cindy's world

I found out this morning that I was tagged by Flat Coke & Flies for this short meme, asking me to list 5 reasons why I blog. Initially, I thought, “Shoot, I don’t have 5 reasons.” And then I remembered that in my first blog post, a Preamble posted on June 3, 2005, I had listed 2 reasons, so I only need 3 more! Yay!

List 5 reasons why you blog:
1.) “If nothing else, the record created on here will show me whether my dark days are truly outnumbered by my happy days (a goal I’m working toward), or”…
2.) …”serve as a tool for me to seek and display the silver sunlit lining around the ominous cumulonimbus clouds.”
3.) To keep exercising those writing brain muscles so that my major doesn’t totally go to waste, and to hopefully stay warmed up in case I DO get up and write that book some day.
4.) To vent when I feel about to explode, and reach 50 people at one time instead of calling each friend and venting 50 times about the same thing. (Just kidding, I don’t really do that. Just 3 or 4 times. 😉 )
5.) Cuz I’m running out of storage space for all my diaries.

I’m going to include a bonus 6th reason, because I know I cheated a little on the first 2 answers:
6.) Cuz I have a secret guilty hope that I’ll really be someone someday and after my death, people (like fans of my writing or my future generations) would be curious about who I was, and this’ll give them something to uncover.

Now I get to tag 5 people in return, so that they have to do this meme, too. I see Flat Coke has already taken Jordan and Vanessa, so…
1.) college roommie Diana
2.) Mel
3.) Wilco
4.) TurboTiger James
5.) Jade
Okay, guys, I just gave you a free blog topic. Have at it. 🙂

I went to the gym yesterday evening with intention to do a run. My treadmill runs lately are about 3 miles cuz that’s pretty much all I have time for during lunchtime. When I say “lately,” however, I mean one run every other week or so; I’m not that good about it. Yesterday, I stepped on the treadmill and input a program for Alpine Pass (2 steep hills in the middle of the program), set the maximum speed for 5.5mph, maximum hill at an incline of level 5, set the duration for 45 minutes, and went for it. It was a smooth, comfortable run. I was so comfortable, in fact, that at the end of the program, I immediately reset the treadmill for a 5.5mph run on a flat course and went at it another 15 minutes plus an additional 9 minute cool-down jog/walk. (Afterwards, when I did abs on the mat, I put my workout towel behind me and laid my back on it. It was almost wringably wet when I was done.)

I dedicate that run to Mel, who’d written in a recent blog entry that she’s now up to 60 minutes in her runs now. That statement stuck in my head last nite, and inspired me to reach for 60 minutes as well. Thanks, Mel!

I was reading an article in the December 11, 2006 issue of People magazine entitled “Anorexia, Again”, which chronicles the relapse of Jennifer Shortis into her eating disorder. When I first began reading it, I felt removed from the disease, like watching a science fiction or horror flick on TV. It didn’t occur to me to remember until after I’d finished the article that I’d once been anorexic for years. I saw my prior eating disorder as just a dumb decision made out of ignorance of the functions of the human body. It was a regret, and had I known then how much it’d affect my body’s weight regulation system and metabolism even decades after I’d stopped, I would never have done it. My body is quick to store fat and slow to burn it; skipping a couple of meals drops me into “starvation” mode and my blood withdraws, I’m suddenly freezing, and I know any food I take in at this time would go straight to fat as my body prepares for a perceived famine. It sucks. I do three times the energy output at the gym and lose less than one-third the weight (if any) of a normal person on a normal workout. So the fact that I feel distanced from anorexia now means that I’ve learned how to be healthier and that I’ve recovered, right?

That’s what I thought until I got to the end of the article — an insert giving anorexia nervosa facts:

According to a study published this year in the International Journal of Eating Disorders, one-third of anorexia patients will recover fully, one-third will have a functional recovery, and a third will battle the illness constantly. Experts offer opinions as to why.

One-third gets a full recovery? Only one-third? Was I just lucky? Was I never in as deeply as I thought? The insert goes on:

When is treatment seen as successful? “This tends to be a chronic illness,” says Dr. Esther Dechant, medical director of the Klarman Eating Disorders Center at Harvard. “Full recovery means you are fine with your body, have no [anorexic] behaviors and can eat normally and follow hunger cues.”

