cindy's world

So the two feared predictions happened.

1) My roofer held off starting the repairs because he said it may rain Monday-Wednesday and they can’t replace a roof when it’s wet and being rained on. I was hoping it wouldn’t rain because the sky looked CLEAR all last week. It poured yesterday and last nite. I put buckets, bowls and cups down at the prior drippage sites but when I left this morning, it still hadn’t dripped. *crossing fingers*

2) I called my Association’s treasurer last nite and told him about the estimate. As expected, he balked, and said the association doesn’t have that much money. So he told me to get at least one more estimate, and meanwhile they were going to write letters to all the other homeowners in the association to try and collect $300 from each of them to pitch in for my roof repair, which, he reminded me, will take some time so we won’t be able to pay any contractor until a month after the job’s done. After I hung up last nite, I sat there thinking there ain’t no WAY they’re gonna pay for my internal ceiling damage, no matter what the law says. I can sue them, but it’ll be just a wasted effort if they don’t have the funds to pay the judgment, AND I’ll have all my neighbors mad at me. So I may as well have my insurance take care of the internal damage and pay the hefty deductible myself. Crap.

All right, so Mr. W was right.

I was telling my floating reporter today about a food revelation I had last week. Our floor does birthday celebrations. The courtroom that the birthday person works in sponsors this cookie/pie/cake/coffee/dessert/snacks/cheese-n-crackers/cupcakes feast for the day, and invites everyone else on the floor to come and sing happy birthday and pig out. Last week, I attended one such shindig, and for the first time ever, looked the free lemon cake, strawberry-topped cheesecake, coconut cake, and chocolate chip cookies in the eye(s), and reached for a cup of coffee. That was it. I hung out, wished the birthday girl well, chatted with some coworkers, drank my coffee and left. I felt so good about that.

The unexpected thing is that the “good” I felt at walking away was better than the “good” I feel eating yummy desserts. I usually eat the food just cuz it’s there and it’s festive to participate, but I have to deal with the guilt of the excessive calories and that really kills the enjoyment of the food. Plus, sometimes it doesn’t even taste good enough to be worth the subsequent guilt. So why eat the crap?

I don’t know why that’s never occurred to me before. Why I robotically eat the fat-loaded desserts just because that’s what everyone else is there for. My floating court reporter agreed with my revelation/theory. She said that yesterday, she wolfed down a leftover donut and not only did she not enjoy it because she ate it so fast, but it was too sweet and made her sick to her stomach. AND she had to deal with the guilt that night and didn’t eat much when she was out with her family for dinner.

Yesterday, Mr. W and I met up with commenter ‘a’ at The Curry House in Irvine for dinner, and I brought my leftover curried rice with me for lunch, which I ate at my desk before leaving for the gym. A reputedly tactless coworker came in, saw my food, and said, as if astounded, “You eat rice?”
I didn’t know how to take that, cuz do I not look Asian? “What do you mean?” I asked her.
She said, “I didn’t think you ate any carbs because, you know,” she pointed to my body up and down. I guess it’s a compliment.

I’m so lame. I forgot the major nail-biter item in my last post, entitled “*Biting Nails*”.

The roofer is set to start work on replacing the flat part of my roof in the middle of next week, BUT it’s tentative because THERE’S RAIN PREDICTED NEXT WEEK!!! Waaaahhh!!! If it rains again my roof and ceilings may collapse! And the workers can’t work on a wet roof and they certainly can’t demolish the existing roof while it’s pouring down rain.

Also, I haven’t presented my association with the roof replacement estimate yet (which predicts costs so high I expect them to balk), and I still need to present my case for why they should pay for my ceiling damage repairs, too.

*biting nails*

I didn’t go to the gym at lunch today cuz we had a mandatory 1pm meeting at work. Instead, I met up with Mr. W and we went to the post office to drop off my engagement ring. It’s on its way back to Miami, Florida (where it was born) to be resized by the original ring designer. With gold values on the rise, I’m kinda bummed I’m losing two full sizes on the ring, but I can’t keep wearing it with moleskin adhered to the inside forever. How cheesy. We insured it at the post office for $16,000 and Mr. W very nervously filled out all the mailing/tracking/insurance forms and off it went. “Say bye-bye,” he told me as he raised the overly-wrapped package to my eye level before it left.
“Bye-bye for now,” I said to the wad.

I received my invitations yesterday. They’re so unexpectedly beautiful I had to hold back tears. Well, not really. But they are REALLY nice.

