So I haven't been very dedicated to my new hobby, painting, in the past couple months. I've had the same unfinished project sitting around for a while now. But I'm finally focusing on it again, and getting closer to finishing it.

I'm too lazy right now to link to older posts with pictures of earlier versions of this painting, (I'd promised myself to take and post pictures along the way so I could remember what it looked like all along the way), but here's my latest version - still needs more work, the pears in particular and some more detailing, to outline the fruit and all, but I don't know; I'm kinda a little bit happy with how it's looking, what do ya think? And be kind, it's only my second real painting project ever.



2:20 a.m. update - - - sleepless night. decided to keep painting. decided i'm done with the painting. because i'm ready to be done with the painting. so here it is:



Next week i start my new art class ... ready for a new project!

WHAT A GIRL WANTS, WHAT A GIRL NEEDS ...

whatever makes me happy ...

And this girl has been stressed out and working too hard and lonely as hell, and needs something new to play with. So tonight I bought myself this new toy - the beautiful g-spot butterfly:



Somehow it feels a little retro. Maybe it's the bulky remote control. But it's new and different for me, and it makes this girl happy.

But what I REALLY want to know is this: do you think I can get away with wearing this underneath my suit in court? Hmm....

Crushing

I have a little crush on an attorney at another firm in town. I've worked with him on cases from time to time, sometimes alongside him and sometimes against him. I think he's only a few years older than I am. He's not the most attractive man I've ever met, although he is nice looking, but somehow it's his personality that has grown on me over the past few years that makes him more and more attractive to me.

Unfortunately for me, he's married. So this crush is just something for me, something that sometimes helps fuel my fantasies when I'm lying in bed alone at night. And he is oblivious to this crush, and I wouldn't want it any other way. I don't act any differently around him than I do around anyone else I work with in a similar capacity.

But I have realized recently that I do take pleasure in doing small favors for him. Work-related favors. It's a small community of lawyers I work with in my particular area, so we all pretty much know each other fairly well. And because of that, and because we as often work on one another's side as we do against one another, we as a group are pretty collegial towards one another. So any of the small favors he's asked of me, I would also do for any other lawyer I know. But I've recently noticed than when he's the one asking the favor, I jump to it almost immediately, rather than putting it off until later in the day or week, and I also actually get pleasure out of it. I'm happy to help him.

It's a perfectly harmless little crush. But it is interesting, to me, how a little crush like that can affect one's behavior towards another person, even in the smallest of ways.

Of course, as harmless as it is, I do sometimes wonder (and wish I could find out) what he would think if he knew that whenever I sit across from him in a deposition, I play out fantasies of the two of us together in my head; that I sometimes get aroused simply by looking at his hands as he's working, imagining how those long, strong-looking fingers would feel delving deep inside me ... I think it would make him blush. I know it would make me blush if he knew.

Fuck Me Hard.

It is 2:20 in the afternoon, and I am sitting in my office, at work, and I JUST NOW realized that I am wearing TWO TOTALLY DIFFERENT SHOES today:



Holy fucking shit. This means that not only did I PUT ON two different shoes this morning at home without realizing it, I have WORN and WALKED AROUND IN two different shoes in an OFFICE BUILDING for the past SIX HOURS without even realizing it.

Fuck you too, Monday.

Interesting.

Last year I wrote a post about a conversation I'd had with an attorney from another firm who tried to persuade me into running for (or at least thinking about running for) a judicial position that had recently opened up on the bench of the particular court before which he and I mostly appear as part of our practice. I remember thinking at the time how strange it felt to have someone come to me with that idea, how out of the blue it was since I've never ever considered such a thing myself, and how odd and funny it also seemed at the time because another attorney I know at a different firm had made a remark to me not long before that day, suggesting the same thing. I really truly have never thought to myself that I would make a good judge, or that it would be something that I would want to do; and I actually seriously don't think I could get elected, at least at this point in my life, even if I wanted to. But it was strangely fascinating to hear two different people I know and sometimes work on cases with, from two different law firms, suggest it to me on their own like that. I mean it was a crazy idea in itself; but to have two different people suggest it like that? Funny.

