Journeys of a Law School Wife

My New Home

2010-09-12T20:44:00.000-04:00

I have a new home over here. My new blog has every one of my posts and comments from this blog. I hope you'll come visit me : )

Being a Catholic Law School Wife

2010-09-12T15:05:00.000-04:00

I realize that I don't talk very much about my religion on here. I'm not exactly sure why, since we attend a Catholic law school and everything. I think it is impart because I have fought long and hard for my religion, so I'm rather tired from all the fighting. Two reasons: one being that I converted from protestantism to Catholicism at a very unusual time: in college. I went to a liberal, public college and most students, partying, secular, experimental 20-somethings acted like choosing Catholicism was about as smart as jumping naked into Lake Huron in the winter. The second is that my family just about disowned me for converting. I was raised loosely Presbyterian, but we rarely went to church. I started attending an Evangelical church on my own late in high school and converted to Catholicism in my freshman year of college. I endured a TON of shit during the conversion process and dealt with a TON of fallout after I was formally confirmed. Although most of the dust has settled now, I am still walking a fine line between re-offending everyone to whom I am blood-related and being Catholic.

Anyway, despite my fear of pissing off the few survivors of the conversion, Matt and I are rather devout. We go to Mass weekly, say Rosaries, read encyclicals, have religious art around our apartment, use NFP, all that jazz. We used to go to Adoration, but there are no 24-hour Adoration chapels down here and the few churches that offer a monthly Adoration hour schedule it for the retired seniors in the community instead of the working class.

Anyway, we also go to a Catholic law school. The mentality and culture of the school is VERY family-friendly. Kids are invited to just about every school event. Wives are often seen in the school's chapel for morning Mass. Professors don't mind students taking a few days off when their wives give birth. There are prayer groups during finals week and bar exam time when families can get together to pray for their law student. Rather pleasant.

Religion plays a large role in our life. When I think about how far we've come, how many decisions we've made, how precariously we're perched right now, I tend to freak out. When I think about the future, wonder where we are going to go, wondering what would happen if I lost my job (real estate is suffering hard core with this most recent down-turn), wondering how we will survive if Matt doesn't find immediate work, it's pretty terrifying. I have to remind myself that we are NOT doing this alone.

Being down here has shown me how strong of a person I am and how utterly dependent we are on God. It sounds weird, but it's true. In a very strange way, you have to be strong to depend on God. By that I mean, it takes strength (discipline) to be humble and vulnerable and look to a being you can't touch or see; it takes strength to have faith. We have a lot of faith; without it, I would be a sobbing mess on the floor. We pray a lot that God might reveal His will for us so that we can follow it. We want to be sure we're laying our foundation out correctly so that we can build a holy family upon it.

Anyway, that's how my religion plays into my life, the law school part anyway.

Birthdays

2010-09-05T22:08:00.001-04:00

Today is Matt's birthday. We bought some donuts after church, read through the newspaper together, opened presents, went to the bookstore with our 40% off coupons to spend some of our freespending money (our allowance to ourselves), then we picnic-ed on the beach, went for a swim in the Gulf, came home, read our books, ate a DELICIOUS dinner and cake (homemade of course : ), and now Matt is playing Rome Total War (a Christmas present from a few years back). I was knitting while I watched, but I wanted to check something online real quick and one thing led to another...

Matt doesn't typically get excited by holidays/events, so, being the countdown queen that I am, I've had a countdown going on the white board since we were 2 weeks out. The countdown, combined with lots of discussion about the menu and the activities for the day upped his excitement level significantly. He was quite ready to tear into those presents today : ) I try to put a little extra into holidays down here since we have no family with whom to celebrate.

Anyway, I have more insightful blog ideas, which I will post shortly. Here is a teaser (plus this way I won't forget!)

2L vs 1L yr and the benefits of the summer internship
How religion impacts our life with relation to law school

Is it really only 10:07pm??? I thought it was already a little after 11pm and was contemplating powering down and heading to bed. Oi, I am such a light-weight.

The Things We Do for Love

2010-08-27T22:05:00.000-04:00

It is 10:00pm, and I am at the law library with my husband. I wanted to spend some time with him, and he needed to go to the library, so here I am. Usually I am in bed at this point. Although, it is a Friday night, maybe I would have stayed up until 10:30 or even 11pm. Either way, I am never out this late.

I guess this is one of those things you do when you love your husband and you're in law school.

The library is rather cold, by the way.

The Reinvention of Self

2010-08-21T08:26:00.001-04:00

At the last book club meeting, the particular book we were reading led many women to tangent upon how the choices they made when they were growing up have changed their lives today. It was interesting how even though unexpected things did change the course of events for them, a good number of things they'd wanted "ever since they were young" came true.

I am also struck by a coworker of mine. She is in her 50s and has recent discovered the gym. She has taken bikram yoga, is currently taking a spinning class, and hopes, when her two high-school age children have left for college, to start taking tennis lessons. I am really amazed that at 50, she decided to do something new with her life.

Matt and I choose to go to a particular school that put us in a city we don't want to live in and in a state we don't want to reside. We are stuck doing this for the next two years. We have no extra cash with which to take long vacations, buy kayaks, or even buy a second car. (Which, by the way, had something else go wrong with it, and I have officially put about as much money into the car as it is worth since the spring, although that does include new tires). Anyway, I start to think that nothing in life will ever be back in our control.

I also feel, perhaps because so often our society decrees our 20s to be the best years of our lives, that I have to accomplish all of my dreams before I hit the big 3-0. (This proves difficult because I don't want to work when our kids are young and we hope to have most of our kids while we are young). Anyway, I often feel like we are going to be stuck in a one bedroom apartment with no money and no excitement for the rest of our lives, thus rendering my dreams, and my life, empty.

Lastly, a friend of mine (in her 30s) has done a significant amount of traveling, especially in Indochina, including spending a month in Thailand. I would say that her experiences traveling have shaped her outlook on life dramatically. I was shocked to find out that by the age of 21, the only place she'd ever visited outside of America was Cancun!

I think that as much as it is important to have friends going through what you are going through (in my case law school), it is also important to have friends who are in a different place in life. I think that later group of friends is really crucial to us seeing the "bigger picture" so-to-speak, as opposed to getting caught up on the drama of our own situation.

I could still learn how to become a camping and kayaking expert, perhaps while teaching my family. I could even pursue a job field testing LLBean gear! If I want, it is completely possible for me to have a 15 year career as a library. I wouldn't even have to start until I was 50 in order for that to happen. I could see all 50 states, visit Ireland, and Scotland, and London, and Egypt, and Greece, and Krakow, and Austria, and Bali, and Kamchatka. I could even volunteer to work with that big cat sanctuary up in Tennessee. Maybe if I played my cards right, I could even do all of those things; if I live to be 80, I could have six ten-year long careers. And heck, at 23, I could still even get a novel published before I hit the not-so-awful 3-0.

The Final Days of Summer

2010-08-16T20:19:00.000-04:00

It certainly feels like an update is needed, but I'm not really sure what to post about. I do have an idea, but I think it's too sensitive of a topic to talk about, as people it discuses may read this blog. I'll guess I'll just general update headline-style.

I had to take my car in to the shop three times in one week. I took it in today as the a/c was broken. I've had to drive around since Saturday with 95* temps and 88% humidity. Thankfully all three trips combined were less than $350.

Matt started his orientation for Law Review today. They require about 20 extra curricular hours. 2L year better be way easier than 1L year. We are going to buy his books for class on Wednesday.

Matt's birthday is in about three weeks, so I have begun doing some preliminary planning. Nothing too exciting yet.

I have chosen two life goals for myself. The first is to write a novel that someone publishes. The second is the camp in the Adirondacks. I'm not sure if I want to have a base camp from which I can bike and kayak or if I will backpack it. Either way, I want to do those two things.

I have one week to finish up my summer goals. I need to read one more book, lose four more pounds, play around with a computer program that I have, and go to a beach to which I have never been. Hmmm...that is a lot for one week and one weekend. We'll see if I can pull it off.

I will make a winter semester goal this weekend.

In the meantime, I need to go fold the laundry.

Going It Alone

2010-08-05T18:45:00.001-04:00

So I've had a hellish few days. Lots of waiting, lots of money, not much sleep. I have a deaf, epileptic cat.

Said kitty is only two years and three months old and I ~~miss~~ love her very much. She has been deaf ~~most of~~ her entire life (depending on who you ask). She meows funny. She meows loudly, like a teenager wearing head phones, yelling above the music. She has had seizures pretty much her entire life, but a previous vet wrote them off as asthma. ~~How do you confuse asthma and seizures?~~ They are not grand mal seizures and they never lasted more than 10 seconds. Until Tuesday. Tuesday night I played with her. Then on Tuesday night 10 second seizures ran back to back for a few minutes. They were worse than they've ever been before. I rushed her to the vet. She had a seizure at the hospital. Then she had a few more. I waited. A long time. They bruised her in several places trying to draw blood. They shaved her feet and put needles in them. She hates it when anything touches her feet. They gave her lots of drugs. They wanted to keep her over night. They wanted to give her $1500 tests and $24/dose drugs with side effects. Seizures cause brain swelling, which triggers more seizures. They told me that if her seizures last more than 5 minutes or run back to back for more than 5 minutes that she is in imminent danger. She will fry her own brain. They took her into the back room away from me. They don't know her hand signals. She is deaf. They don't know how to communicate with her. She scratched the vet techs. They think I am a bad pet owner for taking her home that night. They indicated in the report they wrote that I am a bad pet owner. I stayed at the pet hospital for three hours. I took her limp, drugged up, unconscious body home. I woke up every hour or so as she thrashed around in her carrier, fighting the valium. I stayed home from work the next day as the drugs wore off and she stumbled around and fell off of chairs and coffee tables. I found all natural herbal remedies online with zero side effects. I ordered them. I went to work today. I spent all day wondering if I would come home to a dead cat. I left work early. I held my breath as I opened the door. Kitty was breathing. Kitty is breathing. I have not observed kitty having a single seizure since we got home.

But they are not over. They will never be over. It is not a matter of if. It is a matter of when. My stomach is in knots. I am waiting for my cat to have a seizure. I am praying that the drugs she got at the hospital will hold until the herbal remedies arrive. They shipped today. I am praying they arrive before the weekend. Drugs don't work. Holistic medicine does. I have an incurable colon disease. The side effects from the drugs they gave me were the same as the symptoms of the disease. I took herbal remedies instead. I am not suffering from my incurable disease. I am living my proof. I hope they work for kitty.

Matt is in Arizona. I am doing all of this by myself.

I love my kitty. Please don't have another seizure.

Phase 3

2010-07-31T08:58:00.000-04:00

We'll, he's gone again. He's in the third and final phase of his Blackstone Internship, which is located in Arizona. It wasn't as hard to say goodbye this time; in fact, I didn't even cry. I teared up at a few points, but no full on tears. I keep telling myself that it's only for a week - I'll pick him up from the airport next Friday night. I am hoping to enjoy my time to myself. I made myself a weekend goal list (believe it or not, blogging is on there), and I am going to get some work done. I mapped it out so that I'll do some relaxing on Sunday; hopefully watch a movie and give myself a pedicure.

In other news, I finally took my own advice and joined a book club! An acquaintance of mine invited me and I really enjoyed it! I couldn't believe how much my friend and I agreed on interpretations of the book. The other girls in the group are nice, some are insightful. I struggle with pride when it comes to literature because I studied it so heavily in college (English major!) and I can usually discuss circles around most people. I have to remind myself that I am not the final and absolute understander of these books. Luckily my terribly shy and awkward social skills keep my mouth in check. Between the magazine on which I volunteer, the book club, hanging with my husband, and my summer goals list, I am staying pretty busy.

My sister-in-law is coming to visit the week Matt gets back as well. I'm excited to have a visitor (one of Matt's brothers may come with as well, which would make visitors plural). I revisited a list of things to do with visitors that I made a little while ago, and, in true designer fashion, I made a snazzy little pamphlet out of it. I am hoping to finish it up this weekend and get a few copies printed. (Maybe one of my printer connections will do it for me cheap?) She'll leave the weekend of the 13th, then the following weekend Matt has Law Review Orientation during the day and then...law school starts back up and Matt is an L2!

PS. One year ago today was our last day in Michigan.

A Degree in Mattology

2010-07-29T21:15:00.000-04:00

Our parish priest when we were married taught us this. It's a fun metaphor for us law school wife types as we're quite academic, even if only by association.

You ought to know your spouse better than anyone else. Know them inside and out, backwards and forwards. Think of getting to know your spouse as getting a degree in them. You take a class in "my husband's strengthens," "my husband's weakness," "what my husband does when he feels lazy on a Saturday," "what my husband does when faced with a crisis."

Matt and I extended this metaphor even further in a "life-long education" style. We have to get multiple degrees in each other during the different phases of our lives, working up to a PhD. For example, I have a degree in "newly married Matt with a job a no kids." I am working on my degree in "Matt in law school far from home with no kids." We assume that we start off each program with at least an associates because we still have the same personality, same likes and dislikes, etc. Anyway, one day I'll have to get a degree in Matt with kids, Matt with new lawyer job, etc. You could also treat each of those like classes on the life-long journey to get a PhD, or, in our case, a JD.

It also makes for a fun joke. When we incorrectly guess something about the other person, we joke, "well I guess I'm going have to retake that class," or "I'm never going to get my Masters in Mattology at this rate."

You start walking my way, and I'll start walking yours

2010-07-27T21:14:00.000-04:00

I often wondered as I prepared for my marriage about how mature Christians argue with one another. Surely they do, as everyone argues, including mature Christians, but I didn't know how.

The solution came shortly after our engagement: Matt and I had to take an anger management class as part of our marriage prep classes. The class was hokey, the VHS they played was from the 80s, but even though the techniques were good, we, or at least I, quickly forgot them. We have a magnet on our fridge that reminds us, but it's been there so long now (2 years!) that I don't even see it.

Today in the Wall Street Journal Personal section, they had a piece about "arguing happily ever after," which talked about how fighting smartly can actually strengthen a marriage and talked about how to fight respectfully. Humorously enough, both our long-forgotten class and this article draw from the same source: Fighting For Your Marriage, a book about fighting nicely, so to speak. The article reminded me how much I want to fight like a mature Christian instead of a teenager. They say that if you can teach the concept to others then you truly understand it, so here goes!

1. The listener shuts up and listens. The speaker explains her position in a few sentences. The listener does not interupt.
"I am angry because I cook dinner and do the dishes every night. I feel like you don't help."
(There are lots of other sources who caution that you shouldn't say "you always, you never, I always, or I never" as this will only put the other person on the defensive).

2. The listener repeats back to the speaker what he heard the speaker say. The point of this is to make sure that the speaker is clearly communicating her point.
"You feel like I am not helping you around the house."

3. The speaker is then given the opportunity to re-explain her point until the listener clearly understands and is able to repeat back how the speaker feels/what is upsetting her. Only one person may talk at a time!

4. Now they switch positions. The former listener gets to explain his position.
"I feel like you boss me around when I help you clean and only want me to clean up your way."

5. The listener repeats back to the speaker what she heard him say.
"You feel like I always want you to do things my way."

6. The speaker is then given the opportunity to re-explain his point until the listener clearly understands and is able to repeat back how the speaker feels/what is upsetting him. Only one person may talk at a time!

7. A solution is reached! Sometimes just talking about the issue solves the problem. Maybe he'll actually pick up a sponge and she'll bite her tongue when it's the "wrong" sponge. Other times it is more complicated; this give and take often brings up deeper issues. In this example, it could easily come up that she does not feel that he loves her enough to want to help her. He could feel that she doesn't respect his decisions around the house.

It is easy to see how arguing happily ever after could lead couples to have a stronger marriage than if they didn't argue at all! You'll grow familiar with each other's "trigger issues," even the ones you could verbalize. Then you'll be able to encourage, protect, and strengthen your loved one. What a good relationship!

(Blog post title comes from Diamond Rio's Meet In The Middle).

The Summer of (Wedded) Bliss

2010-07-20T19:23:00.000-04:00

It is nice being married again. I definitely feel like a (fairly) newly married person (is 2 years still new?) living without kids. There are, of course, the never-ending budget concerns which keep us reined in, but it is still sooo nice to spend our evenings and weekends together. Playing games, watching movies, reading together, going grocery shopping together, having help with chores. I am worried that I am getting too used to have him around again; it's going to be so difficult those first few weeks back. They'll be hard for him to, as he adjusts to spending his evenings doing homework instead of gaming. In the meantime, we'll keep hitting those famous Naples beaches : )

Inner Demons

2010-07-14T21:31:00.000-04:00

(This post is a deviation from the law school theme). I've blogged a couple of times before about my almost obsessive compulsive organizational behaviors. They are heightened by excess of emotion and lately I have been dealing with an excess of boredom. I reorganized the bathroom today. It was all I could do to stop there. I am going crazy in my head right now. Okay, this is totally weird, but part of me doesn't want to clean. I desire the end result: looking back on a clean room. I feel like one day I will finally organize everything enough to where I won't have to clean it anymore. Ugh. This weekend is definitely going to be a serious reorganization weekend. Oi. I am sorry that I am everywhere and that this has nothing to do with being a law school wife. I am probably going to delete this post in the end.

What is Your BHAG?

2010-07-09T20:33:00.001-04:00

There is an expensive fitness store right across the walkway from where I work. They are constantly writing motivational things up on their windows. We are kind of health-nutty at work and quite often comment on the notes and inventive mannequin displays of the store. Anyway, we haven't talked about this one at work yet, but the current comment-of-the-week asks, "What is your Big, Hairy, Ambitious Goal?" I'm pretty big into goals myself; if I'm not working directly for something specific, I start feeling hopeless. My anger-venting post a little while back got me thinking back then too: what are my dreams? I'd love to do a lot of things, love to be a lot of things, but most of them are characteristics I'd like to describe me or hobbies I'd like to have, a lifestyle I'd like to live. But what is my BHAG? I'm sure the store would like me to say, "run a marathon" then dart inside to purchase one of the $60 sports bras, sure to motivate me to succeed. But what is my BHAG? Is it a career? Is it really my big, hairy, ambitious goal to be a librarian after my kids are grown? Is it really my big, hairy, ambitious goal to kayak or built my dream house?

You know what my BHAG is? I'm pretty sure it's my big, hairy, ambitious goal to write a novel that someone publishes.

What is your BHAG?

Goal Setting

2010-07-07T20:17:00.000-04:00

As I mentioned at the beginning of the summer, I mentioned that I made a summer goals list. Well, now that we are officially halfway through the summer, I thought it might be fun to revisit said list. It is made up of 22 things (a few of those were added as the summer progressed). Some of them are fun things like biking different areas of Naples or having friends over 2-3x (not easy for an introvert like me). Some of them are personal development things like having a Bible study with Matt or re-learning some Spanish. I set a short-term weight loss goal, I'm going to teach Matt to cook a few dishes, do some tutorials for the niches of a computer program I use a lot. Humorously, one of the items on my list is to do everything on my list. The deadline is the end of summer, or Matt's first day back to school.

