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.