This Blog Is In Sleep Mode

It may be obvious that I do not put much effort into posting on this blog. Actually, it may not be, because I have, like, two followers. And one of them is me at my other blog. (Thanks, Lizzy!) I thought I was up to four or five at one point? I get very few hits. I follow like four other bloggers from this identity and I don't promote this blog at all. And yet, somehow, it has started to hurt my feelings that no one knows about this blog or reads my posts or thinks I'm a fabulous story teller or person generally. I could probably be relevant and funny on a consistent basis if I would be more personal and candid, but I guess I am unwilling to do that.

Due to the Facebook-ification I am experiencing related to this blog, I am going to take a break. Facebookism, as I'm sure you're aware, is the syndrome associated with feelings of inadequacy and jealousy when you read the juicy headlines of your friends' and half-friends' lives. Sure, I do it too. I post status updates that are little snippets of awesomeness that are designed to incite envy. I genuinely try not to do this sometimes, and instead post something that I am pondering or post something funny. Which is what this blog is supposed to be but instead it's like scrolling my news feed and learning that everyone is either on vacation or having another baby or getting backstage passes to the Daily Show (I made that up...are there backstage passes to the Daily Show? Because I would do anything to get backstage passes to the Daily Show.)

So, anyway, ciao for now. I hope to be back, sometime when I can feel not bad for not posting and not bad when I do as well. Good luck in career and family until then (and beyond)!

My Baby Is One!

It's really true that time flies when you have kids. It's like you blink and they are potty trained, going to kindergarten, onto high school, getting their learners' permit, applying to college, going on dates with girls. Or in my case, waking up in the middle of the night like a newborn. We went away for a week and now that we are back J is still readjusting. I am giving him one more night of waking up and nursing back to sleep. Then...NO MAS!

I let him nurse as much as he wanted to last week, and while he nursed often, I don't think he drank very much. The past two days when I've come home from work, though, it's all he wants to do. It's really sweet in a way, but then he still pinches and slaps me so it's not that sweet after all. I can't decide if we are ready to wean or not. I want my cycle (and sex drive--for the love!) back, but I'm not sure I'm ready to let go either! Tonight J was so crabby around 6/6:30 and while I considered just putting him to bed, I really wanted to go outside for a walk because it was cool and nice out. We took him in the Ergo because we still haven't figured out how to rig up the stroller with the new attachment--oh yeah, we got 31.5 inches out of the 32 available inches from the Graco SnugRide--and the adorable little bugger fell asleep. He woke up when I tried to transition him to his crib, and cried for a few minutes but has basically been asleep since 7:00. I didn't change him into a nighttime diaper so maybe I actually do want him to wake up tonight. I think he is still exhausted from traveling and being kept up late last week. But he was a good sport.

Re-entry impact sucked as usual and work is still S L O W, but I think I am back on track to not hate my job for at least a few more months. I didn't pump these past two days and in case you were wondering, I didn't miss it at all! My right boob was a bit full by the end of the day yesterday but I was still able to pack it into a sports bra and go for a run without pain. No complications today and no extreme fullness. Now if J will stop loving me so much when I get home I can maybe spend some more time loving on my husband and have some chance for success in trying to have another kid. :)

Oh yeah, pictures (unedited) of the birthday boy:

I Forgot to Post This Last Week and Now I Don't Have to Write a New Post Right Now

I applied to a job the other day. Actually, night. It was more like midnight, actually. Every time I go on the computer after 9pm I say I will shut it off by 10...becomes 10:30...becomes 11...I started the application online. Then I needed to--oops--update my resume. Then I needed to write a cover letter. Which, thankfully, finally, has become easy. Interest, blah, blah, experience, blah, blah, problem-solving, blah blah, results-oriented, blah blah, asset to [firm or company nickname] team, blah blah. Hardest part is the signature--sincerely? Sounds too old and stuffy. Best regards? Sounds too casual. With warm regards? As opposed to my best stone-cold-bitch regards? Anyway, I went with warm regards. And I haven't heard anything back and it has literally been two days but now I am wondering if I should have done that.