I have fully completed 5 of those things. 8 of those things are multi-stage things that require more time, but I am in the process of doing. Several of the things on my list are easy and would require one afternoon. The point of revisiting my list is to remind myself of my goals and do some more of them.

One of the things on my list is to read 20 books. 20 books in four months is ambitious, even for an English major such as myself. These aren't just any books. I've got Anna Karenina, Howard's End, Don Quixote; I've got some George Eilot and Charles Dickens. I tried to sprinkle in some lighter reading, such as Michael Crichton and a few historical nonfiction books. But either way, I'm halfway through summer and I'm on book number 6. I got stuck on Villette. I'm also trying to do a book review for the magazine I'm a volunteer editor for, which is lessening the time I get to dedicate to my list. At this point, I'm just trying to get as far as I can.

Anyway, I am big fan of lists and I'm really enjoying doing fun things and checking them off my list : )

How to Make Your Marriage Thrive During Law School

2010-07-06T20:17:00.000-04:00

If you're a law school widow, or about to become one, you probably got really excited when you saw that title, didn't you? Well, it was false advertising. I have few ideas on how to make a marriage thrive during law school. The priest for Ave Maria School of Law recommends the following:

1. Having a date night
2. Eating dinner together
3. Celebrating the holidays

The dean of the law school recommends to students that they not cross-examine their families. There is ample advice out there geared towards students to keep them sane. Not so much for law school wives. The best place to get advice for us is probably going to come from former law school widows (lawyer widows?) Maybe I should seek some more of it.

I can't tell you how to make your marriage thrive in law school (although the above principals sure do help), but I can definitely tell you the number one blocker that is keeping my marriage from thriving: my tongue.

It is another one of my weakness (geeze, I'm all about telling the world my weaknesses lately) that I don't have much in the way of patience. I've come a long way, but I'm nowhere near sufficient. I am quick to judge and tell Matt what he is doing wrong and VERY slow to acknowledge that I did anything worth reprieve. Matt and I were doing a Bible study the other day and we read James chapter 3, the end of which talks about how if one looses control of his tongue, it is like a small fire that burns down a forest. Well, I struggle with lots of daily brush fires. I'm not very reaffirming, a quality that I admire in other people. A good wife would compliment her husband when he does things well. A smart wife would point out when her husband does things that make her happy without her asking him (like cleaning his desk or taking out the trash). It is eerie how quickly our relationship and his attitude will shed its negative qualities when I make a point to reaffirm my husband's good qualities.

One rather odd thing, when I work out and eat healthy, I tend do lots of good things the rest of the day. Like, I almost always floss my teeth on days when I work out. I don't know why, but I feel "healthy" and I don't want that feeling to wear off, so I keep doing other "wholesome" things. These behaviors make me feel really good about myself. My positive self-worth translates to my loving words to my husband. I'm a big believer in the interconnectedness of the human brain/body/lifestyle, so this fits right in with my world perspective. So, loosing weight equals a happy wife equals a healthy marriage? I can live with that ; )

Them's Fightin' Words

2010-07-05T22:06:00.001-04:00

Matt has always been a debater, but his time in law school has heightened and refined the way he argues. He is much better now then he was fresh out of undergrad. And me? I hate confrontation. I list it as one of my top three weakness: I'm really bad with confrontation and avoid it with a passion. Well, some days he wants to debate everything. On those days, I can't even have an opinion about the weather without it turning into a debate. Sometimes I can roll with the punches, debate with him, make logical conclusions, but other times, I feel like bursting into tears (and some days I do). When my wrong days align with his wrong days, by the time we're ready for bed, I feel so exhausted and demoralized. I wonder how the heck we will survive a lifetime of lawyer-hood. If I were more mature, I could just say to him, "You're switching into lawyer-mode and I'm not emotionally stable enough to argue with you about that right now," and life would move on, sans debate. But I'm not that sophisticated. I argue with him, get emotional, take everything personally. Halfway through the discussions I feel like screaming at him to stop being logical and just agree with me. Yes, I realize how incredibly stupid that is. Stop being logical? Demand that he just side with me for the pure heck of it? In the heat of battle?! While I have yet to act on my desires, I sure do think about them. I did today as we were debating the definition of selfishness. Yes, that's right; I realize the irony in that.

I'm not really sure where to go from here. I guess acceptance is the first step though, right? According to the 12 Step Program, I now need to "[come] to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity." So I need to realize that God can restore me/our marriage to sanity in a moment of frustration. Next step? I guess next time we start debating, we should say a quick prayer that we'll argue respectfully. I also remember seeing an article in Women's Health magazine a few months back about arguing lovingly. I need to reread that.

The (Rainy) Days of Summer

2010-07-04T15:34:00.000-04:00

Matt is signing up for things for next year. So far he's got two student groups, he'll be Deputy Grand Knight in the Knights of Columbus (essentially VP), and law review (it's a secret, though). He also volunteered to make phone calls for the Republican Party/Marco Rubio (running for Senate). I am getting worried that he won't be able to keep his grades up, maybe do a little around the house, still have date nights. The two student groups require almost no commitments, and the phone calls are only supposed to be 1 hr/week through election (Nov 2). So maybe it won't be that bad? He's also talking about getting a work-study job. Oi! Being the worrying, planning person that I am, I have a really hard time letting go of the fall and enjoying the rest of the summer.

In the meantime, we are enjoying day two of a three day weekend. Rainy days have ruined plans to go to the zoo and kept us inside for the most part. We did go to the 4th of July parade and spent some time at the pool. We are hoping to go to a state park/historic site tomorrow to check out this group called the Koreshans. They believed that the world was hollow and that Collier County (the country where I live) was in the center of it. Anyway, lots of grocery shopping, trying to figure out how to have a garage sale in an apartment, falling asleep on the couch, playing computer games, and watching movies.

Ah, the joy of doing mundane things together : )

Super Husband

2010-07-01T18:59:00.000-04:00

My husband went to pick up the pizza today. All by himself. I didn't even ask him to. Having a husband free of law school means having a husband again. He works for his internship during the day and we do things together in the evenings. I am married again. I don't care if it is 95 degrees outside with 90% humidity, summers are awesome.

The Secrets to Surviving

2010-06-28T20:40:00.000-04:00

Surviving Your First Year as a Law School Wife (in no particular order)

1. Do something that doesn't involve the hubby. Do two things, actually. One must involve meeting other people. Take a class, join a book club, get a job,. volunteer There are a MILLION things you can do that are completely free or have a modest charge. The second thing is something you can do when you are home together but he is studying. Read, scrapbook, play computer games with headphones. Take up a hobby (he'll probably like it to be quiet) that you can do when you're at home and he's busy.

2. Have a date night. Don't let the riggers of law school destroy your marriage. Set aside at least a few hours once a week to do something together. There are MILLIONS of cheap date nights out there, just Google it.

3. Don't take his mood swings personally. He is going to get angry and depressed, he is going to yell and throw things. When he vents, just listen. Wait until he is feeling better before discussing any serious concerns that arose during the anger spell. Encourage him and acknowledge the good things he does when he is in a more positive mood.

Surviving Your First Year Far Away From Home (in no particular order)

1. Get to know the city. Get a map, a good one. Drive, bike, and walk around the city. Discover good places to eat and shop. Check out the tourist traps, the local favorites. Figure out how the lights at intersections work. The better you know the city, the more comfortable you will be in it.

2. Befriend a local. Hit them up for advice for everything from good restaurants to seasonal weather patterns. Never underestimate the power of the advice.

3. Find a way to claim a part of the city. Join a church, take a class, join a library book club, volunteer somewhere. Do something that lets you feel like you are engaging with your new environment.

Adjusting

2010-06-24T21:33:00.000-04:00

I was munching on some Caribbean imported papaya this evening while cutting up some mango when I realized how different my life is that what I'd planned. I've moved around a lot, but I always stayed in Michigan. Then suddenly, I upped and moved from one of the northernmost states to one of the southernmost (maybe even the most?). I never saw that coming. But here I am, scoping out iguanas in front of the grocery store and eating Caribbean papaya. It makes me wonder how little control we really have and what the future will be like. Or maybe we do have a lot of control, but also a lot of decisions to make. In reality, people live where the jobs are. If you can't do what you were trained to do in your preferred state, you can either change what you do or where you live. Because we/Matt are/is committed to a higher calling (religious liberty), we will go where the jobs are. We will go where the institutes and the firms and the associations are, whether that's Scottsdale, AZ, Boulder, CO, or Washington, DC. So that means my life goes too. As much as I love to plan and imagine life in each one of these locations, at the end of the day, I just have to get through tomorrow. I guess one of the secrets to succeeding is to make the best of it. Right now I will enjoy .25 kiwis and white translucent geckos.

He's white when he's outside and not in my apartment : )

Reunion

2010-06-23T18:50:00.000-04:00

Well, we're back in the same state again. I was finally starting to get use to the peace and quiet and enjoy my alone time. But I am glad to have him back. Can you believe it: he even unloaded the dishwasher without my asking him to yesterday! Tonight, however, he is working on his application to the International Law Review, his backup plan should he be denied the Law Review.

The weather down here is in full-blown summer. Super hot, super humid. I've pretty much given up on having a good hair day until October.

I am sorry that I am not very witty or exciting today. I am very tired and sick of electronic things.

L1 Grades

2010-06-15T19:05:00.002-04:00

The grades are all back now and the verdict is great! I don't know how detailed he wants me to go, but let's just say that I've very proud of him : )

Phone Relationship

2010-06-13T07:07:00.000-04:00

5 days, 17 hours.
It helps when you have a countdown calculator to do all the dirty work.

I am adjusting to his being gone, finally. The funny thing is that now he is starting to un-adjust. We predicted this would happen because at first the hotel was new, the people were novel, and everything was different to keep him distracted. But now that the novelty as worn off, he is sick of the hotel and wants to come home. Because of the time difference and his busy schedule, we usually only talk for 1 hr a night (plus some texting, of course). Yesterday we talked for 2 1.5 hour blocks, as he had more time in his schedule.

It is weird transitioning into a phone-relationship. We spent a lot of time on the phone while we were dating. But since we got married, we really spend no more than, I don't know exactly, maybe 20 minutes tops on the phone with each other when someone is driving home. Anyway, it's weird adjusting to hearing his voice on the phone and having to use solely words to express our emotions, no physical actions.

I get fewer "important" things done when he is gone. Of course, the house is clean and I did the finances, but I haven't worked on a few monotonous tasks that I would normally have done. I have done way more crafting than normal. I also have been way better at sticking to a diet. I've dropped more weight this past week than I thought was possible. I also stuck better to my gym schedule, and it was easier to do. I think with those last two things, is that we both verbalize our desire/the temptation to skip the gym and eat junk food. Since we find we have support to cheat, we end up doing so. I am naturally fairly disciplined, so when left to my own devices, I can keep up a decent schedule.

I think I need to channel that discipline to finish those boring tasks today : )

Side Effects

2010-06-11T17:30:00.000-04:00

One of the side effects of one's husband going off to a two week conference to hear premier speakers in the field of his dreams at a Ritz Carlton is that he will get to go out to bars on karaoke night with his new friends while you sit at home alone. Do you know what I did today? I went to work. Oh yeah, and I took the trash out this morning. I even managed to score 30 minutes at the gym this morning. Oh yeah. I'm living it big.

That seems to be the side-effect of law school. He pursues his dreams: his dream law school, his dream internship, doing way fun things 2,300 miles away while I take out the trash. So much for my dreams. I'm paying the bills while he's pursuing his dreams. When the hell will my dreams matter?

I'm trying to find a book club and taking adult ed classes to keep busy. All my friends live in Michigan and the tentative friendships I made down here all fell apart when I had to work so much overtime in Season that I missed 3 girls' nights in a row. The few that survived all moved back to their various homes for the summer.

I'm not saying his life is usually easy or that my life is particularly hard. All I'm staying is that I'm in a bad mood, damn it.

Loneliness

2010-06-08T21:09:00.000-04:00

I am extremely lonely. I even lost my appetite. I never lose my appetite, much to my dismay. I am never too excited or too nervous too eat. Usually when I get sick, I eat more than usual, since I am home all day! But I am not really hungry at all; which is a total shock.

I found that is isn't harder to fall asleep, at least, not yet. I have been getting up at 6am to work out, so when I head to bed around 10am, I'm usually tired and fall asleep pretty quickly. When Matt would stay up to read for school, I would toss and turn, unable to get comfortable without him there.

I still keep a fairly normal schedule. I thought I would get sloppy. I guess I still have time, after all, it's only Tuesday of the first week. My hope is that I am settling into a routine that will continue once the true doldrums hit. Yesterday I had a photoshoot at work, so I therefore worked 13 hours straight (full 8 hrs at work, then a 5 hr photoshoot). By the time I got home, it was so late that I pretty much went straight to bed.

We text a few times throughout the day and he has called me at night all three days so far. I find myself getting choked up, but at least not bursting into tears, which I did quite often on Sunday.

It is so eerily quiet being home alone. After a few hours of silence, it is weird even hearing my own voice. Even one of my cats is deaf, so I don't really talk to her.

Oi, I guess that's enough for now. Not very exciting. 10 days left.

12 days until our reunion

2010-06-06T10:44:00.000-04:00

Well, he's gone. I guess we'll find out how strong I really am.

PS, I have been awake since 4:30am.

El Dia Final

2010-06-05T07:04:00.000-04:00

Matt leaves for Arizona tomorrow. He will be gone for two weeks for Phase I of his internship. Each and every day will be so full of lectures and presentations (even on Saturdays!) that even if we could afford me a plane ticket and the time off work, I would never see him. He'll have a few hours in the evening with which he is planning to call me. His plane leaves at 7:30am tomorrow morning. It has been a little over two years since I was alone and I am dreading two entire weeks on it.

I am trying to figure out things I can do to fill the time. I am thinking about taking another adult education class. I've taken one about digital cameras and their series on Photoshop. They have a writing class that sounds good. Work was not excited about me taking those Photoshop classes b/c they like me to be on call every evening, even though the Photoshop class was for work. I am hoping to go to dinner with a friend of mine. That is all I have that will get me out of the house and keep me distracted. There are lots of other little things I can do, but they are all things I can do at home.

Our vacation finished very nicely and we were both very satisfied. It was the first time we'd spent a vacation alone since our honeymoon! I really love being with him all day. We started working out in the morning so that we'd have more time in the evening. It was really fun getting to come straight home from work (not picking him up from school), and finding the laundry done, or dinner cooked, or some such deal.
Then, we would get to hang out and do stuff together! No homework to do! It was awesome!

Oi. I can't wait until June 20th. When that day arrives, I will stand here looking back at the past two weeks and will be very, very happy.

Money in Law School: The Twist (Part IV of IV)

2010-06-04T17:30:00.012-04:00

If our path continues as planned, we’ll save from Matt’s internship, I’ll get more raises and bonuses at work, we’ll start saving money. According to our plan, by the time he graduates from law school, we’ll be debt-free and have a respectable savings, not many people who didn’t come from money can graduate from law school and say that.

But no plan is ever perfect. Everything will change if we have a baby or if one of us gets sick. That’s why Ramsey recommends a good $10,000. Who knows what we would do if one of us got sick, we’ve never talked about it. We probably won’t cross that bridge until we come to it, which is probably not the smart thing to do. But having a baby is a little less unpredictable. We’re young and Catholic. Need I say more? Anyway, with no family to baby-sit for free, I’ll probably switch to part-time, working mostly from home or quit my job. I have a spreadsheet plan all laid out if I get pregnant for each semester, how much we’d need to borrow, and how long it would take to get out of debt (if you couldn’t tell yet, I’m a planner). Even if the numbers aren’t concrete, I’ve at least got a ballpark estimate in which to stand.

The moral of the story is that should we get pregnant and my boss refused to let me go part time, the plan wouldn't work out so perfect. We'd graduate with debt and things would be a little more stressful. I've found among no-income families in law school down here that Medicaid is pretty usefully. But the plan kind of plans for unexpected things. Even if I was pregnant right this second, We would be able to afford the medical bills and we could live off the subsidized debt. At least until he graduated, we would have things under control.

If you like the sound of our budgeting process would like a template of the easy-to-use spreadsheet that I use to track everything, I would be more than happy to give it to you.

Money in Law School: Lifestyle (Part III of IV)

2010-06-03T17:30:00.000-04:00

We do struggle to stay within budget every single paycheck period. Because food down here is so expensive, I only buy meat when it goes on sale, we eat a lot of pb&j, pasta and beans, I don’t get fancy, exciting bread, we drink water, we don’t buy baked goods. Occasionally, when store brand things go on sale, we’ll have extra money with which to buy some ice cream or potato chips, but for the most part, if we want candy, pop, juice, or alcohol, we use our free spending money. Netflix comes out of my free spending money, Matt pays for his Wall Street Journal subscription that way too. I only have one purse, I can count on two hands the pairs of shoes that I own, I drive an old car (10 years this year) that is falling apart, we pack lunches everyday, a friend cuts my hair for $15 (she is actually really great - best hair cuts I’ve ever had, so that’s not really a sacrifice : ).

How do we make it? Priorities. We don’t want to be in debt, so we live cautiously. There are lots of advantages to living this way. It is a lot easier for me to stick to a healthy diet because we don’t keep much junk food in the house, so I’m losing weight. We don’t stress when we get bills, nothing is unexpected with regard to the finances. Even when my car’s breaks all needed to be completely replaced and we had to put $1200 into it, we handled it without breaking a sweat. We don’t buy things, so our house stays clutter-free. We enjoy our purchases more because we had to save up a while to get them. And trust me, coming from a girl who had ice cream in her freezer every day growing up, it tastes a heck of a lot better when you don’t get it all the time.

According to the Dave Ramsey plan, we should not take the subsidized loan money and I should work a second job to save up a $10,000 emergency fund (Step 3 of his plan). I am not going to do those things. We are satisfied with the way things are going right now.

Well this post is short and sweet!

Money in Law School: Our Expenses (Part II of IV)

2010-06-02T17:30:00.002-04:00

To give you some perspective, my income is small, but gives us enough off which to live. We can live solely off the paycheck, but we only put into savings a meager $11.13 from it (as opposed to a category, see below). We also have to pay for our healthcare entirely out of pocket. We have health insurance, but it does not cover vision or dental, and of course, I need glasses/contacts. If my job covered insurance, we could afford to save more money.

We can afford a few luxuries, like renter’s insurance, $40/month (or $10/week) in free spending money (like an allowance) for each of us, and cell phones with $5/person/month for texts (which I need for work).

