cindy's world

I was about to set my alarm clock for tomorrow morning when I realized — wait a minute — I don’t have to go to work tomorrow. Happy Birthday, Mr. Lincoln! HA-ha! So tomorrow, whenever I get up, I’ll do some laundry. Then I have a 3pm appointment at Glen Ivy Day Spa for an 80-minute massage, courtesy Mr. W and my court reporter. My reporter had given me a gift e-certificate for Christmas, but I was so busy I never used it. Then a few days ago, I got another e-certificate from Mr. W for Valentine’s Day. His gift was so generous that I think I’ll have to split it up into two sessions. Upon receipt, I’d emailed him immediately to thank him, and to tell him to stop wasting our wedding money. I was joking. Partially.

Speaking of money, Mr. W and I went to our realtor’s office after work today and signed our house offer papers. And then we stayed and discussed our finances with him for an hour, figuring out ways to make ourselves more appealing to the bank for mortgage loans. The bank’s current formulas for risk assessment sucks. The crappy California housing market is making loans so hard to get; lenders are getting crazy conservative. By that, I mean stingy and paranoid. But we’re still in a pretty good situation to appear attractive to lenders. Jumbo loans are considered anything $417K and up, and those have higher interest rates, which is ridiculous cuz you can’t even get townhomes for under that price in Southern California these days (unless you’re going into seriously questionable neighborhoods with resale values inversely proportional to the probability that you’ll get shot living there). Luckily, it looks like an “economic stimulus package” bill is newly passed that increases the definition of a jumbo loan, just temporarily, to the neighborhood of the $700Ks. That means we’ll be able to get a higher loan for a decent house and pay a lower interest rate if we buy property this year. (If you read the article I linked to, it criticizes the effectiveness of this bill in warding off a recession, and claims it only helps certain people in certain financial situations in specific housing markets, and those people and situations listed includes us. And if the bill doesn’t stop the housing market from its continual slide downhill, well, then that’s just more affordable inventory for us to pick from.) What a stroke of luck! Interest rates are also about to drop again in a month. Housing prices are still spiraling downward as sellers get more desperate. This is the perfect time to buy. “It looks like everything is lining up perfectly for us,” Mr. W observed happily tonight during a dinner of Thai food. I reminded him that I’d told him last year that my finances always line themselves up magically, and that since he was going to be with me, his finances would line up, too, as a necessity by proxy. And maybe it wasn’t a coincidence that when we walked into my realtor’s office, the first person I ran into was Grace’s dad (also a realtor). I had no idea he worked with that company, and my realtor told me that he’s been there for about 2-3 years, which is approximately the period of time that I’d lost touch with Grace’s parents. It’s almost like Grace is sending her hello to me, letting me know that she’s watching over me and not to worry about finances, things will fall into place. I’d also gotten two other positive signs about finances in the past few days. One, I was balancing my checkbook, and for the first time that I can remember, it balanced out exactly between my checkbook register and the bank statement without my having to make adjustments to account for things that either haven’t processed or that I forgot to account for. Two, I was reconciling my receipts with my credit card bill and for the first time ever, I accounted for every receipt in my room without leftover receipts that didn’t show up on this billing cycle, and without receipts I still need to retrieve from my wallet downstairs.

I know this is way too much boring personal financial information, and it doesn’t mean anything to anyone except that I appear to be incredibly anal in accounting for my finances, but it means something to me as far as signs go. So I’ll just take it as that, that I’m being told celestially that I’ll be okay.

What a Saturday. Mr. W woke up and decided that it was such a beautiful day that we just HAD to go hiking. So we grabbed his neighbor-buddy, who just happened to have an annual National Parks pass, and drove out to the mountains to hike. Turns out strong ankles and a good sense of balance is really important as we stepped carefully and hopped from rock to bark to rock to cross the rushing streams. The recent California rain made all the water levels rise and the waterfalls were much wider and faster than usual. I did almost fall backwards into the water once, but the neighbor, who spent most of the time behind me (Mr. W was in front leading and I was in the middle for safety reasons), stepped up and grabbed my arm when my ass was a foot from the ground. I managed to keep my shoes and socks dry until the last stream, tho, when some water ran over my left toes and since I was in my running shoes, the fabric upper sucked the water right in. Man, I was pissed. I hate walking around in wet socks. I did enjoy the doggies on the trails, tho… they just jump right into the water all happy and waggy.

