cindy's world

Yesterday evening, I told Mr. W a story about a childhood eraser I had. It was a small flat eraser in the shape of a rotary dial phone. When I was in grade school, I showed the cute eraser to my cousin Jennifer, who’s a few years younger than me. She didn’t know what the eraser depicted. “It’s a phone,” I told her, incredulous. She said, “Nuh-uh. What’s that round thing in the middle?” “That’s where the dial is.” “There’re no buttons? Then how do you dial?” I had to explain to her how rotary phones work. You dial by turning the dial. Kids these days don’t know where the term “dialing the phone” comes from, because they’ve always pushed buttons. Today, they say they “punch in the numbers.” Just as the keyboards on computers now have an “enter” key, whereas the older keyboards had a “return” key. “Return” doesn’t make sense anymore because there’s no roller holding a piece of paper up that you have to return to the beginning left position to keep typing on your typewriter. And when the kids now say, “Ditto” to signal an agreement? They don’t know what that means. They have “xeroxes,” not “dittos.” They’ve never seen a teacher hand-crank a deep purple ink press original through a ditto machine to copy a worksheet to pass out to the class. (Mr. W interjected here that he used to love sniffing the chemicals on his dittos. But he grew up in the druggie age.)

Technology has never improved itself so exponentially as in our lifetime right now. In half a generation, we have nostalgia about more items than our parents had to reminisce about. My high school trig teacher, Mr. Brose, told us a story about how when he was in college, they had just come out with the scientific calculator (which was required basic equipment for our trig class). He remembers the early calculators that only had 5 or 9 digits on the display, and only did basic functions, and then they started coming out with more and more functions. “And then I turned to my buddy and made a crack, ‘In the future, they’re gonna come up with a calculator where you punch in some figures and you turn it over and they’ll GRAPH it for you on the back. HAHAHAHA!’ ” Now graphing calculators are a required basic of high school math classes.

Little boy to man on a cartoon: “Dad, tell me again about how when you were a kid, you had to walk all the way up to the TV to change the channel!”

…because I think this is HILARIOUS. My friend Erin, who recently gave birth to her second kid, was emailing me about the hypothetical if Mr. W and I had a kid. With her permission:

Erin: “Yeah Ba [her dad] was 48 when he had my brother and 50 when he had me. It’s really not such a bad thing to have an older parent. The best part is because this would be his second time around there are a lot of things that he would be prepared for mentally so while you would freak out about stuff (because it’s your first time) he’d be able to put you back at ease (like when your kid rolls off the bed…Patrick [her husband] had implied I was a bad mom when it happened to me until it happened to him…). Biracial Asian kids get the best of both worlds, they have more of an olive complexion (so they won’t burn quite as easily as the white kids) with bigger eyes.”

Me: “kids roll off beds? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!”

Erin: “yeah usually it happens when they’re asleep and then they just roll right off. It kind of sucks when it’s yours though.”

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

(I sound British again.)

That’s what it is. The surgeon, after doing the scope on Sunday morning, came out and talked to us and showed us 4 color photos of the leaf-shaped indentation in my dad’s stomach. They didn’t have to do a biopsy, no further operation, this can be controlled by medication for a few months until it heals, he explained.

The surgeon was a character. First he looked at me and asked my mom, “This is your daughter? I can see why he has an ulcer, worrying about his pretty daughter all day long.” And then later he fished out a fresh plumeria flower from his pocket and handed it to me, and then fished another one out and gave it to my mom. My mom told me that the day before, when he told my parents he suspected an ulcer, he explained it’s commonly stress-related. My mom said that my dad hasn’t shown stress, so he must’ve been trying to hide it and pretend to be a man about it. The surgeon’d declared, “What do you mean, be a MAN? He IS a man. Are you saying he’s normally a woman?”, making my parents laugh.

Thanks to everyone’s karmic good vibes, my dad is okay and should be discharged sometime today.

Here’s my public service announcement. If your stomach isn’t feeling right, don’t wait. The doctor said that in a bad internal bleeding situation, a person could die within 2 hours. My dad had lost so much blood that his first day in the hospital, they had to tranfuse 2 pints of blood, but he was lucky. He said he hadn’t been feeling well for 2 weeks, the major problem came Thursday night when he felt weak (I questioned him about 2 scars on the insides of both elbows, and he finally admitted that it wasn’t just weakness, he’d fallen over), he was in the hospital Saturday.

I’m all alone right now and there’s no one to call cuz my phone doesn’t work. And no one’s online.

🙁

My cell phone would not make one phone call after work yesterday. Mr. W kept trying to call me on it and said he just got a “service out” automated message. When I dialed, “Connection error” or “Network busy” would appear on my screen. It was pretty frustrating. We went to a Cingular store and the salesperson explained that a couple of the Cingular cell sites went down, and it’d been down since 4pm that afternoon. Today, I tried the phone again in the morning. The message “connection error” still flashed on the screen when I pressed “send.” I used Mr. W’s phone to check my voice mail. My mom had left a stern-sounding message asking where I was at 8:30p last night. I called them at home and left a message on their machine explaining the phone issues and leaving them Mr. W’s cell number. We checked with a Cingular kiosk earlier today, and the girl at the booth told me that Cingular is phasing out AT&T cell sites, so they’re doing major maintenance stuff and switching certain numbers from one source tower to another, so some numbers may be down for a few hours. I explained it’s been over 24 hours. She said sorry, there’s nothing they can do, but service should restore itself on my phone automatically.

