Sittin' on the Dock of the Bay.....

I like it that the rest of that line is "....wastin' time."

This thing all things devours:
Birds, beasts, trees, flowers;
Gnaws iron, bites steel;
Grinds hard stones to meal;
Slays king, ruins town
And beats high mountain down.

Yes, it's from "The Hobbit."

My whole life I've felt that I'm either trying to catch up or moving too fast. If I can ever retire, I hope that I will not feel so out of sync with time.

I wrote earlier about the whole lawyer/time/billable hours thing. I realize now why I felt so stressed: I have done (almost) everything on my plate to do, and the work won't add up to enough time to meet the goals set for me by myself and others. I don't have enough work to do to justify my existence.

I'm a little ticked off, because on one hand, they (the powers that be) have hired not one but two new associates just in the last 8 months, one of which is worming her way into the environment like a fungus. Fortunately, the other one is studying for the bar exam, so I have a little time to change the landscape there, but I can't seem to do anything about the other one.

Remember when I wondered if the reason she was here was that I needed to witness to her? I've figured out that that isn't the reason. The reason is because she's like my sister in this one respect. She seems to believe that her own advent onto the scene means that anyone else who won't further her position is dispensible and irrelevant. She is here to replace anyone who a) isn't male, and b) doesn't have the connections she's looking for to advance her own career - for which she is going to ride on her father's coattails for as long as possible.

My sister's attitude was the same from the time we were children. She was the youngest - the baby, for about 5 years - so everything revolved around her, regardless of anyone else's needs. Notice, I didn't say "wants" but "needs." It was never a question of whether something she wanted should trump anyone else's wants - it never entered her mind (and still doesn't) that anyone else's needs were important to the extent that they interfered with her getting her own way (even over things that were not "needs").

This new one is just like her. I never learned to fight that in my own family and that's why this biatch is here now - so that I will learn.