Squirmy Avoidance

This is becoming a familiar feeling.

Where I avoid the news – paper, broadcast, internet – all damned day.  I do it purposefully.  If I accidentally click on my usual news sites, I quickly steer away.  If a blogger I enjoy dares speak of the AVOIDED, I again, click away.

Even when 70% of the stories ask if it was “soon enough” or whether the lead was anything more than negligible.  Even if they trash her for her negativity and her attempts at re-writing the rules:

I.

DO.

NOT.

WANT.

TO.

HEAR.

IT.

I don’t even know that I can put my finger on why.

Perhaps it’s because I can’t put my finger on WHY Hillary won’t just fucking crash & burn.  I don’t understand why people like her.  Why they vote for her despite her shittiness – the way she comports herself, the bullshit “misstatements” that she makes, her quasi-republicanism, her negativity, her miscategorizations.

Maybe I am just unhappy.  Unhappy to think that it’s true that a Black Man still can’t be president in this country. (And yes, I fully believe that a very large part of the results in Pennsylvania are due to racism.  The polls that I heard a week ago and two weeks ago were very racist, and very clear that the “rural” residents of the state would NOT vote for an African-American.)  And that a member of his own party will exploit this fact.  Will revel in it.

Maybe I am unhappy because once again, I am apparently worlds away from the vibe of this country.

I don’t want to let go of the hopefulness that something different could happen NOW.  In the wake of the crap that we’ve been handed over the past 8 years.  But not only does Hillary’s apparent semi-popularity dash my hopefulness — so does Obama’s lack of remarkability in the past weeks.  I am not sure I would go so far as to say he was unfaithful to the image I had at the start – the promise he offered and reinforced with his outstanding speech on race – but he’s stopped being remarkable.

I want remarkable.

I still see no sign that if he makes it to the white house, we will have more of the same.

You know,

Bush – Clinton – Bush – Clinton

BARF.

I know that the actual numbers make the pattern hugely unlikely.  But I wanted him to blaze through.  I wanted for us all to stand up and clap and shout as he made his way.  I didn’t want us to be clamouring for public perception and crossing our fingers that her bullying doesn’t work.

So I’m squirming.  But I’m squirming while I continue to donate, and while waiting for the discomfort to go away so I can start to hope again.

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Excitement – likely premature and inappropriate

Of course, Beloved and I made up last night, said our sorries and talked about ways to make our arguments a bit less … argue-ey.  I suppose we should be grateful that we argue over dusting, and not over the biggies – like money or whether or not to have another kid or stuff like that.

The girls are home.  J is sleeping on me right now.  Which is probably the first time she has done this is 5 years or something.  She left with a new cold a week ago, and it’s still got her feeling like shit today.

Since we were given stories of midnight bed times, trips to water parks, and frozen pizza for both lunch and dinner days in a row – I shouldn’t be surprised that her cold has lingered.

Grrr.  argh.

I went to two open houses today.  Both condos close to home and in the girls’ school district.  One is likely out of my price range, and of course perfect.  The other is probably right in our range, and itty bitty.  For us.

The perfect one was really close to perfect.  It was around 1900 square feet (1200 more than we have now), and on top of three bedrooms, has a study and what I keep calling a “family room.”  Eat in kitchen and a dining room.  Two full baths.

The works.

It’s also 3 doors down from the high school.  Which, in just over 2 years, will be extremely convenient and hopefully will preclude E from ever being late to school.

Did I really just say “just over 2 years”?  Is that right?  Next winter, she’s in 7th, and the next, 8th.  Which is pre-high school.

So, yeah.  Just over 2 years.  Or rather “less than 3 years.”

Anyway, it’s a bit high for us.  I think if the seller is inflexible, then we’re just gonna have to walk away.  If we find that offers are accepted, we will be a little thinly stretched for the rest of this year, but will be fine next year.  An August or September closing date would make it all easier.

