Paul's progress

Poor Paul is recovering from a spinal cord injury.  He's doing pretty well, considering he was completely paralyzed from the waist (does a rabbit have a waist?) down for a week or so.  

Now he can hop in a lopsided way and one of his hind legs looks like it's almost back to normal.  The other one's not as great, but we've been taking him to see a vet/acupuncturist and I think it's helping.

I get a lot of eyerolls when I mention the acupuncturist to people, but if doing everything you can to help your animals is wrong, then I don't want to be right.  

Plus it was sort of our fault he got hurt, so there's a bit of the guilt factor going on there.

But mainly we just love him.

Love, J

Frustrating

You know that feeling, when you start something and get deep enough into it that by the time you realize maybe it wasn't a very good idea, you can't really back out of it without making a huge mess, so you have to follow it through to the end?

This morning my canning company plan sort of took a turn in that direction.

My big jar order was supposed to arrive yesterday, if not the day before that. I confirmed this with the company last week. Hubs and I scoured the basement clean, made room for the jars and my other equipment, and I got the house all in order so I could disappear into the steamy kitchen for the rest of the month the minute the jars arrived.

Tuesday came and went. No jars.

Yesterday came and went.

No jars.

I even called the sales rep I ordered through and left three - increasingly curt - messages for her yesterday, in a vain attempt to learn the jars' whereabouts so I could schedule my time in the commercial kitchen and order produce from the farm. No answer.

This morning I got a call from a woman in their billing department, just letting me know, "as a courtesy" that the payment information I gave them didn't work, and so the jars were never shipped.

Said billing department lady then got an earful. Fortunately for her, even at my most pissed-off, I'm cripplingly polite and I probably apologized to her as many times as I told her what crap this whole thing was.

After scrambling like mad all morning on the internet and phone, I came to the annoying conclusion that ordering through the original company is still the best way to go. I was very thorough in my product & price research, and no better options have emerged in the month since I placed my original order. Plus, a week is still faster than anyone else would be able to deliver them.

So I stand here on the path and I look ahead of me and see that I will still need to expend more resources - for produce, kitchen time, fair and market booth fees - if I go forward. And the window for production is rapidly closing, as the beans I need will be toast as soon as the first frost hits. Losing a week of this time is a major, major, major blow.

But on the same path, behind me is the even more money spent to get this far. And the hopes I have built up for my little fledgling cannery, which I know are probably disproportionate to its actual potential, but still, they're there and would be dashed if I give up now.

So I went ahead and ordered the damn jars.

Now I just have to try not to mess up the house & basement before next Wednesday.

Love, J

What I now know about airbags

1. They smell bad when deployed;

2. And will save your face;

3. But not keep your neck and back from feeling hella achy & stiff the next day;

4. And apparently, in our car, they come with a little dashboard light of a person getting slammed with an airbag. This light comes on after the bag is deployed. Like, "Hey! This is you! You just got slammed with an airbag! In case you didn't notice!"

I am very okay (aside from #3), and will keep busy this weekend parlaying my little adventure into any advantage I can think of. I've already scored the hubs staying home from his shift to hang out with me, and my own pizza for dinner last night. And if the doctor next week gives me a referral to a massage therapist, well that would just be very cool.

Love, J

PS ~ Here's a video that I like not only because it is very happy and sweet, but also because one of my high school friends works with George as a nurse at the same hospital, which is pretty neat.

Another change

I'm in yet another professional transition, and am seriously hoping that it is my situation, and not just an inborn restless, impossible-to-please-ness, causing me to move on. After angsting over the rough edges of my job for enough weeks in a row, I reached my breaking point and ended things by leaving myself without a job to angst over.

Which solves all the external yuckiness (or it will, once I am replaced and out of here), but I'm still plagued by a tiny but niggling voice suggesting that some of the dissatisfaction may be internal. Wouldn't that be unfortunate.

