cindy's world

Organic bananas, grapefruits, avocados, soy milk, 2 tubs of Breyers ice cream (mint chip and cookies & cream), peanut butter (crunchy AND creamy): $17.
Feeling better from eating better and cutting out the chemicals: priceless.

I ate lunch w/coworkers and retired coworkers on Tuesday instead of working out, and it was heavy Mexican food that made me feel bloated all day afterwards, so I pushed myself to run an extra mile today at lunch. (Hey, if a retired coworker is gonna drive 70 miles one-way to see us for lunch from Banning, CA, the least I can do is attend.) So now, four miles, a grapefruit and two bananas later, I’m feeling good. The whole digestive system seems to be working better. I feel clean.

Tonite, I’m planning to blanche broccoli and have celery w/peanut butter before jujitsu. Maybe I’ll even open one of the tubs of ice cream. I’d wanted to eat an avocado today, but they’re not ripe enough. I keep pressing on the avocado I brought in today, as if ripening occurs in sudden, 5-minute intervals. While running today and thinking about the avocado, I remembered a story told to me about my ex’s dog, Osa. She would pick some avocados up from the ground under the avocado tree, and bring it back to “her spot” under some bushes that line the side of the house, and she’d guard her avocados for days until they ripened, which is when she’d eat them. I don’t know how a dog knows when an avocado is ripe. I almost cut into mine just cuz it has a sticker on it that says “Mission: RIPE 4225 Chile”, until my court reporter stopped me and said it’s not ripe, it’s too hard, and there may be parts that are edible but I’d have to waste the rest of it. Damn misleading sticker.

My jujitsu instructor invited me to compete this March. I shook my head, wide-eyed. He looked at me steadily, and I became unsure of what he was looking for, so I just looked back. Finally, he turned to another student and asked her, and she agreed. Maybe I made a mistake. Maybe I should’ve just gone for it. I’m not getting any younger. But I feel so green. Last semester was pretty much a waste as far as jujitsu went. I was so flakey. Maybe I’ll aim for a summer competition.

We were discussing ages while standing in the throw-me line in jujitsu earlier. Navy Vanessa (turned out she was Navy, not Air Force) said she’s gonna be 25 next Wednesday. I said, “Hey, you’re an insomiac. We should go out for drinks after jujitsu on Wednesday and celebrate your birthday!” Her eyes lit up. And then I just started inviting people. All of a sudden I was the girl who’s throwing some cool event that everyone wants to be a part of, and I didn’t even get Vanessa’s okay first. It even got to the point where Josh said discreetly that maybe we should talk about this with a more selective crowd of people around instead of making it seem like such an open invite to every stranger out there.

How presumptuous am I? But I can’t help thinking that if I were more like this in high school — more charismatic, more confident in my social acceptance — I would’ve been a hell of a lot more popular. Oh well, I had the childhood I had for a reason, and it made me who I am now, which I wouldn’t trade.

Today was a very inopportune morning to be trapped in a nightmare in which my ex had plotted to have me killed and I was unable to touch base with law enforcement about it. I was stuck in this nasty little world until almost 8:30a, which made me very late for work. And of course, this would be the day that I have a complicated criminal proceeding in my courtroom, and also the day I run into both supervisors, who were aware of my tardiness because they were trying to track me down to pull me out of my courtroom so that I could fill in for a specialized courtroom down the hall. Why they couldn’t have done this clerk scheduling last week was beyond me. So here I am, with a baby relief clerk in my courtroom trying to handle a rather fussy case, while I’m stuck in a busy civil law & motion calendar. I can feel two particular muscles clench in my neck and back, the old reaction I have to work-related stress.

I really, really want a day of massage, spa and pampering. I’ve wanted it so much that all my tentative get-together plans with various women revolve around plans for a spa treatment. And yet there’s nothing solid enough with any of them to book. I normally would just book on my own for something close to home after work and go alone, but I don’t really want to flake on jujitsu.

