One of the best days of my life

Yesterday was my 10th wedding anniversary, and I think it was one of the best days of my life. It actually started the night before, when Jim and I were attempting to roust 7 year old James to get him off to bed. To our surprise, he'd been making us a heart shaped card, that said, "Dear Mom and Dad Happy 10th anavesory James." He told us he'd told his whole class that it was our 10th anniversary.

Then yesterday morning I got to work, and did the final preparation for a talk on the judiciary for the Lion's Club. To make sure I had the timing right (luncheon talks must be under 20 minutes) I gave the chat to a couple of people in my office, and they said that it was interesting and that they learned things. Somebody wrote me and said that my name was in the paper, which I hadn't seen, because I'd been busy getting James off to school in the morning and hadn't seen the paper.

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I then assisted with a minor crisis where a pleading had been served on one of my colleagues after he'd left town to attend the hearing. Once that was resolved, I went to give the talk at the Lion's Club, which went well, and several people came up to me afterwards and said they'd learned something.

I've loved being a lawyer. My years at the Attorney General's Office have been productive and professionally satisfying. I didn't expect to stand for election, I didn't expect to have a forum to discuss my concerns about our system of justice, didn't expect to actually enjoy many aspects of campaigning. So yesterday I thought about that, and how lucky I've been to have both a job I love and a terrific family.

In the late afternoon, I was having some trouble with a current investigation about applying certain facts to the current "reasonable consumer" standard, and an additional issue regarding high pressure sales, so I went for a swim and thought about it. I actually learned about this when my sister was a physics major. She said one of her professors, when he needed to think about something, would go to his garden and weed. Since then, when I want to think about something, I go swimming. When I'm swimming in a pool, all I have to do is turn around every time I reach a wall, I don't have to think much about what I'm doing, yet it somehow frees my mind up to address legal problems in a way just sitting at my desk doesn't. I don't know how it works.

Then I came back to work and tidied up some things, talked about some legal research with a paralegal, followed up on some other tasks, and then had an entire hour free before I was to meet Jim for supper. A free hour for those of us who are working with young children is a rare commodity. It was more the having of it than what I did with it that was the part that was important. All I did was go to the library and pick out a new book to read to James.

Jim and I met and we had a lovely supper at Nino's, which is where we had our wedding reception 10 years ago. We met the proprietor going in, and had a pleasant exchange about anniversaries, since Nino's has been open 18 years this week. Jim and I talked at supper at first about who he had lunch with today and other mild matters, and we didn't talk about the kids, or the campaign, or work. We then talked about the past ten years, and how we were both sort of surprised at how fortunate we've been. And we were all by ourselves for a couple of hours.

Then we went home and Mrs. Davis was reading a story to James, who was wearing his pajamas, and he jumped up and ran up to us like we'd been gone for years. And we said good-night to Mrs. Davis, who helped me keep my job when James had salmonella poisoning when he was one and has babysat for us ever since, and I helped James brush his teeth, and read to him a from the book I just took out from the library, and I was really, really happy.