cindy's world

Call me lame, but I love this photo. I think what I love about it is how surprisingly normal my thighs look. This was taken by Mr. W last Sunday. My jujitsu class all met up at Huntington Beach to take group dojo photos. We hung out and ate some food in street/beach clothes, and then changed to our gis for the photo shoot. I changed behind the open car door to shield me from the class, but apparently Mr. W had made his way to the other side of the parking lot for an unobstructed view. (And that’s a swimsuit, you pervies.)

I think a lot of us (mostly us women folk) have specific things we look for in a photo of ourselves, and we judge whether the photo is “good” based on these predefined points. Someone self-conscious about crooked teeth, for example, may examine a photo nervously to make sure no teeth show through the smile. For me on body shots, I dread the lower abdominal pooch, fat rolls, thick upper thighs, fat upper arms (that part behind your arm that flaps when you wave too rapidly, or looks extra big when you’re at a diagonal angle with your arm too close against your body). There are many specific things I look for on facial shots, too, which I won’t disclose because listing those flaws is just too embarrassing. Men, however, roll their eyes at these things. “What do you mean it’s a bad picture?! You look fine! It looks how you normally look!” And then I think, “I normally look like I have no jaw definition due to a double chin?!”

We see a photo of ourselves. We silently run through our personal checklist of flaws. We evaluate said photo against the list. A “good” photo is one in which the image is better than how we see ourselves in our heads. I think it’s a girl thing.

I was in a general state of poopedness yesterday, immediately upon waking. I didn’t work out at lunch because I’d planned to go to jujitsu after work. That didn’t happen. I ate dinner after work, then fell asleep for almost 6 hours. I laid there awhile and realized I was wide awake and feeling guilty for not having exercised, so I changed and went to the gym. I hit the treadmill at a few minutes past midnight and did 70 minutes of cardio between that and the elliptical trainer. It was my first run since the half-marathon, and I didn’t want to push my healing toes. I got home about 1:30 in the morning and took a shower.

That was a very bachelorette night, very collegiate days, to miss a scheduled class but go to the gym so late. I hadn’t done that in awhile, but as I stood in the shower, I thought about how much I enjoyed that I could do that. I never thought I would be 30 and be this, uh, timeline irresponsible, but then again, I’d always thought I’d be married with kids at 30. For a mom to sneak out and go to the gym in the wee hours of the evening is probably rare. Speaking of this, who does that? Cuz there were more than just a few other people at the gym the same time I was. Some seemed older than me (mostly men), whereas others looked about my age or a bit younger. Are these all unmarried people with no kids, too? Are these college students who don’t sleep at night but don’t get up till noon, like I and my friends were? Are we at the verge of a different time/generation, in which it’s more common to be single longer (i.e. not married right out of high school or college), or divorced, or childless/custody-less, and we therefore have the luxury of living somewhat irresponsibly such as doing our own thing at night instead of sleeping and preparing for work the next day? Is this even a “luxury?” Maybe it’s sour grapes for the fact that we have not achieved the standard dream of home/spouse/2.5 kids/white-picket-fence/dog in the yard…yet.

I started the day by hopping in the shower. While I was toweling off my hair, I heard a little “Wah!” coming from outside my bathroom door, which wasn’t pulled all the way closed. A tapping sound followed, the door opened a tiny crack, and then a white paw appeared. Little black paw pads curled around the edge of the door, the furry white back of the paw pulled the door open to a wider crack, and then a furry black and white head, with bright golden round eyes, appeared. “Wow!” Dodo said, running in. “Hi! Hi my little fuzzy wuzzy cootsie wootsie boy! My little black worm! You’re just a big fuzzy black caterpillar, aren’t you? Look at you, you’re so cute! You’re so cute!” I cooed, running my fingers through his furry black body as his tail curled lovingly around my calf. What a way to start a day.

On the drive to work, I saw another Lexus IS 350 (black) pull up behind me. The two of us tag-teamed around other slow vehicles all the way until I had to pull off the main street to work. That was fun.

