Nothing But Love :: golf blogger

THEY SAY WRITE EVERYDAY SO I'M JUST WRITING ABOUT BORING AND NOT FUNNY STUFF AND I KNOW I DON'T HAVE THE PARAGRAPHS THE WAY THEY SHOULD BE SO IT'S EVEN HARDER TO READ BUT I'M POSTING (WRITING) ANYWAY SO I CAN GET TO THE PLACE WHERE I CAN WRITE FUNNY, NOT BORING (AND PARAGRAPHICALLY CORRECT. I KNOW "PARAGRAPHICALLY CORRECT" IS NOT RIGHT, TOO, BUT I'M LEAVING IT CUZ I LIKE IT) STUFF SOMEDAY, SO READ THIS IF YOU WANT, BUT DON'T BLAME ME BECAUSE I WARNED YOU AND THIS TITLE MIGHT JUST BE THE BEST, MOST INTERESTING PART OF THIS POST BLAH BLAH YACKITY SCHMACKITY

as i told you before (and i'll repeat it here because maybe you weren't paying attention, huh?), life is particularly sweet right now. things are so sweet right now that as i write this, i'm getting nervous that i'll jinx us. spit. spit. (that's me trying to ward off a malocchio).

jackson is doing great! he will be back home right around the beginning of july. he'll be transferring to a starbucks up here then and staying with us until he gets on his feet enough to afford his own place -- he's planning on january. i'm so excited to see him, to be with the old jackson, to watch him growing. he is so awesome! he's got music plans, and i'm happy that he's in a place that i think will allow him to throw himself into this for the first time as a sober young man. he's trying to post some on his site (you can find the link under "family" up at the top). he'll be able to do this with more frequency once he gets home.

matt and mel -- as always -- are terrific. this summer will be crazy busy for matt. mel is the best at dealing with his crazy schedule (there are many days that he doesn't come home at all, catching a few winks at his desk). i can't think of anything more to say that i haven't said before about these two beautiful young people. sigh.

as i told you before, mark and sarah are getting married in september. so we'll all be together (a rare occasion) then. yay for the wedding! yay for us all being together!

bill and i are having a great time right now. i mean a GREAT time!

we love, love, LOVE living downtown. GO CAVS! one of them lives in our building, and bill is happy to share with him his admiration.

our loft is EXACTLY the way we wanted it. bill's practice is better than ever. he's loving his work again due to several factors. the loft is his office. the majority of the construction that we had done last year was to install the desks and storage for the office -- it has worked out very, very nicely.

he's cut a lot out of his practice -- the unproductive, unprofitable, time-eating stuff.

our day begins in stages. bill rarely needs an alarm clock to get up. the dogs wake him when they need their morning walk. he takes them out, allowing me to sleep and, i suspect, allowing him the time to read the paper in peace. once my feet hit the floor, it seems i've developed the bad habit of talking, talking, talking until i fall asleep for the night. i seriously have no clue when this started. have i ALWAYS been like this? i have no idea. i have to work on this, but i'm happy that he's found a way to escape. i get up when i get up. we work 15 steps from our bedroom.

i handle all his billing. this might not sound big, but it has released him from the thing he has hated MOST about his practice. he hated it so much that he was absolutely terrible at it. unbeLIEEVEably terrible. and that's the pollyanna way to put it. the truth is that he just never kept his time recorded in one place. the first of the month would roll around, and then he'd have to put together what he had done the previous month by looking through e-mails, correspondence, phone log, and file notes, thus missing whole big portions of what he did. his clients were billed for MUCH less time than he really put into their work. he'd miss phone calls, research, and lots of other stuff. then he'd have to type it all out. this process would take a minimum of 7 days, often taking 20 days or more. time wasted. the boys became used to hearing me say "did you get your bills out?" and bill's response, "they'll be out by tomorrow". so when we were anticipating the closing of my office for the entire year before it closed, we crunched some numbers and decided that the time and money he'd gain would more than offset the loss of my salary and benefits. i finally understood that although he is a GREAT LAWYER, he's NOT a good office administrator. and i AM. i created him some time-recording sheets that he keeps by his side at the computer. the first month, it took a little prompting; but as he saw me entering the time in the spreadsheets i created and saw how this previously "lost" time added up so quickly, he became more and more conscientious about making his entries on the sheets. on the first of the month, it takes me no more than 15 minutes to convert these sheets to pdf's (the printed/pdf'd versions look like an invoice due to my superior "programming" skills) and e-mail them to our clients. this absolutely tickles bill. and me. i'm earning my "salary."

so we work at our own pace. bill is most productive when he works at his own pace. when he feels like it. it's not unusual for him to work in bed on his tablet pc while i'm sleeping. again -- unusual quiet time -- so he puts in his time when and if he feels like it. takes time off when and if ... leaves us the time to do what we want, golfing, shopping, hanging out with those friends who can, whatever. we are having FUN. i feel like this time is the result of learning from past experiences / mistakes and the implementation of better "systems." i place "systems" in quotations because i'm referring to the personal, too, reminder: 32nd anniversary is one week from today.

and he spends one day a week working on special projects for his biggest client on site. so he has a WHOLE DAY away from my yammering.

it just dawned on me that when matt used to say "blah, blah, blah...yackity, schmackity" to me that he was referring to my motormouth. duh.

Posted by Stacey at June 1, 2007 02:58 PM