Monday and Recaps in Book Five: Working Through the Maze 2018

Happy Monday, all.
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Seriously? This woman is too much sometimes. Wife was away at a Baby Shower this weekend for my cousin. I understand that such an activity would likely sit with Wife in a… potentially difficult way. Because on the Kents, she is the oldest in our generation. It goes Wife, Bro, SIL, Me, Twin-Cousin, TC’s Brother as far as ages. Wife has no baby. Bro/SIL have an adorable 4 1/2 year old. This was Twin-Cousin’s baby shower. So… I was partly expecting her to come home this big ball of anger. Yes, anger not sorrow. She feels sorry for herself when she is in a challenging environment. She feels angry at herself when she is not living up to her own expectations. But… she surprised me… by mostly just being herself.

She came home and instantly announced that she was exhausted. I asked how the Baby Shower was and, instead of telling me about it, she instantly went to “criticism”. Criticizing the lavish nature of the event, the over the top style of it all. In other words, it was “Country Mouse bitching about how Big City Mouse’s party was overdone in her eyes.” After she finished the criticism, I asked if she had fun. She told me about talking to some people, then circled it back around to criticism saying how it was bullshit that both Grandfathers-to-Be were there as well as several other male guests… but the father-to-be was at C2E2. Not for work, not to promote something.... just… he decided to go to C2E2 instead of a baby shower for his own child. So, I get Wife’s ire. Don’t get me wrong. We both aren’t exactly the biggest fans of TC’s husband. He seems like an arrogant spoiled child who found a way to marry into money so that he never had to struggle for anything. But still… first time I’d seen her in more than 24 hours and within the first hour back, she’d spent 45 minutes talking and 38 minutes of that was criticism or negativity. She continued talking about how she was so tired but had so much to do before she could go to bed but she needed to go to bed. Sometimes? I honestly just want to tell her to shut up. I don’t mind chatter, for the most part but… shut. up. Instead of talking non-stop, be quiet… look around you… maybe ask someone else a question? Show interest in someone else’s life? Include another individual in the monologue? ::sigh::

Sleep was not my friend last night.
It took me forever to get to sleep and then when I finally did, I only slept for bursts of about an hour or so at a time. At 6:00 or so Wife got out of bed and I finally got a solid 4 hours of sleep. But upon waking up, my legs hurt more and other parts of me were stiff (for positive or negative). I resolved “Nope. Still going to the gym. But maybe… maybe first I I kick around the apartment for a bit.” This means computer work, computer fun, and some video games. But, I told myself, I’d be responsible. I wouldn’t just sit and do that all morning. I would go to the gym!

It… almost sort of kind of okay didn’t really work? I took my pill, stretched out a lot, ate lunch and played video games. By the time I actually got my workout stuff ready and left? It was close to 1:30 p.m. :( But at least this time I remembered to bring headphones, lol.

At the gym two things kept running through my head. First, the opening two stanzas to David Bowie’s Lazarus “Look up here, I’m in heaven
I’ve got scars that can’t be seen
I’ve got drama, can’t be stolen
Everybody knows me now

Look up here, man, I’m in danger
I’ve got nothing left to lose
I’m so high it makes my brain whirl
Dropped my cell phone down below
Ain’t that just like me?”

And the entirety of Jonathan Coulton’s cover of “Baby Got Back”

POST WORKOUT?
First of all… post workout I remembered that I had not gotten a weekly weight yet (!) so I quick weighed myself in the bathroom. Aaaand after 7 days including minimal workout and diet… the weight is 225.6, which isn’t as impressive as it sounds since my weight fluctuates up and down by 5 to 10 pounds a week anyway. Ah well. Two weekdays in a row, I made it to the gym. That is a start. At the end of this week, if I can say I made it to the gym for 6 weekdays in a row? Then I can allow myself a feeling of triumph. No matter what the scale says.

Started laundry literally as soon as I walked in from the workout. Also did things like “hung my coat up” and “put my shoes away”. Doesn’t sound like a lot but I used to never hang my coat up because Wife never hung her coat up. Now that I’m trying to encourage her to be more “adult”, I am making sure all of my things are taken care of before I do something else. Though, even with my asking her, I still can’t convince her to hang her coat up when she comes home.

There are things I still need to do today. Some will get done but may not resolve what I need them to resolve. Some will not get done. One thing that will not get done? Cooking dinner from scratch. I got too late a start today and have too much other important work to do. We have lots of other food, we won’t starve. So… in some ways, tonight will be important in that respect. Will Wife understand and “accept” that I didn’t cook from scratch (instead making dinner from a skillet meal, but still me preparing dinner) or will this become an “issue?” As I have no idea which is more likely, I’m very curious to know the answer myself. Instead, however, I have a lot of work to do via the phone. The dreaded phone.

