Just look at this shit someone attached to our refrigerator.  Apparently, I like to wear purple and blue britches on top of each other, like Punky Brewster or a homeless person, and I hop around all day on my giant johnson.  Oh, and I’m pregnant.

My bride has pink hair, is also pregnant, and appears to be jumping about on a giant johnson as well.

And then there’s little Maddie.  She’s wearing purple for this grand johnson-hopping event, has a horseshoe hanging on her head, and is also pregnant.  In the background are crosses, because we apparently live in ancient Rome on Good Friday.

This is what we get for taking our 3-year-old to the church nursery.

And then there’s this kid:

He’s hanging out in the bath tub.  He’s chill.  All’s right with the world.

But then:

Found something there, didn’t we?  Oh yes, you did (to be contrasted with “oh no, you didn’t”)!

He continued doing whatever he’s doing with the blue plastic rod until way past the point at which the bathwater became cold.  Now that he’s asleep, I’m totally taking that blue plastic rod into the shower with me to see what all the agape expressions are about.

Filed under: Baby, bath time, children's art | 14 Comments

My in-laws gave our 3-year-old daughter an art easel for Christmas.  Most every day that the temperature is above 20 degrees, she wants to go onto the patio under our deck–the area she refers to as “my yard” (since it had grass up until a few months ago)– to paint.  That, or she wants to pick up her little lime green plastic bucket full of Easter-egg-colored chalk and draw pictures on our sidewalk:  of herself, of me, of her siblings, of the dog, of the sun.  Sometimes, she makes me lie down on the sidewalk, so she can trace me, like she did today.  She colors, too.  Sometimes on the walls.  When we’re trying to sell our house.  That makes the realtor and me happy.

I think all her artwork pretty much sucks.  I’ve never thought myself artistically talented, and I assume my progeny will not be artistically talented.  In fact, I’m not sure I want them to be.  But Pretty Bride seems to think this shit is good for a three year old:

After she finished, she put her paintbrush into the little plastic cup of water and said, “Look, Daddy, it’s you!” and smiled like only an innocent, not-yet-jaded child can smile at her father.

Me: “Why am I hitch hiking?  Don’t you think Daddy can afford his car insurance and gas?  You think I’m a fucking deadbeat, don’t you Maddie?”
Maddie:  “Look!  You’re red and green, because Christmas is red and green, and Christmas makes me happy, Daddy!”
Me:  “But if I’m walking around Atlanta hitch hiking, how the hell do you figure you’ll get anything for Christmas?”
Maddie:  “Silly Daddy.”

I don’t particularly want Maddie to be artsy.  I knew people growing up who were artsy, and they spent their twenties in art school and then rehab and then multi-level-marketing seminars and then the unemployment line before finally giving up and getting GMAT or LSAT study guides (often after an out-of-wedlock child).

Every time my daughter touches fake horsehair to butcher paper, I see her going off to Savannah College of Art and Design, leaving during her junior year for a semester abroad to study some obscure portion of the Renaissance, only to meet some hostel-hopping drifter named Lars living off a Russian oil tycoon’s trust fund and spending the night talking about dada on the Charles Bridge among patina-covered gargoyles and then emailing me to say how bad American coffee is and how much better “Super Bud” is than the horse piss we call “Budweiser.”

Fuck that.  I need someone I can sell my practice to in 20 years.  So I can sit among gargoyles and drink good coffee and beer.

Filed under: Baby, artistic children | 38 Comments

Today’s my mom’s birthday.  She was born in ‘46, so she’s pretty old I suppose.  Her present was driving my dad back from a hospital in Chattanooga to their home in northern Alabama following some kind of robotic surgery.  I guess that’s better than having a birthday on the 23rd when he was in surgery, but still–pretty shitty.

That got me to thinking about a blog post:  “All About My Mother” but without the transvestitism.  Or, better yet, “Things My Mom is Better Off Not Knowing.”  That’s a little better.

1)  When you told me my name would have been Melanie had I been a girl, I thought you were an idiot.  Melanie?  Named after a fruit or a euphemism for boobs?  I totally would have been a hooker (but spelled Mellony).

2)  You weren’t real popular among the neighborhood kids.  It could’ve been your willingness to drag someone else’s kid out of a church service for a spanking.  Or your willingness to spank a neighbor’s child in our front yard for pissing on your azaleas.  Or your willingness to pull out the white plastic cutting board and spank your own son in the middle of a backyard football game.  It’s hard to say.  But one afternoon after watching “The Breakfast Club” on TBS right before I went to college, I walked across the street to the woods where I’d spent much of my childhood to look for the giant tree on which we’d all carved our names in 1984.  And, I saw someone had carved–on the back side of the tree–”Mrs Muskrat is a bitch.”  Don’t worry, though…I pulled out my pocket knife and scratched it out.

