"Stop measuring days by degree of productivity and start experiencing them by degree of presence."
Afraid today's post is going to have a Joycean, stream-of-consciousness feel to it. This is how I experience life, after all. Why not describe it that way?
Mourning what may be the demise of the wedding venue idea. Yesterday George informed us that the rules had changed for banquet structures housing over sixty people. Now we need a fire hydrant and new well to supply it with water, at $6,000.00, plus an alarm and sprinkler system for the barn similar to what you see in a hotel or restaurant. Given that we seem to be running out of folks to help us bring this venture to fruition, P and I have come around to the idea that further capital contributions amount to throwing money down a hole. Time to code the patient.
And with the cows gone, we now have the problem of pastures that will soon become overgrown. We also may lose our ag exemption if we don't think fast. Maybe hay? We run into a similar labor problem here--who's going to fertilize? To cut and bale? To sell? The nation's labor crisis has finally arrived at Wyldswood's doorstep, and we're struggling with how to address it.
This could've kept me up all on its own, but my mourning was compounded by a late call from my sister, informing me that Mom's in the hospital with bedsores all the way to the bone and is on a course of intravenous antibiotics to save what's left of her life. Should I come right away? No, it's not that bad yet--I'll let you know.
I get there on Monday to pick up the Columbia. What will I encounter? Will it be too late?
The irritant that is the practice of law lately continues to keep me on edge and awake at 3 a.m. Yesterday's crises included two clients insistent on courses of action with which I strongly disagree. I tend to represent the sort of folks who can afford my services, and they don't much like being told, as Elihu Root once famously put it, that they "are a damned fool and should stop." The wealthy and privileged aren't used to being admonished thusly, but I've grown old and cranky and now take the position that someone who doesn't like my advice should perhaps avail himself or herself of one of the other 110,000 or so lawyers in the Sunshine State, at least a few of whom are sufficiently desperate that they'll tell a paying client whatever they want to hear, then blame the system when the advice leads to an unwelcome result.
Of course, in my experience probably 98% of lawyers, and maybe more, fall outside of this little corral of ethical wretches. Most of the bad behavior in the legal system is driven by the clients who find themselves caught in the process, and will say or do anything to prevail, whether to cause suffering in the opposing party for personal reasons or out of financial desperation, or just plain mental illness rendered acute by the crisis of a lawsuit. These days I spend more time counseling than jousting in court, which suits me fine. We're in the business of resolving disputes, and as soon as I figure out someone's come through my door with a different agenda, I now send them packing. Life's too short, especially now.
So I may end up firing a couple paying clients today, if I can't talk them into behaving themselves. If I do this enough the Mighty Columbia may become a thing of the past.
Then again, my blood pressure may drive me to the same earthbound result. I've been saying for two months that I need to go pick up a scrip for BP meds, and if I show up for a flight physical in July, the deadline for my exam, with this morning's BP of 151/84 I'll barely flunk and find myself grounded until I address the problem. But these peregrinations back-and-forth between here and Florida, and the vagaries of our health insurance, make it extremely difficult to find an entry point for a doctor visit and a trip to the pharmacy. So I'll just keep putting it off, I guess.
Yesterday's hearing on a rather quotidian motion to withdraw presents the sort of experience that's part of the reason all my stress-related health markers keep creeping in the wrong direction. The hearing was at 9:45 according to the notice, but the attorney seeking to withdraw in the case (the other side's fourth in eighteen months) arrived in the Zoom waiting room at 9:30, and the judge, noticing him sitting there, opened the hearing without me and granted the motion. When I and the court reporter arrived on screen, on time, the judge looked confused and held up to the camera a pink sheet with a very long list of hearings he was working through this particular morning. He asked if I objected to an order granting the motion (which order was arriving in my email in-basket already as we spoke), and I told him I was concerned that the requested forty-five days to secure replacement counsel would render us unable to complete discovery and the hearing of dispositive motions before the jury trial scheduled for November. "Well counselor, I'll solve that problem for you. I'm continuing the trial. No way you all will be ready for trial by then, with the new lawyer not making an appearance until the end of July."
I kept my composure, but was apoplectic. My client, run by a volunteer board, had spent a lot of money to get here, and seen trial kicked down the road twice already because the other party can't seem to keep a lawyer. The judge won't be the one who has to go back and explain how this happened, and deal with the veiled suggestions that their lawyer is a boob because he can't hold the bad guy's feet to the fire.
And this, along with an unfortunate genetic predisposition on both sides of my family tree, is why I drink.
But for now my only drink is coffee, a double espresso over hot water with a splash of frothed oat milk, to be exact. The espresso machine's been acting up lately, maybe the result of our water being too hard and eating its vascular system. The espresso's not especially hot. The frothing wand drips like an old man with prostate issues before it finally starts to steam a little. I ran some Swiss descaling concoction through the system yesterday, but for various reasons was forced to mix the solution a little less strongly than the manufacturer recommended (one bottle to 125 ML, the latter of which I had to look up so I could use our English system measuring cups). The jury is still out on whether this had the desired effect, although P's coffee this morning seemed a little more like the good old days.
Oh look, my first email of the morning from the new lawyer of a client I fired two weeks ago because she refused to take my advice and kept accusing me of incompetence based on her own internet-derived legal analysis. Time to get at it, tiger. Or Donk. Hoping in about 1900 billable hours to move on to something better for my soul.
Speaking of my soul (and I really thought I was done here), my Daily Office gospel reading was one that always throws me a curve. It's Luke's parable of the ten minas, or talents depending on your translation. It goes like this: rich wannabe king leaves town to be crowned down the road. The locals think he's an ass, and are glad he left. He gives ten servants ten talents/minas each, to invest. The two who make a solid ROI are rewarded with suzerainties of their own. The poor soul who hides his mina because he knows the bully will discipline him for losing it gets disciplined, or at least the king takes the mina and gives it to one of the more successful investors among his servants. Why? The king explains he doesn't actually do anything to earn a living, and relies on the markets to pay his mortgage. Or whatever. Then in the feel-good finale to the story, the king commands his servants to bring his enemies into his presence and "slay them before me."
I keep thinking this wretched Trump-King can't possibly represent Yahweh, much less his sandal wearing pacifist son. But all of the online hermeneutics says just that--your loving god expects you to make good use of your gifts. Ignore the whole leveraging your workers and murdering your enemies part.
No wonder I couldn't cut it as a priest. I mean, how much double-think can you sell to a room full of nice people who were raised thinking being nice is the true mark of faith?
Okay, so now you know how what's left of my brain navigates the stream of inputs, and why I have such trouble these days billing the massive number of hours I once did.
Comments