cindy's world

In a recent post where I’d posted a highly intellectual conversation between me and James (*cough*), Jordan commented that if we posted OUR conversations, we’d lose credibility. I disagreed, since most of my and Jordan’s conversations deal with scholarly topics such as biology and anatomy. For example, there’s this one today via email:

Me:
So is there any day you’re not working this week? Aside from today, I see.

Jordan:
I had class today…. a bunch of inservices from 8-4. So… like, do you have elongated nipples or like, irregularly long ones?? I need to know.

Is the rumor true???!!!

Me:
What are elongated nipples? How about I just send you a photo? I don’t know if I’m normal cuz I haven’t examined other people’s nipples.

And then I thought, hey, I have a better source for an answer here! Mr. W was online, and he’s seen tons and tons of nipplage in his day. So I IMed him:

me: Do I have elongated nipples?
Jordan wants to know.
Sent at 2:11 PM on Wednesday
[Mr. W]: What the heck…..no, What is that?
Sent at 2:14 PM on Wednesday

Huh. I guess I don’t. There ya go, Jordan. I’m resourceful. 🙂 Altho…now I’m wondering whether my mom has elongated nipples. ACK! Stupid Jordan!! That’s just wrong! (I bet you’re all thinking about all the Asian women you know, now. You can blame Jordan.)

…that there’s a finite amount of sexiness between couples. There’s this ball, this wad of sexy, and the two people can draw from it and divide it however they do. (This is probably why I’m h0tter when I’m single.) That being said, this post is a complaint that Mr. W is stealing all the sexiness that we share! 2 weeks of ailment, 2 weeks off from the gym, and my weight’s back up. Yup, I weighed myself this evening. I’m so upset. While I’m sitting there pouting about this fact, Mr. W found an opening to tell me that his size 34s are becoming hip huggers, and he’d just recently bought the 34 jeans (down from a 36). What the heck!! So now he’s all cut with these nice abs and yoke and stuff and I’m just this puffy mushy thing! If I gain another pound, standing together with Mr. W we’ll look like the number “10”, to quote Jay Mohr. Actually, I’m small, so we’ll look more like “lo.” “Lo and behold! See the most opposite looking couple in the world! He’s tall, she’s short; he’s light, she’s dark; he’s vertical, she’s spherical!” No matter what my lungs tell me tomorrow, I’m going back to the gym. I’m gonna bring some sexy back. So there!

Some inspiration from elsewhere in my blog…

It’s kinda neat that after a year and a half of being together, I look at Mr. W in his wifebeater and low-riding jeans retiling his shower wall, and I secretly check him out as I swirl tile glue on the backs of the tiles and hand them to him, and I smile at the way his traps shift on his back when he pushes against the wall, I want to press my tongue into the indentation of his tricep muscles, and I wish he were retiling the shower walls naked. Of course, I’m nothing to look at in my wet post-shower hair, a massive mound of fabric as my body disappears inside his big t-shirt and boxers. I guess this is the epitome of being comfortable together.

Yesterday, I told him as we walked from the Thai restaurant back to the car, that I look at him sometimes and smile, thinking how cute he is and how much I love him. He said he’s like that all the time when he thinks about me, and that when he thinks about me, he thinks about how much he wants to spend the rest of his life with me.

I told him that for Valentine’s Day, I don’t want to go out, I just want to be alone with him, curled up in blankets or bathrobes, watching romantic comedies on TV, eating a banana creme pie straight out of the tin.

Of course, if I can stop coughing and feeling like my lungs are compressing on their own whim, I may feel more like getting dressy and going out, or getting undressy and staying home. Stupid virus.

I just heard him cuss. I’d better go help again. =)

My supervisor got me to go to the doctor today, by telling me this:

0 – the number of people who died of pneumonia by going to the doctor.
0+x – the number of people who died of pneumonia by not going to the doctor.

I went to a different Kaiser facility at the advice of my court reporter, and that place was a blessing! I’m going there from now on.

20:20 – the time of my appointment (I was shocked I was able to GET a same-day appointment, considering I couldn’t at any of my other regular facilities).
0 – the number of people ahead of me in line when I went to check in for the appointment
2 – number of minutes spent waiting in the waiting room before I was called into the nurse’s station
100 – my systolic blood pressure (or whatever the larger # is)
57 – my diastolic blood pressure (or whatever the smaller # is)
58 – my pulse rate
128 – weight with a t-shirt, fleece sweatshirt, heavy jeans and tennis shoes on (woohoo! That means I’m like 124 nekkid! or maybe less!)
2 – number of minutes spent waiting for the doctor in the exam room

She figured I had a virus (like flu or cold) that ran its course in about a week, and then when I relapsed, it was because it became a bacterial infection in the upper respiratory area. She prescribed a round of antibiotics.

