cindy's world

On the drive to work this morning, I struggled with a drink and ended up splashing some of it on my lap, staining my skirt. Drat! I mulled over the event, and it occurred to me that what’s amusing about this, is what the drink is.
Some might think, “A drink. That means alcohol.” I don’t drink and drive!
“She’s an American, driving to work in the morning. Her drink is Starbucks coffee.” Nope, not coffee!
“She’s Chinese. Maybe it’s a box of Vitasoy or other soy milk.” Nope.
“Tea?” In the morning? Ew.
“Water.” Well, then, it wouldn’t stain.
“Soda?” Quit that years ago, haven’t caved yet.
“Duh. It’s obviously fruit juice, like OJ or something.” That would mean I’d have to go grocery shopping to have fresh juice.
Nope, what I spilled, struggling with the pull-tab opening while driving this morning, was a boxed drink of Premiere Protein shake. In chocolate. Cuz I’m feminine like that.

This little gem is on Reuters:
~ * ~
WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE? — MAN ASKS WIFE AT BROTHEL
Wed Jan 9, 2008 12:29pm EST
WARSAW (Reuters) – A Polish man got the shock of his life when he visited a brothel and spotted his wife among the establishment’s employees. Polish tabloid Super Express said the woman had been making some extra money on the side while telling her husband she worked at a store in a nearby town.

“I was dumfounded. I thought I was dreaming,” the husband told the newspaper Wednesday.

The couple, married for 14 years, are now divorcing, the newspaper reported.

(Writing by Chris Borowski, Editing by Matthew Jones)
~ * ~
To quote an episode of Friends:
Phoebe [pretending to pick up phone and putting it to her ear]: “Hello, kettle? This is Monica. You’re black.”

I’m still dealing with my roofing nightmare at home (turns out to be a bigger problem than I thought — the entire roof may have to be replaced, and probably the entire indoors ceiling, too; my association and I are going back and forth about what’s whose liability and who should pay for what), so here’s a funny for the blog.

I was telling commenter ‘a’ about my wedding progress, and about how my invitations are done and on order. My mom wasn’t thrilled with the appearance of the paper cardstock, since it’s white and white is the Chinese funeral color. Despite the fact that there are pretty red cherry blossoms down the length of the paper on one end, the white paper paired with black lettering made her appear very unimpressed when I showed her the proof online. “Is it maybe ivory, and not really white? Or does the white paper have silver or a metallic highlight?” she asked hopefully. I informed her that not only is the paper white, the color is called ‘bright white.’ I had to hand it to her; she dropped it.

I know my bridesmaid Vicky had a similar invitation argument with her mother, except she had to order a second set of invitations to patch things with her mom. Commenter ‘a’ apparently had the same thing happen to her. Invitations…BIG DEAL with Asian moms! Who knew? ‘a’ ‘s hilarious story, in her own words (with some light editing to make it blog-friendly), posted with her permission:
~ * ~
“Oh gosh, they [the wedding invitations] were just white w/ black print, so we decided to spruce it by adding a light gray silk bow. Took me 3 stores to find the gray I liked. [I] finally get home, start doing them and she’s [mom’s] helping me halfway thru; then she says, ‘I think pink would be better. Pink is more good luck.’
HERE WE GO.
So I’m like ‘No, we’re almost halfway done, we’re not doing pink now.’
‘No pink, good luck. No pink, good luck. No pink, good luck.’
You get the picture. She would not SHUT IT! So then I’m reduced to screaming, ‘Be quiet!!!’
Then my dad comes out and asks wut all the noise is about. And he tells me I need to calm down.
So I’m like, ‘We’re almost halfway done and she’s nagging me about pink bows!!! And she won’t be quiet!!!’
So dad turns to her and tells her to stop bothering me.
And all the while [fiance] Mark is like silent, cuz he’s scared. The end.
…No the best part is at the end! Where after my dad scolds her, she turns to Mark and says, ‘I’m sorry.’ And I’m like WTF, wut about ME??!?!??!
OH NOOOOOOOOOOO, I forgot, THIS IS THE BEST PART…
So weeks later we’re finally sending out the invites cuz we have them addressed and ready. So we hand them [parents] their stack for their guests, so they can mail it themselves to avoid any accusations that we didnt mail theirs, right? So one day I find their stack on their desk and I pull one that’s still unsealed out.
EFFING PINK BOW!! She replaced my bow w/ her own effing pink bow! So for all time, to all of her guests, I have like Little Bo Peep taste. So w/ all the courage I could muster, I silently inhaled and placed it back into the envelope w/o comment. Cuz I didn’t want her to have the satisfaction of upsetting me again. But the look on Mark’s face when he saw it was like ‘oh shiet, here comes wwIII.’
Oh wait. As I’m telling this story I’m remembering more. hahahaha, I think I repressed it all until now!!! I remember wut I did!!!!
I took out her pink bow ones and put in my extra gray bow ones, then I sealed it so it couldn’t be changed.”
~ * ~
‘a’ explained that her parents couldn’t address the envelopes to their own satisfaction, so ‘a’ and her fiance had pre-printed envelopes with her parents’ guests’ addresses. No way they were going to tear open the envelopes to change the bows because they wouldn’t want to re-address everything themselves and find new envelopes. Therefore, all the ones ‘a’ caught were sent out with the gray ribbons.

TELL ME that’s not funny!!! Are your parents like this?

Yesterday, a printed quote by Ulysses S. Grant appeared on my desk in my absence.

I know no method to secure the repeal of bad or obnoxious laws so effective as their stringent execution.

I chuckled. And then I realized how true it is. Then I felt a little sad. Cuz it’s not just bad things that get taken away when people use them a lot…

I haven’t been home all weekend. This morning, opening my bedroom door revealed all sorts of white stuff all over my bedroom floor. I first thought it was Dodo playing with something and tearing it up, and then I thought the pieces looked like styrofoam. Uh-oh. Dreadfully, I looked up. A large portion of my popcorn ceiling has become popcorn flooring.

It’s been pouring rain all weekend and I’ve naively enjoyed it, thinking it great for our current California water crisis. Even despite an association member and neighbor’s phone call to me early Sunday morning asking if I had any leaks (and my explaining I wasn’t home to check but that I didn’t think so), it really did not occur to me that I’d have a problem. I ran around upstairs checking other ceilings, looking in closets. I found another leak, a milder one, in the spare bedroom. I padded down the damp areas on the carpet and set up a bucket to catch the rhythmic drippage in my bedroom, drops falling off the ceiling fan. On the drive to work, I called the neighbor who’d called me about his ceiling leak and left a voice mail explaining mine. He was going to call the roofers, he’d told me on Sunday morning.

Despite the small wet disasters going on at home, I see the silver linings around the rainy clouds:
* the leaks did not occur over electronics, paintings, other valuables that would be irreparably damaged.
* I had pre-sorted my laundry before washing, leaving piles on the floor in my bedroom, and the drips occurred over these piles. Two piles of clothes were completely drenched. But this is a fortunate thing, because the two piles were tough workout clothes and not my delicates, AND the fact that they were there kept the water from soaking into my carpet, going through the floor/ceiling and creating another water problem/leak downstairs, possibly onto my big screen TV or something. One ceiling is easier to repair than two. No wonder I hadn’t had the urge to actually DO my laundry after presorting them for the past week. (I’d taken the two waterlogged piles and thrown them in the washing machine and started the cycle before I left for work.)
* As is typical of our schizophrenic California weather, today and the remainder of the week is projected to be dry and ultra-sunny, probably in the low 70s. That’ll give my roof some time to dry off and be repaired.

Mr. W just called and I just told him. He went through a bout of cussing and Chicken Little-esque “the sky is falling” proclamations, about how the space between my roof and my bedroom ceiling is damaged now and how my association better do something and get my roof repaired and reminding me how I had to pay last year for other peoples’ leaks when I didn’t have leaks and about how I’d better keep calling the guy and getting on him (even though I think he’s not answering his home phone because he’s at work), and suddenly I’m feeling a lot more gloomy about the whole situation.

I hope it’s not going to cost me a bundle. I don’t have a bundle of money I can spare right now…

I have been faithful to my workouts this entire year! (har) Remember that new amped up workout gym trainee and I are trying? It’s working miracles. We’ve increased all our weights by 35%-50%, dropped our reps from 15 to 10, and we’ve decreased our cardio for the time being.

Today is upper body day, and since we’re still sore from Wednesday’s upper body workout, we did sets of 8 (but 8 was all we were able to push out at these new weights).
Machine chest press: 50 lbs.
Supine barbell bench: 60 lb barbell
Lateral shoulder lift (gym trainee calls this “flying”): 8 lb dumbbells
Dumbbell bicep curls: 15 lb dumbbells
Lat pull-down: 85 lbs
Mid-level rows: 70 lbs
Cable tricep press-down: 45 lbs (or maybe 60; the numbers were rubbed off)
5 minute elliptical warmup in the beginning, with 5 minute elliptical cool-down at the end.

My gym trainee loves her new muscle tone and noticed the inches are leaving. I dropped some weight, not sure how much as my home scale is out of battery, but I definitely dropped inches. I’m comfortably back in my size 2 pants. So for all those people out there who say women should do light weight with high reps to keep from looking like a man and bulking up, and for my mom who told me to stop weight-lifting so my arms don’t look big and ugly in a strapless dress…

PTTTHHHHH!@#$

I met up with commenter ‘a’ yesterday after work at Mochilato in Irvine. Turns out she lives a few miles from Mr. W’s house. Mochilato is a new dessert restaurant that serves a variety of Japanese mochis with a contemporary twist; instead of just the sweetened red bean paste inside the chewy sweet glutinous ball, they have peanut butter (which I had), white bean (which ‘a’ had), no filling and a variety of other fillings I’d forgotten. The best filling is the ice cream mochis. Not just the traditional green tea or red bean fillings in these ice cream mochis that you’d get in a sushi restaurant; this place had tiramisu, hazelnut, chocolate hazelnut, an entire counter of colorful ice cream filled mochis of many different flavors. The restaurant also serves gelato and Asian-style shaved ice with Asian-style toppings. The best thing about the location aside from its easy-on-the-eye and tasty-in-the-tummy bite-size desserts, is that it’s very large for a snack shop. The front half of the restaurant is all well-lit, leather-bound seating area with large tables that seat 8 and little tables that seat 4, and then deeper into the restaurant is the food area that resembles Haagen-Dazs meets Starbucks. (Yes, they serve coffee, too.)

‘a’ ordered a white bean filled pink mochi that she said was surprisingly good so after we hung out and chatted, I ordered one, along with 2 other mochis, to bring back for Mr. W. I’d wanted to try a bite of the white bean mochi, but by the time I turned around, Mr. W had stuffed the ENTIRE THING into his mouth. =( Who eats mochis like that? Guess I’ll have to go back to buy my own.

Anyone wanna come with?

Mr. W and I had a very low-key New Year’s. For the first time since we’d been together, he wanted to stay up (and did stay up) till midnite to toast the new year in. I asked why he’s bothering for this year instead of sticking to his 9pm bedtime like all the previous years. He said because the year we’re toasting in would be “our” year, the year we get married. =) I do not like champagne. I’ve decided.

New Year’s Day, we mostly stayed in and watched “Angel” and “Buffy” on DVD. As we finished Season 5 of “Buffy,” Mr. W’s daughter stopped by to give us Christmas presents. We hadn’t seen her for weeks. She gave Mr. W a big Jack Skellington coffee mug (he’s a huuuuuge fan of Nightmare Before Christmas). Before she gave me my present, she hid it behind her back and explained that it comes from the Disney movie Lilo and Stitch, one of my two favorite Disney movies, and said, “You know how that movie’s all about ‘ohana’ and family?” She handed me an adorable small figurine of Stitch playing a ukelele, which is dangling from a curved wire attached to a clear suction cup. “You’re gonna be family and he’s blue and your car’s blue,” she said.
I was touched. “Oh, now I love it even more!” I said and gave her a big hug. Starting this morning, Stitch hangs from a corner of my windshield, bobbing and twirling and playing the uke.

My mom made out really well this holiday season, too. It all started when one of the prongs on her engagement ring broke. She and my dad took the ring into a jewelry store and asked if they’re able to affix another prong. The jeweler examined the ring and said, “You know this isn’t real gold, right?”
My mom was shocked. “What? It’s 18K white gold! It’s even stamped so inside the band!”
The jeweler said he’s pretty sure it’s not real gold, the weight isn’t right, but they’ll test it in the store’s lab to make sure. My parents were shown samples of silver and gold, and what happens when a particular chemical solution is dropped on them. Then they watched my mom’s ring get tested. Yup. My mom’s ring is silver, with gold plating. They tested their wedding bands, too, which were purchased at the same place as the engagement band. Same shit. My parents had been swindled for the past 32 years.
Luckily, the diamond tested to be real, and of a pretty good quality. (They’d gotten the stone separately at a place recommended by some friends.) My dad had my mother select a new ring setting at the store, and the lab immediately switched the diamond onto a new very chic white gold band covered with small accent diamonds. Feeling bad for my parents, the salesperson took out a tray of good-quality Russian cubic zirconias, and had my mother select one to put into her old (fake) engagement ring, so that she could still wear it for sentimental value. For free. And then while my mom watched the diamond setting process going on at the lab, my dad wandered around the store and bought her an amazing 1.27 carat diamond solitaire which he had mounted onto a white gold pendant that looked to be a set with her new engagement ring. Money was earned to be spent, he said, and they’d been frugal and saved for so long that they can afford to spend some of it on themselves now that their child is independent and they aren’t saving for the next big thing. Besides, he reasoned, he didn’t waste the money; he simply changed it from cash into a different form. The diamond will hold value and can be resold later if need be. It’s not like he blew it all gambling or traded it for junk. True, true.