Uh-oh. If I’m not fine with my body (I don’t remember ever actually being “fine” with my body; even at my lowest weight point I always thought I could lose just a few more, like at least 5 lbs, despite coworkers saying I’m now “too” thin), am I being healthy and realistic, or is this a problem? And as far as anorexic behaviors, I still skip meals fairly often, but that’s cuz I feel like I’ve created a caloric surplus somewhere and need to “even things out”. I still feel massive amounts of guilt when I eat certain things and want to punish myself. Yesterday, I binged through half a bag of Trader Joe’s version of Cheetos, the reduced fat version, which gave me almost 500 calories, and then after the workout I ate more than several servings of raw nuts which I know have “healthy fats and proteins” good for me, but not in the quantity I consumed them, so I didn’t have lunch, and for dinner I had Kashi cereal because it’s the lightest thing I had at home. This morning I just had a cup of coffee. Is this a problem?

What keeps a recovery from lasting? “Relapse is based on a number of factors,” says Dr. Marcia Herrin, cofounder of Dartmouth’s eating disorders program. Among them, she says, is the weight at which patients can be released from inpatient care. “I think it is way too low. If the weight isn’t fixed, nothing else gets fixed.”

Well. No problem there. I can afford to lose about 25 lbs and still outweigh most Asian girls my height. Altho I did hear recently that Asia is just starting to have an obesity problem. Guess I’ll see when I go to China in a couple of weeks. I’d be delighted if I could be a normal sized or small girl in Asia. The last time I was in Asia, a friend of the family observed to my mother that she’s open-minded enough to see that my figure is “standard” or “correct” (biaow dzwen in Mandarin), but that to Asian standards, I’m still fat. Asians have a way of talking around their offspring as if the offspring are not there or don’t understand the language. Actually, I think she meant it as a compliment.

How long is enough time to reach a healthy weight? “Most programs recommend 90 days,” says Dr. James Greenblatt, medical director of Walden Behavioral Care. “It’s frustrating. If we had two patients at the same weight, one [insurance] company might provide two weeks of care, another a week. Once it stops being life-threatening, [insurers] feel it can be treated in an outpatient setting. We used to keep patients until they were at or about 100 percent of their ideal body weight. Now there are no set criteria. It is clear that readmission rates increased as length of stay has decreased.”

If body weight is the indicator of anorexia now, instead of the previous markers of psychological thought and habits like it used to be, then I have no problem. It used to be that someone was not clear of anorexia just because he/she is not emaciated, and the treaters of the disease used to emphasize that just cuz you’re not 70 lbs doesn’t mean you’re not anorexic or bulimic; if you constantly see yourself as fat, you overcontrol food intake or you binge-eat and then throw it up or take laxatives to eliminate, you are anorexic or bulimic.

Even in the age of HMOs, is there hope for recovery? “I see people recover,” says Herrin. “The part that ends up being key is when a client says, ‘I really want this.’ “

Since we’ve established that I’m not “anorexic” cuz I’m not starving to death, I don’t see anything about “wanting” or “not wanting” as an issue. Except that I really really want to be small(er).

Mr. W wanted to take me and his kids out to dinner last nite, so we drove to Black Angus steakhouse. Right before we reached the front door, Mr. W realized he’d left something in his car, so he ran back to the parking lot as the kids and I entered. In the empty lobby, the 2 kids stood to the side of the hostess podium as I told the hostess, “Four, please.” She checked the seating chart, reaching for some menus behind her.
A young male, the guy who takes people to their seats, said to Mr. W’s son and daughter, “Just the two of you tonight?”
Daughter looked confused, and she said, “No, four,” at the same time the seating hostess told him, “Party of four.”
The young man said, “Oh, okay,” as if finally understanding, and then grabbed two more menus. And then he said to the kids, “So you’re expecting two more to show up still?”
Mr. W’s kids just stared at him. The hostess said, “No, these three here [pointing to them and me] and the gentleman coming in the door right now [pointing at an entering Mr. W].”

WTF? I declared that they shouldn’t charge for my dinner since I was clearly invisible. Which brings me to my next question. To quote Chandler from “Friends,” “Hmm. Should I use my powers of invisibility for good, or for evil?”

My court reporter’s daughter had applied for some college scholarships. One of them almost made me cry.

A little over a year ago last January, a Jeep or SUV type vehicle was taking a turn off a freeway in Long Beach too quickly, and skidded out the side of the circular ramp, broke through the chain-link fence, rolled over a few times on its way down the slope, and landed top-down at the bottom of a cement-lined ravine. It had been raining heavily those weeks, and the ravine was filled with water. Only the tires of the car were above the water line. Witnesses rushed down to the overturned car and struggled to get the doors or windows open, but were unable to; the doors were jammed. By the time the police and medical team had gotten there and were able to get the driver out, she was floating in the backseat of the flooded car, unconscious. Resuscitation efforts on the gurney were ineffective, and the sixteen year old girl passed away. They say she may have been trying to get out of the vehicle herself; her seat belt was undone and she was no longer in the driver’s side. Within an hour of seeing this on the news, my court reporter’s daughter got a call that this was her friend. They went to the same high school, and used to spend the night at each others’ houses when they were younger.

