i gotta feeling!

Do you have any good vibes lying around? If so, want to send any my way? There are lots of deserving homes for your good vibes and I hate to hog them, but any rooting for me and my fellow comrades typing as fast as we can over the next few days is more than welcome.

The bar exam is Tuesday and Wednesday, and at this point, the most effective way to help me and hundreds of other hoping-to-soon-be-legit-lawyers nationwide is prayer and/or raising a fountain drink in a toast and just sending a lot of positive energy. Are you up to the challenge? Can you visualize success with me?

I have a long history of doing significantly better than I deserve to on standardized tests. Let's hope this is no exception.

home stretch

Have you ever haphazardly thrown spaghetti at a wall and prayed some of it would stick as you watched it all slide down into a goobery mess? But you just kept throwing?

Me neither.

But that's what reviewing for the bar is reminding me of right now.


Sometimes I open up the phone book to "Attorneys" just to remind me how many goobers have passed this thing. It's like the opposite of positive affirmations. Instead of saying "I am smart and can do hard things" you say "I am dumb, but lots of people are dumber."

umm, kind of.

Studies are so all-consuming (particularly now that I'm in the same state as two of my child's grandmas and therefore have, as a certain former boss of mine used to insist was an accepted term, "uni-dimensional focus") that I have twitchy-eye, and so I cope with things that pop into my head, e.g., this.

Once, years ago, I lived in an upstairs apartment with a bunch of other sophisticated/fabulous women, and a kind but awkward young married couple lived below us. They were particularly impressive when it came to skills such as slow blinking, open-mouth stares, odd forced laughter at bizarre times, and so forth. They were so painfully awkward that one of our roommates began to refer to them, collectively, as Socially Inept. As in, "Socially Inept dropped by," or "Here's that note from Socially Inept." They were technically the apartment "managers" but I'm not sure what that job consisted of except pausing longer than necessary in polite conversation, looking mousy, and leaving the occasional passive-aggressive note. But we loved them.

One day, I came home to find a typed note taped to our door. If you're wondering if it immediately went on our fridge for about a year, the answer is yes.

Dear Residents,

Please do not park in spots that are not assigned to you, even briefly, as it causes other tenants incontinence. Thanks,

The Management.

Know what I like that is really gross (besides Del Taco)?

The term "grow a pair." I know, it's so vulgar. But it's also really effective, and it portrays exactly what I want it to most of the time, in a way in which "grow a spine" or "buck up" or "pull it together" just don't. As I adjust to a new region of the country and know no one but my hub in a 1,000 mile radius, and as I strive to prepare for the damn bar exam by shoving more information into my head than I previously thought was possible, I tell myself to grow a pair a lot. I mean, figuratively.

There is so much information swirling in my head right now it's a little freaky. I'm out of room in my brain but still need to cram (significantly) more in before the bar exam. There are only two solutions: it's time to brain-purge and get rid of all unnecessary/non-urgent info floating around in there, like how to sign the True to the Faith hymn, or that a group of owls is called a parliament, or that there are a number of ways in which women can prepare and subsequently consume their placentas.

See? I have room for like three more things now. Yikes. Guys, it really is like preparing to take 20 intensive finals rolled into one. SO. MUCH. INFORMATION. Brain exploding.

I know, I know...time to grow a pair.

fyi

If your dryer breaks so you have tons of wet clothes, you might think that hanging them up to dry is a good idea. And maybe it is. But if the humidity is 95% where you live, it could take a while.

we made it!

I can't find anything.

Not the towels, not the can opener, not the freaking grocery store. But who needs to find stuff when you have a yard and a new state to call home? I'm a moron about directions generally, but when there are only gorgeous rolling hills but no mountains, I have no idea which direction I'm facing or really, where I live. So that's unfortunate. But I have a map and a phone and with those two things I cannot fail.

Unless I get turned around on the map and have a close call or two on a so-called one way street. In which case it's less of a "failure" and more of an "opportunity to learn from experience."

Part of how I know I really learned something in law school, or at least in my latest bar-study efforts, is when I have ridiculously nerdy responses to things, e.g., the parts of the Michael Jackson saga I'm most interested are about the details about his will and whether it's valid and why. Similarly, if you happen to, say, buy your first home right after reviewing for both the contracts and property law portions of the bar exam, you may enrage everyone else in the room when you insist on reading everything. But come on! Do I look like a dummy? If I sign something that says "ONLY TODAY'S WRITTEN AGREEMENT IS ENFORCEABLE AND NO ORAL PROMISES OR EXPLANATIONS HAVE ANY VALIDITY," am I really expected to listen to these guys 'explain' things to me and then take their word for it and sign my rights away? Sigh. I suspect this is just the beginning of a long life of being uptight. But that's what happens when all you do is learn about absurd worst case scenarios and the schmucks that get squished like bugs for not reading the fine print.

Remember The Office episode in which Michael locks everyone in the conference room to teach them a lesson and every law student in America had a heart attack because THAT HAS ALL THE ELEMENTS OF FALSE IMPRISONMENT?

Anyway. Our kid has loved the move, shrieking as she goes around each corner to discover ANOTHER empty room in which she can run around with her hands in the air shouting words she understands but no one else does and beaming at us. Sometimes she just claps and looks around delighted at the world and it melts my cold heart. She is also the cutest moving-urchin, in her pjs all day with who knows what smeared on her face and black feet from running barefoot on filthy floors. They're clean now though so when you come see us you can take your shoes off without fear. Also there are a bunch of kids next door who like to feed my kid raspberries through the fence, so if you hurry, maybe they'll be some left for you.


We moved!

(Imagine me saying that in the same voice little kids, e.g., my nieces, say things like "I DID IT!" after going to the bathroom. Triumphant, jubilant, please-applaud-me. That kind of tone.)