You Are the Best Thing

I had a weird conversation at work this week that left me feeling discombobulated and weird. Basically someone gave me a whole bunch of "advice" that was actually kind of upsetting... blah. It's been bugging me. I'm sure everything will work out, but I'm really feeling the need for a strong mentor - someone I could confide in and who could give me advice on the direction I want to go in. Anyway - need to start searching for that. I think I have some good potential advocates but it's a question of taking it to the next level. Other than that, work goes well.

In other news, I am single-mumming it this week, which is kind of fun, but means I'm constantly running late. I think the secret is to be terribly organised, and I'm really not. It's funny - at work Is seem to manage quite well, with my tasks lists and bring forward dates and so on. But at home I am all over the map.

I was lonely last night and brought LM into bed with me at 11. He slept through the entire transition and also slept through the night. Ah - heaven. He did wake at 5 for a quick feed, but he's been doing that anyway and because he was so close to me, he dozed back off to sleep very quickly. I tried for ages to eliminate that 5 a.m. feed, but it kept coming back but so I'm just going with it... actually on the weekend it's rather nice because he sleeps in afterwards. He really is the best thing ever.

I Felt So Symbolic Yesterday

Thanks for the comments about my aunt. I will write more about this at some point... but can't right (write?) now.

On other topics: Friday nights at my firm is drinks night in the lobby. Usually around 4:30 an e-mail goes around asking if people want to meet for some booze. There seems to be a permanent wine and beer stock somewhere. Everyone sits around, drinks a few, debriefs on work and gossips.

Strangely enough, there was a similar tradition when I worked for the government. On people's birthdays we'd have a "wine and cheese" in one of the dark, 70s boardrooms and everyone would chat about work and drink. I don't remember who funded the wine - definitely not the taxpayers but I don't recall paying for it myself either. Probably we donated $2 each and someone went out and bought some bottle (box?) of plonk. I remember some people being shocked that we "did" that on government premises, and now it seems sort of shocking to me too. It was only a couple of years ago, but I wonder if they still do that or if they have cracked down on such excesses.

Anyway, the boardroom is spiffier, the wine fancier, but the tradition is pretty much the same.

D was asking if our admin staff is invited to drinks. The answer is no, except maybe the very senior ones, like the HR people. Definitely not assistants. There's a pretty major segregation between administrative staff and lawyers. I think most lawyers at my firm would utterly deny this, but I definitely notice it. Before I summered, someone told me that at one major firm there was a separate lunch room for assistants. That idea horrified me at the time. But I wonder now if it's standard. At my firm (which is probably pretty progressive as big firms go) there is no official separate lunch room. But even though it's not official, the lawyers never eat lunch in there. They come in there often to get coffee/tea and snacks, but not to sit down and eat.

There was even talk of a separate Christmas party, because as someone put it, it's "awkward" to have to stand around and talk to "everyone" (i.e. the support staff). And of course, the support staff would never be invited to the annual retreat. I floated the idea of offering healthier snacks awhile ago and it was shot down because the admin people would eat it... (um, so?)

As a feminist, it's a very weird world to be in. You have a predominantly female support staff and predominantly male partners (although our firm has a large number of female partners - higher proportionally than most). The associates are probably about 50/50, though there are slightly more women. And there's this really weird divide; comments about the competence, the loudness, the clothing of support staff is okay. I'm reading this and I'm realising that it sounds really bad, but it's not. It's really innocuous - so much so that it took me months of working there to think about it. But if you were talking about a lawyer, you'd never roll your eyes when they messed up or wonder aloud if they were capable . But it does seem fair game to notice those sorts of things and comment on them in the people at lower levels.

I've been watching Mad Men lately, and one of the major themes is the real divide between men and women. The males make politically incorrect, slightly amusing comments that have, at their core, a real contempt for women. When I first watched the show, I thought thank god we don't have to deal with that anymore. But you know, it's kind of still there. It's just that the divide is more rooted in class than gender and it's just not obvious. But there's this undercurrent behind the separate parties, separate lunch breaks and so on that's actually rather disturbing.

This is a sharp contrast to where D works (not a law firm). His work place is much more technologically focussed and people don't have secretaries because they just do the work themselves. The partners are much younger. It's still mostly men in the higher-paying positions. But the (female) administrative staff are included in everything - work parties, retreats, training (even if the training is not aimed at the work they do - it exposes them to what the firm does) and so on.

Anyway, this was supposed to be a fun entry about boozing it up at drinks night but somehow it turned into something else... this is what LM thinks of classism:

Morbid Game

D and I were just playing the "what would you do if you only had six weeks to live?" game. And we're not talking the six weeks of health, where you can flit off on the trip of a lifetime to Zanzibar, but where you are dying and sick.

His suggestions were:

1. Snuggle LM
2. Fly family out to spend time with him
3. Spend time outside as much as possible
4. Eat good food and great wine
5. Work as much as possible and do more powerpoint presentations (errr... not)

Mine were:

1. Snuggle LM, and keep him up really late, and let him fall asleep in my arms always
2. Go to yoga or meditation as I could
3. Get massages, pedicures and manicures and spa treatments
4. Get my hair done so I look great
5. Spend time in the country or go stay there

I can think of dozens more things, and many that would be higher on the list than those five or six, but that's not the point of the exercise. It was more about the first things that popped into our heads.

The sad thing is, I don't think you really get that chance. You never know you have a perfect six weeks. You're told six months, and it's only a month, or you're told a month and it's a year. Or you're not really told anything at all except that things aren't looking real good. You're in denial, you're angry, you're frightened, you hope against all hope it doesn't happen. I don't think many people just sit back and ponder about the meaning of life and make amends to all their old friends and leave hundreds of letters with advice to their children. There was a woman on Oprah who did that, but I suspect she is in a very teensy minority of people who keep their head about them. I think most people are desperate and scared.

Despite the horrid prognosis faced by my aunt, she had resolved that she would "beat" this thing... but the bad news keeps piling up. Today it was about more cancer... all over the body. I'm not supposed to know that yet. Probably the braver thing would be to admit that I do know and call her and try to think of the right thing to say, but I'm afraid to. So I'm taking the easy way out and keeping up the I don't know charade for another day until I can absorb this. Don't judge me...

Mmmm.... strawberries

Delicious is:
-a fun date night out at a gallery where there are free chocolate-covered strawberries
-a great meal and free-flowing wine
-when your baby wakes at 5:30 but falls back asleep next to you in bed, all snuggly like, allowing you to nurse your hangover until 8

The corporate/litigation dilemma continues; after sharing my "being yelled at" story with some of the associates, I found that corporate people get yelled at too; in fact, one of them was yelled at that very day. So I guess the occasional yelling match is just an occasional part of being a lawyer.

A friend of mine has asked if I can incorporate his business and review some contracts. This has me thinking that long-term, I would love to do this kind of stuff for small businesses. I love the idea of branching out on my own some day and offering these sorts of basic services for small businesses, female entrepreneurs etc. I could probably work part-time from a home office doing this kind of stuff and it would be quite lucrative. So that's another notch in favour of corporate.

I'm also working on a constitutional case at work - very exciting and big. Lots of going out, meeting and interviewing people, tonnes of research, the kind of case that could go all the way and will have a major impact on the way that the law is shaped and developed. Will be really fascinating - so that's another notch in favour of litigation.