After a long afternoon of hiking, we went to Big Mama’s Rib Shack and pigged out on soul food. Good times.

Another progress update on my projects:
* Roof – Friday, I selected my roofer and left a voice mail with the 2nd company thanking them for their professionalism and blamed it on my association that I’m going with another roofer. In truth, the association left it up to me to decide. I went with the more expensive one that seemed to give me more for my money. But I felt incredibly guilty calling off the second company cuz those people were so professional and so nice. In thinking about it now, I STILL feel bad and almost wish I had another leaky roof to give business to them. =P Anyway, the roof job should begin in about 10 days.
* House Hunting – Mr. W found a really nice short sale in a very desirable area nearby to his current home, and we’ve gone over there 3 times this weekend already to look at it in the day, at night, and met my agent there today. The price is right, the inside could use a little work but it’s not bad at all, and Mr. W really likes the house’s potential. The only thing we both don’t like about it is that it has a pool. Ick. But it also has a huge enclosed patio, so can we say, par-tay house? We decided to put our offer in today. Maybe next summer, my bday can be celebrated at home with a house pool party!

I haven’t weighed myself in like a month cuz the digital body fat scale I have at home has finally run out of battery after like 8 years. Mr. W’s old bodyfat scale, which I knew how to operate, went on the fritz and he’s got a new one that I can’t work, so I haven’t been using his scale, either.

When I arrived at Vicky’s apartment yesterday, she was out walking the dog but had told me to go ahead in as the door was open. So I went in her bathroom, and saw that her digital body fat scale, the same model as mine, was out. Of course I had to get on it, curious and nervous after my prior 2 weeks of only going to the gym twice to do cardio. And of course I had to strip from head to toe so as to eliminate any possible excess weight (You think I’m bad? My mom wouldn’t even step on her scale if she was damp from her shower.).

This model of scale had always placed me at approximately 28% body fat, and I had been about 126ish pounds for a long time. When my weight fluctuated down, the body fat would go up, and if my weight went up, my body fat would drop, indicating that if I put on or lost weight, it was muscle. But yesterday, I was at the lowest weight I’d been in a long time, 120.0 lbs. The body fat percentage was 24%. I had never been at a LOW body fat percentage WHILE weighing less, too! At least, not in recent memory.

What I think happened was that with the increased weights my gym trainee and I had been doing before we took a break, my body composition had changed dramatically to put on a lot of muscle which burned off a lot of fat. And with the two weeks of not doing weights but doing a little cardio, my body burned off some of the accumulated muscle but did not put the fat back on due to the elevated metabolism created from the new muscle. So the result is a drop on both ends.

I’m 5 pounds to goal!

(Click here to see a post I’d written last year about what body fat percentage is right for your body type.)

I’m working away…but I’m here to do a quick status report of my projects.

1.) Roofing – My association treasurer’s letter “to clarify the secretary’s letter” arrived yesterday. He explained the situation to the homeowners about having to pay for my roof, and brought up a good point: if my roof had been replaced 2 years ago when everyone else’s roofs were replaced, everyone would’ve had to pay an extra $300 THEN, so it really doesn’t make a difference whether they pay then or now because either way everyone has to pay for my roof. I got the 2nd estimate yesterday, too. It was only $200 less than the first estimate. So I’m gonna compare the 2 contracts and see who gives me the more bang for my buck.

2.) Parents’ Trust – Vanessa’s a huge advocate of setting up a Living Trust, because she found out the hard way when her dad passed away without having done one, that there are major messy, extensive and expensive probate issues that they’re still trying to clean up. College roommie Diana sent me a Living Trust format which I customized the best I could and this past weekend, Vanessa (who’s a legal notary until February 8, which is in 3 days) came with me to meet my parents, have lunch with us, and she notarized the Trust and Deed for them. I had a judge look the papers over but he had some concerns, so he referred me to a good Probate attorney for document review. I submitted my documents to his office today and set up an appointment for Valentine’s Day (the first open appointment).

3.) House Hunting – No significant progress. Just keeping an eye on the market and on the places we’d like to live. House prices are still dropping (woohoo!) and more nice houses are coming up for sale (woohoo!) and interest rates just dropped another half percent last week (woohoo!).

4.) Wedding – I got my photographer booked. Josh, my buddy from jujitsu, is gonna do it. He’s a new Orange County Sheriff but was a professional photographer, so he’s, like, friend/photographer/security all wrapped up in one! Talk about multi-tasking! Plus, he’s going to give Mr. W all the raw digital images he (and his photographer assistant) will take and Mr. W likes to play with Photoshop, so Mr. W will make our wedding album. I’m pretty sure I’m way ahead of schedule; all there is left to do as far as vendors go is to find a florist for our bouquets.

5.) Taxes – Done and mailed out yesterday. Why wait if I’m getting money back? I just have my parents’ taxes left to do.

6.) Exercise – My gym trainee and I are back in the gym. Yesterday we did upper body and today we did lower body. I’m sore, but I guess that’s a good sign. Aside from being a little weaker, it doesn’t look like my 2-week hiatus did much damage. Whew!

Okay, I guess this update wasn’t that swift.

It appears that quite a few people, mostly women, are using my wedding as a “goal date” for various personal improvement deadlines. I think that’s cool! I feel strangely influential that I can arbitrarily set a date for something, and a bunch of people now set their mental clocks to that date. The power…

I’ve been pretty true to my workouts, but I think I need to incorporate more cardio than I’ve been doing, just to increase the burn a little more. I was eating an Oreo-style sandwich cookie in the elevator yesterday, waiting to get to my floor, when a jury room clerk got on and said, “You can eat whatever you want, you’re skinny. Are you still going to the gym?”
“Every day at lunch,” I told her.
Meanwhile, I’ve been getting crap for doing weights at the gym from the previous generation of Asian women. My mom told me to stop all the weightlifting I’m doing because I’m just gonna make my arms even thicker and less attractive before the wedding, since I’m apparently not heeding her advice to get my wedding gown and Chinese dress with sleeves. The Chinese dress seamstress/shopowner advised Vicky to, above all else, avoid any weight-bearing exercise using her arms to prevent them from growing bigger by the wedding date. (The seamstress didn’t say this to be rude, she said it to address Vicky’s concerns that Vicky wants her bridesmaid dress to have sleeves because she dislikes the appearance of her upper arms.) I still insist there’s a reason why there are no fat girls on the weight floor but tons of them on the cardio equipment and in the aerobics classes.

I discussed this with my co-gym-rat-friend, college roommie Diana, yesterday evening when we met up for a healthy dinner at California Fish Grill in Irvine. Her response was, “You HAVE to keep working out!” (She meant “you” as in “one,” not saying that I personally have to keep working out or explode in outward-falling fluffy fat rolls. No, that’s more like MY personal fear.) I find it ironic that when the seamstress lady was telling Vicky to avoid working out her arms and yet had praised my figure, she was unaware that between the two of us, I was the one who hit the heavy gym weights. And when Diana and I went in to the seamstress shop Monday evening to be measured for her dress, the seamstress was all impressed by Diana’s slimness and the toned appearance of her arms and shoulders, and Diana hits the gym weights hard, too! Diana’s dress, as a matter of fact, is slightly halter-top cut because the three of us (me, Diana, and the seamstress) agree that it shows off her arms and shoulders perfectly.

Diana and I celebrated ourselves by having dessert at Mochilato, and had three ice cream mochis each. This time I had pistachio, mint chip, and toasted almond flavors. YUM. In fact, I’m sitting here eating a plain mochi I’d brought back with me right now.

I have been faithful to my workouts this entire year! (har) Remember that new amped up workout gym trainee and I are trying? It’s working miracles. We’ve increased all our weights by 35%-50%, dropped our reps from 15 to 10, and we’ve decreased our cardio for the time being.

