cindy's world

The weather is beautiful, making sunshine abundant through windows, providing lots of spots for sunning.

This morning, my jungle cat inspects his domain from above, master of all he surveys.

Master of…even me.

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

May your Easter be as warm and fuzzy as mine.

Yesterday, Mr. W left at 7:30 a.m. to meet up with his friend for a 10:00 a.m. massage, and when he still didn’t return by 1:30p, I decided to go get lunch on my own. I deserved something decadent, since I’m sick AND I’d just run 4 miles and walked another 1 at the gym earlier (I had to do the dreadfully boring treadmill because with these antibiotics, I can’t go out in the sun, or drink alcohol. Or even take multi-vitamins. Claudio had commented, “Jesus, she like a gremlin. Comes with instructions and shit.”). However, I don’t normally have lunch on my own, so I checked with a couple of male friends first, asking if they’d find it odd if they saw a chick having lunch by herself at a sushi bar on a Saturday. The responses were that they wouldn’t think it odd at all (and that given my age, I shouldn’t care if strangers think I’m a loser anyway), so off I went to my favorite local sushi joint on the lake. I hadn’t been there in a long time, since Mr. W is rather tired of sushi and when he goes, he’d rather spend $25pp at the all-you-can-eat Minato Sushi than get $50pp omakase on the lake. Perfect opportunity. And I had one of THE best lunches ever on my own!!

Since I’d gotten there after the lunch rush at almost 2p, the restaurant itself was close to empty, and what patrons there were, were sitting out in the back patio enjoying the beautiful sunshine and the sparkling lake. Thanks to my meds, I was the lone customer at the sushi bar. I had never met sushi chef Fumio before. I asked him politely whether it’d be okay to do an omakase lunch, and he pointed me to a seat in front of his station. He started me off with toro (fatty tuna) sushi, with more diced fatty tuny as a topping. Next course, my favorite fresh raw sea scallops seasoned with a dusting of sea salt and a squeeze of lemon. HEAVENLY and sweet. Then yellowtail belly, the most expensive and indulgent cut of hamachi. He served that with grilled yellowtail belly ribs. I was already getting full, but since we were having a nice conversation, I stayed on. I found out that in Japan, at least when Chef Fumio was there, they didn’t do salmon sushi, one of my favorite fish! The salmon served there is always cooked. What?! To me sake sushi is a staple. He also said that the oh-so-popular seared albacore sushi here is not served in Japan, either. “All the albacore in Japan comes in a can. We call it ‘ocean chicken.’ We don’t eat sushi.” Wow.
The owner of the restaurant, who is usually my omakase chef, walked out and recognized me. “Hey, you haven’t been here in a long time!” he welcomed me. “How come?” Eek!
“I’ve been vegetarian for awhile,” I said, which is not really a lie. I assured him that I am pescatarian now and will be back.

Around this time, Fumio had disappeared into the kitchen and returned holding a clear plastic bag filled with liquid and something brown-gray inside. I watched him happily cutting open an enormous shell, humming as he worked in extracting the edible parts of a giant clam. “Is that live?” I asked.
He said, “Yes, I just got this! I have three of them.” He trimmed some stuff off, separated other parts, and cleaned the cut parts in a bowl of ice water, leaving them in there to soak for a few minutes as he loaded a big round bowl with ice cubes and arranged the giant shells, decorating them with strings of carrots and turnips, and translucent coins of radishes. I had something similar, albeit with abalone, at Toro sushi with Eddie and Michelle, so I knew it was expensive and exotic. I kept looking around outside on the patio, wondering who of these white patrons out there, who had been sent standard rolls that I’d watched Fumio make, would know to order something like this. When Fumio simultaneously finished his humming with his clam arrangement, he lowered the finished product in front of me, saying, “Sashimi, for you!” My jaw dropped. For me? For just one person?! This stuff is so expensive that usually a whole table shares one!
“Oh my gosh, I thought you were doing this for someone outside! I feel so special! The presentation is beautiful! I have to take a picture,” I gushed.
Chef Fumio smiled and said, “Thank you. But I didn’t put on my makeup today, so please don’t take a picture of me.” I laughed at him, and took this:

I expected the texture of this “yellow clam,” as it translates to from Japanese, to be firm, similar to the abalone sashimi I had, but it wasn’t. The taste was most similar to the big sea scallops, tender with a touch of sweet. I couldn’t molest the delicacy with soy sauce, it was so fresh and good straight, with just the dash of salt and pepper he’d put on it.

I now expected this to be an $80+ lunch, but that’s okay, I was prepared for that. And this meal was such a treat. I closed out the tab, and the bill came. Less than $40!!! WHOA, I got special treatment!! As I paid, Chef Fumio made me a traditional Japanese dessert (no charge), the sweet flesh of a piece of Japanese pumpkin wrapped like a bun around a piece of banana, with a slowfall blanket of powdered sugar. It tasted like a guilty pleasure. I tipped just short of 40%, thanked Fumio for the best lunch I’d had in a long time, he told me hopes to see me again soon, and I danced out of there.

I have GOT to have lunch on my own more often!!

Claudio, being a competitive boxer, turned out to be a really good boxing trainer. He invited me to his boxing gym for a workout on Wednesday, which was a holiday for me. We started out with a jumprope warmup. Altho I killed in jumping rope in third grade, turns out it is TOTALLY not the same thing when there’s not two other girls turning giant ropes on either side of me chanting rhymes about double-dutch buses. Granted, this individual rope is long for me, but I don’t think I kept up the skipping for more than 5 seconds at a time. At one point I managed to knock the bobby pin right out of my hair and it flew across the floor (the pin, not my hair). Claudio finally got exasperated enough to say, without missing a beat in his own skipping, “Lose the rope! Just throw it away! Every time you stop you’re wasting cardio time. Just PRETEND you’re jumproping without the rope.” I was really good at THAT, and it saved Claudio from having to explain to other boxers how his friend here managed to hogtie herself with a jumprope.

After that, he put on target mits and called out combination punches to me to check my technique. I hadn’t really done much boxing since college when I fooled around with recreational kickboxing. Plus, the very different punch, block, and stance forms from my jujitsu practices got me kinda turned around. After some adjustments on my motions, he had me go through various combination drills. It seemed like a blur of motion and gasping after that. I know we hit the punching bag and a couple of other practice punching targets, one mounted on a wall and another on a tight rope, and just when I thought we surely must almost be done with our workout, he forced me into a boxing ring to spar with him. “WHAT?!” I remember saying incredulously. He promised he would only block and not hit me back, and we went a few full rounds. I was still struggling with breathing problems as my runny nose and coughing overtook me a few times (and my Kleenex was in my workout bag downstairs), and I’ve had to tell him “no” more than once when he pushed me to keep going, as I insisted I had to have a water break or had to go blow my nose. One time after a few consecutive rounds of sparring in the ring, I felt like I was at the edge of consciousness from exertion and exhaustion as boxing is incredibly cardio-intensive, and I heard the bell ding (“Thank GAWD!”). Claudio said, “That’s the 30-second bell. Keep going.” I wanted to punch his lights out but I couldn’t lift my arm anymore. And then we finished up with a gazillion crunches and pushups. At least he treated me to lunch at House of Blues after that. =P

The next day, Thursday, I woke up feeling like I had been run over by a truck. My right wrist and hand, especially, were sore, weak, and the knuckles a bit swollen. At work, I had trouble typing as I didn’t have full control over my right fingers, especially when I had to turn my hand up at the wrist to get in proper position for the keyboard. Claudio and I exchanged texts as I described my motor impediments. He told me I need to go back to the boxing gym and “beat them fingers until they act right.” Then later, I wondered if I ought to skip the gym at lunch, given how sore I already was. Claudio texted, “Go to the gym! Seriously. Go! Do light work tho.” So I went. On the drive home from work, I had already made an appointment with Kaiser for 7pm (see previous post), and Claudio and I exchanged a couple more texts.
Claudio: “Wait until you get your cardio up. We will be able to have a boxing workout and not just the boxing warm up! Lol!”
Me: “That was just the boxing warmup? *discouraged*”
Claudio: “Ha ha ha. I was kiiiiiiiiiiidding. :)”
Me: “*crying* No you weren’t!”
Claudio: “Maaaaybe I was a teeny itsy bit serious.”
Hmmph!!
Me: “I know you were. I have so far to go. But at least I didn’t totally forget all my boxing stuff. Just 90% of it. You have your work cut out for you! Muahaha…”
Claudio: “Bring it.”
Me: “Maybe one day…if I’m a very good girl and I train very hard…I can beat Dwaine up.”

