cindy's world

What’s up with my chipmunk cheeks? Gah. I don’t get it. It’s not like my body is that bloated. I mean, I’m not at the lowest weight I’ve ever been, but I shouldn’t be fat enough to look like I’m hiding marshmallows in my cheeks. Is there such a thing as cheek lipo? But if I really AM fatter than I think (bathroom scale still not working), I’m sure my mother will tell me on Saturday. An hour ago she invited herself to come with me this Saturday to my wedding gown alteration appointment. She initially invited my dad along, too, but I convinced her he wouldn’t want to go to something like that. I can hear her now when she sees the dress on me for the first time. “I still think you should get something with sleeves to cover your big arms. Maybe they’ll take this dress back as a trade-in. Want me to go ask them?”

But it is my fault if I did chunk up. Due to our current child molestation trial (my court reporter discovered that the common denominator among child molesters appears to be ownership of a van. Hence, if I am ever a mother I will not buy a van or befriend anyone who owns a van.) running late into lunch and our marriage license appointment yesterday among other factors which mostly translate to “we didn’t feel like it”, Gym Trainee and I missed our noontime workouts this entire week. But we did walk Monday, Tuesday and today at lunch to run our various errands. We probably put in a solid hour of walking the first two days. Today, however, the walk ended at a local Mexican food restaurant, I ate half a wet burrito that had such a spicy red sauce that the heartburn lasted me through the afternoon, well into the evening, through my gym workout after work, and made me so sluggish and sick that I took way longer breaks in between sets than I should have. I’m sure the crumb donut and half a cookie I had before I left work (leftovers from the jurors) didn’t help, either.

I’m a house mouse with chipmunk cheeks.

I hunted down my coworker and as soon as he saw me, took the digital camera out of his pocket. When he got the photo he wanted on the screen and passed it over, I looked at the older woman on the display with the boy haircut, wearing a hat and huge sunglasses. “I can’t tell who this is! She looks totally incognito!” He laughed and pushed another button. I saw the face of this older woman now. “Is this Becky?” I asked. His ex that I had suspected he got back together with. It does kinda look like her.
“No, this is Bessie!”
“Who the hell is Bessie?”
Bessie was his girlfriend before Becky. I am not making this up. I have never seen this woman before in my life; both he and she were confused as to whether she may have met me 10 years ago when they last dated. 10 years ago I was in college. “So why did she want to surprise me if she doesn’t know me?”
“Well, because she wasn’t sure if she knew you, both she and I couldn’t remember if you were working when we were dating. But I told her you’d heard stories about her from me.”
“So which girl is this again?”
“The one who said she was divorced but she was still married and living with her husband and going back and forth.”
“Oh, the one that played with your head for years?”
“Yeah, it dragged on for 10 years. But she said she’s divorced now. It should’ve gone through Monday.”
“She dated you for 10 years, lied about being married and then said she was getting a divorce but never did, went back to her husband, you broke up for 10 years, and just NOW she got divorced? You better ask to see the divorce decree.”
“You know, I looked it up in the system today, and it’s not in there. So we’re gonna have some issues.”
We’re paying for HER dinner?!

SO lame. I can’t believe I devoted 3 posts to this. I promise my next post will be more meaningful.

I didn’t wait for my coworker to come visit me today. The moment there was a break this morning in our trial, I ran up the stairwell (the elevator takes too long), burst into the courtroom where he’s working, and demanded to see the photo of the mystery x-factor date he insists on taking to our wedding. His eyes went wide as he gasped and said, “Oh, I forgot! Tomorrow, I’ll bring it tomorrow. I’ll put the camera in my car as soon as I get home.”

I gave him a piece of my mind about how not cool a stunt like this is. He swore that there’s no bad blood between me and this woman and that we’d never hung out or had any sort of personal history. He said she only knows me through past contact when she’s come to the courthouse to meet up with him and so I would’ve seen her with him and that’s it. In fact, if I were to see her photo, I wouldn’t recognize her except in the context of seeing her in the courthouse with him. I said I don’t remember his introducing me to any strange women at the courthouse, and he said maybe they saw me in passing and he just pointed me out to her, but she thinks she knows who I am. He told me to trust him, and that this isn’t a big thing, it’s not gonna be some surprise confrontation or something. So I asked for her name again and he again refused. Wtf. He sent me out with more promises to bring his camera in tomorrow to solve the mystery.

