I guess it was fiction after all...

Last night, I was sitting at PG with a group of friends.

"I don't think BB likes me anymore," I said. "He won't return my text messages."

"Ana," my friend Eff replied, "How many times do I have to tell you that BB is a douche-bag?"

With that Eff grabbed my phone, flipped it open, and began to copy BB's number into his phone.

"Let's see what BB's got to say," Eff laughed as he composed a note from the phone number that BB would not recognize.

We'd had a little bit to drink. Actually, quite a bit. I lunged across the table trying to stop Eff, begging him to be nice. Devon sat next to Eff and peered over his arm to see the message, dropped her mouth, and shook her head.

"What did you write?!?!?" I asked.

Eff flashed his phone.

You might be hot if you had a real job and health insurance.

I threw my head into my hands. It was such a jerky and immature thing to say, to do. I sat in my chair feeling miserable for poor BB until Eff proclaimed, "Oh look, he wrote back."

Eff continued to send BB flirtatious put downs and BB...continued to respond. In the meantime, my phone remained silent. About a half hour later I ran into BB at the outside smoking section, made eye contact, and frowned.

"What's the pouty face for Ana?" BB asked.

"You haven't returned my text messages," I said.

BB rolled his eyes and looked at me.

"Don't be so crazy and overreactive," he told me as he extinguished a half-smoked cigarette and headed back towards the door. "I just haven't checked my phone tonight."

Son.
of.
a.
bitch.

"How's the flirting going?" I asked Eff once I was back inside.

"I just told him that if he wanted to hook up, he was going to have to get on his knees," Eff replied.

"Eff! That's something a guy would say to a girl. You messed it up!"

"Oops," said Eff, then grabbed his phone from his pocket to read BB's reply.

"What he'd say?" I asked.

"'Depends on who this is,'" said Eff, now beginning to roll with laughter.

My jaw dropped and my eyes became large like saucers.

"Hey, don't feel bad, Ana," Eff told me, "now instead of the girl who got rejected by a loser, you're just the girl who made out with a closeted gay man."

I crossed my arms in disbelief.

"Really, you should have seen it coming," Eff continued, "the poodle, the neighborhood, his asking you to meet him AT NIGHT IN THE PARK. It's probably a regular meeting place for him, maybe even a source of secondary income."

Silence. I just sat there in silence.

"Ana? You okay?"

"Maybe he just does a lot of drugs and he's on something right now," I finally replied.

I was already convincing myself that my statement was true. Now it made sense: the erratic behavior, the earlier lie, his hazy memory, the bartending into his late thirties.

Or maybe BB knew Eff was writing the texts and just wanted to add to the story.

Whatever it was, the first thing I did this morning when I woke up (besides grabbing my head in pain) was to erase all the text message exchanges, delete his number from my phone, and pop the the two index cards on which BB'd given me his number into the shredder.

Some stories just aren't worth the loss of self-esteem that goes into creating them.

That was embarrassing...

I was just standing in the express lane at my grocery store when I turned around to notice that the gal behind me was one of the bartenders (cute pigtailed girl) from PG.

"Hi," I said sheepishly.

I was only buying one item, a bottle of wine.

I'm yawning because I'm exhausted, not because I'm bored...

I’m pretty sure that whole ‘3rd year, they bore you to death’ is a bunch of baloney. Unless maybe you’ve already secured full-time employment for the following year, are not working a part-time job in the interim, are not serving on the editorial board for your journal, are not serving on the editorial board for your school newspaper, are not determined to write short stories for your own personal enjoyment, do not have a blog readership that you would kinda like to keep (love you guys), do not have friends that you would like to see on a regular basis, and finally, do not have a demanding little dog running your life. Martha has fallen in love with the dog park and that's our new little activity. The other day, no one was there and I got to read for class under the tree. Martha was miffed by the lack of entertainment, but I thought it was great.


Who’s the cutest little gal in town? I don’t know what I’d do without her!

Bad dog!

At the dog park today someone walked over to me and said, "Hi, I read your blog."

To which I responded. "OMG, I'm so mortified. How did you know it was me?"

He recognized Martha.

Martha outed me!

Here she is, Miss Crunchy Granola...

I’ve never been a big fan of make-up. I hate the way it feels on my face and the time it takes to apply it. Plus, once I’ve done all of that, it inevitably causes my eyes to water and then runs down my face. I have two prior ‘bad’ makeup experiences. The first was when I was eighteen. My mother dragged me to the makeup counter because I was getting ready to leave for college and she thought it was time I started using the stuff. The gal at Lan*come worked on my face, and as I sat in the chair patiently I could see both my mother and the clerk beginning to smile.