Well today I experienced deja vu, all over again. Because right now there is another vacancy on that same court, and this morning another attorney, from another law firm, said to me, "you should run." It took me aback. Again. I think he was serious. I've known this attorney longest of all, actually; I first met him when I first started out practicing law, when he had just made partner at his firm. And in the past five years, I've had more and more occasion to work with him, on multiple-party cases. And his comment this morning took me completely by surprise.

I honestly still have no intention of running. I don't know if I'd want to; and I actually doubt I could win a seat on that bench if I tried. But I can't help but feel wonder and, to be perfectly honest, kind of touched, that now a third person has out of the blue made this suggestion to me. A third attorney, at a third law firm, that I have occasion to work with, sometimes as co-counsel and sometimes as opposing counsel.

I don't know what it is I've done to manage to fool them all into apparently thinking so well of me professionally. But shit baby, I hope I can keep it up.

Wondering why,

on Mother's Day, when you go to the grocery store, the person who checks you out wishes you a Happy Mother's Day?

That happened to me twice: once today, and once yesterday. Two different grocery stores. I don't know if they were saying that to everyone, or just to women, but it seemed to be something they'd been told to say to people when checking their groceries.

What I wanted to say in return each time was, "I'm NOT a mother." What I said instead each time was, "thank you."

Eh.

I have a huge issue with this Jon and Kate Plus 8 thing, and I must vent.

WTF is up with Kate's hair?

It's hideous. Short hairstyles can be cute, but hers, with the long sideswept bangs in front and the super-short cropped spikes in back, makes her look like a lesbian who is torn between being lipstick and being butch.

And that is all I have to say on the subject.

Ah, trial work. Gotta love it. (Or hate it.)

Nothing like talking to your star witness for the very first time the night before his deposition is taken by the lawyer on the other side. I'm really feeling prepared these days, yessirree.

Also, nothing like talking to your star witness for the very first time the night before his deposition is taken by the lawyer on the other side, at 8 o'clock at night, when the witness finally returns your earlier call and catches you at home, and you've been sitting back reading a cheezy romance novel and drinking wine for a good hour.

I hope I sounded professional. I think I did.

Update on the devil child

The other day I wrote a post about how my five year old nephew can be really sweet sometimes. That was based on something super sweet he said Friday night at suppertime.

Then Saturday morning came, and he woke up hungry, and asked my sister, his mom, for oatmeal. And when 5 minutes later she hadn't brought it to him yet, he shouted out at her "MOM. Do. Your. Job." And when she said "WHAT did you just say to me?!?!" he said, in a slightly softer voice but laden with sarcasm, "Mom PLEASE do your job."

And then during the course of the day on Saturday, he proceeded to have about ten holy tantrums, shouting and crying himself red in the face over the most mundane things, carrying on loud enough to wake the dead. Or bust an eardrum. Definitely enough to make the rest of us drink heavily at any rate.

And then Sunday came, and I took him to a small neighborhood park with a pond and lots of ducks, ducks that are used to people being around them and not bothering them and waddle all over the place being cute and quiet, and my nephew ran through them all, chasing them, tormenting them, flapping his arms and shouting "RRRRAAAAAOOOOOWWWWWRRRRR!!!!! RRRRRAAAAOOOOOOWWWWRRRRR!!!!!! RRRRRAAAAOOOOOOWWWWWWRRRR!!!!!!", making all the poor ducks run away. And when everyone else in the park gave us dirty looks and I fussed at him and told him to stop scaring the ducks, he said in the most reasonable little voice, "but it's fun."

Yeah, maybe I don't really want kids one day after all.

fucking fuck fuck. fuck.

I have been in the worst mood for the past week. At first I thought it was just the cold I caught the week before, that I was still trying to shake off last week, that had me worn down and cranky. But now it's another Monday, and I'm in a foul mood. I didn't sleep well at all last night, tossed and turned for hours, at times turned on the light and read a book, hoping it would make me sleepy.

I was stressing out the whole time though, thinking about all the shit I have to do at work this week, how shitty and stressful and crazy it's going to be trying to squeeze in all the stuff there is to do with my busy schedule for the week. I finally fell asleep for a few (way too few) hours, and woke up cranky and frustrated. I don't feel like going to work today; I don't want to do all the stuff I have to do.

