A Fool And His Money

While I throw back my much desired IPA in record time, Lars calls Randee. Then evidently Randee calls Deb. And once Deb's ears stop bleeding, she calls me.

"Well, she never misses out on an opportunity to castigate YOU!" she says.

I am well aware of that, but it still bothers me. Why I should even spend one shredded nerve ending worrying about what some lonely, miserable, home permed lawyer with no friends and a voice that could split an atom thinks or says about me is beyond me. But I do. And I hate that there is someone out there with such an unfair, undeserved opinion of me that there is nothing I can do anything about. Lars' description of me when he was so fragile that he had to turn the world against me or go to pieces will live on in perpetuity. Thank God it is a small audience. I never see his worthless friends. They can think what they want. I got the last laugh going over the wall and into a happy (and very colorful)life. Anyone I care about knows at least that much.

I ask Deb how her conversation went, the volume and weapons-grade voice notwithstanding. Deb says she wrote a brief while Randee was ranting and when she stopped to refuel, she very reasonably launched into her argument.

Miraculously, she secured a win!

The order against me will be withdrawn.

The arrears will be forfeited and forgiven. Never again will they be assigned to me.

We will reschedule the hearing and go to a conference, the hopes for which will be a complete and total agreement on numbers. The only wild card is whether or not I have landed a job by the time the date rolls around.

I raise my concern about that last part. Randee seems preoccupied with my getting a job. Ya know, her client has made a habit of sponging off of me and he shouldn't have to worry about where his next gadget or toy comes from just because of my little old job elimination. I have a feeling she is going to keep postponing the hearings until I get a job - simply because she wants to prevent Lars from having to ever part with a penny.

Mark my words, I tell her. But thank you for a big unexpected win. And before the sun set, too!

Deb is excited as well, and chuckling a little. She says Randee knows she has Lars eating out of the palm of her hand. I ask her why she thinks that, even though I think it, too. I think my lawyer is very clever, I want her to opine a little on his blind trust and catastrophic stupidity.

She says that when it was no longer in any way reasonable for Randee to push for the hearing and subsequent hearings and conferences etc and therefore piling up the billable hours she could scorch Lars with, she punted.

I ask how.

She says Randee then insisted on writing the precipe about the agreement, and submitting the continuance. Hours of writing. Deb would not have billed me, but Randee was adding up the shekels as she spoke. She also used her mistrust and disdain for me to parlay another billable: Deb promised that the children would be able to leave on vacation as agreed, but Randee insisted that I can not be trusted. She wanted to write a custody stipulation (Cha-ching!) and have me sign it before she would do any of the things she committed to. More writing, more faxing, more signing, more filing. All billed to Lars because he wouldn't just go to the courthouse with me.

What Lars and I could have accomplished by taking a short drive to the courthouse would now cost him $1000. And yet, he manages to still put all of his trust and faith in his abrasive lawyer rather than trust the mother of his children, whose only transgression was to be unhappy enough to want a divorce.

So be it. A fool and his money are soon parted.