cindy's world

The Brian McKnight/Boyz II Men concert last Tuesday was great. It was an intimate setting out in a park with only about 500 seats under the stars. Boyz II Men opened with a 50-minute set, with one or two songs from their new album and the rest from their classic albums from the 90s. I did miss the fourth member of the band who, according to my gym trainee, had left the group to pursue a solo singing career. I didn’t know which one was missing until the older songs that I’m very familiar with were performed, then I realized it’s the guy with the deep sexy bass voice who had gone. So all the speaking parts of the songs were missing. The remaining 3 members more than made up for it as far as I was concerned by the obvious fun they were having onstage, playing “guess the song” games with the audience, telling us to take out our cell phones and wave them in the air like lighters after calling our mothers on them, as they sang the song “Mama,” having us sing along with their classics and fill in the lyrics, making us laugh with their jokes and spirited performance. Oh yes, like Vanessa said, they each took out a dozen long-stemmed roses and threw them out one by one to the groveling women in the audience as they sang “I’ll Make Love to You.” Then there was a 15 minute intermission that ended up being more like 35 minutes as we waited for Brian McKnight to come on.

I took advantage of intermission time to go to the concession booths and buy my gym trainee a Brian McKnight t-shirt. She had told me that Brian McKnight is looking “real fine” since his divorce, so I got her a black T with a photo in the front of him lounging on a chair with a smoldering “come hither” expression. While I was selecting the t-shirt, two women to my left asked the guy behind the booth about the backstage passes you can get with purchase of an overpriced “limited edition” shirt, and he informed them, as he handed two passes attached to lanyards to two lucky guests to my right, that he had just sold the very last two to these people, sorry. The two women looked enviously at the couple forking over inordinate amounts of cash in exchange for the lanyards, then walked away. I waited patiently for the guy behind the booth to get to me, and made my shirt purchase. By this time, all other customers had left so it was just him and me. As I paid him, he paused then asked, “Did you want to see Brian?”
I said, “Oh, no, it’s okay, I overheard that you’d sold the last passes.”
He pulled a small stack of paper passes out his front shirt pocket, and said, “I have these — I was saving them for some friends, but now I don’t think they’re coming.”
Instantly in my head I pictured having to stay behind and fight the crowd instead of getting out of the parking lot early and beating the traffic. I pictured meeting someone who’s waaaay iconic and I had no idea what I would say or do, it was easier simply to not be in the situation. I said, “I have a tendency to be starstruck and I’d rather not make a fool of myself in front of a celebrity,” and laughed.
He actually looked a little rejected, and said, “Oh, it’s pretty quick, he just signs an autograph for you. I don’t have any uses for these anyway, like I said, my friends didn’t show.”
I smiled gratefully at him (or I’d hoped it was gratefully altho in retrospect it was probably retardedly) and said, “Nah, it’s okay, but thank you very much.” The passes disappeared back into his pocket.

I told Mr. W about this encounter after he came out of the port-a-potty, and he looked at me a little bit in surprise, and said something complimentary about me being alone and looking pretty. But he was probably wondering why I’m such an idiot.

Brian McKnight came out, gave one hell of a performance, showed his charismatic and very humorous, very sexy personality and I was just kicking myself. I sooo wanted to be his friend. He would be a blast to hang out with, this man making goofy faces at the audience, making fun of his own romantic failures and pathetic phone-stalking weepy moments in between songs. He announced that he’s doing something special this year, he’s been bringing his sons along with him on tour, and introduced his 14 year old and 19(?) year old, who proved they are as talented and well-sculpted as their father is as they performed a few songs they wrote with their dad. The 14 year old is kick-ass on the electric guitar, and blasted out my ear drums playing a Prince song while their dad rested backstage for a few minutes. I’d never heard the song before, but Mr. W has and said it was extremely well-played. The entire experience was fun and actually, very romantic.

After the concert, a small line formed at the back of the staging area as the rest of the crowd shuffled out the front entrance where we’d entered. Mr. W and I milled about with the short back line at first, hoping it was a way out that avoided the main crowd, but then realized it was the line to see Brian McKnight and Boyz II Men on backstage passes. “We would’ve been one of the first in line here,” he made sure to note as we walked forward and joined the large exiting herd.

