cindy's world

Today, we went to an appointment to view another similarly-sized property as my #1 choice, in the same neighborhood. And now we’re confused.

This new house is BEAUTIFUL. It’s a short sale, but we know that if we offer what the bank wants as its bottom line ($10K less than the original asking price of my #1 house), then the offer will be accepted and we go immediately into Escrow. There is nothing to be done with this house. It’s perfect and very upgraded. The few things that are original are in excellent condition. So here’s what I like about this house more than the #1 house.
* has a separate living room, dining room, and family room. (#1 house has no family room)
* more modern stylistically.
* has a nice deep carpet in the family and living rooms.
* marble tiling in foyer, dining room and kitchen done very well. (#1 house has large travertine tiles throughout)

Here’s what I like about the #1 house more than this house.
* backyard landscaping is nicer.
* 2 master bedrooms upstairs + 1 bed/bath downstairs makes for bigger bedrooms and more privacy for guests staying on the main floor. (This new house has all 3 bedrooms upstairs, and it’s a nice-size master but the other 2 are small.)
* indoor laundry. (new house has laundry in garage)
* significantly better view. (new house has high block walls in back yard)

We figured we’d let the gods of fate decide again. If the #1 house accepts our offer without countering, it would be $20K less than this new house, so it’s a better deal. We know the new house won’t budge from its asking price of $10K less than the #1 house’s asking price. Is that confusing? Okay, here are the specifics.
#1 house we put an offer on:
asking price – $589,900
our offer – $560,000
new house we saw today:
asking price – $580,000

I suppose I’d be fine with either one. But I really do like the many common rooms downstairs in the new house and the carpeting, and I really do like the 1 bedroom downstairs in the #1 house. What should I do?

Remember those 3 houses I wrote about earlier in the week? Mr. W and I were in disagreement over the houses so we thought we’d put offers on all 3 and let fate dictate our future residence. I spoke to our realtor yesterday after he spoke to the 3 selling agents and here’s the skinny.

1) Mr. W’s #1 pick, a 3 bedroom, 2 bath, upgraded 1962 single-story house in Huntington Beach: This is a short sale, and the bank is in an advanced stage of negotiation with a few offers already. They’ve already gone through counteroffers. The seller’s agent said if we really want, we can submit an offer, but our offer’s just gonna sit on the back burner and would only be looked at among the other backup offers if the current offers submitted to the bank are all rejected or all fall through.
3) Mr. W’s #2 pick and my #3 pick, a 3 bedroom, 3 bath, 1985 Cape Cod house in Mission Viejo with a remodeled floorplan: This is also a short sale, with 8 (!) offers already submitted. The bank is working closely with the top 2, and awaiting a second appraisal to come through before the bank decides whether it wants to accept either of the top 2. If we submit an offer now, we’d again just be among the mass of “backup offers.” Plus, who knows how long the bank is gonna drag this on, seems like they’re debating the value of the house. The oldest offer was submitted 5 months ago.
2) My #1 pick, a 3 bedroom, 3 bath, 1986 upgraded 2-story house in Mission Viejo with a beautifully landscaped back yard perfect for co-ed wedding shower barbecue parties overlooking a hilly drop-off into the city: Contrary to what we’d thought, this is NOT a short sale (so no waiting game at the mercy of the bank), they have currently NO offers, so the price is negotiable.
*running around the room cheering*

Mr. W is pissed off about his Huntington Beach house but after some time spent ranting and refusing to let go of the HB house while trying to kick mine off the table, he eventually conceded to our original deal. Fate is pointing. With giant neon signs. While covering up all other options with heavy curtains. It was scary for awhile there as I watched him and thought I saw Hillary Clinton’s image superimposed over him, but it’s all good now.

So today after work, we went to my realtor’s office and signed the offer. We lowballed it by $30K, but we expect a counter. Tomorrow evening we’ll take a peek at one of this house’s neighbors, another short sale that appears to be in excellent condition with similar size/price, just to make a comparison study.

Reading a post about anny’s amazing day that must’ve been colored with crapola crayons, I was reminded of something that happened to Mr. W in Vegas after his niece’s wedding on Saturday.

