Exam time horror show

There's the usual kind of anxiety and panic that comes from stuff I can silence for the most part. Things like school, getting lost, and not being eaten by wild turkeys because I have failed all of my exams. Then there's the other stuff, the real stuff that I can't deal with in a practical sense and that is just get more and more horrific the longer you ignore it. This would be stuff like paying rent, keeping the heat turned on, and figuring out how to feed myself and the cat (though I have enough leftovers from Thanksgiving I should be fed for awhile at least).

I suck at being poor. I suck at not knowing how I am going to manage to get through the next month, and I really suck at being in a position where there is no room for a misstep. Right now, I have no safety net at all. If I get sick, or hurt, or the car dies, or my laptop or printer takes a nosedive, I am completely screwed. And I cannot deal with this. It's driving me nuts. There is not one little thing I can do about any of it, but I have to do something, because the rent won't pay itself and neither will the power or phone bill. The stress of looming exams just makes it harder to cope and keep the terror at bay.

I just wish I knew what to do. I wish I knew how to focus on exams and studying when I am so terrified of these other things.

Nothing much else is going on, I actually got some decent studying done yesterday, which felt like a bit of a miracle. I'm no where near where I wanted to be at this stage, but at least I took some decent steps forward last night. It's just a matter of keeping that momentum going and trying to set aside my money worries until I have time and bandwidth to figure out some solutions.

Off Center

Last night I was asleep by 8:30. I woke up briefly to log off the computer and haul myself upstairs, and slept like the dead until 7 this morning. I wish I could say I feel more rested and relaxed for having slept so much, but I don't. I don't exactly feel worse though, so I guess that's something. These exams are really freaking me out a lot more than I want to admit to myself.

Trying to avoid the whole I'm-going-to-fail-and-live-in-a-box-and-freeze thought spiral isn't working out too well, but I'm really trying. It's just exhausting. I know this will get better, exams will be over soon, I'll live through it, and then I'll be home for a few weeks to do nothing but rest and knit. It's just hard to get rid of the niggling fear that I will fail or do really badly and I have no back-up plan, no safety net. If I fail, then what? There's no one to catch me if I fall out here. I'm just stuck and broke and it's really scary.

I have been knitting though. The Charm sweater turned out really well, and got lots of compliments, even though it remains unphotographed. I'm working on a feather-and-fan scarf for my mom for Christmas, using some handspun I had from when I got my drum carder. It's a really fun blend of silk and wools, originally dyed red and purple, but I carded it all together so it's more uniform and tweedy looking. I'm quite happy with it and I think she'll like it. I'm not getting anywhere on the weaving project for my grandma. Mom said she likes blues, but I have no blue yarns in my stash. Part of my doesn't give a rat's ass and wants to just use whatever I have, but there is still a part of me that wants to please her. A futile goal, but there it is. I think I'll just pack up whatever I have and work on that the first week of break. I can do the machine sewing part at mom and dad's, or just handsew the back of the pillow on, or I could crochet it together, that might look neat. We'll see.

Must get back to torts. We're reading about proximate cause. Anything with the phrase "in the bosom of time" has to be interesting. I wish all my case books were as much fun as this one.

Oh Sweet Jebuzz

I have a week left of class. Then exams. Somewhere in there I have to send out several dozen resumes so I can hopefully get some interviews lined up while I'm in California for the holiday. And take exams. And I did no outlining at all this weekend.

I feel woefully unprepared for this. It's just overwhelming at the moment, and I hate to admit it but the whole holiday break really didn't help much. It was all for the best really, but I wasn't able to relax and regroup like I'd hoped. I didn't get any real studying done, didn't really sleep enough, and somehow feel even less safe and more uncertain than I did before.

On the plus side, I got my second memo back and did really well on it, and I just met with the career center people and they were pleased with my resume so far and had lots of helpful things to say about my job search for the summer.

I just feel really overwhelmed, terrified, and a bit sad, if not a little hopeless. This whole being poor and cold and lonely thing is really more than I can take right now, what with school related stress building up so much because of finals, having to find a job, and everything else. I have some hope for the Christmas break, but after this last "break" I'm not so sure it'll be as restful as I need it to be. We'll see.

The turkey has landed

I'm getting far too excited about cooking Thanksgiving dinner. Mom and dad got in on Saturday and we went and picked up the turkey last night. I've named him Bob, and he is resting in the refrigerator while I decide exactly which method of roasting him I will go with. There seems to be some debate between use tin foil or wine-soaked cheesecloth to protect the breast in the first half of the roasting process. I've done the foil hat method, I might get creative and try the cheese cloth. We'll see.

because I'm insane, I have decided to bake the bread for dinner myself. I love baking bread. Something about the yeast and the dough in my hands as I knead it seems almost like magic to me. It's the same sort of thing I get when I spin actually, the joy of creating something so full of life and energy from nothing, with just the strength in my own hands. There's something elemental about it that I find very satisfying.

The Charm sweater is done, washed, blocked, and ready to be worn and photographed. I am really happy with how it turned out. It's nice and light and warm, perfect for these cool autumn days. As long as it doesn't get too windy anyway...

I've been working on a few scarves for Christmas gifts, and have decided to weave a pillow cover for my grandmother. She doesn't seem to like anything I give her, or use it, which really bothers me. I made her some knit washcloths a couple years ago, and she never used them. She never uses the chain for her glasses that she said she wanted and I got her either, so I fail to see the point in even trying but one has to do something. The plan is to use the small diagonal looms I got at Stitches West last year and make a sort of quilted cover out of scrap yarns, kind of a crazy quilt look but woven. It should be a fun little project.

