happy holidays

I have a Christmas present for all of you:

http://transmogriflaw.typepad.com/transmogriflaw/

Please update your links when you get a chance. All further posting will be done from the new site.

maybe they should filter out a few phrases

Tonight I googled the phrase 'breast milk' for undisclosed reasons.

Normal links appeared, but in the sponsored links to the right, I saw the following:

Breast milk on eBay
Large selection of new & used. aff
Buy Breast Milk and Save!

Wow. eBay is really expanding these days.

We've got plenty of used breast milk here, packaged very nicely in landfill-expanding plastic. Foolish us for paying the garbage company to take it away when we could sell it on eBay!

clarification on dog bundles

Reader chickenmagazine's initial concern that the Red Wiggly Bundle of Love was, uh, one of two bundles belonging our dog made me laugh out loud, but I see her point. I mean, I suppose that could be an accurate description of male dog genitalia, although, as she said, ewwww.

So, for the record, my dog is female and now spayed. And I call her the RWBL because that's what she is. ALL of her, I mean.

I may be able to unearth some pictures of the snockered RWBL. Not taken by me, of course. I'm a Good Dog Owner (but I may have an evil twin).

the big operation

Our dog's reproductive future, or rather the lack thereof, has been secured. The Red Wiggly Bundle of Love went under the knife this week and returned home stoned to the gills.

I mean really, really stoned. Snockered. Talking with Jerry. She was swaying on her feet from the tranquilizers they'd given her.

Luckily I am a Good Dog Owner and so I would never, ever stick a pipe-shaped piece of rawhide in her mouth and tie a tie-died bandanna around her neck and take a picture. Oh no. No stoned dog humor around here, no siree!

I mean, really. What sort of dog owner would do that?

holiday parties

On Friday evening, my friends R. and M. threw their annual Screw You, Kringle Bastard! party, which is a Machiavellian, martini-enhanced version of a white elephant party.

The gift scheming generally goes on for hours, but by 10:45 Nathaniel was sound asleep on my husband's lap and we were not far from joining him. 10:45 represents the latest we have stayed out since he was born. Hoo-boy, do we live it up these days or what?

When we left, we had secured the following gift:

- Two (2) moderately bruised bananas.
- One (1) container of Fleishmann's margarine, slightly used.
- One (1) opened six-pack of Thomas's English muffins containing three (3) English muffins.
- One (1) bag of bagel chips, unopened.

I think the three missing English muffins were eaten by the Kringle Bastard.

mining my memory and coming up empty

I often scribble notes to myself. Generally these notes make sense both at the time I scribble them and then years later when I find them crumpled in the corner of forgotten bureau drawers and boxes.

Sometimes, however, the notes defy logical explanation. For example, the following, found scribbled on notepaper I'm fairly certain dates from the time I was living in Italy:

- bug-city girls
- Marilyn Monroe
- computer - Sai come ti voglio bene
- Tosca in morning

Heck if I know what I was on about. I'm not sure I knew when I wrote it, let alone now.

it's that time of year

I gained a bit on Monday, which means those of you of a more geeky persuasion now know how old I am. La la la, time marches on and all that.

But really, the time of year that it really is, and that's the most important, not any of this bit twiddling nonsense, is EXAM time. I say it in caps because boy does it feel like a caps-worthy occasion when you are a 1L.

Best of luck to all of you exam-takers. I would say I'm nostalgic for law school exams, but I'd be lying. Law school, yes. Exams, no. The best thing about exams is that they end and then you have that glorious period of time you'll miss tremendously when you're working: winter break.

You're almost there. Really.

back home after a wander

We're back home after a jaunt around southern California. Nathaniel met his great-grandmother and uncle for the first time, as well as two members of the baby explosion.*

Nathaniel was uninterested in the older babies (one four months, the other six). His interests these days still primarily center around Lefty and Righty, though he smiles a lot at the face that hovers above Lefty and Righty and that other face that seems to be around a lot but that's attached to the useless and nonproductive chest.

The older babies, though, both girls, were fascinated with him. The younger one was discomfited when she saw her mother holding Nathaniel and spent the rest of the evening glaring at him suspiciously. The older one, having reached the stage where all new objects warrant tasting, stealthily licked his hand when they were lying next to each other.

I tried to explain to Nathaniel that in a few short years, he'd go through a lot of teen angst for that much attention from older women, particularly the mouthy one, but he completely ignored them. Maybe it's for the best. I've heard that whole hard-to-get shindig works wonders.

We had a great trip, but it's nice to be home. The dog was happy to see us. The cats, well, who knows. I think they were happy, but maybe they were just lobbying for food.

* In the past six months, the following have all produced offspring: my kindergarten seatmate, my freshman year college roommate, a friend from college who briefly dated an ex-boyfriend, two former managers from my programming days, a law school buddy, and a former housemate. Plus Julia Roberts and any other people I might have forgotten. And I'm not even getting into those who are pregnant.

on the road

My boy, my husband, and I are on road trip, complete with road tunes and for our littlest passenger, a bulging diaper bag. It's the best kind of road trip: we have no fixed itinerary and no obligations.

I'm writing this entry in lovely Atascadero, California where I am spending the night at the home of my seatmate from kindergarten. T. and I grew up together, running wild through the avocado groves of what was then rural southern California.

A few years after we shared seats in kindergarden, we attempted to sort out the facts of life with a set of highly promiscuous Barbies. We had established that some freakish interaction of human genitalia resulted in babies. However, we were quite unclear on the details. Even at that age we intuitively doubted Ken's ability to perform when it counted, so our Barbies had plastic lesbian Barbie sex, except that we didn't know what sex or lesbians were. Just to be on the safe side, however, Ken took up residence with each of the lesbian Barbie couples in turn. In hindsight, I think we created quite a Hefner-esque lifestyle for the man with the smooth plastic crotch.

Despite these early misconceptions, we eventually figured it out. Her first child is four months older than mine. We took pictures of the two of them together. The babies were almost completely uninterested in each other, but we each took about two million pictures every time their eyes wandered in the general direction of the other. I suspect that the babies were acting much more rationally than we were.

pictures

Denise graciously offered to post some pictures of Nathaniel for me, as I can barely manage regular blog posts these days.

Here's my boy!

the reservation system

Another characteristic of large families that are nearby, especially those with enthusiastic grandparents and aunties: I haven't held Nathaniel (except for nursing and one time when I exerted maternal privilege just because) for hours. I presume my child will be returned to me at some juncture, but in the mean time, there is some serious jostling for baby time here.

I think I should implement a reservation system for baby holding time. I could solicit pumpkin pie bribes for jumping the queue.

happy thanksgiving

Like last year, except even more so, I felt sort of like Maria Von Trapp every time I started to write an entry about what I am thankful for.

Besides which, I think it's pretty obvious.

I'll just leave it at this: I'm thankful for you, my readers. I've had a momentous year. Thank you for following along with me.

the truth is out there

Approximately five years ago, my husband and I were driving down the always stunning Highway 1 when my husband exclaimed, "Happy didn't go to a farm!"

Happy had been my husband's German Shepherd mix when he was a child. Happy had come to the family as an adult adoptee with an unfortunate aversion to uniformed men. The family managed to keep her away from the police and postman, but as she aged her behavioral problems worsened.

A protective dog by nature, she instantly appointed herself guardian of my husband's baby brother when she arrived. Over time she became increasingly possessive. She started to snarl at visitors who came too close to the child.

The parents' tolerance ran out when Happy lunged, teeth bared, at my husband's mother as she picked up his brother. Happy had become unmanageable.

The parents, unwilling to devastate their two young boys, told the boys that Happy was going to go live at a farm where she could run and play with the squirrels. The boys were sad to see Happy go, but consoled themselves with stories of Happy on the farm. Happy left a few days later.

After my husband explained Happy's history, I agreed that it was unlikely that Happy had in fact gone to a farm. He called his mother and she confirmed his suspicions. Happy had gone to that big farm in the sky.

This transpired nearly thirty years prior to my husband's road trip outburst. I've had the similar realizations, where I suddenly understood that my child's understanding of the world wasn't quite complete.

It makes me wonder what Nathaniel will realize in thirty years or so. What will we protect him from, only to have him realize the true situation years later? And will he mind?

[Update: My husband points out that Happy came from a judge who didn't quite reveal the truth of Happy's nature to the adoptive family. Perhaps Happy's aversion to police officers was vocational in nature.]

parenting in my sleep

About a month ago, I read an article describing some of the early signs of autism. Lack of eye contact or smiles in response to a parent's smile at one year was the first sign in the list.

Nathaniel was approximately one month old, and though cute as could be, was not smiling in response to our smiles. This is, of course, very normal behavior for one-month-old babies, information I knew and was quite comfortable with at the time.

A few nights later, I nursed Nathaniel and lay back down to sleep. He was sleeping soundly, but my subconscious had other plans for me. I started to drift off.

"Oh, ho ho! Your baby is not smiling at you! Your baby doesn't smile when you smile! Your baby has autism! Autism! Autism! Autism! Ho! Ho!" My subconscious is nothing if not aggressively worry-prone, and if there aren't legitimate worries on the menu for the night, will manufacture some doozies.

