What do you do when you got no shoes?

I feel closer to the president elect already. I know what it's like to wear shoes with holes in the soles. You see, I am the type of guy who is loyal to his shoes. I wear my favorite pair of shoes- a black pair of Allen Edmonds- Monday through Friday and occasionally even on weekends. The shoes still look sharp after all this time- I polish them often and occasionally take them to a professional for a buffing. But, the soles are in the end stages of wearing out. It started with a little hole in the left shoe. Now I have big holes in the bottom of both soles. This drives my wife crazy.

"A lawyer doesn't wear shoes with holes in them." Well, not a normal lawyer, I guess.

"You have a closet full of the same shoes," she continues to point out. "About 10 pairs of black dress shoes. All Allen Edmonds!"

But they weren't the same- although all of my dress shoes are of the same brand and may look identical, there's a certain difference in feel between different pairs of shoes. My favorite shoes just feel more solid...holes aside.

"I'm going to throw them away," she says for about the tenth time. I shrug my shoulders, but realize that this isn't an empty threat. Not long ago- maybe 7 years- she threw away my old favorite pair of shoes...

"Okay, Maria." I finally say as I often do. "Next week I'll take them to get repaired." Of course, I am just buying time, but eventually I start feeling too many pebbles beneath my feet.

Finally, I decided to fix the shoes. I dropped them off at a reputable cobbler (is there any other kind of cobbler?).

Now, I am going through withdrawal. My feet just don't feel right!

Crazy, huh?

Don Quixote, Esquire

I have a statuette of Don Quixote on my desk- it reminds me that the job of an attorney is often like the quest of good ol Don Quixote. Sometimes you try to slay dragons, but find that you are just fighting with windmills.
I believe the California dependency system makes a lot of parents feel like Don Quixote. It is a frustrating and insular system that tends to give short shrift to both parents and children in the name of efficiency. The system has a tendency to follow whatever the social workers recommend. It tends to reward compromise and is populated by lawyers that primarily only do dependency cases. I like compromise as much as the next lawyer, but I'm also willing to fight the system to get what is right for my clients. Sometimes this entails fighting with as many as three other lawyers in a proceeding.
I have two clients trapped in this system- one is a grandmother trying to get custody of her grandchildren and the other is a father trying to look for his son. Both clients are very deserving, but only one is getting the attention that he deserves. I'm winning father's case, but Grandmother is fighting an uphill battle. Before I came on the case, she was fighting with windmills- trying frantically to be approved by a system that didn't want to approve her. Now that I'm on the case, the windmills are mine to fight with.
I often feel like Don Quixote, even in victory. Sometimes you win a case for a client and find that the client goes out and commits another action that puts him in worse trouble. Someone once told me to only worry about what I can do and to not carry more weight than that. Yet, I think it's only human to wish that these windmills in all of our lives would stop spinning for long enough to let us pass and get on with the lives that we deserve. Don Quixote will forever be fighting windmills, but the rest of us deserve a break from time to time.

Larger than life

Sometimes, I think being a good lawyer, much like being a good writer, depends on a slight bit of insanity...or weirdness in how we view the world. The job can be so depressing that you have to find humor where ever you can.

I was standing in line for court the other day and saw the reflection of everyone waiting in the windows of the court. I noticed that I was much taller than everyone else and thought- "Watch out wee people, the giant is out to get you!"

Then I went into Court and got hammered down to size by a tiny judge with a big gavel!

I couldn't help but laugh at the irony.

Sometimes it's just one of those days.

A little bit of pressure

There are some days when it doesn't pay to be a lawyer. At least, it doesn't pay to be a lawyer who lives for the contest of the courtroom.

I'm sitting at my desk, tie loosened, feet up on the desk top, and keyboard on my lap. I have my fountain running with relaxing sounds behind me. Soft music flows from my expensive computer speakers. But, I'm feeling anything but mellow. In less than an hour, I have to mediate another intractable family law problem. I need to settle if possible, to save my client's family the costs of further litigating.

I have to swallow the arguments that I will make if this goes before a judge and look for common ground.

I practice a smile, turn off the water fountain, switch the music to the sound of Smashing Pumpkins and take a rare shot of tequila from the globe bar.

Now that's relaxing...

Medical Issues

I spent Wednesday and Saturday at my doctor's office. It was an uncomfortable experience, but necessary.

I'm going to the doctor because of a mysterious tiredness that has been plaguing me for the last few months. I probably should have gone earlier, but..

I've never liked needles. They seem to have a disproportionate amount of ability to cause me injury. I especially dislike needles that are attached to vials for drawing blood. I have small hidden veins that resist attempts to draw blood from them and my arm often looks like a pin cushion after a visit to the doctor's lab.

The laboratory took five vials of blood from my arm. It felt strange seeing the blood leaving my body. My head felt light and my stomach was uncomfortablely quesy. As a cancer survivor, I'm told that I'm disqualified from donating blood. In truth, I don't know if I could take watching several pints leave my body.

I'm usually not such a wimp- I've known the inside of a boxing ring, have killed rattlesnakes and survived an armed robbery. However, the doctor's office always gets to me.

And don't get me started on dentists...

A time to write?

I've been, like many people, inspired by my country's selection of Obama as president. I think it says wonderful things about how far we have come in a relatively short period of time. Racism is not dead, but is clearly greatly diminished.

In light of this inspiration, I've sought to put a little extra effort into my life. I'd like to live a fuller life- to laugh a little bit more, to relish my family and friends more, and perhaps to create art in my writing.

I have often flirted with the idea of becoming a writer. For as long as I can remember, I've written fragments of stories or poems.

Recently, I began to write steadily and to work towards finishing my first novel. I signed up for writing classes and became friendly with people whose writing I admired. Yet, I always felt a little bit out of place. I never felt that my pains were deep enough to write anything personally profound- though I am a survivor of cancer, I made my way through it with more daring and humor than self reflection. And culturally, I felt a little out of touch with the writers that I admired. I have the salesman's outward ease with people, but inwardly I'm more conservative than the Brady bunch. I can converse with people who are, shall we say, "chemically altered" into an artistic frame, but I've never been comfortable around drugs. As a kid, I was so straight laced that I ended up fighting with someone who offered me a cigarette. In many ways, that conservative kid is still with me.

And, yet, I've always felt that I had something to say. That there was something inside begging for artistic expression. I will write this weekend and give my inner artist a few hours to live in the light of this new day of hope. Yes, we can.

Voting!

I took my wife to vote today. It was her first time voting, though she's been a citizen for over a decade. She just never believed that her vote mattered before. She saw corruption in the system and thought that one politician was just as untrustworthy as another politician. Then she listened to Hilary Clinton and, later, to Obama. Now she, though she wouldn't admit it out loud, feels hope for the first time. She feels that maybe things can be better.

I think a lot of us are feeling a great deal of hope today. We have a candidate that by all of the old rules of politics should lose. He's african american. His middle name is Hussein. He's been labeled as the most liberal Senator in the United States. He's running against a Republican that was hugely popular with many democrats. He has been hit with non-stop negative campaigning- including all the resources that Fox news can bring to bear.

And, yet, Obama is winning because he's been able to focus Americans on the issues in a way that more experienced candidates like Kerry and Gore couldn't. He's remained steady through all of the distortions of his record.

He gives us hope that Americans will focus on the issues that matter- the economy, Iraq- and not be distracted by the politics that Republicans have too often used to divide us.