What?

Sports Guy Hurts Himself With Pillow

OK, so I'm not trying to be all judgey here, but while everyone else is focusing on the fact that this baseball player hurt himself adjusting a pillow, and, oh isn't that delightfully funny, I'm more weirded out by the fact that his son sleeps with him and his wife.

"I have a 3-year-old son who sleeps in the bed with my wife and me," Inge said. "I was trying to push the pillow down behind his head..."

Not, my 3-year-old son had a bad dream and was sleeping with us. Not, my 3-year-old son was sick and we wanted him close while we all slept. It's my "3-year-old son who sleeps in the bed with my wife and me." Period. End of sentence.

Um, I think toddler boy needs a big-boy bed of his own.

CONTAC

That's the acronym I invented for self-authenticating documents 3 years ago while reviewing Evidence. If anyone else is studying for the Bar, hi, feel free to use it.

I'm starting to feel a little stressed. I am making all my flash cards like a good girl, but I haven't actually had a chance to study them yet. I've completed about 3 of the practice problem sets (out of 26), turned in one essay, and completely missed the fact that I was supposed to turn in another essay yesterday. Whoops. Whatever, the essay grading is kind of a scam. They score your first essay low and then the second essay a little higher and by the third essay you're a rock star. How do I know it's a scam? I turned in a pretty flawless first essay. I wrote it and then checked the answer in the back of the book and it matched pretty closely. They gave me a 4 out of 6, but didn't really mark anything as being wrong.

Next Thursday we have an all-day Multistate practice test. Just FYI, Barbri will tell you that the average is 125 and most people raise their scores by 10 points by test day. They tell you that to psych you out. I got a 104 on my practice test. One of my friends got a 90-something. Most of my other friends were also in the very low 100's. We all passed.

Anyway, I don't know if you know, but next week is July. The Bar is July 29th and 30th. I know I've passed this mother before, but it wasn't fun. It's still not fun. I don't think I'll get as freaked out as I did last time, but maybe I'll feel differently the evening of the 28th. I am feeling kind of overwhelmed by the class and working and studying. I was planning on taking the week before the Bar off of work, but I may change that to 2 weeks.

Also, it's hard having a husband through all of this. I mean, it's great in a lot of ways, but he's a very useful distraction. Oh, have to watch TV with and cook dinner for the husband! Bonding time! Got to keep that marriage strong!

How You Know You're Settling Into Marriage

When you sniff your fingers after cooking a delicious supper for your husband that involved mincing 5 cloves of garlic* and say "Ewww, I smell like garlic!" and your husband who is sitting on the other couch 6 feet away from you looks up from his computer and says, "Yeah, you do."

Thanks.

* I heart the garlic press.

Look!

Teeny tiny tomatoes!

99

Right this second it's 99 degrees. In Providence, Rhode Island. Saturday it was 90-something, yesterday was 90-something, tomorrow is going to be 90-something.

My family in Tucson is saying pish-posh and that I am whiny. This has nothing to do with dry versus wet heat.* It's just really hot outside and the majority of people (read: me) do not have air conditioning in their homes. It was 87 degrees in my apartment yesterday and there wasn't really anything I could do except lie prostrate on the couch.** Tiny would wander into whatever room I was in, give a pathetic little meow, and then collapse on the floor, enjoying the relative coolness of the hard wood floor.

This morning I went swimming and now I'm trying to soak up all the coolness while I'm at work.

Anyway, between the heat and the wind that will not die and makes it impossible to wear skirts if you're going to be outside for any protracted period of time, I say that's quite enough, New England.

Srsly.

* Because, really, when you open your front door and feel like you just opened a 400 degree oven, it's really hot, even if it is the desert and a "dry heat".
**Actually, I think we have an AC or two in the basement, but I can't lug one up two flights of stairs by myself. Those things are heavy! Jason is back today so maybe that will be our project for the evening.

Reshuffling

I forgot about Chemerinksy's puns. I totally respect him as a Constitutional Law genius, but I stand by my assertion that puns are not funny. Especially a lot of them over the course of 3 hours.

After three days of the crazy schedule, I realized something was going to have to give. Yesterday, I had a discussion with my boss and we decided I would come in 4 days a week instead of 5. I'm going to take Wednesday afternoons off to do catch-up studying. Except for I have today off since I just came up with the idea yesterday.

I can't tell you how relieved I feel, just to know I'll have that one afternoon to study, and have that one day when I'm not going going going for 16-17 hours straight. I will need to be sure to get in at least 5 hours per day at work so that I am literally there part-time, but now that I have some scheduled time to catch up, I feel better about being at work a little later.

So Wednesday afternoons and Saturdays will be catch-up time, and I'm going to get as much done as I can on the other days. Sunday is for rest, because that's how I roll. Also, it's really only a rest day after 1 PM, after Primary is over.

Speaking of which, in addition to studying tomorrow, I need to write a talk and prepare my Primary lesson.

Kitty Needs Attention

Tonight I got home from work, ate dinner and started making my Criminal Procedure flashcards*. I fed Tiny as soon as I got home, but I didn't cuddle him like I usually do. After he eats, he likes to be picked up. It's very endearing since he lays his head down on my shoulder and purrs and purrs.

After pacing around for an hour or so, meowing, and weaving in and out of my feet while I made my cards, he finally jumped up on the table and stood right in front of my face. I gave him a few rubs and he went nuts and started purring so loud and head butting me. I told him I was almost done, could I just have a few more minutes? In response, he took a few steps to the left and plopped his bum down squarely on my notepad. You know, with my notes from today's class in it. Since I was on page 16 of 17, I didn't feel too guilty picking him up and putting him on the floor, but I made sure to give him some love as soon as I was done.

