i am watching with dismay my declining hit stats on this blog, no doubt somewhat connected to my almost complete failure to post anything newsworthy or interesting in the last several weeks (or longer if i’m honest)…the fact is that sometimes the day to day to-ing and fro-ing at the family bar and the pressures of our own real family lives conspire to push blog-posting down the to-do list…

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this week for example i am wrestling with the questions of whether or not an application to transfer my increasingly complex care case to the high court is sheer lunacy or utter brilliance; of how and when i am going to fit in preparation for everything next week when the papers are variously a) not yet available, b) utterly unintelligible and c) too ginormouse to carry home to prepare and when I am up to my eyeballs with pre-birth decorating and with long arranged guests coming on Saturday to sleep in the not yet decorated bedroom; and of how to avoid professional misconduct when I find myself listed simultaneously for two important, oft-adjourned, part-heard final hearings neither of which I can sensibly abandon…particularly when one is pro-bono and my disappearance will leave the client totally stuffed. and when an adjournment of either will cause even more problems when i disappear on maternity leave. its not for want of being careful with my diary either. the clerks despair of my risk-averse strategy to double-booking, they now know not to book me in for more than one hearing a day unless they have checked with me first, and i in my turn have calculated train times between courts and worst case scenarios. today’s shenanigans however have been entirely unavoidable but are adding seriously to my stress levels.

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and in between all of this timetabling chaos my maternity leave is looming ever larger (as are certain parts of my anatomy) and i am beginning to be struck with fear about all the things i have to do with other people’s family matters before turning to my own. and as if to remind me of time ticking away the little blighter was kicking me in unmentionable places all the way through this mornings judicial lambast. some things are more important than being shouted at by a judge, it reminded me…as indeed they are.

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and so i am taking a breather a moment over my lunch and the obligatory pint of milk to jot this down, before launching back into the craziness…i am not sure if i am able to take comfort from the knowledge that whilst cases adjourn, a due date is pretty much a fixture. i suspect i will simply be swapping one kind of frantic existence for another (both equally unaffected by my obsessive planning and urge to control) at least until i return from my maternity leave…