And I was re-living the dream that I had, the one I woke up out of this morning, that also put me in a foul mood. It was a dream about unsuccessful sex. I mean really, really bad, unsuccessful sex. It was not good, and it left me frustrated as hell.

And it hit me after I fully woke up: I need sex. I am sexually frustrated. And all the normal shitty things about day to day life that are piling up on me and stressing me out, I would be so much in a better frame of mind to deal with, if only I were getting laid these days.

Yep, I think this has become a problem. I need a good fucking, on a regular basis, to blow the cobwebs out my head and ramp up my seratonin levels and leave me walking around with that glow on my face and that feeling between my legs of being constantly reminded and aware of the fact that I've been fucked. I think it would greatly improve my work performance too. I must get laid, for the sake of my work product if not my sanity.

caution: sentimental post ahead

My nephew is five years old. And he is a holy terror. I mean it, he is. He's cute as can be, and believe me, he knows it and works it; but he is so hard to handle. (now.) (great, I have a Black Crowes song going on in my head now that will probably stick all morning.) I think it's the redhead in him; he has reddish brown hair, kinda like, hmm, an aunt of his I know. And that's just a sign of the devil. Right?

Anyway. The thing is, he really is a sweetheart at his core. Sure, that's not always apparent, what with his generally eardrum-splittingly loud, obnoxious, sly and surprisingly calculating for a five-year-old, belligerent nature, which I assume is a product of having testosterone in his body because I grew up with girls and seriously we just weren't ever that loud or bad or crazy, but in the middle of all that personality beats a sweet little heart, that at the most random times, can express a genuine love and thoughtfulness for others.

For example, last night's dinner blessing. Now normally my family doesn't say a blessing before dinner, except for I guess Thanksgiving and other occasional holidays and large family gatherings where, because of our upbringings, we'd feel like cads if we didn't offer one up, but blessings are apparently big with kids. They learn them in school, which to me seems like some kind of violation of the separation of church and state, but then again they go to a private school, so I guess that law doesn't apply to them. At any rate, my niece and nephew like to take turns saying a blessing before meals. The short and rhime-y kind. (Blessings, not meals.) And last night my five-year-old nephew shouted and hollered in all his belligerency that it was HIS TURN to say the blessing. So he did.

What he said was: "Thank you, God, for this good food, and for this happy day, make sure Brian is safe and sound, in Jesus' name we pray." Which is based on a blessing he learned in school, but which he changed a little bit for when he says it at home sometimes, on his own, without any prompting from anyone else, to include the part about Brian. Which my sister told me surprised her when he first did it, because it came from out of nowhere except his little brain.

What makes it sweet is, Brian is our really cool, nice, funny, awesome cousin, who right now is stationed in Afghanistan. He made it through his Iraq rotations just fine in the past, and we were all kind of thinking that he was maybe done with that, that he wouldn't have to go back, especially since we've got a new president who is scaling back our presence in Iraq and looking to end our (stupid-ass) mission there. But then he got new word, and now he is over in Afghanistan. Hopefully he'll be back by the end of this year, but I don't know for sure.

Well of course everyone in my family loves Brian and thinks about him and talks about him from time to time, with everything he's doing. And since my niece and nephew know and adore him, my sister explained to them when he had to go away again recently for such an extended period of time. I don't know how exactly she explained it to them, I know she said it very simply and kept it short. (I imagine it included the phrase "fighting for his country," but that's just me, picturing such a conversation in my head.) But I don't think anyone expected the kids to really think about or retain that particular knowledge, or expected that it would change in any way anything that they do or think.

But for whatever reason, maybe just because he loves his cousin, but somehow also I think because he picked up on the fact that we all have him in our thoughts, my little nephew incorporated thoughts of keeping safe and sound our cousin Brian, stationed in Afghanistan, into his prayers and blessings, all on his own, to the surprise of everyone else. Somehow a sentiment like that come from a child in such a way, all simple and sweet and easy and pure, holds so much more emotion than anything we could say as adults. And it makes this cynical old aunt go "awwwwwwww."