The mother of the deceased girl is a court reporter in Long Beach, and the girl was the only child. The girl’s father, a district attorney, had passed away suddenly (heart attack or something like that) only a couple of years prior, and now the mother was attending her daughter’s funeral so quickly after having to attend her husband’s. My court reporter was at the girl’s funeral, as with some attorneys from the building. They said it was the saddest funeral they had ever attended, and among the mourners were many young people, friends of the daughter’s.

The girl’s parents had set up a college fund for the girl, and when the girl passed away, the mother put the money in a commemorative scholarship as a memorial to her daughter. I can’t imagine what making that decision was like; knowing that the money meant to go to your only child would never be used, but deciding instead to put it toward furthering some other child’s college dreams; to help with some good in the world instead of being bitter that your child’s future had evaporated senselessly overnight whereas other people’s children got to go on to bigger and better things.

There really is so much sadness, and it’s inspiring to see good things grow out of acidic soil.

Jordan and I had a playful email dispute that ended with me making what I felt was a definitive, indisputable point, thereby winning the debate. Since she’d characterized her initial email as “poking” at me and then we continued our emails by ending each one with “poke, poke” or “poking you back”, I ended my winning point with “poke mate.” And so it began…

Jordan: I don’t play chess so… I’ll take your PokeMate and slam dunk that in the basketball hoop…
Cindy: and we’ll call that a 10.0 drift head-to-head challenge score!
Jordan: well then move that to the volleyball court and set… spike… SLAM
Cindy: in your face over-the-net block!
Jordan: blocked by my big FOREHEAD back at you then taken to the football field for a TOUCHDOWN…
Cindy: and going over a hip check on the way to a slam over the goalie’s reach into the net! HOLE IN ONE!!
Jordan: popped out of the net…. (sorry).. ran to Yankee stadium where it was a long straight hit out onto River Avenue…. lightly joggin through three bases… slides into home plate for picture-taking effect and because my family is watching…and… HOME RUN
Cindy: FOUL! FOUL! Penalty shot is called! Ooh, and the penalty throw is FUMBLED by Jordan! All cameras snap away as the golden spotlight is snatched away from her with her family watching!
Jordan: whistle blower. reviewed in the ‘box”… yards given back to jordan after reviewing the tape showing that cindy clearly tripped jordan… drives to
daytona speedway at 190 mph… crosses the FINISH line… vroom
Cindy: Alas, the race at hand is a go-kart race! Jordan is disqualified for her
use of her golf cart!!
Jordan: Jordan hands Cindy the pamphlet that stated if you own a golf cart, you may use it in lieu of not having a go-cart… she never reads the fine print… SO… double check mate, swing, goalie, spike, basket, score, home run, grand slam, hole in one and naked haha dance at the end
Cindy: …what? I just saw the naked haha dance and got lost. *pointing at Jordan* You danced NEKKID! HA-ha!! PS – you KNOW I’m gonna blog this.

SIMULTANEOUSLY, Jordan was sending this:
Jordan: i think YOU should post these (sports related triumphs)

Cindy: I was just going to! haha! same brain at use here again?
Jordan: wonder twin powers… deactivate
Cindy: Gooooo, Voltron team!

Did I mention I love it when Jordan has the day off? She plays with me.

Being in the wrong court at the wrong time (Friday) nearly ruined my weekend. Courtroom hours are typically till 4pm, and they shut down after 4 to give the staff a chance to finish their work, do whatever running around they need, so they can get out of there by 5. The judge in Santa Monica on Friday stayed in trial on the record until 4:50p, after which he thanked the court reporter for “staying late” and didn’t even look in my direction, and got off the bench. Hello! The court reporter lives nearby and that’s her regularly assigned courthouse, whereas *I* had a 3-hour drive ahead of me now due to rush hour traffic! So instead of driving home and sitting in traffic, I called up childhood friend Karen (grew up with her since she was in kindergarten and I was in 3rd grade), who lives in nearby West Los Angeles, and we had a nice boat sushi dinner followed by Pinkberry frozen yogurt. It’s fun to catch up with someone whom I see, like, once every other year. Altho I did see her last summer when she treated me to dinner for my birthday. She’s always got tons of stuff going on and I live vicariously through her for a couple of hours until I’m dizzy. Ah, to be young and energetic.
me and Karen almost exactly 2 yrs ago:

