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today my day started with a phone call from a client. you know you're in for trouble when the first thing out of her mouth is "you can't tell my parents what i'm about to tell you, right?" and you especially know when the next thing out of her mouth is "i'm pregnant and i want to be emancipated so i can marry my boyfriend."

at first i was flattered that my little delinquent trusted me enough to tell me this kind of information. (and honestly, i knew it was coming. the kids i represent are not the most ... well adjusted ... responsible ... risk averse ... of a group of people that is already generally irrational and ill-equipped to deal with life: teenagers. nor do they generally have the most supportive of parents.) then, panic set in. how the hell did i end up here, in this job, offering to shuttle kids to pregnancy crisis centers and having heart-to-heart conversations about teenage relationships?

on a somewhat unrelated note, i started thinking yesterday about a conversation i had with my mom (i guess almost two years ago now) about the difference between what you need in a relationship when you're 50 versus when you're 25. at 50, being comfortable with another person might be enough. but i would never let my sisters marry someone "comfortable" -- just a nice guy with a plan and a future and a life insurance policy.

of course this begs the question of what is missing from the aforementioned nice guy that makes him unworthy of the affections of a young person such as myself or my sisters... and i think the missing link is some measure of discomfort. nobody ever says "hey, i want to be in a relationship that makes me squirm, look over my shoulder, think twice, reevaluate." but maybe love is having no idea what is going to happen next but not being able to contain your anticipation that it go ahead and happen. maybe love is being OK with committing yourself to having no idea what is going to happen next. regardless, i am sure love is NOT being 100% sure that you'll always have a good dental plan.

in other news, i had a successful easter holiday -- spent splashing around in the sunshine in a cold cold cold snowmelt creek and decorating easter eggs for aaron's mom almost entirely in fun beavis-and-butthead phrases such as dumbass and bunghole. she appeared to be amused. and that's the extent of my mental capacity after days like today.

Public Defender, Day 128

i dealt with my first irate parent today. it's always good to walk into a child-family-team meeting and have your client's mother yell, "what are YOU doing here?" like you carry some highly-contagious debilitating disease. well, ma'am, i'm here to look out for your daughter's best interest, which obviously you have failed to take care of, else we would not find ourselves spending a thursday morning at the guidance clinic discussing an appropriate placement for your severely traumatized daughter whom you refuse to allow back in your house. i understand that this line is probably hard to swallow coming from me, but c'mon lady -- i'm the best thing your daughter's got going for her right now. not to mention her constitutional right to an attorney ...

people just really hate lawyers and think that nothing good can come from one. i'm used to this and do not get offended that 90% of people i meet find it necessary to tell me their favorite lawyer joke immediately upon learning of my profession. after all, when i was in third grade, i wrote a paper about how i wanted to be an accountant when i grew up -- but anyway definitely NOT a lawyer since i didn't want to be someone that my dad makes fun of at the dinner table every night. side note: praise the lord i'm not an accountant. i do find it unfortunate though, since i try really really hard to do what's best for my clients and make a difference in their lives. even if it's just by being the only adult who will listen to them or sharing a story from my own youth.

i think my parent felt better after the CFT was over and she realized that i really was only in attendance to raise hell to make sure my client doesn't spend a single extra unnecessary moment in detention. i apologized to her afterwards for being defensive (a peril of being a defense attorney i suppose) and she actually shook my hand.

in the past 9 months or so i have become increasingly and uncharacteristically tolerant of others. although i definitely still have a problem relating to WHY people do things that they do, i am convinced that they have their reasons and that these reasons probably make perfect sense to them. and that's good economics -- even if it seems ridiculous to me. all bitchy people are probably just having a bad day. all people who fail to return my phone calls are probably just really busy. all white trash are probably just inevitable products of their upbringing. anyone who knew me in high school would be shocked to hear this, since back then every misstep was a personal affront to me and deserved an ass-kicking (even if in the form of a silent battle).

i'm definitely getting old(er) and mellow(er). i'm sure i'm still a huge pain in the ass, but i've learned to pick my battles. at age 25, woot.

Dear Diary

this morning i read someone else's journal before breakfast. that's pretty early in the morning for most people to be nosing around in the private lives of others, but it's important to take advantage of the opportunities you are given, even when they do not conveniently fit into your preferred schedule. and any writing left lying on a bedside table is begging to be explored.

there's a certain amount of risk involved in delving into the bemusings of another, even, as in this case, when they belong to someone you don't know. it's almost like reading someone's mind -- and i've spent a lot of time in my own mind, enough to be sure that i would never wish it on anybody else. however, i read the journal eagerly, at least until i got cut off around mid-february. even with a blank of the past month, i'm confident as to what came next. people are generally the same. maybe it takes a peek at the deepest level of someone else's thought to recognize that.

do i feel bad about it? no. should i? maybe. but as my dad likes to remind me: don't put anything in writing that you don't want coming out at your senate confirmation hearings. i suppose i should keep that in mind while i continue to exchange flirtatious emails with the JPO...

this past weekend i went to a 6-year-old's high-school-musical-themed birthday party -- you know, as adult supervision. 6-year-olds are fun. just throw some glitter and sunglasses on them and let them run wild with charades & helium-filled balloons and they'll start partying like rock stars & yelling about what beautiful beasts they are (as seen below). i left with one hand of hot pink fingernails and one hand of glittery blue fingernails, sticky with glitter and smelling like a sugar cookie. a successful day to be sure.

