deep breath...I am lucky to be going to law school (repeat)

I haven't posted in quite a while because I've been on a lovely week and a half vacation before school starts. Problem is, the first week was incredibly fun, but not relaxing. And the second part of the vacation, which was actually supposed to be relaxing, wasn't. The whole time all I could think about was the gargantuan pre-law school to-do list that I have open on a Word doc on my desk now.

Some of it's personal - hair appointments, un-sent rebates, doctors. The rest is school-related - forms for cost of attendance adjustment, parking, InTownStateSchool ID Card, football season tickets in the graduate student section, and on, and on, and on.

I am so overwhelmed. I'm not used to such an upheaval in my carefully planned routine. But instead of adding "Make Dr. appt, get Lexapro scrip" to my already excessively lengthly to-do list, I am trying to breathe deeply and remind myself how hard I worked to get here, how badly I wanted this. How lucky I am to be here, despite all the crap. A few weeks ago, my mom brought over an article from our city's paper about how hard it's gotten to get into InTownStateSchool's law school. And how good job prospects have gotten for grads. Basically she was like, see, you and B are rock stars! Very lucky rock stars. Leave it to my mom to put things in perspective!

The last quarter mile

My dearest B is, as I write this, five and a half hours away from being done with the bar. We're both runners, so every time he's started to get down over the last week, I broke out the lame but hopefully helpful analogy that he's in the last quarter mile. Like when you're completely exhausted, but you know the end is near, so you somehow find a little reserve of energy you didn't know you had to sprint through the end.

He's in a town a couple hours away, so unfortunately I won't get to celebrate with him tonight, but I can't wait to see him tomorrow.

I don't talk about work much on this blog, out of a deathly fear it will be discovered by a coworker, but I'm powering through the end of that too. Two more days! And my awesome boss and work friends all want to take me out for a drink on Friday night. So even though I'm overwhelmed finishing things up at the office, and really miss B, I'm just trying to keep my sights set on Friday night, when we'll be out with all our friends celebrating me finishing my job, and him finishing the bar.

The OutOfTownStateSchool saga continues

So I've already talked about how incredibly difficult it was to turn down admission to OutOfTownState school. Unfortunately, today I had to do it three more times.

I was a little suspicious when I got a packet in the mail with some info, including my small section assignment. But I figured that mailing could have been in the works for a few weeks and potentially predated my contacting the Assistant Dean to let her know I wouldn’t be attending in the fall.

Then I got an e-mail from her about some changes to my small section schedule. And that made me nervous. So I e-mailed her to make sure she’d gotten my original e-mail. Out of office reply. I tried e-mailing the Dean herself. Out of office reply. Finally, as instructed in the out of office reply, I e-mailed the third in command at admissions@outoftownstateschool.edu.

It’s been excruciating. I know I shouldn’t feel bad or guilty about deciding not to go there, and that it’s their job to put so much work into trying to convince someone to come to their school. I will just be glad when this is all over.

In the meantime, I really wish the law school I will be attending would hurry up and send me my schedule already. I noticed that there’s three sections of Civ Pro that start at 8:00 a.m., and if I’m going to be in one, I need time to emotionally adjust to the idea.

Update: Third in command wrote back. He was very gracious, and wished me the best of luck in my all pursuits. Huge sigh of relief.

James Dobson strikes again

Except this time, instead of trying to smash the joy and hope out of little hearts, he is after our beloved Democratic presidential candidate. Which is basically the same thing. Jesse Taylor at Pandagon breaks it down pretty well.

How much you wanna bet Joshua Harris is somewhere behind the scenes on this? Okay, unlikely. But it would be pretty funny.

Some vintage Bitch Ph.D.

The New York Times recently covered a study about gender dynamics in same sex-relationships, and what hetero couples can learn from them. One of the major areas covered was division of labor. I feel like this is a huge hot button topic for a lot of couples. Even, well maybe even more so, for couples who fancy themselves feminist, or at least progressive.

