cindy's world

The college roommie had said that the July 4th trip can also serve as a celebration of my b-day, which is June 29. This works out well for me mentally because I was feeling pensive about spending my b-day alone this year. As it turns out, my b-day will be on my 2nd Jujitsu class so I will be busy all evening so I don’t have to think about it. And the 1st weekend after the b-day, I will be up north, kayaking around the seals in Monterey Bay. NOW I’m getting excited! The roommie remarked that it’d be the same as Memorial Day weekend; fly up Saturday, dinner Saturday nite w/friends, athletic sight-seeing activity Sunday, BBQ house party Monday, flight back Monday nite. I’m definitely gonna bring my camera this time so I don’t have to go around begging the roommie’s friends to send me their digital photos of the weekend.

Seriously, I am SO perturbed! Didn’t I just vow to never let anyone drag me down like this again? WTF. This better be hormonally related and not actual slippage from my emotional and psychological progress.

On the brighter side of things, the tentative agenda for July 4th weekend is a homemade Italian meal at someone’s house on Saturday evening (I’ll make lasagne and tiramisu, everyone else can figure out what they’re able to contribute…altho now that I think about it, I don’t know how I’m gonna pull off tiramisu because I’m flying up Saturday and I usually like finished tiramisu to sit overnite for the flavors to develop), kayaking on Sunday, July 4th BBQ/pool party on Monday.

Damn it, that didn’t even cheer me up. I can not believe how offended and bummed I am.

Today was supposed to be such a great day. [Except for the flaking.] After work, I went to Cypress and registered as a continuing education student and enrolled in the Jujitsu class. I had to pick Jujitsu over Kenpo Karate because Kenpo is held Saturday mornings, whereas Jujitsu is held Mondays and Wednesdays. I email-planned with my college roommie today to fly up north and visit her + friends for the July 4th long weekend, which means I need my weekends free. It felt good driving out of Cypress, a student once again (albeit not a Bruin this time), with a student parking permit for the summer semester tucked in the center storage compartment of my car. I was flying high. Class begins June 27. [I hate flakes.]

From Cypress, I drove farther south to Irvine to the Blackmarket Bakery for the Artisan Breads class, and arrived half an hour early, enough time to grab a quick bite and find the place. I met up with my court reporter and her twin brother at the bakery. We made from scratch Walnut Pain Au Levain (basic sourdough), Ciabatta (italian slipper bread), Challah (Jewish braided bread), and Sourdough Multigrain (this is English and should thus be self-explanatory). Fresh bread has amazing aroma, texture and taste. My entire downstairs smells like a bakery right now. I know this because I just went downstairs w/my camera to take photos of the aforementioned bread in my kitchen. [Flaky people SUCK.] The class ended almost an hour later than it was supposed to, but hey, I do have four pounds, four loaves of bread to show for it. What am I gonna do with all this bread? [This wouldn’t have been an issue if certain people weren’t flakes.]

Today I took the first major step in crossing stuff off my “goals” list. I should remove the motorcycling thing [and replace it with “never associate with flakes”]. In a phone conversation yesterday evening, I was given the suggestion [by a flake] to add “kiteboarding” to the list. It’s sort of a cross between parasailing, snowboarding, surfing and waterskiing. “It has you written all over it,” I was told, “because it’s athletic and looks like work.” I suppose it more realistically and more comparably replaces motorcycling than helicoptering does. [I’m so pissed; the flaking chased away all the sunshine that was so bright over my day earlier.]

My staff and I had a conversation today about how “living” is not to spend countless hours every night at a bar, stationary except for the constant arm movement lifting alcohol to mouth, forking over hard-earned money in exchange for useless calories and inebriation. Living is visiting important friends and meeting his/her friends, and doing things like bike rides in beautiful wine country, creating friendships, new perspectives, and memories. When I look back over the last couple of years, it looks like a life in shadow. Blurry, cold, frustrating, drudging. Trying not to get dragged down into the sludgy viscosity, trying to watch deluded drunk men’s backs as the only sober person, while trying to watch my own back to keep from being dragged into barfights or destruction of others’ personal property. In wonderous contrast, where I have been the last few weeks is sunny, colorful, vibrant. This is living! This is learning, experiencing, growing. I hope I never again become stagnant like I had been.

I’m having trouble registering for my Kenpo Karate class online, so I guess I’ll do it in person later on in the week. It won’t be tomorrow, tho, since I will be attending a specialized bread-making class after work. 🙂 This is living!

I had a long chat with Grace’s mother this past Sunday evening. I’ve heard many stories where one or both people in a couple knew upon the first awareness of the other’s existence that they were “meant to be.” I have a coworker who walked up to a fellow stranger student in high school and told her, “I’m gonna marry you one day” and freaked the heck out of her. Decades later, they are still happily married with their three children. I have a friend who dropped his normally bitter and jaded disposition when he met the love of his life on a flight, and glowingly upon his return described to us how, as he watched her connector flight take off from the window of the airport terminal, he thought, “My God – I think I just met my future wife.” We were incredulous but months later, they were wed, she flew to California to begin her new life with him, and has told us since that as she flew off that day, she watched the airport shrink and thought the exact thing – that she had just met the man she was meant to marry. They remain to this day one of the strongest couples I know.

