So far so good

Well, thankfully, I talked to the paralegal who was very encouraging about my situation, and then I talked to my boss. She said it was no problem at all for me to go to the passport meeting, and to leave work early on Friday to fly out of the country. Now I just need to make sure I can get a ticket and my passport, neither of which is a guarantee at this point.

So much is happening right now. I started my new job on Monday, but really I was just in training for the last two days. Along with people from about four or five other organizations, we had a training all about farmworker law, including tax issues, housing, field sanitation, H2A & H2B workers, the Agricultural Workers Protection Act and much more. It would be a lie to say that I was captivated and sitting on the edge of my seat the entire time. It's hard to stay focused for 8 hours in the same moot court room, two days straight, even when the subject is interesting, there is plenty of free coffee and you've had many breaks. Still.

As I sat in the room and looked over the agenda, and listened to the lawyers give their presentations, I was struck by how perfect this whole situation is. Three years ago, I was working for a mom-and-pop company training spanish-speaking laborers on how to avoid electrocution in a wet crawlspace or keep from being buried alive while digging a trench. I was helping co-workers complete workers comp forms when their backs gave out or the trench did collapse. I was calling landlords to ask why rent checks were never cashed, and handing out pamphlets on the free neighborhood clinics run by Duke. I loved it. Going to law school was my best guess as to how I could continue to do this type of work as a career. I didn't want to be a social worker. I didn't want to be a translator. Human resources was never going to work. This is it. And I feel so lucky. I'm excited about this summer!

Meanwhile, my uncle is laying in a bed somewhere far south of here, unable to move anything but his eyes. Six months ago, he was flying helicopters in Afghanistan, a fact that I was never comfortable with, but which speaks to his health and the manner with which he approached life: fearlessly. I am completly baffled and frightened by the fact that my macho, overly-protective, doting, hard-drinking, fun-loving, physically fit uncle, the oldest surviving son of my grandmother, the man who used to tell me I should have one boyfriend for every day of the week, who only just met T for the first time over Christmas, but immediately liked him and welcomed him into the family only two weeks ago... that he is now bed-ridden for life, and that he is stuck in this horrible medical, legal, ethical limbo. It makes no sense. It seems unreal. I can't believe this is actually happening to us.

At the same time, T and I went out to dinner tonight, where he brought up a concern that he had. He shared a story with me that he didn't have to share. The kind of story that is easier to keep to yourself to avoid questions. But because I am dating a wonderful man, and because we have learned the hard way about radical honesty and trust, he came to me and we talked. We're not a perfect couple by any stretch. I know that T and I will weather our fair share of storms in the future, just as any couple will have to do. We've been through some hell of our own already, which we were fortunate enough to have been brought together by, rather than getting torn apart. Sometimes I don't think I stop often enough to think about how lucky we are.

I was saying to him how as I've grown older I've grown more self-confident. It's true. It's not that I feel prettier (I don't) or smarter (I don't) or even wiser (I don't, usually). The difference between who I am now and who I was when I first met T has a lot more to do with how much more I believe in myself. And because I believe in myself, I don't walk around feeling fearful all the time, like I used to do when I was younger. Now, when I feel bad, whether it's insecurity, anger or disappointment, I believe my reasons and I trust myself enough to bring those feelings to the table. And I trust T to take me seriously. Because of that trust, I don't feel guilty bringing things up, and I usually feel better after we've talked. It's awesome. It's not perfect. It doesn't always work. But it's awesome.

So it's a mixed bag these days. Wedding planning. New job. No summer funding. Family illness. Sadness. Love.

Still don't know what to do

Training is at 8:30 tomorrow morning, and I don't know whether to ask my brand-new boss if I can leave work early on Friday to travel out of the country. I mean, my cousin is getting my ticket. So, if I don't ask (or tell) her, the ticket and miles get wasted, I think? But I don't want to ruin my reputation this early on in the summer. (Or at all!)

Plus, I'd have to come into work late on Thursday.

What a horrible time for a family member to get quadripeligic and have to go on life support!

Call for advice

Dear reader,

If you happen across this blog and have ever worked in a summer legal internship, I need your advice on a sensitive issue. I start my summer internship at a legal aid clinic on Monday. Well, technically, I'm at a training on Monday and Tuesday, and then it's to work. I'm excited about the job! I'll be working for a single attorney with a single paralegal, on a specific issue.

Here's the problem. Earlier this week, I received news that my uncle, who I am close with, suffered a stroke. This was a shock because he is physically fit, relatively young and healthy. He also lives in my family's country of origin (i.e. not in the USA). My uncle has generously hosted me for visits for years, and is all around a very loving, caring guy.

Flashforward to yesterday. The first reliable news comes in. He didn't suffer a stroke, it was an aneurysm that burst. Due to congenital defects, his brain cells immediately started dying, and he suffered serious brain injury. He is now stabilized, but he is quadripeligic, only able to move his eyes up and down. Most of the time he is sedated, but when he's not unconscious, they say he is aware of what's going on around him. This is not going to change.

Tio is on life support, but according to his will, he stated he never wanted to be left on life support. However, in the country where he is hospitalized, the doctors make the final decision. Family is rallying together to fly relatives to visit him this week. I am making arrangements to get my passport in order so I can go.

The problem? My work. I just plan to go for the weekend, which is amazingly possible. But all flights seem to leave during the day. I can take a night flight but I won't get there until Saturday morning, and I'd have to leave Sunday morning in order to be back in time for work on Monday. So I would either have to go for 24 hours, miss all/part of a day on Friday or miss all/part of a day on Monday. And this is my first week. I have to book my flight before my passport meeting this week.

Should I even bring this up to my boss, or just do the 24 hour visit and not say a word? If I do bring this up, should I e-mail her this weekend or wait to mention it at the training? Do I mention it casually to see what she says, or do I approach her directly? Please advise whether I will kill my reputation early by bringing this issue to the table!

Thank you ever so much, reader. I appreciate it.

back to it

today i feel much better, if not completely well. i suspect i will have charged through the entire roll of Scott 1000 before i'm completely done with my five-day course of anti-biotics. it's looking kind of thin. but aside from sniffly nose, hacking cough, and bits of green randomly spewing from me, i really am feeling a world of difference! i actually slept last night! really! it was amazing, if not perfect.

i know i slept because i had this ridiculously funny wedding nightmare in which i showed up to the reception and found hundreds of place settings and a bizarre mix of random people i vaguely knew in high school and college. it dawned on me that i may have accidentally sent the invitation to my wedding to all my friends on facebook. luckily, there was a crowd, so all good, right? except my groom was hunkered in the corner, no family was in sight, we had a d.j. playing cheesy 80s songs (not the good kind), and we hadn't actually gotten married. it was all very confusing, and ended with the guests trickling out before anything actually *happened*, and t's parent's finally showing up, with t's dad immediately crawling under covers and saying, "i don't want to deal with this. i just don't want to deal with this."

well, anyway.

i registered for classes for next semester today. i'm actually excited about it! somebody smack me upside the head. what i am NOT excited about is starting my job next week. not because i don't think it's an awesome job. it's just....petrifying. am i really prepared for this? also: i'm like the only law student who is going to be working for this particular department (i think). spotlight, ON. i'm realizing that i am very, very afraid of messing up, to the point that i think i avoid big challenges. too late to avoid this one. i guess i'm going to have to screw up the courage to do the work and (hopefully) do it well. whatever it turns out to be. i have no idea. i am avidly reading the blogs of other rising 2Ls who started work already, to see what i can learn and to remember that i am not alone. eek!

my goal is to have kicked this nasty infection/virus/bronchitis/sinisitus/swine flu-thing by tomorrow so i can go shopping for work clothes, get a hair cut and prepare to look fabulous on monday! here goes nothing.

Bronchitis

Warning! This is post is just a rant, ending in a hissy fit, that reflects my lack of sleep and overdose of self-pity, no more, no less. Read at your own risk.

So: I've been sick for the last seven days. It started on the train ride down to Georgia. I took a nap about two hours in, and woke up with a sore throat and swollen glands. It all went downhill from there. By the middle of the night, when I was supposed to be well into my write-on note, I was curled up under my blanket, shivering and sucking on ice cubes, trying to get comfortable in a packed Amtrak coach car. My mom picked me up when I got down to GA, at quarter to seven in the morning, and when we got to my sister's I went straight to the bedroom to crawl under covers. Needless to say, the trip was not what I had hoped for. And? I didn't finish write-on. Ugh. I'm not sure if I really care at this point. I'd settle for a good night's sleep.

Yesterday, I caved in and decided to go to an urgent care clinic instead of waiting til my school clinic (aka FREE clinic) opened after the holiday weekend. It was actually a not unpleasant experience. We had to drive across the bridge to the urban wasteland across the river, but T was kind enough to treat it like an adventure, when I was feeling guilty for making him spend his last day of the long weekend carting my miserable self into an unpleasant suburban ghost town. "Hey, look," he said, optimistically gesturing at the skyline as we drove over the bridge. "See? It's already exciting."

And I have to say, it was pretty exciting that we got into and out of the clinic in only 25 minutes. Plus, I was the only patient they had there. And since they'd only opened two weeks ago, it was incredibly clean. But the best part was that I came away with drugs. Precious, precious drugs. Antibiotics and cough medicine laced with codeine that I was warned would make me very "woozy". Considering I've been up all night coughing for the last seven days, that sounded fan'effing'tastic.

I wonder what it says about me that the codeine didn't knock me out?