I walked away in thought. Something still doesn’t sit right. If she had such limited contact with me in the past, what would possess her to think she would “surprise” me? What would I care? And what’s the big deal with the big name reveal? Also, I have an amazing memory and I do not remember him walking around work with some woman who was just visiting. UNLESS…

Unless he got back together with his ex-girlfriend! I’ve definitely run into him with this woman a few times in the past, but this was years ago. He’d picked up on her at Subway when a bunch of us was out at lunch together. He’d suddenly asked if our coworker wanted a refill on her soda and grabbed her cup and took off to the soda fountain. When he returned he was glowing with a phone number in his hand. They dated and met up regularly for lunch and soon bought a house together and moved in. When their relationship went sour, he still lived with her (albeit sleeping in a different room) because they couldn’t agree on how to dispose of their co-purchased property. Eventually it got bad enough that he just took her lowball offer, let her buy him out, and scraped together barely enough money to overpay for a condo in Long Beach, and couldn’t even afford furniture for a long time. It doesn’t make sense that he’d get back together with her, but the pieces fit. How do you date someone this new and then decide to move her in? Obviously he doesn’t feel that she’s a stranger. And she’s the only person he’s been involved with that I’ve ever met. We even had lunch together (with him of course) a few times so she definitely knows me and hence could want to keep her name (which I’d recognize instantly) a secret to “surprise” me, as in, “Surprise! We got back together!”

But I still have a hard time imagining how he could get back with someone with whom he had such an ugly end… Guess we’ll see tomorrow.

I’ll do my weekend update tomorrow or when I can figure out why the photos aren’t loading. But for now…do you guys wanna hear something weird? Well, of course you do, that’s why blogs exist.

I’m learning about odd things that are strangely lacking “out there,” things that you’d think would go without saying, such as if the bride gives you free reign to pick whatever dress you’d like for your bridesmaid dress, she shouldn’t have to specify that you’re not to pick a bridal dress. Today, it had to do with the propriety of bringing dates to someone’s wedding. We’ve told everyone that it’s a very small venue and that guest count is extremely limited. We’re not able to accommodate our invitees bringing a date unless the date is the invitee’s significant other whom we’re friends with or have at least met, or if it’s a spouse. Not just some person to tag along or whom they just started seeing. Well, I asked a coworker last week (whom I know had ended a long-term live-in relationship) for his mailing address, and then I said just sort of aside that the invite is going just out to him, right? He’s not bringing his son. He paused and said thoughtfully, “Mmm, gimme a couple of weeks. I’ll let ya know if I’m bringing someone.”
“What? Are you dating someone?” I asked. Altho we coworkers usually know when he’s seeing someone, this is the first I’ve heard of this.
“Yeah, pretty recently. I’m not sure how it’s going yet, so I don’t wanna –”
“I totally understand,” I said quickly. “I can’t tell you how many friends I’ve had who made plans with someone they didn’t know very well cuz they’re in the honeymoon stage and then months later they kick themselves cuz they’re trying to get rid of him and they’re now stuck with plans they made a long time ago.”
He laughed. “Yeah…plus she may not even feel comfortable going. I know you guys are tight on space, so I’ll let you know.”

Turns out the reason he was unsure wasn’t because he didn’t know whether he wanted to keep dating this girl. It was quite the opposite. Cuz some days later he came to me and said, “Hey, I talked to her about going to your wedding and she said yes! I told her where it was and she’s really excited. So put me down for two.”
“Really?” I said, “You’re pretty secure that you’ll still be dating her in 3 months?”
“Well, I asked her to move in with me and she said yes! That’s why I wasn’t sure the other day whether you ought to include her or not, cuz she hadn’t given me her answer yet.” He was glowing. So since this seemed serious, I asked him about her. He would tell me nothing but, “Well…I’ll show you her picture.”
“So what are you saying, she’s so hot that you’ll overlook all your reservations?”
“No, I wouldn’t say I overlooked any reservations…but I do think she’s pr-etty attractive…”
So there’s my only guest (Mr. W has one, too, who sprung this on him also; it’s actually the guy we went to China with) who’s bringing a “date” who’s just a “date” to our wedding, nobody I know, doesn’t even seem like someone he knows well. OR SO I THOUGHT. Now here’s the strange part.

