Weekends and Mondays (Long, of course) in BookThree: Flight Log 2016

This weekend… was rough. Rough weekend. Yeah.
How was this weekend?

Saturday, I had high hopes. I woke up early, I got the lawn mowed before noon… things were looking good. Then I started cooking. And things looked bad. Things… yeah. I was using a recipe called “Cheesy Potato Casserole” now… I may not be very smart in 99% of things but I suppose I assumed Casserole in this instance to be… a bit heartier? Especially for the work put in!

Now… I started this from an “Easy, Healthy Casserole” recipe book. It was NOT easy. First thing? Take 4 lbs of potatoes and wash them (no prob), peel them (took a while), halve them (easy), boil them (took forever) then grate them. Grating them took forever and caused some interesting looking injuries to my fingers. That whole process took me to about 4 or 5… so already NOT easy. Then, I was to mix the potato gratings with a mixture of yogurt, cheese, and green onions. Then bake. After spending more than 6 hours on this damned recipe… I needed a drink. And I got a drink. And drank waiting for the thing to finish baking. And when it HAD finished baking? It was a weak, non-filling, potato side dish that was less substantial than a 30 minute Instant Potatoes Au Gratin box. Frustrating and infuriating, I tell you what! But… after that much time cooking… I couldn’t be arsed to make anything else for an actual dinner. Which… bit me in the ass. Because I got drunk.

Which means Sunday… I was sick. Like… head throbbing, sleep all day, don’t look at me sick. Thus making Sunday a wasted and pointless day and assuring that I never made it into the office over the weekend.

So Monday rolls around! I get up and go to court straight away to see if there was anything on the docket I needed to worry about. A 9:00 Contempt hearing where we’ve been trying to get this lady for two months and she won’t answer our summons. I hate doing it but… arrest warrant. Because for freak sake… she’s supposed to be on probation to the sheriff’s office… the sheriff’s office is trying to contact her… nobody can find her. MORE of how there is no accountability up here in criminal matters. But… I’m standing before the judge and he’s asking me what I want to do, how I want to proceed. Dammit to puss spewing blood gutted hell. I don’t know. I don’t know what to do. And I’m sick of that being my answer. I feel like in places that actually have attorneys… a new associate/prosecutor/defender doesn’t go THIS long and still not know what to do. Partly because there are people around who can help… partly because court happens more often than “once in a very long while.” Seriously… this county needs to be shut down and merged with one that isn’t dying. Because there is NO reason to continue this place’s existence. The surrounding counties? They have juvenile court more than once a month. They have district court more than twice a month. They have jury dates more than once a month. In a calendar with 365 days a year… it should be embarrassing to this community that there are only 12 Juvenile Court dates per year, 12 jury court dates per year, and 24 district court dates per year. It should be an embarrassment.

So… I’m starving. I ate a bowl of cereal for breakfast today… it is three hours later… and I’m starving. Bollocks. Plus I need to figure out how to do some work today. No idea what that work should be, though, of course. So… damned frustrating.

Suffice it to say… I’m slipping in my mental goal of not desperately wishing for time travel. And… frankly… the computer isn’t helping. On Facebook, I see my friends and my family… people hours away with access to things like… THINGS. I read Prosebox and, even though people are struggling, they have friends and family… they have lives. In order to see my best friend? We had to schedule it a month in advance to make sure he could come out here. In trying to see my brother… who only lives an hour and a half away… we’re trying to schedule and missing every time. Because it is a drive to go see them. And even the people who WORK in this area don’t want to drive here because it is… very much… the middle of nowhere. Y’know how a good Anti-Wal-Mart thing is to protect small businesses? There aren’t any here. This didn’t happen but it is like a Wal Mart existed long enough to kill everything and then vanished. THAT much middle of nowhere. And it is getting to me again. Emergency medical services… two hours away. Shopping for electronics or clothes or food… 40 minutes away. I’m just… so angry at this place for being the way it is with the people the way they are. Because I would love to see this place NOT die. So I ask people, the few willing to talk to me “the outsider”, if the place needs more jobs, more entertainment… what could stem the tide of everyone leaving! Nothing, they like it this way. Even though you’ve consistently shrunk every year since 1940 and given a decade or two the place won’t even EXIST… you like it this way? Insular, hostile towards people of race, hostile towards newcomers, with such a lack of things to do that you actively expect people to be alcoholics or drug addicts, with a system so corrupt and unjust that you’ve continued to elect the same people to office despite what you think about them.... you like it this way?

