mostly probably

Everyone is posting on their blogs about how thankful they are for everything. Not to be outdone, I have decided to do the same. This has nothing to do with the fact that today I have felt nothing but contempt for life and I think a little bit of thinking about the good things in my life might be good for me.

1. Alone time. I just went to the temple. (I’m thankful for the temple.) I’m going to a movie in just a second. (I’m thankful for movies.) I will only pay $3.00  for the movie. (I am especially thankful for the cheap theaters.)
2. Papa Bear. I am thankful for a boyfriend who, although he may not understand my need for the occasional night of alone time where I must absolutely not see or touch anybody possible, he does respect it. He is good.
3. My house. I will not lie to you. This house is my favorite house ever. It is incredibly frustrating that nothing works (yet). I haven’t taken a normal shower since I’ve been here. My furnace doesn’t work so it’s been freezing. But the house is teaching me patience, it’s bringing me and the Bear together (I think), and every day I find something else to be grateful for. Like #4…
4. I’m grateful for my fireplace. My house is freezing and the hot water doesn’t work. Cold showers + cold house = cold pretty much all the time. But my fireplace functions normally, as we discovered yesterday. I love that it’s an actual wood burning fireplace and not a flipper switcher fireplace. I will never throw away a piece of paper in the trash for as long as I live here. And snuggling in front of a fire is about the best experience ever.
5. Jerry Seinfeld. I recently got the first season of Seinfeld on DVD. I’m not sure why, but Jerry Seinfeld is my most favorite comedian of all time. He’s clean and doesn’t drop the F bomb every two seconds and real. And I love him. I love that show. Good times.
6. I am grateful that I don’t have the same problems that the clients in our office have. This house has left me a little bit financially strapped. True story! But I look at the clients that come in, hear the stories that people call in, and my heart goes out to them. Still, I feel so grateful to be in the situation I’m in. However strapped and stressed it is, I can pinpoint several people who have it worse than I do. I hope I can make their lives better.

And that is all. Now I’m going to a movie and need to get a sandwich or a bucket of chicken to sneak in.

I work for attorneys. I love my job. I really do. It is stress and makes me want to scream and people are crazy, but I like it. I think this is because I am a yellow and like pretty much most things. The red in me gets frustrated. The yellow in me wonders what is bugging Red so much. I don’t know what it is about law offices that strikes me as being so interesting. It could be that pretty much everyone is crazy, but the truth is I love my bosses.

Attorneys all love each other. The only people that my bosses will talk to without knowing who they are and what they want are other attorneys. My typical phone call routine is: “Law Office, this is Brittany, how may I help you? No, the attorney is unavailable at the moment. Can I help you with something?” If it’s a client, I try to help. If I can’t help, I take a message. If it’s an attorney, I snicker awkwardly and say, “Oh yes, Mr. Whatsaface, he actually is in.” I will then buzz my boss, tell him an attorney is on the phone, and a half an hour of school-girl-type giggling can be heard for the next half an hour.

Then there was the one time that I was at lunch with a friend. My two bosses were walking ahead of us and my friend says to me, “They are a pretty cute couple. Look how happy they look together.” I just laughed. I did not tell my friend they are my bosses, two married (to women) men. It would just ruin it. I did tell my boss, who looked at my other boss, who told me my friend is hereby unwelcome at the office. But pretty sure I caught a special glimpse pass between the two of them.

Attorneys are quirky. I recall working at a law firm a few years ago where my boss told me that no one should ever listen to country music. He then amended his statement, a special twinkle in his eye, as follows: “Except for Shania Twain. She can really sing, Brittany. She can really sing.” He made himself mixed tapes of every obnoxiously good old-man song ever. I have the fondest memories of sitting outside his office, listening to him sing along to Hamilton, Joe, Frank & Reynolds, Hall & Oates, and Gordon Lightfoot. His favorite of all time was Mamma Mia! but Shania held his heart.

(It goes without saying that when I got divorced, this is the attorney I went to first. And I’ll be darned if he didn’t give me a big hug and sit and talk with me for a good hour and a half about everything. Good fella.)

Attorneys like money. They do. Particularly more than the average person does, I think. My boss told us at staff meeting one day that he goes into the parking lot sometimes and weaves around the cars looking for change people have dropped. After a particularly good day of this vagabond-like behavior, he said, “I should take everyone out to lunch.” He never did. And by “everyone,” as it turns out, he meant “just me.”

So pretty much I’m feeling gross because I just wrote a blog about attorneys while I’m at work, all consumed with attorney-type stuff. I’m going to go home and shower. The end.

I am blogging at the moment because I have had it. I just called a client to get copies of some documents that were not in the file they brought in. She insisted that she put them in there. I said “Okay, I’ll just have to double check because I couldn’t see them.” She said, “Okay, well gosh! Stop fighting with me about it!” and burst into flames. I mean… uh, tears.

Emotionally unstable as I am, I have difficulty with this kind of emotional instability in others. I choose to deal with it by looking adoringly at the following picture:

It’s my house! It’s a pretty little foreclosure (although 2,100 square feet is pretty big for just me) that I am getting for about $20,000 less than what I should be. As it turns out, the house we had in Logan technically is not mine (I was on the Deed but never on title), which means I am, for all intents and purposes, a first time home buyer. This means the government, bless its black little heart, wants to give me a whole bunch of money just for buying this precious little foreclosed house. If that scenario wasn’t perfect enough for you, Ogden is so ghetto that Ogden City wants to pay my down payment for me for actually wanting to buy a house in this sorry city.

Let’s add to that the fact that my real estate guy works in the office upstairs and got me a wicked sweet deal. I’m not going to lie. It’s got problems. (Let’s face it. It’s a foreclosure/short sale/house in Ogden.) The first being there are no appliances in the kitchen. Crud. Nope, just kidding. Problem solved. Real estate demigod is cutting me a check to cover the cost of appliances plus some “new tile” cash for–you guessed it! Ding ding! New tile! It’s a Christmas miracle.

And they lived happily ever after. With a big scary dog. And an alarm system.