cindy's world

Our little dinner crew:

In Jordan’s words, “This was the show at 3:45 a.m. The one they don’t advertise in the brochures.”

Not much in my life to complain about. Not much to brag about, either. Not much progress in my workouts to report. (In fact I only worked out 3x this week; a 3-mile run on Monday, lunchtime gym sesh on Tuesday, jujitsu on Wednesday, and that was it.) So I guess I’ll tell you a gross cruise story.

When we arrived in Florida for the cruise, they had just had their first rain in a long time, and it was supposed to have been a pretty bad storm. Unfortunately, our cruiseship followed the storm’s path out to sea. The first nite at sea, we actually caught up to and navigated thru the storm. The waters were rocky and choppy, and early the next morning (day 2 onboard), the ship was swinging to and fro and a lot of people got seasick.

I tell you guys this not because I believe I got seasick, but there is an existing debate as to whether I got seasick. See, we had yoga scheduled for 7am that morning, and the exercise/spa section of the ship is at nearly the very top level of the ship, so we get the bulk of the rocking. This is also the peak time, as I found out later, that people were seasick because this was the time we were in the most unsteady waters. I had told Mr. W before and also that morning that I shouldn’t eat before yoga because I’d done yoga on a semi-full stomach before and it made me very nauseated. Nevertheless, he insisted on grabbing a small bite before yoga class. So, factor 1: 6:30a breakfast off Florida means 3:30a breakfast in Los Angeles time. WAY too early for my body to function. Factor 2: food in my stomach, even tho it’s just a little (plain yogurt, half a muffin, half a cup of juice), makes me sick in yoga. Factor 3: the exercise room in which we were doing yoga was rocking so hard that people couldn’t hold their poses; they kept falling over. I could do the downward dog position just fine, everytime I was inverted I was okay, but the moment I got up I was sick. I got sicker and sicker until my forehead felt cold and clammy, so to keep from passing out, I just excused myself from yoga and sat out at the side of the room on a bench. An older lady got up from her yoga mat and sat by me, saying she was sick too and she was going to take a break from yoga. Then she asked me where the bathroom was, and I pointed her in the direction of the women’s locker room. She left and came back in about 10 minutes, during which time I continued to get sick until I decided that to play it safe, I should go into the women’s locker room and be near a restroom.

When I got into the women’s locker room, my throat was reaching back into itself to access my stomach. You guys know the pre-upchuck feeling. I quickly walked to the towels, grabbed one, and walked into the only available stall, which was a large handicap stall, with about 2 seconds to spare as my diaphragm was already pulling itself in to start the first wave of regurgitation. I popped into the stall, locked it, then swirled around to lurch toward the toilet. With that little time, there was nothing I could do about the fact that someone had already vomited all over the toilet seat, on the floor in front of the toilet, and on the back of the toilet. I barely made it around the side of the toilet away from the farthest-reaching pool of brown and peach puke on the floor, and did my best with projectile vomiting, aiming for the toilet. I hadn’t thrown up in a long time, and vomiting then was surprisingly painless and easy. I wasn’t even grossed out by the pre-existing vomit there. Even tho I was barefoot from the yoga class. I know what you’re wondering. Yes, yes I did. A little. But what bothered me the most was that I didn’t want people to think that *I* had such bad aim with my vomit and just left it there like irresponsible decor that announces my breakfast choices. But I wasn’t gonna clean up someone else’s bug juice. I did a great job vomiting, not a drop outside the toilet.

After puking I felt much better but went back to the cabin to take a nap. It really was still just too early in the morning. Mr. W went to have lunch on his own, and when he came back, he offered me a white folded-up paper bag. “I was just at the infirmary,” he announced. “It’s full of sick people. People are all green walking around the ship. But here’s a barf bag for your seasickness.” “I am NOT seasick,” I announced. After I threw up, I wasn’t sick again for the remainder of the voyage, even tho I heard people who were actually seasick were sick for most of the day. For the next few days, every time we saw the bag on the windowsill in our cabin, I’d say, “What’s that? Oh, that’s your barf bag.” “No, it’s YOUR barf bag,” he’d say. “It’s YOUR barf bag cuz you went and got it, and I’m not seasick.” “Yes you were, it’s YOUR barf bag.”

Mr. W didn’t know about my barfing experience until yesterday. He heard me tell the story to someone else (sans the barefoot detail) and he asked, “Is that where you disappeared off to? Were you upset that I wasn’t there to hold your hair up for you?” Ew, no. I wouldn’t have wanted him there. He would’ve blamed the poorly aimed upchuck on ME, and used it to say that I was seasick.

Yay, I have internet access at home again! My man’s my hero. =)

I don’t have much to report today on a post. My judge took today and tomorrow off to give himself a 5-day weekend (Monday’s a holiday) to help his son with some huge school project. I think that’s very sweet. I’m in a courtroom with one of my favorite judges doing a criminal trial. He’s easy-going and the pace of the trial is comfortable. I tried to check my gmail but I keep getting a blank white screen instead of my inbox. It’s been like that for 2 days. I complained about it to Mr. W, whose solution was for me to just check my email from home, and then I told him I have no internet access at home cuz my modem or DSL and/or router aren’t working. So he insisted on coming over after work to fix my computer. I’m so excited about that, he hardly ever comes over. If he doesn’t stay long, which he says he wouldn’t, then I guess I’ll be catching jujitsu tonite. They gave me a little bit of a hard time for not going Monday and Tuesday, cuz they all know that my cruise was only last week. But Monday was a holiday and Tuesday was Vday, so what’d they expect?

It’s nice to have a placid and well-paced day, actually. Yesterday, I was so bored that I drove myself crazy and miserable.

Woohoo, it’s 2:17pm and the judge is recessing the trial for the day because the defense ran out of witnesses for today.

For those of you who aren’t “Friends” fanatics, the title of the post refers to an episode of “Friends” in which Joey asks Chandler to hook him up with one of Chandler’s film producer friends for a movie audition. Joey wants the audition on Thursday. “Look, if you can’t remember Thursday, this’ll help you. Just remember, Thursday: the third day.” Chandler looked puzzled, like how is Thursday the 3rd day? Joey continues by counting on his fingers. “Monday: one day, Tuesday: two day, Wednesday: when? huh?, THURSDAY: the THIRD DAY.” This Thursday really is like my 3rd day since Monday was an idle day when I just unpacked, watched a lot of TV, ran 3 miles, then went to meet up with college roommie Diana for dinner.

Vday dinner was very cool. I’d wanted to stay in to avoid paying 3x regular prices for overcrowded restaurants, so Mr. W made New York strip steak, rosemary potatoes, steamed broccoli, ciabatta bread, and for dessert was a Valentine’s cookie (heavy on the frosting) and chocolate cherry ice cream. We had dessert while watching a few episodes of Friends on DVD. It was the perfect evening.

I was all excited to give him his present, two Category 1 tickets to Cirque du Soleil’s “Quidam.” I said, “It was so hard to keep quiet about your gift for so long!” as I handed him the card with the tickets hidden inside a flap. (Miami seaport was doing Cirque’s “Varekai” show and he’d wanted to squeeze a show in either before the cruise or upon our return. He kept saying how much he liked Cirque du Soleil. Finally, upon our return, he passed on it, saying that he would not be able maintain consciousness in a 3-hour darkened show right now.) He claimed to know what I got him because he said I didn’t keep very quiet, especially not during the cruise. I was surprised. And then I bopped his arm for being a spoiler. But lo and behold, when he opened the card, he said, “Well. I didn’t know you were gonna get me this. I love Cirque du Soleil!” HA.

For my present, aside from the nice dinner and chocolate covered strawberries and cookies left for me yesterday morning, was a whole bunch of our cruise photos printed out and framed. I’d been saying I want to print out digital photos to put them up, but I never got around to printing them because I didn’t know what size to print them, because I hadn’t bought frames, which I will probably never get around to doing. The wood he chose match the wood frame around my huge Kinkaid painting in the staircase, and it also matches the wood on my bannister. Yay, I have home decor now!

I brought the extra prints of our photos to work today and everyone I showed them to remarked on how happy I looked.

Oh yeah. Mr. W’s daughter had bought us two tiny ceramic fish chopstick holders, a green one and a blue one, which she brought to me all proud, and then in her excitement in talking about how she found them, she waved her right arm into the air, knocked the green fish out of my hand, it flew over both our heads, and landed on the floor and half its tail broke off. She was aggravated. It was the cutest thing and I couldn’t help laughing at her.

Diana and I stumbled by default on a GREAT restaurant called The Daily Grill in Irvine last nite. We shared a filet medallion entree and still couldn’t finish the plate. I was also proud that we left a considerable chunk of the chocolate brownie that was sitting underneath a gob of ice cream, which I also left. The dinner was good because it was the first time I’ve seen her in person since she entered her really trying time in her family life, health, career and love life. It breaks my heart when she calls me crying and I can’t be there. But I was really happy to see that she was actually doing pretty well last nite. We were able to laugh and kid, altho of course she was still dealing with lingering sadness. I hope she remembers that to feel down and depressed is normal, and considering all the stuff going on, the fact that she was only at her lowest point for a week or less and is now pulling out slowly, is really great progress. She has her chin up and her faith in that everything has happened for a reason — a good reason — and even tho it hurts and seems fruitless now, everything will fall into place later and she will understand why she had to go thru all this.

I’d brought my laptop and we went thru my cruise photos, and then just for kicks, ended the night with, at her request, a slideshow of our 260 or so Cancun photos. We remarked, as we reminisced on our September vacation, how different things are between now and then, and what we didn’t know then was just around the bend.

