labor day

Hopefully, everyone received an actual day off yesterday - not just a Biglaw day off, which means you still work, only without a secretary or cafeteria.

I spent the long weekend on Fire Island with Kathy and the kids, closing up our cottage and visiting a few houses which could be options for next year, should we be able to continue to have a summer place there.  I spent a lot of time thinking about my own labor, on this day devoted to the contributions of laborers, and what short- and long-term work-related plans might look like. 

(the Cherry Grove ferry dock)

london, ten years later - Part 1 (or, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?)

Earlier this month, I tagged along on Kathy's business trip to London and Munich.  When I was an undergraduate, waaaaay back ten years ago, I studied English Lit in London for a summer (which yes, was a strange option for a Math major, but it was my way of reconciling what I was good at (math) with what I loved (Virginia Woolf and Shakespeare)).  Because she was there on business, I had a lot of time to bop around on my own.  The first day, I slowly made my way from the City of London to Bloomsbury.  When I studied, this is the area of town where I lived.  I knew where my dorm was, but this was not actually the target of this trip.  Instead, I was trying to find Virginia Woolf's house in Bloomsbury.

When I went to London to study, I met a group of women, at least one of whom has remained a lifelong friend.  One of my most vivid memories of that trip was sitting in her dorm room one afternoon talking about why we came.  All of us had chosen, rather than getting a summer job or banging around East Lansing, to pack ourselves up, spend a bunch of money, and go to London for the summer with a bunch of strangers.  The love of literature alone is generally not enough to send someone on that type of journey, and we were no exception.  The question posed, then, was whether we were running away from something or running to something.  For me, it was a bit of both.  I felt a little lost, as I have felt for much of my life.  I wanted a break from my family, my rather intense group of friends, and I wanted the chance to push myself out of my comfort zone a bit and live with anonymity and autonomy.  I wanted, in a way that only a 20 year-old with a certain disposition can, to find myself.  (Of course, in an environment where someone made me breakfast and dinner 5 days a week and planned fun outings to Vita Sackville-West's gardens and The Globe.)

And so, ten years ago, I was jogging in a park in Bloomsbury at noon on a Sunday.  As my sweet, sheltered, midwestern self was rounding a corner, I saw something I had never seen before (or since, for that matter). I saw a guy tying off his arm and shooting something into his vein with a needle.  In the middle of a park.  In broad daylight.  On Sunday.  I tried to act like I hadn't seen anything, but when I reached the next exit, my legs carried me right on out of that park.  One block later, I was face-to-face with Virginia Woolf's house.  Since I was, at the time, reading Mrs. Dalloway and living in London, this seemed rather serendipitous to me.  I don't know why, but I had a sense of being in the right place at the right time.  I felt found.  The moment was not exactly life-changing -- I was still me.  But it did create some subtle shift, or opening, which allowed me to recognize things about myself that I had previously ignored.  It was like someone said to me, remember why you're here.

So that's why, when I arrived in London, I set out to find Virginia Woolf's house.  I figured that if her ghost (or at least her house) gave me a nudge then, she could give me a nudge in the right direction now.    After about 45 minutes of aimless wandering, just when I was about to give up, I came across this:

promises, promises

I really should stop promising things, like daily blog posts, publicly.  I should just promise them to myself, so you all don't know how terrible I have been doing at living up to such promises.  I have actually been having all-around motivation problems lately.  Yesterday, I did nothing much but lie in bed, finish my novel, and read the introduction to Beowulf in the Norton Anthology.  How productive.  I could blame my lack of motivation on the recent heat wave, but I think actually it's more the internal desert that is resulting in my failure to follow-through, given that it was (thank god) in the 70s yesterday.

