#i saw one of my profs as i was walking downtown so that's crazy

[belladonnafleur]

🌹

[canaryatlaw]

Okay, well today wasn't bad. Still kind of overall stressed, but dealing with it. I have time at least, to get all this shit done, get it spaced out over and all that, so that helps. Alarm went off at 7 and I got out of bed and made it to work and made it through the rest of the file for the permanency hearing, which was more of the parents being like "we're not alcoholics we don't need treatment fuck you" all the way to getting their damn kid removed, so I write up some normal permanency hearing questions and took that and the file over to the lawyer who gave it to me to talk to him about it. I ask if they ever made a paternity finding, because there was a whole big thing about it because apparently her "dad" her whole life isn't technically her legally-presumed dad because her mother was married to someone else when she was born, but I never found a finding, and then the lawyers like "oh yeah, well dad passed away in November, something related to his alcoholism." Oh. Well. And he goes on to add the mom is basically on her death bed in the same situation. Don't need treatment my ass. This poor child. She seems like a good kid though, so hopefully we can get her get into some post-high school training if not actual college. I'll get to meet her and interview her Monday. At that point I went back to my office and created a template for permanency hearing questions that I could just tweak for individual cases since the status based questions are largely the same. Somewhere in all of this my eyes were drooping way too much again so I took another 15 minute head on desk session, I might've actually passed out for a few minutes, but when the alarm went off I freaked out for a minute because I was expecting the wrong time for some reason and thought I accidentally passed out for like two hours lol. So I was fairly glad that didn't happen. Somewhere in here I also tried to call my psychiatrist about the whole Xanax thing I was discussing last night, only to be told he's on vacation till the end of the month.....I mean, the guy definitely deserves it, he's partially retired already and probably in his 70's, and I don't want to disturb him or anything, but like, I know him and I know he would want to hear two sentences from me on this issue but I didn't want to say it was an emergency because it wasn't, and if I did they probably would've put me on with one of the other psychiatrists that are filling in for him, and I'm sorry but there's no way I'm trusting anyone else with this shit. I think I'm gonna increase it to 3 mg a day for now at least, which is still within the normal range he said I could try so it's not a big deal. Hopefully that will make finals a bit more manageable. So that was less than ideal, but oh well. All of my events are really out of order for today so idk if any of this happened in this order, but around lunchtime I went to go see my across the hall friend who's now my across the building friend, to see if she was feeling better and if she wanted to get lunch because I, like a kindergartener, left my lunch box in the fridge yesterday (I had actually packed dinner in a brown paper bag for later but I didn't want to pack two of those). So we went to the "bakery" that has super awesome pizza an I got some of their pizza with the seriously biggest slices and ate like, half a slice lol. So good though. It was nice to talk to her though, we traded crazy stories from our courthouse and the DV one, and I was just like man, I'm so glad I have people I can share these things with without them being immediately horrified and me being like "yes I know those are terribly tragic circumstances but if you hang in there for a moment the court moment was really funny!!" Lol, it's gallows humor for sure but I mean gotten let it out somehow. I vent to my brother about crazy cases too, that's helpful since talking about the law is one of the few things we can talk about and actually have a lengthy productive discussion on without it somehow devolving into him being an asshole (mostly, anyway). So there's that at least. He appreciates my stories. So back from lunch and I spent a while organizing orders into alphabetized folders for two different lawyers haha who both apologized for the shitty work but I'm like hey whatever it's all good I know I'm the intern and I'll deal with your shitty jobs if it gets me a good in here. And then I had to show my supervisor how to send in the mid-semester evaluation my field placement supervisor wanted from him (oh, and he apparently knew my FP supervisor like 15 years ago and he was her boss in this office??? I swear he was everyone's boss at some point) because he was getting so lost in computer forms and retrieving files and saving them and electronically signing forms, so I'm just sitting there showing him how to do it and he's like "ohmygosh Rachel, you're so smart!!!" and I'm like trying not to laugh because he's just so adorably funny. And then of course I got to read more of the nice things he said about me which made my heart melt once again because he's literally so nice I can't handle it and his words are always really genuine too so it's nice. And yeah. So I didn't have anywhere to rush to right after leaving the juvenile courthouse today for the first time I can remember since, the summer, since I decided no kickboxing this week because I simply don't have the emotional or physical energy for it, so I was just gonna find a Starbucks to chill in and work on my appellate brief until small group time. So I got to like, take my time leaving and my supervisor is like "Rachel what are you still doing here, you're gonna be late to class!!" and it's like 5:01 haha so funny. So then waiting for the bus I saw the PD that was on the panel we did yesterday so we of course talked about delinquency stuff, like the spring break project from last year and of course eventually got into the whole transferring to adult court thing and I mentioned the slenderman case because that's just the most horrific case of misjudgment by the system and she'd heard of it of course