Enigmatic Female

Granny

Dallas' Granny died last week. She was a feisty, yet forgetful, 85 years old. Her mind wasn't what it once was by the time I met her around this time last year, but there was still plenty of personality to amuse me. Like how she called her daughter's husband, Slough-foot (because he's the kind of person who looks like he's always just stepped in something), how her advice to me at my wedding shower was, "If you will just shut up, you'll never say anything wrong," how she had a cat, originally named Sinatra, a name which she thought was stupid and hard to remember, so she renamed him, "Baby Boy," and would tell us how she'd say, "Baby Boy, where are you?" and he'd come a-running. Dallas and his older brother spent quite a bit of time with Granny when they were young, as she would look after them while their parents worked. She tells stories (sadly, the same ones were often repeated over and over again in the same hour or so visit, a creeping reminder of her mental deterioration) about how they went walking in the woods, or for a ride on a small train, or to the zoo when the boys were younger. She was so tickled by my appreciation for McDonald's (my first non-babysitting job was as a cashier/drive through runner at age 16), as I expressed it to her at our first meeting, that she misremembered that we ate a meal there (rather than at Subway) that day, and always treated McDonald's food as our own private joke. She was quite a plucky lady, and when she was younger and wanted a stone house, she set her husband and her four children the task of digging rocks for it out of the fields on their land, and cementing them to the walls of their home. This house is still standing, in decline, and she lived in it, alone, until the day she died. The street on which it sits is named for her. We've been mourning, and yet offering thanks that she hadn't had to leave her home of 65 years, or her cat, for whom she was making arrangements on her death bed. Rarely does a day pass when we don't make some reference to Granny, whether it's to say, "That's life for ya, Granny," her favorite phrase to attribute to a precocious seven-year old Dallas, or to say, "I'm BO-ORED," her favorite phrase to attribute to her ungrateful youngest grandchildren, or just to tell stories about her, remembering the good times. May she rest in peace, even as her husband, long-dead, will likely be put to work first thing upon their reunion.

Less Anxiety, Please?

For the past six months or so, Dallas and I have been telling each other that it will be a snap for me to find a job once the bar results are in, and I think there have been times when I've really believed this, but for the most part, I've felt a sickening dread that maybe I won't find a job. Ever. Then what? Writing as a career? Modeling? Culinary school? Oh, I know, I can be a teacher! This train of thought went so far that several days before the bar exam results came out, Dallas and I, both expert negotiators (hey, we even TAed a course in negotiation at the same time, only for different professors), agreed that if I didn't pass the bar, then I could become a teacher. Dallas has never had any doubt I would pass the bar exam, and knew this to be a safe deal to make. Dallas, you see, isn't the biggest fan of any job that I might take that isn't legal, as he feels like this closes off any future career I might want that is law-related. While I completely agree with his reasoning, there always comes a point when you have to question the veracity of your current path, because things are not coming easily. I don't mean not coming easily, like you interview for three jobs and none of the three will have you. I mean a prolonged job search punctuated by rejection and the well-wishes of the rejectors who seemed delighted enough with your qualifications, but really had someone more senior in mind, or someone who had already passed the bar. You see how a girl could get discouraged. At the point when bar passage was imminent, I began sending out resumes again, en masse. I've applied for somewhere in the ballpark of 50 positions, and this week, along with a few polite letters of immediate rejection, I've gotten a couple of interviews as well. I am beginning to trust that I will, indeed, have a job, and soon. Am I sleeping any better at night? Not really. Instead of being kept awake by the anxiety of not having any prospects, I am now wide awake with excitement over the imminent possibilities and going back to work. It seems, as Dallas has known all along, I really like being a lawyer and am getting excited about being able to do it again. Life is good, or it will be very soon.

Alternative Career?