So that leaves me here.  In my last, but not-so-recent post, I mentioned that I haven't been doing well at growing anything but gourds.  The one volunteer tomato plant that I couldn't bear to rip out, and instead moved to a pot on the deck, has actually begun to produce several hard green balls which will eventually be tomatoes that we can actually eat.  The rest of the garden, not so much.  For those of you keeping track at home, that means that my only two successful vegetables were a gourd I did not plant and do not necessarily want, and a tomato plant which I did not plant, but do want.  Everything I have intentionally tried to grow has been floundering under the onslaught of slugs, heat, lack of proper soil, and squirrels.

I realize I have gotten into the rather annoying habit of seeing my garden as a metaphor for the rest of my life, but I'm going to indulge this habit once more.  In case you were paying attention, I took the GRE a few weeks ago, shortly before my trip abroad.  I did.... fine.  I guess.  I did well, if you look at the raw numbers.  I did not do as well as I wanted to, or as well as I thought I would based on the practice tests.  Everyone who I actually tell my score to has been very nice and reassuring that it's a good score, but that does not seem to help me much.  The score has created room for all manner of self-doubt.  Should I go to graduate school, really?  Do I still want to go to graduate school?  What if I don't get in anywhere, then what?

I look at the people around me who have those life-long dreams, and am so envious I can barely stand it.  We have a friend who owns the sandwich shop in town.  She said to me that when she was in sixth grade, she had to write one of those "what I want to be when I grow up" essays.  You know what she said she wanted to do?  Own a sandwich shop.  When I attempted a similar exercise in sixth grade, you know what I said?  Nothing.  I sat there wringing my hands until it was time for math class, and had to take the assignment home.  I stayed up half the night worrying about what I was going to be when I grew up, and finally wrote "actress" or something, for lack of a better idea.  And so, for the two of us, not much has changed.  We are both living our dream, such as it is.  She is running her sandwich shop, and I am wringing my hands.

I am also, however, cultivating my volunteer tomatoes with care.  I told you I was, annoyingly, going to look at the garden as a metaphor for life, yet again, and here it is:  All of the things I have tried so hard on, are floundering.  And yet, still little miracles have popped up while my back has been turned.  I have Kathy, I have a place on the beach for the summer.  I have horseback riding lessons, which bring me joy.  I have useless but funny-looking gourds, and tomatoes volunteering to fill in where the intentionally planted ones are failing.

dead things, mikey, dead things

Not the kind of dead things that these guys found:

(The Goonies)

But instead, the kind that are all around my yard.  While I have been enjoying myself on the beach on Fire Island, or at least sitting in the office studying for the GRE, summer has arrived.  With summer, comes heat, and with heat, comes dead flowers.  All those pretty spring blooms on my flowering shrubs have been replaced by this stuff:

As a result, just as it heats up into the eighties, I have to dead head and make a date with the hedge trimmers.  I tried to ignore this chore, until I was reminded by A Way to Garden that if you wait too long to prune, you risk ruining next years blooms, as the buds will already have formed.

seventeenth percentile

The time has come for me to start studying for the GRE.  I started reading through my GRE book yesterday, and discovered (to my horror) that they are changing the test in August of 2011.  I would rather NOT do some crazy new test that I can't prepare for, so I am going to have to take it by July.  Which actually is pretty good timing, IF I start studying now.  Good thing I looked at the book, huh?

In case you have not applied to grad school recently, the GRE has three sections: writing, math, and verbal.  The math and verbal are basically like harder versions of the SAT.  The writing is some kind of crap like nothing I have ever seen before.  The writing prompts are not really writing prompts at all, it's just some crazy statement, and then you are supposed to "discuss."  I am sure there is some kind of formula for scoring well on them, like there were for the issue spotting essays when I took the bar, I just have to learn the system.