These are rocky waters to navigate both because and despite the fact that we, thank god, don’t have ideological differences about the division of labor in our house. We both agree that it should be equal, with one partner picking up more of the slack when the other is particularly busy (read: Bar/Bri). The problem is that no matter who is busier, and no matter how the work is being split on any given week, one person is doing the vast majority of the mental and emotional heavy lifting. And our conceptions of busy vary as well. My busy consists of say, taking the LSAT tomorrow, or being so deathly ill I can’t rise from bed. B is busy if he’s sitting on the couch stressing about Bar/Bri. Or, you know, is really, really tired.

M. LeBlanc at Bitch Ph.D. had an amazing post a while back on “How to Be a Feminist Boyfriend.” This isn’t exactly a primer piece for your average male firmly entrenched in the vice-grip of the patriarchy. It’s more of a put-your-money-where-your-mouth-is challenge for men who already proudly display their progressive ideals like a badge of honor. A long but lovely excerpt on the mental aspect of the division of housework:

“Not being a jerk about housework involves much more than just doing what you're asked to. This is not the time to say "but sometimes I cook!" Obviously, if you're not doing your fair share, you need to work on that, and do so immediately. But since this is directed more at men who already have some awareness of gender issues, I'm going to dig a little deeper. If you truly want to understand how to make your housework a conflict-free zone, you need to start paying attention to mental work. Who's the person to say "we need more toilet paper," "I think the trash is getting smelly," or "we're having guests tomorrow so we better get this place in shape"? If your relationship is anywhere close to the average, chances are, it's your girlfriend. Luckily, doing more mental work is easy: 1) Pay Attention. 2) Speak out when you notice something that needs to be done. 3) Even better, offer to do it. A sentence like "I think we're running out of clean clothes, and there's no detergent left, want me to pick some up on the way home?" will be music to your lady's ears. If you claim that you somehow just can't notice what's going on with the house (and I don't really believe you; chances are you just don't give a shit), then look at it as a game. It's like those "how many coca-cola bottles are there in this picture?" kid's games.”

My dear liberal lover picking anything up on the way home is something I sit at my desk and daydream about for hours on end. You know, as opposed to calling me and asking me to pick it up on the way home. Or even worse, not even knowing it needed to be picked up in the first place.

B will do almost anything he’s asked to do. He will occasionally even chip in on his own when he sees me working by myself. But it’s that “mental work” aspect that he just doesn’t seem to get. He rarely empties the clean dishes from the dishwasher without prompting. If I hadn’t initiated the dumpster run for our mountain of moving boxes, they probably would have lived on the balcony for an indefinite amount of time. He almost never has an idea for dinner, despite the fact that he’s an excellent cook. If pressed, he will choose from several choices I present him with.

The point of this isn’t to rant about B. He’s light years ahead of his dad, or even my dad, who for the record is the official cleaner of all floors in my parents’ house. Really, at the end of the day, I’m more confused about it than anything. How do you know when you’re being such a stickler about fairness that you’ve lost the spirit of a teamwork approach and everyone filling in where they’re needed? Is B falling under the spell of the seductive whispers of the patriarchy, or is he just plain lazy? And I can definitely be lazy myself, so I’m not one to judge. Is the problem not that he’s under-working, but that I’m over-working? My low tolerance for messiness means I get home from the office, walk in the door, and proceed straight to the kitchen to clean up the breakfast dishes before he even has a chance. But if I gave him a chance, if I fought everything in me and just left it, would he take it? Or would 10:00 pm roll around, and we’d still be starving, with a dirty kitchen, and piles of unfolded laundry? Do we actually have a gender-role based division of labor issue, or simply different ideas of what constitutes clean?

Naturally, we should talk about it. But last time I tried to have this conversation, he got upset that I was questioning his commitment to an equal division of labor. And understandably so. When you talk about this with a progressive guy, you’re cutting right to the heart of who he believes he is. But the good news is that who he believes he is, aspires to be, and is constantly becoming, is something that I admire, respect, and love. And aspire to myself. That’s definitely a great start.

Adventures in spontaneous lying

I officially retract the request for sainthood in my previous blog post. I just told a bald faced lie to the Dean of Admissions at OutofTownStateSchool.

