I'm Sorry, What?

It's been a truly excellent summer.  I've been living up in Wrigleyville, barely making it from paycheck to paycheck, and for the most part loving every minute of it.  (There were some moments there, let me tell you.)  I've been taking long weekend trips, attending my part-time job as a law clerk, enjoying the rooftop deck that is so much better than the cool thing you have at your apartment and all in all having one of the best semester breaks possible.

And then I had an epiphany.

I have to go back to school in one week.  No more just deciding to take Fridays off.  No more watching 30 Rock late at night, and deciding, "What the hell?  I can just be tired tomorrow."  I'm going to go to school 15 hours a week and work the other 25.  And then I have to somehow find a job, pass the bar, and start paying off these loans.

I am one misstep from the very first panic attack of the school year.

Just.  Hell.

Shiny, Happy People

Dear Diary,

I now remember why I never come home and I hate it here so much

Oooo. Too melodramatic. Must stop channeling eighth grade.

The fact is, everything that glitters doesn't remain gold for long. The other fact is that I spend a lot of time on a lawnmower lately, and I spend more than enough time thinking.

At first, being at home was a great joy. I remembered how life used to be and it was this weird feeling of mini-nostalgia. But now trying to get the lawn mowed before it rains while the neighbors laugh at my stupid mistakes doesn't feel so good. It mostly feels like I have to bust my ass to make $50 a week so that I can buy a tiny cup of $1 coffee twice a week and still afford insurance, etc.

Work is great, I guess, except that there's not enough for me to do. Today I sat for two hours while I waited for phone calls. I did all of the petitions and orders necessary for a guardianship case, made appointments, called attorneys for advice on appropriate notice, and sent three client letters. I was still done by 12:30. I'm beginning to think that efficiency is not appreciated in the working world.

So summer has lost its glow and it's mid-June. But that doesn't mean I'm excited for school to start. Just like time at home, law school has about a two-week shiny period. Classes are new, the cases are different and exciting, you're caught up with your work and get to see friends every weekend. And then, just like that, the glitter is gone. You remember that the reason you're learning all this information is to take an exam, that you're paying far too much money in tuition to spend time going out with friends and that you're already behind in reading those exciting new cases.

No, I'm not ready for a whole new period of shiny yet. Shiny can be disappointing. It's better to wait until life is unbearably dull, because then shiny, though short-lived, is incredibly exciting.

She Works Hard For (No) Money

Oh, redesign. You look so modern. Or overly busy. I can't decide.

I like trains.

And with that having been said, I drafted my very first guardianship petition completely on my own. I've been doing them for a couple weeks now, but I've always had a model to work off of so that I just had to tailor to specific facts. But this week, I went to client meetings, took notes, did research, and drafted a completely new petition to file in court sometime next week after the client signs it.

And when I got it back from the attorney, it was all marked up in a good way. I didn't make "You forgot to say this" mistakes. The editing marks scoring the paper were all about making my language sound better. I forgot to cite to one statute, that I didn't even know to cite to. And one of the sections was in the wrong place. (Remember, Amanda, PUT THE BOTTOM LINE UP FRONT. Has LARC taught me nothing??) It was such a great feeling.

Beyond that, I've done all the documents for three of the hearings for grandparent guardianship day, helped write and edit a grant proposal, and gotten the paperwork and accounting ready for a fee request from a client trust. And the best part is? I know my work is GOING somewhere. I don't do busy work. There aren't enough hands to do the necessary work, so there isn't any time to LEARN what I'm supposed to be doing. There's just "Do the work and we'll deal with the mistakes when you're done."

The efficient, list-making, enjoy-being-busy side of me loves it. I can already see the result of the work I'm doing. Things is good. And my boss just decided last week that since I get things done so quickly, they're going to try to do ANOTHER day-long guardianship proceeding in a different county. Who gets to do all the work?

ME.

So. Excited.

Whistle While You Work

My quote of the last two weeks? "It's on my to-do list." Want to know a secret?

I don't have a to-do list. Well, not REALLY. I have a running list in my head of things I need to do. Or rather, I have several lists of things that I need to do. Things for me (GET A HAIRCUT), Things for other people (MOW THE LAWN), Things for work (2 Petitions, Doc Request, Formal Letter, Motion to Consolidate, and these legal blogs). The lists keep crossing in my head, every which way, and I'm not really doing a great job staying focused. Oh, I know what I have to do, and even what order I need to do it in. But while I'm working diligently on one list, another list creeps in and takes over my mind. There I am, doing data entry and before I know it my mind has moved on without me. "I need to make that appointment, and I really need to talk to that one person, and didn't someone e-mail me that I need to respond to? Did I already respond to them? Dammit." It's getting frustrating. And there's too much going on to be making lists. Sigh.

So you can imagine how badly I needed to just walk away from everything for a little while. And that's how I ended up in Milwaukee, land of the hipsters.

Well, not really. You see, my aunt is moving back into the home she and my sisters lived in when they were growing up. She's been renovating for a couple months now, and while she's not done, I have to say it's going to be gorgeous. However, she's renting out her old house, incidentally to a friend of mine. We'll call this friend Sweatervest. (Because he wears sweatervests. And trench coats. And spent his time looking at Italian leather shoes during class.) He needs to move in on Wednesday, so I spent this weekend moving stuff into the new house and helping to clean the floors and whatnot of the old house. My calves are killing me because my aunt's new digs? Are on the second floor of a great big old house. (Let's be clear, Sweatervest. You owe me a drink. I'll be in town this weekend to redeem my well-deserved reward.)

