cindy's world

All right, I’m rounding off this week and just tossing it away as a designated failure. I’ve worked out twice — weights at lunch on Monday and jujitsu Tuesday afternoon. I skipped the gym today at lunch because of some more of the same style idiocy and I felt alone and frustrated in this, and now I don’t think I can go to jujitsu tonite, either. I’ll just get my ass kicked all over the room. So I guess this week’s a loss where health and body is concerned, I’m just gonna buy laundry detergent and do laundry and vacuum and hang out with my cat and veg out.

Last night’s dream:

I received a phone call from Grace. She was gonna come over and visit. Grace! I thought she’d passed away due to leukemia! Or…wait…was that just the prognosis, and not the actual event? I vaguely seem to remember something about a treatment or a misdiagnosis or something…I didn’t want to admit over the phone with her that I thought she’d died because I hadn’t kept up with the news of her health condition. What kind of friend would I be? She came over, and I hugged her, so glad to see her. I may have said something about her ailment, because I felt her tears on my shoulder as she recalled how hard that phase of her life had been. She told me about a turn of events that seemed vaguely familiar, some medical procedure that discovered that she actually didn’t even have leukemia, it was something else that made her sick with symptoms similar to that of leukemia, and they were taking care of that and she was nearly completely recovered. [Interruption: I just realized where I got this memory confusion from. Stevie Wonder’s dog was initially diagnosed with canine leukemia, but through a barrage of tests, they found that it wasn’t leukemia after all, and altho that’s good news, they at the same time weren’t really sure what it was. When Stevie Wonder called me to tell me this most current news, I felt tremendous relief, suddenly followed by, “Wait. Huh? Then what’s going on now? They don’t know?”] So we hung out a bit and chatted, I think her mom — her overjoyed, loving mom — was also there, and an unknown smaller/younger male, who was a family member or a close friend of the family or something. Grace and her mom left, and this male and I were discussing, and then I realized that I distinctly remember knowing that Grace was cremated. I remember Grace’s husband, mother and her close friend who had been at the cremation site had talked about how her husband had removed her ring, but let her bridal bouquet burn with her. I started to see flashes of real-life memory: Grace’s ashes in the palm of my hand as I scattered them in the ocean at her request, at the site where her wedding would have been in Laguna Beach. Her mother standing around the rocky bend from us at beachside, unable to bring herself to watch her daughter being scattered by sister, best friends, husband, father. Altho I wasn’t at the actual cremation, I slowly realized that this girl who acted and looked just like Grace, couldn’t have been Grace. It must’ve been some amazingly convincing robot or advanced hologram. I had no clue who’d try to fool us that way, or why. The boy and I discussed how we couldn’t tell Grace’s mom, look how happy she is to have her daughter back! She’s in complete denial, it’d be not only difficult, but extremely painful, to burst her bubble.

Blech. The whole morning has me rattled and I’m just insecure and feeling…blech. I tried to make myself feel better by putting more effort into my appearance, trying to bring up the confidence level. But still. Blech. I have no idea what the dream means.

My brain has associated certain songs with certain frames of mind. A mixed CD (remember mixed tape days?) I listened to a lot in late 2002, early 2003 when I was single was playing in my car this morning as I drove to work. Cranking up the volume in these songs, I could reinvoke a fraction of the euphoria I felt “back in the day”.

It was a pretty high drive to work…until a DA almost killed me by driving backwards the wrong way up an aisle in the parking structure at a high speed without looking behind her.

And to think, this morning I sat there sadly looking at the low number of entries I’ve written so far this month (sidebar), and wondered what it is I can possibly blog about.

Ptthh. I just found it. Turns out it IS in my own blog, AND in my comment section here where I responded to something Jordan wrote. And right after I wrote this whole entry, too.

Well, I’m glad to see that Murphy’s alive and well.

I could’ve sworn I’d written something either on my blog or as a comment on someone else’s blog something about how it’s scary to be in a relationship because you give someone you have no control over your very fragile world and you just have to trust that the other person won’t be careless with your heart, and then I said something about how you must venture forth with your eyes wide open so that you could determine in as short a time as possible whether the person you’re dealing with is trustworthy, hopefully before you totally fall for him. However, I can’t find this comment ANYWHERE. Not on my blog, not on the comments of blog I frequent. How frustrating! Maybe I wrote that in an email of support to a friend.

But yeah, the scariest thing about a relationship to me is that half of the relationship is out of my hands and it’s purely reliant on how good a judge of character I am that decreases the odds that someone will rip my heart senseless. That’s why I tend to be euphoric alone, especially after I’ve come out of a bad relationship. It’s because for once (or so it feels), it’s finally the case that no one is able to have a negative effect on me. That no one has the power to make me sad. Some would say that even in a relationship, the other person shouldn’t have the power to destroy you, anyway, but come on. Let’s be realistic. If someone doesn’t have the power to crash you to hell, then either you’re a robot, or you weren’t that into them to begin with.