The rational part of my psyche is completely and utterly cowed by my subconscious when I am in that not-quite-awake state. Rather than providing the appropriate response ("You Freud-fetishizing idiot! It's one year, not one month!") to these worries, my task-focused rational brain takes the presumption provided by my subsconscious as fact and works from there.

"Okay. Autism. Check. Early intervention works best, so join the autism mailing lists to get some tips on where to start. And consider selling this place because the school district in the next town over has a better special needs program. Call D., because he practiced special education law and might have some good references." And so on.

Nathaniel finally jolted me fully awake a few hours later with a request for more milk, at which point I realized that despite my elaborate plans, it was a little early to consider switching my career path to autism law.

a little more joy in the world

I've been feeling a little melancholy over the past few days, mostly due to the passage of the anti-gay initiatives around the country. I love being married and having a son. I love that my parents and four siblings are close by, ensuring plenty of loving arms for Nathaniel and support for me and my husband. I love the large extended family I have here, relationships built up over decades of living in the same area. I have family in all senses of the word: a husband, a child, in-laws, siblings, parents, cousins and friends. I love it.

I hate that so many people would deny these same joys to gays and lesbians.

Perhaps my boy knew I was sad today. He was lying in my arms after nursing, gazing up peacefully at me with his deep blue eyes. I smiled at him. No matter how terrible the world may be, Nathaniel makes me smile.

And he smiled back, the first time he's ever smiled back. He grinned in that open-mouthed, toothless, and fiercely enthusiastic way that babies have, putting his whole little body and soul into that moment.

What a moment! I think maybe heaven opened up just a little for me.

that law thing

I suspect I've lost some of my law school readers, at least those that find my short, sleep-deprived baby posts uninteresting. I'm sorry about that. The state of my blog is a somewhat accurate reflection of the state of my life: I'm thinking baby a lot more than I'm thinking law these days.

But I haven't forgotten law school or that I will eventually be a lawyer. I've been in contact with my school, with the firm where I worked last summer, and with the judge for whom I externed. Baby pictures have been sent to my professors and the judge. I brought Nathaniel to the law firm where he was cooed over. Plans for this summer and next fall are slowly working out.

I'm groping my way slowly through motherhood and law. I am sorry I'm not keeping you all as up to date as I'd like, but I promise I will continue trying.

victory

You might think that it might not be such a big deal to finish nursing Nathaniel at 11:00 p.m. last night, go to sleep, and then wake up when he woke up again at 5:00 a.m.

But you would be very, very wrong. That's six, count 'em, SIX hours of uninterrupted sleep for me, something I haven't experienced since August.

Sleeping through the night, for at least a minimal definition of night, has been achieved. I feel like I just won the New York City Marathon.

voting day

We took Nathaniel to the polls today. He won't be eligible to vote until 2022, but it's never too early to educate the young.

The nice voting sticker lady gave him a voting sticker which would have triggered election lawyer apoplexy if this were a swing state. The top part of the sticker read "I Voted" while the bottom read "Electronically!" (Hint: He didn't really vote, honest.)

My husband and I ripped off the bottom part of the sticker so that Nathaniel's voting sticker only said "I voted."  Granted, he didn't vote either way, but that's no reason to endorse Diebold and company.

the difference a year makes

Costume last year: Scandalously (for me) short red dress, long black cape, devil horns, shiny red heels, deep red lipstick. Carefully applied red nail polish on both fingers and toes.
Costume this year: Flannel pajama bottoms and a sweatshirt. Baby urp-up mostly, but it must be confessed, not entirely removed from sweatshirt.

Number of Incredibly Adorable Baby Pumpkins at home last year: 0
Number of Incredibly Adorable Baby Pumpkins at home this year: 1

Number of costumes for the under-three-month set in the house last year: 0
Number of costumes for the under-three-month set in the house this year: 3 (two pumpkins, one pea-in-the-pod. Apparently my child inspires produce-related Halloweening.)

Number of teen girls reduced to incoherent coos and squeals upon seeing me last year: 0
Number of teen girls reduced to incoherent coos and squeals upon seeing me this year: At least 15 or 20. Hint to those wishing to elicit squealing attention from teen girls - carry an Incredibly Adorable Baby Pumpkin. It worked 100% of the time.

What I did at 9:30 p.m. last Halloween night: Left the house to go to a party.
What I did at 9:30 p.m. this Halloween night: Went to bed.

What I did at 4:00 a.m. last Halloween: Returned home from evening's festivities. Took Advil in hopes of avoiding hangover. Went to bed.
What I did at 4:00 a.m. this Halloween: Nursed a Hungry Pumpkin. Drank glass of milk in hopes of avoiding hunger. Went to bed.

too intense

Thursday evening, my husband and I deposited Nathaniel into his grandmother's eager arms and slipped out of our house. It was our fourth wedding anniversary, and exactly five weeks since Nathaniel's birth. We had a date.

We ate at a nearby restaurant, a fancy French restaurant that we had walked by many times but never entered. The food and service were, as rumored, superb.

We also had some entertainment. We were seated near a dramatically dressed couple on a date. They bowed and danced verbally like two Oprah-influenced peacocks. He used the phrase "self-actualizing" without irony. She allowed as to how she was currently processing some self-identity issues.

At one point his intentions became clear. "I want to sleep with you," he exclaimed loudly enough for all nearby tables to hear.

The murmur of the restaurant dropped imperceptibly as the diners strove to hear her response.

"You don't want to sleep with me." She demurred, loudly enough to make sure the rest of the room heard her side of the story.

"No," he declared passionately, "I do!"

She dropped her eyes coquettishly. "No, you don't." She paused for dramatic effect. "It would be too intense for you."

("Ouch," my husband muttered.)

He drew back and smiled a roguish smile. "Oh," he whispered throatily, "I could handle it."

My husband and I immediately took big gulps of some very fine wine to stop our giggles. For the rest of the evening, every so often, my husband leaned over, raised one eyebrow at me, and whispered, "I'm too intense for you!" I would hastily gulp more wine to prevent some fancy-restaurant-inappropriate laughter, which, in hindsight, probably added to the overall problem of the giggles.

I hope the power date couple never figured out why my husband and I were giggling so much.

boromir bats for the bosox

Clearly the reason that the Boston Red Sox are now World Champions is that they have a Flawed Tolkien Hero on their team.

You think I kid?

Here is Boromir in his more well known Lord of the Rings get-up.

Here he is in action for the Sox, but this time supposedly called "Johnny Damon."

Things turned out a little better for him this time around, though.

birthday honors

In honor of Nathaniel's one month birthday, and in keeping with the drizzly day, I made J Strizzy's pumpkin chocolate chip oatmeal cookies. Yum.

Nathaniel, in honor of his own birthday, slept for five hours straight last night. Five hours! After a month of waking up every two to three hours (and sometimes every hour), five hours felt like I'd slept all night.

My interrupted sleep cycles being what they are, I couldn't fall back asleep after such a long, luxurious sleep, and proceeded to wake up more exhausted than usual this morning. Luckily, it was a drizzly day. I stayed inside, ate pumpkin chocolate chip oatmeal cookies dipped in hot cocoa, and napped when Nathaniel napped.

I think everybody needs a nap day every so often. I recommend it.

eating like a baby

I do not think the phrase "sleeping like a baby" means what people think it means. Unless one is excited by waking up incontinent every few hours, it does not seem to be a desirable state.

Eating like a baby, however, is something I can get behind. If my own baby is any indication on this matter, and I think he's pretty typical in this regard, eating is one of the high points of his life. No worries about carbs or fats or Atkins for this kid.

He really, really enjoys his meals. When I nurse him, he smacks his lips. He grunts enthusiastically. He slurps loudly. Halfway through, his eyes roll back into his head, and he sighs with deep and evident pleasure. He burps with gusto when he's done.

I don't think anybody has ever appreciated my cooking this much.

raw

I've been a news hound since I was a teenager, always reading the newspaper avidly and subscribing to various news magazines. I never found it boring or dry. We currently subscribe to two newspapers and several magazines, and up until recently we regularly read them.

I barely look at them now. I still don't find it boring. But for the first time in my life, I need to tune out the news.

I feel exposed now. Vulnerable, I suppose. I don't read the news so much anymore as I feel it. I hear about a car bombing in Iraq, and I see the mothers who have lost their children. I've had dreams about nuclear proliferation, repeated nightmares about global warming gone amok. Even the traffic report isn't safe: there might have been a traffic accident, and somebody might have been hurt or killed, and that person might have parents somewhere that are aching for him.

Right now, my boy is small, and I can hold him and sing to him and mostly keep the world away. But each day inexorably brings closer the time when he will step out on his own, headed out into the world with its suicide bombers and rampant pollution and wars and red-light-running drivers.

Will I ever be able to read the news again?

gods among men

I have some nominations for Man-God status:

Those people who call us, ask when they can come by, arrive, and (this is the good part) bring us food.* Extra bonus points given for noting how awesome my son is, but really, the nomination was assured with the quiche. Or the fresh pasta. I salute you, man-gods!


* "food" may include alcohol, which while not exactly nutritive in the traditional sense, is certainly good for the soul.

wrong address

This morning I received an email with the subject line 'Pregnancy lactaton.'

