You Wouldn't Like Me When I'm Angry

Today might really be the day I blow that vein in my forehead.

Law school is one of those places in which every day has the potential to be a minefield of people you hate and the experiences that make you hate them. And. You. Can't. Escape.

The "sinusitis" will not be allowed to be called "sinus infection" for another six days, at which point I will be written a prescription for antibiotics that will wipe out the misery I've felt for four days in a little under 16 minutes, after, of course, I've infected everyone I know. Thanks, HealthCenter! Meanwhile, I sound like a foghorn every time I blow my nose. Seriously, my friend Emily laughs every time I blow my nose because she says it sounds like a cartoon.

Boyfriend-the-priest-to-be (hereinafter Priest) pities me in my weakened condition. He shows this concern by allowing me to carry two bags of garbage to his dumpster in exchange for my ride to school. I am convinced that I smell like garbage, but cannot smell it. I try to surreptitiously smell myself, remembering that I can't inhale sneakily only when I make a snarf noise that startles even me.

Gnome Hooker is lurking in the hall on my way to my first class. I am horrified to see that despite the fact that her face looks like one of the clocks in that Dali painting, she has on makeup and clothes that match and might look better than me. I am relieved to find that she has not highlighted her hair to match mine as Nikki and I previously suspected. Or, she dyed it back over break. Whatever, she's stopped wearing the glasses that mysteriously match mine.

I stir my Emergen-C into a cup of what is allegedly drinking water from downstairs wonder how something that fizzes like toxic goo is supposed to make me feel better.

A couple of minutes later, I'm back in the hall, maybe I'm making an appointment, maybe I'm seeking Kleenex and come face to face with Professor Badonkadonk, who ignored emails I sent for two months before asking me why I took so long to ask her for an appointment. I go into Career Services to see what kind of neat toner cartridges they have for me to drink.

And on the way back, that's right, Gnome Hooker. I yawn, looking something the Kraken before it eats Johnny Depp. This day just keeps getting better and better.


Email message: From: Princess Guard Dog: Can you do all this work and get all this stuff set up for the event I'm planning with no input from anyone? I know that I don't work, or have school, but I really have my hands full with making the poster!

Lecture Transcript: Clearly the business students who smoke outside our door don't understand English, or they would read the sign and smoke on the steps, 25 feet away from the building. You know who I'm talking about. Dude, did Professor Kapes just bash the Asian Smoker Mafia? Rock on, Kapes!

Ok, that part kind of rocked.

Voicemail: Princess Guard Dog: Um, did you get that stuff done yet? I said by the end of the week, but what I meant was, today. Well, right now. Thanks!

Email: Miraculously, after an email intervention from a higher power, Badonkadonk has time to see me. But she's out of the country until two weeks from today. Um, then who the fuck did I just see in the hallway?

Text Message: Haven't you done that stuff yet? Didn't you get the email and the voicemail?

I start my list of tasks, trying to be helpful at least, I've juuuust started dialing when:

Text Message: What about now?

I grab the heavy duty stapler, wondering if I could puncture my skull with it.

I call a friend, who is also planning this event. I am about to explain my frustration, which is not with her, when someone else chimes in. Ah, we have a conference call! SUPRISE! Fuck My Life.

In an uncharacteristic display of kindness, I buy cups of tea for myself and Priest, who also has a case of the sniffles. My lid is not securely fastened. Hot tea scalds my hand and the 1L next to me starts snickering. I turn to him and say "Yeah, yuk it up, Chuckles."

And he does.

I'm a little teapot

Apparently, all my meanness, and hatefulness, and deadness-in-the-eyes has settled in my sinuses, where an evil mist has formed and avenged the world by making me feel like poo warmed up in a microwave that shoots sparks.

Saturday began normally enough. I went to school (gah!) and actually felt good about getting some work done, it also afforded me the opportunity to decipher the strange and confusing notes in my planner. Wednesday the 1st. Meeting. Wednesday the 8th. Meeting again. I was confused, I thought there was just one day with two meetings back to back. Finally, with Susan's assistance, I get my answer. Wednesday the 1st we are having the regularly scheduled meeting. And then, we are having a meeting, after the regularly scheduled meeting, to discuss the special meeting on the 8th. I cannot make this shit up. It reminded me of Robert Downey Jr.'s line in "Tropic Thunder" where he says "I'm just a dude, playing a dude, disguised as another dude." I'm not sure why.

As time passed on Saturday I was aware of dark forces taking over my nose and I spent the entire night mouthbreathing like an obese pedophile watching a JonBenet documentary. Also, Nyquil gives me nightmares (as if the preceding sentence wasn't enough).

Boyfriend returns from a meeting (we haz LOTS of them in lawschool) to a scene of utter devastation on his couch.

