cindy's world

One of the merchandise booths sold a bumper sticker with the slogan “Down Syndrome People: A Little Different, A Lot the Same.” No kidding. Even they couldn’t escape romantic drama.

Bryan and Kerry
Kerry is a lovely, independent Down girl. Bryan is an average-looking independent Down guy. Kerry is sweet, sensitive and thoughtful. Bryan is excitable, sensitive and ADHD-governed. Bryan was the last to get seated at our table. He could not stop saying, “Gosh, Kerry, you look so nice!” She smiled at him and said, “Thank you.” Kerry is engaged and showed us her ring. We all raved and congratulated her. Somehow Bryan ended up seated next to Kerry. When she cried during a performance of “My Heart Will Go On,” he hugged her and cried with her. Then he privately sang to her to cheer her up. She dealt with all of this maturely, trying not to lead him on but also not rebuffing him too hard. He meanwhile grew very sullen at her lack of interest in him. An older experienced volunteer woman at our table told him, “Bryan, this is a happy place. You need to put on your happy face.” Bryan said, “I’m sorry, it’s just personal things on my mind, that’s all. I’m just going thru some sad thoughts.” Kerry told him, “No you’re not. You’re on cloud 9, because I’m on cloud 9, and you’re here with me.” Wow. I gotta remember that line for use with my future kids. A volunteer as equally inexperienced as me, one of my cousin’s friends, leaned into me and said, “Bryan likes Kerry but Kerry’s engaged.” I said, “And he has a girlfriend! He was just talking about her earlier. AND, his ex-girlfriend is here somewhere.” “WHAT?!” she exclaimed, “I missed all that.” I didn’t. I’m finely attuned to relationship drama.

Ballsy Guy and Blondie Volunteer
These people were not at my table so I don’t have names. Ballsy Guy is a burly, tough guy looking Down guy in a trendy checkered button-down shirt with a buzz cut. Blondie Volunteer’s got a pretty enough face with all her makeup, but she could stand to lose about 15 lbs. (Sorry, it’s the girl in me.) Ballsy guy was not a guy from Blondie’s table, but he came by to say hi to her. She greeted him and he pulled up a chair right next to her and put his arms around her shoulders, hugging her close. She patted his hands, but it became embarassingly apparent that he did not plan to let go. There was a romantic song playing, some couple was doing an interpretive dance routine onstage, and most of the Down people were swaying to the music. Ballsy Guy had half his face buried in Blondie’s hair. She kept patting his hand, more to ensure that his hands stayed at her shoulder height than for any friendly gesture. She pulled his hand down after another few seconds, and he left his face close to hers, staring intently at her; she refused to make eye contact. He started stroking her upper arm with his chubby undersized hand. She tried a few more tactics to get him to stop and he wouldn’t, so she told him, “I’ll be right back,” grabbed her purse, and walked out. I said to my cousin’s friend volunteer, “She’s not coming back.” Sure enough. She came back in after presumably visiting the restroom outside the ballroom and seeing Ballsy Guy still at her table, stood at the back of the ballroom. The Keanu Reeves Down guy engaged her in conversation. Seeing this, Ballsy Guy got up and started making his way across the ballroom toward them. She turned and went out another back door. Ballsy Guy isn’t permitted to follow; they’re not allowed to leave the area w/o an attendant. So he went back to his own table. He would cran his neck every few minutes to see if she came back to her table. Then eventually he just came back and sat at her table to wait for her, often popping his buzzed head above the crowd like a meerkat to see if she was coming in the door. I went out to the restroom and saw her just sitting in a chair outside the ballroom. I’d feel sorry for her if she weren’t flirting with a cute Bank of America volunteer. She was well taken-care of.

The 33rd Annual National Down Syndrome Congress Convention was held this weekend at the Hyatt Hotel a block from Disneyland. (Man, that is a niiice hotel. I had no idea.) Today is the talent show, held in a large ballroom. We volunteers were designated 2-3 per banquet table of about 8 Down-affected attendees, and our purpose was to keep an eye on the Down attendees at our table, be their friend, make sure they don’t wander off, make sure they get onstage when it’s their turn to perform.

N’Sync and Titanic…really big in the Down Syndrome community. Didn’t know that. Anytime N’Sync is performed, the room would be a riot with cheering and dancing Down people. Titanic musical performances would make most of the Down people cry.