He's kind of needy.


* As a side note, with my schedule so booked solid, I'm not sure exactly when I'm supposed to memorize all these flashcards, but I'll worry about that later.

Bar Study Methods

Well, it's after 11 PM now and I just finished talking to Jason after completing my Criminal Law flashcards. I nearly laughed out loud today when the Barbri rep explicitly advised against NOT making flashcards. OK, lady, whatever. Flash cards got me through heavy memorization as a History major and they served the same purpose 3 years ago when I studied for the Massachusetts Bar. I'm sure not everyone thinks like this, but when I think of each topic, I actually picture the card in my mind. Which is one reason I like using colored index codes and red ink to mark the really important stuff. I mean, if I'm going to have a picture, I might as well make it interesting.

The Barbri lady also said today that the best thing to do would be to go home and make a mini outline of the notes we took today. Actually, I found that making mini outlines worked really well at the END of the studying process. About 3 days before the exam I whipped out these 1 1/2 to 2 page outlines for every subject. By that time I had the details memorized, and I just wrote out the major elements of the subject matter in the outline, knowing that I could fill in the details. On test day, during the essays, I would figure out what subject they were testing and what aspect of the subject and then write out that section of the mini outline in the margins just to make sure I didn't forget anything.

I think the moral of the story is that you just have to do what works well for you.

I talked on my other blog about the importance of staying healthy through this whole process. I honestly think one of the best pieces of advice I ever got pre-Bar study was to be sure to exercise often. It kept me sane. So this morning I swam 80 laps first thing.

My schedule is going to be pretty crazy for the next two months, as I'm realizing. Very different from the last time, when all I had to do was study. Today:

• 6:10 Wake up, sort of. I have become a morning person by necessity, not by nature.
  
• 6:30-7:15 Swim.
• 7:15-8:30 Get ready for class/work, put together meals, pack bag.
• 8:30-9:15 Drive to class (Bristol is far away. Well, not far really, just inconvenient since the majority of the drive is on a two-lane road. I understand having the class at the only law school in the state, but it would have been awesome if they had a class in Providence too).
• 9:30-1:30 Class (they won't all take the full 4 hours, thankfully).
• 1:30-2:25 Drive back to Providence and look for a parking spot since I refuse to pay some exorbitant amount for a parking garage for only a few hours. Gradually realize that I'll probably need to park near Brown.
• 2:25-2:40 Walk to work from parking spot.
• 2:40-6:30 Work like a crazy woman.
  
• 6:30-7:15 Walk back to car and drive home with a quick stop at Whole Foods for a few things I'm out of.
• 7:15-7:45 Cook dinner and do some dishes.
• 7:45-8:30 Eat dinner and enter calories into SparkPeople. Watch about 30 minutes of TV.
  
• 8:45-10:30 Make flash cards from Criminal Law notes.
• 10:30-10:45 Put together part of breakfast, lunch and snacks for tomorrow. I'm realizing it takes me WAY too long to do this in the morning so I'm going to start doing it at night instead.
  
• 10:45-11:00 Call Jason to say good night.
• 11:00-Now Hop on computer to read a couple blogs and write a little.
• Soon - go to bed.
  

And that's pretty much how it's going to be in June and July. For now, long distance marriage is kind of a bonus. At least I don't have to feel guilty for ignoring Jason. We'll see what happens when he gets back next week.

Let the Insanity Begin...Again

Barbri starts tomorrow.

That is all.

Alone, Alone, So Alone - But With A Cute Kid Story

Seriously though, don't worry, I'm not depressed. Jason is out of town this week and I am on my own until next Monday.

One of our little punks in Primary has totally endeared himself to me, even though he's still a pain about 2/3 of the time. Today I got to church late, as in I missed Sacrament Meeting and just headed down to Primary. I drove Jason to the airport this morning at 5:30 and when I got home I couldn't get back to sleep right away and then I finally did get to sleep and it felt so good to sleep, and Tiny thought so too because he curled up next to me all nice, and I just couldn't wake up when I was supposed to.

Anyway, the kid (I will call him Leo) came downstairs to the Primary room and saw me. He looked shocked and said, "Were you upstairs just now?"

"No, I got here late."

"Oh okay. 'Cause I didn't see you and I was all, please let Mrs. W be here, please let Mrs. W be here."*

So okay, awwww. Am I right?

Then he sat down right next to me. Later on when the little kids went to their classes, we all moved up to the front row. Leo scoped out two chairs that I think he wanted us to sit in, but was disappointed when another kid sat in one of them. I just sat down on the end of the row and another kid sat next to me. Leo sat down on the other side of the kid. Then he leaned over and tried to convince the kid to change seats with him, which he wouldn't. As soon as the kid got up to do something at the blackboard, Leo slid over to the seat next to me.

This is all very endearing, and makes me root for him when he has a hard time finishing the little crossword puzzle I made for the class, or can't read the picture captions perfectly.*** The two other kids in the class are pretty darn smart, and I think Leo has a tough time not measuring up sometimes. He really likes the plays we do, though.


* The whole keeping my last name thing kind of eludes these kids, so they all call me by Jason's name, which is fine.**

** The whole Mormon "Brother" and "Sister" titles elude them as well, so we are Mr. and Mrs.

*** Jason makes slideshows every week for part of the lesson and we let the kids read them in rotation. If they read perfectly, they get a sticker. Who knew a couple bucks at Staples would bring such joy?