There I am, half concealed behind a fluffy white mountain of used tissues and empty Emergen-C packets. I imagine I look something like the wild man of Borneo, what with my hair being all curly and unbrushed and my face being all pale (except where it looks like the the Meat Lover's Special at PizzaHut) and my eyes being all wild and glazed over with Nyquil. I look up at him with the wild, glazed over eyes, sniff (well,l snarfle) and say, in my not-sexy-at-all almost-lost voice "I don't feel good."

Boyfriend: Aw, you're cute when you're sick. Why can't you be sick all the time?

Love. We haz it.
Yeah, I guess the honeymoon's over when your partner wants you to have the plague because you are more pleasant that way.

Apparently, I am docile and cute when sick. And boyfriend was pleased to let me watch movies and mouthbreathe on the couch, in exchange for this docility and the minimal work of making me a sandwich. Until I decided I wanted cookies. And popsicles. He thought I maybe wasn't being serious and did not move quickly to get them. He did eventually procure the cookies. They were tasty.

But that is so not the point of this post. The point is, I go to the Health Center on Campus (insert doom music here), all sad and sniffly, and with my nose about to fall off and for once, they do not suggest to me that am pregnant or have mono. Srsly? I am impressed, and, in my weakened state, not up to making any snarky comments. They do run a strep test and tell me to treat the symptoms, blah,blah, blah and by the way, have you ever thought of trying a Netipot? Cautious, and convinced this has something to do with toilet training I say....."I don't know what that is..."
Apparently, it is a sinus rinse, which, on a better day I would mock mercilessly, but hey, I'm desperate here, so I buy one from the pharmacy.

I take the magical Netipot home and open it. The box contains a booklet on the mystical healing properties of the Netipot. Also, the Netipot itself. Which looks like a little blue plastic teapot. With a penis for a spout. A RILLY RILLY skinny penis with a HUGE head. Oh no. I have to stick the teapot penis up my nose. On the upside, it comes with, like, a bajillion packets of the magical salt mix. As many as they could stuff into the penis teapot and a bunch more. Score! What a bargain!

I had to sneak home to do this in the middle of the day because I am sure that notwithstanding the fact that boyfriend is all adorable, tea-and-sandwich-making, cookie-procuring, and thinking I am cute while sick, I am sure he'd be Google-mapping directions to the seminary if he saw me with a blue plastic teapot penis in my nose.

I did as the directions stated, I washed my hands, and filled the penis teapot up with distilled water (yes, heaven forbid the plastic teapot penis I'm about to stick up my nose be filled with city water), stir in the magical salts, bend over the sink and allow the solution to gently flow up my nose. It's totally fine if this image makes you laugh so hard you pee your pants.

Sigh, the lengths I am willing to go in the name of my nose and the entertainment of the three of you who read this...

Everybody Comes to Rick's

Nikki might choke a bitch. Butterfly Net (not her real name) needs to reschedule another meeting. She has informed us of this by not showing up and refusing to answer her phone for a week, in case we weren't sure.

The worst part about being a lawyer (or working for one), it seems, is having to track down your clients like dogs in the street so you can take the steps necessary to get them the money it takes to fix the utter ruin their has become due to their back surgery/brain injury/knee replacement following the car accident/slip and fall/divorce. It's an inconvenience for Christ's sake that their lawyer can't just handle the entire case until the check signing (when are they sending my money?) Lawyers ask all these questions about when and how and who the insurance carrier is. Fucking Lawyers.

At Rick's Cafe Legalese we seem to attract more than our fair share of clients who require not a retainer agreement and a contact number, but a GPS dot and a tranquilizer gun.

Neck Crack has gone AWOL. Both numbers are disconnected and two letters have gone unanswered. Rick dictates another one and I sip coffee, kinda hoping Neck Crack has cut his losses and skipped town. The phone rings: It's Neck Crack, just want to know what kind of progress we're making on his case.

I can't decide whether to throw the copier at his head or drink the toner cartridge.

Later, maybe a week, maybe a month, he's crying and angry--we just don't understand--he doesn't have the time or the money to request medical records--can't we just tell them he's hurt? Why are we so mean? He's complaining to the wrong person about broke and busy--I had peanut butter for breakfast and I'm not wearing underwear because I haven't had time to do laundry in 3 weeks. I'm in no personal rush to get the records and settle the case--I'm not the one with a medical file the thickness of the Complete Works of Shakespeare and a gajillion dollars in back child support. And, oh--when can he expect his money? I pick up my notepad and take a look at the toner cartridge, looking for weak spots.

Phone call: Can we sue a motel for having bedbugs? He stayed there for a month, they never did anything about it. His girlfriend just pulled one out and now it's swimming in a water glass. I almost lose the peanut butter.

