Oh, Graduation

I wrote a whole angst-ridden post about how I hate graduation, why that is, and why I'm ready for it to be over.  It made me feel better.  But I decided it won't make you feel better, and that it wasn't going to do anything for my let's-improve-my-attitude-which-has-been-terrible-as-of-late campaign.  I decided to readjust.

So let's sum up how I feel about law school, and how I feel about graduation like this:

That should be sufficient.

I'm glad it's over.  I was not a big fan of law school.  I'm not a huge fan of lawyering in general most of the time.  I'm not excited about graduation.  I should be.  I'm trying to adjust my attitude and just be happy that it's over and polite to everyone with their billion questions about it.  And that sums up why I will be very pleased when this coming Saturday is over and done with!

Whineface Alert

Occasionally, this happens.  I am just in a weird funk and cannot bring myself to write.  I think it's just that graduation is coming up, which feels entirely meaningless.

Mainly this is because the Barbri book fairies just emailed me to say my Giant Box of Books Designed to Teach the One Million Hours Worth of Things I Did NOT Learn in Law School has shipped.  Gulp.  Y'all, I don't study.  Really, I don't take things seriously, especially law school.  I was an English major, where my professors were glad to read my happy little ideas and as long as they were marginally well-written, reward me with a pat on the back and an A.  In law school and on the bar exam?  There are these things called correct answers.  I really suck at coming up with/memorizing/analyzing the correct answer.  Also the fact that I never was interested in law school.  Or what we were learning.  This is really going to spell trouble for me.  I also suck at self discipline.  Another issue.

Further, I guess it all feels ridiculous because there are NO jobs out there.  There are like a million people graduating from all seven of the giant law schools in this state that basically has one major metropolitan area.  So for the say, one or two job openings that do exist - there are a million people competing for them.  I don't like it.

So basically, I haven't been writing, because I have been a giant stressball who does nothing but feed this terrible internal we're-going-to-starve-when-I-graduate inner monologue that has been playing on repeat inside my head for the last few weeks.

Hopefully, I'll just be able to throw myself into studying and being busy and not thinking about it when the Giant Box from Barbri comes and you guys will get to hear about my non-studying adventures more.  Sorry for the whinepants post.  But you know, just had to get it out there.

Wine and Love

Nora over at Walking with Nora has started a new little series on her precious blog that she calls Wine and Love.  And she made a cute button!  So I thought I'd play along this week.  Because let's face it, What I'm Loving Wednesday is okay, but it doesn't leave me any room for whining, and I ain't no Pollyanna.

Things that have me diving into the wine cooler this week: 

Saturday is PB's birthday (okay that's not the part making me need a bucket of wine) - but he is the hardest person in the world to shop for.  And when I finally found him a good present (meaning a pair of Oakley sunglasses he's been wanting for awhile), he figured out the surprise!  Ugh, he's worse than a kid searching the closets for Christmas presents!

We had bad storms this week and power at the law school was out for two days.  That meant no class, woohoo!  But the only way the law school communicated with us was via Facebook.  And Wednesday, they cancelled classes, so I went on about my day.  When I checked Facebook again late Wednesday night, turns out they had changed their minds!  And reinstated classes!  Ridiculous.  But after all was said and done, attendance didn't count on Wednesday because of the "communication issues," so everything turned out happy.  But still.  Way to be professional, guys!

Pollen.  Pollen all over my porch furniture, pollen flying through the air, pollen in my nose, pollen everywhere.  Oh, spring.  I love you, but I hate the pollen you bring.

Things I'm loving this week!

That our wedding tree came!  We're going to display this at our wedding, put out green inkpads and pens for signing, and have people make fingerprint leaves as a sort of alternative way to have a guestbook.  And see the little birds on the bottom branch?  PB and I are going to put our fingerprints there in blue! 

