Well I haven't done THIS in a while:)!

The kitchen table will be a power spot for you in the coming weeks. Your own table will be a supreme vortex for visionary brainstorming, but even those in other households could be epicenters for brilliant planning, crucial shifts in attitude, and increased solidarity among allies. To encourage eruptions of creative behavior, make sure the tables are nice and clean. Try to have good food and drink on hand. I also suggest you keep at least one notebook and pen lying around. 

This is Bob Brezsny's horoscope - Thanks Bob! I am not one for thinking my life is governed by the random movements of the stars and planets.  Rather, I believe in something far more preposterous to the modern world - a relationship with the Divine.  Now THAT's insane:)!

But I had to print this thing out. First, because it falls under the heading of "Passion" and second because it was at my kitchen table, in a controlled fit of exasperation with the directions my life had taken, that I literally "thought" myself into law school.  I remember the time well.  I was 32 years old, had six very young children (the oldest just 9, the youngest two months old) , had taken the LSAT (Law boards) some 7 months earlier but didn't have the results because the dang check had bounced.  John was working his butt off, but making barely enough to cover our minimum expenses.  Every time something out of the ordinary happened, it set us back further and further.  Although I had a college education, it didn't pay me to work in a  regular job; daycare would be more than I'd earn in an entry level position and our income wasn't low enough to qualify for public benefits like daycare vouchers.  But work I did: first babysitting for friends who worked full time; later training and then working as a homeworking proofreader for Waverly Press (now Waverly, Inc. - and I will never forget that wonderful program they had - if you are a scientist, subscribe to ANYTHING they print - they are WONDERFUL!!!).  I had the Waverly job into my final year in law school. 

But I digress.

After 10 years of marriage and buying into Pope Paul VI's Humanae Vitae, and forgoing the usual rationalizations in which most of the Catholics I knew were engaging, I soon found myself getting pregnant just about every other year.  We were falling deeper and deeper into debt and being a stay-at-home mom was less and less a practical reality.  My self esteem was down the proverbial crapper. In fact, when I went to take the LSAT on Pearl Harbor day of 1985, I wondered if I was just kidding myself. I knew something had to change, but what, and more importantly, how?

It came in fits and starts.  First, I knew having more kids was not going to happen if we were going to take care of the ones we already had, so when our youngest was born, I arranged for a tubal ligation.  I knew that even if John were to die or leave me (either being likely at that point, LOL), I would not want to be pregnant again, no matter what the future held.  Furthermore, pregnancy for me was a hell of its own.  Oh the results were beyond belief wonderful - I have the best kids in the world - but getting there I think I threw up about three or four times a day for 10 years straight LOL!

Second, I borrowed the money from my dear old dad to bail out my LSAT results.  When I finally received them, I realized that if I could get the money, it was very likely I would be accepted by either the University of Merlin or the University of Bawlmer law schools.  

Third, although we had our troubles from time to time, my dear husband was very supportive and in fact was wondering why it took me so long to come to this conclusion.  I can honestly say he was as happy as I was when I got the LSAT results. (And believe me, they surprised the hell out of me!)

So I applied to U of Merlin Law School because I really didn't have the money to apply to more than one place.  I went through the "FAFSA" process and then got a letter saying I was receiving $1,800 in financial aid! That wasn't good even in 1987! So I got on the phone and spoke with the financial aid people who for some reason thought that my husband working on a project for his Merlin company in Florida meant we weren't residents.  Then I got them to realize that the additional three children on my financial aid application really existed (to this day that one makes me laugh:)).  And they gave me the full amount I needed.

I was accepted for the Evening Division in the University of Merlin School of Law.  

We moved back over the Bay Bridge to Columbia on August 17th.  Orientation was August 19th.  My first classes took place on August 24th: Torts, Contracts and Property/Legal process.  I read the first assignments and literally hyperventilated! We had heard so much about the Paperchase, but when I got there, the evening students were surprisingly and happily kind and human.  Marley Weiss was our Torts professor and she was a good one.  She would probably laugh if she read this, but she was the first introduction to the possibility of a new life for me and I will never forget her as long as I live. Our Contracts I professor, Bill Reynolds, whom I later got to know and appreciate far better than this first night, began the evening with a booming "Ms. BOYAJIAN" and thus was our introduction to the Socratic method we had already learned to dread, but which we later came to enjoy with a sense of humor.  By the way, "Ms. Boyajian" was the former married name of the first person I met at law school - a woman, like me who was married with children and had to do this.  The day we started school, her husband left her.  Needless to say, she is no longer "Ms. Boyajian," LOL!  And she is certainly doing far better today as I type this than I think even she would have imagined that day. Julie and I are friends to this day - trading "pokes" on Facebook:)  Our third professor was Garrett Power - a very quiet and erudite man and one of the best teachers I have ever met. In ways I still cannot to this day fathom, he made the most complex issues intelligible (try the Rule Against Perpetuities, dear 3.5 readers, it's not pretty!).

So many things happened in the four years it took me from that first hyperventilating moment to being sworn in at the Court of Appeals in Annapolis, my dear husband looking on and our kids home (the younger ones babysat by our then old-enough teenagers) awaiting us with a table set with gifts and our own family celebration.

Since then, we still have had numerous struggles.  Our finances, for example, will never be quite right.  But all of this started with one very pissed off housewife sitting at her kitchen table refusing to leave until a solution was found.  So, Bob Breszny, I too, recommend that we all sit at our kitchen tables thinking outside the box - the box others have put us in, the box we have put ourselves in and the boxes we have put others in.

Well, dear 3.5 readers, I think that's all I have in me for today.  Back soon, I hope.  Until then, God be with you 'til we meet again!

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