Maybe Friday, when there’s no jujitsu, I can leave my happy hour coworkers a bit early for a Friday evening appointment. Or maybe even drag some of them along. Hmm…

Thanks, Vicky, for getting me hooked on these things ever since that first Burke Williams appointment we did for your bachelorette event. I never knew what bliss I missed out on. I don’t know how I lived before spa treatments!

Reading Wilco’s recent blog post about being sick from too much fried food, I was reminded that I had a terrible combination of food yesterday for dinner.

I’m not going to eat after 6:30p anymore, so we’re looking at the small window of time between when I get home after work to when I have to leave for 6:45p jujitsu. Since I also want to cut out fast food, I did a last fast food meal and went to the Pizza Hut Express drive-thru on my way home from work. I ate a personal-size supreme pizza on the drive, and instantly got acid reflux. When I got home, I thought I should supplement my bad food with something healthy, and also something that will hopefully quelch my acid indigestion. So oatmeal it was. After eating the oatmeal, I realized that I had no fruits or vegetables in my meal. So I ate like 3 sheets of straight seaweed, nori, unseasoned. It wasn’t the best nori I’ve had, and it didn’t even envelop sushi, but hey, it’s a vegetable, right?

I was just glad I didn’t throw up in jujitsu yesterday. No one would’ve understood what I had in my stomach.

Jujitsu was funny today. We were so worked on abs that there were literally puddles of sweat on the mat where those of us less conditioned (or more moist) had strained. Okay, it was the older men, especially the ones new to jujitsu. One of the girls that I’m friendly with was walking toward me after the floor warmups, and she inadvertently stepped in a puddle. Instantly her face crumpled and she walked off the mat to the edge of the carpet and started scraping her foot on the carpet, while whimpering at me and saying, “Oh, ew, ew, ew…” I could not help but laugh. I had never seen her, Ms. Former Air Force Girl Vanessa, whimper like that. She said she was picturing sweat mixed with hair product and it was all squishy and cold. We both gagged.

Then later, the instructor was trying to fine-tune a new girl’s arm-twisting skill, and I was the next one up to be twisted after a punch. He was telling her to grab my hand and pull, then go into a quick twist so that it’d turn my shoulder downward as I turned counter-clockwise from the arm pressure. “You’re supposed to whip ’em with the arm,” he said. When she tried it on me, I deliberately and almost exaggerately whipped my body counter-clockwise to let her know her motion was correct, altho she didn’t have enough control to actually whip me, and then I did a forward fall. The instructor told her she did good, and I hopped off the mat to the end of the line to Vanessa, whispering as I got close to her, “I whipped myself.” I was all proud of myself for helping the new girl out, when I saw that Vanessa looked kinda shocked. “You what?!” she whispered back. “I whipped myself,” I repeated, and then realized what she thought I’d said. We both tried hard not to laugh out loud. “Yeah,” I confessed, “that puddle you stepped in earlier was actually me. Why is this class so LONG?!”

About an hour later, at a water break, I was standing about a foot away from the aforementioned puddle that was still there. Josh started walking toward me chatting with another guy as I tilted my water bottle into my mouth, and right when I got a mouthful of water, I realized he was about to step in the puddle, but I couldn’t say anything. I watched his face carefully as I swallowed. No expression change whatsoever. He did, however, meet my eyes when he saw that I had this huge smile on my face. “I was gonna warn you before you stepped in that, Josh, but I had just taken a swig of water.” “Yeah, thanks for the warning. That was — cold and squishy,” he said, still without any changes in expression. I guess guys just handle these things better.

I was a bad girl today. We had a mandatory meeting the last half hour of lunch today so I didn’t have time to work out. Instead, I ate an entire chicken wet burrito from a local Mexican food restaurant. It was delicious and filled me up enough that I didn’t feel I had to eat dinner before jujitsu. But just to satisfy the munchies with minimal calories before jujitsu, I ate chocolate lite whipped cream. Yup. I just sprayed the sucker into a spoon and licked it off the spoon while I watched Jerry Maguire on TBS. Eight times. At 15 calories every 2 tablespoons, I only consumed 60 calories. Oh, and I ate a large cookie throughout the morning at work. Well, the whipped cream didn’t fill me up and I was hungry after jujitsu so I stopped by McDonald’s on my way back and had two chicken fajita rollups and a regular-size vanilla cone.

