Day 1133: The Un-Purdy Shuffle
Aug. 31st, 2014 03:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nagi_schwarzThis week really wasn't a bad one. I had a couple of days of what amounted to down time between a crazy court schedule, so I took advantage of them. I ate good food, spent time with the girls in the office...and worked on my super epic prank. One of the paralegals took two weeks off to go to Europe, and it's a tradition in the office to play a prank while someone's gone. So what did we do? We planned her "dream wedding" to a pretty skeevy dude. (I get it. It's unfeminist and TERF-like to find a dude who wears a bustier and corset on camera creepy. That wasn't the creepy part. The creepy part was where he defended his brother's tying a child to a tree to keep him in place while getting high ensued.)
We call the dude Brother Johnny. And for as long as I've known her, the paralegal has joked about marrying him (she's single, and in Utah Valley, being single at my age is looked on as a pitiable condition, but she and the single lawyer in our office bear it well; our last prank was when said single lawyer was out of the office and we made a fake wedding announcement for him). So I picked up a bridal magazine, and then a cheap notebook, pair of scissors, and glue stick (thanks, back to school sales!) and I went to town. I cut out sample invitations, cakes, flowers, food, pictures of couples, and dresses. All the dresses. On the invitations I crossed out the sample names and put the paralegal and brother Johnny's names. I added their initials to wedding cakes. I pasted pictures of her and him on every bride and groom. We even got our coworkers in on the prank. They submitted pictures and we pasted their faces on pictures of the bridesmaids (we even got a judge in there for good measure). We compiled lists of inappropriate songs for the first dance, the daddy-daughter dance, and the rest of the festivities. We even wrote a maid of honor speech (using excerpts from a blog of a particularly crazy mom of one of our clients). We went all out. I broke out a calligraphy pen to put titles on each section. We solicited people for terrible marriage advice. It was a great bonding activity, and even people who don't usually get in on the action joined in. When we do the work we do, sometimes we need to let off a little steam. And it was good.
On the other hand...I am up to 143 kids. That's the most I've ever had. Usually I'm somewhere around 130. I've never gone below 120. I know the surge in kids is because I picked up some child protective orders and they won't be ongoing cases, but still. Kinda scary. Also, two of my kids ran. One has been found. One has not. The one who has not has made some scarily bad choices in the past, and I'm worried about him.
We are spending the holiday weekend with my in-laws. There has been much crocheting, a good deal of writing, a lot of Netflixing, and at least 2 Dingo escapes. He has now upped the ante to five foot fences. Thanks, dude. I keep checking out the window to make sure he's still there. The bite from the pit bull got a little infected, so we took him to the vet. Poor kid.
Also, I twisted my ankle while out running Wednesday morning (took quite the spill on Main Street during morning rush hour) and I've been limping around, unable to run or dance, since then. I've been doing my best to baby my ankle, but my dogs don't really seem to care whether mommy heals or not. Yay! I still love them, though.
Today we talked about Family History at church, where it's not just knowing births, deaths, places, and names, it's know about the people, about what happened in the dash. It's about knowing who we are and where we come from. The teacher cited a study someone cited at the most recent training conference (and she left out how the study was related to kids in foster care, way to sugar it up for the church ladies, like trauma doesn't happen to kids) about how kids who know about their ancestors and where they came from are more resilient after trauma.
She talked about putting up pictures so everyone can see their ancestors, showed us a video of a dude who looked at an picture of his grandpa and saw his own resemblance. Yeah, that's not happening for me. I have only one picture of my biological parents. Doing hours upon hours of family research will tell me about my parents' ancestors. My parents have done well, telling me about their childhoods and their memories of their parents and grandparents.
I thought the lady was a little too quick to dismiss the contribution of indexing. They keep promoting family history as something teens can do because it's tech friendly now, snazzy looking onscreen and fun. But so many teens these days can't read cursive, so they can't index census records and they can't read their ancestors' journals (assuming those journals are even in the language they speak).
I'd like to get involved in family history. There are a lot of good things I'd like to get involved in on a Sunday, but as a general rule Sundays are not my own. I can't even imagine what it will be like when I have no kids. Having a busted ankle this week taught me a lot about my household. Cody will make breakfast and help with dishes after dinner. He'll carry laundry baskets for me. He'll make lunch for himself or wrangle leftovers for both of us if there are any. But the little things that keep our household going?
Nope. Don't get done. It was kinda frustrating, especially after I spent an hour in a team meeting trying to teach a dysfunctional couple that they need to share in the chores, to compromise, that no matter how much you despise a chore it needs to get done, come rain or shine. But I guess if I never tell Cody these things annoy me, they'll never change. And at the end of a long work day, we're both tired. I understand his lethargy and his desire to sit for an hour and not think, not be.
I guess sometimes I'm just tired that the person who gets things done is me. Of course, on the weekend, the labor-intense chores Cody does, mostly because they required his construction experience. But it would be nice to know that, after a particularly trying day, if we both get home late, he'd be willing to cook or do one of the chores I usually do. Not just volunteer to go out and get dinner, but actually make dinner.
It'd be nice.
But here's to a better week next week, eh?