Dodo has added new step to his morning routine. Normally, he wakes up and meows to wake me up, and then follows me into the bathroom as I get ready. He’d rub up against my leg while I’m sitting there all droopy and sleepy on the toilet (sorry, TMI), and then while I’m showering, putting on my face, etc., he’s lounging in the hallway right outside the bathroom door. And then when I’m ready, he walks me downstairs, I replenish his food and water, and as he’s eating, I leave.

Now, somehow, he’s realized that when I step out of the shower, the bottom of the tub still has puddles of water collected. And he’s decided that this water tastes great. For the past week, when I open the bathroom door after my shower, Dodo pads in, meows his greeting at me, rubs up against my leg, and I have to pet him to acknowledge him. As soon as I do, which he takes as permission to leave because he’s done his foremost duty of attending to me, he puts his forepaws on the edge of the tub, sniffs, the hind legs go up and all four paws balance on the rim of the tub as Dodo looks in, and then there’s a light “thump” as he goes into the tub. Soon, there’s happy lapping sounds. *lick lick lick lick lick*

But what’s interesting to me is that he won’t go in the tub until I give him leave, which is my petting him when he’s affectionately rubbing against my leg. If I ignore him, he’ll keep leaning against me, start meowing, and then if I continue to ignore him and he gives up, he’ll just sit down very close to me and wait. He won’t leave to do what he really wants to do. So do animals follow some kind of heirarchy etiquette? Like how the female lions won’t eat until the male lion has already eaten and then walked away, thus giving the lionesses the “cue” that they are now permitted to feed?

Humans are so uncouth.

It appears that quite a few people, mostly women, are using my wedding as a “goal date” for various personal improvement deadlines. I think that’s cool! I feel strangely influential that I can arbitrarily set a date for something, and a bunch of people now set their mental clocks to that date. The power…

I’ve been pretty true to my workouts, but I think I need to incorporate more cardio than I’ve been doing, just to increase the burn a little more. I was eating an Oreo-style sandwich cookie in the elevator yesterday, waiting to get to my floor, when a jury room clerk got on and said, “You can eat whatever you want, you’re skinny. Are you still going to the gym?”
“Every day at lunch,” I told her.
Meanwhile, I’ve been getting crap for doing weights at the gym from the previous generation of Asian women. My mom told me to stop all the weightlifting I’m doing because I’m just gonna make my arms even thicker and less attractive before the wedding, since I’m apparently not heeding her advice to get my wedding gown and Chinese dress with sleeves. The Chinese dress seamstress/shopowner advised Vicky to, above all else, avoid any weight-bearing exercise using her arms to prevent them from growing bigger by the wedding date. (The seamstress didn’t say this to be rude, she said it to address Vicky’s concerns that Vicky wants her bridesmaid dress to have sleeves because she dislikes the appearance of her upper arms.) I still insist there’s a reason why there are no fat girls on the weight floor but tons of them on the cardio equipment and in the aerobics classes.

I discussed this with my co-gym-rat-friend, college roommie Diana, yesterday evening when we met up for a healthy dinner at California Fish Grill in Irvine. Her response was, “You HAVE to keep working out!” (She meant “you” as in “one,” not saying that I personally have to keep working out or explode in outward-falling fluffy fat rolls. No, that’s more like MY personal fear.) I find it ironic that when the seamstress lady was telling Vicky to avoid working out her arms and yet had praised my figure, she was unaware that between the two of us, I was the one who hit the heavy gym weights. And when Diana and I went in to the seamstress shop Monday evening to be measured for her dress, the seamstress was all impressed by Diana’s slimness and the toned appearance of her arms and shoulders, and Diana hits the gym weights hard, too! Diana’s dress, as a matter of fact, is slightly halter-top cut because the three of us (me, Diana, and the seamstress) agree that it shows off her arms and shoulders perfectly.

Diana and I celebrated ourselves by having dessert at Mochilato, and had three ice cream mochis each. This time I had pistachio, mint chip, and toasted almond flavors. YUM. In fact, I’m sitting here eating a plain mochi I’d brought back with me right now.

My judge has been in the recent habit of leaving amusing anecdotes and stuff on my chair so that I see it when I come to my desk in the mornings. The latest was this printed note:

The judge was finishing his oral charge to a jury. Being a judge who keeps up with the times, he pointed out in the verdict from where the “foreperson” should sign the verdict.
When the verdict was delivered later to the coutroom deputy, four persons had signed their names to the form.
He now uses the old-fashioned word “foreman”.