Saturday morning, a bunch of coworkers and I attended the funeral service of the father of our presiding judge. It was at a Baptist church, and so far I think I like Baptist services better than Catholic ones. I’ve been to two Catholic funeral services in the past several months and found this Baptist priest’s words to lay more smoothly against my personal soul. I found his words soothing and they touched a nerve of truth within my own heart. He reminded us that death is not something to fear but something to celebrate as a return to the place from whence we had come. It is not so much an end of life, as the beginning of eternal life. I especially liked a poem (I think it’s a poem) he read, and I’m not sure if it came from the Bible like a psalm, or was written by a God-loving poet, or maybe he wrote it himself for the occasion. Anyway, it went something like this, although I’m sure I am not doing it justice:

To reach up and grab a hand, and find that it is God’s;
To breathe the air and find it celestial;
To awake healthy and happy and find immortality;
To see endless beauty and find that you are home;
To leave the maelstrom of hopeless end and find endless hope;
Such is our fate, and our hope, as we come from and return to God.

Amen.

I was doing my usual dry delivery of a quirky silly train of thought yesterday when someone in my trusted circle made a sarcastic remark to the effect that it was a good thing I don’t find myself in that situation a lot. Okay, that made no sense unless I actually explain that I was talking about a paternity case we handled in the family law court I was put into yesterday. The case where the court established that a divorcing woman’s child is the offspring of the guy she was having the affair with, and not the husband, which was proven up with a DNA test. I said about that, “Why do people want to make their lives so complicated, so that I have to go through all this strange stupid paperwork because of them?” She chuckled. It was my first paternity case, and I had struggled through all the unfamiliar paperwork and computer entries involved. I continued, “And these people always make us do their work for free cuz they get fee waivers [claiming they’re indigent and can’t pay for legal proceedings]. I pay my taxes, and I don’t use any government services for free cuz I don’t qualify for them. These people don’t even pay taxes and get all this free stuff. I should go and do something stupid with my life so that I can take advantage of welfare-type services, like have a kid out of wedlock. But no, I wouldn’t get welfare cuz I’d be employed. So maybe I should commit a CRIME, get into the criminal law system, cuz everything THERE’s provided for free and then I could really make my taxes benefit myself. But then with my income, I’d probably be required to pay back the services of the public defender, so that wouldn’t work, either.” I mean, it was a non-serious, goofy stream-of-consciousness I was saying aloud because I recognize the ridiculousless of the nature of the thoughts and therefore shared them for the possible entertainment value. It was a joke. I wasn’t really upset about not having and wanting indigency services. She said sarcastically, “It’s a good thing you aren’t in family law much.”

It’s not that she made a comment, it’s that it’s the third or fourth such comment she’d made fairly recently that implied I thought and/or talked too much about nothing. And it’s not that I DON’T overthink things, cuz apparently I do, as this post itself proves. It’s just that I feel she misunderstood me and the point of my words when she made that comment, and for some reason that’s still bothering me. It’s either because I think so highly of her that I don’t want her thinking badly of me, so that right now I feel like I exposed myself trustingly and got made fun of to my surprise in return; or maybe it’s because since early childhood, I’ve had a sensitivity to being misinterpreted, misunderstood, wronged in a sense. When someone I don’t care about doesn’t “get” me and misunderstands something, I just roll my eyes irritably and move on. But in someone I do care about, it just really bothers me when someone’s got a wrong impression of me or something I said.

I said to Mr. W after the trusted person had left, that I need to remember to stop thinking out loud around her because I don’t think she gets me so she thinks I’m being overdramatic over nothing. He laughed and said that he got me, and that he did think the absurdity of what I was saying was amusing. It reminds me of his proposal, how he said most people don’t get me but that he’s one of the lucky ones who do and he gets to laugh. I guess that’s what’s really important, anyway. I just wish I didn’t have to watch my step so carefully around someone I want to comfortably be my off-colored self around.

Today is day 3 since the scary phone call from my doctor’s office. I’m pretty much back to normal, which is a good thing because they pulled me out for my courtroom to handle a (blech!) Family Law courtroom where the supervisors failed to arrange for a relief clerk for the regular clerk’s vacation. The cases were horrible. Restraining orders against former lovers, paternity tests establishing biological parenthood between a divorcing woman and her affair guy, anger, tears, lies, accusations. Criminal Law courtrooms are so much more peaceful.