Today is upper body day, and since we’re still sore from Wednesday’s upper body workout, we did sets of 8 (but 8 was all we were able to push out at these new weights).
Machine chest press: 50 lbs.
Supine barbell bench: 60 lb barbell
Lateral shoulder lift (gym trainee calls this “flying”): 8 lb dumbbells
Dumbbell bicep curls: 15 lb dumbbells
Lat pull-down: 85 lbs
Mid-level rows: 70 lbs
Cable tricep press-down: 45 lbs (or maybe 60; the numbers were rubbed off)
5 minute elliptical warmup in the beginning, with 5 minute elliptical cool-down at the end.

My gym trainee loves her new muscle tone and noticed the inches are leaving. I dropped some weight, not sure how much as my home scale is out of battery, but I definitely dropped inches. I’m comfortably back in my size 2 pants. So for all those people out there who say women should do light weight with high reps to keep from looking like a man and bulking up, and for my mom who told me to stop weight-lifting so my arms don’t look big and ugly in a strapless dress…

PTTTHHHHH!@#$

I can not bring myself to go to the gym. I had every intention of going today, but after being detained 15 minutes into lunch, I decided, screw it. When I’d thought I couldn’t go to the gym for 4-6 weeks after my procedure, it seemed that all I wanted was to be able to go. Now that I am able to go, I suddenly feel lazy and uninspired. Today marks a full week after my LEEP surgery. Well, maybe tomorrow I can start fresh.

Meanwhile, now faced with a lunchtime of no plans, I wish I’d brought my harmonica to practice on. I’d been saying for awhile, completely not intending for it to be a hint whatsoever, that I wished I had a harmonica. I play the piano, but you can’t arbitrarily whip a piano out of your butt and start playing when the whim strikes. But a harmonica, I can keep in my purse and use it to entertain (or annoy, most likely) at any given time in any given company. On Christmas Eve, I found myself the shocked and delighted recipient of a real harmonica, complete with a how-to CD-Rom and tutorial songbook. Mr. W and I had agreed to not exchange gifts this Christmas, but he apparently found something irresistable that I don’t already have because I don’t need it and would never have gone out and purchased for myself. (I got him some nutrition and workout books to feed his current health obsession and a humor book entitled “How Not to Ruin the Biggest Day of HER Life: A Groom’s Secret Handbook”.) Despite stuff I’d said about wanting a harmonica, I wasn’t serious about it — it was one of those quirky things or observations I’d say, like how I’ve said for awhile that I want an elephant because it’d be neat to create memories for a creature that “never forgets,” but I didn’t see any giant packages arriving from Mr. W. So I guess he’s selective about the bluffs he calls me on. But think about it — little Asian girl. Harmonica. Not piano, not violin, not a perfect score on the math portion of the SATs. How unstereotypical.

My harmonican goal is to play Bobby McFerrin’s “Don’t Worry, Be Happy,” which I picture in my head will be revealed when some friend of mine is bitching about something, and then wordless I’d simply reach into my back pocket, pull out a shiny silver object, and then the perky melody of “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” would permeate the air as I rock out in tune to the music, tapping a foot, bending upper body to and fro, right hand fluttering in front of the harmonica doing the “wah-wah” effect. My friend would be staring at me mouth agape, “Wha — how did you — when did you — a harmonica?” and then start laughing and all will be well with the world.

I recently returned from my parents’ house, where I fed their feeshies (mostly young tropical goldfish, plus a last surviving tilapia my dad caught fishing) while my parents are vacationing in Guilin, China this week. I was looking forward to hanging at the ‘rents by myself, as they usually have food in the fridge, which is a detail lacking in my own home. A huge, gaping detail. They didn’t have much food as they ate most perishables in preparation for their vacation, but I did dig out some multigrain rice which I ate with some bittermelon and cucumber cold dish my mom still had in the fridge. In the freezer, I was excited to find a few Marie Callender’s boxed chicken pot pies, and continued making a glorious pig of myself with one’s almost-immediate consumption. And then I saw that each pie contained 460 calories, more than half of which were from fat. Geez. What’s next? I dug some more in the freezer and found a cardboard cylinder of vanilla ice cream. Yech. It’s just like my parents to buy vanilla, what a waste of ice cream. If you’re gonna get that most sinful of frozen desserts, it should be worth your calories, you know? Like chocolate malted crunch, or mint chip, at least black cherry. But wait, what’s that in there? Another carton in a different color! I pulled it out. French vanilla. *sigh* About one-third of the way through the first carton, I managed enough willpower to put the spoon away.