Phone call: Can we sue the vegetable company--She opened a can last night and there was a grasshopper in the spinach. Switch to Green Giant, and for the love of God, can't people buy Raid?

Phone call: She fell at a bar a month ago and got a boo-boo. No, she doesn't know why she fell. Her drink intake? More than my party of six drank watching the game last night. I might know why she fell.

Nikki and I are continuing our exorcism of the office. It's like the beach invasion at Normandy, only with a shredder, file folders, and a can of furniture polish. The filing cabinet drawer opens--pleadings drafted around the time I was born, maybe even before. Not to give too much away, but we're talking Reagan Administration.

Nikki's on the phone, just checking to make sure you're still coming in to meet with us twenty minutes ago. Oh, you were planning on swinging by in a few hours instead? Thanks for the heads-up, Asshat. No, it's no big deal, we just need you to pick up some stuff and sign off on it. Asshat explodes into Hulk-like rage. I've never met him, but I imagine a mustache, resembling a furry animal, that jumps around and collects spit flecks as he screams. So, one-thirty then?

I wonder if I possibly put LSD in my coffee this morning...

Rick wants to hang a picture--how did we hang the cork board? It might be true that Nikki and I used our feminine wiles to Shang-hai a nearby construction crew into doing it for us. It might work again.

Nikki looks at me and cries, in an oh-so-tortured voice--"This is the skin of a killer, Bella!" It makes as much sense as anything else that happens on any given day.

"Mean, Hateful, and Dead in the Eyes:" Random Musings by way of Introduction

Discussion from Tuesday:
Why don't undergrads stay out of the law library? More specifically, why for the love of everything holy, do they insist on sitting at one of 1st floor computers in front of the sign that tells them they can't sit on the first floor. Not like the law library is a hoppin' joyful place. You can cut the tension with a knife. Hell, during finals, the dysfunction level is so high even I can't stand to hang out there. And yet, the undergrads wait for study passes in droves. Dude, WHY?
Amanda points out that law students are not fun to be around. We are "mean, hateful, and dead in the eyes." That about sums it up. To the undergrads: Trust us.

Maybe you think you will meet an attractive and sensitive law student who will someday become an attractive, sensitive, and wealthy lawyer.

Trust me, you won't. We're not sensitive. In fact, right now, we're thinking of how best to report you to the librarians and get you kicked out. Not because you're distracting us. Because we envy the absence of a suicidal glaze in your eyes. And covet the book on developmental psychology with the pretty pictures of babies and rhesus monkeys. Because you have a one subject notebook and a pen with a fuzzy feather top. Because your school books fit in a tote bag. And because being mean to you makes us feel good.

And the wealthy thing? Yeah, most of us graduate with at least a hundred grand in student debt.
Take my advice: Run. Like. Hell.

Law school is an experiment designed to test how high one's blood pressure can be pushed before that little vein in your forehead pops. Exhibit A: I wanted popcorn before Con Law. Something to munch on for 100 minutes of Procedural Due Process, just to take the edge off. A non-law student, or one who is on drugs, proceeds to make the already glacial pace of Spazzy's, the craptastic, monopoly-holding coffee shop, EVEN SLOWER by starting a conversation about the dates on his dimes. I am not making this up. It might have even been something as scintillating about the new state quarter he got. Doesn't matter. I mean, the baristas can't even walk and chew gum at the same time. Don't distract them. I refrained from ripping his throat out with my teeth only because I figure it would create messy (ha!) questions during my character and fitness interview.

So, this, by way of disturbing introduction, is me. Welcome to the outlet of all the random and inane musings that float into my mind. Oh, and the occasional rant, George tells me to warn you about the ranting. Maybe more than occasional rants. George, by the by, does a mean Eliza Doolittle impression.

Format: Mostly, stream of consciouness. I do enough editing in real life. I will probably edit a little bit anyway because I'm insane. First names only, nicknames where only first names would be ambiguous. And, sometimes, I'll just make up the names. Because, hey, it's fun.

Sidenote: I LOVE Alex Karev. Yes, he's a fictional doctor (from Grey's Anatomy). Get over it. If you can't appreciate my love of tv show characters, I don't need your love. Don't judge me.

My cable is blinky and not-worky and the crap "signal" that Comcast sent me has not helped. It is RUINING my Grey's Anatomy viewing experience. Now I'm pissed that I didn't take the stupid survey so that I could tell Comcast how much they suck at anything remotely approaching customer service. I only pay a bajillion dollars (and sixty-seven cents!) a month for their ass-tastic cable and interwebs. Why bother making sure the freakin' service works? If I ever have the guy who makes Comcast the evil empire it is today in my clutches, I will make him scream like an ant being fried under a magnifying glass. Maybe that's even how I'll do it.

Maybe I AM mean, hateful, and dead in the eyes.

Stay tuned.