At the end of the above printed anecdote, my judge had written underneath:

Why not forecreature?

I thought it was hilarious, and showed the paper to Mr. W. After reading it, his expression did not change. “I don’t get it. I read it again and I still don’t get it,” he said. Oh, that reminds me. I was supposed to explain it to him yesterday.

*** Addendum, 1:15p ***
I just got back from the gym. On my chair, there’s another printed thingie from my judge. This one reads:
Q: What do you call a lawyer with an IQ of 70?
A: Your Honor.
– Jonathan Willier

My mom had emailed me two recommended shops to get custom-made Chinese dresses for me and my bridesmaids, one shop in Temple City (which happens to be the shop Vicky had used for her wedding attire) and one in Chinatown. Since Vicky and I were familiar with the Temple City shop already, we thought we’d start with the one in Chinatown and do a price comparison. That was yesterday (Sunday).

I entered the street address my mom emailed me into my navigation system, and the two of us were off. We chatted in the car through a very long drive (45 miles), and then suddenly, Vicky observed, “Are you sure your nav is correct? Cuz we’re nowhere near Chinatown. We’re going into Santa Monica.” I didn’t know anything cuz I’m a navigational idiot, but Vicky pulled out her portable navigation system from her bag, input some addresses and researched, and discovered we were 15 miles out of our way past Chinatown. Turns out the street I was supposed to input was “North Broadway” and I was only told “Broadway,” so the nav was taking us to an entirely different location. I was pissed, I hate driving in circles for nothing, especially when it takes me 30 miles out of my way round-trip, but Vicky calmly and cheerfully told me to just get off the freeway and find a place near UCLA (which is where we were near) to have a nice lunch. It suddenly dawned on me that Killer Shrimp may be nearby. I input the restaurant into my nav, found we were less than 4 miles away, and we ended up having a great lunch (Vicky’s first time there).

After lunch, we input the correct address and drove into Chinatown. It went severely downhill from there. I felt like I’d driven into a third world country. Asian people were milling about the streets oblivious to cars; the streets were dirty with trash, mysterious liquid, and pigeons; there was no parking; street vendors were yelling and peddling wares and birds and crap. We stumbled through crowds of people onto a small pay-parking lot that was at least fenced off with a live person overlooking the lot; I had little doubt that if I’d parked my Lexus in the streets, I’d come back to a stripped car. Having parked and paid, we made our way through the dirty, rude, shoving people and crowded street vendors to the address I was given, which turns out to be NOT A SHOP, but a huge building with many more swapmeet-like booths and vendors inside, just like in China. Unlike China vendors, however, these shopowners are ghetto and rude. Vicky would ask every vendor displaying Chinese dresses, in Mandarin, whether they custom-make dresses or whether they simply sell premade dresses, and they treated us very scornfully, scoffing at us when they’d answer. The only vendor who said he did sell custom-made orders wouldn’t stop loudly smacking on rice he was eating out of a large metal bowl while talking to us, and when Vicky inquired as to whether he had fabric samples, he just pointed to the dresses already hanging on the wall and told her to see the fabric for herself, and when she asked if they had other designs, he treated her like an idiot and gestured again to the few dresses he had hanging up. I told her in more than one shop in a small voice that I was ready to leave. I wanted to crawl into a dirty corner amongst the cockroaches and half-gnawed cow bones and rock back and forth until I woke up in the U.S. again.

Oh, one redeeming thing happened in Chinatown. Amongst all these rude vendors (we were told later that they look down on us cuz we don’t speak Vietnamese or Cantonese), we did happen upon an undergarments shop. That vendor was very nice and helpful, spoke English, and Vicky thought to ask her whether she carried strapless bustiers that went underneath white bridal gowns. She did indeed, and let me try some on. I found a seamless one that fit perfectly! I didn’t like the one that David’s Bridal tried to sell me along with my wedding dress purchase because that one was lined with foam (like the stuff in a padded bra) and they wanted $90 for it plus tax. Vicky had purchased nearly an identical one from Victoria’s Secret in the neighborhood of $80 for her wedding gown. This bustier in Chinatown, Vicky bargained with the vendor and we walked out with it for $28 cash, no tax. *high-five Vicky* It hadn’t even occurred to me to ask for bustiers in this place; I’m glad Vicky was on top of it. She even spotted me $18 cuz I only had $10 in cash. Oh, and the vendor called me “skinny.” Whoa…sale!

