Presidential Fitness Test

When I was ten or eleven (I know it was spring of fifth grade, I am not sure which side of my birthday it was situated on) my class had to take the "Presidential Fitness Test." While for many kids this is an excuse to get out of the classroom and expend some energy, for my over-tall, gangly, be-speckled self having to not only run but do push up and a bent arm hang was nothing short of torture. Add to that the fact that my fifth grade teacher (a man who exemplified the axiom those who cannot do teach) forgot to tell us when the date of the test. For this reason I was wearing a dress, one of my favorites with polka-dots and a tulle under-skirt. While I may have run faster if I had worn athletic shoes, and I was furious with being made to lay on the ground to do sit ups, it is the memory of struggling to pull my body up over a bar on the playground, my entire body straining to reach above the bar my entire class watching me (I am sure flashing my knickers to all of them) that stuck with me. I cannot think of the "Presidential Fitness Test" without a bolt of fear and shame running through me.
So what does this have to do with anything?
I have decided that we need a new "Presidential Fitness Test," not to test the upper-body  of preteens but instead a measure of fitness of presidential candidates.
Earlier this week Herman Cain said that if elected president he would "sign a constitutional amendment banning abortion." Regardless of your feelings on abortion this statement should raise eyebrows, because under Article 5 of the Constitution the president does not sign constitutional amendments. While there is plenty of room for debate about Roe and its progeny, and questioning their validity shouldn't make a person intelligible to be president not knowing how the foundational law of our republic should, or at very least should open you up to the sort of ridicule and embarrassment that fifth graders face on the school yard when they take the Presidential Fitness Test.     
Discussing this with my roommate we came up with quite a list of questions that should be asked. We agreed that the questions should be simple questions with obvious right and wrong answers, that they shouldn't have room for opinions, or academic analysis and that they should avoid political slant. The list we developed included things like:

• What powers are the president explicitly granted in the constitution?
• How does a bill become a law?
• What rights does the bill of rights grant?
• What are the cabinet level agencies? Or maybe just what is the order of succession to the presidency through some number of cabinet secritaries. 
• What are the branches of the federal government?
• Who are the members of NATO?
• Who are the Members of the G8 and the G20?
• Name the 50 states and territories of the US?
• Who is the leader of Canada? of Mexico?
• What is the price of a gallon of gas? of milk?
• What is the corporate tax  rate?
• What is the salary an individual working full time at federal minimum wage?
• What are legal sources of funds for a corporation?

I am sure that there are others, and that some of these could be removed and, I will admit that I don't know the answers to all of these questions off the top of my head, but shouldn't the president? I don't think that knowledge should be the only factor taken into account, I think President Obama's struggles stem from lack of management experience which can't be codified in a test like this. But why aren't people demanding a basic knowledge, why aren't people embarrassed not to know these things.
In the case of Herman Cain he is running in part on the desire to shrink the federal government, encourage the states to take greater control of areas that the federal government has usurped. It seems to me that running on that platform you should be aware of what a massive undertaking it is to amend the constitution, that this is a legitimate limit on the federal government powers, that amending the constitution was intended to be difficult. If you don't recognize those things then your claim of government overreach is nothing more than political opportunism and that you are willing to overlook it when it suits your agenda. 
The problem is most voters nod and ignore, they refuse to see that ignorance won't serve them well. This is why failing my test wouldn't result in disqualification from office but some sort of visual shame, a funny hat? a miss-tailored suit? Ari Gould style super soaking? Something to get people to understand that this is a problem for efficiency and it is embarrassing.
Basically if children have to risk embarrassment to enter law school there should be a chin-up equivalent for becoming president.

Visiting Washington DC

It has been a couple of weeks since my mom visited me. I was so glad to have her visit, although the visit had a few missteps. Most notably my aunt who came down from New Jersey to spend the weekend with us got ill, and the weather was less than perfect but it was a nice visit none the less.
My Dad comes to DC frequently for work but this was the first time my mom had visited, in fact it was the first time I had ever been her hostess in any capacity an it was a nice experience. (I always lived in a dorm or my sorority house in college so there wasn't much of an opportunity.) I like hosting people and DC is a great place to have people visit me in, there is plenty to do, it is easy to get around and I know the city well enough that I can integrate a visit into my hectic life with [relative] ease. Sometimes I think that if the whole law school thing doesn't work out I will open a bed and breakfast, so I can bake scones and have visitors every day. (And then I realize that I would never have my house to myself and that dream dies.)  Generally visits are very different depending on who is coming to visit and why:
Business Trip: (usually my dad) generally he has a rental car and at least a few nice meals I can tag along on. Basically this is my opportunity to eat and live like I did before loans. Generally includes trips to home depot and target.
Tourist Visit: Someone who is excited to see me but also excited to have a tour guide. These trips involve a lot of walking and eating usually at place off the beaten path. Typically I get about a week behind in my work (which is entirely my fault, I will use any excuse not to read.) These trips offer an opportunity to see the sights I never see in my day to day life. Although I refuse to go to the Air and Space Museum, seriously you can't pay me.
My mom's visit didn't really fit into either of these categories. It was closer to a "here is a window into my real life." We made pizza and watched West Wing reruns, we went on a grocery run, and spent some time with my DC family. She helped me get my house a little more together. It was the perfect visit, and now I can look around my house and see little pieces of her. Thanks for visiting mom.

