The ADHD Attorney

Posted By TheAttorney on July 18, 2010

Every Thanksgiving, the cool people and the fun people go to Utah for Thanksgiving in separate cars.  My daughter Stephanie, her husband Jon, and my daughter Justice are the “cool” people who go in Jon’s car, and me, my son Travis, and my son Tristan are the “fun” people who go in my car.

Last week, Stephanie, Travis and I had a reason to run to Utah.  Utah is normally a 6-7 hour drive from here in Santa Ana, CA.  On the day before Thanksgiving, the drive can take 12 hours because of all the traffic.

When we drive out there for Thanksgiving, I am usually the one who does all the driving in my car.  It makes for a very long drive if you are doing all the driving.

But this time, we traded off because we had three licensed drivers.  And there was no traffic.  It was about 7 hours total, each way, because of stopping, but otherwise it went pretty fast.

We were there by 7:45 p.m. (Utah time) and left the next morning at 8:10 a.m. (California time).  It was a fast trip to pick up something that I needed at my oldest daughter’s house.

What made the trip go so fast (seemed like it only took a couple of hours to get there, and a couple of hours to get back) is that those of us who weren’t driving got to play on our laptops via the internet, since I had brought my Sprint data card.  Playing on the internet helps the time to go by very fast.

While we were in the car, we talked about the blog I wrote about them being cool and us being fun.  She said as boring as it sounds, Jon does all the driving and likes to drive straight through.  They stop only for gas.  Stephanie and Justice read or sleep.  (Yawn.)  They get there and back very quickly.  They are usually ahead of us because I like to stop and play the slot machines, which takes about an hour.

As we came closer to Primm, Nevada, where I usually like to stop and play slot machines at Whiskey Pete’s, I suddenly realized that she could become the “downer queen” again.  I usually end up somewhere between break-even and winning $200.  I asked Stephanie if we would be able to stop and she dramatically and emphatically (almost) shouted, “No!”

This had the huge potential for becoming a problem.  I’m an adult.  She’s my (adult) child and shouldn’t be able to tell me what to do and not do, although I should respect her and if she doesn’t want to stop at a casino, then I should wait until I’ve killed her before stopping so that we don’t get into a fight.

Rather than kill her, I resorted to whining.  I whined that I would only spend what I had in cash in my pocket ($7), and that if I lost, we would walk out.  She said no.  I whined that I would give her my debit cards to hold so that I wouldn’t be tempted to go to an ATM to get more money.  She said no.

Travis mentioned that he had a couple of bucks.  I exclaimed, as if this solved the problem, “See?  We’ll all play!  I have $7, Travis has $2.  That’s nine dollars!  That’s three bucks for each of us!”

Steph mentioned, hesitantly, that she had $6.

“See?”  I said, as if that resolved her irresolute attitude.  “If we all throw our money in together and divide it up, we’ll each have $5 to gamble!”

“Okay!” she (almost) yelled (again).  “But we’re leaving as soon as we’re out of money.”

She took my debit cards from me and we found a casino in Primm.

Stephanie was frequently irritated with me on this trip because I took a lot of pictures.  She said, “This isn’t a vacation.  Why do you keep taking pictures?”  I said it was a road trip, and that the pictures would commemorate it.  (I really just enjoyed the fact that I was annoying her.  She’s cute when she’s annoyed.)

Once inside the casino, we divided up the $15 and we each instantly lost it all within 5 minutes.  It was amazing that I was able to convince Stephanie to give me back my debit card so that I could pull $20.00 out.  But it made sense when she said, “Will you loan me $20 and I’ll pay you back?”

Stephanie went and planted herself at a poker machine.  Travis and I went and found a slot machine.  I was lucky and won back the $15 we lost, in addition to keeping the $20, but then I kept going and ultimately we backed away from the machine when we were down to $17.

We went to find Stephanie still at the poker game, a few bucks ahead and refusing to budge.

