cindy's world

I am in materialism heaven.

Mr. W wanted to celebrate Christmas early this year due to varying schedules, so tonight was that night. We (Mr. W’s two teens and us) had salad with bleu cheese vinaigrette dressing, lasagne, garlic bread, sherbet punch (mine and Mr. W’s spiked with vodka), and then we each decorated our own giant gingerbread man with frosting and candy.

As we waited for our frosting to harden, we gathered in the living room and opened presents, each of us with a wineglass of sparkling pomegranate juice. Mr. W orchestrated the opening ceremoniously so we could all bask in each other’s joy as we opened our loot, and he could take pictures. He’d hand one to one person, the person would read the clue on the label and try to guess what was inside, and then open it to see if they’re right. And then play would move to the left. I got Mr. W a membership to 24 Hour Fitness, first 3 years prepaid, which he’s been using since November since I gave it to him early. I’ve created a gym rat who wants to go twice a day and try out all the different clubs! Tonight I handed him his other present, a replica of the DaVinci Code cryptex complete with the rosewood box. The code was the same as in Dan Brown’s novel: apple.

Here’s the list of what he got me, in the order handed to me and opened.
Clue: “To keep the little piggies hidden from the big bad wolf!”
Present: a 3-pack of super-soft slipper socks

Clue: “So shoot me.” (I first thought he bought me a DVD season of “Just Shoot Me” cuz the size of the box is right, and then I thought he bought me a gun, but it was too light.)
Present: an Ultra Compact 5x Zoom All-Weather 7.1 Megapixel Olympus Stylus 740 digital camera with 5x Digital Image Stabilization!!! Holy crap!!! The guilt was instant. The camera was also asymmetric, which he pointed out right away, which was the winning factor in his selection of this camera when it was down to 2 models, that and a Canon. He knows me; I love asymmetry!

Clue: “Beware the windstorm!”
Present: (I knew this one, he’d accidentally given it away last week without realizing it, but I’d really wanted it. I’ve even blogged about it in the past.) A little stuffed hamster (life size!) inside a hamster wheel that plugs into your USB port, so that the faster you type, the faster the hamster runs on the wheel! I’m a pretty swift typist, hence the clue.

Clue: “Some ‘juice’ to call me!”
Present: cell phone charger, because my phone has been dying every few days lately. “Why don’t you charge it?” he would ask. “Because my charger’s at home!” I would declare.

Clue: “You are It is music to my your ears!”
Present: a tiny little flat white iPod Shuffle! I’ve never even heard of this model. It’s the size of a large postage stamp, and the back is just a clip that clamps it to your shirt. It came with a printed card that read “Merry Christmas Cindy! I love you, always, [Mr. W]”. And then I looked closer at the tiny little 1 gig player. In tiny print toward the upper edge is engraved “[Mr. W] loves Cindy.” I started laughing. It’s so cute, it should be carved on an apple tree or something! He must’ve had it specially ordered. “Listen to it, I’ve already pre-loaded a song on it!” he said, pulling the included earbuds out of the plastic wrapper. I put on the earbuds and pushed the playback button. Beyonce’s “Irreplaceable” played in stereo sound. I started laughing again. As I type this I’m smiling and laughing, feeling silly as Mr. W lays behind me. “I’m reliving it,” I explained to him.

Last but definitely not least…
Clue: “To put on your toast? …” (I joked, “You got me butter? And had it laying out all this time?”)
Present: 5 years’ worth supply of Body Butter. I’d just run out of the tub he got me last year, and was sad about that! He remembered! This time it’s a tub each of coconut, olive, white chocolate, mango and raspberry n’ black currant scents.

The photos on here are taken with my new camera. 😀

I’m so spoiled sick. SICK!

Yesterday on the freeway off-ramp, I heard some metallic clanking. Rhythmic, like clank-clank-clank-clank. I was concerned that something may be loose on my car, but then I saw this 3-foot long metal strip shaped like an L rolling in front of me on the lane! I managed to swerve left and avoid it. THAT would’ve totally scratched up my car for sure! It looked like some 80s car’s metallic bumper strip.