Like running on a treadmill whose speed you can't control.

I realize that I am a bit of a failure at this whole "regular updating" thing. But I do feel like I am jogging at an "eleven."
Life is a little insane this semester (and I understand that there isn't a person on the planet whose life isn't busy, but then I tell people what I have gotten myself into and they are like okay yea, you are busy.) This semester the following activities feel entitled to take up my time:

• Classes: Trademark 3 units, First Amendment 3 Units, Business Associations aka Corporations 4 units, Criminal Procedure 3 Units, Media Law 2 Units, Copyright Clearance 2 units.
• Job: Fifteen hours a week in Virginia. (In order to save time commuting I am totally imposing on my DC family and staying in their guest room one night many weeks.) Note to anyone choosing law schools if you go to school in an area where there are lots of intern opportunities the school year it means you have to be an intern during the school year. 
• Extended research paper of publishable (when did this happen?) quality.
• Intellectual Property Brief: One (short) article a month.
• IP symposium planning committee

And those are just the things that I have some pressure to actually go to. It doesn't include job applications, volunteer work and networking (all of which need to happen if I ever want to find a paying job.) It also doesn't include things like eating, sleeping, getting exercise, keeping the dog happy and cleaning the house.

Now I don't begrudge any of it, while I would like  a little more time to myself wouldn't we all and I signed up for it so I really can't complain. It isn't like I am in this boat alone, this is the life of a 2L, at least those of us who hope to be employable. 

So to answer my mother's questions: No I am not whining or complaining, but I am making excuses.  

An Act of God Clause

The last week has been a little interesting when it comes to natural events, I wish I could blame the earthquake or the hurricane on my lack of posting but really it is just the state of my life (between moving back to DC, school starting, ending one job and starting another, trying to maintain relationships and my sanity. Plus what seems to take more energy (especially emotional) than all else, applying for real jobs you know the kind that pay and therefore allow me to eat food that isn't Ramen and maybe one day pay of my debt. You know dream big.)

But now, after two unusual natural events if God is telling anyone anything it "Kate, write a blog post."* 

I was fine, survived both events with minimal impact or costs and generally feel like it wasn't that big of a deal. The East Coast seems to disagree with me, given that, on my vacation I have seen "I survived" t-shirts and it seems to still be a dominant topic of conversation with my classmates. I have come to the conclusion that east-coasters like to be able to plan their natural disasters, some of my fellow west coasters may disagree with me but I prefer not to know ahead of time.  As someone who was used to earthquakes I felt the shaking, braced myself, checked my surroundings, made sure there wasn't damage or bleeding and got back to work. The rest of the are didn't school (which is in a modern building) was evacuated for hours, metro operated at 15mph. 

Now I understand that the area doesn't get earth quakes so buildings aren't up to the same codes, but I like being prepared. (Also I lived in a "historic" read old and retrofitted building and we never evacuated during an earth quake. Which granted also has something to do with having an innate sense of what is a big deal quake and what isn't.) And I feel like in an area where most of your natural disasters happen with little or no warning people live like boy scouts. They are always prepared, I brought that with me, I have a first aid kit, a battery powered radio and enough food and supplies for a week plus. Going out prior to Irene hitting you would have thought that DC inhabitants lived with bare cupboards most of the time give the number and type of supplies they were buying. (Honestly, I could make some comparison to the Hill and people waiting till the last minute to do what needs to be done)

Mostly what struck me was the way people talked about and experienced these events. There was a level of discussion and frenzy about them stretching on either end that I just am not used to. For most of us living in DC these were relatively minor events, there was some damage to older buildings and we lost power, but not anything different than what you get with a rough winter storm. Mostly I just want to tell people to roll with the punches.

*If you didn't get the sarcasm and political reference, I am kidding god doesn't communicate with me through the weather. And if you want to be prepared here is a good place to start http://www.fema.gov/areyouready/.

Things My Job Has Taught Me: Part III (I am so incredibly lucky)

So this is another perspective post...
We have a large murder trial going on in court right now, it is gang related so security is pretty tight and everyone is a little jumpy. The worst part about the whole thing is the number of children involved: each of the two defendants have at least one child. The victim and most of the witnesses, many of whom were (legally) children when the murder occurred, have children. Most days we have four or five children in the courtroom who are anywhere from infancy to elementary school aged.
Now anyone who knows me knows my general tolerance for children is low, but really a child in a courtroom? It would be distracting and inappropriate in any circumstance (I am sorry there are some places that children don't belong, especially children who misbehave these include courtrooms, boardrooms, romantic restaurants and lecture halls.) And even if social mores and the rules of polite company don't bother you, do you really want your four year old listening to graphic shooting testimony or seeing autopsy photos blown up to life size?
I tend to be all for honesty and openness with children, I think that my parents treating me and my inquires with respect helped spring my intellectual curiosity. But there is something to be said for preserving childhood,  and I can't imagine that you have much in the way of childhood memories when you are exposed so young to the criminal justice system. It is by the luck of birth that I was born to an upper middle class white family and my first exposure to the law was visiting the Supreme Court at four. The archetype for me to mold myself to Earl Warren. I try to remember that not everyone has positive images and hope for their own future, that there are so many whose  model is absent or in shackles.

On police chases towards mexico, missing daughters, shrunken gloves and pool ladders.

I have gotten a few questions about the Casey Anthony trail in the last week or so, and I have seen even more accounts and opinions on television in the last few days. I know my reaction has been frustrating and generally less than satisfying when people ask. In part because I haven't answered the "do you think she did it?" question, instead I have been answering that I don't feel the prosecution fulfilled their burden of proving the elements of murder in the first degree.
I don't really remember the OJ Simpson trial and, aside from the ubiquitous litigator jokes about it, it doesn't come up as a topic in law school. I will also admit that I didn't watch the Casey Anthony trial with rapt attention, I saw some interviews and have read a bit here and there about it. From everything I saw I think that the jurors did a good job, this is what makes me different from the general public and what makes people furious with lawyers.
Most people look at this through the lens of truth, of what really happened, of tragedy and human drama. Lawyers aren't trained to do any of that because finding the truth is not the role of the justice system. Lawyers are trained not to pass judgement, as an attorney you have the an obligation to represent your client to the best of your ability whether you know they are guilty or positive of their innocence. This is done by trying to frame the law so that it is favorable to out clients.
The best system we have to enable justice is placing the burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt on the People. When someone is convicted, as opposed to being ruled against in civil court, we are placing the stigma of society on them, they become at that moment a criminal someone who is apart from society and therefore not granted the same rights as other citizens. This is a deeply moral judgement, and it caries a heavy burden, in order for it to be satisfied the people must prove each of their burdens beyond a reasonable doubt. Murder in the first degree is hard to prove and it should be, especially when the prosecution is recommending the death penalty.
My feeling on this is that the prosecution wanted a big win and shot itself in the foot for it. If the DA hadn't wanted to see this woman fry they would have been able to get a conviction. People can be convicted without a known cause of death, they can be convicted without a body, but cause of death is what the prosecution focused on and this is was what was easiest for the Defense to blow holes through. They created a situation where they had to prove chloroform and duct tape and they left the jury confused and doubtful. They should have pointed to the holes in the defense's theory, they should have plea bargained down, they should have done any number of things.

Cartoon Copyright the New Yorker 

I am not sure of what happened, although it does look suspicious, what I am sure of is that we live in a country where we would rather a guilty woman go free than an innocent one be incarcerated and because of that system being guilty of something, being shifty or suspicious isn't enough; you must be shown to be guilty of what you were charged with. This doesn't always go down easy but I can't imagine what trade offs would make it better.

Things My Job Has Taught Me: Part II (You are not an Idiot or Failure)

When you go straight from a top research institution for undergrad to law school you get used to feeling like it is normal to have deep if esoteric discussions. And, unless you are truly exceptional, you also get used to feeling unaccomplished and idiotic. As a law student everyone one you know can rattle off multi-factor tests and Latin phrases without batting an eye. All of my law school friends (because if you didn't guess they are in law school) all working on becoming part of the 2% of Americans with professional doctoral degrees. Every time we go to a networking event, or informational seminar, a meeting or a social mixer it is with lawyers, suddenly none of your accomplishments are all that special or unique, this is even more true when you start passing you resume around begging people to let you work for them (generally for free.)
Basically I live in a world where the strange has become normal.
Coming home this summer has put this in perspective. At my job I sit in an office where they bring "defendants in custody" past my door all day. Generally these people are in jump suits and shackles, sometimes they are in suits neatly groomed to be in front of a jury, but nearly always they are young. Or my age.
Suddenly the fact that mixed up crimen falsi and crimen innominatam when being called on to answer a question doesn't mean I am the biggest loser on the planet doomed to fail fail.
I guess a little perspective is a good thing.

