What do you do when there's nothing to do?

I have been getting more involved with clients and starting to build up my caseload (still working on building it up to the point where I’m always busy. I’m told I should be grateful for these days when I’m not so busy all the time but sometimes the days drag a bit). Some of my clients have difficult cases, though. I have not yet faced the situation, which I’m told is inevitable, where there is absolutely nothing to do for the client. I have faced a few situations where there is something I can do, but it is a long shot that anything will come of it, and that can be frustrating. Times like these, it is pretty easy to get angry at how the system works and how unfair it can be. For example, but sparing the details, we have had a couple people that are not in immigration court proceedings yet but we think are good candidates for them and we have been wondering how we will face that. There is so little hope in that situation, what can we do?

 I don’t want to be a Debbie Downer (in our house we just call them “Deborahs” but I couldn’t remember if there are any Deborahs that might read this) and other than these tough cases, things have been going pretty well. I feel much more comfortable with my job and I think for the most part I know what to do when people come in. I still ask the other compañeras for tips, but I think every day I am getting a better grasp of things. Also, on Thursday Taller celebrated its second birthday! We celebrated by having everyone go on different accompaniments, which prevented us from having a more traditional celebration. Although someone pointed out that it is much more fitting for us to be doing what Taller was founded to do instead of having some superfluous party. Most exciting event of the week? When I got a police escort home from an accompaniment on Saturday! My client had to look at a photo line-up and the police station was far enough away that we had to take two buses there, and the detective felt bad and took us home in an unmarked police car. In front of my house, he went the wrong way down our one-way street and called it “official police business”. This totally made up for having to go into work on a Saturday morning.

On Friday night, in anticipation of the first Notre Dame game of the season, Chris (my fellow Domer) and I finally set up one of our TVs to receive channels. Now we have one TV that does nothing, and one that can show DVDs and channels, instead of just one TV that shows just DVDs. Then, Ann K and I watched Rudy, according to tradition. Saturday we also watched a movie, Footloose, and this time we even dragged Chris in to watch it with us while some of our roommates were at the Polish festival.

I haven’t cooked since the last time I posted, but last night the Anns made enchilada lasagna. They used flour tortillas, enchilada sauce, a can of black beans, some chicken for one of the lasagnas, olives and some Mexican cheese blend. It was so delicious! And, they said it was pretty simple to make. This morning as a special Labor Day treat, Ann K made us pancakes. She made chocolate chip, banana and blueberry pancakes and some combination ones. My favorite was the chocolate chip banana ones.