Blood, (boob) sweat, and (allergy) tears

The Attorney At Large

Posted on May 14th, 2012

Lest anyone fear, I survived mother’s day. And had a good time of it, too, on a picnic with friends. And then my friend RGP made me cry. In a good way.

Now? It’s hot. Pea’s word of the day is “sweltering.” She is “sweltering in her clothes.” Her hair, she says, is sweating and it’s getting into her blood and making her hot. (I’ll keep the secret of boob sweat from her for a few more years.)

Gman? Still sick. We took him to the doctor today and yes, it’s been professionally confirmed that he is sick. He’s on sulfa and steroid nose spray, and oh, lots of sleeping.

I have been transcribing Dearest Maude letters like crazy (they’re currently scheduled out through the end of May, but there are so very many more!)

I received a packet of info in the mail today for the project, including an interview with a great-great aunt, details about my great-great grandfather’s farming operation and how he put one over on the railroad, and the way my great-grandmother was raised. Talk about free-range parenting! It was, quite literally, free range parenting. It’s one thing to know the names and dates, but to read something written (spoken) by family long-dead is so different and amazing. I also learned the melodeon owned by my great-great-great grandmother is in a museum about 6 hours’ drive away.

(I went on a kick a few years back where I bought up books written by ancestors and collaterals. One of them is a HILARIOUS history of Oregon. I have got to tweet that material someday.)

Going through my personal archive of material has triggered a massive allergy attack, so I’m crying as I’m writing this, even after putting drops in my eyes.

And…I’m reading up on grant writing, something that until this past week I knew nothing about. I now know next to nothing about it, but it’s progress. I’ll take it.

Categories: Good day, TMI

Poor Pitiful Pearl

The Attorney At Large

Posted on May 12th, 2012

So.

I hate Mother’s Day. I want it to be over. (I’m getting pretty high in the Google rankings for “i hate mother’s day,” too.) I alternate between being weepy and feeling sorry for myself and feeling angry. Not my favorite emotional states.

My husband is SICK. Like has done nothing but sleep for three days sick. Like chugging Nyquil every four hours-sick. Like I have to go to the store and go past all the Mother’s Day displays and not cry to get the Nyquil-sick.

This comes on the end of Pea being SICK. Like endless rivulets of snot sick (something I haven’t seen from her in a long time) and grouchy and easily exhausted sick.

So far, I am not sick. (I paid those dues — I hope this is the same virus, anyway.) This is good, especially since I haven’t gotten more than six hours of sleep in a long time, and usually it’s been closer to four. Immune system? It’s busy fighting the allergy war. (Which, I could have told it, is about as useful as the war on drugs and teaching abstinence.)

It’s hot (for us) here. Today it was 82, and tomorrow it’s supposed to be 87. 86 Monday. We live in a place where central air is rare, and while we do have an a/c unit downstairs (because of a wall of east-facing windows, it’s almost always hotter there than upstairs), lots of shade trees, and good circulation, hot is hot. And I don’t do heat well.

I was happy this evening when it got cool enough to open the windows upstairs — only to discover it smells like garbage outside. FABULOUS. I make up for my lack of heat tolerance with an exceptionally keen sense of smell. It was not a good trade.

In my exuberance to open those windows, I — with characteristic grace — tripped on a fan in my office and stuck two of my toes into the blades: the big toe and the third toe. Fortunately, I have toes of steel (or at least stronger than plastic) and a great pedicure, so all it really did was rip the edges of my toenails off and ruin the pedicure. And I have some abrasions on my leg, but whatever. No blood.

This afternoon in the mail, I had the new issue of Foreign Affairs, nothing from the historical society I was looking forward to — and a letter announcing that someone new just bought my student loans and jacked the payments more than 3x higher and was going to move the due date up and oh, by the way, I already have a balance and it doesn’t show any of my recent payments. Right. Ha. Ha.