I emailed this coworker today and asked for the soon-to-be live-in girlfriend’s name so that I could put it on the wedding invitation. He called and told me to just put “and Guest.” I said it’s kinda bad etiquette to put “and Guest” when we know specifically who he’s bringing, plus I don’t want people to think I’m allowing invitees to just bring a guest and start asking if they could bring a friend or some random person that we’ll have to pay for and who is possibly taking the seat away from someone who actually IS a friend or a distant family member. He still was really hesitant to give me a name. When I asked why, he said that SHE wanted to “surprise me” and didn’t want him to tell me who she is. What? “What are you talking about? Why would that surprise me?”
“She thinks she knows you.”
“What? From where?”
“I’m not sure. But she doesn’t want me to tell you who she is and she said she wanted to surprise you.”
“You can’t do that to the bride! That’s not cool. We can’t have a wedding with some x-factor running around out there!”
He apparently liked that term, and said laughingly, “Yeah, x-factor! Just look at it that way! She’s a surprise x-factor!”
“That’s NOT cool! Why would she think she knows me? What if we had some past bad blood or something? Am I gonna see her at the wedding and recognize her as the girl who my ex had cheated on me with or something?” My mind was reeling with the possibilities. It just seemed really unkosher and tacky to me. You don’t play games with someone’s wedding! It’s just…not cool! I mean, if my fiance wants to “surprise” me with someone, that’s acceptable, I’ll trust him. But some random girl?!
“I’m sure you guys don’t have a past history of bad blood,” he reassured me. “I would never in a million years bring someone to your wedding that had that kind of history with you.”
I pushed him for more answers and got out of him that it’s not someone who was a peer, i.e. not someone my age whom I’d gone to school with. He said she’s 10 years younger than him so that’d make her about 15 years older than me, someone in her mid-40s. He was vague on how she specifically knew me, he said he thought she believed she knew me from when she’d been in the courthouse some time before. So I started wondering if this was someone I’d trained in the past. But people whom I’ve trained, he would know for a fact knew me, he wouldn’t be unsure, only going by her belief that she knew me and that I would recognize her. Might this be an old co-worker who transferred out a long time ago? I can’t imagine who.
So I finally said accusingly, “You said you were gonna show me a picture of her!”
“Oh, that’s right, I did. Okay, I’ll bring it in tomorrow, it’s on my digital camera.”
“So if I look at the photo and I know for sure whether I know her or she’s mistaken, then will you tell me her name to put on the invitation?”
“Okay.”

I guess the mystery will be solved tomorrow.

Truly, not having internet at work sucks. I had to run and borrow someone else’s computer many floors up (I took the stairs and arrived panting) to send an email canceling one makeup artist after hiring another one this morning. I’m also way behind in blogging. I also realized, it’s not even like I’m getting a significant increase in productivity without internet. It just keeps me from doing little things like online banking and looking up attorney addresses and phone numbers, as well as looking up weird terminology for my court reporter’s transcripts. I don’t play games online.

Friday was Vanessa (“Busykitty”) night. She graduated with her AA degree on Thursday and celebrated with dinner at Tapas Restaurant in Newport Beach. Mr. W and I arrived ridiculously early, as being with Mr. W we’re wont to do, and sat at the bar while waiting for everyone else to get there. The good thing about arriving that early is that we got happy hour pricing and ordered half-price sangrias and a sliced Spanish chorizo appetizer plate. After the party arrived and was seated and I met a ton of Vanessa’s family as well as Jay’s little girl Jayla, Mr. W ordered more tapas that we shared. Mr. W had been to the restaurant before and got to relive his days in Spain through the food. Vanessa’s sister was also part of the flamenco performance troupe that performed there that night. Mr. W kept whispering to me all night “In Spain the food blah blah,” “Flamenco dancing is supposed to be blah blah.” I guess before Mr. W is as Asian fobby as he is now, he was Spanish. Vanessa’s family had multiple graduations this summer in the group, her youngest sister and brother-in-law with their Bachelor’s degrees, their mother with her Master’s, and a niece graduated from elementary school. They joked about how they represented the entire spectrum of degrees. By the way, Vanessa looked adorable with little girl Jayla on her hip. She toted the toddler to meet us when we were still at the bar, and when Jayla started a whine, Vanessa nipped it right away by asking her gently, “What do want? Use your words.” Jayla responded instantly by using a word and pointing, making it understood she wanted to hang out with Vanessa’s teenage niece Janece (okay, I have no idea how to spell her name) who, by the way, is a freaking hilarious girl. Even tho it rained that night, it didn’t dampen any spirits!

