cindy's world

This evening, as I continue my day-long search to find where I belong, what puzzle my odd shape fits into to make a picture that would finally make sense to me, I wish for…

…friendship…

…different perspectives…

…personal growth…

…and a faithful partnership.

I’ve been pulled out of my courtroom to handle a specialized courtroom down the hall that the floater clerks either can’t or aren’t willing to do. So they’ve put a very qualified criminal clerk in my courtroom to handle the child molestation/rape trial that started yesterday. I’ve been haywire for a couple of days now, and all I can do to try to pull myself out is constantly talking myself out of feeling bad. ‘My life is fine, it’s only one aspect that’s uncomfortable, the negative drama stuff is out of my control and not about me, and I can always take some drastic measures if I see the need, everything else is fine,’ etc. Logic has not been dictating my emotions. I’m miserable. I’m lost. I’m scared. I’m nauseated and exhausted.

And then earlier, a law clerk in this department brought her two new calico kittens to visit us. She’d gone home early to pick them up from the groomer’s who was getting the kitties ready for their adoption today, and their new mommy decided to swing back and introduce “Scout” and “Gabby” to us first. They are the cutest tiny things! Scout seems to be a runt, and I picked her up and held her. She purred immediately and curled into my arm, against my body. As she got braver, she put two tiny pink-padded paws on my chest and pushed herself up from my forearm and as I delighted in her curiosity, she touched the tip of her small pink and brown nose to mine in a little kitty kiss. Everyone started cooing and awwwing. “She really likes you!” the court reporter said, as she held the slightly older and furrier Gabby. Gabby was clearly favored as she was prettier, and Scout’s aquamarine eyes seem to protrude a little from her small triangular face. I think she’s just young and still has a bit of the less-attractive infant cat alien look.

For a few minutes there, as I was cuddling the warm furry kitty who was poking her little head around and purring in my arms, my mind was off of my emotional issues and I was happily charmed. I’d hug Dodo like that, but he doesn’t like to be picked up and he won’t stay still when you’re petting him. I’ll give it another try later when I get home. Haha, Scout’s only the size of Dodo’s head.

I’m having an online conversation with someone about “makeup sex” and its definition. He says that “make up sex is hot rough or very slow passionate sex to make the other person either get their anger out or mellow them out.” I didn’t think of makeup sex like that. I’d always thought of it as sex you have after you make up, not sex to get someone to make up with you. I don’t think I could have sex in the middle of a fight; I’d be focused on other stuff. But after a fight I’m feeling a bit sad and lost, and I need him to show me it’s gonna be okay. I need to reconnect with him. When that person doesn’t want to reconnect with me, it makes me suddenly insecure and more lost and now I’m really, really sad.

I think I just figured out a large chunk of myself. It’s like I need closure to a fight to make sure the ugly stuff’s really gone.

Tonight, as I chase after my fleeting sanity, I wish for

tenderness…

…strength…

…self-love and acceptance of the imperfect self…

…and a sense of one-ness and belonging.

This is seriously freaky. While I was collecting photos to put in my mom’s photo frames, I had looked thru all the albums at my disposal. I had some fairly recent stuff that I’d taken, and my mom had also assembled my infancy and childhood photos and given them to me in several albums a few years ago. I had enough for my mom’s frame set, but not for my dad’s. I’m doing the same thing for him, in an identical frame, for Father’s Day. The day that I was to go with Vanessa to scan and enlarge the photos for the frames, I found an album, or maybe it was a portion of one, that had a bunch of photos of me in the later elementary school years, which was a stage missing in the collection I was building for my parents’ frames. I remember telling Mr. W over the phone that I’d finished selecting the photos and I had discovered all these pictures in an album that I didn’t know I had and that I was happy I filled in the age gap. That, incidentally, is also where I found the Halloween pictures of me with Vicky and Karen. Now, having completed my dad’s frame, I’m putting the originals away back into the albums. I can not find the album from whence those later elementary school photos came. I’ve gone through my albums several times already, one by one. I’ve scoured my bedroom and the living room just in case I’d pulled the album but didn’t put it back on the shelf. Nothing! Now I have a bunch of scattered photos on the floor and no album to put them back into! Where was this album when I was first searching for photos? And where is it now? Why has it only appeared for one day, the day I needed to make my duplicates? I would be freaked out if it turns out those photos belong in an album that’s still at my parents’ house. Or if I were to go upstairs right now to check the shelves for the umpteenth time, and those loose photos are missing, having evaporated back to the nonexistent space from which they came.

I’m scared now! And all alone! Waaah!

I don’t know why it surprises me, especially considering how I am, but it does. Telling someone my frustrations or other little complaints bums the person out. I guess I’m just used to being ignored or not taken seriously, because my experience is that when I bring up concerns to another person, these complaints tend to float in one ear and fly out the other. They are quickly forgotten, if even acknowledged in the first place. I just figured that, especially with guys, whatever displeases them are waved off. Except that today, after my observation of, “Are you upset about something?”, it turned out that my prior unhappiness had gathered and stacked up not only in my own head (which is really where I expected it all to remain if it were to remain anywhere), but on the shoulders of the other person, too. He said he feels that there are so many things about him that I’m unhappy about. I was so shocked that I didn’t know what to say. A guy? Keeping track? To the point that it bothers him? I asked him why he didn’t note the things that I am happy about but happened instead to focus on the unhappy things. He shrugged. Should I make him a list of the good things, I asked? He gave a half-laugh.

