My job is becoming the kind that wakes me up at 3 a.m. with sudden terrors of looming deadlines and tasks undone. I keep telling myself - actually, Beloved Boss and I keep telling each other - that it's getting better, we're getting control of the chaos, we're making progress, and I know it's true, but...damn, there's a lot of chaos to wrestle. I'll be bringing one enormous and chaotic file home on Thanksgiving weekend, and while Girlchild is sleeping in and after she leaves on Sunday, I will sort it out and figure out what's going on. That's if Beloved Boss and I don't end up working part of the weekend getting ready for a mediation in another case. And the icing on the stress cake is that our office is moving in December, which means I need to figure out how to organize the mess for packing and we need to spend mega-hours in early December sorting, throwing out, and boxing up, so we can find critical documents without losing our minds. BB's office is a mess, if either of us puts something down in there it vanishes into the quicksand of loose papers, depo transcripts, shop drawings and other document productions. Mine's a smidge better only because I make neat piles of all the crap. This has got to improve, we will lose our minds if we don't take the time to organize. We desperately need a really organized secretary, but there's no sign of one on the horizon, so we muddle through as best we can.

Our work is different from the other people in the firm, we all do insurance defense, but they do things like auto accidents and personal injury cases - usually one plaintiff, one defendant, and a "big file" to them is three expandable folders. Maybe a box. We do construction law - often there are ten cross-claims on a screwed-up project, and a single document production can run into multiple huge, heavy boxes, and there is no such thing as a "single document production" on any matter. BB has the gift of summing things up succinctly - which is why he's a terrific trial lawyer - "They do car wrecks. We do train wrecks."

So the theme of bringing order out of chaos runs through my entire life, at work and at home. Tonight is grocery shopping and housework, tomorrow is more housework, including hauling a load of stuff to Goodwill, then Vigil Mass w/my friend, and then probably margaritas, Trading Spaces and for me, knitting. Her job is stressing her out too, and she needs to vent. Sunday, weather permitting and I think it will permit, is another session in the backyard. I'm thinking that if the weather and my schedule and my back all hold out, I may be able to get it sodded by Christmas. I can't wait to look out the back window into an attractive yard again, instead of a neglected jungle.

I'm rapidly becoming a Weekend Knitter. I was already considering buying Stitch 'n Bitch, mostly for the neat "baby wrap" and the dog sweater and bell-sleeved pullover, and looky, Amazon offers a package deal with both. If I were a Cool Knitter I would aspire to be a Knitsnot and pooh-pooh concepts like weekend knitting and yet-another-book-aimed-at-beginners, but you know, this is my kind of knitting. Walk a moon in my moccasins ye knitsnots, you too will be craving the Zen of the Garter Stitch, if you live through it. And now I've just talked myself into ordering those books....