Stay of Execution

Heavy Item Pickup

It's heavy item pickup week this week in our district and my neighborhood has gone over the top. In front of every house there are enormous piles of junk. There are unfamiliar vans and big trucks cruising slowly through, stopping to inspect particular items and sometimes throwing an old chair into the bed of their truck. The guy across the street told me the limit was six heavy items, so I have exactly six out there: stove, refrigerator, boxspring, old desk, armchair, and old bicycle. The bicycle and the armchair seem to me ripe for plucking -- it's a reasonably nice bike, just needs some TLC, and the armchair could be cleaned up or reupholstered into a very handsome living room ifavorite. And the stove, too -- I was thinking about putting a sign on it that says "Works" so people would be able to assess it fairly. Actually the desk is fine too. Only the boxspring seems hopeless -- it's queen sized but we had to saw the bottom of it in half to get it upstairs and into the bedroom, and then re-fasten it, so now on the curb its unfastened and not that appealing.

For some reason when the cars and vans drive by I am always rooting for them to stop in front of my pile and decide to take something from it. It seems better, somehow, than just having my discarded things hauled away to the dump. And I feel validated a little bit by the desirability of my junk, which is ridiculous. And I like wondering where it ends up. And, of course, if the private junk-cruisers raid my pile before the official crews come, it means I get to put additional items of junk out there without going over my limit of six. Apparently my neighbors are not too concerned about the six-item limit.

A couple of years ago I found a great old bike in someone's heavy item pile when I was out for a run on heavy item pickup week. I ran home with it, vowing I would fix it up, which of course I never did. And last year I found a teakettle and a chair that I liked. The chair is out on the front porch and the teakettle turned out not to work. I resolved not to take anything home anymore when I was disappointed by the teakettle, but I'm sure on tomorrow's walk there will be something that looks like a real treasure. I am not a yard sale or rummage sale person at all, but heavy item pickup week is a different sort of fun.

I Live For Your Entertainment

I'd just like to take a minute to thank the staff writers here at Stay of Execution for getting 2004 off to a busy and dramatic start. The editorial board challenged them as a group, at year-end 2003:

"Listen up, you guys. Ratings are way way down. What are you doing here? The main character, Scheherazade, is BORING. She's happy with her Boyfriend, content with her job, driving around in her Honda Accord with her four-legged dog, dutifully saving up her money and planning for retirement. BORING. The only interesting thing here is this marathon she's training for -- but she's walking it? Walking?! Walking is not dramatic, to say the least. You guys can do better."

They really rose to the challenge, I think, eliminating the Boyfriend right away, throwing in that little food-poisoning twist to the marathon and instead making me trudge around Portland for seven hours in the freezing cold weather. And they got rid of the Honda Accord not long after, and replaced it with a sexier car with better screen test abilities. Housemate, who'd been lonesome and feeling abandoned and a little bit blue all fall, emerged as a foil when she gets a sunny, energetic and handsome boyfriend, with a charismatic dog, and the house becomes a domestic love-fest. And then there was the amputation of my dog. Some minor home improvements -- new roof, new water heater -- probably just a way to draw down that savings account to a more precarious position. A family member on his deathbed -- a nice touch. And now the job shake-up. Perfectly scripted, I think, especially given the demographics of the readership, which is somewhat heavily skewed toward the risk-averse folks in the legal profession. The writers have struggled a bit with the romantic plotlines -- whatever happened with that guy I smooched around the Democratic Caucus, anyway, and didn't I have a date not long ago, and who's this old flame I saw yesterday and why was I crying on his chest? But, you know, Rome wasn't built in a day. All told, I think they've done a bang-up job. Quite literally, they've banged things right up.

I encourage you to stay tuned. They don't let me see the scripts until, well, the truth is they never let me see them. Where would the drama be in that? So I can't tip you off to coming events. All they've told me is that by the end of June I won't be getting a paycheck from the place I've been for the past few years, and on June 30 I'll be stepping onto a plane for a week in Montana. Who knows what I'll discover out there, or what I'll come back to?

Chicken or Egg?

Am I a little off kilter because I bought and consumed a 32-oz Big Gulp consisting of half Diet Pepsi and half Mountain Dew, or did I buy and consume the Big Gulp because I was feeling a little off kilter?

Am I ungrounded and mobile and exploratory because my day involved breakfast in Portsmouth, lunch in Boston, and now dinner in Yarmouth, or did I plan a day with three meals in places hours apart from one another because I was feeling ungrounded and mobile and exploratory?

