Have Plans... Will Travel!

I've started this post three times and just can't put anything together.

Maybe later?!

Feels Like Monday!

It's been pretty emotional around our house the past week or two. AcademyBoy is all graduated and finished up with high school and stuff. A few days before graduation, AcademyBoy got a letter in the mail telling him he is DQ'd becausehiseyesight doesnotmeet pilot/academy standards. HisWaiverWasNotApproved. ...which means, he got the appointment, but can't go. End of story and I really don't want to talk about it any more. Just knew you'd want to know.

I cried.
He took it like a man.

AcademyBoy is once again officially Mr.SoonToBeBlue. He's fallen back on his "just in case" fall back plan... and flies away to the WildBlueYonder (boot camp) in 8 weeks. He's a very determined young man and hasn't moped or complained or even been ugly since he got the news. Still plans on going to college. Just going to go about it in a different manner. No sweat. Still believes the AirForce is right for him at this time, ...and we giggled over the fact that his eyes are good enough to be an avionics technician and work on the planes he won't be able to fly... oh! and there's a 95% chance that he'll be stationed right near here on the coast for 9 months of tech school...

Oh, to be that young again and full of dreams!

Ms.Blue is heading home next week too! She's worked her butt off trying to get leave before Mr.SoonToBeBlue heads out. Her commander just told her this morning she can go home since she hasn't been since Thanksgiving. ...NAVYBOY is driving her. (UGGH!) they are spending 3 days with us, then going to spend a few days with his family then NavyBoy is bringing her home to stay with us for a week while he heads off to TX and before she goes back to the east coast... It will be good to have all 3 of my kids home again one more time... who knows how soon that will happen again.

Anyway... that's what's been going on that I haven't been able to write about...

The Sec Is A PITA...

The sec is still in way over her head. No, she hasn't been fired yet. I guess she's better than the old sec in a way because at least she comes to work and TRIES...when she's here. She still spends most of her day out running errands though.

Yesterday we had the most unbelievable conversation. She planted herself in my office. The she asked me, "Have you ever done an appeal start to finish?" "Of COURSE I've done appeals." then she queried, "Do you have all the steps documented to do the appeal?" "What do you want to know? Just pull one up on your computer from my files and look at one of them..." I told her.

"Yeah, but I need to know ALL THE STEPS." She insisted...

SIGH. COUNT TO TEN. DEEP BREATH.

"Sec," I said, "File your notice of appeal with the supreme court clerk and make sure to mail a copy to all the parties involved, the lower court judge, and keep a copy for your file..."

...I wandered by her desk a little later. ...just as she was STAPLING THE JUDGMENT OF THE LOWER COURT TO THE NOTICE OF APPEAL

SIGH. COUNT TO TEN. BREATHE...

"ummm.... what's that?" I said.

"This is what we are going to appeal." she replied.

"ummm... did you state the issue you are going to appeal in your notice ot appeal?" my question was.

"Well, yeah, I think so." she said.

"You don't attach anything to that." I insisted.

She handed me the court rule book. SIGH. BREATHE. COUNT AGAIN...
"LOOK HERE" she pointed to the rule she thought she was reading. ..."It says to make sure to include all of the documents which will be involved with the appeal..."

OMG. She's an idiot. ..."You list that, along with all of the other documents which might be in the lower court file on your designation of the record."

Her next question... "What's THAT?"

you know... if you don't know what the hell you're doing, why don't you leave shit alone?? I just printed one out and handed it to her... with the short explanation of..."If the paper you were going to mistakenly attach to your notice of appeal were all you planed to include, you are going to limit the attorney terribly when he goes to court on this and waste his time and the clients money because you are going to lose the appeal before you even file it"

OMG. where are the attorneys in this firm???

She dropped out of her paralegal courses after just a couple of weeks, and thinks she can do an appeal?? SIGH

It's going to be a very VERY long week...

Girl Angry.

I don't know what's wrong with me today. I've only been back at work 2 weeks and already I'm as short tempered and angry while I'm in the office as I was before the time off...

Maybe it was the fact that gas prices jumped 20 cents overnight. Or how I'm spending 2/3 of a days wages on gasoline so that I can drive to this wonderful law firm and line my boss' pockets with the cash he puts there instead of the bank account so that I might get a raise... not to mention that we all know it's been 5 years since my last raise...