Saturday, Mr. W and I got into a fight bright and early because I was so pissed that he made plans for 8am. Who makes plans for 8 am on a SATURDAY?! I saw no reason why the exact same plans couldn’t be made an hour or two later. The only thing redeeming was that the plans were with Gym Trainee and her son. We went to the same guy Mr. W bought his wedding tuxedos from and bought the son, Evan, a kid’s tux. I always describe Evan as “a 40 year-old trapped in the body of a 10 year-old and seriously angry about that fact”. Evan’s been bugging his mom for a tux for a long time and now, he has one with 3 different vests he could swap out for different looks at upcoming graduation in June and at our wedding in August. After getting the best deal I’ve ever heard of for this name-brand tux ensemble, we set off for UCLA. The 10 year-old was scoping out potential colleges. If you think graduating from elementary school is too early for him to start looking, to Evan this is already delayed because he’d expected to attend college immediately upon graduating from kindergarten and cried his eyes out when his mom had to explain his misunderstanding to him. He’s been researching boarding junior high and high school for himself because he discovered that some scholastic-based programs will pay scholarships toward universities. The reason we were going to UCLA is to let him decide between setting his goals there as a local university, or Yale. Don’t laugh; he has the grades to back that up and I expect to see great things from him in the future. (Did I tell you he taught himself to read by the time he was 3?) Our two UCLA virgins were good sports about walking everywhere on foot, from South Campus to North Campus, to Westwood for Diddy Riese‘s ice cream sandwiches (up to $1.50 now, $.50 increase from last time; I tried an authentic Hawaiian-style shave ice with the scoop of vanilla ice cream inside), back to UCLA to the dorm area, then to the car on campus. (Mr. W bitched and moaned a lot, refusing to walk where I wanted to take the tour and instead took them through back halls and behind buildings where I don’t think we were allowed to go plus didn’t present the best views of campus, and I was pissed at him for the entire night for taking over my tour and other things.) Mr. W wanted to go to the obnoxiously-reputed Ed Debevic’s restaurant in Beverly Hills for dinner afterwards, but when we got there we saw that it was gone (HA-ha!), so we kept going down Restaurant Row/La Cienega toward the Beverly Center. I thought we could hit up Hard Rock Cafe or Browne Derby, but they were both closed, too. I suddenly felt old. “I remember when this wasn’t here and instead it was…”. We did stumble upon a freaking amazing restaurant called The Grand Lux Cafe where a bank used to be. The overhead drop chandelier fixtures were amazing, not to mention the decorative tin ceilings and marble pillars. And the food!! Such a large menu of everything from gourmet pizzas to steak to seafood. And when the food arrived, the portion sizes made our mouths and eyes open wide. Evan was eating his giant burger the whole weekend, and I was doing the same with my 4-person-serving sized flatbread chicken sandwich. The experience was so delicious and impressive all-around that Gym Trainee told me Evan wants to go back there for his birthday this year instead of their usual Lucille’s BBQ, his old favorite. She also told me he was getting his stuff together to brag to his friends about his tour of UCLA when he got back to school. You know the kid’s in a good private school when visiting a college is “brag” material among his elementary school pals. What was I bragging about at 10? Hmm, new Barbie accessories, cool erasers that picked up after themselves, oragami and rubber band tricks.

