Saturday, December 23, 2017
Merry Christmas, Baby
You may have noticed that, from year to year, my life generally stays about as consistent as Lisa Rinna’s hairstyle. I haven’t “taken a break” from the corporate world to go “find myself” (and likely Typhoid) on a tour of Southeast Asia, nor have I moved to Portland to open an artisanal mouse pad store. I don’t have a mistress whose single about Instagram I’ve agreed to produce, and I rarely, if ever, burn anything down for insurance money. My life generally consists of work, dogs, friends, Netflix, and the occasional legally-themed musical comedy show. I’m good with that. I’m unlikely to inspire an episode of Locked Up Abroad anytime soon, but at least I’m not the real-life impetus for the hit CBS comedy Kevin Can Wait, starring professional fat man Kevin James and that lady who hates Scientology.
This year,
though, has been eventful! I left behind the glamorous world of appellate
arguments before half-awake septuagenarians and prisoner briefs written in
feces to join the white collar defense and investigations group at Seyfarth
Shaw LLP. For all you non-lawyers, this means I now represent people who are
being threatened with imprisonment for accidentally putting a decimal point in
the wrong place at a large, private firm where, unlike at the state, paper towels
are not viewed as a BYO item. So far, I like it a lot, though I’m still far
from that Ally McBeal dreamscape of
dancing babies and courtroom attire that allows the jury to see one’s uterus. Personally,
Ian and I finally got married this year, in a darling courthouse basement
ceremony alongside pregnant teens in their Quincenera dresses and the
alarmingly continuous sound of running water. Immediately, of course,
everything changed, and he became the Eric Roberts character in a Lifetime
movie. We honeymooned in Hawaii, a place so beautiful and relaxing that even my
obsessive-compulsive instinct to map out every single minute of every single
day on a series of Post-Its had to yield. And just for good measure, we’ll be
returning to Vienna in March with my Northwestern students, who will spend
their evenings drinking liquors not yet legal in the U.S. and their days
arguing international arbitration issues and wishing they or I were dead.
So that’s a lot, for me, and I’m happy to have the
holidays as a time to pause and reflect. And by “pause and reflect” I mean eat
the “Cookies & Scream” M&Ms I stockpiled from Halloween while binge
watching Westworld episodes I’ve
already seen with my mother. You see, Ian spends his holiday with his parents
in Minnesota (which is the most Midwestern phrase of all time), and my sister
and her family travel out to New Jersey to visit with the Bates relatives, so
my mom and I are on our own. With three dogs, who could easily overpower and
kill us. But it’s actually kind of magical just to have some time off to relax
and do nothing of any importance, other than continuing to add to my mental
list of resentments against our neighbors, of course. That Santa you’ve dangled
from your balcony looks like a hanging victim, okay? Children will have
nightmares, and not just the ones caused by our now-constant threat of nuclear
war.
Speaking of which, I’m certainly not trying to
pretend that everything this year has been sunshine and roses, even though that
sounds like a new fragrance from Jennifer Love Hewitt. I’m as much a fan of
civil liberties as the next person, unless that next person is Susan Sarandon,
and I’d prefer not to be shot in the head during a 7:15 screening of The Emoji Movie. But at the end of the
day, my own conduct is all I can control, and I try to make the world a better
place, one dog costume at a time. Or one holiday greeting, for that matter.
Happy holidays and best wishes to you and yours for a great 2018!
You may have noticed that, from year to year, my life generally stays about as consistent as Lisa Rinna’s hairstyle. I haven’t “taken a break” from the corporate world to go “find myself” (and likely Typhoid) on a tour of Southeast Asia, nor have I moved to Portland to open an artisanal mouse pad store. I don’t have a mistress whose single about Instagram I’ve agreed to produce, and I rarely, if ever, burn anything down for insurance money. My life generally consists of work, dogs, friends, Netflix, and the occasional legally-themed musical comedy show. I’m good with that. I’m unlikely to inspire an episode of Locked Up Abroad anytime soon, but at least I’m not the real-life impetus for the hit CBS comedy Kevin Can Wait, starring professional fat man Kevin James and that lady who hates Scientology.
