cindy's world

I just got back from watching King Kong. Here’s an outline:

Hour 1: Why the island movie has to be made; setting: New York and ship.
Hour 2: King Kong vs. Godzilla meets Jurassic Park meets Land of the Lost (sans Sleestaks); setting: Skull Island.
Hour 3: Exploitation of the King by us awful people; setting: New York City.

They could’ve cut the majority of the first hour out. The second hour has amazing effects and gorgeous scenery, but it looked like a more realistic Looney Tunes Merrie Melodies cartoon. It was so goofy. It was cool how Ann, despite being thrown around by King Kong and running around the jungle being chased by dinosaurs (yes.) and huge centipedes, stayed perfectly clean and beautiful, her hair still softly curled, clothing barely falling within the description of “dingy.” Hour 3. Sigh, hour 3. The stuff of love stories. Bittersweet, beautiful, tear-jerking hour 3. I laughed, I cried. And then I cried and cried. People around me cried. Men and women cried. Hour 3 is worth the first 2 hours.

King Kong has such life. His face is amazing. You feel like you know him and know what he’s thinking. His character (they actually gave him a character, not just a rubber body) is like a spoiled guy with some attitude, some boyish charm, and lots of alpha male testosterone and pride. And he’s a noble hero. As the actor character said, “Real heros don’t look like me! They have bad teeth, and bald spots, and beer bellies!” There you have it. King Kong is a hero.

I was introduced to smellypoop.com, which is a real web site with poop gag products, poop research, and lots of scatology info. I read thru most of the info, and yup, all the stuff you’ve ever wanted to know about poop, and more. Emphasis on the “and more.” At some points I was fascinated in a scholarly sense, and at other points — like the part about animals and people eating poo (coprophagy, it’s got a name!) — I was just disgusted. And then I was horrified by this little tidbit of info:

“Can you get sick from eating poop?

Yes, you can definitely get sick from eating poop, even in minute quantities! Although urine emerges sterile from the body (unless the person has an infection), poop emerges loaded with bacteria and sometimes other life forms. Many diseases, including food poisoning, cholera and typhus, are spread by fecal contamination. Many parasites, such as the notorious tapeworm, can be spread through deliberate or accidental ingestion of poop.
There are some parasites, such as pinworms, who depend on people eating their own poop to keep the population up. Pinworms are small nematodes that live in the colon. The females emerge from the anus at night to lay their eggs. Their activity makes the anal area itch. The person scratches the itch (often doing so in his sleep), procuring a small amount of fecal matter and eggs under his fingernails, and then puts his fingers in his mouth. Once the eggs are consumed, the person is infected with a new generation of pinworms.
I have read that almost everyone has pinworms. Luckily, pinworms don’t do much harm. You only notice them if you have a lot of pinworms! If you want to find out if you do indeed have them, get someone to gently touch around your anal area with Scotch tape while you are sleeping. The worms will stick to the tape and you’ll be able to see them.”

What does he MEAN, “almost everyone”?! It instantly made me wonder if I have pinworms, and then I imagined finding out that I have pinworms by the, uh, scientific technique the author suggested, and then I just thought it’s better that I don’t know.

Oh yeah. I’m not at work today. Took a “mental health” day off with permission from my supervisor.

Organic bananas, grapefruits, avocados, soy milk, 2 tubs of Breyers ice cream (mint chip and cookies & cream), peanut butter (crunchy AND creamy): $17.
Feeling better from eating better and cutting out the chemicals: priceless.

I ate lunch w/coworkers and retired coworkers on Tuesday instead of working out, and it was heavy Mexican food that made me feel bloated all day afterwards, so I pushed myself to run an extra mile today at lunch. (Hey, if a retired coworker is gonna drive 70 miles one-way to see us for lunch from Banning, CA, the least I can do is attend.) So now, four miles, a grapefruit and two bananas later, I’m feeling good. The whole digestive system seems to be working better. I feel clean.

