cindy's world

Ptthh. I just found it. Turns out it IS in my own blog, AND in my comment section here where I responded to something Jordan wrote. And right after I wrote this whole entry, too.

Well, I’m glad to see that Murphy’s alive and well.

I could’ve sworn I’d written something either on my blog or as a comment on someone else’s blog something about how it’s scary to be in a relationship because you give someone you have no control over your very fragile world and you just have to trust that the other person won’t be careless with your heart, and then I said something about how you must venture forth with your eyes wide open so that you could determine in as short a time as possible whether the person you’re dealing with is trustworthy, hopefully before you totally fall for him. However, I can’t find this comment ANYWHERE. Not on my blog, not on the comments of blog I frequent. How frustrating! Maybe I wrote that in an email of support to a friend.

But yeah, the scariest thing about a relationship to me is that half of the relationship is out of my hands and it’s purely reliant on how good a judge of character I am that decreases the odds that someone will rip my heart senseless. That’s why I tend to be euphoric alone, especially after I’ve come out of a bad relationship. It’s because for once (or so it feels), it’s finally the case that no one is able to have a negative effect on me. That no one has the power to make me sad. Some would say that even in a relationship, the other person shouldn’t have the power to destroy you, anyway, but come on. Let’s be realistic. If someone doesn’t have the power to crash you to hell, then either you’re a robot, or you weren’t that into them to begin with.

I’m trying to sort out my conflicting feelings. The sort of feelings that hit you when you open the door to leave a cutesy little surprise for your boyfriend (when he’s not supposed to be there), and your eyes are met with the sight of your boyfriend there chatting with his ex. And this is the one ex who, despite not knowing you, gave you problems and attitude, ignored you when you tried to smile at her or greet her civilly, said derogatory stuff to other people about you, when you first started dating your boyfriend. The conflict comes from feeling miffed by her, being caught off-guard, and the smothering of the rosy little glow of leaving a gift for your beloved. That’s all under a giant umbrella of feeling out-of-place and uncomfortable. And it doesn’t help that you find out instantly afterwards that when your boyfriend talks about things you guys did over the weekend or whatnot with his ex, he leaves you out of the descriptions. Another side of the conflict is the grownup side of me that really does want the two of them to get along since they have occasion to be in each others’ presence, and they’re finally getting along again now. (They had been friendly for 5, 6 years after the split, and then she suddenly gave him the cold shoulder once she found out about me.)

I think I just feel slighted. That even tho she was the one being oddly immature and catty for no good reason at all, that I had been the one who retreated from the room, only to find out that I involuntarily get retreated from their conversations, too. Another injury came when Mr. W, who came out after me, assumed that I was angry and immediately tried to explain what she was doing there. I wasn’t angry, I’d dropped off his silly little gift, said hello and left, I really don’t care what she was doing there, I don’t have a problem with her being there, so I merely made the crack, “It’s not like she was on your lap.” But his entire set of actions and words at that point were clearly aimed at diffusing a jealous reaction from me, which is the reaction he’d have gotten if I were any of his exes, and now I feel like he’s projecting their flaws on me and not seeing me. Again. He apologized for it after we had a chance to talk a bit, but now I felt wronged. He said his reactions to situations come from learned conditioning, and I said that’s fine, you should learn the cubbyholes to categorize things in when you’re with someone, but you’re not supposed to use the same set of cubbyholes on a new person that you’d developed for an old person in your life. On top of that, his old cubbyholes are not only inaccurate, but offensive to me, because in order to group my actions into those cubbyholes, he’d have to think I’m petty and jealous and not see anything I do to the contrary. And now I feel like I’ve been sacrificial and overly fair (in regards to other people, especially women, in his life) for nothing. And I feel sorry for myself.

But what am I supposed to do? What is he supposed to change? Their getting along is infinitely better than her immaturity in the beginning of our relationship. Maybe I should bow out altogether and avoid dealing with anything. Someone else’s baggage shouldn’t be my problem, it’s not my fault his ex is still possessive over him, and if he’s going to coddle her feelings, my hands are tied.

And yet it all still comes down to this: doubting myself. Maybe it’s just me. Maybe I just shouldn’t be in relationships. Maybe all I really am, and will ever be, is a sad, sad little girl.

The avocado that I had brought with me to work yesterday in Grace’s bag had been sitting on my kitchen counter for a week and a half, still hard as a rock, and I figure that since it’s been like 60 degrees Fahrenheit in my house, the avocado hasn’t ripened because it thought it was in the refrigerator. It sat for a day on my desk at work, and then this morning, it did feel like a slightly softer rock than it’d felt all week. I decided to cut into it length-wise.