Rather than stand around watching her (she told us to leave her alone anyways), Travis and I found some penny slot machines on which to throw away a couple of more dollars.

We went back again to try to make Stephanie leave, but she still refused to budge.  She was still a few dollars ahead.

She sat there and played and played and played, intermittently hissing at us to “GO AWAY!”

Travis finally grabbed her by the arm and said, gently, “Come on, Steph.  Let’s go.”  As she got up from the chair, she was still hitting the “play” button.

But she did get up, and she had won a total of $7.00.  Not bad, considering I was the one who usually came out ahead.

Turns out that the downer queen has a fun streak in her after all.

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Posted By TheAttorney on June 28, 2010

I wrote once about some tickets I had that I forgot to take care of.  That process should have been a done deal, but because I was supposed to make payments, and (of course) I ended up forgetting to make those payments, those tickets became an issue again.  I recently paid a lot of money to take care of the fines, but I still owe a small portion of those fees.  (I really need to find out what happened to the paperwork I was given that shows when the remainder is to be paid.  It’s all so elusive.)

In the meantime, I got another ticket.  (I so hate that.)  I really try hard to avoid breaking the law, not so much because the law is so important, although it is, but more so because if I break a law and get a ticket, I will be sent into the never-ending spiral of missing the hearing date, a warrant being issued for my arrest, only to be stopped and ticketed again after the officer finds out that my license is suspended because I didn’t take care of the first ticket, which I will ultimately take care of, but then I will forget to take care of the second ticket, which will then go to warrant, and so on, and so forth.  Quite honestly, the whole process is nerve-racking.

This has been going on since I was about 18-years old.  No, the tickets outstanding at that time aren’t still outstanding, but that is when the problem of forgetting to take care of tickets started.  Between the ages of 18 and 22, I received several tickets.  I don’t remember exactly what they were for, but I think a couple were for speeding and one was for running a red light.  They all went to warrant because I didn’t take care of any of them.

I was pulled over one night, while those warrants were active, and after finding them the officer said he would have to arrest me.  I was taken to the police station but not held in custody. I was allowed to write a check, then and there for the amount of the warrant, and then I was released immediately.

Although I thought I had enough funds in the bank to cover the amount, the check bounced because I was inaccurate in my accounting.

I meant to go to court immediately after I found out that the check had bounced, but … I forgot.

Time passed by, and ultimately I was pulled over again for something.  Same routine - the officer did a warrant check and took me to the police station.  Again, I wrote a check, hoping that I had enough money to cover the check.  Again, I was released.  Again, the check bounced.

And then I forgot again to go to court to take care of it.  (I swear, I had every intention of going to court to talk to the judge about these problems.)

As each day passed (well, not every day, but almost every week), I would suddenly think about these outstanding tickets, and the checks I bounced to the court, and I would renew my commitment to take care of the tickets, but then I would forget again.

And then one day, I forget what happened, but I found myself arrested again for these same outstanding warrants.  Keep in mind that these warrants were for traffic tickets up to several years old at this point.  I was allowed to write a check again (no computers in those days), and was given a court date for an appearance, and I was released.

This time, instead of hoping that the check would clear, I canceled it.  There was a good reason for it, I swear.  I had moved back home with my oldest daughter who, at that time, was about 3-years old (I think).  Conditions at my parents’ home were untenable.  I had to move out.  I had saved just enough money to move out when I was arrested that last time, and that’s why I canceled the check.

But this time, I went to court to take care of the ticket.  The judge was not happy with me.  He saw the two returned checks and the cancelled check in front of him, and asked me why.  I made the mistake of saying, “I didn’t think it would be a big deal.”

He said he would show me why it was a big deal.  He gave me 10 days in jail.  He said that way I wouldn’t have to worry about paying for my fines any more.  (The good thing is that I got 3 days off for good behavior.)

The incident was so traumatizing that I managed to avoid getting a ticket for about 10 years.