but didn't know the details and she was beyond horrified to hear that they're trying two severely mentally ill 12 year old children as adults and having them face 35 years in prison. Like, we literally have an entire juvenile justice system FOR PRECISELY THESE REASONS. Bypassing it ignores all the science and research and not to mention the recidivism rate which skyrockets when you try children as adults. I'll cap it there though, not gonna go into a full rant at the moment (I know I've already done it on here). I got off the one bus to catch another and had to watch it stop and drive off while I was stuck on the other side of the crosswalk which SUCKS and it was just chilly enough to be annoying out today, but then thankfully another bus came like 2 minutes later which isn't typical but I was very grateful for. So I took that to the Starbucks area, then popped into Walgreens to buy more of their caramel chocolates that Lyft driver got me hooked on (lol) except they didn't have those exact ones, so I got what's basically the same but with toffee pieces and I tried a little and they're pretty amazing. So then I went to Starbucks and got an iced white tea lemonade and tried to surreptitiously eat my sandwiches (I mean I was facing the window so I didn't have to be all that secretive about it) and start the behemoth that is gonna be finishing my appellate brief, and I pretty much immediately felt lost, but always over like the stupid stuff I could find like whether saying "don't use the party names" meant the given names or the terms plaintiff/defendant....(it's the prior, I think anyway) but I figured as some sort of game plan I would work on fixing the argument section based on the feedback I got from our prof, since that still is the substance of the brief, and then work on adding all the extra parts. Half of the edits she gave me though we're like about ordering the arguments and shit and it just pissed me off because I like the way I order my arguments, dammit, because IT MAKES SENSE, and I'm sorry if it doesn't fit your blue book standard but my boss at my actual job where I submit actual motions to actual court seems to be quite impressed with it so you can take your argument order and shove it.....(note please that that wasn't actually directed at my prof, cuz I kind of like her, and I know it's the curriculum and not her setting the standards). But that just annoyed me cuz like, real life isn't legal writing fact patterns. You're not always gonna have an analogous case and a distinguishable case, and you're gonna have to make it work. I just....I get too worked up about all of it. But I at least made some progress on preliminary efforts, so maybe, 5% done? It's a start, at least. I walked from the Starbucks to church which is like a ten minute walk and even though it was still a little chilly I haven't done any walking for the past two days and I haven't had any chance to work out this week (I likely won't go to the gym tomorrow because I have no reason to be downtown) so it's something at least, to go with my push ups (which I think may be hurting a muscle in my side, because trying any new physical activity is basically let's see how I can piss my body off this time for me). But yeah, small group was good. This was something I meant to mention quickly on my last week's recap of it, but I think I might have a teeny tiny crush on one of the guys? Like it was in my head last week but it was barely anything, then I get in there today and we start talking about the marvel tv shows and you know I can talk above superheroes all damn day haha so that was enjoyable, and then he was being like "yeah it was cool being at my cousins wedding this weekend but it's also so weird being single at a wedding" and I'm like alright, that might have been a subtle hint, lol, and of course as soon as the idea even entered my head I spent the rest of the night pretty much planning our wedding when I haven't really decided if I even like the guy yet, lol. Physically he's not like drop dead gorgeous, but he's definitely not ugly and has a certain charming quality to his appearance, so I can work with that. The rest of small group (I almost just wrote Smallville) was good too, we talked about a passage in 1 Corinthians I was familiar with about love and of course I got to opine about my deep theories on the issue about how basically the passage is indicative of the entire problem of "religion" and what the church is facing today- that is, they have all the rules, all the right answers, but without love following through all of it it's basically useless, and I feel like that's so on point for what the church is dealing with right now. Like, no. Love meets you were you are. Love is right in there with your mess. Love doesn't require you to clean up your act before you're welcomed into our church. Jesus certainly didn't require it to be let into his presence, so how dare we even try to do it? And yeah, other random deep shit like that, lol, you get the picture. Took the train to the bus as my normal and AGAIN had to run to make the bus (this was a different stop, but same bus route) and again had to bang on the door to get let in while the driver was looking so put out by it and I'm just like....calm your tits lady we're giving your company money but being here, lol. But I got home, didn't almost get run over by a car but had the weird experience of a car stopping fully at a red light, and I started crossing, and then they suddenly started driving again and blew the light by like, a mile. They didn't even come close to wear I was crossing so I was never in danger or anything, but I was like seriously, wtf man? Who does that?!? Idiots. For home and watched Powerless, which was cute of course, then Riverdale which just left me with the comment that this is the one teen drama where all the high schoolers have it together for the most part and all their parents are going batshit crazy, lol. But I enjoyed both, and that pretty much wrapped up my night. And it's late, and I get to sleep in which I'm very glad about, but still I'm tired and want to go to sleep now, so that's what I will do. Goodnight mis amigos. Happy Friday.