cindy's world

When I returned to my desk at work on Monday morning, I pulled open a drawer to get a paperclip and saw a misplaced note covering everything in that drawer. My courtroom went through many relief clerks in the 2 weeks of my absence, so I don’t know who shifted this paper. Or maybe it shifted itself. The handwritten note reads:

I am bereft!
I was promised a Cindy-fix this morning! Oh, the agony of promises broken and expectations shattered.
But I am NOT defeated[,] I shall return, and CLAIM what is mine, opposing forces be damned!
Are you going on vacation too? (I saw [Mr. W] this morning.)
XXO
F. Tuck

Clipped to this note are some random scraps of notes and 2 poems I’d written on scratch paper 3 years ago when I was in major emotional turmoil. The second of these poems alluded to when I’d wished for death as a relief, and yet had been denied that escape. The lines read, “I have begged you thrice this year for relief/Threw up my hands and my life in defeat/And I am still here.” And it is relevant and fitting and yet ironic that these two things are joined together.

No doubt if a coworker who knows about Mr. W were to chance upon this note, he/she would’ve thought it from an admirer. Cindy having an affair? With some F. Tuck guy? No. The note is signed off with a joke nickname, short for Friar Tuck. Because Steve, the author of the note, had referred to himself as “Friar Tuck” a few times in his comments on this very blog. He had also commented a few times as “Stevie Wonder.”

Steve passed away two days before we left for China. He was a Spanish language interpreter in the building, who had become something of a personal friend. His dramatics are often funny and sardonic, his theatrical background and training coming through in his interpretations of heated family law testimonies. They were really reenactments of the parties’ bickering arguments in open court. He was also amazingly perceptive, clever, witty, and philosophical. Plus, he had good taste in men with his little crush on Mr. W.

Rumors of the situation of his death flew rampant in just a day. “Died tragically” was all the “official word” told us. We knew he took 3 days off work to mourn the death of his beloved Georgie, we knew the day he was due to return, he did not. We knew he’d passed away the night before his scheduled return. Beyond that, was speculation. His neighbors heard a gunshot, called the police, who kicked in the door and found his body, claimed one rumor. I went around saying it just doesn’t sound like Steve to have, much less use, a firearm. Another rumor claimed he’d slashed his own throat. Although this is slightly more believable than that he’d shot himself, it’s also not like Steve to leave such a mess. I pictured his immaculate home, and how traumatized he’d described himself regarding the death throes of a lobster he’d stabbed alive years ago.

We were unable to attend his funeral, which took place while we were in China. Many people from work went, and described the event as a “very classy” affair. Well, Steve would have it no other way. He was reportedly dressed in a tuxedo and white gloves in the open casket. That put both rumors to rest, although it brings up the likelihood that he’d slashed his wrists instead.

The judge’s secretary brought back a music CD that Steve’s parents had given out to funeral guests, a collection of love songs arranged and sung by Steve some time ago. I listened to it while doing some grocery shopping yesterday, and mourned the incredible talent lost. The album, entitled “Love in Our Key,” was Steve’s contribution to the gay community of slightly gender-altered love songs that he’d grown up on and sang constantly, “the songs we have loved so long and waited so long to hear in OUR key, no ‘transpositions,’ no apologies.” Such was explained in his CD jacket. Classics like Gerschwin’s “Someone to Watch Over Me” and Les Miserables‘s “I Dreamed a Dream”, sung in the male voice, about love for another man. The album is quite ingenius.

I couldn’t sleep until nearly 5 a.m. when the sun was already coloring the skies. I walked the halls earlier and imagined seeing him in the back corridor of a courtroom as I had so often seen before, seeing his beaming face as he cooes “Dahrrrrrrrling!” at me in greeting, rolling the Spanish “r”s in a way that I’ve never been able to do. I imagined him smiling at me over the top of his glasses and pointing at me up and down while humming in musical accompaniment to his approving gestures, and saying, “The outfit works for you!” The sight and sound of him are so clear in my head I can’t believe I won’t see it acted out in 3-D anymore. We were supposed to give him another ice cream commission to try out. I just wish he’d given things a chance to get better, and given himself a chance to heal.

