Without A Map

I’m spending money I shouldn’t be spending to remodel a bathroom I soon won’t be using.

And who says future lawyers need to make any sense at all?

Bear with me: One of the reasons why I wanted a house in the first place was to have a wall to paint. I know, stupid reason. Well, I’ve been in said house for a year and a half, and there’s not a wall painted by moi anywhere in sight.

So, because this is a dream deferred, and because we have the best neighbors ever who gave us painting supplies as a present a few months back, I said, fuck it, I’m gonna do something with this bathroom.

At first I was going to sand down, then re-stain the cabinet. But then I melted a sander. I was able to get a new one, but there was still detail work left, detail work that’s hard to get at with a sander. I started looking up chemical strippers, I considered the fact that the bathroom is tiny and not very well ventilated, then said fuck it. I’ll just paint it.

I’ll buy a few pieces of hardware. Maybe a light fixture. And that’ll be the extent of it. As modest as these changes are, this will be the largest-scale home improvement project I’ve ever taken on. And if the house does indeed drag us under, it’ll be the last home improvement project I get to do — maybe for a long time, maybe forever. I’m getting my bittersweet kicks in now, while I can.

So I paint.

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This essay from the early ’90s was so funny it made me cry. Lose my breath laughing. Then start to hurt as I laughed some more.

Probably, among all the things I’ve read about law school over the past 8 years, this was the most useful.

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Everyone needs some Skee-lo in their lives. From me to you: A blast from the mid-90s past.

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Things are moving forward on the Sac plan, in fits and pieces.

I finally got my registration information for McGeorge.

I’ve got a place to live, now, until Mel B. gets a job up there. It’s sorta within biking distance of the school. But more importantly, it’s a house, with just one other person. And she seems cool. And the neighborhood seems quiet. We’ll see how it goes.

I still don’t have a part time job. It’s hard finding one of those from three hours away. The school said they’d help me once I got there. I scoffed that at the time, thinking surely I can find something before then, but now it’s my best chance.

The lawyers at legal aid, on my last day, freaked me out about the house, and I haven’t entirely shaken that. Now I’m getting as much information as I can on worst-case-scenarios. Nice.

I handed in my letter of resignation (they made me write one. They’re big on protocol) last night. So I suppose there’s no turning back now.

I feel like I’m stepping from the train platform onto the track bed. I could be stepping into a space between the tracks, or I could be stepping onto the third rail. And in the meantime, everyone on the platform is nervous and scared as the axe cometh.

My age isn’t helping. This is the first really horrible economy I’ve gone through as a working adult. I don’t have the perspective of having gone through it before. (I weathered the badness after Sept. 11, but that seemed like nothing compared to this. Banks weren’t failing and people weren’t getting laid off around me. But then again, then I didn’t have the responsibilities I have now, nor did I decide to go back to school then, which possibly is folly.) Though I did get some comfort from a woman who now owns her own business. She’s been laid off before. And there are successful business owners who have had to declare bankruptcy. So I suppose financial ruin isn’t the end of the world.

Isn’t that a bitch? A person can live a careful and frugal life, and still fuck it all up. Fantastic.

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So I had a moment on the roadways of California that I’ve never had before.

Mel B. and I were in her car, driving up to Sac. (Hee hee.) We were behind a truck hauling some port-a-potties. So we’re talking, and a piece of toilet paper comes flying above us, presumably from said truck. Mel B. comments on how disgusting that is.

We drive along for a few minutes later.

Then my brain literally has this thought, as I’m reacting:

“Boy, that guy is really slowing — PORT-A-POTTY!!”

Shit. But thankfully, not literally, as apparently they had vacuumed the port-a-potties before transport. Too bad they couldn’t rope them down to the trucks like they were supposed to, before dumping them all over the freeway while the rest of us brake wildly and swerve to avoid them.

Ah, California. The land of the unsecured load. I suppose this is what happens you live someplace slightly more densely populated than my home state.

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