I realized in jujitsu today that I’ve now acquired the asexual jujitsu mentality. I saw the discomfort in a new guy’s face in learning to do a knife takedown, and I realized that when it had been my turn wielding the knife, my crotch repeatedly made contact with the blackbelt’s right hand as he forced my knife hand through my legs and then reached for my hand from behind my butt as he kicked my outside leg out and contorted the top leg after I fell. And thought nothing of it. None of us think anything of contact like this, it’s only the new people who are still aware of their personal sexual awkwardness. This class is gonna kill my sex drive.

I’m tired and achy. I’m glad I vacuumed yesterday before jujitsu, cuz I didn’t even have the energy when I got back last nite to sort laundry like I’d planned. I guess today’s goal would be to sort before jujitsu, and to do a load after my return from jujitsu.

There’s a new redhead in the beginner’s class that’s going to be a problem. I was warned about her by someone who knew her in a karate class. But man, when we faced off yesterday to simulate punches and blocks in a drill, she was not doing the friendly sparring thing, the witch. I couldn’t actually punch her so of course I’d pull my punches about 4 inches from her face and/or body, but she was blocking my punches — which contact is permissible — with full-strength strikes and this totally cocky bitchy look on her face. I was stunned when she first did her blocks on me; she hit so hard she’d actually leave a momentary nerve tingling and numbness down my arm before the pain sets in. I haven’t had a jujitsu bruise since the summer session, and now I have a hickey-looking scratch down my left bicep and a bruise on my right upper arm just above the elbow. I can’t wait till we’re allowed to spar.

*sigh* I wish Burke Williams or Glen Ivy were open late. I could use some pampering. But one more session of more advanced jujitsu tonite, and I’m done with the week! The only exercise I’m gonna have tomorrow is whatever my lunchtime gym workout’s gonna be. I think I should give running a pause. My toes hurt.

Oh yeah. This new guy in the class thinks I’m Wonderwoman now cuz I did 20 squats with him on my back during warmups yesterday (he says he weighs 180, but he felt lighter to me). That was pretty flattering.

Oh yeah #2. I seem to be down 5 lbs. I don’t know whether it was just the water weight from the steam room last nite, tho.

Hee hee hee. That’s how I feel. Giddy. Smooth. Hee hee hee.

I just got back home (it’s past 10:30p). After jujitsu, I was wondering aloud why I don’t go to the gym sauna or steam room more often, as sore as I am. One of the girls in the class said she was on her way to 24 Hour Fitness right now. I said, “There’s one around here? Where?” Turned out we were parked close to each other, so I followed her to the 24 Hour Fitness Sport in Fullerton. We stripped down in the locker room and trotted over to the steam room. I was met with a surprise. Turns out this steam room and the sauna are co-ed. I tightened my grip on the towel around my waist. I wasn’t prepared to go in a sauna, so I had no bathing suit. I was in my sports bra and underwear. We went in, rubbed Epsom salt on our skin for its detox qualities, and chatted, dripping, for about 20 minutes. I couldn’t stand it anymore, so we went out and resumed our chatting in the locker room. We chatted so long we dried off and got cold, so we went back into the steam room. The steam was stronger this time; I couldn’t see 2 feet in front of me. So we stayed in there only 10 minutes before I felt myself almost panicking. Then we came out, showered and went our own way.

It was fun, and it turns out we’re both insomniacs. So we may be doing this more often. Maybe even fit in a midnight workout. I feel so relaxed right now, and my skin’s all soft. Hee hee hee.

I barely pulled a 5K run out of my butt earlier. I think the half slice of marble custard cake and 1.5 cookies I ate for my reporter’s bday celebration this morning killed me. I can’t take a large breath cuz my back hurts when I inhale deeply. I don’t even know what to blame it on, jujitsu or the weightlifting yesterday or the daily runs or my cycle being on fatigue week. So to make myself feel better, I’m gonna go have a piece of chocolate right now.