the ocean

When I'm not busy writing parodies of Taylor Swift songs or extended monologues about my adolescent band trip adventures, I sometimes write exhaustively-researched long-form articles for law journals. Do not ask me why, as I don't really have a great answer to that question. I'm not a law professor and I don't hope to be one, as my limited dealings with the law students of today have made me want to go hot tubbing with a hair dryer. Nor does my job require me to write these things; their literary genre is more "four-paragraph writeup of this legal thing that just happened suitable for LinkedIn." The real answer is probably just because I can, and because I have a compulsive need to always be working on some kind of project. It's probably better than the mosaic making, right? 

Anyway, I am nearly done with my most recent scholarly endeavor, which has taken several months of hunting down case law and double checking citations while watching Real Housewives of Miami. I only have the conclusion left to write, and those tend to be just a quick retread of everything that came before, much like your average Ryan Murphy series. For some reason I am procrastinating, though, including now through the highly meta exercise of writing about writing. Could it be that I am not ready to say goodbye to this particular rabbit hole? 100% not, as I would happily never think about this particular issue again for the rest of my life. I have far more important things to think about, like Scandoval.

Anyway, all you really need to know is that I am super smart and articulate. Despite what all the evidence would tend to suggest.

One of my favorite parts of doing a show is being able to immediately flush all of its contents out of my brain afterwards. I'm sort of like a first generation iPhone in that I use up all of my available memory pretty quickly. Storing an hour's worth of monologues and lyrics makes it far more difficult for me to remember, say, the name of that concerningly perky woman in billing or where I saved that draft article about the Appointments Clause. So once I'm done functioning on stage I can return to functioning in actual life, at least insofar as I generally do.

Speaking of which, it has been quite a week. My Monday was packed with meetings and calls, which I opted to take from my bed desk with some Lifetime Castle marathon gently playing in the background. I had dental work done on Tuesday morning and therefore got to attend work with my tongue feeling like a dead tree limb in my mouth. I feel like my gentle lisping instilled confidence for my clients, though. Wednesday night we went out to the suburbs to see my sister's family and ended up attending a book fair, although Ian refused to buy me the "book" that was just a set of Legos with the instructions on the front of the box. Thursday was kind of a blur? Friday I worked and went up to the vet's office to pick up Aubrey's medications, which was as needlessly complicated as always. Oh, and went to see my friend's band in concert. On a Friday night! This led to me staying out well past my 10 PM bedtime and then sleeping until nearly 11 on Saturday. I'm wild, I tell you.

Anyway, I'm sure you all were hoping I would basically just dump the contents of my Outlook calendar into a post, so you're welcome.

We followed up on our trip to the grown-up version of a waterpark with a trip to an actual waterpark, the Great Wolf Lodge in Gurnee, IL. It was a very different experience but also the same, in that people irritated us and we ran a risk of foot fungus. 

This trip was my sister's brainchild and primarily designed to entertain my niece and nephew, and on those terms it succeeded admirably. My niece very much enjoyed making us all watch her stick her face in the water and applaud for her afterwards, and my nephew worked his way up to going down one of the smaller slides and, on one occasion, pushing his sister down it. They also enjoyed the lazy river, which did not in fact strike me as particularly lazy. The current kept banging us into other people, which was more hilarious than anyone had a right to expect. The highlight for them, though, I think was the arcade, where they ultimately managed, through sheer skill, to turn hundreds of dollars into tickets worth a total of one stuffed animal. I remain excellent at whack a mole, by the way.

Ian and I did attempt some of the big kid slides, of course, with mixed results. It turns out I get a little motion sick from them now, which is a strange thing to suddenly discover at 45. I still had fun, but had to lie motionless for a bit afterwards to regain my equilibrium. The twelve-year-old lifeguards had some concerns, to be honest. 

Also? There were wolf ears. Which is great, because they basically go with everything. Now I just need to get myself an invitation to the Met Gala...