these are a few of kitty's favorite things

I've been feeling somewhat guilty lately for quasi-neglecting my cat. She's certainly fine and gets enough food and water, but has been getting the short end of the attention stick lately. When I don't spend as much time playing with her she gets a little ornery and then I find myself in a pretty heavy spray bottle rotation. So I tried getting her some new toys so she could focus on them and maybe please leave the houseplants alone (forchrissakesstopdumpingovermyorchids!)

These are the toys that we have bought her:
1. Thing in a Bag: little vibrating motor in a paper bag
2. Boingy birdy: feathery bird sits on spring and bounces around when batted at, also plays chirps when struck hard enough.
3. Cat nip
4. Ping pong balls
5. Cat nip filled chewy toys
6. Cat nip filled crinkly toys
7. Mouse that spins around in a circular track

These are the things that my cat actually likes to play with:
1. Jade plant leaves
2. Vertical blinds: she only likes to play with them when I'm sleeping though
3. Every single hair tie on the face of the damn earth
4. Shower curtain
5. Her food: omgteenytinyhockeypucks!!!!!! Also, since there are probably 85 kibbles under the fridge, stove and dishwasher, possibly the source of my troubles
6. My legs
7. My backpack: mostly for naps
8. Twist ties
9. Cardboard boxes
10. Anything in the forbidden closet
11. Occasionally ping pong balls, although that got old really fast
12. Shoelaces
13. Pens: but only when I am actually writing something
14. Measuring tape: sometimes used to get the ping pong balls out from under the stove
15. DVDs that are left out of their cases
16. My contacts case

I would be more than happy to supply her with plenty of the things that she likes to play with (except the house plants and kibble) but even it doesn't seem to hold her attention for very long. There's really only so much more abuse my plants can take, poor things (uh, oddly heightened mothering instinct? perhaps). In general my cat is great: she doesn't tear up the furniture, she doesn't bite or scratch, she always goes in the box (and even tries to sweep up her own litter if it gets out of the box), she lets me groom her so there's less hair around, and with the exception of the jade, she generally only damages the plants if they are in between her and somewhere she wants to be (like the inch-and-a-half between the plant and the wall). I just want her to keep being great despite the fact that Mommy is not playing Catch the String much anymore. Any ideas?

law school has it in for me

What the fack? I got all geared up at the beginning of this week to really power through the last few weeks of class, to get caught up (and even ahead) in my classes, and to be on the ball for going into career services in a couple of weeks.

Then, this afternoon I noticed another little twinge in my throat. Six hours later and I am full-strength sick again. AGAIN.

I think probably BF and I are just trading this thing back and forth at this point, but in my nyquil stupor it also feels a little bit like law school is smiting me for my upstart sass. If law school could talk it would say "I will crush your plucky and resilient spirit whether I have to inflict back to back sinus infections for a year! Bwahahahaha." I try to keep law school from killing me slowly from the inside (emotionally) but holy crap on a cracker could I please catch a damn break? I've been sick for a month. I've pretty much used up all my absences and one of my professors even described me as looking like "death warmed over." I take my EmergenC and echinacaea and drink lots of water and tea and chicken soup. Boohoo. I can't wait for Christmas break.

hitting the wall and also the fan, or why it is perfectly resonable to be drinking wine at 3pm

Y'all. I know that you are ready to stop hearing about spiders. I know that you are thinking "grow the fuck up." I know. And so I'm sorry, but I got all heebyjeeeby just now and had to go kill a very creepy looking spider on the outside of the patio window. Yes, the outside, because our damn patio door doesn't seal and I just knew it would creep in here and crawl on my neck just as I settled down to watch Law & Order and then I would maybe pee in my pants.

And I thought for once I will google these little bastards and find out what the fuck they are. No luck so far, and I now think that was a bad idea, since I just about jumped out of my skin when on of these ones wiggled. Fuck you, whoever animated that, fuck you.

Also, my shirt popped open twice on the train ride home today. In front of strangers. It was a day where the top button was doing more than its fair share in keeping my bobs* in captivity, and as much as I love public transportation, I do not feel like rewarding it with a free show. Or two. Between my catch and release bobs and another motherfucking spider, I decided that this is A Great Time to Drink Wine.

Plus, this post is mostly going to be about acklawschoolargghwtffffff and I thought maybe some wine would help me to type words and not just sounds. Sangiovese = yumyumyumyum.

So, last week I sorta hit the wall. We had a fairly serious midterm in one of my classes and although I wasn't super stressed about it I did suffer from anxiety-by-proxy thanks to some of my Extreme Freakout Law School Edition friends. I thought that the test went marginally ok (not great), but afterwards what I mostly felt was "meh." As in: reading? meh. briefing cases? meh. cleaning apartment? meh. law school? meh. showering? meh. reading other people's blogs and lamenting the fact that I chose this route instead of becoming a writer? yes, lots and lots of that. wishing I had a job to pay off some of this copious debt? I could probably sign up for that.

