lawmummy

Happy Halloween!

Despite the bad press it’s getting abroad, I just love Halloween… It is one of my favorite days of the year. And now, with kids, it’s even better.

Yeah, it’s a little more stressful now, too. I was, in fact, up until 1:00 a.m. sewing layers of green tulle together for Katie’s fairy costume (yes, I know you can buy them in the store, I was doing the crazy homemade thing). I am very pleased with the end result, it’s very cute and Katie is now satisfied that she’ll actually look like a fairy - yesterday, when only the underskirt was done, she kept saying, “That’s not a fairy costume. It’s not green!”

But, as of about 2:00 p.m. this afternoon, I can actually report that her costume is finished and I managed to buy some Halloween candy (and go to the office, take that, Martha Stewart!).

All of this Halloween activity reminded me of how cool Halloweens were when we were young. My mom was one of those cool moms who would make whatever costume you wanted. I think her creativity rubbed off on me (though not her sewing skills).

So, today’s top ten are my favorite costumes of Halloweens past. Enjoy!

1. Okay, these are usually in no particular order, but #1 is actually my favorite costume of all time. In high school, I dressed up as a Hershey’s Kiss. I looked awesome. First of all, it was the 80s so my friend Sherry actually had silver lame shoes. Secondly, I’m Southern and did, in fact, own a real hoop skirt. Add in about a million yards of aluminum foil, some silver face paint, a pointy cap with banner paper coming out of the top that said “Hershey - Hershey - Hershey” and you get the picture. The only low point of the night was when I lost out in the finals of the Halloween costume contest to a Christmas Tree who could actually plug herself in and light up (gimmicky! she should have been disqualified!).

2. We have a fabulous picture at the house of my earliest witch costume. I love it because I insisted on wearing lipstick and giant beads. I think I was four. A glamour witch, it was awesome.

3. I was way too into the whole idea of kings and queens and such growing up. But real ones, not fake ones. I actually memorized the Kings and Queens of England in order going back hundreds of years. Yeah, a little geeky. But I loved the whole notion of royalty and knights, you get the whole idea. So it should come as no surprise to anyone that I recycled a flower girl dress into a damsel in distress costume, complete with flowing scarves.

4. Speaking of scarves, my mom had a bunch of them. I mean, a bunch bunch. She had cancer when I was younger and had to have an operation that left her with a big scar on her neck. She was very self-conscious about this and used to try and hide the scar with scarves and chokers. So she had more scarves than you can imagine. And they were mostly made of cool fabrics like organza - perfect for a wild gypsy! So, I was a wild gypsy one Halloween, head to toe in scarves.

5. Growing up on the coast of NC, I also had an inordinate fascination with pirates. One year, I dressed as a girl pirate, complete with cool jewelry and a parrot. I was the fiercest of the bunch!

6. To this day, I don’t know what possessed my mother to dress me as a pilgrim one year. But it did make a darn cute photo.

7. Yeah, yeah, you already know about my crazy obsession with Madonna. When you consider that I was 12 when she launched her big “Like a Virgin” album (albums are round things, bigger than CDs, that we old folks used to play on something called a record player), I dressed up like Madonna for Halloween. But, I was “Borderline”/”Holiday” Madonna, not “Like a Virgin” Madonna. My mother never would have allowed it.

8. I was a pageant girl. Yeah, I’m not ashamed of it. I placed second in the Little Miss Pender County pageant, thank you very much. My talent was singing “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” while dressed as Mary Poppins. You can imagine that it was easy to transition that to Halloween costume…

9. I did the pajamas thing a lot (mostly when older) so I must have liked it. I will say that I still think of it as a costume and not a wardrobe choice, no matter what girls are wearing these days.

10. My last of the top ten is actually more about the moment than the actual costume. I was a little, um, determined as a child. I got my way when I made up my mind. And when my older brother (whom I idolized) went to school, I decided I was going, too. To the same school. Yes, I was the little sister, who, pre-Columbine and gang violence, was allowed to tag along at school with her brother so long as I was quiet and well-behaved. And if you look at my brother’s first grade photo from Halloween, I’m the cute little devil in red on the front row…

That’s how long I will be married as of October 28. Yep, five whole years.

