Things I'm Pissed About

1. The weather. It's cold and raining/snowing, and it's dark and gloomy outside. Bad weather always deteriorates my mood. I'm ready for spring.

2. Not sleeping. I've been up since 4am. Enough said.

3. Jerk-off lying bastards. After I was lied to about how my former firm had already replaced me, seeing the request for resumes on the job website. Under this same category, searching through all of the internship opportunities in government, and finding that 85% of them have already hired for summer.

4. Crappy-ass school. Many reasons for this one, but today it's because Crappy-ass school curves at a 2.6, thereby automatically excluding me from eligibility of a multitude of jobs, just for going to this school. The remaining government jobs require a minimum 3.0 gpa. That's actually below the curve at some schools. I might have been able to get away with using my grad school gpa (which is a 3.9), if the internships weren't actually for law students. There's no way they'll even consider me.

5. Crappy-ass people at the law school. I finally put earphones on in the library today. There's one person in particular whose voice I can't stand. Mostly because she's completely phony, and often rude, but also because her voice is just plain annoying. So is her laugh. She makes me want to bitch slap her with my laptop.

That's just the tip of the iceberg. I'm going back to studying now, then I'm taking a nap.

Ice

We got hit with an ice storm today. Not a terrible one like we had a few years ago where the entire city was out of power for nearly a week. But it got us dismissed from school early, of which I'm a big fan, considering I hadn't finished my reading for International Trade, and even though I still had an hour to get it done, it wasn't high on my list of things I wanted to do.

So I ice skated my way back to my car, headed to the grocery store to get stuff for dinner (since my dinner plans with girlfriends had been canceled), and came home for some extra snuggling with Cora and Husband. However, Cora wasn't up for much snuggling. She's been extra gremlin-esque today, squalling at me most of the day. We took a nap together, and then she woke up literally screaming at me. I tried feeding her, and she was too pissed. After being unsuccessful at soothing her, finally Husband took her so I could finish my nap. I slept for four hours! I realized when Husband woke me up for dinner (which he'd made while I was asleep) that I've caught Cora's cold. Fantastic.

Anyway, Evidence is canceled for tomorrow, I'd intended on skipping Italian anyway, so I'm taking a full "ice day" and skipping Int'l Environmental Law. It might be canceled, but I doubt it. I feel slightly guilty for skipping, since I skipped on Tuesday, and I'll be skipping again the day before spring break, but oh well. I'm sick, I need to rest, and walking 10 minutes to the law school for just one class, in really cold weather, is not my idea of resting.

Saturday, we're going to a basketball game in the afternoon and then I'm hosting a bridal shower for a friend who's getting married. It's not very traditional, it's more like pre-gaming for the bachelorette party. I baked two penis-shaped cakes this morning, and tomorrow I'm going to make the frosting and ice the cakes. Fun times. If I'm not dying of whatever funk my kid gave me, of course. She had it for two days, I hope my recovery is so quick!

Job hunting

I mailed out seventy resumes last week, with cover letters written specifically for each firm/area of specialty. I've already started getting the rejection letters. At least it isn't personal; they all say, oh sorry, your resume looks great and we would have interviewed you, but we already filled our positions. Good to know that if my previous employer hadn't dicked me over, I might have had a chance of finding a job. Now it's almost March and most places have already hired.

I just called our state's Dept. of Economic Development, located 25 minutes away in the state capital. They have a division of international trade, and I'd really like to intern there, but that's apparently placed through the governor's office. We have a new administration this year (thankfully), but I don't know if they have the funds for the internships, if they're paid. Also, the local world trade center has a part-time unpaid internship, which would make for a fun, although rather unproductive, summer. And my writing club's instructor said he would check around for me as well. He found two of my classmates jobs last summer, I'm hoping he might be able to help me out.

Anyway, I just wish I didn't have to waste so much time looking for a job when I need to be studying. There won't be much updating going on here thanks to my tax final on Wednesday, Italian midterm next week and desperate attempts at catching up with the rest of my homework. Not to mention my graduate school comps studying, of which I'm terribly behind. Oh yeah, and Cora was sick last week and I didn't sleep for two days straight. Then we had family in town this weekend and the Barrister's Ball. It just never slows down! Maybe I deserve a summer of part-time interning.


Cora and her friends, the little yellow ducks

New direction

Trying to figure out what to do with myself this summer. I'm papering the town with my resume, but I'm not sure I really want to work at another law firm. I think the collective number of assholes I've worked for, coupled with being dicked over by the only non-asshole lawyers I'd ever worked for, has left me with a bad taste in my mouth when it comes to law firms. All along I've wanted to get on at a corporation as in-house counsel, but those jobs are difficult to land. But maybe I don't want to actually practice law at all. Why not use my JD in a different way? I'm thinking something more along the lines of marketing and trade promotion. I have the hookup for a Dept of Commerce internship, I'm thinking of going that direction. That doesn't mean I won't still end up at a law firm, but I feel like I need to explore other options.