So I cried over my student loan statement. Sadly, it wasn’t the first time. Tomorrow, if you see a crazed redhead clutching a student loan statement and repeating over and over, “Judgment proof. Judgment proof.”? That’d be me.

Categories: Disasters, Hard days

To Deutschland, with love

The Attorney At Large

Posted on May 11th, 2012

Recently, the Honourable Husband posted about what American food translates to in German supermarkets. At a Safeway in NE Portland, I found the German “section” (I was on a quest for sauerkraut, because my husband is sick and craving polish dogs with lots and lots of sauerkraut).

It was just a tiny section, but a fascinating study. While the Germans think Americans need a lot of baking soda, mustard, syrup, and cheez whiz, Americans apparently think Germans need a lot of herring in aspic, sauerkraut, pickled beets, Spätzle, pumpernickel (how long does that stuff last on the shelf?!), and stomach-calming teas.

Here’s what we found:

We passed on the $6 sauerkraut, but picked up some $8 rapeseed honey. Pea was delighted (she likes bees, in theory but not practice): “German honey! How do German bees make German honey?”

Me: “Very efficiently.”

Pea: “Do German bees sting?”

Me: “Yes. You have to watch out for them every few decades.”

(I know, I know, I played to stereotype. But I got laughs in the aisles, from strangers, in a grocery store. I was on a roll.)

The rapeseed honey was pretty good, actually. I hate clover honey and love orange bossom honey; it was somewhere in the middle of the two.

Categories: Eating, Portlandia

Mother’s Day! It’s just about here! Shoot me now!

The Attorney At Large

Posted on May 9th, 2012

Last year I posted about Mother’s Day and why I hate it. I still haven’t spoken to my mother and that is still fine. It’s for the best. I have a daughter who loves me and I will celebrate — somehow.

I am happy for all of you who had great mothers and who get to enjoy a very special day with them on Sunday. I am sorry for all of you who had great mothers and who are mourning their loss.

But the envy I feel for you is a knife in my chest. I keep looking down, expecting to see the hilt. I don’t like envy. And since I rage much better than I envy, I’ll just focus on hating the holiday.

I do hope the rest of you will join me on the third Sunday in July, when I’ll be celebrating the second annual Children of Drunk Narcissists Day! Woo-hoo! Now that’s a holiday I can get behind.

Categories: Not crazy...yet, WTF

Clients You Will Meet: The Addict

The Attorney At Large

Posted on May 8th, 2012

This is part of my Practice Tips series.

I never found anything humorous about dealing with an addict, so this is a somber post.

With the disclaimer that everything I know about addiction comes from my practice, some psychology courses in undergrad, a few CLEs, and the fact I watched the first two seasons of Dr. Drew’s Celebrity Rehab, here’s my post on how to handle your addicted client.

First, addicts lie. Oh, do they lie. You’d better check their stories six ways from Sunday if you take their case, because even though they may be completely believable and oh, so earnest: they lie.

Second, they can be very charming — as they lie to you. Trust nothing. Use a buddy system if you think you might get sucked into their BS. Have your most hardened investigator sit in on your interviews — and then send them out to check all the facts.

Some firms won’t take addicts who aren’t in recovery as clients, and have it as part of the client agreement. I think that’s brilliant. Do that. I didn’t have the option.

Third, it’s hard to keep an addict together throughout the long process of civil litigation. Now, the prospect of a big money award IS motivating, but realize you’re dealing with someone with almost no impulse control (if any). It’s very tempting for them to slide back into their old habits.

So in dealing with an addict, your main goal is to keep the client from self-destructing as the case progresses. I don’t know how you do this other than what I tried: get the family (who is usually estranged because they’ve been victimized by the addict) involved as much as possible; make sure you keep in contact with them (put it on the calendar to contact them at least weekly); and keep them working at a job where they have to be accountable (and make money for living expenses).