Currently, I have another warrant out because I forgot to go to court on a ticket I received about 2 months ago.  It’s a really stupid  ticket, and I have proof that I have a driver’s license and insurance.  I just didn’t the proof with me when I was pulled over.  I have every intention of going.  I just keep forgetting.

I received a ticket in Arizona 30 years ago that I didn’t take care of.  It finally bit me in the ass this past year when I went to get a duplicate driver’s license because I lost my original.  (Remember?)

The clerk said that they could issue a temporary license, but I would have to take care of the Arizona ticket before I could receive the permanent license.  Can you believe that Arizona still had the ticket, almost 30 years later?

People with ADHD should be given a special permit that they carry with them that entitles them to have the issue resolved right then and there.  If I show my permit to an officer, I should be allowed to pay, right then, the amount of the fine.  In cash, of course.

Category: Miscellaneous, Personal stories | 2 Comments »
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Posted By TheAttorney on June 11, 2010

There are circles in life.  I (vaguely) remember studying about circles in life under Carl Roger’s gestalt theory, where the human mind will see a circle even if there is a piece of the circle missing.   He said that human beings are very much inclined to  need to close a circle.  We don’t like loose ends.

In one of the videos I remember seeing that explained Rogers’ theory, there were circles flashed on a screen that weren’t complete.  They were missing a quarter arc.  When these unfinished circles were shown to people, they guessed incorrectly that they saw a “zero.”  The human mind will unconsciously insert the missing arc, because it needs to see the circle as complete.

The circles that are missing an arc are analogous to situations in our lives.  The problems we experience, that we fail to resolve, are like the  missing arc.  We often fill in the blank arc with various explanations in order to complete the circle.  Our minds (psychologically) need to find closure to a problem that was never actually resolved at all.

Sometimes, if the event is short-played, there isn’t enough time to notice that the circle complete it’s missing arc.  Other times, you have to live for quite a while to be able to see the circle close.

I have seen some circles close in recent years.  I am friends again with the father of my third child, about 20 years after he left me to go join the marines.  I am friends again with the husband of one of my sisters, about 20 years after their divorce.  I became an attorney 23 years after I dropped out of high school.  I recently became reunited with friends whose friendship I so abruptly tossed aside when I started college.

We all  make mistakes in life, whether intentionally or unintentionally.  Sometimes we just make bad choices.  Those choices can, from time to time, loom in our minds like unclosed circles that the mind so desperately wants to close.  We don’t pay close attention to them.  Out of sight, out of mind, etc.  But once in a while, when we open our skeleton closet, we see the consequences of our mistakes hanging there like musty old dresses or suits.  We can put out of mind what is no longer within our vision, with the passage of time.  Years can pass before some of those circles can be closed.  The missing arcs are like holes in our lives that are never filled in.

And this is the reason that I have kept a quotation from one of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Essays on my profile:

A little consideration of what takes place around us every day would show us, that a higher law than that of our will regulates events; that our painful labors are unnecessary, and fruitless; that only in our easy, simple, spontaneous action are we strong, and by contenting ourselves with obedience we become divine.

Belief and love, — a believing love will relieve us of a vast load of care. O my brothers, God exists. There is a soul at the centre of nature, and over the will of every man, so that none of us can wrong the universe.
…
It has so infused its strong enchantment into nature, that we prosper when we accept its advice, and when we struggle to wound its creatures, our hands are glued to our sides, or they beat our own breasts.

The whole course of things goes to teach us faith. We need only obey. There is guidance for each of us, and by lowly listening we shall hear the right word.

Why need you choose so painfully your place, and occupation, and associates, and modes of action, and of entertainment? Certainly there is a possible right for you that precludes the need of balance and willful election.

For you there is a reality, a fit place and congenial duties. Place yourself in the middle of the stream of power and wisdom which animates all whom it floats, and you are without effort impelled to truth, to right, and a perfect contentment.

