Solitude

Want to freak yourself out a little?  Google “Elisa Lam” and then stay in a hotel all by yourself for three nights.  (This is not meant to make light of this poor girl’s fate.  But the video makes me pretty spooked about getting on the elevator all by my lonesies.)

It doesn’t help that the only tv shows on anymore appear to be either loathsome reality tv (I know you probably like it – I love you all regardless of your tv choices, but I just can’t deal unless it’s Duck Dynasty) or crime shows. Watching Criminal Minds is a virtual guarantee that I will be up, blinking at the ceiling late into the night, convinced every creak is the sound of someone with a hotel master key sneaking into my room.  I guess I’ll read The Atlantic Monthly and write a blog post instead of drowning my lonelies in television.

(Am I the only woman who checks under the bed, behind the shower curtain, and in all the closets before deadbolting herself into her hotel room when she’s alone?)

I am in Tampa, taking this lovely little nightmare known as the bar exam.  Taking a bar in February is an odd thing – it’s either practitioners like me, seeking a license in another state and pissed that we have to go through this again when we have infinitely better things to do.  Or it’s . . . people who failed July.  We make for an odd mix of polar opposite levels of tension – we have the mildly annoyed, and the teeth-chatteringly tense, and nary a one in-between.

This morning’s essays were relatively easy, the afternoon’s multiple choice was stupid hard because it was poorly written.  (All of our study guides indicated that the Florida multiple choice, written by a collection of volunteers, is very badly done and we shouldn’t stress over it too much, because there is only so much you can do in that situation.  Nice, huh?  It makes me weep a little, thinking of No Child Left Behind testing.  Our children are about to enter the public school system, and if my children have to go through the equivalent of what I’m doing here ALL THE TIME instead of actual schooling, I will scream.  I hate the thought of my kids studying to memorize a bunch of nonsense so you can pass a test about pineapples written by people who should NOT be writing tests. \endrant)

Tomorrow is the MBE – that big old, multiple choice, Multi State Bar Exam which is the exact same test I took in Alabama in July except I have to take it again with my butt in a seat located in Florida.  (It’ll be a different version of the test, but same idea.)  Six hours of filling in bubbles with a Number 2 pencil, and then I’ll be out of the bar-exam-taking gig, hopefully forever.  Next weekend, the husband even threatens to take me out to dinner to celebrate. It ain’t no trip to Santa Fe, but I suppose it’ll do.  😉  Excepting a rockin’ good time at Chick Fil A on Saturday night (for the indoor play place, ever a hit with my children), we haven’t been out to eat a single meal in over ten days, and I’m proud of our restraint.  I think after this latest Florida adventure I’m due for a meal cooked by someone other than me.

(What I’d really like is a maid, but that’ll have to wait.)

I’ll report again once we’re all done and dusted.