Dallas and I were at the mall last night. We were walking off the effects of our celebratory dinner, which was capped off, for me, by warm bread pudding with ice cream and caramel. MMM. So good. I decided, in keeping with the momentum of the day, that a new interview suit was in order. We started hunting. We looked in department stores (Dallas was outraged by the $92 t-shirts we saw in Barney's), Ann Taylor, and other usual budget-friendly suit shops. Frustrated that jackets didn't want to button nicely over my rather ample bosom, I decided to check out a store that carries "women's sizes" (translation: big clothes for big women).* Not surprisingly, the smallest size they carried was perfect in the bust, but far too large in the waist. The pants, however, due to my impressive caboose, fit very nicely. The problem, however, wasn't how the clothes fit as much as how frumpy they were, and that they wanted $60-$90 for pants that I normally wouldn't pay $30 for, as they felt cheap and gapped in weird places. The ladies who worked in the shop chatted Dallas up as I tried on pants and pants and pants. Nothing was quite right (except a pair of corduroys that I was just not going to pay $80 for) and I decided not to get anything. As I was leaving, though, one of the shop girls asked me whether I would be interested in modeling some of their clothes in a fashion show next weekend. Tickled by the thought of myself as a model, even a "plus size" model, I agreed (I am under no delusions about my not-a-size-2 curves). They took my phone number, and I will be going in next week to try on my outfit and get a rundown on modeling protocol. Sounds like fun. And? Afterward I get a whole 25% off whatever I want to buy from the store. Those corduroys? They might be coming home with me.

*I eventually found a perfectly cut suit at Macy's, which is now at the tailor for a few alterations.

The Score

So, the Texas Bar Exam? It's totally my bitch. That's right, I passed it. Me: 2, Bar Exams: 0.

The Poverty Line

Dallas is spending this year clerking for a federal judge here in Dallas. While Dallas respects and admires the judge tremendously, he sometimes struggles to extend that same admiration to the judge's staff. Perhaps it's because they tell stories like the one I'm about to write here.

"I have a nephew who was a science major in college. He thought he wanted to go to medical school, but he wasn't sure, so he decided to get a teaching job for a while. You know, teachers only make like $40,000. They live at the poverty line."

Dallas tried to intercede that $40,000 is hardly the poverty line, especially if two people were living together making $40,000 each, as under this woman's logic, Dallas and I are living at the poverty line, as we're living on his $80,000 salary, since I haven't started working yet. This just isn't a hardship, I assure you. I can even buy name brand cereal! And we have health insurance! And other stuff!

The woman (who lives in a very upscale neighborhood in Fort Worth with her husband, a surgeon) responded (and got agreement from another woman) that you just cannot afford everything you need when you only make $40,000, and that it's therefore the poverty line. She clearly wasn't prepared for resistance on this idea, as her strongest argument was this: "I know that when the judge went into public service, there were a lot of things he had to give up [federal judges make over $100,000, and they make it for the rest of their lives]. People who make $40,000 have to make sacrifices. Like where they go on vacation..."

Dallas responded, "Yup, people at the poverty line really have it rough. They can't just go to Europe for a couple weeks, they have to make sacrifices."
_______________

A couple days pass, and the staff is again assembled at lunch, and Dallas has yet another macaroni-based leftover (have I mentioned how much macaroni we've been eating?). His co-clerk commented on it, and Dallas responded, "Well, when you're living at the poverty line, you can't have that many options." Chuckles from everyone but the woman making the poverty line comment.

A Few Guilty Pleasures

1. American Idol Season 5 Reruns. Sure I know how it ends. So?

2. Macaroni. Many, many dishes made of plump little elbows.

3. The Little House on the Prairie books. As good at twenty-seven as they were at twelve.

4. Butter. On toast, on fresh French bread, on macaroni, in crumbly cobbler topping, on waffles...

5. The Biggest Loser. Despite two of the above-listed items, I'm getting almost motivated.

6. Scrubs. Six times a day.   

7. House hunting. Our current house doesn't have room for a pool, or a laundry room, or a king size bed.

8. Seventy degree days in October. We had a day in the fifties this weekend. I didn't like it.

9. $30 cashmere sweaters. Got 'em at Ross Dress for Less. To know it is to love it.

