I’m equal to it… fuck that… I am more than equal to it.

June 16, 2009 Savvy Spoonie 5 Comments

I used to believe I could do anything.

Over the past few years I began to realize that belief was born more of my youth and ignorance than it was of any innate capability or superhuman ability. I began to doubt myself, curb my own enthusism, stop tooting my own horn.

Well, as my dearly departed godmother Arie used to say “If you don’t tooteth your own horn, your horn will remain untooteth.”

So today I decided that realization was just plain wrong.

Clearly, whily my youthful self was woefully mistaken about things such as choosing first husbands and the wisdom of pairing three inch heels with stretch pants, she was wise beyond her years in the believing in myself department. This current me could stand to learn a lot from the sheer unmitigated temerity and chutzpah that younger me had when it came to believing what she deserved. Why is that?

Why should a teenaged girl with no credentials be more determined to believe she deserves the world on a platter than a thirty something with a resume peppered with successful interships and clerkships, a pile of degrees, and licenses lining her walls? If anything the roles should be reversed. I should be more willing to demand the world now than I have ever been, or at the least, more willing to believe I deserve it, should my hard work and diligence result in a nicely sized slice.

Yet, here I am. Can I?…. Should I?…. Have I paid enough dues?….Worked hard enough?….Do I have enough experience?…..Is everyone else out there better than me?/smarter than me?/more prepared than me?/better connected than me?…

Oh how that list drones on.

Today I decided to throw the list out. Tear it up, throw it out, tell my older, “wiser” self to shut the fuck up, and start believing in myself again.

Let me tell you something my teenaged self knew intrinsically; no one else out there in the world is going to come along and reinforce you. Your boss isn’t going to come along and tell you how amazing you are, and how much they need you at the company, and hand you a promotion. If you want to get ahead, you are going to have to believe you deserve it, and then make the people with the power to promote you believe you deserve it.

And if you are like me, and you have your own business, no one is going to walk into your door and tell you what an amazing business you have. You are going to have to sell them on it. Opening your doors to the world is like opening your heart and soul. You have to push them open, and them gather the world into them, so you had damn well better believe with ever fiber of your being that you are absolutely amazing. I have never met a client who went out of their way to tell me what an amazing lawyer I was, unless they started out as an old family friend.

So today marks the start of a new era of temerity and chutzpah.

Yes, I can do anything. I have my own business, I have a license to sue, and damn it, I am just that damn good.

Law

Cats, Mussels, Insects, and the air you breathe….

June 9, 2009 Savvy Spoonie 5 Comments

Environmental law is a strange legal creature. I like to imagine it looks a little like a hybrid car would ten to fifteen years in the future, still in pretty good shape, but with some parts held together with duct tape here and there. Our environmental laws require businesses to clean up the toxic messes they made in the past, even though it used to be legal to make them, prevent business and government from making them in the future, protect and recover species from extinction, try to prevent or at least unravel the mess that is environmental racism and inequity in this country, lower the particulate matter in our air and clear the toxins from our water, to name a few.

The hodge podge series of laws that make up our nation’s envrionmental legal arena often seem hobbled together, in part because they were. Many of the laws were written in haste and enacted in response to seeming environmental disasters during the Nixon administration. They often refer to each other, instead of being whole laws unto themselves, requiring those who practice environmental law to flip between statutes to get the exact meaning of certain terms and conditions.

But they are, I believe anyway, fun.

Which is why my summer will be spent fighting on behalf of some cats, some mussels, some beetles, and the air we breathe. Sound like a party to you?

The guest list is a distinguised one, as the U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar will be invited to dance with me at each and every one of my shindigs, well, everyone but the Clean Air Act case, I think that one gets to go to someone else. I will find out soon.

My first case goes live on the 18th. Once the press release goes live, I will copy it here so you all can read up on it.

Otter

Waer

June 7, 2009 Savvy Spoonie 3 Comments

We have baby talk.

Otter has begun to express himself in strange and adorable words the past couple of weeks.

My favorite word so far is “Waer”.

Instead of the infamous wawa that befalls most toddlers when asking for water, Otter has sounded the word out with the “t”. So he will point at a fountain and say “Waer ma sa ma! Waer!” (That’s me, Ma sa Ma, not Mama, he seems determined to do everything just slightly differently than everyone else, why do I have the sense that I am in for it in the not too distant future?)

The stopper is definitely out of his flow of words, he is coming out with new ones every day. He said nurse the other day, “what’s this”, “slide”, “lily” and more come each day. It’s funny, because he tries really hard to say each word precisely, which seems to be way he waits so long to say them. He won’t try to say a word until he has it down to almost the exact cadence, and then he’ll belt it out. It makes for some pretty amusing baby words. Such as “waer”, I suppose.

He is getting very “two” as we say, stubborn and angry at his limitations in expression. When he wants something he will grab my hands and try to make me do what he wants. If he wants to leave a place he will take my hand to the door and try to make me turn the knob. If he wants me to wipe his face he will put my hand on a napkin and then to his face. If he wants a snack he will drag me to the refrigerator, etc. It’s a very strange experience, being made into a human puppet by an angry screaming toddler.

When he gets really mad he starts kicking and hitting now, so we are trying to teach him to stop that. Of course, he is still really sensitive, so when we yell “no” he starts to cry and crumples into a ball of sodden sad baby.

We are generally getting pretty frustrated all around here.

We thought Monkey was our terrible two but it’s starting to be pretty good odds around here that she was a cakewalk compared to Otter.

A few days ago Nana picked Monkey up in her big new truck for an overnight. Everyone made a big deal out of the truck, even Monkey talked about how much better she could see from her car seat. Otter was getting really excited about the truck, but then everyone drove away, and left … him… behind. He was really upset about being left out. He stood at the window crying for about twenty minutes. He yelled at me on and off for about two hours. I told him repeatedly that he and I were going somewhere special after his nap but there was no comforting that young man. Finally he exhausted himself and fell asleep.

The minute he woke up he took his shoes to me and said “shoes.. go”. I told him we still had 30 minutes until we were meeting our friends. I ended up leaving early and cleaning out my car for fifteen minutes instead of dealing with another two year old meltdown. He finally felt better after he got to go to Stapleton’s central park with Ma sa ma and her friends, and play in the fountain, run around on the playground, stay up late, and eat pizza.

The next day when Nana dropped Monkey off she asked Otter for a kiss. He looked at her, shook his head, and walked away.

Terrible two’s here we come.