Tired, dreams, tired

God I'm exhausted. I'm actually looking forward to cleaning... Um...what? I feel disgusting and sticky from the heat and the lack of lunch (unless a cupcake counts as lunch?) and I really need to move the clothes over to the drier. Inlaw visit on Saturday that lasts for three days. Then another day off, and then, finally, work.

*

I keep having dreams that I am pregnant and that it feels like I've been carrying the baby around forever, but it's still not at full term. Last night, the dream baby was still alive and kicking and everything was okay, but I had a biatch for an OB who was making inappropriate comments and sent me to buy her a cookie from the food court. I hated her. But every time I laid down, the baby weighed on my stomach and I couldn't sleep. The dream ended as I was in the middle of looking for an emergency room...I wasn't sure if I was going into labor or there was just something wrong with me.

I was thinking about that dream in the shower this morning afternoon. The message of the dream fell upon me like a ton of bricks. A ton of comforting bricks.

*

I like visiting friends. I like visiting family. I like having friends visit. I like having family visit. I'm not sure how I feel about all four of those things happening in the span of one week. I need to go lay down.

"I'll admit, I'm a bad law student."

T & I spent the weekend on a getaway with my parents, at their invitation. We had a lovely fluffy bed with pillows like clouds, our modern room painted in hip colors like green and orange (ahem - our wedding colors). The trip was a four-hour drive to a mountain town crisscrossed by railroad tracks and bodies of water. There was a pool and a hot tub, state of the art exercise equipment and an enormous flat-screen t.v. In short, it was a recipe for relaxation.

This morning, say around four a.m., I woke myself up talking in my sleep. Apparently I also woke up T, who groggily asked me why I was talking about being a bad law student.

Without missing a beat, I explained: "Oh, I was just begging two of my professors not to fail me for forgetting to come to their classes all semester and bombing their finals."

Dream? Prophecy? Does it matter? For the first time, I understand why some of my classmates have no interest in seeing their grades when they're posted. I could go the rest of my life without knowing how I did this past semester. Just please, let's move past these post-finals nightmares and on with our lives, shall we?

In my dreams...

This would have been one of those imaginary posts that never made it to the blog, except I just read this post from Cee at Starting to Melt, and took it as a Sign.

So this morning, I awoke from my slumber as T was getting dressed for work just in time tell him all about my dream:

"I dreamt that I was sleeping in a bed with Charlie from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia (aside: for some reason, I think he is the cutest guy on the show)."

T's ears perk up.

"Yeah, we were in a bed with four people, and I was on the end, and he was laying next to me, and I was very sleepy. The last thing I remembered saying to him before I fell asleep was 'So you use a Mac, right?'

Then, later, Charlie was freaking out about how he had to brush his teeth, because he was sure we had been making out, and he knew I had a husband. He was babbling about this to someone else (who had apparently been laying in the bed with us) when I woke up and was like, 'Uh, Charlie, that NEVER happened. I've been asleep.'"

T continued buttoning up his shirt, nonplussed, through this fascinating account.

"The point IS," I cleared my throat. "Charlie from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia obviously had a thing for me in the dream."

At that, T laughed.

"What?!" I demanded to know.

"Do you remember that time you had the dream Kiefer Sutherland as Jack Bauer from 24 had a thing for you?"

OMG, I totally forgot!

I present to you the top 3 recent trends in my dreams (not nearly as sexy as the one above):
1. Being trapped in a free-falling elevator.
2. Struggling obsessively to find an outfit to wear from my closet.
3. Having to fight off sometimes-hot television stars who are way into me.
Guess which one is my favorite?

Down to Virginia

We are headed down to Virginia in just a few moments. I've stolen away with my cup of coffee to sit here and make a quick little blog post. We're on our way to visit the site where we'll get married, and take care of all those details we've put off to the last minute. (Photographer, I know you're out there somewhere...) In three weeks, more or less, we're getting married. Wow. I'm still having wedding dreams, but they're less and less like nightmares and more and more excitement and happiness.

The dog is hanging around our feet tonight because the sky was rumbling so much earlier. He has no idea we're about to shove him into the trunk of T's hatchback for a long haul south. But once we get there, he'll be glad. There's much more room to run and play, and many more gross and smelly things to roll in. Pretty soon, he's gonna get a weeklong vacation in the country, while dog-mom and dog-dad go to Spain!

Another weird thing: I can't stop burping. It's getting gross. I think burps are more disgusting than farts by a long shot. A few minutes ago, I sat down next to T on the couch, and immediately began a chain reaction of mini-burps. "I'm so glad you chose right here to sit," says T, snarkily. So I got up to write this post instead. Have a good weekend!

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.

