Made it through my first day back.  Found out from others that I wasn’t the only one “held back” a year, but that didn’t really make me feel any better.  Misery does not love company in this case.  Also found out that everyone knows about the situation, although to their credit, they all gave me the “I cannot believe it happened to you.”  Well, all except the one guy who said, “what did you think would happen after you had a kid?”.  Perhaps he’s the only straight-shooter around.

The partner who told me the bad news the other day is a friend of mine.  Today, though, he gave me the “I know this is hard on you, but it’s harder on me” speech (he literally said that).  I get that it’s difficult to give a friend bad news, but am I wrong to be annoyed by the it’s harder on him aspect?  I mean, it’s not harder on him.  He’s not the one wondering what is going to happen to his career.  He’s not the one wondering if he should hold off on his second child.  He’s not the one wondering if he should chuck it all in and simply go in-house somewhere (and if he does, what he’s going to do about the two-year lease he’s locked into that is only manageable on his current salary).  I’m thinking it’s not actually harder on him.  But, maybe that’s just me.

Anyway, I made it through the day without falling apart without Oscar, and he was absolutely fine when I returned home.  I was home early enough to play with him, give him a bottle and put him to sleep, so all is well here.  I think Nanny Norma believes he should be in his crib, but I have him here on the sofa with me.  I just want him near me.

We have our home visit tomorrow for the homestudy for Etta (I’m not sure I’m requesting a gender, but I like to think of this baby as Etta).  I did not clean for this.  The house will be neat and all, and I’ll even knock it out and make the bed in the morning and sweep the floors, but no obsessing here.  At least that’s what I say now; I just hope I don’t get up at 5 am and go nuts around here.

Off to prepare for work tomorrow.  I have to make the rounds to some partners’ offices and have “the talk” about my career.  Hopefully someone will give me some insight into why I should want to continue to deal with this stuff for the next two years in order to have the chance at making partner.  I’ll be so happy to have this stuff finished with so I can go back to practicing law.  The upside to some of this is that I should have ample time tomorrow to work on my dossier.  Just trying to find the silver lining here folks.