“Oh, you’re going to love it,” the girl said when she held up the mirror.

I did not love it. Instead I screeched, “Oh my god, I look like a painted whore!”

I grabbed the entire box of Kleenex and began to madly rub the goo off my face. Meanwhile the clerk was grossly apologizing to my mother, staunchly maintaining that she had applied very little actual makeup. My mother, thoroughly embarrassed, dragged me out of the department store, but not before buying blush, eye pencil, mascara, and lip gloss. To give you an idea of just how rarely I wear makeup, I still have that blush from fourteen years ago.

My other bad experience happened in the last decade. I visited a friend in Houston and she took me to a salon where one guy did hair and the other makeup. The makeup guy was apparently famous and had tons of pictures of famous musicians as well as pageant girls hanging on his wall. I should have known not to allow myself to be made up by a guy who did pageants, but aw, what the heck. I asked him for a light daytime look thinking that he only applied the clown makeup under special circumstances.

When he was done and spun me around for a look in the mirror I frowned and said, “What the hell did you do with my freckles? I can’t see my freckles! What part of ‘light’ do you not understand? I told you I don’t like a lot of makeup!”

Not only did I look like a painted whore, but I also looked like I needed a cheap taffeta dress with plastic crown.

“Well,” answered the makeup guy, “I only gave you as much as you needed.”

What? Asshole. He does a bad job and tries to blame it on me?

This is all to say that the other day I found myself standing in a Sep*hora with Wine-Time-Girl thinking about my inherent dislike of makeup and wondering why that was. I decided that it was due to my unwillingness to become a grown up. I’ve never had a job that required me to wear a suit and have always flitted through life like a happy (albeit sarcastic) little hippie. Each day that I move closer to graduation I find myself more and more uncomfortable with entering ‘the real world.’ I wondered if perhaps my crush on bartender-boy was due in part to this rebellion. I was somewhat jealous of his non-9-to-5 job and his unencumbered life. If only I could reconcile myself to being okay with a lifestyle that didn’t offer health insurance and required me to live hand to mouth, I would drop this whole law silliness in a second. But I wasn’t, and I wouldn’t, and I needed to grow up, so in the middle of the store I announced, “I think I am going to blow my entire first paycheck from my new job on cosmetics.”

At first WTG seemed excited, then remembered her audience and suggested, “Maybe you should just start with a lip gloss?”

Oh, heck no. If I was going to do this, I needed to go bold and go all the way. I began to pluck items from the different drawers until I realized I had no idea what I was doing. WTG informed me that there was a M*A*C next door and maybe that would be an easier start, so I tromped on over and grabbed the first heavily-pancaked face that I could find.

“Do you have any make-up on?” she asked.

I do in fact have a standard makeup regimen. It entails slathering my entire face each morning with an SPF 45 sunblock.

I plopped down in a chair and let the gal go to town. She thought my face was dry so started with a moisturizer. I was kind of stoked because around age thirty I started suspiciously breaking out on my chin. Zit creams and astringents only made it worse until I realized that my adult acne was due not to an over-oily complexion, but rather a dryness issue. I stopped using the products, but never quite got around to finding a moisturizer.

Next she headed for the foundation and I gave her a queer look when she dispensed it from a spray can. She insisted there was a good scientific reason behind putting foundation in such a receptacle, but I have to admit, it kind of screamed gimmick to me. Next came a special brush to apply the foundation. More gimmick. I sighed. This was lame.

Eventually she finished, proud of herself and turned me to the mirror. My first thought was, “Hey I can go as an Oompa-loompa for Halloween!” but I did not say this out loud. Instead I deferred to Wine-Time, “Is it too orange?”

“No, it’s fine,” she said. “It looks good, but do you really think you’re going to use this stuff? I just can’t see you getting up every morning to do this.”

“Of course I will!” I insisted and threw all of the crap on the cashier counter.

All-in-all I walked out with moisturizer, foundation, special gimmick brush, blush, and lip gloss. I was also $150 poorer, but I had made that crucial step towards becoming a grown-up.

A little less than a week later WTG asked, “Have you worn any of your new makeup yet?”

“YES!” I declared proudly. “I’ve worn the moisturizer every day!”

“Hmm,” she pondered, “well, maybe in the next few days you can try the blush and go from there?”

“Yes, yes. Good idea. I think I will,” I answered.

So the other day I was meeting WTG and WTGBF for dinner and I put on the blush before leaving my house.

After arriving WTG said, “Oh my god, you wore the blush!”

But she said it kind of oddly.

“I thought you’d be proud of me,” I grimaced. “Did I apply it wrong?”

