cindy's world

…just click on the video below. Apply liberally as needed. Guess who? 😉

Who knew blogging about 3 days would take so much time? On Sunday of Jordan & Chad’s visit, we set off for San Diego, where we finally enjoyed a fully sunny SoCal day. We first had a champagne brunch seafood buffet at Tom Ham’s Lighthouse. These cannons are by the front entrance. (As usual, rest mouse pointers on photos for captions.)

If you think what Jordan and I did was bad, you should see (on Chad’s post) what Chad did with the cannon. Next we hit up Sea World. WHEN did tickets to see a bunch of fish start costing $69?! Holy crap. I felt bad making them come here. I paid for Jordan tho, as an early birthday present, as her birthday was the next day. Here we are in the stands waiting for the Shamu show.

We saw lots of cool things at the Shamu Stadium, such as this…

And this!

And unfortunately, this…

This was taken outside in line waiting for the 4D Muppet Show, and I said, “Hey, let’s take a picture in our 3D glasses!” and as you can see, people weren’t listening to me. Jordan was on the phone, but what’s Chad’s excuse?

We were in the aquarium when I heard someone say, “Hey, come down here so I can talk to you!”

I looked down, and a huge catfish said, “Hello, remember me? Let’s retake that old picture you took a few years ago!” So here’s the old photo from July of 2006…

…and the current my-how-you’ve-grown photo.

Jordan bought a little stuffed animal Shamu back with her as a souvenir. Mr. W tried to take this one.

There are some exhibits and props you can play with and touch, like the above. And then there are others, like a giant jawbone of a great white shark, that’s roped off. If you follow the blog or know Jordan, you’ll know her irreverance for fenced-off stuff. Cars behind ropes, giant bird cages on hotel displays, M&M statues in Vegas…there are many photos of Jordan behind ropes, posing with do-not-touch displays. So when Mr. W, Chad and I saw the giant shark jawbone behind the rope, and heard an alarm go off as a tourist tried to touch a tooth, it became obvious how easy it would be to get Jordan to set off such an alarm. As she caught up to us, distractedly taking photos on her camera, Mr. W said, “Hey, lemme get a photo of you with that shark bone behind the rope.
She looked, and her eyes lit up. “Are there security people around?” she asked, looking behind her shoulder.
“No, just hurry up,” Mr. W said without looking around, aiming his camera. Jordan would later say she thought it suspicious he didn’t even bother checking before announcing there’s no security, as if overeager to get Jordan in the shot, but she slowly squatted down near the rope, took another look around, mouthed “ready?” to Mr. W, then darted behind the rope! INSTANTLY the alarms went off and Jordan leapt out, wide-eyed, as a bunch of people who’d stuck around to see if Mr. W could pull off this prank started laughing. Chad and I were outside the door looking in but wincing as it became clear that Jordan was going to do it; at one point we couldn’t even bear to look. It’s clear who the law abiders are in the group.
Moving on, we looked at all the cool animals in the arctic. Like polar bears…

…and beluga whales…

…and penguins!

Jordan’s comparing the size of the penguins to the size of the gnomes in her house.

And that concludes our Sunday! Oh wait. Afterwards we did go to In-N-Out so Jordan and Chad can taste a famous California burger chain. They were pleased. Aloha!

~ Cindy’s World will be right back after a word from one of our sponsors. ~

Dwaine: Modelo is my beer of choice. It’s light and refreshing, perfect for a get-together with friends. It’s so tasty, too!
Chad: There’s nothing like a cold Modelo to quench that dry throat feeling you get from talking too much when you’re hanging out with friends.
~ We now return to our regularly scheduled blog, Cindy’s World. ~

On Monday, everyone left us. I dropped Jordan off at the airport for her 6:30a.m. flight back to Florida, and Chad grabbed a shuttle for a farther airport for his 11am flight to New York to continue his vacation. Mr. W and I went to work. It was a fun weekend; thanks for visiting, Jordan & Chad, and thanks to all my friends who came out to meet them and hang out with us! See you all next time!

