Happy?

Yesterday, my mother accused me of being happy.

"I'm sorry," I responded.

She thought I had misheard her, and repeated herself: "You sound very happy these days."

I repeated myself: "I'm sorry. Should I not be happy?"

I suppose my friends and family are not used to me being happy. It's not as if I was unhappy before; I was perfectly content. I like my job, I like the small circle of friends I have in the area, and I'm a new homeowner. What did I have not to be content about?

But I realized last night that I am, indeed, more than content. I had another poker night. Two friends from law school and Guy From Work came over. Chris cooked and we played poker (I lost everything this time). We talked law (eeeeew!), exchanged stories, and told horrible, tasteless jokes. It occurred to me that I've become a boring adult, what with inviting friends over for dinner and having game night. But this does not bother me. I am happy nonetheless.

In other news, Chris and I have been contemplating his moving in. He lives about an hour away and spends most weekends here; occasionally, he makes a mid-week trek out to see me. He's currently in school and is contemplating a move to this area in the winter, once he has an internship. I thought about it, and it just seems practical for him to live here. 'T'would make financial sense for the both of us. I'm currently using the extra upstairs bedroom as my den and office, and have an empty, smaller room on the first floor that he could make use is he so desires. Suffice it to say, there's enough room for privacy and for each of us to have our own space.

I know it's early in the relationship to even think about this. I know that I've never technically lived with anyone (though for all intents and purposes, an ex-boyfriend lived with me for close to a year when I first moved to this state). I know that I always professed that I had no desire to cohabitate with anyone short of marriage. I know that this goes against everything I've ever wanted or believed. But for some reason, this time, it just feels right.

That makes me happy, too.

Snitches get stitches.

A few weeks ago, I was returning to my office after a morning in court when I ran into an attorney I know. "Did you see the hood of that Mazda?" he asked me, indicating a small car parked some thirty feet past the front door of my office building.

"No," I said. "Why?"

He told me to go look. And this is what I saw.

Sigh of relief.

I had a trial scheduled for today. My guy is a bit of a bombastic sort with a horrible, horrible, horrible record. The other side's witnesses showed up and I had a little chat with them. As I expected, they were well-dressed, good-looking, well-spoken: a nightmare for me. One of them was a fourteen-year-old boy all dolled up for court: the nightmare continues. My defense? Straight up Chewbacca. My client is currently under sentence on an unrelated charge our of a different district. So we decided to try a plea. They wanted a lot of time consecutive, we wanted less time concurrent. The judge (the best judge for disposition), split the baby and gave him a little time consecutive with some probation thrown in just to spice it all up. Even though it was more than I asked for, it was a great deal given the facts and my client's record. The client took it, sparing him a post-trial disposition where he more than likely would have been sentenced to more time.

Trial prep time: a gazillion lost moments. New pantyhose: $2.69. A sweet deal without trial: priceless.

(Ed note, I'd forgotten to eat beef jerky this morning, so I was concerned things would end badly.)

With that out of the way, my summertime lag begins right now. For the next two weeks, I have nothing stressful going on at work. I have a ton of office days coming up where I get to catch up on paperwork, jail visits, and, you know, actually constructing defenses.

The Bordello is complete. My lawn needs to be mowed, but I'm in such great spirits, I don't care. I'm young and in love is life is oh-so-wonderful. I feel like I should be waiting for the proverbial other shoe to drop, but I'm in too fabulous a mood to even bother.

Life is good.

The Bordello is open.

Chris and I put the Bordello together on Saturday. After spending copious amount of cash, it's up and running.

Sadly, I can't find my cord for my digital camera. Thus, the photos I am posting were taken with the camera built into my new, super-duper MacBook. Which means I had to contort myself to get out of the image, and hold the computer at weird angles. Hence, they're not so good. But the room looks awesome.

What's the deal with this love thing?

rEver since I was a wee lass, people have been feeding me the same nonsense about love. "It's inexplicable," they say about the emotion. "Love is forever." When asked how one knows when one is in love, the answer is always the same: "You just know."

This has not been the case for me.

