cindy's world

This morning as I got dressed, I looked in the mirror and saw…flat tummy, the outline of abs, smooth toned skin, muscle indentations on my lower back/upper buttocks, my body looked carved! Of course I got all excited and turned all sorts of angles to see myself nekkid, thinking, “The weight’s coming off, the weight’s coming off! Finally!” I weighed myself, and I’m down 4.5 lbs from the weight gain I had while I was sick and unable to go to the gym a few weeks ago.

And then, I thought about what time of month this is and realized this is just my Skinny Week. The week after my period. I start debloating the last day of my period, it takes a few days until I’m fully my “normal” weight, and then a few days later I’m gaining weight again as my body bloats in preparation for the next period. I’m fully bloated the week before my period as that’s PMS Week, and then I’m bloated throughout the period, and then after the period, I slowly start debloating again. So I’m “normal” only 1 week out of 4 in the month. By the end of this weekend I’ll again be saddened at what appears to be a weight gain and the disappearance of all the tone. *sigh*

My court reporter joked that I should schedule all social activities for my Skinny Week, i.e. parties, outings, swimming, weddings, vacations. I really should! If only this week were more predictable on when in the month it falls.

Oh, the woes of being a girl.

I should take some photos of myself while I’m “skinny” today, tho.

On my walk to get the mail this morning, my stream of consciousness thoughts led me to a memory of a story a teacher told us (her class) in Chinese School when I was in elementary school.

Chinese School is an extracurricular program run by a Chinese association to provide classes in the Mandarin language to any child who is interested in (or forced to) learn reading and writing in Mandarin Chinese, with some mild cultural exposure in the form of field trips and class lessons. During the school year these classes are on Saturdays, and in the summers classes are held in the mornings and there is an optional afternoon session children can be enrolled in that’s more physical and less classroom, e.g. swimming classes and Chinese arts and crafts, and performance. The classes are taught by Chinese volunteers, perhaps parents, perhaps teachers in their old hometowns in Taiwan or China. Either way, I don’t think these teachers are credentialized.

Like many Americanized Chinese kids, I was sent to these classes for years, primarily for day care purposes I suspect. And like the other kids, I retained very little of what I’d learned. (You should see it, we’re banned from speaking English in the classrooms, so it’s all quiet, and as soon as the bell rings, everyone explodes into English conversations that we’d been holding in.) But one thing I did walk away with, apparently, is this “fable.”

There was a little boy who was loved very much by his mother. She loved him so much that she let him do whatever he wanted. If he saw a toy his neighbor had and wanted it, he would take it and his mother would laugh at his cleverness. When he got older, he went from taking candy and toys that didn’t belong to him, to taking larger possessions from adults, such as watches and books. His mother supported him and praised him through all of this. One day, the boy stole a purse from a woman on the street. The woman screamed, and to shut her up, he killed her by hitting her on her head with a big stick. A policeman was nearby, and the boy was caught and arrested. Soon, the boy was in jail awaiting execution. The mother came to visit the boy in jail. “Oh, my good boy!” she cried. “How could this have happened? How could they do this to you?!”
The son asked, “Am I still your good boy?”
His mother replied, “Of course, you have always been and will always be my good angel boy.”
The boy asked, “Can I make one request of you, then?”
“Of course, anything,” his mother answered.
“Can I be your good little boy again like I was when I was smaller, and suck from your breast?”

~ Let me break from the story reverie for a moment. At this point in the storytelling, I am almost as uncomfortable as I was when I was, oh, EIGHT years old listening to this for the first time IN CLASS with about thirty other students ranging from ages seven to ten. I had a sense that this isn’t appropriate, and as I squirmed uncomfortably, I saw other students looking at each other, and some boys sunk into their seats. Back to the story. ~

The mother answered, “Of course you may!” and pulled the front of her shirt up and pulled a breast from her bra. She stuck her breast in through the bars.

~ Squirm, squirm! Some kids blush and look down at the tops of their desks. ~

The boy grabbed hold of his mother’s nipple

~ Yes, she said NIPPLE in Chinese, “nai toe”. Gaaaack!!! ~

with his mouth and suckled. He suckled for awhile, he sucked and sucked, and then all of a sudden, with a lot of strength, he clamped down and bit his mother’s nipple right off!