That this is what the garden section at Wal-Mart looked like the other day.  I'm itching to plant a million pots - I really want impatiens and geraniums and basil and tomato plants!  I did pick up one of these sweet little yellow flowers in the blue bucket.  Only $7 and it's making my screened porch feel like spring!

I got Peggy Sue a life jacket yesterday!  Isn't she just the cutest little floating weenie you've ever seen?  I'm probably going to lower her off the edge of the dock and let her swim around and get acquainted with everything this weekend.  I've kind of shoved her off the steps near the edge of the water before, and she can definitely swim, but with the lifejacket on, I'll feel more comfortable putting her out further so that she can explore and get more used to the water.  I'm determined to have a completely aquatic weenie by summertime!

What are you loving this week?  What's got you reaching for the corkscrew? 

Full Moon Friday

Holy dear sweet Jesus, it has been a crazy 24 hours.  I had such a nice little relaxing Friday planned yesterday.  It was 76 glorious degrees here in the Carolinas, and I was LOVING it.  Peggy Sue got spayed a few days ago, and I've been trying to keep her from cutting backflips, chasing the cat, and running so fast her back end tries to pass her front.  But she kept looking out at me from her crate like, "Come on, man.  Why you so mad?  I'll be good.  Don't hate me."  So I broke down and let her hang out around the house with me while I flung open all the windows, turned on my ceiling fans, drank peach tea, and pretended it was May.

Well, Pegs got left alone for about 3 minutes while I was switching out laundry.  And in that amount of time, her little sneaky butt got into my big canvas lawyer-school-bag and dug out a whole pack of Orbit wintergreen.  And further, she demolished said wintergreen gum into 948593 teeny tiny pieces.  Pegs gets into enough stuff that I generally shrug my shoulders, think to myself, "Ehh, the [cat poop/squirrel bone/leaf/newspaper/rock/stuffed animal] will come out in the wash eventually."  But for some reason, when I caught her with that gum, I just sort of automatically reached for the phone and called the vet.  Really, I expected them to reiterate my initial come-out-in-the-wash thought, but they panicked.  Which caused me to panic. So I drove like the devil was after me to get her to the vet, and they made her throw up a whole lot of minty goodness.  And then they made me take her to the emergency vet to stay all night so that her blood sugar could be monitored. Fortunately, she didn't eat enough to cause her to go into liver failure, so thank goodness for that.  And this morning, she is wide open, not a bit sick.  It was a rough night though, and I hope we don't have to have another emergency vet trip anytime soon.

That whole long story was to tell all of y'all that if you have a dog - keep them out of your sugar free gum!  Apparently it's worse than chocolate for a dog, and I sure didn't know that before this happened, I just got lucky because I happened to call the vet. Scary stuff.

After all that, I woke up this morning to find that my power was off.  That didn't seem like a big deal at first, even though I was supposed to be at a divorce clinic at the law school all day, helping folks fill out their paperwork to get the big D.  I just figured I'd go with scrungy hair (I know, scrungy isn't a word, I made it up) and shower later.  Call me gross, but it's Saturday, and being at the law school on a Saturday when it's going to be 70 degrees and sunny will likely cause me to break out in a rash immediately.

However, then I realized that my car was in the garage.  And oh, right, the garage door works by electricity.  Which I don't have.  At that point, I did what any girl in my situation would do - I called my dad.  He said, "Well you can probably get the door up, just pull on that rope hanging down from the garage ceiling and use it to pull the door up."  Right.  So that ended up with me literally grabbing onto said rope, dangling from it with all my weight off the ground, and the garage door not moving.  Not even a centimeter.  I kept thinking someone had intentionally cut my power and set up a candid camera just to watch me attempt to get my garage door open.

I moved onto option 2, which was grabbing onto one of the metal slats on the back of the garage door and muscling it up.  Well, then I realized I'm not tall enough to get it all the way up.  Once I got a step ladder, I got the door all the way up, and then I realized it wouldn't stay.  So I'm standing there, holding the garage door up, wondering what in the world to do next.  I finally ended up propping the door up with a flat metal rake, and backing the car out.