“No,” said WTG, “it’s just, um. Oh sorry sweetie, but you’ve got a big rash across your cheekbones. I think you might be allergic.”

I’m convinced this is God's way of telling me not to go corporate.

Who are you related to?

My dad's really into genealogy and his latest personal coup was admission to the Mayflower Society. (Apparently it takes a lot of paperwork to prove that you are related to someone from the Mayflower.) Anyhoo, my Mayflower ancestor is some guy named Edward Fuller. Now my dad is searching through all the different lines of the Edward Fuller family and has figured out that I am remotely related to Georgia O'Keefe (VERYCOOL) as well as David Souter (oh geez, it's genetic). I thought it was kind of neato.

Public transit is starting to look very attractive...

Well, my friends, it turns out the parking situation is much more dire than I first suspected. The lot closed is the largest lot near school and holds several hundred spaces. Worse yet, there are no plans to reopen it, as the university has decided to build student housing in its place. (I think my university might be attempting to make a shift from nice, personal, reasonably-priced, community-serving school to impersonal, over-charging national prestige whore. Here's hoping they fail miserably.)

This has caused quite a mess in the parking department (as a street running right in front of the law building has been closed as well) and students, without any alternatives, are parking on the grass, on the curbs, and sometimes even in the roadways. One of the deans sent out a pleading email yesterday asking that we park in the designated, marked spaces. Dear Dean, we would love to – if only marked, designated spaces were made available to us.

As a result, my schedule is somewhat disrupted and today I drove to school several hours early in order to avoid any major complications. The good news is, I’ve read over sixty pages of law-crap, no small feat considering that my daily reading has been a little off-on given that this is the first semester I’ve tried to coordinate school and job. So, the parking situation, while nasty, may in fact help my GPA. The downside? Who wants to bet that I go home this afternoon to find one peeved little dog?

The New York Times online will now function more like a public library - sort of. Yippee-skippee just the same.

Chemerinsky to head up UC-Irvine's new law school.

Oh geez...

I had a couple of glasses of wine before I came to class. Apparently I had too many as I now seem unable to focus on anything other than the ceiling tiles.

Where oh where has my parking space gone?

Recently my university has been doing quite a bit of construction in the area of parking lots. Why they didn't do this during the summer when traffic was lighter is beyond me, but the whole thing has been rather confusing. Faculty lots are now student lots, but only for certain spaces. One day a parking lot exists, the next day it's torn up by bulldozers, and there has never been an abundance of spaces to begin with.

This weekend the Dean of Students sent out an announcement saying that Lot X would officially close on Sunday while Lot Y would be partially closed. Attached was a map outlining a shuttle bus route that only ran in certain directions at certain times. I was rather stressed about this all weekend as I was unsure what lots the Dean was speaking of in regards to the closure (the north one? the south one?) as well as how I would find the mysterious outlying lots for the shuttle bus routes since the administration neglected to include such on the attachment. (Oh wait, I just found it. There's a second attachment for the offsite lot - and when they say offsite, they aren't kidding. Not only is it on the other side of campus, but it's off campus and no permit is required. What are the odds that this overflow lot will fill up by 10 am?)

As my Monday class approached I became more and more bothered until I finally made a command decision: skip class, stay home, and play with the dog. I feel ten times better now. I've got a night class later this evening and I'll wander over then to figure out the parking hullaballoo in less crowded circumstances. Hopefully by Tuesday I'll have some sort of plan. In the meantime, Martha is stoked.


Check out that tail-wagging action.

Classic Lines from WTG...

Ana and WTG at a social event.

WTG: Seriously, people. Think more. Talk less.
Ana: I think I'm going to make a t-shirt that says that.

Later...

WTG: You know, I wouldn't have to drink so much if people weren't so stupid.

A group of people from law school are meeting up at a bar tonight.

I should probably go as I need to remove myself from the fictional world and interact with real people. However, I'm feeling kind of stingy right now with my cash.

As such, I'm sitting at my desk trying to figure out the most nonchalant way to smuggle in a thermos of wine.

Sorry...

Hey Blog Readers,
I feel like Ana has gone a little MIA. I want to write and I actually have stuff I want to write about...unfortunately, I've got this little thing called law school going on and I'm trying to figure out when I'm going to write in between obligations related to reading, class attendance, part-time job, journal duties, (my somewhat imaginary) social life, and spending quality time with the dog. I'll figure it out here soon.

The nice thing about being a 3L...

Every so often, as you're doing your reading you come across a ten page case and realize you already read it for a different class last year. Yay for small joys in life.

PS-If you read the Getting Laid post yesterday or early this morning, it has been substantially updated since then.

Women Get Laid...

