cindy's world

I’m sad. I can think of many counterexcuses why I should be more understanding, but why should I make excuses for someone who doesn’t even care enough to make these excuses himself? Besides, excuses or not, the bottom line still remains that I’m sad.

I discovered in the wee hours of the morning that the pain becomes manageable if I curl up in a tight ball, hugging my knees, and remain upright. So I rearranged the pillows on my bed so that I could sorta sit and lean sideways and finally get some rest. I woke up with a start with the morning light streaming in through the windows, and my alarm clock, which had not gone off, was flashing 2:40. I’d lost power to the house 2 hours and 40 minutes ago. What the hell time was it? It was a bit past 8:30a. I called my supervisor and left a brief voice mail explaining my tardiness but saying I’m on my way, and clamored to the restroom and brushed my teeth, washed my face, decided to skip the makeup and instead bring my face to work with me in a makeup bag. I figured I’d make an appointment with Kaiser when I got to work.

When I got to my desk, I saw a flat little jewelry envelope sitting unobtrusively between my stapler and hole puncher. Inside is a metallic cookie-cutter type angel ornament that appears to be hand-painted. Definitely more sentimental than impersonally mass-produced. My staff knows nothing of it. I called a couple of coworkers who have left things anonymously on my desk before, and none of them seemed to know what I’m talking about. Who has access to a secure courtroom early in the morning, who would think to do this? I thought it was someone who reads my blog and therefore knows what I’m currently experiencing, and wants to leave a little token of support to tell me that I’ll be fine and that an angel is watching over me.

There is a small metal angel clipped to the upper left edge of my rear-view mirror, which I got after my first and only car accident. A circle around the angel reads, “An angel to watch over you.” I now have a courtroom angel which I will pin up on my desk bulletin. So to whomever left it, if you are a blog reader of mine, thank you for the reminder that things will work out. They do always work out.

I am going to juggle between my courtroom and a specialized courtroom down the hall today. They are very short on clerks again. My appointment is at 6:40pm a couple of miles from work, which will work out nicely because I’m gonna stay after work for the retirement party at a nearby hotel anyway. That way I’ll just leave at 6:20 or so to go to the appointment.

This is TMI (too much information) whining in desperate hope that writing this will ease me psychologically and somehow bring some relief physically.
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I had a little experience recently in which I was on my way somewhere unannounced, albeit invited. It started as a tiny little unrealistic voice in the back of my consciousness, and then it got louder and materialized itself in my conscious thought until it consumed me and it was all I could think about. I wasn’t terrified, exactly, because I didn’t really believe it, but having turned down the invitation initially, I found myself unable to proceed with the entrance without first pulling out the cell phone and giving trepidatious warning of my arrival. Yes, “warning.” If there were something going on that I’m not supposed to see or find out about, if there is something that I would walk into, knowledge of which would crush me, please get rid of it before I witness something that will change “us” forever.

Of course there was nothing. I was welcomed with open arms, as I had always been. He continuously passes every test, even though I am not testing him.

If I think back, I believe I can pinpoint the exact moment I started sliding backwards. It didn’t take much. It was just a tiny hair-thick root of a bad, bad weed. But I am powerless to pluck it out. It is not my garden, it is not my weed. And I am a sore gardener who still bears the dirt and stains evident of a prior battle with weeds that were not my own.

It is things like this, so small and insignificant by sight, so encompassing and ominous by feel, that makes me feel like I should quit gardening.

Sometimes all it is, is about connection. The desire to reach out in this vacuous existence and make contact with something. Sometimes I reach for what I think is a secure, unquestionable connection, and in touching this sure thing, I slowly realize it’s not as tangible as I thought it was. I feel it out, testing its shape and temperature and concreteness. Again and again, my hand falls through the mist. …So sometimes the security is in not reaching out, in refusing to confirm what is feared — that I am alone.

Sometimes I’m not sure whether “alone” is the relief that I tell myself it is. There is absolutely a security in aloneness, provided it doesn’t turn into loneliness. Take me right now, for instance. I’m blogging alone in my house, left heel propped up on the front of my chair in shameless unfeminine form, and I’m clad in oversized plush house slippers and tasteless hipster underwear that loudly declares all of Cancer’s traits in white felt print on the ass of the hot pink fabric, and on top, I’m in thermals. I look ridiculous. I don’t care. I enjoy the fact that this getup is so ill-assembled that I wince unintentionally when I pass by a mirror. It’s asserting my independence from others and their opinions. But give me 3 nights of this and I guarantee I will be lying face down on my pillow wondering why my friends have abandoned me. So maybe I can only take aloneness in small doses in order to fool myself into believing that I enjoy it.

