Spent the morning swearing...

The most unceremonious ceremony of my life.

 
Swearing IN that is!  (My personal expletive use is restricted mostly to Oh Man and  guttural shouts of anguished frustration.)  After passing the bar here in Tennessee, my last step was to take my oath and get sworn in at a court house.  The traditional way to get this done is to attend the mass swearing in ceremony.  The ceremony I was invited to, however, was held the day before my due date.  RSVP'ing to that would have tempted the universe a little too much for my taste.  Though I could've claimed to have The Vapors if I'd gone into labor.  That always gets you out of a jam here in the South.  The amniotic fluid might have betrayed me, though...

So when a neighborhood friend offered to do me a post-birth favor to lighten my load, I automatically wanted to say no.  Because that's what I do.  I claim that I've got everything under control, even though that is rarely the case.  It is decidedly not the case these days, of that I'm sure.  I am achingly tired, emotionally wrought over the constant clash between me and Edie, and feeling a million miles from Will.  In short, I am a real delight.  My cousin gave me a little piece of advice that I have tried to live by lately: when someone offers to help you, say YES.  That is really good advice for most women I know, especially moms, and really especially moms with a new baby.  (So, Agusta, your potty training advice got me nowhere, but you've redeemed yourself now.)  With that in mind, and this offer in hand, I hesitantly typed out a request for her to watch Edie for a couple hours so that I could finish the task of becoming a Nashvillian Legal Eagle before my temporary law license expired.

Around 10:30 am, I dropped Edie off and left for the courthouse.  Wearing cropped yoga pants and a seven week old baby strapped to my chest, I really was the picture of professional aspiration.  Don't bother with the metal detector, lads!  I'm made of organic cotton and spandex!  I was hoping that one of the clerks would congratulate me on my new status, but that didn't happen.  It is so exceedingly rare for me to step into the lawyer side of me these days that I was a little desperate for some reassurance that the side still exists.  I did get to sign a great big book, and some pieces of paper did get stamped.  So that seems official.  It was not terribly confidence-inducing when I asked whether they would be sending confirmation of my oath to the Tennessee Bar Association, or Tennessee Supreme Court, or .. anyone?  And I got a whole lot of shrugs and "I don't think so" 's. (How will anyone know I took the oath, then?  Yes, thank you, I think that's a good question, too.  I am very good at questions. Ah, you don't know.  I see.)  While the book was big, I don't think it was magical, and it was definitely stored on a dusty shelf in the Clerk's office.  I'm thinking my work is not *quite* done.  But I got out of the house, I parked, signed what was truly a remarkably large book, remembered my PIN number so that I could get money out of an ATM to pay for parking, later found my parking ticket, and made it home with only one child in tears.  Now I'm ready for the courtroom as soon as I get enough sleep not to commit legal malpractice.