Counsel of Record
Oyez! Oyez!
Appearing before this Honorable Assembly are Counsel of Record: Ray (The Happy Planner) and Patricia (Miss Demeanor if you're nasty). Below are brief bios we wrote about each other and ourselves.
Two lawyers, two genders, two coasts... how could it not be fun?*
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Patricia about Ray
Ray is one of the most delightfully weird people I have ever met. He's insanely smart and funny, which can be intimidating and will surely make anyone stupid enough to ever collaborate on a writing project with him look like a buffoon. Oh, wait. Dammit!
Ray has an encyclopedic knowledge of obscurica - from the divine to the inane. He quotes as easily from Star Wars or Firefly as from Hawking or Kafka. No one has ever caused me to use Google as much as Ray has, but it has always been worth it. You get smarter just knowing Ray. He actually is as clever, cultured and well-read as people seem to assume I am because I am quiet.
Ray lives in Seattle with a fantastic wife who married him despite him taking her to see Cannibal Killer Clowns for their first date. So I guess he is charming or something, cuz yeeesh! They have two adorably precocious girls who are destined to cure cancer, make successful First Contact, and design a fabulous line of ballgowns for Self-Rescuing Princesses. Unless one of them turns to the Dark Side. Then, I fear, we shall all be lost in the sisterly crossfire caused by Evil's sudden but inevitable betrayal. Gods help us all.
Patricia about Patricia
Huh, it really is harder to write about yourself. I've worked jobs that have ranged from booking punk rock bands at crappy bars to being managing editor of a book publishing house and from telemarketing to, ya know, lawyering. I know that's more like a resume than anything really about me, but I reckon it shows I crave new experiences. I've been very lucky to have had a lot of them in my life.
Two of the best experiences I have had (chronologically, not by favorite, haters) have been (a) taking off the year after law school to travel around the world and (b) becoming a mom - well, a stepmom. I'd traveled significantly before my around-the-world trip, but there is something different about knowing you're not on a schedule that lets you fall into the natural rhythm of the places you visit. I'd planned 3 weeks in Vietnam, for example, but stayed for 6 because it was so welcoming and after the hullabaloo of Japan and China, it felt so right to travel by moto or in slow peapod boats at the pace of the river.
As much as I love traveling and the daily adventure that new places bring you, I have been voluntarily stationary for a number of years now. Parenting and full-time world travel don't mix well, so I've stayed put in Baltimore where I live with my incredibly kind husband (Lawful Good Monk, for reals) and two kids so amazing I regularly feel like I won the stepkid lottery. They're primarily in our care, so I have had the great fortune to grow with them - a boy and a girl, now a teen and a tween, respectively - on a daily basis. They are astonishingly talented, smart and kind and I absolutely adore them. My daughter sometimes asks me if I miss traveling and, while I do, I would surely miss my kids more.
(Monk boy points out he is really much more
Neutral Good than Lawful, there being very little punk in Lawful.)
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Ray about Patricia
A lot of people confuse the existence of a Patricia in their lives with the existence of stability. They think that she is some sort of keel or ballast, keeping the boat low and on an even track by mechanically keeping it upright and deep in the water and firmly straight.
I met Patricia on one of my first days at law school. She, an upperclassman, took me underwing and I got to witness her single-handedly pull together the most extensive, successful, and lucrative series of student events that had ever been seen. What was really impressive was not the huge work that went into pulling these things off, it was that once Patricia started planning them, their success became inevitable.
Back to the boat analogy, she is not a stabilizing mechanism. She is the wind itself. An utter force of nature compelling you to move forward and do a hell of a lot better than you have any right to do. You're not feeling the little bumps and waves because she is moving you forward so goddamn fast that you don't have a chance to worry about the little hiccups. Then she smiles, tells you that you did a good job, and you leave thinking you did it all yourself.
It's not a cover-up so much as an exercise in efficiency. You do not think about the huge number of things that are involved in whatever you are undertaking. Patricia does, and she's better at it than you. It's likely she's better at whatever you're doing that you are too, but she thinks you're entertaining, so you're allowed to stick around.
