cindy's world

Sometimes, I awaken in the midst of the night, and thoughts of him roll through my rearing consciousness. With the unassuming innocence of floating cloud mist, it takes me over and wraps me in its airy density, soothing me with coolness yet heating me with longing. It is strange to think that he’d been near me all along, for years a silent presence whom I had barely acknowledged, so consumed was I in my personal hell at the time. I want to make him feel as loved and appreciated as he makes me feel, but I’m not sure I know how. What if it’s not in me? And then the usual guilt brings with it the familiar discomfort.

As always, he senses me, and appears as if from nowhere, as if reading my emotions. I run my hand over his soft fur, and he lifts his little wet nose and tilts it into my fingertips. “It’s okay, mommy, I love you, and I will always forgive you for neglecting me,” his purring seems to suggest. My baby boy. My poor fuzzy baby who waits and meows for me by the door on nights I don’t come home. Who understands when I’ve neglected him, taken away the days when he’d sleep curled in the crook of my elbow on my bed, then taken away his permission to even enter my bedroom. He visits me in dreams and talks to me, sometimes cries to me.

Ugh. I’m gonna go curl up around him on the living room floor right after I shower.

Today’s noontime workout was momentous because this is the first time that my trainee surpassed my weights, and this after just a couple months of working out, from scratch. She went 10 lbs more than me on the reverse flies and prone hamstring curls; 5 lbs more on the seated leg extensions. I can claim to simply be tired from my runs or blame it on PMS, but I’d like to think it’s that she’s doing really well.

I’m so proud of myself.

I mean, of her.

I had a very messy evening last nite.

I took off my makeup and got changed for jujitsu early, had dinner early, and burned my tongue on chicken noodle soup. Then I noticed that some body parts that are required for jujitsu are in horrible condition, in pain and oozing blood and whatnot. So I decide to forego jujitsu to give them a couple of days to heal before causing more damage. Feeling bad for wasting an evening, I decided to visit my parents, whom I had not seen since their return from China this past weekend. I changed into comfy clothes, and immediately fell asleep on the couch. I woke up at 8p and debated whether I still wanted to head over to my parents’. What if they’re already asleep from the jet lag? I went anyway, realizing I wouldn’t be seeing them this weekend because Mr. W and I are gonna be in San Francisco, and I still needed a good way to break that to them.

The first thing my parents, who were seated in the family room having dinner and watching TV, said upon seeing me walk in was, “WHAT are you WEARING?! Did you DRIVE here in that?!” I went into the bathroom I was next to and looked at myself in the mirror. Oversized gray Esprit sweatshirt that went down nearly to my knees (remnant of the early 1990s, B.U.M. Equipment flava’), baggy black sweatpants with a white Dodo hair here and there, big plush green houseslippers designed to look like huge tennis shoes, complete with green shoelaces. My hair was matted on one side from when I leaned against the back of the couch and fell asleep, such that my head then slid down, and I’d scrape my head along the couch back up, and it’d fall down, I’d push myself back up, etc.. Yup, I looked like a crazy homeless woman. But I was comfortable, damn it.

I picked up a pair of chopsticks and jumped in on the homemade Chinese dinner. I’ve missed my mom’s cooking. Mom showed me digital photos of their trip with a feed into their big screen TV. The photos were projected so large that on one, they suddenly realized there was a fly that landed on the side of my dad’s forehead to get in on the shot. Then I was shown the printed out photos their friend took, and then my dad showed off the rocks he bought. Well, these weren’t so much rocks as much as stones that some famous artist carved into overpriced ink-grinding platforms that ancient Chinese used to do their brush-writing. I shouldn’t say ancient Chinese, it’s still practiced today. My parents had visited an ink factory and I finally found out how solid blocks of ink are made. The transformation from pine to ink blocks is fascinating. And then my mom popped in a DVD they’d bought which introduces “the mysterious Huangshan” (Yellow Mountain) to “foreigners” so that I can enjoy vicariously what they saw in person. “We tried to watch this twice already, but we fell asleep both times,” my mom announced, causing me to quake excitedly with eager anticipation.

Somehow I fell asleep, too. I woke up at 4am sprawled out on the 3-sectional couch and looked around groggily at my mom, asleep on the recliner, and my dad, asleep on the 2-sectional couch. I got up, went to the bathroom and contemplated going home, but somehow ended up back on the couch and asleep until my mom kicked me out at 6:20 a.m. and I fought traffic all the way back to my house, showered, fell asleep again in my own bed for half an hour (which was longer than I’d spent in my bed for days, as I spend a lot of nights on the downstairs couch so that I could hang out with die kleine Katze).

