Thursday Stream of Thoughts

I have 20 minutes before bed and Picasa won't let me upload vacation pictures, so random thoughts/stories from today, go:

I got a call from the front desk this morning saying I had a package to pick up. Personal deliveries at work are severely frowned upon/explicitly not allowed, so I scurried over to grab whatever errant box made its way to our offices and found a flower delivery!

I adore flowers. Someday when I am rich and rule the world I will have fresh flowers everywhere in my house and office. For now, I settle for birthdays and anniversaries (and the occasional surprise during a stressful week). My assistant director happened to walk by my office after I got them set up in a place of honor (which required me using both hands to push a 100 documents into another pile of 200 documents in a more central area of my desk) and he commented on the colorful new addition to my office. I told them they were from the counsel representing a party in one of my investigation, as a thank you for all the extra billables we were providing this year. His face went blank, then panicked, and it was all he could do to keep from grabbing them and throwing them out a window. "You can't keep those!" he exclaimed, looking over his shoulder for the ethics officer to appear out of thin air and fire us both.

I do enjoy messing with him.

They were from JP, of course. Our first date was 11 years ago on Saturday and we've been married for 7 years on Monday. He sent the flowers early so I could enjoy them before the long weekend (and before I travel for most of next week). There were also chocolates, but I ate them all before I thought to take a picture. While I gazed at my flowers, typing up interview outlines, he spent the evening driving Landon and Claire to three different Payless shoe stores to buy soccer cleats for Landon's first soccer practice tomorrow. He's so excited and we're hoping this year he has some actual interest moving the ball in the right direction on the field and maybe even into a goal. But the fact that he's excited is a nice start.

I've been working 10+ hours days as a dedicated enforcer of securities fraud (though I felt like less of an enforcer at my last meeting with FBI; they all have guns, very big conspicuous guns, and all I have is a non-self-executing subpoena). My investigations are so busy right now, but at least I get to record extra annual leave hours for every hour I work over my required 8- it brings a whole new feeling to nights and weekends. That next road trip/family hike I'm earning is going to be great!

While on a break, I signed this adorable ball of sweetness up for dance class today ("dance class" really should be in air quotes). I didn't know classes for 2-year-olds existed, but I knew she would love it and felt she should have something fun on Saturdays since she's going to be dragged to all her brother's soccer games. I googled my way to a dance studio near our house with a preschool class and discovered they had 1 spot left in their Saturday 11:15 class! I have found it is rare in Fort Worth to find children's activities that cater to the dual-working-parent set. Like really rare, even in our relatively expensive downtown neighborhood where I assume everyone works because how else can you afford it? Twice at Trader Joes, two different cashiers have asked Landon if he's going to Kindergarten. When he says he'll go next year, they've each responded, "oh, that's nice, another year home with mom!" Um no, another year of using my full-time lawyer's salary to pay $12,000 for daycare, but close. I don't really care, they're being nice and it's Fort Worth- most moms do stay home, so I usually just smile and pay for my food. But JP gets very offended on my behalf- offended mixed with genuine befuddlement, "why does everyone assume you don't have a job? you're a lawyer. you make more money than I do! why doesn't anyone ever assume that I stay home with the kids?" JP, our resident feminist (who would absolutely never answer by that title if you were to use it).

Speaking of JP, it is amusing to watch him watch the Republican National Convention and yell at the TV. He's actually turned it off now because it made him too angry. He still insists he's a Republican and yet he actively, violently hates every single person representing his party right now and maintains the "real" fiscally conservative, Constitution-reading Republican party has been hijacked by a free-spending, country invading, personal-life-regulating religious right. I'm not so sure you can term a 30+ year movement a "hijack," I mean at some point that just is your party, but I see it as progress that one day we might actually vote for the same people. Until then, I vote for mine and he stages a highly-informed non-vote protest. The protest hasn't been particularly effective.

But back to Claire, her dance class requires a pink pair of ballet shoes and a black pair of tap shoes. There's no wardrobe requirements, which is good since Claire generally refuses skirts unless they have built-in shorts (skorts? I had a white denim skort in 3rd grade that I adored; do those still exist?), but there is a recital with mandatory expensive costume in the Spring. It seems a little ridiculous for a 2-year-old, but she's already so excited about the "dancin" and we're just going to try it for a few months to see if it's worth the cost. I have a feeling it will be so adorable I'll hand them my credit card just so I can keep taking pictures through the window of Claire spinning in circles with her hands over her head. We thought she would be the difficult 2-year-old that her brother wasn't, but so far, she's even easier to have around than he is. 99% of the time she's just happy to be here, to see you, to see the things in front of here- it's like everything in her world was specifically placed there to please her. She throws the occasional tantrum, but her method involves curling into a silent little lump on the floor, with her head down and legs tucked under her, until she's decided to emerge with a cheerful "ready!" and then moves on from whatever she wasn't allowed to do. Maybe she's just letting all the angst marinate and the ball will really drop when she's 3 and more physically powerful.

Last night I told JP that I'd been thinking long and hard about the 3rd baby issue and felt I'd reached a decision. He said he had too. His decision - yes. My decision - no. We're revisiting in a few months.

Speaking of babies, have you seen this site? It is the only twitter feed I've ever checked more than twice and it makes me laugh every single day.

And now, to sleep.

(PS from the iPhone I'm hiding under the covers- I just realized in the course of my insomniac mental ramblings that it was Wednesday when I wrote this post and I have no excuses for the error in the title. My editor will be notified and appropriately blamed. But now it is Thursday, so I guess it's fixed and I should be able to sleep now. We'll see.)