Solomon

I'm working on something for the court now that has just about ripped my brain out of my head and thrown it into a blender. You're welcome for the visual.

You all know that I have a job, right? I know that I don't talk about my work that much, but you know that daddy is involved in some important things between all of the ridiculousness, right? Sometimes I worry that you guys all just picture me crying in my Snuggie all day and demanding that Daniel compliment me. Guys. It can't ALWAYS be Saturday!

I work too. And the work that I do, while interesting and exciting, is sometimes really challenging.

My position is counsel for the Supreme Court of Palau. I spend most of my day helping the court resolve cases that have come to it on appeal, which means I am almost always writing and researching and writing some more and editing and writing and reading from books that are this thick [holding my hands very far apart]. Such is the life of a lawyer.

I do other stuff at work too, like meet with judges and attend hearings and give input on policy and procedure, etc. But mostly I'm just digging through cases that have been appealed and trying to figure out how the court should resolve them.

We get all kinds of cases at the court here. Sometimes someone with a machete gets a little too angry. Sometimes a company will have cheated someone out of money. And way more often than I would like, people are fighting over land that they each swear their great uncle pinkie promised would be left to them.

The disputes are often very complicated, and the law is as well. And very often I feel a great amount of pressure to figure out what the heck I'm supposed to do when the answer to that question feels very unclear. Fortunately I worked with a fantastic and brilliant judge in the U.S. last year who gave me a lot of great training on this sort of thing. But I don't believe that anyone would ever feel that this work is easy.

Yesterday I reached the height of my frustration with one particular land dispute and I was about ready to suggest just burning the entire country to the ground and starting over. Because that seemed easier than digging through documents from years before I was even born and risking bacterial meningitis to do so.

Just then my sister Krishelle sent me a message, asking me how work was going. I responded dramatically, which is the only way I know how to respond:

Ugh!!! I'm working on this land dispute and I am getting so frustrated because I don't know how to resolve it and the more I look into it the more complicated it gets!

She responded, unhelpfully,

Just tell everyone that you are going to cut the property in half. Then the person who gives up the property to save it from being cut in half is the true owner.

At least it was more helpful than Daniel's completely irrelevant suggestion ten minutes later.

Hey! Where do hamburgers like to dance? . . . THE MEATBALL!!!! GET IT?!?

~It Just Gets Stranger