Mr. W, his daughter, and I walked to his car in the parking lot of the hotel where the niece’s reception was held to find that the Jack Skellington antenna ball that he’d had on his car for the past 2 years was gone. Mr. W noticed it first and just about lost his mind. Jack Skellington is his all-time favorite character, and for the next 5 minutes his mouth was ablaze spewing forth hexes and curses of violent car accident deaths for the Nevada delinquents who had the failed social skills and the absolute lack of respect as to steal someone’s antenna ball. He ranted about how he’d had the antenna ball a year before he put it on his car because he was afraid someone would steal it but that it had remained in place for 2 years as his car identifier but one day in Vegas and this expensive irreplaceable collectible is gone forevermore. More wishes of grisly deaths for the perpetrators.
I suppose I wasn’t very supportive when I said, “So to you the proper punishment for stealing a styrofoam antenna ball is death?”
I got an earful about how it’s a rare high-quality, plastic antenna ball and not one of those abundant cheapy styro ones.
So I decided to be more supportive. I offered my and Daughter’s services, promising “We’ll jack up the jackass who jacked your Jack!”
Daughter’s laughter ended Mr. W’s rant.

I took Friday off to go to an 8am dental appointment with childhood pal Dentist Andy. I booked that appointment with him because I wanted to drive to Vegas with Mr. W early on Friday to attend his niece’s wedding on Saturday, and this way I wouldn’t be lying when I told my supervisors, “I need Friday off, I have a dentist appointment. See my appointment card.” *tapping temple* A good visit to the dentist is one where after he’s done drilling and working on your teeth for 2 hours, he gives you a big warm bearhug and says, “Bye, Cindy, I’ll see you at your wedding! Drive carefully.” Aww. Speaking of Dentist Andy, here’s a photo from his own wedding in Corona Del Mar that Mr. W and I attended May 31, 2008.
This is Andy dancing with his mommy during the mother-son dance.

This is Andy’s sister, Bridesmaid Sandy and her date. Her date deliberately did the sardonic expression cuz I wouldn’t wait for him to finish chewing before I took this picture.
Yes, that’s right, it’s Sandy and Andy. It used to be funny when we were in high school to call and have this conversation:
“Hello?”
“Hello, izzandy there?”
“What? Andy?”
“Yeah, that’s what I said. Izzandy there?”
(Say “Is Sandy there?” and “Is Andy there?” out loud if you don’t get it.)

Friday after my appointment, Mr. W, his daughter, and I drove to Vegas. That night the groom’s parents had a barbecue in honor of the upcoming nuptials, which we attended. They were a different sort of people. When we went into the backyard, we immediately smelled something skunky, which I thought was weed but Mr. W and Daughter thought it was something else, like a stinky cigar. My sinuses immediately closed up. A shaved-head guy with a bunch of piercings on his face along with some rather unconservative looking women were drinking away, and wasted no time in getting drunk and high. And everybody in Vegas, apparently, smokes. The only beverages available in iced coolers in the yard were Bud Light and Mountain Dew, which we didn’t drink. Daughter and I looked at our surroundings, tried to breathe as little as possible, shrunk back away from giant fluttering mosquitos, chewed our cold hamburgers which had no ketchup cuz they ran out immediately, and mentioned how we expected to see cockroaches run by our feet at any moment. We managed to get through the whole night without seeing cockroaches until on our way to the car, a giant shiny beetle-sized cockroach crossed our paths on the sidewalk in front of the house. Daughter and I froze and I pointed at it exclaiming “OH my gawd!” and Daughter shrieked and hopped over the insect to the car, yanking on its locked handles. It was pretty funny, tho. Saturday evening was the wedding.
What? Whose silhouettes are those?

Oh, it’s Cindy and Mr. W’s daughter. Who complained she looked too tall in this picture while I complained about looking too short. =P I used to call her my little sister because of the 14-year age difference; this weekend she called me her little sister because of the height difference.

Here comes the bride…

And here’s the groom gazing upon his imminent wife with adoration.

At the reception now! Here’s me with Mr. W’s daughter.

Bride and groom’s first dance. I didn’t know the song they danced to, but I did note that they sang to each other.

The father-daughter dance. They chose “Butterfly Kisses” for the father-daughter dance song, and Mr. W was just weeping away like his dog was eaten alive by a coyote.