Then you put all gainsayers in the wrong. Then you are the world, the measure of right, of truth, of beauty.

If we will not be mar-plots with our miserable interferences, the work, the society, letters, arts, science, religion of men would go on far better than now, and the heaven predicted from the beginning of the world, and still predicted from the bottom of the heart, would organize itself, as do now the rose, and the air, and the sun.

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Posted By TheAttorney on May 26, 2010

I had a family law hearing today on a motion to enforce a judgment that was 21-years old.  I filed the motion almost two years ago.

When my client first retained me, she could only afford a small deposit, but because it was pretty clear that there would be money at the end from which I would be paid, I agreed to work on her case without asking for any more money until the case was finished.

During the two years that I handled her case, I missed two hearings.  I hate when that happens.  It didn’t hurt the case, though.  Just prolonged it by about 3 months.  What actually hurt the case was my client’s misrepresentations.  (That’s how you say it in law.  You never say someone is lying.  You say he/she is misrepresenting the facts.)

My client represented that since the time that the  judgment had been filed 21-years previously, she hadn’t been paid spousal support, child support, and hadn’t received certain stocks and an interest in a pension plan.  Based on what she told me, it sounded like the case was worth about $250,000.00 once it was all totaled up.

In family law, I am not permitted to a contingency, although I can agree to wait until the end to get paid.  This is because attorneys are not supposed to have an interest adverse to their client, or something like that.  Based on her allegations, and based on the research I did showing that the other side had a lot of money, I agreed to take the case and be paid at the end.

This was a hard-fought case.  The other side actually went through three attorneys, which made it harder on me because I had to bring each new attorney up to speed.

I filed the first set of documents with the court almost two years ago, but on the day of the hearing, the other party’s first attorney told me that my client wasn’t entitled to spousal support because she actually got married about 7 years after she divorced his client.  He also mentioned that he believed my client and the children lived with his client for several years after the judgment was obtained.

This would mean that my client was entitled to a lot less spousal support and a lot less child support than she alleged that she was owed.

I decided that we should dismiss the action before going into court to prevent my client from possibly getting an adverse ruling.  I decided that we’d better do some discovery and find out why her ex-husband would be saying that.  My client averred that her ex-husband was a liar.  (She’s not a lawyer, so she gets to say “liar.”)

We re-filed the motion as something else and while we were waiting for the hearing date, I held a deposition and conducted some discovery.  The opposing party and his attorney provided me with a marriage license showing that my client had become married about 7 years after she divorced the other party.

I expected he would be unable to lie in a deposition about whether or not my client and their children lived with him, but he said adamantly that they did.  He didn’t waver.

My client finally admitted to me some time later that she did get married 7 years later, stating that she didn’t really feel like she was married because they never finalized it.  The license was issued, and they went through a ceremony, but she said they never filed the license.  She said she had “changed her mind.”  (Except that they lived together after that.)  (And except that when he died, she was listed on his death certificate as his spouse.)  Sigh.

Because of the discovery we did, we found the pension plan that he refused to disclose to us.  My client had tried for two years to get him to tell her where the money was, and to give her share to her.  I found it after sending subpoenas out.  I was about to bring the pension plan into the case as a party when the people who managed it informed me that he had moved the money “somewhere else.”

I immediately filed an ex parte asking the court to order him to tell us where the money was, which the court did.  At the same time, I obtained an order preventing the other party from being able to take any money out of the account or from moving it.

In the meantime, while we were doing discovery and holding depositions and filing ex partes, the ex-husband obtained a new attorney.  The new attorney had to be educated and we had a couple of meetings to discuss problems with my case.  He told me that my client lived with his client, the dad, for several years after the divorce, and that the kids lived with dad, too. He also provided me with tax returns that showed that his client and my client filed joint tax returns for several years after they were divorced.  My client said she didn’t live with him but he did force her to sign the tax returns.  I believed her.

