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Day 1245: Two steps forward
May. 1st, 2016 06:24 pmThree steps back.
Work was chill this week. And by chill I mean, sure, there was drama. The usual work drama, though. (New mantra: you're the clean up crew, not the wrecking crew.) Nothing super spectacular. Nothing too life-threatening.
Well, bit of drama on Monday. Went to a child and family team meeting with a family with a stepdad who's a chronic alcoholic, and could be described as a minimally functioning alcoholic. He never interacts with me and the caseworker, though, avoids us whenever we come over, so I was suuuuper surprised when he came into the kitchen to talk to us. And by talk to us I mean load all the blame on his wife and get angrier and angrier. By all accounts, guy gets mean when he's drunk. Mom was on the defensive. Kids were upset. Caseworker and I were trapped behind the table, stepdad was between us and the door.
But hey, I'm a lawyer. I talked him down. Instead of getting violent, he started crying.
Might have freaked out my friends by sending a panicked text message, though.
Law school BFF Angela and I made junk food, danced, ate junk food.
Tuesday I worked, had few meetings, mostly hung around at home writing and doing laundry.
Wednesday and Thursday were training. We had a presentation from a guy who'd been made homeless at fourteen by his own mother, but who persevered and went on to become successful in life. Great speaker. Great presentation. We watched the film Paper Tigers, which about made me want to cry (and my friends know I don't cry easily during films - unless I'm sick, and then anything makes me cry; more on that later). Thursday training was boring as all get-out. True fact: lawyers are too stupid to understand the nuances of LCMS, GCMS, and LCMS/GMCS-TOF. Also, to be a good lawyer: don't be a tool.
There were happy moments in training, though. I stumbled upon a convocation of Police Dogs playing fetch with their humans on the way to the convention center. The start time of the conference was mis-calendared to start an hour early, so I spent an hour sitting across from a coworker and churning out fanfic like no one's business. Yay for the Bluetooth keyboard and 4G LTE. Sitting and hanging out with my coworkers is always awesome.
And then I crashed at BenTen's house - after tasty Mexican food - and we sat together in the basement, plodding away at our respective laptops, reading and writing fanfic and sharing our fangirling (despite not being in the same fandoms) and generally having fun. Like the old days, when we were roommates.
Well, on Wednesday night, there was some drama. Got a late-night call from a caseworker. They don't call late unless it's an actual emergency, because they also need people to respect the 5PM boundary (and if you answer some civilian's call outside business hours one time, they never call during business hours again, I swear). And it was bad. Kid of mine assaulted in the group home where he lives. Cops wouldn't interview him without my permission, so of course I gave my permission, because please, investigate and prevent future attacks, detectives.
On Thursday after training I crashed at BenTen's house again for more fangirling till Cody's plane came in, and then I took his professor home, and we came home. I had that nasty scratch at the back of my throat that told me I was getting sick. Cody was sure it was allergies or the weather or something.
Nope. Full on cold by Friday. I had a two-hour mediation that went nowhere because mom showed up high and one of her exes is a raging control freak, both of her exes have more money and better lawyers, and she came up positive for cocaine in the last six weeks, which kinda discredits her claims of being a casual marijuana user. Luckily for me, my other meetings of the day were by phone, and then I rescheduled my one home visit, because I felt awful.
By the time Friday rolled around, I was in full-on flu mode. Shakes. Whole body aching. Nausea. Fever.
For two seconds on Saturday when I woke up I thought I was cured, but once I was vertical the symptoms set back in. So I've been huddled on the couch for two days, occasionally venturing away to get a new tissue box, refill my honey-water, nibble on some string cheese, and do small chores, like laundry and vacuuming and mopping.
I am caught up on The Flash and SPN, and also I watched not one but two (two!) Kavan Smith rom coms, which resulted in much laughter and also an embarrassing amount of crying during the sad parts. True fact: Kavan Smith is adorable with babies.
I finished part two of the four-part Love Springs Forth challenge. Need to work on part three.
During the training conference I inadvertently admitted to a coworker that I write fanfiction (one of my other coworkers, who I went to law school with, knows all the ins and outs of my terrible nerdiness), and she decided she wanted to read it.
Nope.
I'll tell you if it's good, she said.
Nope.
And she immediately hit up my Facebook page and looked for what I might have written (definitely not linked on FB, although that one copy edit job I did is on there). She tried to Google me, but both of my names - married and maiden - tend to turn up other people besides me (one a college athlete, one from the other side of the country), so no luck there.
I let her know that unless she was into a fairly obscure corner of late nineties anime, she'd never find me. I'm willing to bet that maybe one of the people I hang out with in fandom these days could identify the source of my usual screen name.
Still, after a weekend of napping, silly movies, and honey water, I think I'm coming to life again. And I have to be at court on Monday whether I like it or not, so there you go. Taking it easy this weekend has helped, though.
In other news, I have plans to do some self-guided study in stuff like child development, just so I can be better at my job. I've picked up a lot as I go, but I feel like there are still gaps in my knowledge, so I bought some used textbooks, and I'm going to attempt to read one chapter a day/half an hour in these reference books just to be a better guardian. We'll see how that goes.
