cindy's world

Okay, I think we’re offically being jacked around by the short sale house’s bank. Our offer expired yesterday, so waiting till today was already pushing it. We STILL didn’t hear a peep from them today! So how do I know the bank didn’t deliberately drop its asking price $30K just to bait people into looking and starting a bidding war? And how long are we supposed to sit here until the bank decides to pick an offer? And what if the bank holds us out until we lose the other #1 house, and someone finally offers a lot more on this #2 house so we just get a phone call one day where the bank goes, “Sorry, we just got a better offer we’re going with instead of yours”? Then we’re assed out. We’re gonna have to figure out a deadline for holding on.

Speaking of the #1 house, it’s the exact opposite of the #2 house. Its agent called our agent today for a polite status check, asking where we stood on our #2 house. Our agent explained we’re still waiting. Our agent said the other agent could’ve threatened to take another offer if it comes along, could’ve said we’re jerking them around too long, but he didn’t. He just asked how our situation looked, that’s all.

*dipping cracker into Kahlua*
*drinking Kahlua straight from the bottle*

A lot of special days occur in June. The first was my godson (unofficial; his mom merely appointed me and Mr. W), Gym Trainee’s son’s graduation from his private school. He was salutatorian in his elementary school graduating class. Smarty-pants. Takes after his god-mom. (Yeah right. I was a mediocre student at best.) He graduated on a weekday, so I mailed him a card with a $50 giftcard to Target. Only days later was his birthday, which I missed cuz we were in Vegas. He’s 11 now! He’s gonna be in a kids’ production of the musical “Hairspray” at the end of the month which I said I wouldn’t miss even if he were just a rock in the background, and he wants to celebrate my 32nd (*retch*) birthday with me that weekend. That should be fun.

The weekend we were in Vegas, we attended Mr. W’s niece’s wedding, which I’ve already blogged about with photos. That Sunday was also Father’s Day. We did an early Father’s Day brunch with Mr. W’s family and his dad, then we left for home. My mom had been complaining that my dad wasn’t scraping the algae off his fishtank glass since he claimed to be saving it for algae eater fish, so I thought it would be a brilliant idea to buy him a big scavenger fish. When we brought it over to my parents’ house, turned out my dad already got one. Oh well, now they have two. There was something odd about giving him fish for his hobby aquarium and eating salmon fish for lunch while admiring his living fish. I felt strangely hypocritical.

Yesterday, Mr. W’s best friend (ex bro-in-law) threw a big Sunday champagne brunch party for his younger son for graduating high school. It was at Newport Landing Restaurant. To get there, we took a ferry from the Balboa Peninsula. I drank more than my fair share of champagne cuz apparently the key to great service is the wait staff looking over your shoulder and refilling your champagne each time you take a sip. That Asian don’t-waste-food training didn’t help. I’d just started eating when Mr. W suddenly babbled all excitedly, “Your cousin! Your cousin! Say hi to your cousin! Your cousin!” and then he ran out the door. I followed and saw the back of my cousin Diana with her new fiance, Doug. I took a flying leap and pounced on Diana’s back and almost gave her a heart attack. Oops. I guess you’re only excited to see someone if you actually see that someone. My cousin Jennifer saw me from the side as I was attacking her sister and called my name, so we did the slow-motion running with our hands outstretch to each other. No heart attacks there. A big group of them had kayaked over from the Peninsula and went to the upstairs portion of our same restaurant to have some beer. I caught them on their way out, and they looked a little upset. Turned out the restaurant told them that because they’re not ordering brunch, they need to leave and give up their table for people who were going to order the brunch buffet. They said they had a couple of beers each and had ordered oysters, but the restaurant still insisted. So they left, and their male cousin (no relation to me) stayed inside to complain to management. No resolution except an apology. I was offended for them; I was asked to leave a restaurant once when I was hanging out eating Korean tofu in Tustin with Vanessa, her friend Lisa and Mr. W, and they said that we need to give up our table for others waiting. We were paying customers, and WE had to wait for a table, too! I was so offended I never went back.

