cindy's world

This just seems wrong to me somehow, making homeless cats compete for a commercial contract in a reality-show forum…as if they even know what’s going on. And “eliminating” cat contestants? What do they mean, “eliminate?” Put ’em back on the streets?!

New Cats Reality Show Article

Me (waiting by the elevator, seeing gym trainee): Hi!
Gym Trainee (passing by me): Ow.
😀
(hey, the smileys are disabled!)

Even tho my gym trainee and I are not on the same cycle, we were both physically miserable this morning. I had the hardest time getting out of bed, and when she staggered in before lunch to say hi, she looked as deflated as I felt. There’s no explanation for this — we were just out of it. She said she just wanted to find a corner somewhere and be left alone. I said that people pretty much leave us alone at the gym. She agreed. And that’s how we got ourselves to the gym at lunch even tho neither of us had much energy or motivation.

It turned out both of us had failed to bring supportive boobwear, so we couldn’t do much cardio. We got on the treadmill and walked instead, something I’d never done. Turns out walking hit different muscles from running, as I felt my shins being worked. We supersetted the 45-degree angled squat press with the assisted pull-ups, and then supersetted the hip adductor and hip abductor machines. You should’ve heard our defeated groans and sighs and seen our listless death-march trudging between the machines. I’ve always been grateful that our muscles and our bodies get the same workout benefit as long as we go thru the motions, whether our brains are on-board or not. Well, they do, don’t they?

“This isn’t just about the marathon,” Vicky said, “it really applies to any major accomplishment in your life.” Forwarded to me from Vicky:

Excerpt from Marathoning for Mortals, by John “The Penguin” Bingham and Jenny Hadfield.

The Rest of Your Life

The finish line is not the end. The finish line is the beginning. Standing at the starting line gives you permission to hope. Taking the time to train, putting in the mileage, making the changes in your life, and taking the risks has given you consent to hope for the best in yourself. The miracle is not that you finished, but that you had the courage to start.
Crossing the starting line also gives you permission to dream. You can dream about the perfect day, the perfect race, and the perfect experience. It may not happen that way, but it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t dream about it. Crossing the starting line may be an act of courage, but crossing the finish line is an act of faith. And faith is one of the most powerful emotions you can experience.
Faith is what keeps us going when nothing else will. Faith is the emotion that conquers fear. Faith is the emotion that will give you victory over your past, the demons in your soul, and all of those voices that tell you what you can and cannot do and can and cannot be.
If standing at the starting line gives you permission to dream, crossing the finish line gives you permission to plan. Crossing the finish line gives you permission to plan for your next success, to plan for the realization of your next dream. The last step of the race is the first step of the rest of your life.
What you do now is up to you. You’ve seen what you can do. If you’ve stuck with the training program, you’ve seen yourself filled with joy and blinded by frustration. You’ve overcome your fears. You’ve been humbled by both the strength and fragility of your body. You’ve found what you thought were your limits and gone beyond them.
You’ve also learned that what stops most of us from achieving our dreams as athletes and as people are the confines of our imaginations. We can never be more than we imagine we can be. And as long as we restrict ourselves by our imaginations, we forever bind ourselves to our past and blind ourselves to our futures.
Your limits lie behind you now. With that one final step across the finish line, you liberated yourself from everything you ever thought you knew about yourself. You have taken the very first step on the course to your destiny.

Vicky and I were talking about our jobs, our lifestyle, our income. “But in the end, that really doesn’t matter,” she said. It’s all about being happy. If you can sustain your happy lifestyle responsibly, that’s what the goal is in the end. When she turned 30, she asked people older and more experienced, more financially established and what others would consider well-settled in life, “When you look back, what would you say it was all about?” They all said finding personal happiness. That’s the only true success, figuring out what makes you happy, finding a means to do it, and sustaining that. I think she’s come around to the thinking I had when I first started this blog. Discovering yourself and finding a way to “make yourself happy”, as my cousin Jennifer had once suggested to a bewildered version of me, and then having the faith to begin the first step in that direction, and the faith to continue until achievement, that’s true personal fulfillment.

I’m on the phone chatting with my childhood friend while casually typing this entry on my laptop on my bed, my cat’s snoring gently next to my bed. Mr. W and I ran 3 miles this morning (exhausting; PMS makes me anemic), hung out, watched “Friends,” took a nap, we had dinner, I went to visit the ‘rents, ate lots of cherries, and then came home. As much as nothing’s “wrong” with my life, I feel I’m a little short of my personal best right now. I’m lacking the initiative for that first step. But the age ticking is putting a new sense of urgency into me.

