The Pre-Thanksgiving Uuuuugh

It's still Wednesday, but I'm already stuffed to the brim. I think it is possible that I will explode in the night. This may be my last sad missive sent out to the world. I should probably make sure I say something really important and thought-provoking.

Ummmmm....

So, my brother and his family came over today. They'll be spending tomorrow with his wife's family, in an eminently reasonable yearly swap (the family that gets Thanksgiving one year gets Christmas the next, and vice versa). The fact that it's reasonable of course means nothing to the overly sensitive, but so be it. Better than the contortions I've seen others go through. I have recently heard both of the following oxymoronic rationales:

(1) My family is small, so they really depend on me being there. Your big family won't miss you. Thus, every holiday should be spent with my family.

(2) My family is huge, so it is just about impossible for everyone to get together. Your small family can get together any time. In fact, why don't they just have Thanksgiving on a different day? Thus, every holiday should be spent with my family.

I think I would divorce both of the above people.

Anywho, this year is not our Thanksgiving. I happened to say to my brother that I'd be cooking on Wednesday and it would be great if he wanted to come over. He seemed really excited about this. Then I realized that, um, he thought I meant I'd be cooking a big dinner for Wednesday. Ha ha ha. Foolish child. The cornbread will not souffle itself.

So I promised to order pizza, and then...then...I have no idea what happened, but next thing I knew there were various people in my kitchen and a big meal was being produced and the Thanksgiving treats were suddenly on the table and BY THE WAY there was no room for me to do actual cooking for the actual big-meal day that is NOT today and seriously, who will souffle the cornbread if not me? If you don't have a solution, well, you are part of the problem.

Meanwhile, it's hours later and though I am full with the fullness of she who ate half a pound of crab dip, I am yet oddly deflated. It is, after all, such a letdown. Those foods, those special foods, so tempting and meaningful and kind of capacious (what with the taking up of every spare inch of my refrigerator, and all the other inches I didn't have to spare to begin with)...their glorious luster is somehow diminished when tradition is broken.

Yes, it is true...pumpkin pie loses its mystique when consumed too soon. Its festivity has been dulled by its sheer prematurely devoured tawdriness. Why, pumpkin pie, why did it have to be this way? If you had just waited your turn until tomorrow, maybe we could have really had something together, but now? Now I know all your secrets. I am over you.

There Is No Healthcare Crisis in This Country

Click on picture to view larger size:

License to Litigate

The recent release of bar results made me nostalgic for a simpler time. Ah, memories....

Why am I torturing you with old posts?


The End Is Nigh
Originally posted fall 2006

Repent while there is still time!

I awakened this morning and everything seemed normal. Then the dog turned to me and said, "Cheerio, old girl, and how about a biscuit for your chum." That was pretty extraordinary. That the dog talked, well, whatever, but that he was British? Who knew!

Then I got in my car and drove to work. I knew something was awry the minute the frogs started raining from the sky and the locusts began, you know, plaguing.

Pigs flew. Hell, elephants flew. And everyone knew nothing would ever be the same again.

What's that? You say you missed it? The Apocalypse isn't at hand? You don't see the Four Horsemen bearing down upon you?

Well, how's this for a sign that the End Times are at hand:

At 2:59 p.m. on this day...I discovered that I PASSED THE BAR!

---

Bar Day: The Most Wonderful Day of the Year
Posted a couple of days after the previous post
(Edited for length)

Or more like one of the worst days ever.

I don't know about you, but I really thought that I wouldn't pass, for a variety of reasons. I've spent the last month and a half imagining how things would play out, how it would feel to look at the list and not see my name, how I'd have to explain it to the people I work with, how they'd react, how my friends would treat me like I'd just been diagnosed with a horrible illness.

I woke up Thursday with that nervous-shaky-nauseated-racing-heart sensation that was all too familiar from the bar exam. From there it was all about waiting. One person had a program that checked the main page automatically for new links, others just clicked refresh over and over, and still others just wanted to wait for someone else to tell them the news.

Basically, we were all a little nuts.

So there I sat. And I felt more and more terrified. And I posted the first of the only two posts I will ever write at work. And then, since it was far too early for grades, I read every story on CNN.com and stopped checking the site.

Then, of course, T e-mailed me with two words: "they're up." I can't begin to describe the way my stomach dropped. I thought I would faint. I went to the site, refreshed all the pages...and I couldn't frigging find the results!

