cindy's world

I caved this morning and turned on the central heater and set it for 70F degrees. It’d gotten to the point where it was too difficult to wash my face and do my morning routine while shaking so hard that I’m afraid I’m gonna put out an eye with my toothbrush.

I think Dodo has g0tten puffier. His winter coat is very dense and longer than his regular coat, and Scottish Folds have more rounded-off builds already, but this morning, looking down at him as he unfurrowed from his “C” in the cat bed, he was like a large round black and white poof. Brushing him didn’t appear to shrink him any, but it made me 25 minutes later getting in the car than I expected to be.

I don’t get it. I must step through some miniature Bermuda triangle in between the kitchen and the garage.

This is something I’ve never expressed outside of my head before, which brings to question why I’m expressing it now. Maybe I just need to sniffle to you guys — some friends, some acquaintances, some relatives, some complete strangers — piteously. I know not to what end.

It has been so cold here that I’ve been in a fitted turtleneck every day this week. (A different, clean turtleneck each day, my fashion-conscious friends.) Our jurors probably think I’m hiding a hickey. And yet, day after day, I ignorantly fail to bring a jacket or coat, despite knowing that it’s freezing at work and outside. So anyway, there are few things more uncomfortable to me than having to stand, face a 14-member jury panel plus witness and court staff, raise my right hand, and swear the witness in, while it’s obvious to everyone that I’m cold. =\ I used to be able to hide it with my long hair, which I would simply part and let drape down each shoulder. But I’ve had a haircut recently, and my hair no longer covers the essentials.

I am reminded of a line from “Friends,” in an episode where Chandler had started smoking again and had Ross’s apartment window open so he could blow smoke outside. It was snowing outside, and Joey said something to the effect of, “Will you stop smoking and close the window?! My nipples can cut glass over here!” I love “Friends.” I miss it.

At this time of year, when the holiday spirit abounds and inspires man to overcome all differences in philosophy, lifestyle, and personal history, it’s really nice of people to think of me and take that extra step.

2 minutes ago, a sheriff here on overtime from his academy-trainer regular position stepped into my courtroom and whispered (we’re in the midst of a criminal trial, he’s not just being creepy), “I thought of you last weekend.”
I asked, “How come?” and then answered my own question as we both said simultaneously, “The UCLA game.” “I know, I know,” I said, admitting defeat, “it should’ve been called the USC game because UCLA may as well have not been there.”
“Yeah, they need to substitute-in UCLA with a high school team,” he said, right before he said “Nice seein’ ya” and walked out.

I had a bad night last nite. 🙁 It still amazes me the level of emotional drama people will work themselves into and then throw at me. Thank goodness for being able to just hang up the phone when it becomes obvious that it’s just straight hysteria on the other end, once it became obvious that the person had actually walked away from the phone to have said hysteria, altho I had to deal with the guilt of that all nite. Also, it was freezing last nite. I’m surprised I woke up this morning at all (especially since my alarm wasn’t set — it turns out — all week); I thought I’d die of hypothermia. When I walked out of my bedroom this morning, I realized it was just my bedroom that was THAT cold. My cat was comfortably curled up in his sheepwool-lined cat bed in the upstairs hall, overlooking the lower level, where he can be master of all he surveys. Except that he’s not surveying much beyond the tip of his tail, curled up in a “C”.

I went out with some coworkers for lunch, and after topics dealing with personal drama, retirement, social activities, children and pets, complaints about work, speculation about coworkers — the usual stuff — somehow we hit on hypothyroidism. So I think I have it. I’d been tested before as having borderline hypothyroidism (underactive thyroid), but the doctor didn’t want to put me on medication in case it swings back into normal, cuz then I’d get really sick on the meds. Now that I’ve done some research on WebMD, I’m convinced my thyroid has swung into sleep mode again.

