Someone With a Pen: Richard Grayson’s Diary

Friday, May 11, 2002

5:30 PM. Last night I watched TV till 9 PM, then fell asleep right away. I woke up a little after 3 AM and couldn’t get back to sleep, but I slept 6 hours and didn’t feel tired.

After going into the office at 8:30 AM, I went over to the health clinic for their walk-in hours. I got to see Dr. Morris Listopad, an elderly doctor who’s a professor at the medical school.

My blood pressure was good, 120/70, and my weight was 140, not bad, and the doctor said my reflexes and movement look good. However, because the sciatica has persisted for this long, he wanted me to have an MRI. The clinic will call me to schedule one.

I also have an appointment with Dr. Listopad on my birthday, so I canceled the one with Dr. Frank for the same day.

Dr. Listopad told me to take Celebrex instead of Vioxx because the latter may be rougher on my stomach. He also renewed my prescription for Skelaxin and wrote out scripts for Prevacid and Nexium, which I’ll keep.

The doctor told me that I may want to have one of those esophageal tube procedures to determine the cause of my acid reflux.

At Walgreens, they told me that the HMO won’t authorize the renewal of Prevacid till May 18, so it looks as if I can get it.

It’s horrible that I have to worry about my health as I’m preparing for the bar exam, but as Dr. Koncsol says, the two things are probably related.

I also made an appointment with an eye doctor that Humana approves of; the appointment is for May 28 at 9:15 AM, and it’s right over here.

I actually had work to do today. I called Hillary Creary to find out if she wants to do her Bar review course again.

So far she hasn’t called me back, but I want to send out a letter with the graduation CD the way I did for the December hooding ceremony. I still need to find out certain stuff.

Pat will be gone on that Scandinavian cruise with Joe, Billie Jo, Jane Fishman and their spouses starting next Wednesday and the entire following week.

I did 70 Constitutional Law MBE questions today, and in that subject I’m getting about 2/3 right as opposed to about half right in Torts.

I’ll probably do a lot more in Contracts, Property and Evidence. I’ve almost finished listening to the Evidence tapes, but how much has sunk in is an open question.

BarBri sent me the schedule as well as the documents. Most of the sessions will be held at Rolling Hills, but some will be at Nova.

I had time for only a brief email to Mark B. Tom wrote with all kinds of literary news; what else occupies his time now?

Anyway, I still have that ache in my left shin and ankle, but I was pain-free during the night. I wish I could get my body back to the way it was three months ago, before my back, leg and stomach problems.

Of course, it’s only going to be more stressful from here until the bar exam is over.

I left the MBE book back at my office because I knew I would not be doing any work on it tonight.

This afternoon I spent about forty minutes looking at New York Times articles online, but soon I won’t even have that much time to read about the news.

It’s still a week before the PMBR workshops begin, so somehow in my mind that allows me to put off studying for the four to five hours a day that I planned to do.

Besides, answering the MBE questions is a good way to study. I don’t yet have the Florida materials from BarBri, though I’ll begin reading their outline soon even if I suspect that’s not the best way to study.

But I also know that the bar exam is not the whole of life.

The situation between Israel and the Palestinians looks more hopeless now, with the American Jewish lobby in lockstep with the religious Republican right behind whatever Sharon does.

Yesterday, though, even Sharon tried to talk his Likud party out of declaring there will never be a Palestinian state.

Today the Supreme Court apparently put out a confusing ruling on the successor law to the Communications Decency Act.

Right now, though, I feel outside the loop on the news.

I called James on Saturday night, and he emailed me this morning, saying he was sorry he didn’t call back. I didn’t hear back from Neo or Shane, and I still have to call this guy George.

My stomach felt achy late this afternoon, but last night I had a black bean burrito for dinner, and it didn’t affect me adversely.

Right now I’m going to have dinner and then get my mail, call Mom, watch Boston Public, and maybe listen to the rest of the Evidence tapes from PMBR.

It looks like BarBri meets on Saturdays and Sundays, though I think what we do mostly is watch videos. I hope there will be some live lectures.

For the next month or two, I’m going to be a wreck – or maybe I’ll get more relaxed. We will see.

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Monday, May 14, 2002

9 PM. Although my GERD has been acting up in the last day or so – I have this bloated, tender feeling where my esophagus meets my stomach – the sciatica has actually been better, and both last evening and this one I walked on SW 30th Street to Pine Island Road and back.

Last evening I spoke with Mom, who said the doctor prescribed Paxil for Marc. He did well on it in the past, so hopefully it will help him now.

