Another end to a weekend. I dreamed last night that Elmo changed his name. It was a long night. Dinosaur woke many times and I don’t remember most of the times. I do remember coughing too many times and waking more congested than I went to sleep. Doolies said I snored also. Probably because of the congestion. The snoring.

Dinosaur is in the car seat fussing a bit. I fed him half a bottle and he fell asleep for twenty minutes. After he woke I fed him another third of the bottle. He then wanted to walk around. That walking led me to the study and car seat. If I stop writing every few sentences and rock the car seat (portable car seats have rockers at the bottom just for this purpose) he calms down. He’s probably looking forward to TV time where he gets mommy milk and comfort while we watch more anime. It’s a win for everyone.

Doolies took care of Tiger’s evening routine while Dinosaur snoozed on me. Tiger should be sleeping now or at the tail end of the third book: Time for bed, Max and Millie; Llama-Llama, nighty-night; and Elmo Says. I think that’s how the muppet got into my dream. Too much Elmo Says (which is supposed to be like Simon says, but that’s never properly explained in the book, and I haven’t tried to explain it to Tiger yet.

The weather is back to Seattle winter weather: partly rainy, partly sunny and forties. One minute it’s pouring and the next it’s warming up. Difficult to choose clothing but I do recommend a winter coat. I’ve been wearing mine for the last month. And a hood. Definitely need a hood in this weather. Umbrellas are optional. Seattlites have a distate for umbrellas. They believe the rain we get is more mist than rain and therefore umbrellas are not useful—sort of like how umbrellas don’t help much in the snow. (Which is also not true. Snow tends not to be as drenching as rain and, I expect (haven’t done any experimenting), would pile up something awful on top of an umbrella making it unwieldy.

My frying of left over rotisserie chicken did not go as planned. I must have over-fried it because it came out hard and chewy. The chicken itself did not start off good, as the last unclaimed chicken left in Albertson’s warming case, it was a bit on the burnt side when I bought it last week. It left me rather hungry. Sorry, that talk of food got me thinking about cookies. I now have three butter cookies, half covered in chocolate. I’m not proud of this choice. I keep a secret stash hidden in the cupboard for this type of occasion. It’s funny how I’m not trying to improve any of my many faults, but hide them so I can a better person than me out of Tiger. Don’t tell her that, though. Secret hypocrite is fine. At least I’ll keep telling myself that.

I ran into an old Naginata friend at Panera Bread today. I went there after Doolies decided to stay home with Tiger (she does not like Panera Bread. She describes their breakfast sandwich as ma-bu, which means dirty dish towel, which it has tasted like on occasion). She’s an engineer and is thinking about attending law school part time. I tend to direct people away from the legal profession in most cases. I’m not sure why I do that. I’m quite happy with my job and the strange, indirect route that took me here.

I grabbed two more cookies from the emergency cookie stash. I’m still not proud but boy are they tasty.

I had given her advice in the past and she’s still thinking about it, going so far as to take the LSAT and write her essays. They’re do this week. I do tend to focus on the bad parts of the legal profession when I talk to potential lawyers. I guess it makes me feel more edgy to be an insider wishing I was an outsider.

Dinosaur’s demands are getting louder. He’s calmed down when I look at him, so now I’m typing with my head facing him. It no longer works. He’s looking away and giving off his dinosaur cries. It might be time to walk around the kitchen island with him for a bit. I still have a good ten minutes of typing to finish. I may hold off until later. I doubt he’ll let me finish up now.

As I say that he quiets down. Where was I? Ah, yes. I think most professions are like that: you get inside and all you can think of is the rocky path that leads through the early ranks of the profession. I hear that from doctors all the time. Would you choose this career if you had a chance to do it all again? No. I definitely would not. It’s a common answer across most fields with few exceptions.

I’m back after anime watching. I shouldn’t have eaten all those cookies. They formed a ball of sugar in my stomach and seem to weigh more than is natural for such a ball. They were yummy.

When people ask me why I went to law school, I half-jokingly tell them, “when in doubt go to law school.” That was certainly part of my rationale but it was not the real reason. I was lost, stuck between a life of philosophy (after failing miserably at astronomy, I was left with nothing but a soft study) or a life of law, whatever that entailed. My mother always pushed me in that direction, seeing something in me that I did not. The first debate I can remember was in junior high school. We were debating abortion. We were put into three-person teams. The crux of my “argument” was having Loraine, the leader on the other team, read the verse from the Ten Commandments about not killing. Another argument was the description of the aborted fetus. Or perhaps that was part of a tasteless joke that I still remember but won’t repeat.

So, no, none of these were the reason I found myself heading to Syracuse for a career I knew nothing about—and isn’t that how it always works? I know of few students who know what they’re getting themselves into regardless of what path they choose. You can’t really know until you do. All those discussions with professionals about their career choices are only discussions, more for the edification of the speaker than listener. I don’t think I spoke to one lawyer before making the choice. That doesn’t make me superior (if anything, it probably goes back to my doubt argument) but does set the groundwork for where I started.

I wish I had the energy to organize these thoughts into a proper essay instead of throwing them against a 30-minute wall and walking away from them, leaving the remnants unfinished and probably uninteresting. There’s something there if I went deeper with them, but that’s not what I do in these brief sessions. I’m happy to have alighted on a topic that kept my fingers moving without falling into my consternated ways.

Time for hopefully a restful night.