cindy's world

Here are photos of what I was doing this past long weekend. Rest the mouse pointer over the photos for captions.

This is what I looked like in Mr. W’s first 50 photos of Thanksgiving Thursday, no matter if I was in the foreground, midground or background:

We went for a stroll at an upscale outdoors mall, and saw these nice decorations.

Here are the Red Rocks shots.

The unveiling of Mr. W:

I was chatting with childhood friend Sandy over the weekend about how much we love Trader Joe’s whole organic food products. I’d seen this great jar of marinara sauce at Trader Joe’s, some garlic basil flavor, and had to buy it. Except that after I got it home, I couldn’t get the jar open. So I’d put it back in the cabinet. Every so often, when I’d have a craving for tomato-based pasta, I’d pull out the pot and put it on the stove, dig out the dried pasta and set it on the counter, and pull the jar of marinara out of the cabinet. And I’d struggle and fight with the jar, admit defeat, then put the pot back on the shelf, the pasta and jar back in the cabinets. Sandy suggested some ways to unscrew uncooperative jar lids. “There’s nothing I haven’t already tried!” I explained. “I’ve used a dry dish rag. I’ve used a wet dish rag. I’ve knocked the lid against the counter. I’ve had the jar between my knees as I sat on the ground. I’ve had it between one knee and the carpet. I’ve thrown my entire weight onto the lid. It freaking doesn’t open!”
“What about asking someone for help?”
“I live alone! I’m not gonna walk around outside with a jar of sauce and ask passerbys for help! And I’m not friendly with my neighbors. Besides, if I asked a guy neighbor, he’s gonna think it’s a setup to get him to play hero so I can talk to him.”
“So how often do you take that jar out to try to open it?”
“Oh, like every 3 or 4 months.”
“3 or 4 months? How long have you had it?!”
“Not that long, like a year.”
“A year! So you haven’t had pasta in a year cuz you couldn’t get the jar open? Why don’t you just go buy another jar?”
“Because I already have a jar at home, I’m not gonna buy another one, then I’ll have TWO! I don’t eat that much sauce.”
“But if you can’t open it –”
“But I’m still Asian. I’m not gonna waste something that I already have, or spend money on another one.”
She laughed and said, “Okay, I do understand that. But I just bought a jar of sauce from Trader Joe’s last week, I think it’s even the same tomato basil one, and now I’m wondering if I’M gonna have that problem.”
I said, “Well, now that I know you have the same jar, I’m bringing mine to your house and I’m gonna swap the two when you’re not looking. Then you’ll just think all Trader Joe’s jars are impossible to open. We’ll see how YOU handle it.”

I visited my parents last nite and had dinner with them. My mom packed all this food for Mr. W that he could have for lunch today, because he wasn’t able to go with me to their house this weekend.

Mom: [wrapping up food for Mr. W] So you stayed at his parents’ house in Las Vegas?
Me: Yes.
Mom: Did his mom prepare 2 bedrooms for you?
Me: No, just one.
Mom: *pause* Just one? She was okay with you two being in the same room?
Me: That’s how she did it the last time we went over there, too.
Mom: I think if his parents are letting you two stay together like that, you two should start some serious discussions about getting married.
Me: What? WHY?!
Mom: Because his parents already accepted you as someone in that situation, it’s just weird if you’re not headed there.
Me: They’re white! It’s not a big deal to them! If it were some Asian household, sure that’d be weird and it’d be a big deal, but they’re white, so it’s totally normal!
Mom: You’re Asian.
Me: …

And I didn’t even tell her that his parents had requested couples photos of me with their son, as well as an individual photo of me so that they could frame them and put them up on their family photo wall, and that Mr. W and his dad had selected from some photos that were already in W’s computer and had them printed into 8x10s at Costco, AND the two picked them up already on Saturday morning.

Thanksgiving weekend was really fun. Mr. W and I had planned to fit in at least one day of gym time, he even looked up the nearby 24 Hr Fitness gyms in Vegas, and we thought we’d take in a show on the Vegas Strip. We didn’t end up doing either because we couldn’t fit it in between the family dinners, hanging out with his parents, having dinner with his brother’s family. The only time we hit the Strip was before meeting up with his relatives for Chicago pizza dinner, when Mr. W and I parked in the Harrah’s parking structure, walked through it to get out on the Strip and get to the Venetian to catch Flat Coke & Flies before she and her boyfriend Bat entered their Blue Man Group show. We only got to hang out while they were in the will-call ticket line, but it was fun to hear about all her Vegas birthday surprises. (On the way there, Flat Coke and I were text-messaging each other on our whereabouts, trying to coordinate, and I told Mr. W that I felt like I was going to a BBS user meet that I hadn’t gone to since I was 17. He’d never gone to a user meet before, so the he likened it to a blind date. Which got me thinking — I’m okay with showing up to a blind date and getting disappointed, but it would really suck if the person who was meeting ME was disappointed, ya know?)

