Esquire Coffinberry's Great-Grand-Niece

Daffodils are blooming... and so is one of the crab-apple trees down the street. With all the rain we had over the weekend, suddenly everything is green all over. It is insanely busy. CSAPs occupy the younger two. (In case you hadn't noticed, St. Vrain School District is not on the same spring break schedule as CU... so I'm out of school for the week, but they're in. We'll trade places next week.) Son Two had a concert last night, and it was quite nice, but very long (2 and a quarter hours, beginning with "Ode To Joy" from the 6th grade orchestra). Yesterday, I studied Evidence, and laid out my preparations for the last few weeks and for final study. I had hoped to work on my Education Law outline, but the Sony repair guy called and said the part came in early (yes, my computer fan, like the fans on so many of the other laptops bought by the class of '08 in the summer of '05, decided to quit working last week... I've been keeping it on ice all wee...

Son-Three all morning has been greeting anyone who will listen: "Happy Pi Day!" And in celebration of the big event, wore this shirt to school today. He wanted to do something special at 3:o9 this afternoon to celebrate, in addition to having pie for dinner. Alas, he is headed to the dentist to have his braces tightened. It is sometimes a bummer to be 13. Edited tonight to add: Son-Two stood up in the middle of class at 1:59 PM and announced "Happy Pi Day." Fortunately for him, it was pre-calculus, and the teacher was so delighted that he awarded Son-Two extra credit. Of course, the other high school juniors just rolled their eyes.

At least, not for me. For the first time ever, I stayed late at the law building last night. I just needed to get my mind in an uninterrupted groove so I could get a moderate-sized albatross off my neck. And to my relief, that bird has flown. On tap today: son-two is competing in solo-and-ensemble contest, some time in the middle of his symphony rehearsal. He went out the door dressed to the nines; and came back 10 minutes later to fetch something really important , his viola. Oops. Later today, he's digging post-holes and setting fence with a youth group from church. Daughter-one-and-only has just run outside to play with the little girl down the street. And son-three has a report on Denmark he's finishing up. Mr. Coffinberry is holed up with a digital-signal-processing project for our small business, but he'll eventually surface, and we'll probably make time to go out together someplace. Meanwhile, I've got about eight loads of laundry to fold and a house to tidy ...

There are days when the list of things to do is just too long, you know? I am going to be so amazed when May gets here, and all this is behind me. It's sort of like hiking up a mountain -- when you first start out you think "I've got to climb that???" Then when you're at the top, "Wow! that wasn't so bad. And look at that view!" Until you turn around and see there's another mountain yet to climb. Went to a church ladies' auxiliary group meeting t'other night. Won a silent auction bid, one hand-made girl's dress from materials and pattern of my choice. I knew daughter-one-and-only would like an Easter dress (and I just would not have time this year to make one). So last night, instead of studying, we went shopping for pattern, fabric, and notions. The pattern was quickly selected, but we spent an hour and a half walking circles around the brightly colored woven goods. At last she made up her mind. It will be a dress unlike any other, ...

My brother and his wife welcomed a new little one into their family yesterday afternoon. He is big (9 lbs 15 oz, 22 1/2" tall) and healthy, and received with much joy. Here the baby is with his big brother (notice the matching red hair). New nephew also has three older sisters. In one of those strange "Circle of Life" things, it's but five weeks since saying good-bye to their oldest son, here now it is time to say hello to their youngest. Not a replacement, but someone new to love.

It was a day-off from school for my young'uns yesterday, so we went to the movies in the afternoon. We chose Bridge to Terabithia . Warned by Son-Two that it was a sad movie (he had taken a date to see it last week), we went anyway. It was a good movie, excellent really. But maybe we weren't ready for it yet. I'm telling you, seventh graders aren't supposed to die. And when they do, the tears just flow like crazy, and it feels like there is nothing that can ever make sense of it. Here's another thing on my mind: http://www.galluppoll.com/content/?ci=26758 . I'm not sure what I think about it. I guess in the calculus any person engages in to make sense of their day and the people they meet, many little things factor in and add up: a plus here, a minus there. And when you're talking about an amorphous group of people you don't know, all you have are snippets of vague understandings to attach to them. So I suppose its not such a surprise. Maybe the informat...