I’m trying to sort out my conflicting feelings. The sort of feelings that hit you when you open the door to leave a cutesy little surprise for your boyfriend (when he’s not supposed to be there), and your eyes are met with the sight of your boyfriend there chatting with his ex. And this is the one ex who, despite not knowing you, gave you problems and attitude, ignored you when you tried to smile at her or greet her civilly, said derogatory stuff to other people about you, when you first started dating your boyfriend. The conflict comes from feeling miffed by her, being caught off-guard, and the smothering of the rosy little glow of leaving a gift for your beloved. That’s all under a giant umbrella of feeling out-of-place and uncomfortable. And it doesn’t help that you find out instantly afterwards that when your boyfriend talks about things you guys did over the weekend or whatnot with his ex, he leaves you out of the descriptions. Another side of the conflict is the grownup side of me that really does want the two of them to get along since they have occasion to be in each others’ presence, and they’re finally getting along again now. (They had been friendly for 5, 6 years after the split, and then she suddenly gave him the cold shoulder once she found out about me.)

I think I just feel slighted. That even tho she was the one being oddly immature and catty for no good reason at all, that I had been the one who retreated from the room, only to find out that I involuntarily get retreated from their conversations, too. Another injury came when Mr. W, who came out after me, assumed that I was angry and immediately tried to explain what she was doing there. I wasn’t angry, I’d dropped off his silly little gift, said hello and left, I really don’t care what she was doing there, I don’t have a problem with her being there, so I merely made the crack, “It’s not like she was on your lap.” But his entire set of actions and words at that point were clearly aimed at diffusing a jealous reaction from me, which is the reaction he’d have gotten if I were any of his exes, and now I feel like he’s projecting their flaws on me and not seeing me. Again. He apologized for it after we had a chance to talk a bit, but now I felt wronged. He said his reactions to situations come from learned conditioning, and I said that’s fine, you should learn the cubbyholes to categorize things in when you’re with someone, but you’re not supposed to use the same set of cubbyholes on a new person that you’d developed for an old person in your life. On top of that, his old cubbyholes are not only inaccurate, but offensive to me, because in order to group my actions into those cubbyholes, he’d have to think I’m petty and jealous and not see anything I do to the contrary. And now I feel like I’ve been sacrificial and overly fair (in regards to other people, especially women, in his life) for nothing. And I feel sorry for myself.

But what am I supposed to do? What is he supposed to change? Their getting along is infinitely better than her immaturity in the beginning of our relationship. Maybe I should bow out altogether and avoid dealing with anything. Someone else’s baggage shouldn’t be my problem, it’s not my fault his ex is still possessive over him, and if he’s going to coddle her feelings, my hands are tied.

And yet it all still comes down to this: doubting myself. Maybe it’s just me. Maybe I just shouldn’t be in relationships. Maybe all I really am, and will ever be, is a sad, sad little girl.

The avocado that I had brought with me to work yesterday in Grace’s bag had been sitting on my kitchen counter for a week and a half, still hard as a rock, and I figure that since it’s been like 60 degrees Fahrenheit in my house, the avocado hasn’t ripened because it thought it was in the refrigerator. It sat for a day on my desk at work, and then this morning, it did feel like a slightly softer rock than it’d felt all week. I decided to cut into it length-wise.

The reason I was eager to cut it was because, while I was complaining about its stubborn hardness in jujitsu last week, my instructor had asked, “Is it a very large avocado?” I told him it was. “Uh-oh. It might rot on the inside before it softens on the outside, because it’s so big.”

So the plastic knife I used strained and creaked against the hard avocado, which almost felt crisp as its skin reluctantly gave way to my sawing. I couldn’t get the knife to cut in closer to the seed, so I ended up having to pry the avocado open. After exerting some brute force, it snapped open. The seed’s thin brown outer skin separated from the whitish brainy-looking inside of the seed, such that half the brown seed-skin stuck to the inside of both halves of the avocado. I could not peel it off the halves. I tried to insert my spoon into the flesh of the avocado, but the spoon couldn’t break through the rubber avocado flesh. I looked closer at the white seed I pulled out, and it already has a half-inch stem coming out of one end! So this stupid thing was about to SPROUT and it STILL won’t ripen?! I bit into a little portion of the hard avocado flesh on the corner. It was bitter as rubber, too. Stupid tease of a fruit.

For punishment, I decided to put the white seed in a clear plastic cup in water and put it on display in shame. It really does look like a brain. If anyone asks what’s in my cup, I’m gonna say that I got attacked by a male mountain lion who, after I was through with him, is only half male now.


Sorry for the bad quality of the photos, all I have is my cameraphone. Rest your mouse pointer over the photos for captions.