We skidaddled out of Chinatown half an hour after we got there and went to the Temple City shop. It was SO NICE to park in a normal parking lot and not fear that I was gonna run over some hunched over Asian grandma in a straw rice paddy hat carrying a stick on her back attached to a cloth bundle of bok choy and live chickens who expected traffic to stop for her. I decided that even if this store costs more, it was worth it to not have to go back to Chinatown for measurements/fit/pickup of dresses. The irony is that weeks before, I’d thought Temple City was chaos hell so the gods of fate saw fit to send me to true chaos hell so I’d know the difference, apparently. We sat in a respectable shop specializing in Chinese dresses, flipped through volumes and volumes of beautiful colorful fabric samples, got to try on many different cuts of dresses, and because the shopowner remembered Vicky, got a fairly significant discount on the dresses as well. Oh, and this shopowner called me “skinny”, too! *faint*

Vicky and I were productive; we selected my dress, her dress, the fabrics, and requested customized changes to the designs, and the store opened a portfolio for my wedding party. College roommie Diana flew down from San Jose this afternoon for a job thing, so she and I will hook up tonight and go back to the Temple City shop and let her try on/pick out her dress design. My third bridesmaid, childhood friend Sandy, is going on her own to the shop on Friday when she expects she’d have permission to work from home.

Wedding preparation is still going very smoothly and quite a bit ahead of schedule, and for the clothing aspect of it all, I really have Vicky to thank.

I can’t sleep. (Duh.) I’m in a pattern of falling asleep in front of the TV, waking up once at around 2am and deliberating whether I ought to go up to bed, and if I’m able to fall asleep again after that, then I wake up a second time at around 4am, perhaps have the same deliberation if I’m still on the couch. It’s hardest to go back to sleep if the remotest bothersome thing crawls into my consciousness. In the fragile silence and unvisibility of the night, troubles dance loudly and vividly, caught in a disturbed repetitive loop in my head.

Tonight, I’m feeling disappointed and kind of miffed. I’m not the type to make anyone do anything for me. I’d like the person to voluntarily, out of personal desire or even a sense of responsibility/obligation, to do “the right thing.” For the sake of friendship or duty, someone close enough to me for me to give her a special label on the most special of days should give me the time of day. Oh sure, I know if I insisted on it, she’d come through — but I shouldn’t have to insist on it. It just kinda sucks. Just because she said “If you really want, I can rearrange some things and go” doesn’t mean it’s not flaking, right? It’s like daring me to pull rank and order her to attend something that’s clearly unimportant and inconvenient to her, but the event had been in place, with her prior agreement, for weeks if not a month; it’s to make decisions for her things, not mine; it’s not going to cost her anything except a little time, and I’m clearly not worth that. I have a sneaking suspicion that she’s choosing to hang out with her boyfriend over me even though she’s with him all the time I haven’t seen her or heard from her in months except a few lines on an email here and there.

I’m just disappointed.

Our current trial had opening statements yesterday. It’s all about an apartment’s roofing damage, mold/mildew causing health problems and the repair/destruction of “popcorn” ceilings leading to asbestos issues with the tenants. My court reporter looked over at me pointedly. If I hadn’t just cut my fingernails really short, I’d have been gnawing on them right then.

The highly-recommended roofer came by my house yesterday. I wasn’t there for the inspection as I was stuck at work with this trial, but Mr. W left work early and went to my house to meet the roofer. (Awww.) Turns out the entire flat upper of the roof needs to be replaced, AND since my central A/C and heating unit is up on the roof, a crane has to be rented to lift it for the roof demolition. Crane rentals are like $360, I think he said. The primary reason for the leaks is that due to lack of maintenance on the roof (the Homeowner Association’s responsibility), both drain pipes were completely clogged. There are (still) two deep pools of water in front of both drain pipes, which led to the internal leakage. The roof was originally constructed to purposely angle toward the drainholes, but the undrained pools of water over time have softened the material underneath and created a sag, so that the roof is no longer angled toward the drain hole. All things the association, had they done their job of regular roof maintenance, could have prevented or repaired before I got internal damage.

I get the roof job estimate on Monday. Everyone’s telling me to make the association pay for the internal damage as well.

Oh, I asked the roofer (who was very nice and seemed to really know his shit) about the asbestos. He asked when my house was built, and then promptly said that they stopped building with asbestos at least 5 years prior, so I’m fine. Besides, he explained, asbestos is only bad when it’s airborne, like when you tear into the construction, and not when it’s merely used as a construction material. Whew!