What brings on the good appetite? Well, two things. I’m happy. I’m relaxed. After work today, Mr. W and I had a brief and affectionate chat about what’s making me drag my feet in all this wedding planning. I confessed I was giving him time to realize that this isn’t really something he wants to do as doing the domestic thing with me goes against all the plans for his future that he’d dreamed about before meeting me. After his two kids are well off into adulthood (son’s 18 and daughter will be 17 in a month), he was going to retire, sell his property, and travel the world like a vagabond. That lifestyle isn’t exactly conducive to raising an elementary school-age kid with me. He said that you can’t predict life and that sometimes you think a river is going to flow one way and then an unexpected rock or something makes it change its course; it’s natural. But a river isn’t going to wake up resentful one night cuz it’s stuck in a house in a California suburb instead of on a boat in the Caribbean because of a 5-year-old asleep in the next room that it didn’t want (to borrow an image from a friend). He laughed at me and said, “Go plan the wedding.” Turned out he had a whole other dream in his head now — one that involves being a retired dad, who’s going to bring his young hot Asian wife (okay, those are my edits) into early retirement so that we could be super-involved PTA parents, the kind of over-involved parents that other parents complain about with “Who calls a meeting at 10:40 on a weekday morning?! Don’t they have a life?” so that we could vote each others’ motions in without other parental intervention (joke). And when the child is young, we’d do “educational” travels with him/her in the country, and as the child got older, we’d do farther and more extended traveling, maybe during summer break, visiting our varied heritages in China, Taiwan, Germany, etc. Other kids get to look at photos of the Great Wall of China, our child will bring in show-and-tell photos of him standing ON it. That’s pretty cool. Altho I don’t think I’m game on the spending one year in this country, and the next in another country, thing. I’d like my child to have stable schooling, if possible, and not have to make new friends every year just to lose them again the next year. How traumatic. I love that I have friends with whom I could make some reference from decades ago, because they were there through some event with me.

The other reason I ate like a little piggy tonite is cuz my gym trainee and I stepped up our game at the gym this week. She’s now familiar enough with the gym, gym equipment, and proper form to really work on strength training. So we dropped our cardio down to just the 5-10 minute warmup in the beginning, and then we hit the weights hardcore. We increased all of our weights at least 20% and dropped our reps from 15 relatively comfortable reps to 10 very difficult ones, working to failure. And because we’re working to failure (stopping when we absolutely are unable to push another rep in good form), we’ve split up our target muscle groups into 2 days: Monday and Thursday are upper body (chest, back, biceps, triceps, shoulders), Tuesday and Friday are lower body (quads, hamstrings, calves, abs), with a day of cardio on Wednesday to rest, plus hopefully cardio on weekends. The results should be tighter, leaner muscles, increased metabolism, and improved strength. Several women have brought up concerns already that we’re gonna “bulk up”, to which I reply that we don’t have the testosterone in male bodies to bulk up, and we’re not going to take steroids to compete for Ms. Universe, either. It’s a pretty common misconception that women are gonna look like men if they do heavy weights, and hopefully my gym trainee (who did not have that misconception, much to my relief) and I will dispel that myth among people who come into contact with us. I observed very early on, like a decade ago, that you almost never see a fat chick on the weight floor, but you do see plenty of them on the cardio equipment and aerobics room. What’s that tell you? My gym trainee is looking great, by the way. Just today, someone stopped me in the Clerk’s Office and said that she noticed my trainee’s arms look toned, which she saw through my trainee’s sweater. “Did you tell HER that?” I asked the complimenter. She said she did. I’m glad my trainee’s getting verbal support, cuz I know that we certainly do get a lot of haters who tell us we’re obsessive and should skip the gym to indulge in lard-bucket lunches with them.

