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Day 1186: Thanksgiving and Writing
Dec. 8th, 2014 06:59 amThat has pretty much made up the majority of my life.
As a general rule, work has sucked in that my cases are all wandering into sticky places. I visited a girl Friday night. Got an email a few hours ago. She ran. Oh joy. Not sure what to do with her. She's not a bad kid, not a criminal, not severely mentally ill. But she does have some problems. And she solves them by running. I thought we were making progress, too.
Another set of kids is in a bind because of their ages. We made a decision in court, but because some of them are below a statutory age limit and the other isn't, we've been shuffled into a pretty strange corner. Also, I'm kinda twitchy, because the Dad on that case just got out of jail, and even though the general consensus is that he's only violent when he's high, well, he's still super angry, and since he's been in the slammer he's sober, so the fact that he's still angry makes him super scary. It's been good motivation to keep the doors locked at night.
Also, while I was moseying around on Facebook, it suggested I make friends with some people. I'm always leery when it recommends I make friends with people with whom I have no mutual friends. I was extra leery when I saw more than one parent of a current or former client on the list. I bet that means they looked me up. It took me much longer than it should have to get wise and lock my Facebook page down tight and also revert back to my maiden name.
The day before Thanksgiving, I got to see a kid adopted. It was a kind of symmetry, in its own way. The first time I met that kid, it was my first day of work, and everyone in court was crying because his mother was signing her right away, and because she was a prisoner she was in shackles and he didn't even get to hug her or say goodbye. Everyone was crying. Even I was crying, and I'm not a weeper. So it was good to finally see him adopted. Everyone was crying then, too. I watched him lose his family and then gain a new one, and that was a pretty good way to start the holiday season. I may or may not have sent my mother a sappy text message after the adoption.
Thanksgiving was wonderful, probably more for me than for Cody, who was super sick and spent a lot of time being miserable and sleeping off a fever. I got to hang out with my mom. We talked and did crafts together and worked on her iPod together (no, we weren't building an iPod, but after she got a new computer and had her iTunes library moved, we had work to do). Mom made all kinds of super amazing food, and she sent lots home with us, which is awesome, or we would have starved this week. We went shopping and listened to Christmas music and sat outside in the nice warm weather (one of the perks to heading south for the holiday). We plotted fun things to do with the creepy elves we bought (my mom got one for my niece, I bought one for the office and have been pranking coworkers with it).
One thing I love about my office is how everyone has a great sense of humor and is willing to contribute to our morale-boosting pranks for the holidays.
It was good to see mom, play games, eat food, and have fun with her. I call her almost every day, but it really isn't the same as being with her
If she hadn't sent food home with us, we would have starved. Cody usually packs away food with the best of them, but when he's sick he has no appetite, so there's often no point in cooking a full blown meal. We probably ended up grazing on holiday remnants like pie and cream puffs and what have you more than we ended up eating real meals. That kind of paid off in the end, although I had to pull some all-nighters to achieve my feat
Last Sunday I had 26,000-odd words in my SPN RBB story. As of 4 AM this morning I have 47,000+ words. I'm still not done, but I know how it ends, so that's really all that matters to me. My house slowly became more and more cluttered and drove me crazy, and last night Cody had to do some pretty heavy home repair (I am super impressed at how strong he is and now have greater respect for construction workers), so today I went mad and cleaned.
We took a nap after church and missed the Christmas Devotional, which kinda makes me sad, but I plan on catching up on it - I'll probably stream it while I'm baking holiday goods or something (the church Christmas party is this week). I've also started listening to books on tape in earnest. They're pretty awesome for when I have to go on long drives for work.
The rough drafts of stories were due today, but they were accepting partial drafts and outlines, so I submitted what I have. I felt terribly old when my artist mentioned she's in the middle of finals (it's been 8 years since I graduated from college) but I have some extra time to get my draft done because she's in finals, so that worked out pretty well in the end.
I've decided I'm going to attempt to finish all the stories in progress before I start new ones. Because this is getting just a little ridiculous.