In prior days, I probably would have simply deleted the mail without looking, not having a burning interest in either pregnancy or lactation. But nowadays, I'm all about pregnancy, 'lactaton,' and gullibility-enhancing sleep deprivation.

Well. As it turns out, the subject line 'Pregnancy lactaton' had about as much to do with actual pregnancy and lactation as the subject line 'XXX' has to do with the alphabet, if you catch my drift. My goodness. The Internet, home of all manner of small businesses, is also home to quite a few breastfeeding entrepreneurs. I could, apparently, set up quite a side business as the result of this lactation shindig.

preservation of the species

I met a new facet of my personality yesterday: the instinctive primordial brain that makes the preservation of my offspring my absolute, numero uno priority.

I was coming down our hardwood stairs, carrying a sleeping Nathaniel in the crook of my left arm. As I got towards the bottom, I slipped.

My primordial brain immediately screamed, "PROTECT THE BABY! PROTECT THE BABY!" In response, my left arm instantly tightened up, pulling him in close to my chest. My right arm flew across my body, stabilizing him from the other side.

Sadly for my body, this left no arms free to break my fall. I remember thinking that it was really going to hurt, but I also remember knowing that I had no choice.

And then I hit the stairs. As I feared, it did hurt. My derriere is now unattractively colored and my knee is moderately tweaked. However, Nathaniel didn't even wake up.

The instinct to PROTECT THE BABY is remarkably powerful. I've never fallen before and not instinctively tried to break my fall or otherwise preserve my body, but this time, my own health was clearly way down on the priority list.

prime birth dates

Shortly after Nathaniel's birth, we were all sitting together in my hospital room when the on-call pediatrician came in for a routine check-up.

"The 23rd, huh? That's a good day." I think she was just making polite conversation.

"It's a prime number," my husband and I chorused in response.

Somewhat startled by our enthusiastic tandem math, the pediatrician paused. "Huh," she said cautiously, "I had never thought of that."

At that point the attending nurse joined in. "Oh, I'm born on a prime too! My birthday is September 9th."

My husband and I both glanced at each other. "Um," I said hesitantly, "I don't think nine is a prime. But it's a good day anyhow!"

hands and their uses

Everything about my boy is long. Long legs, long arms, long torso, and long sleep cycles. Even his toes are long. At a wee bit over 22 inches at birth, he was substantially taller than the average newborn, which is between 19 and 20 inches.

Like me, his fingers are long. Most people who see him notice his hands, and the common opinion is that he's inherited his mother's piano-playing hands. "The hands of a pianist," the refrain goes.

One group of friends, however, has a different opinion.  My friend N., a devoted programmer, said with delight, "He's got hacker hands!" P., a video-game fanatic, enthused, "He's going to be such a good gamer!"

It's all in the audience.

a birthday discovery

My kid is a genius. Today, on his one week birthday, he discovered his hands. Hands! Hands are so cool. Who knew we had such amazing appendages?

Of course, he can't yet consistently insert his hand into his mouth. But rather than frustrating him, this just means that every time his hand makes it somewhere in the vicinity of his mouth, it's time for rapt contemplation of the miracle that just occurred, followed by estatic chewing on the newly discovered hands.

I must remember to appreciate my hands more.

thank you

Thanks to all of you for all the good wishes! I love reading all your comments and blog posts. Everything is going well. Every day I learn something new about my boy. It's wonderful.

I am behind on my blog reading, a state which I suspect will continue for some time. I've re-evaluated my reading sources in terms of what can be managed with a single hand:

Laptop: Bad.
Web-enabled cell phone: Good.
Newspaper: Bad.
Magazines: Good.
The Daily Show: Good

I missed a week of news, an unusual state for me since I usually keep up pretty well. After a full week, the news was exactly the same when I finally checked. Florida has been devastated by a hurricane, the economy is faltering or recovering (pick your political party), and the situation in Iraq is deteriorating. I could have just re-used last week's headlines.

birthday celebration

It is now 6:56 pm, and my son is exactly four days old.

He was born at 6:56 pm on September 23. He's a strong, tall kid, weighing in at 10 pounds, 2 ounces and 22 inches in length, far above the average. He's healthy and happy (and so am I).

peace

I am sitting at home, sharing a celebratory glass of Chianti with my husband. The cats are sprawled on the floor, bellied up to the afternoon sun.

We're listening to Bedtime with the Beatles, which is surprisingly good. My Beatles-loving husband approves.

My newborn son, Nathaniel, is asleep on my chest. Every so often he lets out a mew of contentment.

Motherhood is sublime.

a truism

Practice exams are good. They help you prepare.

But when the moment of truth comes, they are nothing like the real thing.

Wish me luck. I'll be back in a few days.

In labor,

T.

the name game

Waiting is tough, though I'm doing much better now that I've realized that the contractions I've been having for three weeks don't mean OH MY GOD IT'S STARTING NOW. That was a little mentally challenging. Now I'm not trapped in the house any more, because I don't believe the hype.

Plus the heat wave has broken. I have never been so happy to reach the end of a heat wave in my entire life.

All the freed mental cycles leave me time to ruminate on names. We have not decided on a name. We have a short list, but we're going to wait until we see him.

So I find this website incredibly entertaining these days. Snarky name comments like this one bring me joy.

I am 7 months pregnant, and I am having a boy. I think i'm going to name my son Kakinston ,, What do you think... ??

Besides sounding like a former Central Asian Soviet republic bordering Uzbekistan, it aids small bullies immensely starting the kid's name with KACK.

casual conversation

I ran into a woman while visiting one of the local kids furniture stores. She noted how pregnant I was and asked when I was due. She told me about her kids. I mentioned I was in law school.

"So, I take it you're going to work." She was blunt.

"Well," I said, "I'm in law school now, though on a leave of absence. But I'm definitely going back."

"Oh," she said, "then you'll work afterwards?"

I shrugged. "I like law, and nobody is going to pay the bills for us."

"I was a lawyer," she announced, "but I couldn't do it. I quit."

"Mmmmph." I tried to be as non-committal as possible.

She continued on, talking about how involved she was in her children's school, about her daily life, about how she didn't miss law, and about how she didn't know how "those other women," presumably women who did not do exactly as she did, manage.

I eventually extricated myself. There was nothing I could add to the conversation. I don't even have a kid outside the womb yet, just a baby who has apparently decided to hang out in my cervix until he's old enough to get his driver's license.

But I felt sorry for her. I think she was lonely.

I look at my extended group of acquaintances. I see people raised by single, working mothers and people raised with working fathers, stay-at -home mothers, and 1.2 siblings. Some were not allowed to watch television, and some had their own televisions at age four. Some were in daycare from infancy. A few were homeschooled until high school. Some were raised by atheists and some were raised by fundamentalist Christians. Some were spanked with belts, others were rarely disciplined. Some were rich. Some lived off of food stamps. One grew up in a commune.

Some are happy, some are unhappy. Some have great relationships with their families and some dread the two weekends a year in which they are obligated to speak with their parents.

I see no easy correlation in my sample set, no clear formula that, if followed faithfully, yields a happy adult. Reasonably happy, confident parents seem to raise happy kids, more or less, but the mechanism by which they do that seems widely variable.

I don't think at this point we can say with any certainty at all what will work best for us. We'll muddle through, I imagine, just as our parents muddled through.

I can explicitly promise, however, that I won't accost heavily pregnant women in baby furniture stores and interrogate them on their life choices.

fashion in eighteen years

I had a vivid dream in which I saw my boy. He was in his late teens.

According to my dreams, my boy looks like my husband, except with sandy hair instead of dark hair. The same dark eyes, though.

It's fascinating what my subconscious thinks will be fashionable in about eighteen years. He was wearing very tight, very acid-washed jeans. Think Wham! tight. He had hair styled like Ashton Kutcher but it was pulled back into a headband. All in all, very retro-80s. I was aware at the time that he was very fashionable, thankfully proving he did not inherit my miserable fashion sense.

Who knew acid-wash jeans would be back in style?

whine and ye shall receive

As you may have noticed, I've been liberally violating my no-whining rule over the past few days, both in person and on this blog. Interestingly, this has yielded results that would horrify the positive-reinforcement educational gurus.

I whined about how I was feeling house-bound. What happens? My friends and family come and visit me and entertain me.

I whine about getting hormonally emotional to my mother. The next day, I receive cheery phone calls from every single member of my immediate family. (I also learned that the 15th figured prominently in the family betting pool, so the questions about whether my contractions were stronger or weaker weren't entirely without self-interest. That makes me giggle.)

I whine about the heat and the heat wave breaks. How's that for a powerful whine?

I whine about my problems with Michaels, and I get excellent ideas for further improvement.

Bad news for me, this learning that whining works, but my mood is 100% better. Will have to remember this as one of those 'Do as I say, not as I do' things that irritate kids to no end.

go away, hurricanes

Hurricanes scare the bejeezus out of me. Yikes.

