Ruby Tuesday

Well, today was a lot better than yesterday. I feel a lot more at peace with the decision and I am getting excited about opening a new office. It'll be great - the Margarator is in!
I've been all consumed with the job thing that I failed to mention I got a new car! I got a 2003 Suburban - yep, just a newer, fancier version of a gas guzzling soccer mom SUV. It's white with black trim and more gadgets and gizmos than I will ever need. The heated seats kick ass. There are a lot of things about my old one that I like better, but it was customized so it had all kinds of cool shit - I will miss the pimp lights. We sold it to another mom in need and they will love it. We didn't have to advertise it or anything, it went word of mouth and was sold pretty much immediately after I got the new one, so that worked out well.
The weather is finally getting back to normal again and I am so happy about that - I have been frozen for like three months. So now Tonya and I can start planning some of the Open Road Excursions - woo hoo! Bigfoot Campout, Camping with the Kids, Campfire Ghost Tales, maybe even a Mountain Man Rendezvous - ya'll need to plan on joining us on some of these!
It's also time to start planning RiverDrunk 2007 - Coming to the Nuisance. This is the 10th Anniversary Float Trip so we need some kick ass tshirts. Oh yeah - you all that ordered them last year and didn't get them - I have them and Amanda would like to get paid for them.
It's also about time for this season's Eerie Oklahoma Ghost Town Tour. I added a couple of places and found some new stuff thanks to my soon to be brother in law, Justin. I doubt I can find them again without him :).
All's well here - Bailey will be 10 this Friday. Boy, I'm not ready to have a 10 year old. Makes me kinda sad.
Anyway - I've been distracted with this whole work thing and the damned arctic weather that I haven't focused much on my other stuff lately. We went out Saturday night and saw No Hassle. It's a bunch of guys from Northcutt's and they were pretty good. It was a lot of fun - they do all the great sing alongs - Skynard, Steve Miller, Buffett. Had dinner at Chicaro's and that was awesome as usual. New favorite beer - Franziskaner heffe-weis. It's yummy. Took some fun pictures with my fellow ghost diva, Tonya.
Which brings me to - a producer in Florida asked us to send in a video on a show idea she had and he wants to possibly pitch it to a network. That would be interesting.
American Idol performances started. I dig Sundance, Chris Sligh, Blake Lewis, and Phil Stacy so far. That guy Nick with the dark hair & dimples is pretty cute but forgettable. I love Simon, everyone should be like him.

Monday, Monday, Can't Trust that Day...

So I woke up with a stomach ache because I had a dream about work and I realized that I needed to shit or get off the pot today regarding the decision making. SJ starts a big rape trial tomorrow and the week after that Jennifer and I have a big divorce trial, and then her last day is the last day of that trial, so I had to make it today. I had decided over the weekend that I am leaving here to go start a new office with Jennifer.
I figured I would have to go in and talk to him or do a memo today to get it out there, but when I got here, April said he was asking her if I had said anything yet, and I told her then what I had decided. No more than 3 minutes later, he walks by and asks her to come to his office and she looked at me and said, "I'm gonna have to tell him when I go in there," so I said OK, what else could I have done at that point? So I wrote my resignation memo and I got really sad and cried, had Jennifer put it in his box, and I went to lunch and cried some more. He got it but he hasn't talked to me about it yet. Once I got past the actual doing it and the "no going back" feeling came over me, I felt better. I'm glad I'm not wrestling with it anymore and it's over.
It's a lot easier to leave a place that you don't like than one you do.
I have really liked working here and I have learned a lot and working with Stephen has been a once in a lifetime opportunity and I am grateful for the experience I have garnered while here. But I need to move on. I need to have a little more latitude and freedom and less drama. Jennifer will let me do the things that paralegals do and I'm excited about that. I'm pretty freaked out at having to set up an office all by ourselves and running it, but we're pretty smart gals, so I bet we can figure it out.