A long time ago, in my second year of college (well, it’s long enough), I had creeped myself out reading a horror novel about a supernatural murderer that reached its victims through chain letters. And then I got a really strange chain letter via email that seemed identical to the one in the novel and this email did not behave like a regular email, either. So I freaked out, called Grace (who was attending UC Berkeley in northern California), and then decided while on the phone with her to simply delete the email, altho it may be cursing me as I do that, in order to stop the chain with me and not let bad karma or whatever get to my friends. (The fact that I still refuse to pass on threatening chain letters to this day dates back to that instance.) I don’t think Grace was ever superstitious, and she certainly didn’t read the horror novel I had then just read, but the fact that I was distraught was enough for her. She called up the girl who sent me the chain letter, an acquaintance from high school (I don’t even know how Grace got her number), and chewed her out. I didn’t know about that phone call until a year or two later when I had occasion to talk to that girl, who told me what Grace had done for me. It had never occurred to the girl that, even if she herself weren’t passing it on due to superstitious fear for her own selfish well-being (which she was), that she may be passing it on to someone who IS superstitious. Every time I get an evil chain letter and make the same decision to delete it lest I pass it on to someone superstitious, I think of Grace and that incident.

I keep my plastic bags, twisted into its own knot, in the lowest drawer next to my kitchen stove for use later to line my trash cans or to bag things in. This morning, I opened my plastic bag drawer in the kitchen and pulled out a white and royal blue plastic bag that I didn’t recognize. I had bypassed a white grocery bag with Chinese lettering for that blue bag. I dumped an apple, an avocado, and a Chinese veggie bun into the bag and brought it to work with me. I ate the apple during an afternoon break in our trial, and 5 minutes before beginning this entry, I took the still unripe avocado out and placed it on my desk. Then I removed the bun. (I had lunch with Mr. W and a friend of his today so I didn’t eat my stuff.) When I took the bun out, my hand on the outside of the bag felt something else in the bag. I looked in and saw a receipt. I looked at the bag. “WORLD Duty Free”, it reads in white lettering. Did I buy something duty-free at an airport recently? I had bought some salt water taffy waiting to come back from Florida last month. (Geez, was it only last month?!) I figured that’s where I got the bag. The receipt, however, reads:

WORLD DUTY FREE EUROPE LTD
130 Wilton Road London SW1V LQ

…WORLD DUTY FREE HEATHROW TERMINAL 3

And then it shows the purchase. Two Sheridans Cream, 100C, for 14.30 pounds. I have never been to Europe. But I did receive a bottle of Sheridans liquor for Christmas a few years ago… from Grace. I had introduced her to this vertically-split bottle of coffee liquor and cream liquor when I visited her in Berkeley our junior year of college. I got her a small bottle (she had recently turned 21), showed her at her studio apartment how to pour it over the rocks with the bottle completely inverted so that the bottle pours precisely a 2/3 coffee, 1/3 cream floater drink. I remember her lying on her back on her bed, 15 minutes after downing this drink (she loved coffee-flavored stuff), and saying, “Oh man, I am so buzzed.” I remember laughing at her. She remembered, at 12:38:50 on November 1, 2003 according to the receipt, that Sheridan’s remained one of my favorite liquors. I didn’t see her that Christmas, she was in New York going through some chemo treatment and her doctor wouldn’t let her travel. Her sister, who had just returned from visiting Grace in New York, had met me at a Starbucks in Brea and handed me this blue bag, Grace’s Christmas present to me. Inside was a bath kit nestled in a porcelain bowl of sorts, with yellow roses (my favorite color and my birthflower) painted on the porcelain. This bowl was next to a large bottle of Sheridans Liquor. Grace’s sister and I discussed Grace’s wedding and bridal shower plans, and then we parted ways. I called Grace to thank her for the presents. “Where’d you find the Sheridans?” I asked her. “I’ve been looking for it everywhere but I guess no one carries it around here anymore.” She said, “Actually, I saw it in London!” I think she may have told me that she bought a bottle for herself, too.

It’s amazing the things we take for granted, and the things we keep in our hearts. And the things we didn’t know we kept, but will treasure forever now due to unfortunate circumstances. This crumpled receipt will be tucked under my transparent desk blotter at work. Call me superstitious, but I believe Grace is telling me that she’s still with me.

Oh, the love of a mother and her daughter, and their fun with clothing! This was sent to me as one of those email chain letters, you know, those emails that have the great message that you would’ve sent on to warm the hearts of your friends, except when you get to the end of the email, it threatens that if you don’t send it to all your friends in the next 6 minutes, you will be cursed forever or at least until a herd of runaway bulls trample you on your way home and gore your broken body into meat pulp on the street so that the only way anyone can identify you is by the bloodied printout of the aforementioned chain letter that has your name on the “to” field and the “friend” who cursed you on the “from” field and the explanation of what would happen to you if you fail to curse all your friends in turn with this email. That’s what keeps me from forwarding chain letters — the threat at the bottom that tells me to save myself by cursing my friends. I figure if karma really is that sharp of an entity, then I should get more karmic brownie points by refusing to spread a curse and letting it stop with me.

Aaaaanyway, without further ado, here’s the story, and just the story by itself, sans curse.

The Yellow Shirt
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