cindy's world

I love discovering people to have philosophical psychological sociological introspective conversation with. I especially enjoy how they seek an explanation, a theory and a solution for me, and don’t judge me. And they tend to think I’m smart. I especially like that. =)

I had a Diana moment at lunch today. I’m kinda messed up, so it doesn’t take much for a fellow coworker to convince me to go to lunch with him instead of running 3 miles at the gym. On the way out of the restaurant, I thought some guy looked familiar from the back, but I wasn’t sure it was who I thought it was cuz this is really out of the way for him. I walked by him, and then turned around and looked at him. “Oh my God, Mike!” I said as I walked toward him, just as he took a HUGE mouthful of pastrami burger. With his cheek puffed out like a squirrel’s, he nodded at me and tried to put his food down. I gave him a half-hug across his shoulders. I then introduced my coworker to him. “What are you doing here?” he asked me. I said I was just here on lunch break. He said he works around there now. We didn’t talk much, but I had *just* thought of him a couple of days ago when I walked toward jujitsu class and saw a big banner offering bartending classes (he was taking bartending classes the last time we’d talked). It’s kinda funny with Mike — we’d met thru a mutual childhood friend of mine, and we would hang out at the bar, and then one day he brings in a photo of my parents. “What the heck?” I said, staring at the photo. “This is at my house,” he said. “Your mom and my mom are coworkers and they hang out all the time. This picture is everybody at my parents’ house singing karaoke.” I don’t know how he suddenly figured out who my parents are, but that was pretty weird. Small world.

Mr. W and I are in personal rafts/innertubes, like we were in Jamaica a few weeks ago. We are alone, and adrift in a dark river that has a cognizable current that we are paddling against. He was at first next to me, paddling, and I was keeping up with a little difficulty. He then pulls a bit ahead of me, efficiently fighting the current, and I feel like I’m just being pulled back as I struggled with my paddle. In the background was some distant ominous-sounding roar that I had been ignoring or not acknowledging. A nervousness is pulling in the pit of my stomach. I’m now about 2 feet behind him, and I cry out to him. He turns and looks at my face and my tears, and I reach out an arm to him, begging him to help me come back to him. To my utter shock, he coldly turns around and continues to paddle on his own way. I yell his name again, and it becomes apparent that he has forsaken me. Confused and hurt, I pause in the paddling as I watch his back and innertube get smaller and smaller. Suddenly, I am surrounded in the deafening noise that had snuck up upon me. Waterfall. I scream for him again, and he doesn’t even turn around this time. As I start to fall backwards over the waterfall into darkness, I feel less terrified than I feel betrayed and abandoned.

I woke up and saw myself crawl out of bed in my mirror-lined closet. I was surprised at the flat appearance of my stomach, the slight outline of abdominal muscles in the moonlight. Or maybe it was the streetlight. I stumbled into the bathroom and weighed myself. I’m within 1.5 pounds of my goal weight range. The only thing guaranteed to make me dump weight is relationship problems.

There’s a first time for everything. I am publicly recanting the post entitled “Guardedly Chipper” because I jumped the gun on the label that something was a lie. As it turned out, there was a logical explanation for what I felt were inconsistencies, and I am going to go with that.

I’m thinking of keeping a Yay and Nay log, sort of like a pros and cons list, but ongoing. Then I can see whether the yays outnumber the nays and maybe give credit where credit is due. Of course, then we run into the problem of quality vs. quantity, which is the problem with pro and con lists. It doesn’t seem quite fair to simply quantify events and issues, but how do you assign differing weight to each item? I can also see my OCD going beserk with this log. In mid-conversation, mid-action, I’d have to put up a finger and say, “Hold that thought,” and run off and log it. Or I’d have to pull over when something occurs to me on a drive and log it. =P Maybe I shouldn’t even start.

“How are you this morning, ma’am?” my judge just asked me from the bench.
I gave him a flat-lipped smile. “All right, I guess.”
“You look…guardedly chipper,” he observed with a kind smile.

I guess “guardedly chipper” is what I look like when I realize on the drive to work this morning that I’d been lied to. There’s the “Aww, that was delicious, thank you” lie, and then there’s the type of lie that’s used to cover some negatively-motivated action that, when told, just doesn’t sit quite right with the person lied to in a “gut” sort of way. It’s like laying a plank over a marble. You can’t see the marble, but the plank just doesn’t lay flat the way it’s supposed to, congruent with its surroundings.

This is all too familiar. It’s dishearteningly parallel, despite the absolutely different variables. As my high school friend Nina used to say, “Same shit, different toilet.”

*Sigh*

I’LL BE – Edwin McCain

The strands in your eyes that color them wonderful
Stop me and steal my breath
And emeralds from mountains thrust toward the sky
Never revealing their depth
And tell me that we belong together
Dress it up with the trappings of love
I’ll be captivated
I’ll hang from your lips
Instead of the gallows of heartache that hang from above

Chorus:
And I’ll be your crying shoulder
I’ll be your love suicide
And I’ll be better when I’m older
I’ll be the greatest fan of your life

And rain falls angry on the tin roof
As we lie awake in my bed
And you’re my survival, you’re my living proof
My love is alive and not dead
And tell me that we belong together
Dress it up with the trappings of love
I’ll be captivated I’ll hang from your lips
Instead of the gallows of heartache, that hang from above

(Repeat Chorus)

I’ve been dropped out, I burned up, I fought my way back from the dead
I tuned in, I turned on, Remembered the things that you said

(Repeat Chorus)

The greatest fan of your life

I finally listened to other voices in my head today at lunch. I guess telling oneself everything’s okay, everything’s okay, only works for so long until the reality of things is waved in one’s face like a banner, thereby forcing one to confront it, at least in one’s own head. It doesn’t taste very good. And it’s all just very sad, and very tiring.

I had this toy when I was a single-digit-age kid. It looks kind of like a hammer or a mallet, except instead of a metal piece on the top of the “T”, it’s soft plastic, with accordian-style fold creases, such that when you hit it against a surface, it pushes air out and the toy squeaks. On my little plastic hammer toy, one side of the hitting thing was green and the other was yellow.

I bring this up because that toy is what I want to HIT YOU GUYS WITH when I go to your blogs in desperate need of entertainment and you guys haven’t updated in days, some of you in WEEKS. This trial is so painful and grueling, mostly from the defense attorney’s lack of brain cells, that the Spanish interpreter here today said to me upon my return from the restroom, “I was going to ask you whether you had gone to the restroom to kill yourself by slitting your wrists, and I wanted to ask you to leave a blade for me.”

Come on, guys. Lean your heads down. *WAP!* Squeeeeak! *WAP!* Squeeeeak!

When I try to go into my gmail account to check email, I can sign in like normal, the little window pops up to say some security thing or other, I click that “yes,” I want to proceed, and then it just loads a blank white screen. 🙁 Anyone have any suggestions? Other sites (like this one) loads just fine so it’s not that internet has abandoned me. I’ve already cleared my internet cache (cookies, files and search history), restarted the computer, same thing.