The Fluxing Capacitor (with thanks to Mir and Ellen)

I should begin by saying that Spouse's job sitch worked out exactly like Swistle predicted on my last entry, and not long after I wrote it, either. He is really a ton happier.

Things are fixin' to change in a big way for me, as well. Since August 2008, I have applied to lawyer or lawyer-appropriate jobs whenever I've learned of opportunities, and gone on a number of interviews, and even gone on a couple of second interviews. My outlook on life has depended on where I was in the waiting game at any given moment. Recently, after one more turn on the hamster wheel that didn't work out, I decided I was done.

That same week, I'd found out about a new alternative teacher certification program. I'd looked into teaching before, but this was a new thing, only recruiting for high-need subjects in high-need schools. So I went to the info night, and found out that I could take tests and qualify to teach special ed. A field in which the law degree, that $160,000 albatross, would actually come in handy. That just blew my mind.

So I wrote my application essays, sent them off, and was invited to interview for the program. Prior to the interview, as requested, I signed up to take three state certification tests. The interview day went really well--my five-minute lesson was definitely one of the better ones in my small group, and I was absolutely sure I would get into the program. So positive, in fact, that I went inactive with the state bar, which is easily reversible, and really not that big a deal procedure-wise, but my Lord, did it hurt. (I was only mostly done.)

Fast forward to the night before the first test: I got an email saying I was wait-listed. OUCH. I dwelled about this for weeks. I felt like I had been rejected yet again, and like I was being punished for something. Really, though, it meant that I got some sleep, instead of staying up all night trying to teach myself electromagnetism via Wikipedia. (Capacitance is a real thing; flux is a real thing; flux capacitors remain theoretical, but I couldn't tell you why.) I would have kept going, because I'm just that goofy, but once I had that news, I felt ok to eat pizza with Spouse and go to bed.

Eventually I got word that I passed that test, and not long after, that I had gotten into the program. Then I passed another test. Then I did a school visit and was blown away by how skilled the teachers were, how deftly they handled everything the kids threw at them. I've had homework to do, too--a big guidebook to read, a bunch of essays to write about my school visit.

I've been procrastinating, in part because that's what I do, and in part because of ambivalence. This is going to be hard. (On the other hand, it cannot possibly be as hard as the bar exam. Or law school. Or the aforementioned hamster dance.) Historically, I used to bolt when things get hard. (On the other hand: since then, I have become tenacious as all hell.) I still have to actually get a teaching job, which will involve more interviews (but there will be help with that; I won't be completely on my own and isolated like I have been with the law stuff). Communication from the program has not been as instantaneous or as detailed as I would like. (But I can be a tad obsessive: see, for example, having pecked at this all day.)

Summer training starts tomorrow, and until yesterday I'd been feeling disconnected and put-upon and meh about it. I got a very lucky break yesterday, when I read Mir's entry about whether or not public school is right for her son, who has Aspberger's. She was indirectly advised, by a very well-known person on the spectrum, to pull him out ASAP. Strangely, even with teaching stuff all over my desk, I didn't make the connection until I read this comment. A teacher named Ellen wrote,

At my school, we are getting ready to say goodbye to a girl who came in 6th grade totally lost. I am not saying we’d do a great job with Monkey, but [...] It is possible to have success in a public, diverse middle school.

And the light bulb went off: Hey! That's where I'm gonna be this summer!

And: Holy crap! I could do a great job with Monkey! (Eventually, I mean.)

And then I felt a LOT more invested and connected and hopeful.

I have this pernicious tendency to over-believe the negative. I told myself during this whole process that I would end up feeling really silly about all the turmoil re the waiting list if it all worked out in the end. And, well, I've got to got figure out what to wear tomorrow, because it did work out. So my goal for this summer is to focus on the positive, regardless of whatever crap hits the fan. I have no idea where I'm going, only that I'm going somewhere else, and that is HUGE.

Dreamin' is free

My husband, who has been keeping us afloat financially for the 3 years we've been married, lost his job early last week. He's only told a couple of friends. He hasn't said anything about it on Facebook and asked that I wait to mention it until he does. My mom and a couple other people I haven't been able to avoid know, but otherwise I've been keeping radio silence. It's been just over a week now. Hence me typing in this box.

