Plamehouse! So...I'm the cook?

One of the funny things about Plamehouse is while it may be a Vonnegutian karass, it is not a well-ordered home.

Upon my arrival for the blowout Verdict Party yesterday, I took inventory: two over the top giddy bloggers---Hamsher and Wheeler; one enormous bottle of wine from looseheadprop; one regular bottle of wine; and not a damn thing to eat. I mean not a granola bar. Not a cracker.

Open the refrigerator, absolutely nothing. I've seen more food in bachelor apartments. What did these people have for lunch? Turns out neither had lunch. What about breakfast? One of them had no breakfast. [Wait, didn't Jane blog about coffee and pastry at the courthouse? Historians want to know these things. Maybe I’m remembering one of the Stoller DQ crowd who had no breakfast. In any case absolutely no one was interesting in procuring food.]

For the next couple of hours, we drank a wee toast or two to our combined efforts to make the law apply to the high as well as the low. It's been a long time working to understand the details of a complicated legal case. Finally: success. A toast to the hardworking bloggers. A toast to Fitzgerald and team. A toast to the faerie godmother.

I'm the daughter of a city prosecutor, who died exactly 17 years ago as of the verdict. I like to think he is looking down from heaven with a smile on his face. One of his HLS classmates, Kleindienst, was declared guilty in Watergate. He thought this was justice indeed, for the fellow showed up the last day of their group project and just signed his name. My father debated the real Paper Chase professor, Eddie Morgan, until the end of the class, leading to applause for this unusual feat. Should I wonder why my son can argue circles around me?

Perhaps I am just carrying on family tradition. In fact my Republican mother worked for the Boston law firm that took down McCarthy in the early 50's. She worked to register "Negroes" for the vote in the 40's and was surprised to learn that a woman could be fired as soon as she got married.

My mother left the work world when it was time for children, first my brother who died at age 3 hours, right in the middle of law school exams. Then a year later, me, who lived HOORAY! then my 3 sisters and 3 brothers. And you wonder why I work to save the lives of infants. So for the next 30 years my mother cooked three meals a day, tired or not. I felt this was a kind of slave labor and rebelled against this. For my own children, I only cooked them three meals a day until they got to the teen years, and then looked for relief.

So I had to laugh when I realized that these two blogger and media superstars were too absorbed in Verdict Euphoria to deal with such a mundane matter as food. And I, the feminist since 1968, the one who tried desperately to escape the cooking role near the end of my 15 years of full-time motherhood, here I was the one who was going to have to come up with some food.

So I walked out into the unseasonable cold and braved the two city blocks between Plamehouse and a rather decent pizza place. The two pizzas I brought back were the only food available until much later in the evening, when Pach and Stoller and other assorted lovely people assembled for a restaurant excursion. Since I had been up since bolting awake at 5am in verdict mania, it was time for me to sleep.

How I can contribute to the first feminist uprising: refuse to be the only cook. How I can contribute to this political upheaval: be the cook. We live not for ourselves alone.

*******

Guilty Guilty Guilty Guilty

History in the making. Libby is found guilty in 4 of the 5 charges. Successful: obstruction of justice, perjury in front of the grand jury, and lying to the FBI.

It was a great privilege to be one of the first few citizen journalists ever to have official press credentials to cover a trial in federal court. My days were February 13, when Fitzgerald swiftly disposed of John Hannah's excuses, and March 2 during jury deliberations. It was fun to get to know the other media people better. Now when I watch the news I think, yeah, nice guy, met him last week :)

We had a party to celebrate at Plamehouse. I got to meet Pach and Stoller. Jane is off, and Marcy leaves today after her last radio gig. Everybody is elated but exhausted.

We enjoyed celebratory wine provided by looseheadprop.

*******

Rest? What would that be like?

No verdict today in the Libby trial.

It's been fun, in a manic kind of way, to share this waiting experience with thousands of FDL folk. I'm feeling happy about being given a set of keys to help behind the scenes. I have a set of keys for our department at the children's hospital in Russia. It makes me feel that I am included and needed, both important to my psyche.

So many comments made me laugh out loud. When I suggested that sufficient pacing would constitute aerobic exercise, Rayne said she was at that moment trying to figure out how to connect her laptop to her treadmill. Commenter squirrel hiller asked who else had a blood pressure cuff right by the keyboard. Looseheadprop and littleprop talked about prosecutor mom jumping 10 feet every time the phone rang. HAHA I typed rant. It's a habit.

It's been that kind of a day.

So when the news came, no need to keep the vigil until Monday, all of a sudden I was SO TIRED. I have several interesting projects for this evening which have mostly lost their appeal. I don't want to do anything. Well...maybe some puzzles :) But all other plans will apparently have to wait until tomorrow.

Is this what other people experience, the setting down of work, and the adoption of, what do you call it, rest?

I am the mother of three. The oldest of seven. The daughter of a bipolar parent. The founder of a charity that literally saves lives. If I ever knew what rest was, I have forgotten.

Rest, relaxation, re-creation. A different set of keys. I need them too.
.

My ADD interferes with my OCD

True quote from my best friend. We were discussing the joys of being both ADD and OCD when she came up with this gold. Need to think about the implications.

May I ramble on a bit? All right, you say, and in fact necessary to identify a post as being uniquely mine. Not kind of unique, sort of unique, nearly unique, [uniquer--per egSon] thank you lovely children who know this pet peeve. It is either one of a kind or not. Unique or not unique. /rant.

As to rambling, you might think this was the very sign of me posting, rather like looseheadprop's spelling errors at firedoglake. It's how we know it is her speaking.

This lovely friend came over today, as every Friday, to help in whatever way I needed for the Russian Medical Fund work. Today the agenda was to keep the president from quitting. Again. But rather seriously this time.

According to my friend, there are still children who will die without our help, and no one will take my place if I quit [what is WRONG with this world], and I probably am strong enough to keep doing this work. Gratuitous swear word inserted here. I apparently continue to have the obligation and the opportunity to save lives if only I will keep going. So be it. But I hope it's worth the cost.

We operated on a child from Tadzhikistan, who came to us from another center that will remain nameless to protect the guilty. The parents SOLD THEIR HOUSE to pay for his first surgery at the other institution, and they nearly killed him. They at least had the conscience to send him on to us. We did his repair, undoing their strange cutting and pasting, and now he has a chance at a normal life.

I watched the re-do surgery and sat with the mother, who was understandably hysterical, as her son came from surgery to the ICU. I explained to her that the surgery went well, was perfectly normal, yet her son would look strange being under anaesthesia and with tubes sticking into him. We spoke in Russian, which was her second language and mine. Yet as mothers we communicated at a higher level. She trusted me since I too had children.

That's the good news. The bad news: there are people in the city where I work who are actively trying to shut down our program, which saves the lives of 350 children a year.

Why? To bring a trickle of federal money toward their own program, so they can have a small and weak program that kills more patients than they save. They want to expand their own program at the cost of killing ours.

Can you hear my response? Their inability to see beyond themselves is evil.

Yet at some level I am sympathetic. It is always hard to see beyond oneself, or beyond one's own organization. But in this case, for them to succeed, children will die. I WILL RESIST.

My alcohol counselor is unhappy. Better I should withdraw from this struggle and work on my own sanity. What is morally right here?

I have already decided to withdraw from the issue of war and peace between the United States and Iraq/Iran/et cetera, for the benefit aof my sanity. Must I leave my work of 10+ years as well?