Those of you who have either suffered through Ivan (or Frances or all the others) or face the wrath of Ivan or Jeanne coming up, take care of yourselves.

~~~~ Sending many anti-hurricane waves and wishes your way. ~~~~

more practice exams

My body has been playing tricks on me. I've been having contractions for two weeks now.

"False labor," my doctor cheerily said. "It could go on for another few weeks. Your body is practicing."

Does it want an outline too? Maybe a commercial study guide for my cervix?

I've been sitting on the edge of labor for two weeks now, unable to go very far from the house because of the contractions and the heat wave but mentally going crazy with the waiting. Add in the surging hormones, the oh-my-God-there-is-a-baby-coming panic, and, well, let's just say that it adds up to an edgy T.

When the hormones aren't making me weepy when I see babies on TV (true! weird!), I find them fascinating. This entire process is tremendously fascinating, actually. It's the coolest science project I've ever embarked on.

I'm ready for my final exam, though. No more practice, please.

if you want a gmail account

Go here. Also go there if you want to donate your extra invites. Caveat: I haven't tried it, so don't know if it works.

I've had a gmail account for awhile now. I don't like the UI very much so I use it for a few high-traffic mailing lists I belong to, effectively creating my own archives and saving my own personal disk space. It works well for that purpose.

No matter how many invitations I give away, gmail throws me more. It's like some incurable, yet communicable, disease.

the craft zone

I entered the scary craft zone known as Michaels today.

This was a brave step for me because I am craft-pathetic. The most I have ever managed are some gift photo albums with fancy stickers and multi-colored writing on them. I was pretty proud of myself for those, actually, but on the crafty scale of things, that barely registers. I've never had any reason to go to Michaels before.

I faced my craft fear today, however. It's amazing what impending parenthood will do.

We have painted our boy's room with bright yellow walls and a blue ceiling. We then took a deep breath and bought star stencils.

The stars made us ambitious. We dreamt of planets and maybe a comet. So it was off to Michaels for me.

And, oh! The disappointment! There are many, many stencils at Michaels, but only two of them resembled solar system objects. One of them had evenly spaced horizontal stripes with a loop around it. I think it was supposed to be Saturn, but I'm not sure. The other had three or four thick wiggly lines across a globe. It looked like a moldy snowglobe, not a planet.

Sadly, accurate depictions of stellar bodies do not appear to be a high priority of Michaels. I left empty-handed. I'm not going to subject our boy to moldy snowglobe astronomy.

the reality distorter that is the ivory tower

Jeremy posted a provocative quote from former Harvard University president Derek Bok bemoaning the large numbers of "exceptionally gifted" students who go into law, causing a "massive diversion of exceptional talent into pursuits that often add little to the growth of the economy, the pursuit of culture, or the enhancement of the human spirit." Demonstrating that he obviously never worked as an engineer, Mr. Bok approvingly quotes the Japanese, who supposedly say "Engineers make the pie grow larger; lawyers only decide how to carve it up."

Yeah, okay.

In general I find statements ranking the creativity of various professions to be devoid of the very creativity they supposedly value. Maligning an entire profession as lacking creativity and intelligence, or something as amorphous as enhanced human spirit, demonstrates a lack of imagination on the part of the speaker more than anything else.

But Mr. Bok’s lack of imagination is his problem, not mine. No, what really bugged me about the quote was his disapprobation of decisions that he obviously never had to make himself.

This is classic academia, a quote from somebody who hasn’t had to worry about being laid off in fifty years, who doesn’t have to think about his skills atrophying in an industry that changes instantaneously overnight. Mr. Bok has clearly never been through the regular layoffs that are a hallmark of engineering in this country. He lives in a world where people worry about how creative their jobs are, not whether those jobs will exist in six months.

Does he understand how many of the engineers, high school principals, business executives, and public servants that he lauds would love to enter that privileged world? Has he ever paid a bill and wondered whether the check would bounce? Does he have any idea how law, a mostly stable profession with a steady income, appears to the rest of the layoff-fearing, bill-paying world? Would he trade his income and his academic safety for life as a budget-cut-threatened high school principal?

Of course not. That would be silly, about as silly as criticizing the "exceptionally gifted" for desiring a little of the job security Mr. Bok himself has.

modern mysteries

One of the more mystifying aspects of impending parenthood is the Toxic Peanut.

In the course of educating myself as to this whole kid thing, I have noticed a tremendous amount of awareness of peanut allergies. There are many children who are highly allergic to peanuts.

This isn't some fad tailor-made for AM talk show hosts to bemoan modern American life. (They probably do moan about it, because God forbid our rights to get peanuts on a plane be trampled upon. That's, like, totally Communist.) But these kids, their throats close up, their faces break out, they can't breathe, and they are frequently rushed to the ER. These are not symptoms that four-year-olds can fake.

So if it's not fake, where and when did the Toxic Peanut emerge? Has it always been here?

I went to kindergarten and elementary school in the 1970s and 1980s. I don't remember any kids that were allergic to peanuts, at least not so dramatically that even being near one could trigger a fatal attack. I've informally polled my friends about it as well, and none of us remember anything about peanut allergies. Bee sting allergies, yes. There were definitely kids with very serious bee sting allergies. But nothing about peanuts.

Are peanuts more toxic? Or did kids just used to die and we didn't hear about it?  Is it just heightened awareness, or are kids truly more allergic to peanuts? If kids are more allergic, where did that come from?

biology 101

My fellow law students were universally supportive during my pregnancy. Once it was public knowledge, people frequently picked up my bags for me as I went up the stairs, held seats at events and took notes for me.

I did encounter, however, some fundamental misconceptions about the basics of human biology.

1. “You’ll be pregnant for two sets of finals!”

The human pregnancy is approximately 38 weeks from conception to birth. For ease of calculation, consider it nine months. For even more ease of calculation, my due date is September 25th. That’s NINE twenty-five, if you catch my drift.

So, no, I was not pregnant for two sets of finals.

2.”Ewwwwww! There’s, like, a human in there! That is SOOOOO weird!”

Yes, there is in fact a human inside me. Believe me, at times I find it pretty weird too. I’m growing a human? Dang.

3. “You’re gonna get all fat! Do you have to gain weight?”

Yes, one must gain weight in pregnancy. Sad, but true. This is because, as noted above, pregnancy involves growing a unique human being who is not weightless and who is surrounded by a sack of liquid. Therefore weight gain is inevitable. Sorry about the bad news.

4. “Oh my God, how did you get pregnant in law school?”

My personal favorite question, but I’m afraid the answer to that question falls deep into the Shall-Not-Be-Publicly-Discussed category.

This book, however, might provide a useful refresher on the topic.

5. “Do you, like, totally want to eat pickles?”

No. Pickles are gross.

6. “It’s like Alien!”

Sure, other than the fact that he’s a) human (I’m guessing the ultrasound pictures didn’t lie) and b) isn’t going to burst out of my stomach except perhaps in some very controlled circumstances and in that case he won’t try to eat the doctors immediately post-burst. He may slime them. But sure, otherwise just like Alien.

7. “I assume it was an accident. How did you feel when you found out?”

“I felt great. But it wasn’t an accident.”

“You mean you deliberately got pregnant in law school?” I think I horrified her.

I was surprised at the number of people who thought my pregnancy was an accident. I assumed the casual observer would have noted that I have made it thus far with no children and that I am now pregnant. Without going back to the Shall-Not-Be-Publicly-Discussed category, this indicates a successful application of birth control for a nonzero period of time. I thought people would use human pattern recognition skills and come to the obvious conclusion.

Apparently the conclusion I assumed was obvious was not, in fact, obvious.

8. “Wow, I didn’t know you were trying.”

That’s because I didn’t say anything, my personal feeling being that information about conception attempts is deep in the Shall-Not-Be-Publicly-Discussed category. Heck, I’m blushing as I write this.

Do people really want status reports on child-making attempts?

9. “Oh my God, have you seen the size of baby heads?”

Believe me, I am trying hard not to think about it.

grumpiness

I'm grumpy. Very, very grumpy. It's been extremely hot for days now, a situation that is unpleasant under normal circumstances but unbearable in the ninth month of pregnancy. My boy, after making steady progress towards an early due date, has stopped and decided that he prefers it indoors. Given the heat outdoors, I can hardly blame him.

I complained to my doctor. She was sympathetic, but pointed out he wouldn't be considered overdue until October. "It would be statistically unusual for him to be born this early," she said gently, "given how normal and healthy your pregnancy has been."

I heard her, but mostly fixated on the impossible, laughable idea of my boy being born in October. October? October is a million days away from now. Trees will grow and fall before October. Seasons will come and go. New mountains will form at the Continent Divide, and it will only be September 27th. No, I cannot be pregnant until October.

It is astounding how nature fixes it so that the pregnant, first-time mother reaches a point where she is ready for labor long before labor actually begins. "Hours of agonizing, crippling pain, the worst pain I'll feel in my life? But I won't be pregnant afterwards? Sign me up!"

for the special students

[I've been very impressed with AmbImb's law school advice project, Blawg Wisdom. I recommend it to anybody looking for advice on law school. AmbImb has done a fantastic job.

However, there is always room for more advice, especially for those of you who know you're going to get 4.0s going in. -Ed.]

My dear 1L,

You’re a very special person, somebody who stands out from the rest of the 1L crowd. You don’t need the advice given to those other 1Ls. Because I truly appreciate and admire how special you are, I’ve compiled the advice that you need in one handy place.