Hypothyroidism Symptoms
Symptoms of hypothyroidism usually develop slowly over months or years. Symptoms and signs may include:

Coarse and thinning hair. (I have a lot less hair now than I used to.)
Dry skin. (So dry it itches when my skin’s stretched out!)
Brittle nails. (They are chipping more easily these days, especially by my razor.)
A yellowish tint to the skin. (…and I thought I was just Asian.)
Slow body movements. (Totally. I ooze place-to-place now.)
Cold skin. (I’m always cold now.)
Inability to tolerate cold. (See above.)
Feeling tired, sluggish, or weak. (Check, check, and check. Sluggish. Oozing.)
Memory problems, depression, or difficulty concentrating. (I don’t retain info like I used to, which makes me sad, and the sadness detracts from my ability to concentrate on my work. That and boredom. Which makes me sad, too.)
Constipation. (I read in several places that unless you’re pooping 2-3 times a day, you’re constipated. So I’d poop halfway, cut it off, suck the rest back up to save for later so that I’d poop more often in a day. I’m SO just kidding! Don’t take me seriously! 98% of all constipated people are full of shit, anyway.)
Heavy or irregular menstrual periods that may last longer than 5 to 7 days. (I bleed like an amputee when I’m off the pill.)

Other, less common symptoms may include:

An enlarged thyroid gland (goiter).
Modest weight gain, often 10 lb(4.5 kg) or less.
Swelling of the arms, hands, legs, and feet, and facial puffiness, particularly around the eyes.
Hoarseness.
Muscle aches and cramps.

So now we have a cause for my sluggishness, dry skin, weight gain, hair loss, etc etc. =P This is why I can never be a med student (next to “queasy around blood,” and “needs a functional brain”).

I was listening to a morning talk show on my way in to work this morning. They had Darryl Hannah on talking about how she has an old El Camino automobile that she runs on recycled fast food vegetable oil. They asked her what conversion she did with her engine to take that for fuel, and she said none. Turns out that all diesel engines can run off vegetable oil, that diesel engines were invented in 1900 to run off peanut oil, and it’s cleaner-burning than petroleum and does not give off reactive organic gases (“greenhouse gas,” she called it, the stuff that reacts with sunlight to create smog). She said the byproduct toxicity is something in between that of table salt and maple syrup. Her engine runs smoother and quieter, and she gets better mileage, too. She did admit, however, that her car exhaust sometimes smells like French fries. Why aren’t we all doing this? Aside from the fact that my car doesn’t take diesel. I think the heavy tankers and big rigs should run off vegetable oil.

Speaking of big rigs, a juror in our trial called in this morning saying she was running late because all the major freeways were jammed due to two major incidents which, according to her, are on the news. The first is a big rig that flipped over and killed a guy. The second, according to the juror, was caused by a guy getting robbed by some other guys, and the victim chased the robbers down the freeway (presumably in their respective cars), and the robbers ended up shooting him. Ick.

I’ve been pooped lately. I wish I’d noted whether I’m just pooped these few days (so I can blame it on PMS or mental stress), or whether I’ve been like this for a few weeks (which I’d have to blame on my recent weight gain and drop in the intensity of exercise).

At lunch today, I did 25 minutes on the treadmill — a 2-mile run plus a walking 1-lap cooldown — and 25 minutes on the elliptical trainer. Before you give me any kudos for this, lemme say that I had planned on doing 40 minutes straight on the treadmill, which would give me a 4-mile run. But I couldn’t do it. My conditioning has melted to crap, and being out of battery on my MP3 player didn’t help.

This is gonna be my new think-of-it-this-way: I will lose 15 pounds in a specific, preset number of days, and all I have to do is put in my 40 minutes at the gym daily. Any day I take off will be added to the number of calendar days until I reach my target weight. Simple formula. I’m gonna call it 90 gym days. The more gym days I put in, the quicker I can cross off calendar days in reaching my goal. There, I think I’ve now convinced myself that it’s easy.

