Back from the Dead

I got sixteen days

Fifteen of those are nights

Can't sleep when the bed sheet fights

Its way back to your side

-Whiskeytown

Well, it's been damned near that long. Fifteen, I guess.

Back in Corning, encamped in the home office at beloved, drooping, dusty Tara.

That's Dio's car out front. He's up at the Schoolhouse every day working on making that place exactly what Peg wants, and on budget. I don't know what we'd do without him, although Lux eating Slane and Dean's cat food every day is an annoyance.

This place is now under contract, scheduled to close at the end of the summer. I'll believe it when I see it, given the vagaries of the real estate market these days. One last summer watching fireflies in the park from the front porch as I listen to the Braves on cool summer evenings.

I wrapped up my last final for the semester yesterday morning. Calling it a disaster is likely exaggeration, but it certainly wasn't my best day. I thought I was running a little ahead of schedule when I turned the last page and saw a complicated, six part question involving a tax-free (maybe) corporate reorganization with a bucket of consideration that contained a lot of cash (known as "boot" in the business) along with the stock being swapped. What a nightmare. I finished, but won't be shining up my valedictory speech at the NYU graduation in 2020-whatever.

Meanwhile the practice of law flows on in its inimitably miserable way. Peg got seriously into my chili for being so negative all the time--by the end of a workday dealing with impossible deadlines, unhappy clients, and surly lawyers and judges, I'm not a fun guy to be around, not at all. So I'm trying not to let the unpleasantness of practicing law at a few days shy of 61 color everything else in my life. Still, I can't do much about the fact that I lie there from 2 to 4 a.m. every night, worrying myself back to sleep over cases and files that are constantly crying out for attention. One simply cannot compartmentalize the practice of law as a litigator.

It sure would be nice to slow down a little, but we've sort of built a financial trap to prevent that. Getting Tara sold, painful as that might be, will help. Eventually I'm hoping to reach a place where flying south for trials, depositions, and the like will be a rarity, and we can concentrate on living this last healthy part of our lives without the pall of the law hanging over our heads all the time.

Of course, looking beyond my little vocational terrarium of merde, one can't help but absorb a little of the zeitgeist as the country intractably spins off the rails. Who would have thought we'd live to see the end of American republican government, with most of the people who've been a part of my life complicit in the crime? It's a lonely, depressing thing.

Today I have a Zoom condo board meeting with a group that's rightfully pissed that their lawsuit has been kicked down the road and up to the courthouse door with little activity while we await a settlement offer from the defendant. Once that's done I'll go check on the wooden boat, maybe take some photos so we can put it on the market, and head to the gym for the first time in a while. Peg has some very good friends of ours who are moving to Chicago this weekend stopping by after work for one last chance to break bread and say goodbye, so I'll swing through the grocery store after the gym to find something to fix. And, of course, I'll likely be riding through all these chores with my dictaphone, trying to generate a couple nickels to pay for this party.

And so it goes.