my cake is confetti.

**Disclaimer:  As much as I want it to be... this genius rant is not mine (although I did touch up the grammar a bit... I couldn't help myself).  Credit: Caitlin, who would probably then credit yoga instructor, Scott.   Regardless, I laughed so hard when I read this, I was sweating.  Well done.

The other day I overheard two people talking and one said to the other, "She wants to have her cake and eat it too." As goofy colloquialisms go, this one... (ahem)... takes the cake. 

[Brilliant.  I love it already.  See how he did that?  Awesome!]

I don't mean to split hairs, but isn't the purpose of having a cake, in fact, to eat it? Are cakes commonly used for other purposes of which I am unaware? Have you ever bought a cake, or made one yourself just to have around? Maybe to keep on a shelf somewhere like a knick-knack, or put out in the yard instead of a garden gnome?

 [Garden gnome!]

Cakes do not make good paperweights, bookends, or plant holders. They are made of sugar, flour, eggs, et cetera. And since this combination of ingredients is commonly found to be delicious, eating your cake seems like a pretty appropriate response when you have one.

The problem with the expression is the frequent implication that someone is being greedy. If the saying were, "having your cake and eating someone else's," I would tend to agree. Or maybe, "having your cake and buying another one." That would work too. That's greedy. But we are talking about YOUR cake here, and cake is also a metaphor for anything that is yours and brings you pleasure

Life isn't just for learning, it's for enjoying. What is the cake in your life, and are you enjoying it? It feels great to share our cake with friends, eating on plates with forks and napkins. But admit it. Sometimes we also eat it with our bare hands, alone, standing up in the kitchen, licking frosting off our fingers and celebrating the taste of something sweet.

Don't feel guilty about enjoying your cake. It's yours and you probably earned it. 

Esch, timing is everything.

So my tongue-in-cheek post yesterday about how Wisconsinites resort to guns to deal with tough times really (REALLY) came back to haunt me this morning when I heard the news story about the school hostage situation at a high school in Marinette, Wisconsin (near Green Bay, for reference).    The sophomore, who was apparently well-liked and had a number of friends, held a classroom full of kids and a teacher, who had been watching a movie in class, hostage at gunpoint for over 5 hours.  He shot the movie projector, a concept which all of a sudden doesn't seem so funny today.  He let many of the kids go before turning the gun on himself, and he is now in critical condition.  Read the full story here. 

In light of this recent news, I considered taking down yesterday's post.  I figured I had posted it late enough that not many people had read it yet, and maybe I could save some face by pretending I never made the comments that I did.  Now obviously, a guy shooting his TV because he doesn't like the way Sarah Palin's daughter dances is a lot funnier than a school shooting.  But there was more to the TV shooter story that I conveniently left out.  The guy pointed the gun at his wife.  Ugh. 

I'm not proud of my post yesterday after all.  In a vacuum, a guy shooting his TV or his lawn mower, or even a movie projector is funny... but when the "real life" aspect of it all gets thrown in the mix, it really is just sad.

I apologize to my readers and to the citizens of my home state for being so callous.

At Least You're Not This Guy

My apologies for not giving everyone something to peruse during the idle (digestive) moments of a holiday weekend.  I hope that even the most bitter of folks found something to be thankful for this Thanksgiving.  And, for those Thanksgiving grinches who didn't think they had anything to be thankful for... I give you the first in a series dedicated to making you feel better about your life, called "At Least You're Not This Guy."

This article makes me cringe, despite my reluctant concurrence with the guy's motive (...or "trigger" if you will).  The full complaint by the man's wife can be found on The Smoking Gun (it's three pages... so make sure you click through all of them...).  I recognize that my brief blogging hiatus may translate to me relaying old news.  So for those who already got their hands on Us Weekly and read anything other than the 5 page spread on Princess Catherine (I admire her name switch), my sincerest apologies.

As one who also gets fired up (ha) about politics and also often feels helpless when confronted with the mess we've made, I've often thrown up my hands and copped out with a response like "well, I guess I just have to trust that the system works."  But this man... Steven Get Your Gun... has made quite a name for himself (and consequently, I bet this guy is pissed).