So here goes. Another week.
As a general rule, work has sucked in that my cases are all wandering into sticky places. I visited a girl Friday night. Got an email a few hours ago. She ran. Oh joy. Not sure what to do with her. She's not a bad kid, not a criminal, not severely mentally ill. But she does have some problems. And she solves them by running. I thought we were making progress, too.
Another set of kids is in a bind because of their ages. We made a decision in court, but because some of them are below a statutory age limit and the other isn't, we've been shuffled into a pretty strange corner. Also, I'm kinda twitchy, because the Dad on that case just got out of jail, and even though the general consensus is that he's only violent when he's high, well, he's still super angry, and since he's been in the slammer he's sober, so the fact that he's still angry makes him super scary. It's been good motivation to keep the doors locked at night.
Also, while I was moseying around on Facebook, it suggested I make friends with some people. I'm always leery when it recommends I make friends with people with whom I have no mutual friends. I was extra leery when I saw more than one parent of a current or former client on the list. I bet that means they looked me up. It took me much longer than it should have to get wise and lock my Facebook page down tight and also revert back to my maiden name.
The day before Thanksgiving, I got to see a kid adopted. It was a kind of symmetry, in its own way. The first time I met that kid, it was my first day of work, and everyone in court was crying because his mother was signing her right away, and because she was a prisoner she was in shackles and he didn't even get to hug her or say goodbye. Everyone was crying. Even I was crying, and I'm not a weeper. So it was good to finally see him adopted. Everyone was crying then, too. I watched him lose his family and then gain a new one, and that was a pretty good way to start the holiday season. I may or may not have sent my mother a sappy text message after the adoption.
Thanksgiving was wonderful, probably more for me than for Cody, who was super sick and spent a lot of time being miserable and sleeping off a fever. I got to hang out with my mom. We talked and did crafts together and worked on her iPod together (no, we weren't building an iPod, but after she got a new computer and had her iTunes library moved, we had work to do). Mom made all kinds of super amazing food, and she sent lots home with us, which is awesome, or we would have starved this week. We went shopping and listened to Christmas music and sat outside in the nice warm weather (one of the perks to heading south for the holiday). We plotted fun things to do with the creepy elves we bought (my mom got one for my niece, I bought one for the office and have been pranking coworkers with it).
One thing I love about my office is how everyone has a great sense of humor and is willing to contribute to our morale-boosting pranks for the holidays.
It was good to see mom, play games, eat food, and have fun with her. I call her almost every day, but it really isn't the same as being with her
If she hadn't sent food home with us, we would have starved. Cody usually packs away food with the best of them, but when he's sick he has no appetite, so there's often no point in cooking a full blown meal. We probably ended up grazing on holiday remnants like pie and cream puffs and what have you more than we ended up eating real meals. That kind of paid off in the end, although I had to pull some all-nighters to achieve my feat
Last Sunday I had 26,000-odd words in my SPN RBB story. As of 4 AM this morning I have 47,000+ words. I'm still not done, but I know how it ends, so that's really all that matters to me. My house slowly became more and more cluttered and drove me crazy, and last night Cody had to do some pretty heavy home repair (I am super impressed at how strong he is and now have greater respect for construction workers), so today I went mad and cleaned.
We took a nap after church and missed the Christmas Devotional, which kinda makes me sad, but I plan on catching up on it - I'll probably stream it while I'm baking holiday goods or something (the church Christmas party is this week). I've also started listening to books on tape in earnest. They're pretty awesome for when I have to go on long drives for work.
The rough drafts of stories were due today, but they were accepting partial drafts and outlines, so I submitted what I have. I felt terribly old when my artist mentioned she's in the middle of finals (it's been 8 years since I graduated from college) but I have some extra time to get my draft done because she's in finals, so that worked out pretty well in the end.
I've decided I'm going to attempt to finish all the stories in progress before I start new ones. Because this is getting just a little ridiculous.
So here goes. Another week.
