cindy's world

I left work at close to 7:30p last nite and went to the grocery store to buy the food for my chemical diet. I think the sudden appearance of cumulonimbus clouds, lightning and brief passing rain is a good sign. Haha. I arrived home to a yowling cat circling his food and me restlessly. “What’s wrong with you?” I asked him. “There’s food right there.” And then I looked closer. Ants. The outdoor moisture must’ve chased the ants into my house. That was fun to clean up. I love my Fantom Fury vacuum cleaner.

I gave myself extra time this morning to pack my chemical lunch and to eat my chemical breakfast. Normally, I skip both meals. But the bulk of my spare time in the morning was used in sucking up more ants and spraying Raid around the kitchen. I did feel twinges of guilt. I mean, are they not little lives, too? Do they not have souls? Aren’t they just trying to survive and get out of the rain? :*(

Man, I learned MY lesson about getting sufficient sleep. So everybody, you were right. My immune system is kaputt during this stressful period and I have only myself to blame. But I’m grateful that, as bad as it is and this is the worst I’ve ever had this problem, that it’s not worse. I can see how it could’ve easily been a lot worse.

Deadlines are looming now that I’m a week away from Cancun. I’m actually foregoing all my jujitsu classes for the week and the noontime workouts to get my family law crap done. They just gave us a criminal trial today, so I’m not gonna be able to be as productive during the regular work hours. But I also need to lose weight, so I’m putting myself back on this insane chemical diet I’d been on before. Since I can’t afford time to lose weight by burning incoming calories, I’ll just have to control the quantity of incoming. (No, I’m not gonna starve myself.) Starting tomorrow. Today’s moon cake day. =)

I’d just like to say…I’m a good personal trainer!

My trainee told me today (middle of our 2nd week of training) that the pair of pants she’s wearing is roomy enough to tuck her shirt in, and that she hadn’t been able to even get into these pants since June. I asked her if the workouts left her too tired in the afternoon, and she said no, it energizes her and motivates her. And she’s seen differences in her body tone. Plus, she’s now sweating profusely within a couple of minutes of cardio. Woohoo!

Now if only I could get myself results like that.

My second “quarter” of jujitsu started yesterday. I’d never seen the class so full. Half were new students. It was really, really cool to hang out w/the regulars again. I congratulated Gerardo for winning gold at the Okana competition in Arizona last weekend. Everyone harassed me for not going. It sounded like a lot of fun, maybe I’ll go next year. Got my usual wink from the blackbelt. This class started better, I felt. After the initial warmups and stretches and toning exercises, they began the jujitsu training by breaking down and drilling blocks and kicks. Then the class was split into 3 groups to work on various falls and take-downs, just to get new people acclimated to jujitsu in general.

Unfortunately, because half the class was new people who didn’t have gis, I couldn’t work out my aggression on them. Until Gerardo came up to me as I was doing the take-downs. “You can throw me,” he offered. “Really? I really can?” “Yeah! Go for it!” I threw him across the room. He did a dramatic airborn roll. Sometimes it’s nice having people who can read me and my antsiness, especially if they can do something about it.

Wrapping up another wonderful weekend.

Friday, I got to show off my cooking skills on a whim. I don’t get to cook enough; cooking for 1 sucks. It’s not even worth the work with no one to share the meal with. It was nice to use someone else’s kitchen and get help cooking and have someone else do all the cleaning. The compliments and appreciation are nice, too.

Saturday, to further satisfy my cooking urge, I went to Trader Joe’s and bought a bunch of crap in the morning that relives my college days. Middle Eastern bread w/lots of stuff to use as toppings (seasoned crumbled goat cheese, bruschetta sauce, etc) to make into little pizzas to toast in the toaster oven, hummus, flatbread strips, etc. Dumped it all off at my friend’s house, made and had brunch with great company, than ran off to meet my cousin Diana who leaves 10 mins away from my friend. Diana and I went to a cooking class – Extreme Chocolates! She and I made dark chocolate ganache truffles and chocolate flourless cake. We learned how to make triple chocolate brownies, chocolate mousse tarts, rolled chocolate cake, etc. Taking a chocolates cooking class on PMS is bliss. I could not stop munching. Our cake turned out beautifully, and our chocolates tasted great, altho we went overboard w/the Kahlua and espresso syrup. Altho that’s probably what made it so great. Afterwards, Diana and I went to her friend’s housewarming where I met a bunch of people I had a wonderful conversation and homemade meal with. We really bonded over the patio table out in the backyard in this beautiful Mission Viejo house. Lots of laughs and therapy.

Today, I finally got some exercise in. I accepted a friend’s invitation for a great walk and talk up in the hills of Irvine (or it might’ve been Tustin, not sure of the borderline). The walk was on the verge of a hike at certain points, so I was able to break out in a sweat. Toward the end, I saw a big suspended pipe by the side of the trail that looked like one of those playground bars I used to flip around on as a kid. I asked my companion, “When you see something like that, don’t you just want to climb on it?” The next thing I knew, I was being dragged to the bar and I did a flip on it but couldn’t come back up on it because the pipe was too thick for my grasp. Oh well. But now I really want to climb on some jungle gym.

