Life Is Too Exciting for Sleep

I need to be asleep right now, but I cannot. I'm making my first court appearance as a paralegal tomorrow. I'm not a certified paralegal, but certification is not required, and no current national certification exists anyway. My PseudoAunt says I'm at least as qualified as the average rookie certified  paralegal and that I'm a quicker study than most of them, which makes me of more use to her.

I still cannot disclose precisely what I'm doing, although if the adversary reads this, he or she (I'm giving out nothing here) already has an idea.

My PseudoAunt's mom had two attorney suits custom made for me, and I have four silk blouses and a strand of cultured pearls to wear with them, along with two sets of 1 1/2-inch heels (just right for my small feet). PseudoAunt, as an attorney, already had the attire. Even with the haute couture, PseudoAunt and I will both  look like we showed up in court for "Take Your Daughter to Work Day," but we will at least be suitably [no pun intended] attired.

PseudoAunt has acquired written authorization to have a physician seated at her table with her at anytime she so chooses in any legal proceeding, sort of like Campbell Alexander, the character portrayed by Alec Baldwin in My Sister's Keeper, was allowed to have a service dog in court because of an undisclosed medical condition that turned out to be epilepsy. (I knew when the character and his dog  first were introduced in the book version that the dog was a seizure dog. Jodi Picoult laid out far too many clues and shouldn't have bothered with the pretense of keeping the illness hidden if she was going to give away so much. It's great to make the reader think he or she is smart, but too much is overkill. Additionally, as far as the movie version goes, I didn't like the change in ending from the way the book ended. )

PseudoAunt has a really good dog, Pippa, Pippa is a Golden Retriever/Labrador mix.  I'm trying to talk her into having Pippa certified as a service dog. PseudoAunt has cystic fibrosis. (It's a bit ironic that she has cystic fibrosis, as. my dad and his two brothers are carriers, as is their mother [it's more common in the French Canadian population than in the North american population at large] but none of my grandmother's descendants has the phenotype and the disease. Doctors have assumed I have it because of my French surname along with my small stature, slight build, and skinny little neck, which give me the classic look of a CF patient, but I'm clear. PseudoAunt is Cuban-American on both sides, and Cubans aren't known for any predisposition toward the condition.) The dog could be trained easily enough to press a medic alert button in the event that PseudoAunt were unable. PseudoAunt just says "maybe" when I bring the idea up to her, but she says even if Pippa were certified as a service dog, she still wouldn't bring her to court. She says it would be just one more thing about which to worry.

PseudoAunt's dad's computer is going to be set on Skype Mode so PseudoUncle can watch her first actual court appearance. (She has legal permission to Skype for the benefit of a legal associate in California who is on call in the event that she bccomes ill.) She's drafted many legal documents since she received notice that she passed the bar about eight months ago, but this will be her actual court debut.

If things go extremely well, we'll be finished with everything before mid-morning. We still have the hotel suite in case we need it, or we can go back to the condo where we spent the previous night.

I'm a little nervous, more for PseudoAunt than for myself, but just a bit jittery for myself as well. I'm more excited than nervous, though. It's going to be a great day. F. Lee Bailey and Mark Geragos, be afraid! Be very afraid!