I hit the wrong key and think – did I just hit the wrong key?

Flashback about ten years ago.  We are just getting into the whole email thing.  Cautiously because we are lawyers and about five years behind everyone else.  There are about 500 of us trial lawyers on a listserve.  It is changing the way we know and can help each other.  Very cool indeed!

One day I post something and a friend emails me back with a question.  What is DART?  I tell her it is a group of male attorneys who have appointed themselves as the best plaintiff trial lawyers in the state.  I say a couple of other things that are hmmm not really derogatory but certainly a bit flippant and of course highly disrespectful.  I hit that send button and  the message goes to all 500 instead of the 1. 

You know that feeling.  That kind of slightly sick feeling where you start to sweat even though you are suddenly cold?  Yeah, well I get that feeling.  I then reassure myself with the thought that it’s ok, they’re old (rhymes with darts) and probably don’t know how to use the listserve anyway.  Wrong.  One of them emails me back.  And then to make sure the others don’t miss it either, he sends it by old fashioned postal service to each member of the group .

Now there was a bit of a brouhahahahaha afterwards, but that isn’t the point of this story so I’m not going into all of it.  Some of it was funny, some of it was not.  But it all ended just fine and dandy and I’m still here typing so obviously it wasn’t too catastrophic. 

Fast forward to the land of facebook, twitter and the Kardashians.  The lawyers’ email listserve is still going strong.  A few of them have ventured into FB.   But for the most part, the lawyers are mainly interested in trying to keep the insurance companies out of their clients’ social networking.    

The few that use twitter or blog (using a generality here – there are exceptions for example Paul Luvera’s personal blog; Justin Walsh’s appellate law blog) do so specifically to increase website traffic and get clients.  I’ve spent some time looking at the various law sites, and I have to say – it’s kind of ucky.  There said it.  Okay, let’s be real here.  If your tweet is to post each new car collision and a link to your website every few hours, does that have any chance of fostering a healthy respect for our profession.  If you hire someone to blog for you – how exactly is that different from having someone take your test for you in school and pass it off as your own.

Am I in trouble yet?  Probably.  But the very fact that I can have my own opinion and put it out there for whatever it’s worth to whomever wants to give it the time of day – that’s the great fun of blabbing to the world.

I am so enthralled with the first book that I immediately read the second.  Then forget to blog about it.  What sticks out in my mind months later…

This book is the revelation of the genesis of Salander.  She is such an odd, intriguing character.  I don’t totally love her.  Her awkwardness and strangeness borders on the overly contrived.  I’m not sure if the author totally “gets” her.  I mean, what is the point of getting breast implants given her background of trauma and attitude of utter societal defiance. But I want to believe in her so I applaud her feistiness and fortitude. 

Darkness plays perhaps even a greater role here.  This world is more sadistic.  Some of the newly introduced characters are so rotten as to be almost caricatures.  There is no decent human side to them.  They lack a certain dimension.  To me, the best villains are those who have good as well as bad sides.  Because then you  will open your heart to them.  You will feel a certain amount of mixed emotion when they get their just rewards.  Here, there is no emotion other than – what a creepy awful person yuck.

I don’t remember much else.   When I read a book,  I can hear, feel, and see that world better than if it were a movie.  When I’m done, I’m done.  I don’t hold onto memories.  The characters don’t continue to reside in me. I close the book, and put it away.  And in this case, I give it a B.

Cristina and I today on her 21st b.d.

I was five months along before I told the law firm of my pregnancy.  I had never been a “traditional” employee.  Coming out of lawschool my then husband was a professional basketball player.  So I only worked when we were in town.  By 1989, he was about done and I was working more regularly.   

My main supervising partner, a career insurance defense attorney, was a bit of a gruff fellow.   We were in a deck railing collapse personal injury trial where I put on the entire case.  He was there just to watch (and kick me under the table from time to time).   Back then the court staff would let us work in the courtroom through the lunch hour.  The partner used the time to tell me what to do and to make sure I continued preparing.  I was midway through my fourth month and always hungry.  That first day I was too scared to leave the courtroom since I was supposed to be working.  Protein bars hadn’t been invented yet.  I wondered what would happen if I fainted.   After that I brought a sandwich with me.