3) One time when you were screaming at me for being on the phone instead of doing my homework, I taped it.  I played said tape to everyone on the back of the bus during the 11th grade field trip to Washington, DC.  It got a lot of laughs.  I still remember such great lines as, “You’re not gonna step foot out of this house–except to go to school and church” and “No!  The only thing that’s queer is your attitude!”  I’ll have to remember that one for future use.

4) When y’all moved my bedroom to the other side of the house, where my window was 7′ off the ground, so I wouldn’t sneak out at night, you underestimated how easy a pull-up is for a boy with a pull-up bar in his doorway who did 30 every morning.  When I’d say, “I wonder who rolled so-and-so last night?” I really knew who had.

5) I came home one night in highschool and heard you screaming a bunch.  I thought you and Dad were fighting for about 10 seconds until I figured out y’all weren’t fighting, and I went to the toilet to throw up.

6) After a couple months of college, all of us pledges were sitting in a meeting with our pledge trainer, Steve, and he singled me out and asked if I had strict parents.  A friend who’d grown up with me gave an emphatic “Yes.”  Steve said, “It shows.  Dude always shows up on time, does a good job at post-party cleanups, and seems to be making his grades.  As for the rest of you fuckups…”  For about 5 seconds, I was actually glad you were a Nazi for the 18 years I was under y’all’s roof.

7) Before I knew about blogs, I used to send a couple emails every week to a friend from highschool at his university.  He’d print them, bind them, and give them to me at Christmas and summer breaks, so that my college experience would be memorialized.  Anticipating that I’d be sent to Iraq in 2003, I went through every page with a Sharpie and redacted anything I didn’t want you to read if I were killed, since I knew you’d be the one going through my things.  I didn’t want you to feel like you’d failed.

In any event, thanks for always being there, even when I didn’t particularly want you to be at the time.  In the words of a Vanderbilt football fan, “There’s always next year.”

Filed under: Family, mother | 25 Comments

I had other people with me in this picture, but they’re both attorneys, and I’m not sure they want to be associated with this post or this blog, so I cut them out.  Besides, is there any reason this picture–which is clearly the new definition of the word “perfect”–needs any complementing?  No.  And if you’re wondering if two of the necklaces feature a nude woman riding on a giant penis, the answer is “yes.”

My trip started with my de facto partner’s missing the flight.  Jackass.  Who leaves his house too late for a trip to New Orleans?  Not me!  I arrived right BEFORE they shut the escape hatch (and before the airline realized that I have two cases in litigation against them right now–which is why I used my military ID instead of my GA drivers license…you know, as a diversion).  Luckily, two guys in business class were other attorneys I knew, and they split the shuttle to the hotel.  I tagged along.

The conference on the first day was good.  I think.  I sat in on a session or two and then started eating oysters and drinking beer at The Acme Oyster House.  We returned for the afternoon session and then went to a bar at The Roosevelt.  Because that’s what classy Southern barristers do at 4pm.  We ate somewhere and then went to some bars.  My Twitter stream indicates I was sending messages to Katy Perry at 4:44 and still at a bar past 5.  I remember seeing a street covered in garbage and fire hose streams as the sun flirted with the horizon when I hit the hotel elevator.

Lunch was Friday’s first meal.  I sat in on the latter half of the seminar and then went out again, stopping at Galatoire’s Restaurant for dinner:  truly a “to do before you die” dining experience at an establishment over 100 years old.  I even refrained from acting an ass.  Sort of.

We went out to a couple bars and then greased a bouncer’s palm to get a balcony to ourselves above a bar called Cats Meow, where I once went onstage to sing “Sweet Home Alabama” on a trip during undergrad 15 years ago, because I like nostalgia and a good view.

I mean–does this not personify class?

Of course it does.  I signed up to perform in front of the throngs but apparently got too distracted to hear them call my name.  I signed up again but got forced out by my companion at 2am over–I was told the next day–great, profanity-laced protest.

I attended the seminar the following morning while my companion rode on a float in the Tucks parade.  I attended a crawfish boil by a vendor but had to leave because of my uncontrolled shaking and general misery.  I began to worry that I had not adequately trained for this event and that I might very well die.  I walked Bourbon alone for a half hour or so before returning to the room for a nap.  I was defeated.

Just as I thought I might actually fall asleep, roomie busted in the room and demanded that I don my gay pirate outfit and sneak into a Mardi Gras Coronation Party.  I walked up to the bouncers; they checked everyone’s wrists; I was in the middle of a pack; I got through.  MTV was there filming these guys.  I’m probably in the background with a chicken leg in one hand and a bourbon in the other, trying to regain some semblance of coherence with that dog hair trick everyone talks about.