Sunday was also my mom’s birthday, but we celebrated her birthday on Saturday at The Curry House in Rowland Heights, so I just called her and sung “happy birthday” to her on her voice mail. She called me back and said, “Thank you for your present.”
I said, “Huh? I didn’t get you anything.” I’d spent $200 on her and my grandma for mother’s day, so I was pretty out of dough, especially considering my huge looming expenses. I was supposed to treat her to Curry House, but my dad insisted on paying instead. So I ended up not doing anything.
My mom said, “Well, your song was your present, right?” and sighed.
I knew she was hinting, so I said, “What do you want for your birthday?”
She said, “You know what I want. You just choose to forget it.”
I searched my brain. And then she continued, “Forget it, Mrs. Yang bought me a pair of fake Chanel sunglasses already.” That’s right, she’d wanted designer sunglasses. But she’d wanted that for Christmas and then had kept holding it off whenever I asked when she wanted to go look for them, and I’m sure she’d even told me to not worry about it several times. It’s not like I wear anything designer anyway, so I especially can’t just go buy something without her being there and trying them on.
Mom: still practicing the guilt trips.

Good gawd, I just realized that in 6 days, it’ll be MY aging day. Gack. Mr. W’s son’s 19th birthday is 2 days before mine, so we’re gonna do a joint dinner at Ruth’s Chris steakhouse on Sunday. I’m not sure that in my old age, I can burn off those butter-seared filet mignon calories. Maybe I should’ve gone to the gym today.

I was able to breathe normally for the past 3 days. Today, one of our trial attorneys said that her 12 year old daughter (who has asthma) had my same symptoms this weekend. Thinking it was an asthma attack, they got her into the emergency room. Turned out it was heat exhaustion. I guess that does explain things for me, too, since I had the breathing problems the Monday after returning from Vegas, when the weather in California was in the 100s all week. This weekend was good because I stayed with Mr. W and he had the air conditioning on the entire time. Today, I didn’t even leave at lunch to go to the gym.

The #2 reason I didn’t go gymming today (#1 being the usual and omnipotent “I don’t feel like it”) was because I was feeling edgy about our housing offer. We were supposed to hear about our #2 house offer today from the bank, and also to get back to the #1 house people who countered our 1st offer by accepting our original price. The #1 house people know not to put themselves on hold for us, so there’s a chance that when their counter offer expired yesterday and if we don’t get the #2 house, someone else could snatch the #1 house away from us and we’re back in square 1. (What analogy is that, anyway? Hopscotch?) Our realtor doesn’t think we’re at high risk for #1 being snatched away, tho, cuz they’re still listed on MLS as their original slightly elevated price. He did call at the end of lunch with an update on #2. There is 1 other offer in aside from ours. However, that is a weaker offer because they offered $449K instead of our $450 (why wouldn’t you put in the extra $1K to make it an even number?), and they’re only offering 10% down instead of our 20%. So our realtor thinks we’re looking pretty good. However, the bank is STILL considering and wants to get back to us either end of the day today or tomorrow. I stayed at work till 6p just in case, waiting for the phone to ring, which it didn’t. Well, it wasn’t a total loss; I got the insane score of 320K+ in Bejeweled, beating the courthouse record of 126K points, so I made sure to email the record holder before I left to rub it in. I was stuck in that one last game of Bejeweled for so long, in fact, that when my judge poked his head in before he left, he didn’t say the usual, “Okay, see ya in the morning.” Instead, he said, “I’m gonna go out and see if I can find you some crack.”

Guess TOMORROW is the new d-day. *sigh*

Our realtor had made us an appointment for 10am this morning with the 2nd house we now have an offer on. The realtor (a close fishing buddy of my dad’s) picked up my dad and met Mr. W and me at the house. Since we were early, we walked thru the 1st house (vacant, so we can do that with our realtor’s lockbox access), my dad was okay with it altho he thought it was surprisingly small, and then went to the 2nd house. Both houses were better seeing it again than we’d remembered, but the 2nd one was still more impressive. I admired how each room was laid out at an angle so instead of rooms above or next to other rooms, these fanned out like wedges in an orange. The unique floorplan got my dad, and they noticed some new things this time around. The boiled water dispenser built into the large deep kitchen sinks, the redone 2nd fireplace in the family room, the mature peach, avocado and loquat trees in the back yard. When the four of us left that house, we stood outside by our cars and chatted for a bit, comparing the two houses. And then we watched an SUV drive up the cul de sac street slowly, with people staring out the windows. The SUV took a u-turn at the end of the street, then slowly parked in front of the 2nd house! “Uh-oh,” Mr. W said under his breath.
“I think this is not good,” our realtor said, making a face.
We only stayed long enough to watch two Asian women and an Asian man walk out of the car up to the house and ring the bell. Apparently the seller’s agent had updated the computers to reflect the new reduced price, so now this house was getting more attention. It’s way underpriced for the current neighborhood presently, and is so nice on the interior we can’t imagine someone not liking it right away.
Mr. W is, of course, perturbed. Through all our many errands this morning, he kept thinking about those visitors, how they’re older Asian people so they can probably afford a better down payment than us and would likely buy the house in cash anyway, how the house is good feng shui to Asian standards, and how he wishes we’d left and not seen those people drive by.
As for me, I like that 2nd house. It’d be really cool if we could get it. But I keep telling myself that I like the 1st house, too, and I’d also be happy in it, and I’d connected with it right away. Even today, the 1st house felt like home to me, more so than the 2nd house. Maybe it’s because it’s vacant whereas the 2nd house is still occupied and those people’s personal stuff are all over the house, so it feels like someone else’s house.
Speaking of connecting with the 1st house, our agent heard from that seller’s agent today. He’d called to ask for an update to their counter offer, since he hadn’t heard from us. Our agent explained that we’d put an offer on a short sale property a long time ago (only the timing was a lie) and that we’d just heard from them. He said that it was unexpected and that we’re waiting to see what the short sale’s response is, which we will likely hear by Monday. I guess the 1st house’s agent was understanding, altho understandably if he gets a better offer before we get back to them, we’re at risk for them taking that offer and losing ours. I guess Monday is d-day.