Our other budgets are very tiny. When I get a paycheck (2x/month), we dole the money out to specific categories that include Food, Household, Clothes (one for each of us), Charity (we don’t tithe 10%, but we do tithe what we can afford), Rent, Gas, Insurance, Utilities, and Medical. We also have a gifts budget that gets $10-$20 when we get a windfall, which isn’t very often. When the money runs out, we don’t buy anymore. Sometimes if one category builds up, we’ll “donate” money from that section into another section (often times, household gives money to food). Sometimes we’ll splurge and I’ll pull a few bucks from the savings account and we’ll go out to dinner. At the end of the month, there are always some “weakness buys” that we used the debit card on for which money must come out of savings. Hey, no one is perfect.

Matt is the designer of this budget plan. He brought it into our marriage thanks to his dad’s miserly ways. I have modified it using the Dave Ramsey plan, as I am now the one who handles the finances (thanks, Law School).

It is a very simple plan (I prefer things to be uncomplicated), but it is very effective in that it prevents us from overspending. If we want to upgrade our cell phone plans, for example, we think about the price per month. Okay, $10 more per month will buy us unlimited texting. But that $10 has to come from a budget. Most budgets have a small savings cushion, but otherwise run month-to-month. $10 more in Internet, TV, or cell phones means $10 less in clothing, food, or household. It is much easier to be fiscally conservative when you've been eating pb&j everyday of the last month for lunch.

If we had an increase in money, aside from increasing almost every single budget, I'd create an entertainment budget for date nights, and a book budget, which is pretty self-explanatory.

Note, our television is free with our apartment, so we just pay an the upgrade cost with Comcast to get Internet.

Money in Law School: Our History (Part I of IV)

2010-06-01T17:30:00.011-04:00

I spoke a little bit earlier about our finances, but to briefly recap, coming into law school, we had no serious debts aside from Matt’s undergraduate debt. We had a modest amount saved up, we had a small portfolio that included a few stocks, a few ounces of gold, a few more of silver, and a few savings bonds. (All that was thanks to Matt, I had no savings, but also no debt). Since starting school, we have a $1000 emergency fund saved up (Step 1 in the Dave Ramsey Plan. See more later). We received a windfall of inheritance money which we used to pay off the undergrad loan. Matt got a full ride to Ave Maria School of Law, which does not cover books or the cost of living.

We used to use credit cards and pay them off every month, but due to a change in lifestyle thanks to Dave Ramsey’s Total Money Makeover, we no longer do. However, every semester we do accept the loan money for the subsidized loan (no interest until Matt graduates). Matt has a paid internship this summer, and once we receive that money, it will function as “cushion” money and we put the subsidized loan money in a separate bank account. We will not touch unless there is an emergency and, barring none, pay it all back in one lump sum as soon as Matt gets a job after graduation.

Our history includes nothing serious, but a respectable position for two so young.

Money as L1s

2010-05-31T17:48:00.001-04:00

Is it okay to talk about money? I recently read an article that said that people are willing to reveal too much personal information via Facebook and Twitter status updates and blog posts. From what I know of my readership, about half are family and friends from Michigan, and about half are either going to law school/medical school or married with the hubby in law school/medical school, but none of whom are related to Ave Maria School of Law. When I started, I envisioned my target audience being wives who were looking to be L1s in the near future, but as far as I know, that is not the case.

When I was such a person, I was obsessed with trying to figure out how our finances would work. I asked at school visit days, I researched online, I read books, but I never found a satisfactory answer. So I think I will dedicate the next few days to discussing how we handle the burden of law school.

Let me preface this by saying that everyone's situations are unique and that we have a had some huge blessings that enabled us to be where we are.

Revising Old Fears

2010-05-30T12:30:00.043-04:00

Back before we even moved down to Florida, I posted about what I thought I knew and my fears with regard to law school. I thought it would be fun to visit that post and update my thoughts.

What I “know” law school will be like
My husband will spend more time at the library than he will with me - actually, he prefers to study at home.

My husband will change as a person - he really hasn't yet. He thinks differently, but he hasn't changed. One of the law schools we visited said this would happen. Not for us!

He will feel overwhelmed, swamped, like he is drowning, and there will be nothing I can do to help except listen and My husband will get angry and depressed as a result of these feelings - so true

Not only will school demand his time, but also dinners, events, boards, and panels and I will not be able to go with him to all of those - not true yet, but probably due to Ave Maria's extremely family-friendly nature.

We will have no money, no time, and no one else in our family will understand what we are going through - exceptionally true. We have no extra money, no time, and no one except those who have done the law school thing get it. It would be super frustrating when we go home, but we expect it. Most people think law school is like undergrad. I laughed when one of our MI friends recently asked us what we do for fun. Uh, does eating dinner together count?

I will feel very alone - yup. But this has made me realize how strong I am. I always thought I was rather wimpy, but I have impressed myself with my ability to grow.

We will feel very discouraged and doubt our ability to survive all three years - Matt more so than me. I am pleasantly surprised at how my stubbornness is helping me to get through this hot, hellish state.

My biggest fears
My husband will meet some intelligent, sexy female law student and like her more than me - still a fear, although it hasn't happened yet. All of his closer friends are male.

I am too selfish and will demand too much of his time; he will fail school as a result - I am learning to be less demanding. The first few days during a break are awkward because I haven't realized that I can talk to Matt again and I am still very quite, silently cooking dinner or something. I have really learned to control my tongue instead of saying things to him as they pop in my head.

I won’t get a job and we’ll have no money - I got a job, but we still have no money. This is a really big fear of mine. I create lots of spreadsheets and run the numbers in about a million different ways in order to calm the fear.

Being a bit of a academe myself, I will be too jealous of all the graduate-level students around me - Um yes, I still struggle with this quite a bit.

Our #1 Goal
My husband is in the top 10 of his class (note, not top 10%, but actual top 10) - still the plan! I think we've slightly lowered our goal to just the top 10% though.

Things I like about Florida/Naples

2010-05-29T17:13:00.001-04:00

The beaches, the dolphins, the geckos, the sunsets, visiting various docks, touring the houses in Port Royal (the fancy side of town), seeing Ashton Martins and Bentleys on a daily basis.

The capstone:
I'm a really big fan of life stories. The best life stories come as a result of two things: adventure and suffering. I can tell you a really good story about the day I got hit by a car. It certainly wasn't fun getting hit, trust me, it hurt a lot. But that is one heck of a good intro at a party. So I'm adventuring it up down here, suffering sometimes, learning most times. I've had a slow start, but I'm only 23; I have plenty of time to make it up.

Why I hate Florida

2010-05-29T08:21:00.001-04:00

Although I do understand what people like about it.

First, remember that I am a cold-weather girl. I love long-sleeves, well-worn jeans, cute sneakers, fun scarves, hot chocolate, and cozy blankets. I love Autumn the best, but I do love winter. I love bundling up with a hat and scarf and mittens, wearing cute boots with fur around the edges, traipsing around in the cold, crisp air until my legs and nose are freezing. I love coming back inside and curling up with a blanket drinking something hot. That is the life of a northerner.

But a southerner, especially one on the coast, lives a much different life. People down here show off long legs with short shorts, they wear flow-y tank tops or light-weight sundresses, they have a multitude of colorful flip flops and fun bikinis. They laze around outside, soothed by the hot air with a warm, salty breeze. The heat fills one with a slow delicious languidness that gives one a desire to lay unmoving on the beach or dock drinking tall, icy beverages. Such is the life of a (coastal) southerner.

Both lifestyles are wonderfully nice: fiery red maple trees and tall, swaying palm trees. But I am more comfortable with the pitfalls of the cold climate. In the north, sometimes it gets so cold that just when breathing, one's nostrils will stick together. Also, ice forms on the roadways and the heat bill in the winter is outrageous. Even petty things, like, the dry air gives my hair static electricity is preferable for me. I can handle all that. Down here, it gets so hot that I don't even want to walk to the mail box. Makeup is pretty useless, you can only wear clothing one time before washing it, and you need the a/c on almost nine months of the year. I hate all that. It is so humid down here that my hair frizzes-up to no end. (Although I am finally learning ways to deal with that mess). I can handle the snowy roads, what I can't handle are the giant bugs. (I have found that the warmer the climate, the smaller the mammals and the larger the bugs).

I will wrap up with a story that I think perfectly captures this post. It all happened while I was at a photoshoot for one of our new listings (I work in marketing for a Realtor). The photographer, whom I'll call "AF" is a native Floridian. The home we were at had a fireplace, which we wanted to light as it would be prettier in the pictures. It was glassed off, but AF peaked in, "it's already lit!" she exclaimed. "It's probably just a pilot light; it's probably a gas fireplace," I responded. She fiddled with the remote, "I'm always scared these things are going to like, blow up," she giggled. She then hit the right button, and the fireplace roared on with that classic noise that any northern with a non-wood fireplace knows. AF jumped about a mile high.

Toward the end of the night, we left one of the french doors leading out onto the pool deck open so that we could lug in equipment. I noticed a big nasty shiny beetle had scurried in and was sitting on the floor. The property was not being lived in, so I left it there and decided to figure out what I wanted to do with it later. A few minutes before we left, AF noticed it sitting on the floor. She leaned over, picked it up with her bare hands, said, "what are you doing here?" to it and took it outside. I just stared at her. "You touched it?" I asked disbelievingly. "You can't grow up in Florida and be scared of bugs," she concluded.

Well, Florida, I am.

No-see-ums

2010-05-28T20:30:00.001-04:00

I have counted a few of the no-see-um bites on my body and extrapolated to determine an estimation of my current bug-bite situation. I estimate that I have 120 bug bites, 5 of which are mosquito bites. No-see-um bites itch significantly worse that mosquito bites, last days longer, and hydrocortisone does nothing for them. The more you itch them, the worse they become.

You know that happy day when mosquito bites get that glossy bubble on them? You can itch that head right off, the liquid spills out, and there is no more itch? Well, Friday morning, a few of my no-see-um bites glossed over, so I eagerly scratched their heads off, but the liquid caused my skin to itch more intensely than it did when the bite was fresh. I didn't even know it was possible to itch more.

I look and feel like I have the chicken pox, except my bites are more pink than red and they don't really form a bump. I hate no-see-ums worse than I hate cockroaches. Although, I have yet to encounter a hissing, flying cockroach, so maybe I'm not qualified yet.

Mid-Vacation Update

2010-05-28T16:20:00.000-04:00

I was re-reading those last few posts and found about a million typos in there! Sorry about that, I will make a point to proof my work before I post it!

On Wednesday, we went out to the candy shop (we got a lot for only spending $4) and saw the movie Robin Hood in theaters. We don't go to the movie theater often, so it was a particular treat, even without over-priced popcorn.

On Thursday we did nothing. That's right, nothing. Normally, nothing is fun on a vacation, but since we're at home for all of our "in-between activities time", I really wanted to go out and do stuff in the morning before it got hot and save the lazy vacation activities for the evening. On Thursday we slept in, then lounged around reading the newspaper and surfing the Internet. By the time we realized what slobs we were, it had already gotten too hot to do much outside (by noon it's pretty nasty. But it's still spring. By summer, I will be sweating in the time it takes to walk from the front door to the car). I caught up on a few things, did some gaming (namely, Settlers), cleaned the kitchen, and did some reading. Matt spent almost the entire time working on his application. I have no idea what he would have done if we hadn't come home early. (He was suppose to finish it the week between finals ending and our vacation, but distraction and lack of focus threw that plan off-course). I was so bored.

Today we took a lunch cruise on the Naples Princess. It is a tour boat that runs down Port Royal (the most expensive part of town), out through Gordon Pass and into the Gulf of Mexico. It's a little pricey ($40/ticket inc fees and taxes), but still within our budget. It was a lot of fun, we saw some stunning houses, dolphins playing and splashing alongside the boat, Matt saw a sting-ray jump out of the water (I missed that one), and I saw several of the properties that we have listed for sale from the water. Matt and I have been thinking a lot about buying kayaks lately and this cruise is really making us think more about how much fun it would be. I already did some research to find that my little car (a Contour) can tote them, although I would need to buy the necessary equipment. I still have yet to measure the lanai to see if it is big enough to store a kayak. The fun thing is that the method used to store the kayaks wouldn't interfer with our bike rack, meaning that if we ever ventured outside to camp again, we could take them both with us.

Anyway, we have a Netflix, Valkyrie, so maybe that will be our big, exciting evening. The memo is due tomorrow and there are still 3 (and a half, counting today) days left of vacation, so I'm not writing this week off yet!

On a side note, there is a small ledge around our lanai that is located outside of the screened area (we are on the second story), and we get a lot of little geckos and lizards that run around that ledge. My white cat, Emma, loves to run around the perimeter and track them. She is so cute when she does it. Especially because she is completely deaf and normally doesn't notice/hear birds chirping or flying by. But she always notices geckos and bugs. Kinda funny.

Retreat! Part III

2010-05-27T09:30:00.004-04:00

We docked back on Pine Island, where we left the car, unloaded our gear, piled it up in the car, and headed home. On the way, we swung by Target and picked up a $5 game (the card version of Monopoly), made hot dogs, gathered up what junk food remained and sat around playing games and eating junk food. I am covered in itchy red bites (I'm pretty sure one crawled up my shorts and bit my butt) and my shoulder is still sunburnt, but I had more fun last night that I did on the entire trip!

By canceling the trip, we are actually saving a fair bit of money. Even after the cancellation fee for our camp site, we did get a refund back. We never used the kayaking money since we didn't kayak on the island, and we did spend nearly as much on firewood or ice as predicted. They refused to refund us our parking charges (we had to pre-pay at $10/day). We had initially drawn out a set amount of cash to cover the entire trip, so we came back with a portion of that money left.

We have made a list of things we want to do around Naples to make up the rest of our vacation. I took this week off work, I do not have to work this weekend, and we get Memorial Day off (which is odd since we don't get anything off). Anyway, this afternoon/evening we are taking $5 to a candy store (I know, living large) located in a Naples tourist-trap (we like the stores eccentricities and it sells old-fashioned candy that our parents had as kids) and stocking up to see Robin Hood, which is out in theaters now. Matt is working on his memo this am.

We are also going to bike around a particular community that I know from work and has great views. It has lots of preserve, a few bay, and Gulf views. It ends at a particular beach that we go to often and really love. (Naples beaches kick the pants off of Cayo Costa beaches). This will be total free.

I am going to see if I can get us free kayak rental. There's a marina right by where I work and I pulled some strings before and got us a free rental. I don't think he'd ever charge me full price, but I don't expect rentals to be free forever.

We can hike a nearby state park. We did it once before and it was a lot of fun. We'd just pay a state entrance fee.

We can also go to the zoo. We have yearly passes which makes that a popular destination.

Lastly, there is a boat called the Naples Princess that tours Naples. I've seen them boating around for the sunset cruise when I have to do photoshoots at work. It looks like a lot of fun at they have some cheaper lunch cruises.

We could afford a modest charge for the kayaks, but if he's willing to give them to us for free, then we'll have a little money left over. We could catch another movie, go out to lunch or a cheap dinner, or buy ourselves a few books at Borders. The big secret to stretching the money is not eating out. Buy bringing our own lunches and planning our schedule to ensure we'll be home for dinner, we can use money that would otherwise go to a restaurant seeing more sights.

It is amazing how a strictly cash diet will keep a person in check.

The whole point of this vacation is to not only take a break from work/school, but also spend some time together before Matt heads to Arizona for a few weeks for part 1 of his internship.

All three parts of Reatreat! were written Wednesday morning, but I am posting them at different times so as not to overwhelm the reader.

Retreat! Part II

2010-05-26T20:30:00.004-04:00

After dinner we had a brief discussion about leaving early. We discussed the heat, the poor biking trails, the humidity. Even though I applied sunscreen ever few hours, I had missed a random spot on my neck and shoulder and had a weird-shaped burn. We decided to see how the morning went before making any decisions. Even though it was only 9:00pm, we were exhausted. We had been up since 5am, had baked in the heat for hours, and had expelled plenty of energy lugging bags and setting up camp. We were so exhausted. So, ready for bed, we stuffed empty pillow cases with clothing to use as pillows and settled down. The white sand/shell mix turned out to been incredibly hard, the pillows lumpy, and the night air hot and humid. Matt fell asleep quickly but awoke often. It took me about three hours to fall asleep. It was eerily quiet outside. There was hardly anyone else at the campground and by night fall there were no boaters. At first it was pleasant, listing to the silence, but then we quickly discovered that we were in some sort of trajectory for the International Airport in Fort Myers, a nearby city, and every few minutes a large plane would fly overhead. A nearby storm added to the confusion as we sometimes heard planes and sometimes heard thunder. The palm tree overhead rustled in the wind, sounding identical to rain, making it nearly impossible to tell when it was raining and when it was just windy.

With so much wind, one would think that it would be nice and comfortable in our tent, but it wasn't even close. It was so incredibly hot and humid in that canvas. It was similar to being in a closed car in the sun in the summer. Sometime around midnight I finally fell into a shallow sleep.

Tuesday 25 May 2010

My sleep was abruptly awaken less than an hour later to scratching on the tent. "HEY!" I shouted instinctively, used to waking up in the middle of the night to loud cats. "Knock it off!" The noise stopped for a second, then came right back. "What the heck?" I wondered. I threw on my glasses, grabbed my flashlight, and peaked out the screened part of a tent. When my light hit the grubby little claws, a masked face looked up at me and back up quickly. A raccoon. A raccoon was scratching the tent where we'd stashed the food. I moved the food away from the wall and laid back down and listened for the brat. I heard him walking around outside, but he didn't return to the tent. After a few more hours of tossing and turning, I finally feel asleep again.

Less than an hour passed before the raccoon was back, scratching. I shouted at him, startling Matt awake, and watched through the tent window as he bumbled away, significantly skinnier than that fat ones who lived in suburbs that I'd seen up in Michigan. Annoyed and worried that he'd put holes in the tent, I grabbed my flashlight to check out that corner. An orderly trail of ants lead from our package of cookies, across the bread, and across the cooler. One particular corner of out tent, the corner I had decided to put our food in, had a small zipper, maybe four inches long, with no screen. It is essentially a zipper slit, the point of which is to allow us to drain the tent should water or something infiltrate. Well, it was unzipped by about an 1/8th of an inch, just enough to allow a parade of ants through. We zipped it up and Matt fell back into a shallow sleep. I laid there, waiting for the raccoon to reappear and wondering how many ants were in our tent.