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.

bobbly-head

doing my taxes feels like my recurring childhood nightmare of standing in the middle of a city street holding a giant parade float by a single string. at any minute, i could accidentally slip up and let go, and everything will fall apart. papers will fly everywhere, numbers will go in the wrong boxes, checks will never arrive and i will be left with the vague but unsettling feeling that i am not in compliance with the law. horrors.

seriously.

somehow, early on in our relationship, i explained this nightmare parade scenario to t, and we began calling it my "bobbly-head" dream.

(pause while i run through my Form 1040 checklist and try not to knock anything over.)

...and i can already see the problems. i only have one copy of my W-2 for one of my "employers." (same employer, different entity.) this is because they had my address wrong and the actual proper ADP direct-to-employee version never got to me, so all i have is a lousy photocopy. crap. attempt to do this all in one fell swoop has failed.

i am teetering on the edge here.

at least i'm supposed to get a damn good refund this year!

disaster dream wedding

snippets from last night's dream, which i don't expect anyone to actually read:
- the ceremony was going to take place in a catholic church (huh?!) but as the (very few) guests started to gather, a bunch of homeless people were filling the pews for the noon sermon.
- nothing was ready, so i started to frantically direct my bridesmaids, T, his groomsmen and my parents to get various tasks done. but instead of helping, my mom decided to attend the mass and only one of my bridesmaids showed up (that's you, J) but she disappeared into her office, which was for some reason in the church with a handdrawn sign that said "J's Office".
- i sent T and one of his groomsmen to check on the caterer, who i realized i still hadn't received a proposal from for the food, etc. (true in real life.) i also realized that it was a mistake for me to have asked T to snail mail the request for us to reserve a city park earlier that week (also true in real life), since it obviously was probably just getting to the office on the day of the wedding.
- i flew (literally) over to the caterer's office, frantically flapping my arms, where i found that T and his attendant were just ambling on up to the office, having using their leisurely stroll as a chance to catch up.
- irritated, i landed in front of them and asked the caterer what the deal was with the food and where we were supposed to have the reception, since we didn't already have a park reserved. he offered us the grassy knoll by his "office" (a lemonade stand-style lean-to). the knoll was unacceptable to me, as the whole area was too noisy with the sound of children playing and cars driving by.
- i realized it was a huge mistake for us to try and plan the wedding in such a short amount of time, and we'd either have to proceed in this shabby manner or else put it off and send our guests home.
- then i realized that virtually none of my guests were there.
- then i realized that we didn't know who was going to marry us.
- then i realized it was all a moot point because we had forgotten to get a marriage license.
- then i sighed, licked my arm and sadly began flying back to the church.

then i woke up, contemplated spending some time working out a few of the pesky details that haunted my disaster dream wedding, and decided f that. instead i breathed a sigh of relief as i trekked over to starbucks to read property law and outline international law for nearly three peaceful hours. learning the law never felt so good.

Round 2

Law school starts up again tomorrow and I feel... ugly. I have two giant zits on my face, one of which is painful and one of which is just gross to look at. And I have only one pair of pants left. My clothing situation is abysmal thanks to the 10-15 pounds I've put on over the past couple of years. I wish I could just go out and buy a whole new wardrobe, but alas I have no money with which to indulge in that fantasy. Instead, I'll be snagging a bunch of clothes on credit at Target in order to maximize savings and minimize concern about fit. Friends suggested tonight that I go to the local thrift store, and if I were in the right frame of mind, that would be a valid idea. But in moments like this, new, bright, shiny and pretty are what's needed.

T gave me crap for being excited about registering for gifts. I don't care. I'm excited to think about all the fun household-y things we can maybe be lucky enough to receive. When else in our lives will we have the chance to simply get stuff, no strings attached. Not that I expect anything. I don't. I just like the excuse to think about fancy slow-cookers and pretty high-thread-count sheets. And truthfully, the only reason I was thinking about it is cause we were wandering around Macy's looking for a restroom.

Anyway, I'm glad to be back in the city. It's stressful having a visitor here (my brother JC is visiting), but I am also sooo excited to have had the chance to show him around. I've been having nightmares for the past week. Some have to do with school, like the one in which I was devastated to learn that I'd received an S- on my memo (which in reality is graded on an actual gradepoint scale). Some have to do with wedding stuff, like the one in which my dad and my best friend and I were running around some endless mall looking for my wedding dress the night before my wedding. Some have to do with T, like the one in which he was being really mean to me in front of his family and friends at a bowling alley. Obviously, there is a lot of free-floating anxiety in my life and I haven't had a chance to process it. I am craving routine.

Speaking of which, it's time to hole punch those syllabi, clear out the binders, load up the backpack, carve the pages out of the binding of my casebooks, find some pens that still work and settle in for the last couple of guilt-free episodes of the Wire I'll be able to watch for at least four months.

