cindy's world

I like being at home and hanging with the Dodo. This morning, I was singing to myself and suddenly, he was before me, meowing looking up at me. I bent down and petted him, still singing, and he wauled along. Just now, I was IMing with my childhood friend Sandy, talking about our cats the way other adults talk about their children.

Sandy: he’s [Dodo] the only cat i know that talks..
Sandy: and a lot…
Me: all cats talk.
Sandy: meowmeowmeowmeowmeow…
Sandy: very very cute…
Sandy: no Marsh is a mime
Me: I’ve heard him talk.
Sandy: barely.
Me: my cat likes to talk to me.
Me: and he sings with me, too.
Sandy: lol
Sandy: mine just looks at me like I’m stupid
Me: mine found a new corner to tuck himself away in.
Me: now he’s hanging out between the la-z-boy and the couch.
Sandy: he’s sleepy.. cat nap time
Me: wonder when he started doing htat.
Sandy: well.. he knows where it’s comfortalbe
Me: it is a cozy little corner.

I turned and watched my little furry boy affectionately.

Me: he’s dreaming.
Me: his paw’s twitching.
Sandy: lol.. how cute
Me: he looks like he’s doing calculations on an abacus.
Sandy: LOL…
Sandy: only you will say he’s doing colculations on an abacus
Sandy: i’d say.. he’s chasing a mouse?
Me: oh, haha.
Me: that’s true.

I heard some information through the grapevine about my ex, and I didn’t know whether to react with laughter or sadness or scorn or what. Because it’s just so sad and pathetic. The only emotional response I have for sure, is gladness that I’d made the right choice by leaving the relationship. Pat on the back, Cindy, you did right by yourself. I guess I’m always more glad than upset to hear affirmation, just in case I ever think, “Did I make the right decision?” I know I did.

Speaking of rats, I sooooo want this. It’s a hamster in a hamster wheel that plugs into your computer USB port and the faster you type, the faster the little guy runs. So while I’m sitting here at work running the rat race, my little hamster’s wheel will fan me. Since I type pretty fast. I’d wanted this, until I saw the price tag. YIKES!

Speaking of hamsters running in wheels, my coworker Sandy had once said to me that when I’m in thought, sometimes she could actually see the little mouse running on the wheel in my brain, except that unlike other people’s mental mice, mine runs faster, and there are 3 of them, and they’re all running in different directions.

The hose was turned on at 5:15p. We washed with Dawn and dried, stripped the entire car by hand with claybar (I dropped my claybar on the driveway already and had to toss it :(), washed off the claybar residue with the Zaino carwash. It was 6pm at that time. Not bad. Now for the polish. 2 ounces of Z2 polish, 5 drops of ZFX accelerator, shake shake shake. The application wasn’t too bad, but it was getting dark outside. After we waited 30 minutes for the first coat of polish to dry, it was dark enough that we couldn’t tell how much wax we were removing. The second layer of polish would have to be applied in the garage. But first we sprayed on and wiped off some Z7, which is supposed to deepen the shine in between coats of polish, and repel dust and has SPF 40 sunscreen (stronger than the stuff I put on my flesh). Then James moved both Mercedes (Mercedi?) out of the garage and I parked my little Lexus in there so we could see in the light. (I felt bad that the Mercedeses were in the street getting sprinkled on with the neighbors’ sprinklers while my car was being primped in the garage.) We actually ran out of mixed polish and had to mix another batch. With the 2nd coat of polish applied, we went out for sushi while it dried. It was my small payment for his slave labor. Then we came back and removed the polish, and it was still too dark to see detail on the side of the car. I had to use a flashlight. However, at one point James tossed a towel on the hood of the car and it glided across the hood like figure skaters on ice. I couldn’t even lean on the car with a towel because I’d slip right off. We finished off with the Z7 spray, James did my tires and windows and we were done at, oh, 10:30p. So of course I opted to skip the 3rd coat of polish. “And you’ll have to do this again twice a year,” he said. I really don’t know at this point whether I would.