I am forever attempting to reconcile logic and emotion. I am told that emotions do not make sense; I don't believe that. Emotions come from somewhere and are rooted by something. You don't like someone? There's a reason for it. People may blame it on "gut instinct," but even at the most basic level, there's a damn reason why someone dislikes someone else. There is a smorgasbord of emotions: fear, frustration, anxiety, dislike... And there are reasons for all of them. So why is the love thing so different?

And if that weren't bad enough, people talk about falling in love as if it's all rainbows and unicorns. Folks throw logic out the window when speaking of love. They lament about falling in love with the wrong people, as if it's not a conscious choice. "Oh why, oh why do I always fall in love with the wrong people?" they scream to the heavens. And then, as an afterthought, they add, "It's not as if you can control who you fall in love with, you know."

This statement is a fallacy.

Of course you can control who you fall in love with. Certain people are off-limits. Married people. Co-workers. The guy with the nine-page felony record. It's a matter of filtering. You ascertain the unsavory (or forbidden) characteristics, and then decide not to love that person.

So what's the deal with this love thing? I don't get it. I've never "just known" I was in love with someone. I question it, and think through it. I compare the way I feel about someone with the facts and experiences that make up the relationship. I stew and I ponder. And I reach a conclusion. It may not be romantic, but it's pragmatic.

I've found, through long-time empirical studies, that there are several types of fallers-in-love:

Faller in Love Type #1
There are those who profess to fall in love in no time at all. They toss around "I love you" as if it's going out of style, as if there's a finite number of times they're allowed to say the phrase and they have to cram it all into a small window of time. They are obsessive in their need to say the words again and again, until the words have no meaning anymore.

Faller in Love Type #2
There are those who say "I love you" when they do not mean it. They say it because it's the proper response to someone else professing love. They say it because it's time. Sometimes they say it because there's a lull in conversation and they get so anxious about filling the silence, that they blurt out the first thing that comes to mind. Or perhaps they say it because they've gone looney in a bout of post-coital bliss. They give their partners a false sense of security; they allow people to think they are loved in return, when the are not.

Faller in Love Type #3
There are those who fall in love too often. The twenty-five-year-olds who claim to have been in love no fewer than five or ten or fifteen times in their lives. I don't know about anyone else, but I want to be special; I don't want to be another in a long list of individuals who my mate has been madly and head-over-heels in love with. Such a thing is akin to the Faller In Love Type #1; falling in love means little to me when you've fallen in love with everyone you've met.

As for me? I do not fall into any of these of these types. I wait. I wait until I'm sure. I wait until it means something. I am precise with my language, and refuse to say something I do not mean. And even when I do say it, I say it quickly and quietly. So quickly and quietly, in fact, that it is often missed altogether. I never "just know." The only thing I do know is that love is not easy. It is not all sugar and sunshine-dust. Like most things worth having or doing, love takes work.

Lest you think I'm a complete naysayer, I will concede one thing to the sappy romantic, the slobbering, love-crazy fool: Love does last forever. I don't believe in falling out of love. It's always there, in some deep, dark cavern. It may fade over time, sure, like the memory of a seemingly long-forgotten childhood trip to the circus. But it doesn't go away. And since it doesn't go away, since it's always with you, since no one ever really truly falls out of love, it makes sense to be sure of it before you go around saying stuff you can't take back.

They're fighting again...

My roommate is twenty-one years old. (Those who know me know that I have a general loathing for early-twenty-somethings. It's not so much that I find anything intrinsically abhorrent about them. It's just that I remember being that age; I was an idiot. Most early-twenty-somethings are idiots.)

My roommate is perky and sometimes irritating. But she's a good person, despite her unfortunate age (and the world view that goes along with it). My roommate's boyfriend is twenty-four. He comes over quite often. He's a good guy. She's a good girl. But there's one thing that irritates me:

They fight a lot.

I came downstairs and he was preparing a pesto pizza at her direction. She looked up at one point and exclaimed, "Noooo! What are you doing? Don't you want a crust? And it can't be that thick!!"

The boyfriend commutes sixty miles each way to and from work. He returned from work, went to the store, purchased what my roommate had requested, came over, and proceeded to prepare the meal. Sure, he may not have known what he was doing. Sure, he may have messed it up. But he was doing something kind and nice for his girlfriend. And she was being hyper-critical. I winced myself at her abrasive tone.