And then when I have tired of drifting alone but have reached out and taken a hold of …nothing… thereby causing me to have convinced myself that I’m okay with being an island, as in the way no man is supposed to be, my self-proclaimed brothers find me. Gerardo tells me he’s right there with me anytime I’m feeling cruelly antisocial, and Josh says he likes me and my edgy attitude when I’m PMSing and he’s gonna start tracking it on his calendar (so he has something to look forward to every month). And they both give me a hug. And I smile through my cramps as I feel truly connected to people who get me and accept me. And I reward them with more cruel sarcastic comments drawing parallels between the new people in jujitsu and the audience in Jerry Springer shows. (Gerardo had suggested Maury Povich, but I feel that the new people’s collective IQs are not up to the sophistication in Maury shows, and upon further consideration and with further examples exuded by the unknowing victims of my criticism, he agreed with me.)

It really was a great weekend. As it usually is. There were walks in the rain, dashes in the rain, drives in the rain. (No rain here, however, compares to my wet yoga experience in Cancun.) There were candle flickers and friends and games. Sunday, Mr. W and I drove up to my friends Vicky and Peter’s house in Pasadena and had lunch at Big Mama’s Rib Shack for some BBQ and soul food. I had been touting that place for months, so I was really glad that Mr. W enjoyed it. Then we went back to Vicky and Peter’s, let their vizslas trample us (purebred really happy and friendly red-headed doggers), and had game night so fun and intense that we forgot to eat dinner.

I’m really glad we found a couple we can play games with. I was starting to wonder whether I’d spent all that money on games in Vegas for nothing. Ooh! Ooh! I was really proud of myself for correctly answering a question in which I had to employ the Pythagorean Theorem. Vicky was really proud of me, too, because we’ve known each other since the 3rd grade and she knows math is not my forte. I asked her and Peter, “Would you guys have gotten this question?” “Mmm-hmm!” she said in affirmation. I was crestfallen, but only for an instant, because Vicky’s a pharmacist and Peter’s an aerospace engineer for NASA, so it’s no great feat that THEY could figure out the question.

What the hell game is this? you wonder. It’s Mindtrap. The question was something to the effect of, “Sid Shady is staying at a motel and he had too much to drink. In a drunken stupor in the dark, he staggered over to the circular kiddie pool in the center of the motel, went into the pool, crawled due south in the pool 6 meters until he reached the edge. From there, he turned due east and crawled 8 meters until he reached that edge, and crawled out of the kiddie pool. What was this pool’s diameter?” I know, I know, I’m proud of myself for being able to do 8th grade math. I’m pathetic.

Monday, New Year’s Day, we did a Costco run and bought lots of ingredients and I made 1.5 lasagnes for dinner. The reason there other one’s just a half is because there was only enough ingredients for 2 layers on the 2nd pan, and I like to do 3 layers. Mr. W’s daughter called it “our lasagne”, as in, “You’re gonna make lasagne? Our lasagne? The one you made last time? That was good!”, and his son ate quickly, quietly, and had seconds. These kids are supposed to be picky, so I was almost moved to tears. Or maybe they’re not as picky as Mr. W thinks they are, or maybe they just don’t like Mr. W’s cooking. … Oh, who cares! They liked my lasagne!

(And here Wilco is thinking, “Isn’t lasagne spelled l-a-s-a-g-n-A?”)

Today is the first day back at work after the New Year holiday weekend. All the photos and stories from everyone’s respective New Year Eves are circulating by mouth and via email. Although I’m glad to hear how much fun everyone had in welcoming 2006, I can’t help but feel a little teensy bit bitter that I was the lone person awake as midnight struck that night. The tradition/superstition is that whatever you do on New Year’s Day (or maybe Eve or maybe as the hour turns, I’m not sure) sets the precedent for the coming year. Apparently 2006 is going to be a lot of my being awake and alone and slightly irritated at that setup.

Oh well. At least I wasn’t physically alone, just the only one conscious. I can hang with that. I keep hearing something my dear friend Erin told me that her dad had told her: A hand has short fingers and long fingers. Everyone has some shortcomings, and if this is the worst shortcoming I have to deal with, I consider myself ridiculously spoiled by blessings. This hand still works very well, short fingers, long fingers and all.

The hot pot was a success. I still put a raw egg in my bowl and now I’m thinking maybe I shouldn’t have. I’ve had stomach cramps off and on since dinner. Mr. W scored major brownie points by bringing a bottle of strawberry champagne (my mom doesn’t like the taste of regular champagne) to ring in the new year, plus a magnetized algae scraper for my dad’s fish tank. Right now he’s showing off his techie side by giving my parents a tutoring session on the software he just installed on my mom’s new laptop. I’ve snuck away upstairs to play on my dad’s desktop. It was so funny. After I installed GoogleTalk on my mom’s laptop, my dad came upstairs to sign in to his account so that they could plug in their respective microphones and IM each other voice. “Now we can chat with each other!” my dad said happily to my mom. I could just picture it now. It’d be like 2:30 a.m. and my dad would be dozing downstairs in front of the TV in the family room, when suddenly, the drone of some infomercial is drowned out by my mom’s voice blaring from the laptop on the coffee table. “Too noisy! Come to bed!” she’d hiss in that sleepy irrate voice that all moms have when they awake from slumber to yell at you.

