Day After Valentine's Bake-A-Thon

Sleep under the stars tonight. (x2)

A gentle touch speaks volumes. (x2)

Share a secret. (x4)

Celebrate family and friends.

Share a sunset.

Do something spontaneous.

Watch the sun come up. (x2)

Make someone melt today. (x2)

Chocolate. Always your Valentine. (x2)

Remember your first crush. (x3)

Linger over chocolate longer.

Listen with your heart. (x3)

Trust with your heart, not your head.

Be your own Valentine. (x2)

Be a little mysterious. (x2)

This is what I unwrapped and read tonight. I read every single one as I unwrapped it. I was supposed to finish studying GA Remedies/Equity/Non-Monetary Damages. Instead, I made Rolo Cake Cookies, then made a variation batch with Dove chocolates. I waited a full month to make the rolo-center cookies but when I went to the drug store tonight, Rolos didn't qualify as Valentine's candy this year. I personally find Rolos super romantic and don't understand why they weren't packaged in pink and/or red bags.

Discrimination against caramel centers, I say.

So I also bought a bag of Dove dark chocolate with cherry swirl and Dove dark chocolates. I made a variation of the Rolo Chocolate Cake Cookies. I bought a box of white cake mix and made cookies w/ Dove centers...and Rolos. I told my study buddies I'll bring cookies. I think I'll give it to another study buddy...or just someone that I occasionally sit at adjacent tables with while we individually study for the GA bar.

28th Valentine's Day w/out a date. I think I'm getting used to it, despite some personal angst leading up to the day of. The actual day isn't nearly as painful as I imagine it to be. I really should get used to this. I wasn't too into it until a couple years ago when I broke up w/ a boyfriend 10 days (or maybe a week?) before Valentine's Day. Not that I spent every other Valentine's before that one being wined and dined by a boy/man pining over me.

Anyways, despite the candy I really wanted not being on the post-Valentine's day sale, I purchased it and baked cookies for my friends. I baked 6 dozen very decadent cookies...and experimented with the shapes too. Next time, I'm just sticking with the circle/ball shapes.

Happy Day After Valentine's. Or, Happy DAV for short.

Adventures in Puppyland Tidbit: I think Cody had a bit of diarrhea today. Was it the carrot I left him? Was it bits of the shoe insert he ate? He left the shoe alone...just tore up a shoe insert. Bad Dog.

Sorry for leaving you home alone for 13 hours, buddy. I gotta at least pretend to try to pass the GA bar.

Speaking of the bar...I've taken 2 weeks off from my unpaid apprenticeship. At the apprenticeship, there is an IT contractor girl who I like and who is very thoughtful. She has told me almost daily for the past month that I look tired. And my answer always is that I am tired. I need a refresher. I need a job that pays, I need a vacation. I'd also like someone who cares about me for once.

Kate Middleton, a commoner and the daughter of a merchant,

caught the eye of a prince (in a see-through dress) and married him. I'm not hoping for a prince, but I think I do deserve an equal

partner (who will serenade me, is willing to dance with me, and maybe massage my back and do the dishes). And I don't think I should have to wear a see-through dress for that, the cookies should be enough.

It's been a while...I've got a teeth update.

YUP, got a teeth update. B/c, you see, this whole blog thing started as a way for me to express myself while my jaws were recovering from a 10-hour operation during which my head swelled up to twice its normal size (no, I wasn't just a fat-head back then. be nice.) and my neck looked like ppl w/ L-shaped fists punched mirror-images into my throat and everything inside my mouth was so puffy I couldn't swallow or close my lips. I bled for weeks after the surgery and would wake up in the middle of the night to painfully hack up globs of coagulated blood that collected at the back of my mouth/throat.

Needless to say, I couldn't say anything, I had stitches all around the inside of my mouth where my gums met my inner lips/cheek/flesh. I'm very well recovered now, nearly 4 years after that horrendous surgery. But, you know what? I'd do it all over again if I was presented with the choice again.

B/c now, I can bite into a sandwich in public w/out fearing the contents to be dragged out of the slices of bread, dangling like seaweed out of my sea-monster mouth. And, I can bite into a sandwich in private and I know half the insides won't be slapping on my chin. And, I can bite as self-defense if I need to. :) so many useful things I can do w/ this new BITE!

As for the migraines, mostly gone! Probably all muscle-tension triggered migraines are gone the few migraines I now have aren't nearly as drastic and painful and nauseating as they used to be, and even better, they're not a regular visitor. Just on occasional one, usually when I don't eat for a long time and my blood sugar gets low (a new development that came w/ age a couple years ago).

BUT, I didn't wear my shiny new Essix retainers and now, a front tooth shifted. So, I had to get a new retainer made to push that tooth back in its place. Sad. I need to wear it 24 hours a day for 3 months...but already I'm failing. I happen to eat at work, and then b/c I can't rinse out my mouth very well, or carry a toothbrush, I don't put it back in and I forget about it until bed time. le sigh.