Saturday, Mr. W and I went to the Irvine Farmer’s Market, an outdoor “swap meet” style setup with fresh produce, organic groceries and baked goods, and hand-made crafts and clothing. We bought a package of whole wheat pita bread, two types of flavored hummus (spicy red pepper and kalamata olive), dolmas (finger-sized appetizers of seasoned rice wrapped in grape leaves), then went to his place, packed everything up with beverages and an avocado, and we headed off to Irvine Park to have a picnic. After eating our fill of fresh healthy Greek food, we fell asleep on a blanket over grass and under trees. After awakening, we took a nice long walk around the large park and its equestrian, pond, and picnic areas, then went back to his house to watch Fast and Furious: Tokyo Drift while eating homemade pizzas made out of toasting the leftover pita bread and ingredients around his house. Now THAT drifting in the movie is cool. We watched the making of the film, and drifting appears to be more complicated than I thought. Yeah, uh, I’m not gonna be doing it with my car. I also can’t afford to go through 3 sets of tires a day. But I do think I’m at least a drifting fan now.

Sunday, Mr. W and I spent lots of quality time together in the morning, then hit the gym. In the early afternoon, Vanessa came over and she and I headed out to our massage appointments at Glen Ivy Day Spa in Brea. This was her induction into a full-facility day spa that had steam rooms, whirlpool, rainfall showers, complimentary sugar scrubs, tea and apples. I hadn’t seen her smile that big in a long time. We both booked 80-minute full body massages, it was much needed, especially after my Friday the 13th. After we split up after the appointments, I visited my parents, pigged out at their house, and then decided that since it was early, I was going back to Mr. W’s. We watched Pursuit of Happyness starring Will Smith featuring his real-life 5-yr old son, which is a pretty good movie. Will Smith’s son Jaden did a phenomenal job. Nothing he said sounded rehearsed, it was all sincere and convincing, even his tantrum. After the movie, I realized, “Hey, if this movie is set in 1981, and the little boy Christopher was 5 in this movie, that means he’s MY age!” And then suddenly this movie seemed to tell a story from so long ago, and I suddenly felt old. So I went to sleep right away like an old person.

On the drive to work yesterday morning, I heard a sound bite on the radio, something to the effect of a male voice saying, “Actually, I’m not even really sure what the premise of Indecent Proposal is. I’ve never seen the movie. I guess, like, the guy from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid wanted to sleep with my wife or something? Like, who doesn’t? But I never saw the movie cuz I was too young at the time and I guess it’s R-rated and my parents wouldn’t let me watch it.” And I realized it was Ashton Kutcher. The quote made me laugh, cuz it’s reminiscent of how I sometimes “remind” Mr. W of our age difference. (Mr. W: “Remember this guy? He’s from such-and-such a movie.” Me: “I really wouldn’t know; I was like 4 at the time and didn’t speak English yet.”) I then realized that I’d never seen Indecent Proposal straight through either, only in bits and pieces, and I thought that I would like to watch that movie sometime.

In typical Cindy’s World koinkidinkal style, I was channel surfing late last nite and Indecent Proposal was playing. I didn’t get to watch from the very beginning, but it was probably within the first 10 minutes. The movie was surprisingly good. And Robert Redford is surprisingly charming in his character. I’d had a conversation with Mr. W last week about how some friends in high school had crushes on Robert Redford, which I’d found odd at the time, cuz to me he was such an old folgie. But after this movie, I can see what the attraction is. The movie did rip a few reluctant tears out of my eyes, but I like to think if it as late-night oversensitivity. I was, however, disappointed at the lack of sex scenes. Why’s this movie R-rated? Maybe the cable channel had edited out the good stuff.

Two scenes that stuck with me:
1.) The turning point scene at Robert Redford’s character’s mansion (which I recognized to be shot at the Huntington Library. In fact, lemme see if I can find a photo of it.). John (Redford) finally explains why he was pursuing Diana (Moore) so hard by telling a story from his youth. To paraphrase, “When I was much younger, I was extremely shy around women. One day, on a bus [train?], I saw a girl sitting there. She was wearing a dress with a shirt that was buttoned all the way up to her chin. But she was the most beautiful girl I had ever seen. But when she looked up, I would look away, and when I looked at her and saw her looking at me, she would look away. Then when I got off, I looked back at her through the window. She was looking right at me, and then she gave me the most beautiful smile. That moment was horrible for me. I wanted to break down the glass doors and get back to her. I went back on the same bus every day, at the same time, for the next two weeks, but she never came back. There hasn’t been a day since that I hadn’t thought about her, and about what I’d lost. I’m not going to let that happen again.”
2.) The scene in the limousine when John let Diana go by telling her that she was just one of thousands worldwide in the “million dollars’ club”, i.e. that he’d paid many people $1mil to be with them for a night, and his chauffeur, finally catching his drift, played along. She was at first confused and hurt, but then she realized what he was doing, and looked at him gratefully. “Thank you, John,” she said as she kissed him one last time. “Goodbye.” And then she exited the limo and ran into a bus to go back to her ex-husband. “What was that all about?” the chauffeur asked John. “I wanted to end it,” John explained, looking wistfully after Diana. “She would’ve never looked at me the way she looked at him.”