We did go to the Red Rocks with Mr. W’s parents on Saturday before we left. He climbed it alone; I stayed behind and took pictures, and hung out with his parents. It was freezing, but all the red stripes on the gigantic rocky cliffs made for some mesmerizing photos.

This Thanksgiving, I was and remain grateful for a great boyfriend who opens up his life and his family to me, and offers me the most stress-free relationship I’ve ever known. In the other direction, I’m also grateful he opens himself up to my family, culture, and greets things new and strange to him with excitement and wide-spread arms. I love that he spoils me sick with all the little and some not-s0-little things he does for me without so much as thinking twice, and he in turn appears surprised that I appreciate the automatic things he does so much to think I’m being spoiled. Last but not least, I appreciate that his brother left behind his Playstation 2 and Guitar Hero 1 and 2 games with the guitar controllers for us last weekend, which is the reason that I have lost much sensation in my left fingertips. (On Friday nite Mr. W and I were up till almost 3am playing!)

Thanksgiving meal started with lunch. I don’t think my breakfast of cookies and eggnog spiked with whiskey, brandy AND rum counted as a real meal. Lunch was turkey, potato soup, corn cobbettes, mashed potatoes, candied yams, cranberry and orange jelly(?), stuffing, bread rolls, string bean and mushroom casserole, and I’m probably still leaving something out. Dessert was a caramel turtle ice cream pie and homemade pumpkin cheesecake. There was red and white wine. Now everyone’s kinda hanging around waiting for lunch to roll into dinner. There are more relatives of Mr. W’s expected, and two doggies running around the house begging for a scratch with your foot. (Or it may have been asking for table scraps at my feet, I dunno. But I gave it scratches with my feet instead of scraps from the table and it seemed perfectly content with that. Or maybe it wasn’t. I dunno. Or maybe there aren’t even any dogs. I had a lot to drink.)

I think I’m on the verge of a new game addiction. Mr. W’s younger brother brought over his Playstation 2 and plugged in 2 guitar controllers. We played “Guitar Hero,” and I started getting good. This is like a whole repeat of how I got hooked on the bongos (“Donkey Konga”) after playing that game at Vicky’s house a few years ago, and had to go buy GameCube with the 2 sets of bongos for my fix. Mr. W’s brother said they should figure out a game to combine Dance Dance Revolution, bongos, guitar and karaoke games and have a whole band going. That would be very cool.

I only worked out once this entire week. We’re going to go to a reputedly very fancy 24 Hour Fitness Sport tomorrow, Andre Agassi’s club in one of the main strip hotels.

We could leave at anytime for Vegas, depending on traffic. After work, Mr. W and I grabbed some sushi dinner, then went to a nearby 24 Hour Fitness for some whirlpool and steam room relaxation. Now we’re just sitting around waiting for traffic reports to give us the green light. We’ll probably nap first and drive thru the nite, tho.

He wants to go to some red rocks or something, which is supposed to be picturesque. The rocks, according to him, have holes all over them which make for great climbing. So I guess I’ll bring my camera. I totally just had a mental picture of myself clinging onto the edge of a rock, trying to maneuver my camera so that I could take a picture, and then the camera slips and I instinctively grab for it with both hands, and then I just sorta peel off the side of the rock and fall, gripping my camera, backwards off the rock. You see me get smaller and smaller as I fall, and then several flashes as my camera goes off in search of the perfect pre-death shot. Years later, people will find my camera, marvel at the way old technology, and search museums for a computer that will download the photos from such an old medium. And then they’d see these great shots of the ground coming closer and closer. “How’d she take those?” “Must’ve been some great zoom.”

After what felt like weeks of teasing us with the prospect of putting up some soap post, Jordan finally did it. She wrote a terrific soap post, inspired by the original soap post on my blog. It took a lot of poking and prodding and convincing to get her to finally put the post up, because she felt that James and I overhyped the soap post demand and now she can’t meet everyone’s expectations (but of course she never fails to meet them, and still didn’t. Fail, I mean. Not that she didn’t meet the expectations. Forgive me, it’s late. Or really, really early.). It really deserves a read, if for nothing else than to look over her great little pictures, ESPECIALLY the picture of the prison soap.

