Can it get any worse? Apparently yes.

I'm sitting here on this couch, with unwashed hair, for days, doing nothing other than STILL trying to get through all my income tax notes, taking procrastination breaks to eat (vast amounts of chocolate) and watch stupid tv, or read online blogs and wishing somebody would put me out of my misery. That, in a run-on sentence, pretty much sums it up. Ok, so yesterday, I did manage to force myself to go for a jog and for some minor food shopping. But that is about all, as far as variations from this routine go. I say that I'm "going through my notes" instead of "studying" because this is what I'm doing literally - going through my notes, as if for the first time. Apparently (and it has been this way pretty much all through law school, with the exception of very very few classes which I found intellectually stimulating), I am able to sit through hundreds of hours of lectures and type almost every word that comes out of the professor's mouth without actually hearing ANY of it. So that when I'm finally reading through my notes with the intention of LEARNING the material, it is literally as if I'm laying eyes on all of this for the very first time. Remarkable really.

By my calculations, this crawling process will leave me with only 1 day of actual "studying" time. This is because tomorrow, a huge chunk of my day doesn't count, as we are going to see The Producers. Not that I am complaining - procrastination to see The Producers on Broadway is certainly better than my 4pm Oprah break, although I am starting to completely fall in love with Oprah during this awful time in my life.

And as if things weren't dire enough, when I was complaining to Vadim last night about how the thought "I want to kill myself" runs through my brain about a gazillion times a day during this income tax "studying" fiasco, he told me that income tax is a walk in the park compared to the summer that is ahead of me. Naively, I asked why. He explained, very reasonably and calmly, that it's because during that summer, I will have to spend every waking moment trying to commit 3 years worth of law school material to my memory - that's right, not just a semester's worth, but 6 semesters' worth (and each one with NUMEROUS subject areas). I just don't think I can do it. I wasn't cut out for this - why did I ever think that I was? I have no idea! Since his explanation sent me into an even bigger panic, he started to apologize profusely and told me that he only was trying to HELP with this little piece of advice - to make me realize how benign income tax studying really is.

And back to the never-ending: Wedding Planning. On monday, after I am done torturing myself with income tax and taking the exam (I heard a rumor that the professor never gives anybody less than a B, please let this be the truth) I am going with my future mother-in-law to visit another florist. A good one this time. We decided to refuse to deal with the bitchy florist from a few posts ago, and the wedding coordinator guy agreed to give us a $1500 credit. So, now hopefully things will work out, at least regarding the flowers, seeing as how this florist is a former coworker and friend of my future MIL. I don't know why I bother saying "future," because it certainly feels that she is my mother-in-law already. Just like it feels like Vadim is my husband already. I mean, is anything truly going to change after the wedding? How is the way in which we live now any different from how married people live? Other than nomenclature of course.

Yesterday, on Oprah, I watched an interview with Clara Harris - the dentist who attracted fame because she ran over and killed her cheating husband with her Mercedes. The part of her story that really got to me is when her husband was explaining to her, over dinner, what it was about the mistress that made him seek her company over the company of his wife. He gave so many "pointers" that she found it necessary to jot them out on dinner napkins (which were later introduced as evidence in court). All his suggestions had to do with the physical attributes: the mistress was thinner than the wife, etc. So, in this desperate attempt to keep her husband - Clara Harris rushed over to a plastic surgeon's office, and scheduled a bunch of procedures - ranging from liposuction (of course) to a face lift. She also started getting her hair done in a salon each day, along with her nails. Furthermore, she quit her job as a dentist to devote all her time to her family. It just makes me absolutely sick listening to such stuff. I'm not going to get into exactly WHAT bothers me about it, because it is so many aspects of it, and because I must get back to... you guessed it, Income Tax.

Mood elevator

We have these 3 mugs that don't match each other, but are all white on the inside. And during the past 4 months, unfortunately, they've become quite UN-white on the inside, possibly due to my overly frequent consumption of coffee. So much so, that it was an embarassment when friends came over this weekend, and I had this urge to pour coffee into the mugs as soon as possible, so as not give the visitors a chance to look inside. (These visitors, don't need additional reasons to jeer us - seeing as how at that point in the evening they had already made comments about how pathetic our wine rack is standing there with merely 1 bottle). In any case, I told Vadim about the "permanent" stain problem, and he agreed that we need to invest in some new cups. Except this morning, something brilliant occurred to me, and I spent about 15 minutes scrubbing the cups with this little brillo thing. And lo and behold - they are WHITE all over again. Completely, sparkling white! And I feel great.

up and down

I'm in a "bad place" again. Not sure if it's just because studying depresses me or if it's PMS or what. Regarding PMS, I always thought it was a fake syndrome (never having experienced it myself), but it just occured to me that perhaps, if I tried to note on a calendar the times of each month when I feel like an utter piece of garbage, perhaps I would come to a realization that PMS does indeed exist. Interesting.

Often bad moods manifest themselves by me not being able to bear to even consider speaking to people, on a "social" level, that is. This is going on right now, as for the past 2 days I purposefully did not pick up a couple of phone calls from people I haven't spoken to in probably months. (I sometimes do that even if I am not feeling down - simply because speaking to people after a few months silence often involves the need to give up a few hours, and that's hard to do at times.) Just the thought of the obligatory "hi, how are you? Oh I'm great, what have you been up to?" and the even more horrifying chance of hearing a chipper voice on the other line, or stories of people's sucesses... well do I even have to explain my complete inability to deal with it (at times)? This is remarkably well correlated with my down times, because when I am feeling normal, having a long talk with a friend on the phone usually infuses me with energy. And I very often have this extreme hunger for human contact, for communication, a need to just talk up a storm where I actually go through the process of looking through my cell phone book and thinking who could I call next.

And that whole sucess thing.. A recurring topic with me. Today, for instance, I learned just how well this girl that is in one of my classes, is doing academically. It made me break into tears. I am not going to my law school graduation. I have an excuse - I am attending a very big bithday celebration that day, but I made the decision not to go even before the birthday was planned. Everyone asks why I am not going? Because I don't want to feel like a failure. I don't want to sit there for hours, pondering why I didn't take more opportunities in law school, why I didn't study more, why I didn't apply for that editor position, why I didn't make any true friends, why are all these people around me graduating with jobs, etc. That would be depressing. And I can get all depressing without extra help from events such as these.

We finally got our New Yorker magazine, a subscription to which was long ago promised us due to our contribution to NPR. I am very excited about this - I love the feeling of my own "informedness" when I read publications such as the New Yorker. It's a fake feeling, of course, because I am most often not informed at all. But every little bit helps.

whine and complain(ing)

I hate income tax!! There are too many statutes, too many!
Couldn't I have stayed in the dark and just cashed my refund checks in peace, without having to actually read the gazillion pages of statutes?

This summer will be awful. Just awful. Thank goodness that at least there are classes that I'll have to attend during the first 5 hours of the day, so that at least something will propel me to shower.

My head is going to explode!

I am sure that whenever you mention wedding-planning problems to people who are not planning a wedding, they only roll their eyes at you. But take it from someone who knows - wedding planning is nothing to roll ye eyes at. Sure, it all starts off as fun and games, and with phrases like "I'm not going to be a bridezilla, and I am really not the type of girl who dreamed of my wedding since I was little, I am going to be laid back and level-headed about the whole thing", but then you meet face to face with this whole evil concept, known as THE WEDDING INDUSTRY, and all your previous good intentions fly right out the window. I am sure you are all wondering why I am being so vague, but I am just so sick of thinking and worrying about it in my head that I do not have the energy to write down the specifics of the whole mess. But to make a long story short - we are being schemed at every turn by our wedding coordinator guy. This friday we were schemed by him regarding our flowers. Our contract specified that he would cover our flowers, and friday we met with the florist. It turned out that he allocated $1500 to the florist and told her to do flowers for our wedding. And she started our meeting by explaning to us that for that kind of money we can only hope to have the shittiest most embarassing flowers ever. Yes, perhaps she did not use those words - but let's call things what they really are. This is the exact message she was trying to get across. So here stands the coordinator guy, saying how that kind of money can buy you terrific wedding flowers, and there stands the florist saying the absolute opposite. Both trying to accomplish their different aims - him trying to spend the least possible money on us, and her trying to get us to shell out more. AGH!!!!!

