the thin line between optimism and delusion…

I will be in depositions all day, being very useful. 

My job is to sit and listen.  It will be difficult and taxing, but I am working on being good at listening to conversations that do not include or pretain to me. 

Sitting still is the really hard part. 

But I am up early this morning, and feeling good, I’ve already eaten breakfast, I’m drinking coffee, and I’m ready to go. 

love y’all.

It has been an exciting week here at work,  full of international investigations, cult leaders, baseball games, and probate hearings.  I have actual projects and work and stuff, but more than that I am a sort of attorney companion – like a tag along friend.  My attorneys take me places and then ask me what I thought – like a second opinion.  It is really fun.  I like being an attorney companion.  In depositions they even write down my name! Sometimes my attorneys schedule with me ahead of time, and sometimes it is more spur of the moment. 

This week, Monday was my most interesting day –

Monday morning I went to a probate hearing involving a piece of property in Chubb Town, which was the first freehold black community in the south, possibly in the country, I’m not exactly sure.  But the lady who owned the property died in 1930, intestate, and nothing has been done with the deed to the property since her death.   The problem is that there more heirs than you can shake a stick at, and you know how family politics work.  Decisions are difficult to come by.  It is the same old sad story of whether or not the family farm will be sold. 

Monday afternoon I had the pleasure of meeting an individual who adds flavor and color to the city of Rome.  She is a very intelligent, very interesting, very resourceful little woman named Serpentfoot (for more information, consult google, really, it is interesting).   David took me over to her house for a little inspection, the city is trying to condemn her house, and we represent the city, but David knows her from a class he taught at Floyd College.  She has borders in her house, she rents rooms to people – and each room of the house opens to the outside – and from what I could tell – none of the rooms open to each other.  There is one bathroom that opens to the outside as well.  One of the rooms is not currently occupied and she took us inside it – and I about died because it was probably at least 110 degrees inside that room.  And the room didn’t have any windows besides the one on the door – because I immediately started looking for places to put an air conditioner.  I’m sure it would be very livable in the winter time, but it was beyond hot on Monday.  She also runs a church out of house, for more on this, consult google. 

When we arrived she was pulling up poison oak, and didn’t shake our hands on account of the poison oak.  What I didn’t understand was that she wasn’t wearing gloves, and all I could think most of the visit was that tomorrow she was going to be covered in poison oak – especially since she kept wiping her face with her hands.  She showed us a tree she had cut down, and we looked at the sad conditions of the houses on either side of her, which both appeared to have termites and faulty roofs.  Her house seemed to have a fair roof, and she had lots of plants all around her yard – tomatoes, cacti, something called polk-stalk maybe?, and she had two dogs in the backyard on chains who both looked very hot.  At first the dogs acted like they were going to eat us alive, but after we spoke to them they calmed down and acted right. 

Overall it was a very colorful day. 

Ohh, and we got paid yesterday, which is always fun.