In loving memory and commemoration:
Post #494 re watching Brokeback Mountain with him, and a dialogue in Comments with him. This one hits me a little roughly because I had told him, written right there in black and white, that I’d pull him out if he got too emotionally sunken, and I had failed to do just that. I had no idea he was going through stuff until it was too late. If only I hadn’t been so busily rushing somewhere every time I saw him recently…
Post #521 re the ice cream he made at my commission.
Post #525 in which he left nice comments.
Post #572 in which I referred to a funny thing he said. This is chilling as the joke he made was about slashing his wrists.
Post #580 in which he left nice comments.
Post #583 in which he left nice comments.
Post #584 re resolving an issue with Mr. W in which Steve left nice comments.
Post #597 in which he loaned me the movie “Iris.”
Post #599 in which I reviewed the movie “Iris.” He was disappointed in the way I didn’t enjoy Iris’s character the way he had worshipped her, altho he didn’t comment on this on the post.
Post #623 with a brief summary of Georgie’s situation.

I guess if I’m going to write about random experiences in China, I should start at the beginning. Our flight there left really late Friday night, at 1:30a.m., which was really Saturday morning. I worked a full day on Friday, and all day I had a resigned-to-die feeling. I couldn’t picture myself in China, which made me think that maybe I wouldn’t make it. “If your plane’s gonna crash, see if you can get it crash on the way back so you’d still get to experience China,” a coworker joked. I told myself that I couldn’t see myself in China because I did so little research about modern China that I had no mental picture of it to place myself in, that this was always really Mr. W’s dream trip, and not mine, and I wasn’t looking forward to it the way he was.

As plane reading material, I brought along a book Grace had sent me a long time ago. Another book I’d been meaning to read but hadn’t gotten around to. Her Post-It note on the book said, “Hi Cindy — This is a recent book I’ve read. Quite a quick read. Interesting…enjoy. –G” It is Elizabeth Berg’s What We Keep. I cracked the book open soon into the flight. In the first few pages, a ticket stub emerged. “New Orleans Saints vs San Francisco 49ers. Louisiana Superdome. Sunday, October 20, 2002, 12:00 pm.” I know she’d visited New Orleans, she must’ve cheered for her 49ers there. Her 4 years attending UC Berkeley made her a fan. I imagined her using the ticket stub as a bookmark. I was using a wallet-sized photo of myself, which I had plenty of and a stack was within grabbing distance as I left for the airport. I’d always place the photo face-down near me when I read the book; I couldn’t explain away the appearance of vanity if anyone were to question me about it.

A few more blank and dedication pages down, and in shock, I read:

China
Decorates our table
Funny how the cracks don’t
Seem to show

You’re right next to me
But I need an airplane
I can feel the distance
Getting close
— from “China,” by Tori Amos

Yes, I realize the song, which I’d never heard before, is referring to chinaware, and not China, the country. But here indeed I was on an airplane, with Mr. W next to me, flying to China, so on a literal level, it applied to me precisely. I showed it to Mr. W. “She’s telling you she knows where you are and that everything will be all right,” he said. I liked that.

Here is how the book opened, the first chapter:
“Outside the airplane window the clouds are thick and rippled, unbroken as acres of land. They are suffused with peach-c0lored, early morning sun, gilded at the edges…”
2nd paragraph:
“Whenever I see a sight like these clouds, I think maybe everyone is wrong; maybe you can walk on air. Maybe we should just try. Everything could have changed without our noticing. Laws of Physics, I mean. Why not? I want it to be true that such miracles occur…” I went on to read in amazement a narrator who is so much like me, I wondered if Grace had thought so, too. I’d told Mr. W that the book was getting really interesting, and the character, when reminiscing about her childhood, keeps having thoughts that I’d had as a child, and that it was like reading about myself if I had lived some of Jordan‘s life. (The main character is almost exactly 10 yrs older than me, so that’d put her around Jordan’s childhood era. Especially the narrator’s insistance that she would not do to her kids what she felt was wrongfully done to her and her sister by their mother.)