On a tad more exciting wedding front, today I went shopping for wedding shoes with my dad. Someone might wonder why with my dad exactly. Because today my mother invited Vadim and his parents and us over to their house for the 2nd passover seder. We went there purposefully about 2 hours early to give me a chance to stop by a couple of stores to shop for wedding shoes. But as could be expected, Vadim didn't think of that as a good time. Instead, he preferred to be dropped off at my parents house and there he stayed helping my mother prepare the food and set the table. From what I heard - he gave her input on every single dish, input which she gladly took. I am totally cuted out by that. But I digress. Because, unlike Vadim, my father thinks it's a "good time" to hang out with me, even if that means spending time with me while I shop for wedding (or other occassion) shoes - so he agreed to accompany me. I had a dilemma. Buy really pretty elegant shoes with a 3.5 inch heel...

kind of like these, but much prettier, or go for the less elegant, more bulky platform shoes, but with a 5 inch heel.

Decisions, decisions! I went with the 5 inch heel. I figure my dress will cover the shoes anyway, and nobody will get to see the elegance, but everybody will get to see me being 5 inches taller! I have a slight feeling that my dad disapproved. But a (short) girl's gotta do what she's gotta to do!

Our passover dinner was lovely. We all had lots of wine, lively talk was had, jokes told. I felt all warm and fuzzy inside (and not just because of the wine)! But the MOST exciting part happened afterwards, when I went upstairs to pick up my summer clothes, which I left in one of the upstairs bedrooms carefully packaged in garbage bags. You see - we were moving in january, and into a rather small apartment, and I decided that I will only take my winter clothing, and come back for the summer wordrobe later on. But as it turned out, my mom (a lovely woman!) gave ALL MY SUMMER CLOTHES AWAY TO THE SALVATION ARMY! Yes, Dash - including that absolutely gorgeous Arden B tank top thingie you gave me for my birthday! I mean ALL of my summer clothes! Well, except the few that I thankfully left hanging in the closet and didn't carefully pack up into the bags. Mommy (I mentioned that she is a doll) compensated me for my loss and thus when I am done with finals - it's time for a shopping spree. Who's coming?

A short recap

- Yesterday my mom and I saw Helen Hunt, while walking past a restaurant in downtown Manhattan, Tribeca to be exact. She was sitting in a corner with a female companion, but unfortunately her hiding place was not good enough because we saw her. And so did another couple, because after we crossed the street, we heard them say to each other excitedly: "Helen Hunt! Helen Hunt!" I don't know what else to say about this celebrity siting, other than "she looked great!" Because she did.

- I just made my own iced coffee. It's just as good as the iced coffee I like to order in Dunkin Donuts (perhaps because I make Dunkin Donuts brand coffee at home). The recipe: brew coffee. Put the pot in the refrigerator for a while. Add ice and half&half. Drink. Caffenated AND refreshing!

- The wedding planning is going to give me an ulcer, or a heart attack. Or some other disorder brought on by stress. All sorts of unforeseen problems have come up. But the bottom line is: this wedding is so much work and hassle and worry that I can already foresee the depression that I am going to be plunged into once it is all over. There's looking at a glass half empty for you!

- I don't know why I left this till the end, because it is THE most exciting one of all, BY FAR! So I have some extended family, which I might (or might not have) mentioned in some previous journal entries. I am too lazy to look now. But they are perfection personified. They are just a delightfully perfect family all around, as in - loving, sucessful, functional, and even good looking! I know, the horror. And now a confession: when I try to procrastinate, I often google people. So I googled my extended family. I came up with a bunch of interesting info. Among other discoveries about them, my search came up with this article, authored by my 3rd cousin (who is hot) for her college newspaper. In case you people are too lazy to click on the link, it is an article about how it's ok for a college girl to be a virgin. And now I will just throw my head back and laugh and laugh.

(on a serious note - I think it's terrific and wonderful for people to choose virginity, and blah blah blah.) I felt the need to say this because what if I am ever found out?? However, I doubt that my extended family members will ever find my blog, since I also googled myself and nothing came up. I don't need to, but I will mention that this caused a rather prolonged period of anguish where I cried on Vadim's shoulder and kept repeating "I am a loser! I am not in google!"

-The End

My plants have real pots now

Aren't they the cutest? (Regardless of the fact that I can't, for the life of me, take a decent picture where the light is actually good). And yes - I DID get my hands dirty with the soil when replanting the plants in these brand new pots. Just like the man in the store suggested that I should, when I brought to him a bag of soil in order to pay for it, holding it with the tips of my fingers trying not to get any dirt on me.

the writer

This weekend Vadim and I obligatorily atttended a family function. A 1 year old's birthday, which was celebrated in a true russian-immigrant style: a russian restaurant party complete with fancy decorations, abundant amounts of seafood dishes and plenty of people hired specifically to entertain the screaming children. One of the family members in attendance was a writer. I heard of her several years ago, and had already seen her once at a different family gathering. I read a short story written by her in the New Yorker magazine a while back, but did not remember retaining any sort of lasting impression. However, the mere fact that there is a writer in Vadim's family fascinates me. Many times during the party I kept catching myself staring at her, thinking that there really is a writer among us! Imagine that. To my surprise, I never once saw her speaking to anybody else, not to a single relative. In fact, for the duration of the event, she was heavily engaged in what seemed to be an extremely interesting and lively discussion with her husband. She even sat in a way in which she was half turned in her chair to face him, thereby giving off the vibe that she was closed off to conversations with anybody else in the room.