I suppose it is no wonder, then, that last night all of my dreams involved cars that got away from me. Cars that would accelerate to 60 in a parking lot and the brakes wouldn’t work. Cars that, no matter how hard I cranked the steering wheel, simply drove straight.

Now 10:30am… Cecilia just came in to my office with the biggest doom/gloom boom you can imagine. The conversation ended with her saying she’d prefer the atomic bomb to go off here. Most of this because… she’s been doing this job for 19 years. She’s seen how little justice, how zero follow through, how… inept this place is. And I can’t blame her. Working for 19 years in prosecution in a place this broken would be emotionally exhausting.

11:30 am: Yeah… kicking myself for not going into IT. Certainly feel like Quark right about now. My brother went into the tech field, in a way. He’s doing very nicely. But I went into the law, hoping to find my fortune in a way that would allow me to help communities.

12:30 pm: STILL hungry. Should go get food. Instead, going to clean and organize. Because nothing says “Hey, there actually IS something that you can do” quite like being able to sort out my files. Which, of course, is something I do constantly. So while I openly acknowledge that there are several cases where I need to create plea deals and half assedly send them (because… “probation” or “fines” is getting old as hell balls)..... the whole concept just bores me. Instead of cleaning thoroughly, tackling the rest of the day and charging through.... bah, I pick up some papers, move them over, check cracked.com.... move some papers, move them over, check facebook. Bah.

1:30 p.m: As I clean up my files, I discover a case that (in all likelihood) needs some work done on it. However, when I look it up in the system, my Boss has been changing the charges and moving hearings and doing all sorts of weird things. So… does this person have a felony charge, thus Boss is taking the case? Does this person not have a felony charge and this is something I’m supposed to be working on? If it is my case, why is Boss doing so much with it? BASIC COMMUNICATION… shit! It is hard enough that she works in a different city… and SUPER hard enough that she doesn’t understand e-mail… and SUPER hard enough that her mind is shot… but when we can’t even get on the same page about who is doing what in which case? SERIOUSLY?! Bah. Also irritating… who answers an e-mail with a yammering, meandering phone call? Christ’s sake, woman… if you can’t use the tools of the time, it is time to bow out. Thus, disgusted with myself and this entire situation, I began to draft a Prosebox Prompt about A Better Life. Because everything about day to day life here… I need to think, even if just blind fantasy, that I may one day live a better life.

2:30 pm: Trying to call officers because the Magistrate fucked up and, even though by law I have 45 days to write a report and 20 days before I’m required to even SAY if I’m writing the report… she signed an order giving me TEN DAYS to write the report. See? Just… amateur hour bullshit all over the place. But here’s where it gets more amateur hour… THE OFFICERS don’t have office phones. None of them. Sheriff, police, nobody. I have to call their HOMES or CELL PHONES. That seems… even MORE amateur hour bullshit. You’re telling me that the county doesn’t even want to pay for their law enforcement to have work phones and/or answering machines? Fuckin’.... ridiculous county.

3:30 pm: So… I’ve realized something. As soon as I get fully organized… and deeply scheduled… I need to just plow ahead. I mean, that won’t happen until tomorrow at the earliest but… I’ve been so wrong headed (and I know it). I’ve been looking at how little there is to do and saying “Yeah, I’ll get to it. Psh, stupid anyway.” Which, admittedly, is how I’ve been my whole life. But what I really need to do is the opposite, “So… there’s nothing to do but A? I’ll finish A and then there won’t be anything to do. While that annoys me… it is better than having A just… out there… forever.” Buuuuuut..... I’m having a unique issue. Defense Counsel around the area wants me to play cases like they used to… I want to play cases like they should be… playing cases like they SHOULD BE (according to those who’ve told me) will translate into losing my cases. Playing things like they used to means people don’t get held responsible for their criminal activity. Have I told you lately how much I hate this place?!

4:00 pm: So, I’m done for the day. not really… in a lot of ways. But I am. I’m not going to write anymore today, I’m not going to do any more work… this place, and all of its bullshit, can drift into the background. Fuck it, I’m out.