cindy's world

There was an article in a local Las Vegas newspaper that gives an in-depth look of how the prostitution “industry” in the area has been impacted by the plummeting economy. Normally during downturned economic times, the porn, gambling, drinking, and prostitution businesses increase as people turn to them as an escape. But THIS time, the porn industry took a 20%-30% decline in sales, AND mid-range prostitutes have had to add sex acts that they’d previously forbidden, AND lower their rates. (What is this world COMING to?!) Based on an interview of a mid-range prostitute, she used to charge $450 per date, and now has had to drop her rates to $300 per date, and make available things she previously would refuse to do for fear of losing more customers to the competition who WOULD do those acts and charge less, too. Despite that, her personal economics have suffered 50%, she claims, because used to make $6K a week and she’d save $1000 a week and spend the rest, but now she’s no longer able to put away the weekly $1K savings.

So at this point I’m going, “I don’t have $5K of expenses a week! If I had her job, I’d be filthy rich in a few months!” And I had to kick myself mentally.

The reporter then interviews a high-level call-girl and it turns out, she says the high-level people haven’t been impacted by the economy at all, because the wealthy clients who pay $2000 an hour STILL have enough money to keep paying $2000 an hour.

And then I wondered, what qualifies a girl into the high-level hooker classification? The interviewee is a former finance director. So I assume she’s smart. Maybe when one’s clientele are dignitaries, they really want an “escort” on their arm who could pull off the upper crust mingling, the political savvy and social refine to appear like, “I’m not a hooker. I’m Mr. Foreign Dignitary’s intelligent, rich and well-connected date and I just so happen to be extremely hot and unfathomably attracted to him.” And I thought, “I can act.” So I had to kick myself again.

The article’s interviews with lower-level prostitutes reveal that the typically substance-addicted bottom-dwellers of the profession’s heirarchy aren’t negatively impacted by the economy, either. They still get their usual $200-$300 a pop (har) rate, and business goes on as usual. It seems that a concern of the writer is that when mid-range prostitutes drop their rates to the area of low-range prostitutes, they also expose themselves to (har) a lower, scummier clientele base. This, coupled with the addition of sex acts that they really don’t want to do, make for an unpleasant career experience. The writer recommends that instead of compromising themselves ( :/ ), mid-range hookers should advertise more broadly and creatively, such as going online, placing internet ads, and starting online blogs.

And here again I think, this time aloud, “I already have a blog. How easy would it be for me to just convert into prostitution?” I received a snort from Mr. W.

The Santa Ana winds came back last night. Each new gust would start as distant rustling, like a forest of leaves moving around. Then, in seconds, it reaches us in a whoosh and roar and the house would rattle in response. A high-pitch whistling also accompanies the sounds, along with clunks, rattling, sounds of scraping as people’s outdoor belongings fly around the street as if caught up in the dance of a tornado. I stumbled down at 3am to rescue my little avocado tree, which had indeed fallen over at the front door. It’s just inside our front door now.

This pretty and bright morning proved a great day to not go to work. I left the house about 8:15a and drove almost 2 hours to Pasadena for my 10am appointment with Dentist Andy. I made sure to bring a box of assorted glamour cookies for him and his staff, because the crazy guy is working today on his 34th birthday. We hugged hello, chatted a bit about his recent vacation to our homeland in Asia, and made plans for a group brunch this weekend in one of his favorite restaurants. “Gotta warn you though, the food is really good, but pretty rich.”
I hesitated just a moment and then resolved the internal conflict with, “That’s okay, I’ll just run my 6 miles beforehand.”
Almost 20 minutes later while he was working on my teeth, he said, as if it just hit him, “Do you really run 6 miles?!”
I just said “Ah-hah” which is the best I could do since sharp things were in my mouth preventing me from explaining that I used to run way more than that and am working my way up to it again. Besides, I’ve run 5K twice last week; nothing says I can’t do a 10K by the weekend.

The 50+ mile drive back home was only an hour long, now that I was past the morning traffic rush. I think I tanned, sitting in the car that long in 86-degree sun. Now that I’m home, I’ve cut up some carrots, onions, mushrooms and beef to throw in the slow cooker, and was going to use red potatoes but realized that their normal storage spot on top of the fridge (thanks to Mr. W) has been conducive to sprouting. Very, very conducive. So now I’m online researching how toxic sprouted potatoes are, before I ruin an entire pot of stew. (I learn that the sprouts are poisonous, but not the potato itself. I’ll know I didn’t successfully cut out all the sprouts if Mr. W gets headache, nausea, fatigue, vomiting, abdominal pain, and diarrhea. Stay tuned! >:) )

My immediate future plans: get the stew going, hit the gym, come home when Mr. W arrives from work, have stew. If I can get all those things done I’d feel productive today.