10. Monopoly. Love it like you used to.

This Moment of Clarity Sponsored By Cafe Brazil

Recently I've had pangs of self-doubt. Did I do the right thing in leaving New York and my job when I did to move here and be married to Dallas? In that former incarnation of my life, it seemed that I lacked very little. I liked my job, loved my friends, had a large salary to spend on clothes, brunch, and the latest lip gloss, and I was learning to box with a kickass trainer who helped me lose about 20 lbs in just a couple months. Life was very very good. But, and this is a loud, painful, whiny but, I felt that all of those good things were a mere consolation prize for not having what I really wanted -- a steady relationship that could lead somewhere. And by somewhere, I mean marriage, 2.4 children, a few dogs, and a full-sized kitchen. It didn't seem that I could have the life I wanted in New York without making half a million dollars a year (not to mention not being able to find the right man), which would essentially prevent me from taking any enjoyment I could find in that life, as I'd spend sixteen hours a day at work. So I moved and got the marriage, the dogs, the kitchen, and in a couple years, the children will hopefully follow, along with a house in the 'burbs with a pool and swingset out back. Unfortunately, I threw out the baby with the bath water, and accidentally convinced myself that I had to give up all the things I enjoyed about my New York life in order to get the things I wanted from my Dallas life. I've even compromised my firm stand against chain restaurants in my quest for perfectly grilled quesadillas and good salsa (a story for another time). Today, for the first time in a very long time, I feel whole. Like maybe, just maybe, I can have both the pleasures of my New York life along with the satisfactions of my Dallas life. Today I had brunch with a girlfriend. Without Dallas. It was the first brunch I've eaten in a resaurant since I left New York. I felt compelled during my first weeks in Dallas to cook an exciting breakfast for Dallas on the weekend. It was going to be "our thing," this excellent breakfast, with blueberry cakes, and frittatas, and good sausage, and homemade biscuits. Only, it never really took, and we usually found ourselves grabbing something quickly before we rushed out of the house for the rest of the day. There was no weekend ritual like I had in New York, where I was something of a brunch hound, often indulging in two brunches per weekend, as it was one of the only times my otherwise-busy attorney friends could be certain of having free time. In those days I was willing to wait an hour for a perfect cup of Sarabeth's coffee and an English muffin, to break my pork-free diet to indulge in the thick bacon strips at Good Enough to Eat, to run the risk of seeing an ex's mother at Popover Cafe for their strawberry butter on a hot popover. A good brunch would set just the right tone for a wonderful rest of the weekend. Today's brunch showed me what I've been missing, both in terms of kindred female company, as well as the wonderful indulgence that is a cozy Saturday morning meal begun with hot gourmet coffee, and finished by jelly on toast. And, to quote my kindred female dining companion about the suitability of brunch at Cafe Brazil, "what it lacks in atmosphere it makes up for in [taste]." The meal was lovely, and it boasts something way way better than any New York brunchery -- a self-serve coffee bar with more than a dozen coffee selections to which you ferry your own thick ceramic mug and choose your own brew. Bravo!

