Chipped Polish & Wornout Jeans

Fall has arrived, with weird hot and cold weather habits, and I am sitting here in my hoodie and jeans, sipping water, nibbling a nutrigrain bar, and listening to music. I realize that it has been well over two months since I last sat down at the laptop to write something for a post in this blog. I am ashamed. But I just haven't had much to write about really. Life has been boring and uneventful; all I've really done is some cleaning and work on applications for law school again. So here's watch you missed for the last two months:

The job market for law clerks and legal secretaries, which is pretty much the only reasonable paying job that a woman with a political science degree focused on pre-law and a year of law school under her belt is qualified for, is for crap. I know that is not an eloquent way to put it, but its the truth. I've called friends, family members, my doctor who has a whole family of lawyers, friends of my parents, and no one can afford to hire me. I've got a great resume (minus the lack of work experience), but I keep hearing the same thing over and over. My academics (minus last year) and extracurricular activities and skills make me marketable, but the economy makes me expensive apparently. Stupid economy, stupid job market, stupid times, my friends. So I am still jobless, despite all my attempts.

I am learning to code, and it's not as hard as I thought it would be. A lot of it is memorizing tags and where they belong, then common sense and trial and error to move and place things. Why am I doing this? Well, I got volunteered to build a website for my uncle's business, and, because it's family and there was a promise of a little fundage, I spent some of my amazon gift card money on two books on html and css. Becoming a code monkey, that's what I'm doing. I also got photoshop and illustrator, and I am attempting to learn to use them to make graphics. If anything I have managed to make something useful out of my free time.

I do believe that I have lost an inch or two in my hips because my size 13 jeans are just a bit droopy folks. My calves, oh my calves are a beautiful thing. They are tight and tones and strong. However, my midsection is still stubbornly refusing to shrink. (Well maybe it is and I just don't notice because I am angry with it for being so ridiculously chubby and slow to shape up) But I'm trying to be patient. As you know, patience in not and has never been one of my strong points. I am practicing portion control, and that's not easy. It is getting better because when I don't over eat I feel better and I'm getting to the point where I don't have to eat as much to be full. I am walking as often as possible, and jogging when I can. Lately the weather has been uncooperative and I've been kind of sick (weather change + Nic's allergies= no fun) But I am trying to get back on track.

After discovering the ridiculous amount of clutter stifling me in my little bedroom at Casa de 'Rents, I went on a cleaning spree. You see, we are finally going to begin the much anticipated remodel of the house, and its going to dominate my time. Walls are being repaired and painted, new wood flooring (no more carpet), new flooring in the bathrooms, new appliances and cabinets in the kitchen, and we are finally going to get the washer and dryer out of the kitchen area. That is all going to begin very soon, in fact, it will begin as soon as the small loan is processed, and that knowledge got me to thinking about my room, which was still full of boxes from my move back from L-Ville. I cleaned the room and started putting books away again, which is when I discovered that it was clear that my granddaddy had not anticipated the fact that I would be such a massive bibliophile when he built my bookshelf once upon a time. I had to actually redo the entire thing and store some books I never read, just to make room.

The only problem is that I will have to pack it all up again once I move out next year (Good Lord willing, I get into law school again). Which brings me to my final point. I am applying to only schools in TN, and hopefully I will get into the one in Nash-vegas so that I can either get into an apartment in the Boro or Nash-vegas instead of moving to Knox-vegas or Memphis; if this happens where ever I move will more than likely become a permanent residence for awhile, allowing me to stop being a nomad and settle into my own place. When this happens, I will get awesome cooking supplies, and I plan to start a cooking blog. I will still keep this one for personal blogging, but I will also run a blog devoted to my cooking adventures. Speaking of cooking, I think I am going to go have some fabulous tomato soup, now, out of a can of course.

Note from Nic: This blog is getting a fresh new look ASAP. It may stay black and white, but a new background and banner should be coming soon.