0 – number of people ahead of me in the pharmacy line downstairs
15-20 – number of minutes the pharmacist told me to wait for my prescription to be filled
8 – number of minutes actually spent waiting before the prescription was filled
40 – number of minutes spent at the Kaiser facility in all
10 – days of amoxicillin to take. This makes me slightly nervous, cuz the last time I took amoxicillin, I ended up with a yeast infection. 😛 Oh well, anything but this suffering! *cough cough*

P.S.
2 – the number of gallons of ice cream we just bought to celebrate my weight loss. har.

I didn’t go to work yesterday. I thought if I slept in (which I did), and relaxed all day (which I did), my body would somehow heal itself (which it didn’t). I didn’t even blog yesterday, and the only blogger I was in contact with was Jordan, who’d called and left a voice mail message of a baby showing off its very healthy lungs. That’s the entire voice mail. I listened to it while sitting on the toilet after getting out of bed, and wondered whether Jordan was trying to entice me with babies, or annoy me with babies, or simply tell me she was at work playing with babies. All it really did was make me feel sorry for myself as my lungs were nowhere near the capacity the baby’s lungs were belting out. Jordan did call back that evening, and her nursy powers diagnosed me as having bronchitis now. Great.

I didn’t blog yesterday so as to give the spotlight to a very special birthday girl. And she didn’t blog, either! In fact, she hadn’t blogged since February 2, 2007. Can you guess who it is? Here are some more clues. She’s smart yet doofus-y, blonde yet witty, secure/stable yet entertaining/dramatic, young yet mom, petite yet bigger-than-life, cute yet don’t-piss-her-off-or-she’ll-yell-at-you-and-throw-your-tickets-right-out-the-window-of-a-moving-vehicle. Happy birthday, big sister! We love you!

P.S. I lied earlier. I didn’t blog cuz I was lazy.

I know it hasn’t even been a week since I stopped working out due to ailment, but I looked thicker and mushier in the mirror this morning! 🙁 Stupid virus.

Mr. W forbade me to come to work this morning. He said being up all night coughing means I’m not well enough to work and I should rest up at home. But I already missed one day this week, and I came to work yesterday, so missing another day just looks bad. Our present criminal trial only goes on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays as the defendant has to be at dialysis three times a week, and it looks deliberate if I only miss Monday and Wednesday. Plus, I missed a lunchtime meeting/training last Thursday when I was so sick I just laid in the jury room all lunch burning up with fever and forgot about the meeting, and it was a mandatory training so my supervisor has arranged for a makeup meeting/training at lunchtime today. I can’t miss the makeup! 🙁 Stupid virus.

I can’t wait till Mr. W figures out that I’m not at home recuping. I’m gonna get yelled at, on top of not getting a break all day cuz I have to go to a meeting through lunch. 🙁 Stupid virus.

After coughing through a phone conversation with Mr. W today at work, he said that I probably have tuberculosis, which is such a “romantic” ailment because all the great romance novels have the heroine dying of consumption. So earlier I IMed him:

me: I just want you to know…* cough cough *
…that if I don’t make it through this consumption… * hack choke *
…that I’m eternally grateful * hack hack *
…to have been loved by you * puking blood *
Mr. W: u need more jaeger
me: how…unromantic.
I’m gonna blog this.
Mr. W: now here is the romantic part
I am secretly a Vampire and I offer you eternal life and love with me….with just one bite
me: hmm.
I’ll get back to you on that.
but thanks!

I hadn’t been at work for 10 minutes when 3 people I passed through observed how bad I looked. In the elevator on the way up, a court reporter who didn’t know I’ve been sick asked me if I was okay. She said my eyes look glassy. When the elevator doors opened, my gym trainee took one look at me from the hallway and said, “Ooh. You’re not going to the gym today, are you?” I told her, “I don’t think I could take it. My lungs would explode.” “You should’ve stayed home another day,” she remarked. Then after I got to my desk, the relief clerk who was in my courtroom in my place yesterday came by to catch me up on what happened in trial yesterday. She said, “Oh. Are you okay? You sound horrible.” And just as I was writing this, the bailiff next door walked through and said, “What’s up, Cindy? You don’t look yourself.” Well, if it’s THAT obvious, maybe I should go home early.

I’m being slightly taken advantage of at work, I think. This girl came by my courtroom and said that she wanted to start going to the gym, and that my gym trainee told her we go at lunchtime and invited her along. That’s fine, since we all invite everyone along that wants to go and try to encourage people to help themselves. The problem is, this girl continued to ask me to train her. She kind of put it on the footing that implied that my gym trainee had made her the offer, but I don’t know if she really did or just simply told her she should come with. Cuz I don’t want to take on a trainee who doesn’t know what she’s doing at the gym. For one, she’s not a friend of mine, I don’t owe her a thing. Second, it’s a liability if she hurts herself or doesn’t listen to me and does something wrong. Third, to train someone from scratch means that I’m not going to be able to work out myself. That sucks. I was willing to do that for my gym trainee way back then because she helped me out a lot (and still does) with family law crap, and she was motivated beyond belief (and still is) to change her lifestyle as she had a real health issue with her weight. And she’s someone cool I hang out with, too. This girl is just going to be purely me sacrificing my own workouts when I need to help myself to stay in shape.

