cindy's world

Me: how’s this for my xmas cards?

Josh: haha. I’m sure your mom would love it!
Me: who mails their mom an xmas card? I see her every weekend.
Josh: oh ok. what’s the title for the card?
Me: “xmas tree with moon”?
Josh: yeah but if it was a moon, then you need to drop your pants.
Me: “hidden moon and xmas tree”?
Josh: oh ok better

I couldn’t help it — I called the attorney and asked for an update, and then poured a bunch of questions at him. He was very nice, still very grateful, and said he’d stop by and give me the end result in the next few weeks.

It turns out his client is still alive, in his own home, and a nurse comes by every so often to check on him and dope him up on morphine. He was so doped up on morphine yesterday that he wasn’t conscious enough to get the information from the attorney that his divorce is final. So the attorney’s going to try again today. He found out the schedule for the morphine injections so he will try to get over there before his client’s next dose at 6pm tonite.

The ex-wife has moved back into the house, “under the pretense of taking care of him.” Every day, she brings a little more of her stuff in. The attorney called her “a professional leech,” and said anyone who knows her calls her a leech. She’s about 15 years younger than her now ex-husband, and doesn’t work. When the attorney went in on the 18th to have his client sign the final papers, he was stunned to find the wife there, and stuttered a bit. They did kick the wife out of the guy’s bedroom so the attorney can talk to his client alone. The attorney asked, “Do you still want to get that divorce?” The client insisted that he did. “Are you sure?” “Yes.” So the papers were signed while she was outside the room.

It looks like she may try to claim or steal various things. The attorney suspects she’s already gone through the house and taken the stock papers and things like that. There’s an executor to the estate who wants the ex-wife out of the house, but they can’t do anything without the client’s consent, since he’s still alive. They’ll have to seek legal means (“unlawful detainer”) to kick her out of the house after the client passes away. The executor said that he’s okay with her stealing little things like the husband’s watch or loose bits of money or jewelry, there’s not much they can do about it at this point, and it’s only going to be a thousand bucks’ worth of random stuff, but at least they have the big items secured. The attorney said they have people in their office that also does probate, so they’re gonna follow this all the way through and make sure the ex wife gets nothing.

He’ll let me know in a few weeks if he was able to relay the good news to his client.

**Addendum: I can’t believe I forgot this tidbit. The man’s will gives everything to his high school sweetheart, whom he never ended up marrying but became his best friend. The lawyer was going to do everything in his power to make sure the best friend/sweetheart got everything instead of the ex-wife, the client’s will be done.

…continued from the last post, “Wow!”.
When we last left our heroine, she was looking over some divorce papers that an attorney was trying to push through, claiming his client’s health was fading fast.

So the first thing I did was call around the courthouse to ascertain that there was a judge available to sign the paperwork if everything checked out correctly. The presiding judge, who happens to also be my family law reference judge (I think very highly of him, and have blogged about him before), was around, and his clerk relayed a message to him that I may be needing him shortly for an emergency divorce. Then I reviewed the paperwork. The guy’s a schoolteacher…he was married to this woman for 6 years and they separated over 6 months ago so the statutory waiting period is over, that means he’s divorced as soon as the papers are signed…there are two cars at stake, he’s keeping his and letting her have hers…no kids which makes everything easier…there’s a house as part of the marital assets. Uh-oh. The attorney did not have the mandatory legal description of the real property in his Judgment. I called back down to the default clerk and explained this to her. She put the attorney on the phone. The attorney said, “I have a copy of his deed with me right now, can we attach it?” I said, “Unfortunately, you can’t attach exhibits to the judgment because later on anyone can remove the attachment and attach something else and change the things being disputed.” “My client’s really sick, he’s in the hospital right now and he’s stopped drinking water, and the doctors have him maxed out on morphine, so I’m thinking it’s not going to be much longer,” the attorney said pleadingly. I told him, “I’m going to check with the presiding judge and see if he’ll let you fill all the information into the Judgment by hand. Meet me outside his courtroom.” And then it was a massive running around and shuffling of paperwork and fixing all the deficiencies by hand, the judge approved some creative editing of the paperwork and initialed some changes, I made the copies and did all physical processing right there in that judge’s courtroom. “Thank you so much, I really appreciate you doing this. It’s a sad story,” the attorney said.

