cindy's world

Aside from my supervisor’s chastizing solicitation of a verbal agreement from me to complete 82 fking divorce cases in the next 17 work days in addition to my regular workload, Friday was a DAMN good day. Damn it. Damn, damn. (Okay, so I’m still upset about the fking family law crap.)

In the realm of his work, a friend I don’t see nearly enough popped by the courthouse Friday and we had fun catching up with each other. Brad and Val also visited in the afternoon. They drove in from San Jose early in the day, and as they plan to be in Disneyland all day today, my bailiff was nice enough to pick up 2 discount tickets from the Sheriff’s Dept at lunch for them. Since we’d concluded our court trial the day before, nothing was going on in the department so my judge came out and met them, then donned his robe and posed for some photos with us. I wish I had them to post now, but they’re in Brad’s camera. Since Brad brought his laptop with him on this trip, MAYBE HE’LL READ THIS AND EMAIL ME THE PHOTOS ASAP. =) Brad and Val are both good sports in my cheesy photo antics, as you guys know from the July 4th weekend photos posted on my blog. I’m gonna try to meet up with them some time this weekend, maybe late tonite or tomorrow before they leave to drive home. We were gonna meet up last nite after my dinner plans, but they were too tired and crashed instead. That worked out for me, as I didn’t even come home until almost 6am this morning.

After work, I drove to Irvine to meet up with my cousins Diana and Jennifer at their house in Irvine. They have a really nicely decorated place! It’s very femme and creative. Our cousin Olivia also joined us, with husband Eric and daughters Nikki (5) and Erin (2) in tow. Olivia was so cute. She’s missed her carefree days of romping around with us now that she’s heavily into family responsibilities and real-life issues. When we were walking to the cars to take off to the restaurant, she started toward their car, then paused and said, almost whinily in Chinese, “Aww, I so want to sit with you guys!” We told her she’s welcome to, and she got all excited and said “Okay! Lemme ask my husband.” She ran over to him and asked if she could ride over to the restaurant with us, like a little girl hoping her dad would consent to letting her go out and play. I assume by the way his butt and legs stuck out of his car as he loaded the youngest into the carseat that he agreed, and Olivia came skipping, SKIPPING! back toward us with a huge smile on her face. A few more skips, and little Erin’s audible wail for “Maaaaaa!” permeated the air. Olivia froze, turned around, then back toward us, and the same huge smile came back as she skipped the remainder of the way to our car. Even with their car door closed, we could hear Erin crying. “Ooh, Eric’s gonna have a bad drive to the restaurant,” Jennifer said. “That’s okay, it’s only for a few minutes,” Olivia said dismissively.

We had a delicious dinner at King’s Fishhouse in Laguna Hills. Their something-bikini martini, however, could’ve been a little more fruity, a lot less starter-fluid-y. Blech. We took a photo of the four of us cousins at the table which I hope I’ll get from Olivia soon. The lack of sleep and food coma caught up with me and as we returned to Diana and Jennifer’s house, I was invited in to crash for a few hours and all three of us did, in the living room in front of their TV, until Diana and I woke up around 3:30am and watched the remainder of “White Chicks” which was playing on Starz!. It’s a pretty typical night of falling asleep in front of the TV and waking up in the middle of the nite for me, but I’d never driven over half an hour afterwards before.

Oh, I also missed some calls from some friends at dinner, and one was from my girl friend inviting me to go to a huge party tonite. The birthday boy’s turning 40 (I can’t even imagine!) and has rented out the ballroom of a hotel in downtown LA. That should be interesting.

…or maybe new possibilities.

OMG, I did it. I can’t believe I did it. It’s a low I’d always been actively resistent to sinking to. I’d always said I do not want and do not need to resort to this.

Insomnia is NOT good for me. I am NOT in my right mind. This is why infomercials play in the middle of the night, because the audience is disoriented and not in touch with reality and therefore more gullible and subject to influence. I can’t begin to list all the crap I got suckered into shelling out money for because I was hit up in the middle of the night. I even almost joined the Navy once.