It was uncomfortable, it was boring, and it made me re-evaluate what I am doing and why I am doing it. I thought about all the reasons I came to law school, about how much I like law school, and about the fact that law school is just one of those things that I have to do to get what I want. I decided that I'm in it for the long haul.

Then the midterm grades came out, and lo, the shit did hiteth the fan-eth**. I did really well, and I was so happy and proud of myself. Twinkly, my law school bestie, also did really well and I'm so happy for her too. I planned on not telling any other law schoolies my grade, and things were great for about 5 minutes. Then, I sort of got caught off guard and engaged in some remarkably poor decision-making and told another friend of ours (when she asked!) what my grade was. She was pretty much asking everybody, and not reacting super well when people were unwilling to share. Twinkly and I both did better than she did, and she did not react well to this news. There also may or may not have been some sharing of our grades with others, without permission (uh, very un-dude).

It all reminded me of why I sort of hit the wall last week, and of why this competition thing makes me hate law school. I do my best to consider the competition in the abstract, and to not apply it to my peers, because even when they are batshit-crazy-stressed out they're still great people who I love having in my classes.

And? It is ok for me to be happy about the grade I got. I walked out of that test expecting to get a C or maybe a B-, and I was emotionally prepared for that possibility. I worked hard and I earned a good grade. I've certainly learned the lesson of Not Sharing My Grade For the Love of God, but others would do well to learn that If You Ask You Should Be Ready to Accept the Answer. It wouldn't be ok for me to mistreat my classmates just because they did worse than I, so its not ok to mistreat classmates who do better.

If any of us are going to make it through law school, we all have to learn that basing our self-worth on our grades is a colossally bad idea. Sure, I feel great about my grade, but it doesn't make me think that I am any smarter than I thought I was before. It doesn't make me feel like I'm any smarter than my classmates, because I know that people have awful bad days, and people get sick, and people get test anxiety, and people get writer's block, and people get bad grades and then work really hard and get great grades. I am just me. You are just you. We are smart people. So can we please now get over it?






*I am using bobs to keep down the p*rn searches and also because that is what I say in real life. Try it. It sounds funny.
**10 imaginary bonus points if you can name the movie reference, for it is one of my all-time favorite movies.

WaMu probably should have steered clear of those too

My most common and most favoritest law school typos:

joing & several: reminds me of "shwing" à la Wayne's World

thrust fund: uh, yes please

this blog is no longer about law school but is instead about my battles with various insects

I now break from your regularly scheduled law school whining to bring you this, my most recent psychotic break:

My next post was going to be about the recent shitsplosion that has happened to my law school friends, or about my mid-semester crisis and subsequent doing absolutely nothing, or about something brilliant that I thought up the other night when BF woke me up at 2 am because he was having a nightmare (only I can't remember exactly what it was), or about how I think that the worst Sex & the City burn ever is that iTunes thinks that it is similar to the 1st Wives Club. My next post (this one) WAS going to be about one of these things, and my next post still may be about some of those things (I like the word shitsplosion and I fully intend to use it).

But. Alas, for there are more motherfucking bugs in my apartment.

I have briefly mentioned before that I am not a lover of spiders. As a matter of fact I am not a fan of any bugs that come into my home (if they would just stay outside!!!). In order of slightly decreasing hatred:

#1 Spiders
#2 Earwigs
#3 Unrecognizable, but gross looking, other bugs
...
#1,000,000 Roly-polies
#1,000,001 Lady bugs
#1,000,002 Caterpillars
#1,000,003 Lightning bugs
#1,000,004 Butterflies

Cockroaches are not in the top 3 because I am lucky to live in a place where there are hardly any around, and in their absence I like to pretend that they do not exist. Also, in my Which Law School Will I Go To pro/con list I put "not many icky bugs in the geographical area" in the pro column for the school I ultimately chose.

When I decided to call it a night 20 minutes ago and came into the bedroom only to find a crawly of the #3 type, ON MY DAMN PILLOW, it became immediately clear that I would not be able to go to sleep right away. And so, to get my mind off of the real bug, I am blogging about this and other recent encounters of the icky kind.

One morning last week I encountered 3 spiders in or near the bed within 5 minutes of waking up. It was at that exact moment that I decided I fucking hate where I live and we are not renewing our lease. We've already had pest control spray once, and that did absolutely nothing to stem the tide. I blame the shit-tay construction of our shit-tay apartment complex (like the fact that the door doesn't seal all the way, and that none of the damn trim actually touches any of the damn floor). BF blames the time of year, and tries to comfort me by saying that they will come inside and soon die. This is crazy talk, as it seems much more likely that they will come inside and nestle themselves in my belongings and multiply and eat my hair and maybe scare me to death.

The cat is useless. Also in the pro column of Getting A Cat was, "will eat bugs in my house". This was a LIE that other cat-owners told me. My cat is nearly perfect in every other way, but all she ever does is meow at the bugs, and occasionally chase them.

Also significant: I have never before lived in an apartment. I have only previously lived in houses, where there is nature on ALL FOUR SIDES of my home. All of these houses have been at least 30 years old. And somehow, in this apartment built 7 years ago, where there is nature on ONLY ONE SIDE of me there are more bugs than I have ever ever ever seen in my life.