Sunday, Mr. W was a sweetheart and made a point of letting me sleep in. We eventually got up and ran a bunch of errands like getting ocean water for his fish tank, more liquors I could use for my cocktails, a book about the Japanese surrender in WWII that my judge wanted for his birthday (I can’t read that stuff; hence why he’s the judge), and then visited my parents. During a delicious homemade dinner, my mom gave me some motherly essential advice for the wedding (this week it was to avoid sunlight so I don’t accidentally get tan; last week it was to stop working out immediately so I don’t get big; it seems like my lifestyle is just a huge mess to my mom), then we all went for a brisk but long walk around the hilly neighborhood. My mom’s been attending dancing and tai chi classes regularly with her friends at a local park, and my dad was using the alone-time to reacquaint himself with his beloved pastime of fishing, so they were both in great spirits this weekend. They also both look significantly healthier from their increased activity levels.

Monday, Mr. W and I went to his ex-bro-in-law best buddy’s house for the wife’s birthday. She turned 39 and bought herself a brand new cherry-red Corvette. Mr. W’s son had told us that they had a huge party the day before (Sunday) with like 70 people in attendance, so the fact that we were not a part of that but had been invited instead to a BBQ the following day was confusing to us. We were like, “If you didn’t want to invite us to your party, there’s no need to throw a SEPARATE one.” I was wondering how they’d behave about their party, whether they’d keep it from us or make some excuse. But they talked about the event the night before and the guests they knew in common with Mr. W as if expecting us to know about it, giving people updates and talking about all the leftover food they had, pulling a few items out for us to munch on. The wife said something about one of their guests wanting to bring a cake, but that wife had told the guest that she was going to have cake with the kids and us the next day (which turned out to be a delicious raspberry jam white cake). So I guess they’d deliberately planned a more intimate BBQ for us and the kids (their kids and Mr. W’s kids are cousins, and they had their girlfriends and friends over, too) so they could hang out with and talk to us the whole time. The wife had also deliberately arranged this hoping that Mr. W could get together with and talk to his MIA daughter. I’m not sure if meeting up is going to make communication between them any better, but at least it broke the ice.

Today (well, I consider it Tuesday even tho it’s way early Wed morning), I was a good girl and despite not having Mr. W or Gym Trainee on the same lunch hour as me, I nevertheless hit the gym alone at lunch and worked my upper body, and went back after work for a cardio session. Yay, me!

Oh, photos to follow.

Aside from a floss mishap, I had a really good day. After meeting with the Garden’s wedding coordinator last weekend, my two major concerns were the DJ and hair/makeup person. Dwaine and I have an old German class schoolmate who’s gotten into DJ equipment as a hobby. He DJed Dwaine’s birthday a couple of years ago and did a great job. I figured if he were willing, he could DJ the wedding and I’d save like $800/hour. I spoke to him and he was willing, although he had some concerns because he didn’t have a microphone, had never DJed professionally, and didn’t have his own speakers. Turned out he’d simply wired his turntable and equipment to Dwaine’s home speakers. The Garden charges $400 to borrow their speakers, we don’t know if our friend’s equipment is compatible with the Garden’s speakers or the quality of their speakers, doesn’t allow our friend to go in with his stuff to test out the compatibility before the wedding, and our friend isn’t comfortable MCing so we’ll still need someone to introduce the wedding party and guide the reception events. This week I have a new courtroom assistant filling in for my regular one who’s on vacation, and she mentioned the huge party she was throwing for her daughter next month and talked about how great the DJ was she’d found, how affordable, what a total package he was. Instantly I perked up and asked for his contact number. Today, I booked him. Because DJing is his professional hobby (not his day job) and because we knew people in common, he charged me a flat rate of $500 for the night, and he comes with all the equipment and music we could possibly conceive of, not to mention professional experience DJing and MCing! He came highly recommended, does research on the location, its rules and setup beforehand, seems very confident and flexible, and has a great work ethic. What luck! Now I can let our German class friend off the hook.

As for the hair/makeup person, the girl that childhood friend Lily recommended quoted me $699 for my hair/makeup. Yow. Yet she quoted Lily’s soon-to-be sister-in-law in the $300s, and was also in the $300s for Lily’s wedding makeup. I mentioned that to bridesmaid Sandy, who is now looking into another hair/makeup artist that she and her family had used before. Sandy’s girl is an award-winning makeup artist and should be more affordable than $699. Hopefully Sandy gets back to me soon with good news that the girl is available my wedding day and will do affordable bridal party hair and makeup, so I can cancel my $120 trial/consultation with Lily’s girl at the end of this month.