That looks dumb

So tonight my kids and I are sitting in the food court at the local mall and my very astute 6 year old, the same one that brought us the terms "slerms" [slurpy germs you get from sharing a straw] and "rememberies", says, "Mama, do you think that odd, weird teenagers are dumb?" Then this guy walks by all in black, chains all over, etc. and she says, "He looks all gothic and dumb." As we sit there we see several gangsta wannabes and she says, "There goes that dumb "posse" again." I am cracking up because I didn't even know she knew the word 'posse'. Then she says, "That looks so dumb when they have to walk that way to keep their pants up. I bet their mamas don'tlike buying them those pants that hang around their dumb ankles." And she is saying all this so matter of factly and with such disgust you'd think she was an old lady. She also said, "Teenagers are dumb." I told her she would be one some day and she said, "Yeah but not one that looks stupid and wears my pants all around my ankles." Every time someone she deemed to look "dumb" walked by she would just get disgusted and point and say "Look at that!" like they had horns or something. One day we were going to the movies and there was this guy with a red bowling shirt on with dragons all over it and his hair was dyed the same color red - like Ronald McDonald red, and his little boy had on a blue shirt just like his dads. She looks at me and says, "Mama, they need to be on What Not To Wear." Now, I do teach my kids that looks don't matter and all that jazz, but I love that she does not dig the "dumb" look. My ten year old, however, when I told her the other day that something looked weird, says to me, "Mom, I don't follow trends, I set them." Well, rock on with your bad self in that case. Who am I of all people to argue with that one?

Work.

So I've been wrestling with a really big decision for the last few weeks. As some of you know, I work at a law firm. Kind of a big deal law firm. I've loved working there because a) my boss is really a fascinating person b) I've been able to work on some incredibly cool cases, including assisting in a murder trial that we won c) most of the people here are pretty nice d) and I've made more money this last year than I ever have. But there's also the thing that annoys me the most - DRAMA. Of course, Stephen is a high drama person, so it can't really be avoided. But aside from the normal drama that surrounds him, everything in this office is a freakin' ordeal. Like the IT guy says to me, "Jesus, why does it have to take 4 freakin' days to buy a backup printer?" Exactly. Why does it? And I can't even count how many times I've come back from lunch or something and gotten this one, "Just a head's up, So and So is really mad about ... (insert something I did, didn't do, was perceived to have done, might have done three years ago)." THAT is the thing I hate the most. Why does everything have to be a big freakin' ISSUE? Like yesterday, someone asked me to go to the courthouse and get a couple of old files. I tell them that because they are so old, they will likely not be at the courthouse and they will probably have to go get them from storage. I also tell them that since one of them is a criminal file, they won't let me check it out, but I can make copies of it. So thinking that was all clear, I go over to the courthouse to take care of it. As I thought, they were not there and I made arrangements with the court clerk to call me when they got their hands on them. She called a while later and said they had them. Well, I had some other things that needed to be taken over to the courthouse, so I sent very detailed instructions with our runner to pick them up, make the copies, etc. Then I went to lunch. When I got back I got a "head's up" warning that the person that needed it was mad that I had someone else do it and that I didn't do it when I was the one told to. UM... OK, why does it matter who makes freakin' copies? I took care of securing the right files, which was the big deal part of it anyway. That is so stupid to me! And it's like that here all the time.
So the decision I have been wrestling with is whether to stay here or go with one of the attorneys that's leaving to open her own office. Who is also one of my best friends. Who is incredibly fun and laid back and will undoubtedly pipe 80's music through the office at all times. Who really wants me to go.
The struggle is because it's scary because as crazy as this place is, my paycheck is stable. Stephen had a long talk with me the other day telling me how much he thought of me, telling me what a great job I did, etc. and that he would really like to see me stay. That meant a lot to me to have him say those things. But I don't know that that's enough because it doesn't really make up for the knots in the stomach every other day because you never know when you're gonna piss someone off.
A friend that is rather intuitive that had no idea about any of this, let's call her Pyschic Pearl, said she was sensing that I wasn't very happy in this office and that I should go with the other person where I would be more in charge and the atmosphere would be a lot more laid back. She also said some other things that were really right on that she knew nothing about, so...
After I talked with him the other day, I was leaning toward staying. After I got another "somebody's mad at you" I remembered why I wanted to leave. I was ready to put the names in a hat and just pick one or have them stand in the hall and draw straws. I just wish I could make a damned decision so I could sleep well again.