I just discovered these kids. I instantly “fanned” them. They give Boyz II Men a run for their money! Probably the BEST local R&B group I’ve seen in a long, long time.

It’s funny where inspiration comes from. Dwaine met a girl on Valentine’s Day and decided to go old-school wooing style and was going to make her a mixed tape. An actual mixed cassette tape, reminiscent of the 80s and 90s when we grew up and would make mixed tapes on the regular, for ourselves and to show our love for the lucky recipient(s). So I brought him my compact boombox which played CD, radio and cassettes. He’d have to convert his mp3s into an audio format, burn his song selections onto a CD, then play that CD on the boombox while pushing “record” on the cassette. That’s how you get backwards-compatible technology. While I was there on furlough Wednesday working on this project with him (among other stuff), he showed me online photos of this girl. Yesterday, I took a peek online at this girl’s photo album. And then I texted him.
“[Girl]’s profile isn’t private, so I took a peek at her old pix. She is sooooo your type!”
He responded, “LOL…yeah, she seems fun and silly.”
I wrote, “& she looks like she works out. Sorry, I gotta ask…are her boobs real?!”
He responded, “YES! She enjoys working out and they are real! :-D”
I wrote, “omg. omg. U ARE SO LUCKY!!!” and then quickly texted again, “I mean, SHE is so lucky. Yeah.”

Yesterday, I thought about this pretty girl who “ENJOYS WORKING OUT.” I used to enjoy working out. Now I’m a slob at it. I’ve been to the gym like twice in the past 2 months. So I went to the gym at lunch and pushed and pushed and pushed and had a painful but complete workout which left me shaking afterwards for hours. I’m in pain today, but I’m going back to the gym again…RIGHT NOW.

Saturday was spent visiting the beach areas. I had told friends ahead of time that we’d be at the Long Beach Pike where we’d find a restaurant for dinner and then hit up the Mai Tai Bar afterwards, and to join us whenever they’re able. Jordan, Chad, Mr. W and I first detoured to Huntington Beach (because Mr. W wanted to take our visitors on the scenic route), where everyone decided they were hungry enough to eat at Duke’s. We walked down Main Street, enjoyed the sporadic sunshine in between short bouts of drizzle, and porked out with a nice view of the beach. Unfortunately, since this detour took a lot longer than planned, Vanessa had already made it to the Long Beach Pike to meet us, so we jammed there while Vanessa shopped at Borders.

At Long Beach (Jordan’s childhood home town), we stopped and took some photos. Here is the famous Queen Mary behind us. Chad’s being nice and squatting lower so Jordan and I don’t feel like the midgets we are, but unfortunately, Mr. W zoomed out, foiling the attempt to fool the audience.

Jordan wanted to retake the 2008 photos she and I took around Long Beach, so we went off to find the ol’ photospots. Turned out that the little yellow ‘copter from ’08…

… has been turned into a yellow SUBMARINE by 2010. Jordan made me shove my big butt in there anyway and pose for a photo. I’m not sure if a photo was taken by anyone before I leapt back out, screeching. Thanks to the recent rains, the seat was a POOL. My ass was totally soaked! I was NOT a happy camper after that because in the cold, I felt like my butt was turning into ice. That’s why our attempt to replicate this carousel photo from ’08…

…ended up looking like THIS in ’10.

I even tried sitting on the wooden boardwalk and rocking back and forth in an attempt to have the wetness sucked out of my jeans, but turned out, those weren’t wooden planks! They were plastic made to LOOK like a boardwalk. Shenanigans!

But I wasn’t the only one who wasn’t smiling on a ride. Vanessa and James (who’d arrived shortly after we did) caught up to us, and we walked by a huge Ferris wheel. Jordan instantly thought of the great photo ops from waaaay up there, and Chad just as quickly vetoed it, confessing he has a pretty severe fear of heights. None of us knew that before.
But anyway, look at this great shot of Long Beach we got!