The reason I was eager to cut it was because, while I was complaining about its stubborn hardness in jujitsu last week, my instructor had asked, “Is it a very large avocado?” I told him it was. “Uh-oh. It might rot on the inside before it softens on the outside, because it’s so big.”

So the plastic knife I used strained and creaked against the hard avocado, which almost felt crisp as its skin reluctantly gave way to my sawing. I couldn’t get the knife to cut in closer to the seed, so I ended up having to pry the avocado open. After exerting some brute force, it snapped open. The seed’s thin brown outer skin separated from the whitish brainy-looking inside of the seed, such that half the brown seed-skin stuck to the inside of both halves of the avocado. I could not peel it off the halves. I tried to insert my spoon into the flesh of the avocado, but the spoon couldn’t break through the rubber avocado flesh. I looked closer at the white seed I pulled out, and it already has a half-inch stem coming out of one end! So this stupid thing was about to SPROUT and it STILL won’t ripen?! I bit into a little portion of the hard avocado flesh on the corner. It was bitter as rubber, too. Stupid tease of a fruit.

For punishment, I decided to put the white seed in a clear plastic cup in water and put it on display in shame. It really does look like a brain. If anyone asks what’s in my cup, I’m gonna say that I got attacked by a male mountain lion who, after I was through with him, is only half male now.


Sorry for the bad quality of the photos, all I have is my cameraphone. Rest your mouse pointer over the photos for captions.

A long time ago, in my second year of college (well, it’s long enough), I had creeped myself out reading a horror novel about a supernatural murderer that reached its victims through chain letters. And then I got a really strange chain letter via email that seemed identical to the one in the novel and this email did not behave like a regular email, either. So I freaked out, called Grace (who was attending UC Berkeley in northern California), and then decided while on the phone with her to simply delete the email, altho it may be cursing me as I do that, in order to stop the chain with me and not let bad karma or whatever get to my friends. (The fact that I still refuse to pass on threatening chain letters to this day dates back to that instance.) I don’t think Grace was ever superstitious, and she certainly didn’t read the horror novel I had then just read, but the fact that I was distraught was enough for her. She called up the girl who sent me the chain letter, an acquaintance from high school (I don’t even know how Grace got her number), and chewed her out. I didn’t know about that phone call until a year or two later when I had occasion to talk to that girl, who told me what Grace had done for me. It had never occurred to the girl that, even if she herself weren’t passing it on due to superstitious fear for her own selfish well-being (which she was), that she may be passing it on to someone who IS superstitious. Every time I get an evil chain letter and make the same decision to delete it lest I pass it on to someone superstitious, I think of Grace and that incident.

I keep my plastic bags, twisted into its own knot, in the lowest drawer next to my kitchen stove for use later to line my trash cans or to bag things in. This morning, I opened my plastic bag drawer in the kitchen and pulled out a white and royal blue plastic bag that I didn’t recognize. I had bypassed a white grocery bag with Chinese lettering for that blue bag. I dumped an apple, an avocado, and a Chinese veggie bun into the bag and brought it to work with me. I ate the apple during an afternoon break in our trial, and 5 minutes before beginning this entry, I took the still unripe avocado out and placed it on my desk. Then I removed the bun. (I had lunch with Mr. W and a friend of his today so I didn’t eat my stuff.) When I took the bun out, my hand on the outside of the bag felt something else in the bag. I looked in and saw a receipt. I looked at the bag. “WORLD Duty Free”, it reads in white lettering. Did I buy something duty-free at an airport recently? I had bought some salt water taffy waiting to come back from Florida last month. (Geez, was it only last month?!) I figured that’s where I got the bag. The receipt, however, reads:

WORLD DUTY FREE EUROPE LTD
130 Wilton Road London SW1V LQ

…WORLD DUTY FREE HEATHROW TERMINAL 3

And then it shows the purchase. Two Sheridans Cream, 100C, for 14.30 pounds. I have never been to Europe. But I did receive a bottle of Sheridans liquor for Christmas a few years ago… from Grace. I had introduced her to this vertically-split bottle of coffee liquor and cream liquor when I visited her in Berkeley our junior year of college. I got her a small bottle (she had recently turned 21), showed her at her studio apartment how to pour it over the rocks with the bottle completely inverted so that the bottle pours precisely a 2/3 coffee, 1/3 cream floater drink. I remember her lying on her back on her bed, 15 minutes after downing this drink (she loved coffee-flavored stuff), and saying, “Oh man, I am so buzzed.” I remember laughing at her. She remembered, at 12:38:50 on November 1, 2003 according to the receipt, that Sheridan’s remained one of my favorite liquors. I didn’t see her that Christmas, she was in New York going through some chemo treatment and her doctor wouldn’t let her travel. Her sister, who had just returned from visiting Grace in New York, had met me at a Starbucks in Brea and handed me this blue bag, Grace’s Christmas present to me. Inside was a bath kit nestled in a porcelain bowl of sorts, with yellow roses (my favorite color and my birthflower) painted on the porcelain. This bowl was next to a large bottle of Sheridans Liquor. Grace’s sister and I discussed Grace’s wedding and bridal shower plans, and then we parted ways. I called Grace to thank her for the presents. “Where’d you find the Sheridans?” I asked her. “I’ve been looking for it everywhere but I guess no one carries it around here anymore.” She said, “Actually, I saw it in London!” I think she may have told me that she bought a bottle for herself, too.