I thought I’d get back at him for his ruthless tyranny at pushing me, so later, I played my one and only April Fool’s joke this year. At Kaiser, I texted him.
Me: “So guess what. I’m at Kaiser right now.”
Claudio: “Y u at kaiser?????”
Me: [after some time went by and I had gotten home] “Well, I was. Now I’m home.”
Claudio: “Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaat?”
Me: “Know how my right wrist was weird and hence I couldn’t control my fingers or type right? Hairline fracture.”
Claudio: “When did you do that? On the heavy bag?”
Me: “It swelled up like crazy after gymming at lunch, despite the light workout. I probably aggravated it by gymming. =P” I stopped short of saying, “This is all your fault!” Haha!
Claudio: “Sowy to hear it. 🙁 So when r u coming down for boxing again??? =P”
Me: “April fool. I went to Kaiser to see why I wasn’t kicking this hacking mucus thing. Turns out, not allergies, sinus infection. Came back with antibiotics & codeine.”
Claudio: “U r in for a whole lotta hurting next time we box!”

Oops.

As my scratchy throat became coughing fits and a severely runny nose over the past 2 weeks, I ran my hilly 4-miler with Kleenex in my pocket (which I ran out of and had to ration, telling myself, “I’m not going to use the next one until the 2 mile point; I’m not gonna use the last one until I only have less than 1.5 miles left to go”), hit the gym every lunchtime carrying a portable Kleenex pack with my workout towel, and on Wednesday (Cesar Chavez holiday), went with Claudio to the boxing gym. My mom and Mr. W diagnosed me with allergies and it seems like everyone around is complaining of allergies right now, thanks to SoCal’s infamous Santa Ana Winds and extra pollen due to recent rainfalls. Mr. W insisted I take some of his Clarinex, which is supposed to be side-effect-free. It painfully dried my sinuses up while oddly not clearing my running nose and post-nasal drip (which causes me to cough), and it gave me medicine-head, so the next day, I tried something different that other allergy victim friends suggested, Zyrtec-D. Zyrtec-D was much better in that it did reduce the amount of mucus production (hence coughing) with virtually no side-effects, and I took it for 2 days in a row, altho it didn’t ever stop all the symptoms. I took nothing Thursday (yesterday), and the hacking and nose-blowing was not only severe, but I noticed the mucus was not blowing out well and was thick and sticky, which is what it was like the time I had a severe sinus infection. With the pushing of a coworker, I made an appointment at Kaiser for that evening.

It quickly became apparent to my doctor that I do not have seasonal allergies (which makes sense because I don’t normally get allergies).
“Are you experiencing itchy nose?”
“No.”
“Are you sneezing a lot?”
“I think I’ve sneezed like twice since this whole thing started 2 weeks ago.”
“Do you have watery eyes?”
“No.”
He checked my inner ears, up my nose, down my throat (he said I have post-nasal drip while looking in my throat. What does post-nasal drip look like, anyway?) Apparently I had a cold that developed into a sinus infection. He told me to stop taking allergy meds right away, and take no antihistamines. Apparently, when my snot is full of germs (as opposed to harmless pollen), and I take an antihistamine to dehydrate me, it makes the mucus thicker so that it can’t be easily purged out of my system. So all the bad stuff sits around in my sinuses and creates a complication, i.e. the sinus infection. Damn. I probably could’ve kicked the cold sooner if I hadn’t taken Clarinex and Zyrtec-D.

I took the day off work today. When I called in, my supervisor said there must be some virus or bacteria or something going around because I’m the sixth person out with a sinus infection. I wonder if whomever gave me my sickness thought that he/she was only having non-contagious allergies, too. I’m now on a 10-day course of antibiotics and pretty strong cough medication that my doctor advised me to only take before bedtime, as it would make me drowsy. The pharmacist told me while he dispensed my prescriptions that I should stay out of the sun because it could make me sun-sensitive, and I shouldn’t take multi-vitamins or drink alcohol. Good thing I’ve got a month before vacation. I’m not gonna refrain from sun or alcohol in Tahiti. The multi-vitamin is trickier. I need to take it because it helps me recover from muscle soreness faster and I am SO INCREDIBLY SORE from gymming and boxing. The pharmacist thought it’d be okay if I took the vitamin 3 hours apart from the antibiotics, so I’m gonna have vitamins with my lunch. I’m 3 pounds from goal!