My mother, however, is just wigging out more and more. The day after finding out, she emailed me all day asking how I am and telling me not to worry. Then that night, she freaked out cuz she called my cell and I didn’t get it and didn’t call her back. She called me at home early this morning before work, upset that I “went missing” the night before, and claiming also that her mother “went missing” as she didn’t return my mom’s calls either. I told her to stop worrying about nothing. And then 45 minutes ago, my house phone ringing woke me up from my TV nap and I tried to ignore it, but on the 16th ring I finally skulked upstairs and picked it up. My mom was in a flurry because she had apparently found my grandmother, told her about my current health “crisis”, and they both agree that October 1 is too far away and they want to know what’s going on sooner than that, so they want to pay for a private doctor to get the procedure done earlier before my appointment. I told her I wasn’t going to go thru a colposcopy/biopsy twice and my appointment is only 3 weeks away, I’m not going to pay extra money for curiosity, and a week’s difference isn’t going to make the difference between life and death. (She also wanted to know whether the lab results are posted online yet, I told her they’re not, and she told me to call my medical provider and see if they could arrange for a printout that I could go pick up myself. I told her they’re not going to do that.) She finally relented, sounding defeated. I told her if she’s going to worry like this I’m not telling her about this stuff next time. She said quickly, “You can’t do that!”

Now I feel worse. The fact that my mom’s now getting clingier is cramping my lifestyle because I don’t want to explain where I am at all hours of the day and night, and I already feel guilty enough about not wanting to. On top of that knowing that she’s feeling worried and helpless, and that she hadn’t slept well the past few nights and was up imagining all sorts of horrid scenarios and panicking about her only child, I’m feeling some of the worry vicariously and I don’t need to stress over something I have no control over. This worry at this time is totally unproductive and pointless, because assuming the worst case scenario and I have terminal cervical cancer or something, I’m gonna feel pretty crappy upon finding that out. And I will feel crappy at that future time no matter WHAT I feel like right now, so I may as well enjoy the 3 weeks of activities I have until the colposcopy. I have a week in Hawaii for Wilco’s wedding at the end of the month, I have a coworker’s house party right after that, and I have the Marine Corps 5K obstacle course run a few days after the colposcopy (presumably before I get lab results back for any biopsy). And I have a funeral to attend tomorrow, for gosh sakes. Heh.

All through childhood, I stood in confusion and upset watching my mom’s strong emotional reactions to things, teaching me by sight that I’m SUPPOSED to freak out when my dad’s a little late, when my dad doesn’t call, when some small family gossip trickles through the grapevines, when there’s a hair on the ground, when I don’t flip down the visor to shield the sun from my mom’s eyes when she’s driving, when my dad makes my mom the butt of some goofy joke. All through adolescence I rolled my eyes in irritation when watching my mom overreact at what I thought were things she should’ve just chilled at, and hoped that I wouldn’t turn out like her. And then as time wore on, she did chill. She opened her mind, she acquired an incredible tolerance for things that went beyond my ability to follow suit but envied. But when it comes to her baby, it appears she’s still reactive despite her attempts to not be overbearing.

It’ll all be nothing soon.

It’s funny how the power of the mind permeates things physical. For the past 2 days I’ve felt like such a patient, just cuz I was handed the patient hat. I went home yesterday, oozed onto the living room couch and took a nap. The air had cooled to a nice 75 with a breeze that wafted through my living room. I had also called my m.d. friend, pharm.d. friend, and mother. My m.d. friend will talk to her gyno coworkers and get some information for me. My pharm.d. friend had some personal experience and thoughts to share, but also didn’t have much expertise in my particular situation. In speaking with my mother, I tried to be nonchalant about the situation, but she was worried nonetheless while trying to convince me that I had nothing to worry about. And it is true; my family does not have a genetic predisposition to cervical cancer from either side.

I drove to Mr. W’s later in the evening when traffic died down, and told him at dinner that I was just giving myself the day to mope and feel sorry for myself, but that I’d be back to normal the next day. Today, first thing in the morning, my body bled. It’s playing the patient too, right along with my mind. Today I have a general “down” mood with low energy and cramps, but I behaved more normally than I did yesterday, which was sort of an alternatingly angry/tearful/anxious/defeated emotional carousel. Today, I cracked some jokes, was able to interact with strangers normally again (which is good since we started a court trial today), and went to the gym at lunchtime for a pretty crappy workout. But the important thing was that it was crappy because of the other people there, not because I didn’t do my best. It just seemed like people were following me around to jump on the exact machines I was using in my circuit, and then taking it over to sit and flirt with other people standing and milling about.