This summer, I want to concentrate on getting my language skills up to par in Italian, and brushing up on my very rusty Spanish. I still read Spanish with some element of fluency, but my oral and listening skills are embarrassingly bad. My high school Spanish teacher would be ashamed. I think it's time to stop talking about a career in the international sector, and start making it happen. That may very well require moving, and that's a discussion we'll need to have over the next year and a half.

It might do me some good to get out. I've never lived anywhere else. We almost moved to Chicago three years ago for law school, but I decided to stay. I'm not sure if that was a mistake or not. I loved my graduate program, but honestly, I don't feel I got my money's worth with my legal education. While I've had some really good professors (and some really crappy ones), there have been many disappointments. A lack of opportunities, especially, and a lack of courses I wanted to take. Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if I'd made different choices. We probably wouldn't have Cora, unless Husband could have gotten a really good job in Chicago to make up for the increase in cost of living. While most of his family is in Chicago, they're mostly in the suburbs, so we'd either have lived there and commuted, or we wouldn't have had a support system so close as we do now. Also, I probably would have frozen to death. But it would have been an adventure. I just thought there would be a job for me here, and now I'm not so sure there will be. And I wonder if I'd be selling myself short to settle for a job in insurance defense, or family law, or medical malpractice, when what I really want to do is work in international trade.

And the grand total is...

$15,562.31.

Yup, that's the amount of our medical bills. We have just over $9,000 left to pay. I'm about to do our taxes, so we'll find out how much our refund will cover and how much overtime Husband will have to work to pay off the rest, since I'm no longer employed.

Shame I weren't one of the white-trash moms at High Risk Ghetto Clinic, unmarried, no income, Medicaid Card. It'd all be free. Sucks being middle class and expected to actually pay your bills because you choose to be a contributing member of society.

Storms

Crazy storms last night. I'm not generally bothered by them. I've been through two tornadoes, one which ripped through my high school my freshman year (see? prayers do come true). The second never actually hit the building I was in, but touched down nearby. We were there for a choir competition, and still performed after being on our knees, with our heads tucked between them for over an hour. (That was fun while wearing a skirt.)

But I realized that, now that I'm a parent, I should be a little more prepared for stuff like this. For instance, when they issued the tornado warning for our county at about 2am this morning, I decided to quickly change Cora's diaper and head downstairs to wait out the rest of the storm. No sooner had I gotten Cora's new diaper on, then we lost power. So, I'm trying to maneuver in the dark to get back to the living room to my cell phone so the light from the phone can light my way. I put Cora in the car seat and took her downstairs, then went about finding a flash light and battery-radio. Flash light was easy, it was already downstairs. Fortunately, Husband knew where it and the radio were (I was on the phone with him while he was at work). However, I felt guilty because Family Dog won't go downstairs (she'll go upstairs, but the stairs are narrow, and she's a chicken shit, so she won't go down them). I should have lead her around the house to the basement before it got really bad, I would have felt guilty if our house had storm damage and she could have been hurt. Anyway, we waited out the storm and it was fine. The tornado warning was lifted, and we went to bed, putting Cora in the bed with me in the co-sleeper, just in case we had to go back downstairs again. At about 4 am we had a horrible thunderstorm, which Cora wasn't pleased about. I'm not sure she was scared, but the thunder was so booming, it kept waking her up (and me too). So it was a long night. Husband had a meeting this morning, so he didn't get home until noon, after working a 12-hour night shift. Now I'm taking her with me to my Italian class, so he can get some sleep. She's been a gremlin all day, probably because she didn't get much sleep last night.

Anyway, I've decided we need to be more prepared for things like that. Batteries in the flashlights, and the kinds of flashlights that plug into the wall and will turn on when there's no power (so there's no fumbling in the dark). Also, my mom lives in a mobile home in the county south of ours, so I was worried about her. She had her home moved last year, and this new place doesn't have a plan for such things. Her old place had a church across the street they were supposed to go to, but nothing now. So we need to figure out a plan for her too.

Planning... what a mom thing to do, geez.

Sad

This evening, my teenage neighbor shot himself. The house across the street is roped off by police tape, and the police are still working the crime scene. They believe it was suicide, however. The kid apparently had a lot of problems, but I never thought he was in that bad of shape. He seemed like a normal brooding teenager to me, with parents who don't understand him and don't approve of his choices. The interactions I'd witnessed between him and his father, a rather religious man, were tense, but not extreme or even out of the ordinary. The kid would say things to piss off his father, like telling him he was going to a strip club when asked where he was going. He had friends over frequently, he wasn't a loner. I'm just shocked, and sad, for that family, and for a young man who died so needlessly.