But for all that, you can easily lose contact with an addicted client as bills don’t get paid, cell phones get turned off, they move (or are evicted) and don’t tell you where they’ve gone, and suddenly you’re getting all your mail bounced back and you have no idea where your client is while court dates are looming. (Check jail rosters, because an addict has probably been in and out of jail/prison for drug-related offenses.)

Those are fun requests to write: “Plaintiff respectfully asks this court to reschedule the upcoming hearing because of Plaintiff’s unforeseen scheduling challenges.” Or something. And opposing counsel can smell the blood in the water, too.

Here’s a bonus tip: don’t leave any checkbooks or valuables in the room with the client. I’d heard stories of attorneys who were ripped off, so I never left my handbag unattended. I always felt kind of guilty — what with having a fiduciary duty to them and all — but at least I never had to change my bank cards.

Categories: Advice, Law

Clients You Will Meet: the Child

The Attorney At Large

Posted on May 7th, 2012

This is part of my Practice Tips series.

Representing children in PI cases is a pain in the ass in many ways: you generally have to have a guardian appointed, often the parents aren’t suitable for one reason or another, and there are all the weirdnesses involved in state law once you do get settlements. Do you structure it? Do you have to worry about the parents or the guardians blowing the money? It’s just a lot of extra work.

I won’t bore you with any of that crap here.

I’m here to talk about the Child Client. That’s a person over eighteen years who can’t handle living in the real world and really can’t handle being involved in litigation. Either it’s too hard, it’s too stressful, they’re too stoned, or they’re simply too entitled to get that yes, being involved in a court case means they will have to actually 1) do some work; 2) be reliable; 3) go to court on occasion; 4) dress appropriately for court; 5) be respectful; and 6) tell the truth.

Most of these twits are in their early twenties. Generally Mommy and Daddy have handled everything hard for them until now. They only went to a lawyer because Mommy and Daddy thought they should.

You know those reminder calls and postcards you get from your dentist? They annoy me, because I have the appointment in my computer and my phone and they just wasted my time on a call AND sent a postcard that could have stayed a tree for a while longer yet? I hate that. But then, I am a grownup.

You have to do that stuff with the Child. Call. Email. Call. Email. Text. Send your investigator to show up on their doorstep. Don’t count that they’ll be at their deposition on time, no matter how much time went into preparing for it or how stern your tone of voice was when you reminded them about it for the fiftieth time.

Send a car for them. Leave time for them to get ready to go, because you’ll probably wake them up when you ring the bell.

That discovery they say they can get for you?

They won’t. Subpoena everything you can’t get with a release, because your client won’t follow through with anything that requires them to work.

And heaven forbid you have a stern opposing counsel who is not very nice to them in a deposition! They won’t go across the table like the Fishmonger’s wife; they’ll break down. They may cry. You’ll have to take a break just to tell your client to buck up and suck up and get the hell back in there.

And then they will cry harder and whine that they just want to drop the case (your firm will be deep in expenses by now) and everything is sooooo hard and sooooo unfair and why didn’t anyone tell them this would happen? They never should have gone to a lawyer in the first place.

Of course you did tell them exactly what to expect: it’s just that, like my four-year-old, they only remember what they want to hear.That’s when you call a lunch break and bring in their parents.

Yes, their parents. Because you, the savvy lawyer, have figured out that the Child is still infantile and still needs Mommy and Daddy to tell them what to do, so you’ve got them waiting in the wings — or, at least, cooling their heels at a nearby restaurant. Mommy and/or Daddy will give them enough of a pep talk to get them back into the witness chair.

And that is all you can do with a Child Client: assume they aren’t functional. Treat them exactly like you’d treat a four-year-old — a particularly petulant four-year-old — and you will be fine.

Well, not fine. You’ll be so frustrated you’ll want to strangle the client. But you’ll get through the deposition/mediation/trial, and at least you won’t have to do any of that frustrating guardian ad litem stuff at the end.

Categories: Advice, Law