Yesterday in the Southland it was a skin-burning 80+ degrees in the sun, so Mr. W wanted to visit a beach. We decided to explore a new one for us, San Clemente Beach. This is San Clemente Beach Pier.

This is the clock tower to the right of the pier, where the Amtrak train makes its scenic tour.

Of course when I took these cameraphone photos, I had to immediately send the first one to people in colder weather to make them jealous. Flat Coke texted back that her area’s upcoming weather prediction is 7 degrees with a chance of snow. Wow, what’s THAT like? We had lunch at the outdoor patio of a pier restaurant overlooking the sand, seagulls, and surfers, and my right side facing the sun was PAINFULLY heated.
Before we left, we heard the clanging of the railroad bells announcing the Surfliner’s approach.

What a pretty train ride this would be. Mr. W simply loved that this train is named so aptly.

And then we went home and watched TV all night. The end.

On Saturday, my mom’s morning phone call inviting us to lunch was a little unusual, because our normal visiting day is Sunday. She explained that she and my dad had just purchased a new TV for my grandmother and were at my grandmother’s home right now. The TV is a birthday present, and I’d already agreed to go in on it with my parents. So off we went on the looong drive. We passed Angel Stadium.

We passed a guy riding an odd but loud 3-wheeled bike of some sort.

In her next phone call, we found my mom’s ulterior motive. My dad couldn’t get both the video AND the sound of the DVD player to work, he was getting either one or the other, so they needed Mr. W. By the time we arrived, however, 2 hours later, my dad got everything working, so I just wrote my mom a check for half the cost of the TV and it was the most brainless present ever. Because my dad’s birthday is a few days away, my grandma treated us to lunch, and then a dessert coffee and tea cakes at a nearby French cafe.

We left and got detoured to childhood friend Sandy’s parents’ house, because Sandy was struggling to get their TV to work in conjunction with a satellite dish AND a cable box. She got them both hooked up, but her parents were pulling their hair out over annoying horizontal interference lines when they watched satellite. Mr. W redid some of the setup behind the TV and then found Animal Planet for them, which turns out is the only reason they’re paying $100/month for a cable box to begin with. They had sought for the channel unsuccessfully until Mr. W just stumbled upon it during a channel scroll. They were so grateful they kept us for dinner, with promises to treat us to a future dinner. It was fun hanging out with Sandy and her parents, it’d been awhile. I also found out that my mom’s former death scare is no longer an issue, but that she’d totally neglected to tell me that! Sandy’s dad, a physician, checked my mom’s tests and reports and apparently found nothing alarming on it. No wonder my mom seemed to have taken a mood 180 many months ago! “She didn’t TELL you?” Sandy mom asked in surprise. I’m sure she deliberately didn’t tell me so she could keep holding the guilt stuff over my head! Isn’t that such an Asian mom. Even last week she wrote me an email starting off with “I’m not sure how many more years I can remind you of your dad’s and your grandma’s birthdays…”

While hanging out with Sandy and her family, I also found out that her brother, my Dentist Andy’s, birthday is tomorrow. I have an appointment with him tomorrow! I can’t believe he’s working on his birthday. I just spoke to his office a little while ago and asked if they were going to do anything for him, because if they didn’t have anything planned I was going to bring in a little cake or something like that.

My mom also called yesterday to tell me that since my dad celebrates his birthday on the lunar calendar, it falls on a different day each other, and this year it happens to fall on his good friend’s birthday. This good friend is our realtor. I wonder if they’re gonna do anything to celebrate together.

This is probably the most boring post ever. Sorry. But lemme tell you about my Sunday!

I CAN post about my weekend along with photos, but this other thing is weighing more heavily (and uncomfortably), so I’ll blog it and get rid of its pressing nature.

I learned in a college psychology class that the motivation for suicide is commonly, if not mostly, selfish. “I’ll show you. I’m gonna kill myself and THEN you’ll all be sorry.” There’s all these superstitions or etiquette rules that deters one from speaking ill of the dead, but I’m gonna go ahead and spit some stuff out at the risk of sounding insensitive.

A coworker fairly recently, after her only child got married and moved out of the house, started renting out a room in her home to a man. She is a single mom and the extra income helped. Plus I believe she felt pretty alone in her home. I think the man was a stranger to her until she accepted him into her home, but either way, it doesn’t make this more f’ed up.