In case you haven’t noticed, lawyers drink a lot. I suggest you start now so that you are in optimum form by the time second year OCI rolls around. You don’t want to be the loser who gets drunk off of one girly fruity drink at the firm reception. That’s a surefire way to not get a callback. And for God’s sake, stop drinking anything that’s pink. That’s not a drink, it’s a Barbie™ "Math is Hard so I’m a Lawyer" accessory.

You’ve heard law school is competitive. Now is the time to sharpen those talons! Don’t smile or greet your fellow classmates. They just want to gouge your eyes out as they climb ahead of you in the rankings. Acknowledgement is a form of weakness. Pretend you don’t see them. If they insist on talking with you, roll your eyes frequently. They shouldn’t be wasting the time of somebody as special as you.

Even though you are practicing your drinking skills, avoid all invitations to 1L parties. Be sure to sniff loudly about how you don’t like the alcohol-doused nature of these parties because "everybody just gets drunk." For extra points, mention how you would prefer a meeting to discuss Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 11 but "nobody will join me for that." Don’t worry – nobody will actually take you up on that offer! This is called "lying." It’s good practice!

Frequently mention your 175 LSAT score in conversation. That always goes over well!  One particularly successful technique is  to mention your LSAT score and then mention how you are sure there is a qualitative difference in intelligence between a person who scores a 174 and a person who scores a 175. That really reels them in!

If you are male and are in criminal law discussing rape, be sure to raise your hand and tell one creepy anecdote involving animal sex. Make sure that the female rape victim is compared negatively to whatever female animal  you’re using. Guffaw heartily at the end. Don’t worry if nobody else thinks it’s funny! They’re all secretly laughing, but lack the courage to really tell it how it is.

If you are female and are in criminal law discussing rape, make sure you raise your hand at some point and scream obscenities at the males of the class for having masculine genitalia. Again, don’t worry if your bovine classmates don’t stand up and cheer "Womyn Power!" with you. They really agree, but look what The Man has done to them! Luckily, you know better.

The professors really like people who vigorously waive their  hands in answer to every question. Don’t worry if you don’t actually know the answer. The whole class secretly loves your rambling anecdotes, but they’re jealous that they didn’t think of your brilliant insights. Some people, those jealous ones, might claim that this sort of behavior does no good because the exams are anonymously graded. Please. Maybe their exams are anonymously graded, but we all know that the exams of special students like yourself are set aside and carefully given A’s due to your brilliant in-class participation.

Most importantly, however, always remember how very, very special you are.

Regards,

T.

things nobody should have to do

I probably shouldn't read stories like this now.

My God, those poor parents in Beslan.

what to do

My obstetrics clinic gave me a helpful tip sheet with suggestions on what to do when early labor commences.

Among the other, very reasonable suggestions, I saw the following:

"Do not insert a tampon."

I must say, that's not something that had ever occurred to me. I want to know who the woman is who thought, "Heck, I'm going into labor. Let's plug that space up right now."

celebratory days

Happy 7th Birthday to nmap! 

It's not all seven-year-olds that are hip enough to be in The Matrix Reloaded but have the good taste to avoid the horrendous sequel.

For those of you who don't know what nmap is, but who believe that your network has never been hacked, I suggest you kiss your security administrator today. Tell him or her it's in honor of nmap's birthday.

Free love to security admins in honor of nmap's birthday!

been there, done that

I am so over pregnancy. I'm past 36 weeks now and he could come now and I would be pleased. Not that I'm ready to have an actual baby. (My God! They are going to give me a baby?!?)

I am quite ready to be done with pregnancy, however.

Over the past few days we have had a heat wave.

You know those poor whales that get washed up on beaches, usually after Navy sonar tests? Sometimes they are still alive and volunteers run all over the hot sand, pouring buckets of cool salt water over the swollen, immobile creatures.

I really, really empathize with those whales. Poor whales.

irrational breathing

We practiced breathing exercises in our last birth class. These, apparently, help the laboring mother concentrate on her breathing rather than the fact that she is in unworldly pain.

One of the exercises is interactive. The "birthing partner" recites numbers, and both partner and mother breathe deep, pain-forgetting, relaxing breaths together.

The instructor chirped our start signal. "Okay, partners, go!"

My husband looked at me.

"Two!"

Whoooooooo.  Whoooooo.  Two breaths out.

"Three!"

Whooooo. Whooooo.  Whooooo. We breathed together.

"Two!" Two breaths. "Five!" Five breaths. "Four!" Four breaths.

"e!"

I burst out laughing, my husband joining me. The instructor frowned at us, but we were too convulsed in laughter to finish the exercise.

"But he said an irrational number," I giggled, trying to mollify the instructor.

"Ah," she said, smiling tightly. I don't think my explanation helped.

adventuring

Last week when I was at school, I was talking with two friends of mine when a woman rushed up to me.

"Excuse me," she said, a little embarassed, "but are you a law student here?"

"Yes," I said, "though not this semester."

She smiled. "I'm sorry, you're going to probably think this is really weird, and honestly I don't go around randomly assaulting pregnant women. But, um, I just wanted to know, so you got pregnant in law school?"

"Yes," I said, "I was pregnant all second semester."

"Well, I'm so glad I saw you!" She beamed. "I'm a 1L, and I've thought about having kids in school, but everybody thought I was crazy, and it's just nice to know I'm not the only one who thought about it."

She paused. "So, how are you going to do It?"

I didn't wonder what It meant. Any woman who wants kids knows what It means. It means when, It means how, and It means a million other unanswerable questions.

I shrugged. "I don't know."

I've been asked the question before. How are you going to do It?

Sometimes I wish I knew. Usually, though, I think life would be boring if I knew all the answers ahead of time.

When I get intimidated by what's coming, when I'm scared that I can't do It, I think about traveling. Sometimes my journeys didn't work out so well, like the time I was stranded at 3:30 am in the middle of winter in a rural Polish train station, my only company the two local town drunks and a toothless prostitute. I was twenty years old, alone, and terrified.

But the drunks were friendly and the prostitute tried her broken English on me. What started out as a disaster turned into a bright story to remember. At the time I remember cursing myself for thinking that a mid-winter jaunt to Krakow on the cheap local train would be fun. "I could be at home now," I kept thinking, "warm in bed, and safe." That was true enough. But if I had stayed warm in bed and safe, I wouldn't remember the shy prostitute telling me haltingly, "My name, it Kashia."

I don't know how I'm going to do It, but that's the thrill of going on an adventure.

the overachievers

Today was our second to last birth class, but one of the couples wasn't there.

Sure enough, halfway through the class, an exhausted and happy father came down from labor and delivery to see us. "We have an early graduate," the instructor happily announced.

The new father stood in front of the room, a little unsure of himself but grinning wildly. "He was five pounds, six ounces," he said, "and she did so great. She was just wonderful, so good, just so good. And he's so beautiful, and oh, she was fantastic."

The instructor beamed. "Wasn't that an amazing experience?"

He started to answer, but stopped, completely choked up. "Yeah," he whispered, tears falling, "yeah."

Sympathetic sniffles echoed around the room.

"Yes," he finally said, trying to compose himself, "it is amazing."

word from the pro

There is a park across the street from where we live, and we take the dog* there on a regular basis to play with her dog friends.

One of the humans I see every other week or so is a petite Southern woman with a beautiful and pronounced drawl. She's an experienced ultrasound technician and has observed me through the last few months. She knows my Sept. 25th due date.

Today I saw her for the first time in about a week and a half. As the dogs bounded up to each other, she looked at me, stopped, and grinned.

"Ain't no way you lastin', girl! Ain't no way!"

She pursed her lips and clucked.

"That boy, he comin' down!"



* It now occurs to me that I have not mentioned the addition of the Puppy, otherwise known as the Little Red Wiggly Bundle of Love. The Puppy joined us in early April. As somewhat nutty animal people, we adore her, much to the disgust of the cats. The cats, however, have trained the Puppy efficiently, and they get along quite well.

switching tracks

I left work early today and drove up to school. I needed the Academic Dean's signature on The Form.

I ate lunch in the law school cafeteria, deliberately picking a table near the cash register. The table filled up quickly. My former sectionmates, rushing into the cafeteria to grab some food before heading off to their classes, swapped in and out. Summer tales were traded and there were collective groans from those who were struggling with wait-listed classes. My belly was gently patted after a few shy requests.

Soon afternoon classes started and my classmates scattered. The cafeteria emptied out. I started trudging around the administrative offices of the law school, collecting signatures and finalizing my leave of absence.

All of the administrators were very supportive. "Believe me," the financial aid director mused as she signed my form with a flourish, "you'll never regret taking this time off."

I believe her.

Many years ago, when I was living in Italy, I took a trip with some Italian friends from our home in Bologna to Venice for Carnevale. We piled into the already-crowded train, masks in hand, chattering and giggling together.

There was a single older man in our compartment as well. We asked him if he was going to Carnevale as well.

He smiled. No, signorine, no.

Ma perchè no? We were curious.

He laughed. We must have seemed terribly young to him. He was not going to Venice for the party. No, he said, he was merely transferring trains at Venice, and headed into Eastern Europe.

I had forgotten the entire incident until today when it suddenly came back to me. When we asked him if he wanted to go to Carnevale, he had shrugged. C'è sempre Carnevale. It's always there.

I'm on a different track now, a different destination. I won't graduate with my classmates, and that makes me wistful. I'll miss learning law. But I'm headed somewhere else. There will always be law school and law. My son's first year, however, is a golden but entirely transitory destination. I can't wait to get there.

last week

It's my last week of work at the firm. It's also the first week of classes, and while I am not attending classes for this semester, I have several errands I need to complete on campus.