Item One: I need to locate an unofficial Law School transcript. Because despite graduating from Law School in 2014… apparently, my transcript is still incredibly important for the government to discover if I am “a qualified attorney” to work for a Federal Department. (Though, in truth I keep thinking… or you could call my friend in DC who has higher security clearance than you do. Or my friend in Omaha who has been doing the tax law work for the Air Force for 3 years. They could tell you more about me as a person and lawyer than my freaking transcripts.)

Results of Today’s Attempts: Could not locate in Digital Records. List of phone numbers to contact for Registrar/Law School Records/Student Affairs/Law School Academic Accounts/Etc was… offensively long. Like… I get it, you’re a private Jesuit Catholic institution but really? “Transcripts and Student Records” shouldn’t be a hidden contact point on the Law School page! So instead, I sent an e-mail hoping to at least get some direction.

Item Two: I need to locate (or discover if I even own) a State Bar Card.

Results of Today’s Attempts: I will have to ask Wife if there is a specific place she may have stored/stashed my “When I was inducted” stuff. Because I don’t remember there being an actual card. And frankly? The more I hear about this job that all of this is required for anyway… the more I think… “fuck this job. It sounds boring, tedious, and ridiculous and they are asking for absolute bullshit despite this being an emergency opening for 7 attorneys. I’ve been an attorney and worked for the government before… if that isn’t enough for you, then you’re dumb.”

Item Three: Health Insurance Market Place. It seems that we can now finally select a plan. Hooray. Hopefully, it won’t cost us a fucking arm and a leg and will include some kind of Prescription Drug Assistance. Cuz that shit ain’t cheap.

Results: Need Wife here for that. This is the point where my Dad would say, “If she’s going to keep being the way she is… I mean, don’t divorce her… but you need to start doing things without her.” Okay, all well and good… but I’m not going to select our Health Insurance plan without consulting her. If this were a heath insurance thing offered by my job? That would be different. But this is the marketplace and I was raised to discuss things with my wife.

Item Four: Electronic Data Management System. Despite doing the paperwork correctly, I am still listed as Counsel for 8 criminal cases. Granted, those 8 cases only mean 4 people… but these cases are old, dead and buried. The fact that my paperwork hasn’t been rubber stamped is foolish. In fact, three of these cases were dismissed in July 2017!

Results: I’ll have to call the Clerk of Courts tomorrow when their offices are open. Try to see what needs to be done.

Item Five: State Public Defender’s Office, Billing for Indigent Defense Cases. I have 6 cases I still need to be paid on. A total of $3192. True, if I said “screw it” and stopped caring I wouldn’t lose any money. All of that cash goes to The Firm and I don’t care if they’re making money off of my work. But… it is me. Even if the beneficiaries of my actions don’t have integrity… I still do.

Results: One of my $780 bills is sitting in limbo. I need to present to the SPDO adjudicators an official release that says I am no longer working on this case. You read that properly. They are unwilling to pay me until I prove to them I’m no longer working on the case. This seems… rather odd for some reasons. I suppose it makes sense in the day to day of it all but the objection is not “You didn’t work this case.” The objection is not “You didn’t earn this money.” The objection is “We’re not paying you until you prove you’re not still working.” Even though this is the same organization that has my Contract Termination on file. So… long story short? Fuck bureaucracies?

Lastly, I was going to set up a therapy thing that Wife and I could do but… with everything else falling through, maybe I’ll just delay that until tomorrow.

Oh, as an aside… it seems that I may be about to go to war with someone in my Dragonlance Game due to fundamentally opposed objectives. And I don’t mean this “in game”, I mean in actuality. Apparently, her goal is to “Get through the story” whereas I see the experience as “social interaction with friends.” BOTH could function if not for a few small issues. One issue? She encourages the social interruptions! As soon as I got to the game on Saturday, she was throwing notes at me saying “Get Google Assistant to do this, get Google assistant to say that.” So when later, she has the GALL to get miffed that the game “got off track”… I’m like “excuse me, bitch?” Second issue? IN GAME, she is part of this group of two players that playfully harass a third. In other words, a game involving 7 people always becomes ‘The Dwarf Siblings Show!’ Whenever focus is pulled from that, that is when she starts getting pissy that we aren’t focusing. Because somehow doing an entire game session on a tragic character whose mother may or may not be dead… wasn’t “fun game time” for her since it wasn’t about her. Third issue? EVERY GAME SESSION SHE IS ON HER PHONE WATCHING OVERWATCH PROFESSIONAL LEAGUE! Are you kidding me? Are you kidding me? You’re going to bitch that I’m a “distraction” for trying to spend time with my friends while we’re all assembled while you are actively being distracted by watching something else entirely? Go fuck yourself, twatcunt.

Our DM is a lovely soul with considerable anxiety, though. I don’t want him/her to feel stressed, so I’m reaching out. Warning him about potential war and trying to resolve the issue before I have to send troops. Because people are quick to judge me as a “flighty social butterfly who just wants to make people laugh” but honestly? Never go to war against a Joker!

As it would be inappropriate and not diet positive I won’t but… I could really go for some JD right now. Or maybe a little Red Stag by Jim Beam.