cindy's world

The guy on the radio this morning was making fun of how women always say we want a man with “personality” and “a sense of humor,” but when we really find a guy with that, the hot ones don’t laugh at his jokes (probably cuz they don’t get it) and too many hot celebrity girls have humped Josh Hartnett lately that the radio guy would have more respect for women if we were just truthful in saying personality comes waaaay secondary to a nice ass, or something like that.

But he’s right…what tops our cliche list are honesty, sense of humor, good personality. Which makes me wonder — what tops the guys’ cliche list for what they want in girls? I don’t think I ever knew. We tease men and say, rolling our eyes, that they just care about boobs and ass, but what do the MEN say they want?

I was thinking as I was driving into work this morning, that I’d like to try on a different look and see how that affects strangers’ perceptions of me. I’m not talking about parting my hair differently, I’m talking about stepping into a whole different social persona.

I think society recognizes someone’s social identity based on whether someone’s attire fits into a known stereotype. Not to say that you know everything about a person by appearance alone, but you can probably guess certain common traits within the stereotype. Like if I were in leather pants, white wifebeater, big leather jacket, chains, short punkish hair, tattoos, people would say, “Oh, okay, biker chick.” Warm-up pants, tennis shoes, fitted sports top, pony tail, then it’s “She’s athletic.” I certainly do get greeted differently if I walked into a store after work in my suit — namely, I get a lot more “ma’am”s. =P I think that’s why Halloween is such a big deal with women. We get to depart from the “norm” identity and be entirely appearance-mobile, with a great excuse. “Oh, I’m not NORMALLY a slut/naughty nurse/whorish nun/tomato, it’s just my HALLOWEEN costume.” Hmm. Wonder what it says about me that I’ve been wanting to be an anime character for 2-3 Halloweens now but never got the chance.

Anyway, back to what I was saying. I think people are only truly comfortable wearing only a small section of the many possibilities in the attire spectrum, so I wanna step out one day in, like, leather shorts and a low-cut fitted top with a cabbie cap worn sideways, with big hoop earrings, dark lipstick and eye makeup and vixen nail polish, and see how people treat me differently. Or, I guess there are new looks out there these days that the teens are doing? Like “Emo,” which is like our Goth mixed with some punk, and “Scene,” which is like Goth mixed with Cyndi-Lauper-80s attire. Ooh. Maybe I’ll go Goth for a day. Or maybe I’ll be something you guys suggest.

Any suggestions?

…that people were protesting Columbus Day parades with violent bloody demonstrations, i.e. pouring fake blood all over paraders and stuff, cuz they’re saying Columbus was also a slave trader so he shouldn’t be celebrated? Slavery in today’s official opinion was a very bad thing, but it was not illegal back in the day which, yes, was a horrific unfortunate thing, but I don’t understand how you can protest 500-year-old history. How far back do we get to go? Do I get to protest the way the US turned its back on Chinese immigrants after they blew us up on the railroad construction? On Japan taking over Taiwan in my grandparents’ generation? On the Communists overthrowing the Republic government in China? On the invasion of the Mongols on the Great Wall back in Qin Dynasty? On predatory birds, dinosaurs and stuff that had stomped on or eaten my pre-human ancestors? What does protesting history accomplish? I bet the protestors are enjoying their day off today on Columbus Day anyway. (Or maybe I’m not getting the full story of what their issues are.)

…that some of you guys have to work? I’m sorry. I got up about half an hour ago and I’m going into the living room to continue watching DVD episodes of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” with my fiance now. *yawn* *stretch* *scratch*

Nighttime is a time for my mind to wander and scare me, as the lack of visibility propagates my emotional imagination. That being said, I’m still up right now because I can’t stop thinking about my visit to my parents’ Sunday night.

I’d gone alone, as Mr. W stayed to fix an issue with his son’s computer. After admiring the Alexandrite ring they’d bought me in Hawaii (which they still insist is a gift and I still insist is a loan), my mom said, “Cindy, I have bad news for you.” While we were in Hawaii having the time of our lives, my mom received the diagnosis from her doctor that she has liver cirrhosis. Her eyes reddening, she watched me carefully for my reaction. I didn’t react. To her, it’s a death sentence as her father passed away from that. But that was over three decades ago in a small inadvanced island, and he was a heavy drinker and a smoker, while my mother does not have either risk factor and is in a country with better medical facilities. To me, it is an early diagnosis so I do not see this as terminal news. To her, cirrhosis is watching her father cough up blood and waste away painfully within 6 months in a hospital bed. To me, cirrhosis is a disease that modern medical science knows how to stop, even though the present damage to her liver may not be reversable. To me, she has luckily been doing everything right in her attempt to help my father’s hypertension — dropping sodium intake, reduction of pain-reliever pill-popping, nightly walking around the hilly neighborhood with my dad, virtually zero alcohol consumption. But to her, she is frustrated that she’s been doing everything right and she still received this diagnosis. To me, the diagnosis identifies the problem for us so that we can immediately work on the solution. She’d taken the last week off to recover emotionally from the news, and had called her mother, who cried with her on the phone. She will not see tears from me, because I will show her nothing but faith that we are now on the right track to fix this, and that this is not the end. I think she felt a little better after we talked about my views on this.