And then we all got down…

From left to right up there, it’s Mr. W’s gamer bro and his wife (parents of the bride), me, Mr. W, bride/niece, groom.
Mr. W and I were doing the west coast swing that was so easy for us that we could do it with our eyes closed. Just kidding, Mr. W and I were actually challenged to do the west coast swing with our eyes closed. You see Mr. W’s rocker brother (shaved head) cheering us on to the right.

This is kind of a family photo at the end of the night. I don’t know who the guy on the bottom is, but I think he developed a crush for Daughter cuz of how well she sang at the reception (they had a karaoke reception) cuz he followed her around like a puppy dog all night and wanted tons of photos with her. She was nice enough to accomodate. He just sorta jumped in our photo here so Daughter and I were like, “Uh, okay then.”

As much as the above is a silly goofy picture (at least for us youngins), we had even crazier ones on the disposable cameras they placed at every table. At the end of the evening, Gamer Bro, Daughter and I were collecting the disposables off the tables and found that a lot of them still had film left, so we ran round ilke crazed fools taking photos of everything, of ourselves, of ourselves in stupid poses and expressions, of each other in compromising positions, of each other taking photos of each other, etc. It was so funny. I can’t wait till they’re developed and the bride and groom are like, “What the –? And WHY are there so many photos of them?!” Hee hee! Eh, well, they’re nice people who will appreciate a little humor. Such as seeing on their guest book sign-ins that Tom Welling (“Clark Kent” on the TV series Smallville, a bride’s favorite), Jackie Chan (another bride’s favorite) AND Joe Montana (a groom’s favorite) were apparently at their wedding. Hee hee!

Today was almost a bad day, but my supervisor stuck his neck out and saved me from being floated to Long Beach. Altho in retrospect that may not have ended badly cuz then I can visit bridesmaid Sandy and see the teeny little 1-pound kittens she’s currently fostering. What made it a rather unpleasant day, was my finding a CD-Rom of my old diary entries from some years ago and deciding to peek through those entries. I thought it was so long ago that it wouldn’t really affect me. Well, that was a stupid assumption. If you think my blog posts are overly detailed, you should see my diary entries. I read about my dreams, my conversations, my fears, and from my now older, wiser and future perspective, wanted to reach into those words in the past and smack the girl writing them for being too nice and giving, and wanted to strangle the people she wrote about for the games they were playing and red flags that are so obvious now. I’d kept reading because I’d kept hoping that the next day’s entry would lead to her standing up for herself and putting the smack down, that she would get the answers to the questions eating her alive, that she would rise up, shake off the self-doubt and know, know that it’s not her. There’s nothing wrong with her. But I just watched her give more and get emptiness in return, just like I knew the story would go, because she would not wake up for another couple of years.

The only good things I found was that I love my (old) sense of humor which made me laugh out loud, and I love how artistically I was able to write due to the overload of emotions. For example, this was apparently my old AFK message for when I was sleeping:
I’m chasing butterflies while the lilies wave me closer and the weeping willows dip their tendrils into silver to swing by my hair and baptize me…

I was in a crappy mood driving home, and spoke to Dwaine on my cell phone. (Mr. W was busy.) He agreed that it was a dumb thing to do, reliving my past through my diary, and said half-jokingly that if God had meant for us to remember painful past details, he wouldn’t have made us forgetful with time. He said he has days when he’d be driving or something and his thoughts would drift to remember something he’d said in the past that would make him cringe now. I said I’ve had those moments. There are things I’ve said or done that in retrospect I can’t believe I’d said or done, and remembering those totally made me cringe. Dwaine said that the cringing is God’s electric shock teaching us a lesson that we shouldn’t be going around remembering stuff. The laughter made me feel much better. On a more serious note, Dwaine said that the reason I’m upset and cringe is that I’m a different person now from who I was before, and the growth ensures that I don’t let myself be in that past situation again. Amen to that.

Because life is fair, and karma sees to the balance of experience in the universe, today was an incredible crap-ass day.