Tonite, I’m planning to blanche broccoli and have celery w/peanut butter before jujitsu. Maybe I’ll even open one of the tubs of ice cream. I’d wanted to eat an avocado today, but they’re not ripe enough. I keep pressing on the avocado I brought in today, as if ripening occurs in sudden, 5-minute intervals. While running today and thinking about the avocado, I remembered a story told to me about my ex’s dog, Osa. She would pick some avocados up from the ground under the avocado tree, and bring it back to “her spot” under some bushes that line the side of the house, and she’d guard her avocados for days until they ripened, which is when she’d eat them. I don’t know how a dog knows when an avocado is ripe. I almost cut into mine just cuz it has a sticker on it that says “Mission: RIPE 4225 Chile”, until my court reporter stopped me and said it’s not ripe, it’s too hard, and there may be parts that are edible but I’d have to waste the rest of it. Damn misleading sticker.

My jujitsu instructor invited me to compete this March. I shook my head, wide-eyed. He looked at me steadily, and I became unsure of what he was looking for, so I just looked back. Finally, he turned to another student and asked her, and she agreed. Maybe I made a mistake. Maybe I should’ve just gone for it. I’m not getting any younger. But I feel so green. Last semester was pretty much a waste as far as jujitsu went. I was so flakey. Maybe I’ll aim for a summer competition.

I was trying not to bitch about this, but, clearly, I failed. It’s common knowledge that if a relief clerk takes your place in your courtroom, you’ll come back to things either not done, not done right, or things misplaced/changed. I got all 3 categories.

The trial we got yesterday has two probation violation cases trailing it. That means that the guy’s in trial on one case, and if he’s found guilty, he’s obviously violated the terms of his probation on his 2 other cases cuz one of the terms of probation is to not commit any crimes (duh). (Of course the defendant gets due process on the probation violation cases, i.e. a probation violation hearing.) Anyway, the relief clerk only did a minute order entry on the main case. I had to find out that there were 2 trailing probation violation cases for which nothing was done, and I really don’t want to do work for someone when I wasn’t even here for the hearing and have my name attached to a legal document, but hell, it’s not gonna take very long. So I had to email my supervisor to ask for her ID# to input into the system for her 2 orders, or at least her name, so that I could put it into the comment section. Of course he hasn’t responded. I hope he just tells her to do the two entries herself. As for our 7-defendant criminal case my department did in the morning before the trial, I’m scared to look in there in case she screwed stuff up, and the heavy file’s just sitting on top of the file cabinet, not even put back in a filing cabinet. Apparently some important things happened in that 7-defendant case, i.e. a lot of charges got dropped and 3 defendants were therefore released from the case, subject to refiling. That’s a lot of updating in the system.

And here’s the more petty bitching: my chair was lowered all the way down and stuck like that so that it took both me and my reporter to yank the thing back up; my favorite pen is missing. I’m not saying she stole it. Maybe she just didn’t put it back anywhere I could find it.

If I wanted the day off or I called in sick or am on vacation, that’s fine, I made the request and it’s a sacrifice I considered. But when I’m here for work and I get taken out of my courtroom to fill in for another courtroom and my own courtroom is in session, without any forewarning when they could’ve planned this better by arranging for someone else to fill in the other courtroom last week or at least by letting me know so that I could make some prep in my courtroom… argh!

OH MY GAWD! I just leaned back in my chair and the whole back just goes completely back! I don’t know what the hell adjustment I need to make so that I don’t flip out of it if I leaned back! Waaah!!

We were discussing ages while standing in the throw-me line in jujitsu earlier. Navy Vanessa (turned out she was Navy, not Air Force) said she’s gonna be 25 next Wednesday. I said, “Hey, you’re an insomiac. We should go out for drinks after jujitsu on Wednesday and celebrate your birthday!” Her eyes lit up. And then I just started inviting people. All of a sudden I was the girl who’s throwing some cool event that everyone wants to be a part of, and I didn’t even get Vanessa’s okay first. It even got to the point where Josh said discreetly that maybe we should talk about this with a more selective crowd of people around instead of making it seem like such an open invite to every stranger out there.

How presumptuous am I? But I can’t help thinking that if I were more like this in high school — more charismatic, more confident in my social acceptance — I would’ve been a hell of a lot more popular. Oh well, I had the childhood I had for a reason, and it made me who I am now, which I wouldn’t trade.