Posting will be light this week.

the good old olympic days

As the Olympics have started, I've read and heard a few people talking about how they miss the days when the Olympics "weren't so commercialized" and "were purer."

Thanks to Cynthia Crossen's column in last Wednesday's Wall Street Journal, I bring you a description of those halcyon Olympic days:

Held in conjunction with the World's Fair and Louisiana Purchase Exposition, the [1904] St. Louis Olympics also were the first and last games to feature a separate competition for "uncivilized tribes" – Pygmies, Sioux, Patagonians – in what were billed as "Anthropology Days." The events included not only running and throwing, but also pole climbing and a mud fight.

The final report on the World's Fair expressed the organizers' disappointment with the performances of the "savages." Their running was "very poor," javelin throwing was "another disappointment," and the best attempt in the 16-pound shot-put contest "was so ridiculously poor that it astonished all who witnessed it."

In short, the competitors, who had never been taught or trained in any of these events, "proved themselves inferior athletes, greatly overrated," the report concluded.

whaddya know?

I'm sort of a slacker when it comes to blog maintenance. I haven't checked my referrals or hit counter for a shameful period of time. I chose my awkward name because it was Google-nique: I'm the only transmogriflaw link out there. But have I been regularly checking on those links? No. Lazy blogger.

Today it occurred to me that my one year blogday was sometime in August. I checked and I was surprisingly close. It was yesterday:  August 12, 2003.

In honor of my one-day-late blogday, I will answer a question I've been asked. Am I going to continue blogging when the baby comes?

The answer, for now, is yes. But we'll see how it goes.

name changes

My kid has a new name, courtesy of his newfound affection for my upper right hand side ribs.
 
Blogosphere, meet 'Bruiser.'

trial runs

Last night I woke up in the middle of the night because I felt some Braxton Hicks contractions. Braxton Hicks are the pregnant woman's practice exams.

Of course, I didn't quite realize what I was feeling when it woke me up. My thought process was as follows:

Thought #1: What the hell is that?

(I wake up more.)

Thought #2: Oh. Braxton-Hicks.

(I feel it again.)

Thought #3: Huh. That's gonna hurt like HELL.

(It stops.)

Thought #4: But not now. Yay. Sleep.

what i did: an outline snippet

This is a follow-up from my last 'what I did' entry. I have pasted a fragment from my Torts outline along with italicized notes about what each part meant and how it fit together. All the normal caveats apply, plus one extra for this entry: I sure hope my legal summary is right here. Don't tell me if it's not, though. Proximate cause is now a fading memory.

I chose Torts because Torts is a common first year class. Also, Torts is often less theoretical than Crim, Property, or Contracts which makes it a good example. Some of my professors were policy wonks and so my outline was geared more towards legal theory, but not in Torts.

Chapter 6: Proximate or Legal Cause (Title comes from the book. I divided my outlines either by the syllabus or by the book chapters.)

(This is a little summary paragraph of the chapter that I wrote. I did this in Torts because my professor followed the book closely and I found it helpful to be able to summarize the entire concept in a short paragraph. I didn't do it in all classes.)
Proximate cause is different from causation in fact. Cause in fact refers to the cause and effect relationship between the P’s injury and the D’s tortious conduct.  It almost always deals with “but for” causation; the only exceptions are concurrent causation and the market share theory. The D’s conduct is a cause of the act. For proximate cause, the question is whether there should be legal liability after cause in fact is established. It’s a policy decision by the legislatures or the courts to deny liability for conduct that would otherwise be actionable. Proximate cause cuts off liability even where there is cause in fact.

(Section A gets its name from a chapter subheading of the same name. I almost always summarized the concept in my own words first.)
A. Unforeseeable Consequences – if a result is too far out, too hard to foresee, even if D’s actions caused it in fact, D may not be held liable. This law has changed; in older cases, no recovery was allowed where the damage wasn’t foreseeable, but now there is more flexibility. Furthermore there are times when D is responsible even if the result wasn’t foreseeable.

(After I had summarized the subchapter, I started a series of numbered points that I thought were important. I haven't listed them all here, but this is one example. In this case, my professor talked about the different approaches to liability and unforeseeability.)
   1. Some courts say that if the result wasn’t reasonably foreseeable, no recovery for P (the foreseeability approach) – this view relies on the concept that there could be endless recovery for D if recovery is allowed for any harm that results from the tortious conduct.  Therefore, recovery is limited to those cases where the result was of a generally foreseeable nature.

(Items a. and b. are cases that we read that illustrate the point of 1. I tried to bury the cases under the concepts in my outline because the concrete examples of the concept helped me understand the concept better.)
       a. Ryan v. New York Central R.R. Co. (NY, 1866) – D operates one of its engines negligently and sets fire to a woodshed on its property. The fire in turn caused P’s house, which was located 130 ft. from the shed, to burn down. P sued for negligence for the value of his destroyed property. Held that while there was negligent operation of the engine, placing liability on D for the destruction of P’s house is too far out. Court says this “would create a liability which would be the destruction of all civilized society.” (I included this quote because I liked it. The summary itself is based off of an Emmanuel's summary and my notes. I liked the little case summaries in Emmanuel's.)

(Points i-iii are from my class notes. The professor made these points about the case explicitly, so I included them in my outline. He didn't necessarily link the points to the case in class, but since my notes show them as associated, I put them under the case.)
          i. This case is definitely a minority rule now, if followed at all – now the D would be liable to P. There is liability when a fire spreads from one building to another.
          ii. Role of insurance as a policy consideration – in this case, the court talked about how D can insure his own property but not other people’s. However, that isn’t true now as liability insurance can be purchased for protecting property other than your own.
          iii. If the result is foreseeable, but the manner in which it occurs is unforeseeable, usually still liability for D – even if the method by which the foreseeable result happens is very weird, D doesn’t escape responsibility b/c the result is foreseeable.

(This is a second case about the same concept.)
       b. Wagon Mound No. 1 (Australia, 1961) – D’s ship spilled oil into a bay. Some of the oil sticks to the P’s wharf. P’s use of wharf is slightly injured, but so slight that no damage claim was made.  P’s workers then drop some molten metal which sets some waste floating in the water on fire. Because of this, the entire dock is burnt down. Held that D wasn’t liable even though their act was the cause in fact of the destruction. Court ruled that D shouldn’t be held liable because the fire was unforeseeable and D’s original negligence was slight.

I think that's probably enough to get a sense of how I organized things. Remember that I am awfully wordy; outlines don't have to be this wordy. I like excess verbiage.

the edge of the political arena

Most campaign websites are bland. But not all of them.

Indeed, there are bland websites and then there is the James Hart for Congress campaign website. Mr. Hart is the Republican candidate for U.S. Congress in the 8th District of Tennessee.

Mr. Hart's primary campaign plank is eugenics. He is running on a campaign pledge to eliminate the "poverty gene" by using eugenics to encourage the preservation of "more favored races."

At first I thought his website was just another well done satire. It's that astonishing. However, a quick web search found evidence that he is truly the Republican candidate on the ballot in that district. It's not a satire. It's real.

Bizarre. Absolutely freaking bizarre.

the battle of the form

The time has come to withdraw officially from school. I've received my tuition bill and the last remnants of 1L year: an invitation to law review.

My school's law review was tremendously flexible regarding my pregnancy. "Just do the competition," the director said, "and get accepted. Once you're on law review, you're always on law review." He's been true to his word so far. I am now free to withdraw.

But I haven't yet sent in the form. I need to do it soon: if I delay and cause complications for the bureaucrats, I'm sure the great Bureaucratic Deity will send me bad paper-filing karma later. The Bureaucratic Deity does not tolerate well those who hassle his acolytes.

I will withdraw. I do not want to give birth halfway through the semester, and the chance to spend months with my newborn son is tantalizing. A year off of law school will fly by. I'm not worried that I won't go back.

But still, that form sits.

what i did: outlining

Denise posted recently about how she was having trouble with outlining, so I decided to make outlining the second entry in my ‘what I did’ series rather than posting more about NYC. The first entry, on notetaking, is here.

1. Outlining was key for me, but I learn by writing and rewriting in my own words, not as much by aural or visual means. This meant that formal discussion groups and study groups were not very good for me (though I did a lot of informal discussion that was helpful). Making flow charts and using colored graphs or pens was also not useful for me. To learn it, I had to write it. I know for a fact that it is possible to have a good 1L year with short (or no) outlines, flow charts, color graphs, weekly study groups, etc. Outlining doesn't work for everybody.

2. I started my outlines about halfway into the semester and worked on them steadily until finals. I usually finished my outlines 24 to 48 hours before the exams, but there were two I barely finished before the exam (night before) and one I finished three full days early. I did not wait until my outlines were done to do practice exams. Often I modified my outline after taking a practice exam.

3. First semester, I started one outline, Civ Pro, too early. I found myself playing catch-up at the end of the semester when I had to rework entire sections. I didn’t have a good grasp of the material yet and my outline was less about legal concepts and more about short case briefs. Not coincidentally, my first semester Civ Pro grade was my lowest of the year.

4. The hardest part in starting the outline for me was organizing it. I found that the first half of the outline took more than twice as long as the second half. It took me a very long time to figure out how to organize my outlines in general. Due to this factor, my first semester outlines were more work than my second semester outlines, even though my second semester outlines were longer.