What happened to the days when every other day, I’d do 40 minutes of weights at lunch, then 40 minutes of cardio after work, and run 3-5 miles on the days in-between, plus one long 6-12 mile run on one weekend day and a 2-hour weight-training workout on the other weekend day? Man, I had no life.

Sometimes I wonder whether the way people treat me has anything to do with me at all. Maybe they cubbyholed me into a certain group because I remind them of someone else in that group. Maybe someone cozied up to me really quickly not because I was recognized as someone trustworthy and valuable, but because I just happened to plug into the outline of someone lost and missing from this person’s life. As if I were just a continuation of someone else. If that is the case, then the set of rules and behaviors applied to me and expected of me may not be a fit, which disparity just makes the person disappointed or angry. It makes me sad when I see this. I don’t want to be someone’s surrogate sister, daughter, best friend, mother, wife or partner the 2nd day I’m with them. See me. Have a relationship with me. If it develops into something like a sister, daughter, best friend, etc., that’s fine. I think it’s sad for me because I can see that the behaviors and definitions came too quickly, too unnaturally, and I’m afraid that when the person realizes I’m not who I’m presumed to be, then that person will walk away as I lose meaning for that person…but that person wouldn’t have lost meaning to me.

I just dreamt that I missed my own birthday party, altho I knew that it was being planned and knew of some of the guests in attendance. But my friend Vicky was nice enough to call and tell me that it went well. There was a white-frosted homemade cake on a clear glass plate and the candle was shaped like a big, pink microscope sticking phallically straight out of it (as tho the cake were on the Petri dish portion of a 2-foot tall microscope). There was a singular flame at the eyepiece. People oohed and clapped when it was brought in the door. In my dream, while on the phone with her thanking her (she, a pharmacist in reality, was responsible for the cake), it occurred to me that I probably should’ve been there, and I felt bad and stupid for it not occurring to me to attend. She assured me that it was fine that I wasn’t there, because “You know how many people needed you not to be there because they needed to ask who you are, and what to get you? We told them, ‘Oh, you know Cindy. She’s a really nice person.’ ” I wondered only briefly who attended who weren’t even sure of who I was, but I figured that maybe other people were invited by word-of-mouth after I had seen the still-developing guest list. I started to ask whether my friends who threw this party had photos of me to show these people so they could recognize who I was, and then I laughed, feeling silly because I knew that of course they had my photos there. It was a wedding shower so of course there’d be the engagement photos of me all over the place. And then I stopped. What party is this? Shouldn’t I have been there, no matter whether it was my birthday party, my wedding shower, or my bachelorette party? I started to get offended when I realized that no one had actually called and told me when and where the party was to take place, which is why I wasn’t there. And then I woke up.

I’m not exactly sure why I’m blogging this, except that I was told to, perhaps in a “go away and stop bothering my sleep”-motivated sort of way. I’m an obedient insomniac.

I like Southern California because so many cultures are accessible in a relatively small area. Especially where food is concerned. This morning, we did the Americana thing with a BLT-type sandwich at Corner Bakery, then caught an early matinee at the movies (Aeon Flux). Popcorn and soda, cliche stuff. We skipped lunch, watched some random stuff on TV, then drove to a Mexican food restaurant somewhere in a backwoods community an hour away. In the warmer seasons, a brook runs by the wooden split-level patio of the restaurant, which faces the woods. After dinner, we drove off-road and admired the cold winter air, forest crickets, and stars. On the drive back, we stopped by an Asian plaza and grabbed some boba tea stuff at Lollicup, and I bought some Chinese pork jerky and marinated bean curd jerky. And we’re back at Mr. W’s, where I’m all showered up and about to watch Charlize Theron’s Monster on DVD, which role earned her an Oscar.

I don’t see how I could ever move anywhere else. 🙂 Unless SoCal goes to hell, or detaches from the rest of the US and sinks into the Pacific, as some doomsayers predict.