The Last 48 Hours

Tuesday morning I slept in until 10, unaware that my phone was ringing. At 10:26, I checked my phone and found a message from Dallas' 35 weeks pregnant sister-in-law. She said that Dallas' brother, J, was out of town, and that she couldn't reach her mother, and she was heading to the doctor's office, because she wasn't feeling quite right. In a frenzy, as she's had a preeclampsia scare and was still quite a ways from her due date, I got ready as quickly as possible. I spoke with her and she said she was probably next in line to see the doctor, but that it was probably nothing. I told her I was going to start driving toward her doctor's office (about an hour from our house) and if it was nothing, she could call me, and I would go home. I drove quickly, feeling that something was definitely something, not nothing. I didn't hear from her as I got closer and closer. I was about two minutes away when I heard from her again. As I turned onto the street of the doctor's office, she called me and said her water broke and that she wasn't sure what they were going to do. She was understandably scared. That all happened around 11am. By noon I had taken her to a perinatologist at a larger, better equipped for premature births, hospital. By 1:00 we knew that she was dilated two centimeters and feeling stronger contractions. The sonogram showed that the baby's estimated weight was 5 lbs, 11 oz. She was sent to labor and delivery. She was in her room by 2:00 and dilated to four centimeters. Her husband, meanwhile, was making his way north to Fort Worth, from Laredo, over five hours away. By 5:00 he arrived, she was dilated to five centimeters, and had declined an epidural. Around 5:30 they gave her some IV painkiller (pain reducer), and I headed to her and J's house to let their dogs out and tidy up a bit. Dallas met me there. Around 6:20 we got a call from Dallas' dad saying she had gone from five to eight centimeters in twenty minutes. We hurried to tie everything up and headed back to the hospital. When we were about five minutes away, Dallas' dad called back. The baby, weighing 5 lbs, 13 oz was born at 6:47. Dallas is now an uncle, making me an aunt, of a beautiful little girl who was apparently in a big rush to meet the world. She is doing well, as is her mother, and they should be heading home from the hospital today. After hearing this kind of birth story, and seeing how perfectly adorable the little baby is, it makes me feel like it might not be all that bad to go ahead and pop out a few kids while we're young. Dallas, however, has the idea that we should wait a couple years. After taking a few turns babysitting, I may want to concede him this point. Time will tell.

J is for Judgmental

A friend of ours, here in Dallas, recently met a girl (she's 30 and an attorney for a state agency) in Austin. Having heard several lovely things about her and their flirtship/courtship, we've been eager to meet her. Friday night we got our chance at a Lower Greenville bar. Dallas and I sat far away from, but in clear view of, the door, so that we might be able to observe her a bit before we met her. Our friends walked in, the girl among them, and we watched. She is quite petite, as is our friend, and thus suitable visually for him. She had a mousy hair color and a mousy hair style with too little makeup to make any of her pallid features stand out. She was dressed fashionably in a filmy halter top, long jeans and high-heeled sandals. Her purse, quilted of black and white fabric, did not go with her ensemble. After a few moments, we made our way across the bar for introductions. She seemed sweet, but not terribly interesting. I sat on a high bar stool next to another girl in our group. She and I were chatting and she pulled me close to whisper that she didn't think the girl was particularly bright, as the girl had made a comment about a legal policy of the State of Texas in the car on the way to the bar that didn't seem accurate, and had no rebuttal when challenged on that point, even to discuss it and clarify it for the other girl, who is not a lawyer and was curious. I soon got further support for my supposition that she wasn't very interesting, and my friend's statement that she wasn't very bright. As I sat sipping a Grey Goose and tonic (a fairly common drink in NY, and it has seemed, in TX as well), she asked what I was drinking. I said it was a vodka tonic. She beamed at me, "THAT is what I'M drinking TOO!" As if this uncanny coincidence alone could lay the foundation for a friendship. A few minutes before this comment, Dallas had gone to procure another round, and as the bartender put the drinks on the bar, she told him, pointing at the two drinks he'd ordered, "this one is the vodka drink, and this one is the Jack and Coke." I, of course, started making fun of the bartender with Dallas, for feeling it necessary to show us which drink was which, as if we were trying to find a red five in a sea of green dots and just weren't quite able to tell the apparent difference between the brown coke and the clear tonic. When Dallas handed me my drink, the girl told him that she and I were drinking the same thing, again, as if it were newsworthy. He just smiled. She then asked what he was drinking. He responded that it was a Jack and Coke. She looked puzzled for a moment and said, "Jack Daniels?" "Mmhmm," Dallas nodded. [You were expecting Jack Frost, maybe, or Jack Kerouac, to commonly mix with Coke at a bar?] "That's whiskey, right?" "Right," I said. "Well, [boyfriend] was drinking a Crown and Coke before. That's whiskey too, right?" "Right," we both said, wondering where the punchline was. "So what's the difference between them?" Dallas just stood there. I helped her out and explained that one was sweeter than the other (just making up any old thing to let her know that the TASTE is what is different). Instead of being helpful, though, I wanted to made a snide comment about how many things are in the same category, Coca Cola and Pepsi for example, are both colas, but have variations in how they taste. We don't go around wondering at the various varieties in colas, or tampons, or pens, for while they all have the same function as the other brands in their category, there are differences between them, certainly. I felt that this may have been lost on this girl, though, who, while older than we are by some three years, seemed as inexperienced as a seventeen year old at her first frat party. Of course, this is nothing compared with my ire when, later on that evening, I explained that I've never been at a bar with shuffleboard before, as they just don't have that much in the North, and she challenged me by saying, snottily, "Where in the North?" As if I haven't been to many bars and couldn't be trusted for my limited experience. Pu-lease! Unable to contain the snide side, this time, I replied, "Oh, let's see, New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, D.C.... Nowhere have I ever been, in any state, have I seen shuffleboard as a bar activity. Perhaps on a cruiseship parked somewhere in the Caribbean, populated by wrinkled white men, but not at a bar." Being as I was a bit tipsy by then, I didn't listen for a response, but turned to flirt with Dallas, instead. We relived all the comments the next morning, Dallas, grudgingly agreeing that she didn't seem too bright.

