cindy's world

(Written 8-19-08, 7:33p, but it took this long to get the photos. Photos were as of last week; there’s been improvements since.)

The first week of living with a boy was stressful; the house was a mess and the very tidy Mr. W was about to pull out his hair. He so badly wanted his house to look a certain way, and there just weren’t enough hours in a day, what with having to work and all. But we chipped away at the pile of boxes, and over the weekend he built another Gorilla Shelf in the garage for additional storage. The garage is neater now, altho we still have to find places for more stuff if we want both our cars in the garage at the same time. The house is fairly presentable now, tho.

Up until two days ago, Mr. W fixed breakfast, handed me a lunch as we went to work, made dinner. It was all his stuff and his food in the kitchen, so he knew his way around it earlier. Three days ago he uncovered a giant box of kitchen food we had yet to unpack, and so I went thru the box as he worked on the sprinkler system outside. The boy has like 12 cans of salmon, 9 cans of tuna of various brands, a case of canned peas, a bazillion packets of hot cocoa (which he doesn’t drink), three commercial-sized boxes of Lipton iced tea bags, three bear-shaped bottles of honey, two difference sizes of unopened Heinz ketchup, 28 cans of different brands, cuts and preparations of tomatoes, 5 canisters of different protein powder mixes, 3 bottles of different brands of apple cider vinegar, 2 or 3 more different bottles of different kinds of vinegar (balsamic, red wine, rice, etc.) plus a gallon jug of store-brand apple cider vinegar, 10 boxed packages of various flavors of instant Thai noodle dishes…I could go on (believe me, I can), but you get the idea. It was an inane amount of food, most of which he doesn’t eat. Like the bajillion little packets of dried up mac & cheese. Immediately I resolved to clean this out cuz we have a HUGE shelved pantry and things are piled on top of other things. When I ranted about this inventory, Mr. W said helplessly that 1) he shops at Costco and things come in multi-packs, and 2) when he lived alone he was too lazy to dig out what he had in his shelves and pantry so if he wanted to eat a particular thing, he’d just go buy more. At Costco. So last nite I made a modified Thai green curry with peas and ground turkey over brown jasmine rice, and tonite I made honey-barbecue glazed chicken breasts (in the oven so it’s healthy) with wasabi and Italian herbs as a base marinade, served over a bed of mashed potatoes to balance out the sweetness of the honey.

Not a dent in the pantry. I haven’t given up.

The house is getting close. There are still some boxes left in the garage, but my car is now in there, too. I think the new plan is to not unpack those boxes, since the house is pretty full as is. We’ll make do with what we have on hand, and when we have time in the future, we’ll sort through the remaining boxes and see what we want to get rid of, what we want to bring in the house to replace other stuff already in the house. A lot of people are gonna be staying with us the week before the wedding in rotation, so that’s the more important deadline in getting our house “ready”.

Today, we bought patio furniture. A lot of places are doing outdoor furniture clearance sales as the summer draws to an end, and we picked up a nice outdoor 6-seat dining set and a 4-seat firepit conversation set for about half off the original prices. Over a thousand dollars later, gigantic boxes join our leftover boxes sitting in our garage. Tomorrow will be outdoor furniture assembly, putting the wall stuff on the wall (paintings, framed photos, etc.), and floor cleanup.

I’d been wanting to take advantage of the two bathtubs to take a fizzy bath bomb bath for over a week, but we always get home so late after running home supply and repair errands, and I’m too exhausted to draw a bath. Tonight’s lining up to be no different. Because I now have to get up at 6a to carpool into work with Mr. W (who has earlier hours than me), I’m tired a whole lot earlier at night. I feel geriatric. I miss sleeping in till 8a.

Photos will be forthcoming once the place becomes fit to be photographed.

Man, moving was rough. I packed for 8 consecutive days and moved stuff from house to house for the last 4 of those days. I have learned that
* packing is probably the worst home life chore ever;
* you can’t fill a big box with fragile stuff, books, tons of small stuff, or heavy stuff;
* heavy stuff have to be split up into small boxes;
* you have to pack boxes according to weight and durability and not according to category, even tho it’s instinctive to put all “bathroom stuff” into one giant box;
* oil lamps always tip over;
* I have chosen my sister-friends well and they came through big time.