China was sick yesterday and wasn’t eating or drinking. They put pillows along the walls because she keeps bumping into them.

China was supposed to go to the vet for a grooming today, but Mom wasn’t sure how that would work out.

Last night it took me a while to get to sleep, but I slept till 4:30 AM and had good dreams, the last one taking place all over New York City with college friends. Of course, I did take half an Ambien tablet at 10:30 PM and a little Klonopin when I woke up during the night.

I was at the law school around 8 AM, and the atrium was already set up for the AAMPLE orientation. Pat did a nice job introducing the program to the students.

Tracy told me that about half of the AAMPLE students do well enough to be admitted in the fall. I had thought the number would be lower.

Our current students who are working as law school advisors were there in their blue t-shirts. George was one of them, and he told me he was happy because he got a C+ in both Civil Procedure and Property.

Marie Laurio told me she got C’s in those courses but that she got a B+ on her LSV memo.

Beatriz emailed to thank me for helping her with her writing and said she got a B in LSV.

Another student stopped by my office and asked, “Didn’t you used to teach at FAU?”

It was Shannon Colville, one of the best writers in my awful creative writing class in Boca. She’s now a 3L, and she said she still had everyone’s papers from my creative writing class, so maybe it wasn’t that bad after all.

Hillary Creary called to say she’d do the bar exam workshop again, and I got her a room for six Saturdays starting on June 1, and I put that schedule in the letter to the graduates after going to get the CD from Linda and Larry.

I also changed some of the letter’s wording, incorporating some of the suggestions Linda gave me.

Pat said that tomorrow at 10:30 AM, Steve Friedland is having a meeting on fall orientation that we need to attend.

After doing Con Law MBE questions, I ended up with 138 out of 200 correct. If the exam were all Constitutional Law questions, I’m sure I could pass easily.

When Jane Cross came down to my office to schmooze, she told me that the PMBR questions are usually trickier than most of those on the real MBE.

We gossiped for a while, which is always fun; I like Jane a lot.

She did say that Katie B is the most unpleasant student she’s ever encountered, and while that doesn’t surprise me now, I wish I had known that when I hired Katie as Braccialarghe’s teaching assistant for the fall.

I read as much of the New York Times online as I could and emailed Mark B, Teresa, and Sat Darshan, who told me that a few days ago Gurudaya was driving her car with Kiran in it when an uninsured motorist crashed headlong into them.

Gurudaya was sore and bruised, but Kiran was unhurt. The front end of Sat Darshan’s car is ruined, and it looks as if she’ll have to buy another car, which of course is another expense she doesn’t need.

On Mother’s Day, Sat Darshan said she felt sobered by how close she’d come to losing two of her three kids.

Teresa wrote back that she had a great time in Mexico with her sister and their friends, but her most surprising news was that she and Paul looked at a house before she left, and when she returned, they bought it.

It’s near the old house, within walking distance of town, but in the village of Matinecock off Buckram Road, on the way to Oyster Bay.

The house needs no work, and it’s on a dead-end street with the backyard next to a nature preserve so that they won’t have neighbors to deal with.

Neither Teresa nor Paul could get used to the Bayville house they had moved to. They can’t put it on the market so soon after buying it, so they plan to fix it up and rent it for a while.

Teresa says if she could get $2,000 in rent for the Birch Hill Road house, they could get $3,000 for this one.

I guess they will have a mortgage again, but I count that they have four houses and all, including Fire Island.

Around 5 PM, I left work and picked up prescriptions at Walgreens, along with a couple of nice, cheap tie-dyed t-shirts.

Pat told me that Celebrex is much easier on the stomach than Vioxx, but I think I’ll use up my Vioxx for at least another few days before switching drugs.

A few minutes after I got back from my walk, a thunderstorm erupted.

*

It’s now 11 PM, and I’ve been on the phone for the last hour and a half.

Mom said that the vet told them that China has glaucoma and that he might have to remove her eyes to relieve the pressure. When they heard that, Mom got hysterical, and Jonathan started experiencing chest pains.

My parents made an appointment for China at an eye institute in Scottsdale for next Tuesday, but I guess if the doctors there can’t help her, they will probably need to start thinking about putting China to sleep.

I know how much my family will miss her. I will miss her too, but I’m not as close to her, and so it’s easier for me to accept the fact that she’s old and near death.

Mom also said that she and Dad had been talking about my taking the bar exam and wanted to reassure me that it’s not a life-or-death matter.

“You can always get another job,” she said, and of course Mom is right about that.