And after all that, I realized at work earlier that I still forgot to tell my parents I’m not gonna be around this weekend.

The strangest thing happened to me on my lunchtime run today. I decided to give my MP3 player another chance, so I wore it around my neck, put the earphones in, but I held on to it with a hand (the small pen drive dangles to my belly button when it’s on the neck strap) so that it wouldn’t swing into something and shut off. It operated perfectly. That’s not the strange part.

The strange thing is that with the music blasting in my ears, the run was totally, completely effortless. The whole experience was unreal. My feet fell into pace with the music, as with my breathing. The music was providing so much energy that I felt like I was just bounding along. I could’ve been walking for all the effort exerted in the run. Because I couldn’t hear the pounding of my feet on the treadmill over the music (nor my breathing, for that matter), I felt like I was bouncing along on air. So much of exercise is mental. Four miles flew by, I never was out of breath, I felt like I could’ve increased the speed but I didn’t want to push it. Because the treadmill faces a mirrored wall, I watched myself glint with sweat and was fascinated at the feel of perspiration that seemed so out of place because my body wasn’t complaining at all about being hot, tired, or pushed. It was like, “Why’m I sweating? I’m just hanging out here.”

Maybe the music drowned out the little whiny voice that complains of being tired or bored. My energy did seem to wane in between songs when I was able to hear the impact of my feet on the treadmill and the hardness of my breath. Or maybe there was something in the pastries that my reporter brought in this morning which she made over the weekend. Hmm…

Mr. W and I watched The Interpreter this weekend on DVD. Sean Penn is a great actor. Nicole Kidman was actually pretty good, too. I wonder how precisely her foreign phrases are spoken. I mean, it did sound like African Ku, but it’s not like I know how Ku sounds. The downside to the movie is that watching it was like when I watched The Pelican Brief (Julia Roberts) when I was in high school. I could not follow the political and legal issues in the movie. Here’s me throughout the movie: “Who’s that guy? Wait. Why’s the FBI people tailing him? Oh, he’s the assassination target? Then who’s the other guy who was speaking in the beginning? Why’s Nicole Kidman talking to Philippe? Who’s Philippe? Who’s the dead guy in the tub? Is that her brother? Who’s that guy who just dropped the bomb? Is that the exiled political leader? Then who’s the other leader? Wait. What? HUH?” It’s a very perturbing thing when you realize you don’t get a mainstream movie which markets to the masses of average IQed people.

On the brighter side of things, I may not have gotten some random movie, but there are few joys as pacifying to me as seeing eye-to-eye with someone when it comes to the major issues in a relationship. We had some good conversations this weekend on some subjects sensitive to me. He makes me feel so at ease and stable, which frees me up to be balanced, secure, silly, independent, and embrace all these other traits that are purely “me.” I don’t think I’ve ever been this comfortable and peaceful in a relationship before. Erin was right — when you’re in a good, loving, trust-worthy and respectful relationship, one day just flows right into the next.

Mr. W’s suggestion on the diet portion of my weight loss attempt: eat all my meals, small amounts of calories per meal, and when I’m eating out with him, we’re splitting a meal. So yesterday was day 2 of the strictly limited caloric intake.

Breakfast: Mr. W made bacon (3 strips, which I wrapped and patted in paper towels first, and peeled off some of the fat), banana-nut french toast (I skipped both butter and syrup) and a grapefruit-grape-apple-garlic-onion-scallions-raw oyster-lawngrass smoothie. (Okay, it wasn’t that bad. But it was darn healthy and I chewed a lot of fiber in the beverage.)

Lunch: We split a BBQ pork po-boy sandwich from The Jazz Kitchen in Downtown Disney. It came with fries, which I ate probably 3 or 4 of, and a Diet Coke. This was, of course, before Erin informed me in her comment that Diet Cokes make you fat by increasing your appetite. Oh wait. I just remembered that he introduced me to Beignets, which is “A New Orleans classic. French donuts deep fried and topped with powdered sugar.” I had 2 little squares. That was my sin for the day.

Dinner: He made a buffalo chicken patty on a whole wheat bun with a ton of raw little baby carrots on the side. I ate so many baby carrots (I was STARVING by that time) that I woke up this morning expecting my skin to be orange. Baby carrots are amazingly delicious when they’re really cold straight out of the fridge.

Dieting sucks.

Since Erin and I were commenting about the “are you going to hell” test in the “Jaded Courtroom” post a couple of posts ago, I thought I’d put the link up for all of you to enjoy. My cousin Jennifer sent me this link a couple of weeks ago.

Are You Going to Hell?

