As the imminence of being gone for 2 weeks rolls in like a thick sea fog, I scurry around my second home, my courtroom and courthouse, making frenzied preparation. Life may be easier if I had the typical county worker mentality this week — lazy, spoiled and nonchalant, confident in the job security that a friend of my parents had once called “a metal rice bowl” in Mandarin. Instead, I am in hyper-drive. After the unusually complicated hearings this morning were held and their records and orders processed and entered, I went about the afternoon tasks I assigned myself. The dense stack of civil harassment files I received this morning must be calendared in the redbook; the Civil and Criminal computer systems must be checked for any upcoming hearings that I may have missed in my hand-calendaring; wrote a quick “Daily Tasks” list on a post-it and stuck it to the monitor to help the relief clerk out; I turned in my mileage claim (77 miles claimed) for my Hell Day a couple of weeks ago; I discussed with my supervisor and judge regarding having a consistent relief clerk in my stead here for the next 2 weeks; I did a (fruitless) hunt and investigation for 2 divorce cases that were “allegedly” assigned to me in January but which I’d never received; I set up courtroom statistics sheets for the next month so the relief clerk won’t have to dig too hard in my file drawers for those forms; I got answers on how to deal with a few “problem children” divorce cases.

I’d delved into my gym work with the same desperate conviction. Stepping up the intensity of my programs, I took my gym trainee with me as our workouts were elevated to 20 minutes of cardio and 20 minutes of heavier resistance-training on all major muscle groups every lunchtime, leaving her sore and painfully aware of the weight of her purse and of the court files on a daily basis. This we had done the past 3 weeks. I’d forgone group lunches, birthday celebrations, in favor of hitting the gym every lunch. Today was a hitch; a meeting was called at 1pm which robbed me of 30 minutes of my lunch period. I snuck out of the courtroom 15 minutes early, as soon as our last case was done, and hit the treadmill for a 3-mile run with my frenzied rushed state feeding into my energy level. I dashed into the meeting room only 3 minutes early, still sweating despite my cool shower.

Just a few more divorce cases…just a few more under my belt, and I can go home for the evening and resume my laundry and packing. Tomorrow after work, a happy hour party is being thrown at a local pub to say goodbye to 3 district attorneys, who are transferring to other courthouses. I’d decided early in the week to get my packing done throughout the week so I’d be free to attend at least for a little while, since two of the DAs are people I consider myself on extracurricularly friendly terms with. The presence of upcoming events like the meeting today and the happy hour tomorrow feel like looming deadlines to me and the pressure has had me on a sort of “panic mode” all week.

Just a few more files and I can get back to cleaning house and packing. I feel like I’m forgetting something, or will forget something. Ack, I need a vacation.