I became convinced I'd failed because of the ominous nature of T's e-mail (turns out she sent it the second she saw it was up, without even checking the results), and finally the page came up. And I scrolled and scrolled and scrolled...and didn't see my name.

Felt numb. Checked one more time just to be sure...and there it was!

I called some people, got to be the first to tell them they passed :), and then I flung open my office door and went running out waving my hands in the air and hollering that I'd passed. Apparently my boss was on the phone with opposing counsel with his door open. Ahem.

We almost immediately left for a bar – us and every other newbie lawyer in town, terrifying the locals with our sudden besuited, BlackBerry-clutching descent into the bars. I drank some champagne, not a lot, and had Indian food for dinner and fell asleep watching ER. I am a very elderly, very boring person.

---

You May Call Me "Her Worshipfulness"
Originally posted fall 2006

Today I am a woman.

Wait, sorry, getting confused. I didn't have a bat mitzvah today, although I guess in a lot of ways being sworn in is similar. Both offer crappy fruit punch and crowds of shrieking girls. But nobody offered to draw my caricature today, so I gotta say the bat mitzvah wins.

So, we were sworn in. We arrived a little late but still managed to run through the line to pick up our REAL LIVE law licenses and our REAL LIVE bar cards. I have a bar number. I can't believe I have a bar number. That was really the high point of the day. The woman who handed it to me had huge smile and said, "Congratulations!" so sincerely and enthusiastically that it seemed like she really meant it. It was a great feeling to have my license in my hands.

The ceremony itself was very nicely done. It felt very much like a graduation. We sat in chairs on the floor, family sat in the bleachers around us, and the valedictorian gave a speech. Yes, there is a valedictorian of the bar exam. Yes, the competition never ends. I'm pretty sure that when we retire someone will be the valedictorian of the practice of law.

We raised our hands and swore the oath. It includes a line about "demeaning" ourselves in the practice of law. Demean? DEMEAN? I do not think it means what they think it means. Nevertheless, I feel proud. I have demeaned myself on a daily basis ever since I started working! Fantastic.

An Unusually Tall Ghost

It's almost November already? I really have no idea how that happened. I've been so...filled with a sense of malaise this month. Work was always, ahem, what it was, but this month it's been so very hard just to make it all the way through the day. Nights aren't much better. I started trying to exercise again this week, but otherwise I've been mostly watching TV.

It doesn't help that it's HALLOWEEN month, which means that all the really awesome scary movies are on TV. I love it. I can't get enough. I watched Hellraiser for the first time. It was not a good movie. So of course I watched Hellraiser 2. It was even worse. So of course I watched yet another one...don't remember the title, but based on the plot it was something like Hellraiser: Lost in Space! That one I actually had to seek out specially on On Demand.

I think there's something really really wrong with me.

A local columnist had an article in the paper recently about teen trick-or-treaters. That hit close to home for me. 'Cuz I wish I were a teen trick-or-treater. Of course, I WAS a teen trick-or-treater, as long as I could manage it. I believe I was 15 the last time I went. I would create elaborate costumes (oh, fine, elaborate costume, since I was nuts about Anne Rice and so really all I ever wanted to be was an 18th century vampire) and run around the neighborhood with my similarly stunted friends for hours until all the porch lights were turned off.

I don't get the hostility to my latter-day counterparts. Let the poor sad souls have their fun! All too soon they will be forced to grow up and be shackled to a desk until they're actually HAPPY when they develop serious illnesses and have no choice but to seek solace and joy in the installation of slate flooring. I know, I know, it's not too cute when they don't even bother to dress up...but come on! That sweet surly span of late childhood is all too fleeting. Let us heap upon them tiny treats, lest they too soon awaken to the cold harsh reality of a world in which candy ain't free and your best costume is your courtroom attire.

Meanwhile...I have TOTALLY been thinking about going trick-or-treating. Yes, now. It could go down like this: a nice mask, maybe a ghostly sheet, and the world need never know my shameful shameful secret. I tried to convince my dad to come with me to provide parental supervision so as to complete the disguise, but for some reason he refused.

Nurse Ratched

My niece has become deeply, intensely concerned about everyone's wellbeing. She is forever asking us if we're okay – although it comes out more like, "You 'kay?" A couple of weeks ago, in the middle of a family dinner, she insisted on being taken out of her high chair. She then demanded that we pass her from one person to another, all the way around the table. She'd ask each person, "You 'kay?" and when they said, "Yes," she'd smile, pat them on the head three times, and give them a big hug, and then point to the next person she wanted to be handed to.