Turns out that the printer/copier/scanner doesn’t include a printer cable, so we’ll have to come back some other time to set up the printer and to link it to a network so that all the computers in the house may print. Good thing those old people downstairs get along. 😀

Oops, gotta go…my mom realized I was missing and is now calling me downstairs to look at their photos from their Sedona trip on her new laptop.

Public service announcement: The next time you guys run 4.5 miles and think, “Gosh, a cold Wendy’s Frosty would be a great treat right now,” don’t do it. The ensuing nausea, cramps and freakish bodily sensations as your stomach struggles to warm up the Frosty in your stomach and pulls the blood from where it’s really needed is NOT worth the delicious taste and feel in your mouth. I’m glad I’m going home after work. I just wanna lie somewhere face-down. Preferably somewhere soft.

Well, the New Year’s plans have been laid. No suicidal sucker-consumer plans this year. No siree. (If you think this post sounds lame, blame the Frosty for sucking the blood out of my brain.) It’s to mom and dad’s house we go, for Chinese hot-pot (“shabu shabu” in Japanese) dinner, early enough that Mr. W can play Techie Superman and set up my mom’s laptop and my parents’ new printer on a wireless network. My mom’s looking forward to introducing Mr. W to this Chinese winter traditional meal in which a large pot placed at the center of the table keeps broth boiling and each person gets his/her own wire ladel to hook onto the edge of the pot, and raw veggies and thinly sliced meats and meatballs are dropped into the broth, the more delicate items isolated within our wire ladel/baskets, to cook in the broth until we take the items out to enjoy in a sauce formulated to individual taste in our separate bowls. The food keeps going in and coming out, and soon the broth is nicely flavored with the combination of tofu, mushrooms, beef, pork, chicken, seafood, etc., and we enjoy the remaining broth as soup. It can go on all night. I personally don’t care for this, as the food comes out tasting the same. But it’s a good way to keep people centralized for optimal conversational purposes. Kinda like a fondue. Oh, and I’m sure my parents want to show off the photos they took Christmas weekend from their trip to Sedona. Mr. W said it’s beautiful there, with lots of rocks to climb. My mom had already emailed me about their attempts at climbing.

There’s supposed to be 2 storms coming this holiday weekend. One is to hit tonight through tomorrow, and the second one, the big one, is expected to drop 2 inches of rain between Sunday and Monday. I guess there won’t be a lot of spectators spending the night on the street in Pasadena this year for a good spot to watch the annual Rose Parade march by. A headline in a local newspaper read, “Hoping That The Floats Don’t Have To.” I’m excited about the rain. My skylight makes the rain plops sound like the tapping percussion of nature’s orchestra. I’m thinking about lighting my fireplace tonight. Just me and my cat. I used to be afraid that Dodo would walk into the fireplace in a temporary light-show induced hypnotic state, but I’ve come to find that cats are not moths, and curiosity has yet to kill this cat in a big fireball of fur. Maybe I should do laundry and vacuum, too. It’s amazing how little time I spend at home messing it up, and yet when I am home I spend more time cleaning than doing anything else.

Mr. W and I are trying to set up game nite this weekend with some friends. I hope it works out.

We watched The Chronicles of Narnia after work yesterday. If you don’t like kids, annoying kids, stupid kids, doomsayer kids, screaming kids, kids in the audience or British kids, I’d say to avoid this movie. I did like the storyline, I enjoyed the parallel with Christ (Mr. W told me the book series were written by a very Christian author), I admired the scenery, but most of all, I liked the big furry lion. I’m sure the rightful King of Narnia, Azlan (sp?), all-powerful and revered fighter/leader/advisor, would not appreciate my describing him as a “big furry lion,” but that’s what he was! Now how do you look at that giant-pawed feline without wanting to bury your face in that thick mane, or wanting to squeeze a rounded fuzzy ear? I bet his ear is warm. =) Falling second in appeal to Azlan is the remarkable face of the oldest human brother, remarkable because of how closely, in my opinion at least, this British boy resembles a young Val Kilmer in the ice blue eyes, the facial features especially the lips, the jawline, and even some regal expressions. I found myself wondering what this boy would look like 10 years from now. As for the rest of the human cast, the youngest child, the little girl, screams and shrieks too much; the younger brother is perplexing in his weakness and idiocy; the older sister needs her gray-clouds-follow-me attitude silenced by perhaps a stapling of her lips. The ice queen was decent. So was Santa Claus. Don’t believe me? Watch the movie.

How’s that for a shallow review?

Really. See it for the lion. Trust me.