Now, I likely wouldn't put up with such behavior from a significant other. But if someone did talk to me like that, it wouldn't really be worth my time to engage.

But he engaged. Briefly. The spat was over almost as soon as it started.

My roommate remedied the pesto/crust problem and directed her boyfriend to slice mozzarella. Immediately, she ripped into him for cutting the slices too thick. Then she put her hand in the way to pick up a slice of cheese and get him the Look of Satan when his slicing came close to her fingers. "My fingers!" she shouted. More bad behavior. And what did the boyfriend do?

He engaged. I felt like I was listening to my parents argue as a kid. My roommate had that Jewish-mother-as-abrasive-as-kitchen-cleanser demeanor. Her boyfriend had that self-righteous defensive tone. I remember how on the occasions when my parents fought, it was just like my roommate and her boyfriend. It was always incredibly loud, incredibly obnoxious, and about something incredibly asinine. These silly arguments that I remember from my childhood were always symptoms of some other stress.

And then he left the house. At some point, though, he came back. And about an hour ago. They've been arguing since. I catch snippets and phrases. "I've never been so hurt..." "You don't trust me..." "Can't you...?" He left the house again. He came back. The boy is trying to talk to her, trying to reach some sort of resolution.

I remember these sorts of arguments; I've had them. I remember these emotionally draining confrontations. And you know what? It's never worth it. It's never productive. Nothing is ever accomplished. I've been there. I've been the one who's come back, desperate for a resolution, desperate for an ending. The status quo is usually maintained, apologies are exchanged, and nothing is ever resolved.

I may not have have the best history or luck with my relationships. That said, I'm so glad I'm past these types of arguments. I'm so glad I've reached a point where, for the most part, I'm able to walk away before I lash out and say mean and hurtful things. I'm so glad that I can address small problems before they become huge disasters.

Perhaps youth really is wasted on the young. (I say that tongue-in-cheek, realizing that I'm still young.) Perhaps there are folks who wish they could go back and experience the exhilarating feeling of the firsts we experience when we're young: first kisses, first loves, first heartbreaks. Perhaps youth really is akin to a magic, fairy-land place.

But sometimes growing up feels good.

I love you, Gideon.

Several months ago, my friend sent me a link to a public defender blog. I read. It was well written, cogent, and evocative. I was smitten with the author's impeccable use of grammar. I was wowed by his lofty analysis. I simply had to know more about this amazing blogger, who wrote under the name of Gideon.

I clicked on a link to write to Gideon. His email address contained the phrase "threegenerations." As in "Three generations of imbeciles are enough," written by the prosaic Justice Holmes in Buck v. Bell (holding that compulsory sterilization doesn't violate an individual's due process rights).

Gideon and I corresponded for a bit until he realized he already knew me. And how did he know me? The author of the blog was the same person who'd told me about it in the first place: My friend had sent me his own blog and neglected to tell me it was his.

In all seriousness, though, he hits some good issues and handles it with aplomb. So if you're reading this because you want to know more about the law and less about my poker night, check out his blog.

My mother is wrong about the Macintosh.

My mother commented on my last post that we did not own the Mac Plus in 1986. I have to apologize, Mom... I have to apologize that you are so very wrong.

The Macintosh Plus was released in January 1986. The big difference between the Plus and the plain ol' Mac (later dubbed the "Macintosh Classic")? The Mac Plus had a SCSI port. And being early adopters, my parents just had to have the SCSI.

Moral of the story? It's bad to mess with someone who has such a ridiculously good memory for completely pointless information.

Return from the Dark Side.

In 1986, my parents purchased our first Macintosh computer. It was a Macintosh Plus, and their biggest decision in buying it was whether to get the one with the internal hard drive. Seven years old at the time, I played with the tutorial and learned all about the function of a mouse. It was heavenly.

Several years later, my mother bought the Macintosh LC. From there she got a Performa. Upon entering college in 1997, I got my own power Mac. Then, in 1999 I upgraded to my first laptop: the G3 PowerBook. It was $2,500 and I thought no computer could ever be better. That G3 laptop lasted more than four years with no problems. And in that time, I acquired my mother's hand-me-down G4 desktop.