Round 2... fight!

There was something about a rabid pig.....*

I am done with Torts... woo hoo! woo hoo! I'm bouncing around in my seat, and the words I type here are actually a great little ditty in my head that I will no doubt be singing over and over to T for the next 24 hours. Until I realize that contracts is up next. But that's for later. Right now... woo hoo! woo hoo!

I still have a lot to type about! But I came on here to talk about why I decided to go to law school. Not because I need to explain it to anyone. Just because I remembered the other night, laying in bed, and I want to remember it again. You see... just a year and a half ago, I was sadly realizing that my job sucked. I was a human resources coordinator for an LLC that had no previous "real" HR person. It was a tough job, first of all because I met with a lot of resistance, and second of all because I didn't really enjoy where my priorities had to fall in the position (making the company save money). The job I'd had before was for a family run company, so I got to pretty much make impassioned pleas to my boss that this safety measure or that HR initiative would be good for employees and, thus, good for business. It was a lot more fun, plus I got to practice my spanish every day and learned a lot about immigrant culture.

Anyway, my boss at the HR job approached me and told me that the company was moving in a direction that would involve a major reworking of my position. It meant I would be involved with project coordination and, basically, a lot of letter writing and administrative tasks. Not what I had in mind. He told me I could stay and they would be happy, or I could leave if it wasn't what I had in mind. This is after five months on the job. Yeah. The perils of signing on with a small venture capital firm.

So, I went home that day both happy and bewildered. It was a great chance to get out of my job, but I had no idea what I wanted to do. I briefly entertained some jobs in construction and other safety jobs, similar (I thought) to what I was doing before. But when I turned down a great opportunity because it was at a meat packing plant, I realized I needed to get my sh*t together. That's when the baby dreams started.

Wouldn't it be nice, I thought to myself, if I had a baby? Wouldn't it be great to get to introduce this hypothetical baby to all my great music? How awesome would it be to get to love on that cute thing all day? What if I got married? What would the wedding be like? Etc. etc. I was in therapy at the time, but it didn't take a therapist for me to see that I was trying to fill some kind of void.

Not that having a baby or getting married was something I didn't really want. It's just... it's not what I was looking for. I was actually looking for, I don't know... something. Something meaningful? I started asking myself: Well, if you were to have this "baby" then what kind of mother would you want to be to it? I started thinking about the example I'd want to set for my future kids. I started thinking about the example my parents set for me. And then I started thinking about all the things I wanted to do for a living. I started thinking about standing up for the people I cared out.

Finally, I started thinking about law school. Not because I want to be a lawyer because it would set such a good example for my (future) kids. It's just that I realized that I need to do what's going to make me happy *for me*. Because it wouldn't ever be fair to have a kid just to make myself happy (not to mention that whole big issue of convincing that other person to go along with your plans...). I remembered that I needed to figure out what was going to fulfill me, what was going to make me feel like I was being the best person I could be, so that my kids would see that's important. And they would value their own choices as well.

So in the end, and with a whole lot of other factors thrown in for good measure, I did decide to go to law school. What an abridged version this is. But ultimately, I like the idea of saying that I went to law school for my kids. Cause I think that's what I'm doing? Going to make myself happy. So that I can have a job that supports this family and also keeps me sane. So T can do what he needs to do to keep himself happy, and stay sane himself. And so eventually, one day, we can grow this happy family. Making the right choices now means having that shot at winding up in the right place in the future. So, grades? Screw them. They aren't why I'm here. I'm just here to make sure I have the options I need. And right now, I'm feeling pretty lucky to be where I'm at.

*...I was going to title my first post-Torts exam blog with the very bizarre last line of my Torts class notes. But I don't remember what that weird last line was, and I don't feel like looking it up.

I had this dream (A post for T)

In the dream, I was diagnosed with some kind of degenerative neurological disorder, something similar to MS or Parkinsons (I think). We learned that I would sporadically and increasingly lose my ability to control my movement. The dream disease progressed quickly, because in short time I was essentially unable to move, and you were helping me get around everywhere. I was like a doll whose arms and legs only move along one plane: I could lift my arms and rest them at my sides, but that was about it. Perhaps it goes without saying that I couldn't talk either.

You talked to me though. You basically continued to talk to me and treat me like the person I am now (in real life). It was as if our love was getting you through the ordeal of my illness, even though the strain was palpable in the dream.

There was a tinge of regret to the scene, a mournful quality. Thoughts of who we were when we were healthy and whole composed an unspoken conversation between us. Through our eyes and movements we sighed, "But that we could go back for just a little while, and appreciate our lives still more!"

I woke up feeling infinitely grateful for you, and everything you do for me, every day.