Actually, Chris and I have been together for ten years. But that’s a sordid story involving mixed drinks, the Kiss song “Beth”, Chris entering the ladies’ room at a local bar and my mom receiving a frantic phone call from me at 2am (Note to all of you doe-eyed newbies to the serious dating scene - never, even in a moment of weakness, ever disparage your date in any way to your mother. Someday, when your date is actually your husband, your mother will give him the evil eye from across the room because she’ll remember no matter what you say after that…)

As I have waxed on about before, I am crazy in love with my husband. No, he’s not perfect. He has an unhealthy relationship with ice hockey and the Philadelphia Flyers. He used to think Catherine Zeta Jones was attractive (almost unforgiveable in my book). He refuses to clip his toenails. He doesn’t like condiments of any sort except for hot mustard (yes, that means no ketchup - I don’t get it). He is not an Elvis fan. He is addicted to his Blackberry in a disturbing narcotic-y kind of way. He refuses, absolutely refuses, ever to change the toilet paper roll when it’s empty - or the paper towel roll. He insists on reloading the dishwasher and the grocery cart (yeah, I’m not kidding) because he thinks I’m too sloppy. It takes him 15 minutes to take a picture. He does not know the difference between a dinosaur and a dragon (made all the more sad because his alma mater is the Drexel Dragons).

And yet, I’m still mad for him.

Many of my friends think he’s not a romantic at all. Two friends in particular constantly nag him because they don’t think he spends enough time and attention on me at holidays and stuff. He is awful at dates and birthdays in years past have not been stellar.

But he’s one of those guys who isn’t obvious about things. He’s thoughtful and romantic and thoughtful in his own way.

Every year since the girls have been born, he has made me a bound photo album with captions; I have three now and they are my most favorite things that I own. He once danced ballet and sang “Don’t Cry For Me Argentina” because he remembered that was what my college roommate, Brenda, used to do to make me laugh. He bought me lots of stripey socks because I like them (c’mon - who buys socks for their wife on purpose?). He has been to not one, but two country music concerts, because I wanted to go. He’s watched pig races at the NC State Fair. He learned “Brown Eyed Girl” on the guitar to play at our wedding with his college band. He sat in my great-grandmother’s house in SC when it was a zillion degrees outside and the heat was on inside, and answered “Yes ma’am” and “No ma’am” to her even though he didn’t understand a word she said. He’s wandered through some not so great neighborhoods in New York City and Philadelphia in search of soul food. He watched almost four hours of Gone With the Wind on video because it was my favorite movie - and didn’t freak out when he found out that I accidentally forgot to tape the last five minutes (it was on TBS, it’s very confusing).

And he puts up with my family, for Pete’s sake. To paraphrase Dylan McDermott’s character in Steel Magnolias, “That alone is worth getting married for.”

Sigh. He’s a good guy, that husband of mine. Every now and again, I wonder what would have happened if we hadn’t met. And for the life of me, I can’t even imagine not having met and married him… I probably wouldn’t have stayed in Philly. I wouldn’t have gotten a dog and would likely still be scared of dogs. I doubt I would have visited Germany or San Juan or Castine, Maine - some of my favorite places. And I wouldn’t have the two most adorable girls in the world.

My whole world would be different. And not in a good way.

Some day, I’ll spill the whole story of our meeting, not dating, dating, not getting married and getting married. It’s fairly entertaining (hey, I won ten cases of Perrier for telling the story once before). I will just say, in the event that you’re unattached and reading, that it’s a story about keeping an open-mind - I met Chris in law school and thought he was so not my type. Only he really was.

My mom now thinks Chris is a saint. He is a pretty darn good guy (hardly saintly - I don’t think that saints pat themselves on the back because they can pick socks up with their toes). And I am lucky to have made it 1,825 days being married to him. With any luck, we’ll make it 18,250 more…

So, happy anniversary to me!

Yeah, I’ve been having a pretty awful few weeks… And then I ran across this little gem on Conglomerate.

It seems that Jenkens Gilchrist, a large law firm with locations in eight cities including Austin, Texas, made a (insert guffaw here) pretty miserable recruiting video, which has since become the laughingstock of lawyers everywhere. And c’mon, if you check it out, you’ll understand what I mean… Sneakers? The theme from Rocky? Cheesy graphics? I guess they’re trying to appear relevant. They appear dated and goofy.