~ Methinks she enjoyed telling the sucking part a little too much, but it did have the proper effect, the second part was totally unexpected and there were audible gasps from the kids. ~

So now the mother was bleeding, and she held her injured breast

~ The teacher was actually pantomining clutching one breast with her hand in front of the class at this point. ~

and she asked her son, “What did you do? Why did you bite me?” And you know what the son said?
He said, “I bit you because this is all your fault. The only time I was a good boy was when I was an infant and still sucking at your breast. After that, I was never good, and you allowed me to be bad, and now I am to be executed.”

~ At this point, we were confused because as good little Chinese kids, we were taught to always respect our elders, so the son blaming his own bad actions on his mother seemed further proof of how bad he was. That must be the moral. ~

And was he right?

~ Some kids in the class shake their heads and utter “no”, the answer we thought she wanted, but most of the kids just stared at her wide-eyed, apparently in traumatic shock. She saw fit to confuse us more. ~

Of course he was right. It WAS all his mother’s fault, for not teaching him right from wrong. That’s the moral of this story.

I think my parents should get their money back for all they’d spent for me to attend Chinese School. What do you guys think?

My previous post, Barbershop Duet, touched on a chord with Bat because he saw my question to Mr. W asking whether he’d still be attracted to me if I shaved my head as one of those girlie “trap” questions. His girlfriend, Flat Coke & Flies, reveals in the comment section of that post that Bat refuses to answer questions that he perceives to be “trap” questions that lead to fights. Her perspective is that sometimes it’s just a hypothetical question. Here’s my take on questions like that.

Bat, I hear you, I understand what you’re saying, but see, here’s the difference. When I ask a question like that, it’s just a random quirky question in which the answer doesn’t matter. The question itself is a joke. The thought of me with a shaved head is stupid and ridiculous, and it (hopefully) wouldn’t happen. It’s like when I asked, “If I grew a third breast in the middle of my chest, would you see me as a freak or as a gifted woman?” (I don’t even remember Mr. W’s answer. He may not have answered, he was too busy fantasizing.) He knows it really doesn’t matter HOW he answers the question.

I don’t really ask what I call “girl questions,” which I define as a question in which there is one “right” answer and one “wrong” answer and the “wrong” answer would piss us off and create a fight even tho the question itself doesn’t matter to begin with, i.e. it has no consequence to the relationship. If there’s a possible answer to a question that would make me upset, I wouldn’t ask it. If I ask something, then I’ve already considered the possible answers and would be okay with any answer. For example, I’m not gonna ask “Does this dress make me look fat?” if I would be devastated if he said “Yes.” But if I need a real answer because I’m on the fence about a dress before I spend money on it, and he tells me “Yeah, it does make your ass look wide,” I WANT to know that so I would put the dress back.

So to summarize, questions that are not important to the relationship but have an acceptable and UNacceptable answer, I don’t ask. It’s asking for trouble, it’s like testing your man when your man has a 50% chance of failing the test. If I ask something, it’s because all of the answers are acceptable. (This is NOT the same as asking a question for which you hope for a “right” answer, that IS important to the relationship, such as “Do you think we can afford to have another child right now?” and “Will you marry me?”.)

I now need to qualify the girl questions. Girl questions are asked not because girls want to pick a fight, because as much as it’s convenient for guys to assume we LIKE fighting, that’s simply not the case. Girls ask girl questions because they figure it’s such a “gimme” to the “right” answer that it’d make them feel good. They want to hear, “No, you’re not fat.” “Of course I love you.” “Of course you’re the hottest lay I’ve ever had in my life.” This is a big billboard that the girl needs more positive reinforcement in the relationship, i.e. they need something from YOU, the man, to make them feel good because they’re not feeling so great right now for whatever reason.

In the last relationship, I didn’t ask girl questions because I couldn’t bear the impact of a “wrong” answer, so I just avoided them altogether. In my current relationship, I don’t ask girl questions because I don’t question where Mr. W’s head is in this relationship, so I don’t need the reassurance that girl questions are designed to give.