My jury came back with their verdict today, after being told this trial would take 3 weeks and being here today for the 32nd day. I began reading the 20-page verdict into the record at 10:30 a.m., polled each juror as to each question (to make sure every question on the 70+ question verdict has no bigger voting split than the mandatory 9-3 maximum), and by the time we were done, it was 1pm and we’d worked through most of the lunch hour. The judge ordered the attorneys back at 1:45 p.m. to start the punitive damages phase of the trial, and with less than 45 minutes of lunch break permitted, I missed the gym for the second week.

I was really looking forward to starting a new workout regimen with my gym trainee, too. In the last 2 years we’d been working out together, I’ve brought her to be at my level (or better, depending on the exercise) for resistence training, which means she weightlifts what I do, or more. Her cardio is much improved, and she’s able to pull off supersets without needing breaks in between exercises. Our current regimen has us doing a 10-minute cardio warmup, then 3-4 weightlifting exercises hitting all the major muscle groups (legs, chest, back) in 3 supersets of 15 reps each, then a 10-minute cardio cooldown. She’s done really well with the added cardio and has lost a significant amount of body fat, so now I think we need to step it up. The plan is to really strength-train, i.e. hit only 1 body part a day and max it out at 6-8 reps of many exercises for that target muscle group, do different body parts each day in the week, and cardio on Wednesdays and weekends. This should tighten up our muscles and raise our metabolism from the extra muscle density. Not to mention the extra strength! (Don’t worry, contrary to non-weight-training girls’ beliefs, we are not going to turn into our Governator — women don’t have enough testosterone in the body to get muscular-bulky. And we’re not gonna take steroids or enter ourselves into Miss Olympia pageants.)

I was thinking I’d go to the gym today after work, but life is SO luxurious hanging out in my clean, vacuumed, candlelit living room with my cat, watching “Two and a Half Men” on TV and playing Bejeweled on my laptop, that I believe I’m developing sores on my ass from my leather couch. Oh well, tomorrow is another lunch.

Chronologically…

Ballet (age 4) – hate it. Meanie teacher is scary as she goes around the room pushing kids down forcing us to go deeper than we’re able to in the splits. Look forward to mama coming to pick me up in her pretty dresses and fabric flower earrings.
Chinese Folk Dancing (age 5) – not too bad. But my brain keeps freezing during the big performances.
Jazz (age 7) – slightly difficult as it is hard to understand the nice teacher’s directions when I know so little English. I feel fat and uncomfortable in my oversized leotard that Mom swears I’d grow into.
Square Dancing (age 9) – wtf is with these Americans? Why are they making us do this in school? Why aren’t we in PE class? Partner up with a BOY? Gross, cooties! Do-si-what?
Modern/Lyrical/Funk (age 15) – at least I’m not in regular PE. And I’m learning lots of French! Pirouette, plie’, porte’ bourre…chaine turns…uh…does spelling count on the final? Whoa, we’re gonna be in the school dance concert? And it’s gonna be televised? COOL!!
Cardio Funk/Hip Hop (age 19) – I’m home! I am FEELING this! I LOVE this music! This is MY dance!
Street Hip Hop (age 20) – You want my body to go from the floor there to WHERE? How? WHAT? Body roll, body roll, body roll, down, kick up, leg goes from behind me on the ground on all fours to in front of me…*pant pant* Wow, this looks SO cool if I could only breathe.
Latin Ballroom (age 22) – …and we’re back to wtf. I can NOT get my hips to move this way. Feet where? I am SO not feeling this. I miss hip hop. And I’m not coming back.
Bellydance (age 30) – Okay, okay, I think I’m getting this… not the workout I wanted, but interesting. I’m starting to like the music. Some of these moves look pretty cool.
Burlesque (age 31) – I will let you guys know after the class on Sunday…