My judge is off for the rest of the week starting today, so I expected my work to be very light. I didn’t think I’d have to float anywhere or cover other courtrooms, since half the courthouse was also dark, so we had more clerks than judges available. Mr. W suggested we both take the afternoon off to go real estate hunting with our realtor, which was a great idea. We finally get to look “for real” now, since his financing came through last week. But this morning, not only was I reassigned to a busy criminal calendar courtroom, but I was reassigned to a busy criminal calendar courtroom that had the calendar from hell. Despite my explaining my desire to have the afternoon off to my supervisors, they still refused to move any other floaters around to help me out. We finally compromised by my promising to work through lunch, leave in the afternoon after making sure the courtroom was covered in case anything came up, and coming back in the evening after my appointments and working as late as it took to finish my work before leaving for the night. The morning’s workload was so famously horrid that another bailiff came by, saw me, and asked, “What happened? You drew the short straw this morning?”
“No,” I clarified, “The short straw was forcibly jammed up my ass this morning. I didn’t draw it.” I’d never used the f-word so much at work before. The bright spot was that another judge-less coworker floating next door helped me do 2 cases that got delayed into the afternoon, so that I could take off at 1:30p.

We looked at 1 house in Brea (eh…), 6-7 houses in Mission Viejo (my city of choice), and 1 house in Huntington Beach. Mr. W was already in love with the Huntington Beach house from seeing it online and despite my beef with a house that’s 14 years older than me, only 1 story, under 1700 square feet, and in an old neighborhood, Mr. W would not let me veto the property. We got into bickers about this house and he’d said multiple times that he was going to forego it since I apparently hated it so much, but the next day it was always back on the table as if we’d never had the discussion. After visiting the house itself, I had to admit that it was fully upgraded and done so impressively, and the neighborhood, although old, is not as slummy as previously viewed Huntington Beach neighborhoods that had scared me to the point I knew I’d be afraid to go to the mailbox by myself. But I still preferred the newer, bigger, more modern homes and floorplans.

So we decided to leave it to the hands of fate. We would put an offer down on his #1 choice, the Huntington Beach house, on my #1 choice, a Mission Viejo house, and a third offer down on another Mission Viejo house that was his #2 and my #3 choice. I love my #1 Mission Viejo house. I loved it the instant I walked in. I love the outside, the inside, the light and bright floorplan and the cute manicured backyard with a dropoff view (no residences behind us). Plus, it’s 24 years newer than the Huntington Beach house and $10K less on asking price. It’s 2 stories, has a full bed/bath downstairs, and both upstairs bedrooms are master suites. How can you go wrong?!

Our appointments went on till past 6pm, and I was weak and unenthused by the end of the trip because I had consumed zero calories the whole day. The morning at work was so insane that I never ate a solid molecule of food, never drank a liquid molecule of beverage, and never went to the bathroom. My first bite of food didn’t happen till Mr. W bought me a chicken chipotle wrap after we got back to work. I got my food to go, went upstairs back to the courtroom, ate real quick, and went right back to entering and processing the morning’s criminal cases. I left work a little past 8p.

I popped into my coworker’s house to check on her cats but she’d beaten me there after driving back from Vegas, so I just gave her her housekeys back and handed her a wedding invitation. Then I came home and highlighted my hair. I got a scare initially since the highlighting foam stripped my hair color so dramatically that instead of leaving it on for the recommended 10-30 minutes, I panicked at 5 minutes and washed it out. The instructions said that the color of hair after taking the highlighting solution out isn’t the final color, and that the final color would be shampooed in later, but I didn’t trust it. I ended up stripey, but it did come out much better than it’d originally looked. I think I washed it out too early; only the top of my head took. But that was okay, since the bottom half of my hair still had the lighter coloring in it, so what I did (inadvertently) was blend the top to the bottom. Oh well, you can’t win ’em all.

Based on today, tomorrow should be great.

Tuesday evening was wonderful. I’d decided it was time to get a trim since I was spending entirely too much time peeling split ends when I was supposed to be working, so after I got home after work, I rifled through my coupon box in search of local haircut discounts. I’m not loyal to any particular hairstylist or salon, so I usually just go to what I can get cheap, be it Supercuts, Fantastic Sam’s, Great Clips. This time I dug out a promotional coupon for a free haircut at a local salon (not a chain) which was in a “welcome to the neighborhood!” coupon book the City mailed me when I bought this house 7.5 years ago. No expiration date was printed on the coupon, so I called the salon and asked if they still honored it. The receptionist was amused at this coupon, since it apparently wasn’t in circulation anymore the past 6 years, and checked with the owner of the salon. The owner, Donna, said she’d honor it and asked me to be in at 6:45p. That gives me a couple of hours to feed/water my coworker’s cats (I’m cat-sitting since she’s in Vegas for a few days) and I decided to go shopping for my own dress to wear to Mr. W’s niece’s wedding this Saturday.