And to tell you the truth, I was not surprised. Even if I tried really hard, I could not imagine her having a conversation with any of the people at the party. I could say that she was an ice princess, that she felt herself above all the people there. But that wouldn't be entirely accurate. While she did give off a certain aloofness, I really didn't get the impression of superiority from her. Maybe I am completely off, but am guessing that that is indeed how she felt there. Maybe superior is not the right word, but just of a different world alltogether. I often say that you can tell so much about people just by looking at their faces. You can just guess right away a person's character and many times after I form an impression, I later find out facts that confirm that my impression is indeed correct. She looked like a sweet, charming woman. More charming, in fact, than anybody else in the room by far. She was pretty and timid and elegant. I kept wanting to talk to her, to penetrate this wall that she built around herself and her husband. But of course - what in the world would I say to her? "I read your story a while back, what is it that made you start writing?" Right...

So today, in some strange way seeking to fulfill my gut feeling about this woman, I found another story of hers, called "Mistress" (which can be found here). I loved the story. Absolutely loved it. Is it a self-fulfilling prophecy? Perhaps it is. But there is just something about it, something so familiar and sad. Of course I cried at the end. But I wanted to cry even before I got to the end, because although there was nothing terribly tragic in the story, nevertheless it gave me such a feeling of familiar hopelessness and melancholy. I can't really explain how it made me feel because unfortunately, unlike her, I am not a writer. I am curious if anybody else, not from the same culture as myself, would find the story just as touching. Was I touched because I can relate - I can see my own grandfather in this story, as well as so many other russian grandfathers, just muddling along with no purpose in this new and strange country. We've been here so long, and it's been such a long time since we've all assimilated, that I almost forgot about this aspect of immigration.

In any case, I think I will buy her book of short stories. And at the next family gathering, I will come up with some way to start a conversation with her, without sounding like a blubbering fool (which is my constant fear and the reason why I rarely start conversations with strangers, and why I am terrible at shmoozing).

---

For my Education Law course, part of our course requirement is to write 5 reaction papers during the term, basically reacting in a couple of paragraphs to any of the assigned reading. Most of my reaction papers are simply that - a fulfillment of a requirement in which I try to come up with sophisticated rhetoric to express in an educated manner opinions which I don't really hold. Not that I am writing about opinions that are the opposite of my true ones, but instead I simply don't have strong feelings about any of the things I write about. Just how good I am at this rhetoric stuff became blatantly obvious to me during the last class. My professor had in front of him my latest reaction paper, and asked me to expound on what I had written for the rest of the class. I found myself fumbling with the words, not really knowing what to say because it had been several days since I've written the piece, and I really did not remember what I wrote. Nor did I have a strong opinion on the matter, as explained above. Seeming a bit disappointed with my lack of response, my professor said "You wrote extremely eloquently about your feelings in your paper, I believe you said..." and proceeded to read an exherpt from my paper. I have to say that I sat there and thought "Hey, he's right. I did write about it fairly eloquently. How sad that I can't think of a single thing to actually SAY about the same subject matter." For the curious, here is the part that my professor found eloquent:

Perhaps I hold a naïve view of American teachers, but I find it very difficult to believe that deception and manipulation on the part of the teachers, such as that described by Moe, is widespread. The idea that systematic abuse of the testing system is taking place in many of our public schools is extremely disturbing, and makes it seem that most American teachers do not possess any integrity... I believe (and I hope that I am right) that many teachers actually do want their students to learn, are themselves interested in accurate assessments, and would not sabotage the testing system in order to bolster their careers.

I often surprise myself because I couldn't care less about most things that I study, but somehow I do know how to make it sound as if I have something of value to contribute to the topic. Somehow I can do it if it's a written assignment, but I am completely incapable to bullshit in the same way when I'm called upon to do the same by speaking. I wondef if I can find a way to use this particular strength in my career as a lawyer without exposing my weakness.