Things My Job Has Taught Me: Part I

I am working this summer and, in addition to useful, educational and  important things, I have learned quite a bit that I couldn't put on a resume, or talk about in an interview but that are significant none the less. So I will be sharing them as they come up from here on out.
The first one:
If you are a defense attorney defending meth users and dealers, don't look like you are a meth head. I understand that you are probably naturally gaunt, and we haven't had much sun so your pallor is excusable, and maybe you are colorblind so the fact that your jacket and slacks are wrinkled and miss-matched doesn't stand out to you.
But really the missing tooth is over the top.

Not a 1L any more

May was a huge month. There was so much I could have written about, but so little time to do it. There were exams, an amazing friend getting engaged, moving back home (for the summer) starting work, helping my sister through the rituals of senior year of high school and trying to keep my head above water. Thankfully the school year is over and I have finished my first year of law school. It is hard to believe how fast it has gone and how much I have done. I am working now but, theoretically, without homework I should have time to post again (fingers crossed.) I am home on the California coast and in a grand twist of irony the weather stinks, but at least it means I am stuck inside and might actually write!

[F]EASTER

Exams are quickly approaching but my roommate and I decided that Easter is not a holiday we can overlook. While we could have been observant and gone to church we decided to recognize the holiday the way we recognize most things, we cooked. I wasn't too excited about it at first, I knew the time involved with this kind of meal and I am starting to feel the exam pressure. But we did it anyway and the results were amazing (if comically large.)

First we had to buy a ham. The smallest we could find bone in was ten pounds. There are two of us (and Grace) but we decided to get what they had and figured the bone was a good portion of the weight. (Why is it that meat can't be found in reasonable quantities?) I think that the people at the supermarket thought we were crazy, our bodies half in the freezer hoping to find one that weighed an ounce less.

 Notice the ham, with a glaze homemade by my roommate. (Oh and did I mention that on Thursday we had a whole chicken so while we were making the feast I was also making chicken stock?)

 My asparagus with a lemon rue, and my first attempt ever carving. Neither, my roommate and I, who both have extensive cooking experience, had carved and we find it funny that it is such a "man's task."

Notice the yams, and the mashed potatoes and the homemade bread. Also not pictured the mini-cheesecakes we had for dessert. (Guess whose house is not carb free?) 

Grace waited patiently hoping ham would fall.

And yes that is a croque minsieur,
which I will be consuming throughout exams.
We still have 9.8 Lbs of ham to consume

I had a better time without you.

Samuel Beam aka "Iron and Wine" at the 9:30 club

I have had tickets to see Iron and Wine at the 9:30 Club last Friday since some time in January. On Thursday the people I planned to go with told me that they had sold their tickets weeks earlier. I was pissed, I couldn't believe how inconsiderate it was, especially because I don't think they would have told me at all if I hadn't asked them about meeting up. I don't know how people get away with being so inconsiderate and still have friends. (It wasn't that they canceled but that they didn't offer the tickets to me to see if I could find someone to use them, or tell me early enough that I could sell mine.)

I tried to sell my ticket and, predictably, was unable to find a buyer. So rather than let the ticket go to waste I went to the show alone. My mom wasn't happy about it. (I think she expects me to run into Sid Vicious and end up dead in the Hotel Chelsea anytime I go to a concert. This means that I often wait to tell her about them until after the fact.

It avoids conversations like this:

Mom: but why do you want to go?

Me: Because they are awesome and the lead singer is cute. [Or I listened to them every day for a month when I was hating being abroad. Or because all my friends are going. (But that just brings up the bridge conversation.)] 

Mom: But it is expensive.

Me: How would wasting the tickets saving me money?

Mom: I just don't want you to get hurt. 

Me: Mom it just Outside Lands [or the Catalyst, or the Greek, or the 9:30 club]  and I have the cheap tickets, I am not going to meet some ne'er do well musician who tempts me with his words and move into his bus.

Mom: Well things happen. (She finishes in such a way that I can see her eye brows raise and her head tilt through the phone so she may as well be screaming "YOU SHOULDN'T GO.") Okay so that isn't exactly fair, but my Mom's distaste for heat, crowded spaces, and loud noise come out any time going to a show comes up.)

I disregarded her advice and went and I was really glad. In part because there is something really empowering about doing a "couple-y" thing on your own. I would have been upset if I had let the ticket go to waste, and while I could have blamed it on my friends ultimately I had control over the use of my ticket. While I was an anomaly, most people don't go to concerts alone, people were friendly, the beer was good and the music was better.  I generally have a head on most of the waifish hipster girls so I was ten feet back from the stage and could see everything perfectly. The whole set was amazing, and because I was alone I could sing along and enjoy the music without idol chit-chat. As an encore he did an a cappella version of "Flightless Bird American Mouth" that brought tears to my eyes. While it would have been nice to share it with someone who appreciated the music, obviously the people who bailed on me were not those people. 

  

Failure is not an option...

When I was about nine or ten my dad brought back a t-shirt from a business trip in Florida. It is a quote from Gene Kranz, the NASA flight director on Apollo 13. While it is exactly what I would want to hear from a flight director if I was an astronaut, I think as a child I would have been better served by the words of Edison "I have not failed. I have just found 10,000 ways that don't work."

While "failure is not an option" works reasonably well as a stance for the parents of a bright (if sometimes lazy) child living in a town where teachers were told not to use red pens, everyone had to be given valentines, birthday party invitations and end of the year trophies, at some point we will all fail. Success isn't about never failing, it is about learning to fail well. This has been the toughest lesson of law school. One of the secrets of the law, which is actually painfully obvious, is that you are going to lose half of the time, and if you define winning as getting exactly what you client wants well then that number is considerably lower. So law school is the excruciating experience of failing a lot, of breaking you down to very small painful parts and building you back up in a way that makes failure less personal so you can learn from losing, so that even the worst sort of day isn't really a failure.

This isn't compatible with "failure is not an option" and it has isolated me. I have created an infallible facade in front of a very human girl. When I am less than perfect there is no one to share that with because it doesn't fit with who I was created to be. There is nothing to success if it wasn't fought for and in exposing our wounds we are allowed to learn from them rather than letting them fester in the dark.

     

An amazon in a hipster bar

A couple weeks ago I went out for one of my friend's birthday. I had a good time, but I was also reminded why I don't go out all that often. My friend picked a great place, with a good DJ and without a cover, although I could tell immediately it wasn't my scene. Maybe it is DC, but I always feel overdressed if I put in the smallest effort into getting ready. The staggering number of people in hoodies and sneakers made me feel ridiculous. More so because I was in heels, I could look over the heads of everyone in the crowd. If that wasn't enough one of the girls who can grate on me begins the evening by saying "oh my god you're huge!"
Yes I am tall, but huge? Way to start a girls night off on the right foot. This girl in particular seems to bring out all my childish insecurities. Whenever I am around her I feel like my twelve-year-old self, and our interactions always seem to turn petty.
I was hoping law school would temper my interactions with superficial girls. That once we began our "professional lives" as they like to tell us, that we would all try to act like grown-ups. Boy was I wrong.
As an undergrad I developed a distaste for the subcategory of these girls who acted dumb to get men. I went to school whith some of the most fiercely intelligent women in my generation. Women who spent their days working on cures for blindness and doing research for Nobel laureates (not an exaggeration) and who would then turn around and act like idiots because when they acted like themselves they were ignored by our male counterparts. They were threatening, and boys don't buy drinks for girls who threaten their masculinity. I can't even begin to count the number of times I was told by smart, amazing women that if I just "acted dumb" that I could have a boyfriend.
And it continues, I don't think it will ever end. As long as men (on the whole)are threatened by women and more attracted to women who seem vulnerable, it won't change and the dating scene will continue to be miserable for everyone. (For women because they are changing themselves to be attractive and for men because they are ending up with girls who are either supercritical or insecure in who they are.)
The party was mostly really fun. I was having a great time aside from the occasional comments about how tall I was for most of the evening. One of my friends, not a superficial girl, was spending some quality time with her crush. The rest of us were giggling like gossipy teenagers. The crush, being either a nice guy or a typical guy who sees an opportunity noticed one of our classmates (definately a silly girl-pretty and more than that, adorable, but also willing to say and do the dumbest stuff for attention.) Like drink in obscene quantities. Anyway, crush goes to help her, gets her water encourages her to stop drinking. The bar closes and we are outside waiting for cabs and superfical girl is puking everywhere. Crush is being kind, holding her hair back. Silly girl finishes the exorcist routine, Crush tries to put her in a cab asks he what her address is to give the driver. She stands up, wipes her mouth, says, "I just want to go back to your place" then caresses his chest and it works. I wanted to throw up. My friend is miserable, I give her a "typical" and an eye roll and we go back to her apartment to watch chick flicks and drink more. And I never want to go to bar again. Which is why this week my roommate and I stayed in watched sitcoms and drank boozy smoothies.

Q: So dumb guys go for dumb girls and smart guys go for dumb girls.

Then what do the smart girls get?

A: Cats mostly

-Modern Family on discovering what it means to be a smart girl

The fine gloss a year puts on your undergraduate years

There are a ton of things that are miserable about being in college. ( Not that there are a lot of good things.)  One of the worst things is being told how wonderful and easy it is. (On a side note this is not something you ever hear about law school, people who have finished law school tell you one of two things, law practice is so much better and that they know how you are suffering or get out now it is not worth the miserable suffering.) Being told how easy and fun college is compared to the real world doesn't help anything, It doesn't make a paper write itself or the drama of living with 50 women go away. People who are out of school for a long time forget the misery that comes from being under constant scrutiny, of being judged and maligned at every corner. While there is some of this in the working world the biggest difference is in your job you have time to master your skill, to take charge over your domain. In school everything is new all the time. I think part of the reason you don't hear form lawyers how much better law school is, is that unlike undergraduate education where you put the miserable stuff behind you once you enter the real world (only to take on new and different miseries) the skills you take from law school are much more applicable. Lawyers are given a daily reminder of the ways real practice is better.