My mom got to pick up her new pendant this last weekend after she got recent liver tests back from her doctor. The cirrhosis is still there, but they have it under control now with the medication they’d put her on the past 6 weeks. The drugs did their job and they can now drop one of the prescriptions. So it’s a good start to the new year all around.

Saturday evening, after the whole dress ordeal, Dwaine and Andrae came by my house. Dwaine immediately spotted my camera sitting on the living room coffee table and proceeded to flip through the photos. There were photos of me in three separate wedding gowns that Vicky had taken a week ago the first time I was at David’s Bridal. “Is this the dress you got today?” Dwaine asked.
“One of them is.”
“I like the simple one.”
Could it be? A man’s seal of approval on the plain dress? “Which one?” I asked him, looking over his shoulder.
He navigated through a few photos. “That one,” he said, landing on the dress I’d bought hours ago. Yay!
Dwaine played with my camera a few minutes more and figured out how to set it up on timer, then propped the camera on my wet bar counter and told Andrae and I to stand for the picture. It took a few tries…

My, uh, collar bones look good?

this is the most effective one ^^

Finally, a decent shot, except that my static-pattern sweater makes me look ultra-wide. At least the men look good. (Then again, when don’t they?)

(as always, rest mouse pointers over photos for captions)

We grabbed a quick bite of pizza in Brea, then watched Will Smith’s movie I Am Legend. It was a toss-up between that or Sweeney Todd, but since I’d seen Legend and don’t care to see Sweeney, we let the gods of fate decide based on movie times. I was actually glad to see Legend with them again, because I caught a couple of things the second time that I didn’t the first and I always enjoy movie plotline and psychology discussions with witty funny brainiacs. We grabbed a drink and appetizer at nearby Taps Fishhouse & Brewery after the movie and talked the night away. And by that, I mean that I was home by 11:30 because we ARE in our 30s now. Heh.

Everytime I’m out with these guys, or either of them, I’m spoiled to the hilt. “Your money’s no good here,” they tell me, and paid for my pizza, movie, and drink. Doors are opened for me, in the short walks between parking, restaurants, and movie, they make a conscious effort to walk with me and/or on either side of me protectively. In the night chill walking back to the car, Andrae stripped off his wool coat and put it around my shoulders. =) I feel guilty that they treat me as one of the guys and yet don’t forget that I’m a girl. Good times.

Saturday morning, I swung by Vicky’s house, picked her up, and the two of us wandered up and down Las Tunas Dr. in Temple City, aka Asian Wedding Mecca. My mom kept referring me over there, saying that her coworkers picked up cheap wedding photographers, wedding attire rentals, custom Chinese dresses there. The few wedding studios I’d visited locally wanted way too much money, and a $60 wedding gown with all alterations included is hard to resist, so off we went cuz mommy knows best.

Turns out everything mom heard from people was a load of crap. We entered many bridal dress places and they wanted between $200-$400 for rental gowns, but were pushing me to buy gowns for $800+. I was mauled by 4-5 Chinese and Vietnamese speaking salespeople who were not only forcing ugly and/or wrinkled and dirty dresses on me to go try on, but even as I stood in the dressing room half naked in-between changes, multiple salesladies would open the dressing room curtain and hold up dresses to me, saying, “What about this one? This one beautiful! Try on! Only $800 dollar, on sale! Very fashion!” And as I changed, they’d gab to each other in Cantonese or Vietnamese just outside the room, sounding like one was scolding the other, probably for trying to steal each others’ commission. I felt like I was back in China or Jamaica in the streets as an obvious tourist. The photographers were no better. Once we walked in we couldn’t get out easily, they were pushy and clingy and wouldn’t let us just browse. Plus, the dresses and photography were overpriced but offensively low in the quality and talent department. I was so glad Vicky was there with me to speak firmly to them (in Chinese) when the need arose, and to lie to them, feigning interest and collecting a business card so that we could leave, when that was what was required. If I had gone alone, diplomatic and polite (i.e. pushover) me would’ve been stuck and screwed the first store I went into. “That’s why I had so many stupid magazine subscriptions when I was a freshman in college,” I complained to her. My first-year apartment didn’t have a security gate.