Earlier, I spoke to Aunt Sydelle, who was very upset because she had to go to Dr. Reichbach late in the day after developing an infection in her leg. The stress is getting to her.

But the psychologist who came over on Monday said that Sydelle is a survivor, and she will get through this rough patch the way she’s gotten through other rough times.

I hope so. But my aunt seems unwilling to change.

As much as she dreads going to the beauty parlor on Saturday, she has to go to a beauty parlor, and she won’t go to one closer to her house where the drive would be a lot easier to manage.

Can Sydelle become less anxious about driving at the age of 81? I’d like to believe so, because it would tell me that I can conquer anxiety at the age of 51 and get through this rough patch in my own life.

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Thursday, May 16, 2002

9 PM. Last night I slept extraordinarily well. Granted, I needed to take 0.5 mg of Klonopin and then another 0.25 mg at 2 AM, but I slept solidly for nearly nine hours.

Moreover, I had the most incredible dream about a world of underground shopping malls and city skylines where I could fly, at which point I knew that I was dreaming. I woke up with a great sense of peace and calm.

Somehow it helped that it was raining out. After breakfast, I took a bath with Epsom salts, which felt relaxing. This morning I took only half a Triavil 2/10 tablet because I felt so good.

I did the remaining 75 Criminal Law MBE questions in the workbook, and although I got only about 53% right, I am learning from my errors. I thought I would try to read the MPBR Criminal Procedure outline before attempting the questions, but in the afternoon Emmanuel stopped by.

He’s the Haitian guy who went to Miami-Ohio. He got C’s in Civ Pro and International Law (which he had to take because he got a D+ in Property). That raised his GPA only to 1.55, below the 1.75 he needed to avoid academic dismissal.

Emmanuel said he hasn’t slept in two nights, and he’s desperately trying to figure out a way to stay in law school. I went over the possibilities with him, but they are remote, and I couldn’t give him false hope.

This is the hardest part of my job. Emmanuel is not a dumb guy, and his writing isn’t that bad for someone for whom English is a third language (after Haitian Creole and French).

I told him that maybe he wanted to explore going to graduate school. He can reapply to Nova Law in two years, but to him at age 24, two years seems like forever.

He was laid off from work, and now he has about $80,000 in student loans due from undergraduate school and law school.

It’s hard to believe that anyone could pay it off, and I told him what Mark B tells me: that it’s only numbers on someone’s computer.

Emmanuel feels devastated, and his Haitian parents can’t really understand what he’s going through.

I wish I could have offered him something other than sympathy. Sigh, as Rick Peabody would write.

I know what stress Emmanuel was under. Compared to him, I have a much easier situation; for one thing, I’m 27 years older than he is. If I lose my job and go bankrupt again, I can handle it – as long as I’m healthy.

Today and yesterday I had almost no sciatica pain, and although I felt that gripping feeling in my stomach, I had a spicy Sichuan frozen dinner tonight. I didn’t get sick, perhaps because I’d taken Prevacid.

I gave Pat copies of The Silicon Valley Diet, I Survived Caracas Traffic, and the Dictionary of Literary Biography article.

Although I’m sort of shy, I do want people to know that I’ve achieved at least some success as a writer, with me in DLB between entries on Gail Godwin and Barry Hannah.

It helps build up my confidence to remind myself and others that I’m talented and smart.

I actually think I will feel a lot better about myself if I pass the bar exam, and there’s no real reason I shouldn’t, though I’m sure panic will overtake me at times.

However, right now I’m familiarizing myself with MBE questions, and I know that I can get prepared in ten weeks. I’m more concerned about the Florida portion of the test, but as I study that, I will gain more confidence there, too.

I read a lot of today’s New York Times online, so I really haven’t missed getting the print edition of the paper delivered.

Sat Darshan writes that she’s looking for a new car online. The added expense means she’ll have to cut back in other areas.

Soon after coming home this evening, I went over to BCC-South for a poetry reading. I expected to see a bunch of my literary friends there, or at least Patrick.

But the only one I saw was Barbra, whom I like immensely, but whose poetry I think is mediocre.

Tonight’s reader was Barbra’s friend Gianna Russo, whose work I found somewhat pedestrian and trite. Her poems based on Vermeer paintings had predictable images.

I know I’m not the greatest writer in the world, but I do have a somewhat sophisticated sense of what literature should be.

I left the reading early, which probably seemed rude, but I prefer to catch the end of Survivor rather than listen to more mediocre poems.

I did pick up the new issue of P’an Ku. It looks like Patrick again did his usual good job on the student magazine.