Last Friday after work (day 2 of packing), Gym Trainee picked up her son and came over after work and packed much of my kitchen for me, which is great cuz I have no idea how to pack oddly shaped glassware and pots and pans. Then over the weekend, Busykitty Vanessa came over to help pack the remaining kitchen stuff and some of the other rooms, but first she brought over a light dinner of multi-grain tortilla chips, salsa, a couple of apples, some containers of cut melon medleys, a container of cut pineapple, a pack of mixed nuts, 2 bottles of water, and last but not least, a drum of mint chocolate cookie ice cream. We got to chat and catch up before we got to work. I dumped three giant trashbagfuls of stuffed animals and two bags of clothes on her; the stuffed animals were for her niece Lizzy and the clothes were to send back to Costa Rica with her aunts to give to the poor (which they do regularly on their visits back). I got rid of as much stuff as possible because Mr. W had already pre-scolded me repeatedly about not bringing “clutter” and “useless shit” to the new house. Monday, Vicky came over and traded me a small pepperoni pizza for the remainder of the ice cream (since I couldn’t eat that much ice cream before I had to move on Tuesday), and helped me pack my many many books and random leftover things upstairs. After moving all the larger items and heavier stuff like furniture on Tuesday, there were still little things at the house I could move on my own but couldn’t get done. Hence started the many little trips back to the house after work to pack some more. Each trip back, I’d thought would be my last; each time I kept finding more stuff, I contemplated suicide more graphically. I packed and transported carfuls of stuff EVERY DAY this past week until the final trip on Friday, when Vanessa again came over for the third time. She’d come over to pick up more things I’m giving away to her and her relatives on Thursday night, stayed to help me pack, and on Friday, she emptied out her SUV and we left a ton of stuff at my front door for a Salvation Army pick-up I’d scheduled for Monday, left some odd furniture in the living room the future renters may want, and made the long drive to the new house. Turns out the new house is totally in Vanessa’s neck of the woods as she works around the corner and regularly visits the shopping area visible from our back yard for lunch.

Today was spent unpacking. At least half the boxes in the garage are gone now and their contents distributed around the house. There were lots of disagreements between me and the W about stuff, cuz like Vicky said, when you’re consolidating two households of stuff, the general perception is “My stuff is stuff, and your stuff is shit.” He basically wanted me to throw all my stuff away and have only his stuff, whereas I feel that his shit, especially his silverware and drinkware, are ugly. He kept calling my stuff “cheap” and I told him my Oneida service for 12 flatware is NICE (looks similar to this) and HIS multi-colored, cracked plastic giant drinking cups are tacky. But he insisted on keeping his plastic “glassware”, throwing away my plastic sink rinse/cutting board combo and keeping my nice service for 10 squared drinking glasses and matching rocks glasses unopened so that we can “get rid of them.” He’d simultaneously used the opposite excuse of plastic being unacceptable and cheap to get rid of others of my belongings, like my Sharper Image DVD Power Tower.

But living together with a man for the first time (who isn’t my temporary roommate) had its surprising and unexpected advantages, too. For example, by the time I started moving in, Mr. W had already called the electrical, gas and water companies and set up our accounts; made arrangements for cable TV/cable internet/phone service to be installed; and arranged for our moving crew and U-Haul truck. I’m sure that once we get over this adjustment period of trying to fit into each others’ day-to-day lives and tastes, and he stops saying insulting things like pointedly saying that I’m to be in the kitchen and cooking for him and then the next moment say that it’s “his” kitchen and that his way goes while my way is rejected, and that I “never” cook, we’ll be fine. Or he’ll just tick me off and I really will make his “never cook” proclamations a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Oh, almost forgot. The Dodo. His first night was pretty bad; he was needy and up all night making noise, trying to dig a hole underneath the doorway into the closet. I finally couldn’t take the noise anymore as it was keeping me up so I kicked him out of our bedroom and closed the bedroom door. The exact same noise, the scratching and digging and yowling and pushing, simply transferred to this new door. He hid in the only closet I’d allow him in, an empty one in our master bathroom, for the entirety of the next day, leaving only to go to his litter box downstairs a couple of times. But now he’s fine; his tail’s up and he’s cheerily exploring the house and hanging out with us downstairs in the living room, sprawling on his side on the cool tile floors.