We'd both been eagerly contemplating both of us having Real Jobs. He had been talking a lot about how great it was that we had built up our savings again. In fact, he'd been talking about it so much that it was making me nervous. For my part, I'd been spending hours writing in this box about how part of me still badly wanted to have kids but another part, a surprisingly loud, anxious part, did not want to go back to worrying about money so soon. I didn't post any of this for fear of sounding materialistic, or like I wasn't sincere about having a baby.

He'd left that morning at about 8:45, and I'd stayed in bed and conked out again immediately. Then I heard him come back in and I thought he had forgotten his inhaler or something, not realizing I'd been asleep for half an hour. So I murmured something like "What happened?" into my pillow and wasn't even looking at him when he told me. My loyal, supportive, loving response was "Are you fucking kidding me?!"

I've been on an emo roller coaster ever since. He said he almost replied "thank you" when they told him, because he had been abso-freaking-miserable there. I knew he wasn't happy--a week or two earlier, he'd politely but firmly told me I wasn't allowed to ask him about work--but I had no idea how miserable it was making him. So in the first minute or so, I was happy, even excited. I didn't cry until I remembered all the prescription bottles in our bathroom. But at the end of the day I felt all right. I went to meditation that night and on the way home I left a message for my therapist saying that this was the worst possible thing that could happen, I'd thought, and it wasn't really all that bad.

My thoughts have changed slightly since then. We still don't know what COBRA might cost. I've been on it before, and it was exorbitant. I was excited about the 65% subsidy until I read that it was allowed to lapse by Congress. By Democrats in Congress. On one hand the premiums were still so high that relatively few families were taking advantage of the subsidy. On the other hand I feel like my team deserved to lose if it is that completely incompetent, and in a weird, circular way, that makes me feel less horrible about the elections.

Spouse was looking forward to taking a little break and was hoping we could get by on unemployment. Unfortunately we live in a lousy backwards Southern state. Even if he gets the maximum level of benefits, Spouse will receive less than half of what he'd been earning. I successfully represented clients in unemployment hearings in another state as a law student. This summer during my internship I did research for a couple of unemployment appeals. In other words, I am supposed to know something about unemployment. Yet I was blindsided by the fact that the benefits are capped in my state, and at a ridiculously low sum. Of course it's better than nothing. A lot better. It's not enough to live on for very long without exhausting our savings, but at least we have savings to exhaust.

I am STILL supposed to have an second interview at the place that hosted me this summer. I got that confirmed today and am waiting to hear about scheduling. This is a good thing. When you've gotten used to having zero prospects, you can get a ton of mileage out of having one.

I am studiously avoiding Christmas and will be doing well if I can get our Thanksgiving scheduled without crying. That would be a new thing for me. Three houses to hit + plans coming together at the last minute + one of the houses being 45 minutes away + baking for Dad's birthday + stuffing, at minimum, for Mom's house + Mom's having surgery the week before + Spouse's delicate tummy + my various neuroses = an overly complicated Turkey Day situation.

Spouse has just suggested we host something HERE, since we both have some time on our hands, and I just told him he might as well go to a certain part of town that has a number of pawn shops and buy himself a shotgun. Because Oh MY GOD.

Waiting

My internship has ended. There is a job opening there and I am anxiously waiting to hear when my second interview will be. This would be life-changing on a million levels.

My worry meter is running hot, and I feel pretty lost during the day. I need to get on a regular schedule and leave the house a lot more often. There is a litany of tasks I could be doing now that I won't have time to do later. Spouse is home sick today, which always throws me off, and I'm not sure why.

Once I pick up my reserves that have come in from around the state, I will have something like 30 library books on my living room floor. I've blazed through all the fluffy stuff (lots of celebrity memoirs, see Twitter for reviews!) and am now trying to avoid the more imposing tomes. There needs to be a word for the type of procrastination that involves putting off things you actually want to do. I wish I could figure out why I do this!

