cindy's world

There really is a lot for me to be happy about. All around I could see close calls, pitfalls I’d almost fallen into at one point. But luckily, I have made some good decisions and am very comfortable in my life right now.

It’s a nice Friday. I’m all warm from my lunchtime workout and the hot shower I had afterwards, I’m sitting in a courtroom where I can do my work at my own pace since we’re not in session right now, and I just finished munching on a fresh blueberry bagel. I look and feel better (well, except for the aches and pains from jujitsu) than I did a few years ago at this time. Today is payday. I ran into a friend I haven’t seen in awhile in the courthouse today. I still have hair. My reporter introduced me to a new killer ab exercise today.

Tomorrow I’m gonna have a girlie day w/a friend at Glen Ivy Hot Springs and we’re gonna sit in mineral baths, whirlpools, saunas, red clay and/or pools all day. In a couple of weeks I’m gonna meet up w/my cousins Diana and Jennifer and we’re gonna go have a nice dinner at Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse in Irvine, easily one of the best steakhouses anywhere. (One thing I realized when the three of us were trying to find a good day to go have dinner is how busy my weeks are and I am so glad about that. I’m not busy doing stuff I hate, or fulfilling obligations to other people. I’m busy doing stuff I enjoy and/or signed up for myself.)

Ahhhhh. *smiling contentedly*

I skipped jujitsu today because my wrist and knee aren’t feeling up to par and I don’t want to risk further injury, and because my family has relatives visiting from Taiwan and their tour group put them in a local hotel tonight. So I had dinner w/many relatives I hadn’t seen since November, 1998.

I was a bit pensive going to dinner and took care to look presentable because Asian relatives like to make physical observations and commentary. “Your head’s unproportionately big for your body.” “You Americans must like the unruly hair look. We proper Chinese prefer the neatly groomed student look.” And because I threw my clear contacts away and am wearing out my gray ones before I throw these away, “I’ve noticed you American-grown Chinese kids like to pretend you’re white.” But it turned out that no one made any such commentary at me. Instead, my mother said to her cousin (in front of his wife and kids and everyone else) “You’re a lot fatter now than the last time I saw you.” “That’s rude,” I told her under my breath. She looked surprised.

I remember that cousin of my mom’s fondly. When I was 4 or 5, he let me run ahead of him while he followed me on his bike, then when I got to the finish line first, he panted and said to me how impressed he was that I beat him. It was years before I realized he had let me win. For years I claimed to be able to outrun a bicycle, and everyone thought I was a conceited liar. (And by “years,” I mean until I almost finished junior high.) Then, on 11-13-98, I stayed with this same cousin’s family (him, his wife plus 2 young sons) in their apartment when vacationing with my mother in Taiwan. That evening’s journal entry reads:

As the kids were being annoying & violent to each other yesterday morning, their dad suddenly said, “Hey, I just thought of a great game!” That stopped them from fighting over their stupid water balloons. “Wanna play?” he asked them. Of course they wanted to play. He said, “You two run downstairs & stand under the balcony outside.” (We’re on the 7th floor.) “…I’ll throw the water balloons down and you try to catch them.” I had to bite my tongue, but the kids’ mom said to her sons, “You think you’ll catch them? Don’t let Daddy trick you!” So they didn’t go for it.

Later, I told my mom about how my coworkers think I’m getting too skinny and how I think I could still stand to lose a few more pounds, and she readily agreed, without any malice aforethought, said “I think so, too. You should lose at least another 15 lbs.”

Just thought I’d post some photos of my friend Lily’s wedding that I went to on June 11, 2005 and blogged about that weekend. (See 6-12-05 entry, 2 Burgers; But Hold the Patties, Part II.) She’s such a beautiful bride. I wanted to post photos as a supplement on that entry, but no one goes back to read an old entry, so here we go.
Kind of the quintessential bride and groom look. Congrats to the good doctors.

What a crazy lunch. Our trial settled late morning so I had some extra time. Since I did not sleep until past 3am and had a really hard time getting up this morning, I took an hour-long nap in the jury room women’s restroom “lounge” at lunch. Really odd dream involving tea lights on a cheesy mattress, my crying because I wasn’t allowed to use the bathroom of a friend’s house, and something about living in a forest. When I woke up, the tiny room I was sleeping in had turned into Antartica. I took a walk across the street to an outdoors eatery to thaw out. (Yes, my lunch is legally 1.5 hours long.) Ran into a DA who was enjoying the weather, his wireless internet access on his laptop, and what appeared to be a really decadent lunch of celery and carrots. I purchased my pizza and Diet Coke and joined him at the outdoors table and we analyzed my dream. I find myself still rather cranky about my last relationship. Then when I came back to work, on my keyboard I find a newspaper clipping someone had left with the headline Cindy Hits Gulf Coast. “Tropical Storm Cindy, possibly intensifying to a Category-1 hurricane this morning, will churn inland across the Mississippi Delta early today, packing winds at over 70 mph as it batters the region with heavy rain and thunderstorms.” I like how they personify objects, and objectify people, but my weather alter-ego is definitely sounding like me as she sits and pounds over New Orleans. You go, girl.

Waiting for people behind me to finish boarding the plane for my 9:40 p.m. flight out of San Jose airport, I stared out the window and caught a magnificent fireworks show. It must’ve gone on for half an hour. I was impressed by the firework that goes up in one unit, then sprays red sparks out such that they line up and make a huge heart in the sky. I don’t know how they control the direction of and and distance traveled by the sparks for such a formation. There were 3 of those.

The view below was beautiful after take-off. The brightly lit grid beneath me was punctuated here and there by small circlets of color exploding and glittering as people on the ground celebrated our nation’s birthday. I don’t know why I thought fireworks reached as high as planes fly. From the sky, the fireworks seemed to be tiny mushroom caps right at the city surface. From the ground, the fireworks are gargantuan umbrellas of color, fire and smoke reaching across the heavens. I was relieved to discover this difference, and kicked myself for having my camera packed away in the overhead storage bin so that I couldn’t document my enlightenment.

I will add more photos later when I receive a copy of Jimmy’s photos (documenting our insanity on Monday), and when I get to my better photo editing program at home so I can crop out all the dead space around the photo. Meanwhile, this photo is representative of Monday:

Our trial attorney asked me an hour ago which beach I had gone to in San Jose, and I could not remember. He started naming all these beaches, and none of them sound right. The point is, it doesn’t matter. The location was a variable; it was how I felt that was the surprising constant. There was a big crowd at our beach event and although most were strangers, I was comfortable enough to completely be stupid. My camera battery died so the really stupid photos are on Jimmy’s camera. Things like my standing on Diana and Jen’s backs and shoulders in a human pyramid, and our imitating the famous photo of the flag-raising at Iwo Jima… only instead of Feb 19, 1945, it was July 4, 2005; instead of the American flag it was a beach umbrella; instead of the US Navy it was Val, Jen and myself; instead of the battlefield rocks it was Diana’s ass.

Good times. At one point I looked around, fully aware of my high level of contentment and comfort, and then it suddenly hit me that later that evening I would be on a flight home and this beach, these people, are so far away from “home.” That was a strange feeling.

I’m sorry to have missed the beach night bonfire, but very happy to have participated in the antics of the day. I am grateful to all of these people who have befriended me and taken me in at a very hard time in my life, and have shown me by their mere existence that continued faith in people, friendships, and connectivity is warranted. Thanks, guys.

Saturday:

There is something so satisfying about hanging out with these people, a lot of whom I have only met once before, a month ago. From grocery shopping and cooking with Brad to laughing at Mike’s renditions of events to rebonding with Diana over each other’s social miseries to watching Jen’s sweet silliness to making fun of Jimmy under the stars to falling asleep outside and waking up just prior to hypothermia setting in. I perched so long on top of the stone-topped cooking range in Diana’s backyard last nite chatting with people that I think I bruised my butt-bone (okay, so I’m not an anatomy genius). I told them as I sat out there watching the stars get brighter as the night got darker (mostly because Diana couldn’t figure out how to turn the lights on outside; turned out the timer switch was unplugged) that it’s amazing how comfortable I was there that evening. I didn’t feel left out even tho a lot of the night was spent out of the circle of main conversation, and I felt totally at peace and safe. There was no worrying that someone was gonna get drunk and out of hand, or that there was some subplot going on so I’d better keep an eye open and watch my back. And I’ve only known a lot of these people a month. Amazing. Oh yeah. And the lasagnes turned out pretty well, if I can trust the compliments of the guests. The largest compliments were the guys who went back for seconds, and Henry’s girlfriend whose parents own(ed?) an Italian restaurant and who said that this is the best Italian food she’s ever tasted that an Asian person made. These people felt like kin.

Sunday:

Sunday isn’t over yet as it’s right before 9pm and it looks like we’re getting ready to go out again. I accomplished two things. The first is the realization that people who I’d thought were perfect and so admirable, I found out today is as human as the rest of us, and everyone has issues. I’m not sure if this is a good discovery, but over time I’m sure its effect will be revealed. The second thing is that I finally got a tan. I wore my bikini to Melanie’s (right photo, whose back you see) annual July 4th pool party and had good food and…well…interesting company. I didn’t mingle as much as I could have, but there were enough people I liked around me that I didn’t feel compelled to go out of my comfort zone. Jimmy, thanks for letting me throw you over my shoulder onto the grass. Now I know never to throw a fully-clothed adult while I’m in my bikini. Ouch, the fabric burn on my shoulder and shoulder blade…

After work (and I use the word “after” loosely) I met up with some coworkers at a local restaurant/bar, Geezers, for a farewell-good-luck social for a deputy district attorney who is leaving the DA’s Office to go into private practice with his friend. Many of my favorite work people were there, and I would do shouts-out, but I don’t know how they’d feel about being named on a public blog. 🙂 For a belated b-day drink, a fellow clerk bought me a HUGE margarita which was easily the size of 2 large margaritas. I had some second thoughts about finishing a drink that big, but I can’t let good alcohol go to waste. I missed most of the good stuff, because I had to leave at 5:45p to make it from Santa Fe Springs to Fullerton for jujitsu. It looked like there were props being brought in by the attorneys and I left just as everyone started eating. Oh well.

In case you can’t read what I wrote on your card, Mike (guest of honor), it says, written upside-down and reverse mirror-image and in German, “Vielen Gluck und Geld, mein Freund.” Much luck and money, my friend. Thanks for the counseling sessions over beers at Outback.

The above paragraph is funny because, altho a few DAs have my blog address, the aforementioned Mike does not even know I have a blog. Maybe I should tell him tomorrow.

I was discussing July 4th weekend plans with a stationary bike buddy at the gym today. He’s considering going to Tijuana with buddies to watch a bullfight (royale!) which takes place on Sunday. I told him I’m flying up north again and described all the activities involved. And then we discussed what I did last July 4th: hung out with a bunch of inebriated people at the usual bar, then branched off with 3 of them (one being the ex) to launch fireworks from a local neighborhood street. That’s the euphemistic version. The reality is that these people continued to suck down beers, and played the following fireworks “games” on the street:
* blowing up beer cans, cardboard boxes, city construction cones
* playing “chicken” with fireworks to see who can hold a lit firework the longest before throwing it into the air
* jumping over lit fireworks on the ground
* squatting over grounded fireworks that spray flames and sparks into the air (to see who can squat the lowest the longest)
* trying to hold lit stick-fireworks between the buttcheeks
All this while laughing hysterically, jumping up and down and clapping, sucking down more beers, calling me “uptight,” saying I “had no childhood” because I don’t see the necessity of burning body parts for no good reason at all. And these people range from ages 35-44. My stationary bike buddy assured me that their behavior isn’t typical and it’s not me because, altho he’d laugh if his drunk buddies engaged in activities like that, there’s no way he wouldn’t discourage it and tell them to stop being stupid, and no way he’d participate in those “games.”

“I remember sitting there last year kinda apart from them and thinking, ‘Oh my God, is this my life from now on?'” I said.
He smiled and said, “Well, now you know the answer. It isn’t.”
I must’ve glowed from smiling so hard as I said brightly, “Nope, it isn’t, and that feels SO GOOD!”

I slept on and off all morning into the afternoon. Then I woke up in a panic and realized I was late going to my parents’ house for Father’s Day festivities. Alas, my house is still neglectedly unkempt.

My dad seemed to really like the liquor dispenser. He assembled it right away, then started playing with it with tap water. All the fun with liquor dispenser sans liquor made me want a drink, so I poured myself a shot of some Mexican coffee-flavored liquor I found in my parents’ cabinet. GAAACK! That crap’s strong. I should’ve gone for the Kahlua next to it. My Asian can’t-waste-food gene kept me from pouring the drink down the sink, so I tried to save it. Milk would be a good idea, I thought, and rummaged thru my parents’ fridge. Of course, no milk. This is an Asian family’s fridge. And soy milk just seems wrong. My dad suggested I water it down with ice or water, which I did, and it was still nasty. Finished it anyway.

Dinner was cool; my parents, maternal grandma and I went to a Chinese restaurant with my godbro’s family and my grandma’s sorta-relatives. My little godbro is now almost 18, has a hilarious sardonic sense of humor (actually, he always did even as a kid), is starting his freshman year at Berkeley in the fall, and drove me back to my parents’ house in his BMW. I smile wryly. How time flies. “Twenty-nine…the big TWO-NINE,” he rubbed in as we drove back. Hey, I’ve got almost 2 weeks before I’m officially the big two-nine. I had a blast bonding with my godbro, and we tentatively set up some future things to do together (such as working out).