And then I switched to the dark side. I was using a PC at work, and I got used to it. So I sold the perfectly-functioning G3 and G4 on eBay and got myself a Toshiba in February 2003. By January 2006, the thing had died. It was fond of overheating and turning itself off. Because I had little money at the time the damn thing dropped dead, my father kindly got me an HP; it was inexpensive and not top-of-the-line, but I only used it for Internet use and word processing.

A few months ago it started overheating and turning itself off. Watching stupid videos? No go. Automatic shutdown.

For years, I would explain to people the difference between PC and Mac users: PC folks use their computers. Mac folks love their computers. How did I ever manage to forget my roots? Was the less expensive alternative (the PC) worth my time and frustration? After some soul-searching, I came to the conclusion that the answer to that question is a resounding no.

No! No more viruses. No! No more crappy hardware. No! No more having to purchase peripheral devices.

So yesterday, while Chris lay in bed sleeping, I crept out of the house and went to the Apple Store, where I purchased myself a MacBook. It's wonderfully fabulous.

For four years I've been away in the Darkness of PC-Land. It feels good to be home.

You don't have to take your clothes off to have a good time.

Years ago some friends tried to teach me to play poker. By "friends" I mean a group of young men and one other girl (who also didn't know how to play poker). Because we had neither money, nor chips, the game quickly turned into strip poker. I can safely say that it's impossible to learn how to play poker when you're surrounded by a group of silly boys who want to see you naked.

Last night I had some people over for dinner. Chris cooked, per usual. The gathering consisted of me, Chris, my best law school friend, Mike (the best friend/pseudo-ex-boyfriend), and a guy from work. My friend from work brought with him poker chips (really nice and heavy clay ones) and other assorted poker accoutrements.

It was a five dollar game. Chris and guy-from-work both ended up having to buy for another five. A whopping thirty-five bucks were on the table (big money, people), and I ended up with twenty-one of 'em. How this happened, I do not know. However, I actually learned how to play and ended up with sixteen more dollars than I started with. And I didn't even have to take my clothes off.

To burgle.

When someone's home as been broken into, he will often tell his friends, "My house was robbed."

This is not true. Robbery is stealing something from a person through the use of force of the threat of force. Burglary is stealing something from a dwelling at night. (Most jurisdictions don't require the nighttime element; it is, however, part of the common law definition.)

Robbery versus burglary is pretty basic criminal law. But most folks don't know the difference.

And so, when someone has broken into your home and stolen your flat panel TV that you paid WAY too much for, or your diamond jewelry that small children had their hands cut off for, remember, your home was not robbed. It was burgled.

My boyfriend is a nerd.

I really do try not to write about my boyfriend because I don't want to be "that" girl. But he just tends to do things that are worthy of writing about. (He really ought to stop that.)

When I saw him on Wednesday, he started grinning about something. So I asked him about the dopey smile. "I know something you don't know," he responded. Of course I questioned. He told me it was a surprise. "When will I discover what what it is?" Soon, he told me. Maybe the next day. Maybe in two weeks. When I get something to eat.

So as soon as I left, I searched my kitchen. Nothing. Of course, it's hard to find something when you don't know what it is you're looking for.

I called him the next day and left a message. "I wanna know what my surprise is! Tell me!"

He e-mailed me a response. "You'll find out when you get home. So come home."

And I did. He left cards all around my house. In the freezer. In some kitchen cabinets. In my underwear drawer. Propped up on top of the dryer. Under my pillow.

So nerdy-sweet.

My boyfriend is a nerd. I love it.

Reunion.

And so, my trip here to Sunny Columbus, Ohio is nearly over. The reunion has come and gone and I have come out unscathed.

Truth be known, I suppose it was better than I expected. My class was known for being the most apathetic and having less school spirit than any class before or since. The class of '97 just didn't really care; members of our class were too busy drinking wine coolers on our parents' basements and smoking sub-par weed. As for me personally? I was far too busy being angry and not fitting in.

Few people showed up; less than half the class was there (my class had approximately 135 people in it). Who didn't show? The really popular kids were the ones not in attendance for the most part. The trivial and petty part of me wants to believe that this is because they peaked in high school; maybe they did and maybe they didn't, and maybe I don't really care as much as I once did.