This house is coming together pretty nicely, altho I think Mr. W’s fear is coming true that it’s going to look cluttered due to the quantity of stuff we have and the small space we have to put it in. He’s now stopped opening boxes and is letting a bunch of them stand in the garage, saying that if the house is full now, he must not need anything in those remaining boxes, threatening to discard them without looking to see what they contain. I had to throw out some very difficult and personal things (I’m a total sentimentalist), and I don’t want to go through that again. It was fun having Vicky packing up old mementos with me because we go so far back that we have a lot of the same memories. I can’t imagine having all of those old tokens gone forever.

I had an action-packed day!

I had planned to meet up with some coworkers in their jury room at 10:30 a.m. to decorate their jury room for a surprise wedding shower for another coworker. It was tricky and ingenious how we’d planned it; the guest of honor actually works in the courtroom whose jury room we were decorating, so it was nearly impossible to sneak the planning by her and yet somehow get her to go to the jury room at the right time, so we told her everyone was planning a surprise wedding shower for ME. And we told her to keep it hush-hush, and that she was to show up at 12:15p after leaving early at 10:30p to get her wedding license. Meanwhile, while she was at the County Registrar-Recorder’s Office in line to get her wedding license, a bunch of us collected in her jury room and decorated like mad, laid out the food, cake, presents, etc. to transform the dull space into a festive Hawaiian wedding (their wedding theme) party central. I’d bought all the decorations Tuesday after work and had white crepe wedding bells, metallic palm trees, a coconut monkey, silver Congrats banner, coconut shell bowls, butter mints individually wrapped in hibiscus print wrappers, wedding bell confetti, even an inflatable monkey and palm tree. The court reporter brought leis, food and cake, the clerk arranging this brought more food and went with the wedding couple to get the license so that she could keep an eye on their timing and sneakily be our double agent contact. They were shocked to say the least. The party was a raging success. There are photos forthcoming taken by other coworkers.

And here’s where it got complicated for me. Although I was supposed to be down there at 10:30a to decorate which from all signs seemed perfectly reasonable since we hadn’t been busy all week, right at 10:45a, as I was about to go down, a 16-count criminal molestation trial walked in our door. I couldn’t believe it. Now I was stuck and was going to have to pick a jury. Luckily, the defense attorney needed a little more time to talk to her client in lock-up, so my judge, also to free me up, excused the case until after lunch.

And THEN, as I was making my second attempt to leave, I got a call from my real estate agent. Some background: the bank financing our new home loan had been playing games with us and giving us an extremely hard time. It basically felt like it was stalling and trying to find a reason to reject us. We understood we’d have to submit the loan application fully documented in this economy. That’s fine. We gave copies of our paystubs, copies of verification of funds. A couple of weeks go by and we’re in Escrow at this point, but now the bank says they need more documentation. Two months of paystubs, three months’ worth of bank account statements for every bank account we have, verification of the current values of our cars (even though both our cars are paid off), current account statements of all our retirement plans. We keep clean records, so we provided all this stuff, shaking our heads at how intrusive these requests are. Apparently the bank’s digging around for collateral, looking for a reason to say we’re not good enough. And then last week, the bank’s final request: give them signed rental lease agreements showing that people are lined up to rent our current properties for our asking price, AND a photocopy of these renters’ deposit checks, AND proof that these checks were deposited into our bank accounts. WTF! We let our management company take care of these requests and he faxed the appropriate materials. How violating of our privacy! It seemed like we were going to miss our Escrow closing deadline before our loans would fund. We were in a 35-day Escrow, the last day of which is August 1.

Well, when my realtor called this morning, he said all the documents were received, written up, pushed through in record time and that we HAVE to be at the Escrow office that afternoon to sign the closing documents in order for the loan to fund by tomorrow to meet our Escrow closing deadline. “But I JUST got a huge trial and I can’t leave!” I wailed. It never fails; I hadn’t had much to do all week and now THIS today of all times. I said I’d see what I can do and call him back. And rushed down to decorate for the wedding shower after 3 failed attempts to get a hold of each of my 3 supervisors on the phone.

While I was down there in panic mode, late for the decorating and busting my butt to get it all done before the return of the guests of honor, freaking about needing to leave that afternoon but not being able to find a supervisor for permission, a coworker stepped up and volunteered to handle my trial mid-afternoon after her own hearing so that I could leave early. And then later, another coworker agreed to take over my courtroom immediately after lunch before the first coworker is available, so that I could leave even earlier than that. I was so touched!! As soon as the party was over at the close of lunch, I rushed off, but not before learning that my trial is going away; the defendant had decided to take a plea bargain! What are the odds on THIS kind of trial?!

