Surprise! I'm a single parent

Im not kidding the lawn got to be knee high. Going to the compost heap was a bush beating exercise.  I had given up on all the people I’d asked to cut it and I was sick of borrowing the people-down-the-road-I-don’t-knows mower. One reason is I hate being beholden to people. It’s awkward and icky. As if to completely prove this point they legitimately asked me if Id look after their cat while they were away. It turned out to be a lot to do with runny cat poos ewwwwwwww and this just made me think no way did I want to end up feeling like I owed them in the future!

Nice people but very incontinent cat.

Anyhow just as I was resolved to planting trees haphazzardly and kissing the lawn idea goodbye completely I was visiting a friend when her lawn guy turned up. She explained to me he was completely unreliable but what I saw was a lawn guy who was ACTUALLY THERE.

I drew him a map to my place, explained the dog, explained where I’d put teh money and 10 days later, early one morning Im making my porridge and staring out the back window and I see it – a short lawn!

Woo hoo. On closer inspection I see why people mow regularly – over time the grass has kinda clumped and huddled together and gotten more bristly but … it was never a great lawn anyway. I wonder if the lawn guy also does lawyering? I want a blunt cut there too….

How do you get a good lawyer?

It’s not like flatmates where you put an ad in the paper and they line up to be interviewed. It’s not like husbands where – well how did that happen?

Lawyers cost three hundred dollars an hour to interview. Three hundred dollars!!!

So I put an add on my work bulletin board. Discretely. In amoungst does anyone know a good panel beater, painter, mechanic, piano tuner I placed ‘divorce lawyer wanted’.

I got 5 recommendations and now I need to come up with some criteria. What I’d really like to be able to assess is how well they identified and secured a good share of assets, how cheaply they did it and how fast. But I’m not sure how to guage this. Instead I think about how easy it will be to get to their office, whether I could park there and what their office hours might be. I want to know the hourly rate but …. are the faster ones more expensive?

Again in all this I realise that although I feel poor and like some sort of emotinal refugeee Im actually in a better position than most. I have a job where I have flexibility to head out and meet with a lawyer, I have a super scheme I can break in to in order to pay a lawyer and I have some assets to split. But why do I just feel completely resentful I have to pay someone to do my negotiating for me?

I have some numbers and I’ll write my questions down:

About how long and how much do you think this will take?

Will you be able to take my phone calls?

Will you be able to get him to be a better parent?

Could you get him to take all his rubbish away?  I have rooms of the house I can’t get into because of his things and I think I may need to get a boarder in order to pay you… hmm maybe that last question I should keep to myself.

So lawyers – how can you tell a good one? Do you really need one? All this and more maybe in a future bloglet from the erratic surprised single parent.