I miss your tea

I think about my former clients all the time. What is really fun about being a public defender in a rural county is you get to know people, not just the frequent fliers but also the places they go, the people they associate with, and the other things happening in their lives besides their court cases. It makes me feel like a townie in the best sense. 

A few weeks before I left, I paid bond on a case where I felt the bond determination was especially unfair. This was a kid who had never been to jail before, and a case with a high likelihood of dismissal, and so even though the clerk scoffed at my naïveté, I didn't lose sleep over it. After he was released from holding, he came to my office and sat at ALR's desk and cried and cried, and I worried about what would become of him. 

After I left the public defender's office, I checked in on the case once or twice, along with at least a dozen more, but eventually I forgot their names. Whenever I learned of a not-guilty in that county through the listserve, I would text my replacement congratulations, cheering for the outcomes he had been able to secure for my clients which I had not. I never learned what became of my sad sap, but I hoped he was safe.  

Well, today I got his bond payment back in the mail! His case number was printed on the check, but the case was not in the court portal. I spent a few minutes searching for the case but eventually gave up, presuming from the fact that the bond was even returned signaled that this was was dismissed and sealed like I expected it would be. But in the time spent perusing the names of defendants who came after I left, I found myself so saddened by how many names I recognized. This kid may have dodged a bullet, but many of my other frequent fliers had not. 

On our evening walk last night we saw a fist fight break out. There was a gaggle of adolescent boys, maybe 14 years old, huddled out front of the McDonalds. One of them ran a few paces away, turned back and squared up, and no word of a lie, the rest of them pig-piled on him. They were pulling his hair, yanking on his clothes, punching his chest and head. I watched helplessly, torn between wanting to intervene and not wanting to be responsible for escalation. 

Because we had been out walking, we knew there were two cops just 300 feet down the road, and as a car laid on its horn at the kids, I willed these dum-dums to break it out before they caught the attention of the police. I realized that was probably a perverted reaction--I should have wanted some kind of intervention for the poor kid getting wailed on, but I was worried about his assailants, too. 

I don't know why I root for the wrongdoers. Why it's easier for me to have compassion on the struggling criminals than the meritorious innocents. In my rural county it was a revolving door of people hurting people, one week a domestic violence victim, the next week a pants thief. All people unable to get out of their own way because of myriad factors, but most likely because of poverty, and most fundamentally because of sin. 

We are all sinners. We keep passing through the revolving door, of hurting others and being hurt. And strangely, that's not necessarily bad news, because it means we have (for now) escaped the ultimate accounting for our sin. Our God is slow to anger and withholding judgement to just give us a fighting chance at hope, redemption, righteousness, that we might be healed despite the brokenness we sustain. 

My clients, they suffer. Life has broken them even more than the criminal justice system might. I cheer when they avoid judgement for their actions not because I condone their wrongdoing but because I feel in their frustration and desperation that the natural consequences of brokenness in this world are already taking them to task. We sinners are getting what we deserve and also not getting what we deserve every day. And it's perverted to think that our communal suffering is a form of grace in motion, but also I want us all to know grace. 

(P.S. That bond payments are returned to payors via mail months after a case has been resolved does a terrible disservice to those who have no disposable income to be bailing out. I used to think bail bondsman were a scam, but now I get that it's better to be parted from your money forever for less than to shell out beaucoup bucks but have that money enslaved to the bureaucracy.)

Kicking butt and making frames

Airstream work took a pause in November because of our vacation and then Thanksgiving, but December has been an exciting month! First we moved our Airstream indoors--its first road trip in over 20 years. It was a fun premonition of prepping to move on trips to come: setting up the stabilizers with the tow hitch, checking the brakes and taillights, strapping everything down. We have not yet been baptized in the couple trials of coordinating trailer parking, but we got a foreshadowing. 

Having the trailer inside is even more of a value-add than I had expected. I'm not anxious about mice, bugs, water getting in. No more worrying about the battery freezing. No more dirt, sand, and mud getting all over our materials and tools. And when we have the space heater going, I am not freezing my buns off! Even though it's not in a convenient location, I am optimistic we will be able to make some strides thanks to the shelter. 

So, for example, we have framed in the bathroom walls. We used metal studs for the curved part of the wall, cutting triangles out every 8" or so to make the curve and riveting it to the skins. We used regular wood studs for the rest. Making sure the walls were square was tricky because nothing inside the trailer is square, but we adjusted the hitch and used a level. 

We had been storing the old walls since demo and finally they came in handy! First cut on the curve was perfect, we only had to do one more cut on the bottom. It was nice to have something go smoothly for once, haha! The inner-most wall is a bit of a puzzle because of the air conditioner and the back fan--we carved a diagonal slice out of the stud for clearance, but the plywood sheath on the walls should cover the carve out. We might notch it out altogether depending on how it looks as we polish it up. 

Yesterday we divided and conquered: Peter teamed up with Amanda to do the dry plumbing for the sink and shower, while Prudence and I tackled the bed frame. The sink and shower vents are in, as is the shower drain! Peter has also made a rough plan for the pee diversion to feed into the same drain line as the shower. The sink drain line is in place, but is obviously awaiting the sink itself. 

Working on the bed frame was a huge self-efficacy boost for me because usually I am the watcher/tool passer, but Prudence wouldn't let me get away with that. We used the pocket hole jig that Peter got for Christmas on some 1x1s and made a frame to anchor to the floor (as opposed to the walls) that the plywood base can rest on, above the electrical components box. (We used four (4) boards 77" long, twelve (12) boards 15" long with pocket screw holes each end to make two ladders, and then six (6) boards 29.5" to connect the ladders. Easy but satisfying!)

We left space at the "head" of the bed to build a cabinet for access to the drain and vent pipes running there. The "foot" of the bed will be pretty much flush with the street-side trailer wall. We will make one more "ladder" to support the far end of the bed, but we have to work around the back hatch and the battery, so we had to wait on the project manager before tackling that one. 

The outlets and overhead lights inside aren't working because of a short somewhere. At first this was a demoralizing discovery because installing the ceiling was a giant pain, and the thought of having to un-do and re-do it made me want to throw a temper-tantrum, but then Peter recalled a spark during the installation of the front end, so we are thinking maybe that's where the short is. Next time I think we will attempt to find/fix the short, and also add some wood framing to the air conditioner hole. Maybe build the seat for the shower and put down waterproof lining for all the places the drains run. 

For Christmas, Peter finally caved and said he will get me a mini wood stove, but it remains to be seen where it will go. We can avoid putting more holes in the ceiling by using the hole from the original stove exhaust vent hole. But we had Will run the propane so that the range can go in that spot. We had talked about switching the range to the street-side for weight distribution, but rerouting the propane may prove too intimidating. Anyway, Peter's love-motivated pro-wood stove gesture was as touching a Christmas sentiment as a person could want. ^_^