Wow, did I really wait for a month to put another entry in? YOu know how it is. You get busy at work. You find your are working nights. You worry about the things that still need to be done. And you get up in the middle of the night for no reason whatsoever, but you know you shouldn't start working on another case because then you'll never get back to sleep.

And in the office the phone rings off the hook so that you find yourself in the office Saturday morning cleaning things up and organizing yourself so that you can get things done next week--after hours, because you have hearings in the day and clients later in the day.

Thank God "Glee" and "The Simpsons" are starting new seasons this week. Otherwise I'd just go nuts.But you know how we humans are. Just two blogs ago I complained that I wasn't getting enough work. Now it's a lot and I'm managing but barely to keep the ol' head above water. I actually may end up hiring a secretary part time so that I can get my filing done and some other small tasks around the office. Also, I noticed that on those days when my intern showed (she was here for the summer on Thursdays and Fridays) I seemed to get a lot more work done than when I was alone in the office. So maybe this will be beneficial for me.

But it does get tiresome when my whole life revolves around the practice. I guess I'm being naieve in saying that. When you run your own business, your time is never your own. You take calls at 11:30 p.m. on Saturday in case it turns into a client. Sometimes it does--about one in five--so you can't allow yourself to say "No, I'm not taking that this late at night."And being a lawyer, working late hours is expected. It's part of the deal. It's the basis of the old joke, "Why do Lawyers like Fridays?" Answer: "Because there's only two more working days till MOnday.

"Still, I'm getting some interesting cases, both on the criminal side and on the family law side. I won a case a week ago which resulted in a father getting his little girl back--and the girl being removed from the other parent's home where a troubled young boy presented a danger to her. That made me feel like I'd made the right decision to stick around in Humboldt. I've even been in the newspapers lately. Don't want to discuss the case here, as it's not appropriate, but you can look at the Wednesday and Thursday front pages of the Times Standard (times-standard.com) from last week.

How does this match up with my burgeoning career as a Farmer's Market troubador? Well, the FM season is ending soon. I have three more FM gigs in October. I hope to use the winter to learn some new songs.But who knows? By next May, when the season starts up again, I might be so busy that the Man In White will be a rare sighting in Humboldt County. And I'll be going even crazier.

By choice this time. Ah, the things we do to make our way in this world, my friends.