I’d forgotten my camera. James ran in and got his, however, and took a few “before” shots. The “after” shots were probably bad, since it was pitch dark by then and altho the flash went off, he said the photos didn’t come out. I’ll tell ya where the camera DID come in handy. There’s no light that comes on in my trunk when I open it, but there is a light switch on the inside. James said, “You have to manually turn the light on every time? That’s weird.” But the light doesn’t turn off on its own when I close the trunk. We bent our heads down and I slowly closed the trunk with the light on. The light was still on…still on…still on… And then James said, “Oh, I know how we can tell if the light turns off!” He put his camera on video record mode, put it in my trunk facing up to the light. I closed the trunk. I opened the trunk. He pulled the camera out and we eagerly watched the playback. You hear him say, “Here we go. Okay, close it,” you hear him laughing at my saying how overtechnologized we are in this generation, you hear a thunk as the trunk closes and the light goes dark. “Oh! It DOES turn off!” we said. “There you go,” said James proudly. And I was gonna do it the prehistoric way, of opening the slot between the trunk and the back seat so I could look in from the back seat with the trunk closed.

This morning I touched up around my car with the garage door up cuz I can now see the water trickle marks at the usual places around the door corners, and lemme tell ya, mirror effect! I totally saw my reflection in the car. I still haven’t seen my car in sunlight, since when I’m driving I can’t see the outside, and then I parked in the structure so it’s shady, but I can’t wait! “You’re gonna be one of those people that are like, ‘DON’T TOUCH MY CAR! YOU’RE GONNA LEAVE FINGERPRINTS!’ ” James said. I think he’s right.

Oh, and the weather reports say rain tomorrow and Thursday. Of course. But I get to see how the beading effect works!

How long is this post on washing my car?! I said to James mid-project yesterday that I felt like such a loser for spending this many hours on a car in the evening, but that I felt better when I realized James is spending the same number of hours on a car, and it’s not even his car! HAHAHA! What a good friend.

Oh my gawd! Embedded videos work! Now you can see and hear our idiocy!

I wonder what it is about washing a car that makes it more effective than an Indian rain dance. Today, for instance, I’d only planned on washing and Zaino-ing the car (and I’m pretty excited, cuz I’d be Zaino-ing for the first time so I’ve put aside the entire evening for it; James said it should take about 4 hours), and this morning, it rained. I can’t even remember the last time it rained.

“Rain is OK if you are going to wash it today!,” James emailed. “Just hope it doens’t rain tomorrow. If it does you should walk to work instead to keep the car clean.”

Four-hour process, man! Wash, claybar, wash, polish, remove, polish, remove, polish, remove. I’m gonna take before and after photos. And NOT with my sucky cameraphone, either. (See previous entry’s photos of cats for sample of sucky cameraphone pictures.)

I’m cat-sitting this weekend for Vanessa, who’s out there somewhere looking at some redwood tree as I type (presumably). Today, the sky was overcast and I spent a couple of hours in her apartment playing with her two tabby kittens. Few things make me sleepier than being indoors on a cool-weathered day with 2 furry warm bundles around me, and watching them blink slower…and slower… until they doze off. *yawn* I’m sleepy now just thinking about it. I took a brief cat-nap on Vanessa’s couch with Maxwell, the affectionate male, tucked against the crook of my bent knees purring away…

…and with Angelina, the independant Amazon female, curled comfortably in the rocking chair next to me.

*yaaawn*

This guy, a 26-year-old named “Mike,” called a talk radio station this morning with a dilemma. Here’s what he said happened.