So, I have a new retainer. I will post pictures with it on, but just not today. I need to go print my resume, get my stuff together for an interview (at which, I'm told by an insider, they won't be hiring anyone) but I got an interview, I signed up for a time slot and it would reflect poorly on me for my budding new career as an attorney/officer of justice to not show up just b/c I found out they're not hiring. But secretly, I hope they decide to hire me anyways. And, b/c I have to register w/ the GA Consortium of Law Schools folks 40 mins before my actual interview, I have to leave home by the awesome hour of 7:40 am. I know this probably doesn't sound too bad to most ppl who've been in the working world, but I am not a morning person and deliberately find housing close to where I have to show up to in the mornings. One day moving every time I get a new place to be, or in search of a place with an even shorter commute will not be possible (aka, one hypothetical day in which I'm married or have kids or own my dewelling place. I don't know which of these circumstances are the most unbelievable to me at this present moment.)

The new retainer cost me $150, and that's b/c my orthodontist took pity on my insurance-less state and basically charged me the lab fees. I think after I get that one tooth straightened out, I'll go back to him to get a bite-guard-splint thing made for my teeth-grinding problem. I still grind my teeth, apparently. I guess the stress from my life didn't all go away w/ the surgery. More about the woes of wearing a retainer aggressively pushing a tooth back into place to be discussed later.

In other news, I called a dentist's office and they said teeth cleaning, and an initial exam and basic x-rays are $95. Not too shabby...possibly even affordable after I scrape the bottom of my bank account to hand over to the GA Office of Bar Admissions (it's costing me more than $1000 more, that's a whole $1K, than IL did). But I'm going to call one other dentist, one that a friend recommended, to see what her prices are like. I do need a cleaning. I haven't had dental insurance since 2008, and it's been that long since I've had a cleaning. I'm overdue. It might be why I have sensitive teeth these days. I hope after the cleaning, the sensitivity will go away (????). Sounds like wishful thinking, but maybe not too out of the realm of possible realities.

Adventures in Puppyland bit: Cody is a cutie. But he loves his dog food way too much...he bit my toe/foot this morning. I'm trying to transition him out of puppy food into adult dog food and the pet store I went to didn't have the adult version of the Wellness Small Dogs Just for Puppy super5mix in the 15 lb bags. Apparently they can order the large bag, but it comes ins 12 lb bags, instead of the standard 15 lbs. So, they gave me several different sample bags of dog foods of comparable quality and price range.

Tried the Pure Vita grain free Salmon Formula a couple meals (w/ some of the old puppy mix I've been feeding him) and he's gotten some wetter stools. Not sludgy or liquidy in any way, just wetter, stickier and thus more difficult to clean up (I like his poop to just roll off the newspaper into the toilet, no shaking or shoving w/ toilet paper). It was also lighter in color. I checked the ingredients of the puppy kibbles I've been mixing and they have turkey, chicken, salmon, some other species-named fish, lamb and other stuff, so salmon isn't completely new to his diet.

I think I'm going to table Pure Vita for now, and buy some more of the Wellness just for puppy stuff (to mix into more Merrick Whole Earth Farms stuff and the remaining Royal Canin stuff...which I was told and read was not as "premium" or awesome as they say they are). I think I'll use his old mix for a bit long, to transition him into adult dog food. And, I am going to not even try the Pure Vita grain free Bison Entree sample and move on to the Taste of the Wild samples...hopefully they will agree w/ Cody's digestive tracts a little more.

Save the Date Everyone!!! Cody's 1st Birthday is Feb. 5th. If the weather's nice and the yard is dry, I am thinking of inviting his other doggy friends and their humans over for a romp in the yard and doggy birthday cake. And some of my aged glugg and/or Christmas wine for the humans/adults. Otherwise, I would have to make it an indoor event and invite less creatures into my teeny, tiny, very humble abode w/ no real seating. And then have a larger clean-up job after the guests leave.

Here's like the P.P.S. part. Remember how when we were in middle school, there was a list of P.S.'s and P.P.S.'s and P.P.P.S.'s? It's like that but I promise to stop after this. I've started studying for the GA bar examination (hopefully IL Sup. Ct. and the IARDC will get off their butts and mail in my letters of good standing so I can definitely take the 1-day attorney's examination). I bought the books and lecture notes off of a former classmate who took (and passed) the GA bar in July, instead of paying for an entire new bar course, b/c I just coulnd't afford it and figured I may not have time to do all the lectures anyways.

Here's the schedule I've come up with for the next 6 weeks:

week 1: Property and Con Law

week 2: Crim Law, Crim Pro, Agency/Partnership and Corporations and MPT

week 3: Contracts, Damages/Equitable Remedies

week 4: Torts, Evidence and Family

week 5: Wills, Trusts, Fed. Civ Pro, and GA Civ Pro

week 6: Comm. Paper, Sec. Trans., Prof. Resp. and MPT(?)

WISH ME LUCK!!!