One bright spot in yesterday: I came home to find my garage door replaced to the rolling metal door; they did not replace my garage door motor against my will (as they insisted on replacing some of my neighbors’ motors), but left my old one up which worked very efficiently with my new door. AND, they’d swept my entire garage. I can’t say much for the company’s office staff, but the work crew seems very good.

I’m deferring the Brian McKnight/Boyz II Men concert post for something more eminent that just came up, and since this is a record of my life, I think it warrants recording.

I just received a call from my doctor’s nurse. Although all the blood test results came through online, the results of the pap smear haven’t been published yet. The nurse advised me gently to call another number and talk to a specific doctor, to make an appointment for a colposcopy. She said it doesn’t mean that something is abnormal, it’s just a more complete screening, beyond what the pap smear told them.

After calling the referral number, I spoke to the specialist there and found out more information. I do have an abnormal pap smear. I also tested positive for something else that is very upsetting to me, and as a result of the abnormalities they need to rule out cervical cancer. My colposcopy/biopsy appointment is set for October 1.

I suddenly don’t feel like working out today.

The Boyz II Men/Brian McKnight concert was Tuesday night, not Wednesday night as stated in my previous post. I put Wednesday to throw off any stalkers. Just kidding. I thought Mr. W said Wednesday but turned out it was Tuesday. *shrug*

I’ll post more about it later on since it’s pretty late right now, and maybe even post a cameraphone video clip. I didn’t take photos because 1) I didn’t bring a camera, thinking the venue wouldn’t allow them (which was true and they announced no photography, but tons of people had their cameras going anyway), and 2) my cell phone died so I didn’t even have a cameraphone with which to take pictures. Mr. W had his cameraphone, tho, and recorded some clips.

In a nutshell, I laughed, I cried (well, no I didn’t), I sang along, I danced, I had a blast, I blast out an eardrum. It was a very nice experience to have shared with Mr. W, who isn’t even an R&B fan but enjoyed himself anyway. He’s a good guy to take out cuz unlike me, he’ll truly give a new experience a real attempt before making up his mind that it’s not his thing. Plus, R&B tends to be very romantic so it would’ve been slightly sad if I’d been alone. Altho I suppose even if Mr. W hadn’t gone, I wouldn’t have been alone. His daughter, upon finding out we were going, made some jealous protests that I should take her instead because she’s a bigger fan of those singers than her dad is, and ended the conversation by saying, “Oh well, have fun! Take pictures! Take me!” Haha.

Dude, my ears are still ringing. Seriously. “You ruptured an eardrum? Wow, were you at a shooting range?” “No, I was at a Brian McKnight concert.” Dumb.

Happy Labor Day. But not for 24 Hour Fitness employess. You guys I thank for laboring through today to keep the gym open so that I could go kill myself. Much obliged.

This holiday weekend, Mr. W and I became “two.” Not two as in two people (altho we’re that, too), but two as in, we need two candles on the relationship birthday cake. We celebrated by doing nothing, our current favorite pastime, since weekends are oddly overbooked these months. So Friday, I stayed home all by myself and hung with the Dodo Boy; Saturday, I cleaned the house, organized some stuff, ran some errands, then in the afternoon finally made it over to Mr. W’s house, where we watched “Perfect Stranger” starring Halle Berry and Bruce Willis on DVD. (The movie affected the mood; I felt sick and perturbed afterwards. Not a great aphrodisiac movie for dates, just to warn you.) Sunday, we had a dim sum brunch with my parents, then went to my house where Mr. W worked some air conditioning filter magic and got my A/C in tip-top shape so that my Fozzy Wozzy Dodo Pal could survive in his unremovable fur coat in this freakish 100+ degree weather. There’s only so much cooling down my dumping ice cubes into his water dishes would allow. Oh, and I cleaned his little ears, so it was a productive day. Then after confirming that college roommie Diana has arrived in San Diego in the afternoon, I drove us down to meet up with her and her friend Gil for a nice dinner. Aside from Mr. W and I walking over a mile to the wrong location to meet them at the bar they were at (the brilliant Ivy League-bound bartender there gave her the correct number of the building, but the wrong street, so that the address made us walk across town stepping over the legs of drunken homeless people and crazy ladies in wheelchairs yelling at us on the streets and avoiding sidewalk pee puddles to arrive at the address we were given, staring confusedly at a run-down Hawaiian burger joint, which was CLOSED, instead of leading us to a safe, lit swanky bar in the middle of night life action in the Gas Lamp District), the night was fun and we got to explore the less ghetto parts of San Diego on foot. Diana also treated everyone to a very nice Italian dinner as an “engagement present” to me and Mr. W. Even as I write this, Diana is out playing in San Diego with Gil, her personal tourguide right now. Nice guy. Very funny. (I mean he’s a funny guy and made me laugh, not that it’s funny-weird that Diana knows a nice guy.) We got back to Mr. W’s house at 2am, and I was exhausted.

