cindy's world

I was re-reading my last post and I realized, I so can’t show my parents my blog! The way that entry reads, it seems just taken for granted that dating these days involve sexual intimacy before emotional intimacy. Can I make a louder announcement of “Hi, I’ll be in bed with you before I’m in love with you, if I ever fall in love with you at all, that is.” ?!

I thought that last entry was all rosy and shimmery, too. Maybe it’s just time to go home from work. Have a good evening, peoples. I LOVE YOU ALL!

A DA friend and I were conversing on the topic of the ease (or difficulty) with which our separate genders fall in love. (It was also a work-related phone call, I swear! Something about the 7-defendant murder and attempted-murder case he continued in my courtroom this morning.) I originally said without much thought that girls, the emotional creatures that we are, fall in and out of love all the time; we always think we’re in love. He said he feels it’s a rather rare thing because he’s not referring to the druggy intoxicated infatuation you have in the beginning with a new person, he’s talking actual deep love love. Which got me thinking…

How do you know when you’re in love? Is there some gradient scale your emotions can be measured against, like when you hear people say, “Well, I like him a lot, but it’s not quite there yet.” Or, “Just when I was starting to fall in love, he messed up and I’m back down to just liking him now.” Can you then say, “Whew, that was a close call! I almost fell in love but then I caught myself and now I’m cool!” ? I think I’ve said things like that.

Or do you know you’re in love when you pass that one test question, the litmus paper that defines you the way a pregnancy test does? “I love him so much I’d give up smoking for him.” “I love him so much that if someone shot a gun in his direction, I’d push him away and take the bullet myself.” An ex once said that to me (swapping out the “him”s for “you”s, of course). I found out soon thereafter that he was a compulsive liar by nature. Do you love him? Do you see yourself marrying him? Would you have kids with him? When you imagine a permanent future with him, are you happy or scared? If a magical dragon were to come out of the ground and grab him in one claw and all the chocolate in the world in the other and make you choose, would you choose him? What if it were him versus your pet? Him versus your figure? Him versus all your current assets and your money? What if he put on 60 pounds, went bald but everything else was the same?

The pressure! Good Lord, I’m stressed. *pant, pant*

But maybe it’s just like this. You open your eyes one morning, you see him peacefully sleeping next to you, you smile, your heart smiles, and the words just form in your head. “God, I love you.“

It’s cold out there, I have cramps, I’m fatigued, I got off of work late. I’m skipping jujitsu. But I’ll think about going to the gym. I was going to finally catch up on my Cancun entries, but now that I’ve logged on to everything and made myself available to people’s cyber arrows, I’m in a foul mood and I don’t feel like it anymore. I think I’m gonna just sit around in my bathrobe and read, or watch TV.
*smolder*
I love it when people start crap just so they can pin it on you. Real mature.

** Update 7:46pm **
I just had a very nice IM conversation with my godbrother. I haven’t talked to him in a while, and it wasn’t like we talked a lot before. But it’s really nice to find that you’re related, even if not by blood, to someone who makes you laugh so hard you cry, and who has the depth to be a good friend and tell you in a dark moment that he loves you instead of lecturing at you. That makes my whole logging on worthwhile. That and my other IM conversations with good friends. =)

I feel bad about the last post. I was very derogatory toward senior citizens, fat people, angry minorities, Oldsmobiles and Buicks. And any vehicle with only 4 cylinders. And the security guards. I’m over my morning attitude now. I’m really not a morning person. I say really ugly stuff to people I end up on the elevator with in the morning right after leaving the metal detectors. This morning, for example, a Spanish interpreter who works in the building was nice enough to hold the employee elevator door open for me and upon my entry, I just hurled my irritations all over the man. Luckily, I saw him during a break in our trial and I was able to make my peace with him. He seemed surprised that I felt bad about the morning. Either he’s a good actor and is trying to make me feel comfortable, or I’m more self-conscious and guilt-ridden than I need to be. In any case, sorry for the negativity of the last post, I don’t want to be one of those people who only sees the glass as half full, and whose blogs are 95% bitching about something or another.

A coworker suggested an impromptu happy hour after work at Taps Brewery today. I’m interested in going, but I gotta figure out how to juggle final tidying of the house, completion of packing, and taking care of the cat before I leave for the weekend. I may also have to repack cuz Diana just emailed me that the weather is going to be mid 60s and sunny, whereas I had packed pretty much winter clothing.

It turns out, my hair is no longer wash-and-go. I had to spend about 10 minutes this morning with a curling iron, which is a waste because it’s raining now. I suddenly recollected haircuts of the past I did not like, where the layers were cut too high and too short, so that unless I curled my hair, the shorter layers would bend in odd directions and press the longer layers against my head and then poke out toward the end. =P I guess I’ll just have to get up a bit earlier now until my hair grows out a bit more. I expect it to be wash-and-go again in another month or two.

A problem with Southern California drivers when it’s damp or sprinkling outside is that they don’t know how to handle their cars anymore. The freeway drivers are as aggressive as ever and tend to hydroplane. The surface street drivers slow to half the speed they normally drive. I drive approximately 7 miles on all surface streets to work (I have no freeway alternative), 6 of those 7 miles are driven thru an area where it seems everyone on the road in the mornings are blue-haired retired people in their 70s and 80s chugging along obliviously in 1960 Oldsmobiles and Buicks. By obliviously, I mean that they’ll drive right alongside someone in the other lane (the road is 2-laned only), both cars going 30 mph, for miles. They are unaware that the light in front is green and they’ll go so frustratingly slow until the light turns yellow and they stop, when they had more than enough time to have made it thru the green, but now everyone’s stopped. Once we hit one red, we hit almost all the rest of the 33 lights, it just works that way. And we can’t get around them, because the moment one gains a little ground on the other one so that you think you can get in the other lane, we hit another red light and have to start over. Or, just as I’m finally able to get around a slow car and have a clear lane ahead, another oblivious old driver in front slowly merges over into my lane and gets in my way, blocking me off before I could get my stupid 4-banger to pick up any torque. My next car is definitely gonna be at least a V-6.

And then when I get to work, there are idiots dropping people off while perpendicular to both entrances into the parking structure so that they block everybody off while their obese passenger takes his/her sweet time coming out, orbiting around the car and wobbling off the street. They can’t pull forward 10 more feet or pull up against the sidewalk so that they don’t block off 6 cars trying to get into the structure?! Then when I’m trying to get thru the metal detectors in the courthouse entrance, I’m significantly delayed by either a mom trying to herd her 6 children into the detectors, or by some idiotic man who needs to drop every coin from his pockets onto the tray for the x-ray machine, one coin at a time, or by some fat chick who suddenly goes from the detector archway back to the x-ray belt because she thinks that unless she puts her pack of cigarettes onto the tray, it’d set off the metal detector. There is a side line for employees and attorneys only so that we can get ahead of the general public when there’s a line. But this shortcut isn’t very well enforced because the general public in the geographical area this courthouse services are angry large minority people who block employees off with their large bodies and larger handbags as if their very lives depended on letting no one cut in front of them, and the new security people at the detectors don’t do a damn thing about it.

*growl*

Ah, yes. PMS in full swing. I’m gonna be a lot of fun this weekend.

Sometimes, I awaken in the midst of the night, and thoughts of him roll through my rearing consciousness. With the unassuming innocence of floating cloud mist, it takes me over and wraps me in its airy density, soothing me with coolness yet heating me with longing. It is strange to think that he’d been near me all along, for years a silent presence whom I had barely acknowledged, so consumed was I in my personal hell at the time. I want to make him feel as loved and appreciated as he makes me feel, but I’m not sure I know how. What if it’s not in me? And then the usual guilt brings with it the familiar discomfort.

As always, he senses me, and appears as if from nowhere, as if reading my emotions. I run my hand over his soft fur, and he lifts his little wet nose and tilts it into my fingertips. “It’s okay, mommy, I love you, and I will always forgive you for neglecting me,” his purring seems to suggest. My baby boy. My poor fuzzy baby who waits and meows for me by the door on nights I don’t come home. Who understands when I’ve neglected him, taken away the days when he’d sleep curled in the crook of my elbow on my bed, then taken away his permission to even enter my bedroom. He visits me in dreams and talks to me, sometimes cries to me.

Ugh. I’m gonna go curl up around him on the living room floor right after I shower.

I just found out that an event that someone told me he witnessed was completely fabricated. And then it made sense as I realized that the story was invented to make a (completely unnecesssary) c_ck-block between me and the person the story was made up about.

I can not believe the amount of male and female c_ck-blocking, lying, rumors, slander and basically immature playground crap orbiting around me right now. People need to grow up or otherwise leave me alone. It’s really wearing on me.

After a very tough last few years, I have zero tolerance for drama, especially drama that shouldn’t have anything to do with me. I’m merely existing. That’s all I’m doing. I’m not messing with anyone, stepping on anyone’s toes, I’m only existing.

I gotta shake, shake it off
Just like the Calgon commercial
I really gotta get up outta here
And go somewhere

My court reporter handed me this last week, saying “This doesn’t apply to you now, but tuck it away for the future.”

After a while you learn the subtle difference
Between holding a hand and chaining a soul,
And you learn that love doesn’t mean leaning
And company doesn’t mean security,
And you begin to learn that kisses aren’t contracts
And presents aren’t promises, —
And you begin to accept your defeats
With your head up and your eyes open
With the grace of a woman, not the grief of a child,
And you learn to build all your roads on today
Because tomorrow’s ground is too uncertain for plans.
And futures have a way of falling down in mid-flight.

After a while you learn —
That even sunshine burns if you get too much.
So you plant your own garden
And decorate your own soul,
Instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers
And you learn that you really can endure…
That you really are strong.
And you really do have worth.
And you learn and learn…
With every goodbye you learn.

Saturday was a lazy day for Mr. W and me. For the most part, we laid around unproductively and napped frequently. Then late evening, we picked up a Mexican pizza from 3 Alarm Pizza, brought it back to my house, and watched the final 3 episodes of WB’s Angel on DVD, which I’d missed when they aired. Sunday (today), we walked to Starbucks really early in the morning (thank goodness the one about a mile from me opens at 6a on Sundays), had coffee (him), Chai tea with soy (me), cranberry scone, banana nut bread and zucchini muffin, and upon our return to my house, he installed/wired a digital compass in my car that also gave temperature, barometric pressure, altitude readings, and unclogged my upstairs bathroom sink. All voluntarily.

Mr. W met the ‘rents plus maternal grandma today. They’re going to China at the end of this week and I asked my mom if she wanted to meet him before they left. They in turn invited us to dim sum. (Another thing to cross off our list.) I think it went really well. My parents were a bit awkward at first but they warmed up really quickly — especially my dad, once he realized how much in common he and Mr. W have. After dim sum (Mr. W’s first time, he really enjoyed the food), my parents invited us back to their house for a demonstration of a traditional tea ceremony. I’d emailed my mom about how Mr. W was trying to pick out loose tea and asked me what the difference in quality of tea was, and how I couldn’t answer the question but deferred to my parents for that kind of tutorial. So my parents got to show off their tea stuff (some new really interesting pots; one that used some kind of water pressure physics and magnets so that once the teacup is placed at the base of the clay dispenser, it automatically filled the cup and would stop when the cup’s full), my dad got to show off his expansive natural stones collection, and pass on some of our culture and legends. Mr. W ate it all up because he has a natural curiosity toward the histories of other cultures, and he and my dad share so much of the same interests, i.e. nature, animal behavior, fish, etc.
(more…)

I’ve noticed that I’ve been hardheaded lately. My instinctive response to things is generally a flat “no.” I feel bad about this, but I’m not sure if I should feel bad. I used to have difficulty refusing things that I didn’t feel like doing or eating or watching or participating in, and now I say no without really a second consideration. My low tolerance and refusal to compromise or be more open-minded may be scar tissue. Perhaps I should just be quiet from now on. Not really say yes, but not say no, either.