The wedding isn’t the only front where I felt lucky to have friends today. I got an email from Mike (“wilco”) telling me that he’d written an email program such that if I sent an email to a particular address with the URL of a website, his program would email me back a text version of that website. He developed the program because I’ve lost internet access at work and can’t keep up with anyone’s blogs anymore. I was so touched, and so impressed at Mike’s techie skills! I had no idea an email-linked program like that could even be written.

I even got Mr. W a connection. He’s been complaining about sciatica pain for awhile, and massages only help temporarily. He attributes the problem to sitting on his wallet for too many years. In our phone conversation after work today, he told me that he’d gone to 99 Ranch Market last night looking for those fobby car seat covers made of wooden beads in hopes that the accupressure would relieve his pain. Luckily for him, though, he didn’t find the covers. I suddenly thought to ask bridesmaid Sandy if her chiropractor boyfriend treated sciatica, and his response was “Of course!” Yay!

Are you guys wondering about the “floss mishap”? Let’s just say that I’ve got a psychotically tight space between two back teeth. So tight that regular floss, sewing thread, titanium wire shred and break instantly in there, leaving uncomfortable high-pressure residue in between the teeth. Expensive thick no-shred floss (from my judge) either shreds and breaks too, or is just too thick to even go in between those two teeth. All the attempts only ripped up the corner of my mouth, some knuckles that had to rub against my teeth, fingertips that had to push the floss to no avail. I was thinking I had to wait hours with that pain to get off work, drive home, and use my normal floss that’s always worked. Finally, my court reporter dug out of her cabinet some sample new-age floss that’s apparently been blessed by fairies and the love-induced tears of a unicorn, because that finally went in between my teeth and despite breaking two or three times, there was still enough left of that sample to get in there and dig out the broken first floss and thread, all bloody and balled up.

I’m grateful for good friends and all the things they do for me.

Last nite during dinner at my parents’ house, my mom looked at me and asked, “Are you gonna lose weight before your wedding?” Geesh, there’s no hiding any new fat cells from Mom. I told her I know I’d gained a little recently. She scolded me to stop weight lifting so I don’t thicken up any more. I said annoyed, “Yeah okay, I’ll be a skinny fat girl instead of a fit girl.” (Dwaine, by the way, hates skinny-fat girls. You know, the chicks who have tiny measurements and who fit in a size 0, but jiggle everywhere and have no tone or shape cuz it’s just fat wrapped around bone? If I’m gonna be thick, I’d rather be a fit-looking thick.)

And then I wondered…is all the trendy frozen yogurt that I’m eating on a regular basis making me fat? I must’ve gone every day this past weekend. A new favorite at YogurtLand is the peanut butter froyo. I think I’d be pretty devastated if I had to cut the yogurt out of my life.

It’s hard to wonder anything for long when my mom starts lightly smacking my upper arm, making critical comments on my arm girth due to what she considers excessive muscle. And then the next thing I knew, she started doing some Tai Chi moves she’d learned from her new Tai Chi recreation classes, saying she’s now built up some strength too and can beat me up. I wasn’t even going to entertain that thought. Silly mommy.

But then, it wasn’t like I was helping myself today, anyway. I’d planned on hitting the gym both during lunch AND after work, but since we were in the midst of a trial when on my first day back today, of course we worked into lunch and then there was no time left for the gym. So instead, for lunch I ate a giant slice of chocolate cake my court reporter had saved for me from my judge’s birthday last Friday. And then Gym Trainee and I drove to a nearby discount store where I purchased the glassware for my wedding centerpieces. At least it was a productive lunch. I balanced out the chocolate cake with a powdered donut after work that was left over from the morning. =P Work was really WAY too productive without the internet to entertain myself with. I kept staring at my email inbox willing people to write me so that I could at least carry on an email conversation with friends. Wish me luck for hitting the gym after my 7pm Homeowners Association meeting tonite!

