cindy's world

“Your desk area is like a florist’s shop,” my judge warned me as I stepped off the elevator. I walked in to work after a nice 3 days off to see tulips galore! Pretty powder pink, fuschia and ivory tulips filling and pouring out of 2 vases. A little note saying simply that Mr. W loves me. I’m giddy.

And then I saw this email from Vanessa. So heartwarming I thought I’d post it here. Hope you all smile as big as I did today!

“Going Postal”
Our dog Abbey died Aug. 23, and the day after Abbey died, my 4 yr. old,
Meredith, was SO upset. She wanted to write a letter to God so that God
would recognize Abbey in heaven. She told me what to write, and I did.

Then she put 2 pictures of Abbey in the envelope. We addressed it to God in
Heaven, put two stamps on it (because, as she said, it could be a long way
to heaven). We put our return address on it, and I let her put it in the
drop box at the post office that afternoon. She was absolutely sure that
letter would get to heaven, & I wasn’t about to disillusion her.

So on Labor Day, we took the kids to the museum in Austin, and when we came
home, there was a package wrapped in gold on our front porch. It was
addressed to Meredith so, she took it inside and opened it.

Inside was a book, “When Your Pet Dies” by Mr. Rogers (Fred Rogers).On the
front cover was the letter we had written to God, in its envelope (opened).
On the opposite page was one of the pictures of Abbey taped on the page. On
the back page was the other picture of Abbey, and this handwritten note on
pink paper:

“Dear Meredith,
I know that you will be happy to find out that Abbey arrived safely and
soundly in heaven. Having the pictures you sent to me was a big help! I
recognized Abbey right away!
You know, Meredith, she isn’t sick anymore. Her spirit is here with me (just
like it stays in your heart) young and running and playing.
Abbey loved being your dog, you know. Since we don’t need our bodies in
Heaven, I don’t have any pockets to keep things in– so I am sending you
your beautiful letter back with the pictures–so that you will have this
little memory book to keep.

One of my angels is taking care of this for me. I hope this little book will
help. Thank you for your beautiful letter. Thank your mother for sending it.
What a wonderful mother you have. I picked her especially for you.

God blesses you every day and remember, I love you very much. By the way, I
am in heaven and everywhere there is love.

Signed,
God, and one of his special angels (who wrote this letter after God told HER
the words).”

How wonderful is that! I never knew there were angels working the post
office!

It’s kinda neat that after a year and a half of being together, I look at Mr. W in his wifebeater and low-riding jeans retiling his shower wall, and I secretly check him out as I swirl tile glue on the backs of the tiles and hand them to him, and I smile at the way his traps shift on his back when he pushes against the wall, I want to press my tongue into the indentation of his tricep muscles, and I wish he were retiling the shower walls naked. Of course, I’m nothing to look at in my wet post-shower hair, a massive mound of fabric as my body disappears inside his big t-shirt and boxers. I guess this is the epitome of being comfortable together.

Yesterday, I told him as we walked from the Thai restaurant back to the car, that I look at him sometimes and smile, thinking how cute he is and how much I love him. He said he’s like that all the time when he thinks about me, and that when he thinks about me, he thinks about how much he wants to spend the rest of his life with me.

I told him that for Valentine’s Day, I don’t want to go out, I just want to be alone with him, curled up in blankets or bathrobes, watching romantic comedies on TV, eating a banana creme pie straight out of the tin.

Of course, if I can stop coughing and feeling like my lungs are compressing on their own whim, I may feel more like getting dressy and going out, or getting undressy and staying home. Stupid virus.

I just heard him cuss. I’d better go help again. =)

Mr. W said earlier over tom yum soup and yellow curry, “I’d like to go back to Thailand and see it again, now that I’m older, instead of just as a young kid out there…”
“…whoring?” I finished the sentence for him.
“Yeah.”

Instantly Mr. W and I were in Thailand, walking down a crowded village street in a marketplace type area. Out of nowhere, an older woman (and by older I mean Mr. W’s age) grabs his arm, staring wide-eyed into his face. “It’s you! You have returned!” she says breathlessly. He looks down at her, confused. “It’s me,” she says, and clucks some name in Thai.
“Oh! Hiiii!” Mr. W says with a tone in his voice that makes my heart catch in my throat. He breaks through the reverie and pushes me forward slightly. “This is my girlfriend,” he introduces.
The woman notices me for the first time and almost as an afterthought, drops her hand where it was still clutching Mr. W’s elbow. She nods at me, not meeting me in the eyes. “I go to market — I have to buy –” she points in a general direction, and without finishing her sentence, she trails off.
Mr. W stares after her, then tells me, “I’ll be right back,” and jogs to her. I watch, standing alone and scared on the streets of Thailand, as he exchanges some words with her quickly and then returns to me.
Later on in the hotel, he would be distant, seemingly lost in thought often. And when I call him on it, he’d say, “I’m sorry, remember the girl I told you I’d met in Thailand, and we became friends?”
“You mean the bar prostitute you used to hook up with?!” I’d spat.
His face would darken in anger as he defends her. “I told you, we were also friends and we would talk. Anyway, she’s in some kind of trouble or hardship or something, we didn’t really get into it. I’ll find out more –”
“You mean you’re going to meet up with her?!” I’d say, clutching the front of my own shirt as if to keep my heart from bursting out of my chest and splintering right there on the hotel room floor.

“I’d like to actually go see how the people live, and see the museums and the culture,” Mr. W was saying, spooning up another mouthful of lemongrass soup. I gasped internally, putting my fork down. If only he knew what was playing in my head with the simple line he’d thrown out there.

At Grace’s funeral, her husband Justin showed me a notebook she’d kept at her bedside toward the end of her life. The first few pages lists things she’d still like to do, places she’d still like to see. I have a feeling she had an even bigger list before with a ton of stuff crossed off, like the Roman Baths and Stonehenge (photos of those vacations were everywhere at her funeral, in her scrapbooks that her parents laid out for the guests to peruse). Then, a few more pages into the little notebook, she had a section called “To My Girlfriends.” Writing with the great wisdom of one who has walked through fire and hell barefoot to arrive on enlightenment, she had a list of quotes and things she wanted us to remember. Things like “No man is worth your tears. And the one who is, won’t make you cry.”

I have some girlfriends going through relationship hell right now. To them, I offer what I have learned from my personal walk through hell…

When a man breaks up with you or makes the relationship so unbearable that you have to end it, no matter how much you hurt, realize that if he wavers that easily (regarding where he stands in your relationship or how important you are in his life), you’d be in a very insecure relationship and in the long term it’s better for you to find someone more emotionally stable, and ready to be with you. I know it hurts, but honestly, every man who leaves you is a blessing in disguise. Every time a man walks, he resolves the problem of a bad relationship. I swear to you, even tho it may not feel like it now, that an empty house is better than a house with bad tenants. If he stayed, the problems and heartaches will continue to tear at you. When he goes, it’ll take a little bit of time to feel okay again, but after that your life will be 1000 times better because a big problem has resolved itself in your life, a poisonous relationship or person (I’m not saying he’s a bad person, but a person can be a good friend, a good person with a good heart, but that doesn’t mean a generally “good” person isn’t toxic to YOU) has left and will soon stop contaminating your wellness.

And you still have your girlfriends. 🙂

I put in for 2 hours sick time and left work early on Friday, after receiving a frantic phone call from my mom shortly after lunch telling me my dad’s in the hospital again. He had issues at work that concerned his coworkers enough to call an ambulance which delivered him to a hospital in West Covina, where my mom was driving to when she called me. So the bday dinner for my grandmother was postponed. People at work were concerned enough to keep telling me I can go ahead home, but I wanted to finish some deskwork I was in the middle of first, after I ascertained that I got permission to take off. Mr. W slipped out of his work a little early, too, and we dropped off my car at my house and went together to meet my parents in the emergency room.

The emergency doctor was very nice. They haven’t figured out yet what’s wrong with my dad, as there was no bleeding this time, so they’re running a battery of tests. She’d told us she wants to do a heart stress test this morning, but I spoke to my mom earlier and they just did an EKG (normal), was prepping for an MRI, and there was no order for a heart stress test. The people sitting in the little glass-encased admittance booth to let people into emergency were a whole different story that I’m not going into cuz it’d just piss me off more. The emergency doctor thought my dad may have had some heart issues, altho she’s not sure as he didn’t have classic heart attack symptoms. Plus, heart problems don’t exist in my family history on either side. It’s because of his risk factors (high blood pressure, high cholesterol, borderline diabetes, high triglycerides) that she wants to double-check his heart. Hey, I just realized I have a few medical professionals that visit my blog. I should explain what happened on Friday with my dad.

My dad was trying to move or disassemble their giant 4-poster bed in the morning, and he had thrown his entire body weight into it to try to turn the posts. He felt nauseated and slightly dizzy after that. He recovered in a few minutes and went to work. All through the morning hours at work, he had waves of dizziness, light-headedness, cold sweats and nausea. He said it was the exact sensation as what he’d felt the last time (I posted about it here with the diagnosis here.) Finally, he started throwing up and couldn’t stop. My dad’s boss took my dad’s cell phone to call my mom, and my mom said she would leave work and go pick my dad up at work to take him to the hospital. Because the vomiting was so severe, however, and because of my dad’s recent history with such similar symptoms, his coworkers called 911 to get him more immediate medical attention. He threw up throughout the ambulance ride, too. My dad had finished his medication they gave him for his bleeding ulcer just earlier in the week, and my mom said he hadn’t been good about sticking to a low-sodium, non-spicy diet. (In the hospital, my dad said he’s feeling hungry, which must be a good sign that his body’s functioning properly now. I said, “Of course you’re hungry, you threw up your food all day.” He said good humoredly, “No, I didn’t have food to throw up. I threw up water. And a couple of peanuts.” So I guess he’s been taking his regular vitamins and prescriptions meds on an empty stomach, too. Except if you count the peanuts, which he seems to.)

Mr. W and I still went through with our dim sum plans with Vanessa and another friend, Lisa, and the four of us had a grand time. Vanessa kept calling to make sure I wouldn’t rather cancel lunch, and I had to keep telling her I’m fine. Everyone else is really concerned with my dad and how I’m holding up, too, which felt strange to me because I’m thinking, “I’m not the one who’s sick.” But that got me thinking — should I be more concerned? I feel no fear or anxiety internally over this, it really feels to me like he had a little upset something or other, he got proper medical care very readily, and now they’re just checking to see what needs to be repaired or what lifestyle habits he needs to modify. The fact that there was no blood or severe internal bleeding this time is a comforting thing.

I remember being 6 years old and watching my mom worry and fret when it got dark and my dad hadn’t come home from work yet. She’d pace from room to room, she’d separate the living room’s miniblinds and peer out into the street for my dad’s car. There were constant fights about how he could’ve called if he were going to be late so that she didn’t have to worry that he got into a car accident driving 50+ miles of freeway to and from downtown LA each way. (I just suddenly remembered that Cheating Ex tried to tell me my dad was late because he was having an affair. Whatever, not every man cheats.) At some point, my dad established a new routine of calling my mom really briefly from the office shortly before he left. It was a “I’m coming home now;” “Oh, you’re coming home? Okay;” “Bye!” “Bye” phone call. But before he started doing that, I’d watch my mom as she seemed sick with worry, and soon I became nauseated like at the beginning of a panic attack with tingly knees and wide, scared eyes, and I’d find myself going to the window, separating the blind with my tiny fingers, looking into the dark street, and praying, “Please, God, let my dad come home soon. There’s a car’s headlights. Please let that be my dad. Oh, that’s not him, they drove by. Please let this next headlights be my dad’s. I’ll be good if you make this next car be my dad’s coming back home,” and I’d visualize my dad’s car turning into the driveway and entering the garage with all my mental might. Now, after my big depression a couple of years ago, I react less strongly to things. I have my sensitive buttons that the last relationship created within me, but Mr. W has been systematically doing away with those and I’m generally calmer and less mentally emotional now (except for the thin line keeping me from irritation when I’m PMSing). All that makes me wonder whether being overly-dramatic, or anxiety disorders, even, are a learned behavior.

Had a nightmare about being at a joint bday party for my twin friends Dwaine and Andrae, where the Cheating Ex (an optometrist by profession) showed up uninvited with a few of his inebriated friends and tried to force an eye exam on me, saying that it’s been too long since I’ve had my eyes checked. I had to swat his hands away and basically screamed bloody murder at him for trying anything with me. Toward the end of the party, which was becoming an all-nighter thing, Dwaine tried to make a move on me, and I had to turn him down due to the fact that I’m with Mr. W, altho he apparently didn’t even care enough to show up to the dreamland party.

I’m glad real life is easier than dream life.

I heard on a local radio show on Friday that a private survey shows that more American men would rather have sex with a post-operative transvestite than with an obese woman. Then male callers called in and it was pretty well split down the middle on where they stand. The ones who say they’d rather have a one-night stand with a transgender says at least the transgenders are totally hot and they now have female parts (altho artificially created), but that obese women just visually turns them off. The ones who’d take the obese woman said that they’d be confused sexual-orientation-wise if they slept with someone born biologically male, and even tho the obese female is not as aesthetically pleasing as a hot “transie,” at least she’s a woman. And then there are the callers who say they had sexual experiences with these transies and they are hotter than most normal women, and until told, they really couldn’t tell that these women were once men. I will admit that there are transsexual women out there who are able to make themselves up to be way hotter than I can ever hope to look, even with professional makeup. Plus they have that great male metabolism. Another factor both sides of the men mentioned is how much crap their buddies would give them for having sex with one or the other. One caller said if you put an incredibly hot transie next to a fat Rosie O’Donnell and tell a man he has to pick one for a one-nighter, his pals will understand that he picks the transie once they see the two options. The radio personalities then said, “There are overweight women listening to this right now who want to kill themselves knowing that men would rather have sex with a biological male than have sex with them, cuz they’re fat.” Ick.

I have male readers, don’t I? Where do you guys stand on this? Girls? How do you feel about the survey that concludes more men would take a pretty ex-boy over an overweight you? (Mr. W feels that society today is more forgiving if he has sex with a fat girl than with a transgender.)

Okay, I’m feeling guilty. Extremely guilty. I have not gone to jujitsu this entire semester. I didn’t enroll, either, but I’m still on their mailing list and the emails keep urging attendance, saying the dojo is in danger of shutting down this semester due to lack of interest. I feel horrible, but I’m still not interested. It was something I did to expand my physical defense/combat knowledge and to take up time while I was single. Mr. W takes up most of my evenings now, and I enjoy that. I think he likes me being his little shadow when he runs his errands.

I also told a coworker that I’d take up belly dancing with her instructor this session. I think the first class is today. I was planning to go, but now Mr. W springs on me that he’s planning to buy a Prius today, so now I wanna be there.

Oh no, am I turning into The Girlfriend and not Cindy anymore? 🙁

*** Addendum ***
I just got a call from the coworker, who’s all nasal sounding at home. She’s been out sick for a week, and apologizes but she can’t make the class today. I’m off the hook! Guilt’s gone!

*** Additional Addendum ***
Mr. W just called. He’s leaving early to go to the dealership to get the car, since the salesperson he’d been negotiating with leaves at 6p. So I guess I actually could have made belly dancing. Oh well. The jurors buzzed that they have a verdict now, anyhow.

You guys ever have one of those days where you’re talking to people, and you’re talking away, and then you realize no one’s responding to you? And then you look around and ask if anyone heard you, and they don’t respond to THAT? And then you wonder if maybe you died in your sleep last night, but that you’re unaware of that so you’re still walking around in your life as you normally do but to everyone else you’re invisible. So, in the words of Charlie Brown, you’re doomed to wander the earth as a lost soul. “I suppose before I wander the earth as a lost soul, I should feed my dog.” Who’s gonna feed Dodo?! Oh no!

Someone reply to my email so I know I’m not dead!

More and more personal blogs are going “private.” That means you need to be a pre-approved reader of that blog to have access to the website. Usually the blogger would send out an invitation to show you that you’ve been added to the “in” group, and you’d have to log into their blog with an ID and password to read it.

I think bloggers didn’t expect to be so easily searchable when they first start publishing their journals and thoughts online. When blogging was a relatively new thing, we just figured that we’d give out the address to people we wouldn’t mind keeping in touch with, and we can all stay updated on each other’s lives whenever we’re near an internet connection. I’m sure it was in the backs of everyone’s minds that maybe, just maybe, the address will be given out to someone in our extended network, and perhaps once in awhile, a stranger would stumble across our blog, read a passage or two, and then leave forevermore, and what’s the harm in that? So we create and personalize our sites with information easy to remember about us; we use our real names, cities, colleges, other identifying information. And then now, Google, Yahoo!, MSN, and other search engines have become insanely powerful that a few key words bring up our blogs to anyone who knows even the most basic things about us. My buddy James, whom I’d lost contact with for years, randomly found this site by googling “cindy vicky ucla,” Vicky being a childhood friend he knew I hung out with a lot and UCLA being my alma mater. Despite not using my last name anywhere on this site, I was still that trackable.

When I started blogging, one of the appealing things was, and remain, the widespread access of the general public to what I put out there. I love feedback, and I love to entertain. I love to contribute to other people’s thoughts, even if it’s a momentary “Hmm” by them as a new angle enters their perceptions. But then I’m a literary exhibitionist. That being said, I didn’t write much that would be devastating if specific people happened upon my blog. Except, maybe, if my parents found this blog. Mom, Dad, if you’re reading this, I’m still your happy little pristine daughter who doesn’t think too much and sees no evil — especially not in the form of certain things in certain men’s pants. Ew, boys! Gag! Ick! Puke! Boys are GROSS!

I’m not sure what to think about blogs going private. I think on one level, it defeats the purpose and the fun of a published web log. But on another level, I can understand the violation of being read by someone who’s your mortal enemy, who may use information against you, or if someone from your past whom you wish to have no contact with hunts down your blog, or if an ex’s new significant other suddenly becomes obsessed with you and fixates on your blog. Not all “surprise! remember me?” comments turn out like James. It’s no one’s fault, it’s just the nature of being on a WORLD-WIDE web.

To combat the accessibility, people have created either super-anonymous, code-named blogs that aren’t readily searchable, or have created a password-protected private blog, either in addition to a public blog or in place of one. Sometimes the public blog loses color and detail as people hesitate to put possibly incriminating things online.

It all just makes me a little sad, as much as I see the necessity in going private, publicly.