Blabber

English Renaissance dress is highly complex to construct. I thought I'd have my Halloween costume done in plenty of time with no problem. But, boy was I wrong. There's still so much to do on it - and that I want to do that's not even necessary to ensure I'm not naked. But first, I have to make sure I'm not naked when I wear it. This means - get the bodice finished by trimming the seams and then hand tacking the piping seam around the edges, fitting on the hooks and eyes, and attaching the sleeves. I have to finish the cuffs of the sleeves, make the ruffs for the neck and the writsts, make the partlet by sewing on twill tape and snaps, and gathering it at the neck. Well, there's probably something that I forgot to write about that I still have to do - but I'm excited to get it done.

Last night, Mom and I pinned it onto my dress form and, with very little imagination, got a first look at what it will eventually be. And we kept telling each other that we should go to bed, but we standing there looking at it and thinking about what other gewgaws we could put on it that would make it look even better.

I am excited for it to be finished, but I don't know when I'm going to get it finished. There's tonight and tomorrow night and then it has to be done because I'm having a party Friday night and I'll have to spend the evening getting ready for that, not working on the costume--the cosutme which is the reason I'm having the party because this one is just too cool and expensive to only go to one party in it. So I'm throwing my own.

Last night I went to my ward Halloween party - with just the skirt. Of course, I wore a shirt - but it was just a white linen shirt. I walked in with this huge farthingale and a gorgeous skirt peeping out from under my blue cloak. Oh yeah, people were impressed. But then there's this boring, non-matching shirt on top. The best was that people kept asking where I got the skirt, like they never suspected that I made it! That's cool. It also gave me an opportunity to explain that the bodice isn't finished, which is why I'm just wearing a skirt. A really big, impressive, fancy skirt.

And now I'm developing a cold sore!

Been staying up far too late at night making the skirt.

Mom's been helping soooooooo much. She's spent so much of her time hemming the never-ending end and then the waist band. This is the coolest thing - the over skirt attaches to the waist band in a very unique and time consuming way. There's about 3 or 4 yards of fabric that is to be gathered onto the waist band. It's done by doing three running stiches along the endges in a precise way and then gathering the fabric along the stiching threads. You end up with fathers about .5 inches thick. Each gather is individually attached to the outside of the waistband. The result is that the gathers (cartridge pleats is what they're called I think) stand out from the waistband - straight out. Until of course the weight of the skirt pulls them down.

I'm so blabbering because I'm so tire. I'm having a hard time concentrating at work.

And here's the strangest stress I've ever dealt with. I hate charging people for what I do for them. It just seems ridiculous to me to charge people for me to think for them. Also, I know that I'm not the fastest at researching and so I feel so guilty charging anyone for the amount of time I spend researching. I'm pretty sure that I come up with useful stuff, but I feel that I should charge for only half of what I do because..... because ..... I just don't like people paying that much money for what I feel is work that is almost common sense. Like the other night, a fellow calls with a question about a custody issue. He's a young guy, fathered a child and is worried about the child's saftey. He calls (the attorney at my firm who works for him wasn't there, so I took the call). He calls with these nebulous concerns and I get this feeling that basically he just wants to take the child from the mom's home. But his conscience knows that that's no solution - at least not a permanent one. All I can tell him is don't do anything stupid. In fact, with most of my clients (which granted is just a handful and I've been an attorney for a whopping two weeks now), when they call asking for advice, mostly I tell them in a few more words "Don't be stupid." Don't do things that are going to get you into trouble. Duh. Now, pay me $60 bucks for that 2 cents worth of advice. Can you see why I have a hard time charging people? I guess, if I want to be cynical, if people need the advice of "don't be stupid" or "don't panic" or "be nice" then they deserve to be charged that much. But I don't believe that. I frequently get the feeling that they're mostly looking for assurance that they are right. Man, this is just weird trying to figure out what it means to be an attorney. To make it clear, I should say that my practice (and it is practice - another reason I don't like charging) is mostly family law and probate - that means I deal with the people who are at a very gut level having a hard time with something in their family. It is a lot of touchy feely type stuff - not a whole lot of intellectual gamesmanship like MA or IP.

Blabber, blabber, blabber - I've got work to do. Clients who depend on me! I suppose it's ok to charge them. The difficulty I'm having right now comes from the fact that I just input a bunch of hours into the practice management software and saw what the clients are paying. My gut just clenched and my head hung in shame. It's just hard. And I just have to get over it because this is the way the world works. My desire for people to just be kind to each other is idealistic - our relationships and understandings of self are still so bound up in property that if I don't charge people for my work, I'll starve - because that's the way the world works. I wish the world was different - but it won't change for my wishing and I just hope that I can keep my ideals and gentleness - that I can be supple enough that I'll always bounce back to my original way of seeing things, even when I do things that are contrary to the way I wish things were.

Blabber blabber blabber. Bye.