Now it was so hot and so humid that I wasn't using the sheet we'd brought. I'd long since lost my shirt and was laying on my back, arms spread, legs spread, in a pair of short sleeping shorts. Our tent had no holes, so I wasn't worried about mosquitoes. In Michigan, we'd get some small green gnat-like bugs if we left a light on, but we were in bed before it got dark, so I wasn't concerned. Every few minutes, I'd brush off what felt like a small itch. I figured it was just sweat drops or some kind of heat, but it wasn't until it felt something catch in my finger nail that I realized what they were: no see-ums. Yes, that's literally what they call them down here. If you type "no see-um" into Wikipedia, it will redirect you to the technical name of this bug. It is essentially like a mini-mosquito, but they love beaches. They bite, suck blood, and leave itchy red dots. They're called no see-ums because they are very small. Small enough, it turns out, to fit through the screen of our tent. Yes, that's right, I'd been laying all spread out, nearly naked, not using the sheet, for most of the night. I yanked the sheet up, covering myself from the neck down. By morning, I had sweated so much that the clothing inside my pillow case was soaked.

The rest of the night proceeded very slowly. The raccoon returned a few more times, put a few holes in the tent, the ants streamed in with force, I had a break down, we decided that this was certainly not shaping up to be a relaxing vacation, and we decided that we would catch the 3pm ferry off the next day. I think the longest I slept was between 3am and 6:30am (when we woke up), during which I'm pretty sure I only got up 3 or 4 times to adjust my pillow, secure the sheet, and roll over.

The morning brought more stifling sun. We counted seven small holes in the tent. The package of cookies was toast, but that was the only thing the ants ruined. The heat did the rest. The bread was so warm it felt like we had just pulled it out of the oven, the marshmallows melted together in their package, the ice in the cooler melted super-fast, then the cold water permeated our Ziplock bags, water-logging the hot dogs, turkey lunch meat, cheese, and even the factory-wrapped s'more making chocolate. Most of it was still edible, even though it didn't look appetizing. That morning we decided to leave, so we called around and changed our ferry reservation. We biked up to the ranger station to let them know about our plans. Since the ferry wasn't leaving until 3pm, we decided to go for a morning bike ride. The trails were lame and short. We saw a few more racoons, a black racer snake, and countless geckos and lizards. At 10am, we headed back to camp and packed up. Matt sunscreened up then left to buy some ice. I rinsed off and used up the last of the sunscreen, which meant that Matt could shower because he had nothing to reapply. I felt like a jerk.

We sat around, I read, Matt worked on his memo and we waited. I crushed up some gold fish crackers and fed them to a dove who was watching us. A lizard jumped on the picnic table and drank the melted ice water from our leftover ice. Trams run every hour, so we had to catch the 2:00 tram to make the ferry that left at 3:00pm. We headed over to the pavillion where people wait at 1:30pm, in case the tram was early. Through conversation, we discovered that some people who came over on the ferry with us (we called them "neighbors") had quite the adventure as well. It was her first time camping and although they didn't mind the heat, they did mind the racoons. He'd tied their food up outside and two raccoons spent the night fighting over it. Also, a few days prior to their arrival, someone had discovered a giant alligator in the camp site. Although they had planned to stay for six days, they were taken the same ferry as we were back. Meeting someone else who hated the island as much as we did made me feel better.

A few hours later, we were on the ferry headed back to our car.

Retreat! Part I

2010-05-26T09:44:00.001-04:00

Monday 24 May 2010

We woke up bright and early at 5:00 in the morning. After trudging around, him barely awake, me excited, we showered, ate, finished packing, loaded up the car, and hit the road at 6:45. It took us 1.5 hours to get there, first driving straight up the coast then cutting westward across islands. Once we reached the furthest most island one could reach by car, Pine Island, we loaded our gear onto a ferry, which departed at 9:30, and continued westward. We were told to be 1 hour early for the ferry, so we stood around on the dock in awe of all the surrounding islands. A few cottages stood on some, a few mansions on others, and a few were deserted. Pelicans perched on every dock post in site. Large, gracefully brown pelicans who didn't look up even when a boat scooted past. We were so excited to camp on an island that we could hardly wait. We reached Cayo Costa State Park around 10:30 and piled our gear onto the tram which took us an additional mile westward to the tent campsites which are located on the Gulf side of the island. We unloaded our stuff and lugged it to post #7, which was a long driveway leading back to a firepit. We excited followed the driveway back to our camps site. There was ample space with plenty of shade along one side, a picnic table, and lots of sand for the tent.

According to the little diagram on the website on which we made our reservations, tent site #007 was supposed to be closer to the Gulf than any other tent site. Well, the FL rangers were in the process of re-growing the beach dunes, which kept us a few hundred feet back from the water and it was only possible to see it when standing. This was pretty disappointing as we were counting on Gulf breezes to help keep us cool. We recognized that the sun would move to the west, thus changing the shadows, so we popped the tent up on the west side of the campsite, directly underneath a sabel palm. At the time it was located in the sun, but the picnic table was in the shade on the east, so we plopped our gear down atop it and began setting up camp. Our tent was very easy to set up and within 30 minutes, camp was set. We had one sleeping bag unzipped and laid out across the tent, as a "mattress". We had an old white sheet laid out on top of the sleeping bag. I lined the food up alongside the inside of the tent on one side with our plates, bowls, and silverware. On the other side, we stacked our clothing and backpacks. The pots and pans and bike helmets stayed on the picnic table. The bikes found shade under some trees, and we chained them up.

Now after unloading and setting up in the sun in 90* temps, I was pretty hot. By the time I had finished setting up inside the tent, I was so drenched in sweat that I felt like I had just left the shower. We took the tram back to the ranger station and bought a bag of ice, a bag of firewood (no using wood found on the island), and two .25 ice pops. We got back to the camp site and filed our 10 qt cooler as full as we could. We emptied our 27oz Klean Kanteens of hot water from the morning and filed them full of ice. The rest of the 8lb ice bag we emptied into one of our camping pots to melt.

The island did not have much shade as palm trees don't provide much themselves, and these particular ones were short. There were plenty of rather open meadows with short, dry grass and scrubby palm bushes. Everything on the island was made up of white sand and crushed sea shells. It was exceptionally bright. Shortly after docking, Matt's sunglasses fell off the top of his head and broke. He had just a baseball hat left. Other island accommodations included a short (3 minute?) walk to the bathrooms, which included two bathroom stalls per gender, no soap, and no towels with which to dry hands. They also had two open outdoor showers, which require users to retain their swimsuits while showering. While we were checking out the showers, we saw what a sign we'd previously read identified as a coachwhip snake and a few marsh rabbits.

After returning from the ranger station, we decided to take a swim in the Gulf. Used to white sandy beaches in Naples, we were disappointed to find the less-manicured ones at Cayo Costa. Broken shells littered the intensely hot sand. Combined with the spiky, thorny salt-water plants of the dunes, barefeet was impossible. We waded out into the dirty, murky waters of the Gulf, nothing like the beaches we were used to. Something started stinging Matt's leg and the seaweed started following us around. Although the heat felt significantly less intense when covered in water, we decided to vacate the beach in favor of the showers. Matt and I swapped stories about books and movies we'd read and seen about how people in deserts keep cool. In true desert fashion, I soaked one of my t-shirts in water and wrapped it around my neck. It did wonders to keep me cool. After a quick rinse, we headed back to the camp site. I took a nap in the stifling hot, although at least shaded, tent while Matt worked on a memo he has due at school at the picnic table. Finals may be over, but he is working on a paper for his Law Review application.

I woke up around 4pm, at which time, the picnic table was no longer shaded. We moved over to a nearby camp site (which no one was using), and sat at their picnic table while I read and Matt worked. Even sitting in the shade, it was intensely hot. The only relief came from the warm, salty breeze, which provided a few seconds of reprieve. After a few hours, we decided to take a quick bike ride then cook dinner. We biked out the way we had seen some fisherman going. We passed a lagoon (not a true lagoon) where all the fishermen had cast lines. A big sign boldly warned that the lagoon contained alligators and that no swimming was permitted. The trail winded back to the Gulf, where it instantly turned to sand. Countless beautiful shells, in mint conditional and rather large in size. We also ran across several herds of sand crabs. They were very small, maybe 2 inches long, and ran sideways in stereotypical crab fashion. The sand forced us to quick biking and we walked for a ways before deciding that our hunger out-weighed the heat and lack of shade.

we lit up a fire and cooked dinner. Matt got the fire going pretty quickly (and pretty perfectly considering that it was his first fire setting alone!), I made some hot dogs and beans. After dinner we washed dishes, then made some s'mores. At this point, the heat was dying down and we were actually enjoying ourselves. We cleaned up the camp site, showered, and headed back to our tent just a few minutes after sunset. I've seen enough Florida night bugs at our apartment to know that I didn't want to see them in a wild forest.

Charity

2010-05-23T11:46:00.001-04:00

Last year my sister started doing a bike ride-athon for the Make A Wish Foundation. She is doing some fund-raising in preparation for this year's ride and found that Hotelscombined.com is willing to donate $20 for every blog post that displays the following banner. That's actually quite a lot, if you notice how little other organizations are willing to donate for causes. Anyway, I've never used the service before, so I can't vouch for its legitimacy, but they have a clean, well-designed website, of which I am a big fan. Anyway, below is the little banner.

If you want to help raise money, this is a super easy way to do it. Just go to this website, copy the code and paste it into your blog post. If you do so, please comment on my blog. My sister has to prove to HotelsCombined that their banner was displayed, so she'll need your url.

I recommend HotelsCombined.com and sent $20 to World Vision!

You can shout and help too.

Vacation Tomorrow

2010-05-23T11:32:00.000-04:00

We finally chose a destination: Cayo Costa State Park. It is a barrier island in the Sanibel and Captiva islands, for those of you who know the area. The road runs across several islands, than from we'll take a ferry to the island on which we'll camp. It'll take about an 75 minutes to get to the marina and the ferry leaves at 9:30am tomorrow morning.

It is difficult to pack as we'll have to carry everything from the ferry to our tent site when we arrive. I know this is short, but I have to get back to packing and cleaning. I have to work today (checking messages), but I have all next week off, that weekend, and I think Memorial Day. I'll be sure to post when we get back.

I'm so excited!

VayCay

2010-05-16T22:14:00.001-04:00

Okay, so I have planned and re-planned our vacation. I don't even want to think about it anymore! So I can take off May 24-28 if I want. Plus, I don't have to work that weekend and I get Monday off for Memorial Day (which is hilarious, because we had to beg to get Christmas Eve off. My coworker had to work on New Years Day. Real Estate doesn't recognize holidays).

Plan A: Go hiking at a state forest 4 hours north (mid-Florida). On the advice of a friend, it is going to be hot and nasty. On the advice of a random campground review site, there will be lots of black spiders.

Plan B: Go to Dry Tortugas. The cost to get to this island 70 miles off shore? $180/camper.

Plan C: Go to the Florida Keys (4.5 hours to Key West). The cost? $50/day to reserve a space for a tent on one few islands with overnight camping in the chain.

Plan D: Getting desperate here, a last-minute 4 day cruise that leaves from Miami (about 2 hrs away): $750 (total cost).

Plan E: Right now we are talking about just going to a campground about 2 hours north that is right on the cost in hopes that the breeze off the water will cool us down. I have to find out if the campground requires reservations. If it doesn't, we can always cut it short if it's too nasty.

Maybe we'll just stay home and make day trips? Miami, the keys, the Everglades. Oh gosh, who knows.

It's been in the upper 80s. There was lots and lots of humidity, but the last two days it hasn't been that bad.

I want a vacation so badly I can't even explain it! But I have no idea what to do! Oi!

Updates

2010-05-14T22:17:00.000-04:00

Boy do I ever own this blog a post!

Matt is done with finals. He took his last one this morning. We went out to the cheesecake factory (with our coupon, of course) to celebrate. He thinks he did okay, in the A- to B+ range. We'll see where things shake out in a few weeks I guess. He didn't get as stressed as he did at midterms, which was nice. No snappy grouchiness. He even helped out with some chores yesterday!

Now that I have my husband back, I am just imaging all the fun things we are going to do. We are going to start with a bike ride around the ritzy part of town Sunday.

I have been alone at work the last two days. There were four of us full time and one part time. One full time found a new job and the part time quit/was fired. Three remained, but two already had overlapping vacation time scheduled. Everyone left and it was just me and my boss (who isn't much good at day-today stuff). I can't believe I survived, but I did. I kept things the way I liked them: low temperatures, no lights (lots of natural lighting from the windows), country music playing softly in the background, and a big bag of minty chocolate for when things got rough. I managed to survive and even got a fair bit done.

I have to work tomorrow also. Some showings in the morning (which I HATE!) and some work on a contract (for which I haven't been fully trained). Oi, I can't wait till the other girls get back.

Matt and I made summer goal lists. Things we want to accomplish between Monday and when classes start back up. We included things related to our personal lives, our careers, our relationships (both as a couple and with friends), and spiritual. I put on my goal list that a goal is to complete my goal list.

OCD

2010-05-04T23:14:00.000-04:00

As I briefly mentioned in my last post, I am falling behind in the chores at home (finances, cleaning the bathroom, grocery shopping, laundry, etc). I am also falling behind in the magazine I volunteered on which to work. I am also falling behind at work, what with the extra load from the recent quit and taking Friday off for the wedding. All of this stress is kicking my OCD up into high gear (it acts up whenever I feel an excess of emotion). I have an intense urge to reorganize my entire apartment. I want to do a full spring cleaning that includes empty cupboards, scrubbing down refrigerators and reorganizing closets (and the silly thing is that I just reorganized a few closets a few weekends ago). I can't stop thinking about all the stuff I have and don't use. I desperately want to sell it. I would LOVE to make a couple extra hundred dollars. We could totally use it to go on our vacation in late May. But how to have a garage sale in an apartment? I've been researching some ideas. I was thinking maybe I could do the organizing in June when Matt is in Arizona for his internship. I don't think I can wait that long.

Now that I've started thinking about it, I can't get it out of my head. Even though I got caught up on a lot of chores tonight, I got caught up at work today, and I have all evening tomorrow (no risk of working overtime) to play some more at-home catch-up, I still can't get the cleaning thoughts out of my head. Every day the thoughts will get worse and worse until I can't resist them any longer. I'll feel dirtier and dirtier each day, I'll feel more and more suffocated, I'll lose my patience quicker. Before you know it, I won't even be able to think anymore. I'll be sitting down, trying to read a book, but I won't be able to take my mind off of how messy the cupboard is. Even if I open it up to find neatly stacked dishes, I won't be able to relax until I pull them all out and neatly put them back. (I don't normally get the idea to scrub the walls, but we can thank the Florida bugs for bringing that one on). Anyway, I've been down this road enough times before to know that there is no getting away from the thoughts.

Ugh, I feel like doing it all right this second. It's 11:13pm on a "work night."

April Showers

2010-05-04T23:00:00.000-04:00

The last few weeks have been rather hectic.

One of the girl's at work found a new job, and I was given half of her work in addition to my own. I am super swamped at work now. Just when Season was winding down. I have to say though, I feel pretty needed.

On April 24th, I met up with a friend and spent the day biking. I got a nice sunburn as a result. It was nice to get out and do something, as that is not something that Matt and I often do. I am also thankful to be reaching out and building friendships so that I am not alone.

April 25th was our 2 year anniversary. We celebrated by going kayaking for the first time (I know a guy and so was able to get the kayak rental for free). We then picnic-ed on the beach, napped in the sun on the white sandy beach, bought something cotton (yay traditional anniversary gifts). We have some satin sheets that are very slippery and our pillows constantly slide off the bed, so we never used the sheets. We bought some $40 pillow cases on sale with a coupon for a whopping $9.95 after tax. The new 100% cotton pillow cases do not slide off. Thus, we also gained some "new" bed sheets. Then I made some lasagna and did the dishes while Matt did homework. We finished the evening playing some board games, watching a movie, and doing other fun adult things.

The weekend after that found us in Michigan for a friend's wedding. Out Friday and back Sunday, but it was the first time that I've ever been in a wedding (other than my own, of course), which was a lot of fun. I also got to see nearly all of my Michigan friends and Matt's family at the wedding. We saw my family, including some extended family the morning of departure for breakfast.

I was greeted at work with a 13 hour shift with 1.5 hours off in the middle for dinner and travel time. I spent today trying to catch up on things I have been too busy to do since Wednesday.

Economically Green

2010-04-18T12:00:00.000-04:00

My husband is a rabid conservative. By that I mean that he is significantly more conservative than the average Republican. I'm wildly conservative on most issues, but there are a few issues on which I am rather moderate, even by societal standards. One of which is environmental conservation. My left-leaning tendencies, though nurtured by National Geographic, do take root in conservative beliefs; I certainly don't hold the Earth above the health and prosperity of humans, who are made in the image and likeness of God. I want to preserve the environment for hiking and camping purposes. I want to recycle so that there are fewer ugly landfills dirtying the water, making it unsafe to drink

To mention the word "environmentalism" to my husband would elicit a snarl followed by a tirade of hatred on philosophies that place excessive value on nature. The best way to win my husband over to the dark side is to show him the economics of environmental behaviors. We use reusable bags because they are sturdier than plastic ones. We recycle because trash and recycling fees are rolled into one at our apartment complex. We reuse (for example, buying used furniture or accepting free things from friends who are moving out of town) to save money.

It is in using this logic that I have found ways to both cut our expenses and save the environment while living in an apartment. I discover ways by first looking at our budget and determining where we are spending too much money (to the electric company). Then I list the things I do that use that resource (lights, stove, heat/a/c). Then I brainstorm ways to use these resources less. Some things we do that are green:

-We take marine-style showers (rinse, turn water off while soaping up, rinse again).
-When the temperature outside is 80* or more, we keep the a/c level around 77 and use fans to keep cool.
-We share one car. This is highly inconvenient, but we only have one car payment (the car is paid off, but we make payments to ourselves for maintenance and for our next car), one insurance payment, and one gas payment.
-Because it is fresher, we try to buy local when prices are comparable.
-Because it tastes better, we try to buy non genetically engineered food. (Sadly, it has never comparable to buy organic food).
-To cut utilities, we keep as many lights off as possible. We do not have night lights and we do not leave a light on when we leave the apartment in the evenings. I would love to keep lights off longer, by showering in the dark (with the door open to let in light from windows in other rooms) and using candles in the evening, when it first starts getting dark, but Matt is not on board.
-I buy natural cleaning products, for which I can often find coupons and combine with sales.

I would love to bike more, find a farmer's market, find local farmers from which to buy fresh eggs, make homemade bread, and make my own cleaning products, all of which are possible in an apartment--I just have to do the research! Maybe eventually, we will be able to grow our own vegetables and herbs, use solar panels to heat and cool our home, and compost food waste.

PS, if you've been bitten by the "economically green" bug, check out ">No Impact Man, which gave me many ideas. He also has a documentary by the same name, which is an Instant Movie on Netflix right now, if you're a subscriber.