But I am sooooo bored at work right now. There's just not enough work for my group. I will refrain from going on and on about this, because WHO CARES? I am also very worked up right now about being underpaid. Why did I go to law school so I could be bored and underpaid? Seriously, I need an answer to that question. And that's why I am--sort of--looking for a new job. I need to be PAID, or not bored. Both would certainly be nice, but I am also worried about being worked too much. Like anything over, mmm, 45, no make that 42 hours a week. So maybe being bored and underpaid is what I get and deserve with my laziness? I'm not really lazy. But I don't really like to work that hard for other people and I will make no apologies for not wanting to when I feel like most jobs involve meaningless crap that you do with people who think they are way more important than they are.

There is so much more to all of this, obviously, and I am not about to have another quarter-life, ahem third-of-life, crisis about what I want to be when I grow up. But anyway I think I need to really figure out if what I want is more money as a lawyer, or to not be a lawyer. (There is a third option to be a helping lawyer for a good cause, instead of a defense firm lawyer, but that will definitely mean not more money and may not ensure not bored-ness.) So that is the question. Not complicated or important at all.

. . .

In Mama-land, J took his first trip to the beach and he only tried to eat sand once. He played in the waves and stayed on his blanket in the sand and nursed and slept in my arms while I read my book and it was so, so wonderful. Perfect weather too. We went down for the day on Saturday and came back on Sunday night. It was a fun, spontaneous weekend that even included giving Senior road head on the way down. Just kidding. (Only I'm not. Just kidding.) We met up with my aunt and cousin and when I inquired about a vacancy at the motel where they were staying, they invited us to just stay in their room. J hogged the double bed that he and I shared while Senior slept on the couch. When I tried to move J over a few inches sometime shortly before dawn, he woke up and started babbling and crawling around and waking my aunt and cousin so we got up and went for a walk on the beach. Sunday was lovely too and we were so glad we stayed. My family used to go to the same place for years with our cousins so it was nostalgia mixed with the novelty of bringing my own little boy for the first time. Later on Sunday my other auntie arrived with her sister and we got to visit with them a bit and none of this was planned which made it so much more fun. But we wished we had remembered the volleyball and the camera.

In pumping news, I have experienced two blocked ducts since I decided I would cut back on nursing except I have not actually cut back on nursing. I am still pumping once a day in the afternoon and at this point, since J will be 11 months old in two days, I guess I am going for the full year. I feel this sort of sense of accomplishment but also a sort of resignation that I am continuing to breastfeed exclusively with an apprehension that I won't be able to stop at all! Because if everything goes according to plan I will be able to get pregnant immediately upon cessation of that mid-day nursing session. But clearly I have to stop nursing for that to happen. And then my job will pick up and I will get an uber-raise at the end of the year and my wardrobe will become amazing without shopping or trying on new clothes and I will lose the "last five" pounds of "nursing weight" and I will have time for things like sex and yoga. So stay tuned for that!

Three Things I Want to Rant About

Then I will talk about them in more detail later. But for now...the list:

1. Let's stop talking about "leaning in." All of us. Oh wait, only we women are the ones talking about it. Exactly my point.

2. My breasts cannot be playthings and useful things at the same time. Sorry, Senior. Back off.

3. When did "women" become an adjective? Imagine this sentence instead. "The courtroom was clamoring with men lawyers trying to prepare their clients before the session began."

Friday Night Random Post

Is it still World Breastfeeding Week, or whatever? Because I do tend to talk about breastfeeding and my breasts quite a bit, but not this week. Yet.

I'm still breastfeeding. Bebe will be 10 months old next week. I am still pumping at work, but down to one pumping per day, in the afternoon. It is much more tolerable this way, plus J is eating a lot of food and starting to lose interest in daytime feedings anyway. But I have a lot of milk in the freezer, so...naturally...I started thinking...that I want to make cheese out of my breastmilk.

I know that some people might find this to be really gross. But my question is: Why? What could be grosser than drinking milk from a cow? (Drinking milk from a human.)

I have to be honest, though, when J was just born and I tried the milk I thought it was super gross. It had like this soapy taste to me. I thought it smelled weird too. But over time, I don't know if I just got used to it, or if the taste actually changed, or what, but now I think it smells like nothing and pretty much tastes the same way. So maybe it wouldn't make good cheese. But, I have to also confess to sticking my nose in a bottle with milk residue that had been left for a day or two, with the lid on. And it smelled like delicious, pungent cheese. I agree this is a little gross. But you have to agree that it's only gross in our heads, especially if we eat cheese made from the milk of other animals and think it's delicious.