Trying to get the rules of the cases in my head for Religion Law and Education Law (which started off the semester canvassing very similar issues), I have come to wonder just how much J.K. Rowlings knows about U.S. Constitutional principles. Wasn't one of Dumbledore's passwords early on "Sherbert Lemon"? And I am going to feel so-o-o much better when I finally kick this sinus cold.

Yeah, so over on the cubLAWg everyone whines about grades, and I was whining about parking and what a travesty it would be if I had to do something so difficult as walking from lot 416 to the law school, rather than 402 (poor poor pitiful me). But walking that far ain't got nuthin' on trying to wrap my skull around the rules of evidence. It feels like I keep trying to stuff 'em in, but they keep falling out the other side. But you know what? Evidence, and Law School, ain't difficult. Nope. Unh-huh. Not a bit. Not compared to parenting teenagers. Compare d to that, law school is a piece of cake. Parenting a teen is a little bit like discovering a butterfly emerging from chrysalis on a meadow-clearing bulldozer on a windy day--you can't do nothin' about the meadow, but you can do something about the chrysalis, only then you've got to hold it gently as the butterfly emerges. You cannot help it emerge, but you've got to shield it from the windstorm long enou...

Friday is still pizza and movie night at the Coffinberry home. So last night it was a large four-meat pizza (for son-two and son-three), a small south-western pizza (chosen by yours truly), and a barbecue chicken pizza (daughter-one-and-only and Mr. Coffinberry's choice). Picking a video at the rental place is always an adventure, but we got there early enough yesterday that the new releases had a few left. We enjoyed both "Flushed Away" and "Man of the Year." It was nice to laugh, a little. This has been an excruciatingly hard four weeks, and we needed a lift. So, as people celebrate the Academy Awards tomorrow, here's a big thanks to those who make great movies for our pleasure!

The snow has retreated half-way across my front yard; it's supposed to get up to 58 degrees today. I noticed, where the ice had cleared from the flower bed, that the first tips of the daffodil shoots were just barely poking up above the ground, a brilliant yellow from the absence of sun during the last 61 days under the snow. My son got out his rollerblades Monday. My daughter was out riding her bike. But there's still 12 inches of snow on the yard on the north side of the house. So spring isn't here, quite yet.

Long time, no blog... From my point of view, the adage is true, at least so far. 2L definitely has been a work-you-to-death kind of year. In a good way, that is. (Although I did get chastized by my husband this past weekend for working so hard that I was starting to get sick, and I couldn't find time on my schedule to get over to the doctor's....) I think I'll be ready for a little bit of "bore you to death" next year, just for the opportunity to breathe! But as before, I'm still having a blast. The concepts I encounter in class linger in my mind long after the books are closed, as I ponder how the pieces fit together. Hang in there, all!

After blowing off my first class of the day on account of arriving late (heavy traffic this morning), I decided after the second class to bail and just go home, maybe put in some serious study time whilst kidlets remain quietly tucked away at school. So, arriving home I pop my soup in the microwave, and step out to check the mailbox. Oops. That was a mistake. For there in a slightly torn media mail envelope is a book I ordered way back in July, now hot off the presses. The title is "Justice, Peace and God - a Minister's Personal Odyssey." ISBN 0-7884-4097-7, 473 pages, paperback, fresh off the presses and shipped straight from the publisher. And of course, I couldn't put it down. The soup was slurped, the chips crunched, and the honeydew savored; but I still kept reading. I'd only intended to do a quick glance at the first chapter, but I ended up reading the first four, skimming the middle, and slowing for the last three. The book, a biography, was fascinating. I ...

The temperature begins to cool, The little ones are off to school. Ha. See, I can make a rhyme. Hoo boy. I've already been bogged down with homework, and school doesn't start again until Monday. Where did this summer go?