Camping and Weekends

2010-04-17T11:10:00.000-04:00

I ended up neither sleeping nor watching Netflix. I instead went through a pile of mail, etc that was laying on the coffee table. In going through this pile, I realized that it was April 14 and I still had to file my quarterly tax stuff. We already did our 2009 tax returns, but since I'm 1099-ed at work, I have to file my 2010 taxes quarterly. The first return is due on tax day. It is fairly easy, just one form. Then write the government a check and send it in with a 1040 es voucher. Either way, I went to bed around 11pm and did nothing fun.

But on to more exciting things: our camping trip!

But we don't even know when we'll be able to take it. Right after finals end, Matt has an essay to write and a test to take to make it onto law review. But we aren't exactly sure when these things are due (sometime in the first two-three weeks after finals end) and every person in my office already has a week off at some point in May, which restricts my ability to take some time off. And remember that as of June 6, Matt is flying down to Arizona for two weeks for his internship. The ideal time period happens to be Memorial Day. When camp grounds are jam-packed. No fun. So, we know we want to camp, but we don't know when we'll be able to go. I'm still waiting on law school.

The good news is that my parents found some old camping gear in their barn that they are giving to Matt and I, particularly cookware. They also found a few other things, but they aren't as easily transportable, as we'll be picking this stuff up when we go back to Michigan for a friend's wedding in early May. Cutting as much out of the budget as possible sounds wonderful, as this entire trip will be coming out of our savings account. Right now I've got it calculated at $157. That includes buying all the food (assuming we'll be all out of peanut butter and have to buy a new jar just for the trip) and even gas, but does not include the $20 Coleman lantern (Matt and I decided to "rough it" with just flashlights), nor the day pack I wanted. I'd love to see this trip at $100, but we'll see what happens.

Other good news, it's only 11am on a Saturday morning, but I've already gotten a lot accomplished (include setting up our tent to discover that it is still in mint condition! It's a Coleman 3 person "sundome" tent that I got on sale for $23 up in Michigan last year). Anyway, this sets me up for a relaxing weekend.

I know, my life is very mundane right now. But that's kind of how life is a majority of the time, isn't it?

Random Tidbits

2010-04-14T21:56:00.000-04:00

There are a lot of Facebook haters out there, people who think it's cool to reject the trends in America. I think it is important to understand them, whether or not you embrace them. Anyway, that's a topic for a different blog. I am a Facebook fan because it helps me stay in touch with my friends while I am in this isolation that is the swampy. I recently reconnected with my Korean roomie from college.

On another note, I talk about going to the gym a lot as if I'm fit or something. I'm not. I actually struggle with my weight quite a bit, largely in part due to a couple of health problems that require strange diets, ones that are not designed to encourage weight loss. So I work out a lot to compensate and also to relieve stress from my job.

Today was very stressful. My boss chewed me out for something, but in the process, proceeded to discover that he was wrong, not me. He ended by telling me not to screw up again. He was completely serious. It was not the most uplifting moment.

My husband is MIA due to the approaching finals. I think there are 2.5 weeks left. He is up until midnight nearly every night. He is also spending less time doing non-homework things. I am certainly feeling the departure.

I am very tired. I have to get up at 6am. I am going of those people who needs 8 hours to function, but I really want to do something completely relaxing (besides sleeping). The decision: should I watch my new Netflix or get some sleep?

Hmmm. I'll let you know how it turns out ; )

Counting Down

2010-04-08T21:48:00.000-04:00

I was not a big fan of the last half of summer that we caught last year when we first moved down here, but I cannot wait for summer this year because I will have my (emotionally stable) husband back. And we will actually be able to spend time together in the evenings. Maybe we'll even go to bed at the same time. One month left.

In all honesty though, I should really disclose to you that the brief is due tomorrow morning, ie, in twelve hours. Ah yes, the brief. The one he has known about for months? Yup. The one he started in on a few weeks ago? Yup. The one he had to start over because he didn't like the first few drafts? Yup. The one he was supposed to finish over the weekend? Yup. I guess I really can't blame him for being so grouchy tonight, now can I?

I have a countdown on my phone. I have been in Naples for 248 days. I have been married for 713. There are only 16 days left until my two year anniversary : )

A Day in the Life

2010-04-05T19:45:00.001-04:00

The challenge of being a Law School Wife is in the mundane daily tasks.

6:30am-wake up, take showers (Matt shaves while I shower, then I put on makeup while Matt showers), make lunches, eat breakfast (when Matt has an 8:00am class, we wake up at 6:00am).

8:00am-leave, drop Matt off at school, drive to work (when Matt has an 8am, we leave by 7:40).

8:45am-arrive at work (or at 8:15 when you-know-who has an 8am).

12:00pm-eat lunch at my desk b/c no one in my office takes lunch breaks.

5:00pm-leave work, pick Matt up at school (he studies at school until I get off work), drive home.

5:45pm-arrive at home, go to gym while Matt continues studying at home.

6:30pm-cook dinner, eat dinner, clean up dishes, all while talking to Matt.

8:00pm-do some chores, read a book, or watch a movie and crochet/knit. Matt does homework.

10:30pm-brush teeth and go to bed. Lately Matt has been doing this step around midnight.

Sometimes I don't go to the gym and instead we eat dinner and I usually do a bigger chore, like vacuuming or laundry or something.

When we graduate, it will be a lot of fun to read this.

Summer Plans, Phase II Placement

2010-04-03T08:30:00.002-04:00

Matt got his assignment for Phase II of his internship: Naples, Florida! Yay! He'll be working remotely from home for a firm in Maryland. That is all we know so far.

PS

2010-04-03T08:18:00.001-04:00

This weekend, they say, is the last weekend for northerners. I can't wait!

The Desert of Lent

2010-04-02T19:45:00.000-04:00

It has been a turbulent week, but things are shaping up now! Here's the abbreviated list:

-The brakes on our one car started grinding the other day, so I took it into the shop. Turns out that both the front and the rear breaks needed to be replaced pretty badly. While they were taking off rusty rotors, an important piece called the spindle broke. Of course they didn't have any in stock and had to order one. Thankfully it came in the next day, although I had to plead with coworkers for rides home from the shop, to work then next day, and from work to the shop. I am soooo thankful that it only took one day and that I have friends enough to be there when my car breaks down. Although it includes 4 new tires, I was not so thankful for the $1200 price tag.

-Matt has an oral argument coming up, for which he had a practice session the other day in class. He did spectacular and his professor offered no critiques. The top eight or so in the class go head-to-head in front of a super-panel (which includes a former supreme court justice) to debate. I am really proud of him. It is pretty obvious that talking is one of his strengths.

-Work has finally calmed down. The phones slowed, the showings have slowed, the need for marketing has slowed. I have been catching up on those back-burner, long and boring projects that I've ignored for so long. I also finished the last over-time necessary photoshoot his past week, which means I should be back to 40 hours (plus checking messages every other Sunday).

-The weather is amazing! It has been in the 50s-60s at night and 76-80 degrees during the day with a slight breeze and hardly a cloud in the sky. My coworkers are telling me that this is what Naples is normally like in the winter. This is quintessential Dec/Jan weather. This past winter has been the coldest in recorded history. Pretty coincidental that it also happened to our first.

-Lent is almost over! After a long and painful Lent without chocolate and a good portion of sugar treats, I am ready for Easter! Matt and I each got a 4 oz chocolate bunny and a bag of jelly beans (to split) at the store the other day. Just two more days! We also invited some friends over for Easter dinner. There will be a total of five of us, which I think is a good number for such a small apartment. We will have some dinner, chat, and plan some games. I am looking forward to a good, relaxing time.

So anyway, yes, long, difficult, but it's almost over.

The Internship

2010-03-27T08:10:00.000-04:00

Periodically I will be doing some mundane task and it strikes me: In just one and half months, I will be doing this alone. At the very least, for two entire weeks, I will be waking up, eating dinner, doing laundry, sitting on the porch, going to church alone.

I pride myself of my loner-nature and my lack of attachment to people, but there is one person who I can not live without. And I haven't been alone in two long years.

Quality Time in Law School

2010-03-26T18:51:00.000-04:00

Although life has changed significantly from our days in Michigan, where we spent every weekend hiking and biking, and most evenings playing cards, games, and talking, but we still spend a lot of quality time together, it's just usually more productive. Before I got married, a friend of mine told me that after marriage, things like eating dinner together and driving to work together, is quality time. Now that I'm married, I realize how true this statement is. Sharing a one bedroom, one bathroom apartment with one car means that we spend a LOT of time together not on a date, not relaxing at the beach, and not going for walks. This is the main way that we spend quality time together.

We don't have a consistent date-night, but we usually do spend a few hours on the weekend doing something date-night-ish. We probably eat out (at a restaurant) once a month and get a pizza once a month. We watch about one movie every week and a half together, thanks to Netflix and a modest but respectable DVD collection. I would really like to do something physically active on the weekends (a 30 minute walk in the park across the street would work), but usually we have chores and running around do to, eating up Matt's non-homework time. Hopefully once Season is over, I'll get more done during the week and we'll be able to again.

Life has changed significantly since law school. The way we live, eat, sleep, go about daily life, is different. But it is amazing how quickly a person can adjust to the change and continue to thrive.

Volunteering

2010-03-22T08:21:00.000-04:00

I am home sick today. I got sick Saturday morning, proceeded to be sick all weekend and am still dealing with some residual sickness today. Some sort of stomach bug. Anyway, I haven't updated in a little over a week, so I figured I was overdue.

Matt is still working hard, slightly distracted by March Madness, being the basketball fan that he is and with our Alma Mater in the running. I do my best to keep him focused, glancing over every now and again to see him glued to the basketball game streaming over our Internet and gently reminding him that he has homework.

I, on the other hand, have been working less overtime, which translates to more getting done in my home life. I am also trying to find ways to volunteer in my community. At church, they've been homily-ing pretty hard core about donating time, talent, and treasure. I don't have much treasure, I can barely afford to tithe. I don't even really have time. I have a bunch of odd time because Matt and I share a car and because I randomly work overtime on weeknights and weekends, I don't always know what's going on with my schedule in advance. So I end up with a time slot from 8-10pm on a Wednesday or something. I've been mulling it over and I finally realized two ways I can help:

1. Making baby blankets for local hospitals. I LOVE to knit and crochet, but there isn't much call for yarn goods in a swamp. I picked up a pamphlet at a yarn thing that made this suggestion and I felt particularly called to this "blanket ministry." There is such a huge immigrant population down here, especially from Haiti, Guatemala, and El Salvador. I see the lifestyles of these poor families and it breaks my heart. Plus I can make these any time, most any place, and even in my pajamas on a Wednesday night.

2. I volunteered to be an editor for a Pro-Life magazine. A go-getter guy who goes to school with my husband off-hand mentioned that he wanted to start a Marian magazine that focused on pro-life issues. He'd already gathered the necessary articles and bought the copyright to the name (he's a serious go-getter). But he was lacking in the three areas that are my strengths: design, layout, and editing. Next thing you know, I'm the editor for the premier issue of Maria News.

Anyway, I really glad to have found two ways that I can do something that actually matters, impact society in a positive way, and most importantly, love the least of these (Mt 25:35-40).

ONE Week Off

2010-03-15T20:00:00.001-04:00

Guess what I'm planning for our ONE week off between finals, essays, and internships?

A camping trip!!!!! Old fashion, tent camping, cooking on an open fire style camping. 3 nights, 4 days. I found a state forest 3.5 hours north of here that has great reviews on Trails.com and sounds exactly like what we want. Rustic camp sites with water and access to 43 miles worth of hiking and biking trails. Matt's parents own a cabin on some property in northern Michigan on which we've tent camped before, but other than that, we've never been together, so this should be a lot of fun. Neither of us have ever used a fire as our main source on which to cook. We'd wanted to go up into the Smoky Mountains, but were looking at a 12 hour drive. That's a little too much, so we'll stick with something in this state.

We already own a tent, sleeping bags, camping chairs, and SPIRIT! I've priced out every we'll need (we're on a mega strict budget, as you know).

Needs:
-Firewood - $5/bundle + 3 bundles/day = $15. Hopefully we can avoid this cost by merely picking wood out of the forest, but that might be illegal, so we'll have to see what we can do.
-Pass - $12/day for rustic sites + 3 days = $36.
-Gas - $2.85/gal + 440 miles (round trip) = $55
-Cookware - $22 at BassProShops.com. This is the cheapest thing on their site (this site is surprisingly cheap compared to other sporting goods stores and namebrand sites)

-Dinnerware - $10 (I don't have anything plastic and I'm not using disposable, so cue HomeGoods)
-Lantern - $20 on BassProShops.com. Matt thinks we can make do with flashlights, but I think that for $20 for a Coleman brand lantern, it'll be worth the extra convenience. At the end of the day, it'll come down to price, so we'll see what happens.

-Food - $40. Includes 1 box cereal, pb&j with crackers and bag of apples, 1.5 pounds of cheap-o meat divided up into 6 portions, potatoes, broccoli, and onion. Potatoes and broccoli will roast in tin foil on coals, steak and onion cook in the pans, s'more making materials, gatorade, and drinking water. This price also assumes that we'll have to rebuy everything for the trip. We'll probably already have an open jar of pb, j, a bag of potatoes, etc that will bring this cost down, but I am keeping the numbers high as a "worst case scenario."

For a grand total of $206. In the future, we won't need to rebuy several things, so our future camping trip cost would be $150 (wood, gas, pass, food)

I also want this super cute $60 LLBean Daypack, but this is purely a want and I probably won't spend my precious free-spending money (our allowance to ourselves) on this when we have other things we can make work:

We are also planning to bring a stash of good books, find the perfect reading spot somewhere in the forest, and spend all afternoon enjoying ourselves. I am so excited!!!!

March Doldrums

2010-03-14T10:01:00.000-04:00

Okay, maybe that's exaggerating, after all, I'm sunburnt from yesterday, the highs are in the low 70s and there's not a cloud in the sky. I am more referring to a stretch of time in which nothing exciting happens and life drags on. In Michigan, the sun also refuses to shine, but all the snow melts and the ground is disgustingly muddy. Everything is dreary, and spring is just a little too far away. I always tried to save something for this time of year. In college, I always had Spring Break. At least during that week I didn't have to go school, even if I couldn't travel. Last year we won a free night in a hotel. I made Matt save it until February, when I knew we'd need a vacation. It was a LOT of fun.

Anyway, weather aside, I'm still muddling through Season (March is the busiest month of Season), Matt is still muddling through the reading (Although he got a great score on a quiz in his least favorite class last week), we're in the middle of Lent. I don't have any fun ideas for the next few weeks, so I guess we'll just have to muddle through a few more treacherous weeks. Hell for me ends with Easter (Season runs Thanksgiving to Easter). Lent ends Easter too. However, coming back from Easter Break (yay, Catholic Law School), Hell begins for Matt.

Right in the middle of Matt's Hell Month, is our two year anniversary (April 25th) and we fly back home for one of his best friend's wedding. Then two weeks of finals, two weeks to write a memo as his application to Law Review, THEN ONE WEEK OFF, then he leaves me and goes to Arizona for two weeks as part of his internship. Then HOLY COW it's summer! Maybe these doldrums will pass faster than I think!

This week and this summer

2010-03-07T19:56:00.000-05:00

If I have to do any more photoshoots, I am going to shoot myself. Okay not literatly, but we didn't have any last week (yay clouds!) and I can't believe how far behind I was in at-home chores! Matt was pretty helpful, but there are only so many things he can do when I've got the car. I go soooo much done, it was wonderful!

My boss wants to redo a photoshoot this week from a property he listed a few years ago that hasn't sold. He thinks better photography will help it sell. I am sick of working 50-60 hour weeks. I have almost no time to myself. Ugh. Just when I think we're caught up, more piles up.

I don't get paid overtime, but I am saving up my hours to take vacations this summer. There are so many places I want to go! I really want to go camping with Matt! There is a large state campground inland that I want to visit. We brought out tent and sleeping bags with us to Florida. And I'll need some time for the big news:

Matt got his internship! This summer he has a paid internship with the Blackstone Fellows of the Alliance Defense Fund!
He'll spend two weeks in Arizona (orientation), six weeks "on the field," then two more weeks in Arizona (debriefing). I can't go with him to AZ (at least, I don't think so). He was asked for a list of places he'd prefer to be placed for the field work. Blackstone will do its best to place him there, but no guarantees. Apparently when they place in Florida, it is usually in Orlando. If he ends up there or in Miami, I will try to arrange with work to work from home 2 days/week, so I can spend them in said city. We'll see what happens. All we know right now is that Matt got his dream internship. Details to come, I guess!

Spring Break 2010

2010-02-28T20:20:00.000-05:00

I've never really taken a Spring Break, although I always wanted to. One year in college I went to Chicago. It was cold, but I had fun anyway. I would LOVE to take a Spring Break now and explore this new state, but Matt has sooooo much work to do and with my being in full season at work, I just don't see it happening. So for Spring Break 2010 (which technically started at 5:30pm last Friday), we decided to do a few key things:

First, Matt made a goal list of school things and fun things.
Then he decided to work from 9-5 every day.
Third, he made a schedule and filled it in hourly with what he would work on. Lots of outlining, working on briefs, and, of course, reading.

When I get home at 5:30, we'll go to the gym, have dinner, and clean up. Probably around 8:00, we'll have fun time and he'll do things on his fun goal list until bed around 10:30pm.

Then the fun began.

He's given himself this past weekend and next Sunday off for pure fun. We decided to pack in Saturday with a week's worth of Spring Break fun. Here's what we did:

-We had fun in the morning ; )
-We went hiking (FINALLY!) It was a TON of fun. We found a state park about 40 minutes away with some trails.
-We went to a duck race. The shopping plaza where my office is located had a charity event where people could sponsor a rubber duck for $10, then they dumped 10,000 rubber ducks into the bay where the office is located (did I ever tell you that my office is located on a Bay and I can see the water from my desk?). They outlined a race-track with crazy noodles (pool toys) tied together with rope and had some kayakers follow alongside the ducks to keep them under control. The ducks then float down the bay. The duck winner's sponsor wins gift certificates to area restaurants, or some such deal. Anyway, my office (me and 4 other co-workers share it) has a private balcony that overlooks the water. Matt and I watched the race from the balcony with 2 of my coworkers.
-Afterward we went to Borders Books, we each got a book, went to a coffee shop and read for a little while.
-We went out to dinner at Applebees (which is a very happening restaurant down here) with a gift card we got from Christmas and had been saving for such an occasion.
-We watched The Blind Side at this super fancy movie theater with leather seats, a wine bar, and uniformed attendants. It was pricey, but worth it for a one-time date night.