And then this morning, I was driving surface streets to work on the right lane of the 2-laned street. After my red light turned green, the old Mercedes in front of me was going painfully slow getting through the intersection, and then I saw this dirty old-style (probably mid-late 90s) silver Eclipse fly by to my right, where there was no lane, to cut in front of the Mercedes. I know she was going slow so it was kind of understandable, but how freaking reckless! A block up at another red light, the Eclipse went into the left-turn lane so I turned and looked at the asshole. Dark brown-haired jerk in his mid 20s, wearing sunglasses in foggy overcast mildly sprinkling weather. “You think you’re so hard-ass, you loser,” I thought at him, and redirected my attention elsewhere. A couple of blocks down, I saw that same Eclipse in front of me! What the heck? He must’ve gone in the left turn lane just to pass up the cars going straight and cut them off in the intersection, like he did to my right earlier! Luckily his lane was going slow so I passed him up rather happily. I peeked in. Yup, same guy. Asshole. A few more blocks, another red light, and suddenly this same jerk passes me again to my right, and I’m still in the right lane of a 2-laned street so there’s no lane to my right he must’ve pretended like he was going to take a right turn at the intersection and then blown straight through to cut off the car in front of me at the intersection where no one was expecting a car to come from the right! What an ass! WHY are people like this not getting tickets? And then…this was all just too familiar. I called James.
Me: Hey, remember that car that was cutting people off from the right turn lane and left turn lanes at the intersections?
James: Yeah?
Me: Do you remember what kind of car that was?
James: Um, it was a foreign car. I don’t remember. But it was something older and souped up, like a Supra or something like that.
Me: Was it a silver Eclipse?
James: Yeah! I think it was! Why?
Me: He just did that to ME!!

It turns out that James has “the power” now, too, altho his is way slow. He commented in detail about this car way back months ago, and now, I run into him. What a reckless jerk!

While driving on the freeway this morning, I saw a large wooden spool with wires or cables wound around it. It was rolling across the freeway. I was in the left-most lane, and the spool rolled from the dividing wall across my lane without being hit by the car in front of me, and I thought, “Whew, I’m safe.” It rolled into the lane to my right, and the moron drove right into it. I watched it break and ricochet in a diagonal beeline directly at my car! There was no avoiding it. I cringed as I heard the “BADA-CLUNK!” I don’t know how many pieces of it hit the right front of my car, or what happened to it after it hit. But I was pissed. I wasn’t going to get out to check my car, so I finished the 35 minute drive home and dreadingly came out to look after I’d parked in the garage.

The damage is small chips into the paint in the right corner bumper, as if someone jabbed a metal pen into it repeatedly, and a scrape around the corner of the bumper. Most of the scrape wiped off, but some light scratches remain. ARGH! I guess I’ll be Zaino-ing my car this weekend with Z5 scratch remover! I hope it comes out!! At least it was in the corner where it could do the least damage. If I had sped up, it would’ve hit the side of my car and probably dented it and left a longer scratch. If I’d slowed down, it would’ve hit across the front of my car and scraped up the length of the front bumper, or worse, bounced up and hit my hood and windshield. So thank heavens for mitigating blessings.

I think the most interesting thing in all this is what happened in my mind as soon as I got over the shock of the impact. I immediately thought to call Mr. W, but I realized my purse was in the back seat so I dropped that idea. Then I thought, “I’m gonna blog this.” Some years ago, when I was having a very rough breakup, I had no energy to go to the gym or to go out and socialize at lunchtime, so I just sat in my car in the parking structure to be alone. Next thing I knew, a public defender getting into his SUV parked to my right opened his door into my car so hard that it shook my car for several seconds. Incredulous, I stepped out of my car and walked around it to him. He looked up at me. “You know you just hit my car, right?” I said, forcing a calmness that was very apparently…well…forced. He played dumb. I almost lost it. I didn’t speak to that public defender for almost a year afterwards. But my point is that after this happened and he pulled out and left to lunch, I sat back in my car and the same thoughts ran through my mind. I wanted to call my significant other and tell him about this. But we were breaking up. So I couldn’t. And the helplessness of not having someone to help shoulder my emotional burden just cracked me and I sat there and cried. That was, of course, before I had a blog.

