Not Waving but Drowning*

I’ve gained weight, I’m doughy and pasty, I’m ill, my son’s birthday and Easter were days ago and I have posted nary a picture nor video nor update.  Must be exam time.  I don’t even want to tell you about the state of my house.  As soon as my last exam on Wed, I am scrubbing this little apartment top to bottom.  Living in filth and squalor makes me crazy, but I have to embrace it these couple times a year when life goes off the rails a bit.  Liam, the commando crawler, does a pretty good job of keeping the floor clean, at least.

Was taking a study break and reading on Corporette all about fashion for summer associates, faux pas (peep toed shoes!  Well I would never!  Though slipping your shoes off under your desk – that seems kind of human and normal to me, and any firm that wouldn’t offer you a job for doing that is kind of a wacky firm, I’d think).  I like the site, sort of, though fashion is just SO SHALLOW – I mean, fun and all, but leads to a lot of catty remarks, and a lot of poor financial choices these days, as so many people dress better than they can afford – but it’s also good not to make huge mistakes in the professional world of lawyering, in a recession, where people are looking for reasons to drop kick you and your resume to the curb.  In any case, the site is all – buy five or six suits – and – you should really invest in some nice stuff, to make a good impression, like some Diane von Furstenberg and Banana Republic.  And I’m like – REALLY?  You want me to buy a four hundred dollar suit?  FIVE four hundred dollar suits?  Plus the level of shoe and handbag that one must have to go with a four hundred dollar suit?  As a law student living on loans??  And we wonder why we have a credit card debt problem in this country.  Heaven’s sake.

But of course now I’m all nervous that my cheap (but cute!) Target work dresses are not flashy enough, and everyone at my new job will mock me.  Not to mention my purses – both of them TJ Maxx purchases that are fraying around the edges.  I’m embarrassed.

Last summer I worked in-house, which I know is a way different scenario.  Also, I was so pregnant I could barely fit through the door.  People give big old pregnant ladies lots of leeway in fashion – in pretty much everything.  But now I’m all aflutter that my colleagues at this summer associate job at a nice, medium sized Southern law firm are going to turn their nose up at my black sleeveless knee length dress with lime green cardigan combo, of which I was formerly so proud, and instead expect me to spend a third of my gross summer income on fashion.  We’d been hoping to pay for Jack’s preschool with that, but oh well.  I’ll just let Jack know he can’t go to preschool, because Mama needs a Coach shoulder bag, Nine West shoes, and a suit for each day of the week.

Well, I have three cheap suits, and was going to buy a nicer Ann Taylor one for court, but spending money makes my teeth ache, and we’ve spent a lot lately what with the Target work dresses and then the windshield replacement and the major splurge on family photos, not to mention renting two places all summer.  (And food – what is up with the cost of food lately?  I’ve cut meat almost entirely out of our budget, and yet still the grocery total climbs and climbs.)  Reading Corporette was probably a bad idea.

I have an exam tomorrow, Constitutional Criminal Procedure.  I’d better go sleep.  I’ll have nightmares about coworkers pointing and laughing at my Payless shoes and TJ Maxx bag, but I’ll try to overcome them by thinking of their credit card bills.

*This title refers to a poem that my professor loves and recites in class – to talk about the lack of duty a bystander owes to someone drowning, for you law students, present and former.  Since I’m drowning here – in work, in drifts of cat hair and piles of laundry, in exams, in stress, in an overabundance of everything but sleep – but often pretend like I’m waving, so as to look capable and “handling-it”, it made me think of the poem.  And I had no better title.  Gah.  Here is the poem.  Forgive my scatterbrain-ed-ness.

Nobody heard him, the dead man,
But still he lay moaning:
I was much further out than you thought
And not waving but drowning.

Poor chap, he always loved larking
And now he's dead
It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,
They said.

Oh, no no no, it was too cold always
(Still the dead one lay moaning)
I was much too far out all my life
And not waving but drowning.