Despite her red eyes clearing up, she nonetheless led me upstairs and showed me where she kept all the bank account books, legal paperwork, important documents. She’d spent the week taking photos of all the valuables she had in the house, then putting those photos in an album with price tag labels so that if I should decide upon their death to sell the items, I would know their approximate monetary value. She said half sheepishly that my father had called her crazy for going this far, saying this kind of preparation is unnecessary and that she was being ridiculous. I told her that it’s okay, despite the fact that I’m sure it’s unnecessary, I understood that sometimes having your affairs squared away just makes you feel better and rest more comfortably, because that’s still another important and big thing done.

After getting back, I emailed her to tell her that I was thinking on the drive home that maybe she’d expected me to react more strongly, to cry, to panic, and explained that my lack of panic does not mean I do not care, but that I don’t feel we are at a stage for panic. I reiterated how I feel she’d unknowingly and luckily given herself the best chance by her current clean lifestyle, and we’ll figure this out very soon. She wrote back that she knows I do care, but that the clean living is apparently not enough, so what more could she possibly do or change? She’s feeling helpless. I’m trying not to let myself feel helpless. I need to research how to get her white blood cell count up, her immune system up, and her platelets up. She’d always had low blood pressure, and while there, she had some major sciatica pain when she got out of her seat that prevented her from being able to move, and my dad had to help her back into her chair as her face crumpled and her shoulders shook from the pain and effort. A heating pad helped relieve most of the pain, and I told her she should stretch her hamstrings and leg muscles when she’s not in pain and after their nightly walks when her legs are warmed up, showed her a few ways to do it, explained that her sitting for long periods of time and her sleeping on her side in fetal position plus her poor circulation leads her leg and hip muscles to tighten up, pulling on the sciatic nerve. But secretly I’m thinking that maybe she is already dealing with edema in her legs due to the liver not performing at its peak right now.

Tonight I’m thinking of how my mother does all the cooking and cleaning and bills and, well, everything. How helpless my father would be without her. I remember my mother going back to Taiwan to visit her mother when I was in the third grade, and my dad and I had instant ramen for two weeks. Occasionally in those 2 weeks my aunt would bring by some homemade food, but my dad basically did not cook. I’m thinking about how my mother makes all my dad’s medical appointments, keeps his pills straight, manages the things he should and shouldn’t eat, like taking away the soy sauce and MSG, and bringing him plates of chopped fruit. I’m thinking of all the things I haven’t learned from her, like her amazing red-roasted beef stew noodle soup, her won tons made from scratch, how she felt when she first met my dad. I’m thinking of all the things I haven’t given her, like more affection, a wedding date, a grandchild.

And now I’m crying.

** WARNING ** Men, don’t read this.
(more…)

Got this via email, and I think it’s a nice reminder…

Heavenly Father, help us remember that the jerk who cut us off in traffic last night is a single mother who worked nine hours that day and is rushing home to cook dinner, help with homework, do the laundry and spend a few precious moments with her children.

Help us to remember that the pierced, tattooed, disinterested young man who can’t make change correctly is a worried 19-year-old college student, balancing his apprehension over final exams with his fear of not getting his student loans for next semester.

Remind us, Lord, that the scary looking bum, begging for money in the same spot every day (who really ought to get a job!) is a slave to addictions that we can only imagine in our worst nightmares.

Help us to remember that the old couple walking annoyingly slow through the store aisles and blocking our shopping progress are savoring this moment, knowing that, based on the biopsy report she got back last week, this will be the last year that they go shopping together.

Heavenly Father, remind us each day that, of all the gifts You give us, the greatest gift is love. It is not enough to share that love with those we hold dear. Open our hearts not to just those who are close to us, but to all humanity. Let us be slow to judge and quick to forgive, show patience, empathy and love.