I thought the last kerfuffle over this was over two years ago, but it seems to have cropped up again with the locavore movement. I will still be blogging about my new products, so stayed tuned.

My Big Mouth

After a very long pre-nap, during which J nursed for over 30 minutes, then cried for a few minutes in his crib, babbled to himself for 43 minutes, and cried for six more minutes, J is napping. So I am blogging.

Work, in a nutshell, is a little bit busier so I am not bored for now but we are still operating at only partial capacity. I have a meeting next week with the guys with whom I WILL be starting the gym, so we are moving ahead and it's not close enough to be scary that I will be giving up a stable (?) job so it's really exciting.

Lawyering deserves an update. I was sent to argue against a motion that defense counsel made in a completely separate matter from what I normally do. (I have found another partner to feed me at least a little bit of work food.) Normally I am in workers' compensation court, where the hearing rooms are often found atop grocery stores in strip malls, in breezeways off the backs of doctors' offices, or in other low-slung, ugly, and always unmarked office buildings, usually off of parking lots in need of repaving. There are signs on the bathroom stalls in these facilities that say "Do Not Steal the Toilet Paper." I am not making this up.

But last week I was in "real court," in a real courthouse on a case in the Court of Common Pleas (trial court in PA). I was standing in for the lead attorney/partner on a products liability case he brought on behalf of a plaintiff who suffered very serious injuries in a 40-foot fall from a tree while doing arbor work. Defense counsel wanted to amend his pleading (answer to the complaint--or lawsuit--filed by plaintiff) to include the defense that plaintiff was engaging in "highly reckless" conduct at the time of the fall. He wasn't, and I was there to argue against the motion because the case is almost to decision stage. First off, I didn't even know which side of the courtroom to sit on. The clerk said plaintiff is alwasy on the side of the jury box. Ah ha! Totally makes sense. But in comp court, it can be either side, depending on the judge. I thought I had it figured out that defense sits on the side of the court reporter, claimant on the side of the witness box, and then the next time I went to a hearing before this one judge I sat on the wrong side. So it's not like I'm new to embarrassing moments as a newb attorney.

It was defendant's motion, so he spoke first, and then I would have a chance to respond. From the very beginning, the judge was completely against him. The judge thought the attorney was missing his point, and that they were talking past each other. At one point he pulled out the Rules of Civil Procedure book to ask the attorney to show him where in the book it said what the attorney was saying. Numerous times I just shook my head in agreement and felt VERY BAD for the guy across the aisle. So I know the motion is going to be decided in my favor. I KNOW it. I don't just think it. And given this fact, you would think I also would know better than to open my mouth to say anything. Anything at all. Why would I do that? Well, let me tell you why. Because I am a lawyer. Goddammit. And I'm like, I drove over an hour and paid five dollars to park and I'll be driving another hour back, and we charge all that to the client and all I did was sit there and nod and look serious? I mean, there is a reason certain people become litigators and it is not because they like to sit back and NOT TALK. So I spoke. Against all better reason, I spoke.

"Your Honor? May I just explain...?"
"That's ridiculous. Who told you that?" --"The partner who sent you here? Is he a testifying expert in this matter, ma'am?" --"You shouldn't come here to tell me that." --"That's a reflection on your partner. We've all been in your shoes, ma'am, that's not a reflection on you." (This he says with one hand on the door to leave the courtroom.) Well...shew? I only just threw my partner under the bus?

Let me first say that I LEARNED MY LESSON to STFU. Oh, yes I did. Especially when nothing I say will change the judge's mind and more important because I don't want to change his mind. He was already deciding in my favor. Buuuut, he made some comments that I thought, you know, were not true about (my understanding) of the case, and I thought, you know, for the record, I should say something. And of course the other side was saying some stuff that I wanted to rebut. Again, why? Because I like to talk. That's why. Not a good reason. Not a good reason at all.

What else did I learn? That you can usually at least try to find a positive thing to have come out of a generally bad (well, not really, we won the motion) situation. So I was able to share some insight about the judge's view of the plaintiff's behavior in this case, that it was negligent because...

Also, I told the partner exactly what happens so he is warned when he goes before this judge next and the judge says god knows what about what happened at that oral argument!