What has really fired folks up is the representations of lawyers on the video. There is, count ‘em, one black attorney and one female attorney clearly visible on the video. The rest of the females - the cheering section - are staff. This, on a recruitment video?

In fairness to Jenkens, they posted these “stellar” stats on their web site:

Diversity Information
- *Female partners: 14.8% in 2004, up from 13.6% in 2003 (+8.8%)
- *Female associates: 43.7% in 2004, up from 33.9% in 2003 (+28.9%)
- *Total minority lawyers: 8.3% in 2004, up from 6.2% in 2003 (+33.9%)
- *Minority partners: 4.6% in 2004, up from 4.1% in 2003 (+12.2%)
- *Minority associates: 13.8% in 2004, up from 9.6% in 2003 (43.8%)
*According to Texas Lawyer

I mean, c’mon, can you blame them for not including more minorities in the video? Less than 5% of partners are minority. Less than 15% of partners are female.

Apparently, they managed to win the title of (and I am not making this up) one of the “Best places to work in Central Texas”. Boy, I’m glad I’m in Pennsylvania!

By the way, we took an informal poll at the office today and we’ve voted our theme song in the morning to be “Let’s Get It Started!” We’ll see what we can do about setting that to film for you guys…

This week, I wrote letters to Senators Spectrum and Santorum, asking them both not to support the nomination of Harriet Miers to the U.S. Supreme Court. If you’ve been reading, you know that I’m a big fan of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. I was prepared to be excited about the nomination of what I hoped was another qualified female candidate for the Supreme Court. I was, to say the least, extremely disappointed in the Miers nomination. She is distressingly unqualified. And that’s a shame. I suspect she will not be confirmed, and the President will follow with a more traditional nominee, a la John Roberts.

As the mother of two girls, it is important to me that my girls see women in all sorts of roles – and that it appear normal. I don’t want the nomination of a female to the U.S. Supreme Court to be any more of an “event” than women playing professional sports.

On that note, today’s top ten is Cool Chicks Monday, or ten women that I admire for various reasons. As always, in no particular order…

1. Mia Hamm. As a fellow North Carolinian, I remember hearing about her playing soccer at UNC. It was incredibly cool to watch her lead the US Women’s Team to the World Championship. She’s beautiful and she can kick a mean soccer ball. She single-handedly (in my opinion) made sports for girls cool.
2. Coco Chanel. She meant more than the little black dress. She made fashion a household name.
3. Margaret Sanger. She fought not only to make birth control legal but to educate young women about their bodies. The debt that women all over the world owe her is enormous.
4. Madonna. I’ve already blogged about Madonna. Suffice it to say, I think she inspired generations.
5. Harriet Tubman. As a kid, I only knew of her from the Underground Railroad. It was later in my life that I also learned of her struggle for the rights of women and African-Americans, even after the war. She lived her whole life in service.
6. Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. The first Justice on the U.S. Supreme Court.
7. Rachel Carson. She was a brilliant scientist (did you know she graduated magna cum laude?) and literally kickstarted the environmental movement in the US.
8. Katherine Hepburn. Yes, she won a ton of Oscars. But I really admire her for the types of roles she tackled, not just how well she acted. She was unconventional – in life and in her work.
9. Eleanor Roosevelt. She wasn’t just a First Lady. She gave a voice to women everywhere. She worked towards ending child labor, establishing the minimum wage and championing workers’ rights.
10. Eudora Welty. I was in college when I read “Why I Live at the P.O.” It profoundly affected me – weird because, in and of itself, it’s not remarkable except that it spoke to a small town Southern girl. And that’s remarkable. I didn’t have much that spoke to me then. I quickly learned to love the “First Lady of Southern Literature.”

Yeah, little flashback to high school and Guns ‘n’ Roses. I was a metalhead. As much a metalhead as a proper Southern Baptist girl from the rural south could be.

At any rate, I am still struggling with trying to potty train Katie. Today, she was screaming through Ikea “I want to get on the potty train! Where is it?” She’s not quite getting it.

On yesterday, she was sitting on the potty, nothing happening, nothing happening (although we did have not one, but two successful potty runs on yesterday, so I’m counting my blessings).

And I was growing tired of waiting. And waiting. And waiting.