I was kept too busy in China to read much more of the book, but I read it on the flight back, and dove into it voraciously in Las Vegas Thursday and Friday nights, until I finished devouring it at 3:30a.m. early Saturday morning. “Wow,” I thought, closing the book. I wanted to hug my mom. I wanted to re-read the book with the new perspective I’d gained at the end. And then, the inevitable — I wanted to talk to Grace and discuss the book with her.

The Tori Amos song was right about something else that I didn’t see coming. In the last night of the trip, the petty bickerings between me and Mr. W got so bad that it made me reel a little. I didn’t sleep well that night, and woke up the next morning feeling sick and stressed, which I’d told him about. Do we just not get along? Do we just naturally rub each other the wrong way? If something small became so big the night before, do we want to deal with that forever once the young love/lust is gone? Cuz that’s what we’re left with, right? He didn’t have anything to say about it, just got up and started packing without looking at me again. I sat sadly on my bed (we had separate beds the whole trip), watching him. Silence but for the sounds of zippers, boxes closing, clotheshangers clacking against each other. You’re right next to me, but I need an airplane, I can feel the distance, getting close… Finally, he asked, “Do you need this bag for anything?”, holding out a plastic bag. “No,” I said in a small voice, “But I could use a hug.” He crossed over the room and we held each other, my face smushed into his chest. He held my head to him with one hand, and said, “Whatever it is you’re feeling right now, I love you. You know that. And I think we can get through it.” I couldn’t talk as tears drained out of my eyes in surges. He took my silence as a negative thing and said, “You don’t think we can, huh?” I sniffled a little bit, trying to get myself under control, and then I pulled away, said, “I feel better now,” wiped my face, and got packed. Just like that, the clouds were gone. I didn’t feel alone anymore. He didn’t need an airplane to bridge our distance, only to get back home.

You find out things when you leave your place of work at 8pm. I, for example, almost had a heart attack when I exited the elevator at the ground floor, turned into the lobby toward the front glass doors, and saw that the doors were chained closed with handcuffs. When did they start doing that?! Luckily, the side door was unchained so I was able to escape into the cool night air. Ah, night. You haven’t greeted me upon my daily prisonbreak for a long time.

Driving home past 8p, I felt a twinge of hunger. My mind’s eye explored my empty refrigerator. Maybe I just shouldn’t eat. But not eating would lower my metabolism, so I should get something light. Grabbing my cell phone, I called James. “You should definitely eat,” he advised. I wailed something about eating alone. So he agreed to meet me for a bite. We grabbed a quick sushi at nearby Miyako Sushi & Sashimi, a place he’d been harassing me about not taking him to when Vanessa and I ate there. This marks my 3rd straight night of eating raw fish, which I’m gonna miss when I’m in China. Eating cooked fish. Yech.

Dinner conversation led to my expressing a grave concern that had occurred to me earlier this evening, while I finished packing and doing laundry. What if my plane crashes, and my parents are forced to tearfully clear out my house? The task is difficult enough without them finding my porn and various, uh, physical pleasure paraphernalia. None of which I purchased, of course; they were from people who bought them as (gag) gifts for me and from others who just sorta left stuff at my house. There was only one obvious solution to this dilemma at this point. I begged James to take my schtuff for safekeeping until I got back safe and sound. He was hesitant at first, and I could see his brain was reeling with the possibilities of being in possession of something that he may have to explain to someone else. I told him he could just keep the collection in his trunk and never take it out, and even if someone DID happen upon it, he could tell them the truth. And if I die, he can either keep it or dump it, I don’t care.

Being a good friend, he reluctantly agreed. I double-bagged the schtuff in an opaque red bag. As I handed it to him and he started to leave my house, he said, “You better come back alive.” That’s a good friend, man. I wonder if he’ll ever be curious enough to look in the bag. Maybe that’s a TMI line even James won’t cross.

