More from Maira Kalman

Love her illustrations. Love her words. Check out her latest.

Small Changes

Friday with nary a thing to do at work...so I made a few changes to the ol' blog. Notice the very organized categories of other blogs I read. Too. Much. Time. On. My. Hands.

The Long-Awaited, Much-Anticipated No BAR Post

First, I just realized that I'm pushing a month since the last post. My apologies. Next, I realized that I'm pushing a year since law school graduation and it's now more than 6 months since that ugly day in November when my name wasn't on the Bar pass list. I never really addressed not passing the Bar in this forum....and honestly in a lot of other ways too, first because it was super painful and second, because after a while...the whole ugliness started dissipating (yay!). With the class of 2009 now graduating, I'm attending a few celebrations and now that people are starting to study for the July Bar - I've been mentally re-living some of that over the past few days. I started this blog thing as my effort to keep folks informed while I was in the midst of the law school "adventure"...so now might be a good time to share a bit about me and the thing that was law school.

Dear reader, you're just going to have to indulge me this more personal blog entry and I promise - I'll put up more pictures of sunsets, baked goods, and puppies in the near future. That's the thing about a blog - I get to write what I want.

I think it's a safe bet to say that the major players in the story of my life know that I failed it. However, I've been to a few St. Mary's related events as of late and realize that the large flashing neon "I Failed the Bar" sign that I've been quite sure is levitating over my head is actually not visible to most. There's a humility in that realization - because a whole lot of people simply don't care. Certainly they don't care as much as I. This is a good lesson for me - the black cloud of Bar failure is just really not that big of a deal these days.

It was a huge deal at the time though - I thought I would take it again...I really did. I even hired a personal Bar coach and started studying for the February exam. But, things just kept getting darker surrounding the whole mess and I kept feeling more and more miserable and came to a point where I just sort of stopped. I stopped studying. I stopped thinking I wanted to be a lawyer. I stopped NOT listening to myself and tried to be in the quiet for a while to figure out exactly what I was NOT doing (taking the damn test again) and what might be next.

I don't wistfully dream of licensure. I don't want to be a lawyer anymore. I don't think I really wanted to be one in the first place. A dear friend saved an e-mail I sent to her when I was making the decision to chuck what was a pretty decent little ol' life I had going on back in Dallas in order to go to law school. In that e-mail I told her that I didn't think I wanted to be a lawyer, but that I wanted to "know what they know." Hmmmm....ok....so I know lots of stuff now and well... huh.

I wouldn't do it again. There, I said it. I would not go to law school again. So, if you have a nephew or a kid or a neighbor who's thinking about it and you want them to talk to someone who went, well I'm probably not the most uplifting person you could direct them to.

The redeeming part of the experience: I love the true friends I made during my time in San Antonio. I cherish them and know that our paths would not have crossed if I hadn't been in that place at that time. I'm grateful for them. But, the honest truth is that I hated law school. I hated feeling incompetent. I hated getting up every day and going somewhere to sit and listen to something that 99% of the time I just didn't care about...not one iota. Not one little bit. I hated always feeling like the ball had been hidden, like I didn't get the same rule book that everyone else did. I hated the courtyard discussions about the freakin' Rule Against Perpetuities. The hate and loathing caused misery. The misery caused sadness and I feel like I lost myself in the whole mired-down process.

I feel like I used to be a pretty cool person. I was the organizer of the social outings, the one people went to for support, the sender of the birthday cards and the baker of the cookies when cookies needed to be baked. I planned scavenger hunts for people to find little treasures just because it sounded silly. There was a monthly "girls night in" happy hour - at my house. I wore a purple cape with a big silver "A" on the back and chased my 9 year old friend Dylan around his backyard because it made him laugh and it made me laugh and it made his parents and relatives laugh. I wrote poems. I went out at least once a week to hear live music. I planted flowers. I sat in the backyard with Joe and Bob and discussed the meanings of life. I hosted a "White Trash" party where I served spray cheese on saltines and Schaefer Light and ran a loop of "Urban Cowboy" on the TV before we all loaded up and went to the grand opening of Gilley's in Dallas where we rode the mechanical bull! I felt fun and goofy and creative. All of those things went away in law school because I didn't have the time to do them and because I didn't have the mental energy to give. That's sad to me now. I sacrificed those warm and funny and silly parts of me for an over-priced piece of paper hanging on my office wall.