I wonder how we got that shot. Hmm. The answer is below…

Honestly, I was surprised Chad took the leap and followed us up into the Ferris wheel. I was going to stay down on the ground with him. But what a trooper! I mean, can’t you just hear Chad’s teeth grinding as he tries hard not to look down?
When we finished wandering and sight-seeing, everyone decided on Bubba Gump for dinner.

It was perfect because Chad’s never been there, Jordan loves shrimp and wanted to eat it for dinner, and it was just underneath the Mai Tai Bar (our final destination). Turned out that Jordan and Chad are whizzes on Forrest Gump trivia, and we thought we’d be a shoe-in for the free dessert we’d win if we answer 5 trivia questions right, but the last question was SO unfair. It was, “What model of car was advertised on the side of the passing bus in the scene where Forrest is sitting on the bus bench?” WTF? Multiple iPhones instantly started googling, but to no avail. Shenanigans!!
On our way out of the restaurant to hit up Mai Tai Bar, our visitors couldn’t resist being in the shoes of Forrest Gump himself.
“My name is For-rest. For-rest Chad.”

Forrest W: “Life is like a box of video games…”

Forrest Jordan: “Wait, how does this go?”

Forrest Cindy: “Life is like a box of…HELP ME GET THESE CHOCOLATES OPEN!!”

Mai Tai Bar was also a hit! The waitresses wore TEENY skirts (Mr. W and Chad thought they saw something when one sat down to take our order), and it was happy hour for a LONG time. Ann joined us there and we all had a GREAT time bonding.

(as usual, rest mouse pointers over photos for captions)

Okay, I’m finally getting around to post photos about my Floridian and Tennesseean visitors’ weekend in SoCal on Feb 5-8. To read Chad’s rendition, see here.

Friday morning started off with a little scare, because bad weather had grounded a lot of planes and for Jordan’s flight, an announcement came that they were reducing the passengers to a mere 49 for weight considerations, and that they were going to call out the names of the lucky 49. She texted me through this, wailing that they weren’t calling her name. I immediately started looking up alternate flights as she was stuck in Vegas at her layover. I found one that left an hour later and asked her to see if she could be standby for that flight, so when she went up to ask, turned out, they HAD called her name, and fifth, too, and she didn’t hear! I threatened to kill her. She had the gall to text back, “Sorry! Want me to get off the plane?” *shaking fist*

Early afternoon, I excitedly picked up Jordan and then swung her by James’ work (a mere couple of miles from the airport) to say hello. This was the most high-security friend visit I’d been to. James had to come out to the Taco Bell parking lot where we were parked to get us and escort us into his building. It was raining, there were puddles everywhere, and the bottom 2 inches of my jeans got soaked. (Mr. W said that it rains in SoCal like 10 days out of the year, and these two choose 2 of those 10 days to visit.) I hopped around, trying to avoid puddles while balancing an umbrella with one hand and trying to pull my pants up with the other. Once in the building, James had to “okay” us to the front desk security; the guy checked our IDs, printed our names on visitor badges we had to wear, put a special sticker on each badge that would change colors if we overstayed our welcome (so that we can’t return the next day). Then we visited James’ lab and then his window office on a different area of the building. We only stayed for 20 minutes or so because James had a meeting (and I was bored), and Jordan and I went back to my house so she could settle in. Soon it was time to pick up Chad from the airport, so off Jordan and I went. Chad was already waiting curbside and hugged us hello while he wisecracked something about the awful gray weather, and then we blasted old school hip hop on the way back. Mr. W had asked me to call him if we were not going back home first, so he could meet us at the sushi restaurant, and so once Chad got all offended that I asked if he’d preferred to eat first or go back so he could drop off his stuff and change or “freshen up,” we called Mr. W and told him to meet us at our favorite all-you-can-eat sushi joint, Minato Sushi.