Today was a very inopportune morning to be trapped in a nightmare in which my ex had plotted to have me killed and I was unable to touch base with law enforcement about it. I was stuck in this nasty little world until almost 8:30a, which made me very late for work. And of course, this would be the day that I have a complicated criminal proceeding in my courtroom, and also the day I run into both supervisors, who were aware of my tardiness because they were trying to track me down to pull me out of my courtroom so that I could fill in for a specialized courtroom down the hall. Why they couldn’t have done this clerk scheduling last week was beyond me. So here I am, with a baby relief clerk in my courtroom trying to handle a rather fussy case, while I’m stuck in a busy civil law & motion calendar. I can feel two particular muscles clench in my neck and back, the old reaction I have to work-related stress.

I really, really want a day of massage, spa and pampering. I’ve wanted it so much that all my tentative get-together plans with various women revolve around plans for a spa treatment. And yet there’s nothing solid enough with any of them to book. I normally would just book on my own for something close to home after work and go alone, but I don’t really want to flake on jujitsu.

Maybe Friday, when there’s no jujitsu, I can leave my happy hour coworkers a bit early for a Friday evening appointment. Or maybe even drag some of them along. Hmm…

Thanks, Vicky, for getting me hooked on these things ever since that first Burke Williams appointment we did for your bachelorette event. I never knew what bliss I missed out on. I don’t know how I lived before spa treatments!

Ever since we finalized our cruise booking on Saturday morning, Mr. W would, here and there, lean toward me and say something like, “We’re gonna be in Jamaica, baby!” He downloaded a bunch of Bob Marley songs and his XFM was set on a reggae station all weekend. My first cruise. I hope I don’t gain another 15 lbs. But is it any wonder that this song’s stuck in my head?

Kokomo
performed by The Beach Boys

Aruba, Jamaica, ooh I wanna take ya
To Bermuda, Bahama, come on pretty mama
Key Largo, Montego, baby why don’t we go
Jamaica

Off the Florida Keys
There’s a place called Kokomo
That’s where you wanna go to get away from it all

Bodies in the sand
Tropical drink melting in your hand
We’ll be falling in love
To the rhythm of a steel drum band
Way down in Kokomo

Refrain:
Aruba, Jamaica, ooh I wanna take ya
To Bermuda, Bahama, come on pretty mama
Key Largo, Montego, baby why don’t we go
(Ooh I wanna take you) down to Kokomo
We’ll get there fast
And then we’ll take it slow
That’s where we wanna go
Way down to Kokomo

To martinique, that monserrat mystique

We’ll put out to sea
And we’ll perfect our chemistry
By and by we’ll defy a little bit of gravity

Afternoon delight
Cocktails and moonlit nights
That dreamy look in your eye
Give me a tropical contact high
Way down in Kokomo

Refrain

Port au prince, I wanna catch a glimpse

Everybody knows
A little place like Kokomo
Now if you wanna go
And get away from it all
Go down to Kokomo

Refrain 2x

Ooh I wanna take you down to Kokomo

There really is something to be said about driving to gorgeous San Clemente less than a mile from the ocean to hang out with one of my favorite coworkers and her eclectic family and friends for her youngest son’s post-wedding shindig. We had sheriffs there, courtroom clerks, adults in their 40s, alternative-party people in their early 20s (with whom I was mixing drinks and exchanging bawdy conversation), smokers, tokers, lesbians, conservatives, tattooed body parts, pierced body parts, mohawks, and tiny tots. Okay, I don’t know about the tokers, it just sounded good in there. I’ll just assume everyone at that party who had ever used any kind of recreation drug has now stopped. My point is, I had so much fun! And SO worth the drive, not just for the happy friendly people, but also for the fresh air and beautiful view! I had wondered before how it is my coworker is content to commute such a distance to work daily, but with her great hubbie at home and home by the beach, I understand completely now. Her family is so different from my own family, but I’d always felt so at home around her, her husband, and her kids (who are about my age anyway). There really is more than one way to live and be, and more than one way to be happy.

Flight from Los Angeles to Fort Lauderdale, Florida to go on a 5-day west Carribean cruise on the Carnival Imagination to the Grand Cayman islands, Ocho Rios island, Jamaica, booked for February! Yay!

Of course I requested the latest dinner seating, 8:30p, so that I could hit the onboard gym before dinner each night.

Yay!