Just Another

Manic Suckass Monday.

When I write about my job I wonder who reads it, but frankly, I don't care much. Do I worry about getting dooced? Eh, not really. It would be no great loss, but it would also give me grounds to, uh, question their decision via a kickass employment lawyer I know. Bring it on, bean counters.

But honestly, my gripes about my job are not with my boss, who is a really good guy, or his boss, who is also a really good guy, or even his, who I barely know but assume he's okay because he hasn't gotten rid of the other two down the ladder, even though they take the whole corporate thang with a healthy grain of salt. So we are all cool.

My problem is basic, it's functional, it's I can't get any damn useful help to do the non-billable, secretarial tasks so I can spend more time billing time.

Exemplar #1. We asked a sec'y in another office to notice a couple of depos for us - it's an area of practice with which we are not familiar, and her boss is taking the depos. Seems reasonable to ask her to do the freaking notices, right? Six emails and two calls later, the notices went out. (Those of you who know the great complexity of a depo notice are already rolling your eyes.) One of them was wrong. We got a snip-o-gram from the P's lawyer today asking us to please get it right. So, yeah, I did the amended notice and launched it. It simply was not worth asking the sec'y to re-do it, I am still recovering from asking her to do it in the first place.

Exemplar #2. We passed off one of our South FL construction claims to one of our heroes on the mothership, a great lawyer and all-around hilarious guy who wanted it and is handling it with panache. He is not the issue. The issue is that his sec'y keeps earnestly sending the filing to me. As if I have the file in our office. I'm sorry, but how can she be working on this matter and not know she has the fucking file? The last straw today - I received a wad of filing for the file which is in her boss's possession, and, buried deep within it, was my note to her, in my own handwriting, sending back the last wad of filing. It says: "(Your boss) has the file." I sent it to her in, probably, early April. I kid you not. I'm sorry, but I'm getting spazzed when my own filing is backlogged to the point I consider obscene, and this girl doesn't even know she HAS this file? I don't know whether to laugh, cry or drink heavily, so I'll do all three.

I contrast this with the Six Weeks of Glory last year, when we had the Fabulous D and all three of us were running full throttle, scheduling and reviewing documents and meeting with experts, and cases were being moved forward at an astonishing clip, and life was so very good. Then "they" (those who have never touched a construction case) decided I didn't need filing help anymore, and took her away.

See, the thing is, we know how we could do the job, and we can't do it. I'm happy playing MacGuyver and inventing my own fixes, I'm fine with making do with less, we are the most low-maintenance people I know, but it just ain't working and I'm sick of the lack of backup. One more email about the status of my billable hours and I'm going to go postal.

Thank you, I feel better after venting.

I also feel better getting back in touch with my Inner Crocheter. And I was thinking about it last night, and figured out why. I learned to crochet about the same time my little eyes focused. I cannot remember learning to crochet. I think Gram and the Aunties may have put a hook in my hand during potty training. And I was free to play. I could do anything with a hook and yarn, creating colorful knots was fine if I was happy with it. Loop this into that, throw a treble crochet here and there, make a big yarn anemone. Now it's an art form called freeform crochet. I called it playing with yarn when I was 4.

Contrast that with knitting. I learned to knit at maybe 6, or 8, I can't pin it down. But by then I was old enough to have developed that neurotic insecurity: "Am I doing it right? Is what I'm doing Good Enough?" So knitting has always been more structured, less "I can just make this shit up as I go along." By the time I learned to knit, I knew about doing it right and doing it "wrong" and that took a chunk out of my creative instincts.

So picking up a hook and screwing around with yarn is more relaxing and freeing to me than knitting right now. I'm loving the whatthefuckism of the craft for me - when I crochet, I'm 5 years old, playing with colors. I'm whipping up a big round basket-bag to be felted, using wild colors of Cascade 220, and I may decorate it with some felted flowers. I may give it away, but I'm having a ball making it because the hook and the yarn and I are just running wild.

In the real world, I'm working on a new roof (but miraculously, the old one isn't leaking yet) and I'm about to cash in the last two grand of my husband's life insurance and piss it away on, uh, bills. That's a major thing too, because when the life insurance is gone, the last support system of my entire married life is gone, and I'm on my own. On my own earning money, paying bills, getting a new roof, finding a new job, working out, going out, it's like graduating from college at 47. It's a strange, strange thing, but I know I can do it. I will crochet something wild to get me through it.