Category Archive
The following is a list of all entries from the Quickies category. Noteworthy entries are filed topmost.
Crotchety Old Lady Alive and Kicking
The Crotchety Old Lady and I have been going at it the past several months about this whole solo law thing. She poked. I ignored. She prodded. I told her she was a few shots shy of a decent mega latte.
Well, the Crotchety One and her bony finger are on a warm beach somewhere, basking in the rays of their victory. My ribs are recovering from the months of jabbing. And I’m back to getting some sleep and a decent cup of morning java.
I’m launching a solo law practice and joining the ranks of home office lawyers, also affectionately referred to by Chuck Newton as Third Wavers, Spare Room Tycoons and Carpet Commuters.
Stay tuned!
Out of the Closet
In the words of the late Madeline Kahn as Lili Von Shtupp in Blazing Saddles -
Is it twue how zey say zat you people are … gifted?
(Lights go out, sound of zipper opening)
Oh. It’s twue. It’s twue. It’s twue. It’s twue!
And so yes, it’s twue, as Chuck Newton wrote, that I am ” … a mom, a lawyer, with teenagers, stuck at home.”
And it’s twue that I am betwixt and between, as my late father would say, on the issue of going back to practicing law. With a senior and junior in high school, I better figure out some way to fill the space between college parent weekends.
I do have the first few months of my son’s freshman year covered. It’ll take that long for the big suck machine, aka my wet/dry vac, to inhale the dearth of hair in his bathroom and for me to power wash his shower walls and under the toilet rim.
Still, there will come a time when even the melodic roar of my wet/dry vac will no longer cut it for me.
The question is, now that I’m out of the closet, do I have what it takes to dust off the license and launch?
On Top
It took 143 years and the state of Montana to get into the room and another 90 years of working the room, but there’s finally a woman on top.
George, John, Sam and the boys jawed and threw back a few in September 1774 at the First Continental Congress in Philadelphia.
In 1917 they let Jeannette Rankin in the Sixty-fifth Congress.
And as the 110th Congress kicks off, 233 years in the making, Nancy Pelosi will lead the House of Representatives.
233 years. Work it, honey.
Too Much Information
All I wanted to do was buy two potholders and a box of soap dispensing scrub wand refills.
The big box store had them.
Willing buyer, willing seller.
I give you money, you give me the stuff.
In. Out.
I don’t blame the cashier. She just asks the questions.
But for the love of Sister Jean Clare, enough.
No, I don’t want to give you my telephone number.
No, this won’t be on my big box store account.
No, I don’t have an account.
No, thank you, I don’t want one.
No, I don’t want to donate $1 to Charity X so you, big box store, can donate a collective mega amount to write off as a corporate charitable deduction.
Oh for the good old Woolworth days.
Compare and Contrast
Teenagers and a certain Speaker of the United States House of Representatives have a lot in common.
To-wit:
What?
What’d I do?
You never told me that!
I don’t remember you telling me that.
Do you realize how much I’ve got going on?! I can’t remember everything, you know!
I didn’t do anything!
It wasn’t me!
No way, dude. It didn’t happen that way.
And the always popular …
I was absent that day.
In a Galaxy Far, Far Away …
Sorry, Anousheh honey. I’m not feeling your pain.
Iranian-born American Anousheh Ansari, having been-there-done-that, dropped $20 million for a round-trip ticket to the International Space Station and something to talk about at the salon.
Now I figure that $20 million would buy a pretty damn good list of while-you’re-in-our-cosmos travel tips. Evidently not.
Anousheh’s been blog-itching about enduring primitive primping conditions. A coiffed space ‘do with mere water bag and dry shampoo. Wet and dry towel bathing. Teeth brushing, rinsing and swallowing ….. not spitting.
Which brings me to the recycled water.
All water in the International Space Station is recycled. Ewww. Those used workout clothes are air dryed so the water conduction contraption can collect and purify the sweat before Anousheh and the boys fill their water bottles.
And then there’s that come-to-mama zero gravity.
Eight days sans the seven signs of aging?
Anousheh, honey, it was worth every million.
Interloper
I am caught up in Lincoln’s Melancholy, which hit the shelves last year.
Joshua Wolf Shenk spent seven years researching this glimpse into Lincoln’s lifelong struggle with the Black Hole of depression. The result of Shenk’s toil is engrossing.
Shenk has allowed me to step inside Lincoln’s tortured mind and eavesdrop on his most private thoughts.
For those of us who have walked Lincoln’s path of pain, his story is a light in the darkness.
Keep walking towards the light.
Multitasking Teen
Just in case you were lying awake at night wondering ……….
It is, in fact, possible for a sixteen year old female to operate a lawn mower and read text messages and/or incoming caller ID numbers on her cell phone.
Dailyness
This is one of those times. No earth shaking. No black hole. Just the usual stuff. The daily stuff. Wake up. Do the day. Go to bed. Get up and do it again.
Thank God for those times once in a while.
Independence Day and 217 Year Old Wisdom
“Whenever the people are well informed, they can be trusted with their own government; that whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them to rights.”
The Thomas Jefferson Papers,Thomas Jefferson to Richard Price, January 8, 1789
