home alone

Yesterday I walked a mile and a half (each way!) and paid $5 for two cupcakes and a glass of milk from this adorable establishment, Sweet Mandy B's. It has, I can say with total confidence, the most delicious cupcakes in the world. Actually, the cupcakes are good, but it's the frosting that haunts my dreams. I got one carrot cake and one red velvet--which is to say, double the cream cheese frosting, please. I sat on the bench out front and ate the carrot cake one and drank the milk and brought the red velvet back for after dinner. It. Was. Glorious.

But also, this post is about how pathetic I am when left to my own devices. The hubs skipped town to go run some absurd distance in some other city, and I stayed home alone. I watched disgusting amounts of HGTV and subsist on cupcakes and goldfish. I'm pretty damn lucky to have him around most of the time to be sure I don't die wearing my ugly sweatpants, surrounded by what appear to be the remnants of a first grader's birthday party.

dripping with alchemy

A woman I worked with when I was a summer associate had been out on maternity leave when I started, and just returned. I hadn't seen her in nearly 2 years now, and so the first thing she wanted to talk about when she saw me was...the wedding. Ah, yes, the wedding. Of course. How quickly I forget. It was nearly a year ago now. A year!

A year ago at this time, I was getting ready for finals. Finals. Even the concept feels so foreign to me at this point. When I was in law school, occasionally someone would make reference to something that had appeared on a final I had taken. (Generally, talking about law school finals is totally taboo in all civilized circles, but now and then in conversation someone would drop a "oh, yeah, like that bizarre hypo with the cat and the lady with the pick up truck...") Anyway, when one of these references came up I, without fail, had no idea what this person was talking about. From the second I walked out of that exam room, if you had asked me one thing that was on the test, I couldn't have told you. Honestly. It's like how they say some abuse victims don't remember their abuse because they've just repressed the memory? I didn't understand how that was possible before law school. It's not like I'm not remembering because I don't want to. I honestly just don't.

This is all a long-winded, roundabout way of my saying...I think I also blocked out law school. Sometimes when I think back on it, I feel like it didn't really happen. Like I came out of college, took a three year nap, Rip Van Winkle style, and woke up a lawyer.

A year ago! Almost! Crazytown!

turn smile shift repeat

So I'm now a full month into my job. And it's...I mean, it's job. There's a reason they have to pay you to go to jobs (and in my case, arguably overpay) and the reason is they all suck a little. But I spent three years--three miserable years--of my life telling myself that if I could just get through those three years, then I would get to be a lawyer. And being a lawyer was going to be awesome.

And some things about it are kind of awesome. There's a lot of problem-solving. I get to be a part of a team way more than I anticipated, which I unexpectedly sort of love. Plus, I get to give legal advice. There's something about that which is totally weirdly satisfying. I also think the issues I'm dealing with are pretty interesting in a majorly nerdy way. And those sweet, sweet lawyer paychecks certainly don't hurt.

But then. But then. I'm working kind of a lot, and there's a lot of pressure for me to be working even more. My employer laid a ton of people off in the last year, and there's a lot of anxiety about when or if they might be laying off more. There's a lot of tension about who's working what kind of hours and whether we ought to be doing this or doing that. Incidentally, in a total fluke, I happen to be in one of the busiest groups at my firm, but even I had a super slow day this week which caused me to have a "well shit, if I can't even get work in this group, I might as well pack it in now."

On top of that, I have no idea if I'm doing even a passable job. I get feedback in the "here, make these edits and then send it to the client" kind of way, but not in the "yeah, you're a pretty good beginning lawyer" kind of way. I guess they hired me on the basis of the work I did last summer, which must not have sucked, but then sometimes I get some pretty negative feedback (one partner, for whom I do the majority of my work, had to remind me to "mind the small things"....I shut the door to my office and cried.) and it's like....this? This is what I'm doing with my life? Why??

Oh, not to mention there's no exit strategy. I'm in a sort of niche area, and there's not really a lot to do from here, even if there were available legal jobs out there.

Maybe part of the problem is that I have always been relentlessly, disgustingly goal-oriented. I worked hard in high school to get a scholarship to college. Check. I worked hard in college to get into a great law school. Check. I worked hard in law school to get a firm job. Check. Now that I have that job I have sort of a feeling of a ship at sea. Now what? I had thought I'd be on a sort of partnership track, and maybe in a few months I'll decide that is what I want, but right now, the idea of working at this same place doing this same work until I retire makes me want to put knives in my eyeballs. The idea of billing 2000+ hours a year and taking a blackberry on vacation and always being on call makes me want to quit today. But that great law school didn't come cheap, so I guess for at least the next 10 or so years, I'm just going to have to suck it up.

out of touch

I have never been the kind of person who's really good at staying in touch with people. There are a number of reasons why this is a flaw in my personality, but I'll skip over them to the punchline: I should stop it. It's a result of this flaw that I have very few people I keep in touch with from high school and college.

Keeping in touch is a weird thing anyway, in the Facebook Era. I mean, I know exactly what basically every member of my high school class is doing now--both in terms of their careers and education and families, and in terms of what they had for lunch or what color their bra is. (That is a whole different post, which will likely never get posted.) But do I actually speak to any of them? Basically no.