As if this all isn't weird enough, apparently this is not a strange reaction for Wisconsinites during frustrating times.  Take, for another example, this guy.  My favorite part about this particular article, is the note at the bottom that any warranty this guy might otherwise be entitled to, is void as a result of the incident.   Fantastic.

So no matter how bad you think you might have it... no matter how bad you find the current political state of our country ... (say it with me) At Least You're Not This Guy.

the international itch

I have a large bulletin board above my desk in my office.  It's filled with pictures of family and friends, cards I've received, race medals, a Wisconsin license plate, and my favorite poem in the world.  I see people who enter my office for the first time display one of two reactions.  The first is awe, as they scan the many places I've been and silently applaud me for putting all the pictures up in an office.  The second reaction is disgust and disapproval, as they roll their eyes and think this isn't a dorm room.  Regardless of the reaction, the pictures make me happy, and the poem makes me happier.  Actually it makes me nod, smile and muse a little. 

Its called "Where We Are," by Gerald Locklin, and it really summarizes... me:

I envy those
who live in two places:
new york, say, and london;
l.a. and paris;
hawaii and switzerland.

There is always the anticipation
of the change, the chance that what is wrong
is the result of where you are.  I have
always loved both the freshness of
arriving and the relief of leaving.  With 
two homes every move would be a homecoming.
I am not even considering the weather, hot
or cold, dry or wet:  I am talking about hope.

I love it.  I can't say that enough.  You know when you read something and you think "oh my gosh, that's me."  That happened when I first read this poem.  I immediately copied it down, cut it out and pasted it right above my computer.  But, because I know it's there, I rarely take the time to actually read it.  I read it this week... it was much needed.

It's funny to me how many of us still have the itch to go somewhere else for awhile.  We didn't leave that behind in college.  Last weekend I got to spend the day with my law school girl friends.  We don't get to see each other very often, and it's downright rare when we can get (almost) everyone in the same place for more than an hour at a time.  Shockingly, we all managed to have last Sunday free.  We spent the day hiking with our dogs and then sitting around the kitchen table catching up.  I was shocked at how many of us said the exact same thing, "I still want to go abroad for a little bit.  Not long - maybe a year or so - but I feel like I need to do that soon.  I want to come back to Colorado and be here for the rest of my life, but I just have this itch to go while I still can."

But then again, this poem rings true.  We forget the homesick element.  Do I like the idea of living internationally more than I actually like it?  When I lived in Spain, one of my most homesick days ever was Thanksgiving.  There are no pilgrims in Spain... and certainly no stuffing with gravy.  Eat your heart out America.

words to the wise

Angst is the greatest catalyst for writer productivity.  This technically "short" week has been dragging on, not because I'm really looking forward to turkey, but more because I'm really looking forward to writing.  My life feels so up in the air lately that I'm really hoping that writing about someone else's, albeit fabricated, problems will be therapeutic.

I stumbled across this today, and it made me smile (which was pretty tough to do today), so I thought I would share it with y'all:

Do not put statements in the negative form.
And don't start sentences with a conjunction.
If you reread your work, you will find on rereading that a
great deal of repetition can be avoided by rereading and editing.
Never use a long word when a diminutive one will do.
Unqualified superlatives are the worst of all.
De-accession euphemisms.
If any word is improper at the end of a sentence, a linking verb is.
Avoid trendy locutions that sound flaky.
Last, but not least, avoid cliches like the plague.
~William Safire, "Great Rules of Writing"

short and sweet...

...like the Thanksgiving work week.

This article makes my blood boil.

This article makes my heart hurt.

... and the culmination of them makes me desperately want to move back to Argentina, even if there's no Thanksgiving in Argentina.

crown us kings and queens of self-righteousness

While I primarily practice corporate law, I have recently been branching out into litigation as a result of my love for writing.  Before this recent switch in practice areas, I had fulfilled my passion for writing by editing other people's pleadings.  I can appreciate how horrid that sounds to most people, but I actually enjoy it.  And I don't just edit pleadings, I also edit emails... from professional to personal, pride-saving emails.  I am sometimes referred to as the "Ghostwriter" for my friends. 