I went writing with BenTen this week. She bought dinner because I went out of my way extra so she could avoid driving on the interstate (she hasn't had her license back for very long). It stormed and the power went out briefly, but we chatted and wrote and it was awesome. And me? I got a new iPad mini. It's what I'm writing on now. So life really isn't that bad. I think the constant dull ache of my ankle, the headaches brought on by the weather, and 143 kids has just done me in.
We call the dude Brother Johnny. And for as long as I've known her, the paralegal has joked about marrying him (she's single, and in Utah Valley, being single at my age is looked on as a pitiable condition, but she and the single lawyer in our office bear it well; our last prank was when said single lawyer was out of the office and we made a fake wedding announcement for him). So I picked up a bridal magazine, and then a cheap notebook, pair of scissors, and glue stick (thanks, back to school sales!) and I went to town. I cut out sample invitations, cakes, flowers, food, pictures of couples, and dresses. All the dresses. On the invitations I crossed out the sample names and put the paralegal and brother Johnny's names. I added their initials to wedding cakes. I pasted pictures of her and him on every bride and groom. We even got our coworkers in on the prank. They submitted pictures and we pasted their faces on pictures of the bridesmaids (we even got a judge in there for good measure). We compiled lists of inappropriate songs for the first dance, the daddy-daughter dance, and the rest of the festivities. We even wrote a maid of honor speech (using excerpts from a blog of a particularly crazy mom of one of our clients). We went all out. I broke out a calligraphy pen to put titles on each section. We solicited people for terrible marriage advice. It was a great bonding activity, and even people who don't usually get in on the action joined in. When we do the work we do, sometimes we need to let off a little steam. And it was good.
On the other hand...I am up to 143 kids. That's the most I've ever had. Usually I'm somewhere around 130. I've never gone below 120. I know the surge in kids is because I picked up some child protective orders and they won't be ongoing cases, but still. Kinda scary. Also, two of my kids ran. One has been found. One has not. The one who has not has made some scarily bad choices in the past, and I'm worried about him.
We are spending the holiday weekend with my in-laws. There has been much crocheting, a good deal of writing, a lot of Netflixing, and at least 2 Dingo escapes. He has now upped the ante to five foot fences. Thanks, dude. I keep checking out the window to make sure he's still there. The bite from the pit bull got a little infected, so we took him to the vet. Poor kid.
Also, I twisted my ankle while out running Wednesday morning (took quite the spill on Main Street during morning rush hour) and I've been limping around, unable to run or dance, since then. I've been doing my best to baby my ankle, but my dogs don't really seem to care whether mommy heals or not. Yay! I still love them, though.
Today we talked about Family History at church, where it's not just knowing births, deaths, places, and names, it's know about the people, about what happened in the dash. It's about knowing who we are and where we come from. The teacher cited a study someone cited at the most recent training conference (and she left out how the study was related to kids in foster care, way to sugar it up for the church ladies, like trauma doesn't happen to kids) about how kids who know about their ancestors and where they came from are more resilient after trauma.
She talked about putting up pictures so everyone can see their ancestors, showed us a video of a dude who looked at an picture of his grandpa and saw his own resemblance. Yeah, that's not happening for me. I have only one picture of my biological parents. Doing hours upon hours of family research will tell me about my parents' ancestors. My parents have done well, telling me about their childhoods and their memories of their parents and grandparents.
I thought the lady was a little too quick to dismiss the contribution of indexing. They keep promoting family history as something teens can do because it's tech friendly now, snazzy looking onscreen and fun. But so many teens these days can't read cursive, so they can't index census records and they can't read their ancestors' journals (assuming those journals are even in the language they speak).
I'd like to get involved in family history. There are a lot of good things I'd like to get involved in on a Sunday, but as a general rule Sundays are not my own. I can't even imagine what it will be like when I have no kids. Having a busted ankle this week taught me a lot about my household. Cody will make breakfast and help with dishes after dinner. He'll carry laundry baskets for me. He'll make lunch for himself or wrangle leftovers for both of us if there are any. But the little things that keep our household going?
Nope. Don't get done. It was kinda frustrating, especially after I spent an hour in a team meeting trying to teach a dysfunctional couple that they need to share in the chores, to compromise, that no matter how much you despise a chore it needs to get done, come rain or shine. But I guess if I never tell Cody these things annoy me, they'll never change. And at the end of a long work day, we're both tired. I understand his lethargy and his desire to sit for an hour and not think, not be.
I guess sometimes I'm just tired that the person who gets things done is me. Of course, on the weekend, the labor-intense chores Cody does, mostly because they required his construction experience. But it would be nice to know that, after a particularly trying day, if we both get home late, he'd be willing to cook or do one of the chores I usually do. Not just volunteer to go out and get dinner, but actually make dinner.
It'd be nice.
But here's to a better week next week, eh?
I went writing with BenTen this week. She bought dinner because I went out of my way extra so she could avoid driving on the interstate (she hasn't had her license back for very long). It stormed and the power went out briefly, but we chatted and wrote and it was awesome. And me? I got a new iPad mini. It's what I'm writing on now. So life really isn't that bad. I think the constant dull ache of my ankle, the headaches brought on by the weather, and 143 kids has just done me in.