Mr. W and I met at his house, dropped off my car, and we went to his bank to withdraw a cashier’s check for his portion of the down payment, and then went to my bank to do the same for my portion. We got to the Escrow office near our new house at exactly the time requested by the Escrow officer, a mere minute before our real estate agent himself showed up. We did a new incredibly efficient thing of “e-signing” our Escrow documents, signed off on the house stuff, and then Escrow said it needed proof of home insurance as the last thing before we’re done. Wait. I didn’t take out home insurance on the new house yet. I’d brought my insurance bills with me to work today, intending to call to cancel insurance on my current property, but wasn’t able to before all insanity broke loose. I remembered that coincidentally, my insurance company had called for me earlier as I was in front of the teller and I’d told her I couldn’t talk at the moment but would call back. I called back in the Escrow office and turned out they’d received a request from Escrow to send proof of insurance, so my insurance company and I, over the phone, set up the required insurance as Mr. W finished off the e-signing. By the time Escrow signing was done, my insurance was faxing the Escrow office our quote and new policy (at an incredible price, too!) for us to sign, and everything required was fulfilled perfectly and simultaneously. Escrow should close on time tomorrow, our loan fully funded. Even our agent was amazed.

WHEW!

But we still had a final inspection of the house to do. So Mr. W, myself, and the realtor did that after leaving the Escrow office. Everything was fine. I’m taking tomorrow off to pack so we can move over the weekend or at least at the beginning of the week. INSANE!!! And none too soon; our management company called Mr. W as we were doing our home inspection and said happily, “You need to get out! The renters want in ASAP!” Woohoo!

Today is Mr. W’s birthday. Hippo birdie, Mr. Double-You! If I had double yous, I’d stand in the middle and make a sandwich. Or make both of you make me a sandwich. Yeah, that’s probably more likely.

He didn’t want to have a birthday celebration this year, so I just got him something he asked for, a book with accompanying CD-Rom of Photoshop CS3 tutorials and tricks for editing portraits. He’s going to do our wedding album all by himself! I know Flip Flop Girl is doing her and Wilco‘s on her own, but I wouldn’t attempt it. This is right up Mr. W’s alley, though, the computer and digital photography addict that he is. While I was at the bookstore selecting his tutorial book, I came across a cookbook that’s also an informative introduction to traditional Indian cooking. Mr. W and I had talked about having theme-week cooking when we got married, and we’ve been on an Indian food kick this week, so this was perfect to add as the “surprise” element of his gift.

I don’t really know whether we’d ever go through with food theme-week, but it’s fun to think about. We’d go grocery shopping on the weekend at an ethnic grocery store, and all that week we’d cook that ethnicity’s food. We’d have Chinese food week, Indian food week, Italian, Japanese, and American. We were having Indian food after work today (his chosen birthday meal) and I suddenly thought, “What category of food does pizza fall into?” He said it could be American. So American week is gonna be pizza, hot dogs, hamburgers, fried chicken, soul food, Cajun shrimp. Eclectic. And then another brainstorm. “Ooh,” I said, “We can change our kitchen and eating area decor weekly to match the food theme. And then when people come over, they’ll know immediately what week it is and if they don’t like Mexican, they’ll know not to stay for dinner.”
Mr. W added, “And we can use that strategically, so when someone we don’t want to have dinner with comes over, we can change the decoration to something we know they won’t eat.”
So of course I thought of MOH Vicky and her resolute dislike of Indian food, since no one else I know has a food category they claim they absolutely would not eat. So I guess it’d be like, “Hey, Vicky’s coming! Quick, help me take down this Chinese stuff and put the Indian plates up! Where’s that golden statuette of Durga?” Haha. Guess our friends are gonna have to learn to like whatever we make if they’re just gonna drop by.