Yesterday, he and his girlfriend got into a verbal argument over the correct spelling of the word “vegetable.” He said he’d already been having a bad day at work and wasn’t in the most tolerant mood. The fight escalated and the girlfriend snatched Mike’s pen out of his hand and refused to return it. So Mike grabbed for the pen, managed to get it back, but she still had the pen cap. He demanded the pen cap, there was more yelling, and then she ended up throwing the pen cap at him. The cap landed on the ground. He told her to pick it up and give it back, she refused. They argued about that some more. Then the phone rang, she got up to pick it up, but because they were in mid-argument, Mike walked up and hung up the phone. She then “promised” that if she could call back her friend and finish the conversation, that she would pick up the pen cap. He agreed. She called her friend back, they finished their conversation, and then she went into the room, got dressed and put on her makeup, and then left to go to a party with her friends, having never picked up the cap. Mike was fuming, so when she returned, they fought again and they broke up.

The radio show personalities, along with most of the callers, reamed Mike out for being stupid and petty. “It’s a PEN CAP, do you realize that?! Who cares about a damn pen cap? If you can’t get over a PEN CAP, you’ll never get anywhere in a relationship.” Mike insisted it’s more than just the pen cap. It’s the fact that she lied to him and then left. People said, “If she lied, she lied about a PEN CAP! Hello!!”

I tend to agree with Mike. It’s not about a pen cap, even though that’s the subject of the argument. But the pen cap is just a variable, it could’ve been anything that mattered to Mike. The fact is that the girlfriend is physically confrontational (snatching a pen out of his hand, throwing things at him), doesn’t respect him, and is okay with saying “F you” through her actions of saying, “I promise to do this,” and then just leaving without doing it. His feelings are of no consequence to her. Sure it’s a pen cap now, but the fight reveals a lot about her attitude, and the future fights will be the same but about bigger things. Like maybe it’ll be really important to him that she not have this one drink at an event but she insists on the drink and everyone will say, “It’s a DRINK. Get over yourself, Mike,” but really, she’s an alcoholic. People were yelling about how small Mike was to not pick up the damn cap himself. But what about her? She didn’t pick it up, either. They both could’ve stopped it at any time, but both were too stubborn. Who says the guy needs to give first? She was the one who threw the cap.

The fight as I pictured it in my head made me laugh, but it’s full of real red flags to me. These are the kind of red flags you look for early in the relationship as indicators of how the other person deals with problems. I’d like to be (and be with) a person who says, “I may not understand what the big deal is, but I can see that it’s important to you so that’s fine, I’ll do this little effortless thing to make you happy.”

Call me lame, but I love this photo. I think what I love about it is how surprisingly normal my thighs look. This was taken by Mr. W last Sunday. My jujitsu class all met up at Huntington Beach to take group dojo photos. We hung out and ate some food in street/beach clothes, and then changed to our gis for the photo shoot. I changed behind the open car door to shield me from the class, but apparently Mr. W had made his way to the other side of the parking lot for an unobstructed view. (And that’s a swimsuit, you pervies.)

I think a lot of us (mostly us women folk) have specific things we look for in a photo of ourselves, and we judge whether the photo is “good” based on these predefined points. Someone self-conscious about crooked teeth, for example, may examine a photo nervously to make sure no teeth show through the smile. For me on body shots, I dread the lower abdominal pooch, fat rolls, thick upper thighs, fat upper arms (that part behind your arm that flaps when you wave too rapidly, or looks extra big when you’re at a diagonal angle with your arm too close against your body). There are many specific things I look for on facial shots, too, which I won’t disclose because listing those flaws is just too embarrassing. Men, however, roll their eyes at these things. “What do you mean it’s a bad picture?! You look fine! It looks how you normally look!” And then I think, “I normally look like I have no jaw definition due to a double chin?!”

We see a photo of ourselves. We silently run through our personal checklist of flaws. We evaluate said photo against the list. A “good” photo is one in which the image is better than how we see ourselves in our heads. I think it’s a girl thing.

What am I doing up so late, you ask? I’m rel0ading all photos put on this blog before September, 2005 into my current image hosting site, because the image hosting site I’d used from the blog’s birth till then has apparently decided to die. So now I’m on my home desktop, looking for all the old photos, uploading them into my current hosting site, and changing the address on the blog of all these photos from the old site to the new site.

But no, no…don’t you worry about my lack of rest. Anything for my dear readers!