At least this’ll keep me busy for the time being.

…I can’t believe I did it!

If you ever get the chance to listen to George Michael’s rendition of this Bonnie Raitt song, you should. He sings it less country and more soft rock, but the rise and fall of emotions behind his voice and his precisely delayed verbal beat on certain lines makes it so incredibly heart-wrenching.

I CAN’T MAKE YOU LOVE ME – George Michael

Turn down the lights, turn down the bed
Turn down these voices inside my head
Lay down with me, tell me no lies
Just hold me close, don’t patronize
Don’t patronize me

‘Cause I can’t make you love me if you don’t
You can’t make your heart feel something it won’t
Here in the dark in these final hours
I will lay down my heart, and I’ll feel the power
But you won’t, no you won’t
And I can’t make you love me
If you don’t

I’ll close my eyes and then I won’t see
The love you do not feel, when you’re holding me
Morning will come, and I’ll do what’s right
Just give me till then, to give up this fight
And I will give up this fight

And I can’t make you love me if you don’t
You can’t make your heart feel something it won’t
And here in the dark in these final hours
I will lay down my heart and I’ll feel the power
But you won’t, no, you won’t
And I can’t make you love me
If you don’t

Ain’t no use in you trying
It’s no good for me baby without love
All my tears, all these years, everything I believed in
Baby
Oh yeah
Someone’s gonna love me

The Coriolis effect is making me nauseated. Wow. I am seriously bummed. I’m trying to tell myself that this is just the result of my imagination going crazy on me, but what it feels like is too similar to how I felt in the relationship when I sensed that sht was going down involving her. I also know that instead of investing energy into convincing myself it’s not true, the energy should be going into getting me to the point of, “Whether it’s true or not, I don’t care.” I’m not there. Instead, I wanna curl up and cry.

Please, God, please please please let this be over soon. I can’t be hurt by the same thing over and over again. I can’t do it anymore.

I thought a lot about my ex today for some reason. Lots of things reminded me of him, as lots of things normally do, but today I wasn’t able to just push all thoughts away the moment they reared their ugly heads. The result was I spent too much time rethinking things I should’ve said or done, and things that were done to me.

In my boredom driving home, I decided to reach some old contacts, and one friend I called is married to one of my ex’s closest buddies. I originally called her to say hey and ask if she and her hubby (the only friend of the ex’s whom I’m still very fond of) still had my Lord of the Ring DVDs. But as the phone rang, I suddenly had the sick feeling that she may know something about my ex’s current situation and casually tell me. I became horrified and hoped desperately that she wouldn’t pick up the ph0ne, and yet I was unable to hang up. As the ringing continued, I thought about how I’d feel if I found out the ex indeed got together with the student he cheated on me with. I would, even now, be absolutely devastated. It would feel like all the talk and the convincing he had given me about how he no longer has feelings for her, that she was just a weird phase, that he loves only me, that he never loved her, that he has no interest in even pursuing a friendship with her any longer, that there’s no future between him and her, that she’s far from perfect, that he hated her for being the reason our relationship destructed, that he hated himself for destroying our relationship for nothing and she was the nothing, that he was so mad at her for contacting me and telling me things about them that he wanted to go kill her, that he couldn’t be with anybody or love anybody for a long time, if ever again…it would feel like all of that, and the measure of comfort believing those things gave me, would be all lies. It would feel like I made him a better person so that he could give it away to the most undeserving of people, the most hurtful person he could get together with where I’m concerned. But that’s already happened once. I bought all the stuff he said before, too, about how insignificant she is to him and how “she’s not a threat to” me, only to find out that it was all untrue, and he had bled me for her. Repeatedly. Until I had literally almost reached death three times. It hit me today why I was so passionate about the Jennifer Aniston/Brad Pitt split. I had already a very severe distaste for angelina jolie, and I was a huge, HUGE fan of Aniston’s (I’m indifferent toward Pitt), so when crap was rumored and Aniston filed for divorce papers, I understood exactly where she was coming from. And after she moved out despite Pitt’s continued attempts to convince her nothing was going on between him and jolie, and now the relationship between Pitt and jolie has hit mainstream news and people can’t understand why Aniston is devastated and hurt because after all, she’s the one who wanted the divorce and moved out, I understood that perfectly, too. It’s because in spite of all her gut feeling that something is seriously wrong, a part of her heart still clung desperately to the belief that her husband did not lie to her, that despite feelings for another woman (who wanted to be a MORTICIAN and took embalming classes and instead of exchangnig wedding rings w/her last husband, exchanged vials of each other’s blood which they wore around their necks), he did not betray her and he would not get together with a woman whose existence destroyed his marriage.