Quick change

I have an internship, at my dream employer in the small city where I live. I got it because a busy professional, who was volunteering anyway, took extra steps to make it happen. Must write her a thank-you note. I start tomorrow morning. I'll be wearing a suit. And a teeny weeny bit of makeup. And possibly, some adorable gold ballet flats. While it's just a summer job, I'm trying really hard to focus on the next ten weeks and not on what happens after that.

Off to put the kitchen back together and to deal with an untenable laundry situation.

Heavy on the prepositional phrases

Our financial situation has improved since I started my little job, and having rebuilt our savings, we recently invested in a Hugh Mungous flatscreen TV. Spouse had been looking for months, nay, years--whenever we were in a store that sold flatscreens, even if we'd gone in for potato chips, he'd end up in the electronics section--and found a good deal online. So we got the thing, and it now sits on the dresser in our bedroom. I stayed home to meet the delivery man, and when it got here I called Spouse and gaily announced, "It's a boy!"

I should explain that when we moved into the townhouse we rent, we had no kitchen table. We also had no couch. We did have a hodgepodge of other furnishings our parents didn't want anymore, including the aforementioned dresser. Also, before we ever slept in the new place, we went to Sam's and got a king-size mattress and box spring, and I was oddly comforted when I read on the labeling that it had been manufactured right here in our fair city. We also got an extremely basic bed frame. Since there was nothing else to sit on other than a lawn chair, we'd sit on said bed to eat dinner and watch TV or a movie, on the laptop, on the dresser.

I should also explain that Spouse has to be watching something when he eats a meal. When he was a kid, TV during family dinners was an ordinary, regular experience. (My mom is a retired reading teacher, and when we were little kids, TV was as poisonous as sugar and Liquid Plumr.) Granted, if I'm alone and eating anything that takes more than a minute to chew, I've gotta be reading something, or listening to the radio, or I feel ridiculous. But when I have company during a meal, I would just as soon have a conversation as watch MythBusters.

The embarrassing fact I'm getting at is: despite having eventually acquired both a dining room table and a comfy couch, we still eat dinner in our bed, which is why the TV is perched on our bedroom dresser, where the mirror should be, and not on the living room wall, opposite said couch. This is mostly my fault, not just because I failed to put my marital foot down, but because the table is perpetually covered in my junk. Hell, pretty much the entire dining quadrant of the living room is covered in my junk, including, Spouse informed me the other day, something like thirteen pairs of shoes. That area is my landing pad when I get home. It's where the mail gets tossed, and where the receipts and candy wrappers go when I clean out my purse, and where I sit if I'm looking through cookbooks or filling out bills. It's hot out now but there are still coats and jackets on the dining chairs. (Have I mentioned how rarely we have people over, and how if anything breaks or needs maintenance, such that the landlord has to visit, panic ensues?)

Eventually this will have to change, because eventually (I hope) we will have offspring, who will probably be even messier eaters than we are. But for now, we eat dinner in bed, and late at night when whatever we've watched on Netflix ends and the giant screen glows red, I think, "Who needs a fireplace?" And if I get sleepy before the show's over and take off my glasses, if I hear something interesting, I can look up and see it just fine.

Disaster brownies

I think if I wait until I have Something Important or Something Upbeat to say, I will continue to not blog very often.

So instead I will talk about the cookbook I recently threw out.

Many years ago I got my mom a cookbook with a charming title about how sugar-filled and butter-packed its contents were. And recently it came back to me when Mom was cleaning out her cookbooks and gave me an overflowing bag of them. Many were utter doozies (fundraising collections, heavy on mayonnaise-based cuisine), but this one was funny to read and the baked goods sounded delish.

So one evening last week I tried to make Congo Bars, basically a chocolate chip blondie, and they were a total disaster. There was a center portion that looked and tasted all right but it was surrounded by a moat of scary-looking goo that had to be chiseled out of the pan. You could see that the batter had bubbled to the very top of the pan and could easily have spilled over. My oven rack had not been centered, and I figured they must have gotten too hot.

Not twelve hours later, with the rack properly adjusted, I opened the oven to find...exactly the same thing. I was chagrined. I asked Mom if she remembered the cookbook, and she said, "Um, I think there might have been a reason it was in the giveaway pile." As in, she probably hadn't had any luck either. So I dumped the cookbook in the kitchen trash, along with most of the contents of the brownie pan.

