Manning the helm, what there is of it

I am sitting in my office all by myself. I am waiting on a phone call from an attorney for the City of Griffin to determine finally what will be charged on a demolition charge against some property I am trying to close this afternoon. I am also waiting to get that information so that I can incorporate same into my closing documents and send it up to the Seller, which is a bank in Doraville, so that we can get approval on the transaction and close this d---- thing today. I am also waiting on Patti to arrive, who called me earlier to let me know that her son was sick and that she would be here after she dealt with him.

I have been answering phone calls and talking to clients who arrived without warning and trying to deal with the issues of the day. This is what you do when you are a solo practioner. Kind of makes me feel like I would be well-insulated if I were practicing in some large law firm and all of the support personnel that go along with that. On the other hand, I suppose I could just leave and go home and take a nap if I wanted to. Or go out and eat a long lunch or take lunch to Cindy and eat with her. Those are the normal possibilities of a solo practioner.

Well, Patti got here so I will look to talk to her about what I know about the day and the near future. T'would be nice to close this loan and get a little extra money into the coffers for the week.

Well, it looks like I might close this d____ thing after all. It reminds of those closing attorney cartoons where everybody gets ready and then the thing falls apart. Everyone is so happy when it finally closes. It is the nature of transactional property law these days that you burn your jets three or four times before you finally close, exacerbating the participants and making you wonder yourself about your chosen profession.

At these times, you take on this pseudo-English stiff upper lip attitude and look confidently toward the future. The truth of the matter is that you are anxious about everything, wishing for the transactions to close, but also hoping for other transactions to take their place.

Faith takes you so far. Hopefully, faith will lead you to the end. Hope and faith are unsatisfactory terms but loom large when the reality of the situation paints a dark cloud on your prospects.

Humor is important. You can go quite far with a badger in your pants. Wolverines will do. I prefer wildcats, myself. Vanilla ice cream is a good salve for those scratch marks. Vanilla is more en curant than you think (Pardon the pseudo French). Vanilla, as that Canadian band says, is the finest of the flavors. And a good salve, particularly when you use a high butter content ice cream.

I know I left that helm somewhere around here. Pardon the deleted expletives in this blog. I guess the image of the sailor just got to me.