I can tell, too, that Mr. W used to get girl questions from other people, cuz his old response was just like what Flat Coke says Bat’s response is. “I’m not going to answer a hypothetical that’s never going to happen. I refuse to participate in this question.” Now he answers cuz he knows it’s okay, I’m just being goofy, and it’s not going to lead to a fight. And that’s as much to his credit for making me feel secure, as it is to me for not habitually asking girl questions.

** Addendum: I just went back and read the previous post. I figured it went without saying, but then realized it doesn’t go without saying because not everyone who may come across my blog knows me. The conversation described was entirely playful. The post is written tongue-in-cheek. If you had been in the room with us, you would’ve heard the silliness in my tone, and heard us laugh in between his answers.

** Addendum #2: Here is a related post about picking your battles, and about “girl questions”‘ role in that.

After work on Monday evening, I watched Mr. W cut his own hair with an electric hair trimmer razor thingie. He cuts his son’s hair with that trimmer, too, but had always turned down my half-joking request for him to cut my hair, claiming he didn’t know how to work with long hair. “If I had a boy-cut, would you cut my hair with that thing?” I asked him now.
Between the buzzing of the trimmer, he said, “Yes.”
I leaned farther out against the chairback I was resting my chin and hands on, crouched on the seat facing backwards like a little dog looking out a window. “Would you still be attracted to me if I had a boy-cut?”
Bzzzz. Bzzzz. “Yes.”
I peered at him, watching him stroke the blade methodically from the base of his skull up the back of his head. “Are you lying?” I asked.
Bzzzz. Bzzzz. “Yes.”
The chair creaked. I watched him work, observed his concentration as he examined his head from all angles between a hand-held mirror and the wall mirror that covered his bathroom closet doors. His eyes never left his reflections, which from my angle looked like a startling row of Mr. W Rockettes reflected over and over between two large opposing wall mirrors. The opposite mirror farther away from the light source reflected a darker Mr. W, so that the row of boyfriends seemed an M.C. Escher rendering of opposing and alternating pale and tan Mr. Ws.
“But what if it’s not my fault that I don’t have hair? What if I’m a cancer patient and the chemo made me lose my hair?” It didn’t seem very fair in my hypothetical that I’d have to endure cancer, its harsh treatments, and the loss of my boyfriend’s attraction to me.
I received a quick side glance. “If you had cancer and got chemo treatments, then we’d both have our heads shaved. And I’d still be attracted to you.”
For awhile, nothing in the room could be heard except the buzzing of the hair clipper and the distant churning of laundry whirling in the washing machine — the only signs of ordinariness in the extraordinary conversation I was having. His last words shimmered between us in the air in a way that was less surreal than the meaning of the words itself. I was no longer there. I was now back years and years ago, reading a newspaper article about the NFL football player who shaved his head in solidarity with his wife, who was undergoing chemotherapy for breast cancer at the time. I heard my past self say wistfully, “Do guys like this really exist?”

Have patience, I wanted to tell her. They do. They really do.

Phone: ring, ring.
Cindy: *whispering* Department E.
Mr. W: Oh, you’re still messing around over there?
Cindy: *whispering* I’m not messing around! We’re still on the record in trial. I’m working. There’s a difference.
Mr. W: I’m about to go home. You coming over right after you get out?
Cindy: *pause*
Mr. W: Hello? Are you coming over?
Cindy: *whispering* Actually, I was gonna go home, even tho I have no reason to…
Mr. W: You have no reason to go home, or no reason to come over?
Cindy: *whispering* Well, both. ha, ha.
Mr. W: I’m not enough of a reason?
Cindy: *whispering* A Riesen is a candy caramel coated with chocolate.
Mr. W: Oh. Well, I can stop by Rite-Aid and get a bag of Riesens. And then I can give them to you, and that way you’ll have a whole bunch of Riesens. But you’ll have to come here to get ’em.
Cindy: *giggling* So you’ll give me lots of Riesens to go over there? *looking up in alarm* *whispering* Oops.
Mr. W: *laughing* Yeah. I’ll see you over here.
Cindy: *whispering* Okay.