Today after church:
-We went to a festival that our church was sponsoring (way fun)
-Then we toured a $13M house at an open house (one of our new listings; I work for a Realtor), it was AMAZING.
-I hit up Victoria's Secret and got $50 worth of stuff for $10 (yay sales+coupons)
-Then we came home, watched some basketball, did some chores
-Now we're relaxing and about to go watch a movie

A great spring break weekend. Now it's back to the grindstone, but I feel like I've been on vacation!

Uniqueness

2010-02-25T08:33:00.000-05:00

I think part of what makes my blog so unique is that compounded atop the law school wife-ness is that I'm actually 1300 miles from home. I was born and raised in Michigan. I've either lived or worked in most of the cities between Detroit and Lansing. I'm used to 80*s in the summer and 10* (negative with windchill) in the winter. My favorite season is Autumn, I prefer to be cold over warm, I like the snow, I like scarves and mittens, I prefer sweaters over tank tops. I have red hair, pale skin, and freckles. I wasn't designed to live in heat and humidity. But I currently live in Southwest Florida. It's in the 90*s in the summer (100s with humidity), and 60*s in the winter is unusually cold. This is a much different world than I've ever been used. And I don't really like it.

But at least today's high is 62*. And yes, I wore a t-shirt.

How far we've come

2010-02-20T21:45:00.000-05:00

Back when school first started, I didn't have a job and I spend every moment helping Matt. I would make his lunch, ready his breakfast, pack his backpack. I enjoyed it because I didn't have much else to do and I felt very useless. I was jealous that he got to go to school with clean notebooks and multicolored highlighters and read things. Now Matt packs lunches while I blow-dry my hair, he makes his breakfast while I make mine, and he packs his bag while I read the Wall Street Journal headline and play with the cats. I hardly even know his schedule anymore.

But it's okay though, because I still ask him every day how classes went and we swap stories on the car trip home. Every morning we pray for focus (for him) and patience (for me). It's funny how life changes so quickly. It's also funny how even adults go through phases.

Health Insurance

2010-02-18T21:37:00.001-05:00

is very different than health care. But we use the terms interchangeably.

Ways to get health insurance while in law school

Get a job that offers benefits
I missed the memo on that one. I'm 1099-ed at my job.

Be a stay-at-home mom and use Medicaid
The half-dozen women I've befriended down here who chose Option #2 say that the Florida version has worked great for them.

Be in perfect health and get an individual plan
I missed the boat on this one too. I owe mine to a colon disease.

Pay through the nose
The one plan I've been approved for was so expensive that my health insurance agent didn't even bother forwarding me the quote. The maternity rider alone was $500/month and I would need it for 2 years before it would cover me.

Use a shady student-based company
American College Student Association has an affordable 80/20 plan for grad students. We're looking into it now.

Talk to local hospitals about pre-paid options for maternity coverage
Designed for women/families without health insurance. This is almost for-sure the option we're going with. Even though we haven't decided what we want to do about kids yet, we don't want to be up a creek without a paddle in the event that we are given an unplanned blessing.

Get a time machine and fly back to the 1800s
Back when the hospital was the neighborhood Doc, he accepted bushels of corn for payment, and you died around age 50, therefore not needing insurance long-term.

Silence

2010-02-17T21:45:00.000-05:00

I am sitting in silence with my two kitties in the bedroom. Matt is working on a paper that is due tomorrow. Tonight will be a late night for him. Did I mention that he has an 8am tomorrow as well? I've already pre-made the lunches and packed my bag for work tomorrow. I am planning to wake up when the alarm goes off the first time tomorrow and let Matt sleep for a little while, since I take longer in the mornings. I will make his breakfast (not that cereal is all that hard), and pack his backpack (he'll still have to double-check it in the morning). It will all be worth it when we run out the door on time, we'll pause as we lock the door, he'll turn to me and say, "Thanks, Babe" very sincerely and heartfelt. I'll feel like I truly am fulfilling my wifely duties to build him up.

PS, in the end he ran to the store at around 7pm and bought me some candy on Valentine's Day. Nothing spectacular, but at least I didn't get forgot on V-Day.

Distractions and Debt

2010-02-14T13:09:00.002-05:00

Matt is having a hard time focusing. A really hard time. Internet, football games, books, computer games, all are calling to him and they are very hard to ignore. I am contributing to the problem too, talking to him when he should be working is my biggest problem. I do not blame him at all. I'm sitting over here blogging on a Sunday afternoon. I'll probably watch a movie, do some crocheting, read a book. If I want, I can take a nap, run an errand, look something up online. But he has to sit there, at his desk, and read. Read cases, read opinions, read books about writing papers. He is behind in some of his classes, he has two papers he should be working on, there are a few chores I asked him to do that he hasn't done yet. And have I mentioned that today is Valentine's Day and he didn't even write me a cheesy note, yet alone spend some precious money on a card, flowers, or candy?

Anyway, it is so hard to resist talking to him! Oi! I doesn't help that I am bored or in a bad mood. I desperately wish I could spill my financial guts to someone. I need advice on this baby vs debt issue.

Have I talked about what we're facing at the end of this year yet? Two weekends before finals is the Barrister Ball (a formal for law school students hosted by the school--all of my law school wife friends are going) on Saturday and our 2 year anniversary on Sunday. The next weekend, the weekend before law school finals, we are flying home to Michigan for Matt's best friend's wedding.

That's a lot of crap all at once, which means no study time. So he has to work hard now so that he won't fall behind. If he falls behind, he'll have to make up the work. He doesn't have time to make up work because he has to work ahead. And now he can't concentrate.

And the neighbors are blaring music. And I'm grouchy. And should we have a baby or be debt-free upon graduation? I posted that question along with some financial details on the discussion section of Dave Ramsey's MyTotalMoneyMakeover.com (I recommend the book). As we speak, the unsentimental bastards are ripping me to shreds for daring to say that we would accumulate some debt while in law school and it's depressing me.

I KNOW it is the financially smart decision not to have a kid! Is it the MORALLY smart decision? Won't it ALWAYS be financially smart NOT to have kids?

Note to self: don't blog while grouchy. Ah, the many sides of a law school wife trying to be honest.

Live Like Your Dying

2010-02-07T20:03:00.000-05:00

What exactly does it mean to live like your dying? It doesn't take much to realize that it can't mean the obvious, to act like today is your last day on earth. We can't just quit our jobs, spend all our money, every day of our lives until we actually do die. There are consequences to our action and chances are that we'll be around tomorrow to deal with them.

But what if we take it a step deeper? Live without regrets, without hesitation. "Care-free," if you will. Well, it doesn't take much more brain power to realize that that isn't exactly the best lifestyle either. Every day will bring errors, fights, mistakes. There will be things you'll have to fix, adjust, and, more importantly, learn. How can we learn if we never dwell on the past? Living with regrets is a part of life - it's how we mature. If you don't regret the stupid thing you said to your friend, what will stop you from doing it again? We have to take responsibility for our actions in order to progress forward.

Well, if the expression does not mean neglect responsibility and ignore consequences, than what does it mean?

These are the thoughts I have been contemplating lately. My husband ventured a guess: live with a heightened awareness of our sins and our relationship with God. I think this is closer to the mark, but I think it's impossible to do while still living in this world. If I spent every day dwelling on these topics, I would realize that I need to go to confession and Mass every day. There would be no point in going to the zoo, baking dessert, doing my hair because these things to do further my salvation. That won't work either.

So what does it mean? Well, my interpretation, and one that I think I can live with, ties in closely with my earlier thoughts on a simple, stress-free life.

The keys include:
-refusing to stress-out or entertain drama on a daily basis or over little things
-never going to bed angry/tying up loose ends
-saying, "I love you" often/building people up
-balancing work with play

In the movie Reign Over Me, Adam Sandler's character Charlie, spends most of the movie remodeling his kitchen. He'll finish it and the very next day, he's back at the Home Depot picking out counters and re-doing his floors. At the end of the movie, it is revealed that he and his wife were re-doing their kitchen, but the morning his wife died, they had a fight about picking out cabinet colors, or something equally petty. As a result, Charlie had spent every day working on the kitchen, haunted by his angry last words to his wife.

This movie demonstrates my theory perfectly. If we spend every day telling people we love them, building them up, etc, then whenever we die, we'll know that the last thing our loved ones heard from our lips was loving. That will be their last memory of us.

By not stressing and balancing work with play, we'll feel more at peace with our lives when we die. Imagine that you found out that you were going to die in five minutes. What did you do with your day? Did you freak out at work because someone yelled at you? Did you spend the entire day working on a report? Is that really what you want to have done with your last day?

But if you plan out your week so that you spend 2 hrs working on your report and 1 hr playing cards with your spouse, for example, how much better will your last day be? How much happier will you be if you don't yell at the car in front of you on your way home on your last day?

I think live like your dying is best done by embracing those around you and exhibiting a strong inner peace.

Okay, back to normal law-school life in the next post. These are just my thoughts as of late and as I am striving to include them in my personal growth, I think it is important to talk about them. Law school life for a wife is about growing. That's what I am doing.
Anyway, this coming week I'm working 3, maybe 4, 10-11 hour days, (not to mention the normal 1 or 2 nine hour days I'll also have) so I doubt I will have much energy to post when I get home. I'll see you all next weekend!

The Key to the Other Side

2010-02-04T20:03:00.001-05:00

So, the more clothes I have, the more laundry I have to do, right? Well, yes, but, as I thought about later, I didn't want people getting the wrong impression either. I think today's society over-embraces a care-free nature. It emphasizes a lack of responsibility and encourages an ignorance of consequences (I plan to discuss this further in my next post). Anyway, I don't want people thinking that I'm encouraging this behavior with my emerging philosophy.

My thoughts can be surmised in this sentence: I do not want to look back on my life and remember all the times I washed my windows.

However, this is also true: I also do not want to look back on my life and remember that I couldn't see out my windows.

So I have two options. I can either not have windows, or I can have a moderate amount of windows that I clean. I vote for the latter. What I was trying to get at was that I want to have a simple, modest house. I do not want closets full of clothes, walls full of windows, or tons of square footage. I want enough clothes to dress nicely for most occasions, but I don't need a different dress for every event or a new purse for every season. I want to pool my time and resources into my family and my leisure life, so instead of owning a big house with new cars, I'll own a modest house with slightly used cars and a kayak (for example). But I want my simple, modest life to be very clean and organized. I want to put a huge emphasis on leading an organized, clean lifestyle. I will spend less time doing laundry because I will have fewer loads to do, NOT because I wash my clothes less often.

For those of you who don't know me personally, I am exceptionally clean and organize. Almost to the point of disorder. Whenever I feel an excess of emotion (be it boredom, anger, or happiness), I clean. Organizing is enjoyable for me. I have spent the last three weekends reorganizing my apartment for fun. Every Monday I clean off and rearrange my desk at work. When things in my life are messy, I feel suffocated and frustrated. One time I freaked out and almost cried because Matt would not organize his monopoly houses when we played. I realize that I'm a freak. I don't care, it is how I stay sane. Although, I do seriously worry about how my kids will develop if I never let them keep their toys out.

Anyway, so yes, I am a believer in simple, modest, and CLEAN. It is such a huge part of my life that I didn't think to express it in my developing philosophy, but some things just can't go without saying.

Leaving Work at Work

2010-02-02T21:36:00.000-05:00

So if I want to spend less of my life on chores and complaining, then I need to stop dwelling on work when I'm at home. I've only got so many hours of release at night and I don't want to spend them complaining about my job. Don't get me wrong, for the most part, I love my job, but we're extremely busy right now and it's quite stressful.

I understand that venting is an essential part of a healthy mental life. I also understand that since I spend sooooo many hours there, that it's silly to try at ignore that aspect of my life when I'm at home. But I spend too much time complaining and I spend too much time taking my anger out by over-critiquing my husband. I do not like the person that I'm becoming. I'm sick of telling this to the priest at confession. Time to move on!

1. I will not let my coworkers frustration get to me. Or, more positively, I will focus on my inner-calm when the world around me descends into chaos.

2. I will remember that I love my husband and that I want to spend our few precious hours together as blissfully as possible.

3. My harsh critiques when I am angry tear my husband down and it is my duty as his wife to build him up.

The More Clothes I Have, the More Laundry I Have to Do.

2010-01-31T19:35:00.001-05:00

And doing the laundry is one of my least favorite chores.

"We do not ride on the railroad; it rides upon us."

I didn't realize what that quote meant until sometime in college. Although I hate Thoreau, he does have a point with this one. At work, I see all these big, million dollar houses, on the water, beautiful views, a few thousand square feet of hardwood floors, floor-to-ceiling pocketing, sliding, glass doors that, when open, create a seamless room with the outdoors. The lawns in the area are so amazing that the neighborhood association gives out an annual award to the most beautiful lawn. Homeowners literally hire landscape architects to design these things. It's amazing. When I'm at these houses, showing them, at a photo shoot, or just dropping off a contract for a client, I want to live in them so badly. As I move from one room to another, I smell the fresh air. The air on the water down here is always fresh and clean feeling. I want so badly to live like that. I imagine lining the room-sized closets with clothes and shows. I imagine cooking in the double stacked ovens. I imagine watching the sunset on the Gulf of Mexico every night.

But there is an ugly side behind those scenes. It is in caring for the houses.

I once overheard my boss telling someone that if they weren't interested in repainting their house every few years, not to live on the water. The salt does such damage to the paint. But also, those pocketing sliders will need to be washed, all those square feet will have to be swept, vacuumed, dusted, washed. All those light bulbs will need changing. Both those ovens will need cleaning. The pool will need chlorinating, the boat will need maintenance and repairing. What I am learning to see is that to have five bathrooms, one must clean five bathrooms. Even if I decide to hire someone to clean my house, I need to find a service I like and trust, and I need to make sure they get paid on time.

I don't want to look back on my life when I'm 75 and think about all the times I cleaned my windows. Or paid bills. I want to remember the camping trips, the Saturday kayaking, the Sunday hikes. I want to remember playing tennis with my kids in the local park, family trips to the zoo. I want to play Euchre with my family, I want to read really great books, and I want crochet family heirlooms. I don't care if I've seen the latest season of The Real World or if I know what happened at the VMAs.

If I don't care about TV, why do I watch it so much? I will never be the person I want to be if I don't start now. I will never be adventurous if I don't go out this weekend. I don't want to look back in five years and realize that I'm essentially the same person. I don't want to be who I am now forever, I'm not satisfied yet.

I think one of the best ways to achieve a goal, at least for me anyway, is to picture myself already there. It is better to tell myself, "I want to be outdoorsy and learn to kayak" instead of saying, "I do not want to sit on this couch all day."

Summer work

2010-01-20T19:34:00.000-05:00

Matt is making his summer plan preparations. Plan A is a legal internship with the Blackstone Fellows, a branch of the Alliance Defense Fund that works to ensure a free and just society in a religious context. It is very similar to what he learns at Ave in terms of the moral foundations of the law, but would also offer him other resources and networking contacts. He finished the long questionnaire and submitted his 4 essays. His transcripts are on their way and 2/3 letters of recommendation have arrived. He is following up on the 3rd tonight, although the last we heard, it was good to go. The fellowship is offered to 100 students yearly.

Plan B is to work as a research assistant under the guidance of one of his favorite professors a few days a week and find something local for the rest of the days.

We are really, really hoping he gets a Legal Fellowship, although, at the same time, I am dreading it. Why? Allow me to explain how the fellowship is structured.

The first two weeks, he will be stationed in Phoenix, AZ (2,300 miles away). Then he will be placed "in the field" for six weeks. He will be allowed to pick three areas in order of preference and they will do the best they can. Apparently Orlando is a common Florida destination (3-4 hours away). Then he's back to AZ for a few weeks. They are very accommodating for families, but I can't leave my job for the entire summer. I'm fully dreading it. I'm brainstorming plans in the event that he gets placed in Orlando. Oi. We'll know about the Blackstone by late February; one month away.

Where do you see yourself in 5 years?

2010-01-18T19:40:00.000-05:00

This is an interesting question, one that smart people will advise you to consider to help you live your life as opposed to wasting it. Where do you want to live? Where do you want your career to be? Where do you want to be in your relationships, with your family? What words do you want to describe you?

At any moment in your life, I think this question is particularly important. From the angle of school, it is necessary to consider so that it can guide class choice and fuel hard work. I was reading an article about goal setting and it especially struck me that I have to start now if I want to get there. At no point in time will life get less stressful or less busy. I do not want to be who I am now in five years. Matt and I sat down to talk about where we want to be in five years and a more vague list of things we want to have accomplished by the time we are in our 80s. I feel a lot more focused since talked and wrote our ideas down.

Also, a little while back, I wrote out a personal mission statement. I listed four adjectives that I wanted to describe me. Then I listed two words that define my adjective and gave a sentence on how to achieve it. For example, I want to be sweet. I want people to think of me and think, "wow, she is a very sweet girl." Anyway, this is what my mission reads for that adjective: "In order to be sweet, I must be friendly and considerate. I need to go an extra mile to ease someone else's journey." Matt and I are working on a family mission statement, but have only gone so far as to brainstorm.

In combining my mission statement with my vision of myself in five years, I really feel like I can be that person who I want to be.

First Semester Grades

2010-01-15T20:27:00.000-05:00

Rumor has it that Ave is different in that Matt has his grades back before the end of the academic year. But his does. Well, 4 out of 5 grades. He's a head of the curve in all of them. We're pretty stoked. I'm very proud of him. I wish we had the money to go out to a nice dinner to celebrate, but that's just not in the cards.

He had six classes last semester (no exam in one of them). All six of those continue on this semester, and he also has another class tacked on (it requires 1000 pages of reading by semester's end). So now he's up to 7 classes, the reading is overwhelming, plus he has year-long finals at the end. It is going to be a stressful semester, especially since the first year is always the worst. We pray every morning and I will do what I can to support him. I wish there was more I could do.

Although I'm doing even less this semester than last. We decided that he would probably feel better about himself if he helped out around the house, so we divided the chores. Now he vacuums, cleans the cat pan, and dusts once a week and has dish duty Fri-Sun. I'm excited to liberate myself of some of the chores and I hope that it does help him feel better about himself.

A Good Kind of Pain

2010-01-13T20:27:00.000-05:00

You know that hungry feeling you get when you first start a diet? The gnawing, wearing pains in your stomach? At first, the pain is awful and you have to tell yourself over and over again why you're suffering? But then, after a few weeks, the aches dull, and your stomach disappears, and you feel better and better. Then, you're busy one day and you forget to eat lunch, then at 3:00 you suddenly feel that empty pang again, but this time it feels good. Oh so good because you know that feeling is you conquering your body, conquering your fat, conquering your demons. It feels good because you know you've beat it before, and hell yeah, you'll beat it again.

That's how I feel about the mound of to-dos piling up at work. Sometimes I don't feel like I'm working unless I've got 10 things going on at once. I have to remind myself that 5 is enough, but sometimes that struggle of too many things, too many deadlines, too many people talking to me feels good. Oh so good because I know that at the end of the day, I'll have a huge completed list, and hell yeah, I work hard for my money.