Nearly everyone looked the same. Almost all the women looked the same. Some didn't seem to have aged a day. The men changed more. The once-scrawny kid was hopped up on steroids. The little pothead kid looked good, but got irritatingly drunk and coked up. Two guys put on lots of weight; one looked like the Stay Puff Marshmallow Man while the other one more closely resembled Jabba.

The cliques re-cliqued. The self-proclaimed popular kids sat at their own table, while everyone else mingled with one another. I'll talk to anyone, but I gave up on the people who walked away when I attempted to approach them. (Ed note: Our country has health care issues and poverty. War is going on around us. How are we going to all live together in peace and harmony if some douchebags can't even be cordial at a high school reunion?)

I was curious about everyone. And I got what I came for. I came back with awesome hair and a law degree (neither of which anyone EVER expected would happen). My curiosity is satisfied and I feel a lot better. I may not have fit in much in high school, but that seems to be the general consensus across the board. Some girls came back married baby-factories. Some boys came back married to baby-factories. I'm glad I'm not in their positions, but they all seemed happy enough.

As for my old friends I've lost touch with... we fell into the same routines we always had with each other as if no time had passed. And maybe that'll happen again when we see each other in another decade.

Questions or concerns.

Every Fourth of July in the little town of Bexley, Ohio, those who have class reunions ride on parade floats. The class of 1997 is no exception. I just received the following e-mail regarding the float:

This should be a blast and I hope people will be a part of this fun occation. Let me know if there are any questions or concerns.

I'm concerned that it's been ten years since high school and you still don't know how to spell "occasion."

A confession.

Eight years ago, I read my boyfriend's journal. He kept it in a black and white composition book.

We were living in a castle in The Netherlands. He had borrowed an Ani Difranco CD and I was in his room to retrieve it; he had given me permission to do such. Told me that it was in the top drawer of his desk. So I went into his room and opened the top drawer of his desk and found the CD right on top. Right on top of the black and white composition book. And I did what I shouldn't have. I picked it up and started thumbing through it.

He had written a letter to his best friend from home. Written a letter to her and taped it into his journal. He had chronicled a few weeks of his summer for her. And he had written about his trip the previous summer -- nearly a year earlier -- to visit me. He had written about our drive back from downtown, cruising along Route 315 in my mother's convertible, the top down, wonderful music blaring from the speakers. He had written how wonderful the drive had been. He had written about how despite how wonderful it was to be cruising down the highway in my mom's convertible, that something had been missing. She hadn't been there. And so a feeling of melancholy blanketed him. He had written that he missed her. He had written that she was home to him. All this while he was with me.

The next day, I confronted him. Not about the contents of the journal, of course. I merely told him that I desperately loved him and could tell that he didn't love me. "I have loved you passionately," he told me. Past tense.

The moral of the story? Nothing good can ever come from reading another's private thoughts.

Motion.

I have a motion tomorrow that I really don't want to argue. Actually, it's not so much that I don't want to argue it. No, that's not it. It's the fact that it's an unusual motion because of special circumstances. Because of this, there's no proper procedure to look to, and I worry about what the judge will have to say about it. I also worry that the judge will refuse to hear it at all. I hate worrying about the unknown.

Joy of Cooking

I don't cook. I hate to cook. And I'm not very good at it, either.

Thus, my diet consists primarily of the following: breakfast cereal, canned ravioli, ramen noodles, tuna fish, cheese, ice cream, cookie dough, beef jerky, and breakfast sandwiches from Dunkin' Donuts.

This is not good.

So the fact that Chris cooks is a super-duper-oh-my-God-I-adore-this-guy bonus. Don't get me wrong; I'd dig him even if he didn't cook. But come on... it's totally awesome that he does. Not only that, but he gives into my gustatory whims. I want pancakes? He makes 'em. I want cheesy eggs, hash browns and bread-in-a-can? He makes it. And when I can't decide? He comes up with something.

That's how I ended up with a delectable chicken and white wine and vegetable dinner last week. Nutritious and delicious. Really, who can ask for anything more? And even though I didn't ask for anything more, I got something more. Leftover! But not just any leftovers. He made an extra aluminum foil bag and gave me cooking directions: 400 degrees for forty minutes.

So tonight, I had me a wonderfully delicious and good-for-me meal. Gotta love it.