“So does he want this done so that the wife can’t inherit all his stuff as his widow?” I asked, file stamping and conforming and filling out blanks, stuffing envelopes on this case.

“Yeah,” the attorney said. The soon-to-be-divorced guy found out about a year ago that his wife was stealing money from him by syphoning money out of his accounts and depositing it into her own secret account. In the 6 years they were married, she’d stolen about a quarter million dollars. When he realized this, he thought about employing legal means of getting the money back from her, but then opted to just let it go and be divorced. They had a prenuptial agreement, so once they’re divorced she can’t take anything else from him. Two months after he had confronted the wife about this, he was diagnosed with lung cancer. Two weeks after the diagnosis, she up and left him. (This made me think that she was going to leave him anyway, but knowing that she’d signed the prenup and would get nothing if they divorce, she ensured herself a tidy sum by stashing away a nest egg at his expense.) So this poor man, in his 50s, went through all the doctor visits and chemo treatments on his own. He was off on disability from his teaching. The lung cancer actually went into remission and he was the great success story, when 2 Fridays ago, while he was gambling and hanging out in Las Vegas, he developed a headache. Upon his return, he went to the doctor to have the headache checked out. The cause of the headache was a brain tumor; the lung cancer had, unbeknownst to anyone, metastasized into his brain. Now, less than 2 weeks later, he was on his deathbed in the hospital. The attorney paused in his story at some point, getting more emotional than he’d wanted to reveal. I looked down at the documents, checking them over one last time, pretending not to see.

I handed the attorney the finalized papers. “Thank you so much for doing this, I’m going to the hospital to see him right now,” he said. I asked, “Is he going to be lucid enough to understand when you tell him the news?” His attorney said, “I don’t know, I hope so. Just to give him that peace of mind before he goes. He understood everything when I was there yesterday.” I looked at the file. Some of the final documents were signed by the petitioner on December 18, which was the “yesterday” the attorney referred to. The signature was weak and shaky, the name slightly off the signature line.

After the attorney left, I went back into the presiding judge’s chambers to thank him for doing this. “You’re a good person, Cindy,” the judge said. “In most other counties, he would not have gotten the kind of personalized attention he got today.” “You mean the attorney, or the client?” I asked. The judge said, “Both. That attorney went out of his way for his client.” He sure did. I found out today from the default clerk that the attorney had been in every day to check the paperwork, after reassuring his client he will do his best to push the divorce through.

Because of the prenuptial agreement, the woman should only get her car through the divorce. The house and the rest of his assets should be part of the man’s estate, to go to his family or wherever he has willed it. She should inherit nothing, unless they want to argue the death certificate date vs. the divorce date in probate court. But I don’t think she’ll do anything; she knows she stole from him and got more than she should ever deserve. If she had been a good person, honored her pledge and vows as his wife, she would’ve been by his side through everything and when he passes, she’d have everything, all his savings, his house, his retirement. But now, she’s got her stupid $250K and hopefully, a conscience that keeps her up at nights.

I was in the middle of a blog post about something sort of negative, when I was interrupted by a phone call that changed my entire afternoon. I’m going to go home to blog about it when laundry’s going, but I’ll set up the preface right now.

Yesterday afternoon, I received a phone call from a clerk downstairs who sets up divorce cases and assigns them to different courtrooms. The divorces that don’t require court hearings (for example, if both sides have signed a marital settlement agreement and there’s nothing in dispute) can be processed by clerks who don’t work in family law, like me. I review the files and paperwork for procedural requirements, and if they’re okay, I send them on to my judge, who will look them over a final time and then sign off on them. Then I do the processing to get these people divorced. So anyway, yesterday the clerk who assigns these cases to us calls me and says that there’s an attorney here who wants his case rushed, and she’s been calling different courtrooms to see if she could get a hold of someone who’s willing to rush a divorce case for him. The petitioner (male) has a brain tumor and wants his divorce finalized as soon as possible, and his wife is not fighting the divorce. I said that’s fine, go ahead and assign the case to me and put it in my mail bin. I made a wry joke about how I’d feel if my husband’s dying wish is to be divorced from me. I wouldn’t contest it, either. (Except that as a widower, I’d legally get all his stuff as opposed to only the stuff we agree on for the divorce.) I got the file today, but because of various other things going on in this courtroom, I didn’t get around to looking at it. I did the more pertinent things first, such as the orders the judge (who is not my own judge; my judge is on vacation) wants processed and mailed out, and tending to the hearings we had in open court today.