Working for God on earth doesn’t pay much……but His retirement plan is out of this world!

Two people contacted me yesterday to nudge me to post (one was very gentle, the other was kind of a brat about it), so okay, I’ll just sit on the blog here and see what blubber falls from my fingers.

Speaking of falling blubber, I did a 45 minute hilly run yesterday at lunch for my workout. I hadn’t run in a long time, and it surprised me that I was never out of breath, and my brain never bitched to me about how awful the run was and tried to bargain with me for cutting the run short. My only limit was time. However, the first half-mile to mile of the 4-mile run was painful on my stomach and abdomen, because all the fat bouncing around made my skin ache. I wished for a fitted bodysuit. I wished for a jog bra for my entire body. (There, that’s some TMI for everyone who wants to tell me I’m not fat.) How do those seriously obese people on “The Biggest Loser” do it? I enjoy that show, BTW. I find the participants’ weekly 15-lb weight loss inspiring, in the same impossible wistful way that I aspire to live like Mother Teresa.

Gee. I sound cranky. I wonder why that is. Maybe it’s due to the awful nightmare I had this morning that brought to light all the worst qualities of who I am and played it out in a dream about going to China with Mr. W. Poor Mr. W. I suck. I don’t know whether he hasn’t realized it yet, or whether he’s realized it and loves me anyway. Sucker!

Speaking of Mr. W and trips, this Friday evening we are leaving on a flight to the Big Island of Hawaii to attend “Wilco”‘s destination wedding. I took care of the flight, accommodations and rental car as a 2-year anniversary present for Mr. W. He’s definitely the most expensive wedding date I’ve ever bought, snicker.

Speaking of wedding dates, there isn’t one for us, yet. People keep asking, I keep replying “9 years.” It’s gotten so that Mr. W automatically replies “9 years” as well. Over the weekend when Mr. W and I were visiting my parents, they talked about all the wedding venues being booked up for 8-8-08 (8 in Cantonese, a Chinese dialect, is the phonetic equivalent to the word for “to prosper,” so many Chinese people want things with 8s in them for good monetary luck. House numbers, phone numbers, social security numbers, dates.), similar to how there were a ton of American people who thought they were brilliantly original for aiming for 7-7-07, lucky number 7. My dad brought up that if couples wanted luck for their wedding, they really ought to aim for 9-9-09, because 9 in Chinese is the phonetic equivalent to longevity. We don’t want to get divorced, or have our spouse die early on us, do we? I’m all for aiming for 9-9-09, because it gives me leave to procastinate more.

In an ongoing email conversation, I asked a jujitsu friend today whether he thinks I think too much. He replied, “if you didnt think as much, do you think you would end up getting in trouble?”

Me: “Huh. I never thought about that before. (See, I DON’T think too much!)
I wonder if my thinking is mostly after-the-fact, justificational thinking, or whether it’s consideration-thinking where I think out a situation before acting and therefore avoid poor decisions. I daresay it’s mostly the former and occasionally the latter. Well, maybe not, cuz I think a lot about random things in an attempt to compulsively explain things to myself. Like, how the hell are Dippin’ Dots made? Cuz if they’re ice cream droplets on a surface that are then frozen, they wouldn’t be as round. If they’re that round, that’d imply they were mid-air when they were frozen, but they couldn’t have been too impacted by gravity because they’re not droplet-shaped, they’re spherical. So how are they being so quickly frozen before they’re even allowed to fall? What were we talking about again?”

Him: “what? sorry… i wasn’t paying attention…. “

I woke up this morning from a disturbing dream in which college roommie and I were talking and she revealed she’d been in email contact for quite some time with a guy from my high school past. In the dream I was surprised and somewhat disappointed that he’d bothered to stay in touch with her but not with me. I told Dream Roommie, “Back then, he would make or break my entire summer on a daily basis.” And that was true.

Since waking way too early from that dream and being unable to fall back asleep, I’d been in this sticky web of emotional nostalgia, and not in a good way. It’s dark and murky, what I feel. Secrecy and real trouble surround this guy, and yet he always sneaks into my dreams just often enough for me to keep looking for him, to make sure he’s still alive. I’d house-cleaned him a hundred times, he’d disappointed me at least that often, but every time he emerges in a dream I return to the same disturbed state.

