Day 133: Bar Exam Applications and Anniversaries

Are the worst.  Not literally, of course, but they are pretty terrible.

This is the third application I’ve filled out.  The first time I filled it out, took the exam, passed, but never became licensed, because I knew I wasn’t going to practice for a while, and then we moved.  The last time I filled it out, studied for the bar, and found out we would be moving the week after the exam, so I never took it.  Not taking the exam felt like a waste, but the three or four days it saved during a month of complete insanity were worth it.

Here I am again, filling out a bar application, cursing under my breath as I try to remember old addresses and try to find someone who I’ve known for five years, but who is not family, who I did not work with, and who I did not go to school with, and will also mail documents in a timely fashion.  It’s annoying, but mailing things on time is not exactly my strong suit either, so there will be no stones being hurdled from this direction.  It turns out, I know very few people qualified to help, and the people I know who could or would end up doing a disproportionate amount of paperwork on my behalf, and I feel guilty asking them to fill out and mail yet another document.  But what alternative do I have?

To be fair, it’s probably much less annoying for people who are twenty-five and who have lived in the same place most of their lives and maybe had one or two jobs.  I’m also probably more anxious about all of this because I waited until the last minute (I have to mail the application next week) and I still haven’t opened a book to study.

I also spent the better part of yesterday morning at the DMV, where even with a pass to go to the “front” of the “line,” I was there for an hour, just to change my name.  Dealing with bureaucracy like that should be something that happens at most once per month, and certainly not two days in a row.  And I have a sore tooth, thanks to a local restaurant that basically tried to feed me a rock.  And my husband forgot our anniversary.

Well, sort of.  Not our anniversary anniversary, and he didn’t exactly forget it, he just didn’t say anything to me about it.

I don’t ever want this blog to be a place I bitch about people, or about my life in general.  My in-laws are exceptions, for obvious reasons, and because attempting to offer even the most basic constructive criticism ends in full-blown war, and I never want to be the reason HW and our children don’t have a relationship with them, aside from things I can’t help, like living, breathing and being completely in love with and marrying their son.

For everyone else, or at least for people with whom I have a relationship, I prefer to speak to them directly.  I think that’s healthier and better for everyone.

So before I wrote anything about this, I sent him a text (he was at work, on a call that lasted most of the day, so the text was really my only communication option).  I asked him if he forgot or if he didn’t think it was a big deal.  That sounds passive aggressive, but it was a genuine question.  It’s not like forgetting the day we got married, or the day we decided to get married, or the day one of our children was born.  It’s simply the day we sat down and had an honest conversation about how we felt about each other.

Still, it was an important day, a day that was either going to be the end of the most important friendship I had ever had, the beginning of the end of the most important friendship I had ever had, or the beginning of something else.  It was a pretty scary time.

At the time it felt like we knew everything about each other, or everything that mattered (and to some extent, that was probably right), and it felt like we had been through a lot.  Together we had already weathered several long-distance moves, new jobs, engagements, broken engagements, marriages, divorces, affairs, and a few other “life events.”  We had no idea that over the next six months we would experience so much more, and that now, years later, we would be here, in Florida, chasing four children around.

In that way it is sort of a mixed memory.  It’s a good memory, for sure, and important because it was the start, in many ways, of everything else.  It was also, as I said, a scary time, and a difficult time, and we had a lot to sort out to make it to where we are now.

I remember making that call and starting that conversation, preparing for the worst, but believing that I had to tell the truth.  I had to tell him how I felt, so I did, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Oh, and HW said he tried to come over to talk to me about the anniversary a few times, but the kids interrupted him.  He doesn’t get a complete pass, and in fact he is in quite a lot of trouble, but he has a lot of time to make it up to me.