I have these friends with an uncanny sense for what I need, even if I hadn’t been in contact with them. My friend Erin sent this to me a little earlier today, altho I didn’t tell her I’d been cranky lately, or that today was a really awful work day. Now I’m posting it for those of you who may need the same uplifting perspective:

Hey Cindy!

A friend just fowarded this to me. You seemed like you needed a pick me up so here it is:

*Never apologize for pursuing what makes you happy. Even if you need to quit your job, or move across country, always do what you really want.
*Never apologize for giving your best in a relationship that just didn’t work out.
*Never apologize for being successful. Only haters want to keep you at their level.
*Never apologize for crying. Wear waterproof mascara and express yourself.
*Never apologize for being frugal. Just because you save your money instead of blowing it on the latest fashion emergency doesn’t mean you’re cheap.
*Never apologize for being a single mom. Babies are a blessing.
*Never apologize for treating yourself to something special. Sometimes you have to show yourself some appreciation.
*Never apologize for leaving an abusive relationship. Your safety should always be a priority.
*Never apologize for keeping the ring even if wedding bells won’t chime.
*Never apologize for setting high standards in a relationship. You know what you can tolerate and what simply gets on your nerves.
*Never apologize for saying NO.
*Never apologize to your new friends about old friends. There’s a reason she’s been your girl from day one.
*Never apologize for ordering dessert. Or more than one dessert.
*Never apologize for your taste in clothes. It’s your style.
*Never apologize for changing your mind
*Never apologize for being you!
“ALWAYS KEEP YOUR HEAD UP!!!”

I didn’t crawl out of bed this morning until restlessness just about killed me. When I saw the clock, I knew why. It was past 11a. Holy crap! I baked an Italian sausage breakfast casserole (ingredients: 4 slices wheat bread, 4 de-skinned Italian sausages which I sauteed without oil and drained the grease from, 5 eggs, 1 cup milk, salt and pepper, 1/3 cup mixed grated cheeses) for Mr. W, his daughter and me, and since then, haven’t done much but watch TV. I’ve discovered that if I watch a jewelry shopping channel waiting for a gorgeous natural Alexandrite ring to come up for sale, I end up munching on raw almonds, red potato chips, grapefruit, dark chocolate truffles (2), apple. Not good. But if I watch a reality show marathon of The Next Pussycat Doll and see 8 young beautiful girls work their asses off on looking hot and getting the intense choreography in order to keep from elimination, all I put in my mouth is water. And I feel just fat and ugly enough when I look at my still-pajama-clad makeup-less form in the mirror, to not put anything else down the piehole. What is wrong with me? Why am I binging like I’m PMSing? I’ve found myself these couple of days to also be short-tempered and low in tolerance just like I’m PMSing. Maybe it’s not PMS. Maybe I’m just an irrate bitch. Hmm. That’s a new perspective. Okay, fine, it’s not new.

I found out this morning that I was tagged by Flat Coke & Flies for this short meme, asking me to list 5 reasons why I blog. Initially, I thought, “Shoot, I don’t have 5 reasons.” And then I remembered that in my first blog post, a Preamble posted on June 3, 2005, I had listed 2 reasons, so I only need 3 more! Yay!

List 5 reasons why you blog:
1.) “If nothing else, the record created on here will show me whether my dark days are truly outnumbered by my happy days (a goal I’m working toward), or”…
2.) …”serve as a tool for me to seek and display the silver sunlit lining around the ominous cumulonimbus clouds.”
3.) To keep exercising those writing brain muscles so that my major doesn’t totally go to waste, and to hopefully stay warmed up in case I DO get up and write that book some day.
4.) To vent when I feel about to explode, and reach 50 people at one time instead of calling each friend and venting 50 times about the same thing. (Just kidding, I don’t really do that. Just 3 or 4 times. 😉 )
5.) Cuz I’m running out of storage space for all my diaries.

I’m going to include a bonus 6th reason, because I know I cheated a little on the first 2 answers:
6.) Cuz I have a secret guilty hope that I’ll really be someone someday and after my death, people (like fans of my writing or my future generations) would be curious about who I was, and this’ll give them something to uncover.