And Katie kept saying, “It’s coming!” And, of course, it never did.

Finally I told her that she had one more minute and then we were going to leave the potty. To which she held out her hand like a crossing guard making a “stop” signal (or a Supreme!) and said, very seriously, “Mommy.” And then she made a little fist, with just a bit of space between her forefinger and her thumb and said, very wisely, “A little patience.”

She’s right.

I need to get some of that.

I spent two hours today trying to put a filing cabinet together. Lessons learned?

1. Don’t buy cheap office furniture. It’s never worth it.

2. I am so not cut out to be an engineer.

In my defense, I was attempting to put this together with the company’s horrid directions - only some of the pieces were actually labeled by part which was terribly confusing. The directions were lame. And the number of things (like the number of screws and nails) in the package didn’t correspond to the list that was in the directions.

And, on top of that, my daughters were “helping.” I pulled two screws out of Amy’s mouth - and Katie insisted on using the hammer. She lost interest fairly quickly, thank god.

But ultimately, I stink at putting things together.

And the proof is in the pudding:

You’ll note that the rough edges face out. The drawer looks like it fits, but it doesn’t. It sits too high, which is why drawer #2 is beside the cabinet instead of in it. And the tracks don’t work (in my defense, they’re plastic, for Pete’s sake! How cheap is that?). So, the filing cabinet now sits next to my desk - taking up even more space.

Chris says we’ll throw it out later. I don’t mind so much because it’s not usable. But… two hours? Oh, the humanity!

Trying so hard to get motivated this afternoon… What better to do than take a pointless quiz? Thanks to APL for this one.

You are Woodstock!

I saw “Ever After” on TV tonight for the first time ever. It’s quite a nice film. Drew Barrymore did a lovely twist on the classic Cinderella story, making the heroine more of a strong character than a victim. It’s still, however, a fairy tale.

Katie is just now getting into the idea of princesses. Whenever she puts a dress on, she twirls and yells, “Look Mommy, I’m a princess!” To which I often reply, “Yes, sweetie, you are. You’re always a princess.” She even wanted to be a princess for Halloween. A quick trip to the fabric store changed that to a fairy. I couldn’t handle the complete princess bit.

I don’t know why her fascination with princesses bothers me quite so much. I believed in princesses when I was younger. I named all of my dolls proper “royalty” names like Victoria and Elizabeth. I remember getting up at the crack of dawn to watch Princess Diana’s wedding - I adored the pomp and circumstances and the Cinderella feeling that a commoner could marry a prince. Okay, sure, she wasn’t really a commoner, but you get my point…

I keep telling myself that it’s because I don’t like the stereotypical Disney princess version of fairy tales… You know, the ones with no mothers, and helpless young women who rely solely on their beauty and their goodness for both survival and accomplishment.

But after tonight, watching the movie, I don’t know if that’s really what’s bugging me.

Maybe it’s just that I don’t want her to grow up with unrealistic expectations.

But that’s terribly sad, isn’t it?

What expectations are so unrealistic? Happily ever after?

How do we become so jaded as adults? And when did it happen?

I was always a dreamer growing up. I dared to dream things that my friends thought were crazy - like going to Europe, graduating from college, becoming a lawyer. And those things came true. And yeah, I also dreamed about marrying a wealthy prince and ruling the world - I’m a little off the mark on those. I suspect marrying a self-employed lawyer and being Vice President of my local development corporation weren’t exactly what I had in mind at the time. But they’ve worked out okay for me…

But, now only in my 30s, I’ve let my dreams take a back seat, sometimes for legitimate reasons but mostly because getting older and supposedly wiser means giving up on those dreams. At least that’s what convention tells me.

And I wonder if that’s what happens to people. Maybe that’s what happened to my mom. She’s scared to do new things anymore, travel to new places. She used to be practically fearless - she once led two tour buses of teenage girls from southeastern North Carolina to Fort Worth, Texas, planning the whole thing herself. I thought Mom could do anything. Now she is content to sit in her house and read old cowboy books. It’s not the Mom I know. I have a whole host of speculations as to why and how it happened. And it scares me a lot. Because I think she kind of fell into this complacency. I think it’s what happens to us when we stop believing in dreams and fairy tales.