Beyond that, I pretty much spent time with my aunts, parents, and cousins just doing what families do: Nothing and mocking each other. Because I really have nothing else to say, I'll just throw you some quotes from this weekend.

"You know, hipsters. Twenty somethings with huge ironic mustaches wearing at least two scarves?"

"You have no screens on your windows! You're not afraid of bugs?" "No, my bigger concern is squirrels."

"He's pimpin' my crib."

"Did you see that fox?!" "Butch, that was a cat. Did you see that elephant? Oh wait. No, that was a mailbox."

As you can see, there's no love lost between my family members. Because there wasn't much there to begin with. ZING! Just kidding. We like each other. Usually.

Till Wednesday, then. I still have to write about DUI's. I'ze gots to get paid.

Dvorak's New World Symphony (Going Home)

Lately, when I spend time at home it's just for a weekend or less. A short 36-hour period in which I spend time with my family, and maybe make a grocery run with my mom. But I've been back for almost three weeks now, and time travel happens often. For instance, I haven't mowed the lawn since early high school, because I was always careful to get a job which paid. But since doing odd jobs and chores is the only way I'm making cash these days, I'm spending lots of long hours on our riding mower cutting the grass on our three acre property. It makes me feel like I'm all of thirteen again. Except now I'm listening to my iPod instead of my super-cool, totally cutting-edge portable cd player. Oh, how times have changed.

Except that they haven't. Today in Meijer's with my mom, we decided to use the self-scan. One of our items wouldn't scan and we were buying alcohol, so we had to wait for the staff to come help us. We waited and waited and finally saw that the staff on duty for the self-checkout? Was a girl I knew from high school, who has lived down the street from me for 12 years, and made fun of me all the way through high school. (Admittedly, most of my peers made fun of me all the way through high school, so it's not like it was THAT big a deal.) When she finally came over, she was very distant and wouldn't meet my eyes or my mother's. It was odd. We made it a point to greet her. She didn't even acknowledge it. Come on, you spent seven years mocking every word that came out of my mouth! At least have the common courtesy to greet me. Clearly, she had no idea who we were. Surprising, but possible. I guess. She finished checking us out and we walked away. Or at least we started walking away.

"Amanda! Amanda!" I turned around. She was looking right at me. "You forgot your receipt."

So she DID know who I was. So the ignoring game was about what? Apparently for some people high school was the zenith of their life. And here I thought that was just something you said to twelve-year-olds to make them feel better about their sucky lives.

Mom and I laughed all the way home.

It's A Quarter after [3], I'm All Alone (and I'm Thirsty and Can't Sleep)

It's getting harder and harder to make the song titles relevant.

So it's over. Sweet Jesus, so awesome, it's over. I was listening to the 1L song, though, and the lyrics that stuck in my head were, "They say it gets better, but the damage is done. I bleed reasonableness and jurisdiction." I think I make some sort of legal joke EVERY DAY. The only difference is that no one is going to get my (admittedly bad) jokes all summer long. I'm going home.

First of all, because there's a puppy there, and I hear puppies and kittens are good for relaxing. Actually, it's a 3 month-old 40 pound yellow lab puppy. So it's a big puppy. But since I discovered today that I have no idea how to relax, I think a big puppy is just what I need. I really don't know how to not do anything anymore. After the criminal law final on Friday, I immediately picked up my contracts final. I worked on it for nine hours straight for three days in a row, and after a final edit Tuesday morning, I turned it in. I came home, sat down and watched one episode of Full House and immediately started packing. I wasn't supposed to leave Chicago until Thursday, but by 5 pm, I had packed everything I own, and decided to just go home Wednesday. And then, because I STILL had time to kill I started cleaning the apartment. So you see I'm not kidding. I do not know how to relax anymore. I'm working on it.

The second reason I'm going home is that after much (okay, not really) searching*, that's where I found my job for the summer. I use the term "job" loosely, since it's actually an unpaid internship. I contacted the Volunteer Lawyers' Program of Northeast Indiana over Spring Break back in March. I finally heard back from them at the beginning of May, had a phone interview Wednesday morning at the crack of dawn, and had a job with them by noon. What will I be doing you ask? I have no idea. I think I'm supposed to spend half my time at the VLPNEI office doing things like intake interviews and whatnot, and then I spend the other half my time with two of their attorneys helping them with whatever they're doing. It's all very vague, but I have an orientation on the 21st.

I'm pretty excited. VLPNEI works with lower-income people who otherwise wouldn't have access to the judicial system. It mostly deals with things like family law and landlord/tenant law issues from what I understand, so I'm going to be doing good, down-to-earth work that has a real day-to-day effect. I'm sure it's going to be a challenge at times, and I'm going to make mistakes (hopefully just little ones), but it should be eye-opening at the very least. I'm happy that I get to put all these legal skills to use so they won't just collect dust this summer.

The best part, of course, is that for the first time in my whole life, my job is Monday-Friday, so I get weekends off. I will be spending my weekends at the lake, perpetratin' a tan.**

Anyway, goodbye ChiTown. I'll miss you, but I'll make sure to visit lots so you don't feel sad that I left you.

________________________

*Cut me some slack. By the time I realized I should be applying for things, a lot of application dates had passed.

**Yes, that was a "Gold digger" reference. Bonus points if you got it.