(written earlier this morning; borrowing a coworker’s internet access to post)

It’s 9:05a and I’m already having a wonderful day! I started the morning in a great mood because the meeting with the management company last nite went extremely well. This is a godsent company, which is not only professional with unprecedented response time in my couple days of dealing with them, but the CEO I spoke with was pleasant, had all the answers I needed and wanted to hear, was chock-full of experience, and was extremely flexible. The company also had tremendous resources. They can strip my bathroom wallpaper, retexture and paint, clean, replace blinds, etc. at a fraction of the time and expense for me to do it myself. They already have an interested renter in my place! So they’ll do all the applications, pull credit reports and background records on potentials. If an eviction is necessary, they’ll handle all that, too! I don’t even have to be there. They’ll pay the monthly bills and send me accounting at the end of the month. And they’re cheaper than any other management company I’ve heard of. Woohoo!

When I finally got my outfit put together for work, I had a strange “first” for me. I looked strangely “too” skinny in the mirror. I don’t get it; I looked chunky naked, I could see gross fat, but when I put my clothes on, they fit too loosely to look good. So I had to change the shirt a few times to go with the narrow short skort I put on (which I couldn’t get into comfortably for a LONG time). The shirt I ended up wearing was fitted across the shoulders and chest, but loose from the ribs down. Really, really odd. But it’ll have to do, so I left the house. I hummed along with my MP3s playing in my car in the drive to work, had a decent drive without hitting my usual 27 straight red lights, and as I walked from the parking lot to the building, I was aware that the skort was so roomy around the waist that it was actually riding up and getting even shorter at the leg. Good thing there’s shorts under the skirt part, but from outside it still looks like I’m wearing an extremely short skirt that’s growing shorter with each step. Oh well, I’m still a bit late, so I keep walking. As I walked through the metal detectors and collected my purse at the other side, a suited tall gentleman in front of me, who had turned to face me, said, “Hello.”
Thinking it was someone I knew, like a DA or private attorney, I replied pleasantly, “Hi!” Then I looked up to realize that this isn’t someone I knew, altho he looked familiar so I’m sure he’s a regularly returning attorney. Probably in his late 30s or early 40s, well-dressed.
“You are so pretty,” he said discreetly to me. Is this sexual harassment? I looked down and realized I am indeed wearing my employee badge, so he knew he was talking to court personnel.
“Thanks!” I smiled at him trying not to look as taken aback as I felt, pulling my purse strap over my shoulder and walking around the detector to get to the employee elevator.
“You’re welcome. You are so pretty.”
“Thank you, you’ve made my day,” I said nicely.
“Well, have a very nice day,” he waved and was off.
It must be because I only put on 2 layers of my BareMinerals foundation instead of my usual 3 as per Anny’s advice on the phone last night. Wow, she was right. Haha.

Going into the employee elevator, I was stuck with a floating court reporter who had sought me out in a stalkerish way earlier in the week. On Monday or Tuesday, I accidentally ran into him in the crowded elevator after lunch, and he followed me out on my floor then waited outside in the employee hallway for me in a very obvious way as I dodged out into my court reporter’s office to stall and wait for him to go away. But he didn’t. And I turned the corner on my way back to see him and pretended not to see him but he blatantly called me out so I had to stand there and make uncomfortable smalltalk for 20 minutes as nobody came to rescue me and he refused to take my body language hints of leaning into my door trying to get inside and not inviting him and not divulging personal information despite his prying and not looking him in the eyes. My supervisor even walked by a couple times and I’d taken the opportunity to tell the reporter, “Why does he always catch me when I’m not working?!” but the reporter didn’t take that hint to let me get back to work, either. When I finally ended the conversation after blaming my judge for a stack of imaginary work, I returned to my desk to email my supervisor that we need a secret code word when I’m stuck in a conversation I didn’t want to be in. My supervisor wrote back that henceforth the “secret word” shall be, “May I ask you a question about the death penalty case that we’re doing?” and he’ll rescue me. If you asked why I didn’t tell this reporter guy that I’m engaged, I DID. He went back and harped on that but did not leave me alone. And this morning, he gabbed with me for a bit, and then called me from his courtroom 15 minutes later to finish gabbing. And then he asked me if I had any single Asian friends. Like I would subject any one I cared about to this boredom! In the words of my gym trainee, he’s a total dork. But luckily I was able to be honest when I told him that each Asian female I know or am related to is in a relationship currently or married. He went thru his dating resume (stable job, nice guy, has a condo…) and asked me to keep him in mind as he’s currently looking for a girlfriend-slash-relationship. I agreed. Uh, any single Asian chicks out there wanna date a tall Korean court reporter, stable job, not dangerous personality, appears to be pretty educated, non-fobby, 34 years old? Leave a comment.