It’s amazing the things we take for granted, and the things we keep in our hearts. And the things we didn’t know we kept, but will treasure forever now due to unfortunate circumstances. This crumpled receipt will be tucked under my transparent desk blotter at work. Call me superstitious, but I believe Grace is telling me that she’s still with me.

Oh, the love of a mother and her daughter, and their fun with clothing! This was sent to me as one of those email chain letters, you know, those emails that have the great message that you would’ve sent on to warm the hearts of your friends, except when you get to the end of the email, it threatens that if you don’t send it to all your friends in the next 6 minutes, you will be cursed forever or at least until a herd of runaway bulls trample you on your way home and gore your broken body into meat pulp on the street so that the only way anyone can identify you is by the bloodied printout of the aforementioned chain letter that has your name on the “to” field and the “friend” who cursed you on the “from” field and the explanation of what would happen to you if you fail to curse all your friends in turn with this email. That’s what keeps me from forwarding chain letters — the threat at the bottom that tells me to save myself by cursing my friends. I figure if karma really is that sharp of an entity, then I should get more karmic brownie points by refusing to spread a curse and letting it stop with me.

Aaaaanyway, without further ado, here’s the story, and just the story by itself, sans curse.

The Yellow Shirt
(more…)

Me: I’m gonna do the first annual Disneyland half-marathon in September!
Court reporter: That sounds fun! Do you get to run through the actual Disneyland park?
Me: Yeah! [reading aloud the description of where the run goes through] You guys want to do it?
Court reporter: Maybe! I’ll look up the information online when I get home.
Judge: Whoa. I think I’ll retire by then.
Me: But it’s The Happiest Race on Earth!
Judge: What race would that be?!
Me: … Good point.

But then, the two of them have already done multiple marathons (with really good times!) and the only races I’ve done are 5Ks. I was training for the Huntington Beach Half-Marathon as my first race when I got injured, and never got up that mileage again. Now’s a good time to kick up the dust again.

Last week in jujitsu, the instructor said, “What’s that guy’s name who did the round table for those knights?”
“King Arthur?” one of the students ventured.
“No, the carpenter. What’s his name again? I think he was a knight, too.”
Nobody knew. I briefly thought of Jesus.
“Sir Cumference,” he said. (say it out loud)
***
While hanging out with friends watching the UCLA/Alabama game on Saturday nite, Vicky called me and invited me to join her in the Inaugural Half-Marathon to be hosted at Disneyland in September. I guess Disneyland’s going to close down the park and we’re actually going to run through Disneyland. HOW COOL IS THAT?! We’re just doing a half-marathon, so training up to 14 miles by September is totally do-able. Spots are filling up very quickly, so I told her to sign me up. $85, which is even more expensive than a full marathon in Los Angeles. But, it’s Disneyland, for gosh sakes! And it’s the FIRST run there, ever! I’ll be a part of Disney history! Maybe we can play in the park after we’re done running.
***
Speaking of the Los Angeles Marathon, which took place in downtown Los Angeles yesterday, apparently 2 runners died and one is in critical condition in the hospital. I don’t know anything about the one in the hospital, but the two deaths are both Los Angeles Police Department officers. Ack! One had a heart attack on mile 3 of the 26-mile run, and the other had a heart attack just 2 miles shy of finishing the run. It’s an unfortunate loss to the department and to law enforcement in general, but one of the first things that went thru my mind when I heard about this on the news was that I can just hear the Compton or Los Angeles criminals now: “Okay, so you take this gun and stand by the door and keep watch and I’ll give all the commands to empty the cash register. If you see LAPD, just holler and we’ll run.” “Where do we run to, man?” “It don’t matter, just keep running until the cop has a heart attack and dies. Shouldn’t take long.” And it certainly doesn’t help with the stereotype that cops are out of shape and subsist entirely on free donuts.
***
Later: I did some research on the 2006 Inaugural Disneyland Half-Marathon Weekend. Here’s what it says about the route:

The course for this fantastic event will take runners from Disney’s California Adventureâ„¢ park, celebrating California’s storied past and exciting future, to the Disneyland® park, to explore the fantastic “lands” of nostalgia, color and delight. Then it is on to the scenic streets of Anaheim, past Arrowhead Pond, along the Santa Ana Trail, around Angel Stadium, and finally back through Disney’s California Adventureâ„¢ park for an exciting finish of the Happiest Race on Earth!