After shopping at a few local discount clothing stores, I decided that the problem with today’s trend is that they all look like maternity wear. Everything is high-waisted (or empire-waisted) with tons of fabric floating underneath, so that all the shirts and dresses look like babydolls. I’m short and curvy, so if you take the widest part of my chest and just drape fabric down to the widest part of my hips, I become a giant rectangle. Mr. W’s daughter is very tall and slender, so the current fashion is pretty flattering on her, making her look more fluid and less gangly. And then a thought: should I be stocking up on this unflattering fashion right now for future use AS maternity wear? Cuz with my luck, when I actually am pregnant it’ll only be hip-huggers or high-waisted bottoms and form-fitting tops in style. After trying on many many dresses that looked cute hanging there but terrible on my frame, I found myself in the discounted department store Ross. I grabbed a ton of dresses I thought might have potential and the first one I tried on was a fitted dress so amazing on me that I had to step out of the dressing room to see myself in the 3-angled mirror, in case the dressing room mirror was a freak circus elongating one. I still looked shockingly nice. I tried on the other 3 dresses I had in there, and none of them looked decent, so I was pretty sure it wasn’t the mirror. I tried on the first dress again, admired its tiny cap sleeves that surprisingly didn’t make my arms look huge, the form-fitting body that surprisingly hid my fat due to the dark brown and maroon print, the asymmetrical V-shaped skirt hem and upper-body-elongating deep V-neck, and bought it. $9.99. Even if it dissolved after I wore it it’d still be worth it. Despite the fact that Ross is notorious for its long slow lines which I did observe as I walked in, when I was ready to pay there was nobody in line. I quickly got out and made it to my hair appointment exactly on time.

Donna, the salon owner, did my hair because the other stylists working there were independent contractors renting space so she did not make them honor an outdated coupon for a free haircut. Donna asked me what I was looking for in the haircut, and I explained that my hair was entirely too long and shapeless now, and I needed a trim. Maybe about 3 inches, my wedding makeup artist had told me, so that she could still do a messy up-do for the wedding in a few months. Donna started snipping away and since we were on the topic of weddings, she mentioned that her daughter (whom she’d dragged in there to work the receptionist desk for her that day) is also engaged and was looking for a venue. So the three of us, since all the other stylists had left by this time, had a nice talk about weddings and experiences and venues. Her daughter Alison and I appeared to share the exact same brain when it came to weddings, practical and thrifty to a fault, totally non-girly, so our chat was very productive. I mentioned I happened to have my wedding binder in the car (passed on to me from Anny’s wedding), so after the shampoo I ran out to the car to grab it for Alison to examine. As Alison made photocopies of useful information in there, we talked about what a great coincidence it was that I was there, since I happened to find the coupon, Donna happened to be working, she happened to have forced Alison in to keep her company, and I happen to have the wedding binder with me. At the end of my free haircut, I tipped Donna $5 and she gave me a “new customer kit,” a mug, pencil, and coupon for $5 off my next appointment. She ended up lopping off about 5 inches, I’m a little nervous about it being up-do-able, but I love it. It’ll grow another inch and a half by the wedding.

Figure-flattering dress: $9.99
Complimentary haircut: $0.00
Looking cute, younger, and feeling like I helped someone with something she was stressed and lost about: Priceless.

Oh, and the chipmunk cheeks seem unnoticeable now, too. My original theory was that it wasn’t that my cheeks got rounder, it was that my neck got skinnier, but now I think it was the hair.

I had 4 tasks today.

1.) Call my HELOC people and demand why I was told I could lock my interest rate twice for free but everytime I call, I’m either told I can’t lock it, or am given the runaround. I left messages with two employees of my bank and the one who’s new to me called back. He explained fixed rates vs. variable rates locks to me, and it’s all clear now. I’m happy with the information I received. Turned out the way the first guy explained it to me was misleading and I’d misunderstood the “rules.”

2.) Call the wedding catering company and demand why I was charged 18% as “service charge,” which I took as tip, and then was taxed the standard tax rate over the service charge, cuz last I checked it’s illegal to tax me on a service tip. The food coordinator explained that the service charge is taxable, because it’s actually a fee used to pay the worker’s wages, and not a tip. Darn.

