cindy's world

What are we gonna do with ourselves, being so politically correct and eggshell-walking as a country so as not to offend anyone by using the old honorary day name of “Secretary’s Day”? What’s an “Administrative Professional,” anyway? I just refer to myself as “courtroom slave.”

I was just in the jury room giving our 14 jurors the orientation and rules for being in the jury room, explaining the buzzer system to them, etc. I asked if anyone had any questions about what I’ve told them. One man raised his hand and said, “Happy Secretary’s Day.” I paused. He had unknowingly belittled my position but with good intent. It’s like when a naive person with no racism in his heart refers to me as an “oriental.” If it were anyone else, it may have been ugly as the well-intended speaker got taught a politically correct awareness lesson he didn’t expect. I said to him cheerily and politely, “I’m not a secretary, but thank you; I’ll let the judge’s secretary know.” He blundered, “Oh, clerk or whatever.”

I can see college roommie Diana (an attorney) wincing at this. If it were certain other clerks, this juror would’ve been thrown out of the building after his blood and various body tissue were smeared all over the jury room walls.

Ah, politically correct America. What’s an oriental to do? Guess I’ll ponder that later whilst eating my fortune cookie, unless my mom calls to give me crap about why I’m not a doctor, engineer or an accountant, which are professions which someone would never mistake for a secretary.

We are now on our 10th consecutive week of trial (many different trials, civil and criminal, all back-to-back). The new trial we’re doing which came in yesterday brought in a DA whom I’m on friendly terms with. Today, he asked during break, “So how’s Cindy’s World?” “It’s all right,” I said. He said he’s told a few people about this blog and referred them to it because he thinks it’s so cool that I do this; to have it set up online and to put myself out there daily. He said he’d want to do something like this, but he doesn’t have the balls (his words). I said it’s not a matter of having the guts to write publicly as much as needing it for therapy. He said still, it’s all honest and candid, and he admires that I can expose myself like this.

The compliments made me feel good, because even tho he didn’t compliment my writing (haha), he complimented my character. A small portion of it, at least. He hasn’t seen the blog in the past few months so he has no idea how much more candid and soul-baring and lick-my-bleeding-heart it’s been. And I don’t have the heart to tell him the dark turn this site has taken as of late.

Sometimes I’m so focused on people who are thorns in my life that I don’t see the ones who are the roses. There are a couple of thorns, sure. But there are dozens and dozens of roses of all different colors and sizes in all aspects of my life. Even a furry black and white one at home who greets me by the door when I come home.

At jujitsu yesterday, Vanessa asked, “Did you hear Dodo this morning?” I sure did. He wasn’t doing his polite greeting “meow.” He was doing his loud, deep echoing “WAUL! WAAAAAAAUUUULLL!!” I had a hard time getting up yesterday morning and laid in bed 45 minutes after my alarm went off. Dodo walked in and out of my room caterwauling at me every so often. I know he was telling me to get out of bed. Turned out he was doing the same to Vanessa, who was also later than usual. We laughed when we exchanged stories and figured out that my cat was really saying, “What the hell! Where is everybody! Get up already!” He now waits in the middle of the upstairs hallway between my room and Vanessa’s room as we get ready in the mornings, just so he’s fair. He used to wait in my bathroom as I put on my face, or just outside my bathroom and bedroom doors, and walk me downstairs and he’ll have breakfast as I pat him goodbye and leave. Now, he waits for both of us and walks us both down and sends us off separately. What a sweetie.

The criminal trial we currently have in our courtroom involves one count of possession of marijuana for sale. The defense attorney had heard that I was recently in Jamaica and he joked that I should be a juror in this case since I’d just been around drugs. I told him that altho other people on the cruise have talked about being offered marijuana while we were docked in Jamaica, I wasn’t and that even tho everyone says how accessible drugs are to anyone, I’ve never been offered any and have no idea where to get them. (No one believes me, by the way.) I’ve never seen anyone do drugs, either. No one I know does drugs that I know of. The defense attorney said that drug dealers know to avoid me because I look conservative and academic, and they’d be afraid that I’m an informant. Eh??? An informant for the police? I thought about it and could actually see myself refusing an offer of drugs, turning around then calling the police on my cell and telling them that some dude just tried to sell me drugs. In real life I’d likely just politely refuse and walk away.

And then the DA (another young Asian female) and I got into a conversation about how we had never seen drugs prior to working for the courts and we’d never been offered drugs. She said she attended UC Berkeley for 4 years, where liberalism is supposed to run rampant, and she’d still never been offered drugs.

“Why, are you guys offended?” asked the defense attorney.

What, we look uptight?

It’s really weird to be divorcing people at my desk when an overtime bailiff I’ve never seen before is hanging out with my bailiff and talking very openly about the long-term relationships he’s been in and getting into detail about a particular 28 year old’s sexual responses to him.