I am sitting here looking around at the boxes that hold my life. That's sounds funny, but its true. Exams are over, and I am packing up the apartment to move back to the Boro for the summer. My lease is up on the eighth, and I'm moving out either Wednesday or Thursday. Mama is drivin' up to help, which is awesome, especially since there is no way that all my junk is going to fit into one Blazer. I was going to move this afternoon, but the flooding happening everywhere makes that impossible. I'm not going to write about packing though. Instead I'm just going to do a stream of thought entry about all the things that have been on my mind, and maybe I'll throw in a brief note on my plans for the summer.

I am not the woman I was several months ago when I came to Louisville, and that is both a good and bad thing. Back in August when I arrived in L-ville I was wide-eyed, ambitious, and excited. Law school was an adventure I'd been looking forward to for a very long time. It became complicated the second day of orientation when I soon discovered that my accent was a great deal stonger than most of the people there, and I was definitely a little fish in a great big pond. I got the feeling I was out of place. And it was a brand new experience. I was two hundred miles away from everything thing I loved and everyone. It was frightening and exhilerating all at once. As an undergraduate I could handle most of my classes in my sleep, and I balanced everything relatively easily. I was a mock trial captain and a college senior facing three years of more work than I could imagine, but I could handle it. Law school isn't easy, not at all; I have to work three times as hard as I used to, and I was on my own. Living on my own is not the difficult part; its the being absolutely alone, isolated from everyone and everything I am close to, that made life unpleasant. Even Jake and I felt the strain, and at that point, our relationship was still going strong. In December, my grades were not great, and, I knew I was here for the next two years. Things weren't weren't smooth anymore. And then I thought they were getting better, and I was wrong. I don't have Jake anymore, and that breaks my heart; I threw myself into working, outlines, case briefs, and learning the law, anything to keep my mind off what I'd lost. It hasn't really worked, and now the semester is over. I am leaving my first year of law school, and I am not really going back to the Boro the same woman. I feel like I've lost some of my strength, some of my spark. I'm all jaded and even more cynical than I was when I came here. I've lost some of my confidence, some of what made me, Nic. This summer I hope I can get some of that back.

This summer I am also going to lose this weight. I looked in the mirror after my shower the other day, and my reflection made me want to cry. I'm fat, and its disgusting. This is not a "I hate the way I look cause I can't wear skinny jeans"; this is a "I've gotten so big that it's unhealthy and disgusting, and I have to do something about it" thing. I'm not saying that the break up caused the weight gain, but I really started to gain all this weight after it happened. I guess its because I had nothing to do but work; its not an excuse at all though. I shouldn't have let this happen to me. I should've kept in shape; I should've taken better care of myself. I was pretty much wallowing, and it does not suit me well. I'm angry at myself, and I'm disappointed in what I have done to myself. I have to fix this; I look terrible and feel just as bad. I can't stand it any more.

The idea for this summer is to catch up on my reading, do some writing, get a job for the summer in the Boro, work on jewelry, and practice with my camera. It's not exactly the summer I was so looking forward to when the semester started, but I will make the best of it.

It's been three weeks, pretty much, and I am finally getting into a rhythm. I have figured out how to manage all my work and my books are filled with brightly colored highlighter. I've got a study schedule that I try to stick to as best as I can. I've ordered a new laptop because there is something wrong with the screen of my current one. It's been a good one and has worked very well until now. I've got two blue/purple lines running down the screen, and shipping and repair will cost me more than its worth. Plus I can't be without my laptop for the week to two weeks for them to look at it and possibly determine that it can't be fixed. But the new one is completely customized with my free upgrades, and its super cute. I won't get it for a week or so, but my current lap top should last me until then. The hard part will transfering my notebook to the new one. Its a serious pain.

I am moving into my new apartment tommorrow afternoon, which is also a hassle. I finally got the apartment closer to campus, so I'm packing everything up, cleaning up the old apartment for inspection and moving fifteen minutes or so down the road. The new apartment is much nicer, even if its a bit smaller. I'm sort of excited about it, though the swapping the rent payments and making sure everything is straight money-wise is a royal pain.

I have tried to get ahead of the game with all my reading and briefing because it is a long weekend up ahead, and I would like some time to relax. It seems that I have just a little work this weekend because I don't have Legal Research for the next two weeks due to Lexis and West Law training, I've got almost all my Torts done for next week, BLS takes no time at all, and half my Property work is done. Contracts is the only class that I don't have my assignment for yet. That means that I can have Sunday off and part of Saturday as long as I work Friday night when I get back to TN and Monday night when I get back to my apartment, which I plan to do. Since Tuesday the 8th is my birthday, and I will be away from everyone, Jake and I are hopefully doing something Sunday. The family and I are doing things Saturday, or at least thats the current plan.