I thought as I walked from the parking structure to the building, how is it that one of the guys at work who is almost exactly a year older than me to the day, has such a different life? He really admires my car, but can’t afford it for himself. He’s got some kids (different moms, also been thru divorce and is currently remarried) and he has spousal support and child support to pay, so sure, his expenses are higher. It’s strange to think of 2 people about the same age on such different tracks of life. I think the same thing when I see a 28-year-old defendant before us in court facing 25 years in prison. How did I end up in my position with this car? Because, I concluded, I was unfortunate enough to have been screwed over by men in my earlier years. They screwed me over, so we didn’t get married, and now, my reward is that I can afford this car. I guess everything does balance out. “Sorry your exes are jerks. Here’s a Lexus.” “Thanks!”

*Disclaimer: I’m not saying ALL the men I dated were jerks, but the jerks know who they are.

A commonly used phrase in relationships is “pick your battles.” Sometimes fighting is productive; it brings to the table issues that can be worked on and resolved. Not all things are worth a fight, but deciding what’s “worth” it is subjective.

When I was less emotionally experienced, i.e. on my first and second boyfriends, everything seemed worth a fight. If something was thoughtless or offensive, I wasn’t gonna let him get away with it. It led to a lot of arguing and bruised egos, as the other party felt like I was picking on him or unreasonable. Another thing feeding the feeling that everything’s potentially a devastingly big deal is insecurity. Young love is often insecure, because this new feeling of love and relationship is so great that you’re suddenly afraid of losing it, and you’re convinced there will never be a guy who could be as funny, as loving, as affectionate, as clever, or have as much in common with you. (Now I look back and think, HAHA!) So anything that isn’t smooth sailing, you want to stomp out instantly. You’re also more sensitive to being hurt because no one else was ever in the position of being able to hurt you so exquisitely. People associate this state of mind with youth, but I don’t think it’s limited to youth as much as inexperience. People have come to me with stories of 30-somethings going through the kind of anguish and arguments as teenagers, because these 30-somethings are on their first relationship.

I’m not saying this is true across the board and no exceptions exist. There are older people who are always oversensitive and throw immature tantrums when their high demands aren’t met. There are younger people who have rarely been oversensitive even in early relationships. My childhood friend Sandy is my age, and she’s dated a lot more people than me, but even in high school, I was never surprised at the battles she chose to fight. In fact, I was often surprised at the battles she didn’t choose. She’s the person I call when I find myself uncontrollably angry at something that my brain is telling me shouldn’t be that big a deal. I call her and ask to borrow her scale, and to inquire if I’m overreacting. When she tells me I’m not, that’s when the guy’s really in trouble. Mr. W’s teenage daughter is another one that continues to astound me with her ability to forgive and move forward with someone, altho with her I’m not sure that she isn’t caught up in the “I have to make my first love work” mentality.

I read somewhere, or maybe saw on a show, that people fight when they feel there’s something to fight for. That when people stop fighting, it’s because they’ve given up on saving the relationship. This is of course referring to productive fighting (“I feel like when your mother criticizes me, you start accusing me of the same things instead of defending me. If you truly have a problem with these things, can you come to me first, and if you don’t have a problem, please don’t adopt your mother’s problems with me as your own.”), not insulting self-esteem killing fights where someone’s just picking on the other person (“You lazy fat good-for-nothing slob, you’re lucky no hot girls were at the bar or I would’ve cheated on you tonight.”). Sometimes a fight isn’t as much a fight as a struggle to hammer out some common ground for the relationship.

I think a good thing to do, which I had to learn the hard way, is to decide whether something is worth a fight before even stepping in the vinicity of the issue. Sometimes things happen to you that you can’t control and suddenly, you find yourself in a conflict. Like your drunk boyfriend walks in the door and throws a tantrum for your not knowingw here his favorite shirt is. But there are other fights that happen because we don’t leave well enough alone. My classic example is of a girl asking, “Do I look fat in this dress?” If he says yes, she’d be mad, and if he says no, she probably wouldn’t believe him. And when it comes down to it, is the answer to this question so vital to the relationship that it’s worth the fight, especially if he’s still with her because he loves and is attracted to her? This is why I have a huge list of TMI no-nos. I don’t ask if I’m the best lover, best girlfriend, favorite girlfriend, smartest person he knows, funniest person he knows, prettiest person he’s dated. I don’t ask where the most unusual place he had sex was, what his favorite sex act is, what his most romantic date entailed, where his favorite date restaurant is. I don’t want to see his old gifts from other women, old love letters and cards, old photos (he can have them as keepsakes, I sure do, but don’t show me). I don’t want to know, it doesn’t affect our relationship for me to know the details, and in knowing the details, it only gives me visuals that make me bitter, competitive and insecure.

I look at myself sometimes and wonder whether I’m enlightened or jaded. I wonder whether I’m appreciating the right things, and then whether I’m aware enough of the good things to appreciate them. Sometimes when something positive about someone dawns on me I call the person and acknowledge the positive trait. (Today it was that despite knowing I’m not a baseball fan, when he wanted to go to a game, he bought 2 tickets and offered one to me, with the out that if I really don’t want to go, the extra ticket can go to his son. He makes me feel included, never presuming that just because an activity isn’t my usual routine that he’ll leave me out.)

This… *waving at this long post Vanna White style* …this is what happens when I spend 45 minutes chatting with Vanessa after belly dancing.

I secretly feel bad that my life has stabilized to the point that there is no drama to entertain people with on this blog. But I don’t feel bad enough to hope for drama just to keep my readership up. I also secretly feel bad that what little drama I deal with can’t be posted on here for privacy reasons regarding the people I would be bitching about. But that just gives my friends a reason to call me and see what’s new that I can’t write about on this very open, very public, surprisingly searchable site. I don’t like censorship. I also secretly wish people out there know enough “inside” stuff to get how boundary-flirtatious some of these posts truly are, but I’m not gonna spell things out. They just have to read between the lines or be on the inside path.

As a single-digit-age kid, I loved flipping through those thick Best department store color catalogs. Those things were like phone books! Best doesn’t exist anymore, but in the 80s it was a mega department store that had unbelievable inventories of jewelry, household appliances, bedding, knick-knacks, tools, and my favorite: toys!! When I was 6, I would turn to the jewelry section and “randomly” put initials by rings and such to designate a “random,” “fair” divi-ing up of loot between me and my 2 favorite playmates, my cousins Diana and Jennifer. And then I’d show them the book. And they’d realize that altho the assignments seemed random, I appeared to always have the prettiest rings designated to me. “No fair!” my cousin Diana had once said, throwing the book into the air. I had to later ask my mom what “no fair” meant. Hey, I was 6 and didn’t speak the language, okay? But darn it, at ages 7 and 4, my cousins were on to me and my youthful double-edged stealth.

My point is, at that age, I’d flip right by the bedding and appliance “grownup” sections in a catalog, and I’d wonder, “Who looks at this?! It’s so boring!” And here I am, blogging about INSURANCE. My inner child is screaming and rocking.

I’ve been having relationship nightmares these past couple of nights. Today’s horoscope reads:

On one hand you may be wide open to the current circumstances of your life. On the other hand, you are cautious about what you let into your heart. Make decisions now that are based on your willingness to love rather than on the analytical fear that creeps in when you don’t know what will happen. Find time for quiet reflection and trust your intuition, no matter what distractions arise.

Nowhere in the above advice does it tell me to go ahead and help myself to a panic attack, so I guess I won’t.

I don’t know why I bought an annual pass to Disneyland because I don’t like kids. Well, that’s not totally true across the board. I dislike unruly undisciplined kids running amock within touching distance of me. Hence, Disneyland. I dislike it so much that Mr. W and I got into a fight about it. Some stupid kid kicking the back of my seat through the entirety of the Aladdin Show at California Adventure put me in a pissy mood, and when we met up with Vicky and her boyfriend for fireworks, Mr. W brought up that I didn’t even enjoy the show because of some kid. So I explained to them that a stupid boy was kicking the back of my seat and I’d turned around and looked pointedly at his feet and his dad didn’t do a darn thing about it. And then Mr. W announced to me, “You’re too uptight. You need to calm down and relax.” It took everything I had not to turn around and pop him.

Here’s another example of bad parenting that night. The Hyperion Theatre at California Adventure seats 2000 people in 3 different levels much like a classy broadway show setup, like where they hold the Academy Awards. Before the Aladdin show began, 2 boys, about ages 11 and 8, walked to the front of the theatre right in front of the stage, accompanied by 2 Disneyland theatre ushers/employees. “Attention, everyone,” the employees yelled. “Did anyone lose these two kids?” The theatre quieted down as 4000+ eyes stared. The time ticked by. The boys looked around them. “Does anyone know these two kids?” the employees yelled again. People in the audience started pointing and whispering. Among the whispers around me I heard someone say how sad it was that no one was going up to claim the kids. As nothing happened, the audience started back in on their own conversations. “I don’t think the parents are in here, the kids probably ran in ahead,” I said. Someone else said, “How do you lose 2 kids for this long and not know it?” The ushers in the audience called everyone’s attention to look at the boys and see if it’s their kids. Finally, finally, a large Hispanic woman made her way up to the stage and claimed her kids. The 2000 people actually broke out in applause. “This is gonna be a story for show n’ tell when they get back to school,” I said. An older white man to my right said, “She probably didn’t know she lost those 2 kids cuz she’s got 8 more; she didn’t realize they were missing.”

The kid who was kicking my seat was one of 5 people in a Hispanic family. I’d wondered if they’d heard the man’s comments. But I quickly stopped caring when the boy was so absolutely annoying and rude and his parents didn’t do anything about it. I first saw that family when we were let into the gate for the mezzanine level seating. We were waiting in line for about 15, 20 minutes when the usher outside the theatre undid the chain and the first people in the mezzanine line started in. This family ran for the opening from the side, kid holding mom’s hand holding kid’s hand holding dad’s hand holding kid’s hand, completely skipping the line. The usher instantly put out his arm and stopped them, and made dad, mom and 3 kids turn around and go to the end of our line. I suppose if you’re gonna lead your kids to blatantly cut in line, you wouldn’t stop them from kicking the back of someone’s chair, either, even if the person turned around twice to look deliberately at your kid’s feet on the back of her seat.

I hung out with Dwaine earlier today and he said that my dislike for kids isn’t so much a dislike for kids, as much as a dislike for obnoxious bratty misbehaved children, and he theorized that it’s because we were raised to be well-behaved in public and not embarrass our parents. That was a good point, I said thoughtfully, cuz I know that if I did what the kids did, at that point I’d be expecting to get my ass whooped by my mom. But these parents just look the other way when their kids run ahead in line and climb on the ropes and hit other patrons with the ropes that they’re playing with and then kick my leg when they clamber around climbing the walls in line. Grrrr. I made a comment today when Dwaine was admiring my new car’s backup camera on the navigation screen. “It’s so you can see if some kid’s behind you when you’re backing up, so you can WATCH him get crushed. It’s more fun that way.”

I did more gut spilling last nite. Didn’t feel much better. Didn’t sleep well until the early morning hours, when I dreamt I was arrested in Mexico for making a left turn on a red light, and the jail cafeteria lady (who was an older Asian) offered me grilled talapia for dinner in jail.
***
Said to him this morning in a goodbye hug, “Don’t hate me because I’m crazy.”
Him: (laughing) I don’t hate you! I love you because you’re crazy.
Me: I’m not crazy, you jackass!!
***
Vicky told me last night to not give up my dreams just because of one bad weekend. So I’m probably not going to buy the car. Unless I just really, really want it after 3 weeks. She also thinks the nagging sinking nausea will pass and I’m just going through something because of environmental factors and/or recent developments around me. If she’s right it’d make things easier. At least temporarily.
***
I have a bad stress habit of picking on my heels. I was so stressed that last night I even picked my heels in my dream.
***
I’m wearing more makeup than normal today. It’s what I do when I’m forcing myself to feel better. I have to feel better today, because today is day 1 of our 4-defendant, dual jury month-long murder trial. We’re picking the “red” panel of jurors today for 2 of the 4 defendants, and I have to orient 91 jurors soon. Monday we’re picking the “blue” panel of jurors for the other 2 defendants out of a different 90 jurors, and after that jury selection will be a juggling act between the 2 panels. But that’s nothing compared to keeping the exhibits straight, i.e. keeping the evidence that only goes to 1 panel separate from the other panel, tracking which exhibits can be viewed by both panels. So anyway, this morning the perfect song was playing on KIIS FM, Ryan Seacrest’s morning show:

from “Sexy Back”
Justin Timberlake

[Verse 1]
I’m bringing sexy back (yeah)
Them other boys don’t know how to act (yeah)
I think you’re special what’s behind your back (yeah)
So turn around and I’ll pick up the slack. (yeah)

The Cancer horoscope for today reads:

“Your mental faculties continue to be razor sharp now. You have absorbed everything with precision and have successfully withheld your feelings about what’s happening. Today you must say what’s on your mind, as terrifying as that sounds. Don’t let an opportunity slip by without doing something about it. Things won’t improve until you stir up the waters.

Thursday, August 10, 2006”

I saw it after returning from a lunch break during which I’d let spill the emotional driving mechanism behind my sudden impulse for a non-essential luxury car purchase this past weekend. At least getting this horoscope kinda makes me feel like I’d done the right thing in retching my wretched guts out at lunch.

The amazing part is, I don’t feel too miserable for having done that.

The human mind, with all its physical nerves, hormones and neurotransmitters, is quite an amazing thing. With all its intricate, miraculous abilities, it is remarkably programmable, even to a fault. I tend to personify the heart and the mind as two separate entities, but they both lead back to the same cranial control center. It is that detail under which I find myself currently struggling.

I had a gut reflexive emotional response to something that my intellect acknowledges is not worth that level of response. I sadly confessed to my court reporter this morning that I think I’m wired wrong now, after my last relationship. Remember the days when your brain would see a problem, and then you’d have an emotional response (anger, fear, whatnot) corresponding to that perceived problem? Now, the emotional response is all over the board, all on its own, when my brain is saying, “It’s a different guy, a different situation, and there’s no problem like that here.” Maybe I’ve been wishing too hard for weight loss. Ha, ha. My court reporter said that after 2.5 years of conditioning for this kind of response on nearly a daily basis, I’m responding to the shadow of a possible threat, even if I know that the threat isn’t really there. It’s just that I’d seen the shadow so many times before in the past and it always led to the threat, and I’m so deeply scarred, and I’m so aware that I can’t go thru that kind of crap again, that I have instantaneous knee-jerk reactions to anything that has similar “key words” like triggers. (I wonder if psychologists/psychiatrists would recommend my listing these triggers to force them into physical form.)

My reporter says it takes time to retrain the mind and break prior years of associations, and the fact that I am psychoanalyzing my reactions and recognizing the disparity between reality and emotions is a good thing. It means I’m working on it. It doesn’t mean I’m not scared that what the “shadow” is would turn INTO a threat, it just means I shouldn’t be responding as if it were a threat NOW when the other person has already nipped something in the bud and I can’t even think of a better way for him to have handled this particular incident than the way he handled it. In addition to the fear, I’m also angry, but that anger is tied to the experiences in the past and not the experience now. It’s like being angry that someone had kicked a cat in the past, altho nobody kicked or is kicking my cat.

Every time I realize new ways that I’m scarred, I’m angry on top of the other feelings that come with having a scar stirred.