For a long time, I thought of this as thoughtful pruning. And, to some extent, I still do. I have no time in my life for people who aren't pretty awesome. Everybody has to deal with a number of not-that-awesome people every day--as part of our jobs, our commutes, our web-surfing, our grocery shopping, whatever the fuck it is we do all day--and I like to keep that to an absolute minimum. Seems fair. But what got thrown out with that bathwater are all the people that I really like but just somehow never made time for. Or people that I made time for at one point in my life and just stopped later because of distance or laziness.

So this is my resolution: to be a better friend. I'd even share a milkshake. Maybe. Probably not 3 ways, though. I take my ice cream more seriously than that.

an open letter to the man with the office across the alley from mine

Dear man with the office across the alley from mine:

Have you noticed that we can see directly into one another's offices? Because I will tell you what, I have. I have also noticed that you play a LOT of Freecell and Hearts. I'm sorry your job's so boring.

Oh, hey, can I ask you a favor? I'm sure I can. Will you PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD fix the picture frames on your wall? I see you have many fancy diplomas presumably for your many fancy degrees all nicely framed but ALL OF YOUR DAMN FRAMES ARE CROOKED AND MISALIGNED.

Your OCD neighbor,
Kate

hey, guess who it is? it's your butt. hey butt.

So I debated posting this at all, because there's so much judgment about women's bodies out there, and I have tried to avoid that minefield as much as possible. Nonetheless, whatever else this blog is, it ought to be about my experiences is and the fact is this: I have gained a lot of weight. (Since the wedding. How cliched is that?) And I'm uncomfortable at my new weight. Not because there's something bad or gross or wrong with it but because it's new and none of my damn clothes fit anymore.

In fact, if it weren't for the fact that none of my damn clothes fit, I probably wouldn't have even noticed at all. I look more or less the same, and while I'm out of shape, I've certainly been thin and out of shape in my life. (Why hello there, 15 year old Kate. I notice you're approximately 80 lbs lighter than I am right now and yet can barely squeak out the 14 minute mile required not to fail phys. ed.)

But, since none of my damn clothes fit, and because I'm starting work next week and I haven't worked during the winter since 2006, I needed new clothes. New business clothes. Fast.

The most jarring thing about the weight I've gained is that it was just enough to cause me to "size out" of most of my old favorite stores. I'm sure for a lot of people (most people?) this is demoralizing or something, but for me, it just fucking pisses me off. I am a consumer. I want to purchase your goods. WHY CAN'T YOU MAKE THEM FOR ME??? I mean, I knew this was a problem--I read the blogs--but there's a difference between knowing there's a problem and experiencing it in all its painful glory.

What's maybe just as irritating is how ghettoized buying clothes is for people my new size. Seriously, who thought up the term "Plus Size?" Yes, it's the number of my old size PLUS FOUR!! Isn't that fun? Also, WOMAN. Somehow WOMAN is code for "fattie" in the biz. There's Michael Kors, then there's Michael Kors WOMAN. There's the Macy's women's department and then there's Macy's WOMAN. Oh, also, did you know we also have our own sizing numbers and letters? That's a whole different fun learning experience.

Anyway, I finally did find a few retailers who would deign to sell to me, though I am now my old size plus four, but the whole ordeal left me totally exhausted and annoyed and angry and sad. And I came home to check Jez, and what do I find? This spread, from V Magazine's forthcoming January issue.

And you know what? It made me feel better. Isn't that weird? I don't think fashion has ever made me feel better. It's HOTT. It made me feel a little hotter, even in my WOMAN pants. I didn't think it was possible for fashion photography to make ME feel hotter. The models are airbrushed, sure, but like...they have rolls! But they're still hot! And maybe more importantly, they're still supposed to be hot!

A few of my faves, in case you didn't click through:



Thanks, Jez, and V Magazine. I needed that.

(The title is from this ad, if you didn't recognize it. I seriously love that couple. Can they get a sitcom deal? Come on, the Geico cavemen got one!)

best of 2009

Best trip: ROAD TRIP.

Best restaurant experience: Sprout. Seriously, best meal of my life.

Best book (fiction or non-fiction): Lolita.

Best night of the year: My wedding.

Best day of the year: Thomas's birthday- Portland, OR.

Wildest day of the year: St. Louis.

Best day of work: I didn't really "work" in 2009. So there's that.

Best challenge: bar exam. Is that a best? Ugh, it sort of doesn't feel like it.

Best place: Glacier National Park.

Best car ride: SF to Yosemite. "hey mom, I PASSED THE BAR."

Best learning experience: recession + crushing student loan debt = new lessons in attempted frugality.

Best gift: flowers and omelets October 11.

Best purchase of the year: does the road trip count as a purchase? does my J.D? assuming not, my favorite pair of jeans.

Best insight or ah-ha moment: If it's a business, it's going to operate like a business, no matter what else they try to tell you. Wait, that's too cynical. How about this: it's a big, beautiful world out there and I'm just lucky to be living in it. Yes, that's better.

Taken from my cuz, the incomparable EA.