Anyway, I took the practice test today, and holy crap.  I scored in the 43rd percentile for math and verbal, and in the SEVENTEENTH percentile on the writing.  Apparently, my gut feeling was correct and I have no idea what they are looking for when they tell me to "discuss" a statement.  But the seventeenth percentile for writing is not so great for someone who wants to get into an English program, is it?  This is the percentage of GRE test takers that scored higher on the writing section than I did:

83

Just in case the full impact of being in the seventeenth percentile didn't hit you the first time.

the next 12 months

(contemplating life on the roof of a hotel in NYC, many months ago)

The severance package offered by my firm gives me a year's worth of (significantly reduced) compensation and health insurance.  That will take me through March of 2012.  I can't really afford to go back to school without some funding, and I am not willing to completely finance more education with debt, the way I did with law school.  The timing should work well in one sense, because I will find out what my offers are with respect to school at just about the same time that my severance money will run out.  And at that point, I will have to actually earn some money.  This, of course, panicked me.

tombstones

I have two deal toys.  Actually, I have one.  I have one deal toy, and one award from Legal Aid.  And a paperweight. 

In case you don't know, a deal toy is a little trophy that you get when a deal you work on closes.  They are also called "tombstones," I guess because of the typical shape?  Or maybe because by the time the deal closes, you wish you were dead.  Anyway, a deal toy usually has the name of the client, the name of the firm and the amount of money that the deal was worth written on it somewhere (which is why you don't see a picture of my real deal toy, just the stock image below).  Usually they are made of some kind of acrylic or Lucite and are kind of ugly.  Lawyers and investment bankers collect them over the course of their career and put them on a shelf in their office (or more than one shelf, depending) to show what a hot-shot they are.  Not all the lawyers on the team get them though -- usually they leave out the junior associates.  This is how the really important lawyers show juniors that they are fungible.  Which is why, over the course of three years, I earned only one.  And an award from Legal Aid for a pro bono case I worked on.  And a paperweight.

(deal toy image via the WSJ)

 

born again

If all change is a "little death," there is also a little birth.  It being Spring, and given my New Year's Resolution (number one) that seems appropriate.  A piece of us dies, but a new piece also comes into existence.  And that is why, today, on the day that I gave notice at work, I think I feel so light and so happy.

(via)

To be honest, I expected to have feelings more associated with the death.  I expected fear, and yes, some grief.  Instead, I felt feelings I associate more with birth (like joy, and relief -- although I suppose that feeling could accompany either transition).  There was a little fear as I walked into the office of the Director of Attorney HR, and again as I walked in to speak with one of the co-chairs of my department, a woman I have a lot of respect for.  I have spent weeks agonizing with Kathy over the right way to say what I wanted to say, the way to spin it that would burn the fewest bridges and maintain these relationships, in case I change my mind and want to come back.  In the end, what won out was the simple truth.  I simply told them the Plan.

secrets

 

I found out some more information for one of the steps in my grand master plan yesterday.  It's not exactly what I hoped for, but it will help.  But this kind of thing is why I'm not saying exactly what the grand master plan is yet.

 

Yesterday, Kathy and I started talking about the grand master plan with the kids.  They asked if it was a secret, so we had to explain the nature of uncertainty, and why grownups don't like to share their plans with the world right away, necessarily, when they aren't sure it's all going to work out.  I am not sure they got it.  I'm not sure I get it.  Why is it that it is so scary to let people in on things that might not exactly, precisely, work out how you hope or plan?  Is it scary for everyone, or just for me?  I don't know. 

 

marinade

This morning, I made a marinade for the pork loins we'll be having for dinner.  It consists of this:

3/4 white onion, chopped
1 tsp black pepper
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp Allspice
1/2 tsp ground thyme
1 tsp sugar
1 Tbsp Worcestershire sauce
1Tbsp water
2Tbsp vegetable oil
Dash hot red pepper flakes

I blended it all up with my immersion blender until it was a disgusting paste, and spread it over the meat, which I then covered and put back in the fridge for the day.  Kathy's going to brush it off with a pastry brush before grilling it tonight.  This is what it looks like now:

I'll let you know how it goes.

I've been home from work for a few days, sick.  I'm going to go into the office later this afternoon, then try to resume normal life.  The time off sick has given me time to consider what it is I'm going to do with my life, given this post from last week.  After thinking, and researching, and talking with Kathy, I think I've actually come up with a plan.