In the movie, this was John’s front yard leading up to his house, altho in the photo (from our visit in 10/06) it was under renovation:

Here’s what lines either side of the yard/fountain:

My judge chose today to take off work and accompany his son on some university visits as son decides which college to attend this fall. Unfortunately, procedures would then leave his staff to the mercy of the wind. My bailiff was told yesterday that he would be the bailiff for the courtroom next door. Not too bad, although it’s busier than our courtroom is. My court reporter and I joked yesterday that we’d be left alone to enjoy coffee in her office all day. It really looked that way for me this morning, as at 7:30a the assignment charts didn’t have me listed to go anywhere else. At almost 8:00a, my reporter entered the courtroom and started packing up her stuff. “They’re sending you out of the building?” I asked in surprise. “Yes, they’re sending me to Downey,” she said miserably. Downey Court is about 5 miles away, but it’s never comfortable entering a strange courtroom with strange people calling strange cases with different rules and ways of doing things that we’re not aware of. And then, there was one. Me. At 8:30a, my supervisor approached me in the Clerk’s Office, where I was putting away some documents. He looked apologetic. That can’t be good. Turned out, it wasn’t good. They sent me to Santa Monica Court, over 30 miles away, and that’s not the worst of it. It was close to downtown Los Angeles, through the most hideous driving conditions on the freeways. You think of LA rush hour traffic, cars honking, stop-and-go (mostly stop) parking lot of cars on the freeway, that’s what I sat through to get to a strange courthouse with the strange courtroom with strange people conducting strange business.

I walked in the courtroom in mid-trial. Civil medical malpractice lawsuit, it seems like, tons of paper documents about operation reports, dental records, billing records, specialist diagnoses, photos, basically a paper exhibit nightmare. I didn’t know who people were, who was talking, who was on the witness stand, and no copies of the complicated-looking exhibits. GAH!!

So I’m faking it the best I can. It’s only for a day. I introduced myself to the judge at a break earlier, and he was very nice, offered to let me into an in-house gym they have downstairs. Unfortunately, I’d left my gym bag at home since I didn’t think I’d be working out at a strange location. *kicking self* Luckily, I’d worked out twice yesterday.

Some time ago, a thread of conversation in the comment section got on the topic of how some guys refuse to answer hypothetical questions posed by his significant other for fear of entering into a trap-slash-fight, which topic I’m sure had nothing to do with the post itself. 🙂 Such is the nature of my blog for certain things to take on their own life, and I enjoy that aspect immensely.

On that topic, Mr. W used to refuse hypothetical questions. It was almost a matter of policy for him. One could just feel that hypothetical questions had come back to bite him in the ass in the past. Now, however, he answers and plays along with me, because he knows there’s no consequence if I’m going to ask something absurd, except for last night when I asked him playfully, as he was falling asleep, to tell me a story, and he said he had no stories and he’s not creative, and I said, “Tell me a story about the time you cheated on me,” and he obviously had never cheated but he did make something up involving Pamela Anderson and I decided a few minutes into this story that this probably wasn’t the greatest bedtime idea. But again, there was no “real” consequence aside from the story somehow ending with me screwing entire football teams.

ANYWAYS…geez, how do I get off on these tangents? I was remembering an early hypothetical posed by Mr. W’s kids about 3 months into our dating, as later recanted to me by Mr. W. Apparently the 3 of them were having dinner and the kids’ hypothetical was, “If there was a big earthquake or something, and the ground split, and we were stuck on one section and Cindy was stuck on another, who would you come rescue?” His response was, of course, “I refuse to answer this hypothetical question because it’s stupid and impossible and would never happen.” When he told me this question, I thought, “Uh-oh. They’re feeling insecure about their station in Dad’s life with me around and they need/want reassurance that Dad will still be there for them.” The kids prompted Mr. W some more and when he still refused to play along, his kids said, “Well, CINDY would have you come rescue US because she’d tell you to help us while she took care of herself.” How right they were! And just after a few months of knowing me! It was a relief to know they were just testing HIM (and how well he knew me) and not acting out based on some perceived competition with me. I must’ve been doing SOMETHING right.