Exams, Bouncy Seats, and “Genius Law Clerk” Earrings

Yesterday I took my seventh law school exam, the final one of my 1L year, and it was the worst, most ridiculous, dumbest hide-the-ball piece of nonsense I’ve ever seen.  It really ticked me off, but I’m over it now.  I never do post-mortems after exams (what did you get for #1?  b/c I did dormant commerce clause analysis, blah blah), but I did a bit after this one, because I just wanted to see if everyone else felt as blank and dumbfounded as me.  Anyway, everyone agreed it was a weird exam, so I’m shaking it off and moving on.  But I hate feeling dumb.  It reminded me of my MA program, in which I felt like I just couldn’t catch on, I was so unredeemably stupid, etc. etc.  I wonder how many more of these types of exams I’ll face in my next two years, because up til now they’ve been largely fair.  I think I’ve been spoiled.

On my way to said exam, I tripped in the street and when I reached out my foot to catch myself, got caught up in my flip flop and fell hard to my knees.  I obviously fall a little harder these days, and I ended up ripping the knees in my (borrowed!) pants, getting scraped and scabbed on my palms and knees both, and ripping off my pinky toenail (but the ginormous belly stayed safe!)  Awesome.  After the fall, I had some big style Braxton Hicks contractions that stayed with me throughout the exam.  They don’t hurt, really, your whole belly just goes hard – it feels like your muscles are (gently) contracting and you can’t release them.  However, they ticked off this baby, and he was stretching and punching and rolling to try to make his home be a little more squishy and roomy.  I spent most of the exam trying to poke his limbs back into the depths of my womb, lest they break out through the skin.  That, and the jokers in my exam room throwing stuff at each other and giggling and whispering (WTF?  Are we in high school??), did not help with the experience. It was not the best 3 hours of my life.

However.  Today is going MUCH better.  I feel like a rockstar, because I have cleaned out the depths of each of our five closets in order to do the Baby Clothes Shuffle.  My clothes have been shuffled to their own closet in the study, which smells of cat pee, so I’ve got to do something about THAT.  Jack and Angus (not his real name) now share the closet in Jack’s room.  I hung many more of Jack’s clothes, so that they can also share the drawers that Jack once dominated.  I got out the mobile, the baby bathtub, the playmat, the bouncy seat, the aquarium nightlight lullaby miracle thing of magic that helped Jack sleep in the early days, and the zillions of tubs of baby clothes.  I’m currently organizing them by size and season.  It’s pleasing work.  I cannot believe the size of these clothes.  Sometimes I’m a little frightened of having a child that small again, but I suppose Jack survived me the first time around, and I can only think 2 years of parental experience have improved my mothering skills.

This afternoon I’ll do some more nesting and go to the grocery.  Tomorrow morning I’m going to leave the house at 7am to catch the streetcar and see if I can make it to work by 8 . . . or if I can leave a little later . . . or how that whole deal will work, since I start next Monday.  CRIPES!  I am fully nervous about that, let me tell you, but I bought a few professional looking wrap dresses and pairs of nice flats from Target dot com, for the express purpose of faking courage.  Maybe I should get a haircut, too.  Theatre taught me that costume is important, so I’m clinging to my “She’s a Professional Lawyer in the Making” costume.  I even bought a pair of earrings that said “Genius Law Clerk” to me.  “Damn,” they’ll say, “that girl can’t write a memo to save her life, but she sure LOOKS good.”  (Except they won’t, instead they’ll say – “You havin’ twins er sumthin’?”, which is what every joker loves to say to me these days when they find out I have 2 months left before my due date.  Anyone hear echoes of Jack’s final months of gestation, and my attendant grumpiness?  Yeah.  I’ll be here all month.)

Well, lots to do in the next couple of days, so I’m off to do it.  🙂  Peace out –

the 2L mom of soon-to-be two!