Last week she returned to her painstakingly put-together and decorated, remodeled home and ended up being barricaded out of her house the entire night as police documented her home as a possible crime scene. Her renter had killed himself in her home.

At first I of course thought, “Oh, no, how tragic!” but immediately after I thought, “He had to leave a mess before he died? For someone else to clean up? Why should this be her problem? And now she’ll have to disclose this suicide in all future real estate sales because it’s required by law and this’ll wreck her home’s value. Who the hell does that?! Why take down another person who’s doing you a favor to let you live in her home?!”

Other information came through that he was a gay man. I think the implication is that he may have been prone to being overdramatic, but I don’t think any official word has come down about his actual “logic” for suicide, if something like this could be logical.

I was just really ticked off for my coworker. She’s had to go through a lot in her life and she’s a genuinely good person; she recently spent a ton of money completely redoing Gym Trainee’s office as a surprise when Gym Trainee was off on vacation last week because she thought it’d be nice for Gym Trainee, who gets pretty screwed by administration around the building and gets kicked out of her offices a lot for someone else with squeakier wheels wanting an office space, to finally have a claimed space of her own, no matter how temporary it may be. Gym Trainee’s first day back is today and she was bowled over at all the personal touches and the amount of labor involved. That office is nicer than my entire house now, and the coworker made an appearance also as we all hung out in the office earlier, and never mentioned her home tragedy. I wanted to ask if she’s okay going into her home living alone now, whether she had to do physical cleanup alone, if there were something I could do, but of course it wasn’t the time or place during this morning’s happy occasion.

This is probably going to be the ugliest statement yet, but even dogs and cats run away into the wild to die, to avoid dying at home around loved ones.

Last night was oodles and oodles of fun! You can tell by my giddy delirious diction. But that very possibly is also caused by lack of sleep.

After work I drove to Vicky’s new house in the newly burnt Chino Hills. Altho Mr. W and I had considered buying a house there when we were looking, I now know that I could not have handled living there. Although it is 10 miles closer to work than our house is, the drive took twice as long as it wound through scenic single-laned roads with motorists who had to brake down to 15 mph at each turn. I was awed by the charred land and could still smell the smoky carbon aftermath. Vicky’s house itself was great. It was so spacious that when I called Dwaine upon my arrival there, he could hear my voice echoing through our cell phones. It is evident that she and her handy boyfriend worked hard on endless renovations there, and although they say a lot of detailed work remain, I think the house is ready for furniture. The textured dark wood floors were especially breathtaking, even without the excited dog charging full speed toward me as I entered and instead skidding sideways past me as his frenzied feet pedaled Looney Tunes style in a fruitless attempt for some traction to turn around. Vicky’s house has the exact opposite problem as ours — they have 3 spacious common areas for entertaining, not including the formal dining room, kitchen and breakfast nook, and were trying to figure out what to do with all that room. Mr. W and I had trouble fitting 8 teenagers into any single room in our house for Daughter’s birthday party a couple weekends ago.

I left Vicky and her boyfriend an hour later to join Dwaine at a nearby new Yard House Bar & Grill. The menu looks different from other Yard Houses, but I almost recklessly and randomly decided on the Porcini Crusted Halibut, which is described on the menu thusly:

Porcini cream sauce and white truffle oil, asparagus and bok choy over parmesan mashed potatoes.

I pushed the plate toward Dwaine, who had ordered a chicken and mushroom pasta. His eyes widened as he tasted the perfectly seasoned flakey halibut. I then took my first bite, which was of the mashed potatoes dipped in the truffle cream sauce, and my eyes rolled into the back of my head. I grabbed his fork and insisted he try that, too, and got him a clump. As soon as he tasted that, he looked angry. Looking at his own dish in disdain, he announced that although he always gets that pasta dish because he’s always enjoyed it, he now wants what I had. I laughed and said it happens all the time when people eat out with me, but now he knows what to order for next time. Dwaine vowed to return the next day for lunch and order what I had. In fact, he said, he would bring someone with him so they could also enjoy this amazing dish and understand what we were experiencing in food. I don’t know what it is about that place — even the Framboise Lambic (raspberry ale on tap) tasted better than I’d ever had it. Maybe it’s the company. We chatted for two hours at the restaurant, and then went to his house 10 minutes away (Vicky’s house was 5 minutes away) and continued chatting so that we didn’t have to yell over the bar noise. We hit lots of topics, introspected, made jokes, caught each other up on stuff, psychoanalyzed other people, reminisced, shared photos and inside information, and I only left because he yawned and I had a long-ass drive back home.

