cindy's world

I got this little gem on email from my jujitsu instructor:

DADDY’S GONNA EAT YOUR FINGERS ..
This one is for everyone who … a) has kids, b) had kids, c) was a kid, d) knows a kid, e) is going to have kids.

I was packing for my business trip and my three year old daughter was having a wonderful time playing on the bed. At one point she said, “Daddy, look at this,” and stuck out two of her fingers.

Trying to keep her entertained, I reached out and stuck her tiny fingers in my mouth and said, “Daddy’s gonna eat your fingers,” pretending to eat them.

Went back to packing, looked up again and my daughter was standing on the bed staring at her fingers with a devastated look on her face.

I said, “What’s wrong, honey?”

She replied, “What happened to my booger?”

It’s kinda neat that after a year and a half of being together, I look at Mr. W in his wifebeater and low-riding jeans retiling his shower wall, and I secretly check him out as I swirl tile glue on the backs of the tiles and hand them to him, and I smile at the way his traps shift on his back when he pushes against the wall, I want to press my tongue into the indentation of his tricep muscles, and I wish he were retiling the shower walls naked. Of course, I’m nothing to look at in my wet post-shower hair, a massive mound of fabric as my body disappears inside his big t-shirt and boxers. I guess this is the epitome of being comfortable together.

Yesterday, I told him as we walked from the Thai restaurant back to the car, that I look at him sometimes and smile, thinking how cute he is and how much I love him. He said he’s like that all the time when he thinks about me, and that when he thinks about me, he thinks about how much he wants to spend the rest of his life with me.

I told him that for Valentine’s Day, I don’t want to go out, I just want to be alone with him, curled up in blankets or bathrobes, watching romantic comedies on TV, eating a banana creme pie straight out of the tin.

Of course, if I can stop coughing and feeling like my lungs are compressing on their own whim, I may feel more like getting dressy and going out, or getting undressy and staying home. Stupid virus.

I just heard him cuss. I’d better go help again. =)

Mr. W said earlier over tom yum soup and yellow curry, “I’d like to go back to Thailand and see it again, now that I’m older, instead of just as a young kid out there…”
“…whoring?” I finished the sentence for him.
“Yeah.”

Instantly Mr. W and I were in Thailand, walking down a crowded village street in a marketplace type area. Out of nowhere, an older woman (and by older I mean Mr. W’s age) grabs his arm, staring wide-eyed into his face. “It’s you! You have returned!” she says breathlessly. He looks down at her, confused. “It’s me,” she says, and clucks some name in Thai.
“Oh! Hiiii!” Mr. W says with a tone in his voice that makes my heart catch in my throat. He breaks through the reverie and pushes me forward slightly. “This is my girlfriend,” he introduces.
The woman notices me for the first time and almost as an afterthought, drops her hand where it was still clutching Mr. W’s elbow. She nods at me, not meeting me in the eyes. “I go to market — I have to buy –” she points in a general direction, and without finishing her sentence, she trails off.
Mr. W stares after her, then tells me, “I’ll be right back,” and jogs to her. I watch, standing alone and scared on the streets of Thailand, as he exchanges some words with her quickly and then returns to me.
Later on in the hotel, he would be distant, seemingly lost in thought often. And when I call him on it, he’d say, “I’m sorry, remember the girl I told you I’d met in Thailand, and we became friends?”
“You mean the bar prostitute you used to hook up with?!” I’d spat.
His face would darken in anger as he defends her. “I told you, we were also friends and we would talk. Anyway, she’s in some kind of trouble or hardship or something, we didn’t really get into it. I’ll find out more –”
“You mean you’re going to meet up with her?!” I’d say, clutching the front of my own shirt as if to keep my heart from bursting out of my chest and splintering right there on the hotel room floor.

“I’d like to actually go see how the people live, and see the museums and the culture,” Mr. W was saying, spooning up another mouthful of lemongrass soup. I gasped internally, putting my fork down. If only he knew what was playing in my head with the simple line he’d thrown out there.

My supervisor got me to go to the doctor today, by telling me this:

0 – the number of people who died of pneumonia by going to the doctor.
0+x – the number of people who died of pneumonia by not going to the doctor.

I went to a different Kaiser facility at the advice of my court reporter, and that place was a blessing! I’m going there from now on.

20:20 – the time of my appointment (I was shocked I was able to GET a same-day appointment, considering I couldn’t at any of my other regular facilities).
0 – the number of people ahead of me in line when I went to check in for the appointment
2 – number of minutes spent waiting in the waiting room before I was called into the nurse’s station
100 – my systolic blood pressure (or whatever the larger # is)
57 – my diastolic blood pressure (or whatever the smaller # is)
58 – my pulse rate
128 – weight with a t-shirt, fleece sweatshirt, heavy jeans and tennis shoes on (woohoo! That means I’m like 124 nekkid! or maybe less!)
2 – number of minutes spent waiting for the doctor in the exam room

She figured I had a virus (like flu or cold) that ran its course in about a week, and then when I relapsed, it was because it became a bacterial infection in the upper respiratory area. She prescribed a round of antibiotics.

