cindy's world

This was something new this year. The judges in the building each donated big bucks to make an off-location Christmas party happen. Our administrators and some volunteer coworkers rented out a rec hall on Friday from 11:30a to 2p and we had an impressive catered lunch (turkey, ham, all the trimmings, cakes) along with tons of raffles. SANTA walked in to hand out the prizes.

It was a pretty convincing acting job, and if I hadn’t been told shortly before his appearance that Santa is one of our judges, I would’ve been tempted to sit on his lap and tell him I’ve been a good little girl this year. Of course, knowing who it is and THEN doing that would be sexual harassment.
It soon became a pattern that each winner of a prize would go up, collect his/her prize, and then stay to take a photo with Santa, and then it’d be on to the next prize. It soon became apparent that all the pretty girls were being directed by Santa to sit on his lap as the photo pose. That was when I shrunk down and prayed, “Don’t pick me. Don’t pick me.” I got my wish, by the way. A lot of my female coworkers who were dragged by their hands onto Santa’s knee looked embarrassed. And then there were the judges, like the presiding judge and MY judge, who pranced up when called and threw themselves on their colleague’s lap for the photo op. My big boss even raised both his legs up and sat across Santa’s lap as if Santa were about to carry him over the threshold. Everyone shrieked with laughter and camera flashes went off.
As much as I enjoyed being a spectator, I was happy to have averted disaster this year. I was in a fluffy gauzy and, in some coworkers’ opinions, very short skirt.

Mr. W has gotten so many compliments on his new hat that he wants to go back and buy a few more (different colors).

I wish I had photos of me and Jordan playing in the hat shop.

My mom’s xmas wish list (stuff she wants from me) this year includes a new TV, boots, string of pearls (necklace), diamond earrings, and a puppy, but my dad won’t let me get her the last item.

Wrapping presents with a cat around is always a great challenge, as Mr. W found out this year for the first time.

How in the world did we get invited to so many Christmas parties?

The first off-site work xmas party is tomorrow, and altho I half-agreed to step it up a notch and make myself halfway attractive, I’m really too lazy and don’t feel like it.

I’ve been so tired lately, skipping the gym and taking naps at my desk at lunchtime instead.

It was funny today when my judge and court reporter were discussing their reviews of nonfiction books about the Black Panther movement, first-hand accounts of Al-Qaeda from the inside, secret government surveillance of our military, etc., and during a pause in their conversation I offered, “I’m reading an adolescent novel about a teenager’s romance with a vampire,” and my judge had looked at me in horror and exclaimed venomously, “You’re not reading that Twilight crap, are you?! …no thanks, reading about government conspiracies is scary enough.”

That was a very long 1-line sentence.

We worked a bit into lunch today, taking a verdict, so Gym Trainee and I decided to just take a walk instead of going to the gym for what little time there was left of lunch. We were circling the neighborhood and looking around at the wadded-up fast food bags thrown on the sidewalks and at the shady-looking people coming out of pawn shops when I thought, “This is a really bad area.” That was when we approached an intersection where the cars next to us were stopped at a red light. A Hispanic guy was crossing the street toward us, walking in front of the stopped cars. When he stepped onto our sidewalk, he started saying something to three black guys in a car, also stopped at the light, closest to us at the corner. I was wondering if they knew each other, when we got close enough for me to realize he was challenging the three guys to come out in a hostile voice. “C’mon, bring it,” he was saying, along with other slangy stuff I wasn’t picking up on, sprinkling some colorful adjectives in there as well. I couldn’t tell if the three guys in the car were saying anything, but I certainly didn’t hear them. The Hispanic guy reached into his jeans pocket at this point and I briefly wondered if he had a gun. He pulled out something small and colorful, and waved it at the car. A utility pocket knife, it looked like. And then he walked farther down the sidewalk so that he was behind us, still challenging the carload of people. I got PISSED. Get the f out of my WAY when I’m trying to cross the sidewalk, and stop dancing around behind us! Go stab the car or something, their passenger window’s open! The car took off when the light turned green and the Hispanic guy said cockily, “YEAH, thass wot I THOUGHT! Chickenshits.” WEREN’T YOU just bouncing around behind TWO WOMEN, trying to put us in the middle of your idiocy? I almost wish the carload of guys had gotten out and beat the crap out of him. How stupid does a guy have to be to start crap with a car of 3 people to his 1, and all he had on him was a dinky little keychain pocketknife? What if they pulled out a gun? What’s he gonna do, stab his way through a metal car as they ran him over? Idiot. Gym Trainee’s take on the situation was that as the guy was crossing the street, the car may have pulled up a little after he stepped on the sidewalk, so the guy took offense, like the driver was trying to hurry him up or play like he was gonna run him over. She also thought the guy overreacted because he was “trying to look hard” in front of women. Ooh. Score. *eyeroll*

Mr. W and I watched “Four Christmases” on Friday with two coworkers. I still think Reese Witherspoon is adorable. Parts of the movie made all of us laugh aloud. Like when an old family photo portrayed a young version of her character in couple-like poses with a very butch looking female, and Reese’s character denied naively that her buddy was gay, saying that they used to play-pretend they were laying out on the beach sunbathing, and they’d lay in the basement naked, and her friend would be very protective and didn’t want her to burn in the pretend-sunlight, so she’d rub sunblock lotion onto Reese’s skin everywhere — and then realize halfway into her sentence what she was saying. There was one part of the movie that was exceeding disturbing to me, though. The boyfriend’s sister-in-law, towing a toddler with her, was telling Reese’s character that breastfeeding doesn’t hurt her at all anymore. It did at first, she explained, but then the nipples toughen up like leather and she can’t feel them at all anymore; “here, look, flick one,” she invited, offering her left boob to an alarmed Reese.
I turned to Mr. W with my eyes wide. “Is that true?” I gasped.
He wouldn’t answer me!!! Waaaah! I’m loathe to lose two of my erogenous zones.