That's how I feel now that Matt is back in school. The chores are mine, the errands are mine, I have to spend the evenings in near silence so that he can read, I have to take care of the cats, take care of the apartment, take care of everything. And even though it's hard, even though it's a struggle, after a while, I start to enjoy digging my heels in and knowing that we're surviving because of me.

It feels good because at the end of the struggle, you know you've truly earned the reward.

Finishing Finals

2009-12-27T20:51:00.000-05:00

We made it through finals. And it wasn't that difficult. For me, anyway.

Matt surprised me with his dedication to st udying. I even tried to deter him one night (hey, it was still a few days until his next final) with a movie at a plushy theater in Naples. No dice. Anyway, he spent much time studying, but since he was home for many days, he also did a few chores during his breaks. Although he wasn't adventurous enough to make dinner, he vacuumed, did dishes, ran errands and all-around made my life easier, which was really nice considering the work I still had left to do before we left.

We flew to Michigan on Dec 23rd to visit family. That's where I am now, on my in-law's couch, waiting for a 40 MB file to upload (trying for the third time, takes about 1.5 hours each time--lovely) for work. Yes, I still have to do work while at home. 10 days is just too long to be away from the grindstone; I don't want to get too far behind. I spent some time this afternoon working and am trying to finish up so that I can play some Euchre (it's a Michigan thing). It's not looking good.

We don't have a lot of cash and we're trying to save as much as possible, so we flew up (save more by working those few extra days instead of driving) and are staying with family. It has been a good Christmas so far, and I haven't even gained a single pound! Yay!

There is something very warming about sitting around a living room after eating a delicious meal that I cooked with my sister-in-laws, talking about life, joking about life, watching the kids run around with their new presents, while it gently snows outside. Yeah, I needed this. Almost every day we have some such evening scheduled, several afternoons already booked with lunches with friends. Matt is loving this too, all the relaxing, reading for pleasure. As much as I miss my cats back home, I sure am enjoying this.

PS. I got the complete National Geographic on DVD. Every single page from every single issue since 1888 on my computer. As soon as this ad uploads, I'm downloading. Maybe Euchre can wait.

Thanks for Making Me Stronger

2009-12-01T22:29:00.000-05:00

I feel tough today.

I deal with a LOT of stress at work. I work 6 days a week every other week, I cook, I clean, I do laundry, I eradicate bugs, I plan girls' nights, I write Christmas cards, I make Christmas presents, I make Thanksgiving dinners (not even using canned pumpkin in the pumpkin pie), I work out regularly, I eat well, I sleep 7-8 hours a night, I run, run, run. I somehow have good hair days, play with kitties, read books, recite Rosaries. I balance insurance, do the finances, pay bills, make arrangements to go home for Christmas, design business cards, design party invitations.

I feel like I am juggling two dozen things at once and I am succeeding.

And when I fall asleep on my husbands shoulder at night, I feel tired, I feel satisfied, and I feel fulfilled.

I feel like I am kicking some major butt. I feel very emotionally, physically, and mentally strong. I feel very spiritually humble.

I am both the domestic goddess and the bacon getter. Today is the day I get to feel pride in what I do, I get to reflect on how far I've come from Ypsilanti, Michigan to Naples, Florida. Not just geographically, but intellectually. I hope that every girl earns a day to feel like this.

Don't mess with me right now. Today, you'd lose.

Just the Mundane

2009-11-23T21:44:00.000-05:00

Phew! Well, I'm entering week four at work. I'm finally beginning to feel somewhat energetic when I come home. At least enough to a point that I don't feel like collapsing the second I get off work. My job is very mentally and physically demanding, so I am pretty beat when I get home. I am a Marketing Director for a Realtor who deals only with high-end, water-front property. I really enjoy it. I'm busy enough to work 9-5 Mon-Fri, plus extra hours on Saturday doing showings and what not.

Matt is feeling pretty swamped at school. The reading is piling even higher and some of his professors canceled a few classes for conferences, so now that they are having make-up classes in addition to pre-finals studying (making outlines, doing practice exams, etc). Even though he's so busy, he has been helping out a little around the apartment. It's pretty nice having help with the dishes, vacuuming etc. We like to bet each other on little things. We used to bet candy bars, etc, but now that we're calorie counting and trying to lose weight, I'll bet him chores. Hehe.

Anyway, life now that I'm working is pretty busy. I don't know how dual-income families function, and humorously enough, I was raised in one! I'd like to say that I do a chore a night, but what really happens is that some days I do chores all night long, while other days, I pretty much drop Matt off at our apartment and take off to run errands or go to girl's night or something. Lately I've also been working out at night because I just don't have enough time in the mornings. Next semester will be easier, as he has more 9ams than 8ams.

I'm very excited to go home for Christmas (29 days!). I think about it a lot. I still have been thinking a lot about kids too, but I'm usually too tired to dwell. I also try avoiding the topic since I'm not sure what will happen trying to balance work and a new baby. Except now, I have enough distractions that my thoughts don't rule my every waking moment!

Sorry I don't have anything particularly insightful tonight, just the mundane.

No rest for the weary

2009-11-16T22:21:00.000-05:00

My four hours of personal time when I get home from work (6pm) before bed (10pm) is being quickly eaten by chores, cooking, and errands. But I am still liking my job and things are going really well for me at work. Matt studies every evening as per usual.

Today he said, "You know, lawyers are notorious for procrastinating. But really, they are so busy that if it isn't due tomorrow, it just isn't a priority." So true, so true.

Stress Relief

2009-11-11T19:28:00.001-05:00

Prayer=instant stress relief.

How many meltdown panic attacks will I give myself before I start realizing this?

*sigh* At least I am satisfied now. More details later, but it's really not a big deal.

Busy!

2009-11-09T20:07:00.000-05:00

Phew! Life is so much different now that I am working! I get up at 6am every morning to work out. Then I come home, shower, make lunches, eat breakfast and run out the door. I work 9-5. On Mondays and Thursdays, Matt has a 9am, so I get more time at the gym, but Tues, Wed, and Fri, he has 8ams, so I only get 20 min at the gym and I get to work about 45 min early. (It never ceases to amaze me that no matter how little I want to go to the gym, once I get there and start working out, I love it).

Every day I am busy all day long, I work through lunch, I usually leave around 5:15. I pick Matt up from the library and get home around 6pm. I make dinner, do some chores, get stuff ready for tomorrow, do a quick email and facebook check, read for about 30-45 min then crash in bed around 10pm.

So far I am really like my job. I wouldn't go so far as to say that I love it, but I really like it. I do all the marketing for a Realtor, and I am training to do showings. I also answer phones, do general office work, help my co-works when they need it. We're pretty equal and we all share a small office, so we all answer phones, run errands, write thank you notes. My title is Assistant to Realtor, so I also do odds and ends that he needs. He is very funny and good to work with. I really get along well with all my coworkers. I will have to work every other Saturday (open houses), but I will get to take a few hours off during the week to make up for the few hours I worked on Saturday (yay half days). My boss said that he wants me to be able to go home and be happily married with my hubby. Little does he know that all the hubby does is study : )

Anyway, that is what I am up to. Now I am going to sign off so that I can do a few other things before the night ends. It is only my second week, so I am still trying to balance all of the craziness and learn to organize my time.

Topics I want to talk about:
Thanksgiving plans
Matt's crazy study schedule

I don't know how people who work full time and raise a family do it. I now understand why fast food exists, hehe. I bet those people have two cars though, so they don't spend as much time on the road and waiting for their spouses.

Finding Strength Little By Little

2009-11-01T19:41:00.000-05:00

As soon as I typed that last sentence last night, I knew that my mindset needed to change. If there is any time in particular when life is so volatile, when our decisions will impact the future so drastically, it is now. Therefore, I should be praying daily for God's will in my life, as I want to make sure I make the right decisions at such a vulnerable time. So I prayed. I feel oddly at peace. I'm not even nervous about tomorrow! I got a bunch done around the house, so I am feeling good about myself. It's only 7:40pm, so I can still spend a few hours reading. I'm working through Anna Karenina, The Truth About Money (finance book), and Design Elements (a graphic style manual). Or maybe I'll play Risk, as Matt just chimed in asking me to battle him for the fate of the world.

You know, whatever works ; )

Suffocation

2009-11-01T01:02:00.000-04:00

I know it's been awhile since I've updated. I wonder how many blog posts have started out that way. So apologetic, so full of excuses. Well, here's mine: I've been very depressed lately and haven't done much of anything. I suppose it's no better than any other excuse, but it's all I've got and it's the truth. So here I am, 12:32am on Oct 31/Nov 1, blogging. I may even make it to the official release of daylight savings time. I hope not, 1.5 hours is a long time to blog. Anyway. I've been very depressed about finances. There is such a fine line between debt and savings and such a complexity between the amount of debt and time spent paying it off. After a week of depression as a result of intense stress, I've shot my health to hell, but after making a realization a few minutes ago, I hope I am on the brink of recovery.

Before I begin, there are two things you should know. The first one is that I found a job. It is a real-world, career-geared, entry-level position. The second is that I am not currently pregnant, but I am eager to start a family. So much so that it is become painful for me to hang out with friends who have kids. PS, my job pays slightly less than Matt got paid at his real job in Michigan and our expenses are significantly higher down here, even with a decreased quality of living.

Okay, there are four major issues: what to do with the trust money, when to have kids, how long to work once we've had kids, and how much debt to take out. Matt and I sat down tonight and made a game plan: invest 1/2 and live off the other 1/2 of the trust money. Be open to conceiving this spring and giving birth in the fall, work until we have the baby, see if my employer will let me be part time, contemplate full-time motherhood, and take as little debt as possible. It sounds simple, but is much harder to live. We are talking bare-bones skimping. Cutting Internet, phones, eating out, movies, etc. We don't do much of those last two anymore, but the occasional opportunity to do so is very enjoyable. Possibly not going home for Christmas. Not just for a month, not just for a summer, but FOR THREE ENTIRE YEARS! Think about where you want to be in your own life in three years, what will you have to do to get there? How much money will you spend between now and then? Now imagine that you live in one of the most expensive cities in the country. How did your spending change? I am so stressed out every evening thinking, planning, reworking numbers. I've never lived paycheck to paycheck, Matt has never lived paycheck to paycheck. But unless I work full time for the entire three years, that is unavoidably what we will do, it's just about whether we have to pay back the paycheck and how long that will take.

I'm suffocating. Suffocating under the stress of not knowing where my money will be coming from, or if it will come, during the next three years. My chest feels tight, heavy. I feel too depressed to move. Even in my most angsty of teenage years (and trust me, I had some nasty ones), I have never had such an uncertain future.

Anyway, I realized tonight why exactly I'm so pensive over the debt load question. It is because it is my fault we will need the money as I will be the one bringing a baby into the financial question. Babies need full time care, full time care=money (be it daycare of my quitting work), money=debt. We want as little debt as possible. Having a baby/debt will mean that Matt has to work long hours at a hard job, saddled with all his debt, spending 15-20 years paying it off. And it's all my fault. It's my fault I never see my husband. I did it to him.

I understand that some of my logic is flawed. I didn't say this is how I accepted reality, I said this is how I feel.
This is how I feel.

Realizing my rationale is a bit of a relief because I finally know where my feelings are coming from, but it is also scary because I see the only satisfying option as being that I work at my new job full time for three years and we don't have kids. Sounds simple, right? Sadly not. For some reason, for a few months, I have been unable to stop thinking about having babies. I want a family so badly that I can't stop. I have even prayed that God will take away my burning desire, but it is no avail. I do my best not to feed it, but when I try to tell myself I don't want a baby, I become angry and bitter inside. I am surprised at the voration of my own feelings.

Anyway, having realized my feelings of intense guilt of Matt being overworked, I felt the need to blog, stronger than I have in a long time. When people say an experience was hard and that they struggled to get through it, they are always speaking from the position of someone who is on top, someone who made it. But right now I am living those dark nights when daylight feels days away and the light is running out. I need to pray more. I desperately need to go to adoration and pray. But I am scared of the answer. I am more scared of the answer than of suffocating.

Making Friends

2009-10-19T15:59:00.000-04:00

Well, another fun Law Partner's Ladies Night and a half dozen new Facebook friends. Whereas the last party was a meet n' greet, this one was a game night. I enjoyed myself, met some new people, talked to some I met last time. A few of us even arranged to go out for drinks sometime soon. While I'm not calling up any of them to chat during boring afternoons, I'm stoked to finally be meeting some new friends!

In other news, the weather granted us a two-day reprieve. Since Saturday night, the temps have been cooler (60s-70s range), with low low low humidity and a strong cool breeze! While the beauty promises to end by tomorrow afternoon, I'm excited for the few days I've gotten to open the windows and air out this stuff apartment.

I know this is a fairly boring post. For some reason I have been inexplicably exhausted for the past few days. Who knows.

No More Seasons

2009-10-16T13:23:00.000-04:00

Having no money and knowing that it will never really be winter is really starting to wear on me.

On the former account, I job hunt to no avail. I have heard a couple of nos, but mostly I don't get a response, even to my follow-ups. Oy. With regard to the later, I find it so strange that October is half over and I am still in shorts and tank tops. We still run our a/c 24/7. We still need to. I still wear tons of sun screen, sweat when I'm outside, and plan my errands for the late evening. I am dying to pull out my jeans, sweaters, scarves. I LOVE autumn, I LOVE jeans and cozy sweaters, I LOVE hot chocolate. I like my temps in the 40s-60s. I like my days cloudy and my nights clear. What can I say, I'm a cold weather girl.

It all culminated when my last VS catalog arrived a few days ago. I'm a huge Victoria's Secret fan (no, not the sweat pants and "PINK" shirts, but the actual clothing--usually you can only find the clothes in the catalog and online. I also, of course, like the wide selection of bras and underwear). Anyway, they have tons of cute new stuff out, lots of sweaters, long-sleeved t-shirts, and CUTE jackets! But not only do I not have MONEY to buy ANYTHING, I also don't have any need for WINTER clothes : ( During Florida's winters, I'll be wearing my fall clothes from Michigan. And with the highs reaching into the low 70s in December-Februrary, I doubt I'll even wear a coat most days.

I hate Florida. I hate how far away from all my friends and family I am, I hate how hot it is, I hate how many bugs there are, I hate how it's always sunny all the time. There are only two things I don't hate about this ridiculous state and this absurd city: the beaches are beautiful, and my husband is here.

More Bugs

2009-10-15T13:23:00.000-04:00

I hate bugs. Not like a blood-curdling fear, but more like a get OUT of my HOUSE kind of aggression. As I chronicled before, Florida has some bug problems. That's what happens when people build a city in a swamp, I guess. Lots of bugs. Anyway, today I was cleaning and a nasty scorpion-like bug darted across the foyer. He was about 2 inches long, stood high off the ground (that's how I knew he wasn't a cockroach from afar), and his tail curved over his back, the end forked like a snake's tongue. He was a dark reddish-brown in color. I've got a question up on Yahoo! Answers to try and figure it out. Disgusting. Every time I see a bug, it just makes me clean harder and more frequently. As it is, my apartment gets a thorough scrubbing twice a week.

Anyway, my husband has been staying late at school lately. Not a lot, just by a few hours. He needs to use some resources in the library for a project. He always gets home before dinner, but I am lonely during those few extra hours alone. I am practicing my Spanish and working on some Christmas presents (I'm big into crafting, especially knitting and crocheting).

Isolation in the Swampy

2009-10-12T12:17:00.000-04:00

I hate living so far away from everyone I know. No family, no friends; it gets lonely. I am determined to meet some friends.

Keeping Busy

2009-10-11T08:29:00.000-04:00

Remember back when I was talking about things I do to keep myself busy? Things are changing, so I thought I'd update.

I was taking a "get to know your digital camera" adult-ed class that teaches people what all the different buttons on a camera mean. Anyway, the class was six weeks long and ended on Tuesday. So now I need a new class. They start the last week of October and run another six weeks. I am torn between taking a creative writing class and a Photoshop class. The PS class would teach us PS3, but I own PS2, and I want to buy (eventually) PS4. It could come in handy with doing freelance work (which I did for a few years back in Michigan), but I am not planning on expanding my freelance work. Hmmmm. I would rather take creative writing, but I wonder if PS would be more helpful in the job world. Matt votes for the former.

I still have my gym membership and have been going regularly. I am motivated by the changes I see in my body. I am hoping that by Christmas, I'll go home looking like a true Florida girl!

A Rosary making group is starting up at Church. Meetings start next Tuesday, so I am looking forward to that. I joined such a group during the summer of 2005 while I was home from college for the summer and I enjoyed it.

I'm still a part of the Law Partners, which doesn't meet regularly, but I went to Ladies' Night and the Mock Class.

Things I've Rejected:
I haven't gone to a meeting for the Naples Knitters yet. I just have a feeling that all the members will be too old and stodgy for me. Plus they met in a bookstore called "Books-A-Million" and I am VERY picky about my bookstores and don't like that store.

My church is looking for crafters for a craft bazaar next month. I haven't volunteered because I am trying to make some Christmas presents for family right now and don't have time for any extras. A girl can only spend so much time crocheting, you know what I mean?

They also need Religious Ed teachers. I've taught 4th grade before and they're looking for 3rd graders. I just don't feel prepared to handle the large class size that my church has, plus I want to get a little more established in the parish and start to meet some other people before I start trying to mold young minds.

Anyway, I'm still bored during the day, but it's nice getting out in the evenings.

Mock Class

2009-10-09T11:45:00.003-04:00

Torts class last night was great.

Yup, I'm talking about the Mock Class. My favorite subject + Matt's favorite prof, so it was bound to be a decent night. We talked about Garret v. Daily, which Matt had already told me about back when he first read it. I was amazed at how specific the language needs to be in law school, every word needs to be precise, exacting, perfect. What I found more interested was how much more involved I am in Matt's law school experience than are most of the other wives. For example, I'd already heard about this case from Matt, the other girls I spoke with hadn't. They said they don't talk to their husbands very much about law school. I was amazed! I get a play-by-play of each class, I know what he does on lunch, what speakers he hears, when his clubs meet. I know when he'll be home, which classes he has on which days, what times they are. I can understand those women with children, how it would be difficult to be so involved, but several of the women I spoke with were newly weds. When Matt and I were newly wedded, we were practically joined at the hip! I suppose I got an inkling of how/why so many marriages end in divorce. Hello, girls, COMMUNICATION!