0 – number of people ahead of me in the pharmacy line downstairs
15-20 – number of minutes the pharmacist told me to wait for my prescription to be filled
8 – number of minutes actually spent waiting before the prescription was filled
40 – number of minutes spent at the Kaiser facility in all
10 – days of amoxicillin to take. This makes me slightly nervous, cuz the last time I took amoxicillin, I ended up with a yeast infection. 😛 Oh well, anything but this suffering! *cough cough*

P.S.
2 – the number of gallons of ice cream we just bought to celebrate my weight loss. har.

I didn’t go to work yesterday. I thought if I slept in (which I did), and relaxed all day (which I did), my body would somehow heal itself (which it didn’t). I didn’t even blog yesterday, and the only blogger I was in contact with was Jordan, who’d called and left a voice mail message of a baby showing off its very healthy lungs. That’s the entire voice mail. I listened to it while sitting on the toilet after getting out of bed, and wondered whether Jordan was trying to entice me with babies, or annoy me with babies, or simply tell me she was at work playing with babies. All it really did was make me feel sorry for myself as my lungs were nowhere near the capacity the baby’s lungs were belting out. Jordan did call back that evening, and her nursy powers diagnosed me as having bronchitis now. Great.

I didn’t blog yesterday so as to give the spotlight to a very special birthday girl. And she didn’t blog, either! In fact, she hadn’t blogged since February 2, 2007. Can you guess who it is? Here are some more clues. She’s smart yet doofus-y, blonde yet witty, secure/stable yet entertaining/dramatic, young yet mom, petite yet bigger-than-life, cute yet don’t-piss-her-off-or-she’ll-yell-at-you-and-throw-your-tickets-right-out-the-window-of-a-moving-vehicle. Happy birthday, big sister! We love you!

P.S. I lied earlier. I didn’t blog cuz I was lazy.

I feel bad that the last 6 consecutive entries were about me whining over how sick I am, so I thought I’d put something that may be of more interest out there. An early lesson about walking in someone’s shoes. Or something like that.

In 5th grade, our school put on a Christmas production that involved a choir, some acting, some instrument playing. I think it was a musical or a play about a poor musician who, through divine inspiration, wrote some great Christmas music and made the king or Bishop or someone happy, thereby saving himself from starvation. All our chorus music was in Latin. Since I was sort of the student pianist prodigy (I’m not saying I deserved the reputation), I was pulled out of Honors Chorus for the play to do the keyboarding part of the production. My 5th grade teacher, Mrs. C, was doing much of the direction and musical arrangement.

The pieces were difficult, I just remember something about playing the part of a donkey on the keyboard which was put on an “oboe” setting. I struggled through many rehearsals, but I attended them all.

The day of the concert came. In class, we were working on some assignment quietly when I noticed a gnawing discomfort in my stomach. I ignored it for awhile, but finally decided to ask to see the nurse. I walked up to Mrs. C, who was sitting at a desk at the front of the class, writing something. I waited to be acknowledged. She didn’t look up. Finally, I said in a small voice, “Mrs. C?” She ignored me. I waited again. “Mrs. C?” Nothing. I just started talking. “I don’t feel too good. My stomach hurts. Can I go see the nurse?” She didn’t look up. “Mrs. C?”

Finally, she looked up at me angrily. I don’t remember what she started off saying because I didn’t understand her, and was only aware that the sharpness of her voice caused other students close to the front of the room to look up in surprise. I finally caught on when she was saying, “…and all of us have been practicing our parts for all of these weeks, and now you’re telling us you can’t do the part! Now that’s not very fair to me or to any of the other kids, now, is it?!” I took a step back. “It’s NOT fair, is it?” she insisted. I obediently shook my head and whispered, “No.” Mrs. C gave a huff of frustration and looked back down at her work on her desk, signaling me that this conversation was now over. I went back to my desk, bewildered.

I went home after school and told my mom my confusion. She didn’t know what I was talking about, and made me attend the concert that night anyway. I saw that Mrs. C was doing the keyboarding part, looking angry and tense. I took my place with the choir and sang the part I’d always sung before I was assigned the keyboarding part. I wondered if Mrs. C was wondering why I was there since she believed I’d said I wouldn’t be attending, but she never met my eyes.