5. I found looking at other students’ outlines from prior years (but with the same professor) useful as a starting point for figuring out how to organize the outline.

6. I used outlines from prior years as a secondary reference if I didn't understand the textbook or my notes. I found the outlines considerably more useful than study guides like Glannon's or Gilbert's. My school maintains a bank of student outlines from prior years, so I had a prior year outline for almost every one of my classes.

7. If my notes or reading disagreed with a student outline, I used a formal study guide as a backup reference. However, by the time I got to this point I usually had to go to office hours anyhow. I found study guides like Gilbert's and Glannon's to be of limited use. The one exception was Torts, because in that class Emmanuel’s was keyed to my casebook. I found the case summaries in Emmanuel’s helpful because my Torts class covered many cases and I stopped briefing Torts cases early on in second semester.

8. I used MS Word (sigh. dang monopolies.) on my Mac. If I got stuck on something, I highlighted that section using MS Word's highlight function, brought my laptop to my professor's office hours, and clarified the issue in office hours. After office hours I reworked that section.

9. I only went to office hours if I had questions on my outline. I didn't find office hours too useful otherwise because without having outlined a subject, I couldn't ask useful questions about it. (The one exception to this was that once I started doing practice exams, most of my professors were very accommodating and freely went over my answers with me, which was invaluable feedback.)
 
10. I know some outlines are strictly organized by rule, subrule, etc. I didn’t really do that. I instead made a list of points (and related subpoints) based on class notes and the notes following the cases. I did include rules, but mostly what I did was group information that I thought was important for each topic.

11. My longest outline was about 90 pages, and my shortest was about 35. I’m wordy. Also, my outlines represented the majority of my work in each class since I didn't spend time in study groups or discussion groups.

12. I'm generally a solo studier, and wrote my outlines on my own. However, my classmates and I sometimes emailed each other sections of our outlines for review or to help clarify something. This was useful, because sometimes my friends would spot errors or point out something that I had missed.

13. My professors tended to rely heavily on the notes following the cases in the casebook. Therefore I included that information in my outlines. If a professor referred in class to a particular note (which I would know from my class notes or, if there was a direct quote, from my highlights in my book), then it definitely made it into the outline. The rest of them made it in if I thought they were interesting and/or important.

14. As I wrote my outline, I frequently reread what I'd already written, but I tried not to rework anything unless it was clear that I had misunderstood a section.

15. It took me a long time to figure some of these things out. I don't think I really hit the outlining groove until second semester, though I liked my first semester outlines (except for Civ Pro).

Postscript: I was thinking about posting a short segment from one of my second semester outlines along with embedded comments about the structure (such as why I included this or that). Would that be helpful?

that was then

Hard drives and other things were different in the 1960s. Really.

things I wonder about

Today I stood in front of a group to talk. At the same time, TJ (transmogriflaw junior, of course) decided to put in his two cents. He's now big enough that his kicks are visible through my clothes.

I wonder if anybody stopped listening to what I was saying and thought about Alien. I wonder if bored jurors watch the bellies of pregnant lawyers, looking for some sign of life in the courtroom. I wonder if anybody notices at all.

improving the tour

The other day at a summer associate lunch, I mentioned I'd been recording the Tour. It's my annual foray into OLN television, otherwise known as the home of Rut & Strut. (I'm serious. It's a hunting show.)

The other summer associates, all men, regarded me blankly.

"Um. I'm a huge sports fan," said P. tenatively, "but isn't that just a bunch of guys bicyling for hours? How do you watch it? Isn't it boring?"

I tried to explain. "It's complex. It's the balance between a team and a single individual. It's exciting."

The others remained politely dubious.

I explained how I liked the announcers, laconic British bicycling fans. "Of course, when there is a crash, or when there is a fierce competition for a stage win, they go nuts."

P. perked up. "There are crashes?"

"Oh yes," I said, "the Tour is dangerous." I explained how nerve-wracking it was watching the riders fight through the crowd during the Alpe d'Huez time trial.

R. was interested. "You mean the spectators attack the riders?"

"Yes, it's happened. Sometimes it's an accident, sometimes not."

P. and R. grinned. "Well, why didn't you say so?" P. asked. "I'd totally watch that."

"Yeah," R. chimed in. "Especially if they could arm the riders against the spectators. That would be so cool. The total annihilation stage win!"

"Yeah!" P. emphatically agreed. "That would be so much better!"

the olympics are coming

Time for some beautiful international incidents.

the big apple

My firm flew the summer associates to New York City headquarters for a litigation seminar and various work and social events.

I didn't think I'd be able to go at first, because when I first inquired about flying, the doctor I talked with was not enthusiastic.  "It will be really uncomfortable," she said, "and will depend on how you are doing at that point." This wasn't my normal doctor, but I went back home and scared myself silly with Internet research about cosmic rays, pregnancy, and flying. I was, however, loathe to miss an opportunity to see firm headquarters and, more importantly, meet the partners and associates there.

A few weeks later, I saw my regular doctor. By then I'd finished all the routine pregnancy tests, passing all with flying colors. "You have a normal pregnancy," she said, and my husband and I were thrilled to be boring. My doctor was far more relaxed about the entire prospect of flying, though she confirmed the "really uncomfortable" bit. She, however, was unconcerned about cosmic rays or early labor. "Don't get on the plane if you're in labor," she shrugged. "That's the basic rule."

"But how will I know?"

"You'll know. Besides which, it's your first baby. Even if you start labor on the plane, you won't give birth before it lands." Yikes.

I took the plunge and flew to New York on Friday. My doctors were both right.  Flying while seven months pregnant is very uncomfortable. The lack of legroom in steerage class seating is even more noticable when there is a big belly that has to fit there too. Thankfully, my husband was there to help, and flights, like labor itself, do eventually end.

My husband and I spent the weekend being tourists in New York. We walked for miles in the hot, humid weather, meandering through Central Park, Greenwich Village, Times Square (a.k.a. Disney York), and the waterfront.

We started off on Saturday morning at the New York Public Library, mecca for bibliophiles. Just being in the reading room alone made us happy. On top of that, we saw the Gutenberg Bible and a copy of the Declaration of Independence that was hand-copied and signed by Thomas Jefferson.

I am pleased to report that no less a writer than Thomas Jefferson has problems with his contractions. His handwriting was neat and easy to read, making the following fragment jump out immediately: laying it's foundation on such principles, & organizing it's powers in such form.

Editors always have the last word. The final version fixed the contraction: its foundation, and its powers. They also removed an entire anti-slavery paragraph that Jefferson included in his original draft.

[more later]

da firm

Life at the law firm continues apace. It's very different from the judiciary. I like it quite a bit.

I am acutely aware of how little I know about law after one year of law school. I'm in my firm's IP litigation group. I've never had IP law before, but I've probably learned half a semester's worth of IP law in the past few days. I hope to attain some degree of usefulness by the time I stop working for the summer, but for now I feel sloooooooow.

This firm is large, and has summer associates in most offices, which makes for a lot of summer associates. Almost all of them are 2Ls, but there are a few other 1Ls here and there. I do feel like the 2Ls know more than I do, which bodes well as far as the usefulness of law school, but I don't think any of us are crack legal aces. Of course, if we were, we would probably be years out of law school by now. At most, we're aspiring aces now.

the next battle

JCA writes passionately about something I think about a lot these days: motherhood and career.

Halfway through last semester, my employment discrimination professor brought in a guest professor to speak to us about gender discrimination in the workplace. At the time I was almost three months pregnant and trying to adjust to pregnancy and the rather enthusiastic hormonal mix that had taken hold of my emotions.

The guest professor, who specializes in gender discrimination, spoke about stereotype studies and women in the workplace. The professor described studies in which participants were asked to rate the intelligence of various fictional characters in an effort to determine the pervasiveness of gender stereotypes. The good news reflects JCA's experience: the fictional professional woman with no children had a perceived intelligence and capacity almost equal to that of the fictional professional man. (No study showed the man and woman exactly equal, but they were extremely close.)

However, once the woman was turned into a mother – but her described characteristics did not otherwise change – her perceived intelligence dropped precipitously. In one entirely depressing study, the fictional woman with children was slotted into the same intelligence stereotype category as the the physically handicapped, the blind, and the very old, groups that themselves suffer from horrendously bad publicity as far as perceived capacity. There was only one poor group that consistently rated lower in perceived intelligence: stay-at-home mothers.

I almost started crying in class.

There is so much to love right now. I love being pregnant, watching my body change, my husband's transformation into a father. I love this new little person kicking around inside me ferociously.

But I hate the stifling societal straitjackets that come with parenthood. I hate that no matter what choices my husband and I make, a large segment of society will continually question those choices. I hate the fact that I even have to worry about this, that these outdated stereotypes will affect my life, my husband's life, and my son's life.

On the other hand, the best choices I've made in my life have always been those made in contravention to popular and uncreative wisdom. I didn't cry that day, and since that class, I've come to secretly relish the people who sniff mournfully and disapprovingly, "I would never do that!" I respond politely, but I think, "I'm sure you wouldn't." And I smile.

