cindy’s world

In keeping with my now crappy mood and old diary-reading, here’s something raw from several years ago. I haven’t had writing like this for a long time. That’s a testament to the wonderfulness of Mr. Wonderful. But JUST IN CASE you “don’t care to know” what’s in my past writings, you don’t have to click on the “more” below. (I’m not bitter.)
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I dug out my old handwritten diaries from back in the day. It’s weird cuz just this week alone, I’d thought back to certain things that happened decades ago, and wondered why they happened. For example, I remembered a high school crush hanging out with bridesmaid Vicky and me at this guy Pete’s apartment our freshman year in college, and I’d wondered why he was with us since he didn’t know Pete. I also wondered whether he’d sat in the front seat or the back seat as I’m sure I drove to Pete’s house. (Pete, btw, is its own drama that became something of a triangle involving Vicky. I’d also thought about him recently. My proudest sting operation involving three-way calling and call-waiting was in exposing Pete.) In randomly flipping in this diary, I read about that exact incident. And it was way more embarrassing than I’d expected. I cringed reading it and remembered that Dwaine had said we’re programmed to forget things for our own psychological protection. To show that I am a good sport, I’m gonna let you guys in on what a spazz I used to be back in the day. Some background; the crush and I were insanely close at that time, we’d talk for hours on end on a nightly basis. Vicky had met him a couple of times through me, but as far as I knew they barely qualified as acquaintances. Usually they did not say kind things about each other to me.

“…After this, Vicky and I went to Burger King. Sitting there, I got a page from [crush], ‘hi-sis’. I was all excited, then I thought, ‘What’d he MEAN, “sis”?!’ Then I got sad. Immediately after Vicky’s pager went off. [Crush] paged her ‘miss-you.’ I got really upset. She later went to a pay phone and called him. I threw an attitude and refused to talk to him tho he kept asking for me. I just stood and watched Vicky flirt w/him. I was really sad, yet I stubbornly refused to talk to him. She said [to him as a suggestion that] he could page me w/a buncha’ sorries, but I turned off my pager on the spot. And he never knew why I was upset @ him.”

The next day:
“This afternoon @ 12:48p, [crush] paged me, ‘5748801217.’ Then @ 12:56p, ‘1-177155-400.’ [I miss you] I couldn’t figure out what the 1st one was, so when I got it (@ 1:30 or so cuz I was at L.A. Fitness w/o my pager), I called and asked what it said. He said it said ’stubborn.’ That was dating back to yesterday when I refused to talk to him. I kinda gave him the cold shoulder in the 3 mins I talked. He said he didn’t go to church today (yesterday Vicky tried to get him to go out w/us today, and he kept saying he has church till 3,no promises, he’ll ‘try’ to call, page, etc.) I called him back later and told him to come over. He kept asking why, I said no reason. He wouldn’t believe me, saying I always have a reason for everything, and I said I just wanted to see him. He came over. We sat around as I finished the last of my packing, and Vicky talked to Pete on the phone. [Crush] said he was gonna bring me a pic, but forgot it @ home. After awhile, we all went down to Pete’s apartment in Pomona and kicked it there for like 2 1/2, 3 hrs. At first, [crush] seemed kinda bored, but he loosened up and told some of his adventurous stories & everyone loved him (except Vicky, who flirts w/him in person but disses him behind his back). Then when we parted, he gave me a hug in front of Pete (Pete looked really surprised) and went to his car. My mom said to leave for LA today @ 5-6p, and we were giving Henry a ride, so I told him that, too. But since I didn’t want to leave (leave [crush], perhaps), I didn’t say anything and we didn’t leave Pete’s till 6p. [Crush] had an engagement too, he was supposed to take some Vivian Choe [a popular Chinese singer at the time] look-alike out for ice cream, and @ first, he kept looking @ his pager for time, and he sat, then stood, then sat, and didn’t leave either till she paged him again. Pete asked if he wanted to use the phone to call her, and he said ‘No, it’s all right.’ Heehee. Anyway, @ 7:32p, I was in the car on the way to LA, and I got this page: ‘44177-177155-400-999.’ I couldn’t read it, and Henry read it. It’s ‘will miss you-[crush].’ Then when I started writing this entry, he paged ‘Ring me’ @ 10:10p. I happily obliged and we talked till now, about 1 hour…”

This entire diary is scandalous with the different guys I gushed about on every page. And the way I behaved around these guys!!! I do remember the incident described in the diary entry above, and some years later I’d gotten back in touch with then-crush, and we’d caught up on people we knew in common, and then Vicky’s name came up. He said, “That girl never liked me. Hmmph.” But I had TOTALLY forgotten that APPARENTLY, they were FRIENDLY and it appears, even PAGED each other little affectionate pages! I should call him now and demand what the hell had been going on between him and Vicky.

But that’d be the old Cindy.

When I was a junior in high school, my English class crush told me, “I wish I were depressed.”
“Why?!”
“Because. It’s so artistic.”

Okay, so Sylvia Plath in her emotional cage and John Keats in his widower mourning wrote some pretty amazing stuff. Even my own poetry that bled out during the periods of deepest adolescent gloom were the most poignant and raw. But to wish for depression for the sake of artistic creation? Even if you’re getting a B in English, that’s not a worthwhile cause. B-, maybe. Depending on how Asian you and your parents are. Har.

Of the many voices I write with, two that I think are very prominent on this blog are 1) goofy tongue-in-cheek bordering on absurdity, and 2) a sort of struggling pain, a muffled cry trying to make sense of events and recover. In looking back I find that in 2005, I tried to stay optimistic while I struggled, then I went through a phase of euphoria when I broke free of previous emotional shackles, and then there was Mr. W whose appearance in my life added a calm stability that made most of my posts either dully reporting or if you’re lucky, somewhat anecdotally amusing.

I’ve read posts of others who are struggling, bleeding artists. The writing is beautiful and inspires me to want to write with the same honest emotion. But I don’t have any of those emotions and most of my prior wounds have healed. I *almost* want a little turmoil to add some flavor to my writing, except that I also recall a time when I’d thought all my posts were too depressing and wished for the emotional soundness to write the happy-go-lucky feel-good posts I’d read on other blogs at the time.

I think the moral is to embrace whatever state of mind you’re currently in, because it is human and beautiful in its own way. But I bet you’re thinking that the real moral is, I’m never satisfied, though I try. What color is YOUR grass?

*peeking over the fence into your yard*

I was processing divorce cases last week when I came across three files in a row where the couple was married for 19 years and now requesting divorce. “What is this? They were married for 19 years and then suddenly realized that the marriage was sooo bad that they HAVE to be divorced before their 20th anniversary?”
My courtroom assistant said simply, “Their kids are grown.”
Oh! I’d never thought about that, and that makes perfect sense. They probably had a kid within a year of the wedding and 19 years later, when the child is now a legal adult at age 18, divorce is simple without issues of child support, legal and physical custody, and visitation.

Since I don’t have kids, I didn’t think about it in that kind of perspective, the whole counting backwards to see when the kid was born thing. I remember the first time it occurred to me to count backwards with respect to other child things. It was 1999 and I was in a computer lab as part of my training for this job. I was chatting with a big butch lesbian, another member of my class, about how growing up, all my friends and cousins with siblings had birthdays really close to their siblings. For example, my cousins Diana and Jennifer have a 3 year age difference, but their birthdays are about 2 weeks apart. MOH Vicky’s sister Karen is 3 years younger, but their birthdays are about a week apart in the same month. When I met a girl in grade school whose birthday was 3-4 months away from her younger sister’s, I refused to believe that they were sisters because their birthdays were too far apart. I laughed at the conclusions my childhood self drew at all the coincidental close birthdays of siblings. The classmate said, “It’s probably not a coincidence. It means that your friends’ parents kept having sex at the same time in the years.” I remember going quiet as I processed this new thought. Imagining friends’ parents having sex was new to me, even in such practical parameters. I only mention this classmate’s sexual orientation because it discredits me to not have thought of this obvious explanation before, when someone who wouldn’t be having child-making sex with a spouse was aware of this like it was nothing.

So of course now I always count backwards 9 months. My cousins were both born in late October/early November? What’s so special about 9 months before that spurred the sexual celebration? (ew.) Maybe Valentine’s Day. Maybe cold weather. MOH Vicky and her sister were both born in May? What was 9 months ago? (ew.) August. I don’t know of any special holidays in August. Maybe it was a wedding anniversary. (ew.) I was born at the end of June. What was 9 months before that? My parents’ October honeymoon. (ew ew ew!) This might be a curse.

I have to say that when I started blogging, I did not foresee the day that I would write an entire long post about a visit to the dentist. But here I am, writing my second dental post of the week. I think I’m just really boring right now. Sorry.

When I was a little girl, I would flip through Best Department Store catalogs frothing at the mouth for the toy section. Then, looking at all the pictures of all the great toys, I’d imagine which toy I’d select if a fairy godmother appeared and told me I can have any toy on a page, and then I’d imagine how I’d play with the toy and make my neighbors and cousins jealous. Sometimes I’d accidentally land on a furniture or bedding section while searching for the toy section, and I’d make a face and quickly turn past those photos, thinking, “Who’d LOOK at this stuff?!” I could not imagine that I would one day not only love going through Bed, Bath & Beyond flyers getting decorating ideas and wistfully wishing for various expensive furnishing items in them, but I’d share my oral cavity events with strangers on the internet.

Yesterday evening, maid-of-honor Vicky (yes, I’ve decided recently she’s my maid-of-honor; she’s more than earned it. Didja read all my past Las Tunas and Chinatown trauma she guided me through?) came by with her boyfriend Glenn and the three of us went out to a local sushi joint for dinner. After returning to my house, Glenn proceeded to take apart my living room’s vertical blinds to see if he could replace the broken clip on one panel. He soon discovered that the system was made in the late 70s and the parts I’ve purchased don’t fit in the old system. GAH! He was a good sport and reassembled everything, put it back up in the window, and advised me to buy a new blind system. After checking the blinds upstairs in the bedrooms, he found they were the same old system, so those will all have to be replaced, too. While upstairs, he said my ceiling damage from the leaks actually aren’t that bad and that they can be repatched very inexpensively, so I don’t have to hire an expensive ceiling repair guy or put a claim into my homeowner’s insurance. Great! With his prior experience managing multiple apartment homes, he recommended some products and even offered to come help patch the ceilings once my external roof is replaced. Looks like Vicky’s dating life has finally paid off for me. Haha!

(Today I told Mr. W about Glenn’s blind discoveries and Mr. W said he already knew that the pieces were not compatible cuz he’d already looked at it. Well, why didn’t he tell me?!)

Afterward the free inspection, we hung out and chatted in the living room, when something someone said sparked the memory that I have video tape footage of Vicky when we were in 8th grade. I busted it out, popped it in the VCR, and I watched Glenn’s amused smile looking at his whiny girlfriend more than 15 years back in time. Bridesmaid Sandy is in our 8th grade graduation video, too! I threatened to play it at my wedding. One thing we all noticed is how incredibly tan we were as pre-teens. Of course there was the daily P.E. class and playing outdoors and swimming, but man, adult office life has done nothing for our tans.

Now I need to find some embarrassing video footage of bridemaid Diana from the late 80s. Heh heh heh!

What sucks is to be starving and not be able to eat the food that’s right in front of you. I had insisted on going to the gym today because I’d missed all my lunchtime workouts this week as our trial keeps running late, but after our workout today my gym trainee and I ran across the street to Tropical Smoothie Cafe where I grabbed a buffalo chicken wrap. Sooo good! Unfortunately, as I expected, when I walked in the courtroom the judge was already on the bench having a hearing, despite the fact that I wasn’t late. So now the wrap sits on my desk, getting cold, as I drool.

I’ve always thought it a form of torture, too, when I’m starving to death and have to drive to pick up a pizza. My parents were always too frugal to pay or tip for delivery so after waiting what felt like forever until the estimated time the pizza would be ready for pick-up, they’d take me along to the pizza place, and of course I wasn’t allowed to eat before dinnertime for fear of ruining my appetite. So we’d pick up our pizza, I’m starving while the cheese and meat aromas circulate around the car, and as a final tease, my job was to hold the hot box on my lap. There was rarely a longer drive than the one back home. As tormenting as these drives were, when I lived on my own I would also occasionally opt to pick up my own pizza rather than have it delivered. I think it’s the Asian thrift gene passed on, but I did make one modification: no later than when I get in the car, I would open the box and grab a slice of pizza, happily proceeding to burn the roof of my mouth off with molten cheese on my drive back home.

*looking at wrap*

MAN I wanna eat. I think I’ll take my wrap out into the back hallway and eat in secret.

I’ve been wanting to post this every Valentine’s Day for years but I never remembered in time. I wrote this poem 2-14-94, my senior year in high school. (That’s important for the irony you’ll see.) It was published later on that year in a school publication.
Each time a reference to Valentine’s Day is written, the font is in a creepy horror-movie-title font, like with blood drippage coming off the letters.

V-DAY
The kid down the street
Sits up in bed at six
Alarmed as his alarm alarms him.

And in this state of panic
His feet hammer out something drastic
Just as his young heart mimicks his alarm.

Having forgotten it was Valentine’s
He frantically cuts flowers fresh off the vine
And in so doing, draws blood the color of the maroon petals.

In school, the boy greets Little Suzie,
Presents her with his flowers, still a little woozy
From his tremendous outpour of blood.

Suzie’s lush lips stretch into a smile
As she eyes the beautiful red pile
Of flowers, and blushingly accepts the gift.

She giggles and wiggles and squirms all day
Looking so forward to her luncheon date
With the little, young twelfth grade boy.

Amongst all this hustle and bustle
Of young, immature kids
Whose clanging, clamoring hearts still believe in Valentine’s Day

I sit, and observe
And occasionally laugh
At all the silly, unrealisitic lovesick fools

And wish that one time more
I could be a part
Of all this fuss over nothing on Valentine’s Day.

Dude. I can’t sleeeeep! You know what ridiculous thing is going thru my mind?

In Physics my senior year of high school, we had a project to design and build a small bridge using ONLY flat wooden toothpicks and Elmer’s white glue. For every Physics project, our teacher ran a contest for extra credit points. The bridge’s contest is to see which bridge could hold the most weight in proportion to the bridge’s own weight. I remember Vicky (who had Physics in another period) and I ditched a class or two to leave school early the day before the due date to finish (i.e., start on) our bridges. I even remember that before I met up with Vicky at my house, I’d stopped by The Wherehouse to buy the cassette single US3’s one-hit-wonder “Flip Fantasia” for Vicky cuz she thought it was a cute song. Hence, I was late getting to my house and she’d beat me. Random details. Oh, and I remember Vicky had bought those expensive strong “Diamond” brand toothpicks in the blue and white box and I bought the cheap flimsy Thrifty store-brand toothpicks, and that I’d bought my toothpicks some days earlier when I watched Schindler’s List with Sandy since she got extra credit for watching it, and I had to walk out of the theatre during one of the more violent scenes, so I walked to Thrifty. (I’ve known these two bridesmaids forevah!)

Vicky’s bridge design was this intricate assembly of boxes with a diagonal toothpick inside each wall of the frames for extra support, and she even cut all her toothpick tips at 45-degree angles so that all the edges would match perfectly together and make flush corners. When she put her bridge on the table, it made a solid “thwack” sound. That bridge had substance and presence.

My bridge design was less design than just gluing toothpicks together, keeping in mind that the strongest geometric shapes are arcs and triangles, and then bringing those glued sticks closer and closer until they connected on top. The arc of the bridge turned out surprisingly high, I don’t even think the structure stood solidly on the table but was a tad wobbly the way an uneven kitchen table would be, and it looked flimsy compared to Vicky’s. I noted that the support was a bit thin between where the legs connected to the upper surface of the bridge, but was too tired to reinforce it because cutting and gluing toothpicks together took surprisingly long. It was very late that night when we’d finished. We prayed that the white glue had enough time overnight to dry before our bridges would be tested the next day in our respective Physics classes.

Vicky’s Physics period was before mine and her bridge ended up being the second-best in her period, taking a lot of pounds of weight before it broke. When my period came, the teacher put each person’s bridge on the counter/table at the front of the class, and one by one, carefully put small bags of weight on it until it broke, and then recorded the results as the class watched. When it came to my bridge, he put a weight on it, and my bridge did not budge. Surprised, he took the weight off, put a small bucket on my bridge, and then dumped sand into the bucket. I watched my bridge’s legs start to spread as he kept adding weight in the bucket. Running out of sand, the teacher took a metal dumbbell ring and put it inside the bucket. The class was awed, and whispers of “Daaaaang…” echoed throughout the students. Finally, the bridge broke in the EXACT PLACE I knew needed reinforcement! I could kick myself, cuz I could’ve done something about it, but was too tired to. My bridge held the most weight in proportion to its own weight in the class, so I got the extra credit points, but Vicky’s bridge was able to hold more weight. Her downfall, why she only got #2 in her class, was that altho her bridge held more, it also weighed more. I think both our bridges (mine for sure) were displayed in the glass case in the Science Building’s hallway for a few months until the next project.

This is what’s keeping me awake… why didn’t I build an “m”-shaped bridge instead of an arc bridge? The middle leg in the “m” would’ve totally supported the sag. Was it part of the rules that it had to be an arc bridge? Somehow I don’t think so, I think the only rules were in the materials we were allowed to use. But even if it were written that the bridge could only stand on 2 legs, I could’ve designed an “m” with the middle leg NOT touching the ground, but when the two outside legs separated as the bridge sagged, the middle leg would then get low enough to touch the ground and support the sagging weight so the bridge legs wouldn’t break. Of course it would’ve made the bridge slightly heavier, but I think I could use minimal toothpicks to make the small increase of weight well worth its increased strength.

I wanna call Vicky and ask if she remembers the rules to the bridge project.

Jordan’s recent post complaining about her body mass index (BMI) inspired me to start digging through my desk drawer in search of my BMI chart. I didn’t find it, but instead got lost in a flood of emails I’d printed out and retained.

Through a particularly tortured period of my life, I’d printed out email conversations between my friends and I that were inspiring or comforting, because I want the wise words for future reference and I want never to forget the time and love gifted to me. The following is an excerpt from a 6-pager:

Me: What I really want, and what I’ve always wanted, is to know that if I’m tired, like I am right now, when I can’t think straight and I can’t deal, that I can just lean my head on someone’s lap and trust him to take care of me while I took a break. To trust that if I let go, he would not let the sky collapse on me. That when I’m ready to deal with things again, I can awake refreshed, be greeted by his smile, and I’d know that things are okay. Why is that so impossible to find?
Friend: I think that this is what most people are seeking. They want someone that they can trust, that they can go back to at the end of the day, they want someone who they can let their guard down and not be afraid of being taken advantage of. For me, I think that this is a large part of what love is all about.
And why is it so impossible to find? I tell people (and myself) that the thing about love is that you only really have to get it right once in your life. And once you get it right, you’re set for life. It’s the beauty about of love is that once you do get it right, you don’t ever have to worry about it again. This kind of love may be hard to find, but I think it’s well worth the wait. I know that I want to love someone so completely and have that love returned that I’m not willing to compromise when it comes to people I date. Now, this might make me a little lonely and a lot single for a long time, but the way I see it is, I don’t think that I would be happy any other way.

The email was from June 16, 2005. And I have since then found that person I was writing about wanting to find. And my friend who wrote me the words of encouragement has not only found his person now, but married her. Neither of us at the time were dating these people we are with now, but we would be within months unbeknownst to us then.

I feel compelled to note that I don’t think what my friend meant in the above exerpt was that once you find the right person for you, everything will be honky dory with no effort from you and you can just be a lazy slob and take no responsibility for the relationship. But I think with the right person, your efforts aren’t wasted; they, along with your love, are reciprocated and nurtured.

Thanks, Mike/’Wilco’! (Bet he thought I wasn’t going to give him credit. Or maybe he doesn’t even remember writing that.)