Anyway, back to law school. After class ended, the "parish priest" (one of them), gave a talk on "How to make a marriage thrive during law school." It irks him when people say, "we survived law school!" He started by saying that a marriage shouldn't just survive law school, it should thrive as a result of the struggles that the couple endures together. He also outlined a step-by-step approach:

1. Pray as a couple
2. Eat meals together
3. Take Sundays off
4. Include some romance; ie, have date nights, celebrate the holidays

He advised people not to "save up" their grievances, but to deal with issues and problems as they arise. He also supports the idea of not going to bed angry, of kissing goodnight, and of saying, "I love you."

After Fr. Orsi came a student panel of three married couples, a 2L, a 3L, and couple 5 years out of law school (alums). Of course the issue of balance between kids, money, and life while in school arose. Once again it was reiterated that government assistance is available, which is how several other couples we've met handle health care costs. In sum, they said that having kids is tough, life is expensive, but it's worth it and it makes the student more responsible and a harder worker in the process.

Matt and I resolved to pray harder about when we should have kids.

On a side note, when we were waiting for class to start, Matt chatted with Fr. Orsi and his prof a little bit, which made me excited: he is already networking, forming a relationship with these people outside of class time. Not only will this help him find a job after law school, but it'll help him do better while in school, since he'll feel comfortable seeking advice if he needs it.

The First Late Night and the First Bday Challenge

2009-10-07T13:06:00.003-04:00

It's only Wednesday and we've already had a challenging week! On Monday, we had our first late night. Our previous late-night record was only til around midnight or just before. Matt had tons of reading left, so we decided to "crank it out." I prepared Matt some popcorn and potato chips (necessary studying food), filled up his water bottled, and laid out his highlighters next to his book. We brushed our teeth and Matt sat down to study. I pre-made his lunch for the next morning, cleaned up the apartment, then sat down to read my own book (pleasure reading, of course) until he was finished. But Monday was different. On Tuesday (yesterday), his first writing assignment was due: a closed memo. He had finished it around 8pm and wanted me to look over it. Well, I found a few bigger problems (including a case he cited but never explained) and it required quite a bit more effort than the hoped 10pm bedtime would allow. He was already at the page limit before explaining the missing case, which led to more necessary revision. Not to mention that legal writing is VERY different than the traditional 5-paragraph-essay style, which meant progress was slower and needed more editing. I gave up around 11pm and went to bed, Matt said he was close to complete. He ended up hitting the sack after 2am, at which point, he said, he couldn't process any more. We woke up early: 6am and he did some more revising. We were tired, but he submitted it on time: 15 minutes before the deadline. Phew!

The obsession with the memo meant that he had little time to devote to reading for his classes. Tuesday would have made a great catch-up day, right? Unfortunately not. Yesterday was my birthday (23rd!), our second as a married couple and our first in law school. Matt's birthday was easy as it fell on the Saturday of Labor Day weekend. We were able to take tons of time off to have fun. But yesterday was a little different. Not only were we tired, but Matt left for school early (to finish the memo), and had to stay late. Plus I had my for-fun class in the early evening. We finally got to celebrate around 6:30 with dinner, then back to the apartment where he still had to wrap my gifts. After I opened them, it was back to the books. Needless to say, he hadn't even finished the reading for one class, let alone three.

My poor husband won't even have time this week to catch up! Thursday night from 6:30-8:30, we're going to a mock class hosted by the Law Partners at the school. The evening includes, of course, a mock class for the spouses, talks by one of the school's priest, the dean's presentation, then some hors d'oeuvres. The weekend? No! On Saturday we were planning on celebrating my bday, since Tuesday was so limited, although I think we are going to have to trim down Saturday and give Matt some more study time. Oy! This week is posing a lot of challenges. I really encouraged Matt to work hard last weekend, but he was too easily distracted by the Internet, primarily ESPN.com.

This weekend will be difficult. I am not sure exactly how he is going to cope. Too much work, too little time.

My game plan is to give him plenty of peace and quiet, encourage him to get back to work when I see him surfing the web, and keep an eye on his study schedule so that I can prod him to stay on track. We'll see.

Money

2009-10-05T20:16:00.000-04:00

Hmmm...Well, while I know that I don't have a large readership and that this blog is mostly a way for me to communicate my thoughts, even if only to the future me, but I do want to be honest to the ideal reader I imagine in my head: a young wife about to embark on the hell that is law school. My biggest fear was and is the money issue. So, presumably that is my ideal audience is struggling with these fears as well. I want to address the issue and my approach to it as honestly as possible without revealing too much personal information, which would violate my sense of boundaries and cause me to delete this whole blog (long story).

The Theory
This is the principal I try to think by:
When it comes to the grand scheme of money, we have a plan sketched. We know how much money we spend per year, how much we need to be bringing in, what we need in a six-month emergency fund. We have a minimalistic and generous budget (the generous, for example, has an entertainment section for movies and dinner, a larger food budget for steaks and desserts). And we are aware that the future is never secured. By knowing what you need, you know for what to strive.

In regard to the small details, the short-term, of money, we have a budget etched, we know exactly how much we can spend on groceries, clothes, etc, to stretch the little money we do have. By knowing what you have and what you need, you'll never be surprised by a lack of funds.

The best plan, in my opinion, is to keep yourself rich by keeping your wants few. That is the best way to keep money in your pocked (and a clutter-free house!).

Our History:
I was blessed enough to have parents who were able to pay for my undergraduate degree and I was responsible enough with a credit card to come into this marriage with no debt. I also had no problem spending money and buying myself nice things and therefore entered the relationship with naught but a couple thousand to my name.

My husband had some undergrad debt, but it was paid down a fair bit and was a little over $10,000 by the first day of class (when they went back into deferment). He was also miserly enough to have secured a decent savings, especially for such a young man.

We have a few investments (a couple thousand in gold and silver, depending on the market), a few hundred in stocks (which has since grown), some bonds, some foreign currency.

Our Money Situation
Because of Matt's generous scholarship (free tuition), we have a huge weight taken off our shoulders. We still applied for loans to cover books and the cost of living. This is our only source of income. Thanks to our budget, we can make the two semester loan checks last all twelve months. Life will be scarce and that does not include health insurance (we're working on getting some, but it's not here yet), trips back home, or Christmas presents, for which we'll depend on our savings. If I never get a job, we will live loan check to loan check with a small, dwindling net below us. We'd end law school broke, but not homeless or starving.
Thankfully, we have a few other sources of money. Long story short, Matt's parents have family money set aside for the kids that they are passing down now. That money will take a while to get here, but when it does, we'll have a nice, medium-to-large sized net below our loan check trapeze wire.
We also have the option to take loans out from the bank and/or government and smaller loans from our parents, should we come about a hard situation.

A Job
A modest job, one that offers $8-$12 an hour, will offset the amount of loans we need to take, which will put us in a prettier financial position come graduation, some debt, but some savings. A nice job, $35,000+/year, would remove our need to take any loans and allow to us pay down the loans we have taken and Matt's old school debt. See the advantages of having a job? We'd end law school nearly debt free and have a respectable savings.

Tangles
The twists in our delicate web arrive in the form of a baby. If we do have a baby and I'm haven't been working, that nice net disappears just as quickly as it arrived. Expensive health care (being pregnant is a pre-existing condition, didn't you know?), not to mention all the toys, diapers, blankets, clothes, etc, that come along with a baby. If we have a baby and I'm working, we'll be faced with different challenges. We both don't want our kids raised in day care, so I won't work full-time. But if I cut back to part-time, we'd still need a babysitter and we don't have any family down here to help. And enter stage-left day care costs. Plus, I am still leaving the baby in the hands of strangers for 20 hours a week. If I completely quit, depending on our savings, we might have whittled our medium net down to a small one.

I feel like I should draw a diagram flow chart, just to help myself understand all of this.

Well, I don't have a handle on it, I can't draw this post to a fancy conclusion with a bit of advice at the end. I can simply pause here and say, so that's where I'm at. Strings, tangles, webs, and all. I'll let you know where I shake out and what I hit on the way down.

Thanks for reading.

Revisiting "Old" Fears

2009-10-03T19:59:00.001-04:00

A while back, I posted about my fears with the impending law school. And while we are only just beginning them, I thought I'd revisit the issue to see how the fears have changed now that we've actually started school. The italics are from the previous post, the normal sentences are my current takes.

My husband will meet some intelligent, sexy female law student and like her more than me
I'm am still worried about this, but I have not found any evidence to support me.

I am too selfish and will demand too much of his time; he will fail school as a result
Actually this hasn't happened yet. I do demand too much of his time in short spurts. I'll just blurt things out, or ask questions without realizing that he is in the middle of reading something. I'm working on it though.

I won’t get a job and we’ll have no money
Um, yeah, I think my loyal readers all know how true this one is.

Being a bit of a academe myself, I will be too jealous of all the graduate-level students around me
I am struggling with this so badly right now. Especially because I have nothing to do in my life and I was accepted into an MLIS program that offers 100% of it's classes online. I figure once I get a job it'll lighten up.

So, those are all the fears I listed. I think I have a new one to add, after my whopping one month and four days worth of experience: That Matt won't get good enough grades to be in the top of his class and therefore get the internships he wants. It's not his fault, you wouldn't believe the amount of homework he gets. That is, unless you're a law school wife too : )

Now that I've revisited them, I feel like I need to go somewhere with them in order to bring this post to a conclusion. But I think the key is simply understanding what they are and whether or not they're rational. One usually can't do much to stop fears, it's simply a matter of reacting sensibly to situations instead of on the basis of the fears. Since I am able to point directly to my fears, I am not at as much of a risk of falling to them.

Growing Pains

2009-10-01T19:36:00.002-04:00

As law school continues, my husband brings home more and more stories. Class, classmates, laws, new views, opinions, thoughts, experiences. When he first gets home, he's usually excited to share them with me, and I sit patiently, listening to his day, class-by-class. I'll listen intently until he brings up a name I don't recognize or a case I don't remember. Wait, I think, is that the guy who sits behind you? Or the one with three kids? Was that case the one from Property about trespassing? Or was from Torts, with the lady with the odd injury? I feel bad that I don't remember, maybe I'm a bad wife, I wasn't paying close enough attention before. Eventually I'll get so lost in the story that I have to ask him to back up and clarify a few details. Oh, that's right, he'll say, I never told you about that case. At the end of the night, after he's told me all about his day and we're crawling into bed, suddenly he remembers this one other thing his prof said and he tells me about it. It's all these moments that make me want to run screaming back to Michigan.

No one else can understand what Matt is going through besides his classmates. As close as we are and as much as I know about his life, I am still not sitting in class with him. I don't understand the flaws of his professors and I don't understand the jokes that follow them. He will always have something in common with his colleagues that he won't have with me, no matter how close my attention is to his stories. When we talk to family and friends, he will bring up stories and cases that I have heard of, that I don't know. And that scares me. As I mentioned before, I am worried that he is going to find some sexy, smart law school girl with whom he connects on that level and he'll prefer her over me.

I need to be more confident in our relationship and I need to be a less-jealous person. Maybe this is one application of the blog post my law school guardian (see the end of the previous link) made in my life of me needing to become a more virtuous wife.

I Love Torts

2009-09-29T17:20:00.000-04:00

My favorite class is Torts. That is, when Matt scoffs and says, "listen to this," I find that Tort cases are always the most interesting. I've also taken to calling people torts, as an insult. They are too, liabilities to my tax dollars, common sense, understanding of what makes a sane, intelligent human.

Chore Rebellion

2009-09-28T20:53:00.000-04:00

Matt's homework rebellion makes me think about my own lifestyle changes, and I've realized that I have chore rebellion. I've always done most the chores, but usually Matt could pitch-in, cleaning the litter pans if I didn't feel good, doing the dishes if I got sick of it, helping fold the laundry. He also had his own chores: doing the finances and taking out the trash mostly. But now, I do it all.

I am tired of doing the dishes every day, only to have a new stack waiting for me that evening. I am tired of doing the finances. I hate math and I'm bad with numbers and it takes me hours several days a month. I hate being the one to stress about money. But mostly, I hate the monotony of doing the same thing every day. Some days I flat out refuse to do the dishes, but then they pile up and by the next morning, I can't stand the mess anymore and end up cleaning the entire apartment, if only to get rid of the feeling of dirt.

But c'est la vie, this is just part of life: overcoming the monotony. This is the memory I tap into for inspiration:
I used to wear a lot of black, especially in high school. But as I moved into college and who I was started changing and growing, I got sick of the gothic nature of all black, but I didn't have the money to up and buy a whole new wardrobe. So whenever I would buy clothes, I'd just choose other colors. A brown or blue sweater instead of black, a green or white tank top. At first, having one shirt with color seemed pathetic. 6 days a week, I still wore black. But slowly, surely, I'd have 2, then 3 outfits with color. It took months, but one afternoon, I showed up at my then-boyfriend's house wearing stylishly-cut blue jeans, a pink tank top and a brown long sleeved shirt. That afternoon it dawned on me: my months-long project was finally complete! I started all-black and I ended in my vision! It's the same thing with working out: you can only lose 1 inch at a time, but in 3 months, that'll be a whooping 5 inches. Changing, overcoming the monotony, is a hurry up and wait kinda game. You have to keep working and keep waiting. But when you do, you'll be or do, whoever or whatever you wanted.

Homework Rebellion

2009-09-27T15:43:00.003-04:00

We're experiencing our first weekend of homework rebellion. My husband is full up to his ears in both homework and a desire to relax. We're both feeling it actually, the old days, when we had weekends off and we watched movies, played games, ate junk food and relaxed. We watched Netflix, old episodes of The Office. We didn't just lay around, we went for bike rides, several a week and usually a long stretch during the weekend at a state park. We went for walks in the nearby parks. It was a lot of fun and we really enjoyed our free time. But after a month of working hard, we've slid into a weekend of hardly working. A few hours Friday night, a few hours Saturday afternoon has been all the time my hubby has spent on homework. So here we are, Sunday afternoon and he isn't ready for tomorrow.

It isn't about focus or dedication or laziness. This is an issue with adjusting. It has commonalities with a new year's resolution. Resolutions are easy at first, those with any discipline can stick it out for the first month, but after the initial excitement wears off, after the motivation begins to wane, that's when the going gets tough. But unlike losing weight or cleaning the house, Matt can't just give up. He needs to continue to plug away, reaching deeper and trying harder to do the work. They say the first few months of law school are so difficult because learning law is like learning a different language. I think it is also caused, especially for someone whose been out of school for a few months, by a serious change in lifestyle habits.

So that's where we are now; a hatred of homework, a desire to come home and unwind, versus a syllabus of never-ending reading.

At times like this, I wish I could do the reading for him. As if it were a chore, dishes don't care who does them, so long as they get done. But even if I can do his torts reading, I can't answer the questions for him in tort class.

A famine in the Job Hunt

2009-09-23T09:55:00.002-04:00

My only solace is that no one is getting a job. I've only talked to one person whose found a job so far. Not even the local grocery store is hiring. I overheard the cashier tell another customer to try again in late October/early November, maybe there would be something then.

Oh well, who needs money, right? Not us!

On the weather front, it's amazing how nice 80* feels when one is used to the mid-90s. When we first moved here, 87* with 95% humidity is with what we'd wake up. But this morning, I enjoyed my walk home from the gym thanks to the "cool" temps and gentle breeze. The humidity didn't make me want to choke either. Yesterday I wore jeans and drank hot chocolate just to spite Florida. The first day of fall warrants these behaviors, no matter what the temperature.

A day in the life of a Law Schol Wife

2009-09-19T10:22:00.001-04:00

6:15am-wake up, make the bed, make Matt's lunch, pack his backpack(1)
7:15am-stretch while he eats breakfast
8:00am-gym time!(2)
9:30am-get home, stretch and make a protein shake(3)
10:15am-shower
11:15am-clean the apartment, do chores
12:00pm-lunch break
12:30pm-special project-job hunt, grocery shop, do the finances, depends on the day
2:40pm-Matt gets home, listen about his day
3:15pm-Matt does homework, I finish the afternoon project or read or something
5:00pm-make dinner
5:45pm-eat dinner, talk about Matt's homework or interesting we were thinking about
6:45pm-read, craft, watch episodes of Lost(4)
10:00pm-Matt finishes homework, get ready for bed
10:30pm-lay in bed, listening to Matt sleep until I finally fall myself

Well, that's my life right now, as boring as it seems. Now does it make sense why I spend all day thinking about babies and MLIS-es?

(1) I like packing his backpack, not only does it save time because I do it while he is in the shower, but then I know what classes he has, what books he's on, etc. It makes me feel more connected.

(2) I look forward to this time a, because I want a better body; and b, because it makes me feel productive--I'm tired, I've gotten off my butt and done something! I'm not at the gym right now because my legs are too sore from yesterday. As soon as I post this, I'm planning on doing a few ab moves from a past Women's Health magazine.

(3) Protein shakes are not for muscles, they are because I have a particular conditions that improves when I have a lot of protein.

(4) I'm currently addicted, I don't know what I'm going to do when I'm all caught up on past seasons. I guess just read and craft in silence.

Ladies Night, PS

2009-09-18T08:39:00.002-04:00

PS. Tons of women at the party joked about starting their own business instead of finding a job. As a psych minor, I find this very intriguing.

Plus it helps that I've had urges to start my own business here since we've moved.

Ladies Night

2009-09-18T08:04:00.004-04:00

Last night was Ladies Night hosted by the Law Partners group. Law Partners is designed for the spouses of students. There is something about law school that not even family understands, so this group is supposed to help us bond over our common circumstances. It was nice to get out, chat with people, talk about what makes Florida different, why Naples is good or bad. Thankfully no one wanted to discuss their baby's feeding schedule, as is common in girl parties, but there certainly was the element of an ignorance surrounding all current events, which I find is common in women of conservative religious circles. I didn't meet any best friends, but I did click with a few different women. The biggest thing I found was that everyone was job hunting. A few women with kids were happy to stay home, but those who were still pregnant, only had one, or had no kids at all, were looking for jobs. Most of the people I talked to mentioned nannying, working at day cares, or being a secretary. As I have my Bachelors from a Big Ten university, I am not interested in any of those positions, but these people still pose distinct threats should Matt and I feel desperate enough for me to find a job answering phones, but largely, because they are also tapping Ave Maria as a major job source, as am I.

In Michigan, education vs. experience was a very big debate. I heard in three different interviews for serious positions that I was candidate number 2, and that they had chose to go with experience over my education and enthusiasm. So frustrating! I haven't heard that in Florida yet, but that's mostly because I haven't had an interview. I went to a job fair, which was a bust, but that's hardly an interview.

I did apply at a temp agency, but haven't gotten anything yet. The temp agency could be perfect should Matt need to travel during his summers. We'll see.

Waging War

2009-09-14T14:10:00.002-04:00

If I have to scrub this apartment every single day, I will find no more bugs. Today it was ants, swarming the cat food, crawling all over the bowls.

cockroach
ants
gecko
more ants

They lied when they said they spray for bugs once a week.

Then again, they lied about a lot of things.