I got my 2007 Houston Fire Fighters calendar today! Whoooooooo!

Uh. I mean, I got my receipt for my $18 donation to the Houston Fire Fighters Burned and Crippled Children’s Fund in the mail today. *side glance*

I let my reporter open the envelope to brighten her day. The result was a hearty suggestion from her, “Let’s all move to Houston and start a fire!” Yeah, bonfire in a hay barn! Let’s roast marshmallows! You’re all invited!

On the freeway on Sunday, I spotted a white semi beat-up late 80s-to-early 90s model Chevy Pontiac Grand Prix to my right. Thinking it may be, on the off-chance, a coworker of mine, I looked into the driver’s window as we passed and saw a very content looking man in his late 40s or early 50s, a stranger to me. It struck me that he may have had this car for decades, he may have purchased it used, but the expression was of someone having a great time in this old car. I instantly thought at him admiringly, “You’re a better person than me.”

I don’t actually know when St. Patty’s Day is, except that it was sometime this past weekend. So, uh…here! =D Happy Monday.

May the Lord bless you
Be gracious unto you
Make His face shine upon you
And, may the Lord give you His peace!

May God grant you…
A sunbeam to warm you,
A moonbeam to charm you,
A sheltering Angel,
So NOTHING will harm you.

May you always walk in sunshine,
May you never want for more,
May Irish Angels rest their wings right beside your door.

My court reporter is one of those inspirational people who always has great compassion and insight from having walked through hell herself. She’s also goofy and will make you feel good cuz she laughs at any joke you crack, no matter how lame you really are. She comes back to work tomorrow after being out the past 2 weeks. All the temporary relief reporters just made us miss her more.

She had taken the last two weeks off to take care of Coby, her white labrador retriever, who had leg surgery. I guess labs have thin leg bones and it’s common for big happy dogs to bounce their way into injury. She’d called two days after the surgery to let us know how things were going. The poor dog didn’t sleep well the first night due to all the pain. She said that aside from a couple of 45-minute intervals when he’d passed out, Coby cried and whimpered and shivered the whole night from pain. The pain pills the doctor gave my reporter to take home did nothing; she said she probably gave him three days’ worth in one night and he never got comfortable. No one slept those first few nights. She even called an emergency 24-hour vet, who couldn’t do anything in the middle of the night because they’re not mobile and could only give Coby a pain reliever shot if she brought him in, but a 90-pound dog who’s not mobile is not easy to carry around. The bandage was seeping blood still. With her daughters’ help, my reporter managed to get Coby into her SUV the next evening and drove him to his regular vet, who came out to the car and gave him a morphine shot. He slept better that second night. But he wasn’t able to go to the bathroom, as every time he leaned back on his haunches to go, the pain in his injured back leg made him leap back forward whimpering.

I can’t wait to see how Coby’s doing when we finally get our reporter back tomorrow. Here are some dog sayings in honor of Coby:

The reason a dog has so many friends is that he wags his tail instead of his tongue.
-Anonymous

If there are no dogs in Heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went.
-Will Rogers

A dog is the only thing on earth that loves you more than he loves himself.
-Josh Billings

The average dog is a nicer person than the average person.
-Andy Rooney

We give dogs time we can spare, space we can spare and love we can spare. And in return, dogs give us their all. It’s the best deal man has ever made.
-M. Acklam

Anybody who doesn’t know what soap tastes like never washed a dog.
-Franklin P. Jones

If your dog is fat, you aren’t getting enough exercise.
-Unknown

My dog is worried about the economy because Alpo is up to $3.00 a can. That’s almost $21.00 in dog money.
-Joe Weinstein

Ever consider what our dogs must think of us? I mean, here we come from a grocery with the most amazing haul, chicken, pork, half a cow. They must think we’re the greatest hunters on earth!
-Anne Tyler

Women and cats will do as they please, and men and dogs should relax and get used to the idea.
-Robert A. Heinlein

Dogs are not our whole life, but they make our lives whole.
-Roger Caras

James asked me a few nights ago that knowing what I know now, if I had the chance to make a different decision regarding my last relationship, would I? Would I enter once again what was undoubtedly the hardest segment of my life to date, harder than all the difficulties I had ever faced in the rest of my life combined? I really didn’t know.