I feel like I should have everything figured out by now. That by 26 (almost 27), I ought to know what I'm doing. Or, at the very least, where I am headed. I think that by doing the college-then-law-school thing, I fooled myself into thinking I had a plan, and that I wasn't susceptible to this kind of drift. But school ended, and with no more marked trail to follow (freshman, sophomore... 2L, 3L), I've lost my momentum. And in the process learned that momentum is very key to my ability to get anywhere.

So now I drift. I'm just bobbing along, hoping to wash ashore of wherever I'm meant to be and thus avoid the scary (probably inevitable) fact that such washing does not happen. At some point, I'm actually going to have to choose.

Fortunately, thanks to this job, I know better what I am not willing to compromise. And while it would be hugely unwise for me to detail the ugliness of my short foray into legal assisting here (even understanding that I have at most 5 followers - Hi Aunt Sue!), I will at least defend my decision by declaring that the objective unpleasantness of this position justified my leaving. For reals. And this will always be true, even in the event that my life unfolds in a way that proves me to be a quitter at heart.

(But uuuuuhhhg, I hope that's not what happens.)

Stay tuned.

(Bye Aunt Sue!)

Love, J

Down and out

Besides blue eyes and a very fortunate metabolism, I inherited three things from my mother: a tendency to exaggerate; a love of gift-giving; and depression. It's this last little legacy that has plagued my day.

It begins in a way very similar to catching cold. Only instead of waking up one morning with a hint of a sore throat, I'll be driving down the road and feel a soft tug on my heart. A gentle but very perceptible feeling of dread. And just as the sore throat will develop into a runny nose and achy limbs, the dread mounts and slows me down until I stop. And for a while, I will be sad.

I love/hate the word 'depressed.' It's too shrinky and overused when I look at it from the normal perspective. But if I think about it in the physical way - like, a button that has actually been pressed down, it feels quite apt. 'Deflated' and 'leaded' work nicely too. Depression isn't a hot topic of conversation, at least not in any circles I run in, but I know it's around. I've seen shadows of it in others. However, because everyone other than me has some sort of filter between their thoughts and their words, it doesn't get discussed.

My sad days seem to follow some of my more manically high, happy hours, but I can't say that's true without exception. In my experience, self-absorption does not equal self-awareness, and I am embarassingly bad at keeping track of what, if anything, triggers my blues.

But that's fine because I'm also not particularly bent on heading them off. What self-absorption does equal is self-indulgence, and I find it completely appropriate to take advantage of a buy-three-get-three-free candy bar sale at Safeway and then hole up in my sweats until I'm all moped out.

Understand that this is very different from a run-of-the-mill bad day and subsequent pissiness. When you get yelled at by a client, or miss your bus home when it's raining, or, say, fail the bar exam, that's one thing. There is a reason for the foul mood that follows, and there are usually ways to cure it. But the baseless gloom that overtakes you (or maybe just me?) out of nowhere every once in a while has a different heft to it.

It is both a frustration and a relief to not know when it's coming, and to not know how to climb out when it hits. I don't attempt to cheer myself up anymore, because I know that I can't. It's just time to be sad. Hopefully tomorrow I will wake up and it will be time to be happy again. Until then, I am self-medicating with a dinner of Reese's and Hershey's, and thanking Mom for the metabolism.

Love, J

Failure

A week ago, I almost wrote an entry on law school and how it had cured me of my pride. How every other student in my class had traveled extensively, had great careers and multiple post-graduate degrees, and were more worldly and well-spoken than I could hope to be if I lived 3 lifetimes. And how after spending my life at the top of my class, being at the bottom gave me much needed perspective and humility.

This week when I found out that I failed the bar exam, I realized that law school had not humbled me a bit.

I know this because I opened my mailbox on Monday with as much hubris as I've ever had, fully expecting the letter to begin with 'congratulations,' and not, 'we regret to inform you.' Even after spending three years at a school full of people who are smarter, more talented, and harder workers than I will ever be, I still was stuck up enough to assume I would be one of those who passed the test.