Jordan was queasy about eating “real sushi,” so we didn’t make her (which turned out to be a good thing for a few reasons, one of which was that the roll she ended up getting was surprisingly HUGE). Chad, however, came with an open mind and an open stomach, and let me just order whatever I felt like. This is a pretty inexpensive restaurant considering the quality of fish they serve, and I told Chad that there were only 2 sushi restaurants I’ve been to which served better fish, but those prices were triple what it cost here. Chad ate everything with gusto and exclaimed enthusiastically that he’d thought he’d had decent sushi before, but he had no idea it could taste like THIS. Yay! Well, now I know why I found the sushi in Florida so sub-par. Apparently it IS sub-par, but people don’t know any better. Until they come to California and hang out with us. Mr. W is slightly concerned we may have ruined Chad to all sushi at home now. Guess he’ll just have to visit again.

Dwaine joined us for a beer at the sushi place and although he didn’t really eat, he did try his first piece of sushi. Salmon. He said it was surprisingly good, and not fishy like he’d expected. Chad grabbed the bill and paid for everyone, which was what I’d planned to do. He said he was happy to do it, considering the entire bill for everyone, including the sake and beers, were less than what he’d paid for his last few dates. So ladies, apparently Chad’s the guy to date if you like expensive outings.

After sushi, we went back to our house to hang out a bit before going out again to BJs Brewery. We ended up never leaving the house. Dwaine said he didn’t know how he could’ve forgotten I’m certified in bartending, as I made Jordan an apple martini. The guys mostly had beers. We discussed social theories on dating for awhile.

Below we see Dwaine schooling Jordan, and she’s SHOCKED at his knowledge base.

A sisters-shot.

We ended the evening around midnight, which was 2am for Chad and 3am for Jordan. They’re troopers, after a day of traveling!

The Calendar
This year, Asian New Year and Valentine’s Day fall on the same day. So Happy New Year’s Eve and Happy Valentine’s Day Eve, people!

I like the above photo because it’s clear that as I’m lighting a giant string of firecrackers, the white boy has no idea about his precarious position. One can imagine that, right before this photo was taken, I said, “Here, Mr. W, hold this,” and he happily obliges, and I’m in a position where I’m about to light, cover my ears and run, and he’s just naively standing there. =D
Claudio & Ann
This is a long 4-day weekend for me, thanks to Lincoln’s birthday on Friday and President’s Day on Monday. I spent my day off yesterday hanging with Claudio for the first half and with Ann the second half. Claudio and I started out our time together how we have always traditionally started our time together — with exercise. We met at the gym and I was game for whatever he wanted to work on, so he slaughtered my biceps, triceps, shoulders and abs. Those are what I consider “minor muscle groups” (which means they’re smaller supporting muscles that get worked out by proxy when I work on “major muscle groups” of chest, back and legs), so since I haven’t been at the gym much lately, I’ve been mainly ignoring them as far as isolated exercises go. Well, I can’t ignore them now! They’re SCREAMING at me and cussing me out as I type this. Thanks, Claudio, my body hates me now. But that’s how he felt when he followed one of my workouts, so that makes for a good day at the gym. After we left the gym, we hung out at the Irvine Spectrum and started out healthy with a vegan lunch and kale, but we soon deteriorated into some Starbucks Frapp drink for him and a hand-dipped ice cream bar for me.