I told my client that she would have to provide proof of her address for the years that the husband claimed that she lived with him.  I had several meetings with her.  Each time she came in, she brought evidence of where she lived, but none of the evidence covered the time period that the ex-husband claimed she and the kids lived with him.

There were several things not making sense about her case.  It was as if there was a black hole.  I have to believe my client, but I told her that we couldn’t go to court without evidence, especially because of the tax returns.  Plus, the ex-husband said he had a roommate who would testify that while he lived with the ex-husband, my client and the kids lived there.

It was also during this time that one of the hearings went off calendar because I was late for court and forgot to call ahead of time to ask the clerk to put the hearing on second call.  I immediately re-filed the case, but the opposing party thought he won and happily fired his attorney and went back to life as usual, ignoring the fact that he owed my client something.

After we immediately served him with the new documents, for which the hearing was set about a month and a half out, he retained a new attorney who became my favorite one of all.  I love experienced family law attorneys.

In the meantime, my client’s youngest daughter came out from wherever she had been living.  She brought with her a diary from 10 to 20 years ago in which she had made entries on various dates talking about with whom she was living, and where.  It turns out that the kids did in fact live with their dad for several years, off and on.  She also wrote in her diary that her mom moved in with her dad as well.  She and her mom, my client, lived with him for several years.

So at this point we know that my client misrepresented the truth about being married, and misrepresented the truth about with whom she and the children lived for at least some of the time.  This is important because generally, if a spouse remarries, spousal support terminates.  And if the children are living with the party who is paying child support, child support should also terminate.

The third new attorney and I met at the first hearing on which he was attorney of record and discussed the strengths and weaknesses of my client’s case.  We agreed to continue it so that I could gather up more proof, and that is when I missed another hearing.  My paralegal mis-calendared the hearing for two days after it was actually supposed to occur, so the judge took it off calendar again because we weren’t in court.

The good thing is that the new attorney on the case is one of those experienced types who is very courteous.  He knew that I would have to refile, and that it was inevitable that it would go back on calendar, so he signed a stipulation putting it back on calendar.  We were in court all morning on today’s date.

We spent most of the morning working out the details of the case.  I informed him that I was no longer seeking $250,000 on behalf of my client because it wouldn’t be right based on the new facts.  We actually ended up settling on $50,000.00.

Now for the fun stuff.

When I met with my client a few weeks ago to go over the case in preparation of this hearing today, she brought her 29-year old daughter with her.  At that time, I told my client that my fees were over $17,000.00, but that I would reduce them when it came time to pay the bill.  I told her that I knew she didn’t have much money and that this money she was expecting would really help her.  She and her daughter were really appreciative.

Today, after the attorney and I agreed that the case should settle for $50,000.00, I went to discuss the settlement with my client, who had her three adult children with her.  After I told her how much I thought we should settle for, she asked how much I was going to ask for in attorney’s fees, and all of a sudden she and her daughters turned on me with a vengeance.

The daughter who was present a few weeks previously said that she wrote it down when I said I would reduce my fees, as if I was about to try to back out of the deal.  She almost snarled at me.  I said I remembered that I said that, and I said, “Please don’t do this.”

She then said, viciously, “You handled this case really badly because you missed two hearings.”  She turned to her mother and said, “Don’t sign the settlement agreement unless she agrees to reduce her fees.”

Her mother, my client, looked at me and said, “You did miss two hearings.”  It was as if this was all planned.

I was stunned.  I said, “Before you begin accusing me of malpractice, you need to understand that the outcome of the case must have been negatively impacted.  The outcome today is the same as it would have been if I hadn’t missed any hearings.”

The daughter said, “My mom should have gotten more money than this.  What’s she supposed to live on for the rest of her life?”

I said, “Your mom lied to me about a lot of things.  We filed several different declarations that contradict the evidence.  We can’t put her on the stand.  That attorney will tear her to pieces.  We have to take what they are offering or we have to go to trial.”  Actually, I got them to give an extra $5,000.00 more than they were offering.