Why I gotta be a bitch?

I am so incredibly done with stupid people.
I am an outspoken, opinionated woman. Why does that make me a bitch? Why does that make me mean? Why can't people have a goddamned discussion these days without getting all torqued up when someone offers a different point of view? Adult discussions consist of just that, various viewpoints on various subjects. An adult can have a discussion with someone that doesn't agree with them and they can still be friends at the end of the day. That's called maturity. It's utterly ridiculous to become catty and hateful with someone just because they don't agree with you. I might call someone out on something or argue to the death about something, but in the long run, I still respect other peoples' opinions if they have any merit to them at all. Now, if they're just being an asshat and their opinion isn't based on any kind of reality or make any kind of sense, then no, I probably won't respect those that are arguing just for the sake of arguing. I'm just tired of people being called mean and insensitive just because they are opinionated. Are people seriously just eternally stuck in 8th grade? God, please take away the stupid people.

Speaking of Hookers, moving sucks

So I've been blogging for a couple of years now and I finally decided to move away from MySpace. I know, I know, but it's nice to be in the comfort zone of your "friends". I finally got around to going through the old blog and moving a lot of them over here. Some of the better rants are now here along with the diary of the murder trial last year. Enjoy.

Vote

The BoB Awards are taking nominations...

Code enforcement or elitest snobbery?

I don't know if anyone caught the story on In Your Corner a couple of weeks ago about the Enid couple, but it seems that the Enid code office contacted this family and told them if they didn't get their house fixed up they would be tearing it down - 9 days before Christmas, mind you.
This family had an agreement with a contractor to put new siding on their house and garage - they met with him three years ago and the contractor told them they would need to take out a second mortgage on their home in order to pay him half of his money up front. They did and they gave him $12,000. Then he never did anything, so here they are three years later, still making mortgage payments and no work has been done.
Now, this house is 94 years old and it does look like it could use some freshening up. But it's really not that bad. There's never any trash in the yard, the yard is always maintained, and there are never any junk cars sitting around. The ONLY thing is that the old shingle siding looks rough. BUT, this house happens to be in a neighborhood on WEST Oklahoma among other houses that are pretty freshly painted, etc.
When channel 4 got involved, the code office changed their tune a bit and said if they continued to make progress they would extend the deadline until March. How very kind of them not to put these people out on the street quite yet.
Let me tell you a little about these folks - they both work hard and are very kind and they have kids. They don't make a lot but they get by OK and they are well adjusted folks as are their children. They tried to take care of the issue three years ago and got scammed by this contractor guy.
It turns out that the contractor has done this to other people and the state is now prosecuting him on several counts of home repair fraud. Did the City of Enid care? NO, the woman went to talk to the code office and ended up leaving in tears because the lady there was so rude to her. They were going to tear down their house because it simply wasn't pretty enough.
A man saw the story and called the family. He is a contractor from OKC and said he had a couple of crews and things were slow, so he was going to come to Enid and fix their house for free. What a blessing!
I was happy to see there were people that were kind and willing to help these people that got screwed by no fault of their own and appalled that their own city would seriously threaten to tear down their house 9 days before Christmas and put them on the street.
My real problem with all of this is that I drive down N. 4th every now & then and can count at least ten to twenty houses in a row that should be condemned, yet they sit and rot and cause an eyesore. I see houses and buildings all over this town that are in awful condition yet they sit and look like crap. This house happens to be in a neighborhood where most of the houses look pretty darn nice. THAT is why I think this whole thing smacks of nothing more than downright snobbery. If it were on the east side in the middle of N. 4th no one would probably even notice because it's a darn sight better than all of those places. It's old siding - that's IT. And they were seriously going to demolish a house because someone's siding doesn't look as good as the neighbors??? That is a crock and I am ashamed that's how Enid operates.
SO - with that said, when these crews come to help fix up the house, they may need some help serving sandwiches or something.

Shit Talking

I can talk shit with the best of them. Apparently, there's a club for that. Woo hoo!