After we parted, I gave Ann a call and she was working from home, so I went to visit her at her new apartment. I helped her set up some new patio furniture that had arrived that morning, played with her dog, had ice cream (I must surely be PMSing), and caught up with her. We had a good time, and I continued the laughter I had from the earlier part of the day into the early evening. Ann’s so funny; she was sad that she has no plans this Vday, so she bought herself flowers. While I was there, she clipped the stems of the roses and irises and stuck them in a drinking glass because she didn’t have a vase (since no one gave her flowers this year). She was in total self-pity mode. I said, “Surely, you’re not actually buying into this commercial holiday enough to feel BAD, are you? Just don’t think about it and don’t celebrate it.” She sadly took out a big container from her refrigerator and put it in front of me.
“Want some fudge? I made Valentine’s Day fudge,” she said in a small sad voice.
I laughed at her. “Why’d you do that?!”
She said, “Well, I still wanted to be FESTIVE!” As I shook my head at her silliness, I watched her reach behind her for yet another container, which she also put in front of me. “And I made Valentine’s Day cookies, too,” she said, offering me round cookies with red heart cutouts in the middle of them. We both laughed at her “festiveness” despite it making her sad.
I did tie some more loose ends that were laying at my feet before I left, though, much like I’d done for my friends the day before, so hopefully things won’t be as bad as she’d thought they’d be this weekend.
Mr. W & Me
When I got home, Mr. W was already home. He’d been at a leadership training thing all day. He told me that everyone there had to pair up and interview the other person, then introduce their partner to the class. One of the interview questions were, “If you could have dinner with whomever you want, whom would you choose?” As people were introduced to the class, he heard about wistful dinners with President Obama, one’s deceased father, other prominent historical figures and current icons. When Mr. W was introduced, his partner said, “This is [Mr. W]. If he could have dinner with whomever he wants, he would choose to have dinner with his lovely wife.” The entire class reacted and people said, “Aw, who in here knows his wife that he’s kissing up to?!” Mr. W explained that he really did think about it, and sharing a meal with a stranger — not to mention an idol — would be too stressful for him to enjoy so the only person whose company he likes (he claims) is mine. He seemed sincere. And it’s probably the nicest thing he’s ever said about me. “Aww, that’s the best Valentine’s Day present!” I told him.
The Lynx & Dodo
But here’s what Mr. W actually offered to buy me for Vday:

Claudio and I saw two male Highland Lynx kittens at a pet store when we were wandering around the Spectrum earlier. They’re genetically desert lynx, wildcats, so they’ve got leopard markings and bobcat tails, slightly longer and very strong hind legs, and huge paws. Plus the little curled and tufted ears are ADORABLE. I’d have two rare breed cats (the Highland Lynx is registered as “wild & exotic”), a Scottish Fold with tiny ears, and a Highland Lynx with curled ears. Plus, it’d just be cool when someone asks if I have any pets, to say nonchalantly, “Yeah, I got a lynx.” Right??? Claudio asked the employee how much the kittens are, and the answer is $1500 each. YOWCH. “They’re cute, but not $1500 cute,” Claudio laughed. Just as well… as tiny as these kittens are now, they’d probably still kill my older mellow Dodo. One of the boys even has 6 claws on each foot! I can totally imagine this cat as the neighborhood pimp. Other cats have to come and offer mice and birds in homage, or they walked away with 6 parallel lines across their faces. “I got bitch-slapped by the Lynx.”

…siiiiiigh…

I had a zany weekend with many of my favorite people. It was also quite an eye-opening experience and a good look at people around me. Before I get into that (since I have photos and it’d take work to post and I’m sleepy), I just want to post a brief li’l ditty…

I’m helping a friend out in a quick marriage ceremony. Nothing formal, just something that has to be done before the lunar calendar year (Feb. 14 this year) is over, and I happen to be in the unique position to have access to all the loose ends. So I tied a few in the last few days in the interests of love and friendship. I had offered my veil as her “something borrowed,” which she can use for the technical ceremony later this week, and if she would like, she can use it for her “something borrowed” at her formal wedding later on in the year. In digging out my wrinkled veil to be steamed earlier, I happened upon my wedding dress. Curiosity got the better of me and I pulled it on. At first I thought I wouldn’t be able to zip it up, because I had worked out so hard before the wedding and I haven’t exercised much at all recently. It was more snug than it was the day of the wedding, but it zipped up and looked fine. That’s a relief to know that if I need to wear a princess-cut ivory dress, I have one ready in the closet!