Today childhood friend (and bridesmaid) Sandy called out of the blue and we had a long catch-up chat, and are tentatively planning to finally hook up this weekend. I hadn’t seen her since the wedding, and she still has my watch. 🙂 I think I really do have the world’s coolest people in my friends group.

OH, I ALMOST FORGOT. Hey girls, if you’re described by someone as physically “thick”, but you don’t have the benefit of knowing the context of the description (like you don’t know the tone or the sentence it was used in, just that someone described your body type as “thick”), do you automatically take that as a negative description? Like, do you think “fat”? I’m taking a survey.

As pleasantly surprised as I was at my cardio ability yesterday, I was inversely dismayed at how weak my abs are today. I wonder how I even sit up in the mornings. Nevertheless, I hit the weights, did 3 sets of each major muscle group in resistance training, 5 minutes of stairclimber, bunch of abs. That cute little inspiring DA smiled at me and settled into the ab bench next to me. MAN I felt fat next to her. Well, in time…

Meanwhile with two workouts under my belt, I’ll feel less guilty about seeing my friends. I met up with Anny last nite and had a tasty shrimp angelhair pasta in a light tomato cream sauce, and today I’m meeting up with Vicky at her new house (which I’ve never seen), then catching some drinks and maybe dinner with Dwaine after that. As I’m heading to Vicky’s directly after work, I made sure to bring a change of clothes that are looser-fitting for food and alcohol consumption.

(photo of the beautiful 5’2″ Alyssa Milano courtesty of www.sofeminine.co.uk)

I haven’t had a meaningful workout since before the wedding. Yup, you heard me right. Some days after the wedding in early September I stood in front of the mirror staring at my smaller boobs and the bones poking out disgustingly in between them, while grabbing and jiggling the omnipresent lower abdominal fat roll, and thought, “Geez, I can’t lose any more fat, I already look kinda gross and my curves are disappearing, and it’s apparent my body isn’t gonna burn up fat from where I WANT it to burn up.” So I decided that I’d rather put on a few more pounds and bring the curves back. Rather than being gross AND lumpy, I could just be lumpy. In the following 3 months the holiday chaos made working out at lunchtime pretty difficult; either I’ve had to work through lunch, or Gym Trainee (my ride) had to, or we both just didn’t feel like gymming and would take a brisk walk around the neighborhood instead. Our handful of gym days produced unmotivated and uninspired workouts. Knowing I wasn’t giving it my all in the calories spent area, I made an effort to control the calories taken in. The results aren’t bad; I probably gained 2-3 pounds since before Thanksgiving, maybe 8 overall since the wedding. My weight and fat percentage are acceptable, but I’d like to look more toned, so I knew I was gonna have to find my motivation somewhere.

New Year’s Day, Gym Trainee and her son woke up at our house from spending New Year’s Eve with us. More acurately, with me; Mr. W spent much of the evening playing a computer game while the remaining 3 of us hung out. He explained it was the only way he could stay awake. He eventually, after deflecting half a dozen death glares from me, left the computer and came to sit with us in the living room, and then called it quits and went to bed at 11p. So I rang in the new year with Gym Trainee and my godson with Martinelli sparkling cider. I’d actually missed the transition and countdown while I was in the kitchen struggling with the bottle opener. Oh well. I’ve had worse new years. So anyway, New Year’s Day we watched a marathon of The Biggest Loser, Season 3, and Gym Trainee and I got so inspired to work out. She has this week off on vacation, but promised to hit the gym and catch up on her cardio training on her own so that we can meaningfully weightlift next week when she returns. I’d invited Mr. W to go on a jog with me that day after our guests left, but he declined. You see, he was not as inspired because instead of watching The Biggest Loser with us after watching the 120th annual Pasadena Rose Parade, he was in the backyard digging big holes and planting rose trees. I look forward to all the colors that will pop up next spring.