That sounded really simple.  What it really involved was me holding my breath while I backed the car out under the door that was supported by JUST A RAKE.  And I forgot to mention that I had my mom's Cadillac XLR because my car was in the shop. Her brand new Valentine's/anniversary present XLR.  Oh. My. Lord.  I can't believe I made it out.

But anyway, that's what's up with me.  I made it back to the emergency vet to pick Peggy up, and got her crazy self over to my parents' house so that she could hang out with Mom while I came to divorce clinic.  And now our clients are one step closer to be happily divorced!  I really loved that we had a question - "What if you don't know what date you got married?"  I'm thinking that if you need to ask that question, I'm pretty sure that I now understand why you're getting divorced.

snowcation is over :(

I am so much better at snowcation than I am at real life. Lawyering school was back open today, so no more switching from sweatpants and Snuggie to snow clothes to bathing suit (for the hot tub) and back. I will say though, we had a fantastic time with the snow.

Day one, we took Peggy Sue out to play and produced the lovely picture you saw before. The snow was officially one wiener dog deep, so she had to sort of leap every time she wanted to run. I know her speed didn't drop below 40 miles per hour the entire time she was outside. She was also fascinated that the snow kept producing prizes, like the fantastic stick seen above.

We headed to the park for some sledding, because PB and I are actually 10 year olds. There must have been a million kids there, with the best arrangement of homemade sleds I think I have ever seen. There were people with tarps, cardboard, trashcan lids, boogie boards, and even a Superman inflatable pool float. Sledding was awesome, but boy will it make you tired. Turns out I am not really a 10 year old, but an old lady who was exhausted and freezing after 45 minutes.

Hence, spent the rest of the day in my snOMG pants, pictured above. Snow requires chili and stew - nothing else works for dinner when there's snow on the ground. Made white chili with this miraculous McCormick seasoning that I highly recommend. Throw some chicken (leftover, rotisserie, grilled, poached, even canned - it all works), beans, Ro-Tel and corn in a pot with that stuff and you have a deliciously amazing dinner in 10 minutes. Miracle in an envelope.

Day two, we decided to go much more hardcore with the snow. We went back to the park, because for the most part, there was just too much salt on the roads to produce good sledding. However, we brought our friends T and J, and we came super prepared. Mainly, I mean that I made sangria, we poured it in our leftover giant styrofoam cups with lids from Chick-Fil-A, and J and were your friendly neighborhood park wine-os. I started to understand the appeal of drinking wine from a paper bag on a park bench.

Since it iced over the snow, the park became significantly more epic. There's an absolutely giant hill that dumps into a creek, so every time you pick up to about 50 mph, there's a moment where you think you're definitely going down the eight foot drop off into the icy creek. Aaaaaand for a few people, that definitely happened. No one was hurt, but I might have been laughing a little inappropriately anyway, due to all the sangria. See in the picture below? Just beyond the amphitheater, that part before the trees that looks like a giant drop-off really is. Bet that wasn't fun.

Later in the afternoon, the neighborhood potheads came out, and I had a lovely time watching them all fall on their faces as they tried to snowboard down the hill on boogie boards and skateboards without wheels. But then we decided that probably the few parents that were left might decide they didn't like all of these shenanigans, and well, we were drinking wine out of cups ourselves, soooo, better to hightail it out of the park.

We ended up finding a dead end road with a cul de sac, which was entirely coated in ice. We really only did about 5 passes apiece down that hill though, because it was sort of a death wish. You'd go hurtling down the ice, only to jump the curb and land in a giant hill of ice-coated brush.

See? That's so pretty.

Jeez has it been hard to get back to real life though. Snow days took away all urgency I had to do anything school-related. Okay, let's be honest, did I have any urgency anyway?