One year with Odie!

We adopted our sweet terrorist one year ago today! We love our little snuggle puff!

Emotional Roller Coaster

Now that I have submitted most of my applications to law school, I have been on quite the roller coaster ride of emotions. As typical with my generation, I enjoy instant gratification, so having to wait 3+ weeks for a decision is driving me mad.

Day 1: Submit application. Feel proud of self and excited! 

Day 2: Check status of application a gillion times per hour. Feel confident. 

Day 3: No one is going to say yes. . . I'm not going to get in. This is going to be awful. 

Day 4: It doesn't matter all that much. I plan to take a year off anyway. I'm fine.

Day 5: PLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEASE.

Day 6 & 7: What if I get in? What if we have to move? Change is too scary. I'm going to go vomit now.

Week one down. At least two to go. 

Yay.

Personal Statement

After attempting to write my personal statement for my law school apps for 6 months, I finally finished a draft this past weekend. It is horribly sloppy, has incomplete thoughts, and needs a lot of work, but it is drafted!

Ben has graciously gone through and provided notes on things to revise or add. He has listened to me spout out ideas of what I could include in my personal statement for the last 6 months, so he has a good idea of what I want to say and reminded me of things that I inadvertently left out.

My goal is to be able to submit my law school applications within the next two weeks. Exciting times!

Time passes so quickly!

I haven't posted in almost three months, I think. This is what we look like now:

Courtesy of SnapChat filter.

Just kidding. :)

My lack of posting is not for lack of things happening in our lives. More like lack of time / lack of want to log on and write. 

I still have not completed my law school applications. I have a self-imposed deadline to complete those by the end of February. I think the first due date coming up for applications is in April and some schools even allow you to submit applications as late as August. I am to a point now where it is stressing me out more to not know what I will be doing than the thought of rejection. The applications themselves are very easy. Obtaining the letters of recommendation was easy. It is writing the personal statement that is a huge challenge.  BUT Ben will be at a conference in Seattle this weekend through Tuesday, so I will have plenty of time home alone to work on this thing and at least get a draft completed. I have many, many first drafts which consist of about 2 or 3 sentences. 

On another note, we went to Chicago last weekend! As an early birthday present to Ben, I purchased tickets to the opera Der Rosenkavalier by Strauss. We went up Friday night and stayed through Sunday morning.  We walked around the city, got a couples massage, went to supper at The Berghoff (German restaurant before going to a German opera!), and attended the opera. We ended up leaving a bit earlier than originally anticipated because there was a winter weather system moving in and we wanted to get home safely.  We truly enjoyed our time in the windy city! We had never done a couples massage before and we both truly enjoyed it. We did the deep tissue massage and I was sore the next day. I also had some bilateral hip pain going on after the massage which was uncomfortable, so I think next time I would discuss that with the massage therapist prior to the massage.

Here are some lovely photographs of our time in Chicago:

Ready for our couples massage!
One of the ladies at the spa said y hair is gorgeous. :)

Supper at The Berghoff - a German restaurant in Chicago.
I chose a German restaurant before going to the German opera!
Ben had steak, potatoes and asparagus.
I had sliced beef with a sweet and sour gravy, mashed potatoes, and veggies.

Wined and dined and ready to go see Der Rosenkavalier!
Isn't my hubby handsome?!

We did, unfortunately, hit some snow on our way home from our weekend away and ended up sitting in stand-still traffic for 3 hours due to a massive car accident. (No fatal injuries, thank goodness.)

Other things that have been happening in our life:

I started my final semester of undergrad!!! I graduate May 14th at 9 a.m.! I could have had the 1 p.m. slot and slept in if my name were still Watznauer. . . Just saying. . . lol

My sweet babies after a weekend at the farm. Pooped!

Odie and Grover became BFF's. They now look out the window together, play, snuggle in the same vicinity, share doggy beds, and sometimes chase one another. It is a nice change from Grover snarling at Odie allllll the time. [NOTE: Grover still snarls on occasion. Odie normally deserves it.]

Odie earned our trust to remain out of his kennel during the day when we are at work. After about a month of free roaming, he betrayed our trust and is now back to the kennel. In his lifetime he has destroyed 5 pairs of my flats, 2 pairs of Ben's shoes, too many Kleenex's to count, a few of my school books, multiple puzzle pieces, multiple pens, a bajillion toys (those are ok to destroy), and I'm sure many other things that have slipped my memory. Most recently he tore into a stack of text books I was going to take and return for a bit of moolah. We have noticed that we can predict when Odie will be destructive, and most of the time it is when we tick him off because we are leaving. So. . . kennel.

Ben has continued to learn and grow in his new position this year. He has liked this job from the get go, but as the year has gone on I have noticed that his enjoyment has increased. He has had the chance to establish working relationships with his teachers and gained their trust. They have also gained experience in the classroom and are able to actively participate in their conversations and various interactions. As I said, this weekend he is in Seattle for some conference from today through Tuesday. If you want more information on how things are going with his career, feel free to ask him about it!

As for my job, I continue to work hard and am learning more each day! It has been pretty busy at work. I had a deposition at the end of January to prepare for and then a hearing from this past Thursday that both kept me quite occupied during the working hours. I went to both the deposition and workers comp hearing with the attorney I work with and it was great to be able to see how my hard work was used in both situations. Advice to attorneys: take our paralegal(s) to hearings, depos, witness interviews, etc. It will improve their work ethic and work product!

This is all I can think of at the time being.

TTYL. LYLAS. BRB. ;)

Life

It took them forever, but they're friends sometimes! 

It has been quite some time since I have sat down to write a post for the blog. I have been completely swamped with work and school and have had no time to do anything I find fun. If I do make time to do something fun, I end up paying for it later with 20 tons of homework to catch up on. Sigh. . .

BUT this semester is almost over! My first day of total freedom will be Friday, December 18th! Ben and I are going up to the Twin Cities for a Christmas party and some holiday time with part of his family. I will finally be able to enjoy a weekend that does not include a complete day being consumed with class work! I haven't had a break like that since summer.

I suppose this is good practice for law school. Although, I won't have a full-time job if I'm going to law school, so I'm hoping that will make a difference.

So for now, I will go and gloriously plow through one more week of classwork. When finished, I'm going to veg and watch Christmas movies every night while eating candy kisses and enjoying snuggle time with my husband and fur babies.