Sometimes you get crap in life, but you may also be surprised by the bright yellow dandelions that grow out of crap. Excuse me if this post doesn’t make as much sense, I had bourbon for lunch today (with cherries and sugar muddled together, plus vermouth) because I DESERVE it after the day I had yesterday, goshdarn.

Yesterday we were “dark,” meaning my judge took the day off (to take care of some family issues), so his staff was available to float. At 8:30 a.m. yesterday in my regular courthouse, my supervisor said, “Sorry. They need you in Torrance. General Civil department.” That’s 3 freeways and over 30 miles away.

Crap Chunk: I walked into a criminal courtroom in the middle of morning calendar call, and NOT a civil courtroom. I didn’t bring any of my criminal law materials with me. Calendar was also hard because criminal attorneys have a tendency to assume you know who they are so they don’t check in with you. You have to guess or flag them down after the hearing to know who they are.
Dandelion: The court reporter was wonderful. Things that I had missed, she read back the proceedings. (The clerk who was temporarily subbing in there when I walked in didn’t take notes on the morning calendar hearings.) Also, a supervisor walked in with two giant manuals so that I at least had some of the codes necessary to work the program.

Crap Chunk: Since the courtroom handled a lot of cases in the morning and is in trial, I knew I would have to work through lunch. I didn’t have breakfast, and would now not have lunch. I can’t leave during lunch anyway because I didn’t have keys to return into the building.
Dandelion: The bailiff walked in during lunch carrying a large Pizza Hut Stuffed Crust pizza, saying “Anyone want pizza?” He told me to help myself, and then left to do some work. I had two slices, they were my saving graces.

Crap Chunk: The regular clerk screwed up her verdict forms for the jury so bad that it caused major confusion when the jurors THOUGHT they had reached verdicts and turned out they didn’t. The judge wanted the verdict forms corrected. I don’t have access to her computer profile/login so I can’t touch her old verdict forms, so I had to retype 3 verdict forms (a full page long each, single-spaced on MS Word) from scratch. After 4pm. Regular courtrooms would’ve already adjourned for the day at 4pm. But this judge wanted me to retype the verdicts and give them to the jurors pronto. I got them done around 4:20pm cuz I’m a fast typist. The judge sent the jurors back into the jury room with the new forms, and everyone including 5-6 backup deputies (since this is a gang-related murder trial with defendant’s peeps in the audience) waited until 5:05p, when the jurors finally reached their verdict correctly. I read the many looong verdicts (all guilty), and the jurors were finally discharged at 5:30p. The judge did some last minute things and got off the bench at 5:45p. (A normal courtroom would’ve recessed 1 hour 45 minutes prior.)
Dandelion: The judge came back in after 6p and said, “I like your work ethic. Let me know if you ever need a job.” Another clerk working late in the building said that for THIS judge to say that, he really really really means it and she’s never known him to have ever said anything like that to any relief clerk, it’s an extreme compliment. Yay.

*Guys (males), avert your eyes and skip this one*
Crap Chunk: I went to the bathroom for the first time since I’d left the house that day at 6pm, and found that surprise! My period had come early.
Dandelion: There just happened to be a tampon sitting outside the dispenser in the restroom, so I “stole” it. Plus, getting my period early means that hopefully, it’ll come early the month of the wedding, too, so I won’t be PMSing and bloated during. Otherwise I’m estimated to get it right around the wedding day.

Crap Chunk: I’d been dying of thirst but the jury room drinking fountain had an “out of order” sign on it, and the drinking fountain in the back hallway squirted water back against its spigot so that I can’t get to it.
Dandelion: I thought I’d try my luck and open the little fridge in the jury room. Sealed bottles of water!!! I “stole” one. First bit of liquid I’ve had all day, after 6pm.

Crap Chunk: The looooong trial minutes took forever to type (over an hour to be exact) and the overtimer bailiff could only stay until 6:30p to let me out of the building. But I still had to close up the trial file, inventory 100 trial exhibits, photocopy the verdicts and question while blotting out the jury signatures (to protect their anonymity) and seal any original documents with juror signatures in a confidential envelope, paginate and file the jury instructions, blah blah blah. I wasn’t gonna be done for a long time.
Dandelion: The overtimer bailiff (not the same one who bought the pizza) inventoried ALL 100 exhibits for me, put them in order, locked them in the judge’s chambers for me which is where the judge said I could keep them for his clerk. And another clerk who was working late in the building had a “bate stamp” which paginated all the jury instruction pages for me. And she stuck around for AN HOUR until 8:30p to direct me on where to turn in the various things I had to turn in after work, and to let me out of the locked building. And she drove me to my car cuz it was dark and I didn’t park in the nearby employee lot.

