I need a vacation!

I am stressed. Monumentally, unbelievably, incredibly, edge of my seat, giving myself an ulcer, stressed.

Mostly, the cause of my stress is a case I am involved in that is about to blow up in a really really ugly mess, in which I think my client is going to be wholly, completely, and utterly screwed.

And there really isn't much of anything I can do about it, because the law is kinda sorta maybe more on the side of the "bad guys." Even though I don't really think my client did anything wrong, and even though I think the other side is looney tunes and malicious driven to destroy my poor client.

These are the days when I wonder why I went to law school. Because that whole, 'fighting for truth and justice and righting the wrongs of society' - doesn't get to happen all that often.

Sometimes the bad guys win, and the good guy puts her pro bono lawyer in front of her and the two of them get squashed.

These are also the times that I need to remind myself that my client and I are not the same person, and we are not standing in the same shoes. (I have trouble separating myself, and I tend to be more empathetic than is truly healthy. I need to establish a wall of separation, because if I allow my emotions to get involved, I will not be able to defend my client to the extent that I can. Even though I don't have a lot of ammunition on my side, I need to be calm, cool and collected so that I can utilize my limited ammunition most effectively. For what it's worth.)

On the bright side, I am getting on a plane at 6:00 AM on Saturday morning, for a week of lounging on the beach, and hopefully I will be able to forget about this mess for a while.

Gabriel knows we are leaving him with his grandfather and his step-grandma, and while he is exciting about staying with them, he has been very clingy and a little freaked out. To be honest, I am a little freaked out, too. Each time I have left him has been a little bit harder than the last. You would have thought I would have found it harder to leave him as a 2 year old, but, in fact, last year, when he was 5, was the hardest to be away from him for a week. Which is not to say that I am not glad I went on vacation - we had a fabulous time, I just missed him. And I suspect I will miss him even more this time.

I wonder if this means by the time he is ready for college I won't be able to stand being apart from him and attempt to move into his dorm with him, a la Lorelei on the Gilmore Girls when Rory first goes off to Yale??

Um, probably not. Probably he will be a snotty teenager and I will want to throw him out...

Well, I'm off to fight a armored tank, with my tiny little sling shot. I don't think it's going to turn out so very well...

Law Mommy