Anyway. Today I was determined to *not* lay on the couch all day working on my night cheese and farting into my slanket. So I dragged myself over to campus for my monthly visit with the school psychiatrist to re-up my Prozac. In the course of our meeting, I explained to him that I wanted to "bump" my dose up to pre-law school levels. (What the hell was I thinking, by the way, dropping my dose when I started law school?) We had talked about that last month, but at the time I wanted to give it another month to be sure.

So I'm running through the litany of complaints I have, which I always feel self-conscious about doing, because as anyone who has struggled with low-level chronic mental health issues can tell you, it starts to be unclear whether these things are symptoms or just, well, life. And the doctor says to me, "So you feel bad about yourself?" And I'm like, "well, yeah. Well, sometimes. It gets worse at certain times." And then he delivers the kicker: "Because I've never seen you feeling happy in here." Or something like that. Thus making me want to jump up in his face and insist that I AM a happy person, that I DO like myself, that I'm NOT always bummed out, that I haven't slept for more than 2 consecutive hours in ONE WEEK, etc. etc. And of course, if I were to do all that, it would only make me look more crazy/angry/unhappy or whatever.

I got my higher dose. But he wants me to consider going back to therapy if it doesn't do the trick. For some reason, this pisses me off. But then again, I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. Apparently it's in my nature.

train's a'comin...

Just so life doesn't get lost in the passing of time (and because I still have plenty of write-on work to avoid).... a recap of my weekend.

On Friday night, a momentous occasion happened when I was successfully able to hang out with law school friends AND T (along with Best Man & Woman) at the same time for more than 45 uncomfortable minutes! We made a plan ahead of time to swing by a classmate's birthday party but to continue on with our night at other bars downtown, hopefully meeting up with other friends. Instead, we had dollar drinks at the bar up the street from our apartment, along with Best Woman, then walked up to the basement pub for the birthday party. When we got there, we were among the first ones to arrive, and settled in to one of the cooler (read: not crowded, filled with annoying drunk dudes and super-expensive "lagers") bars for the night. Eventually, we were joined by Best Man and one of his band mates, along with several people from my section, who congregated in one corner of the place. It turned out to be a lot of fun (and tall boys), mainly just chatting with my buddies and wandering over to be sociable with school people from time to time. I felt in my element, personally, and in the sense that I was getting face-time with "colleagues" which brings its own sense of enjoyment. Plus, T and I kicked some ass at slide-hockey!

Saturday, we went to a crazy neighborhood festival at the curb market up the street from our house, where I ate: ravioli, pizza slices, cannolis and water ice, and drank a bunch more beers. Also, I got to meet Vito from the Sopranos! Sweet! Then we walked back to the apartment and slept for a long time. Eventually, I woke up, worked on write-on stuff for approximately 20 minutes and began cooking a dinner that we sat down to eat around 11:00 at night.

Today was lounge-around time. Late breakfast. Sunday paper. Walk to Starbucks to do more write-on stuff. Best Man came over for dinner at our place. Baked brownies for T's birthday tomorrow. Played some Boggle. Now, just chilling (aka avoiding more write-on work). Tomorrow, I actually have to start writing. Eek.

On Tuesday, I am taking a 15-hour train ride down south to visit my sister and watch my second-oldest niece graduate from high school. I can't believe she is actually graduating. *I* was just graduating from high school! How is this happening? Seriously. Anyway, I plan to use the train ride to finish writing my note, then fed-ex it or have T print it and deliver it to the school on Thursday. I'll figure those pesky details out later... More importantly, I am excited about the dining car!

defrost / unfreeze

my non-law school mind is starting to come back to life. slowly.

the jack-and-jill move my dog pulled on me yesterday has not been a major set-back, thank God. i went to campus today to pick up materials for write-on and to see if my knee could be examined at the free clinic. turns out, nothing appears to be broken or severely misplaced. just a serious "contusion" (bruise), so i'm good to go on with my vacation-enjoying!

which, of course, means freaking out about wedding plans!! so, i need to figure out flowers, officiant, contracts on the ceremony and reception sites, catering contract, music for the reception, cake details (we're doing homemade all-cake centerpieces + wedding cake), what the heck is actually going to happen during the ceremony (aka readings), and probably a bunch of other stuff i'm not thinking about. t is helping with much of this, including taking on the invitation stuff himself. which he is freaking out about in his own right. we are both having wedding nightmares, and neither of us are the "type" of people we'd expect to freak out about wedding details! so it's kind of funny.

and way more exciting and fun than write-on, which is just reading 400 pages of case law and then writing a "note" about it. (and by "note" they mean a 20-page paper analyzing, evaluating and predicting the outcome of a court opinion.) i'm so not stressing about that though. write on can KMA, for all i care, because if it's not graded, and there's not a final, it's not worth the silver hairs that are sprouting out of my scalp with greater frequency these days.

ahhh...not being in class.