Or maybe it's this. Good sec gossip. On Monday a tax agent stopped by the office to mention that they were gonna do all sorts of good legal stuff to the company and the building because the payroll taxes hadn't been paid in... oh, at least 10 months. SINCE THE OLD SEC LEFT. huh? I mentioned it (HAHAHAHAHAH) to my boss when he returned from lunch. He huffed and he puffed and then finally admitted that although he has been practicing law since before I was born, he has no clue what taxes need to be taken care of for his employees. Never has never will kinda conversation. And he asked me to look into it. So I started looking for the tax folder the old sec used to keep. I knew she had one, but the file is no longer in existence apparently. So I started digging. There were tax letters and forms and stuff never even opened from all sorts of important tax people at various agencies. The new sec came back in the middle of this and said ..."I don't know how to DO it" ... from the minute she lied during her interview here insisting she could do it and stay on top of it... until now, she's been HIDING all the tax stuff and pretending it would all go away. Oh. My. God. What a mess I walked into.

Liens and levys and assessments and penalties and interest. Forms that were never filed and payments that were never made. It took me 30 minutes to figure it all out and present my boss with the grand sum that would be needed to get them out of this mess... He wasn't happy.

He yelled at the other partner. YELLED. His exact words were (speaking about the sec) AS FAR AS i'M CONCERNED, SHE CAN GO!!! THIS IS INEXCUSABLE. AND WHERE IS ALL OF THIS EXTRA MONEY GOING TO COME FROM?? IT IS GOING TO BE TAKEN OUR OF HER PAYCHECK. ... yeah right. Neither freeking attorney said ONE WORD to the sec. Not One. And on top of all my other work, guess who now gets to keep up with the firms taxes?? (sigh)...

So... I'm angry. And I have some other things going on that I'll probably write about before too long but am just not ready to share right now...

Have a good weekend.
Oh, and if you get a raise? Don't bother telling me about it. Some guy (friend's husband who is a supervisor somewhere) made sure to point out to me last night that his "employees got a raise this year... and last year" and so did he. This is NOT the sort of conversation I want to be having with anyone in my life right now. It does NOT help. Not at all...

RETURN OF LAWGIRL!

Did ya miss me???? :)

Who would have thought 7 weeks would go by so fast! Today is actually my 2nd day back at work but yesterday was totally crazy and I just couldn't stop long enough to post. I'm going to try and sum up the past 7 weeks in one post, but honestly, when I finally stopped and settled down and got a ton of great rest, I wished I could have written a post every single day! So much is happening out there in the world when you get me away from the firm and running 100mph all of the time...

Let's go clear back to March 19th...
I came in to work that morning and was gone a good part of the day for my pre-op workup at the hospital. Just as I was getting ready to leave to head out there, the sec yelled that I had a phone call from the Congressman's office. Oh what a treat! It was official. Mr. SoonToBeBlue had received a congressional appointment to the AirForceAcademy and is officially AcademyBoy. Things for him from that point have been a whirlwind. He flew to CO by himself for four days and did his orientation. He leaves in 7 weeks and a day and oh what an honor. I cried over the spiffy half page article that ran about AcademyBoy in our local newspaper a couple weeks later... But anyway... the good news definitely was a big help in keeping me from getting nervous about my surgery... in fact, I never got nervous at all.

No problems w/ the preop appointment, got a couple hours away from the office and went back to work until 5. Went home and packed an overnight bag, not knowing how many nights I was going for but only that I was GOING... gosh, it had been years and years and well... more than 9 years since I'd spent a night ALONE anywhere by myself. I was excited believe you me.

I don't remember too terribly much about the day of the surgery. It ended up being about 7 hours later than it was scheduled for because the dr had a couple emergency surgeries he had to take care of before they got to me. No big deal. I was there for the long haul. I fell asleep right after they wheeled me into surgery about the time the anesthesiologist (sp??) told me to take three deep breaths... ...and woke up later screaming and crying and in a really awkward position, knees bent and my incision across my lower abdomen hurt like HELL! OMG it took them some time to get the pain down and then I woke up again in my hospital room... spent three nights in the hospital but immediately felt better than I have in 10 years or more... sweet. (not sure if it was from the surgery or getting to spend 3 nights alone, the jury is still out on that one...)

It was nice getting all the flowers and presents and stuff... having the kids come and visit for short times... all of those horrible, nosey, strange people whose mission in life is visiting in the hospital took my advise and stayed away...

And I rested and I read and rested and read...

Came back to work yesterday, started a new part time job on Sunday. I'm tired. Gonna take me a while yet to get my strength and stamina back, that's for sure...

will try to post more later as time allows!