cindy's world

That title up there was for all the confused blog readers. =D I didn’t realize I was vague about my birthdate.

I picked up Mr. W and his friend at the airport last nite. They really didn’t catch any fish. “YOU explain it to my dad,” I told him.

It was a great day today. A couple minutes past midnight this morning, Navy Girl Vanessa called and left a voice mail to say happy birthday, and then early this morning, at like 7am, my childhood friend Sandy called and sang Happy Birthday to me. Mr. W rolled over in bed and said, “Someone beat me to singing happy birthday to you?” After I hung up with Sandy, Mr. W sang happy birthday in my ear while hugging me in bed. It was soooo cute. And then my friend Erin called, sending me birthday wishes. And then Vicky called and we chatted, but she didn’t realize it was my birthday, altho she did later and called back and left a voice mail apologizing for being a crappy friend. Haha, I didn’t even realize it until then that she didn’t say happy birthday. Hee hee, I just got a call from Edgar just now wishing me a happy 30th and remarking how old I am. He’ll get his…in October. And I got the birthday voice mails from Diana and my mom. All day long my phone was ringing and it’s about to die on low battery right now. I’m unexpectedly happy for someone who just turned 30 and has become *gasp* a GROWNUP.

Lemme backtrack some. Yesterday evening was my first bellydancing class. Man, there are a lot of fat women in that class. I’m glad they’ve taken the initiative to get some exercise in a fun way. I realized that since I can already do dancing that isolates my upper body and my hips, bellydancing was not that hard for me on the first day when we went thru 7 or 8 basic moves/steps. The only thing that was hard for me was the shimmying, because as a fat-conscious chick, I’ve spent most of my time trying NOT to make my fat shimmy. I did work up a little sweat in the end when we were doing moves nonstop. It’s gonna be fun.

Before bellydancing, I got online to check Mr. W’s flight status, since I had to go pick them up right after class. As I was doing that, I got an email notification that Jordan had just written me. A line in her email said something about hoping a package she sent gets to me on time. Package? I stood up and walked out the front door to check the gate (my ingress and egress are usually done through my garage, so I don’t go by the front door), and there was a big white box sitting just inside my gate. Inside was an awesome care package of a comedian DVD she’d told us about when we first met on the cruise, a relaxation CD, a Jimmy Buffett CD (she was making fun of me on her blog for not knowing who Jimmy Buffett is), a book of love coupons (no, not the raunchy sex shop kind, the nice Hallmark kind), body scrub, and body butter. A bunch of confetti metallic stars fell out of the box also; I recognized them from the handfuls of them she put in my birthday card, which she mailed separately and I received the day before the package. I listened to Jimmy Buffett all the way to the airport picking up Mr. W and friend, and then I had to turn it off cuz it turns out Mr. W hates Jimmy Buffett. Haha.

So today, Mr. W and I got up early and headed out to my birthday treat. He’s so sweet, we first stopped by McDonald’s and he picked up 2 Fruit n’ Yogurt Parfaits, and then by Starbucks where he got me a chai tea with soy (I didn’t even tell him my order, I was on the car on the phone with Vicky, he did really good). And then at Glen Ivy, we got to hang out all day in the pools, bake in the red mineral clay, and watch turtles eat leaves and swim with koi fish. After our treatments (where my therapist gypped me 10 minutes on a supposedly 80-minute treatment), we changed and went to the local Tom’s Farms, bought a ton of fresh organic fruit, and came home and he just made papaya/watermelon/apple/carrot/rhubarb smoothies. Yum!

After I hung up with Vicky earlier today on our drive to Glen Ivy, I remarked to Mr. W how nice it is that all my girls had called (I designated the caller group “my girls” with a Beyonce song ringtone, and that was all we heard all morning), and they/we are all happy in our love lives finally. Everyone’s getting somewhere or are at a really good place. Man, we’ve all had our tough times in romance, walked through hell and back. Now, everyone’s glowing all over the place. Yay for all of us! I don’t even mind turning 30 cuz I’m having such a good time. I mean, it helps that everyone around me are at least 10 years older than me at work, but I’ve also been feeling 30 for almost 2 weeks. People would ask how old I am and I’d say 30, or I’d refer to myself as a 30-year-old, and then I’d kick myself for prematurely aging myself. But generally, I think it’s okay being 30 if you’re happy with your life, content with where you are, and are surrounded by good friends.

Oh. And people tell me I don’t look 30, either. That helps. Haha!

I had a really good lunch. I convinced my gym trainee to ditch the gym with me and have a margarita, on account of my birthday. Another coworker joined us. The three of us had some girltalk and strong margaritas at a local Mexican restaurant. I first dropped my car off at the carwash next door to the restaurant, so it was a productive lunch. My car was so heavily coated with dirt and dust that it looked an entirely different color from its “dark emerald pearl,” as the manufacturer named it.

I haven’t worked out at all this week. Yesterday, instead of going to jujitsu, I went to Cingular after work and bought myself a new Nokia flip phone. The 6102i is Nokia’s first flip phone authorized for sale in the US. I was up till 5am reading the instruction manual to get to know all its functions. It’s an amazing little phone. I felt bad for replacing my last Nokia phone, but it really was on its last leg. All my previous phones, I’ve replaced when there was nothing wrong with it, I just wanted a new phone. I love Nokias.

Tonight is my first bellydancing class, and after that, I’m gonna go pick up Mr. W and his “fishing” buddy from the airport. He sent me flowers on Monday, calling it my “birthday week,” and my birthday surprise, it turns out according to a flyer he made and emailed me so that I’d get it on Monday, is a day with him at Glen Ivy Hot Springs in Corona, where I’d been to with my friend Erin, but I’d never used the services there. It was expensive enough just to get in. But he’d booked me a 20 minute scrub and an 80 minute massage. =) My man’s the greatest.

Ooh, and since I insisted on not doing a birthday shindig at work this year, my bailiff gave me a card with a giftcard to Bed, Bath & Beyond and my reporter got me 2 nice photo frames, a red coral bracelet from Costa Rica (she was recently there on vacation), and a very cute maple photo flip display. I can’t wait to print out photos to remind me of what great people I have around me.

It’s funny that the Chinese tout harmonic balance and yin yang and Taoist internal peace and Confucius’s calm wisdom, and yet we have to deal with the Asian Fatalist Gene. It’s like the Catholic religion honoring virginity and disinheriting man’s built-in desire for pleasures of the flesh. Maybe it can’t be done. Maybe we’re gonna be drama queens. And they’re going to have sex/kids out of wedlock or be interested in young altar boys. Maybe it is inherent that we as homo sapien fight for what we don’t have naturally. Curly-haired people want straight hair. Straight-haired people want curls. Maybe that IS yin yang, to have both sides of the coin in dual existence, juxtaposed and seemingly contradictory, but somehow not.

I gotta figure out the “somehow not” part.

I was chatting with my court reporter about why it is that people respond to certain things a certain way. She suggested that when we are angry or indignant, it is often because something offended our ego. The ego speaks loudly and is selfish, it is the voice that booms, “How dare you do this to me. You hurt me, now I’m gonna do this to you.” She says to listen to the smaller, calm voice that says, “In the large scheme of things, this isn’t a big deal. I’ll bring up that I would’ve appreciated if you did this or that instead, but I’ll listen to and understand where you’re coming from.” If people focused on how they affect other people instead of being offended by how others affect them, she said, think how much more positive everything would be. Instead of saying, “You didn’t give me this present I wanted, you’re thoughtless,” go out and buy the person a present. Then you wouldn’t even have the time to think about what they should give you, or rather, what your ego feels you’re entitled to that they’re falling short on. “The ego makes us very angry, and when we’re angry, we can’t see the truth. They can tell us a perfectly fine explanation, but you’re so wrapped up in ‘you hurt me’ that you can’t accept what they’re saying. It’s like them throwing a rock into water. If the surface is all rippled, you can’t see anything in the water. But once the surface is calm, everything suddenly becomes clear and you can see inside the water.”

I’d never thought about the ego as a separate entity which has the power to muck things up because of its misguided perceptions. But I agree with her. It seems that often when I’m upset, it’s not so much that they did something to truly injure me, but they’ve offended my ego. If I could keep ego out of it, I can respond much better without the anger. If someone did something malicious to me, I can see the person as toxic and simply remove myself from this person’s life. And if someone does something that’s kind of thoughtless but not bad, I don’t have to be angry because there’s no ego saying that I ought to be offended because their actions must mean this or that.

I hope this line of thinking doesn’t turn me into a doormat.

As much as I can say that vulnerability is a beautiful and essential part of the true intertwining of hearts, and almost believe it when I’m consoling someone else who is the experiencer of this tender and agonizing vulnerability, the truth is that in myself I see it as a weakness. I am proud when I laugh at someone, turn my back to someone, dismiss someone’s feelings because they do not move me. I find few things more frightening than the point of realization that someone else has access to make me feel and do things involuntarily, because when I’m at this point, I perceive the other person as having more control than me over my own feelings. It is at this point where I feel that I’ve given more emotionally than the other person has, that I miss the other person more than he does me, that I think about him more than he does me, that I love the other person more, and shit, he is more important to me than I am to him. This is only the beginning of what can go wrong. If he means so much to me, I’ll put up with his placing me on low priority, as he will because I’m not as important to him. I will be thinking of him and considering him in my decisions as he makes all his decisions based only on what’s convenient for him and what will make him happy. And I will be sacrificed — not only by him, but by myself — to make him smile. To make him love me the way I do him. How pathetic. I really despise myself when I feel I “need” someone. I don’t want to “need”. Every physical thing in my life is controlled by me and I am completely self-sufficient financially, physically, socially. Why is it so hard to keep my heart sovereign?

Jordan’s blog currently features the music video for Mariah Carey’s old hit “Dreamlover.” It was a pleasant surprise to see that video again and hear the music. I was instantly and joyously taken back to summer 1993, reminiscing about:

* flannel shirts tied up around the waist
* short denim shorts that you roll up the cuffs on to make them even shorter
* wide black belts
* long dangly necklaces, especially crystals on cords
* lots of boys around
* taking summer school with my friends at Diamond Bar High
* my senior year best friend, Eric, dancing to this video at Vicky and Karen’s parents’ house
* discovering and becoming obsessively addicted to BBSing
* carefree walks with friends in hot sunny weather to Thrifty’s and the Wherehouse, laughing on the streets
* dancing the Butterfly
* the days when Mariah was skinny

I think that summer may have been the most feel-good summer of my life.

I think all my prayers are working! I’m finally bleeding, and here’s what my horoscope for today says:

The Bottom Line
Kudos for your attitude — all your perseverance is paying off. Get ready to relax.

In Detail
If you feel like you’ve been through an emotional wringer, take heart — you’re due for a break soon. Your exceptional attitude has made everything go much more smoothly than it could have, so good for you! Tempers are cooling, fortunes are turning and you are set for a traveling opportunity. You will be able to learn more about a culture you’ve always been curious about. Fill today with exploration and feed your curiosity. It will relax your heart and still stimulate your mind.

“This isn’t just about the marathon,” Vicky said, “it really applies to any major accomplishment in your life.” Forwarded to me from Vicky:

Excerpt from Marathoning for Mortals, by John “The Penguin” Bingham and Jenny Hadfield.

The Rest of Your Life

The finish line is not the end. The finish line is the beginning. Standing at the starting line gives you permission to hope. Taking the time to train, putting in the mileage, making the changes in your life, and taking the risks has given you consent to hope for the best in yourself. The miracle is not that you finished, but that you had the courage to start.
Crossing the starting line also gives you permission to dream. You can dream about the perfect day, the perfect race, and the perfect experience. It may not happen that way, but it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t dream about it. Crossing the starting line may be an act of courage, but crossing the finish line is an act of faith. And faith is one of the most powerful emotions you can experience.
Faith is what keeps us going when nothing else will. Faith is the emotion that conquers fear. Faith is the emotion that will give you victory over your past, the demons in your soul, and all of those voices that tell you what you can and cannot do and can and cannot be.
If standing at the starting line gives you permission to dream, crossing the finish line gives you permission to plan. Crossing the finish line gives you permission to plan for your next success, to plan for the realization of your next dream. The last step of the race is the first step of the rest of your life.
What you do now is up to you. You’ve seen what you can do. If you’ve stuck with the training program, you’ve seen yourself filled with joy and blinded by frustration. You’ve overcome your fears. You’ve been humbled by both the strength and fragility of your body. You’ve found what you thought were your limits and gone beyond them.
You’ve also learned that what stops most of us from achieving our dreams as athletes and as people are the confines of our imaginations. We can never be more than we imagine we can be. And as long as we restrict ourselves by our imaginations, we forever bind ourselves to our past and blind ourselves to our futures.
Your limits lie behind you now. With that one final step across the finish line, you liberated yourself from everything you ever thought you knew about yourself. You have taken the very first step on the course to your destiny.

Vicky and I were talking about our jobs, our lifestyle, our income. “But in the end, that really doesn’t matter,” she said. It’s all about being happy. If you can sustain your happy lifestyle responsibly, that’s what the goal is in the end. When she turned 30, she asked people older and more experienced, more financially established and what others would consider well-settled in life, “When you look back, what would you say it was all about?” They all said finding personal happiness. That’s the only true success, figuring out what makes you happy, finding a means to do it, and sustaining that. I think she’s come around to the thinking I had when I first started this blog. Discovering yourself and finding a way to “make yourself happy”, as my cousin Jennifer had once suggested to a bewildered version of me, and then having the faith to begin the first step in that direction, and the faith to continue until achievement, that’s true personal fulfillment.

I’m on the phone chatting with my childhood friend while casually typing this entry on my laptop on my bed, my cat’s snoring gently next to my bed. Mr. W and I ran 3 miles this morning (exhausting; PMS makes me anemic), hung out, watched “Friends,” took a nap, we had dinner, I went to visit the ‘rents, ate lots of cherries, and then came home. As much as nothing’s “wrong” with my life, I feel I’m a little short of my personal best right now. I’m lacking the initiative for that first step. But the age ticking is putting a new sense of urgency into me.

Mr. Rogers (addressing Senator John Pastore in a 1969 US Senate hearing re funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, telling him the words to one of his songs from Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood as a sample of responsible programming for children): This has to do with that good feeling of control, which I feel that children need to know is there.

What do you do with the mad that you feel
When you feel so mad you could bite
When the whole wide world seems oh so wrong
and nothing you do seems very right?

What do you do? Do you punch a bag?
Do you pound some clay or some dough?
Do you round up friends for a game of tag
Or see how fast you go?

It’s great to be able to stop
When you plan the thing that’s wrong
And be able to do something else instead
And think this song.

I can stop when I want to
Can stop when I wish
Can stop stop stop, anytime!
And what a good feeling to feel like this
And know that the feeling is really mine.
Know that there’s something deep inside
That helps us become what we can
For a girl can be someday a lady
And a boy can be someday a man.

In 6 minutes, Rogers convinced the Senator to sway his way to support the $20 million grant proposed by former president Lyndon B. Johnson for public broadcasting (as opposed to supporting the $10 million cut President Nixon wanted in order to fund the Vietnam War), and it spoke to me on perhaps the same personal level that the Senator felt that day. See the short clip of that convincing here.