Last night I got some Good Chocolate bars so I can make World Peace Cookies if I wanna.

My yoga teacher and probably closest friend here is moving away, and I need to find something to do exercise-wise or my new clothes aren't going to fit. I suppose I could just walk around my neighborhood but depending on the time of day, I have to beware blistering sunlight or swarms of insects. It's hard to get a good pace going to NPR. I don't have an iPod, so I wear one of those headphone radio contraptions, and as ridiculous as that probably looks, I'd feel even sillier lugging around a Discman. I might as well strap an Atari console to my back.

What is really bothering me: A couple weeks ago I had an appointment to meet with an attorney, mostly to get advice about what to do for my pro bono client. This attorney works with my therapist, who had mentioned me to her and recommended that we meet.

It was less than helpful. Mostly, she just did not have time to meet with me. She took a phone call right after we sat down, and then we spoke a bit, and then suddenly she urgently had to take her paralegals out to lunch. I'm sure she didn't mean to be dismissive or discouraging. Honestly, it's the same problem I bump into over and over again: Almost nobody, particularly practicing lawyers, can get their brain around an unemployed lawyer. People just cannot believe it. My existence messes with their heads. This is precisely why I don't go to local bar meetings. I have not found a way to describe my situation--faraway law school, extended struggle with bar exam, finally licensed, can't find job--in a way that makes people understand it and react with any sort of warmth or empathy. People react with utter incredulity and I have no idea how to respond.

If anything, meeting this lady--who just happens to look like a dang supermodel--made me feel even more awkward and incompetent, and even less equipped to deal. I'd spent the previous week applying for an internship in public-interest law, for law students and licensed attorneys, and had written all these essays about my much-vaunted experience, and how I'd gone to law school to Help People, and was finally feeling sorta motivated again...and now I'm back to wondering why I bothered applying, because I haven't heard anything yet and I'm not sure they're even going to consider me.

My part-time job, at the Day Spa for Overly Entitled Women and Occasionally Their Spouses, is...probably best not discussed here. Sigh.

Channing who?

So...did anyone else assume Channing Tatum was a girl?

Let me back up a bit. I used to be somewhat up on my celebrity news, at least what I could read in a daily paper. However, the daily paper in the town where I live is full of typos and its editorial slant ranges from slightly rightward to full-on nutjob. Between the cost and what it would do to my blood pressure, I have never subscribed. I was getting Radar magazine for a while, and then when it folded I received a few issues of The Star, which was a hoot. But other than that, my celebrity news is decidedly limited to what I can skim at the hair salon or doctor's office, or what I happen upon online. I continue to enjoy Go Fug Yourself, but honestly, I don't know who half the people being skewered are anymore.

And somewhere along the way I picked up the name Channing Tatum, and I just assumed that it was some new music video or TV starlet with implants, a made-up name, and a somewhat quaint affection for pop culture. Carol Channing's a girl, Stockard Channing's a girl, Tatum O'Neal's a girl, ergo Channing Tatum must be female. So when I read this from the Fug Girls last night, I felt rather sheepish.

I should say that I do not know how to dress myself at all. If I am ever complimented on anything I'm wearing, inevitably my mom or grandmother found it for me. I wore my "good" pants Easter Sunday and they declared that a Shopping Day was overdue, because said pants were falling off. So we went last weekend, and it was an adventure. Everything I tried on felt too tight, and they had to reassure me that I did not look like a sausage and just needed to get used to clothes that actually fit.

I was hopeful that shopping would be different, having lost 36 pounds in the last, I dunno, year or so. But I am still decidedly 3X up top, and down below, my underbelly is so outsized compared to the rest that it was still a pain to find pants. At least we stayed at one department store and avoided both Catherine's and Lane Bryant. In that respect, it was a lot better.

Oh, and I'm SHORT! At 5'6", I might add! In grade school I was one of the tall girls and now I'm "petite." Plus-size petite. Jesus. It almost makes me want to try wearing heels, except I know better. Short and fat beats short, fat, and in a cast any day of the week.