Am I edgy and confused and vulnerable because I found myself crying with my head on the chest of an old flame I haven't seen in three and a half years, or did I find myself crying with my head on his chest because I felt confused and vulnerable and edgy?

Am I  favorably disposed to recklessness and self-deprecating honesty and humor and pain because I was blasting the Old 97s and Golden Smog while driving on the highway between towns, or was I blasting the Old 97s and Golden Smog because I am favorably disposed to recklessness and self-deprecating honesty and humor and pain? 

Sunshine = Sunburn

I am sunburned, notwithstanding my application of 15 SPF and then 30 SPF (too late). And very wind-tousled. It was REALLY WINDY -- whitecaps in the anchorage, literal whistling sounds in the rigging because of the force of the wind. So Jud Smith, the visiting rock star boat specialist, gave a "dock talk" lecture about mast rake and mast bend and forestay tension and shroud tension and backstay tension and all the various ways those interplay. It was pretty high-level; I could barely follow along. His philosophy is that everything about the boat can be reduced to getting the forestay tension right. Sounds simple, but there are a zillion ways to do that -- and if you do one thing, and get the forestay right, it might disrupt something else, so you need to make another adjustment to correct for the thing you disrupted, and so there are about six different elements you are trying to control as the wind increases or decreases, just to get the forestay tension right. It's fascinating and so damn elusive. Way over my head, mostly. But I left today having learned a couple of things. I had lee helm (a bad feeling) last season because my forestay was too short, and I didn't have enough mast rake. It didn't have anything to do with my shroud tension, even though I had those too tight until August, when I loosened them way way up and finally won a race or two.

We didn't sail because it was too windy, so Jud just went around to everyone's boats and answered questions. I spent some claustrophobic time in a pointy dark crawlspace in the bow of the boat and lengthened my forestay by an inch. We moved the base of our mast forward half an inch, and might move it yet further forward. We installed a "deflector" (which made me feel like I was in a Harry Potter book) -- a line and pulley arrangement to make fine adjustments to the tension of the jib halyard. We made a plan for our boom vang and our cunningham -- long time problems for me. We marked our backstay in three places so we have benchmark settings at different windspeeds. We scrubbed and coiled and replaced and taped and sponged out the boat, until it looks like it's in reasonably good order. I'm feeling this great tired and relaxed feeling of achievement. I know my boat a little better than I did at the beginning of the day. There is lots left to tweak, but I think we're in better shape this year than we were last year at this time. And that's what it's all about, right?

Jud had a funny word for some of the ancient and klugey arrangements or systems we had on our boat. He would say, "hmm, this block system you've got is kind of agricultural, but I think it would work." Meaning old and outdated. Our former jib halyard adjustment was agricultural, before we installed the deflector. Our mast blocking system is agricultural. Our boom vang is kind of agricultural, but that's not so important. Interesting.

Getting Hooked

First thing I noticed this morning when I woke up: sunshine. This funny yellow light outside. Not grey. Fantastic. And it's still there, even after showering and a little unplanned post-shower nap on the sofa, in this bright bright blue sky.

Second thing I notice this morning: weather report says it's going to be windy. 15 -- 25 knots from the northwest. All right. And it's cool outside -- highs only in the lower 60s. So it's going to be a cold wet ride this afternoon, when the Hooked on Tonics girls and I go for our first sail.

We have a hotshot from Marblehead coming up to talk to our whole fleet about little tips and tricks that can make our boats perform best. This is the kind of stuff I expect he'll be saying. I'm about to hit the marine store for a million little (yet expensive) items: small blocks (sailor talk for pulleys), some 3/8" line for a cunningham, and some line of a different color for a boom vang. There are a lot of things about the way our boat is set up that I don't like and I'm hoping Jud can advise us about better ways. So in the morning it will all be technical talk -- the distance from your backstay to the base of your mast should be exactly this; you should have a pressure reading of this on your lower shrouds when the windspeed is that, etc. And then this afternoon we're all going sailing and Jud will ride along in a motorboat watching us and telling us what we're doing wrong. A lot, I expect.

I haven't been sailing since October! I'm so excited. It's going to be gnarly out there today, too -- windy and wet and cold. Hoping we won't break anything.

Professional Self-Assessment

Matt Homann is going to spend the weekend being innovative.

I'm going to spend the weekend thinking. Well, also fiddling around with my boat and seeing friends and barbecuing, but I'm going to try to do some thinking too. And because for me words are a by-product of thoughts, I expect I'll write a lot. Some of it here. So there will be lots of undigested self-examination coming out on this blog, I expect. Maybe you can help me sort it all out.