*sigh* Hey Diana, remember back in the day when we were really well adjusted and we were bored with our lives and envied the excitement of other girls’ romantic drama? HA.

Since I was on the cruise last week during SuperBowl and wasn’t able to post (actually, the ship charges per minute to use the internet, and their internet’s SLOOOOOW), here’s a little post-post, or postscript.

A man had 50 yard line tickets for the Super Bowl. As he sat down, another man walked down and asked if anyone was sitting in the seat next to him.
“No,” the first man says, “The seat is empty.”
“This is incredible,” said the second man. “Who in their right mind would have a seat like this right on the 50 yard line for the Super Bowl, the biggest sporting event in the world, and not use it?”
The first man says, “Well, actually, the seat belongs to me. I was supposed to come with my wife, but she passed away. This is the first Super Bowl we haven’t been to together since we got married in 1987.”
“Oh…I’m so sorry to hear that. That’s terrible. But couldn’t you find someone else, a friend or relative, or even a neighbor to take the seat?”
The man shook his head. “Nope, they’re all at the funeral.”

Men and their priorities. I’m glad mine put his priority on me during the Superbowl and we were having the formal Captain’s Dinner in the dining room on the cruise during the Bowl. Not that the maitre’d didn’t keep announcing the scores over the loudspeaker through the dining room anyway. Heh.

Dodo woke me up this morning at 6:15a with all the noise he was making batting a plastic bag on my desk in my bedroom. I chased him out, looked at the clock, and went back to sleep with some difficulty, determined not to get my day started until my alarm clock made me do so at 7am.

I woke up from a dream and looked at all the sunlight around me. I looked over my head at my clock. 9am! Holy crap! What happened?! I clamored out of bed and my leg collapsed underneath me and I fell to the floor. I shakily got up again and wobbled weakly to the bathroom, where I washed my face, skipped the hair brushing, makeup AND the contact lenses, put on my glasses, grabbed the pile of skirt and sweater in my bedroom that I’d taken off last nite before going to bed (I only wore the outfit a few hours at dinner with college roommie Diana, who’d flown in for a 2-day work-related thing yesterday), and ran out the house and drove to work. 5 minutes after falling (literally) out of bed. It wasn’t until I was on the way that I realized I wanted to wear a cute red outfit, not my baggy brown and black one. I’m returning to work from vacation looking more haggard than when I left.

Oh well. Happy Valentine’s Day, people.

Here are some photos that I’ve uploaded. There’ll be more to come later. Unless I get lazy. Which is a high likelihood. Rest your mouse pointer over the photos for a caption.

JAMAICA, MON!
Rivertubing at White River.


I never knew that in Jamaica, people drove on the left side of the street and the driver of a vehicle sits on the right side of the car. Our excursion guide said, “In Jamaica, the left side is the right side. And the right side…is suicide.”
Here, snorkeling at a reef off of a beach in Ocho Rios, Jamaica.

ON THE SHIP!
As many of you know, a signature of major ocean cruiseships is the different animals your cabin steward makes out of your bath towels and hides in your room daily. Here’s a bunny we found after coming back from a formal dinner.


Remember how I tried to give you women out there a nice shot of a hot guy across the bar from me when I was in San Francisco but couldn’t get a good enough picture? Well, here he is again, at the ship’s center Atrium, completely unaware that I was taking this picture. I think he should be flattered.

This is one of those ship portraits that I was talking about. We walked by after our formal dinner and they waved us over and posed us.

Someone with whom I can speak candidly who will try to understand me, even if he doesn’t agree.
Someone who, when he says communication is so important in a relationship, actually does his part to keep the communication open.
Someone who hears what I say instead of injects his own presumptions.
Someone I can lean on when I feel bad, who will embrace me instead of push back at me.
Someone to make me feel special.
Someone who doesn’t walk away from me when I’m crumpled.
Someone who cares for me as genuinely as he laughs with me.
Someone who gives me the benefit of the doubt because he believes in me as a person.
Someone who wants me near not only for the ways I can enrich his life, but also for the ways he wants to enrich mine.
Someone I can reach out to who doesn’t look at my outstretched hands then slash my exposed wrists.

I’m tired of being sick. Each day of ailment drags on, exponentially longer than a day of happiness or even a day of blissful nothingness. Each tick of the sad man’s clock thunders and its echos continue to claw at and weigh on his chest and mind, cumulatively, draining him. Unable to eat, sleep, or enjoy the passing of time, he finally drops in exhaustion, overtaken by a fitful and restless sleep, in which demons personified of life’s turmoils continue to threaten his very sanity. Crying is sometimes a relief, but less because of its healing catharsis than because of its distraction. Having sat in this state for an extended period of time — extended not because of its chronological duration but for its toll — I fall too familiarly into this again and again. What does it take for the shell to reharden, for the callouses to form?

I’m gonna go stand in the shower for a bit.