Remember how I was stuck between my original favorite house, and the 2nd house we visited after we put an offer down on the 1st house? Well, I think admittedly both me and Mr. W prefer the 2nd house, despite the 1st house having its definite advantages of the beautiful yard and full bed/bath downstairs. So we offered $560K for the 1st house, and they took it. Now that this house is $20K less than the 2nd house, after I told Mr. W the “good news” about them simply accepting our price offer without countering it, instead of being excited, he cussed. Cuz he was hoping they’d counter with something unreasonable that would justify our going to the 2nd house, which he prefers.

At his insistence, I called my realtor this afternoon to request that he check the status of the 2nd house. Does the bank on that short sale really mean it when it said that a full-price offer of $580K would be accepted and move it immediately into Escrow? I was hoping for a clearer sign that we’re meant to take the 1st house, like maybe the 2nd house is no longer available. Then we’d know that the sellers simply accepting our lowball bid is “the” sign.

Well, the 2nd house wasn’t taken off the market. Instead, at noon, the bank REDUCED their asking price from $580K to $555K! The 2nd house is now CHEAPER than the 1st house! Mr. W was floored. Since this is such recent developments, the online realty website doesn’t even reflect the price reduction yet. Our realtor called that seller’s agent, and was told that not only did the bank just approve the price drop today at noon, but if the buyers aren’t picky about wanting modifications done on the house or wanting the sellers to pitch in on closing costs, they were willing to let the house go down another $5K and yes, move immediately into Escrow. The 2nd house is now $550K, or $10K less than the 1st favorite house.

Our agent immediately typed up the offer for the 2nd house and faxed it to me at work. Mr. W came by my courtroom after work, we both initialed and signed off on the offer, and faxed it back to my agent, who sent it back to the selling agent. We’re excited, but I feel SO BAD for the owners of the 1st favorite house, whose beautiful house sits vacant and unwanted without offers, such that they were even good enough to take our lowball offer w/o countering on price, and now they’re gonna be left out in the cold again. They probably thought it was a sure thing because of how fast and definitively they accepted our offer, and were sighing and celebrating in relief. 🙁 Our agent said he’ll handle it with finesse. They’ll probably call him this weekend to ask what’s going on with their counter, and he’ll let them know that we had an offer pending on a short sale (which is true enough) which just suddenly came through.

I still feel soooooo bad. Anyone want a beautiful 3 bed, 3 bath house in Mission Viejo to be our neighbors for $560K?

The phrase meaning “to pant” is “sucking wind,” right? How come when I typed that in the title, I suddenly got the mental image of some big strange man bending over, my face behind his butt, and breathing deeply in with my mouth while he farts?

I was feeling better last nite after speaking to my realtor, but of course after the fight I was wheezing again. I went to the gym at lunch, did heavy weights which impressed a judge that happened to be at the gym, noted my slow recovery time in between sets as I gasped to get air into my lungs, and then when I got back to work, I staggered to a bailiff who used to be a paramedic before she became a sheriff. I asked her the symptoms of asthma, and she said she has her stethoscope in her courtroom so we went there and she listened to all 4 quadrants of my lungs and to my heart. She said altho my pulse is fast, it’s strong and clean, and my lungs sound clear. If it’s allergen-induced asthma, it’s still very mild. If it doesn’t clear up in a week, she said to see the doctor.