Around 3:30pm, I get a call from that divorce clerk again. She asked, “Cindy, did you get a chance to look at that file we talked about yesterday?” I said not yet, I was about to get to it. It was literally on my desk in front of me as the next thing I was about to do. The judge had left for the day already, but I was going to review it and if it’s good, have the judge sign it tomorrow morning. The clerk said that the attorney is there in front of her right then. His client may not hold on much longer; he’s in the hospital and fading fast. I didn’t know it was that much of an emergency situation!

To be continued when I get home… and I’ll tell the story behind this sad case.

Mr. W told me earlier that his daughter went home from school early today. She caught the stomach flu that her brother and school friends had last week, and she threw up in science class today.
“She threw up in the science class?” I asked. Apparently she did.

I bet most of you normal people, in your head just now, went, “Aww.”
Some of you who are less paternally- or maternally-inclined may have just thought to yourselves, “Ew. Well, that sucks.”
Here was my immediate reaction. I said, “Oh, that’s cool! Cuz then the other kids can take a sample, put it on a slide, and look at it under their microscope.” I mean, it was in science class.

And it didn’t occur to me until now, almost 2 hours later, that my reaction wasn’t probably the most normal or thoughtful one.

So… my gym trainee has broken the ultra-difficult plateau and gotten below the weight line that she could not get under for the longest time…she’s now under 160 lbs. Yay! She’s at 159.2, and hopefully that’ll keep dropping. Not bad for the holidays. Mr. W has broken past the 200 lb barrier and is in the 190s. Before you go thinking that he’s fat, lemme say that he’s over 6′ tall. And me…well, I’m okay with where I’m at, altho ideally I can drop another 10. I did break my 10s platform and now I’m under 130. Not by much, but it’s better than the alternative.

May you have an unexpected head start in reaching your New Year’s Resolutions this year. 🙂

So what’s it mean if I dreamt that I’m trying to stuff a sack full of cat hair up my vagina, and the background music in the dream is Lynard Skynard’s “Freebird”? I think I’m playing too much “Guitar Hero.”

Please note the time. I’ve just gotten back from the gym! And it wasn’t because I went to the gym at 11p. Oh no, Mr. W and I set foot on the weight floor a little before 9p.

I used to be pretty hardcore about working out. In my heyday, I’d hit weights during lunchtime for 45 minutes to an hour, supersetting everything and getting 8-9 exercises in, 3 sets of 15 reps each. And then I’d go back after work for at least 45 minutes of cardio. And then every other day, I’d run outdoors (4-6 miles on weekdays, 10-12 miles on weekends). Now, I hit the gym at lunch for 35 minutes of weights, working in with my gym trainee so I don’t always get to superset, so we get about 4-5 exercises in on average, and maybe but rarely I’d go to jujitsu for a few hours after work. I’ve been ditching jujitsu and even bellydancing, and both are now on hiatus until next year. I’m not running much unless it’s on the treadmill for 3o mins or so.