The abundant rain last weekend resulted in prolific raspberries in my backyard bramble. Son Three sat in front of the bush yesterday like a medium-sized grizzly bear, popping berries with both hands. The whole neighborhood-ful of kids have been grazing like starved gazelles. And yet there was still a gallon of berries. Which, this afternoon, became 12 pints of jam. Two batches of straight unadulterated raspberry. And the third batch, because there wasn't quite enough raspberries for another go-round, to which I added the left-over half-bag of frozen mixed blueberries/strawberries/blackberries from the freezer, a quickly sliced-up nectarine from the fruit bowl, and a cup of orange juice out of the fridge to fill in the spaces between. That batch just came out of the canner, a deep purple and delicious.

Unlike last summer, there are now 5 little girls ages 7-9 that live nearby. Yesterday, unplanned, all five converged at our house for the afternoon. They played Twister, House, Barbies, and School - all in a forty-five minute span. They played in the sandbox and swung on the swings and roamed the house playing hide-and-seek and sardines. They devoured three-quarters gallon of cranberry-apple juice (unpolitely called "crapple juice" by my teen sons), two pounds of cherries left-over from the fourth, all the ripe raspberries from the bush in the back yard, and then several asked to stay for supper, which was black-bean chili, in which the tomato chunks proved to be too much to swallow, but the bag of doritos and the cheese was quickly consumed. Giggles, shrieking, running, chasing. A noisy day at the Coffinberry place.

Yes, we got our usual spot. 5pm, Roger's Grove, snug up against the do-not-cross tape. (Telling people "this is the end; you can go no further" loses none of its appeal over the years). Veggies (broccoli, jicama, tomatoes, peas, carrots, celery, cucumbers) and dip, lots of cheese, crackers, three kinds of chips (Sun Chips, Doritos, and those wonderful veggie chips -- mmm, sweet potato chips), Oreos, and a chocolate birthday cake with chocolate chip frosting. A long, leisurely game of Apples-to-Apples (did you ever pretend that the cards you win say something about yourself? My husband's cards said "normal" and "ancient" - poor sweetie! - but mine said "sexy," "sensual," and "boisterous." Ha!). We had just sent the little ones off to play in the cattails, and had started a very loud game of Pit among the 9 adults, when we looked up at the sky... all previous rain clouds had tracked to the south and west of us, but this ...

In Property class this last semester, the spring section of the course was introduced with a discussion of the use of rent control or subsidies to generate affordable housing. In keeping with the theme of "The Tragedy of the Commons" which seems to be the whole story of Property in a nutshell, we discussed the pros and cons of applying either governmental regulation on property owners (rent control) or artificially stimulating a segment of the market (via subsidies, either supply-side or demand-side). The class, largely consisting of renters feeling the pinch of housing costs, enthusiastically engaged in the debate. It was easy to see the problem of not-enough or too-expensive housing... everyone needs a place to live, right? But it's not so easy to see the problem of not-enough-children. Though my generation (yes, I'm an X-er) has long known that Social Security is a bogus farce because the whopping baby-boomers just before us will eat it up for lunch (breakfast, din...

I'm cleaning house, dumping trash off my desk, stacking books for resale (anyone need some?) when suddenly, it hits me. The answer to part "e" of question "2" on last Thursday's Civil Procedure Exam... I totally missed the option that AA and EE had of possibly starting a Class Action law suit over the manufacturer's defect. I could have gone a long time talking about that one. And it didn't even occur to me until what, five days later??? Grrr...

Colorado is sure beautiful this time of year... it's especially nice, being as finals are over! Spent yesterday totin' kids (one kid to a church day-camp, one kid was on a Scout hike, and one kid had a rehearsal and concert down in Niwot), cleaning out the old canes from the raspberry bushes, and clearing the detritus of the long winter from the corners of the yard. Son 1 mowed the grass (even though it wasn't his turn). I did a load of dishes. Normalcy. Aaaahhhhh.....

Examining the societal impact of the decline in sisterhood, female altruism, and childbearing among educated women. Edited to add: Check this out... my efforts in my pre-law career were worth (at the low end) $115,600. Wow...