Jury duty holding me hostage. Take no prisoners.

One thing I really hate in life is being held hostage. And no, I don't mean in the real sense. I've never been held hostage in my life nor do I plan to be nor do I wish to be nor do I think it's a laughing matter. However, I am held hostage by people and things and events that take control away from me and give it to whomever or whatever, and this, this is what I hate the most about being an active member of society.

I'll quickly go over some simple things.

• Phone calls. I hate talking on the phone. Why? Because I feel there is no reason to spend time on the phone, listening to people yammer on about stuff that they could tell me when I see them in person. The worst are those people who call other people, keep them on the phone while they do other things just because they want the company. There are very few people I like to talk to on the phone, and I think you know who you are, because I can tell them I need to go when I really need to go instead of being all polite and staying on the phone while wondering when this person is going to decide they're done being lonely.
• Being driven places. This is something my husband likes to do. He doesn't do it as much now, simply because of Mateo and how our life is now, and also because I hardly do anything alone anymore. The only time I don't mind being driven and picked up is when wherever I'm going is far away or too annoying to get to. Other than that, I'd like to decide when I'm leaving, how I get there, and leave when I want to leave instead of waiting for my driver to show up. I think you can surmise that my husband is often late.
• Random visits. This is a work thing. It's not specific to my job or my place of work, so I think I can write about it without fear of repercussion. When I write "visits," I mean people who come to your desk, stand around, shooting the breeze, while you're going nuts inside because you have 50 things that needed to get done yesterday, or you're just really not in the mood to talk, or you just plain don't like the person and he/she has yet to figure it out from the death rays you shoot at them constantly. I'm generally a very friendly person. I generally don't mind the visits. But there are just times when I wish I could put my invisible cloak on and disappear so I could be left alone. I'm also easily distracted by gossip, so I can find myself spending way too much time visiting and then can't concentrate on what I should be doing.
• Let's walk together! There are very few people I want to walk with to and from the BART station once in SF. Very few. I don't like small talk. You can only ask someone "so how's work going?" so many times. You can only answer the question "when are you having another baby?" so many times. I'll walk with my husband because I can tell him to hurry up or slow down or whathaveyou. I'll walk with my co-worker because she understands the need to get to the station at a certain time, and I talk to her all day long, so we don't do the small talk thing. I'll walk with some folks I used to work with years ago. But that's about it. And yes, I'll purposely slow down or walk super fast to I don't have to cross paths with you for very long.

Now to the nitty gritty.

As you can see from the title of this post, I've been called to jury duty. Yes, it's my civic responsibility. Yes, I've gotten out of it the past 5 years or so for various reasons so that probably means I'm very due to head on over to Oakland and sit in a room with a bunch of other victims responsible citizens, waiting for our sentence. And yes, we all hate doing it (well, some of us), and it's a necessary evil, so I probably shouldn't complain.

When I got the notice, I thought, ah well, no big thang. I never thought of plans or how it would disrupt my life and Mateo's and my husband's. Then yesterday I started thinking about it. How were we going to deal with Mateo and daycare? What about dinners? What about taking care of the little things in life during the day? How long would I be doing this, if I got picked? Especially today, a day I work from home. When I work from home, I take Mateo to daycare and pick him up. If I had to up and leave, who would pick him up? Would I be able to get to daycare in enough time to do it myself?

When I got home last night, I quickly checked the jury summons online, and my group wasn't called (ya!), but I have to call back today after 11 AM to see if I am needed that afternoon (boo!). That's all swell and grand and great. But that just makes my day that much more annoying because I'll have to leave in the middle of the day, try to find parking at the train station, go to Oakland, and sit and wait and wonder if I will really be picked or if I'll be dismissed.

I just don't like not knowing what's going on. It makes me crazy. So I have a few more hours before I know. And until then, I'll drive myself crazy thinking about it.

On a good note, I balanced three month's worth of checking account statements and found about 4000 bucks, but then lost about 2000 of it to a mortgage payment I never entered into Quicken. I also entered that Comcast payment I paid two times three times into Quicken (for those of you adding in your brain, yes, that's 450 dollars) for some stupid reason. I also found various double entries and some that were really credit card purchases. So now I'm not that worried, but I still need to get a good budget put together and keep up on our finances. Obviously half-arsing it isn't doing us a world of good.