So if you're passing by a poorly built, maintained and managed apartment complex in a part of the country that doesn't have many cockroaches and you hear "guhgaaaahguhugh eeeeeeeeeeuuuuwwwww ick ick uhahha aha aha pheeeewwww," then you will know that you have found the non-internet human being behind this horrible-excuse-for-entertainment blog, and that I am killing a spider.

I spy with my little eye...

...an undergrad in the lawbrary. Doing math homework. Geteth ye to the safety of the student union, young lad, else ye shall incur the wrath of the crabby law students.

reasonable belief in imminent punching of faces

I am thisclose to punching some faces. I have discovered two somewhat related things that I do not like about law school: 1) the fact that people think it is totally ok to be meddlesome, nosy and all-up-in-everybody's-business and 2) the failure of my classmates to recognize when they need to STFU.

As we approach midterms I find that I am having more and more experiences that leave a bad taste in my mouth. Have these people not learned how to be adults? No one but me needs to be concerned with how I spend my time, whether or not I check my email during class, and how/when I get my work done.

I understand that some people think that I'm a fool for checking my email in class, who would rather go without sleep than come to class under-prepared, and who schedule every quarter hour of every day, and who base their entire self-worth on whether they give a good response when called on in class. Certainly, anyone who that system works for should use it. I am not one of those people.

Finishing every last page of reading isn't going to do me any good if I don't get enough sleep, because there is no way I'll be coherent enough to understand what is going on in class anyway. I need some down time every day - usually mid afternoon. Anonymous grading means there is no shame in saying "I don't know." And if checking my email is the only way I can get something useful out of my tuition dollars that are wasted on stupid comments in class, then I'm going to do it. The next person who tries to keyboard shortcut quit Firefox on my computer should expect a karate chop to the face.

While I'm ranting, another thing that people need to tone down is the incessant exam-chatter. These are just midterms, calm the Eff down. I neither need nor want to hear about how many hours you spent in the library. I don't want to see your flashcards. I don't care what you think is probably going to be on the test. STFU. If you really need to share your inner monologue, get a blog like the rest of us narcissists. I'm sure you can trick at least a couple of law school hopefuls into believing that you, 1L, are a master of torts. I, however, am not interested.

That being said...good luck on midterms for anyone who has them!!

neglect and lemmings

Apparently my cat has decided that the best way to get any attention is to lay down either on my textbook or on top of my keyboard. She's probably right. The problem is that now she does it almost every time I sit down to study.

So, which is worse for lonely kitty: staying at school longer & working more efficiently, but ultimately spending less time at home OR being home more often but getting work done a lot slower?

The answer would be pretty obvious except that spending much time at school forces you into the nutjob lemming herd that is just about to run off the cliff: outlineoutlineoutlinestudystudylibrarydon'tdrinkthewaterinthelawbuildingoutline - and pets are great anti-anxiety medicine. (Hm. Remember the Lemmings computer game? I loved that game! I wonder if it is still around.)

It's just a little weird when I open my laptop at school and cat hair flies in all directions.

in which I am a poor example of natural selection

Oi. I was all amped up to write a long and syrupy post attributing my lack of posts to the fact that I have been horribly sick for the past 2 weeks, when I noticed my cat making some pretty intense efforts to crawl through the shoe rack. It occurred to me that my kitty could usually care less about the shoes, and that she was sort of doing that "on a mission" crouchy thing.

Then it hit me. She was chasing a spider. In the shoe rack. A spider*. In my shoes.

I feel fairly confident in saying that for many people, myself included, Spider-in-Shoe is one of Life's Great Panic-Inducing Fears. While many people (wrongly) believe that a general fear of spiders is irrational, its safe to say that just about everyone I know would wig out at least a bit when faced with Spider-in-Shoe (especially if they had already gotten the shoe on by the time they realized it).

Now I'm filled with the heebiejeebies and can't really remember any of my rambling I've-been-sick post. Here is the gist of things: I am sick. I have been sick for 2 weeks. I am not just sniffly sick, but stay home from school, sleep 20 hours in one day, miserable throat pain sick. I went to the doctor last week and he said I would be better in 2-3 days. I got worse. I went to the doctor today and she said that I have a sinus infection and stupid pink eye. Missed more school, because of the highly contagious nature of pink eye. Starting to get a bit nervous about my midterm next week, considering the fact that I have not done a lot more than go to class and sleep in the last 2 weeks. Being in law school makes being sick even worse.

So, although there have been numerous bizarre and hilarious things to write about in the last 2 weeks, I've been oscillating between bitchy and hazy, which does not give me any interest in blogging. Sorry. I have drugs now, so I will hopefully be leaving the sicky-sick behind.





*Here at my clusterfuck of an apartment complex, spider means one thing: giant (nickel-sized) red/brown terror spider. I have never seen this kind of spider before, and I'm too prone to nightmares to try and use Google to find out what kind of spider it is, and if it is dangerous.