Over the weekend Mr. W and I discovered a new show called “What Would You Do?” or something like that, in which 3 “out of shape” people in each episode are faced with a simulated disaster and they have to go through a sort of obstacle course to survive the disaster, or save a loved one. Like, there’s been a major earthquake while you’re at a movie theatre and various things collapsed. They had to climb over some collapsed theatre chairs, pull 5 sandbags off a large wooden box blocking the pathway, then pull the box out of the way, get down and crawl underneath a low obstruction, then up some narrow fire stairs after pulling a beam out of their way. Or they’re driving along an unpopulated road when they blow a tire and skid into a pile of stuff on the side of the road. The driver has to run around to the passenger side, pull a 250-lb barrel out of the way, grab the passenger (a dummy) who simulates a loved one knocked unconscious and carry/drag it 100 feet away in case the car blew up, then jog the 1 mile up the dirt road to a gas station where they could call for help. (I, too, was thinking, “Why don’t they have a cell phone?!”) Of course everyone fails the challenge the first time around, either because they couldn’t complete it or they took longer than the time allotted which is calculated by how long it would take an average “fit” person to complete the scenario. Then the 3 people are monitored by a doctor provided by the show, given nutritional training and fitness training by three Marine Corp drill sergeants (the hot young one was also a kinesiologist) for one month, and then they get to repeat the challenge. Most of them pass this time, or get really close.
Mr. W and I were like, “MAN. I wanna do those challenges and see how well we do!!! Why don’t they have stuff like this for non-obese people?!”

Today, the postage stamp sized iPod Shuffle that Mr. W gave me our first Xmas together is finally charged after years of neglect, and I was inspired to push myself. Just a little, though, don’t want to burn out. I figured I’d see if I can run a mile on the treadmill and then do some light weights. Ideally I’d do more cardio than that, especially when I haven’t conditioned my cardiovascular system for so long, but I didn’t want to get discouraged right off the bat. I started a light and easy jog pace. To my surprise, a mile flew by and I was so spirited I felt like I could run forever. Each new song I hadn’t heard in so long pumped new adrenaline and excitement into my veins so that as my hands tingled with it, I wanted to sprint right off the treadmill and through the walls. Everything was motivating; the large women on the elliptical trainers in front of me struggling through their new year’s resolution, Kanye West talking in my ear telling me to “work it, make it, do it, makes us, harder, better, stronger, faster,” and that what “don’t kill me can only make me stronger,” and seeing in my mind that I was running toward my goal, the look I want in tangible forward-running steps so that if I just run those steps it will lead me to looking how I dream (forgetting for the moment that I’d need liposuction in certain areas to actually make that happen).
And then mile 2 hit and I was bored. I took a sip of water which threw off my breathing, and I had to struggle for concentration again. Step step inhale, step step exhale. Mr. W appeared in front of me another half mile later, pale and dewey. “I’m spent,” he complained. “How much more’ve you got?”
I glanced down at my digital stats. “I’m working toward a 5K,” I explained in a stronger voice than I thought I had the energy to produce. I saw his eyes flutter wider in surprise. “I didn’t mean to — I was just hoping to do a mile, but I felt good, so…”
“That’s good, I’m gonna go shower and if I’m done first I’ll wait for you,” he said eagerly, and limped off toward the men’s locker room.

Well, I finished that 5K (3.12 mile) run and walked another eighth of a mile for a cooldown, teetered off the treadmill, and wobbled my way into the locker room, where I ran into a really cute new district attorney a few years younger than me, a little shorter than me, who has the anomaly of sharing my last name. I thought I saw her on another treadmill farther down but wasn’t sure, and now that I see her in her tight jogging clothes I thought, “I have GOT to look like that.”

I’m on call for jury duty this week. I haven’t been called in yet, but we’ll see for tomorrow. Meanwhile, in honor of courts and holidays, here are some season’s greetings from the legal site mlaw.org:

“Please accept with no obligation, implied or implicit, our best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low stress, non-addictive, gender neutral celebration of the winter solstice holiday, practiced with the most enjoyable traditions of religious persuasion or secular practices of your choice with respect for the religious/secular persuasions and/or traditions of others, or their choice not to practice religious or secular traditions at all.”

“We also wish you a fiscially successful, personally fulfilling and medically uncomplicated recognition of the onset of the generally accepted calendar year 2009, but not without due respect for the calendars of choice of other cultures whose contributions to society have helped make our country great (not to imply that the United States is necessarily greater than any other country) and without regard to the race, creed, color, age, physical ability, religious faith or sexual preference of the wishee.”

Mr. W’s niece and her mom (Gamer Bro’s daughter and wife) are visiting friends in San Diego, and will spend the weekend with us. Yay! Niece was recently married and even more recently preggers! I haven’t seen them since Thanksgiving when we went to Vegas and I’m sure she’ll be softly glowing. 🙂 Or maybe the hormones have made her glinty, we’ll see. She seems to be cheerful so far and has said that pregnancy has been easy on her.

You know what I wish I had? A really cool, artsy, maybe black and white photo of me in some eye-boggling but not gross contortionistic pose. And then I can make it my profile photo everywhere and frame it in a simple thick-edged black wooden frame. Yeah.