I’m not sure how to feel about the fact that my being unhappy actually affected someone, because wow, someone actually gives a shit about my feelings. (My expectations are so low.) On the other hand, I didn’t take into account that what I do or feel has any remaining impact beyond the actual conversation or fight or whatever deals with it directly.

This is a hard post to write. It’s all muggy in my head, too. I just feel bad.

This is Vanessa (Navy Girl) making a special guest appearance. Thanks you for the applause! 😮 j/k

What is a girl to do when she does not have a printer, the print online to a local FedExKinkos software will not download and you have less than a couple of hours to print mapquest directions to 20 different sites for Japanese business guests in the AM? Now picture mighty mouse theme music playing in the background . . . We are here at Cindy’s work and she saved the day CINDY IS DEFINITELY MS. WONDERFUL! THANKS GIRLIE!!! YOU ARE AWESOME! Peace out!

I think someone may have wished me peace over the weekend. Or maybe I wished myself peace. Maybe the gift I was given is not peace, but perspective, because after all, all this layered drama has been going on around me and for once, they’re not MINE! All I know is that as much as my head acknowledged what was going on, my emotions were steady on Friday morning. I’d sat there alone and smiled in retrothought. Again, tonight. I’m not happy about things, but if it were a month ago, I’d have been distraught and bedridden with emotional angst. Instead, I’m sitting at work (yes, at work), happily joking with Vanessa and arranging flowers and printing out stuff.

I deserve some emotional stability, man.

Since Mr. W’s parents live out-of-state, I made him take my parents out for Mother’s Day. Well, actually, I invited him along, he very graciously accepted, there was a slight misunderstanding on the phone when I spoke with my mom about our taking them out and she thought he was going to take everyone out, I didn’t correct her but told Mr. W that I’d pay him back since I’d told my mom that money was no object, and he insisted on paying anyway. My mom strangely had a craving for pizza, then changed her mind and decided on Italian, and Mr. W suggested Portofino. To avoid the crowd, we made reservations for Saturday at 5:30p altho Mother’s Day was on Sunday.

Mr. W and I met my parents at their house first, and I presented my mom with the 8-photo 3-D frame that I’d been working on all week. She seemed to like it. I dunno. Asian parents are so stoic. The photos are of me with my mom at various ages from infancy to early adulthood. Some are cute, some are tender, some are silly. I’d scanned the photos in at a Sam’s Club kiosk and enlarged them to fit in the frames.

After that, Mr. W drove us to Portofino where we had a fancy schmancy Italian dinner, a bottle of wine, and dessert, then went back to my parents’ for tea. You can’t escape the Asian-ness, haha. Mr. W attempted to fix my parents’ leaky kitchen faucet when we returned, and altho he couldn’t find the leak to fix it, the effort gave him big brownie points. He offered to return and change out the entire faucet if they’d like.

Oh, I did receive an email from my mom today. She said she couldn’t sleep last nite so she was tampering with my photo frame and tried to switch out a photo I have in there for another one in her possession, but discovered that the sizes weren’t right. She asked if I’d enlarged the original photos, I responded that I had, and then she seemed to appreciate the gift a bit more as more work than she’d originally thought had gone into it.

Friday night, Mr. W took me to the Stella Adler Theatre in Hollywood to watch “The Body and Soul of a Chinese Woman,” the latest play by C.Y. Lee, the same guy who wrote the hugely famous “Flower Drum Song,” which was later made into a Rodgers & Hammerstein Broadway musical. Here is the synopsis according to theatremania.com:

The Body and Soul of a Chinese Woman follows a young, traditional folk dancer from China as she deals with inner conflicts and struggles to free herself from her cultural binding so that she may live the life that she craves. Her body and her soul are clashing all of the time and her soul constantly provokes and encourages her into discovering herself as a woman by exploring her sensuality and liberating her intellectual being. Her ultimate search for happiness and for true, deep emotional love and freedom is told with humor, sadness, tenderness and pain.

Altho Mr. W felt the play was lacking on depth, I found the play absolutely delightful. And the main character’s living room, I immediately noticed, could’ve been my parents’ living room, or my friends Vicky & Karens’ parents’ living room, or college roommie Diana’s parents’ living room. “All parents’ living rooms, and not the kids,” Mr. W noted. You got that right. Here’s a photo of the set:

We got to Hollywood in the early afternoon and walked all around l0oking at the sights (Mann’s Chinese Theatre, the stars on the Walk of Fame?, most of which names I didn’t even recognize), watching street performers, checking out the many whore outfitter stores (I was SO tempted to buy stuff, but those cheap costumes were hideously overpriced for the quality), had a great Shabu Shabu dinner at Koji’s.

This guy walked up to Mr. W as we were walking and asked if I was his girlfriend. Mr. W actually entertained this guy in conversation as I refused to even make eye contact. He asked Mr. W what his haircolor is, accused him of being old so how did he get a young girl like me?, asked if I had a sister, said I’m pretty, then asked if I was Korean. I found all his questions really offensive. The guy followed us chattering for like 2 blocks. After that, Mr. W for the remainder of our Hollywood trip made sure I walked on the inside of the sidewalks with him on the outside. Oh, in response to the guy’s question about how he got a “young girl” like me, Mr. W had said, “Because men age like fine wine, we only get better with time. Don’t worry, you’ll get there.” I’d rolled my eyes.