cindy's world

This past weekend, Mr. W had restored my old computer at his house, so I printed out a short story I’d written in college for him to read. It’s the first piece of fiction he’s read of mine, and he called me just now to discuss it.

I realized I have very little memory of the story and wasn’t able to discuss it very effectively. It’s kinda embarrassing when someone else can shoot you down regarding some detail or impression of a story that you’d written yourself. But it makes me happy that he has opinions and thoughts on it at all. I think a greater compliment to a writer by far is someone closing your book and saying, “Hmm…”, as opposed to closing your book and saying, “That was nice. I enjoyed it.”

I just looked at the first page of the short story. Yoga is mentioned by one of the characters. I had never taken yoga at the point in my life when I’d written this story. Interesting. I wonder what other elements in the story I now relate to (short of the fact that the Chinese character is married to a Caucasian man, and I’m now dating one, too).

The only sensible thing I’d ever heard from “Sex and the City” is this line from Carrie’s narration: “That’s the thing about needs. Once they’re met, you don’t need them anymore.”

If only men knew that as long as they’re willing to meet some need from us, that oftentimes, their willingness is all we really need. Make the offer. Reach out the hand. You’d be surprised how reasonable we (at least the sane ones of us) are, and if it’s a burden to you, we will find an alternative, but you’ll get all the brownie points in the world for offering.

Some men draw some invisible hard line, petrified that if they appear to bend just a little, that their very masculinity will be threatened and a woman will walk all over him. You don’t have to roll the red carpet out in front of a woman, but if you picked a reasonable, loving woman, she will meet your kindness with like kindness, fairness with like fairness. On the other hand, if you “put your foot down” (I hate that phrase, it’s such a laughable attempt at overcompensating and he may as well stamp his foot and insist that he has a large penis) and refuse to work with us just “on principle,” you may find that we’re hurt and will fight back “on principle.”

Real men aren’t the ones who refuse to compromise or even talk about our concerns. Real men don’t say “it’s my way or the highway, I’m the man.” Real men aren’t scared to deal with things face-forward, and they address problems on the problem’s own merit, and dispel issues by resolving them in the real world. Real men understand that sometimes to win the war, you must lose the battle. And that if you lose this battle, we’ll give you the next one, and suddenly, there are a lot less battles to fight.

I had posted a comment on another blog, likening the Japanese shabu shabu to the Chinese hot pot, and received a response from Wilco claiming that shabu shabu is “totally different” from hot pot. So today, Mr. W and I had lunch at House of Shabu Shabu in Irvine.

Shabu shabu is a much more organized meal than the chaotic everything-goes hot pot. The concept is the same: pot of boiling water/broth in front of you, you order plates of raw vegetables and thinly sliced meat, which you boil in the liquid and then take out, dip in seasoned sauces, and eat. Shabu shabu, however, differs in precisely the reasons that I don’t like hot pot. There’s a delicious ponzu sauce for the meats and a separate sauce for the vegetables. I don’t like how the hot pot sauce makes everything taste the same, and “the same” isn’t even as good as the flavors of the shabu shabu sauces. This shabu shabu place also comes with a bowl of rice and some udon with noodle sauce that you eat in the end with the broth (which should be flavored by all the stuff you dump in there when you’re done with the meat and veggie consumption).

I will definitely eat shabu shabu again. And I still don’t like hot pot.

“…Draw an equal-armed cross over the stones. Set the picture of the person (or their name, if you couldn’t find a picture), on a black plate, cloth, or construction paper. Repeat the above incantation every time you drop one of the small pebbles on top of hte picture. Finish by saying: ‘You are burdened with your own negativity. You can no longer move against me.’ ”
– Solitary Witch: The Ultimate Book of Shadows for the New Generation, Bullies, “Shatter the Shadow Spell”, p. 482.

I stopped reading at this point. “I don’t want to do this one,” I said. “It turns it back on her.”

I turned to the internet for alternative advice angles.

“If you are under psychic attack the best thing to do is try and neutralise the negativity rather than try to retaliate,” the first site I found affirms. “Remember to send the negative energy away from you and yours with love, so as to neutralise any harmful intent.” “To ensure psychic protection during the night , ask your spirit guardians, guides, gatekeepers, angels, and / or loved ones in spirit to watch over you while you sleep. Ask them to deflect any bad energy away from you and send it away with love.” (Rachel Keene, www.rachelkeene.net)

“Love is the greatest healer and your greatest protector against psychic attack. A love of yourself, first. You must love yourself, warts and all. No one’s perfect; none of us ever will be in this human body. Learning to accept yourself for what you are and are not is the first, big step in this process. Eventually, with time, trials and experience, you will understand the term, ‘active compassion’ and be able to apply it to others and groups. It gives you the emotiona detachment necessary. I have found that loving one’s enemy is the finest choice one can make. They might send you destructive energy, but when it meets the energy of love; it completely dissipates it. Hate cannot destroy love; just the opposite.” (Eileen Nauman, http://www.accessnewage.com/ARTICLES/HEALTH/psyack2.htm)

My enemies may one day realize how blessed they are that they chose me to pick on. Now I gotta find some black tourmaline.