“Bat” and Jordan are coming on Friday and I’ve got all kinds of things planned for the weekend, so I’m terribly excited about that. It also gives me a “clean up the house” deadline of Thursday. I was already doing laundry on Monday with my clothes in various piles on the spare room bed categorized by color and severity of agitation they’d get in the washer. By Tuesday, I had my “delicates” hanging on a drying rack in the spare room, with some remaining piles of clothes to be laundered still on the bed. I knew I was going to lose Wednesday night to do what I had to because Mr. W made our tax appointment super-early for Wednesday after work, so I also needed to get my tax documents in order on Tuesday evening. I could do that while laundry is going, no problem, except that since it was so early, I hadn’t received any tax documents in the mail from my banks and mortgages, yet. I’d managed to pull some 1099s from online, and just needed my mortgage statement for my old house. I couldn’t pull that from online since I don’t have an online account with that lender who had recently bought over my loan from my original lender. So I was a little stressed about that. On the drive home Tuesday, while I had all this on my mind, Mr. W said that his son had decided to come over that night and stay over. “Maybe he’ll already be there when we get home, and then we can all go out for dinner!” he said. I immediately thought of the lingerie hanging on the drying rack in the spare room (where Son normally stays when he’s over) and the piles of dirty laundry on what would be his bed. Crap!! All my financial stuff is also kept in that room, so I’ll have to pull all that out of there FAST to get out of Son’s way. I hoped Son wouldn’t already be there, cuz I don’t want him to walk into a room with embarrassing laundry all over the place and then my having to kick him out of the room so I can pull receipts and statements. So…things to do ASAP:
* finish laundry
* pull tax stuff
* see if the mortgage statement miraculously made it into our mail box; if not, then get on mortgage lender’s website and make a new account so that I can download the statement immediately

It also occurred to me, as I’m thinking of all this, that I’ll have to wait until Son leaves to clean up the guest room and bathroom, launder the bedsheets, etc, and I can’t do it Wednesday because of the tax appointment, so I’d have to do it Thursday. So Thursday, I gotta clean the house and guest rooms, get fresh sheets put on, find time for a haircut, AND oh, crap, Mr. W’s daughter needs black work clothes for a new job she got as a singing hostess at an upscale restaurant. She needs this before the weekend, and I’m busy all Friday with my out-of-towners, so that only leaves Thursday, too. I felt the stress mounting with all these impending deadlines, and a rare headache started creeping in. That car ride home seemed interminable. I have things to DO, man!!
“I don’t think I’m gonna be able to go out for dinner with you guys,” I told Mr. W. “I have too much crap to do.”

When we got home, Son wasn’t there yet, so I immediately went to work putting stuff on my drying rack away. On one trip downstairs, I noticed Mr. W by the front door, hand on the doorknob. He said to Daughter, “You ready?”
I asked, “Where’re you guys going?”
He said, “To dinner. Wanna come?”
I said, “I can’t. I’ve got too much stuff to do before [Son] gets here.”
So they left, and as Mr. W didn’t extend an offer to bring me back dinner, I figured I’ll just find something really quick and simple to eat while I’m at home. It started as a productive evening; I put in a new load of clothes and moved the remaining load to our bedroom, then boiled some instant Ramen on the stove and added yolkless Eggbeaters and baby spinach. While that was cooking, I pulled tax documents from the spare room upstairs so I could be out of Son’s way ASAP when he got there. I ate the ramen straight from the pot as I worked on the tax documents. Then I got online to register for a new account with my mortgage lender bank since indeed, my mortgage tax statement was not in the mail. At the final step, I was eager to get into my account and download the last missing item for the tax appointment the next evening. Instead, I was aghast when I read on the monitor, “Your password will be mailed to you within 5-7 business days. You may then come back to this website, put in your login, and enter that password to access your account online.” I don’t have FIVE TO SEVEN BUSINESS DAYS!!!