Crap Chunk: There was a 6pm Homeowner’s Association meeting that I told everyone I would be available for, that I had to miss cuz I was stuck in Torrance Court. It was a presentation put on by a termite company we’re considering hiring to treat our homes. The president had called me 3 times while I was in the courtroom, but I didn’t know cuz my phone was on “meeting” mode.
Dandelion: There was a 6pm Homeowner’s Association termite treatment presentation that I missed.

Crap Chunk: It was now almost 9pm, I hadn’t had dinner, and I was over 40 miles from home.
Dandelion: Christi (Flip Flop Girl) had flown in on business just 5pm that evening, and had called to tell me her whereabouts, asking if I was free for dinner. She was about 4.5 miles away. We met up and she treated me to an authentic Japanese dinner, saying I deserved a treat after the hellish day I had. We had a nice dinner, nice chat, and planned to meet up again tonite after bartending class for frozen yogurt.

Crap Chunk: I spent 11.5 hours in Torrance Court.
Dandelion: My supervisor approved 5 hours of overtime pay (giving me my lunch back in money) plus mileage. Cha-ching!

The air’s been either super-dry or over-irritant-enriched lately, cuz my eyes have been irritated. I didn’t even put in contacts this morning, and my eyes are STILL dry. I keep yawning to stimulate the ol’ tear ducts, but they’re apparently all dried up. AND, I look rude and bored to the jury.

Tonight Mr. W and I are going with his ex bro-in-law best bud and best bud’s wife (same couple we went to see Formula D with last weekend) to see a play called “I Do I Do” or something like that. His best bud got us tickets. It’s a 2-person play that follows a couple from the point of engagement or marriage through 60 years of marriage, through their joys and tribulations, trial separations and reunions. I hope the friends don’t think I’m rude and bored when I yawn through the whole evening. Maybe I should bring eye drops.

There are still gnats flying around the courtroom, so the Venus Flytraps I brought in the other day weren’t doing much on my desk. My courtroom assistant complained yesterday that the bugs were at her desk a lot, so I loaned her the container of flytraps. She jammed the entire plastic cylinder into the wide bowl planter of dirt that her large ficus tree is in, next to her desk.

After everyone left for the day, I walked over to her planter and looked. There are visible gnats walking around the dirt of her planter, so now I know the source. (Gym Trainee said if the courtroom assistant would quit dumping tea, coffee, anything she could think of into the planter, maybe there wouldn’t be a living compost pile in the courtroom.) Peering into the clear cylinder surrounding the flytraps, I saw that a gnat was already in there. Excited, I looked around for something to cover the top with so the gnat couldn’t escape. I ran to my desk, grabbed a few half-page sized Request for Time Off forms, and clapped them over the top of the clear plastic cylinder, and I watched from the side.

I watched the gnat flit around, and land inside the open pink mouth of one of the flytraps. I watched the gnat walk around in there for awhile. I watched the gnat get bored and fly off again. The flytrap didn’t even move! Perhaps the gnats are too small to trigger the traps. My plant was gonna starve to death.

Today at lunchtime, I took a brisk walk with Gym Trainee so we can enjoy the sunny 80-degree weather. I spotted a dead bee on the sidewalk, took 5-6 steps past it, and then decided to go back and pick it up. Gym Trainee gave me a receipt and I folded it into a makeshift compact-dead-bee-transportation-device. Back in the courtroom, I used two pencils like chopsticks, picked up the bee, and dropped it onto the open mouth of a flytrap. The weight made the trap vibrate a little. I stared at the open trap. Good gawd, did this plant have a suicide anorexic death wish? I poked around the trap with the tip of the pencil, and finally it sprung closed.

I can’t believe I bought a dependent PET instead of a clever and helpful resolution to our insect problem.