Monday, November 19, 2007

courtroom dramas and other trials of life

Just wanted to fill you in with lots of useless trivia about my life during the last week or so.

The week started with our second weekend away in a row. Two wonderful weekends, but still exhausting.

You may remember I had to go to court to testify in a commital hearing on behalf of a friend last Tuesday. I worried for days about what would happen at court. Would it be like those courtroom dramas, where an intimidating and aggressive lawyer peppers you with questions and objections: "What exactly happened on the day of 10th July 1979 at 3:15 pm?...Did you personally witness these occurrences? Well, how do you know they took place?...Objection! That's hearsay!"

And an even more vital question: what exactly do you wear to court? I was trying on outfits for a good hour. My wardrobe is more sloppy housewife than professional woman.

Picture me on the morning of the hearing, running in my falling-off shoes and long, tight Savers skirt, along the tram tracks to catch an impatiently "dinging" tram. The driver was definitely not smiling when I said sorry for holding him up - in fact, I think he avoided eye contact of any kind. Probably thinking "stupid woman, she runs just like a girl". Which I did.

I travelled for 1 1/2 hours on our environmentally sound but very slow public transport system, including a 1/2 hour wait for a late train. Ran from Flagstaff Station to the family court building, where I rode up and down in the lift to various floors until I found the court room, by which time I was light headed and shaky, and 15 minutes late for my legally binding appointment.

All this only to be greeted with the news that they might not need me that day after all, at which point I nearly burst embarrassingly into tears in front of a very official looking lawyer.

I was put in a small room with the other witnesses, mostly old school friends. We were told to check our statements, but not to talk about the one thing we were all thinking about - our evidence. So we swapped stories about our children and talk about the inadequacies of the public school system. We waited for 2 hours while the lawyers argued, only to be told that our evidence was inadmissible.

So I never did experience the inner workings of a courtroom. Ah, well, at least I got to have lunch with Sue, one of my best friends from school, who I barely get to see any more, so that made 3 hours on public transport almost worthwhile.

What else can I whinge about? Let's see. My computer died over a week ago, and has shown no signs of life since, despite an attempt by Mike, our poor, put upon trainee staff member, to fix it yet again. It's now residing uselessly at the computer repair shop. So I've been blogging and facebooking as best I can from Steve's office all week.

Which, of course, led to all kinds of heart-searching questions for a self-obsessed woman like me: does God want me to stop blogging and facebooking? does he think I'm neglecting my family? is he punishing me?

Well, actually, the main result of a week without a computer was a welcome respite from the children's over-use. They have been playing old-fashioned energetic games all week, so perhaps I should leave the computer at the repair shop. And our family scored well in the diabetes' quiz at school, when Ben was the only child able to report he had zero screen time the day before, which hopefully gives me the rating of super-parent.

The lack of a computer also led to my mother giving me her old laptop, making it much easier for me to write blogs in the heart of my family without neglecting them. Blogging is starting to feel like a natural part of life, a relaxing hobby which no longer disrupts or steals time from the family.

So even if I had shoulders tight and sore from stress all week, perhaps it was worth it to get in touch with an old school friend, rediscover the delights of non-computer play, and resolve some issues about blogging and the family.

Gd's faithful providence in the midst of everyday trivialities.

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