greetings

Oh, friends. Thanks for your patience as I yammer less and less predictably on me blog. I realize I haven't blogged in many moons. I also realize that this is perhaps the busiest time of my life so far, meaning, ever. Because of this lack of time, I have a serious blabbing backlog so brace yourselves for an avalanche of yappage when I get more than thirty seconds.

In the meantime, may I share some recent bar exam news? In the words of my illustrious friend Ru:

"DUAL ADMISSION, SUCKAS!"

whew part A

I have so much to tell you!

It's old news now, but I shall still share part A (the bar exam) in bullet points, bc that's how I roll, er, type. Parts B and C involve our trip west and then some local shenanigans so please stand by.

The Bar Exam 2.0, or, If I Ever Want To Take Another Bar Exam, Please Kill Me.

• The exam itself was tolerable. Could it have been worse? Yes. Could it have been better? Yes. Do I think I passed? Yes. But most people think they passed, and there are always people who don't, so, who knows? I hope I did, and I'll be sad and mad if I didn't, but I will survive, and I will let you know if it's good news, and if it's not, let's just all act natural.
  
• Picture this: the exam site was 2 hours away...which is juuuuust long enough to be a big fat headache when you have a full day and a half of testing and a nursing baby. Soooo, yes, we took a family field trip and my dear, dear husband chased our girls around a large and unfamiliar city for two days. And if you imagine us all sleeping in a cozy hotel room that goes: wall/crib/bed/crib/wall, that's about right.
  
• They forbid taking ANYTHING into the bar exam room except my plug, laptop, and ID. No wallet, no cell phone, no nothing. Luckily we've been practicing ESP so rather than getting stranded in an unfamiliar city making collect calls from a lice-ridden pay phone, I sent husband vibes when it was time to come get me and it worked.
• I didn't study property. BOOYAH. Did you know that? Are you impressed with my bravery or shocked at my foolishness? They give you 15ish topics to know cold, and then a national testing group releases essay questions on 9 of those topics, and many states choose 6 of those. So there's lots you learn that you won't be tested on, and sometimes you just need to make those sorts of calls. During studying, I quickly realized it was going to take up three valuable days to learn property (a pretty specific, complicated, laden with terms-of-art topic) and the odds were pretty small I'd get an essay question on it. So, (vulgarity alert), I grew a pair, threw caution to the wind, said, "Nope," and just skipped it. Gutsy eh? Well, e-friends, I'm here to tell you, TO RISK IS TO LIVE, bc the gamble paid off and there was no property question! Is this 27 years of paying a full tithe? Perhaps. Bc that could have really been a dumb move. And if you are going to take the bar sometime soon, DO NOT FOLLOW MY EXAMPLE, because there WILL be property on the the multiple-choice portion, which I didn't have to take this year because I took it last year in another state. Got it? But still, phew.
  
• Though I survived law school with nary a testing software problem, I spent a solid 15 minutes of the first 90 minute essay with a frozen screen and a busy proctor trying to fix it. I utilized my hypnobirthing breathing and remained relatively calm, but still, LAAAAAAME. Thank you, Hypno-Debbie (our initial hypnobirthing teacher from a few years ago).

This is the first sentence of the world's most hilarious cheese-riffic hypnobirthing cd, so say it in your highest, creepiest dreamlike voice:

"And now it's time to relax..."

pretty sure we all deserve a Slurpee.

Have you ever had one of those days where you finish up a cross-country roadtrip with small kids by driving 1200 miles in one day, and you arrive home at 2 AM and your poor kids have the travel-shits and take turns accidentally emitting various bodily fluids onto every imaginable surface in your home, and your toddler refuses to nap and you consider it a victory that you manage to shower and right after you finally get dressed your kid burps up all over your only clean clothes, and your house looks terrifying and then you suddenly realize the sister missionaries are coming over for dinner and you have Mother Hubbard cupboards and your spouse will be home later than usual? And at the precise moment you realize you just used the last diaper in the house, your toddler accidentally headbutts your baby and both begin screeching cries of tortured fury?

Yeah, I had one of those.

How was yours?

pretty sure...

....that playing "Do I Have A Right?" counts as bar prep. Or something. So what if it's targeted to middle schoolers? Go play it! You're welcome.

bar none

Hello friends and internet. May I ask you a favor? I took the Utah bar exam last year, and then we moved, and I am taking the bar exam of our new state in the great Midwest so I can hold myself out as a lawyer.

(Timeout: "holding yourself out" is one of my favorite awkward phrases. It appears often in the law in subjects like common law marriage, e.g., "holding themselves out as husband and wife," or ethics, e.g., "holding yourself out as an expert," and its perhaps obvious meaning is a person purporting to be something. But "holding yourself out" just makes me picture me holding a smaller version of myself in the air a la Simba from the Lion King and shouting "Behold! I! Am! A lawyer!")



Anyway, what I'm trying to get to is this: If I ever mention that I'm thinking about taking another bar exam, I want you to stage an intervention. And if the intervention doesn't go well, shoot me.

Thanks.

Unrelated comment: being a parent is my favorite thing I've ever done. Our girls (a two-year-old and a six-month-old) had their first long, loud, deliberate giggle-back-and-forth exchange in the car the other day and it may have been the sweetest thing I've ever, ever heard. I sense much mischief in their future and I like it.

Moving on. I have a horrible, horrible, cannot-think-or-sleep-as-my-head-is-pounding toothache. Pretty sure it's bc I haven't been to the dentist since we got married due to lack of dental insurance (whooooops). This is particularly unfortunate timing considering the whole enormous test next week phenomenon, so yes, a dentist is squeezing me in today because if I have to take the bar with the right side of my head pounding I will cry. And also fail. But I'm pretty sure it's bad news, because I can't think of anything good they will tell me about a throbbing tooth/jaw/eyeball/side of face ("Congratulations! It's throbbing due to GOLD NUGGETS! LOTS AND LOTS OF GOLD NUGGETS!") and I suspect it will cost a fortune.

Let us pray. And floss.