Some time later, my mother told me a secret she’d either heard on the news or through her work with a County child abuse agency. “Remember when your teacher snapped at you and you didn’t know why? Don’t tell anyone in school because no one is supposed to know this, but her husband is a coach at the high school, and he was caught in his car doing things with a male student of his. It happened around the time she yelled at you. So she’s going through some problems at home, just don’t let it bother you and understand that people sometimes have their own difficulties that you may not be aware of.”

I still don’t like her.

I know it hasn’t even been a week since I stopped working out due to ailment, but I looked thicker and mushier in the mirror this morning! 🙁 Stupid virus.

Mr. W forbade me to come to work this morning. He said being up all night coughing means I’m not well enough to work and I should rest up at home. But I already missed one day this week, and I came to work yesterday, so missing another day just looks bad. Our present criminal trial only goes on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays as the defendant has to be at dialysis three times a week, and it looks deliberate if I only miss Monday and Wednesday. Plus, I missed a lunchtime meeting/training last Thursday when I was so sick I just laid in the jury room all lunch burning up with fever and forgot about the meeting, and it was a mandatory training so my supervisor has arranged for a makeup meeting/training at lunchtime today. I can’t miss the makeup! 🙁 Stupid virus.

I can’t wait till Mr. W figures out that I’m not at home recuping. I’m gonna get yelled at, on top of not getting a break all day cuz I have to go to a meeting through lunch. 🙁 Stupid virus.

After coughing through a phone conversation with Mr. W today at work, he said that I probably have tuberculosis, which is such a “romantic” ailment because all the great romance novels have the heroine dying of consumption. So earlier I IMed him:

me: I just want you to know…* cough cough *
…that if I don’t make it through this consumption… * hack choke *
…that I’m eternally grateful * hack hack *
…to have been loved by you * puking blood *
Mr. W: u need more jaeger
me: how…unromantic.
I’m gonna blog this.
Mr. W: now here is the romantic part
I am secretly a Vampire and I offer you eternal life and love with me….with just one bite
me: hmm.
I’ll get back to you on that.
but thanks!

I hadn’t been at work for 10 minutes when 3 people I passed through observed how bad I looked. In the elevator on the way up, a court reporter who didn’t know I’ve been sick asked me if I was okay. She said my eyes look glassy. When the elevator doors opened, my gym trainee took one look at me from the hallway and said, “Ooh. You’re not going to the gym today, are you?” I told her, “I don’t think I could take it. My lungs would explode.” “You should’ve stayed home another day,” she remarked. Then after I got to my desk, the relief clerk who was in my courtroom in my place yesterday came by to catch me up on what happened in trial yesterday. She said, “Oh. Are you okay? You sound horrible.” And just as I was writing this, the bailiff next door walked through and said, “What’s up, Cindy? You don’t look yourself.” Well, if it’s THAT obvious, maybe I should go home early.

I’m being slightly taken advantage of at work, I think. This girl came by my courtroom and said that she wanted to start going to the gym, and that my gym trainee told her we go at lunchtime and invited her along. That’s fine, since we all invite everyone along that wants to go and try to encourage people to help themselves. The problem is, this girl continued to ask me to train her. She kind of put it on the footing that implied that my gym trainee had made her the offer, but I don’t know if she really did or just simply told her she should come with. Cuz I don’t want to take on a trainee who doesn’t know what she’s doing at the gym. For one, she’s not a friend of mine, I don’t owe her a thing. Second, it’s a liability if she hurts herself or doesn’t listen to me and does something wrong. Third, to train someone from scratch means that I’m not going to be able to work out myself. That sucks. I was willing to do that for my gym trainee way back then because she helped me out a lot (and still does) with family law crap, and she was motivated beyond belief (and still is) to change her lifestyle as she had a real health issue with her weight. And she’s someone cool I hang out with, too. This girl is just going to be purely me sacrificing my own workouts when I need to help myself to stay in shape.

Do I sound selfish? Oh well, I’m not going to the gym for another few days, anyway. I’m too sick today and I have a lunchtime meeting tomorrow.

Today… I am a trooper no more. Today… I had more fun than you as I called in sick to work, then slept in till 11a. After my shower, I walked to the living room and realized that Mr. W had left his lunch behind. So I took it to him at work, then bought a few things at the store, and I’ve been home since. I vacuumed, cleaned up the cat area, have laundry going, sucked up some apple cider flavored Theraflu. I have taken more drugs this past week than I have collectively in my life. Nyquil, Robitussin DM, Theraflu, Tylenol, cough drops. I’m still coughing and my lungs feel week, but I’m in high spirits from the day’s productivity and other little things. I think I’ll curl up with Eragon the rest of the night, and I’m even tempted to order a pizza. If only sickness-induced weight loss were more permanent, I’d have less than 10 lbs to go till I reach my goal weight.