I know that there are a lot of things that weren’t all good that I definitely would go through again, because what those things did for me were well worth the few struggles. College, for example, wasn’t easy, but it is something I would never take back. But the last relationship? I don’t know that the ends justified the means. Even when I was going through the hell and people told me it won’t make sense until later why it was necessary for me to experience such pain and violations, I wanted to believe them and look forward to the day it’d all be clear. But at the time all I could see was, “Like I didn’t know that being lied to and cheated on and treated like crap wouldn’t feel good? I don’t need to experience all this to get this lesson!” And now, it’s been a couple of years. I guess if forced to examine how it changed me positively, it gave me a depth that I didn’t have before. It’s like growing pains, you’re being stretched beyond what you can handle and it hurts, but afterwards, you’re more, uh, stretchy.

I was talking to Mr. W about this last nite. I didn’t know when I was in the relationship that salvaging it would be an impossible goal to attain. The relationship was set up from day 1 to fail (the day after we got together, he went to a girl he’d been seeing behind my back when we were just “dating” and started what would become the “affair”). But the beauty of a situation in which the goal is impossible, is that it forces you to reach beyond where you’d ever reached in the past, it forces you to try everything within your power, make up new powers, combine old knowledge, test new concepts, attempt new combinations in the struggle to reach what you will never reach. If the goal were a hop, skip and a jump away, I would’ve reached it and not gone any farther. But an impossible goal that you don’t know is impossible forces you to keep reaching.

In addition to the depth I earned, I also gained perspective, and what Mr. W calls my “level-headed, loving communication style”. I think the depth makes me more able to relate to people and to be more relateable. I can counsel people with more heart in addition to the logic now. People have always gravitated to me for counseling, and I’ve always done what I could to offer them a new perspective. I was talking to a bailiff about this at work the other day and I think his orthodox Christian lifestyle made him a bit scared by what he thought I was saying. He asked if it was witchcraft or voodoo. I told him it’s not the occult; it’s just being able to get in someone’s head. He looked alarmed. I reassured him that I don’t do it to manipulate people; I look and see what’s in there, but I don’t move anything. All I do is add some flowers on the counters, and then I walk out. And I explained my opinion that tampering with someone’s free will is an absolute violation to me. He insisted that I could manipulate people and I gave my usual joking line of, “But I use my powers for good, not evil.” I could, but I don’t. Everyone is here on their own journey, and I can illuminate things for them, but no one is anyone else’s puppets. He still thinks it’s trippy that I can just sit there at a bar and strangers will tell me secrets and life struggles that they’ve not told their closest friends about. He thought it was trippy, at least, until he realized he’d just told me stuff about his relationship with his ex-wife and things he’d done in the past that he normally does not ever bring up, and that I’d talked him through that until he had a look of relief on his face. And then he walked out wide-eyed in a daze. “But don’t you feel better? And you don’t feel manipulated, right?” I called after him. “I fold,” he said, “All in.”

I told Mr. W in our conversation about this that if it came to just me, the last relationship wasn’t worth it. It challenged me in a trial by fire, and I’d almost died three times. So it gave me a depth, so what? But if that’s what I had to go through to help people around me, to use my experience to help lift their lives, sort of in a share-the-wealth type of way, then it would have been worthwhile. And that happened almost immediately after the breakup. People came to me really early to ask for help and advice on how to survive the aftermath, and I did what I could for everyone that was open to me. In a self-serving way, what I went though made me recognize Mr. W for who he is, whereas before, I wouldn’t have and actually did not give him a chance, and before, I was wrong.

I’d told James in another conversation some time ago that what I want to do with my life is to leave a mark of some sort, to know that my life made a difference somewhere. He told me that he just wanted to live well and be happy. I guess that’s a constitutional right in this country, the pursuit of the American Dream, of happiness. He asked, if I know that I’ve made a difference, would I gain “happiness” from that knowledge alone even without riches or the “perfect” material life? I think I would be satisfied.