cindy's world

I was checking to see if the blog server came back up, cuz I mean, it’s been days, and I have stuff to say. But when this site popped up, all post ideas fell out of my head through my gaping mouth. What happened to my pretty green script-fonted format?! Oh well. Blue is pretty, too. I like ice blue, that’s the color of my cell phone, too. And it’s wintery.

I have 15 more minutes to kill while I wait for my hair to suck in the hair dye, so I’ll sit here and explore the format and try to remember what it was that I wanted to post over the past several days when the server had been down.

Today was one of those weird bipolar days where my diet is concerned. I drove to work inspired and determined to lose weight and make myself hot, came in and had a donut that was provided at our meeting. Right before lunch, because my bailiff was telling me a story, I figured I may as well fortify myself for my noon run, so I ate another donut as I listened to him. And then I did a 3-mile run, got a good sweat, felt really good. Again, I wanted to be hot and, like, wear a black leather outfit so tight that I look like a cross between Halle Berry’s “Catwoman” and Malibu Barbie. I came back, worked through our trial and had another donut.

I’m gonna try to skip dinner tonite. Or just have an apple or something. =P But the way this day is going, I’m probably gonna have dinner anyway, and it’ll likely be a donut.

This post probably moved Wilco to tears.

The image hosting site is back up, so let’s finish this post up. 🙂 So, it was Saturday afternoon/evening, and my friends Sandy and Johnny have me over at Johnny’s to cheer me up, and to join their holiday setup as well as enjoy the beautiful Manhattan Beach, golden sands one small block away.

Don’t tell me this isn’t sweet:

What I was laughing at is the pose I had before Sandy actually took the picture.

Me with my oldest friend in the world (not old as in age, old as in we were running around the pier in braids and pigtails chasing after Uno cards blowing around at 5am as over-bundled-up six-year-olds in sweaters, vests, jackets and shawls as our dads hung over the pier and fished and our moms…actually, I have no memory of what our moms were doing).

You know how you drink a little too much, look into your wineglass, and think, “Look at all the pretty colors! It looks likes a sunset over Manhattan Beach” ?

Back at the house, we finished decorating the tree with the antique ornaments, and Sandy and Johnny are now taking a break with their wine. Sandy and Johnny are both admiring their respective favorite things in the room.

“It’s Christmas-Chunks!” Sandy chirped delightedly at seeing Chunk the cat in front of the tree. I told her I thought “Christmas Chunks” sounded like someone threw up eggnog.

The tree lights were finally turned on, and after oohing and aahing, Sandy went to do some adjustments and finishing touches. Johnny, as you can see, moves *really* fast.

Johnny’s holding back tears at his Christmasy living room scene. “It’s beautiful, man,” he sniffles. Gruffly and masculinely, of course.

My busy gym trainee rushed in earlier and plopped a tupperware container on my desk with a piece of chocolate on top of it. “You never bring lunch, so I don’t even gotta ask, ‘You got lunch?’ ” and rushed back out before I could get over the shock enough to register what happened.

That’s so sweet! =) I’m in a totally good mood now. Mom-types pick up right away that I’m a mess. Haha. But it takes a friend to try to clean me up.

(I’m running out of winter holiday themed titles, by the way. And we’re only halfway thru the month!)

My girl friend Sandy and I had our first complete “real Christmas tree” experience on Saturday at Manhattan Beach. Her friend Johnny was thrilled that he gets to “kill two birds with one stone” by popping both our cherries in this respect. Remember the last time I was there and was upset for not having my camera? (see posts Out of Character, Part I and Part II) This time I made sure to bring my camera! I had so much fun, they’re wonderful cheerer-uppers, the location was beautiful, and there was lots of festivity, tradition, sarcasm, laughter, and a smokey cat named Chunk!

Memorial to the Vets next to the tree lot:

I never knew pine needles grew straight out of the tree’s bark.

Taking the tree home

Setting up the tree

Johnny showing you his blood, sweat and tears invested into the project.

Santa’s Workshop, aka Johnny’s Decoration Collection. Some of those things date back several generations to 1920!

Moon over Manhattan. Beach, that is.

Johnny about to break into song, inspired by the beautiful beachy sunset.

And what view is so inspiring for Johnny? This one:

Oops, the image hosting site just crashed. Something I did? I’ll post the tree photos in a followup entry. Rest your mouse pointer over the photo for a caption!

The Wilco server is finally back up, having been down since Friday night. The recent entries I wrote were about how everything happens for a good reason and life is wonderful, thereby jinxing myself for the second time since I started this blog. I’m gonna trust providence and not blog about the negative occurrences of the weekend I just had since the blog must’ve gone down for a reason the moment things went horribly wrong in my life, and didn’t come back up until my 2nd (hopefully successful) attempt at resolution. Yup, I’m not going to talk about all the sadness and badness here…except to say that I found out alcohol doesn’t do a damn thing to alleviate the grieving heart. Not a one. I don’t understand why people turn to alcohol for relief. I had been drinking since 4:45pm Friday, finally stopping last nite after 3 martinis and a glass of blanc, and my problems neither faded nor lessened their sting, much less disappeared or became forgotten. I don’t get alcoholics. I don’t.

What begins with a funeral, ends with a party, and has lots of hard work in-between? No, it’s not the way a dyslexic person describes his life. It’s…today!

