Planning on Own The Leap

What I'm Actually Asking the Attorney

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I printed the employment agreement this morning. The copy I found in the guest room closet last week, eleven pages, originally printed on an HP inkjet I got rid of in 2021. It’s on my computer. I highlighted the clause on the PDF two weeks ago. I printed it again anyway.

Something about a legal document in your hand on a Sunday morning that is different from the same document on a screen. The screen version I’ve been reading for two weeks. The paper version I made coffee first.

The Real Deadline

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The scheduling email came at 8:47 this morning. I was on my second cup of coffee and my third work email of the day when I saw it, and I did the thing where I close the laptop and then open it again because I wasn’t sure I’d read it right.

The consultation is Tuesday at 1pm. Video call, forty-five minutes, bring your employment agreement.

I have known this was coming. I submitted the intake form six days ago. I knew a date would arrive and I would put it in my calendar. And yet when it came, I sat there with my coffee going cold and felt something I am still trying to name correctly. Not relief, exactly. More like: oh. So it’s real.

The Email I Keep Not Sending

Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I have a draft folder problem. Not a technical one. I don’t have things sitting in my email drafts right now, taking up space, waiting. What I have is a mental draft folder, and that is worse, because nobody can see it and I can pretend it does not exist.

I wrote six names down on Wednesday. The list is in my phone. Every name has a company and a note about how I know them and when we last spoke. I was careful about it, which is something I do when I’m nervous.

The Names I've Been Keeping in My Head

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The attorney’s office acknowledged my intake form Tuesday afternoon. Two business days to schedule a consultation. It is Wednesday. I have been thinking about what I need to have ready.

The agreement, obviously. I’m going to scan it properly before I go in, not photograph it the way I photographed every school permission slip during the pandemic years, crooked, with my thumb in the corner. The clause is on page three. I’ll have it flagged. I am, it turns out, the person who shows up to legal consultations with a labeled document and a written list of questions. I suspected this about myself.

The Intake Form

Tue, 26 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The box is back in the closet. I put it away Sunday after I found what I was looking for, which is what I do with things I’ve dealt with and also things I haven’t. I’m aware those two states are not distinguishable from the outside.

I have the document. I know the clause. I know there’s a missing exhibit, something called “Restricted Clients,” that I either need to locate or find someone qualified to interpret without. I know exactly who can answer this: an employment attorney who represents employees. Not employers. The distinction matters and is not obvious from most law firm websites.

What Was in the Box

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Sunday. Max got back from the lacrosse tournament around noon. He said it went fine in the way that means neither great nor terrible and moved directly to the refrigerator. Doug was mowing. Zoe would be asleep for another hour at minimum. I had approximately no excuse.

I went to the guest room closet.

The box was where I said it was, third shelf, under a bin of craft supplies I keep meaning to donate and a garment bag that has been in that closet since 2007 without being opened. I knew this because I had moved those items aside mentally at least a dozen times in the last week, which is a form of preparation I am apparently comfortable with but that does not actually retrieve the document.

The Agreement I Signed in 2002

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Saturday morning. Doug was out getting the car washed. Zoe was asleep until a time I have stopped having opinions about. Max left at 7:15 for a lacrosse tournament I can track in only the broadest terms, and I found myself with a quiet house and no plausible excuse.

So I Googled it.

“Non-solicitation agreement standard terms.” Just typed it, hit enter, the way you finally pull a bandage you’ve been preparing to pull for two weeks.

The List I Won't Write Down

Fri, 22 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Thursday, second coffee, before a call that will definitely run long. I had seven minutes and I did what I’ve been doing with every scrap of found time lately: I tried to start the list.

Not a list I can put anywhere yet. I’ve done the health insurance research, or, not exactly done, I have two spreadsheet tabs and a saved bookmark for a healthcare.gov calculator I haven’t run all the way through. But I know the shape of it now: COBRA would be $1,840 a month for our family, which is enough to take seriously. The ACA marketplace option, depending on what I project for year-one income, might come out close to $1,100. Neither number is what I had in my head before I looked, which was something between “impossible” and “paralyzing” with no actual figure attached. The real figures are manageable. Annoying, but manageable. I did not expect to feel that way about them.

The Question I Hadn't Prepared For

Thu, 21 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The questions came Wednesday night, which was not when I expected them.

I had been anticipating a kitchen-table conversation. Serious. Probably after Zoe went upstairs. Doug would have a list, I would have answers, we would work through them the way two people who’ve been married for 21 years work through things: methodically, a little formally, with the television off.

Instead he asked the first one in the car. We were coming back from dropping Max at a friend’s house, 8:47pm, and he said, without preamble, “So what’s the actual timeline?”

Working Backwards from November

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The questions still haven’t come.

I don’t know if Doug is being generous or strategic, but it’s Tuesday and he has not asked any of them. He made dinner last night. We talked about Max’s lacrosse tournament and whether Zoe’s college counselor is actually helpful or just expensive, and we watched forty minutes of television and went to bed. Normal in every direction.

I keep waiting for the conversation to resume and it keeps not resuming. This is starting to feel like its own kind of pressure. Like a held note.