An unfeminine word escaped my lips. The headache was greater, and I felt sick. I was feeling sick pretty soon after I ate the ramen, but it was more than just a nuisance now. It was incapacitating. By this point Mr. W and Daughter had come home from dinner, and I showed him the message on the screen. He said the same unclassy word, and was upset about my inability to be prepared for the tax appointment the next day. I teetered upstairs and fell over sideways on the bed, hoping to ride out the sickness within a few minutes. An hour went by. Another hour. I told myself I’d be up to move my laundry from the washer to dryer once the clock reached 8:15p. Everything hurt at 8:15 and I was severely nauseated, so I stayed in the same prostrate position. (I couldn’t tell if the body pain was sickness-induced, or due to the 4-mile hilly run I took Daughter on the day before, or maybe it was the heavy weightlifting I did at the gym at lunch.) I heard Son arrive. Soon Mr. W came to see what had happened to me. I mumbled that I needed to get downstairs and see about my clothes in the washer, but that I couldn’t move. He asked if they just had to go into the dryer, and I said I’m not sure, I’d have to see what the clothes were because some may have to be air-dried on the drying rack. He left. I receded from reality again, and was soon after aware of the sounds of the washer and drying going downstairs, so I knew that Mr. W had put in additional laundry, which meant he took mine out of the washer and likely put the load in the dryer. I forced myself up to go downstairs, opened the dryer and pulled the damp, hot clothes out of there, closed the dryer, and went back upstairs to put them all on the drying rack. Mr. W said something about how they’re not dry yet, and I responded that if this particular load dried in the dryer at the setting he had, all the clothes would shrink. I arranged the wet mass on the drying rack, and then went in the bathroom and threw up.
Half an hour later, I threw up again.
Fucking ramen. I figured I’d been eating so well now for so long that my body totally rejected the preservatives, chemicals, sodium and MSG in the instant ramen, which I’d always known is one of the worst things one could eat, but there was one package left and SOMEONE had to eat it so it doesn’t go to waste. It was soooo not worth it.

The next day, despite not sleeping well at all, I forced myself to go to work, knowing I was going to abandon my judge on Friday to pick up Jordan at the airport, and we’re in trial so he’s very anxious about my not being there. He even offered his WIFE to pick Jordan up so that I didn’t have to take the day off, but of course I couldn’t let her do that. I threw up at home before we left, and felt so much better after doing so that I figured I was fine for the rest of the day, but was wrong and threw up again at work. I’ve never vomited 4 times like that in memory. Fucking ramen. I couldn’t believe I still had ramen to throw up after 14 hours; my body was obviously not letting any of it go down. I pensively sipped at only a mug of cool tea all day on Wednesday. Mr. W ended up trading our tax appointment with one of his friends, who had a March appointment, so at least that pressure was gone.
Around lunchtime, I’d totally forgotten it was yoga/pilates day at work, which I normally participate in, but I couldn’t do it. I instead crawled into the jury room to nap at lunchtime, and dry heaved a little upon waking, but didn’t vomit again. I could just feel the pregnancy rumors starting at work.

I did get better throughout the day, enough to try a small bowl of plain miso soup for dinner, and altho my stomach protested a little with a small stab of pain, it didn’t come back up, so that’s a good sign. Mr. W and I also went to some clothing stores and got Daughter her work clothes on our way home yesterday, and shopping is much faster without her, so that’s out of the way. She was happy with our purchases. This morning, I was dying of thirst and weak from malnutrition, so I sucked up two cups of soy milk for breakfast. My stomach protested a little, but insignificantly, so now I’m having more tea at work. I’m slowly expanding my food capacity again. Today, Daughter and I will go get haircuts after work and she needs her work shoes and I wanted to get her running shoes, so maybe that can all be done in one shot. Then Mr. W will help me clean the house. It’ll be okay, I tell myself.

I vowed to never eat instant ramen again.

I just blacklisted someone’s IP address for the first time on here. Some psycho left a bizarre and barely coherent comment in one of my pages here. I can’t tell who she’s cussing at (me or the myriad commenters on that string), but I don’t tolerate hostility like that, even tho she’s either so uneducated or so drunk that she can barely put a sentence together. I categorized her message as spam AND blocked her IP address, so if one filter doesn’t catch her, another will.

Felt good.