When you don't know what to say, just ramble...

First off, thank you to all of you for your emails and sweet comments and for checking on me and my family. We're doing about as well as can be expected. I'm exhausted and would love to curl up in a ball for a month, but that's not really an option.

I'm in the middle of about three different stories but have no motivation to finish any of them. And I really have no idea what to write about. So I'm going to do something unusual on this blog. I'm actually going to write about me. Novel concept, right?

Yes. I recognize the irony here, having a blog and rarely blogging about myself. But I play my cards pretty close to my chest. I always have. I hate interviews where they ask you "tell me about yourself." I realize this is the softball of all interview questions. But I can't stand it. If you want to know something, ask. I'm honest. Well, about most things.

I never confessed what I really got in freshman nutrition class. Ten years later, I'll admit that I got a fucking D+ in that class. I thought it would be easy. I mean, how hard can the damn food pyramid be? But that class was HARD! Plus my TA hated me. She kept calling me Jaime Robyn. The only person who calls me that is my mother when I'm in trouble. So I very politely asked the bitch to stop and she refused to call me anything else. I stopped going to our TA sessions after that...on the first day. Think that had something to do with my grade? NAH!

Okay. Secret's out. That wasn't too painful.

Speaking of college...I miss it. I think my dad was secretly proud of the fact that I had a rather awful collection of fake IDs. I got so busted at a bar in DC. I had this Alabama license. It was terrible, but no one in Maryland knew what a real one looked like... Anyway, I present my license confidently to the bouncer who looks at it and smirks. "Dothan, huh? Dothan, Alabama?" I laughed and said, "What's wrong with that, city boy? Never hear of the place?"

He pulled me aside, lowered his voice. "Honey," he drawled. "You wanna see what a real license looks like." I thought he was bluffing. Turns out Mr. big city boy was actually from Dothan! But he still let me in and gave me the hot pink bracelet which let me drink for the night. He thought I had suffered enough having to pay for that awful ID.

Now that we're on the subject of carding, have you ever been carded at a MOVIE? I have. THREE times. It's so embarrassing. I look young. I'm told one day I'll like it. Today ain't that day. Nor was I particularly amused when I was carded to see "the craft" the day I got my license. I was thoroughly pissed when I was carded to see "american pie" - the week after my 21st birthday. And I could not contain my contempt for the pimple faced jerk working his first job who demanded my license before selling me a ticket to..."Not another teen movie." (I was 23, in my second year of law school and Concord isn't exactly the booming metropolis of excitement when you need a break from studying at 8 at night so don't judge my taste in movies)

Law school was a ton of work, but also fun. Yeah, I'm sick like that. I got to play in the school's criminal law clinic. It was scary representing real clients when we hardly had any clue what we were doing, but it was amazing. My first client was interesting.

See, he was homeless - so little things like notifying him of his upcoming hearing were an adventure. We couldn't call him. I sent him letters to each of his last known addresses. Then I went out with another student and tried to find him at each of those addresses, the local soup kitchen and when all else failed, we went hiking through the snow covered woods to the areas where Concord's homeless were known to frequent. It terrified me when Jeff grabbed his gun out of the car and started making his way through the woods with the thing aimed in front of him, ready to shoot the hell out of anything that looked at us funny. (We never found the client nor did Jeff get to shoot anything.)

I showed up in court without my client and had to explain to the judge why there was an empty seat next to me at counsel table. He asked me, "Well, didn't you notify your client he was supposed to be here?" What could I say? "I tried, Your Honor. But my client is homeless - that makes notification a little difficult." I was a wise ass during my first court appearance and I continue that trend today... Shocking that my mouth can get me into trouble, right?

On that note, I think that's enough rambling for one evening. Have a good night