My boyfriend is a lawyer.  He is also Irish.  And he is a litigator (a "good" litigator... both in the sense that he works for the good guys-defending doctors and lawyers, and in that he is good at what he does).  Sometimes, however, his tone needs a little work.  He asked me to look over one of his motions and "edit for tone."  I chewed him out for coming across as pompous.  He was surprised by my critique and said he had worked really hard to "tone" it down (pun intended).  I chalked it up to the Irish in him.

This week, I received an assignment to draft my very own motion.  This is big news for me, and I'm excited to have the opportunity to do some persuasive writing.  As is very much my style, I waited until the last minute to start writing, getting all of the "little things" out of the way so I could really focus all of my attention on the task at hand.  Naturally, my assignment was kind of a "stretch" argument (which is probably why it landed on my desk... Oh, let her give it a shot.  It's not like we're going to win, but she can't really lose it for us either.).  When the argument was first presented to me, I was worried about having to persuasively make an argument that I thought sucked.  But... the more research I did and the more I thought about it, I found myself thinking that maybe we were in the right after all.  The "maybe we were right" turned to "we're definitely right," which turned to "how dare they sue my client over this!!!  How DARE they!!!"  As the hours went on, case law flowed, and my arguments developed, I became more and more convinced that we were right... that I was right... and that this opposing attorney (who had such seemingly winning ideas when I initially read his brief) was ... well, nothing short of an idiot.  I wrote and wrote and wrote, and by the end, I felt really good about my efforts.  In my mind, we had obviously won and no reasonable judge could rule against us.  I set my draft down and took a two hour break (to go buy myself something off the sale rack at Banana Republic because I. Had. Earned it.). 

When I sat back down to begin the revisions process... I was blown away.  I hardly recognized myself in that pleading.  Who was this person?!?!  I could hear the author rolling her eyes throughout the entire piece.  I had broken all of my own cardinal sins of legal drafting... the same ones I had harped on my Irish boyfriend for only days earlier.  Don't use words like "obviously" or "clearly" because you're over-selling it and it's not persuasive.  Do not act like opposing counsel got his law degree yesterday because (well, first off, chances are he's way more experienced than you, and...) the court really doesn't like that.  And the big overarching theme:  Be nice.  You can be nice and still be right.  I could not believe that I was struggling with this...

I immediately emailed my boyfriend, who suddenly didn't seem so Irish, and apologized for making him out to be a mean ogre.  We laughed about our stubbornness and self-righteousness... about how funny it is that what had seemed like a toilet-argument two days earlier had suddenly become the clearest, most common-sense thing I had ever heard.  Maybe the self-righteousness derives from the fact that for two days, or ten days, or two months, or a year, that toilet-argument is our life.  We eat, sleep and breath that argument.  We defend that argument all the way to the end.  And by that end, it doesn't even matter if the argument was right in the first place.  By the end, we're so beyond the technicalities and the law school elements, that all that matters is whether we won or not. 


I can see how litigious and self-serving that all sounded.  But at the end of the day, I believe this is why the system (generally speaking) works.  You take a bunch of self-righteous, stubborn and competitive people and you pit them against each other to solve other people's problems.  The clients' problems become the lawyers' problems and when you combine that with the lawyers' pride... Fireworks.   It really is genius in a way... the design of it all.  But really, I do think we would further the profession so much more if all of us could just rein it in a little bit.  We can still "zealously" represent our clients (I heard a rumor that they removed "zealously" from the ethics rules because lawyers were a little too "zealous"), but we can also be respectful about it.

Funny enough, above, I initially wrote "reign" it in, as opposed to "rein" it in.  Obviously "reign" being associated with royalty (There's a 'g' in both reign and king).  Oh the grammatical irony....

I will take this opportunity to conclude with a note that I don't think I have an ethical violation in disclosing my commentary on my experience in this case.  Having said that, I also feel compelled to tell my readers that you won't find my pleading out there in legal cyberspace.  Ghostwriter strikes again.