My question is, what is the ratio of people who have thought this and had it happen, versus the people who have thought this and were wrong? You never hear about the “wrong” stories.

The Colour Of My Love Lyrics
Artist: Celine Dion
Album: The Colour Of My Love

I’ll paint my mood in shades of blue
Paint my soul to be with you
I’ll sketch your lips in shaded tones
Draw your mouth to my own

I’ll draw your arms around my waist
Then all doubt I shall erase
I’ll paint the rain that softly lands on your wind blown hair

I’ll trace a hand to wipe your tears
A look to calm your fears
A silhouette of dark and light
While we hold each other oh so tight

I’ll paint a sun to warm your heart
Swearing that we’ll never part
That’s the colour of my love

I’ll paint the truth
Show how I feel
Try to make you completely real
I’ll use a brush so light and fine
To draw you close and make you mine

I’ll paint the truth
Show how I feel
Try to make you completely real
I’ll use a brush so light and fine
To draw you close and make you mine

I’ll paint a sun to warm your heart
Swearing that we’ll never part
That’s the colour of my love

I’ll draw the years all passing by
So much to learn so much to try

And with this ring our lives will start
Swearing that we’ll never part
I offer what you cannot buy
Devoted love until we die

So I was despondently belting this out in the shower just now (it’s 2:12 am as I type this). At times like this, I can imagine how my lilt would intonate and personalize the music if I were sitting at the velvet-lined bench of my shiny black baby grand (at my parents’ house). Sometimes I feel as if a force or feeling or some multi-dimensional something is bursting within me, and no poetry I could write, song I could sing, picture I can paint could express it justly. Maybe an animated 3-D image set to specific music with the temperature just so and the colors just so and a scent ever so light as to convey a certain feel and induce a specific line of thought could simulate or express what it is that hangs around and within me. This must be a challenge that the creators of Disney’s “Fantasia” films had.

I really want a Sea-Doo, too. Maybe it’s midlife crisis. I have what appears to almost be a death wish. I want more speed! I want to master more elements! Land, air, water! If I hit all the goals, I’d be a race bike riding, helicopter flying, martial arts ass-kicking law enforcement surfer chick. I may as well apply for a job as a Charlie’s Angel. Plus I’m sorta tri-lingual.

I’m trying to stay strong and level-headed, but it’s hard when I take a nap and dream about my phone not ringing and about his phone not calling me and even tho this is not the case in real life, I awake with an overwhelming feeling of abandonment. I should just stop taking naps.

I just returned from lunch with my coworker. When I packed up my gym bag this morning, I’d forgotten to pack tennis shoes, so I had to nix the lunchtime gym visit. I told him about my list of things I wanted to do before turning 3o, and he was adamantly against the motorcyle thing. He said it’s a “death wish” and even tho I’d be a careful recreational rider, there’s no way to guarantee that the idiots in the cars around me wouldn’t run into me. Yeah, there ARE a lot of Corollas out there. To back up his point of how dangerous motorcycling is, he told me that California law enforcement is in the process of trying to do away with all motorcycle cops due to the high rate of death/dismemberment in today’s traffic conditions.

So what’s the new plan? I can replace motorcycling on the goals list with getting certified as a helicopter pilot! If I take the actual courses and get licensed, I can apply for a helicopter position with the LA County Sheriff’s Department. I have no problem passing their written exam (I’d taken it once already just to keep an ex-boyfriend company while he took the exam, and I only missed 2 questions. Apparently, people study and study for it and can’t pass, so I don’t expect a lot of intellectual competition.), I look forward to the physical training/conditioning, and it’s a low-risk job since I’ll be in the air and not on the ground being shot at in the action. How many quotas would I fulfill? I’m a college grad, I’m a minority female, minority Asian, at an age when I’m trainable and in good physical shape, AND I’m gonna already be licensed to fly a ‘copter so they don’t have to train me on that, and I know they have a shortage of pilots right now. If I still want to pursue writing, this’ll give me better benefits and pay and more free time. If I get bored or want to retire, I can always fly for the news or for traffic conditions, or just be a private pilot.

Why not?! Like I have anything better to do with my time right now.

Okay, I gotta go register online for my Monday/Wednesday evening Jujitsu class now. It’s gonna be a little weird since the 2nd class is on my b-day. Maybe I should take Kenpo Karate instead, that class is only on Saturday mornings. I think Kenpo is better for me anyway, since Jujitsu focuses more on grappling, throwing, wrestling-type moves. I’m partial to kicks and punches and I’d prefer my enemies to not get too close to me where I’m gonna toss them over my hip.

A friend I was talking to about my goals (see Goals entry, below) suggested I add “become a pilot” to the list. That reminded me of my cousin telling me after her first hot air balloon ride that apparently, you can acquire a certification or license as a hot air balloon pilot with something like just 10 hours training. So that’s what I told my friend. He met me with silence. I continued by saying how cool it would be to have this conversation at a cocktail party:

Stranger: So what do you like to do in your spare time as a hobby?
Me: Oh, I’m also a pilot.
Stranger: Really? That’s so cool! What kind of plane do you fly?
Me: None. I fly a hot air balloon.

My friend said, “You can take something so cool and make it so lame.”