Now if I could just channel some of the weaving and breadmaking enthusiasm over to my homework, I'd be in good shape. Motivating myself to read is just not working. I fall asleep whenever I open my casebooks. Is situational narcolepsy a real thing?

What I've learned so far

I've been trying to review and outline for final exams, which are in 2 weeks. Ack. How did that happen? This is what I've leared so far, for two of my classes:

Torts:
1. Stay far, far away from rail road tracks
2. Learn to swim, especially if you plan to work on barges or tug boats
3. Don’t mess with Texas
4. In Texas, it is not necessarily a bad idea to shoot your neighbor's mad boar.
5. Texas scares me
6. People in California like to throw furnature out windows. This I cannot explain.

Property:
1. Never get into a land deal with relatives
2. If you own a house with a ghost
a. The house isn’t vacant when you sell it.
b. Haunting is a latent defect. Disclose it.
3. My family is far more functional that I had thought (for example, my inheritance, such as it is, is not contingent upon changing my name, marrying some guy I've never met, or naming my first child after the family dog)

Knitting progress, finally!

My homework avoidance project the last couple of weeks has been a snuggly warm sweater from Knitscene (the Charm Wrap if you really care), using some of my handspun yarn. I'm not sure if this is a good thing or not, but it's done! Mostly. I still have to sew it all together and do a few more inches of belt, but the knitting is done. Assuming that all goes well this week, I should be able to wear it next week. Hurray! I'm really happy with how it's turned out. The pattern was easy to do, though I don't like they way they wrote or formatted the directions for the side shaping. It was really hard to follow, mostly because it was impossible to read. The end result is nice though, and looks like it should fit well. I did a size larger than I actually need because the yarn worked up at a slightly tighter gauge, so it'll be a little roomy but that's ok for this sort of thing I think. I'll post pictures once I get it sewn together, and find the ever elusive cable for the camera.

In other news, school carries on. Being a grad student seriously sucks. I had yet another panic attack last night after catching site of the latest pile of bills I have to pay. The being in school part isn't so bad, it's the whole not having any money and having to eat beans and rice and ramen noodles that I can't quite get over. It's scary. I'm more frightened than I have been since I was out of work and my unemployment ran out. That was an all-time low point in my life so far, and I keep finding myself back in the same head space these days, which does not help things at all. I know intellectually that this is all just temporary, it'll get better soon, and that I won't starve, but I hate the feeling that the bills are piling up, the debt is mounting, and for every bill I can pay there are 2 others waiting someplace that I've either forgotten about or simply don't have the ability to deal with. Objectively, it's probably not as bad as all that, but I'm seriously looking perspective when it comes to the whole money thing.

I am at least adjusting to life in Virginia. I've fallen completely in love with the fall colors. They tell me this year is rather drab, but to my eyes it's spectacular. Every day on my way to school, I marvel at the changing shades of red and amber. The trees near my house look like every shade of amber there is right now, not brown, but rich gold's and bronzes and dusky reds and fiery orange. It amazes me to see these colors on living things.

Now I must go and write a lease. For parking spaces. Which, given that I moved here from San Francisco, where there is no parking to be had for love or money, seems rather appropriate. But still, a lease? I have no idea what to put in a lease.

Well there you go

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Now if only I could use my fabulous demonic superpower to get out of this civ pro class and back to knitting my sweater...

We've got major grad school burn out going on here. That and some sort of freakish flu. blegh.

Poopy

It's been a crap week for some reason. Maybe I'm just having a hard time adjusting to the time change and all the darkness, but I've been feeling really low energy and just blagh.

Yesterday hardly helped, but I think I have identified a huge source of my law school related anxiety. We had a negotiation practice, and the opposing council we went against flat out lied about some material facts. The first thought I had when I found this out was "well, you'll make great lawyers." I don't want to be that kind of person. I don't want to be lumped together with that kind of person. It's unprofessional, unethical, and goes against everything I hold to be true and sacred. And part of me is terrified that law school is going to turn me in to that kind of person, one I wouldn't want to sit down over a beer with, nevermind be forced to maintain a professional relationship with, or trust.

Have I changed? I know I have become busy and stressed in new ways, but has this all changed the core of who I am and what I believe? I hope not. Lawyers do not need to be, and in fact should not be, the kind of people who lie. In negotiations, sometimes information is not shared, that is understandable, but when a direct question is asked, isn't the honest and ethical response to answer the question truthfully? I still think that it is, but I realized that I had this knot of cold fear, terror really, someplace in the pit of my stomach that 2 years from now when I graduate, I won't think so, that I will have become one of the deceitful, dishonest, and corrupt people who lie and cheat and steal.

I simply lack adversarial motivation. To my mind, a negotiation is supposed to be a meeting of the minds, both parties should walk away feeling good about the deal struck, not that they fleeced the other side or were in some way cheated. For one thing, I will never negotiate again with a lawyer who I feel has lied and cheated me. For another, what could possibly be served by such an antagonistic relationship?

Anyway, I'm bitter and angry about this, and need to let it go. grr.

Instead, I get to spend the weekend studying. blegh. I think I'm going to drive out to Yorktown after class this afternoon for lunch, just to get out of here.