If only because I’ve slept so well all week, I don’t expect to sleep much tonight. But that’s okay.

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Monday, May 20, 2002

9 PM. I knew this would be a rough week. It would be easier, of course, if my leg didn’t ache so much.

During the lunch break from the PMBR workshop, I made an appointment to get the MRI at Nova on Friday.

I’ll have to leave the workshop a little early, but the Nova clinic is not doing MRIs next week, and I want to get it over with.

The woman making the appointment asked me if I’m claustrophobic. A little, I said. She also asked me if I weighed more than 500 pounds, and that cracked me up.

It reminds me of when I was so anxious in the fall of 2000, and every time I’d go to the ASU Student Health Center, I kept being asked if I was 95 years old because they somehow put in my birthday as the default date of 1/1/1905.

I hope I can sleep tonight, as my leg is throbbing. Everything is just so much. I mean, after the PMBR workshop ended at 3:30 PM, I had to go to work at the law school for 90 minutes.

Granted, I didn’t do much there. During the break, I’d check phone messages, and Emmanuel had called.

I called him back, and he said that Pat Jason was rude to him. He wants to show evidence of his learning disability, so he faxed a letter to me for Joe from the counselor at Miami-Ohio.

It’s not going to do him any good. As Pat said, he needs to get on with his life. He can petition, but it won’t change anything.

Last night I slept okay, but I was up at 4 AM. I felt weird this morning as I went into the Best Western at Rolling Hills.

About 200 people attended – most from Nova, some from Miami, and others from different schools.

I sat with Navleen (I could tell she was Sikh from her kara), who’s already passed the New Jersey Bar and who’s taking the New York Bar in July, and with Erica, who just graduated FSU and said she wasn’t “ready for this.” Sitting behind us, Chad said he has been on vacation for two weeks and hasn’t started to study yet.

Jeff, the PMBR lecturer, is very good, and he’ll be with us for the first three days. After some introductory remarks about the Multistate, he had us do the 50 Evidence questions in our workbook.

Since I’d already done all those questions this weekend, I even saw some of the same exact questions I did and got wrong yesterday – but the only reason I got them right today was because I had learned things so recently.

I seemed to be the first person to leave, at around 10:15 AM, but I needed to check in at work.

A lot of people say they’re going to do the sample exams at home and just come at noon (11 AM on Wednesday) for the lecture, but I want to do it under test conditions.

Of course, it’s so much easier when you know what subject the questions will be on.

From noon to 3:30 PM, with two breaks, we went over the answers, and that’s how he taught us the rules.

Evidence actually isn’t hard. I got 34 out of the 50 questions right, but as I said, it’s in my head. I’ve still got so much to cram in there, and I will forget a lot of it. That’s why I don’t want to burn out.

Tomorrow is Contracts, one of the subjects I’m most concerned about, and then Wednesday is Property.

When I came home from work at 5:15 PM, I did some biceps curls, triceps extensions, and shoulder exercises simply because I needed a release.

From 6 PM to 8 PM, I read the Contracts flashcards, surprising myself because I didn’t think I could stand to do that after the long day.

I just watched the season finale of Boston Public, and I’m taping the season finale of Ally McBeal now.

Stuck in my door this evening was a letter from the Cameron Cove’s management, along with a notice from the FBI about nonspecific threats of terrorists renting an apartment and threatening to blow up the whole building with explosives.

Over the weekend Vice President Cheney said another Al-Qaeda terrorist attack is likely, and today the government said we can expect Israeli-style suicide bombers.

Great. What a world we live in. Thinking about it just made me cry and hug my little Valentine’s teddy bear.

(I thought about the Beanie Baby I had in Arizona: Swampy the alligator, whom I left with my parents.)

When I called Teresa, there were about three contractors and a carpenter in her house. She told me that the house in Matinecock is very nice and secluded, with four bedrooms. Two of them are downstairs, and I’ll stay in one of those.

God knows when I’ll be able to visit Long Island again, but someday I will.

Teresa has already contracted to have kitchen work in the Bayville house, and it needs to be rent-worthy. Paul finally admitted to her that he never liked that house either.

Teresa saw the new house the day before she left for Mexico, and they accepted the offer. There’s already a contract, and she’s trying to arrange creative financing.

Pam finished her master’s thesis, and will be graduating at the end of the month; Teresa’s having a big party for her.

Teresa said she sympathized with China’s plight. When she goes to Fire Island, everyone asks for Phoebe, and Teresa feels sad that she’s dead. Now she says she’s even sad about Hattie.