Bar Exam Wife

06Feb08

Ten Twelve Things That Suck About Being a Bar Exam Wife:

1. You have to do the dishes. And sometimes cook dinner. (If you can’t understand what I’m talking about because you do these things anyway and/or you like doing these two things, insert two things you hate and/or are very unskilled at and that your spouse does because of your hatred and lack of skill.)
2. You have to hear things like, “Does this make any sense to you: blah blah blah blah trustee blah blah blah decedent blah blah. That just doesn’t even make sense. Who writes this stuff?” Then…
3. …you have to try to pretend you (a) understand, (b) also think it’s stupid and whoever wrote it is a dummy, or (c) (GASP!) try to explain it based on your 100% lack of knowledge of whatever-the-f*ck it is you’re being asked about.
4. You have to put up with alarms going off very very early in the morning and the proper recipient of said alarms occasionally hitting snooze and/or flat refusing to get up then returning to sleep to snore while you contemplate the stippling on the ceiling.
5. Your kid is sad because he misses daddy and daddy is sad because he misses his kid. And you miss weekends. Ah, weekends. The closer you get to the bar, the more distant your memory of weekends becomes.
6. You have to watch your bar exam husband go through torture. This part really sucks. If it’s his first bar or he has not yet passed a bar exam, the torture is worse. Sometimes, he looks physically ill. Sometimes he swears he’s not taking it. Sometimes he is so distracted he forgets what month it is. If it is his second state (i.e. he has passed and is practicing in one state and is taking an exam in another state), as in our case, the torture is less but still noticeable.
7. You have to spend a lot more time alone. Like, a lot.
8. You have to pick up a lot of the slack around the house (see #1 above) and you don’t even get to complain about it or at least you try not to complain because you know that your husband probably (a) has more to complain about, (b) is less happy than you are, and (c) would much rather wash the dishes than study. Plus there’s the fact that he’s taking the bar to benefit both of you not, as you sometimes wonder, because he’s a mean, mean sonofabitch who wants to make your life unpleasant.
9. It’s nearly impossible to tell when you should encourage your bar exam husband to relax and take a break and when to encourage him to buckle down. When he’s neglecting the books, this is especially hard because who are you to say, “hey, maybe you should be studying more” because saying that would be sort of like saying to a pregnant woman, “hey, maybe you should try not to be so hormonal” or something. Basically, it’s unwanted advice and really just makes matters worse.
10. You just keep wanting to say, “HEY! Only 64 more days until the bar exam!” because you are counting every single damned second until the thing is over but this initiates shaking, cold sweats, and much, much anxiety in your bar exam husband. And yet sometimes you accidentally say it and then you get the look.
11. You save up things to complain about when the whole thing is over (you even write letters to your husband that you never give him because writing them genuinely helps you feel better) but then once it’s over, you forget to complain. The second time around, you kind of wish you’d gotten the chance to complain after the first one because now you feel like you’ve got extra complaint baggage stored up and it’s harder to make room for your new complaints.
12. All you can think about is all the stuff you want your bar exam husband to do after it’s all over — all the ways he should repay you for all your selfless effort during whoa these so many months — and so you kind of forget that you should probably also be repaying him and doing nice things for him when it’s all over.

The good news is, it does all end and your husband does return to normal and all the things you wanted to complain about vanish and your husband does take back his half of the work of making life happen each day and everything is good. Until results are due out and then the torture begins again. Ah, such wonderful things to look forward to in the coming months.

Did I mention, though, that we only have 18 days not counting today and the day that Brian drives to Albany for the exam? Did I mention that? Because I can’t mention it to him but I can tell you! EIGHTEEN DAYS! Only 21 until I get him back.  (Well, 21 until I get him back in body; probably 24 until I get him back in mind.)

WOOHOO!

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