Disclaimer: for those of you with more “sensitive” senses of humor, i.e. you don’t have one, this test is for your amusement purposes only. It is not meant to be any sort of indicia as to whether you are actually going to hell, or whether you are a good or bad person. If you are one to think a quiz which scores your sin points is bad taste, do not click on the above link. Thanks.

P.S. I scored a 70. I think Mr. W scored 200. Haha. Feel free to comment on what you scored and if I know you, I’ll tell you whether I think it’s accurate. >=)

Okay. So. My trainee had a doctor’s appointment today, which allowed me to go to the closer gym. I got there early, ran 3 miles on the treadmill plus 1 lap cool-down. Then I hit the weights for 30 minutes, crammed 5 exercises in. I was sweating like a pig (do pigs sweat a lot? or are they referring to cops? like when a cop’s overweight from all the donut-munching that they’re sweaty and out of breath chasing a suspect for half a block? of course I’m just saying this to jab at all the sheriffs who work with me), I even got a blister one the side of a toe, just like I used to when I packed on the running mileage. The run was still terribly boring and seemed to last forever. I couldn’t wear my MP3 player until after the run cuz any contact with anything would cause it to reset, and as it was, it reset 3 times when I was doing weights. I need to get a better MP3 player. Any recommendations? The music was very helpful in hyping me up. Weights feel lighter with “I wanna fk you like an animal, I wanna feel you from the inside…” screaming in my ears.

Food count so far:
Breakfast – 1.5 cups Silk vanilla flavored soy milk (150 calories)
Snack – Chocolate Amond Biscotti ZonePerfect bar (210 calories)
Post-Workout Lunch – Chocolate Peanut Butter ZonePerfect bar (210 calories)

570 calories…that’s a lot, consider how little food that is! I expect to receive a phone call soon from Mr. W saying, “WHAT? That’s all you ate all day?! You need to eat more!”

In late 2002 or early 2003, I was at the gym and something my ex-roommie Brian, who was training a client near me, said to me caused me to respond, “Hell, I’m even scared to jog by the KFC cuz knowing my body, I’d smell the fried food and my body would take that scent molecule and turn it into a fat cell.”

I think my body also takes happiness and turns that into fat cells.

I have gained 15 pounds since the 2nd week of September. Actually, I think it’s the accumulation of lots of factors.
1.) Training someone at the gym means I’m not getting my usual 20 mins cardio plus 6-7 exercises every lunch. Because I have to go to a farther gym to train my coworker, that also cuts into the lunch hour. A typical session of ours is like 8 minutes of cardio warmup, 3 exercises with weights. (Which is why I don’t understand how she’s losing all this weight and gaining such great muscle tone.)
2.) Before the summer was over, in addition to my great noontime workouts, I used to do jujitsu 4 evenings a week, 2 hours per evening. I’m now down to 2.
3.) For 1.5 weeks straight before Cancun, I had to work thru every lunch and stay overtime till 7:30p and come in 2 Saturdays. That means no evening workouts and no noontime workouts. That must’ve greatly slowed my metabolism to cut out all exercise that suddenly.
4.) During Cancun, altho we worked out (HARD) twice a day, we were eating gourmet food probably cooked in lard, and I was pigging out cuz it was all-inclusive, so the working out did not offset the sluggish metabolism and the extra calories.
5.) I haven’t changed my eating habits to match my significantly less intensive exercise regimen.
6.) I’m happy, which means I have a great appetite. I’ve never dropped weight so fast as when I was going thru the crap the ex put me thru; I had no energy, I couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep at nite, and all I did at lunch was sleep in the jury room as my escape. My body dropped 20 lbs in a month.

Anyway, I am determined to lose the 15 pounds I’ve gained. Which means
* no junk food, period. I am applying the same stubbornness I had when I said, “Soda has 7 teaspoons of sugar per can?!” and stopped drinking soda for 9 years until I discovered Diet Coke.
* trying to get to the gym 10 mins earlier at lunch to get 20 mins of cardio in on M, W, F before I start training sessions w/my coworker
* running 3-4 miles T, R, and one weekend day (which is no problem because I’m sure Mr. W wouldn’t mind running with me)

Wish me luck! I’m sick of not fitting in my size twos.

For our most recent trial about the defendant who chased down the victim on the street and used the victim’s car Club in their fight and to break the van’s windows, the jury came back this morning and found the defendant not guilty of assault with a deadly weapon (I agree, cuz it really does sound like the two were just fighting each other), and guilty of vandalism with over $400 in damages (the victim produced a receipt from a car repair shop showing the repairs cost him $425.)

My bailiff said, “When the defendant’s mom asked him the night of the incident where he’s been, he told her he’d been clubbing.”