Lost

You know the feeling. You are looking for something very important, and you have either 1) put it in such a safe place that you'll never find it again, or 2) you were careless with it and can't remember where you left it even though it is so important to your life, that your entire day is going to snowball into depression and insanity the longer you search. For mothers, I imagine the panic in your gut that could cause several ulcers comes from misplacing a child. I remember how panicked Becky and I were when our eldest son was missing for twenty minutes, and we were sure he was roadkill somewhere outside the building we were in.

Well, My day started with the "my computer just crashed and all my work was lost" feeling, except it took the form of a missing USB drive. Yeah, the little Toshiba 4 Gb wonder that holds my entire professional life, or at lease the last 24-48 hours of non-backed-up work product. It has a small hole designed into it, suggesting it should attach to my keys, but my keys are the size of Alaska, and I am WAY too lazy to disattach it every time I want to plug it into my laptop, or work computer. I began to immediately imagine the last 48 hours in detail, trying to remember if I actually created really important legal documents that were not e-mailed or printed that were now likely lost forever.

Unbeknownst to me, my adventure started last night, when I had to take off all of my clothes, and empty every pocket, at the Justice Court metal-detector port-of-entry. Normally, I just flash my bar-card and as an attorney, I get in without much hassle. But becuase our legal system makes so much logical sense, I can use this perk for Appellate Court, or even the Utah Supreme Court, or at the Federal Court, where they even let me bring in my active cell phone without even checking to make sure it is not a weapon - counsel are trusted at the hightest levels, because lets face it, lawyers would NEVER do anything insane or harmful, or vengeful like normal nut-jobs. But at the lowest levels of our system - yep, Small claims court, we have to get strip-searched so we don't kill the Pro-tem judge, who is really not a judge at all.

Yeah, I forgot to take the USB drive out of the plastic container at the Court while putting back on my belt, shoes, jacket, watch, and glasses. (If they would just let me shower at court too, I would'nt even bother getting out of my Pajamas on the mornings I have hearings.)

I got home late, was wheedled into three bedtime stories for Clara, Audrey and Reuben (and had to re-read one for Amy, who was begging) and quickly turned my attention to watching San Diego State get "Jimmered" in front of the whole country, and then I realized that my son did not do his homework that was due the next morning. He's asleep. I have to stay up to midnight doing a legal letter - should I wake him up?

Some people have to go to bed, and would rather get up early to do work. Night Owls (definately me) are just getting going after 10 p.m.- So I start searching for the documents he will need to get up early and get his history homework done, but can't find them. I start looking for my USB drive to find the templates he is using for his National History Fair project, but can't find it. I watch an episode of MASH to console myself, certain that enough Hawkeye jokes will make me remember what pants or jacket pocket I left it in. Midnight comes, and I promise myself I'll find in in the morning.

6am comes way too fast, and my eyes still feel like the little girls slithered silently into my room during the night and shoved emery boards up under my eyelids. (We've been battling pink-eye for over a week) My son is up, and staring at the computer in the other room, searching anywhere in his brain for a few of the 250 words he has to write. Luckily, he found his documents on the hard-drive. Unfortunately for me, I spend the next 6 hours looking in all of the "safe" places at the house, in the car, at my office, at the law offices from my yesterday appointments, and finally, at the court.

And now I have "lost" an entire morning of work. Oh well, at least I found Toshiba before noon - I'm really not a morning person anyway!

Posted by Judson, Jan 27th, 2011