Because most people do pass. This year there was an exceptionally low pass-rate, and it was still something up near 70%. And also, because I studied. Really, really studied hard. I have never tried so hard at something and then failed so utterly.

When I called my exam prep school yesterday to ask what I should do next, the woman I spoke with looked up my file and said, 'Oh. Your practice essays were well within the average - I wonder what happened?'

Yeah, lady, you and me both.

And I wasn't even close to squeaking by, either. If you score within a certain margin and still fail, the bar association lets you appeal the decision. I wasn't even near the appealable range. My scores were so low, it would be almost funny, if it weren't so heartbreaking. I mean, I really tanked.

And so now I start all over again. I'm going to give myself until Monday to nurse my ego and overcome my denial, and then it's back to outlining and flashcards and essays until the next exam at the end of February. Oh, it makes me sick just thinking about it - it was all supposed to be OVER when I opened that letter, not about to begin again.

But mostly I am dreading it because now I am truly humbled. And while my ego may not have helped me pass the exam, it certainly kept me going while I studied over the summer. Every time I'd run out of steam, I'd think, 'All you have to do is keep going. Of course you will pass if you just put in the time and give it 100%.'

And then even after giving that 100%, I came up way short.

So what am I supposed to say to myself when I get worn out and run down while studying this time around?

Oh, I'm sure there's a lesson in this. But I'm still too freshly stung to see it.

Love, J

Rough week

Yesterday I got my bar exam results in the mail, and opened them eagerly, because I knew I'd passed and was excited to get the news. I was wrong.

Today I woke up in a blind panic, positive that there had been some mistake with the exam results. I felt really, really good about how I'd done, and I had studied my ass off. So at 4:30 am I pulled on my sweats, jumped in the car, and drove to Seattle to get a copy of my test and find out what had happened. When they gave it to me, I thumbed through it and found that there was no mistake. My answers all uploaded correctly. My test didn't get mixed up with someone else's. I just failed. So I got in the car and drove back home, with the new, awful knowledge of what it's like to have complete faith in yourself only to find out that you shouldn't have.

More later (more complaining, I'm sure), but now I'm still shell-shocked and in denial about the whole having-to-do-this-all-over-again thing. I need to curl up and whimper until that's out of my system. Be back in a few days.

Love, J

And you thought YOU were dreading Monday

Today's forecast says there will be a high of 42, low of 30 degrees here today.

And the hubs, as part of his very exciting police training, gets to jump in a lake this afternoon, to practice water rescues. He'll dive in clothes, protective vest, and all. And then stay in the water for a while, showing he can get to the bottom to pull a dummy up, tread water for a few minutes, and complete any other challenges they give him.

Two weeks ago, it was still in the 80s here. But when we spent this last Saturday morning outside at G's soccer game, I got an ice cream headache.

Tearing up the field in her super-cute candy cane stockings

Looking like a linebacker in my 3 layers of clothes + big scarf, and still freezing my buns off

Of course he is being a characteristically good sport about the whole thing. I am dreading it much more than him, and right now I am bundled up in sweats and wrapped in a blanket because I get cold just thinking about it. Sympathy pains, or something.

Brrrr...

Love, J


PS: Happy post-big-birthday bash, Aunt Chris! I hope it was even more fun than expected!

Ah, sisters

A friend sent me this and as I watched it I was very, very grateful that KT didn't know about this joke when I was in high school, because she would certainly have done it. More than once. She's never been a prank-someone-laugh-about-it-and-move-on type of girl. She likes to make you feel extra silly for falling for the same joke 5, 6, 7 times over a span of a few months.

Her favorite was to rubber band the spray nozzle on the kitchen faucet open so that when you cranked the water on, you got soaked. This is pretty much exactly how that went, every time. I'm sooo glad this was before YouTube, because I think she would have been a lot more creative and persistent in pranking everyone if she knew she could film and disseminate our reactions.

Lately I've been missing living in a house full of people, but I'm a little less nostalgic when I remember all of the booby trapping that went on.

Love, J