3.) Call the bridal gown store and demand why I was charged so much for the gown alterations. I spoke to someone in the alterations department who was not there the day I did the alterations, and told her I had questions on my alterations order. She nicely got my ticket and answered each of my questions and concerns. She said my alterations lady marked “take in zipper” in error when it should’ve been “take in or let out sides”, but that it wouldn’t create a misunderstanding with the seamstresses because the point of alterations were clearly pinned and they could tell the zipper was not to be touched. $95 is the “standard fee” for this on bridal gowns, she explained, and especially because my bodice has pleating/ruching. So okay, fine. If it’s standard I’m okay with it, altho my opinion is still that it’s high. What about the hemming that they charged me $150 for? I told her my dress has no lace on the bottom, no multiple layers, no embroidery or beadwork that has to be redone. “I’m gonna have to talk to my manager about this charge,” the lady said, and put me on hold. She returned within minutes and said, “This is a mistake, the charge is supposed to be $120. Maybe she didn’t know. I’m going to write on this that you get $30 credit. When you come back to pick up the dress, make sure to tell them about your credit.” I knew that the register automatically printed out $120 and they had to add a separate transaction of $30 for a reason. And I knew that my alterations lady had written $120 and then got talked into changing it to $150. Scammers. So I asked whether the $30 credit would be paid to me in cash. She said no, it’s store credit. What am I going to do with store credit? I’ve purchased everything I was going to from that store! She said to talk to the front cashier when I got there and maybe they could do something, like credit my card since it’s already prepaid. Well, it’s better than nothing.

4.) Saved the best for last. I was to meet up with Mr. W’s daughter and go dress shopping with her since neither of us had anything to wear for Mr. W’s niece’s wedding this Saturday. Daughter finally decided last minute to come with us to Vegas to attend this event, so I invited her dress shopping with me. She met me at Mr. W’s house, we went to a new upscale shopping plaza where she not only scored a very pretty flirty sundress and belt on Mr. W’s dollar (he gave me $60 for her dress allowance, her total ended up with me pitching in another $2.50, so she did pretty good), but she scored a job interview at that store for tomorrow. Now that’s productive. I tried on a few things at various stores but couldn’t find anything that I thought looked good on me. We then gave up for the evening, I treated her to dinner at a place she recommended with good 1/2 pizza/salad/soup combos, and then we came back cuz she still had schoolwork to do. She came in, showed off her new dress to her dad, gave me a hug, offered to go back shopping with me anytime this week if I wanted to give dress hunting another shot, and was off.

#4 was my favorite task today.

Bridal alterations: My mom had nothing bad to say about the dress. She was charmed by its simplicity. She even went so far as to state that my arms actually DON’T look big in this particular dress. She tried to call my dad to have him come to the dressing area to see me in the dress, and I overheard her tell him it looks very good, but he didn’t want to go thru the hassle and opted to wait outside in the store area. The alteration lady had to bring up my skirt a lot at the hem, and bring in the attached petticoat a lot. I tried the dress on first with that bustier that gave me nice push-up cleavage but also pushed fat up everywhere else, and remarked how I hated the bubble of fat that rises above my bodice due to the bustier. The alteration lady (who was not the lady I spoke to on the phone who forbade me to NOT wear a bustier) suggested that if I’m more comfortable without the bustier, that she can simply stitch in bra cups inside the dress. Really? Off the bustier came and instantly the dress was so incredibly more comfortable, it felt like jammies. Sure I look flatter in the dress now and I had to pay for the cups, but it is worth the smoother silhouette. Due to the loss of excess fabric from the bustier, my dress has to be taken in half an inch on either side of my ribs along the vertical seams. Then they said if I have my veil, they’ll steam it for me and smooth out the wrinkles along with the dress cleaning after alterations. So I just said screw it, I’ll buy my veil right then and there. My mom called my dad in for his opinion, I walked out to the store area in my pinned up dress, and when my dad saw my dress he exclaimed, “So plain?!” My mom said almost defensively, “I like plain and simple.” My parents helped me pick out a veil, and I ended up with a simple single-layer short veil that cost less than the one I was gonna order online, anyway. I was content with that purchase. What I am NOT content with, and grow increasingly salty about, is the fact that my alterations cost more than my bridal gown. I seriously think they ripped me off. I noticed that instead of marking the spot on the alterations ticket that said “Take in or let out sides,” which the price chart in the dressing room listed as “$35 and up,” after some Spanish instruction from another lady, my alteration lady marked “Take in zipper” and wrote $95. I know zippers probably take more work, but they didn’t touch my zipper! Also, the price chart listed hemming the skirt as $75 and up or something like that, and they charged me $150! WTF! I could tell the lady had written $120 and then the other lady babbled something to her in Spanish so this lady then changed it to $150. When the alteration ticket was rung up at the register by the front cashier, the amount for each item was so much that they had to break it down and ring it up as separate items. “Take in zipper” was rung up twice, once with $65 and another with $30. “Alter skirt – hem” was rung up once for $120, then itemized again as “Alter skirt – take in or let out” for another $30. Clearly they’re overcharging beyond what their computer is programmed to charge cuz they did not take in the skirt, they merely shortened the hem which apparently had a maximum charge on the register program as $120. I’m so pissed off right now even tho it’s so many hours later, cuz the more I examine the alteration ticket, the more I feel they deliberately ripped me off. I didn’t even need a bustle done and the price is outrageous. When I went with Mr. W’s niece to a Vegas branch of this same bridal shop, she had the hems done, inches taken out (she’d gained some weight since the dress purchase), and bustles put in, and it came out to about this much or less. I’m so gonna call them tomorrow and have a fit.