I wanted to quit after the first semester. I really wanted to quit after the first year. I felt like I would be letting people down (not sure exactly who those people were now). I felt like I'd be a failure. So, instead I toughed it out - always barely hanging on by an academic thread and dreading checking my grades at the end of each semester to see if I "got" to come back for another round....when in my heart, I didn't want to go back at all. On the one hand, I should have listened more closely to my inner voice. On the other, the whole wretched experience placed me where I sit (physically and metaphorically) today...so I recognize the value in it....I just wish it hadn't been so damn frustrating and depressing at the time. I know that it's a great accomplishment to have the degree. If I had any doubts before, I now know that I can do just about anything I put my mind to....but the difference now is that my list of what I should or must put my mind to - well, it's a lot shorter and a whole lot more pleasant.

These days, I'm trying really hard to focus that list on things like: take Ace for a really long walk, discover new parts of my new home-city, find reminders of the old me, stop and admire the sunset, read stuff I want to read and not stuff I have to read, exercise my creativity, be a good friend again....and oh yeah - LISTEN more to ME than the chatter all around. Have I fully mastered all of this?- 'course not. But, it's way more fun trying to achieve a happier, calmer, less-stressed existence than it was trying to achieve a law degree...and there's no awful three-day test to take.

All we were missing was a plague of locusts...

I spent the Easter weekend in my favorite Texas/Oklahoma border town. Highlights included:

* driving through still-smoldering areas along 183 on Friday where grassfires had done some significant damage the day before. There were several spots where it became very surreal with charred land and trees on both sides of the highway, piles of ashes still smoking, and a creepy haze. Very Tim Burton-esque.

* A Saturday BBQ at my Uncle and Aunt's farm - including two new baby horses (not BBQ'ed silly, but just for admiring), a two-toddler Easter egg hunt (hey, we don't have a lot of little ones anymore), several of us in our 30's and 40's waiting until the aforementioned toddlers weren't watching and then stealing the best stuff (they will never, never know), and 45 lbs. of BBQ'ed brisket (along with potato salad, deviled eggs, beans, and three cakes!) with my Great Uncle Walter's secret sauce recipe.

* Sunday, sitting in my parents' living room with the sun shining outside and then without warning, being amazed at pea and marble sized hail...no rain, no thunder, no lightning, no darkening of the sky - just HAIL!

* Later on Sunday, further amazement when it poured rain in my parents' FRONT yard and NOT in the BACK yard. Seriously. It was freaky. Oh, and the sun shined the whole time then as well.

Talk Amongst Yourselves...

From the Austin American Statesman -

Sheriff’s office hosts inmate job fair

By Patrick George | Monday, April 6, 2009, 03:40 PM

The Travis County sheriff’s office announced today it will host a job fair for inmates at the county jail.

The Job/Resource Fair will be from noon until 3 p.m. Wednesday at the Travis County Correctional Complex, 3614 Bill Price Road in Del Valle, in the chapel building.

Sheriff’s spokesman Roger Wade said the fair is part of the sheriff’s office re-entry efforts for inmates to reduce recidivism and the jail population.

I have to wonder which employers participated...and certainly, there'd be a few interesting responses to the standard job application question, "Have you ever been convicted of a felony?"

Patio Gardening

Not a lot of space, but a whole lotta color and plants!

I'm "harvesting" cilantro and basil on a regular basis now....come on 'maters!

Hill Country Weekend

Christina, Melanie, Andy and I spent another great weekend in Wimberley. This time, we stayed at the Texas Star. It was perfect for our needs: two bedrooms, ample kitchen and yay....a hot tub just off of the deck! Each time we looked out the windows, there were deer in the yard - even Ace was so relaxed by our surroundings that he didn't seem to notice the deer, whose presence would normally send him into a tailspin.

Much food and drink: Mel and Christina stopped on their way from Dallas for Czech Stop kolaches, cookies and cupcakes and provided the libations. Andy and I whipped up quesadillas, tamales, pasta salad, chicken salad, muffins and sangria (because apparently, we can never have too many libations).

On Saturday afternoon, we did something a little different. We toured an olive farm at Bella Vista Ranch. So very interesting. Instead of a wine tasting, at the end we did an olive oil tasting. In addition to regular olive oil, we tasted one infused with orange - soooo good! The gentleman farmer who toured us around his farm was very knowledgeable and I think we all have a new appreciation for EVOO! If you ever get the change to visit there, you should. He managed to provide the best 30-minute "origins of modern civilization" lecture you could ever want to hear while sitting outside in the sunshine on a Saturday afternoon. They grew lots of other yummy and interesting things on the farm: limes, asparagus (did you know it looks like grass when it's growing and that you have to harvest every 12 hours because the plants produce so much?), blackberries, figs, pine nuts, and....

"Mary, Mary, quite contrary...." - how do your artichokes grow?

From there, we drove on over to Driftwood Estates Winery for a little tasting and relaxing while we enjoyed an amazing view.

View from the terrace where we shared a bottle of their wine after we completed our tasting.