To add to the list of things I didn’t know until today: You make one audible comment about how one of the Down men in a nice dark suit, had he not had Down, would’ve gotten women left and right, and about how he looks like Keanu Reeves with a touch of Down, and suddenly you’re the butt of all the jokes among the volunteers. “Oh, there’s your man in line for open mike!” “Hey, your man’s about to go up for his dance routine, you gonna scream and cheer?” “Hey, your man’s crying!”

All in all, I had a great time. After the conference, my cousin Jennifer, her “pal” David, and I went to Downtown Disney and had a late lunch and drinks at Restaurant Catal’s outdoor circular UVA Bar. Their caramel apple martini? AMAZING.

Speaking of horrible married men, I just remembered there’s this very helpful white belt in my jujitsu class who I think might be flirting with me. But I’m not sure and I didn’t think much of it because he seems quite a bit older and he’s married.

Incident 1: In class before the day of the Kata Contest, the instructor was asking around to see if we were going to go show support for our competing teammates. One guy in the class said, “Do they have those girls in bikini tops and tiny little hot pants who walk around holding signs that say ‘Round 1’?” Married Guy said to me across the room, “You’d be good for that, Cindy.” We all laughed it off.

Incident 2: In class on Wednesday, the instructor reminded us that next week is our final week for this semester. The New Girl asked if he was going to do anything for us on our last day, like throw us a pizza party. The instructor asked if there were any toppings we don’t eat. I said “pineapple.” Instructor said, “Why would anyone put pineapple on a pizza? To make it Hawaiian?” That started the class on wanting a Luau themed party, and one student asked if we’re gonna dress for it. I said, “Yeah, the whole class has to wear nothing but coconuts and grass skirts.” Married guy asked if I would wear a grass skirt. I said if he provided it, I would. He said, “I’ll make it myself!” The class laughed and joked about how he’d make it out of lawn grass, and he said there would only be a couple of blades of grass on the skirt but that I’d already said I’d wear it.

I was late getting to Irvine so I skipped visiting my cousins’ house and just met up w/them at Ruth’s Chris. I had an amazing wine. By appearance it was a white, almost looks chardonnay, but is made of 4 types of grapes. It was light like white zinfandel, but the flavor has much more depth and color. The nose was an explosion of grape bouquet. I wish I could remember what it was called, but I had some alcohol so foreign memory retention wasn’t at its peak. We started with an oysters rockefeller appetizer. All 3 of us had the petite filet mignon (melts in your mouth), and we shared sauteed mushrooms and a warm chocolate ganache cake a la mode. It was great catching up with my cousins over dinner, and to have frank, non-judgmental conversation about the raunchiest of subjects. We were an episode out of Sex and the City. With better food.

After dinner we walked to the Edwards Theatre and watched “Must Love Dogs” w/2 of their chick friends. This is the first time I can say I agreed with the movie critics. The reviews are lukewarm, but never was there a doubt in my head that I would enjoy this movie, this was right up my alley, it was quirky and sweet and it starred Diane Lane! While I was taking off my face earlier, I thought of all the comments I could blog about this movie, and I settled on these two: 1.) Of the parts of the movie that I did see, the best was when a large fluffy black dog named Mother Theresa climbed into John Cusack’s character’s boat from the water, because of how small the dog looked with his fur wet. 2.) The reason I say “of the parts of the movie that I did see,” is because for the first 1/3 of the movie, I dozed off at least half a dozen times. My cousin Diana was on my left, and I felt horrible because here they were, taking me to a movie with their friends, and I was falling asleep. I was afraid to turn and look at her, but I hoped she didn’t notice that I was dozing off. I did note that she was awfully still, tho. It wasn’t until after the movie when we talked about it, that I realized all 3 of us slept on and off thru the first 1/3 of the movie. We were all hoping no one else noticed. Of course none of us did, because we were asleep.

Sunday afternoon, I went to the Shoshin Ryu Region 1 Kata Contest that 2 teams from my jujitsu dojo were competing in. I’m so proud of them – they competed as green belts (they were initiated green belts just before the contest) against brown belts and took away first and second place in the adult division. It was fun to see what the competition is like. They were egging me on to compete for next year.

I took a bunch of photos, but here’s my beef with the digital camera. 1.) The delay between clicking and the actual photo taking is over a second, and by then the move’s already done and I ended up with a bunch of photos of them getting up from a fall, not of them in mid-air. 2.) I put in fresh batteries when I got to the site, and 38 photos later, I was running out of juice and the battery symbol was flashing. 3.) It takes too long for the flash to recover in between shots. Not that the flash works well anyway; it barely illuminates to the middle of the gym.

As I was driving out after the contest, I got a call from my instructor asking me to join the other instructors for an In-N-Out burger. I was craving In-N-Out because I saw a bailiff walk in with it at lunch last week, so how could I resist? I am now so bloated that it looks like I have puffy ciabatta bread dough wrapped around my lower abdomen.

Sandy and I were sitting at the bar at BJs Restaurant Brewery in Brea, pigging out on loaded nachos, spinach-artichoke pizza, margarita and beer. I was listening to her tell me, all aglow, about her new boyfriend. And then we were interrupted by an older (mid-late 40s) white guy sitting on her left (she had her back turned to him to talk to me) who tapped on her shoulder while we were in mid-conversation, and when she turned, he asked if he could take the menu that was sitting on the bar. Why couldn’t he just take it?! It was on the rack at the bar, it wasn’t in front of her. I knew he was doing the lead-in and I rolled my eyes. We went back to talking. He tapped her again. She turned. “I’m sorry for interrupting you,” he apologized to her. She said, “Oh, it’s okay” and waved it off dismissively. I glared at him. We went back to our conversation. He let almost half an hour go by this time before he tapped her on the shoulder again. I couldn’t hear their conversation over the bar noise, but she told me when she turned back that he wanted to know her situation, whether she was with anyone because he didn’t see her talking to any guy. No shit, she was talking to me. She told him she does indeed have a boyfriend. This guy was seriously on my nerves now. I would never interrupt 2 strangers’ conversation to ask stupid questions. He couldn’t talk to her when I had gone to the bathroom?! About 10 minutes before we left, he once again tapped her shoulder. They talked for about a minute, he handed over a scrap of paper. She told me he said, “I know you said you have a boyfriend, but you never know what the future will hold. If your situation changes or if you want, call me.” Now I was so annoyed (PMS helped) that as we stood to leave, I said extremely loudly as I walked by him, “What a LOSER! Why doesn’t he just open with ‘Hi, I’m desperate and old and have an Asian fetish’?” It’s men like this. Have some self-respect! And do you really want a woman who’ll cheat on her boyfriend?! Sandy said, as she wadded up his name and number and tossed it at a trash can, that he’s just thinking with his dick, he’s not looking for his next wife, and that there are plenty of women who would indeed call a man like that when she’s fighting with her boyfriend or when she’s bored and a man like him would say, “Hey, it’s not my problem. She called ME, I didn’t tell her to cheat.” THIS is why I have no faith in people and relationships.

I just came back from shopping and dinner with my girl friend Sandy.

Why would anyone wear panties that have a big (3-inch diameter) puffy fabric flower sewn on the front right side of the panties? Those flowers are bad enough when sewn onto the upper corners of skirts, or the strap of a camisole, cuz it looks cheap and cheesy, like you cut some large silk flower off an artificial floral arrangement and stuck it on your clothes. But on underwear? What would that look like underneath your clothes? “Hi, I have a tumor on my abdomen.” “Hi, my right ovary is a bit swollen.” “Well, lookit that! My fetus moved!” WTF.

I got an email this morning from my cousin requesting volunteers to work the 33rd annual National Down Syndrome Congress. Volunteers will be acting as guides, group leaders, and friends for teens and adults with Down syndrome at their annual conference where they will be participating in workshops and talent shows. It’s going to be at the Hyatt Regency in Garden Grove on a Sunday at the end of the month.

I immediately wrote back to her telling her I’m in. I’d done a similar volunteer position for the Special Olympics with my then-boyfriend on June 17, 2001 for the Sheriff’s Department (I know the date because I’m looking at a labeled Polaroid of me taken at the event, tacked to the front wall of my desk, among various photos of Dodo). I’d also done a lot of volunteer work in high school for CSF and Key Club. What good times we had back then! My cousin was also in Key Club and I’d see her on occasion at large volunteer events.

There’s something about volunteering for the less fortunate that really opens your eyes and your heart. I can’t wait.

Visited the ‘rents this evening. Washed my car over there again. Two weekends in a row in which I did laundry and washed my car. I’m too embarrassed to put in writing how often I normally did laundry and washed the car, but if you know me, you should be wiping a tear in pride now. My mom offered to make me a fruit smoothie. She’s been really into the organic healthy stuff, and she makes her own yogurt which she blends into smoothies. I munched on sliced oranges and Fuji apples (smoothie ingredients) as my mom blended, and ended up too full when I got my mug o’ smoothie, so I played with the foam on top while my dad took a sip of his smoothie. He complained it was too sour. My mom said, “Oh, I must’ve used too much tomato.” HUH?

As I worked up the courage to take a sip of…tomato smoothie, I took the mug with me to the living room and decided to practice piano. It’d been a long time. I rummaged in the box of sheet music and music books, and pulled out Claude Debussy’s Suite Bergamasque. I discovered a whole submelody in “Clair de Lune.” I frowned to concentrate through my parents’ Chinese talk show CD, which they had cranked way up so they can hear it over my piano (the radio was in the kitchen and they were sitting in the family room trying to listen to it). Then I started pulling out Chopin and various composers’ Sonatas. It’s interesting to sight-read music I know I’ve played before but have no memory of it, or of the markings made by my former piano teacher. Coming at this music from a “fresh” perspective, then, I was impressed by the composition and light-heartedness of one Sonata which didn’t have a composer’s name under the title. I thought it sounded a lot like Mozart’s style, and it reminded me of the arias in Mozart’s opera “Le Nozze de Figaro,” which I had seen with my ex last year. I flipped to the table of contents which did list the composers, and I was right! Now that I’m older and have more exposure to classical music (as opposed to simply memorizing a given order of notes with no opinion as to the quality of the music, which was how I approached music as a child/teen), I find that I have more appreciation for and understanding of these works. It takes playing music to a whole different level. For example, I examined a chord and wondered why Debussy chose to use an F instead the smoother sounding chord he’d make with E-flat, and then I looked at the measure before and saw his pattern of note ascension. Brilliant. This appreciation bubble burst as my mom interrupted my playing to tell me to hurry up and drink the tomato smoothie before the enzymes die.

I went upstairs to blog about my excitement over my piano playing, and could not get their internet up because their dial-up kept hanging up after the “verifying user name and password” stage. So I played 3-D Pinball for 2 hours until I decided that the computer’s cheating, then I came home.

My girl friend Erin and I met up at Glen Ivy Hot Springs this morning around 10am. Whereas I was proud of myself for getting to Corona at that hour, having finally fallen asleep this morning at past 5am, Erin had already completed like 3 errands before I saw her. We started by caking ourselves with the red mineral clay, chatting on the lounge as we dried, then like two little pots, we sat in the mud water to rinse off what we couldn’t flake off. Then we showered, I changed into my slinkier tanning bikini (earlier, had to wear a black tankini that red clay couldn’t stain), and we explored the grounds, going from pool to pool. First we dipped a toe into the sulfur-smelling outdoor mineral bath, but that was way too hot. We went instead into the adjacent lap pool to bob around as we talked about swim strokes and kicks. Next, we sat in the bubbling indoor Roman bath and enjoyed the hot spa water and jets. Then we hit the steam room. I made a very bad Holocaust-related joke when it got unbearable, and we left and padded outside to explore the nooks and crannies of the outdoor property. On the different levels and terraces, behind various foliage, we found and lounged in a warm, fizzy salt water spa and discussed the California real estate market (as compared to New York’s, Nevada’s and Arizona’s). On a terrace, we discovered and lounged in one of two generously-sized terrace spas. When we craved cooler waters, we drifted lazily on blue foam floats in the large lounge pool. When we left Glen Ivy at 5:30pm, we were pruny but our skin felt smooth and conditioned and we kept talking about how great our bodies feel and how relaxed we are. Seriously, my backaches and sore spots are gone as I sit and type here.

For dinner we hit up Kamon Restaurant in the City of Industry for sushi. As usual, the sushi chefs at the bar greeted me warmly and joked with Erin and myself as they made us great food, gave us a great discount, and complimentary baked salmon. (I tip generously there, and have been going there for awhile.) $26 + tip for sushi dinner for 2, can’t complain. We both wanted something sweet for dessert, so we went to a crepes restaurant in the Hong Kong Supermarket plaza. Horrible service. We never got the water we requested, nor the extra spoon nor napkins (the latter two I got myself from the front of the restaurant). The two crepes including tax came out to $7.04. Erin was covering dessert and she put on the table…7 dollar bills and four pennies. We skidaddled out of there. Then we chatted in my car and caught up with each other’s lives for an hour after I drove her back to her car.

I had a good time. =) And a good tan, despite the continual reapplication of sunblock.