Dad’s tuxedo: Mr. W came by my house and picked me and my parents up after we got back from the bridal alteration appointment, and drove us to his tux guy. I can’t believe how suave a man looks in a nice tuxedo. My dad looked instantly younger, slimmer, classier, and richer. He opted for the same Chaps (by Ralph Lauren) tux and vest set that Mr. W and his groomsmen got. He also picked up some nice onyx cuff links/buttons set as well as second set of unique blue stone cufflinks. My mom was so charmed by my dad, in a tux for the first time in his life, that she got this giant smile on her face and pranced over to him, hugged his arm, and said, “I wanna marry you again!” My mom’s gonna look pretty swanky herself in her custom-made mother’s dress, so they’ll make a handsome couple at the wedding.

Mr. W treated us to dinner at some fish restaurant near the tux place, and it was expensive food. My parents split their plate cuz the waitress misunderstood them when they placed their order, but it worked out cuz we were all ridiculously stuffed. I was pretty salty by this time about the alterations cost, so I didn’t even protest Mr. W paying for everyone. Tomorrow is a Chinese festival holiday where we get to eat one of my favorite foods, glutinous rice steamed in long banana (?) leaves, and we’re gonna have a great meal at my grandma’s for lunch, then we’re all going to deliver invitations to the older generation of relatives and family friends to whom mailing an invitation would be an insult. I’m gonna find some time in there to call the bridal place and ask arbitrary alteration cost questions to see how they price me.

I’ve been good about gymming Thursday (did it on the way home from work) and yesterday (did it during lunch) because the freak cheeks are really inspiring that way. I also sucked down some dandelion root capsules yesterday because my Gym Trainee swears by them as a natural diuretic to debloat. She takes 1/3 the dose and pees out more water than she knew was in her. I took maximum dose (3 capsules each time) and it didn’t do squat. Either it’s not working for me, or I’m NOT bloated, which means the cheeks are here to say! Waaah!

Mr. W made my dad a tuxedo appointment with his contact for today at 6pm, and my mom and I have that bridal gown alteration appointment at 3p, so apparently my dad decided to come with my mom and me so that we’re all together and could hit both appointments as a family. My dad is gonna be sooooo bored at the bridal fitting. But maybe he could distract my mom from criticizing me too much.

Okay, I’m now off to the gym to do some massive cardio round, my parents will meet me at the bridal place at 3, we’ll all come back to my place, Mr. W will come here to pick us all up, and then it’s off to the tux fitting. I get to hand them their invites that they’re gonna hand-deliver to their friends, too. Then we can have dinner together and hopefully meet up with our realtor to talk about house-hunting for real. If you think that sounds productive, my mom has already been up for 5 hours doing tai chi and country line dancing at a local park that offers recreational classes and is now shopping at a nearby store, and my dad’s been fishing since the buttcrack of dawn.