After a Mandarin-style beef noodle soup lunch, we escaped the annoyances of Asian Wedding Mecca Street and went to where I had my first wedding dress experience, good ol’ white-bread David’s Bridal in the Orange County city of Brea. The saleslady who helped me the first time I was there had kept notes of the dresses of particular interest to me, and brought out the top two for me to try on again. But because I had unexpected success earlier with a beautiful princess-style jewel-encrusted dress with a satin fitted bodice and a full skirt with embroidered train (but which I refused to pay $1200 for) in the store where I was overly helped by salesladies, we tried on a similar dress at David’s Bridal that ran $900. I looked like royalty in that dress. I looked like I was going from a Venetian cathedral ceremony to a Ritz-Carlton reception. But it was more than I wanted to spend, inappropriate for a garden wedding, and over-embellished for Mr. W’s taste. Or so I told myself. Seeing me admire the dress in the mirror but sensing I would not commit to it, Vicky said that I am supposed to be the most beautiful I can be on my wedding day, and that the vision of me should blow everyone out of the water, so if it’s a price issue, I can pay the amount I’d intended to pay for a dress and she will make up the difference as a wedding present for me. “The difference” being more than the portion I would personally be paying for the dress, I told Vicky there was no way I could let her do that for me. She reasoned with me some more, and although I will forever remember this moment as one of the most touching, selfless offers ever made to me by anyone, I still turned her down and put my front-runner dress on.

When I walked out in the dress that had won the most favor before that day, I looked in the mirror at its simplicity and again was taken aback at how nice I looked in that dress. That’s what hit me and Vicky the first time I tried on that dress a week ago. Other dresses were gorgeous, even gorgeous on me, and people would not be able to help but say, “Wow, that’s a beautiful dress.” But this simple, train-less dress brought the focus on how good *I* look. The difference in comment would be, “Wow, you look beautiful.” It made my waist look tiny, and I could dress it up in any amount of sparkle in jewelry, rhinestoned veil, tiara. But it looked so plain compared to the dress I had just taken off. There was a bride trying on dresses next to me who had brought along three bridesmaids, her mother, and another older woman. The saleslady asked me, “Is it okay if she tries on the dress you just took off?” I told her sure, to go ahead. I had seen her and her mother admiring me when I was in that dress before the mirror. The girl walked out of the dressing room in the $900 dress, and immediately her bridesmaids were agasp with compliments. She spun and admired herself in front of the mirror, and sung firmly, “Found it.” “It’s only the second dress you tried on!” her friends said, gushing about the bodice! The train! The embroidery! How it made her boobs look huge! Behind her, her mother in the chair gazed at her daughter in the mirror, smiled, and then her face wavered and tears flowed out. “Your mother’s crying! That’s a good sign!” her bridesmaids said. As everyone at that section of the mirror went on and on, I couldn’t help but feel so simple and plain in my simple and plain dress.
“Do you think if my mom were here that she’d see me in ‘the’ dress and cry?” I asked Vicky.
“I don’t know if your mom’s the type to cry,” Vicky said comfortingly. We both know the answer would be no. My mom has already expressed how she wanted me in a dress with sleeves to cover my oversized arms, and how I need to stop working out immediately so I don’t get thicker than I already am. Even for the traditional Chinese dress, she wants me in a long-sleeved two-piece.

I changed back into my sweater and jeans, walked to the front desk, and ordered my simple satin dress in ivory. I also ordered the slip that goes under the skirt to make it full, and added a garmet bag to the list. $350 later, we left the store. After leaving Vicky’s place (where I took with me her wedding album that had photos which put the photo samples we’d seen earlier that day to shame), I called my mom, and received my lecture about spending way too much when I could’ve rented at Las Tunas for the elusive $60 deal with alterations and undergarments included.