I'll start with this observation. I've been surprised at how captivated I am by the practice of law. I didn't expect to find it this interesting. (A friend of mine once looked at me disdainfully and said, "Sherry, you find everything interesting." True enough.) I've also been surprised at how hard it is to be a really good lawyer. I'm not even close. I might never become one, and I may yet discover I'm missing something essential, but for now I still believe I probably have the raw ingredients to be one someday. It will just take YEARS to get there. Becoming a really good sailboat racer takes a long time -- it's a lifelong pursuit -- but during my most intense training time, while I was sailing hard in college, I got at least within spitting distance of being good. I could beat the really good racers, who are now sailing in the Olympics, maybe two out of five races. I wasn't one of them, but if I had stayed in it a little longer I might have been. I don't particularly have a knack for it, but I was pretty highly coachable. And this lawyering stuff, well, it takes a lot longer than that, even though I suspect I might have kind of a knack for it.

I also notice that there are two things that especially appeal to me about being a lawyer, and I think they are in tension with one another. I love the process of translating the law into regular language and talking to people who aren't lawyers about it. I like the exercise of distilling something into its essence -- what's important here and what's tangential, from the point of view of the client -- and I like the exercise of finding metaphors that might turn something abstract into something familiar, and I like the ability to connect with someone and take away some of their uncertainty and fear, and give them tools. I like being trusted, and I like earning that trust, and I like being friendly and competent and articulate and clear-thinking when they might not be. So I like the "front-end" of the law -- the people side. Eliminating or absorbing complexity and overwhelm and providing clarity and warmth. That's about relationships and language as much as it is about the law and being smart.

The other thing I really dig about the law is the intellectual complexity itself. Bankruptcy is what I know best, although I expect I could be equally absorbed by tax or perhaps even certain regulatory schemes -- there's lots out there. I sit like a total dork in the front row at bankruptcy conferences, I can get absorbed in articles about code sections, I feel an awestruck and self-conscious fan-dom in the presence of someone really nimble and creatively structuring deals. I'm quick enough to be able (barely) to follow, a couple of steps behind, conversations about the exciting potential implications of this new case X on Y kinds of situations, but I'm not experienced or imaginative or clever enough to conceive of these kinds of things myself, and when I'm around someone who is I yearn to catch up so I can play, too. And this pull is toward a whole different set of skills than the "front end" stuff: specialization, knowledge, and language that only lawyers and judges really care about. It makes me want to be a scholar -- to dedicate myself to an area and kick it around from every angle, think about it deeply. It makes me see clients as opportunities for new kinds of transactions or battles, as circumstances for innovation, as interesting problems, as chances to match wits with other lawyers, and not so much as people who need help.

There are some other observations. I love to write. This kind of writing, about what I see and what it makes me think about, is obviously a need in my life -- anyone who knows me from college or high school knows I've always done it. If I could get paid to meet people, look at the world, learn things, and write about what I've discovered, I would like to do that. I also enjoy the writing I do professionally, and like the emphasis the law places on precision and language.

More will be coming, I'm sure.

Rain, Rain, Go Away

It's not been dry enough to mow the lawn for two weeks, and as a result it is a tangled green no-man's land.

At least my dad likes this puddly, wet weather.

The Mattress

Part of the excitement of jumping off a cliff without a net is the intensity of the free fall. What will I learn about myself? What is the limit of my comfort? What do I really need to be happy and what if I took that away, who would I be then? Those kinds of questions make themselves known when you decide to leave one situation and don't know what you're going to do next. It is scary and the fear itself has a fascination as you look at it closely -- I'm only scared this much about this, but I'm scared a lot about this, I wonder why? In any case I think it is the mysterious and rare untetheredness, and the richness of possibility (including the possibility for colossal failure) during this time that explains the unexpected enthusiasm of people's admiration and support. I've been frankly surprised more people haven't chimed up and said, "I think you're a truly foolish kook for quitting your job without another one lined up."

Anyway, so this morning someone basically ran out of the woodwork with a big plush mattress hollering "You can land right here, it's nice and soft." Which is nice and all, and there's a piece of me sighing this great sigh of relief. But, you know, I don't know if that's where I want to land. I'm hardly ready to think about that. Somehow just the fact of it appearing makes me feel less brave for jumping in the first place. And suddenly it gives my questions a different form -- 'is that what I want and when do I have to decide?' rather than 'what do I want and how will I know and what am I willing to accept or give up to get it?'