Then she asked if I was stressed or having panic attacks. I said I wasn’t stressed and how could I be panicking for 5 days straight? She said I may not be aware of my panic or stress, but my body knows. After all, I have a lot going on right now. Wedding’s coming up, there’s the house thing so of course finances are an issue. I shrugged.

When we got to Mr. W’s house earlier, I beelined for his laptop and got on my blog. Mr. W suddenly said, “OOOOH, I know what your panic attacks and stress is over! Internet withdrawal!” I said that Vanessa had already said that. She commented in the post about my breathing problems that my body is having stress attacks out of boredom since I can’t go online during work. Turned out Mr. W meant something slightly different. “You go right for the computer when you get home. You’re anxious from not being able to blog and write when you’re at work.” That’s true. Blogging has been a major source of therapy for me, and not being able to blog forces me to keep thoughts and emotions bottled up inside with no pressure release for HOURS. I also haven’t been sleeping much cuz what am I doing in the evenings at home? Getting my online time in! Maybe I should start writing blog posts at work to email to myself.

You guys know Jericho, the blogger? Well, HE is the man to get to KNOW, because he has actual magical powers. Take my experience, for example…

* On my post dated 6-11-08, when I wrote about how Mr. W and I were in disagreement over his #1 house in Huntington Beach and my #1 house in Mission Viejo, and how we were gonna let fate decide between those two and a third compromise house, Jericho commented, “Here’s to getting your choice.” And you know what happened? The other two houses fell through and the only one poised to receive an offer was MY CHOICE. I’d gotten MY CHOICE.
* On my post dated 6-13-08, I wrote about my crappy Friday afternoon. Jericho commented, “Next up: a truly fabulous weekend.” Guess what happened that very weekend in Vegas! I had a “truly fabulous” time with Mr. W and his daughter at his niece’s wedding!
* On my post dated 6-17-08, I wrote about how we put a lowball offer down on the #1 house and submitted it to the sellers. Jericho commented “Congrats — now I hope it works out for you, at a decent price, to boot. I have been wanting to sell my former house since July ’07. I finally received an offer yesterday. In my excitement (and relief), I almost accepted without countering. Then I thought, ‘They’re expecting a counter, right?’ So I upped it by $4K, and now I wait.” I even responded to his comment with, “You only countered it with $4K? Man. That’d be a dream come true for me.” An hour ago, my realtor called me. The sellers countered. Remember that their asking price was $589,900. Our offer was $560,000. Their counter? They want our 45 day Escrow reduced to 35 days. THAT’S IT. *swooning and falling down* THIS must be the sign I was looking for! THIS is “the house”!!! Even my agent was shocked. He was expecting them to counter with a figure in the $470Ks. He said if we accept, all we need to do is sign the counter in his office and we have a house.

You guys are all finding out about this before Mr. W, cuz before I could tell him we got into a fight. I’d originally planned, when he called me back in response to my voice mail telling him we got a counter offer, to say all sullen, “Well. We got the counter offer back today. *sigh*”
I’d imagined he’d say, “Really? What’d they counter with?”
And I’d sigh again. “Well…”
And he’d say, “$585, huh? They would only drop it by $5 grand?”
And I’d say, “No. They wanted to change…the Escrow to 35 days!” And then there’d be a lot of excited and disbelieving laughter.

But that’s not going to happen now!

I was talking to a girl friend the other day, asking how her life’s going, what’s new with her social life, etc. She told me she’d recently had a date with a new guy. He’s British and she’s digging the accent at dinner, and then as the night wears on, he thought it appropriate to disclose his sexual fetish. The way she put it was that he said his “thing” sexually is…”having a girl pee…IN his mouth.” I’m holding my tongue and reserving judgment, letting her continue. She clarified that he’s NOT referring to the typical “golden shower,” if golden showers could even be considered typical outside of Japan. He was referring to pee…in his MOUTH…while the girl is sitting on his face.

So instantly I’m imagining that I could never sleep with a guy who’s just disclosed this to me, cuz it opens whole new worlds of concern re the phrase “not knowing where his mouth has been”. But because my friend is already clearly distraught about this detail, asking me whether this truly is freaky or if she’s just a prude, I couldn’t be anything but nonchalant and supportive. I wasn’t gonna make her feel worse shrieking, “OMG, EWWWW! Who the f are you dating?! You need to SCREEN, man! Don’t just go out with the first cretin who hits on you!” Cuz that is not being a good friend. The first neutral thought that came to mind was that at least urine’s sterile. That’s what I heard, anyway. She quashed that real quick. “It’s not as sterile as you think. There’s bacteria in urine. And some people have MRSA in their urine.” I think I asked her what MRSA is, but I don’t remember what she told me. I just remember it was like, “Mrs. A?” So here’s what I told her.