One thing she can't cover up is that she has surrounded herself with a family she adores. She has a completely dry and deprecating wit from her truly adorable parents and nerves of steel from her military siblings. Her husband, The Buddhist, does a very good job in keeping those nerves from being tested too often. Her son, The Artist, shows in his talented drawings and art a reflection of her broad tastes in culture and quality music. And her daughter, The Actress, is growing into a bold talent, due in no small part to Patricia's unwavering support and encouragement.
Ray about Ray
How the hell did I get here? I'm writing this from a bar that is 3200 miles from the closest thing I've ever called home. My shoes are soaked, pants are soaked, and my coat is dripping on the hook next to the stool. But it's my one day a month off duty, so I'm not about to stick around the house even if the sky has opened and animals started pairing off, two-by-two. Also, I have given up a car, professional work, and I'm relying on my wife to pay my enormous student loans while I do the last thing a lawyer ever should, which is stay at home and raise kids.
But the seeds for this current state were laid a while back. Although I can do the lawyery stuff, I had opted out of that particular bit several years ago. Instead I was working as a city planner, an esoteric bit of municipal governance. Anyone that pays attention (and they don't) thinks that planners tell folks where they can build and what business they can open. I've always found best parts of the job to be where we get paid to look, really look, at the city as a giant beast and study its habits. I'm sure folks enjoy feeding the beast, or doing its dentistry, or washing it, but I'm the only one that gets to look at the entire thing, deem that it is indeed a city, and make other, less obvious, Hunter Thompson references.
Also, this isn't the first time I've been pretty far from home. I seem to have a tendency to wander about every few years and spend some time living there. I'm a serial monogamist when it comes to travel. And I don't go far, staying on continent, just because me and planes don't get along. Thus, being on the other side of the country is a bit more excessive than I'm used to. But it's not a complete departure from the past.
And maybe the "where" is useful for knowing why everything is soaked. This is Seattle. I'm originally from Baltimore, so it's been a little change. There is a rumor that it rains here all the time. This is not true. It drizzles all the time, making today's pouring deluge quite a surprise. And right as I got off the bus. The bus riding, it should be explained, is new too. We live right in the middle of downtown, so it's possible to live carless. We gave up the Corrolla, but not the van, so we're half-way there. And the Breadwinner has it to ferry the girls about for the day.
The most explainable part of my current state is that I am sitting in a bar. Beer is good. Seattle beer is really good, though I wish they'd brew more stouts. Everybody’s brewing dark IPAs and inky lagers. Put on big boy pants and brew a damn stout! And pour it for me! After all, it is Saturday, and I'm off duty from the girls for the day.
So what the hell am I doing being the stay-at-home dad? First, the missus has a hell of a lot more lucrative career than I ever was in municipal government. Pay your civil servants, people, and you get to keep your well educated staff. Otherwise, we're all going to be living in the Pacific Northwest, and you can wait even longer at city hall for your deck permit.
Other than that, I can't say that I have any idea why I'm doing what I'm doing when raising girls. Or how. I do know that I talk a lot. I hear dudes complain that their homemaker wives nag and bitch about everything. What a lot of guys don't get is the difference between "spending time" with kids and "raising" kids. When I'm with the girls, ages three and five, I constantly run my mouth. It is a stream of instructions, impetus, encouragement, explanations, coaxing, and coddling, punctuated by the occasional burst of exasperated rage. Profanity has been scrubbed, and holy shit that's hard. But the words are unceasing because the girls are unceasing and we have things to go to.
I'm sure there are other ways to raise your kids. I've read about a lot of them. But most of those books cover the mileposts and the really difficult interactions. They don't say how to act during the other 23.5 hours each day or the other six days out of the week. So I chat with the girls, which comes naturally to me.
But not to a lot of other people at this bar. Which is kind of refreshing. Because it is my day off.
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