My Day in Court

For those who don't remember my little misdemeaner situation with that car accident in January: I looked back at Daniel, ended up gently rear-ending a guy, and got stuck with a misdemeaner.

Well, the pre-trial was today, with my public defender. For starters, he was an hour late. It was my understanding that we were supposed to talk and then he would go talk to the prosecuters and try to work a deal. That's what I was told by his office anyway.

Nope, he took me to conference, said "I looked at the notes. Misdemeaner charge is standard for innatentive driving. You should have told the officer you were following too close, not that you looked back. (telling me to lie to an officer?) You can either accept the charges today, pay court costs, restitution for the victim who is still in physical therapy (for a sore neck? give me a break...) and blah blah blah."

Option B is that I could schedule a court trial, no jury, with the possibility of the prosecuters reducing the charge to following too closely, which is an infraction, and paying a fine so long as my insurance has paid the victim's medical stuff. Umm, I thought that was what the pretrial was for? Working a deal? He suggested I do the court thing. Okay, fine. I told him that we were darn lucky the baby was asleep the whole time, and that I have to bring him to trial with me since he won't take bottles. And that if he got hungry, I'd just have to nurse him in the court room and hope the judge didn't mind....! I got there at 2:00, my appt was at 2:15, I didn't get called until 3:15. I had to wait some more, and didn't get out of there until just after 4, so of course I had to pay for the 3rd hour of parking even though I only used 10 minutes of it. $7.50!

Lucky my last-minute sitter was okay with having the older 2 for longer after school than I thought. I'll be watching her kids tomorrow and hopefully will have her brownies done by then. I ran back to base to pick them up, and then had to go into town to get William and do a piano lesson. So I left the house at 12:30, dropped off William, ran to Boise, sat at the courthouse for 2 1/2 hours just to find out I have to go to trial anyway, fed a baby who woke up starving, drove home in torrents of rain, picked up kids at various places, had dinner at Amanda's, did a piano lesson, helped pick up the room they were playing in, and finally made it home about 9:00. Whew!

Wonder how tomorrow will be?