This morning while at the gym, trudging from machine to machine, I thought for probably the hundredth time in the past year how I must be just physically out of it right now, because I’ve had to stop to catch my breath in between exercises of my supersets, and will myself to continue to the next exercise. I tried to remember the last time I’d felt full of energy and ready to tear it up. I know I’m anemic right now from the time of month, but the fact that I can’t remember the last time I felt really good in-between exercises makes me wonder, am I getting lazy and unconditioned? Am I *gasp* old? My recent physical examination scored me in high marks health-wise, both in bloodwork (crazy-low triglycerides, ideal blood pressure, low overall cholesterol with high HDL cholesterol) and in physical body (doctor said everything looked and felt very healthy and normal, and I’m right-smack in the middle of the ideal range for my body mass index). So what is going on?

It was so freakishly, insanely hot last nite that I flopped back and forth on my leather couch dying, unable to fall asleep. (No way I was going upstairs to bed; that’s even worse!) I looked over at the densely-furred Dodo, sleeping soundly on the floor, and wondered whether he was actually dead from heat exhaustion. I had windows and doors open, but there was no breeze. I think it was in the muggy low 100s until 4am. At some point in the middle of the night I rummaged through the guest bathroom medicine cabinet, thinking I might have a spray bottle in there somewhere so that I could mist myself, and found a Citrus Punch Body Splash (with moisturizing Aloe Vera!) in a little spray bottle from Bath & Body Works. I spritzed myself down, then spritzed the air in the bathroom, hallway, living room, dining area. I think it helped and I fell asleep soon, only to be awakened by an irritated “grrr” from Dodo as he crinkled up his sensitive cat nose and darted into the kitchen to get away from all the Citrusy goodness.

Poor cat, it was a bad evening for him. I ran a bunch of errands after work and got home late to find that the garage door had been open all day for some reason. I ran in and the cat seemed fine, and my house appeared uninvaded. He yelped and complained about the heat, and I figured he’d enjoy some ice, so I put 5 squares of ice cubes in one of his cat dishes, put the dish under his nose so he can sense the coldness, and I placed it on the floor for him. He eagerly lapped at the ice cubes, except that because I stupidly didn’t put any water in the dish, Dodo’s tongue got stuck on an ice cube. He made a protesting sound deep in his throat, shot his head back spilling the dish a little, and shook the ice cube off. Altho I added water to the ice after that, he wanted nothing to do with it anymore.

You don’t want to turn 5o around HERE, man.

Today is a court reporter’s 50th birthday. Everyone knew it was her birthday, but she didn’t know that we knew it was the big 5-0. A few of us waited around after hours yesterday until she went home. And then we busted out some decorations and got busy.

I would say we “trashed” her desk, but it’s so much more FESTIVE than trash. The clerk of that courtroom said that when the reporter came in this morning and walked into the courtroom, she screamed for about 10 minutes.

Aside from the obvious large decorations of the black desk covering, balloons, signs and streamers, there are also AARP magazines on the top of her desk, 3 cans of not just Ensure, but LIGHT Ensure, stacked at the front edge of her desk, a diaper, Tiger Balm medicine pad, and “Over the Hill” sparkly confetti sprinkled everywhere. I even put some in her desk drawers and cubbyholes. She’ll be finding sparklies for weeks. Some more details:

Even as I was having the best time doing this yesterday, I was secretly glad that these people with the crazy decorations will be retired when *I* turn 50. Whew!
And yes, the judge took the bench and went into session with all the decorations in place, conducting business as usual. The litigants were delighted at the decor, I heard. Who says Family Law isn’t light-hearted?

You can just barely see the top of the court reporter’s hair over the top of the cards on her desk.
(I don’t know if this happens on your computer, but for some reason on these photos, about 15% is cut off on the right margins when I view them on the site, so all the photos look off-balance. In the full photo, you can actually see a litigant’s arms on the counsel table in the last shot. Roll mouse over each photo for caption, as always.)