Courage

I need to get up my courage to do something hard. I've been worrying about it for a couple of months now, and have avoided taking action. I can always rationalize doing nothing -- this isn't something that's terribly urgent. But eventually it will need to be done.

I want to leave my hairdresser. I know who I want to leave her for. There's this other woman, who cuts my friend B's and my friend J's hair. They rave about her. My own hairdresser is a tough cookie, though. She's well-connected. She would be PISSED if I left her, and also personally hurt and offended. She holds grudges. And she's pretty good at what she does. While my hair was short she did things with it that always got me good compliments. But I am ready for someone else. My hair is getting long now so I have just been avoiding the whole thing, letting it grow. But I'm thinking a trim, a few little wispy layers perhaps, and I want to try this new chick. I just don't dare to do it.

The last hairdresser I had, before the tough cookie, I shared with a friend and I just stopped going to him. That put my friend in a really awkward position. He would ask my friend about me every time she went in for a year or two, and she would always stammer and make up excuses ("I think she's letting it grow."). I should have just come out and told him. But what's my excuse? There's not anything, particularly. You're great, but I feel like a change. I have an itch. I've outgrown you. It's not you, it's me. I just can't commit. It all makes me feel like a jackass. So I'm just letting my hair grow until I figure it out.

Race Committee

Yesterday evening I was in charge of running the race committee for the first Thursday Night Race of the sailing season. It's been raining for about a week straight, so I wasn't looking forward to it, but the clouds magically cleared yesterday morning and the day got sunny. I had lunch outside, even, and the sun on my skin was a treat. But as the afternoon progressed I watched a layer of fog sweeping in from the ocean. It was a very thin layer -- only 50 to 100 feet high, I'd say, but impenetrably dense at the surface. I was pretty sure I would cancel the race but held on to the possibility that the fog would lift by race time.

I had a gang of volunteers helping me. It's surprisingly easy to recruit volunteers when you ask non-sailing friends whether they'd like to sit on a boat, drink cocktails, and fire guns for an evening. So they appeared at my house, bearing snacks, and we cheerily packed into my car and headed to the yacht club. It was freezing cold and visibility was almost nil. We unloaded and walked down the dock to the race committee boat; a couple of additional friends joined us there. A bunch of sailors who were gathered inside the clubhouse hoping the race would be cancelled started to trickle out and put on their foul weather gear. My guests spread out all the hors d'oeuvres in the cabin of the motorboat and sat down in captains chairs and started eating shrimp and drinking rum and tonics.

Then the heckling began. I kept walking back and forth to the dockhouse to look out and see how the visibility was. It was crappy. The few brave sailors who had come out of the clubhouse were asking whether we would have a race, hunched in their rainjackets. The fog kept rolling in heavily and lifting again -- there would be moments when you could make out the hazy outline of Clapboard Island a mile off shore, and then moments where you couldn't see the boats midway out the anchorage. I told folks I would be postponing the race for a while and probably cancelling it. Everyone wants to look tough so they pretended to be disappointed and hovered around the race committee boat looking enviously at our shrimp. Partly to entertain my crew of volunteers, I decided to be sort of hardcore about postponing the race (even though most everyone who was thinking about racing was standing around at the dock looking at us). We counted down the time and at exactly 5:30 we shot two blasts with the shotgun and simultaneously raised two postponement flags -- one at the dockhouse flagpole and one on the race committee boat. Then we ate more shrimp and invited a couple of the sailors aboard and socialized for twenty minutes or so, with breaks for me to go up and check the visibility. Any time the fog lifted enough to see the vague outline of the island some sailor would point it out. I'd say, "if I can see the island for at least fifteen seconds, we'll talk about it." I never could. One minute before 6:00, we took down the two postponement flags and made a long sound signal with a horn, and exactly at six we shot the gun three times and raised the signal for abandonment of the race: the N flag over the X flag. (See the flags here: the postponement flag is the answering pennant, a red and white stripey guy labeled "code/answer" on the page, and the "N" and "X" flags are as labeled.)

We stayed on the race committee boat for a while, eating and laughing and talking, and then made our way up to the clubhouse, where there was a blazing fire going. I made Dark & Stormys for my volunteers and we sat by the fire and finished the olives and shrimp and chips and salsa. It was really fun. The group of friends I'd gathered hadn't met one another before, but somehow they clicked easily and they were all asking to come back and really run a race anytime I needed them.