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Saturday was spent at the Renaissance Pleasure Faire with Mr. W, my bailiff and his girlfriend. If you’ve never been to a Renaissance Faire, it is the most bawdy place ever. Gravity-defying cleavage and sexually connotated double entendres thrown shamelessly everywhere a la Billy Shakespeare. During a joust, I even received a coupon that reads in old English calligraphy: This card entitles the bearer to ONE FREE KISS from any willing man, woman or beast. I read this, looked up and inquired, “How does one know if a beast is willing?” If you’re under 17 or you’re related to me and don’t want to read about my participation in this land of sin, stop reading now.

I got dressed up, which made no sense because I’m Asian, so to add to the confusion, Mr. W bought me a pair of fawn horns. Not fawn as in a little deer, but fawn as in woodland mythological beast. He in turn had more obvious twisted longish white horns on. It matched his devilish look and impish smile well, everyone (strangers mostly) kept commenting. One lady selling corsages in a basket (which women wear tucked into the cleavage to decorate the breasts) said to Mr. W, “My good sir, I see you’ve let your horny lady walk around naked and yet you’ve plowed her and left her no garden! ‘Tis shameless! Here are some flowers for her fertile hillside.” He selected a heavenly-scented gardenia which was tucked into a regular florists’ plastic tube of water, and with her instruction, he pried my boobs apart a bit while she pushed the cold tube into my cleavage. “She’s tight, you lucky sire!” she said to him. (I have a really funky tan line on my chest now, by the way.) At an alcohol booth, a young lady filling Mr. W’s drink order saw my gardenia and asked to “smell [my] flower.” I stepped up onto a low step in front of the counter and leaned forward and she stuck her nose into my boobs and inhaled, saying, “Mmmm.”

At one point, Mr. W had gone to the restroom (or “privies”) and my bailiff and his girlfriend had gone to the food court. So I sat alone on a bench in a court, in front of this:

I was doing my usual avoid-all-eye-contact thing on this bench, when out of the corner of my eye, I could see a man walking toward me, in nobility attire (probably one of the RenFaire actors), with a similarly dressed man. He separated from his friend and came too close into my personal space, and stopped, as tho willing me to turn and look up at him. So finally I did.

Him: You have horns on your head.
Me: Yes, I know. I’m “horny.”
Him: You stole my line! I was gonna say that next.
Me: I’ve been hearing it all day. “You’re a horny girl,” “Since you’re horny, you would appreciate a nice piece of wood between your legs.” (Said by a “ride operator” referring to the large wooden rocking horse ride.)
Him: (turning his hip so that the ornate hilt of his sword is exposed and pointing at me from under his cape) Wood? What about steel?
Me: Well, I suppose steel is firmer than wood.
Him: (turning so that it appears to anyone not standing to our side that he’s thrusting his hips toward me from underneath his cape) You wanna touch it? You can touch it.
Me: (eyeing the sword) No, I might be tempted to unsheathe it.
Him: (pulling open the cape and exposing the leather lacing up the side of the sheath) You won’t be able to. It’s peace-laced.
Me: (raising an eyebrow looking at his face) Hmm, it sounds like a challenge now.

His friend had been looking back and forth at first amused, and then shocked, and then impressed. I now looked at his friend who was standing to the side and I waved a hand at him and said, “Eh, we could go on like this all day,” and gave him his friend back and the two walked away.

This politician was walking around smiling into his frame and asking people to vote for him.

When I walked away from this guy, he said, “Now you’re well-hung.” I said, “Hmm. I’ve never been well-hung before.” He said, “Or forcibly mounted, whichever you prefer.” I said, “I definitely prefer the latter.”

The horns made me do it.

My childhood friend Sandy had once told me that she discovered who it was that had it in for her, and it was not whom she expected it to be. I think she was even kinda freaked out about it. My bailiff and my gym trainee both told me today that people are jealous of happy people and they want to shove a stick in your bicycle tire spokes and make you fall. I was hanging out with Navy Girl Vanessa chatting about some spiritual research stuff, and I randomly flipped a book and it opened to a statement that said that the more spiritual you are, the more you get attacked, and all spiritual people have had to deal with some big attack(s) at some point. I don’t know, but with me, it really seems like people started hating me fairly recently, and I hate to say it, but it seems to coincide with the time Mr. W and I got together. Maybe it is just about people feeling discontent with their own lives when they see me happy. But I don’t think I’ve had so many problems with catty women before, ever. The one I found out about today just blew me away, because I really had thought we were cool. But she went so far over the line behind my back that I’m just in shock.