Every so often Ana gets a piece of mail, and while she usually responds to it privately, she received a note the other day that she thought might be well-served by a public response where others can benefit…

Hi. I stumbled on your blog while researching law schools …

…Oh, and by the way, you used the phrase "getting laid" in one of your recent posts - women don't get laid, men get laid. Women put out. Sex and the City isn't reality.

[name redacted]

Dear Gentle Reader,

Thanks for the nice things you said in the email. That last part really bugged me though.

To me, the belief the women only put out implies that men are always willing to engage in sex and women hold all the decision-making reins. Men are the getters and women are the givers.

This is simply not true. Just as I have turned down the opportunity for sex, so have I, as cute, smart, witty, and humble as I am, had men deny me when I broached the subject. It's a two-way street. Sex should only ever occur when both participants actively and mutually agree to engage in it. (Why do I suddenly feel an urge to bust out with a lecture on Contracts?)

I will not even bother delving into the issue of dissecting 'putting out' when only two men or two women are involved.

Also if 'putting out' suggests that women make the ultimate decision in sex then it follows that women are additionally charged with the burden of moral gatekeepers. This is not only unfair to women, but also insulting to men in general. I know many men who are able to make intelligent, reasoned decisions with regard to their libido. Men are not an inferior sex that deserve to be reduced to salivating animals. Men are my equals.

And now I’ve said ‘moral,’ a relative term if there ever was one. While there are many situations in which sex involves a moral decision (whatever 'moral' may mean to you), sex in and of itself is as neutral and innate to the human experience as eating, sleeping, and going to the bathroom. Too many in this country subscribe to the view that sex is evil and only in limited contexts is it even kinda-sorta ok. Thank the Puritans for that one.

Perhaps my best argument against “women put out" is the fact that during periods of celibacy, whether self-imposed or otherwise, when I feel a little, uh, itch, never once has the thought come to mind, “Gee, I should really fix this and go put out.”

No, it is usually, “Man, I need to get laid.”

I’m going to let you in on a little secret: WOMEN LIKE SEX, TOO. We don’t always admit it, because well, there’s still a large contingency out there that seems to think that makes us whorish. Why those of us who know better didn’t call BS on this earlier is beyond me. Maybe it was because until recently women couldn’t vote or work and stuff and needed to rely on men in some capacity. Believe me, if women didn’t enjoy sex, humans would have reached extinction a long time ago. Brawn doesn't count for everything.

I'm sort of flying off the handle here and jumping to conclusions, but here's the real reason why I find putting out so off-putting.

Putting out? Like I'm a coke machine, you drop in a quarter, and I put out. Are you kidding me? If this is how men are viewing sex, then it's no wonder I can't get laid. [Ana shivers.]

'Putting out' sounds like a job.

"Okay, ladies. Once everybody puts out you can all go home."

Ick. That's no fun. Putting out doesn't even sound charitable. I can't even write it off on my taxes.

'Getting laid' does sound fun (to me at least). Laid makes me think of lying down, lying in bed, taking a break. The get implies I'm receiving something...like presents! So yeah, presents in bed! I'd rather associate sex with Christmas morning than performing a task.

I am sure that there are plenty of men and women out there who feel as you do: Men get laid. Women put out. For the sake of their sex lives, I beg them to reconsider their viewpoints on sex, their bodies, and even how they view themselves. The prospect of great sex is one of few things that allows me to get out of bed in the morning. And this is coming from a die-hard romantic.

Sorry dude.

It's my blog and I'll get laid if I want to.

I remain affectionately yours,
Ana

Memories from 1L...

Prof asks a question generally directed at entire class.

Ana, sitting in the back row, mutters something under her breath.

Random kid sitting next to Ana, raises hand and waves it wildly.

When the prof calls on kid, they repeat Ana’s sentiment verbatim.

Prof tells kid how insightful they are.

Ana starts to chuckle, tries to stifle it, and ends up snorting rather loudly.

Everyone in class looks up and makes a mental note regarding the rude girl in the back row.

To all the new 1L's - Have fun and remember not to take things too seriously.

And don't worry, the very next week I made sure to mutter something completely idiotic. the prof was so disappointed in the kid's answer.

The Cultural Exposure that Friends Provide...

Alex: Hey Ana, whatcha doin'?
Ana: Reading Borges. Why?
Alex: Well, we bought a bottle of Double Chocolate Stout and we just found a half gallon of vanilla ice cream. We were thinking of doing some experimenting and making ice cream floats.
Ana: Yeah, I might be up for that.

It was, um, interesting. Really chocolatey at first with quite the stout after kick. Who wants to try pouring red wine over chocolate cake?