I was not happy my last semester in college. The sorority drama seemed especially petty, I wanted to start law school (and despite a lifetime of  being told I was exceptional I knew I wasn't going to Yale) my classes seemed especially esoteric and bogged down in the pedagogy of Ivory Tower academia. My degree, in addition to being in political science, is in Rhetoric and the focus of my degree was narrative as public discourse. It couldn't have gotten much more heady or philosophical. There was a time I lived and breathed the words of dead Russians and longer dead Romans and Greeks. But by my last semester I had very little patience for it. The theory that had once excited me felt too far removed from reality. I just started reading the Idiot by Dostoevsky as my commute book, and I am enjoying it so much. I remember now why I once declared my love for depressing Russian literature. It was nice to discover that the frustrations of undergraduate life didn't squeeze the joy of literature from me.
     
It is easy to look back from the vantage point of twenty years and exclaim how easy everything was and how you wished you had appreciated it more, but that comment is made from the sure footed position of the future. Yes knowing that you passed, graduated and  got a job makes it seem easy, but when you're in school none of that is certain. I am sure there are things I will appreciate more about law school from the vantage point of a job that pays me, and hopefully financial security. I try to recognize that it is a shared experience I have with lawyers across the US and that it shapes our profession and will shape me. It is just hard to remember when you are paying someone to break you down and build you back from the broken pieces.

Beer... it's not just for breakfast anymore.

So I guess it is going to become tradition for me to write about my baking habits on minor holidays and not much else. (I do promise that there are more exciting and interesting law school related bits coming.) But I have actual pictures for this, and it is about something mildly entertaining that isn't reading and writing for hours. 

Anyway coming from a family that recognizes its Irish roots (probably perceives them as stronger than they are, but thats another story) Saint Patrick's Day was a pretty big deal. I can remember getting into a debate with my cousin about the merits of Kelly v. Emerald green as true green and being pinched in the morning for not wearing green pajamas.

This year was pretty boring, because law school has taken up my life, and somewhere along the way I became responsible i didn't even have a drink. But I did make Guinness cupcakes. Which are amazing. I double the beer in mine so they actually taste like stout and they came out so well. Plus it is really fun to give food away. Anyway...   

  

Grace is a fan of all baked goods, beer not so much.

Sisters...

I have really amazing biological sisters, but I am also lucky to have a group of girlfriends who I get to call sisters. I am not really one for the silliness that sororities seem to be associated with, if someone had asked me as a senior in high school if I would join a sorority I probably would have laughed, or rolled my eyes. If I hadn't gone to a school with a "quirky" Greek system (aka what you would expect from Berkeley) I probably wouldn't have rushed. I was assured that it was lower key at Berkeley than anything you see in the movies or have heard from your cousin in Texas. Joining a house was one of the best decisions I made in college, and this week reminded me why.
Through a weird twist of fate one of my sisters who was a senior when I was a pledge was sitting in the back of my Intellectual Property class this week. When I was nineteen she was so cool and together and amazingly unreachable in the way upper class-men always are. Now, four years later we have all this history, an automatic foundation to start with and stories to tell, even if I was far removed from her influence as she was finishing college.
Then I got an email form one of my favorite sisters from my pledge class, that she is thinking about moving to DC and would I have time to get a drink. Yes please. Oh and by the way she might be interested in subleasing from me for the summer, thank you.
And the sister who when I mentioned that I might be in LA for the summer jumped at the ability to hang out, despite the months since talking.
So because of all the positive sorority energy (forgetting the former president who totally ignored my email- not that I am surprised) I called another sister who I should have caught up with ages earlier. We spent the evening on the phone and she seems so happy and together, she reminded me that we are rapidly becoming adults. But then we laughed so hard at a stupid joke I had to sit down and completely forgot about being grown ups.
And then there is Dip Girl, half way around the world and playing phone tag; but ceaselessly there. 
Now I don't claim to be best friends with all of my sisters. There are some who I flat out dislike. But there is this web of amazing women who I know spreading across the globe. Whenever I think about them I am filled with hope that I will get to be a part of their lives for years to come.

I can't believe I am giving him this much energy.

Aka Pot meet out of touch kettle.