The house is vibrating with Mr. W’s operation of a red plastic guitar as he strums to Playstation 2’s “Guitar Hero 2.” Yes, he bought the game. Why am I not playing? Because I have gone blind from passing the game on Medium level. Yes! I passed the game. The secret super duper bonus when you get to the end is an encore with the classic Lynard Skynard hit, “Freebird.” Cool! That’s, like, the only song I know in the whole game since I don’t listen to punk or hard core rock.

My head and fingertips hurt.

*listening to Mr. W play a slowed-down practice session on Easy Mode*

Baileys! I need Baileys!

I am so unmotivated to work out. I didn’t eat breakfast and only had lunch less than half the time in the past 2 weeks, so my anorexia kicked in and I gained 3 pounds, despite all the gymming and cardio I’d been doing. So now I’m discouraged. I actually stayed in and worked through lunch today rather than go to the gym. And even tho Mr. W was kindly offering gymming to me this evening, I couldn’t lift my fat ass off the couch, or my eyes from the scrolling TV screen, since my fingers had cellularly bonded to the Guitar Hero guitar buttons. When I finally looked up again the TV and its surroundings were wavy, which I knew to be an optical illusion because of the constant staring at the dropping notes playing the game. It’s the same effect after running on the treadmill, when things seem to fly by you faster after you stop. And since the effect of this game was so similar to the treadmill, I consider myself to have worked out and am going to bed.

Baileys! Hello!! Or maybe a Frangelico. I’m not picky!

I have something for you plane buffs, or anyone who’s a fan of flying, or even if you’ve simply flown in a commercial plane before, or if you have seen a commercial plane in flight or in landing, or if you feel like getting a good laugh. Check out my sidebar links under “Pages,” to your right. I’ve added a new humor page called “Just Plane Funny.” I know, I know, it’s cheesy. But not as cheesy as an email I received from a coworker earlier, with the following riddle:

Q: If athletes get athlete’s foot, what do astronauts get?
A: Mistletoe!

I remember that joke from my 4th grade spelling textbook. Or it may have been on an issue of Highlights for Children. Or maybe it was printed on a woodcase pencil that we used back then. Or maybe it was in my Big Book of Children’s Jokes, which contains equally silly jokes such as:

Q: What do you get if you throw a white rabbit into the Red Sea?
A: A wet rabbit!

For smarter, at least smartasser, humor, check out the page I just told you about.

My jujitsu instructor told us some time ago during warmups (when we usually have casual class chats) that he met a guy who was being very pompous while talking to my instructor. The instructor asked him, “What do you do?”
The jerk said proudly, “I’m a rapper.”
Ever unimpressed by people’s egos, my instructor said irreverently, “Oh, you must be really busy around Christmas-time, then.”
He said the guy didn’t find it funny.
I thought it was hi-larious.

I got to catch up with a close friend yesterday on the phone. She was tossing around holiday gift ideas for her boyfriend. And then she said, “I gotta be careful what I say I want these days!” Because the last time she carelessly said that she wanted something she saw on TV, and it was close to Christmas, she ended up with a Showtime Rotisserie Grill from her then-boyfriend. I remember getting the phone call from her; she was sooo upset that it was laughable. “I have never ever gotten an appliance from a boyfriend for a Christmas gift before!” she’d complained. And the poor guy had been so proud of his gift, hinting that it was something she’d expressed that she’d really, really wanted. Recently, she happened to have caught an episode of Everybody Loves Raymond in which Ray gave his wife Deborah a crock pot for Christmas, and to top it off and make it even better, he bought her a set of pots and pans. Deborah was beyond offended. Seeing that episode did not allay her fears.