No work would be required upon walking in the door, but we eventually have some projects already in mind in order to increase the flow of the rooms.  We would have an office.  And a dining room.  And a laundry room.  And a gas stove.  And a screened porch – perfect for the kitty litter and a summer-time table big enough to hold a bottle of wine and two glasses.  And a park across the street where the kids could (and likely would anyway) congregate with their friends.  And E (and eventually J) would have no reason to be late coming home from the dances, and I could watch them for their entire walk home to be sure that they weren’t sneaking smooches or trips behind the gym for any inappropriate activity.

he he he.

That alone makes the stretching worth it – doesn’t it?

They likely won’t mind the spy opportunities, since it will be balanced out by the fact that they will have their own suite on their own floor with their 2 bedrooms, their own bathroom, and my laundry room – that’s it.

Which is really hysterical to me, because when I was 9, I moved to my parents’ downstairs, and soon after, my dad redid the whole downstairs, and it became a place for just me and my sister – our two bedrooms, a bathroom, and my mom’s laundry room.

It would be very funny if my girls got the same.  Only theirs wouldn’t be a basement, but a lovely second story in a beautiful building overlooking (out very pretty bay windows) the park.  And their bedrooms would be bigger.  A little ridiculously big.  I think bigger than mine and Beloved’s, but ours is fancier and is right next to our own study and library, respectively.  So there.

The other condo is less exciting and more settling, and I don’t think we need to think about it too much until we see what the spring brings to the market.

Both of them, though, are in ideal locations.  With friends and parks and walking distance to present and future schools.  Oh, and also my train.  And still Beloved’s work.  Probably closer for all of us.

Delicious.

Time to shake the dreams out of my head, and go watch the Oscars.  We saw less contenders this year than we have in the past, which is sad.  I tried so hard to see Juno with a friend, and if Beloved and I hadn’t caught J’s cold before she left for the Middle of the county, we likely would have seen There Will Be Blood.  But as it stands, we’re stuck having seen only Michael Clayton and No Country for Old Men.

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Give and Take

For almost 4 years now, I have been riding a wave of utter spoilation.

I have done what I needed to do in order to make it through school, through the bar exam, and through the early days of full-time lawyerdom while trusting that the rest of life would work out around me.

This was because of one thing:  My Beloved.  He has cooked, he has coordinated, he has covered sick days, snow days, busy days.

This past week, I did without him entirely.  I was tired.  I was stretched (a snow day? really?  THIS week?).  But you know what?  I did it.  I met all my obligations, I took care of the girls and the house completely.  Hell, even the cats were fed twice a day.  I even cleaned out their litter box.

It’s a good thing.

Because it appears my free ride is over.

Beloved was able to take on all of the slack I let go during high stress times because we long ago decided I would go to school; then he would go to school.

Now, he’s in school.

Because he’s in a low-residency program, he was (still is) only gone for 12 days (my heart couldn’t take more, I don’t think).  But when he comes home, he has work to do.

And it’s not yucky ewie work.  It’s what he loves.  What his personal circumstances have required him to put off and put off and put off.

He isn’t putting it off anymore.

It is time for my Beloved to do the things that were put on the back burner twenty three years ago.   Things he is supposed to do.

Wow.

Has he deserved this, or what?

So yeah, I’ll need to cook more.  And I’ll need to take the driver’s seat on school projects more.   Not only can I do it, but I could do more, if I had to.  I can do it all – just like he could (and did).

I think it’s likely that we’ll have some growing pains.  There will be times my work is pulling me to stay in the office for later than we’d planned; and there will be times that his deadlines hit at the same time as a filing deadline for me.  But I think we have the foundation that we need.  I think we respect each other, and each other’s work, and we can make it work.

It helps that we also have OLD kids, who can do things and go places and work stuff out without the same intense parental supervision that was required of them in their younger years.   (I realized today that J is almost 10.  Almost 10.  This means that I almost have ZERO kids in single digits.  They are BOTH old.  J is already drooling over which cell phone she’ll get, and wondering what activities she’ll do in high school.  E is running a newspaper, texts like a pro (has yet to go over our limit), and went to a restaurant with JUST her friends for lunch on the snow day.  They had to figure a TIP, and to split the bill!!  By themselves!!)