I got in to work early to meet up with my judge and court reporter, and the judge drove us to my bailiff’s mother’s funeral. It was a nice little service. My bailiff, whom we hadn’t seen for the past week due to his bereavement leave, had his back turned looking into the coffin with his arm around his sister when we walked into the chapel. Then the service began, and he never saw us, because we had to leave early to come resume our criminal trial. It was nice to see that there were so many people there that he wouldn’t have missed us. I recognized his daughter and his brother from photos he’d shown us.

At lunch, I left to go run 4 miles at the gym. Lately, altho I tell people “I’m gonna hit 4 miles today” when they ask where I’m going, I don’t really believe myself. I figure that’s just the tentative plan, but that I’d likely modify it when my athletic abilities don’t allow for the optimism. Surprisingly, I ran 4 miles without any overexertion at 5.8 mph (a bit over 41 mins), then did a lap and a half cool-down jog-walk. Without my MP3 player. I guess my court reporter was right. Sometimes you have an “off” day (like Monday), and sometimes you have an “on” day. I’m glad I took advantage of my “on” day. She, on the other hand, I caught yawning while doing arm curls. She’s “off” today and hated every moment of her workout, but in the end, no matter how much your brain resents the process, your body still got the benefits of a workout in.

Tonight, Mr. W’s buddy is spinning (or maybe just DJ-ing, I’m not sure) at some beach town club. I don’t remember what city he said it’s in. But we’re gonna go represent. The location’s supposed to be just casual dress, but casual in a club is not the same casual at a BBQ, so I have no idea what to wear. Especially since it rained earlier, so looking skanky has its price. Har. On the other hand, I really should wear the stuff I can get away with wearing now, before my body ages and my skin puckers and my parts sag and support becomes not just an option, but mandatory if I don’t want to trip over mammary glands.

I was off after work to run an errand yesterday, which involved getting bad directions, getting lost, getting stuck in traffic, and fighting angry people (not literally). And that was just in getting there. I’d left the completed errand thinking I got the short end of the stick, but I just checked some sources and it turns out Lady Luck was really smiling down on me when it all went down, unbeknownst to me. Cuz the alternative, which I had chosen against and then bitterly regretted yesterday, turned out upon further examination today to be the worse choice BY FAR. I’m really happy and grateful.

I think I was 16 when I realized that Fate, Providence, my spirit guide, my guardian angel, God, Jesus, whomever is responsible for looking out for me and keeping me straight on my path, knows what they’re doing waaaay more than I do. I’m just blind and dumb stumbling around on Earth, trying to make sense out of something larger than me, for which I don’t have enough information to make sense of. That was when I trusted the higher power completely to arrange things that may not be my choice at the time, but ultimately always turns out better for me than what I would’ve chosen for myself in my ignorance. In other words, if I was upset that I didn’t get my wish, I later found out why and was grateful. At age 16, the issue was something as small as not being able to schedule my classes the way I wanted them so that I could be with the friends I wanted in my classes. But the way fate arranged my classes later proved to be more ideal than I could’ve figured, as more circumstances unfolded over time that would’ve made my personal choices bad for me. The effect of that realization is why even to now, each year I blow out my birthday candles, I don’t wish for anything specific. Instead, I defer the wish to my other-worldly guides to do with it as they see fit.

With the spiritual research I’d done since age 16, I’ve developed a larger understanding of the way things are, and I am completely comfortable with what I have learned, and I see it working every day in small miracles, too perfect and too many to be written off as coincidence.

So for the small blessing yesterday, I am humbled as I am shown once again, that I don’t necessarily know what’s best for me, that the Other Side does, and I am grateful that I am taken care of, even in the smallest of ways. I see You, Lord, and I thank You for always walking with me despite my too-often lapses into Earthly complaints.

Oh. And I also thank You for giving me Diana’s aid in my time of need yesterday. The timing, as with everything, was immaculate.

Amen.

I was helping Mr. W’s daughter with her math homework yesterday, and I use the word “helping” very, very loosely. People who know me know I avoid math whenever possible, and in college, I’d taken anything that would fulfill the same credit requirement that math would — geology, pollution & atmospheric sciences, accounting, oceanography — to avoid taking a math class. (I must’ve been out of my mind to take AP Calculus my senior year in high school.)

My brain froze on this equation:
A train leaves the station traveling 45 kilometers per hour going east. 3 hours later, a second train leaves the same station and travels east on a parallel track at 68 kilometers per hour. How long would it take the second train to catch up to the first train?

WHO REMEMBERS HOW TO DO THAT?! I mean, I could probably do it the dummy way and make a chart of “hour 1, train 1 is this far away. hour 2…” and then do another series for train 2 and wait for the numbers to coincide. But apparently this is a distance = rate X time algebraic equation set-up thing.

BLEAH! *vomit*

I was encouraged to start snowboarding last nite in a phone conversation, and I thought I’d check my goals list to see if it’s on my list.

GACK! I just reviewed the goals I set for myself before I turn 30 and I’ve done ONE THING off the list! The motorcycle thing is pretty much out the window. I’m not gonna have time to learn to surf in before my birthday (it’s too cold to get in the ocean), I don’t have vacation in warm weather to stay at a bed-and-breakfast in the Niagara Peninsula, and altho San Diego is only a couple hours’ drive away, I haven’t stayed at the Hotel del Coronado there!

And then I looked at my local goals, and we’ve only hit 2/5 food places, 1/4 places to visit!

Life’s passing me by again! Time to start kickin’ my ass. If I did New Year’s Resolutions I’d put them on that.