I’ve been tired a lot lately. And more than a little melancholy. I’m terribly worried that my life is passing me by - and I am scrambling on the sidelines, just trying to get things in order from one minute to the next. I fear I’ve given up on my dreams. I used to make wine in my apartment (yes, it’s true) and dreamed of owning a winery… I wrote and dreamed of getting my book published… I dreamed of hiking the Appalachian Trail… and seeing the Macchu Pichu. I had a whole list (maybe I can dig it up for the blog tomorrow) of things I wanted to do. And somewhere along the line, I stopped dreaming of those things and spent far too much time and energy fighting the wrong battles and allowing mundane experiences to wear me down. I don’t know if I can ever get that spirit back again.

And it’s not my imagination. Chris sent me an email last week about our busy schedules that said, among other things, “I’m concerned that life is knocking the spirit out of you, which would be a very sad thing.” I agree.

So maybe that’s my beef with fairy tales. Maybe I’ve gotten to the point where I don’t believe in dreams and happily ever after - and I don’t want anyone else to, either. And that’s not fair.

I think I want my girls to believe in lots of things - themselves, other people, and yes, their dreams. Right now, Katie so wants to be a princess because she thinks that princesses are beautiful and happy. And what’s wrong with that, really? Why is it a terrible thing to make wishes and have dreams? What’s wrong with wanting to believe in fairy tales? When and if I figure these things out, I’ll let you know.

Yep, I am researching schools and considering testing. I am requesting applications for admissions. I am RSVP-ing for Open Houses. For college? Nope. Pre-K. And I am so not making this up.

I had a conversation with a friend today that gave me pause about sending my oldest daughter to Kindergarten at our local public school. Chris and I had been discussing our options anyway, and this was one of those moments that made me think we should really discuss our options.

Ideally, I’d like to put Katie where we will keep her. No separate daycare, different pre-k and kindergarten. I like the idea of some consistency, especially for Katie. Despite how it may appear, Katie likes some structure and we try to give her some. There is no greater example of how a lack of routine makes her nutty than the past two weeks with Chris gone. She was impossible.

So, we’re looking hard and fast at Pre-K. You have to have applications in by January for most schools in order to enter in the fall, when she’ll be (gulp) four years old.

I’ve requested brochures from the schools that interest me the most. I am especially into the girls only schools, since I am a graduate of a woman’s college. I believe in education for women; it works (ask Sandra Day O’Connor or Hillary Rodham Clinton - or you can just take my word for it).

Other than girls only schools, we are considering some of the Quaker schools. I like their philosophy.

Boy, this stuff comes at you really fast. Nobody ever really prepared me for this. I had heard the chatter about preschools, and dismissed them as crazy parents (and I stand by that). But, it’s clear that the schools that serve through the 12th grade want your child to enter in Pre-K. It’s really overwhelming.

Wish me luck… We’ll be going through applications in the next few weeks. Open Houses start in November. Do they make a Kaplan course for Pre-K testing?

Powerball is way over $300 million now. At this point, I think it’s time to buy a ticket. And if I win? (Picture me rubbing my hands together gleefully). Today’s top ten is a list of the ways I would spend my Powerball winnings…

1. Pay off student loans. I would run to the bank to do this. They are a serious pain in my ass. And it’s a LOT of money. It’s more than my house - and I don’t even get the benefit of a real tax deduction for them.

2. Buy a winery, perhaps this one.

3. Go on a vacation. A LONGGGGGGGG vacation.

4. Buy a house for my parents. They’re beyond stressed about getting older and living in a hurricane zone. I’d get them a mountain home with lots of amenities near a real town, like Asheville, NC.

5. Create a huge school/college fund for my girls. This should be self evident but it’s mostly to avoid forcing them to play Powerball to pay off their loans…

6. Restore the Fiat. Completely. It’s my husband’s toy car. And boy is it cute. I’d like to see it look like this, just like a guy posted on the web:

7. Install a gourmet kitchen. I love to cook. I want a real gourmet kitchen, not just one of those faux yuppy ones.

8. Buy a flat in Munich. It must have an elevator (strollers with steps are hell, I did it over last Christmas).

9. Build the business. I’d want to grow the business. More business. Less me.

10. A mini. Yes, I want a Mini. Specifically, I want this one: