cindy's world

When someone calls 911, the 911 operator/dispatcher needs to type up the situation and that gets transmitted to a police car. A recent transmission that came out of Lakewood Sheriff’s Station, which is within my court’s jurisdiction, reads:

“916C [citizen holding misdemeanor suspect] — Male found someone breaking into his veh [vehicle]. He tied susp [suspect] to a tree and left because he had to go to work.”

Here’s one out of Norwalk, home base of my courthouse:

“p5150 [possible crazy person] — Female calling 911 claiming 261 [rape] now, stating she is wearing the sky.”

(“The Open Mike,” Star News, [official monthly publication of the Sheriffs’ Relief Association of Los Angeles County, California, Inc.], June 2006 issue)

A couple of attorneys who came in for a hearing this morning complimented the flowers. People always assume Mr. W gave me the flowers, but don’t worry, Vanessa, I set them straight.

My reporter can be seen walking by and sniffing the roses and eucalyptus.

(sorry for the bad photo quality and glare; I only have my cameraphone)

“Hi, remember me? I’m the avocado seed. People said I wouldn’t make it, but how you like me now?! They used to call me ‘weed,’ but now they call me ‘Jack and the Beanstalk.’ I’m real popular at Cindy’s work. People stop by and marvel at me. I’m gonna be worth hundreds of bucks when I grow up a little bit more and move into my own pot.”

“Here’s a view of my root system:”

(sorry for the bad photo quality and glare; Cindy only has a cameraphone)

(Warning: boring post alert.)

As I was leaving to go to work this morning, I walked by the bouquet of flowers and thought, “There’s yoga class tonight, so I won’t be around to enjoy these until tomorrow morning for a few minutes, and then I’m gone for the weekend again.” So I decided to bring them to work with me so I can have a full 2 workdays with them. The ceramic vase I’d put the flowers in has a vertical crack down the side, so water was slowly leaking. I planned to change them into one of a few glass vases I had in the courtroom. I put the flowers to the side on my file cabinet as we did a hearing on a criminal case that was returning today for sentencing. The defendant, who was in custody, decided his attorney was “railroading” him and had a fit, cussing and trying to stand to leave the courtroom, not shutting up or settling down so that we could resume sentencing. 15 sheriffs in our courtroom (2 with stun guns) later, this defendant was escorted out of the courtroom and we sentenced him without his being present. It was downhill from there for the rest of the morning. I selected the beautiful cylindrical frosted glass vase that Vicky had sent me flowers in for my bday last year, and looked around for the packet of flower food I’d brought. I could not find it; it’d vaporized sometime during the morning struggle. I ignored that BIG HINT from fate. I had a spare packet from a previous bouquet, so I took the vase to fill with room temperature water (as directed on the printed instructions on the packet) in the bathroom sink. The sink was too small for the vase and it was not gonna fill sideways, so after making a slight mess in the hallway restroom, I took the vase into the jury room restroom to fill. The vase fit in the sink albeit at an angle, but after I filled as much as I could, the vase would not come out of the sink. I pulled, rolled, manipulated as best I could, and called my court reporter to help. She put soap on the rim where it was making contact with the sink edge, couldn’t get it out. We called our bailiff. He couldn’t do it, either. “I can’t just leave it here for now,” I said, “They just sent us another trial. We’re gonna have jurors using this restroom!” Finally, with a clink, my bailiff broke the vase, and we took the pieces out. =( I got another less exotic vase and rinsed that over the water fountain at the back of the courtroom. Water spilled out of the shallow metal fountain bowl and spilled all over the ground. I sighed and got a bunch of napkins to put on the floor. I adjusted the angle of the vase, and the new angle made water trickle out the side and onto my skirt. Another puddle on the floor. I cleaned that up. The angle wasn’t vertical enough to fill the vase and neither was another water fountain I tried after that, so I finally got smart and filled my water bottle with sink water and poured that into the vase. The flowers beautifully displayed in a clear vase, I went to rinse out the cracked vase in the hallway bathroom sink, and in pouring out the brown-green water in the vase, a wave of it skipped over the sink water’s surface, flew out of the sink and landed right on my skirt. I sighed. What next? Was I gonna slip on a puddle or get hit by a car on the way home? What a bad plant day.

And then, lunch came and everything started getting great! We worked into lunch because our new trial defendant decided to take a plea bargain instead of going to trial, so that freed up our afternoon. I spent some time with Mr. W at lunch, then came back to work to make some phone calls to my retirement program people. I received a check in the mail from them yesterday with a letter stating they’d erroneously deducted this money from my pay to switch my retirement plan, which scared me because I’d been trying to call them for months to say the retirement plan that show me on in the annual statements is wrong and that I’d paid money for the switch. The fact that they returned money may mean that they kicked me out of the plan I want to be in and refunded my money, which is going to cost me thousands more to get back into the right plan. I got thru finally on the phone, and the representative I spoke to said that nope, it was their error for not putting me in the right plan years ago, and that I’m fully paid for the correct plan, and that the check I received was a refund for the money they’d pulled out monthly to switch plans without realizing that I should already be switched. He apologized, and said to just go ahead and cash the check, they’ll mail me confirmation of the plan I’m in soon. Happy birthday, me! How often do we get a check for thousands of bucks from the County that we didn’t have to kill ourselves to get?

Oh, and Victoria’s Secret also sent me a giftcard for my birthday. And Mr. W didn’t feel like going to yoga so instead of seeing crazy yoga lady, we’re gonna have a nice dinner and watch “Friends” and eat green tea ice cream. Karma’s being so nice to me right now. 🙂

Dwaine is holding me personally accountable to him to report back to him my research in switching career paths. Man, the excuses were plenty for not jobhunting earlier. “I’m gonna keep this job for the steady pay and benefits while I write.” “I’m trying to decide whether to go to law school by exposing myself to the battlefield.” “The job market is unstable right now, and if I work for a private company, I’ll probably be laid off.” “I have a mortgage to think about, I need the steady paycheck.” But he’s right, I’m ambitious by nature and I just got lost in where to set my next goal and have become frustrated from my lack of direction. Just taking a small step in the direction of my dream like looking online for information makes me feel good, like a small weight’s been lifted from my shoulders. The guilt of complacency is now eased somewhat. It truly is a luxury that I’m not in a rush and that my financial burdens are tiny, thanks to lucky timing and cautious care early and throughout.

Anyway, I looked online and turns out my problem is that I don’t know what search words to put in. People want technical writers, underwriters. The closest I can get to is copywriting, which is confined at an office and I don’t think I’m into doing that again. Small advertising companies tend to not hire enough people so they deadline like mad to overwork their few exhausted underpaid employees. I think what I really want is just freelance work, which means I may as well start writing on my own time on my own topics wherever I want to bring my laptop and send stuff out.

Even writing that feels good.

Between the two phone conversations I had with my friend Dwaine (whom I’ve known since junior high) today, we talked in depth for 2.5 hours. We don’t talk often, but when we do it’s major catch-up and we’re on the phone forever. He’s a bit tough on me sometimes, but that’s okay, I believe him when he tells me that he just wants to see me happy, that my happiness is what he truly desires for me. With the assistance of his tough love, I realized something potentially monumental. He’s damn right that I’m generally unhappy right now. But here’s the twist: what I think I’m unhappy about is not what I’m actually unhappy about, but rather the symptom of a more deeply-rooted discontent on a larger scale that is so huge that I’d formerly just pushed it back, pushed it back, not dealt with it even in thought. Every time it began to rear its head in my mind, I’d hammer it down out of sight like those plastic gophers you slam with a padded mallet at Chuck E. Cheese’s.

My life is not fulfilling. My life is stagnant. It is in the exact same place today as it was when I was 23, 24. That was the last major thing I did for myself — I bought real estate. It may have been a great accomplishment in my early 20s, but now that I’m approaching 30, everyone else has caught up and surpassed me, and what does it really matter that I’ve had this house for this long already? Only that the years on the mortgage are less. My low expectations for myself when I was in high school was “college, then job, then marriage and kids.” Well, the marriage and kids ain’t jumpin on silver platters and sliding themselves over to me, so here’s the real ideal: a career that I’m passionate about, that truly taps my talents and benefits others. Nothing neutral like the job I have now, which position is by law required to be exactly that — neutral. I want to make my mark and I want to contribute. My want my handprint on Planet Earth to truly matter and mean something to the future inhabitants of this planet. I want to write. I have been writing since I was 6 in the nonsensical limitations of a language I was just learning and forcing to fit around the shapes of my limitless imagination. I’ve been fooling myself when I’d tell myself, “My life is great, it’s low-maintenance, I can do and can afford to do whatever I want, it’s stable, it’s great, it’s everyone’s envy.” That is not me. I don’t like complacency. I got lazy somehow, or maybe I lost direction. This was supposed to be a temporary job while I figured out what to do next. I’m restless and antsy as a hermit crab (I AM a Cancer, ya know) in a shell that I know I’ve already outgrown. I also fooled myself when I said this job is gonna be the low-maintenance, easy money, great benefits provider as I do what I really want to do, which is produce The Great Asian American Novel. Have I written one short story since I’ve been hired on in 1999? No. The thing that fuels my poetry is the need to write for emotional therapy, and I’ve published one poem since I’ve been out of school. Who am I?!

Who I want to be is someone proud of her career because she knows it’s a good fit. Creative advertising, copywriting, writing a regular column or contributing wide-range articles and features to different publications, commercials, TV shows, counseling/advice columns, short stories, novels. That’s me. Anyone who has known me awhile knows that’s me. Since day 1 of my hire in the job I have now, I have been told by peers, supervisors, managers, that I’m too good for this job and they don’t know what I’m doing here, and now what they’re saying is that they’re surprised I’m still here and I need to get out and do better for myself, because I can. I love most of the people I work with and respect them immensely, and I in no way think I’m better than they are and therefore need to get out of “the rat race,” as one retired coworker had always put it. But I don’t think this job is a fit that maximizes on my fortes.

And perhaps I obsess over minute details of a bland life as a distraction so that I could continue to blind myself to my lazy complacency. Perhaps I nit-pick and overdramatize on non-problems because there is nothing else to feel anything about. Idle hands are the devil’s playground, right? I focus on stupid shit because I can’t step up to the big shit.

Everywhere I look around me, people are coming into their own. Diana, the young lawyer just tapping into her potency in an area that’s new but that she’d always felt an internal gravitation toward. Vicky, the doctor pharmacist with her interest in medicine and talent toward sense and order. Karen, who just passed the bar exam (congrats!). Other ex-classmates of college, in prestigious positions that inspire them to rise to new heights and challenges. A security guard buddy downstairs who just passed the sheriff’s department exam and is finally on his way to realizing his current goal of becoming a deputy sheriff. Brad, who just bought a new house. Dwaine, in his recently-purchased new house, in a relatively new career in which he’s climbing the success ladder so fast he’s skipping rungs, with eyes still on totally different and higher ladders in the near future. The list is endless. Even other women who are newly engaged or planning their weddings, they are on their way to their own dreams. Each time I hear of wonderful news of people around me, I’m happy for them while pushing away a feeling in myself that can only be described as feeling left behind. And I have never been left behind before. I led the pack. I used to always have a next goal. Get the class, get the grade, get the college applications nice and juicy, get into the college I want, get the grades there, get the job, get the house, get the financial security. Now that I’m there, I’ve stopped reaching because I’ve stopped dreaming.

When I turn on my cell phone, you know what it says? It says “Peace is being calm in your heart.” It used to say “NEVER stop daydreaming.” When I was in elementary school, every open house in school my parents went to, the teacher would say what a well-behaved kid I was, if only I could curb my bad habit of “daydreaming too much.” First grade, second grade, third grade, all the same thing. In indignance a few years ago, I celebrated dreaming. And now, focus on the dreams have been replaced with focus on emotional recovery from the recent trauma. I began this blog in therapy, hoping that I could achieve inner peace and stability again. I think it’s time to start dreaming again.

I’ve been pulled out of my courtroom to handle a specialized courtroom down the hall that the floater clerks either can’t or aren’t willing to do. So they’ve put a very qualified criminal clerk in my courtroom to handle the child molestation/rape trial that started yesterday. I’ve been haywire for a couple of days now, and all I can do to try to pull myself out is constantly talking myself out of feeling bad. ‘My life is fine, it’s only one aspect that’s uncomfortable, the negative drama stuff is out of my control and not about me, and I can always take some drastic measures if I see the need, everything else is fine,’ etc. Logic has not been dictating my emotions. I’m miserable. I’m lost. I’m scared. I’m nauseated and exhausted.

And then earlier, a law clerk in this department brought her two new calico kittens to visit us. She’d gone home early to pick them up from the groomer’s who was getting the kitties ready for their adoption today, and their new mommy decided to swing back and introduce “Scout” and “Gabby” to us first. They are the cutest tiny things! Scout seems to be a runt, and I picked her up and held her. She purred immediately and curled into my arm, against my body. As she got braver, she put two tiny pink-padded paws on my chest and pushed herself up from my forearm and as I delighted in her curiosity, she touched the tip of her small pink and brown nose to mine in a little kitty kiss. Everyone started cooing and awwwing. “She really likes you!” the court reporter said, as she held the slightly older and furrier Gabby. Gabby was clearly favored as she was prettier, and Scout’s aquamarine eyes seem to protrude a little from her small triangular face. I think she’s just young and still has a bit of the less-attractive infant cat alien look.

For a few minutes there, as I was cuddling the warm furry kitty who was poking her little head around and purring in my arms, my mind was off of my emotional issues and I was happily charmed. I’d hug Dodo like that, but he doesn’t like to be picked up and he won’t stay still when you’re petting him. I’ll give it another try later when I get home. Haha, Scout’s only the size of Dodo’s head.

Happy May Day, people. On the drive to work this morning, a listener called the radio station and asked the on-air personalities what they think of “Mexican Day today.” He was referring to the planned walk-out Mexicans here are doing today for demonstrations and rallying downtown in protest to our present immigration laws and policies. The caller said he was “100% Mexican,” and that he’s in support of their demonstration, but feels that to make a real impact on the importance of Mexican immigrants in the nation, they shouldn’t just do the walk-out for a day; they should do it for weeks, or a month. The DJs said that if people demonstrating stay out for a week, they could lose their jobs, and the kids who walk out of school to support the demonstration long-term would be losing out on their education. The caller said, “But when you want something done, you need to be ready for the consequences. I say we get all us together and VOTE –” The DJs said, “But most of these people demonstrating can’t vote because they’re illegal, that’s what they’re rallying about –” The caller jumped in with, “Well, if it were up to me, I’d walk out there, have my Uzi and I’d point that around –” and the DJs cut him off there and said, “Whoa, whoa, whoa! Now what’s THAT gonna prove for you? Now if it were idiot walk-out day, I’d be on board for that!”

I’m exhausted, I can’t focus my eyes, and I couldn’t call in sick today because administration’s policy is that anyone not appearing at work today without a doctor’s documentation to verify actual ailment would be assumed to be acting in solidarity with the Mexican ditch effort and we’d be considered absent without permission/pay.

Stupid.

I’m at my childhood friend Sandy’s apartment in Long Beach right now working on a program flyer for an upcoming Raytheon conference. I haven’t done advertising/marketing since the days when Sandy and I both worked for i2S Institute and I did all their ads. Sandy used to say then, “Man, we have the best ads.” But that was 8 years ago when we were college kids and now we’re adults and working for more established companies. Not that Los Angeles County Superior Court is a “company.” Not really, anyway. I’m taking a break after completing the first page of the flyer. I used one of my personal photos for the background to prevent any copyright infringement on photos. She wanted a photo for the background wash but didn’t have one ready, so luckily one of my Cancun scenery shots did the trick. Good thing I brought my laptop, too. She said she was gonna have Raytheon pay me as an outsource contractor for the creation of this flyer, so now I have something to add to my photography resume and my advertising resume. Cool, huh?

Well, break’s over. Time to hit page 2.

My judge’s wife called while we were in session (the attorneys were giving the jury their closing arguments) and I took down a message for him on one of those pre-printed message pad forms. On the line that asks for who called, I wrote his wife’s name, and the line underneath prompts the caller’s identity with “OF _______”, on which I wrote “your Kingdom.” I then passed the message up to the bench to him. After a few minutes, he passed it back down to me. He’d added to “your Kingdom” with “and Outlying Realms of Spiritual and/or Metaphysical Dimensions, including but not limited to, various parallel universes.” Just like that. He took up 3 lines to write that. He later said to me, as he was getting off the bench, that he had to make sure I refer to his rightful realms properly.