First Court Appearance = Not Glamorous (+ I might be Zombie)

Note:  This first paragraph is gross.  So if you’re squeamish, skip it 😉

This morning, I woke up at 5:45am and picked up my blackberry to check for emails before I hopped in the shower.  Sure enough, I had one.  As I was reading the email, I felt something weird on my tongue so I put my finger on my tongue and tried to scratch it, and all of a sudden my tongue was bleeding.  I went in the bathroom to look in the mirror and my whole tongue looked blackish.  I was freaked out.  There was crusted blood all over my tongue!  And it didn’t really support the possibility that  I could have just bit my tongue in my sleep.  What happened in the middle of the night?!  Did I suddenly turn into a zombie or a vampire in my sleep?!  (Is it scary that the thought actually did cross my mind?).  My best guess is that my mouth got so dry in my sleep (I generally sleep with my mouth open) that my tongue started bleeding.   GROSSSSSSS.   Needless to say, it was a weird and somewhat unsettling start to the day.

I also had my first court appearance today.  It was sort of what one might call an EPIC FAIL.   The opposing counsel checked in with the clerk and immediately turned around and started talking to me, so I didn’t realize I was supposed to check in separately.  Later, when it was our turn before the judge, he asked me to state my name and when I did, the clerk FLIPPED out.  She started yelling about how I didn’t check in and how awful/horrible/ridiculous/crazy/howdidyouevengraduatefromlawschool I was for failing to realize, in court for my first time ever, that I was supposed to check in with her separately and give her my business card.  I was so embarrassed, and realizing that the clerk was really frazzled (and knowing that it’s very important in the legal world to treat the clerks with the utmost respect), I apologized profusely and just bit my tongue as she went ON and ON and OOOOOOON about how horrible it was that I didn’t check in.  (Yeah, I understood the moment you said ‘you were supposed to check in’ that I made a mistake, you don’t need to find 50,000 other ways of telling me I screwed up.  I get it. ).  On top of that, I was busy handling all of the opposing counsel’s witnesses since the opposing counsel was running around like a mad woman, and the sheriff decided to put it on me to get those people out and on their way as soon as possible.   I had NO CONTROL over those witnesses.  I did not subpoena them.  I did not even know they were subpoena’d.   Needless to say, it was a great time.  The good news is that it will be one of those stories that I will tell for all time.  I will be 85 and talking to some new, young whipper snapper lawyer and I will be like, “back in my day, when we still had courtrooms and paper and printed business cards…..” and I will tell the story.  And that young whippersnapper will have no idea what I’m talking about, but I will tell the story anyway.

One more dramatic piece of info to share from my day.  So, several weeks ago I had to go to the emergency room via ambulance.  I didn’t tell my family because everything turned out fine and I didn’t want anyone to worry.  Well, apparently the ambulance people decided to send the $1050 bill to my mom.  So today, as I’m trying to dig my way through the poorly written laws of the state of Massachusetts, I got a text from my mom saying, “I have this bill from you getting transported to the emergency room.  Are you ok??”  So much for not making anyone worry 😉