A couple of weeks ago, they sent out a semi-threatening e-mail, asking people to re-confirm their intent to attend based on data they had from LSAC saying that a large percentage of their incoming class had put seat deposits down for other schools. At the time, this didn't technically apply to me, since I hadn't put my seat deposit down for ITSS, and they didn't require a response till June 9, so I thought I had plenty of time to put down my seat deposit, kind of sit on the decision for a while and make sure I was doing the right thing, and then reply to OTSS, telling them I regretted to inform them I would not be attending by the date they'd requested.

My well-laid plans were completely ruined when I received a personal phone call today from the Dean of Admissions of OTSS. To begin with, I shouldn't have answered the phone in the first place. I normally don’t answer phone numbers I don’t recognize, but with job hunting and law school admissions I've become accustomed to having to do so. So when she asked me point blank if I was coming, as a knee jerk response I said yes. Translation: No, but after all this work and the money I paid for my seat deposit, I'm not ready to give up my right to change my mind. Then she asked if I had seat deposits at any other schools or was on any other wait-lists, and I also said yes. I told her that I'd been admitted to another school at a very late date, and that put me in a difficult position of having to make some quick decisions (that part is true). And then she went on about how the Assistant Dean was out of town for the rest of the week, and she had access to all the e-mail correspondence. I did my best to get out of the call by saying that I would touch base with her early next week when she got back.

I feel terrible. Particularly because part of the reason that I couldn't bear to tell her I'm probably not going to OTSS on the phone is that I like her so much. She reminds me of my mom. With an office. I planned to just e-mail the form back to the Assistant Dean, who I don't even really know, and let her put my name on a list of ungrateful admits not accepting their generous offer of admission. And then I would never hear from them again. When I sent in the form telling BsHomeTownStateSchool that I wouldn't be attending, the avalanche of correspondence came to an abrupt and final end. They didn't ask me for reasons or make me feel bad. It was the cleanest of clean breakups. I was irrationally afraid that if I told her on the phone, she would ask me why. Did I not like the students I met? Enjoy the classes I went to? Get a good enough tour?

So now I need to just rip the band-aid off and e-mail the assistant dean. And then stop answering calls from mysterious out of town area codes.

I am a box vandal

I feel guilty for saying this, but I should be sainted. Beatified? I'm not Catholic, so I'm a little hazy on the terms. I have just spent 27 hours straight, alone with B's mother. She got here on Friday night to help us move. And B doesn't get here till Sunday. Now, I love Mama B. Really, I do. I'm not just saying that. As far as boyfriends' mothers' go, she's pretty cool. While I'm slightly bitter that B is more spoiled than the leftovers I abashedly pulled from a tupperware in our refrigerator this afternoon, overall I think she did an excellent job raising him. And she brought me bronzer as a peace offering. I'm easily appeased.

So if I love the woman, why am I going slightly crazy? I think it's because your significant other's mother is the one woman - no, person - who has the inherent ability to render you devoid of all agency and power. What am I going to say to her? No? Do you want to go to Denny's? Sure, sounds great. How about we sneak around the back of the grocery store and take some wire cutters and take some of those great boxes to help you guys move? Don't worry! I'm sure by now that cop we saw back there earlier will be gone. Okay, sounds great, let's go. We can have the leftover Mongolian barbecue for breakfast tomorrow! Mmmhmmm. And I pray to God she didn't pack the toaster oven. The knives are packed though. I will make peanut butter toast with my bare hands and eat it in the bathroom before I tell her that the thought of eating our dinner leftovers for breakfast makes me slightly nauseous.

Usually I get annoyed at B for so shutting down all his mom's ideas, but I've kind of taken for granted that I get to be the neutral party, the angel child. Now, I would give anything to have him here to say that Denny's gives him a tummy ache. Or that foods containing Thai spicy sauce are generally unfit for breakfast consumption. Or that most things you secretly do behind a store involving wire cutters are a bad idea.

And in all of it, I think the breaking point is that she made me watch P.S. I Love You. I'm not a huge chick flick fan anyway, but I had actually made a thoughtful decision not to watch this particular movie, because I thought it seemed a terrifying combination of a tear-inducing story line (dead Irish husband sends letters from the grave), and good acting (I saw Hillary Swank in Million Dollar Baby). It was everything I expected, complete with Gavin DeGraw crooning through the credits. And to my credit, I made it till five minutes from the end till I cried. Have I mentioned that I'm ready for B to come back?