Today was spent reading the fourth book of the Twilight series, Christmas shopping, wandering around the Irvine Spectrum outdoor shopping, exploring a new crepe restaurant and then a new coffee shop that claimed to have live music (turned out it was more like some teenage kids goofing off doing more party karaoke than actually performing for strangers; we left before we were even halfway done with our specialty coffees), then finished off the night at the Lake. And I went back to reading.
I guess it’s somewhat noteworthy that I did do a tiny bit of hat shopping. Enough to know that I can not pull off the cabbie cap. The hard brim and low bulky top turned the girl in the mirror (me) into a Communist. I quickly took it off. Ironically, Mr. W found a short-brimmed Fedora that he really liked. The tag said it was on sale for $9 and it looked good on him. After he came back from the register, he explained his wide grin by telling me that it rang up as an even deeper sale item, $4. I ducked his efforts to find me a hat as well, dodging the bulbous colorful yarn caps and the hunter-in-the-blizzard style lambwool-lined plaid hats with ear flaps.

Welp, back to the book. Stephenie Meyer is getting really good at her characters’ dialogues in this last book of the series. I actually chuckled aloud quite a few times.

On the way home from work, we pass a huge warehouse-sized Halloween Store. It’s still open every day despite the fact that costume purchases can’t be a regular thing on people’s shopping lists anymore. My head turns, my eyes glued to the store window displays of colorful, skin-tight, skanky costumes every evening as Mr. W drives obliviously by on the freeway.

Recently my desire to add a little something different to my wardrobe returned. I’d thought about this last year, and blogged a little something trying to explain how I feel. I think I go through this annually for some reason. On the way to Vegas, I mused about this aloud. “I think I should get a hat,” I said.
“You don’t wear hats,” Mr. W noted.
“Yeah, but a hat can change my look dramatically. Like…ooh! A cowboy hat! I should get a cowboy hat. But I probably won’t have much of a chance to wear it.”
“You can get one of those puffy hats, like — what do you call those? They’ve got a short brim and they’re puffy on top?”
“A chef’s hat? I KNOW I won’t get much of a chance to wear THAT.”
“Nooo, like a Strawberry Shortcake hat.”
“That’s a giant chef’s hat.”
“Not that big of a puff. It’s kinda flat on top, slants down…it’s made of that nice fabric…”
“I am not gonna wear a cabbie hat,” I said. “I won’t get much use out of that. I want something cool, something bad, like, OOH, a pirate hat!”
“Oh, I’m sure you’ll be getting a lot of use out of THAT.”
“With a big feather sticking out the back!!” I got really excited.

I didn’t end up getting any hat, and the pirate phase has passed. Maybe a triangular furry red hat with a white furry brim and a white puff ball at the peak will be the practical hat purchase for me. Something I can get a lot of use out of for the next month.

I have been completely unmotivated to hit the gym. I was dragged out there yesterday by the convincing words of Gym Trainee and Mr. W. Today, I ditched it again. You’d think my lack of desire to be “good” would make me less of a hypocrite, but it doesn’t.

Yesterday at the gym, Gym Trainee said off-handedly, “I guess I’ll do abs at home while I’m waiting for dinner.” So around 8:15 p.m., I text messaged my 11 year old godson, Gym Trainee’s son: is ur mom doing ab exercises? she said she was gonna do them tonite.
I received an unenthusiastic response: she said she guess so
I decided to make him my partner in crime, to get his mom to step it up. So I bribed him. make her stick 2 her word & ill bring u the 3rd evangelion dvd 2morrow. I’d gotten him hooked on the award-winning anime series just last month with the first two DVDs.
It worked. I received simply: ok
Some time later, I got a report: she’s on her third set of smiley faces. That’s a lower abdominal exercise where you lay on your back and swing your extended legs in the air in a low arc, like you’re drawing huge smilies with your toes. It sounds easy until you do ’em right.
I instigated. thats it???
I received: she did smiley faces crunches. ya she said shes tired.
It wasn’t long before I got a voice mail from his mother. “YOUR CHILD,” she said in a mock hostile voice, “is about to be HOMELESS!” And then she laughed and hung up.

This morning she came by my courtroom for a visit. Apparently how the boy got her to do the ab work was by waving his cell phone around where she lounged on her back watching TV and threatening, “I can send a video of you doing just that — nothing.” Ah, cell phone technology. Gotta love it. I may have a crappy work ethic right now, but I’m a dedicated trainer.