In a work-information email sent out by a coworker, he decided to add his own unrelated 2 cents. I responded, and this chain resulted:

HIM: Did you know that in Shakespeare’s time, mattresses were secured on bed frames by ropes. When you pulled on the ropes the mattress tightened, making the bed firmer to sleep on. Hence the phrase …………………. “GOODNIGHT, SLEEP TIGHT.”
ME: how do you lay on the mattress and pull the rope to the desired tightness at the same time?
HIM: With great strength.
ME: oh. I’m glad I have a pillowtop over springs, then.
HIM: We have a pillow top also but it is so high of the ground I had to get a ladder for my wife.
ME: whatever happened to the good ol’ days of chivalry when a man would cradle his wife in his arms and carry her and lift her gently over the bed?
HIM: Oh you sweet innocent child.
ME: Hey, I’m almost 30!

Well, that broke up the mundaneness of jury selection on our new drug sales trial. Now, back to taking notes on jury selection, processing and entering a civil judgment on a prior case, doing family law crap. =P

My bailiff had just booked a $4000+ cruise through Alaska for him and his girlfriend come May. He’s normally pretty frugal with his finances but splurged on a balcony-view room for this impromptu vacation. He said he realized that life really is about the now, and sometimes if you wait, you lose the opportunity. “Did I tell you about the boyfriend my daughter had in high school?” he asked. “No,” I told him.

His daughter was with a boy for 2 years in high school and they went to prom together. They broke up in college because she attended UC Irvine and he went to Pepperdine. In college, he met his future wife, and they married about 2 years ago. They had a great time for a year, but then he suddenly fell sick last December. Blood transfusions and other emergency medical attention couldn’t save him, and he slipped into a coma and died three weeks after having been diagnosed with Acute Lymphocytic Leukemia (A.L.L.), an aggressive cancer which hits hard and fast, often in young adults. A.L.L. is what my friend Grace had.* This boy was only 22 when he passed.

My bailiff decided that since he and his girlfriend had always talked about going to Alaska or going on an Alaskan cruise one day, he may as well make the one day now. He can wait for finances to get better, but really, when will they ever be “better” to one’s contentment? (Actually, I’m pretty content with my finances. But I’m not the norm in that.) “I may not have tomorrow, so why wait?” he said. One day you’re here and fine, and the next you (or your loved one) is not. The money will always be re-earned, assuming you’re not throwing all sense of responsibility out the window in buying something you really shouldn’t be buying. But if you can generally afford something, an experience is not replaceable.

I neeeeed a vacation, man! Well, I worked through lunch, so I deserve to go kick some green belt butt in jujitsu for 3 hours tonite. Mr. W offered me a stress-reliever massage if I skip over to his house after class.

*One thing that’s always been of comfort to me is seeing the tons of photos Grace had collected during her short marriage to her husband. There’s them at the Roman Baths, in front of Stonehenge, looking toward the Niagara Falls, in New Orleans. She had a list of places she wanted to travel to, and she got to hit a lot of them, starting from even before her diagnosis. She enjoyed every ounce of her time with her husband and crammed a lifetime of memories into a couple of years. Her life was much like her. Full, vibrant, fierce.

I’m tired! *sob* We barely ended our psycho trial (declared a mistrial this morning cuz 1 stubborn juror caused the jury to hang) and half an hour later, they give us another one. Meanwhile I’ve been given a deadline to get thru family law crap and I need to clean up the mistrial case file and do all the forms and turn in the exhibits. I think I’m gonna skip the gym for lunch today and just stay in and do this crap. We didn’t get a break between the last hefty civil trial (the verdict was 26 pages! 26!) and this last psycho one, either. I just want to sleep.

Oh my gawd, and now they’re DEADLOCKED! The judge is doing a deadlock inquiry right now. The foreperson is the hold-out, I’m sure, cuz she was overheard yelling at the other jurors about some irrelevant sticking point.

It’s 4:06 p.m., and the custody bus normally leaves before 4 to bring the inmates back to county jail. And our pro per custody is sitting here in the court. =P

Our pro per (defendant insists on defending himself instead of thru an attorney) criminal trial is killing me. I want to gouge my own eyes out, which, incidentally, is what the defendant is charged with. (He gouged out the eye of another inmate in a local state mental hospital.)

And our jurors! The foreperson’s being a total witch, she’s causing problems, and she refuses to sign the request forms. She’d better not refuse to sign the verdicts!!

And she requested readback of testimony of EVERY WITNESS in the trial. What the hell was she doing when they were testifying?! The other jurors don’t want that kind of readback, but she’s just this controlling bossy cranky lady.

Everyone I’ve run into in the building (other DAs, other judges, other clerks, other bailiffs) have been sympathetically asking about our trial or saying they heard we have a nightmare case. Word gets around fast.

The pressure in here is actually making me shaky. I feel like a child tiptoeing around a parent who you know is a hairline away from ripping his belt off and whipping you to welts. Anything I do or say, or anything anyone does or says, may trigger the finely-tuned trip wire and everything will blow up. I’m trying to (very quietly and gingerly) mediate the situation and defuse the bomb, but I keep hitting dead ends. Meanwhile the ticking’s getting louder…