When she got to me, I told her, "No." 'Cuz I didn't feel 'kay, and because I'm evil to tiny children. She frowned at me severely, and then began repeating over and over, "You 'kay? You 'kay? You 'kay?" It became less like a question and more like a command. I finally told her I was, indeed, 'kay, and then I got my pat on the head.

:-O ^ 2

It seems I was premature in reporting the cost of my, all things considered, fairly insignificant ailment. The bills have continued to mount. Today, the total is, in fact, double the previously reported amount. As in, "Gee, should I have an appendectomy, or should I buy a Bentley?"

Gosh. I mean, the being alive is nice and all, but I think I'm pretty strong and could have survived regardless. And my car keeps breaking down....

I totally promise no more appendix posts. After all, I have lots going on besides that. Like...um...today I went to a store completely dedicated to Halloween paraphernalia. I didn't buy a thing. It was way over the top. I thought I liked over the top, but somehow, the thought of placing a realistic replica of a disemboweled human on my front lawn doesn't quite appeal to me. Instead I bought a fake pumpkin from Wal-Mart. It cost $1. I think that's awesome.

Oh, Bloody 'Ell

Now they tell me.

:-O

So, I decided to look up my health insurer's website to see if they've received the bill for my surgery and hospital stay yet.

They have.

It cost $31,000.

I had a panicked and terrified moment before I called my dad and he calmed me down. Right now it says "processing claim," so it's not clear how much I'll have to pay, but he assured me that I only have to pay my deductible amount. (I didn't know about these things, having, y'know, not been sick before.)

'Cuz otherwise? Geeeeez. It'd be a lot cheaper to plan a funeral.

Swag

One of the best things about being sick (besides the week off work – did I mention that I got a week off work?) has been all the fabulous prizes I've won.

People are really, really nice when you get sick. I don't know if it would have occurred to me to be so thoughtful for something "minor" like an appendectomy (that is, it's minor if it happens to someone else, but TOTALLY LIFE-CHANGING HORRIBLE SHOCKING OMIGOD THE TRAAAAGEDY when it happens to me). But now that I know how great and special it made me feel, I will definitely bring on the goods.

Even the hospital sent me off with wonderful parting gifts. True, said gifts consisted of such things as little molded plastic basins that, though never used, are doubtful to be welcomed in my home as an alternative fruit basket. I was still thrilled to take them.

(At right, a lovely bouquet from C and K.)

If I Lived in 1492, I'd Be Dead

Alternate title: "I Didn't Go to Work This Week"

I decided it would be more fun to get appendicitis and have emergency surgery.

And I've gotta say...whoo boy, it totally was. I highly, highly recommend the appendicitis. It is the most exquisite illness in the world. Serious enough to get yourself a nice, long, guilt-free vacation from work; not so serious that your life is really in any appreciable danger.

It was all a very weird experience. I've never really been sick in my life – I usually don't even get colds (something I chalk up to my OCD-inspired hand washing, but hey, whatever works). Lately, though, I think I've just been working so hard and getting so little sleep that it's like my immune system just suddenly crumbled. I had the plague (well, okay, a bad cold), and then immediately after that I had this. I think my body just finally demanded a nice little break.

So, this was my first time in the hospital. I may not have mentioned it before, but I have doctor phobia. As a result, it took a lot before I finally worked up the courage to go to the ER. After all that, though, I think my phobia may be cured. I really loved the hospital. I mean, it was the most fabulous resort experience I've had in a while.

I'm all set to go on many many more visits to doctors. I believe, in fact, that I shall develop hypochondria, since this has all been so enjoyable. Doctors were great, hospital was great, pain medication was great (lest you think otherwise, I should point out that, in the interest of preserving my supply of hard-earned painkillers as long as possible, I have not taken any today). And week off work – beautiful!

I will probably go back to work next week, though maybe not Monday...will have to see how I feel.

The only downside is that this means the unfortunate demise of my 15th century counterpart. Am I the only one who plays that game? Basically, the question is, "Would I still be alive in a time before modern medicine?" No fair considering probable realities like death from a now-inoculable disease like scarlet fever or dying in childbirth at 15 or being trampled to death by a jousting-enraged horse. It has to be based purely on what happens to you today.

I think I had a pretty good run, but alas, surely the appendicitis would have done me in. R.I.P., medieval me.