Then, it was time for a conference-sponsored costume party on a Bourbon Street balcony.  I was in such disrepair that I stood in front of the bartender for a full 45 seconds before finally requesting a water.  20 minutes later, I stood in front of him another 45 seconds before requesting a Crown and Coke (I never drink Coke, but I felt caffeine was a must at this point).  He just shook his head and poured.  It was 7.15pm.

7 became 8 which smacked into 9 then melted into 10 before molding into 11 and collapsing into 12 prior to colliding with 1.  Party over.  Time to shuffle back to the hotel to get ready for an early Sunday morning flight.

One last look out the window Sunday morning, and it was back to the airport.

And back to this:

Thank God I can go back to work and be a normal person for 4 days until I go to San Antonio this weekend.

Filed under: Travels, mardi gras | 30 Comments

It’s been 10 months.  3 months after my 7 months status post.

I didn’t write down any goals when I started like all the motivational books say to do, but I had a few in my head:

1) Bring in about the same amount of income in year 1 as I brought in the year before while working for a firm.
–Did that by month 7 (though months 1-5 brought in next to nothing).  This was the goal others thought was crazy.

2) Get asked to speak about my unorthodox marketing ideas.
–I’ve had about 10 attorneys ask me to lunch or happy hour to discuss how I started my firm, marketed it, and got it to work.    Today, it was an architect.  Tomorrow, a law student interviews me for a class a local law school is doing on entrepreneurship and “going solo.”  He’ll be shadowing me from time to time the next couple of months and will then write a paper.  I can’t wait to have him bring me coffee and open the mail, as I’m sick of doing both and am too cheap to pay someone to do it.

3) Have enough flexibility to attend events at the little ones’ school.
–I’m finding that preschool doesn’t have a bunch of “events,” but I did go to the Halloween costume parade.  It was adorable.  Sometimes, I take them to school in the morning and meet their teachers.  No one tells me I have to stay late or come in early for meetings or corrections to TPS reports, so I almost always have breakfast and dinner at home with the little ones.  Perhaps “flexibility to attend events” really means “be a part of your children’s lives” right now.  My dad was a pilot and would often be gone for 2 weeks straight.  That is why I never considered becoming a pilot.

4) Travel on my firm’s dime.
–This is where I have excelled.  A friend who’s also a recent solo shares office space with me.  Shortly after we started our firms, we decided our area of town needed its own bar association–sort of like a fraternity for young(ish) lawyers who like nice restaurants and bars.  We called the right people and made it happen.  At our last meeting, we ended up at the same bar as the Black Eyed Peas.  We’re going to New Orleans in 2 days.  We have a conference in Nassau in a few weeks.  Later this year, trips to New York, Destin, Asheville, San Antonio, Houston, and Seattle will be firm expenses.  I love firm expenses and the sections of the Internal Revenue Code that facilitate them.

5) Derive intrinsic satisfaction from the “big picture” aspects of what I do.
–That took a matter of seconds.  Fighting for individuals who are getting screwed is way more fulfilling than fighting against them to save an insurance company money.  That being said, I don’t want to help someone defraud an insurance company or small business.  I think handling several hundred cases from the other side helped me gauge the liars.  I turn down those cases.

6) Have fun.
–A couple friends IRL have opined that I have too much fun, but I get a lot of work from folks with whom I go out a night or two per week.  Don’t hate.  I’ve been to more than my fair share of funerals the last few years.  I’m gathering rosebuds.

There have been a few unforeseen downers, however:
1) Banks don’t lend money to folks if the loan can’t be sold, which means the loan has to meet Fannie Mae guidelines, and two self-employed people don’t qualify.
–Regardless of income and credit scores.  So, I’m giving a big “fuck you” to the banking industry and have put our house on the market with the goal of renting for a year or two while saving up to pay cash for a new home that will fit all our babies (that or get a small portfolio loan from a local credit union, but only for 10 years).

2) There is no “unplugging.”
–Whether on vacation, a weekend trip, or the shitter, I’m always thinking about work, checking emails and voicemails, and going over what needs to be accomplished the next day in my head.  I don’t relax unless I’m intoxicated, which has led to an increase in my drinking.

3) Imitation may be flattering, but it can be discouraging.
–In the last year, I’ve seen a huge increase in the number of older, more established firms in my market increase their web presence and start using social media for promotion.  They have deeper pockets than I do, so while their efforts lack my wit and personality, they’re more visually appealing and professional-looking.  I still believe the internet is an arena in which David can beat Goliath.  Hopefully.

Summary:  It’s worth it.  And I’ll continue to promote chasing dreams and being unorthodox to anyone who asks.

Filed under: Law | 25 Comments