It wasn’t until half an hour ago that my mom called Mr. W when we were sitting in his living room watching a DVD of United 93. My dad’s in the hospital. He’d been there since last night. They couldn’t reach me on my cell all day, and she hadn’t been home to get my message until now because she was at the hospital with him all day, and didn’t even leave his side to eat. He hadn’t been feeling well in his stomach for the past 2 weeks, but figured it’d go away. In the middle of the night Thursday night, my dad got up and was instantly having cold sweats, then he felt too weak to stand. But like a typical stubborn Asian person, he still went to work the full day on Friday. That night, he realized it was internal bleeding, and went to the family doctor, who confirmed the internal bleeding and told him to go into the emergency room right away. His blood pressure was 80/70-something. In the hospital, they paged the on-call doctor over and over, starting at 11a, and the guy didn’t wander in until 4p. Anyway, it’s too late to visit him tonight, but I’m going to go in the morning. He has some procedure scheduled for 10a, so I’ll be there to talk to the medical staff in case there’s any language barrier for understanding instructions or situations. I also called the hospital and talked to my dad, who seems to feel that this isn’t a big deal — at least that’s how he’s putting it to me.

My phone STILL isn’t working. My dad better be fine. If this is the last conversation I have with him I’m going to !@#$ sue the ass off Cingular.

This has never happened to me before. I was responding to comments on this blog by commenting back, and upon clicking the button to submit my 2nd comment, I was taken to a blank white screen and this text was at the top:

Sorry, you can only post a new comment once every 15 seconds. Slow down cowboy.

Huh?! I’d never heard THAT rule before! I’m the administrator of this blog, gosh darn it, and I can post as quickly as I want! And I’m a cowGIRL. Yee-ha!

This may be too early to tell, but my day’s been balancing out in my favor.

I woke up later than I expected, and didn’t leave at the 7:15a time I’d planned. 7:15 would’ve gotten me to work at just before 8a, per Mr. W’s estimation (I was leaving from his house to work for the first time). Instead, I got up at 7:17a, and couldn’t leave the house until 7:50a. ACK! The specialized courtroom I’d been assigned to opens its doors at 8:30a, so I oughta be in there before then. In my haste, I also stubbed my toe against my bag in the bedroom. Which toe? Only the one that was already injured from the half-marathon run last month, the 4th toe on my right foot, where the nail has begun to lift off the nailbed. I heard it. It sounded like a plastic flick. Scared, I looked at it and it did indeed lift from the nailbed. But it didn’t rip and I pushed it back down into place.

BUT, traffic was cooperative and I was at work before 8:15. I called my supervisor asking if they got someone else to cover the specialized court because my courtroom was sort of in chaos. He said not yet, they’re still working on it. Within 10 mins, however, he called me back and said to stay in my own court because the clerk who I’m supposed to be covering, who was supposed to be at a medical appointment, actually came in. Huh? Why? Who cares, it’s great! So yay, we’re all set up and ready to go!

*dancing in sparkling good luck dust*

Whoa, I just realized that tomorrow is Friday the 13th. Appropriate, considering my jury deliberation has just taken a turn for the wicked, my judge isn’t here this afternoon to address their issues so we’ve put it over to tomorrow, and tomorrow morning, my reporter has a root canal scheduled and won’t be here if they request readback of testimony, and I’m being assigned out to work that one specialized courtroom again, so I don’t know who’s going to cover my courtroom. Of course it also means the specialized courtroom will have a day from hell and I’ll be working late.

Well, how about this. I hereby sprinkle imaginary protection dust on all who read this today and tomorrow. Except if you’re a bad person, or I don’t like you. Then no protection for you! Save my fairy dust for someone who deserves it. (That last part’s gonna ruin my karma for the day.)

Funniest freaking thing I saw and heard all week.

I was walking back toward the courthouse from the parking structure after the gym. On my right was a small parking lot of reserved parking for privileged people only (supervisors, employee of the quarter, etc). A car blocked the only pathway through it, and a 20-something Hispanic female was standing in the open passenger door, talking to the driver. Finally, she closed the door and walked away from the car. She didn’t get but a few steps away before the entire parking lot and the area in front of the courthouse was permeated with a piercing kid’s wail, “waaaaAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!” I looked toward the car in surprise, as with a bunch of attorneys, jurors, other patrons standing in front of the courthouse and sitting around the large planters. She kept walking. The kid kept screaming. A large black guy sitting on a bench in front of a planter said, “That kid needs a good ass-whoopin’.” The woman walked past him and said something to him, which I couldn’t hear because her back was to me. The man responded, “You don’t gotta do it now, but you OUGHTA do it.” I had to look away to hide my smile.

This was not the wail of an naive infant. This was the tantrum scream of a 4-5 year old boy who has no fear of authority.

I’m still up. I just booked two 90-minute massages for me and childhood friend Sandy. She’s online working and IMing about her stress level, so I suggested we should have a spa evening sometime to catch up and relax. I’ve been needing a massage anyhow. She agreed, and I booked her a Swedish + deep tissue back + scalp, and me a straight Swedish for next Sunday. It’s gonna be her first professional massage! I may get her hooked the way Vicky got me hooked. I’ve never been to the OC Spa & Wellness Center in Huntington Beach, but the prices look good. I don’t think it’s one of those places with a happy ending like Mr. W likes to go to. I’m kidding. Sorta.

Maybe it’s the late hour, but I’m now paranoid that the 22nd would come and go and I’d forget. And they’re already prepaid. I hope I’m not napping at Mr. W’s or something come 5pm that Sunday and then later go, “Hey, I missed 8 calls from Sandy. I wonder what’s going on with her.” I’d better tell her now that if for some reason I don’t make it, she should still go.

She just IMed me, “you’re not gunna forget to go DUDE”
HAHAHAHA! Okay, I need some sleep. I’m getting punchy.