So now he should come home so we can work it all out.

I still miss him.

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Last night’s nightmare.

First, it was a bunch of people in my office.  They were admiring my view – in real life, my view is the airport.  In this dream, it was a shipyard.

Then it was an engagement party.  For my ex-husband (who looked nothing like my real ex-husband, and didn’t even have his name).  We were sort of still in an office building, but it had a lounge.  He asked the girl to marry him in his own office, and then they came into the lounge-room which now looked more like an apartment for a celebration.

Then there was an odd rushing/moaning noise coming from the fireplace (so now it was more like an apartment).  It got louder and louder, and I said, “what is that noise?”

My ex-husband (now my REAL ex-husband) said, “I don’t know, but I don’t think it’s good considering that Madrid was just flattened.”  Now we are in Spain.  He says, “Get the kids out of this room!”  I grab each of my girls and push them toward the front room, and look back to the party-room to see streaks and balls of fire shooting out of the fireplace into people’s (including one of my father’s business partner’s) faces – burning them and killing them.  There is fire.

I look out the window, and I see similar explosions in the tops of other tall buildings.  I start to freak out – we’re on the 43rd floor!  I need to get E and J out of here!  We need to get down – where is the elevator?  Then I watch as the city loses power – and the fires are still lighting up the sky.

I then woke up absolutely terrified, hearing a street sweeper going by, making the very same noise that was coming from the fireplace before it attacked us all.

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One of the worst dreams I’ve ever had

Last night, I dreamed that I failed the bar exam.

I was in a strange lecture hall – a huge one – not too dissimilar from the one in which I took BarBri.  The lecturer was talking and talking, but my friend and I saw an envelope on the desk where he was speaking from, and we knew it was full of bar results.  The whole room started to titter about it, and eventually he said, “you all want me to stop talking and just pass out the results, don’t you?”

My friends (some from high school, some from college, some were people I don’t know) all got their results before me.  One said, “you have fulfilled the requirements of the bar.”  Another said, “you have fulfilled the minimum requirements of the bar” and we all laughed, because it seemed like she just barely passed — she didn’t care.  I was all “I’m not going to have the word ‘minimum’ in my letter, I think I did okay.”  Then my letter was handed to me.  I had to rip through 4 different enclosures to get to it – including shrink wrap.  I knew before I fully unfolded it that the structure of the sentences was different than the letters of my friends.

It said that perhaps next time, I’d get a better night’s sleep.  It said that perhaps I had been going through a difficult time of my life.  That I could take it again.

I had many flashes go through my mind at once … who at the firm do I have to tell?  how could I not have studied enough?  How can I possibly go through that again?  Especially since the girls won’t be gone for a month?

Then I thought, “I wish this was just a bad dream.”  and then I realized it was a dream, and that I could wake up.

So I did.

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For the first time since late July …

I dreamed about the bar exam.  It was a stupid dream, and the anxiety didn’t come until the end, when I realized I was spending more time socializing with the people in the store where I was taking the test than actually focusing on the questions (which required me to seek information from the labels of the products in the store, which seemed to be a hardware store).  Then I started to freak out that I wouldn’t finish, and so I woke up to think, “oh, I already took the test, and things should be fine.”

I also dreamed that I was at my school, and I was done with school and  was looking to give back my textbooks (you know, like in high school?  When you return them at the end of the year?) when I ran into my math teacher and thought, “oh, shit.  Math.  I don’t know if I even took that test.  I don’t know if I even went after the third week of school.  Did I fail?  Will that mean I won’t get my degree?”  Then the math professor told me that I did “above average” and while I should have fixed a couple of my homework assignments, I did fine.

I walked away from her thinking “how stupid is it to have a math requirement in law school?”

I’m assuming that all of this combined means I’m starting to get anxious about the new job.

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