I sought for old contact from him on Friendster. He’d found me in 2003 on that site, left a vague email about wondering how I’d greet him after all these years, with a hug? With a slap? He wrote that he’d been to hell and didn’t think he had actually ever come back. Said now that he’s finally found me, he hopes I haven’t forgotten him. I wrote back that sometimes people I care about have to take the walk to hell for their own reasons and altho I recognize that, it doesn’t make watching it any easier. I let him know my hand is outstretched to help and whether he takes it or not is a matter of choice. Some disturbing response from him about how he’s been shot at, bribed, arrested, homeless, and that he’s learned in his adventures walking the world and getting into adventures, like Cain (from “Kung Fu”), that life is cold and uncaring, that all people have ulterior selfish motives for any kind acts they do, and that self-serving unjustness rules the world. He said even his contacting me is selfish although sincere — he is lost and wishes to be found; he hopes to rekindle a friendship that was regrettably neglected. I wrote back that I have the same phone numbers he’d last had. Without hearing more from him, he promptly and mysteriously disappeared again.

I contacted him through the same means some 2 years after this (after another disturbing dream that I’d traveled up north to find him, and I could not, and he wasn’t where he said he’d be, he never picked up his phone, and no matter what I tried I came to dead ends) he responded 20 days later apologizing for losing contact, said that he’d been trying to sort out issues for some time and haven’t kept in touch with many people. Said I have always been “too good” to him and therefore apologizes for not keeping in touch with me. Wrote that he trusts I’m doing well except for my overthinking which he’s sure I’m still doing; that I’m too smart for my own good and that ignorance is bliss. Ended on “hope to hear from you soon.” And disappeared again. That was 2 year ago.

He is and had always been vaporous to me, elusive to grab but simultaneously everywhere in a cold thin veil of mist. You could never feel secure around him. You could never really penetrate his vibes, get a good read on what and why he does or says what he did or said to me. At least, I couldn’t.

I think his recent appearance in my dream wasn’t about him, it was about what he represented. Yesterday, I ran into someone who I thought I was worth more to than how he was treating me. It bothered me to the point where it bothered me how much it bothered me, that I was treated like any common acquaintance from the street, as if we didn’t once share a closeness that permitted (no, embraced) the rare entry by a non-significant-other into our most private fears and thoughts. Yesterday, I felt as insignificant to this person as I had felt a hundred times with the guy from my past. Like, I had given you so much of me and you drank it all because you needed me, and you could not be bothered to stand by me on my most important day when I needed you in return, and you didn’t come, and you didn’t call, and I didn’t matter, and I don’t know why.

The entire time I’ve been writing this post, this has been playing in the background of my mind:
You used to captivate me
By your resonating light
Now I’m bound by the life you left behind
Your face it haunts
My once pleasant dreams
Your voice it chased away
All the sanity in me

So I thought I’d look up the rest of the lyrics. And it was me, ages 17, 18, 19, 20, 21.

“My Immortal” – Evanescence

I’m so tired of being here
Suppressed by all my childish fears
And if you have to leave
I wish that you would just leave
‘Cause your presence still lingers here
And it won’t leave me alone

These wounds won’t seem to heal
This pain is just too real
There’s just too much that time cannot erase

[Chorus:]
When you cried I’d wipe away all of your tears
When you’d screamed I’d fight away all of your fears
And I held your hand through all of these years
But you still have
All of me

You used to captivate me
By your resonating light
Now I’m bound by the life you left behind
Your face it haunts
My once pleasant dreams
Your voice it chased away
All the sanity in me

These wounds won’t seem to heal
This pain is just too real
There’s just too much that time cannot erase

[Chorus]

I’ve tried so hard to tell myself that you’re gone
But though you’re still with me
I’ve been alone all along

[Chorus]

Saturday morning, a bunch of coworkers and I attended the funeral service of the father of our presiding judge. It was at a Baptist church, and so far I think I like Baptist services better than Catholic ones. I’ve been to two Catholic funeral services in the past several months and found this Baptist priest’s words to lay more smoothly against my personal soul. I found his words soothing and they touched a nerve of truth within my own heart. He reminded us that death is not something to fear but something to celebrate as a return to the place from whence we had come. It is not so much an end of life, as the beginning of eternal life. I especially liked a poem (I think it’s a poem) he read, and I’m not sure if it came from the Bible like a psalm, or was written by a God-loving poet, or maybe he wrote it himself for the occasion. Anyway, it went something like this, although I’m sure I am not doing it justice:

To reach up and grab a hand, and find that it is God’s;
To breathe the air and find it celestial;
To awake healthy and happy and find immortality;
To see endless beauty and find that you are home;
To leave the maelstrom of hopeless end and find endless hope;
Such is our fate, and our hope, as we come from and return to God.

Amen.