...

Now...what else? Apparently Friday night is J's "cheat" night when it comes to his otherwise pretty good sleeping habits. Two Fridays in a row he has been up past 11pm. Last week my parents tried to put him to bed so Senior and I could play some sand volleyball and go out for a drink after. Drink after was canceled when my dad texted to say J was still awake at 10:07 as we were heading to the bar home. Two nights ago he went down so nicely around 7:30 (early!) and I got all my stuff together to go down to a friend's house so we could all get up before daybreak the next day to begin a 90-mile relay race across New Jersey. (I blame this on my big mouth, too. I guess I "committed" to running when I told the organizer that I hadn't been running at all but sure why not? I thought they were going to say they didn't want my slack-ass on their team.) Well, he woke up before I could leave, I pulled him out of his crib to nurse him some more and then he was AWAKE. I just left him for Senior to deal with, and later found out that he finally went down sometime around midnight. WTF? Then Saturday he had a long nap and went to bed normally at 8. We were/are considering the 6:30 bedtime regime for at least a little while, especially given these occasional regular night owl episodes, but I don't know. That seems so early. Sometimes I don't even get home from work until 6:30 (of course, though not that much lately as you can imagine), and how can we eat/bath/go for a walk or do anything together as a family?

So anyway, sleeping adventures continue to be just that, but overall we're a pretty happy and well-rested bunch. Except for the three hours I got the night before the race,* after a few of us sat up drinking and catching up. Senior is so good to me...he took J after I fed him this morning at about 6:30/7 until 8:30. Then he was like "Later!" and took off 6.5 hours early for the Phillies game tonight.

*More race-y for some than others. I ran a 6-mile leg and a 5.5-mile leg. I think the last time I ran 6 miles in a row was...sometime less than two years ago. But the last time I was really in shape was 4 years ago, thanks to two pregnancies^ and the bar exam in 2010, I haven't been running that much in quite some time. I am sore today, but it's not terrible, and I am happy to report that I averaged about a 9:30/9:40 pace on both legs. I was shooting or anything under 10-minute miles).

   ^I have one living child born in October 2012 and a first pregnancy that ended at 25 weeks, 3 days in August 2011. A lot of my thoughts on children and pregnancies are colored by this loss that was by far the most difficult thing I have ever experienced. Because I want THIS blog to be more accessible and light and funny, I have kept this story separate on another blog. If you would like to read it, though, send me an email and I will share the link.

Hi from the Flight Deck

Sleep training update: oops, I was supposed to be sleep training. Taking the baby to Oregon (three hours away) did not help. I picked the baby out of his crib twice tonight, because he did not nurse himself into a passed-out stupor the first, I mean second, time I tried to put him down. At least he is not spending the entire night in our bed, like the night we got home from Oregon.

Breastfeeding/pumping update: I am still pumping once a day at work. My goal was to stop after Oregon, so I was still trying to ramp down production this week. I am fearing the change though, and I'm not sure I will actually stop pumping next week. I also feel like I need some time to get used to not eating whatever I want all the time (i.e. dessert with every meal). Will I have to reel myself in on the sweets-eating once I drop the daytime feeding?

Job update: I successfully settled my first case yesterday. Which means I am now down to one active file. The work is not pouring in yet. Funny thing, though--somehow my secretary is busier than ever with my boss' work. And yet, I have nothing to do. This probably means I am more likely, not less, to get laid off by the end of the year.

Next job update: Had a good meeting (and long lunch) today with my friend about starting a business. We are going to start writing the business plan soon, and are now gathering demographic information and plotting possible locations. We will have a brainstorm by Skype with our third partner currently in Colorado sometime in the next two weeks. I miss Colorado. I lived there for over seven years but now looking at it from the East Coast again, it still seems so cool and sexy.

What else?

I just ordered the "performance" version of the Ergo baby carrier. Nothing makes me happier than going for a walk carrying the baby. And carrying 19 pounds in the Baby Bjorn was making my shoulders, neck and back very, very sad. I can't wait to go hiking with the little guy strapped to my back!

I am part of a 90-mile relay run on August 3, and I will be responsible for two legs totaling 11.5 miles. Currently I'm good for at least 4.3. I don't look forward to you, August 4.