I had an IM conversation with Diana last nite about how things will play out if something or someone is meant to be. The conversation reminded me of a particular circumstance. This is how fate or yuan (Mandarin) works in relationships.

My ex was very audible about how he’s a “breast man.” “The bigger the better, I don’t care if they’re fake,” he used to say. Granted, the exes or people he used to like/date that I’ve seen/met are large people so every part of them were big, not just the boobs. But he didn’t seem to mind that as long as they were, like, 44DDs or whatever they were. He’d asked me early on, “Would you ever consider getting a boob job?” I was taken off-guard and had responded with a snappish question — would he get a penis enlargement? And he’d responded that he would if he were asked to. But I was made to feel so inadequate in the breast department in that relationship that I did consider breast augmentation surgery. (I didn’t get one.) Subsequently, after I’d been a few months into dating Mr. W, I brought up the topic of implants. He was avidly against them, cited all the health risks and expense and how they’re not worth the exchange for simple vanity, and added that my breasts are perfect the way they are (I’ll spare you guys the adjectives and descriptions he used in telling me how I’m fine the way I am). I told him I’d briefly considered getting them augmented in the past, and he said that if I had done that, he would not be dating me right now.

So let me review. If I had altered something unnecessarily to please my ex, then I would not have been with this great man who loves me as I am, who values my health above some appearance preference. But because I chose to keep my body parts as they are, that left the door open to be with this new guy. I love the way that works out.

Let me clarify…the issue is not that we don’t like people who have implants. There are justifications for having implants, like maybe someone had a breast removed due to cancer, or someone with actual problems in the breast area and need to even them out for their own self-esteem. But to augment for a GUY (or guys in general) is a different story. It tells you where someone’s priorities lie, and the kind of motivation from whence their major decisions stem.

When I walked into the building last week, one of the security officers said to me, “I can’t believe how good your boys are doing!” I didn’t know what he was talking about at first, and then realized he meant UCLA men’s basketball. “I know!” I said happily. And then watched my first UCLA game last nite. *sheepish*

Diana and Jimmy both came down to LA independently and we all met up, with 9 other people, in Marina Del Ray for dinner last nite. Dinner for 11 was difficult at the small, non-reservation-taking restaurant Killer Shrimp. But first, 6 of us met up at a bar 5 blocks away from the restaurant and watched #2 ranked UCLA’s very tight game at #10 Alabama. I can’t believe it was such a close game, there was no consistent lead, and in the last 5-6 minutes or so, we never led by more then 3-4 points. The bar was alive with UCLA fans’ adrenaline. (By the way, the people we were meeting up with were old UCLA friends, too.) We barely won, which is scary considering the ranking difference. But it was an exciting game. “Now we can relax and eat in peace,” Diana said as we left the bar to begin our trek toward the restaurant. (I emphasize the distance because there was some debate about whether it was 2-3 blocks away from the restaurant or, like I said, more like 5-6 blocks away.)

Killer Shrimp wasn’t able to accomodate a large party like ours until their 2 linkable tables left, and altho I’d given them a heads up that 11 would be coming at 7p, they couldn’t get those tables cleared until almost 9p. Diana popped in and out and gave us updates. “They’re just waiting for these 4 women to leave, and they already paid and everything, but they’ve just been sitting in there FOREVER!” After standing outside in the cold for that long already, I offered to kick these lolly-gagging women’s asses on their way out. Jimmy pointed out that this is where Mr. W’s gun, had he brought it, would’ve come in handy to add some pressure. Mr. W forbade me to take advice from Jimmy in the future. The dinner turned out to be worth the wait. Killer Shrimp is about a dozen large shrimp served in a spicy Louisiana-style broth in a large bowl, and they give you a generous refillable basket of French bread to dip into the broth and to dig the shrimp out to peel-and-eat. You can also get rice in the broth or angel hair pasta in the broth for $2 more ($16.95 or something like that) in addition to the bread basket. Their pecan sweet potato pie was AMAZING, too. And that is the entire menu. It was a lot of fun and I HIGHLY recommend it. The sauce was rich with butter, chili, garlic, basil, rosemary, parsley, and oregano. Large chunks of these herbs. *drool*

Oh. Jimmy took some pictures, so there may be something to post up later.