Progress

Yesterday I went and took that Kickboxing aerobics class again, and other than being kicked really hard by a fellow kickboxer (more about that later), I feel terrific. That is if terrific involves hurting all over, which it certainly does. The instructor that teaches this course is one of those "tough love" trainers. She yells obsene and nasty things at us, tells us that we suck, and uses various other ingenious ways of egging us on. I love her! I wish I had enough money to hire her as my personal trainer. I would be so buff then. Unfortunately this class is only once a week.

As far as being kicked, I don't understand why certain people take aerobics. And by certain people I mean people with no rhythm. The guy that kicked me wore these skin tight biker shorts. But that was the only thing which qualified him to take an aerobics class. Although the 80s are over.. Regardless, I could see him in the mirror the whole time, and for the duration of the whole class he was never once in step with the rest of us. He just didn't get it. And since he didn't, I don't see how the class was beneficial to him. I usually get it fairly quickly. But until I get it, the working out process is no fun. It's pretty useless. Because when your energy is directed towards getting the steps right - you are not concentrating on getting the most out of you workout, you are just concentrating on not looking like an ass. Imagine concentrating on that for a full hour! Apparently he was concentrating so hard, that he didn't realize that he was close enough to me to kick me really hard in my arm. With his foot. So hard that there was a dirt mark on my arm from his goddamn sneaker! He looked appologetic right away, although I did NOT hear the words of appology come out of his mouth even after the class was over. But I was kind of nasty myself. Instead of saying "it's ok," like I have a feeling I should have, I looked really shocked and appauled and kept rubbing my arm demonstratively.

In other news - we have a rabbi! A moviestar rabbi at that. Our rabbi actually starred in a movie with Robert Deniro! Something like "Once Upon a Time America". And in that movie - guess who he played? He played a hasidic rabbi! You must have real talent to be a non-hasidic rabbi and yet portray a hasidic rabbi. In case anyone is wondering - no, I have no idea what the difference is.

And have I mentioned that my wedding invitations finally arrived? My excitement about them only lasted for a day and a half. At that point I wanted to take a picture of all the disassembled invitations spread out over my floor, and then take pictures of the finished product - after I have tied all those bows. But after getting through less than half of the bows - my enthusiasm wore off. Thus, no pictures. I didn't realize exactly what was involved in the "assembly required" warning. So to the rest of you - stay away from "assembly required" anything!

Today I spent 3 hours filling out my bar exam application. I had to reconstruct my whole life history for the past 10 years. All the places I've lived and worked from the time I was 16 years old! And while I've been out of work for the past 3 years and feeling quite lazy, this reminded me that most of my life I have indeed been a hard-working girl.

Eat your heart out

For those 1.3 Cornell people that actually read my blog, this should look familiar.


Yes, this past weekend, we took a little trip down memory lane and drove up to the utmost beautiful Cornell University.



(That was just so everybody believes that I speak the truth.) I haven't been back since the year that we graduated, which would make it almost 5 years! The place is just as amazingly beautiful as ever, except after living in the real world, going back there and seeing it again is so nostalgic as to make it almost painful to walk around and take it all in. I doubt that the details of our trip would be of much interest. So I'll just say that we managed to eat at all of our favorite places, including Alladin's (which still has the same menus, and more importantly - the same prices), College Town Bagels (which has all the same yummy bagel sandwiches, but in addition also tons of new and fancy coffees and deserts), Simeons on the Commons (not impressive) and John Thomas Steakhouse ($34 steaks rarely disappoint I suppose). And just so I don't give the impression that it's all only about the food - we also visited two wineries around Cayuga Lake.

---

I am starting to feel that planning a wedding is just like doing one of those huge puzzles where you have to find each peace and make the fit together. Except it's not always clear just how many pieces there are. For example you think there are only 15 pieces, but each week you realize that there are more and more pieces hiding somewhere and the realization makes your head spin. So basically all the time I am realizing just how many more extra little things I need to find out about, get recommendations on, research, etc. At least we ordered bridesmaid dresses this week, and after only one shopping trip too, which is a huge relief for me. The dresses will look like so:



Except the upper part will be in white.. I mean in "candlelight". And the trim will stay pomegranate. Before I told people that my wedding colors were "white and red," but now I will switch to saying "candlelight and pomegranate."

I will leave you with this last picture that demonstrates just how gorges (get it, get it?) Cornell is.