Now that I’ve got Mr. W a membership, he’s always suggesting going to the gym. And by always, I don’t mean daily. I mean he’s there every lunch that work doesn’t oblige him to do something else, whether or not I go to the gym, and he wants to go again after work. On weekends he tries to make plans with me all day to go. But I’m in a workout slump. Today, I let him drag me through the motions of what I used to do. With my new Apple iPod Shuffle loaded with music, we hit a new gym. (He’s also into trying all the ones within a half hour’s drive from his house, and when we go some place on vacation, he wants to try the affiliated gyms there.) We both really liked the Orange 24 Hour Fitness; it’s clean, spacious, has new updated equipment, and uncrowded. I think we’ve found our home gym. After 10 minutes of stairclimber (because he wants to try a new cardio equipment), we went upstairs to the weight floor. I did 7 exercises at 3 sets of 15 reps each and was ready to call it a day, feeling pretty proud of myself for doing more than I have been doing on my own. But Mr. W wanted to work his minor muscle groups now t hat he’s worked his major muscles. I figure it’s good for me, so I did some triceps with him. And then I went to him, ready to go, relieved it’s over and more proud of myself for hanging in there. He wants to do abs. I’ve been slacking on my ab work, too, so I drag myself down there to do it with him. It’s nice to end a workout with some abs, anyway. I did 2 types of advanced ab stuff as he did his. After we were done, I prepared to walk to the locker room. He leaned his body toward the cardio equipment. “You want to do cardio?” I said somewhat incredulously. I guess a 10-minute cooldown wouldn’t kill me. He looked hesitant. “What, you wanna do MORE?” I asked. He wanted to do 40 minutes. It was now 10:30p and an hour and a half past his normal bedtime. He’s usually very cranky if he can’t be in bed by 9p. We compromised and did 25 minutes of elliptical trainer with a 5-minute cooldown. I was SO ready to go home. He announced he’s going to the steam room. Good Lord, where is this energy coming from?! I was too exhausted to sit in heat, and I’d run out of water, so I told him I’d meet him outside. I took my time in the locker room showering and getting changed, listening to some naked old Asian lady hock up noogies in the shower and in the mirrored vanity area as she dried her hair, standing there clothe-less and dripping, with the hand-dryer. And then I waited for him in the lounge area by the front desk.

I called college roommie Diana from there. Diana is a well-known gym rat. I told her, “I’m at the gym.” She said, “Okay, that’s good,” noting that it’s late. “I’ve been here since before 9,” I wailed. She started laughing, because I’d previously told her how I couldn’t get Mr. W to buy gym membership, how he always said he hated gyms, the way they’re crowded and smelly and anyone is stupid to pay for a gym when they can just buy some dumbbells for home use and go run for free outside. I told Diana how I got worked at the gym by the boyfriend tonight. “Good!” she said.

Maybe Mr. W’s new enthusiasm for gymming will get me back on track. He got me to the gym early for lunch yesterday, too, and I’m totally sore from that workout. Maybe this gym membership I bought for him is not just giving him the gift of health, it’s giving me the gift as well, as a sort of 2-for-1 thing. “What I like about going to the gym is that it’s something we can do together,” he said earlier in the car. So maybe it’s a 3-for-1 thing. I hope he doesn’t let me slack, cuz I know this is good for me and if I can’t motivate myself, he can either motivate me or club me over the head and let me regain consciousness on a hip adductor machine.

P.S. The time now is 12:39, 30 minutes after I started writing this post. Music from “Guitar Hero 2” is wafting in from the living room. Mr. W’s playing. WHERE is all this new energy coming from?!

I am in materialism heaven.

Mr. W wanted to celebrate Christmas early this year due to varying schedules, so tonight was that night. We (Mr. W’s two teens and us) had salad with bleu cheese vinaigrette dressing, lasagne, garlic bread, sherbet punch (mine and Mr. W’s spiked with vodka), and then we each decorated our own giant gingerbread man with frosting and candy.

As we waited for our frosting to harden, we gathered in the living room and opened presents, each of us with a wineglass of sparkling pomegranate juice. Mr. W orchestrated the opening ceremoniously so we could all bask in each other’s joy as we opened our loot, and he could take pictures. He’d hand one to one person, the person would read the clue on the label and try to guess what was inside, and then open it to see if they’re right. And then play would move to the left. I got Mr. W a membership to 24 Hour Fitness, first 3 years prepaid, which he’s been using since November since I gave it to him early. I’ve created a gym rat who wants to go twice a day and try out all the different clubs! Tonight I handed him his other present, a replica of the DaVinci Code cryptex complete with the rosewood box. The code was the same as in Dan Brown’s novel: apple.

Here’s the list of what he got me, in the order handed to me and opened.
Clue: “To keep the little piggies hidden from the big bad wolf!”
Present: a 3-pack of super-soft slipper socks

Clue: “So shoot me.” (I first thought he bought me a DVD season of “Just Shoot Me” cuz the size of the box is right, and then I thought he bought me a gun, but it was too light.)
Present: an Ultra Compact 5x Zoom All-Weather 7.1 Megapixel Olympus Stylus 740 digital camera with 5x Digital Image Stabilization!!! Holy crap!!! The guilt was instant. The camera was also asymmetric, which he pointed out right away, which was the winning factor in his selection of this camera when it was down to 2 models, that and a Canon. He knows me; I love asymmetry!