After the hike, I got to watch “The River,” a Chinese award-winning film that my uncle Miao Tien starred in. We could not finish watching this gawd-awful film, altho we did have fun laughing hysterically at how horrible it was in the beginning. Maybe there’s some great surprise ending that puts the whole disjointed movie together, I dunno.

Oh yeah. I also bought half my Cancun wardrobe today at a swap meet. Do I need anything else except my current swimsuits and board shorts?

I had a little internal twitch earlier this evening that I think was made better by a vicious 95 mph drive to my parents’ house with the radio so loud that my ears rang after I got out of the car. I guess I need to do that every once in a while.

I just got back from checking up on my gym trainee. She’s sore in all the right spots — upper hamstrings, chest under the armpits, middle back — and excited about hitting the gym again. Yay! The only thing is that for my personal benefit, I can’t babysit her in weights daily, or I would never get a good workout in. So I told her today I’ll have her do straight cardio, straight fatburn. She was very agreeable. I think that’s a good plan for her anyway, because I don’t want to burn her body out and having a rest day in between weight-lifting days allows me to hit all the major muscle groups each time we do weights. It’s also optimal for body fat burn. She needs to do a lot of cardio and some toning to help bring the metabolism up.

I met one of my coworkers at the local 24 Hr Fitness today and trained her during lunch. She’s been to the gym before, but doesn’t have the basics down, so I had to start with some fitness/body education, then spend a lot of time correcting her form. Even with the form instruction, I had to adjust her throughout the set and she had some trouble understanding what it is I want her to do and where I want her elbow to be, etc. She was such a good sport, never complained, did everything I said. She says she doesn’t sweat much, so I know her metabolism’s low, and it took a while, but I was determined to make her sweat and I did. I underestimated the amount of time it takes to work out when I’m training someone inexperienced and need to work in with her, so the first exercise we did, chest flies on a machine, took way too long. The next two, bent-over rows and step-back lunges, I selected because we could do them at the same time. We superset lunges with the rows (free weights) and as she put her opposite knee and hand on the bench for support, the way most people do it, I did mine simultaneously standing on one leg, which allowed me to be next to her w/o needing my own bench. I was hoping to get at least 5 exercises in, but only did 3. At least I did hit every major muscle group. I don’t want to start her off too strong, anyway. We were so short on time that after we were done, I made her do 10 mins on the elliptical while I ran into the locker room to shower. She has a free afternoon and we just got a criminal trial.

When I got back to work, a half-page sized Priority Mail envelope was waiting on my seat. I got my passport! YAY! Taking into consideration the long weekend holiday, it took almost exactly 4 weeks on regular processing (I mailed it out August 2). I feel sheepish that I, as a government employee, am nowhere near as efficient as to only take half the time that we tell the public to expect processing. The new passport is flimsy.

After my friend dropped me off back at home, I took a nap and then hit the gym for 2.5 hours. 10 minute cardio warm-up, over an hour on the weight floor doing circuits and supersets (3 shoulder exercises, 2 chest, 2 back, 4 leg, at 3 sets of 15 reps each), then 65 minutes on the elliptical trainer. During the elliptical cardio, I was so…bored. It didn’t help that the only TV I could see from my station was showing a college football game. I even set the program on cross-train aerobics, which breaks up the strides into intervals of speed changes, direction changes, arm usage changes, but that didn’t help. After I pedaled for what felt like 30 days, I looked down at the time and damn it, it’d only been 14 minutes. I wanted so badly to quit and go home, and the excuses were making themselves heard. “I supersetted the weights, so I really didn’t give myself a break, so technically I did cardio already AS I was doing weight training.” “I worked out yesterday, so this is sufficient for today.” But I trudged on, combatting the excuses with things like “I didn’t eat well today. Gotta make up for it.” “I would be so disappointed in myself later that I couldn’t stick it out for the entire time just because I was bored.” “I need license to eat like a pig tomorrow, and I’ll probably eat like a pig tomorrow anyway and not work out, so I’d feel better tomorrow if I put in the time today.” “Think of how good you’re gonna feel in another 30 minutes.” “What better thing do you have to do right now?” “Cancun’s coming up.”

I’m exhausted. I’m going to bed now. Geez, it’s already 2am.

I was told I would be in my own department today, altho dark, to clear out my stupid family law divorce case load. Did that happen? No. I am presently sitting in an actual family law department, for which I have had zero training and zero experience, and I don’t even know how to do a calendar on their computer program. At least the bailiff in here is a friend of mine. We used to dance at the after-work parties so he’s more familiar w/me than some other people. He already said he’ll do most of the work for me. =/ But he can’t do the computer work.

He just checked everybody in. It’s a freaking full house. I am going to be in a very foul mood today. Oh, just now I found out we have a 1:30p calendar, too.

You know what this means? I am going to have a ferocious workout at lunch. I almost left the house this morning w/o my workout bag. I had my car halfway backed out of the garage, and then when I realized what I was missing, I ran back into the house and threw my workout clothes together. This morning, I was down 3 lbs with a 1% increase in body fat which means I am debloating. Ugh. I am so cranky, I feel the black clouds swirling.

This is probably all in my head, but I think I look better already. 65 minutes on the elliptical trainer on a cross-training program after work. Not too high of a level, just level 4, but I was definitely sweating. I think my legs look more toned, too. Hopefully the puffiness is due to bloating from my sodium high so the sweating and the excess water I drank all day will take care of that.