I got a call from my realtor today. I’m not sure if I’ve ever said it on this blog, but I know I’ve said even recently in real life, that I hope the 2nd house’s 50%-down offer falls thru and they come crawling back to us but WE won’t be available anymore, and that’d serve them right for their underhanded dealings and lies.

So my realtor said that he got a call from another realtor from the same office of the one he’d dealt with in House #2, and this realtor said that the guy who’d offered 50% down hasn’t given them the documentation that he has the cash to back up his offer, and wanted to know if we were still interested in House #2. Are you freaking kidding me?! After they LIED to us about how if we go in at the price we offered, we’d be immediately accepted and then go into Escrow, and THEN when we did exactly as they said, we were jerked around for a week until our offer for House #1 expired altho House #2’s agent kept saying, “Tomorrow, you’ll get an answer tomorrow,” and tomorrow didn’t come for a week, and THEN they gave the house to someone else who didn’t even make an offer until ours sat and got stale that entire time?! F them! I was happy to learn our agent already told them off and asked how could his clients (us) trust them, after the experience we’d had with them? They have no credibility with us now. That agent said, “I understand, but you can trust me.” WHATEVER. They didn’t say they terminated the offer with the guy who offered 50% down. They just said he wasn’t showing documentation and that they were frustrated with him. I can totally see that they’d make us pull out of Escrow with House #1, lose our deposit there, then tell the 50% down guy that they have another buyer lined up to pressure him, and then he’d say, “Oh, sorry, here’s my 50% right here!” and they’d give the house to him AGAIN and screw us AGAIN. Forget that! It was not going to happen. I believe a touch of fate exists in househunting, and EVERYTHING points to House #1 as The House and House #2 as The Distractor. And we already learned that lesson. I doubt House #1 would take us back again if we left them hanging a second time, and I wouldn’t blame them. They’ve been nothing but patient and forthright with us, which is the exact opposite of the people involved in House #2.

Mr. W is mad about the whole thing cuz he still prefers House #2, but my message to House #2 is merely, “PPPPTTTTTTHHHHHHHH!!!” I hope they end up stuck on the market for a long time, and finally sell to someone who gives them like 5% down. HA!

On another good note, I found a freaking INCREDIBLE rental management company that I’m gonna retain to lease out my place. They’re affordable, they do all the work, have great references and experience, and even go above and beyond MY expectations and hopes in their services. They can find renters for my place way more quickly than I can. I have an appointment with them to come see my place tomorrow evening. OH, and they even have an in-house team who’ll do home repairs and renovations more inexpensively than my hiring an outside contractor to fix my ceiling (from the leaks earlier in the year) and get rid of my bathroom wallpaper. Just like that, all my rental headaches solved!

Well, I didn’t eat the giant chocolate chip cookie last nite. At about 11:30p I turned off the big screen satellite TV downstairs and went to watch the tiny static-y analog TV upstairs in my bedroom to remove myself from temptation. And promptly fell asleep. Disaster averted. Or rather, postponed.

What did I do with my first day of food freedom? The cupcake was still there in the courtroom when I walked in. I ignored it. For about an hour and a half. And then I thought about this poor loner cupcake sitting by itself, unwanted, and felt so bad for it that I ate it. But just as a public service. I did not enjoy it. I had instant reflux very quickly after the cupcake so I thought I’d even out the sugar with a cup of fresh coffee, no sugar, just unsweetened soy milk. And then I realized that coffee is acidic, and wondered what the hell I was doing to myself. I had a few animal crackers the remainder of the day and that’s it. When I got home I ate the giant chocolate chip cookie which was not that good, either. OH, and I was on a giant caffeine kick, all jittery and crazy the rest of the day from the coffee.

I think I’m over the junk food now.

(Read this with an Edgar Allen Poe voice in your head.)

‘Tis two hours left of this dark day, one hundred twenty minutes in a bleak countdown to end the week. Seven days with claws digging into your flesh, seven days of a spirit-sucking demon whispering over your ear, driving you to end this, end this, even as you sit in helpless misery and the damp secretions of your desperation hang off your brow and eyes like so many ignored and inconsequential desires. This week is a dream killer. Worse than that, it brings to mind fantasms of possibility which tease you to reach a weak hand to it, only to have these hopes instantly dispel as strange voices and things unnamed laugh and mock. The drain on your mind and soul after mere days bleed into a growing emptiness inside, and suddenly you are nothing. Nothing but what you never could be and will never touch again. Seven days draw to an end, but the closer this end comes the farther it pulls away, reminiscent of the near stopping of time when one is on the Stairmaster.