So I’ve got a few people who have designated themselves as my enemies. I really can’t do anything about it, I can’t control what they have going in their own heads to feel what they feel, all I can say is that I have never done anything to any of them, nor will I ever do something negative to these people. I don’t feel a desire or a need to. But along with these brand new enemies =/ , I’ve also made some new close friends who have become very important to me, who came into my life because of, in some way, my relationship w/Mr. W. My gym trainee is one, and Jordan. And of course, Mr. W himself.

Yup, the avocado is still there in its little clear plastic cup of shame. Kind of like how people were punished in the ol’ Medieval days by being shackled and locked head and hands in a wooden stock and people would walk by and laugh at them or throw apples at them.

The tip of the stem has now died and turned brown. It was suggested to me that maybe I was drowning the seed, so I poured out most of the water and just left the bottom part of the avocado sitting in the pool. The crack split open more, and I thought something was happening, but it’d been a few days. People do stop and ask what the hell that is, but I’d forgotten that I’d wanted to say it was the testicle of a cougar, so instead I’d been answering people with “It’s the brain of the last attorney who was in here.” Very few people pursue the question further. The movie props people who were in my courtroom filming a few weekends ago had asked the sheriff who was posted in my courtroom what was in the cup, and I’m not sure what he told them. He did tell me people kept asking about it.

I had been about to dump the seed when I turned it and realized that something between the yellowed color of the seed and a light green had begun to grow in the middle of the crack. It doesn’t appear to be a root, not stringy enough. It resembles the very young sprout of a bamboo or something, about the size and shape of a large sunflower seed shell. So I guess I’m keeping it a bit longer to see what happens.

A few people have told me when Disney’s Lilo and Stitch first came out that I must’ve been like Lilo as a young girl. This now reminds me of the scene in which Lilo’s shaking up a large liquid-filled glass jar that had a few wooden spoons in it and the spoons have faces drawn on the scoop parts and yarn hair glued to the tops. Someone asked her what she’s doing, and she said without looking up, “I’m punishing my friends when they’ve been bad,” or something to that effect.

I’ve gotta watch that movie again.

Tonight marks the first night of a 1.5 hour yoga class I will be taking weekly with Mr. W. He recommends this woman’s class because he’d taken it before. I haven’t done yoga regularly in a long time, and I think it’ll be good to have a toning stretching exercise weekly to even out the cardio (running), strength training (weights at the gym), and dexterity training (jujitsu).

I really never thought, in my younger days, that I’d be taking so much on my plate as far as exercise variety goes. I figured I’d do tennis here and there, work out at the gym semi-regularly, maybe have a jog a couple of times a week if I’m lucky.

Maybe I should put this effort into improving my life or my mind instead of my body. After all, the body’s just temporary housing for the permanent soul, right? Who cares what it looks like.

Yeah, right. I’ll just sit here in the corner and keep telling myself that.

I’m at the end of my rope. I called tech support for my internet service, and we figured out it’s not a problem with the internet service or the modem, because internet works when it’s hard-wired to my computer directly without the router. When I plug the router back in, internet sort of flickers but never loads, and the router flickers along with it. Argh! I am so behind in my gmail from not having access to it at work or at home. I called tech support for the router, but apparently, you have to have registered the Netgear router for them to assist you. Stupid company.

Anyone have any ideas? Any techies who can offer his/her 2 cents?

I had JUST commented on Jordan’s blog entry that her day off spent on the phone with various friends and family while sunning by the pool is NOT a waste of time (despite her father’s criticism that she should’ve been more productive), because I feel that “…it’s very important to catch up on your correspondences on your day off. I think in the larger picture, it’s more important than running an errand here and there, because when you lose people, it hurts like it’d never hurt if you skipped an errand. ” After having wrote that, I felt a twinge of guilt for not taking my own advice and catch up with friends I hadn’t touched base with in awhile.

And then I stumbled across my horoscope for today:

You are nothing if not family-oriented. Whether it’s your biological family or a self-made family of friends, you care deeply about your circle. There’s nothing you wouldn’t do for them, and they know it. It gives them a real feeling of security to know how much they mean to you. And vice versa. So check in with a couple of your nearest and dearest. Ask them how the heck they are, anyway. You’ll all be glad you had a chance to talk!