I’m posting because her first image, an animated picture of colorful soap bubbles rising up, reminded me of the first time I played with bubbles. It was kindergarten in Taiwan. The teachers took us out into the cemented yard, where they’d set up stations of plastic and metal tubs on the ground with liquid in them. There were little plastic bubble wands, too. They explained what bubbles were and showed us how to make them, and then let the kids go station to station. Apparently there was this big bustle around one particular station where the kids gathered chattering excitedly about “rainbow-colored bubbles!” I’d walked around asking what this rainbow bubbles are, and some kids said that these blow out in different colors. So I looked really hard, expecting a red bubble, orange bubble, green bubble, blue bubble, indigo bubble and violet bubble to float around. But no, it looked like the non-multi-colored bubbles at the other station to me. It was also hard to see because these cheap-ass ghetto homemade bubbles just clustered off the wand and fell in a wad to the ground if they were even forming bubbles to begin with, altho much of the time the teachers and the aids just ended up blowing soapy liquid straight into the eyes of the mob of eagerly waiting Chinese kindergartners. *blink blink* “Ooh! Ah!” *blink* “Oh!” Stupid kids.

Now that I’m an adult and have immigrated over into this country, where bubble solution is produced by actual engineers under major toy manufacturers, I wonder: WTF is the alternative to a multi-colored bubble membrane? Did they actually have black and white bubbles?!

Apparently I’m kinda angry at this time in the morning. Or maybe it’s just memories of how much I was picked on at that age. It leaves a bitter taste in my mouth. Maybe I need to wash it out with some prison soap.

I was waiting for the laundry to churn, and of course I was watching TV as this is happening, and TV rarely fails to lull me to sleep. My last load was removed from the dryer at 11:30 p.m., but I couldn’t bring myself to lug the hamper upstairs to fold and put away clothes; I only got as far as the chenille La-Z-Boy recliner in the living room. I woke up sideways on the recliner at 3am and dragged myself with now-cold clothes into my bedroom to the soundtrack of some infomercial about land auctions. I almost called the auction info line, but stopped myself by reminding myself that there’s a reason these things play on TV at 3am — the head is heavy, the will is low and the common sense is null. I’ve bought many a useless item and joined some shameful programs while being awake in the wee hours of the morning. I almost even joined the Navy once. (Why does the Navy advertise at this time? Are they that short on low-judgment insomniacs? Or maybe being awake at this hour somehow makes you an ideal armed forces candidate, i.e. it shows you have high stamina and unusual strength and wisdom. Yeah.)

So of course I’d fallen asleep with my contacts and makeup on, and now that I’ve made it upstairs, I brushed my teeth, took out my eyeballs and washed off my face, then put away laundry, putting aside clothes I would bring with me to Vegas. And now I’m wide awake.

“How’d you sleep?”
“Like a donut.”
“How does a donut sleep?”
“With a hole in the middle.”

Now that I’m in bed, I’m gonna try to go back to sleep. Experience tells me that because it’s past 4am, I’m gonna be in the middle of some REM cycle and will not hear my alarm at 7a. Someone call my house and wake me up if you read this in the morning!! (You like how this post has a hole in the middle?)

I remember the first time this particular question occurred to me. It was when college roommie Diana and I had dinner at Outback Steakhouse 2 weeks ago. Before we left to take her to the airport, we made sure to empty our alcohol in the restaurant’s bathroom. (Outback has a wooden sign that says “Used Beer Department” on an arrow pointing toward the restrooms.) In the restroom stall (yes, I’m taking you readers in there with me. Stop reading if you’re uncomfortable, I won’t be offended.), I looked at the toilet seat and wondered the question that has been eating at me every time I entered a public restroom since then (which is a lot):

Why are public restroom toilet seats shaped like a horseshoe, instead of a complete circle like private residence toilet seats? Are they really saving that much money in the front wedge they don’t fill? “Let’s see, if we remove 3 inches from the front of 13 toilet seats, we save enough ceramic and plastic to make a whole ‘nother toilet seat for free!”

Maybe there’s a more logical reason for the missing piece. Like it saves them 0.0004 cents in cleaning product not having that extra square inch-age to cover with Pine-Sol. Or it saves the cleaning lady 0.0004 seconds in the swipe she doesn’t have to complete. Perhaps statistics show that toilet seat sitters tend to get trapped by the suction created when they shove their butts into the toilet, and public entities are just trying to prevent lawsuits filed by trapped women with robust heinies. Or maybe it has something to do with those wax paper toilet seat covers, altho I happen to know that those things work just as effectively on full toilet seats that go aaaall the way around the rim of the bowl.

Theories, anyone?

My horoscope for today reads:

“Don’t allow yourself to become discouraged, even if it feels like everything has come to a standstill. Whether or not you know it, you are on the edge of something big; however, you will have to take initiative to make it happen. Perhaps something exciting is about to open up on the romantic front or maybe a current relationship is being revitalized. Either way, give it time; it won’t happen overnight.”