I said that I guess mentally, golden showers are less gaggy than sucking on the faucet directly (haha, I slay myself) cuz at least it’s external and you could always wash it off. But the pro to sucking on the faucet is that it creates less of a mess on your body/bed. So you don’t constantly have to change your sheets or buy vinyl bedcoverings. Or be subject to people going into your bedroom, sniffing the air, and saying with a wrinkled nose, “Are you a bed-wetter?” I told her that if she truly likes the guy and truly can’t handle his fetish, maybe she could retrain or untrain him. Like, eat lots of asparagus. Bundles and bundles of steamed asparagus. For days. And then she only has to do it once. Or she could always wait for a bladder infection or UTI and then while he’s chugging away, she could say thoughtfully, “You don’t suppose the bacteria in my bladder infection would infect your mouth or throat, do you?”

Am I a good friend, or what?

I spoke to Dwaine briefly on the drive home earlier. He said he’d taken a peek at this blog earlier in the week and saw all the photos posted from Mr. W’s niece’s wedding this past weekend. He said he wanted to comment but didn’t want readers who don’t know who he is to me to take it the “wrong way,” but that I looked great in that dress in all the photos I’m in, and that he could tell I’ve been working out and he wanted to give me props for being in the current shape that I’m in. I thanked him heartily, said that my regular readers know who he is to me because I talk about him fairly regularly and reminded him that he’d commented before. He’s even had comment rapport with my regular readers. So he went online and commented after we hung up. Cuz he’s cool and generous like that.

I was too guilty and sheepish to tell him that I’ve only been to the gym once this week, and that just in the past 2 days alone, my food intake consisted of:
Wed lunch, Employee Appreciation Day free food:
3 slices of Costco pizza (cheese; pepperoni; everything)
piece of cake
Wed dinner at Claim Jumper:
half a rotisserie chicken
steamed veggies
basmati rice (which sounds okay, until you get to my dessert)
3 flavors of creme brulee (lemon amaretto; green tea & ginger; chocolate mocha)
Today at work:
rehydrated vegetable soup from a packet
2 handfuls of minty rice M&Ms
giant chocolate muffin
another piece of Costco cake (brought up by my courtroom assistant from a coworker’s housewarming luncheon today)
a bite of donut
like 8 lardful spring onion crackers

Dwaine didn’t know it, but he’s guilted me into going to the gym tonight, as soon as the evening crowd dies down.

Today is the 3rd day that I’ve been having “breathing problems.” I put that in quotes because I’m not sure it’s physical so much as mental. I feel like I can’t get enough air in my lungs when I inhale, so I end up taking deep breaths through my mouth, stretching my lungs as much as possible, and even those breaths don’t feel like they’re filling my lungs with enough oxygen. I imagine this is the sensation if I’m in very high altitude and can’t catch my breath. The reason why I think it’s just a sensation and not actual oxygen starvation, is because I’d take these consecutive deep breaths with my mouth, and after a few seconds I’d feel dizzy and nauseated. That means I’m hyperventillating and losing too much carbon dioxide in the CO2/O2 balance, right? That means I AM getting oxygen. And yet I feel like my diaphragm has problems expanding. I try to tell myself it’s just in my head, so that I wouldn’t panic. The thought of asphyxiating nearly throws me into a panic attack where I gasp for breath even harder, now more convinced that my lungs have stopped working.

I tested the oxygen exchange in a different way today. I had to go from the 3rd floor to the 7th floor, and I took the stairs at a fast pace. I was panting when I got to my destination, but I recovered in a few minutes. I guess that was a good thing, cuz if it turns out I AM having asthmatic symptoms or whatever, I would’ve just passed out or something.

Mr. W asked if I may be having panic attacks. I told him I didn’t think so, since I’m not anxious or panicking. I’ve had short bouts of sensation like this before, usually alleviated by unhooking my bra so that my diaphragm feels less restricted, and in any case, it’d only last for an hour or less. This is the first time it’s been days.

It seems to have started a few days after I started using that new Crest desensitizing toothpaste. Could it be that the toothpaste numbed my throat, tonsils, and uvula so that I no longer have the sensation of cool air going down my pharnyx, so it feels as if oxygen is not being sucked in? I’ve switched back to my old toothpaste starting today.