Believe it or not, she said, “That’s not important.  We don’t need to focus on that.”

I was stunned, but I put that aside.  I went and talked to the other attorney and told him that basically, my client wanted attorney’s fees.  He said, “There’s no way the judge is going to give your client attorney’s fees.  My client is on disability.  He doesn’t get much money.  She should take this deal.  The stock lost $150,000.00 worth of value.  The appraisal you had done on the stock was based on the value from a year and a half ago.  She won’t get as much as she’s getting if we don’t settle this today.”

He was right.  She was getting the child support that she didn’t receive for the time when the daughter was living with her, and she was getting spousal support for up to the time that she remarried, minus the two years she moved back in with the opposing party.  She was also getting one-half of the value of the community property interest in the pension plan.  She wasn’t getting any stock because I found out today that they had already divided it up and spent it before they signed the final judgment 21 years earlier.  (Something else she lied about.)

Basically, she was getting only that to which she was entitled, and she was upset with me.  And now she and her daughters were trying to accuse me of botching the case so that they could scare me into reducing my fees.  It was really ugly to watch.  I reminded them that I had already offered to reduce my fees.

But I also reminded them again that if she hadn’t lied to me, I wouldn’t have spent so much time on the case.  Again they tried to brush that aside.  I gave up.  I believe they had this planned.  They figured out a way to pretend I had done something wrong in order to get me to reduce my fees.  What boggles my mind is if they really felt I did something so wrong, why didn’t they fire me?

I have had this happen before.  I hate clients sometimes.  If you don’t get all the money up front, then when it comes time to pay at the end, they try to find something you did wrong so that they can use that as an excuse to not pay.

I ask, why would you continue to use me if I was doing such a bad job?  If an attorney is screwing up so bad that it is  hurting your case, why wouldn’t you get another attorney?

My client doesn’t realize how much I helped her.  They are ignorant.  That first time when we were supposed to go to trial we got lucky when the first attorney told me, before we went in, the evidence he had.  He was going to tell the court that she had been married.  I was smart enough to take the matter off calendar so that we could figure out what he was going to say.

I found the pension plan.  I filed an ex parte when it went missing.  I put a lien on his house and a lien on the pension plan so that he couldn’t touch either one of them.  I sent subpoenas out, trying to amass as much evidence as possible.  And most of this turned out to be moot because she lied to me on most of these issues.

And now here she was, with her daughters, trying to tell me that because I missed two hearings, I should take less fees, even though I had already said I would take less fees, and even though I hadn’t screwed her case up.

When they asked how much I would reduce them to,  I said $10,000.00. They said okay.  What’s interesting is that they didn’t ask to see the bill.  What if the final bill was only $10,000.00?  At that time, I thought that the final bill was up to about $18,000.00.

And what was funny was that up until that moment, I had been telling the Captain that I wanted to only charge her $5,000.00 for the work I had done because I felt bad for her because she didn’t have much money, although she does own a house that is paid off and worth about $500,000.00.  The Captain was furious that I was thinking about reducing my fees.  He said, “She has a house.  We don’t.”

When they turned nasty like that, I suddenly didn’t feel so generous, which is why I said $10,000.00.  I suppose I could have said, “Screw you.  I quit.”  and then I could have walked out and left her to start over, but I didn’t want to deal with a complaint to the state bar.

And besides, now I will have $10,000.00 instead of $5,000.00.

But something else that was funny:  We thought her final bill was about $18,000.00.  When I went back to the office after that hearing, I asked the Captain to provide to me a final bill so that I could send it to her with a letter that I was writing.

The bill had a huge error in it.  There was a time that I forgot to stop the clock when I was drafting subpoenas.  Instead of reflecting 17 hours for drafting subpoenas, it should have reflected 2 hours.   That’s a lot of money.