A few weeks after that trial ended (successfully for my client), I went to tell the main two partners of my pregnancy.  In my mind I thought they might have started to have suspicions.  There was only so much a jacket and baggy skirt could hide.  And one of them was female for Pete’s sake.  But apparently they just assumed I had been gaining a little weight.   As I told them my plight, I could see their thoughts behind their eyes.  (I can still feel the tension even now).   They were thinking – what are we going to do.  We need a body that can work the way we need it to.  

Over the next several months, this is what happened.  I introduced one of my friends to them whom they hired.  To make room for the new staff, they moved/banished me from my office on the main floor, to an office on the top floor next to the library (there were no other attorney offices upstairs).  They did not throw me a shower.  They did not offer me maternity leave.  They did not talk at all about life after the baby.

I was a bit confounded because the female partner had children.(Even though she had them before she went to lawschool, still, I thought there would be some understanding).   I never complained to them.  I never asked them for more than they offered (which wasn’t anything).   Instead, I worked until the week before the baby was born 21 years ago to this day. 

Not quite three months later I went to work for a plaintiff lawyer named Tom Chambers who would later became one of our state’s Supreme Court justices.  But that’s another story.

Hempfest – Seattle’s Ode to All things Marijuana – clogs up the park I want to run through Sunday afternoon.   So I decide to try Discovery Park.   I would actually like to run to it, but there is no trail leading into it.  By now you will have noticed my running pattern involves avoiding streets.   What’s wrong with streets?  Hmmmm.  Being hit by a car is the number one reason.  But also, I don’t like having to turn up my ipod all the way to drown out the car noise.  Plus inhaling the exhaust fumes mentally (if not physically) defeats the goal of enhancing health.  Plus I don’t want to get hit by a car.  Nala either.

The 500 plus acre park is on the peninsula of Magnolia.  http://www.cityofseattle.net/parks/Environment/discovparkindex.htm.  The miracle of so much park land being so close to the heart of the city, lies in it having been Fort Lawton in a prior life.  There is a 2.8 mile loop that I plan on travelling a couple of times.  Off I start with Nala.

We transition from paved parking lot to a mainly dirt imbedded with gravel path that winds its way up and down through pristine heavily wooded areas.  I am immediately transported back to my childhood.  We grew up just outside of Lake Forest Park in North Seattle.  We lived on a hill that was sparsely constructed upon because: it was quite a hill.  There were ravines and bluffs and we were always hiking, up, down and around them.  There were lots of kids in the neighborhood.  We were constantly spying on one another, having blackberry fights, and pretending to live in the trees.  I even remember there being heavy vines that we could swing upon to fly from one big tree branch to the other.  No wait – I think that was from a Tarzan movie.  Regardless, as I enter Discovery Park I am back in my childhood.

There is one unique consequence, in particular, of living on a big hill.  You have to go up it.  You have to go down it.  Discovery Park is no different.  There is not a single area of that path that is a flat straight of way.   It is also quite dark because the trees form an almost total canopy.   I’m keeping my eyes out for tree roots, and letting Nala pull me along.   There are more than 11 miles of trails, but that means getting off the loop.  I do this (unintentionally) several times.  Thankfully it is not hard to find your way back because there are marker posts every several hundred feet.   The trails I don’t like are those that are so steep that there are wooden beams forming stairs.  At one point, I’m midway down an entire hillside of them when I think – Forget that!  Back to the loop.

As I’m huffing up a long steady incline I can see glimmers through the trees.  We shoot out onto a flat grassy meadow that has a breathtaking 180 degree view of the Sound and Olympic Mountains.  There are approximately seven people looking at the tableau.   I’m thinking, why is it that a park like this is so empty.  I guess one purpose of a park is to preserve land.  But another purpose is to allow the millions of people that live in the region access to a place that connects them to the natural world that we live over.   I think perhaps it is a bit of a conspiracy.  The residents don’t want their streets clogged.  They get to have their own private ginormous, awesome park.  The government preserves land without having to worry about people significantly utilizing it.  What a shame that more people don’t discover the joys of this amazing park.  Of course there is always a positive side.  Nala is being especially good because there are so few opportunities for her to engage in doggie road rage.