Yeah, everything goes back to “Friends.” Speaking of friends, thank God the friend never picked up her cell. I didn’t leave a voice mail.

…but it’s starting to feel like that’s all I do!

My friend wrote a blog entry today about her disappointment in people who take the sanctity of marriage lightly, and how despite their belief that the marriage will likely end in divorce, they get married anyway. Like, “We’ll try this out, and hell, if it doesn’t work, we can always get divorced.” She’s very much against that frame of mind.

Well, my work day took a very frustrating turn shortly before lunch, to the point where it so soured my day that I couldn’t even do my usual lunchtime workout — I had Jack-in-the-Box instead. I had been trying not to blog about it because I didn’t want to ruin this rare “happy streak” appearance that I’m giving out on my blog. However, this opened the door, so I’m gonna share my comment on her blog w/my readers, too:

Tell me about it! I hate, HATE family law divorce cases that I have to process. I had a NIGHTMARE last nite about people coming into my courtroom to inquire as to the progress of their divorce case. And today at work, aside from numerous phone calls from people “checking on the status of my divorce judgment,� my SUPERVISOR came up and handed me a fax from some b!tch demanding special favor to push her divorce thru, and also LYING about contact with me. He made me type up a list of my hundreds of pending divorce cases and what date they came in. These people piss me off so bad, I want to yell into the phone at them, “If you’re gonna be so rude about this, guess what? I’m NOT divorcing you! So there! You’re gonna have to file your taxes this year as married! HAHA!� *CLICK* So people should really do ME the favor, even if they’re not doing themselves the favor, of NOT getting married if they believe it will end in divorce! In fact, I’m gonna blog this on my site. This is such a SORE SPOT with me.

My male friend just wrote me this email:

A 78-year-old woman in Atlanta has been indicted for shooting to death her 85-year-old boyfriend in an old folks home because he was seeing another woman.

You can never trust a woman, no matter how old she gets. Never.

My body was sore from overdoing a workout Tuesday, so yesterday, I made an impromptu massage appointment at Glen Ivy Day Spa in Brea for 7:30pm. Man, that place is popular. On a Wednesday nite, the only slots they had left were 20 mins at 5:30 and 20 mins at 7:30. I wanted an 80-minute but oh well, guess I’ll have to save my money for something else.

I got there an hour early to enjoy the facility. The first place I went to is the empty Garden Tea Room to fill out my waiver and consent form. That room is amazing! It’s got quaint little conversation areas set up all over, plus a large blazing fireplace on the far wall with cozy seating and lounging areas around it. There were ample stone tables to do work, and low soothing music was playing. I could see myself there with a spot of tea working on my (soon-to-be-purchased) laptop, organizing my notes and writing my book. Next, after putting my stuff away in the locker room, which has windows into garden-looking enclosed areas, I sunk into the kidney-shaped whirlpool. There was only one other person in it, and it was large enough that sitting at a certain angle I couldn’t even see her. Instead I faced the large glass wall that opened into another garden-like area. Then I laid for 15 minutes in the sauna. The temperature of the sauna and the whirlpool were perfect. Most of these places tend to have the water/steam too hot, and I have to get used to it while feeling like cannibal dinner. Cold wet towels on ice were provided in a large brass bowl by the sauna door. All the sinks were large round brass bowls. It all looked very neo-Roman. 10 minutes before my massage appointment time, I got into the robe and spread out in the women’s lounge with complimentary cup of their Serendipi-tea. They had sliced cucumbers on ice in the lounge, too, for our puffy eyes. I didn’t use any as I did not want to risk pouring hot tea down my chest.