Now I get to tag 5 people in return, so that they have to do this meme, too. I see Flat Coke has already taken Jordan and Vanessa, so…
1.) college roommie Diana
2.) Mel
3.) Wilco
4.) TurboTiger James
5.) Jade
Okay, guys, I just gave you a free blog topic. Have at it. 🙂

My court reporter’s daughter had applied for some college scholarships. One of them almost made me cry.

A little over a year ago last January, a Jeep or SUV type vehicle was taking a turn off a freeway in Long Beach too quickly, and skidded out the side of the circular ramp, broke through the chain-link fence, rolled over a few times on its way down the slope, and landed top-down at the bottom of a cement-lined ravine. It had been raining heavily those weeks, and the ravine was filled with water. Only the tires of the car were above the water line. Witnesses rushed down to the overturned car and struggled to get the doors or windows open, but were unable to; the doors were jammed. By the time the police and medical team had gotten there and were able to get the driver out, she was floating in the backseat of the flooded car, unconscious. Resuscitation efforts on the gurney were ineffective, and the sixteen year old girl passed away. They say she may have been trying to get out of the vehicle herself; her seat belt was undone and she was no longer in the driver’s side. Within an hour of seeing this on the news, my court reporter’s daughter got a call that this was her friend. They went to the same high school, and used to spend the night at each others’ houses when they were younger.

The mother of the deceased girl is a court reporter in Long Beach, and the girl was the only child. The girl’s father, a district attorney, had passed away suddenly (heart attack or something like that) only a couple of years prior, and now the mother was attending her daughter’s funeral so quickly after having to attend her husband’s. My court reporter was at the girl’s funeral, as with some attorneys from the building. They said it was the saddest funeral they had ever attended, and among the mourners were many young people, friends of the daughter’s.

The girl’s parents had set up a college fund for the girl, and when the girl passed away, the mother put the money in a commemorative scholarship as a memorial to her daughter. I can’t imagine what making that decision was like; knowing that the money meant to go to your only child would never be used, but deciding instead to put it toward furthering some other child’s college dreams; to help with some good in the world instead of being bitter that your child’s future had evaporated senselessly overnight whereas other people’s children got to go on to bigger and better things.

There really is so much sadness, and it’s inspiring to see good things grow out of acidic soil.

This is another TMI post. I’d suggest the men to not click on the “more.”
(more…)