I remember thinking when Cora was having surgery, if that was all the time we got to have with her, at least we'd made the most of it. We'd loved her, spent quality time with her, and had been thankful for every moment. But I can only imagine what the boy's parents are going through now. Going over the last few conversations, remembering what was the last thing they'd said to him. Thinking of all the fights and unkind words exchanged.

It's hard to look at my little bunny, now staring wide-eyed at her friends the rotating yellow ducks above her swing, and know that someday she'll be a young woman and we probably won't like each other very much. We won't understand one another, and we'll probably say mean things to one another. But I can only hope that, unlike that poor young man, Cora will never get to such a bad place that living no longer feels like an option. She may not want to talk to me, but I hope she'll always have someone to talk to. I just wish my young neighbor would've had someone to talk to.

Snoring away

Glad someone's getting some rest. Not me. Little Gremlin is a growing girl, she's almost 10 pounds now. She decided she needed food every three hours last night, so I'm pooped.

I had two doctor's appointments this morning. One for a general physical and get an order for lab work (all that cholesterol and thyroid checking and whatnot), and then to talk about birth control. I had a script for birth control already but when I went to fill it, it wasn't covered by my insurance and it was going to be nearly $60. Hell no. So I went to student health to see if I could get one of the student packs. Well, there isn't one that I can take that's in a student pack. Ugh. Anyway, I did have a good conversation with the nurse practitioner though, and she wrote me a prescription for a medication to increase my milk production. I told her we couldn't afford a lactation consultant, so she said if I wanted to make an appointment soon I could bring Cora in and she'd help me with some technique. So that was nice. However, I just can't have unprotected sex without ending up with Irish twins.

I then dropped in on the career services dean. I sent her an e-mail, but I wanted to talk to her in person. She was busy and tried to blow me off, but then I started tearing up and she took a few minutes to chat. Too late for OCI, but I can send my resumes to those firms myself and hope they'll take the time to interview me in their offices. I've already gone through all the resources her office provides, and there's always grants for public interest work and the drug prosecution program. I'm not really interested in either, but we'll see. She mentioned she could go with me to talk to the firm, but agreed that they probably won't be up-front and honest about the reasons. Also, she said I might not want to burn those bridges. Sometimes those decisions are made by one or two people, and the rest of the partners find out only after the fact. But honestly, after getting treated like this, even if it is only by one or two people, I don't want to go back. What they did might not be actionable, but it's still completely unprofessional and shitty.

Mixed feelings on the whole thing. On one hand, I'm excited about the prospects of a new job, meeting new people, learning new things in a different area of law. On the other hand, I really liked what I was doing and the firm, and am sad to leave there. This feels as bad as when your boyfriend breaks up with you. You're now free to hook up with other guys, but you still got your heart broken. Sucks.

I guess I'd better get to resume printing and cover letter writing. I have to go talk to another dean tomorrow and see if I can postpone my tax final, yet again. I didn't get any studying done this weekend since I was too busy desperately making contacts for jobs. Again, sucks.

Freaked out

I don't know what to do. Apparently, I don't have a job anymore.

I turned in my badge and key card at the office Christmas party just after the baby was born. I had told them I would be back to work in February. I went to visit this week and again reiterated that. Well, I just got an e-mail from the office manager saying they didn't think I was coming back and that she thought they had already made offers to other people. So I e-mailed the partner in charge of hiring, and he said they've made an offer to one person, they needed four for the summer, and he would "let me know" if I had a job. WTF? I didn't interview anywhere else because I thought I already had a job. They made me to believe I already had a job. I can't believe this. I don't know what to do. I passed on both sets of OCI's, I haven't sent out any resumes. It's so late in the year, I don't even know where to begin to look.

I'm just so upset. I don't know what I did wrong. They obviously don't want me back, otherwise, there wouldn't be a question about it. There's never been a question about the other clerks returning. I can't believe this. I need the money, even if it isn't great money. And I really wanted to keep working there. I like working there. I feel like they used my "maternity leave" as an excuse to kick me out the door without actually letting me go. But if they didn't want me back, why didn't they say so in the fall, when I could have sought other opportunities? What am I supposed to do now?

I'm terrified I won't be able to find anything this late in the year, and we definitely need the money. We're still struggling to pay off the medical bills, they were higher than I thought they would be. I just don't know what to do. I'm so angry and frustrated, and hurt. I don't need this right now, I really don't.