Sequential Harms/Loves/Long-Long-Weekends

Hello from the hole (yes, that is a picture of "the hole" and no, I didn't draw it). Thought I'd poke my head back into cyberspace for a second to insist that y'all know how I'm doing (or at least that I'm still alive-ish).  I'm a wee bit... haha, ok really really really tired. Amazing that I have another month to go. I'm told I'm about a week away from "hitting the wall" - yes we're unsubtle about our endurance sports metaphors. Anyways, yes, the prep is exhausting, but far more exhausting has been trying to squeeze the prep around an otherwise pretty jam-packed June. And kind of an emotional wringer of a June.

The first weekend of prep, I came up to Bellingham (it's kind of a theme) to attend a PeaceHealth fundraising Gala at which my Dad recieved a really awesome award and made a particularly moving speech (tears, of course and A LOT of socializing with people in evening gowns and tuxes). Of course to do this, there was a lot of shifting around of the study schedule (which does not rest on the Sabbath I will have you know), and the general logistical headaches that arise when an on-edge insanely punctual girl rides to the 'ham with a laissez faire boy who doesn't always keep track of time when he's out riding and they hit some fun traffic on a hot day! And it was a fundraiser for the new cancer center, so many tears were shed for many speeches and inspiring stories. I even saw my boss from my first legal internship with PeaceHealth and got to spend much of the evening with my extremely pregnant sister who'd flown out for the event! Fun, exhausting and I didn't get any sleep naturally.

The second weekend of prep, I actually stayed in Seattle shockingly. We had rescheduled the ballet to Saturday from the weekend before and the next day was GRADUMACATION. Think I talked about that briefly, so you know ... the usual mix of inspiration, harried rushing, panic, a pass at musing at the meaning of three extremely significant years that failed to compute. And didn't get any sleep, naturally.

And this last weekend was the big event: the marriage of my M&M's (Molly and Marcus - my bestest buddies other than the imaginary unicorns who whisper bar answers to me after ten or eleven hours of catch up after weekends like the last three). 

There was a rehearsal and rehearsal dinner the night before at Semiahmoo (virtually, but not actually Canada). I began to suspect the dinner might last until the actual wedding given the insanely lugubrious service schedule (I was furthering suspecting that we'd all died, and this was some Satrerian hell to which we'd all been condemned), after which I drove halfway home from Semiahmoo before "realizing" my cell phone was MIA. Knowing I'd had it in hand as I fled the dinner hall (apparently when you are in the resort, Verizon believes you are in Canada so I had been receptionless for upwards of two or three hours!!!), so I was utterly convinced that I must have dropped it in the parking lot. So panicked drive almost all the way back only to hear the faint chime of my apparently still present and intact cell phone. After a good fifteen or more minutes of border guard level searching, it blithely alit from the heavens and appeared in an auto cranny. And of course, as is tradition, I got lost a few times. So I got home somewhere long after ten to the boyfriend who had been alone waiting at my mom's house since he got caught in traffic around 6 p.m. and figured there'd be no point in coming to the rehearsal dinner at that point.

Then of course the wedding. Such a rush of every possible emotion. I will say with all the other things going on, I have deferred the pre-programmed female crises that automatically pop up on the loss of one's last and best female friend to the snares of holy matrimony - for now those can stay in the movie Bridesmaids until I have a chance to process the whole law school thing. Mostly there was a melange of everything going wrong all at once, stress levels exceeding bursting, and pure ecstatic "oh my god you look so beautiful and you ARE GETTING MARRIED!!" The ceremony was gorgeous and they did this really beautiful bit at the end where they brought Molly's son up and exchanged vows to him. Every one, of course, cried. Oddly probably the coolest thing for me was signing the wedding certificate as a witness. Maybe I'm just a law geek, or maybe it was just such a private moment, it was particularly meaningful to be there.

 Oh and did I mention, it was my anniversary with Andrew? It was. We stayed out at the resort to celebrate, but after all the ado, the celebration mostly involved staggering into the room, making a pass at the pounds of pretty that the stylists had given me and staring at the wall for a few hours before trying to go to bed in the room that had been set to about 74 degrees all day. He celebrated by napping in the extremely hot room all day. We decided that given our mutual low-to-unemployment that we weren't going to front the price of the swanky breakfast, so of course when I woke up starving the next morning, it became rapidly crucial for us to go home quickly! And of course  from there, I had the day of bar prep to sludge through (they saved Constitutional Law for this special occasion, because they loooove me so!) Needless to say, I did not really sleep.

And yes, I promptly tore a hole in
this dress w/ my heel

 So, I may be recovering. I'm not sure. There were some days there were I was so wrung out that I could really cry for no reason. And I don't mean "for no reason" as in "at the slightest provocation," I mean for literally and absolutely no reason. But I seem to be a bit caught back up and am planning a particularly dull and uneventful study filled weekend. With about ten hours of sleep per evening, I think I'm possibly recovering for a second wind. One can knock on wood.Maybe the wall I'm predicted to hit will be wood so I can knock on it??

In the meantime: