cindy's world

I was doing my usual dry delivery of a quirky silly train of thought yesterday when someone in my trusted circle made a sarcastic remark to the effect that it was a good thing I don’t find myself in that situation a lot. Okay, that made no sense unless I actually explain that I was talking about a paternity case we handled in the family law court I was put into yesterday. The case where the court established that a divorcing woman’s child is the offspring of the guy she was having the affair with, and not the husband, which was proven up with a DNA test. I said about that, “Why do people want to make their lives so complicated, so that I have to go through all this strange stupid paperwork because of them?” She chuckled. It was my first paternity case, and I had struggled through all the unfamiliar paperwork and computer entries involved. I continued, “And these people always make us do their work for free cuz they get fee waivers [claiming they’re indigent and can’t pay for legal proceedings]. I pay my taxes, and I don’t use any government services for free cuz I don’t qualify for them. These people don’t even pay taxes and get all this free stuff. I should go and do something stupid with my life so that I can take advantage of welfare-type services, like have a kid out of wedlock. But no, I wouldn’t get welfare cuz I’d be employed. So maybe I should commit a CRIME, get into the criminal law system, cuz everything THERE’s provided for free and then I could really make my taxes benefit myself. But then with my income, I’d probably be required to pay back the services of the public defender, so that wouldn’t work, either.” I mean, it was a non-serious, goofy stream-of-consciousness I was saying aloud because I recognize the ridiculousless of the nature of the thoughts and therefore shared them for the possible entertainment value. It was a joke. I wasn’t really upset about not having and wanting indigency services. She said sarcastically, “It’s a good thing you aren’t in family law much.”

It’s not that she made a comment, it’s that it’s the third or fourth such comment she’d made fairly recently that implied I thought and/or talked too much about nothing. And it’s not that I DON’T overthink things, cuz apparently I do, as this post itself proves. It’s just that I feel she misunderstood me and the point of my words when she made that comment, and for some reason that’s still bothering me. It’s either because I think so highly of her that I don’t want her thinking badly of me, so that right now I feel like I exposed myself trustingly and got made fun of to my surprise in return; or maybe it’s because since early childhood, I’ve had a sensitivity to being misinterpreted, misunderstood, wronged in a sense. When someone I don’t care about doesn’t “get” me and misunderstands something, I just roll my eyes irritably and move on. But in someone I do care about, it just really bothers me when someone’s got a wrong impression of me or something I said.

I said to Mr. W after the trusted person had left, that I need to remember to stop thinking out loud around her because I don’t think she gets me so she thinks I’m being overdramatic over nothing. He laughed and said that he got me, and that he did think the absurdity of what I was saying was amusing. It reminds me of his proposal, how he said most people don’t get me but that he’s one of the lucky ones who do and he gets to laugh. I guess that’s what’s really important, anyway. I just wish I didn’t have to watch my step so carefully around someone I want to comfortably be my off-colored self around.

Today is day 3 since the scary phone call from my doctor’s office. I’m pretty much back to normal, which is a good thing because they pulled me out for my courtroom to handle a (blech!) Family Law courtroom where the supervisors failed to arrange for a relief clerk for the regular clerk’s vacation. The cases were horrible. Restraining orders against former lovers, paternity tests establishing biological parenthood between a divorcing woman and her affair guy, anger, tears, lies, accusations. Criminal Law courtrooms are so much more peaceful.

My mother, however, is just wigging out more and more. The day after finding out, she emailed me all day asking how I am and telling me not to worry. Then that night, she freaked out cuz she called my cell and I didn’t get it and didn’t call her back. She called me at home early this morning before work, upset that I “went missing” the night before, and claiming also that her mother “went missing” as she didn’t return my mom’s calls either. I told her to stop worrying about nothing. And then 45 minutes ago, my house phone ringing woke me up from my TV nap and I tried to ignore it, but on the 16th ring I finally skulked upstairs and picked it up. My mom was in a flurry because she had apparently found my grandmother, told her about my current health “crisis”, and they both agree that October 1 is too far away and they want to know what’s going on sooner than that, so they want to pay for a private doctor to get the procedure done earlier before my appointment. I told her I wasn’t going to go thru a colposcopy/biopsy twice and my appointment is only 3 weeks away, I’m not going to pay extra money for curiosity, and a week’s difference isn’t going to make the difference between life and death. (She also wanted to know whether the lab results are posted online yet, I told her they’re not, and she told me to call my medical provider and see if they could arrange for a printout that I could go pick up myself. I told her they’re not going to do that.) She finally relented, sounding defeated. I told her if she’s going to worry like this I’m not telling her about this stuff next time. She said quickly, “You can’t do that!”

Now I feel worse. The fact that my mom’s now getting clingier is cramping my lifestyle because I don’t want to explain where I am at all hours of the day and night, and I already feel guilty enough about not wanting to. On top of that knowing that she’s feeling worried and helpless, and that she hadn’t slept well the past few nights and was up imagining all sorts of horrid scenarios and panicking about her only child, I’m feeling some of the worry vicariously and I don’t need to stress over something I have no control over. This worry at this time is totally unproductive and pointless, because assuming the worst case scenario and I have terminal cervical cancer or something, I’m gonna feel pretty crappy upon finding that out. And I will feel crappy at that future time no matter WHAT I feel like right now, so I may as well enjoy the 3 weeks of activities I have until the colposcopy. I have a week in Hawaii for Wilco’s wedding at the end of the month, I have a coworker’s house party right after that, and I have the Marine Corps 5K obstacle course run a few days after the colposcopy (presumably before I get lab results back for any biopsy). And I have a funeral to attend tomorrow, for gosh sakes. Heh.

All through childhood, I stood in confusion and upset watching my mom’s strong emotional reactions to things, teaching me by sight that I’m SUPPOSED to freak out when my dad’s a little late, when my dad doesn’t call, when some small family gossip trickles through the grapevines, when there’s a hair on the ground, when I don’t flip down the visor to shield the sun from my mom’s eyes when she’s driving, when my dad makes my mom the butt of some goofy joke. All through adolescence I rolled my eyes in irritation when watching my mom overreact at what I thought were things she should’ve just chilled at, and hoped that I wouldn’t turn out like her. And then as time wore on, she did chill. She opened her mind, she acquired an incredible tolerance for things that went beyond my ability to follow suit but envied. But when it comes to her baby, it appears she’s still reactive despite her attempts to not be overbearing.

It’ll all be nothing soon.

It’s funny how the power of the mind permeates things physical. For the past 2 days I’ve felt like such a patient, just cuz I was handed the patient hat. I went home yesterday, oozed onto the living room couch and took a nap. The air had cooled to a nice 75 with a breeze that wafted through my living room. I had also called my m.d. friend, pharm.d. friend, and mother. My m.d. friend will talk to her gyno coworkers and get some information for me. My pharm.d. friend had some personal experience and thoughts to share, but also didn’t have much expertise in my particular situation. In speaking with my mother, I tried to be nonchalant about the situation, but she was worried nonetheless while trying to convince me that I had nothing to worry about. And it is true; my family does not have a genetic predisposition to cervical cancer from either side.

I drove to Mr. W’s later in the evening when traffic died down, and told him at dinner that I was just giving myself the day to mope and feel sorry for myself, but that I’d be back to normal the next day. Today, first thing in the morning, my body bled. It’s playing the patient too, right along with my mind. Today I have a general “down” mood with low energy and cramps, but I behaved more normally than I did yesterday, which was sort of an alternatingly angry/tearful/anxious/defeated emotional carousel. Today, I cracked some jokes, was able to interact with strangers normally again (which is good since we started a court trial today), and went to the gym at lunchtime for a pretty crappy workout. But the important thing was that it was crappy because of the other people there, not because I didn’t do my best. It just seemed like people were following me around to jump on the exact machines I was using in my circuit, and then taking it over to sit and flirt with other people standing and milling about.

One bright spot in yesterday: I came home to find my garage door replaced to the rolling metal door; they did not replace my garage door motor against my will (as they insisted on replacing some of my neighbors’ motors), but left my old one up which worked very efficiently with my new door. AND, they’d swept my entire garage. I can’t say much for the company’s office staff, but the work crew seems very good.

Yesterday while I was lounging on my living room couch, eating and playing on my laptop (and trying to recover from the shock of my doctor’s visit), I heard a faint rattling sound to my left. I looked over, looked out the window behind me, but didn’t see anything amiss. I listened again, and it was still there, a faint on-and-off rattle, lasting about a second and a half, with an equal pause, and then another rattle for a second and a half. I finally crawled over the couch and peered over the left arm, down at the triangle of space formed by the side of the couch, the side of the La-Z-Boy recliner, and the side of the end table. There was a black and white and pink ball on the ground in the triangle, and it was snoring.

Looks like my fuzzy wuzzy Dodo boy has found a new spot to hang that’s totally invisible except from the top and the back view.

Is there anything more comforting than hanging in your home on a day off and listening to the snoring of a snoozing cat? Awwww… Little joys of life.

Another week is over. My judge is now in New York hanging with his family and in-laws. I’d been pulled out of my courtroom all week to handle Master Calendar (specialized courtroom). Next week, when my judge is still out prancing in the Big Apple, I’ll be in another courtroom. But before THAT…is this weekend.

This weekend, Mr. W plans to take me to sunny Las Vegas to visit his parents and brothers, and to make the engagement announcement over yonder in that department. I’m a tad nervous about his family finding out, because we’ve deliberately kept it from his kids (I’d remove the ring when his kids are around) so they don’t go back to tell their mom, who is not on good terms with Mr. W right now due to a heated and court-involved disagreement about child support issues. I just don’t want to be caught in the cross-fire where all of a sudden I’m collaterally damaged cuz the kids’ mom assume I’m controlling or meddling in their child-rearing business, or that I’m manipulating Mr. W’s position for personal financial gain. Cuz I’m not doing any of those things. Those custody/support issues? They can keep ’em.

*looking down* I’m really liking this ring. Shiny.

“Wow, the ring comes with its own drama,” my gym trainee said last week.
“Figures,” I said, “The relationship is so peaceful that the RING has to have drama.”

Mr. W happened upon The Ring in a jewelry shop while we were on our cruise some weekends ago. Once he saw it, and saw the heart through the jeweler’s loupe, there was no turning back for him and no talking him out of the extravagant purchase. And to think that I was just trying to get to the other side of the store to look at on-sale tanzanite stuff! No, Mr. W had found The Ring. To explain the ensuing drama, I’m going to change the numbers to make them more simple and understandable.

The salesperson said that the ring would appraise for $16 bucks, but because we were purchasing out at sea, we were saving sales tax AND there was a discount on the ring, bringing it down to $9 bucks and some change. The ring has a full money-back warranty for the first year and she said that if it doesn’t appraise for over $16 bucks, or if we change our mind on the purchase, we can return it back to the designer/manufacturer. After some discussion, she said if we take it right then and there, her manager had agreed to discount it down to $8 and some change. Well, if we’re getting a $16 ring for $8, that’s half off, so that’s pretty decent, Mr. W thought, and plunged forth into the full commitment, pun intended. As purchased, the ring was 2.5 sizes too big, and the saleslady gave us the information to contact the designer/lab and informed us the resizing would be free, and we’d be reimbursed postage and mail insurance.

A few days later, we were informed that no mail courier service (UPS, FedEx, DHL, USPS)’s shipping insurance truly covers jewelry; that they’d insure your package, but the contract has every loophole in it for jewelry that virtually makes insuring jewelry through them pointless. So we were suggested to take out our own insurance policy on it before shipping the ring off for resize (the lab is in Miami, Florida).

At this point you’re probably wondering why I don’t just get it resized locally. It’s because local jewelers resize by cutting a length of gold off the bottom of the band, and bonding the remaining ring together, forming a smaller circle. With 64 stones sitting on 3 surfaces of this band, no local jeweler could offer a guarantee that the side stones won’t pop off once the circle is reduced by that many sizes. Plus, cutting the band would remove the designer seal and signature on the inside of the band. The original designer would make a new band in my size, remove the current stones, and re-set them into the new band.

Okay, so I called my homeowner’s insurance company. They said they’d insure the ring under my homeowner’s policy for an extra $320 a year, but that policy would only cover $10 of the ring. What about the other $6? They said I can take out a policy just for the ring itself, and that’d cost $500/year. Holy crap. But first, before they write any policy, they want the ring appraised and a formal appraiser’s report submitted to them.

So off I went to find a gem appraiser. I found a really good one who has 25 years of experience, has certifications and gemology degrees up the yin yang, and met with her over the weekend. The appraiser examined, weighed, took photos of the ring, and researched by calling the actual ring designer’s company for replacement value. The 9-page appraisal report came in late last nite. The value? Not over $16 buckaroos like the store claimed. But $10 smackers. Yup. Less than 2/3 of the claimed retail value.

So now I’m ticked. I feel swindled, not by Mr. W, but by the store. And I want to return the ring and get Mr. W his money back. If anyone knows me, they know I don’t pay full price for anything, because I do my research first and walk in with a great bargaining chip or work through reliable connections. Granted, I was not expecting to go ring-shopping or get a proposal, so I’d done no homework, and this isn’t even my money, but it just doesn’t sit well with me. I don’t mind paying $9 clams for a $16 item, nor paying $5 clams for a $10 item, but I don’t like paying $9 for a $10 item. What the hell is that?! Jewelry is marked up so much already that we shouldn’t be paying more than about half of the full retail value.

Last nite, after some brainstorming with an engaged friend, I was thinking that I’d go ring shopping, and see if anything out there really grabs hold of me. Chances are that it’d be a bigger stone or better value for $9 (cuz we’re not paying designer prices for a patented cut), OR it’d be a similar item for $5 or less. And if it happens that nothing out there compares to this one and I fall in love with the one I have, then I’ll insure it, ship it off to get resized. Mr. W is okay with this plan, and it may save/refund him a lot of money.

And then all day today, people kept talking about the ring. “Where’s this amazing ring that everybody’s been talking about, lemme see!” said a male security guard downstairs that I normally have zero rapport with. People everywhere, judges, reporters, attorneys, bailiffs, people I don’t even know, have heard about it and say it’s the talk of the courthouse. Mr. W is now touted as THE man with THE best taste in jewelry. And he really did fall in love with the ring, and came up with this whole metaphor comparing me and our relationship to it in his proposal.

So the dilemma is, is my Asian thrift gene more dominant, or will my sentimentalist gene win over? Argh.
(For more examples of the Asian thrift gene, see here and here.)
What do you guys think about this situation?

And P.S…. Stop trying to change him. It doesn’t matter what his hurtful behaviors are. He hasn’t changed YET despite seeing how he hurts you, what makes you think he will just cuz you nag him? It doesn’t matter whether he changes or not. Just let him, and all his issues, be somebody else’s problem, cuz YOU are gonna be the one that was smart enough to get out.

I have a few girlfriends who are going through rough hell in their relationships. I see myself in them, the active analysis of their relationships, of what it all means, what it all COULD mean, and it makes me concerned because I see this line of thinking as the smart girl’s attempts to rationalize herself into staying in something that is hurting her every day.

When I say I see myself in that behavior, I mean to refer to my old self. I’ve been there, where the other half, by simply existing in my life and being himself with all his hurtful behaviors, killed a little of my spirit every day and every morning when I woke up, as soon as I remembered who/where I was, I was sad again. There was always that lump in my throat, the consternation on my forehead, the painful rock in my stomach. I lost so much weight despite not having the energy to do anything, not even work out. When I finally freed myself of that, EVERYTHING was wonderful. The colors were more vibrant, the birds sang just to me, I noticed every beautiful detail around me (like the sparrows’ fuzzy chests as they twirled on their tummies in the dirt), and they all delighted me, made me want to laugh out loud.

I want to tell these beautiful women, make them see, that they’re working so hard to make excuses to justify a selfish guy’s behavior, and you know how much the guy cares? He doesn’t even bother to justify his OWN behavior, much less modify it despite how he sees it’s killing his girlfriend, and the WOMEN are doing all the work in saying, “Oh, it’s my fault, I shouldn’t have ticked him off, I know how he likes his slippers warmed up and fetched as soon as he comes in the door, and I took too long.” “It’s just me being unfair. I knew when I got in that he liked his women and booze. As long as I make myself okay with it, we’ll be fine.” WTF?! And the guy is happily doing his own thing, prancing out the door to do whatever he wants with whomever he wants, too easily ignoring the crying woman on the floor he leaves behind.

Girls, not every man is like that. And you are about to be so happy, you just need to take the first difficult steps on your own and it’ll be so much easier the farther you walk. Stop injecting the false hope and nonexistent kudos with “I think he’s getting it, he didn’t hit me as hard yesterday as he normally does, so it’s getting better, right?” I’m not being literal on the quotes, but you know what I’m getting at, because you women are smart. Now be smart on your OWN behalves.

One thing that screwed me when I considered getting out before, was that I’d think about being “alone” and how “alone” might be worse than staying with crap. To that I now say, “An empty house is better than a house with bad tenants.” Besides, you have to be “alone” first to move on and be whole again, figure out what makes you happy, do it as much as you damn well please. Then when you heal and come out of this emotional mud, your future boyfriend waiting at the other side of the muck will be very happy you left something that wasn’t right for you because now the future boyfriend gets his turn to be with you.

