's best for my kids at court.