I had knowledge that some weeks ago, Mr. W had helped my good friend Vanessa out because she had broken up with her long-time guy and was therefore sexually unfulfilled. And by “help out,” I mean he slept with her, kind of as a favor. And I was aware of it, and I was okay with it, it was nice of him. And then yesterday, the three of us went to the gym. Vanessa wasn’t able to drive, and Mr. W and I drove separately, so she drove back with him to his house where we were gonna meet up, drop a car off and go get a bite to eat. As Mr. W was exiting the house to go to the car, and Vanessa and I were picking up our purse and shoes and about to follow, Vanessa mentioned, tossing a used napkin or something in front of me into a trash can, that they had taken a little longer than me to get to the house from the gym earlier because they had a quickie in the gym parking lot before they left. I asked her, “I thought you were on your period.” She said no, and then I remembered that she’d recently told me that her period strangely lasted only a day and a half this time. So she was no longer on her period. “Oh, okay,” I said, and waited for Mr. W to leave the house completely. As soon as he did, I said discreetly to Vanessa, “Actually, I’m a little hurt about this one. He and I hadn’t had sex for 3 days, and then he goes to YOU for a quickie.”
She looked surprised. “He told me it was 5 days –”
I said, “Fine, maybe it WAS 5, but that’s even more of the point; that he hadn’t slept with me for that long and he goes to you instead of me.” And then, suddenly it hit me. “Wait. You know, I’m not okay with any of this at all! Nobody told me it was going to happen again or made sure it was okay with me this 2nd time! In fact, no one checked with me before the first time! I was just INFORMED after the fact that it happened!” And then I questioned my own logic. WHY had I been okay with this before?! “I just loved you guys too much to make a big deal out of it, but now I feel — I think he cheated on me!”
Vanessa gasped. “Oh my gosh! I think you’re right!” Suddenly she looked indignant, like she was angry on my behalf.
The two of us went outside, where Mr. W was at his car. Vanessa got to him first and said something I couldn’t hear to him, but it sounded kind of angry, and she pointed behind her to me. I was already in a rage. “You CHEATED on me!” I yelled at him, walking toward the car.
Mr. W walked forward toward Vanessa. I thought he was just going to talk to her or take her to eat as planned and ignore me, but he walked past her and walked toward me. I couldn’t help but notice, however, when he passed her, he gave her a smile and a look as if to say, “Cindy’s going crazy for no reason again.” Another two steps toward me, and I held out my hand as if to say STOP. I stepped backwards, away from him, maintaining a distance of about 15-20 feet.
“You SLEPT with her, TWICE, and you just TOLD me about it aftewards! I wasn’t asked if that was okay!”
“But you knew about it,” he said, almost laughing at me as if I was making a big deal out of something stupid. He took a few steps toward me again and I quickly put up my hand. STOP. I took the same steps backwards, back toward the house, away from him.
“You SLEPT with one of my closest friends! That’s NOT right! Normal people don’t sleep with their friends! Did you sleep with [his female best friend]?” He cocked his head to one side. “Did you sleep with [male best friend]?” I expected those answers to be no, I was just making a point.
He took a few steps in my direction again. “Well, I didn’t sleep with [male best friend],” he said, still smiling and shrugging like this was not a big deal.
“Wait. What are you saying, you slept with [female best friend]?!”
“Yeah, I slept with her.”
“WHAAAT?!” This was all the more absurd because I know that female best friend is not romantically interested in men, and she has a live-in long-term relationship. Suddenly I understood that he had slept with her to satisfy her curiosity about men at some point. I shook my head at him in disgust. This was just too much. Given all the things I had been forced to accept as part of his sexual past that I am not generally okay with, and now all THIS.
I turned and ran back into the house. I could hear him running behind me. I ran into the bedroom and closed and locked the door, then threw myself against it on the ground, sobbing. The sound of my wails bounced hollowly off the walls of the room.
Mr. W suddenly came in, and I realized I hadn’t locked the side door to the bedroom. Idiot. But there was no fixing this, there was no going back. I was just aware of how absolutely hurt I felt, and I wished so badly that none of this had ever happened, that time could turn back to before his indiscretions and instead of going on the skewed path, he would’ve chosen the correct things to do, and we could be happy together again. How much I wished for that.

Mr. W put his hand on my shoulder. “Cindy, wake up. Wake up, you’re having a nightmare. It’s okay, I’m here.” I woke up in mid-whimper. The nausea was still at my chest.
“You cheated on me! Twice! …With VANESSA!”
“Oh gawd, you and your dreams,” he smiled and hugged me.
“And you slept with [female best friend]!” This time he laughed. So I told him the dream in detail, ending with how he admitted to sleeping with his female best friend. He remarked how improbable that’d be due to her sexual orientation, and I said that it was because she’d been curious what being with a man is like so he did that to help out. “It’s like you were this sexual humanitarian or something!” I can’t remember the actual term I used for the life of me. But it means something like sexual assistant, sexual facilitator, someone who goes around having sex to “help” people. Whatever the term was that I used, he repeated it and thought it was hilarious.

I didn’t find it funny at all, and was unable to fall asleep after that. Ugh.

Oh, a note. After awakening, I did feel like I got my wish in the dream, cuz time went back to when we were good and he had committed no indiscretions. The 2nd thing that struck me was remembering how helpless and sad and hurt I felt while I was crying in the dream. Where was the anger? In real life I’d imagine I’d just stand up and walk away from him forever, knowing that my life would be fine without him.

*beep* “Hi, guys. This is [Mr. W]. Lily called Cindy and said that our passports and visas are ready to be picked up, and she wants to know if you want her to pick up your passports and as well.”

In the above sentence, who does “she” refer to? Grammatically, the pronoun (“she”) would refer back to the subject (Lily), so doesn’t it sound like Lily called me to tell me that our passports/visas are ready to be picked up and Lily asked if I wanted to pick up passports/visas for Mr. W’s friends, as well? When I heard Mr. W leave this message on his friends’ answering machine, I told him that it sounded convoluted as to who was asking whom to pick up the passports because all he said was “she.” The remainder of the message, he told them to call him back and let him know so he could tell “her” (meaning me). This led to a dispute because Mr. W insisted that he’d made a point to say my name so that they would know that it was me who was offering, not that our travel agent, Lily, was forcing me to take other people’s personal documents into my own hands. I told him that he’d only said “she” and he said that because he’d said my name, then the “she” obviously meant me. I said it did not, and then he claimed that the message he left was “Lily called us and said our passports and visas are ready to be picked up. And Cindy called, and asked me to call you guys to see if you want Cindy to pick up your passports as well.” I KNOW he didn’t say THAT. Cuz as soon as he said “she” in the first version I had typed up there, I winced. It’s the editor and writer (and copywriter) in me.

And then Mr. W characterized this dispute as a “fight”, and complained that we “fight every day” about stuff like this. I asked for other examples. He brought up the day before while we were having dinner with Vanessa, and the day before that when he and I were watching Ally McBeal.
The dinner dispute was when Vanessa and I were talking about weight loss and dieting, and Mr. W interjected, “I’m coming back at like 210, 215 now.” Both she and I thought he was saying he’d gained 20, 25 lbs recently, and then I realized that he meant he’s coming back from the GYM at his lunchtime workouts at 2:10p, 2:15p now instead of the regular time when lunch is over. So I explained that to her and he was lost and I told him that Vanessa and I were on the same page, confirmed that with Vanessa, and that was the end of that. He called that a “fight”? The Ally McBeal thing was because we thought we may have been viewing the 4 episodes in the wrong order on the DVD, since the episode names weren’t displayed in a list, they were displayed in a block of 4, so we didn’t know whether we were supposed to go from the left top episode to the right, or straight down. We picked one, and there was a scene where Ally was making reference to all the strange guys who’d asked her out that week and she talked about some fat guy or strange event that we hadn’t seen in a prior episode, so Mr. W said something to the effect of, “See? We did skip something cuz we never saw that happen.” There was another place where he made a similar comment. But later, he denied ever even thinking that we may have viewed the episodes in the wrong order or that we may have skipped an episode, which is still confusing to me, but we went back and forth with me saying, “But you mentioned it TWICE!”. But anyway, his dramatic overcharacterization of those 2 disputes as “daily fighting” offended me yesterday evening and I’ve been irritated ever since.

I know fights, I’ve been in fights. I’ve fought when some sleezeball treated me like crap and told me it was my problem if I didn’t like it. I’ve fought when I was cheated on and lied to. I’ve fought when someone twisted something my mother said and published it to brag to his deluded friends. But I’d never fought physically or thrown things. And I know of Mr. W’s past fights with women he said had “volatile tempers”, who cheated on him, who screwed him over, who had psycho fits over stupid things like going thru his personal stuff and finding something he owned that they didn’t like. Women who had neighbors call the police on them for screaming and cussing and physically fighting with their men on the streets outside their homes. And he wants to lump ME into dramatics like that?! You’d think he’d know the difference.

I’m actually dizzy and lightheaded right now, and I’m not sure if it’s because I’m so irritated about all this, or because I couldn’t sleep all night from being bothered by this. Maybe I’m overindulging in his fatalistic, dramatic outlooks, and maybe it’s cuz I’m PMSing. But I hate, hate being wronged and I feel wronged often in this relationship. Who cares if his friends misunderstood his message? They could probably pick up the meaning through context if they had half a brain cell. I was just pointing out that it sounded convoluted, it’s not a stupid fight. (When I went to pick up the passports, by the way, travel agent Lily mentioned that the “friends” had picked up their passports that morning already, so now the friends can feel bad when they hear the message that we offered and they didn’t.)