I have never liked Rush Limbaugh. There are many reasons but I won't get into them. But this week he said something that really upset me, not because I am liberal but because I am a woman who lives in modern America. This week he implied Michelle Obama is fat and unhealthy. Like her or not  agree or not he can go ahead and say what he wants about her she is a public figure. 
This is what he said: 
"The problem is, and dare I say this, it doesn't look like Michelle Obama follows her own nutritionary, dietary advice. ...I'm trying to say that our First Lady does not project the image of women that you might see on the cover of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue[.]"
Now the part of that statement that upsets me the most is the part that people aren't talking about. It doesn't have anything to do with Michelle Obama, I would like to think I would be just as upset if he had substituted Sarah Palin or Christine O'Donnell . The part that is upsetting is that he implies that healthy women look like the women on the cover of Sports Illustrated. They don't, the average BMI in last years Sports Illustrated swimsuit addition was under 17. (For those of you that don't know that is underweight bordering on dangerously so. So you know the opposite of Mr. Limbaugh.) This is what makes me ill. That men anywhere, especially those with a microphone are that out of touch with reality. Men in fashion who object to having to put *gasp* women with healthy BMI's in their clothes don't claim they are healthy, they claim it is art. Mr Limbaugh is not claiming that these models are beautiful, or that they wear a swimsuit well, he is claiming that they should be held up as a model of health. Living with fifty other women you see what eating disorders do to people and if the image of health is a woman who is starving herself what are we telling girls we are going to continue to do this to generation after generation.
I am frustrated with myself that I am not more articulate, because I feel as if I could write pages about sexism and image and media and the way women see themselves. But I am so upset that some big fat jerk thinks that anyone who doesn't look like a swimsuit model is fat and therefore that I am fat makes me want to scream "shut up lard butt" like some eight year old. I know for him it is just one more thing to get people riled up about. But to me it is the sorority sisters who was addicted to drugs (mostly legal) to stay thin, the friend who planned meals around purging, the women with lung cancer who couldn't quit smoking because they were afraid to gain weight, the girl down the hall who had a heart attack because of anorexia, the sister who defines herself in beauty, the gym addicts and girls who fear food. And me who could never live up to what sports illustrated thought was beautiful so I took it out on myself and those scars won't fade. For us we see a woman with a healthy attitude towards food, who exercises, who has had two children  and who is lauded as beautiful by designers.   
I know Rush probably didn't think about this when he was making these statements. He probably didn't mean to imply that ninety percent of women are unattractive. But that is why he doesn't deserve consideration when it comes to women's beauty or health. I have never been so happy not to have a radio.

Plus I think most women would prefer vogue anyway.

 

Oh and what I wouldn't give for her arms.

   

If cupcakes don't have frosting they're automatically breakfast food.

Breakfast...

Today was one of the best Valentine's days I have ever had. Mostly because no one cared that it was Valentine's day. I got cards and candy from home which made me feel loved and appreciated but that was about the extent of it. (Including a box of see's which has been throughly appreciated, especially by the dog who dragged it off the counter and ate a significant portion of it. She is still in trouble but we were glad it was just toffee and not the dark chocolate foil covered hearts because that might have done real damage. Those she buried in our beds- it was really a thoughtful gift.)The thing about Valentine's Day is that mostly I don't care. Some people love it- probably because they are in a relationship, and some people hate it. It is amazing the passion some people put into hating this day, and the thing is they always come off jealous, like if they were in a relationship they would be in the other camp with hearts and flowers sending cupid grams to people. My feelings about Valentine's day has a lot of similarities to my feelings about the Valentine's bouquets you see at grocery stores: anyone can do it and it takes no thought, it is there out of obligation not real love; but I understand the purpose.

Valentines day in law school
Chocolate is always good
and no worse from Grace's ware

Yesterday I make coco-pink cuplets, which are a family recipe for chocolate cake that isn't too sweet which you then top with nuts and chocolate chips instead of frosting. This makes them faster, easier, better to transport and (in my humble non-frosting liking opinion better) plus as my roommate likes to say without frosting they are just muffins and therefore breakfast food.
So my day dawned with coffee and "muffins" for breakfast. Then I step outside and the sun is shining and it is in the 60's. I laughed with glee at the warmth. I had to call people to share my joy. (Honestly this is what makes east coast winters livable, there is a day in the spring where you feel warm again and you actually appreciate the sun. Living in California  you never really marvel in how wonderful it is to have a sunny day.) Then after class I got empanads and gossiped with Hotlanta. We appreciated that point in the semester where you know what you are doing and what to expect but life hasn't become too crazy.
 Really a wonderful day.        

Thunder Snow

Beautiful or a death trap?