What I've Been Trying To Be Lately

A few weeks after we returned from our honeymoon, Dallas and I had a heart to heart talk about what I want to be when I grow up. For years and years, and years and years, I wanted to be a lawyer, and I still do, but it has not been easy to relocate professionally due to my lack of Texas law license (Novemeber 3rd, I'm told, will bring the results of the July Bar Exam). During our heart to heart, though, I began to see my break from work as more of an opportunity than a setback. As, it would seem, with most bloggers out there, I have aspirations of writing more than a website, and have been working diligently to that end for some time now. According to our calculations, we can make it without me working until Bar results come out and I get a permanent job (I previously thought I might temp or take something part time and low key in the meantime), so I've been working on writing full-time. As I didn't want to invest in the 2-3 creative writing classes the local colleges offer (I already have a BA in English with some writing thrown in), I've been pursuing my own curriculum that I've cobbled together from course listings, novels that have formed parts of my literary identity, books on writing written by successful authors, and the list goes on. I've been covering at least two books a day, as well as working through various writing exercises and working on my own writing projects. I am coming to the end of my compulsive reading and researching phase, though, as one of my projects is about to take off full steam.

I have been working on three different projects over the past month or so. The first is a children's mystery novel involving a precocious and unpopular 12 year old boy who is captivated by word games and physics. The second is a romance novel centered around a character who has old-fashioned sensibilities but modern ambitions (guess which career she leaves during the course of the novel to pursue a different life) that is evolving into a more literary novel as I work with it more and more. The third, and most unexpected, involves notebooks found by Dallas' father in the house of one of his cousins whose wife recently died. The notebooks were written in the 1950s by a woman who was born only 2 years after Laura Ingalls Wilder. She lived on the Texas frontier and has captured over a hundred pages of anecdotes from her childhood, as well as her married life. She was an early animal rights activists, as well as a quiet feminist. This project is the furthest behind, as I've not yet determined the best use for the notebooks. I've written an introductory chapter to a novel and a few short stories from the material she provided, but it needs to stew on the back burner until I get a better feel for it. All in all, it's quite an interesting time I've been having, and I'm looking forward to seeing how the various projects come out.