Do I sound selfish? Oh well, I’m not going to the gym for another few days, anyway. I’m too sick today and I have a lunchtime meeting tomorrow.

Today… I am a trooper no more. Today… I had more fun than you as I called in sick to work, then slept in till 11a. After my shower, I walked to the living room and realized that Mr. W had left his lunch behind. So I took it to him at work, then bought a few things at the store, and I’ve been home since. I vacuumed, cleaned up the cat area, have laundry going, sucked up some apple cider flavored Theraflu. I have taken more drugs this past week than I have collectively in my life. Nyquil, Robitussin DM, Theraflu, Tylenol, cough drops. I’m still coughing and my lungs feel week, but I’m in high spirits from the day’s productivity and other little things. I think I’ll curl up with Eragon the rest of the night, and I’m even tempted to order a pizza. If only sickness-induced weight loss were more permanent, I’d have less than 10 lbs to go till I reach my goal weight.

I had 2 sets of plans in place for yesterday. The first was lunch with my childhood friend Lily and her hubbie Arnold, both of whom I hadn’t seen since their wedding in ’05. It just seemed like every time we tried to make plans for the past year they’ve been in Southern California, either my dad was in the hospital, or we were in San Simeon, or my dad was in the hospital again. So I was not about to cancel that. The second was dinner with my parents and maternal grandma for grandma’s birthday. It was already postponed from last week from my dad being in the hospital. I also was not going to postpone that again. So I didn’t tell any of them I was sick. Since I’d lost my voice yesterday, I text-messaged Lily to tell her we were on the way.

I broke the news to Lily and Arnold when they tried to hug me with “I wouldn’t hug me! I don’t know what I have!” The two doctors paused and shrank away from me. I felt like a leper, but they were so good about it the rest of the time through dim sum. I requested a spare pair of chopsticks to use as “community chopsticks” so I wouldn’t infect the food with the pair that I was using to feed myself, and Lily and Arnold shared a second pair of “community chopsticks.” After dim sum the four of us went back to Lily’s parents’ house in the affluent gated area of Diamond Bar, and Arnold set up the billiard table in the living room. “Do you shoot pool?” I asked Mr. W. He said, “A little. We played sometimes in the Marine Corps.” Arnold and Lily were apparently really good. Mr. W accepted the invitation to play against Arnold for a round, as Lily and I flipped through her professionally created wedding and engagement photo albums. It wasn’t long before we heard Arnold say, “I think [Mr. W] is hustling me.” We soon theorized through a brief period of observation that instead of protecting the country, Mr. W’s battalion had invested much time in goofing off.

After leaving Lily & Arnold, Mr. W and I met up with my parents at their house nearby. I was exhausted from being up most of the night before due to the tremendous throat pains. My hopes of sneaking a few z’s at my parents’ were quickly shattered as the construction activity of massive home remodeling going on indoors and outdoors of their house drove me and Mr. W back to my own house. There, Mr. W caught the pregame reports of the Superbowl on TV as I knocked out upstairs in bed. My mom called to check up on us, and then we were off to meet them for dinner.

Dinner was in a Chinese hot pot restaurant, but my grandma being the picky eater, wanted to order separate cooked dishes in lieu of hot pot (but insisted on doing so at a hot pot restaurant, which she chose). Oh well, it’s her birthday, what she says goes. The food was delicious, except when it came to the last dish, which is a delicacy — a cross-section of tender white fish simmering over tofu, with stir-fried ground soy beans covering the top of the plate. The fish is served on a metal tray set over contained flames so that it’s still cooking as it sits on your table. I took one bite and it felt like someone shoved sandpaper down my already-raw throat, rubbed it up and down my throat, and then sprayed chili-oil covered asbestos on the offended area. I gagged and choked and hacked so hard my inner ears stung, and sucked down 2 cups of tea to soothe my pissed off throat. I think it was largely due to that episode that my parents tried to take the bill from me when it came, cuz they felt bad I didn’t eat much (I ate till I was full). I was so offended, however, that they ended up giving the bill back to me. I have no idea what I looked like as I was surprised at my parents’ reaction. I just know that when they took the bill, I said hoarsely in the little voice I had that they shouldn’t do that because we’d already agreed that I was paying and they already gave my grandma a bday present and this was supposed to be MY bday present to her, and suddenly, they froze looking at me, said quietly to each other, “Daughter’s really mad!” and gave the bill tray back. It was under $100, anyway, not bad for 5 people.

I got my voice back this morning (altho a bit weak), but I am coughing more. The throat pain is more bearable, and the fever and body pains are pretty much gone. So my body, not to be outdone by a virus, saw to it that I got my period today. “She’s sick and in pain and hasn’t slept well in days, so let’s make her bleed, too!” *sigh*