I hadn’t thought much about turning 30 all weekend. I think the Disneyland thing helped me. Less than 20 days till my boobs sag to my knees and I kick them around trying to avoid contact between my heels and my dangly ass while fleeing the scene of an accident in which I drove into a crowd of unsuspecting Farmer’s Market shoppers while confusing the gas for the brake.

…it’s the accuracy.

I just found and took a typing test online. A few seconds into the test, another bailiff and the judicial secretary walked in and carried on a noisy conversation with my bailiff. It was distracting, to say the least, but here are my results after a 1-minute test.

Test Name: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
Gross Speed: 102 WPM
Errors: 6 Words
Net Speed: 96 WPM
Accuracy: 94%

The judicial secretary pointed her finger at me and said, “You’re NOT supposed to type faster than me! That’s my job security!”
“It’s okay,” I said, “Nobody knows.” Heh heh.

When someone calls 911, the 911 operator/dispatcher needs to type up the situation and that gets transmitted to a police car. A recent transmission that came out of Lakewood Sheriff’s Station, which is within my court’s jurisdiction, reads:

“916C [citizen holding misdemeanor suspect] — Male found someone breaking into his veh [vehicle]. He tied susp [suspect] to a tree and left because he had to go to work.”

Here’s one out of Norwalk, home base of my courthouse:

“p5150 [possible crazy person] — Female calling 911 claiming 261 [rape] now, stating she is wearing the sky.”

(“The Open Mike,” Star News, [official monthly publication of the Sheriffs’ Relief Association of Los Angeles County, California, Inc.], June 2006 issue)

ANGRY OWNER USES DEAD PUPPY AS A WEAPON
Attacked dog breeder with Chihuahua that had died, police say

Updated: 2:18 p.m. PT June 8, 2006
ST. PETERS, Mo. – A woman angry that her new puppy had died pushed her way into a dog breeder’s home and repeatedly hit her on the head with the dead Chihuahua, authorities said.

The 33-year-old woman told police she had taken the puppy to a veterinarian, who said it was only 4 weeks old and needed to be returned to its mother. But before she could return the puppy, it died.

Early Wednesday, the woman went to the breeder’s home, pushed her way inside and began fighting with the breeder as she tried to make her way to the basement to get another puppy, police said.

The breeder wrestled the woman out of her house to the front porch, where the woman then hit the breeder over the head numerous times with the dead puppy, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported, citing police.

As the woman drove away, she waved the dead puppy out of the car’s sunroof and yelled threats at the breeder, police said. She later called the breeder and threatened her and her family, according to court records.

Police said they are considering felony burglary charges against woman and misdemeanor assault charges.

(Thanks for the e-mail, Vicky. And for the mental pictures.)

I judge the efficacy of my workouts by the patterns on the backs of my clothing when I peel them off in the locker room. If the back of my sports bra has darkened in color, that’s good and I smile. If the lower back of my shirt has a pattern that I call “wings,” that’s even better. The vertical dip along my spine does not make much contact with my shirt, so that part of the fabric usually stays dry. Small hand-sized feathers of sweat fan upward and outward on the lower right and lower left sides of my back from my movement.

Earlier at lunch, my goal was to hit a 4 mile jog. I hadn’t been religious with my jujitsu, running or weight-training in the past couple of weeks. PMS will do that to your spirit. I looked forward to this run, however, because I had finally picked up some AAA batteries for my MP3 player. I started the run at 5.8 mph, and ran effortlessly with the music for 3.25 miles. I wanted to push more throughout this duration, but I was afraid that the excess energy I felt in the beginning would be misleading as to how much energy I had in reserve for later. But with only 3/4 of a mile left to go, I increased the speed to 6 mph (a 10-minute mile). The music jumped to something absolutely inspirational, and I saw the body I had last year at this time in my head, and imagined myself to be running toward achieving that body shape again. At 6.2 mph, I finished 4.5 miles with energy to spare. Never did I pant, never did I feel overwhelmed or bored. Whenever I checked the clock, it was with regret at the speed of the passing time, and never in aggravation that I’d only run for a few minutes that felt like hours. I noted in mid run that I felt good, and the warmth rising from my body felt good, and the rivulets of sweat racing down my chest and back felt good.

In the locker room, I saw that the entire back of my sports bra was wet to the point of wring-able, not that I tried. The diagonal spaces in between the fingers and the vertical space in between the wings on the lower back of my gray shirt had completely filled, so that instead of looking at a small wingspan, I was looking at a heart. What little fabric there is of the back of my thong was soaked through and made almost transparent by my exertion, such that I could not bring myself to put it back on after my shower. I smiled at the V-shaped red lines that ran from either side my neck down to meet in between my breasts, evidence of my MP3 player that I wore around my neck and tucked through my sports bra.

I hope this ability to run harder, faster, and to want to do so stays with me.