In the end, we only lost about $3,000.00.

Category: Legal Stories, Miscellaneous | 4 Comments »
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Posted By TheAttorney on April 29, 2010

When I became an attorney in May of 1999, I started my office as a sole practitioner from my garage.  I used a long, old table for my desk.  You know, the kind that you unfold the legs before you can stand it up, like a card table, only longer.  I draped a table cloth over it to hide the nicks and scratches.  I was in business.

At that time, I was doing project work for twelve other attorneys.  Those attorneys practiced in the areas of criminal, personal injury, civil, construction defect, probate, and immigration.  I learned a lot.

About a year later, I did some project work for a bankruptcy attorney who had an extra office in her suite, so I opted to rent that room from her.  I couldn’t afford a desk, but luckily she had two old mismatched desks in that room.  This was a step up from the long scratched-up table I was using in my garage.  One was an old, yellow desk made of metal, and the other was an old-fashioned wood desk.

I was retained by a few clients, believe it or not.  I don’t know why.  If I went to see an attorney and saw only two mismatched desks and nothing else in her office, I would keep the meeting short so as not to embarrass the attorney and then I would promptly find someone else.  I didn’t even have my certificates framed yet.

I don’t remember how long I was there, but because that attorney’s secretaries and I didn’t get along very well, I moved my office back to my garage.

I then came across a lying, thieving bastard an attorney who was opposing counsel on a case, and after the case was resolved, he invited me to rent a room in his suite of offices.

That is when I bought my first desk, albeit a used one.  For $50.00, it was a great buy.  It was red mahogany and weighed about 1000 pounds.  It was huge!  This picture doesn’t really show how big it is, but it takes 4 strong guys to move it.

This desk was already about 10 years old when I bought it, and I used it for 11 years.  It has become nicked and chipped here and there and in this latest move, I had to let it go, sadly.  It was just too big and heavy to try to get it up the stairs at the new office.

I also made three sets of shelves to hold law books that I received for free from a law firm that was switching to online research.  My ex-husband cut the wood and I stained them myself:  Red mahogany, to match the desk.

Those are two of the sets.  The third is in the paralegal’s office because all of the shelves wouldn’t fit in the staircase, which is what you are looking at there.

I also found a small chest of drawers, only two drawers tall, that was painted bright orange with black dots all over it.  I still wish I knew who would paint a piece of furniture bright orange and then fleck it with black dots.

I took paint remover and rid that poor set of drawers of that god-awful color and then I stained it with … yes, red mahogany.  (Still needs handles for the bottom drawer.)

Now I had a room with a matching desk, a set of drawers, and shelves, with real law books!

That attorney I rented that room from also gave me two pictures that he said he wasn’t using any more.  The frames were red mahogany.  The pictures were of old sailboats, natch.  Funny thing is that I wasn’t interested in sailing at that time.  But because that attorney gave me those two old sailboat pictures, that became the theme of my office, and now I actually own a sailboat.

While I was renting that room, I was retained by a client who saw those two sailboat pictures who exclaimed, upon seeing them, “I have a piece of art that would fit perfectly in here!”

It turns out that the art of which she was speaking was a picture of an old sea captain, and the frame matched the red mahogany frames that surrounded the sailboats.  A few people have been spooked by that picture.  I don’t know why.  The people who were spooked said that the captain looks evil.  In fact, my paralegal asked me to take it out of her office and trade it with a picture that I had hanging in my office.

My (then) husband, as a surprise, took one of my certificates to be framed.  I think it was the certificate stating when I was sworn in as an attorney.  He had it framed in red mahogany.

I rented that office for about a year and a half before I realized that the attorney from whom I was renting it was doing things that were unethical, and I moved out.

And this is the point in time when I went through my divorce, which I have threatened to write about, but have not done yet.  So let’s skip ahead to what happened next.

