“and the little plastic castle is a surprise every time”

Semi-paralegals such as myself have a plethora of duties. One of them is carting clients around who need carting, who can’t drive themselves somewhere for one reason or another. One of these clients needs a ride to our office and a ride home today, and he lives on the other side of the Bay Bridge (which can be terrifying to cross – for me because it’s so high), a good hour away from the office. He is also the most depressing person I’ve ever met. He’s completely obsessed with the injury that’s led him to our office, and has such bitterness and anger towards the doctor that caused the injury that it hurts me to see it. It hurts me to be around him, truth be told; he’s so negative and so sad that I suffer from his proximity. I feel for him, but that doesn’t mean I like being around him.

So this is going to be a fun-ass day.

Class last night was nothing short of awful. The instructor walked us through the first few sections of the procedural rules of Maryland courts, and if you’re already asleep from reading that sentence you get the idea of how it felt to sit in class with it for two hours. He appears to have come up with an actual plan for the semester, which is comforting, but I don’t think he realized until tonight just how dry this material is. At the end of class, he said that if anybody had any ideas to jazz up the material, please, please let him know. I don’t know a way to jazz up procedural court rules. Nudity, maybe?

I still intend to write a whole post about the ashtanga class – just maybe not today. I slept poorly, am not looking forward to driving the client, am concerned about class tonight, had an exasperating workday yesterday, and in general feel like I’m a fish who’s just realized she’s in an aquarium, bumping back and forth between the glass walls, bruised and wondering why I can’t reach the world that’s out there.

Update: Okay, this was the funnest-ass day I can remember for quite a long time.

I don’t think I was clear enough about this client of ours. He is not a mere Gloomy Gus; he is Eeyore times eighty. He talks constantly about how much better his life was before the incident of malpractice; any other topic you can possibly come up with will somehow segue into how horrible his life is now and how he’s in constant pain and how he can’t do anything he used to do.  You say the sky is blue, he says he remembers how the sky looked in Montana when he was there outdoorsing, before this happened to him. You say the Steelers sure played well, he says he remembers how well he used to be able to play baseball back in the day, before this happened to him. And so on. For ever.

While he was meeting me halfway between the office and his home, this still meant a half-hour there and a half-hour back with him. And when we got there, MD asked me to sit in on his meeting with the expert that was the whole point of him coming there. Sit in on it. For two hours. Of him explaining about his limitations and all the things he used to be able to do that he can’t now. Which I’ve, um, already heard. Don’t know if I mentioned that.

Did I get to eat lunch? Oh no.

When we got back to where his car was parked, we found that I had left his car keys on my desk back at the office. So back we went to the office, across the Bay Bridge again, to pick up the keys and drive allll the way back. I can blame no one but myself for this, okay, but it still meant an extra hour spent in the car with him and an extra hour of driving that I shouldn’t have had to do. I was fucking furious. And starving to death. My blood sugar was so fucked up that my fingers started to feel strange and tingly, and even after I finally got back to the office and ate my lunch at 4:00, the tingling didn’t stop right away.

And oh yes, there was a pile of work on my desk when I got back that I couldn’t possibly finish in the half hour of workday that I had left. Which means tomorrow will also be fun.

FUCK ME. I hated this day. So right now, instead of speeding off to class, I’m sitting in my office bitching to the computer and having myself a cup of tea. I deserve a nice cup of tea. I’m going to take the time to have it.