This year, she’s afraid she may have “accidentally” over-expressed her desire for a Chia Pet Herb Garden. It’s something she’d likely buy for herself if she decides she wants to cook more, but definitely something she does not want to unwrap Christmas morning. “I hope he forgot I made that comment, it was months ago,” she said yesterday. The conversation moved to bathrobes, and she mentioned she saw some really nice ones at Old Navy (?) recently when she was out shopping with her boyfriend. Then she paused. “Oh crap, I said I really liked the bathrobe and that I needed a new one, I hope he doesn’t buy me a bathrobe for Christmas!!” Hahaha!

I’m actually okay getting an appliance from a boyfriend, provided it’s something I have really been wanting. My judge got me a hand-held vacuum cleaner for my birthday a few years ago, and the staff pooled together and got me a scanner. Some other time I got a Tanita body fat scale. I was delighted every time. But then those aren’t my boyfriends. Hmm. I’ve never gotten an appliance from a boyfriend, either.

My gym trainee forgot her gym clothes, so I jumped on the opportunity to suggest a margarita lunch outing. I deserve it cuz I’m having a crappy day, right? While at lunch, I confessed that I don’t understand the concept of, “Oh, I’m having a bad day so I’m gonna have a drink,” because drinking really doesn’t help me feel better. She said she doesn’t understand it either as all alcohol does is make her sleepy, but that she uses the “bad day” thing as an excuse to drink. I confessed that’s what I did today, too, as I sucked on my margarita.

The funny thing about having really strong margaritas is that when you’re back at work, it feels like you’re sitting and walking at a 45-degree angle from the ground, but as diagonal as you are, you don’t fall over. Funky.

Is this another bad sign? After my run-in with Ms. Tactless this morning, I looked up my horoscope for today. It says:

Loving Venus is now in your 7th House of Relationships, but your romantic life may be fraught with problems, for the love planet needs rules when in Capricorn. This can create an unsettling situation, for you may now be offered the security you seek, but with enough restrictions to make you uncomfortable. Think about what you’re willing to give up for emotional safety. Even if the circumstances seem out of your control, your response is your decision.

So what’s that supposed to mean? That my relationship is stable but really terrible? And I’m short-changing myself in order to be emotionally placid? The last few months of this horoscope has not applied to me so I’d been sending it on to college roommie Diana, who’s also a Cancer, and she’s been saying that it’s applied to her, so maybe this is her horoscope instead of mine again. I don’t know.

Trouble walked up to me before I even got in the elevator to get to my floor at work this morning. I’m still standing there waiting for the elevator to come down and this coworker — this oversensitive, tactless woman as her reputation is not only known to be but personally experienced by everyone — decided to make some inappropriate comment at me about something that’s none of her business and in fact, even made her sort of a hypocrite. Of course I defended myself and she wanted to have a bickersesh with me, so I just clammed up and refused to make any further eye contact with her. Finally inside the elevator, there was a 3rd person so I just stared at the buttons, feeling my face grow hot with my anger. The coworker spoke again. “*scoff* You are just getting skinnier and skinnier.” I didn’t turn around. She said, “You. Cindy. Aren’t you getting skinnier and skinnier?” This would be a compliment coming from anyone else, but even last Friday other coworkers were commiserating to me about how this very same coworker has been on their nerves accusing them of starving themselves and looking too sickly with weight loss, when my coworkers have felt just fine about themselves and didn’t need her critique. I told her in the elevator, “I don’t know. I don’t think I am.” She kept going on insisting that I’m dissolving and what am I trying to do? I said that I haven’t done anything, whatever I do isn’t working. Then my floor was up and I stepped out.

What a way to ruin the day. First thing at work. She couldn’t even wait until she was standing with me waiting for the elevator before she started; she had to talk crap as she was still walking toward me! I totally covered her butt last week, too, because for 3 days, she was supposed to work this specialized very busy courtroom, she had a fit, so I covered both that courtroom and my own courtroom so that she could go sit in her cushy relaxed courtroom. See if I ever do HER any more favors. Hmmph.