That and I’m anal about my work product. I hate that when you go to old photos now, it just gives you a text box with the caption next to a little box with an “X” in it.

It actually kinda scares me a little that this is how we’re raising today’s youth. It went from teachers not being allowed to corporally discipline students, to parents walking a fine line between punishment and abuse, to kids not being allowed to play tackle football at school, to not being allowed to run during flag football (you have to speed-walk to the person so it’s non-violent, per some schools), to Tag being outlawed at some elementary schools because a child psychologist said stress levels of kids had gone up when asked questions about playing Tag (of course stress levels go up, it’s adrenaline, it’s part of the game!) and they didn’t want kids to feel the pressure of being “forced” to be “it” when another kid runs up and tags him. THESE are the kids who are gonna be fighting our wars?

My friend Adam emails me today:
My third grader and some of his friends got sent to the principal’s office this week for reading a Pokemon book in the bathroom at recess.

Me:
DEVIANTS!!! What kind of MONSTER are you REARING?! I have never heard of such an atrocious violation of parental guidance!
Can I blog this?
And what’s wrong with reading a Pokemon book?!

Adam:
Dude. Where have you been?
Pokemon is forbidden because it leads to play fighting which can lead to real fighting.
Representations of superheros on clothing are forbidden for the same reason.
Playing tag is forbidden because kids run into other kids.

Blog it.

Are they KIDDING?! They’re IMAGINARY cutsie little cartoon creatures that roll out of a little ball to fight each other with magical abilities, and the two cartoon kids competing don’t even TOUCH each other! It’s not like as the pets throw lightning bolts and wind at each other, the two boys are kicking each others’ asses!

Adam also supplements:
At the last cub scout picnic we played kickball. I fielded the ball and drilled the kid with it as he ran to first base. “You can’t do that!” “Can’t do what?” “You can’t throw the ball at people!” “What’re you talking about? This is kickball. Of course you can throw the ball at people–that’s how you get them out.” Some mom comes to explain, “They don’t allow the kids to throw the ball at each other on the playground at school.” I tell the kids, “Listen, boys, are you in cub scouts or girl scouts? All right then, get ready to get drilled.”

This morning I was putting on my makeup and listening to the radio at my usual morning radio station, 102.7 KIIS FM, which is Ryan Seacrest (of American Idol)’s talk show. Every morning at a certain time, they do what’s called The Birthday Giveaway. Ryan calls out a month, and takes the first caller who was born on that month. That caller gets $1000. Then, he calls out a date, and if that caller, on the air, happens to be born on that month and date, then the caller gets $10,000. I’ve never heard anyone win the $10,000, by the way.

Today, he called for June birthdays. In the bathroom, I thought, “That’s odd; he called June just a couple of days ago.” I never call in for those things, firstly because I’m lazy and I don’t want to interrupt my morning makeup application to run from the bathroom to my bedroom to call and risk being late(r) to work, and secondly because it seems everyone who calls is so ecstatic over winning a grand that I think others need the money more than I do. The demographic of the radio station (Los Angeles) certainly hits a lot of lower-income or welfare families. Sometimes a woman has 5 kids and works an unskilled minimum wage job (Ryan occasionally asks what the caller does for a living).

So this reasoning was going over and over in my head, but I felt this compulsion to call. I never call. But after a minute or two of hesitation, I trotted over into my bedroom and dialed. The phone rang a few times…I got excited…and then the recorded operator message, “We’re sorry; all circuits are busy now. Please try your call again later.” I hung up and redialed. One ring, and the same operator message. Oh well, a lot of people got to it first. I returned to the bathroom to finish off the makeup.

A few minutes later, a heavily Spanish-accented woman came on the air as the winning caller.
Ryan: Is your birthday in the month of June?
Woman: Yes.
Ryan: You have just won a thousand dollars!
Woman: Thank you.
Ryan: Now…for ten thousand dollars…were you born…on…June 29?
Woman: [sharp inhale] Oh…no, it’s not. June 26.
Me: BITCH STOLE MY MONEY!!!!