Work was chill this week. And by chill I mean, sure, there was drama. The usual work drama, though. (New mantra: you're the clean up crew, not the wrecking crew.) Nothing super spectacular. Nothing too life-threatening.
Well, bit of drama on Monday. Went to a child and family team meeting with a family with a stepdad who's a chronic alcoholic, and could be described as a minimally functioning alcoholic. He never interacts with me and the caseworker, though, avoids us whenever we come over, so I was suuuuper surprised when he came into the kitchen to talk to us. And by talk to us I mean load all the blame on his wife and get angrier and angrier. By all accounts, guy gets mean when he's drunk. Mom was on the defensive. Kids were upset. Caseworker and I were trapped behind the table, stepdad was between us and the door.
But hey, I'm a lawyer. I talked him down. Instead of getting violent, he started crying.
Might have freaked out my friends by sending a panicked text message, though.
Law school BFF Angela and I made junk food, danced, ate junk food.
Tuesday I worked, had few meetings, mostly hung around at home writing and doing laundry.
Wednesday and Thursday were training. We had a presentation from a guy who'd been made homeless at fourteen by his own mother, but who persevered and went on to become successful in life. Great speaker. Great presentation. We watched the film Paper Tigers, which about made me want to cry (and my friends know I don't cry easily during films - unless I'm sick, and then anything makes me cry; more on that later). Thursday training was boring as all get-out. True fact: lawyers are too stupid to understand the nuances of LCMS, GCMS, and LCMS/GMCS-TOF. Also, to be a good lawyer: don't be a tool.
There were happy moments in training, though. I stumbled upon a convocation of Police Dogs playing fetch with their humans on the way to the convention center. The start time of the conference was mis-calendared to start an hour early, so I spent an hour sitting across from a coworker and churning out fanfic like no one's business. Yay for the Bluetooth keyboard and 4G LTE. Sitting and hanging out with my coworkers is always awesome.
And then I crashed at BenTen's house - after tasty Mexican food - and we sat together in the basement, plodding away at our respective laptops, reading and writing fanfic and sharing our fangirling (despite not being in the same fandoms) and generally having fun. Like the old days, when we were roommates.
Well, on Wednesday night, there was some drama. Got a late-night call from a caseworker. They don't call late unless it's an actual emergency, because they also need people to respect the 5PM boundary (and if you answer some civilian's call outside business hours one time, they never call during business hours again, I swear). And it was bad. Kid of mine assaulted in the group home where he lives. Cops wouldn't interview him without my permission, so of course I gave my permission, because please, investigate and prevent future attacks, detectives.
On Thursday after training I crashed at BenTen's house again for more fangirling till Cody's plane came in, and then I took his professor home, and we came home. I had that nasty scratch at the back of my throat that told me I was getting sick. Cody was sure it was allergies or the weather or something.
Nope. Full on cold by Friday. I had a two-hour mediation that went nowhere because mom showed up high and one of her exes is a raging control freak, both of her exes have more money and better lawyers, and she came up positive for cocaine in the last six weeks, which kinda discredits her claims of being a casual marijuana user. Luckily for me, my other meetings of the day were by phone, and then I rescheduled my one home visit, because I felt awful.
By the time Friday rolled around, I was in full-on flu mode. Shakes. Whole body aching. Nausea. Fever.
For two seconds on Saturday when I woke up I thought I was cured, but once I was vertical the symptoms set back in. So I've been huddled on the couch for two days, occasionally venturing away to get a new tissue box, refill my honey-water, nibble on some string cheese, and do small chores, like laundry and vacuuming and mopping.
I am caught up on The Flash and SPN, and also I watched not one but two (two!) Kavan Smith rom coms, which resulted in much laughter and also an embarrassing amount of crying during the sad parts. True fact: Kavan Smith is adorable with babies.
I finished part two of the four-part Love Springs Forth challenge. Need to work on part three.
During the training conference I inadvertently admitted to a coworker that I write fanfiction (one of my other coworkers, who I went to law school with, knows all the ins and outs of my terrible nerdiness), and she decided she wanted to read it.
Nope.
I'll tell you if it's good, she said.
Nope.
And she immediately hit up my Facebook page and looked for what I might have written (definitely not linked on FB, although that one copy edit job I did is on there). She tried to Google me, but both of my names - married and maiden - tend to turn up other people besides me (one a college athlete, one from the other side of the country), so no luck there.
I let her know that unless she was into a fairly obscure corner of late nineties anime, she'd never find me. I'm willing to bet that maybe one of the people I hang out with in fandom these days could identify the source of my usual screen name.
Still, after a weekend of napping, silly movies, and honey water, I think I'm coming to life again. And I have to be at court on Monday whether I like it or not, so there you go. Taking it easy this weekend has helped, though.
In other news, I have plans to do some self-guided study in stuff like child development, just so I can be better at my job. I've picked up a lot as I go, but I feel like there are still gaps in my knowledge, so I bought some used textbooks, and I'm going to attempt to read one chapter a day/half an hour in these reference books just to be a better guardian. We'll see how that goes.