When the Captain came into my life about 7 months after the divorce started, I still had all the (cheap yet tasteful) stuff I had acquired up to that point.  Desk, drawers, shelves, and a framed certificate that stated that I was a lawyer.  Not bad if you are only renting one room somewhere.

When the Captain started helping me to run the office, we became busier than I had been when I was a single person running the office, and we moved my office to a suite where we had two rooms, a receptionist area, and a client waiting area.  We were sub-leasing from a lady who was a counselor and who only used her one room in that set of offices one night a week.

This necessitated buying a desk for the Captain, but we weren’t rolling in dough.  We bought a matching desk, small table, and a set of drawers, all in matching red mahogany, but they were laminated.  I hate admitting that, but it was all we could afford at the time.  But at least everything matched.

We grew out of that office by the end of the two-year lease and we moved into a building that we didn’t have to share with anyone.  For the very first time, I was leasing my very own set of rooms and didn’t have to share with anyone.

We ran the office at that location for the last three years.  We were really excited to move in when the lease was first initiated.  I even drew a picture of it and posted it in a previous blog.  I said to the Captain at that time, “It’s funny how excited we are now, but I predict that in 3 years, we will be happy to move out.”

And it was true.  Even though our lease wasn’t up until this coming June, I called the landlord and asked if they had another building that we could lease because the one we were in was falling apart.  They had a building they had just remodeled located three doors down.

Over the last 3 or 4 weeks, the Captain and I have been moving the office.  We moved into the top floor of a two-story building that used to be a “mansion” or maybe apartments in the old days.  These buildings were homes that have since been converted into offices.

That is my son in the foreground.  No one is leasing the bottom floor yet.

The nice part about moving was that we didn’t have to rush.  We moved over 3 or 4 weeks.  It took so long because we were working in the meantime.

It is interesting the things I have accumulated over the years, and how the office furnishings have transitioned.  I still have the shelves and pictures and set of drawers that are pictured above, but I have also added the following:

Because I got rid of my old desk, I now have the Captain’s desk that we bought a couple of years ago.  We then gave his old desk (the laminated one) to the paralegal.  He’s now using a desk that my daughter didn’t have room for that was able to be squeezed through his door.  (Yes, it’s red mahogany.)

There are two new plaques (well, not really “new”, I think I had those framed when we moved into the first “new” office) on the wall behind my desk, as well as a table against the wall.  I still have two or three certificates to get framed, but I never remember to take them in.

I bought the curio (I think that’s what it’s called) that is in the corner and the side table at an antique shop in Riverside.  You can see the small set of drawers that I re-finished back when I first started, hanging below the pictures that I also received when I first started.

That small dresser with the blue sailboat on it is actually a replica of a captain’s desk for a ship.  It has all kinds of neat compartments and drawers.  That white love seat also doubles as a cat scratching post.  (Damned cat.)

That magazine table was also purchased in Riverside at an antique store.  There is a story behind that, too.  Because I hate going to Riverside, as a “treat” I would always stop at this antique mall near the court after I was finished with my appearance.  It made the trip worthwhile.

Yes, that’s a puppy in the picture.  Her name is Friday and she is 4 1/2 months old.  She is the office mascot.

That conference table became a necessity when we failed to schedule the court reporter at the correct location recently and so I had to change the location to my office at the last moment.  We were still moving in but we cleaned up my office, bought a small table, and voila!  This is why you see a lot of stuff laying around.  We’re still going through piles of papers, organizing, and hanging drapes.

The Captain is taking a nap on the couch that is located behind the conference table.  He might be annoyed that this picture ended up on the internet.

There are two other rooms, one for the paralegal and one for the Captain.  I won’t bore you with any more pictures.  The point is, I started with a long table with a table cloth thrown over it and over the years I have worked my way up to respectability.

As we moved in, I thought of getting rid of the shelves and buying some shelves that don’t look so “home-made.”  But the Captain said to keep them, because of the memories.  I’m glad I took his advice.

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