1.) It’s not you, it’s HIM.
2.) Stop making excuses for him.
3.) Yes, it’s hard, and yes, it gets easier.
4.) Walking away from him is walking toward reclaiming your life, your happiness and your future.
5.) It’s about to get SO GOOD.

Unless, of course, it IS you, but my girls who are going thru this and have gone thru this (and you know who you are cuz all of the above are things I’ve already told you), if it IS you I’ll tell you so. Haha.

I was trying to do the Simpsonize Me thing that Erin was commenting about, but I can’t get it to work. First it rejected my .bmp cuz it wanted a .jpg. Then after I converted it, it claimed my photo was too small. And I can’t find a larger photo of my mug. So argh, forget it. Instead, I’m posting my zen.

I was walking by some night market (flea market outdoor swap-meet type thing) in Shanghai, saw this little guy at the bottom of a glass display case in a jewelry booth, did a double-take, doubled back, and cooed and awwed and pointed and giggled until Mr. W took a photo of it for me. It is THE cutest lucky cat I have ever seen to date. I’m posting it to make myself feel better tomorrow when I see this at work.

Sunday was pretty stinky. It started with my meeting my parents alone (at my mom’s request so she can have some exclusive mother-daughter time with mother-daughter talk, which sounded anxiety-attackishly vomit-inducing to me and turned out my instincts were right) for breakfast out, which opportunity my mom took to tell me, both through anecdotes allegedly from her coworkers and through directly saying it, that I must bear her grandchildren immediately or I will die alone and neglected in my old age. And she was not having it when I gave her my usual answer about how long we expect to be engaged before getting married (9 years), and said that it had better be within 2 years. She claimed she may not be alive in 9 years to attend the wedding, and I said that’s all the more reason for me to put the wedding even farther out, so that she’d HAVE to stay alive and healthy in order to attend it, and that I was now elongating the engagement period to 25 years. After that breakfast, during which my dad stayed mainly silent, the three of us went to my aunt (dad’s 2nd sister)’s house to make the engagement announcement. My dad’s 3rd sister was invited to join us there, but she turned it down claiming she was presently unpresentable and took a rain check. My cousin, the 2nd sister’s daughter, was to meet us there too, but she never showed up. After staying awhile, my parents and I left to my grandma (mom’s mom)’s house to make the same announcement. Grandma asked me how soon we expect to be married, then promptly turned around and got distracted into shuffling through some stuff on her shelf as I answered, “9 years.” She didn’t react, and I turned to my mother and said, “See? She’s all right with that.” And after that visit, my parents and I went back to our respective homes.

Turning right onto my street, I passed by a black SUV that was going the opposite way, toward me. I saw out of the corner of my eye that someone in the back passenger seat had his/her full arm stuck entirely out the window toward my car, and I thought it was a neighbor I didn’t recognize waving at me or something, until I realized he/she had his/her middle finger up flipping me the bird. WTF?! It was definitely not anyone I knew, and what the hell were these people’s problems, they don’t like Lexuses?! I hoped karma would see to it that the person got his/her arm broken off soon as I fantasized about what I would’ve done had I possessed a secret laser-beam shooting space-age weapon. I doubted my ability to take the high road and keep my keys in my purse if I ever I see a black SUV parked on my street with a Raiders football decal on the center top of the rear window.

I eventually made it back to Mr. W’s in the late afternoon and we went to a pizza joint I’d been recommending, and turned out he thought the parking lot design was awful; we were seated in the last available booth which was in the back by the restrooms and patrons constantly went in and out and every time the door opened, we could smell the bathroom air freshener; he didn’t like the glass the chianti was served in (they used a chardonnay glass so he was unable to swirl the red wine without spilling some); he thought the antipasto salad wasn’t very fresh as it wasn’t “crispy”; and he thought the pizza was too soggy in the middle. Sigh.

Sunday evening ended with our attending a funeral at 7pm. The pallbearers brought the coffin into the church followed by a procession of the deceased’s family members, and I saw a teenage boy wipe furiously at his face, trying to hide his sobs, as his sister and mother on either side of him walked with their arms around him protectively and rubbed his back in an ineffective attempt to comfort him. Watching his agony choked my chest and brought tears to my own eyes. Sigh.

Tomorrow is a new day.