It is a real thing, I swear. I didn't know it but you can have a thunder storm with snow. Winter weather this year has not approached the craziness of last year and what people who were in DC call "snowmageddon" but it has been a little stressful for little ole coastal me.
Last Tuesday, the day before our big job fair, we had an ice storm and while taking the garbage out I slipped on our front steps and landed on my right arm. I scared the dog with my scream and spent a few hours wondering if I should go to the hospital. Thankfully I am a south paw, although we lefties use our right hands much more than the average right-y uses their left. (for example because of a lack of left handed scissors at my public elementary school I cut with my right hand, even with knives which is weird.) Also importantly for a job fair, we shake hands with our right. (I nearly cried every time someone shook my hand too tight.) Also my lack of range of motion made it really difficult to dress myself. Something that played out as a bit of a comedy of errors as my roommate and I tried to decided what to wear for the job fair.

Our back yard.

My injuries led a friend from home to observe that I may want to choose where I live based on how likely I am to get hurt, given my general klutziness.   
This weeks weather was less dangerous, but more mystifying. Wednesday brought us the previously mentioned "thunder-snow" a whopping seven and half inches of it, and nearly twenty-four hours without power. The loss of power was difficult to deal with. I could read my books as long as the sun was out but once it got to dark there wasn't much I could do. It is do difficult to balance a twenty-five pound law book and take notes by flash light, plus the reading is just not lively enough to keep me engaged in the dark (well except for criminal law, but no one wants to be reading about rape and murder in a cold house with the lights out.) So I caught up on sleep and read a bit of "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo" which is way too good. Honestly law school is getting in the way of my real reading.
So now I sit trying to focus, you can see how well that is going, knowing that all of the school we missed in the last couple of weeks will have to be made up, and thinking snow days must be a lot more fun when you are a kid, but I wouldn't know because where I grew up it is currently seventy two degrees and sunny as my father likes to remind me... I am not jealous at all.

Grace doing a better job braving the snow than I did

How quickly everything stays the same.

I am back at school, back around my friends, and it is really good. I like my classes this semester. Mostly I am astonished at how quickly we all fall back into the same routines we had before break. How the time away falls away and everything is the same. In some ways it is refreshing. A semester in I know what I am doing, or at least I can fake it and not make a fool of myself. It is hard to believe I am just over a sixth of the way through law school. On the one hand I know it is going to fly by. I know one day I will look back and think, jeez that was a blink. At the same time there are moments where the amount of time it will take to do this feels impossible to span. Moments when the sheer volume of what I have to get through is drowning.
Those are the moments when I go running. I feel very embodied when I run, like I exist only in that moment and the rest doesn't matter. Or I run away. Like this weekend when I ran away to Virgina, to exist apart for reality, and just escape. Moments where nothing mattered except feeling loved and supported around people who leave me feeling confident in myself and the future.

And when reality strikes again, well then I just remember what my dad taught me- there is only one way to eat a whale, one bite at a time. 

Home

Well I am back in DC, technically Maryland, but well you get the point. I meant to write some during vacation but that, along with a slough of other things, didn't happen. This Christmas will certainly be remembered, but for all the wrong reasons.
Thomas Wofle was right, you can't go home again. The vestiges of your former self, which live in foggy memories and haunt the walls of your childhood home are phantoms, reaching out to you with a hope they cannot fulfill. They leave you lost, lonely, and mean; searching dusty tomes for an artifact to reassure you in your future or stabilize the foundation from which you grew. Ultimately you are left unfulfilled, having unearthed more weaknesses then you care to acknowledge. And still it pulls on you calling for you to stay, to hold onto that fuzzy version of your past self that never really existed.
I thought about running away, frequently, over the break. Getting in a car or on a plane and leaving it behind, the debt, the responsibility. It is a silly dream I know, leaving would make things infinitely more complicated. It is the spirit of American wanderlust in me, I guess, but I know it isn't a viable option. (Just as much as I know the price of the cheapest one way ticket from IAD to De Gaulle on most days.) If I were living in a Russian novel Paris would be my Moscow. I love stories about the post-war expat community in the city about artists and poets and the family they formed there. I have been to modern Paris and I know that Montmartre doesn't look like it did fifty years ago. That the place I imagine doesn't exist and probably never did, it is probably the musings of the romantic in me I have been trying, unsuccessfully, to kill for far to long. I still love the city though, every time I am there I understand why it is the French have such an aversion to work. It would be a lovely life, sitting by the Seine writing, painting, drinking wine and eating cheese. The piece of me that loves Pacific avenue and local bands and feels guilty for not becoming the type of lawyer that defends indigenousness peoples from huge multinational corporations and the ill will of their government wants to run away, to live that life. I am not that person, I don't wander, I plan. I will have my Juris Doctorate mere months after my twenty-fifth birthday.  At least here I know what my role is. Law school is terribly isolating, piercingly difficult and at times painful in the myriad of ways it makes me feel like an idiot but I know who I am and what I am supposed to do. I know I am capable, and that I have the wonderful support I need to do it. Just because you can't go home again doesn't mean it's not there waiting, changed, rough around the edges but there none the less.