The massage therapist, Carla, was wonderful. It was probably the best massage I’d ever had. She had a unique way of applying pressure, and she explained that she was trying to distribute the lactic acid buildup in my muscles so that the soreness would go away faster. At the conclusion, she agreed with me that yes, I did need a longer massage as all my muscles are tight. (Maybe I’m not stressed and they’re just tight because I work out. HAHA, right.) I was in this fuzzy sedated heaven state when I teetered out of the massage area back thru the lounge into the women’s area, and I jumped into their shower. Oh! Shower bliss, too! A large overhead cylinder dispensed rainfall-like hot water onto my head. A regular showerhead on the left wall gave me the diagonal blast for my upper back. The right shower wall had a lower, more focused showerhead that gave me pressurized water onto my lower abdomen or lower back, depending on which way I turn. And of course, complimentary Red Mineral Clay shampoo, conditioner, shower gel. I was afraid I wouldn’t make it home last nite.

Seriously, the drive home, I felt drunk. Or high. It felt like my body and spirit were padded in a cozy soft envelopment, and nothing could touch me, physically or mentally. I finished off my night at home with yoga and fresh grapes.

This was written by an 83-year-old woman to her friend. I’d like to think I’m living like this now. I have a dinner planned with my 3 other female cousins in California, who I didn’t always bother to keep up with, but now that we’re all adults, I think we can enjoy each other more. One of these cousins and I are gonna take a cooking class (“Extreme Chocolate”) in September. My oldest girl friend (we met age 6) and I are planning a 3-day cruise in September. We’ve never been on one, and would like to see what all the hype’s about. And of course, the college roommate and I have our week-long Cancun trip in the works for the end of September. I’m also tired of my saved perfume going bad, expensive products expiring, good food molding, pretty candles melting.

Dear Bertha,

I’m reading more and dusting less. I’m sitting in the yard and admiring the
view without fussing about the weeds in the garden. I’m spending more time
with my family and friends and less time working.

Whenever possible, life should be a pattern of experiences to savor, not to
endure. I’m trying to recognize these moments now and cherish them.

I’m not “saving” anything; we use our good china and crystal for every
special event such as losing a pound, getting the sink unstopped, or the
first Amaryllis blossom.

I wear my good blazer to the market. My theory is if I look prosperous, I
can shell out $28.49 for one small bag of groceries. I’m not saving my good
perfume for special parties, but wearing it for clerks in the hardware store
and tellers at the bank.

“Someday” and “one of these days” are losing their grip on my vocabulary. If
it’s worth seeing or hearing or doing, I want to see and hear and do it now.

I’m not sure what others would’ve done had they known they wouldn’t be here
for the tomorrow that we all take for granted. I think they would have
called family members and a few close friends. They might have called a few
former friends to apologize and mend fences for past squabbles. I like to
think they would have gone out for a Chinese dinner or for whatever their
favorite food was.

I’m guessing; I’ll never know.

It’s those little things left undone that would make me angry if I knew my
hours were limited. Angry because I hadn’t written certain letters that I
intended to write one of these days. Angry and sorry that I didn’t tell my
husband and parents often enough how much I truly love them. I’m trying very
hard not to put off, hold back, or save anything that would add laughter and
luster to our lives. And every morning when I open my eyes, tell myself that
it is special.

Every day, every minute, every breath truly is a gift from God.

Boys are funny. They play these games. They want to pursue you, and the moment you decide, “Okay fine, let’s give this a try,” and you reciprocate their interest, they totally turn on you. They don’t return your calls, they’re too busy for you, they’re aloof. So then you say, “All right then, if you’re that hard to get, then you’re just not gonna get gotten,” and you lose interest and do your own thing, and suddenly they want to know what you’re doing, who you’re doing, whether you want to go out, and they call you all the time.

Where’re all the men at?