Midnight, almost midnight. The symbolic 00:00 o’clock, signaling the demise of this last day when the shackles disengage and life begins anew. Is it cheating, then, is it a soul-sacrificing sin to, in two hours, touch that elusive haunting giant chocolate chip birthday cookie, or will I be trading in forevermore the fantasy of physical thinness that compelled me to chain these shackles upon my then-innocent being seven long days prior? Have I been transformed, or have I learned nothing…?

Day 7: BROWN RICE, UNSWEETENED FRUIT JUICE, AND VEGETABLES. Again, stuff, stuff yourself. Be sure to have the soup at least once today.

I had to get to work early, so I didn’t pack a lunch of veggies or brown rice. I only brought along a container of the veggie soup. And you know what my court reporter brought to work? Homemade cupcakes!! With chocolate frosting! She’s NEVER brought cupcakes before. Of course it has to be during my diet week. My judge had one, my courtroom assistant (I presume) had one, cuz 2 were missing. When my reporter realized I was still on my diet, she blocked the cupcakes and told me not to look. Well, I did look. And then I went back and looked again. Later on in the day I walked by them and peered in yet another time. But I did not touch. Not even with my tongue. Not even when I had to bitterly drink half my soup before the noon workout and the other half plus a handful of raw snowpeas (donated by Gym Trainee) after the workout, craving carbs. There was one cupcake remaining in the container when I left for the day. It better be gone by the morning.

I am so scared that without the excuse of “diet” to refuse all this food this week, I’m gonna eat my way back into unfunny expressions like “I have a perfect body. It’s just wrapped in fat to keep it from getting scratched.”

I was starving when I got home, and the brown jasmine long grain rice was so fragrant and satisfying. I steamed the rice and mixed it with some (formerly) frozen seasoned veggies, had some soup with half a raw green bell pepper, and a big glass of unsweetened orange juice. I haven’t been full like this for a long time. But when I changed into my loungewear earlier right after I’d eaten, I could swear I look fat again.

Maybe Mr. W is right. If being full triggers me to think I’m fat, maybe I am anorexic. Our IMs earlier:

Cindy: *drinking yummy tasteless vegetable mush *
Mr. W: *drinking Martini
Cindy: *pout *
I’m scared I’m gonna eat everything in sight next week adn gain 10 lbs.
Mr. W: Thats usually what happens after a diet
Diets are bad….
Bad Diet
Bad
Cindy: are you wagging your finger at me?
Mr. W: No the diet
Cindy: I think losers pig out both before and after the diet.
and they reward their diets with food.
both of which are totally counterproductive to the act of dietingl
I’m not one of those fools.
I don’t start my diet on a “monday” just so I can shovel food in my face on the weekend.
I taper my food and give my diet a running start.
and I’m not gonna eat the “yay you deserve it” cupcake tomorrow.
*shaking fist *
Mr. W: r u off ur soap box now?
Cindy: *looking down *
Yes.
Mr. W: If u r looking down u r still on it
Cindy: What, you didn’t like the “Battle Hymn of the Republic” playing in the background while I was typing?
Mr. W: U do fine with your life style changes.
U don’t eat fast food…U moderate your sweets and snacks
and U plain eat healthy
Almost Always
Cindy: then why do I still jiggle when I move? *sob *
Mr. W: U have anorexia Syndrome
U will always think that
Cindy: i won’t think that if I don’t jiggle.
Mr. W: because your Mom ingrained that in you
Cindy: i’m not fat compared to californians but I”m fat compared to chinese.
Mr. W: Bones in the mirror still look fat to anorexics
Cindy: but I literally jiggle.
you see ripples like waves when I move.
Mr. W: I like your curves. If you become boney I won’t like That.
Cindy: oh, really?
Mr. W: Ethiopians are gross
Fobs are gross
Cindy: HAHAH
Mr. W: Boney arms and boney ribs..Blah
Cindy: I won’t be boney, I have too much muscle for that
Mr. W: Now calves and definition..Thats what I’m talking bout