Playing Catch Up

so i went a whole week without talking to my mom and she refused to accept my apology because my non-communication indicates to her that i have a life of my own. my immediate reaction: yeah right. but given the immense pile of laundry that is taking over my spare room, the fact that i haven't managed to squeeze in a haircut (despite complaining about it for weeks), and my utter dread of checking my email every day in fear that a task might appear ... maybe she's right.

last week i dogsat and am 100% sure i am too selfish/irresponsible for a pet. i am a morning person, but dragging myself out of bed and trudging out the door into the cold in my pjs and slippers before i've had a chance to brush my teeth is not how i want to start the day. and then only to be drug along by a large, hyperactive animal until the moment of truth: picking up a steaming pile of poo. there is nothing more demeaning than dealing with the poo of a creature who can outrun you. i still love raven, even though i spent much of the week chasing after her squealing like a sissy in my suit and high heels every time she caught sight of a child, squirrel, ball, etc.

while i was at kennedy's, a dead rat appeared in the drainage ditch behind her condo. at first, i was only fascinated by it's immense size -- at least 6 inches long not counting the tail -- but it soon changed to disgust when the thing somehow crawled it's dead self into the middle of the driveway. usually i'm not affected by dead things, but this guy's fur was blowing in the wind and he looked like he could've flipped over any minute and run up my pant leg. plus, how the heck did he get into the driveway!?

after more careful inspection, it became clear that the dead rat was actually a dead-something-else, like a guinea pig with a big fat tail. aaron offered to remove it, but i rejected his offer to hit it with a golf club into the neighbors yard in favor of allowing kennedy to enjoy it when she returned home. and enjoy it she did ... armed with rubber gloves, germ masks, safety goggles, a cardboard box and two big long disposable sticks, kennedy and i successfully manuevered the dead rat into monday morning's garbage pail with an appropriate amount of jumping around and girly squealing.

turns out that it was a dead gerbil and we should've kept it for the guinness book of world records. karrie had a gerbil when we were kids that we thought was HUMONGOUS but paled in comparison to this colossus. the kids next door came by the next day and kennedy told them that their little friend had passed on and that we buried it in her yard. then she miraculously located a hill in her side yard that she took them to so they could say good-bye. hopefully there are no attempts to exhume the body for a more formal burial in the family pet cemetery since ol' ratley is actually sleeping soundly in the landfill after being speared with a stick by two crazed attorneys. whoops.

also while i was dogsitting, i woke up groggy from cold medicine on friday morning to realize what i had known the night before -- that i was out of clean underwear. i'm a pretty laidback person, but putting on a previously-worn pair of underwear (notice that they don't have to be dirty -- only previously worn) is something i will not tolerate. nor will i wash it in the sink and pretend that in anyway makes it clean again. even i draw the line somewhere. like at sharing a toothbrush. my mom will find this humorous since i absolutely refused to change my underwear when i was a kid. or brush my teeth at all.

anyway, i was up late the previous night at a restorative justice circle for one of my clients -- a story in itself for another time -- and probably wouldn't have gotten myself out of bed at all if i hadn't gotten an early morning phone call and happened to be sleeping on top of my phone while it was vibrating. so needless to say, i wasn't in the best frame of mind. i ran through my options: 1. go to work without underwear on. no problem with a skirt, but not the same while wearing white pants. 2. drive past the office and up to my house to get some clean underwear. sounds reasonable, but i knew i'd get stuck there doing one of the millions of things i left behind when i moved into kennedy's for the week and i was already late for work. 3. buy a pair of underwear at target on my way into town. bingo.

i arrive in andy's office in my white pants with my new underwear tucked into my purse. kelley! he says. i'm so glad you're here ! i've got a good one -- mudflaps, interstate commerce, the whole deal, going right to the supreme court. ok, i said, but can i go to the bathroom really quickly and put on this new underwear i bought on the way to work since i realized i was out this morning? when i return andy is giggling, apparently curious as to why it did not cross my mind to do a load of laundry at kennedy's house. and you know, it never even crossed my mind a single time. here's a good example of not being able to see the forest for the trees.

now for an entirely different story: when i returned kim's car to her in california in december, there was a little bit of twinkie smeared on the outside of it. (they just don't make twinkies like they used to...) i meant to have it washed before i left, but prioritized the oil change and didn't quite make it. huy got a good laugh and kim didn't seem to mind, but it was still unfortunate since i love love love the drive-thru carwash. probably similarly to how a 5-year-old kid loves the drive-thru carwash. lucky for me, between the snow in prescott and the dust in the valley, my car needs the occasional bath here in arizona to keep it at peak shininess. and in the event that i'm too busy to acknowledge those aspects, there's always the loogey i spit out the window that landed on the side of my car and froze/congealed into a big chunk. sounds gross until you consider what i found smeared across the back seat. i blamed that one on raven though. :)

thankfully, i am feeling better. one more round though, and neti pot, here i come! prescott, and northern arizona in general, is full of (silly) naturopathic hippies. a guy in my spin class recommended i start using a neti pot -- a yoga purification technique of "nasal irrigation." basically you use this little teapot to pour saline solution in one nostril so it can drain out the other. for your enjoyment, here's an action shot. gross. however, it still sounds more pleasant to me (and probably those around me) than giving up dairy and sugar as linsay always suggested.

last night at greg's birthday party i commented that i thought i was getting more and more boring every day. dan asked me to think of something i saw that day that really struck me as amazing. although i can't disclose my immediate reaction, i know that finding something amazing in arizona is as easy as driving to work through miles of open space under the biggest sky i've ever seen. i've been here almost 6 months and it still strikes me every morning.

and re-reading this ... i still think i'm the funniest person i know :) but am less convinced that i have a life of my own :/