Other than some things I don't think I will talk about here, things have been going well for the last three weeks. I'm not behind in anything, though I do need to type some things up and fill in my notes. Those things won't take long really so I'm alright.

I am sitting here in my little apartment, next to a huge stack of very expensive textbooks, officially a law student. Thursday was the last day of orientation for the 1L students, and I went to pick up my massive stack of books. My books were contained in two boxes, and they are huge. My four main texts are the size of dictionaries; I also have a pocket version of Black's Law Dictionary and various smaller books. My first day of actual classes is tomorrow, and already I am covered in work to do. There are lots of cases to brief and pages to read, but I have divided everything up so that it will be manageable. I've bought all my supplies for class as well, like my pens, highlighters, and notebooks. Everything is set now, and as soon as I finish this entry I will be finishing up my work for tomorrow. I already started on it earlier.

I moved into the apartment, completely, as of today. I finally unpacked all my stuff and put it away, and I even made a pitcher of sweet tea; I believe that a place isn't home until there is a pitcher of sweet tea in your fridge. My apartment is a one bedroom place on the top floor of a building right in the middle of the hospital district in downtown. While living by myself is an adjustment, to be honest perhaps the biggest one is the fact that I live where there is a truck load of traffic, pun not intended. I'm not used to the noise outside really; every night is a struggle to get to sleep, but I'm slowly but surely getting better. Life up here is an adventure. I say up here, even though I'm not extremely far north because for the most part Southern accents are few and far between, and I've yet to get a decent glass of sweet tea except for the stuff I made tonight, which is really good. My own accent has been progressively stronger, and I think it is because I seem to be compensating for the lack of accent everywhere.

As for the plan I mentioned, I'm working on getting with it. I haven't bought a lot of junk food for the apartment, but one of my new problems is that I haven't found the gym close to here yet. There's a gym in the student activity center, but it would require me to stay on campus to use it. Since I live downtown there is really no place for me to safely go on a walk. When I finally get my TV and DVD player hooked up I can go back to my cardio work outs on DVD, which were working when I could do them. The Barrister Ball is in the spring, and I am determined to make myself less fat and jiggly by then. It's actually a good thing because it gives me even more motivation to keep up with my plan to get healthy.

Well readers, I better get to work. I have several more cases to brief and about 50 pages more to read.

So getting accepted to a law school is only half the battle. The harder part is paying for that education and getting everything settled. You see I have to look up student loans and scholarships, and I've already sent in my seat deposit. Law school is expensive, and I'm not sure how I will pay for it. I know that once I get out I will have a truck load of debt to repay, but I will come up with a way to handle it all. I have to. The tricky part is not going overboard; I don't want to be so far in debt that digging myself out becomes almost impossible. I don't like the idea of debt, though I know it's pretty impossible to avoid. At the moment, I only have one real payment to make, and that is the insurance on my blazer. Eventually I will be buyin' my own food again, more than I did when I was in college, and I will have to pay for room and board at Brandeis. I'm pretty sure that the days of living on my scholarship refund are over and done. I had to grow up sometime. I will need to look for work, possibly, though I'm not sure that I will be able to hold down even a part time job while in law school, especially during my first year, since I heard that in your first year they scare you to death with the amount of work.


Getting everything settled has been a challenge. I've had to set up two accounts so far, one for my student email and one for student housing, and I'm sure that I will have to do another before I even get to the campus. The moving in will be a pain because I will have drag all my stuff, at least the stuff I'm going to bring, across state lines to KY. Good thing I drive a mid-size SUV, I guess. I've been to Louisville twice, both times I was on a regionals trip with the mockers, those crazies who do Mock Trial at MTSU; I stayed in a hotel room and only went out to get food and to go to the courthouse for rounds. I've never actually looked around the city to see what is there. Not that I anticipate a lot of time to go out and do things.

Law school preparations are complicated.