eat your veggies

My husband and I went out to Chinese food with a friend of ours last night. I suggested a cabbage dish.

"Oh no," he said, "I can't eat cabbage. I have cabbage trauma."

My husband and I tenatively asked whether this could be shared, never having heard of cabbage trauma, or, for that matter, any sort of cruciferous angst.

"Yes," he replied gravely, "I can share. When I was little, my mother used to tell me stories about a friendly cabbage who had vegetable adventures. He had little cabbage shoes, and a little cabbage hat. He was a happy cabbage."

D. was silent for a moment, savoring the memory.

"My mother was dating somebody at the time who was familiar with the cabbage. One day they got in a huge fight, though I didn't know that. What I did know was that night her boyfriend told me the evening cabbage story."

He dropped his voice to a whisper. "That night, the story ended in coleslaw."

so. tired.

Last year, my last day at my software engineering job was June 30. I started working at the law firm Tuesday, making it almost exactly a year since I was last paid for work.

Tuesday also marked the longest time I've gone without a job since I was 15. This means I've experienced the First Week of Work many times, for many different employers. It's not a new experience, the forms, the passport-handing-over, the direct deposit ritual, the orientations, the introductions. Sometimes it's rather casual, sometimes it's quite formal, but the basic elements are more or less the same every time.

Including the tiredness. Every time I start a job, the first week knocks me off my feet. I drag myself home at the end and collapse onto the sofa. Whether I like the job or not doesn't seem to matter. I've never had a job where it didn't happen.

I am now curled up on the sofa, laptop balanced precariously on my belly, happy to be home. I had a good first week, and I like the people I work with, but boy am I glad it's Friday.

part II begins

I finished my first day of work as a summer associate today. My brain is tired but happy; there was so much to take in.

I think between the judiciary and the law firm, that I'll easily learn as much this summer as I did during the school year.

[Update: Biting Tongue says it better than me. I wholeheartedly agree. This 2/3 school, 1/3 working schedule is wonderful. I suspect I'll really miss it when I start full time work in a few years.]

what i did: notetaking

1. I attended almost every single class. In my second semester, I missed one because of a traffic problem, one because of a doctor's appointment, and two because I was sick. I didn't miss any first semester. Caveat: I liked attending class, so this wasn't a burden.

2. I took notes on my laptop. Caveat: I can't handwrite at all and find it very distracting when I have to do so. I learned a lot less in class the two days I had to handwrite notes because I forgot my power cable.

3. I created a new file for each day and each class. For example, notes_torts_020404.doc, notes_civpro_041604.doc.

4. I am ashamed to admit this, but I used MS Word and (gasp!) it worked well. At least it was on a Mac.

5. I printed out all my notes every few weeks or so and put them in a binder. I had one binder for each class. I used this binder when outlining.

6. I wrote down much of what the professor said, organizing it in my head as I went. Caveat: This only worked for me because I am a fast typist, so I could organize and still write down most of what the professor said at the same time.

7. I wrote down the Socratic questions the professors asked other students.

8. I almost never wrote down anything that a fellow student said, unless the professor explicitly endorsed it as correct or asked the student to repeat what he had said for the benefit of the class. If I did write down something from a fellow student because I liked it, I usually wrote it in my notes that it came from a student.

9. If a professor repeated a statement a few times, I always wrote it down, sometimes underlining it.

10. I always brought my casebooks to class. If the professor quoted directly from a case or essay, I highlighted those lines in my casebook. I did not otherwise mark in my books at all. I found this useful when studying for exams as I had a visual record of what the professor considered important enough to quote aloud. Caveat: I hate looking at books with highlights and pencil marks.

11. I briefed all the cases first semester, and about 25% of the cases second semester. Second semester my professors weren't as Socratic, so briefing was less important, and I was also able to read more effectively by then. I'll write more on briefing later, but in terms of notetaking, I didn't take class notes on the case in my brief. I found switching back and forth between my notes and my brief too distracting. I did leave my brief open for reference in case I was called on, but all class notes were in one place, the file I mentioned above.

12. When we started talking about a specific case, I wrote the case name in italic and bold and then continued taking notes beneath that heading.

13. As time went on, I was better at sorting out what the professor considered important. Early on my notes were very long, but later they were shorter because I could figure out sooner what the professor considered important. I probably averaged about three to four typed pages per fifty-minute class, single spaced but with lots of new paragraphs and whitespace because I don't like looking at cluttered pages.

14. My section was a friendly section, and we shared notes freely with each other. I gave mine away regularly, and on the times I missed class, I usually received at least two copies of other people's notes. If I felt that I missed something in class, I asked my friends for their notes on that topic, printed those out, and put them in my binder next to my own notes. I found the notes from my fellow students very useful. I've heard of people hoarding their notes, but I didn't see it happen in my section, and sharing notes made life a lot easier for everybody.

15. I didn't try to study too much in class, reserving studying for later. I used class time primarily to clarify concepts and to discover what the professor thought was important. Getting the law into my head, into my own words, and really understanding it was something I had to do on my own. Caveat: I learn by writing in my own words by myself. People who learn by more aural means and group means probably learned more new concepts in class than I did.

I think that's all for notetaking. I'll update this later if I think of something else.

[Update: It occurred to me when I reread this that you might think I started out doing all this from the beginning and that I was some scary über-efficient beginning 1L. I didn't and I wasn't. This is what I ended up doing, what eventually worked for me, but it took me a while to find the pattern that worked. I don't really feel qualified to give advice, but I wouldn't worry about it if it takes you awhile to figure out your pattern too.]

what i did

I've had a few requests for tips and hints for getting through 1L year. I started a big long post about it a few times, but it never really came out well. I had a hard time separating what I consider a valuable tip and what nobody else other than me would find useful. The entry became too unwieldly. It's hard to give generalized advice that would be useful on something as personal as law school.

I've decided to take another approach. I am going to write a series of short entries that describe what I did in a certain area, such as notetaking, or outlining, etc.  I think I may just state what I did in list form. It won't be fancy.

Before I started law school, I soaked up advice from books, bloggers, current students, former students, our academic support program, and basically any person with a word of advice to say about law school. I didn't use most of it. That's why I am going to list out what I did. You can pick and choose what will help you.

I suggest reading Heidi Bond's series on what she did (most recent entry here). One, because it's well-written and has good insight into the entire process, but two, because if you read both of our 'what I did' descriptions, you can see how they vary. Some of what Heidi did wouldn't have worked for me, and vice versa. I point to Heidi because she, like me, had a blast her first year in law school, got what she wanted out of it, and was generally quite happy with the entire thing. We reached the same end, but sometimes through different means.

For the rest of who you aren't interested in this, all entries along these lines will have 'what i did:' in the title so you can ignore them.

body chemistry

One of the nifty side effects of my pregnancy has been the Technicolor dreams. I have astonishingly vivid dreams, dreams set against Kubla Khan landscapes and described by fragmented echoes of Ginsbergian dialogue.

I have stood at the top of vast undulating prairie hills that stretch away to a crystalline ocean below. Ice cold winds have blown against my face. I have felt the thunder of a wild herd of Appaloosas roar through me. I have swooped over silent forests and down into Alpine valleys. Last night I dove, deep, deep, streaking down into cold blue water, accompanied by bejeweled, unblinking fish.

LSD has nothing on my own hormones. I should bottle this stuff and sell it at Grateful Dead concerts.

end of part I

Yesterday was my last day in the judiciary. On Tuesday I start work as a summer associate.

I think I can safely recommend that law students jump at any opportunity they get to work in the judiciary. I don't think it matters if you do federal or state, appellate work or trial court work. Learning how the judiciary really works, at any level, is tremendously helpful.

My work was in the state appellate court, so I learned how appellate opinions are drafted and the interplay between the trial court, the appellate court, and the high court. Seeing the process that generates the opinions in our casebooks was fascinating.

I spent all of my time working on criminal cases, which will be a nice contrast to the civil work I'll spend the rest of the summer with. I now have even more admiration for the work that public defenders do and the work that criminal prosecutors do. I'm not sure it's something I could do full time. I found criminal law could be very emotionally draining at times. I spent one day examining a group of cases for a specific procedural issue that I was researching.  The cases were about 80% child molestation cases and they included graphic and horrific descriptions of what the poor kids suffered. I had nightmares about it that night, the crimes bringing out the raging mama tiger in me. I think I'd find it very difficult to work on case law like that all the time.

linky dinkies

Today was a good day for time-wasting, entertaining links. I share now, so you may also waste time.

1. Courtesy of John Scalzi, the F3110wsh1p of teh R1ng.

2. From a friend of mine, justification for feeling that the clutter around our house isn't that bad.

3. Actual, legal British postal stamps that made me want to rush out and fly to London so I could use them. They're vegetables! With accessories! Scheherazade will have to promise to use some for me when she returns from Sri Lanka.