Honest work

I'm wiped out after 11 hours of editing. I've got to put it in perspective, though, because law firm associates like acrobatty work those hours every day, six days a week, 50 or so weeks a year.

There are more reasons than I can count why I was never cut out to be a lawyer. The one which impressed me as a kid exposed to my dad's law firm was the necessity of dealing with crazy clients. I think it came with the nature of his practice, which was administrative law for landlords and pushcart vendors. People would come in in their undershirts, yelling, screaming, imprecating. My dad would calm them down, make them make sense, get them to tell their stories. But they scared the wits out of me. They'd get our home number and call my dad at weird hours of the morning and on weekends. "Urgent," they'd say when I answered the phone. "Life and death." I learned with time that this was not necessarily true, but I always wondered, "What if someone really were dead? Could Dad help?"

If I were 20 again, maybe I could handle the constant death march. But after a day like today, I'm sure I cannot now.