WTF??

O.K. so I'm sitting out in the sun having a little lunchy-lunch and this girl wanders over with her guitar and we commence with the chatting (because it's just too nice a day to not strike up random conversations with girls holding guitars!) and she mentions to me that she's just come from the courthouse (where her boyfriend is being arraigned -- lower those eyebrows all you watchers-out-for-possible-encroachment-on-the-GF's-"territory"!) and that she was made to chat with this "private" lawyer because the city "no longer has Public Defenders..."

Did we all catch that? No longer has Public Defenders. i'm sorry but isn't it a federal law that everyone has a right to "free and unbiased counsel"??? Is anyone else struck by the fact that turning the job of the pd department over to private firms violates (on a fairly fundamental level) that particular tenent...? Is this just me thinking that's weird/wrong/shocking in that it's even been allowed to happen?? Anyone?? O.K. sorry. just channeling the Ex who used to work for the PD office for a minute there. I'm better now.

moving on....

today i am sick. I point this out because I was going to fill this space with a long, appreciative, post about the lovely child-filled week-end that has just passed -- wherein at one point i actually had 7 children ranging in age from 3 to 9 scampering around my house being all delightful and cute. After which I was going to wax poetic on the adorableness that is the GF's little sis and her cute-as-all-get-out offspring which was only enhanced by the amazingness of our puppy who at the same time was spending his first entire day "out in public" mostly on a leash and who didn't act up even a little bit... but then I starting getting sniffley, then downright snotty and by the time i'd finished with the freaking, loud nose-blowing/hocking/mild dizziness combined with my indignation that some tall, super skinny, model-looking chick can't get free legal counsel in this city (I mean, jeeze! If she can't then who the hell can?? and yes, this was on the heels of some irritation already inspired by the CP whose job it apparently is to make me feel like I'm bothering her with my desire to speak with her about figuring out kid-care for the big girl next week. Seriously, I don't know what it is about CP but sometimes i just wannna...!) Anyway... after all of that, it just turns out i just wasn't so much in the mood anymore.