Clue: “Beware the windstorm!”
Present: (I knew this one, he’d accidentally given it away last week without realizing it, but I’d really wanted it. I’ve even blogged about it in the past.) A little stuffed hamster (life size!) inside a hamster wheel that plugs into your USB port, so that the faster you type, the faster the hamster runs on the wheel! I’m a pretty swift typist, hence the clue.

Clue: “Some ‘juice’ to call me!”
Present: cell phone charger, because my phone has been dying every few days lately. “Why don’t you charge it?” he would ask. “Because my charger’s at home!” I would declare.

Clue: “You are It is music to my your ears!”
Present: a tiny little flat white iPod Shuffle! I’ve never even heard of this model. It’s the size of a large postage stamp, and the back is just a clip that clamps it to your shirt. It came with a printed card that read “Merry Christmas Cindy! I love you, always, [Mr. W]”. And then I looked closer at the tiny little 1 gig player. In tiny print toward the upper edge is engraved “[Mr. W] loves Cindy.” I started laughing. It’s so cute, it should be carved on an apple tree or something! He must’ve had it specially ordered. “Listen to it, I’ve already pre-loaded a song on it!” he said, pulling the included earbuds out of the plastic wrapper. I put on the earbuds and pushed the playback button. Beyonce’s “Irreplaceable” played in stereo sound. I started laughing again. As I type this I’m smiling and laughing, feeling silly as Mr. W lays behind me. “I’m reliving it,” I explained to him.

Last but definitely not least…
Clue: “To put on your toast? …” (I joked, “You got me butter? And had it laying out all this time?”)
Present: 5 years’ worth supply of Body Butter. I’d just run out of the tub he got me last year, and was sad about that! He remembered! This time it’s a tub each of coconut, olive, white chocolate, mango and raspberry n’ black currant scents.

The photos on here are taken with my new camera. 😀

I’m so spoiled sick. SICK!

Yesterday on the freeway off-ramp, I heard some metallic clanking. Rhythmic, like clank-clank-clank-clank. I was concerned that something may be loose on my car, but then I saw this 3-foot long metal strip shaped like an L rolling in front of me on the lane! I managed to swerve left and avoid it. THAT would’ve totally scratched up my car for sure! It looked like some 80s car’s metallic bumper strip.

And then this morning, I was driving surface streets to work on the right lane of the 2-laned street. After my red light turned green, the old Mercedes in front of me was going painfully slow getting through the intersection, and then I saw this dirty old-style (probably mid-late 90s) silver Eclipse fly by to my right, where there was no lane, to cut in front of the Mercedes. I know she was going slow so it was kind of understandable, but how freaking reckless! A block up at another red light, the Eclipse went into the left-turn lane so I turned and looked at the asshole. Dark brown-haired jerk in his mid 20s, wearing sunglasses in foggy overcast mildly sprinkling weather. “You think you’re so hard-ass, you loser,” I thought at him, and redirected my attention elsewhere. A couple of blocks down, I saw that same Eclipse in front of me! What the heck? He must’ve gone in the left turn lane just to pass up the cars going straight and cut them off in the intersection, like he did to my right earlier! Luckily his lane was going slow so I passed him up rather happily. I peeked in. Yup, same guy. Asshole. A few more blocks, another red light, and suddenly this same jerk passes me again to my right, and I’m still in the right lane of a 2-laned street so there’s no lane to my right he must’ve pretended like he was going to take a right turn at the intersection and then blown straight through to cut off the car in front of me at the intersection where no one was expecting a car to come from the right! What an ass! WHY are people like this not getting tickets? And then…this was all just too familiar. I called James.
Me: Hey, remember that car that was cutting people off from the right turn lane and left turn lanes at the intersections?
James: Yeah?
Me: Do you remember what kind of car that was?
James: Um, it was a foreign car. I don’t remember. But it was something older and souped up, like a Supra or something like that.
Me: Was it a silver Eclipse?
James: Yeah! I think it was! Why?
Me: He just did that to ME!!

It turns out that James has “the power” now, too, altho his is way slow. He commented in detail about this car way back months ago, and now, I run into him. What a reckless jerk!