cindy's world

This is interesting. Email chain between me and a “friend” re the Cheating Ex (I reversed the order so that it’s easier to read, just read straight down):

>>>>> u know that Jaime has a blog that hes using to
>> talk all sorts of crap about u behind ur back, right?
>>>>>

>>>> That’s so none of my business. If he needs to hate me,
>> he hates me. BFD. People who read my site should
>>>> know me well enough to know what really happened.
>> And if they want to hate me with him for camaraderie,
>>>> how does that affect my life, really? They’re not losses to
>> me, they’re not my friends if they don’t get me.

>>> just thought u’d like to know… u want the site?

>> no. I don’t need his bitterness to disrupt my life. I don’t
>> even respond to his calls anymore, I don’t nkow why he
>> would seem to take the hint when I would stop responding to
>> his emails for awhile, then start calling an d txtmsging me
>> again. I really don’t need to deal with whatever’s going on in
>> his head. I don’t have the patience for his i-love-you, i-
>> hate-you head games. Every time I would try to have a normal
>> conversation with him and I think we can salvage a semi-
>> friendship, he proves me wrong. Thsi is all so unnecessary.

> sorry to upset u… just thought u had the right to know…

You didn’t upset me, I appreciate that you’re looking out for me.
Thanks. But really, every time I talk to him it seems like he’s still
trying to work the relatinoship out in his head and the old issues still
abound (on both our parts) and if his conclusion is that he wants to
dwell on things to hate me, then he hates me. The hell am I supposed
to do about it?

Gawd. Maybe this is why I get into unexplained lapses of discomfort. I just don’t understand that guy. It seems like he’s so delusional and feels like such a victim as to the relationship, like when he told me a month ago he was still mad that I “sabotaged our relationship” by taking the initiative in finding out about his lies and cheating and if I had just let him be who he wanted to be and let him do whatever he wanted to do, then we’d still be together. But then I don’t understand why he always picks up contacting me if he’s so mad or has taken up a blog to bitch about me. And then he’d have his employees or other made-up accounts comment 0n my blog. Maybe I should just call him and talk it out. I’m okay with that. If he wants to throw knives, maybe he can throw knives once and for all and it’d bring him to some peace. What I think I’m not okay with, is if he has to keep coming up with reasons to hate me so that he can smother any residual love he has for me, because then the strange contact would not cease, altho that would explain his hot-cold thing that he does with me.

I think I’ll call him now and leave him a voice mail inviting him for a chat when he gets back from Miami. He’s sent me a few text messages from there in the last couple of days, seems like he’s enjoying himself. Hopefully he’ll be in good enough spirits so that he can just hash this out and finally be done with it all. Or maybe he’s already hating me now because i hadn’t responded to his messages and wouldn’t want to hear from me at all. But I really don’t want him so upset that he feels compelled to keep dwelling on it. I actually feel bad that he feels bad still.

Oh, the teeter-totter of it all. Well, I’m gonna make the offer anyway. He can do with it as he sees fit.

Well, if it ain’t PMS then I don’t know how else to explain it.

I was trying to get back into the old Cindy this weekend, slept in till almost noon, then I got up and got dressed to go to the gym for a couple of hours. Going downstairs in itself was depressing. The house was in disarray, and there’s nothing I can do about much without a vacuum cleaner. I’m not going to fight the “black Friday” shopping crowd, so I’ll have go to w/o a vacuum for a few more days. There are papers on the dining table of things that needed something to be done — opening an ING account online, ordering additional checks, calling my retirement plan and asking why they show me under Plan E when I clearly switched over to Plan D 6 years ago… There was cat hair on my couch so the cat has been taking advantage of my being home less by doing what he knows he’s not allowed to. I felt like I’d let everything slide and get away from me and I’m completely overwhelmed. The neighbor across the driveway from me again had their friend park on the driveway instead of on the street despite all the tow-away signs posted, and I’m blocked from being able to back my car out of my garage. My fat percentage is as high as it’s ever been, I need to vacuum the cat area, the cat’s all sheddy and I need to brush him, I wish I could cure his corneal ulcer problem and finally get him out of his cone, there’s a huge black spider up over the fireplace that I can’t reach without a vacuum cleaner extension hose, there are paid bills that need to be sorted through and filed away and laundry to be done… It was overwhelming me until I was interrupted by the beeping of my cell phone, signalling that I’ve just received a text message.

I eagerly went to check it, and I didn’t realize how much I miss Mr. W until the disappointment of seeing it’s not from him nearly made me want to drop to the floor in exhaustion — if the carpet weren’t so dirty from cat hairs. Then I thought, there’s nothing wrong with my calling him. It’s not like he’s out in Vegas partying with the guys and doing things I’m not supposed to know about so that I can’t call him cuz he wouldn’t pick up and would only accuse me of “checking up” on him. Mr. W doesn’t do crap like that. So I called. He picked up and upon hearing his voice, I almost cried.

***
I remember how hard first grade was. Strange new country, mean racist kids, language barrier, different rules. I’d thought I was doing pretty well, holding it together. The class was walked over to another classroom in a portable building for an hour of games and crafts. Like sheep or lemming, we allowed ourselves to be herded into the classroom where different tables were set up with a parent volunteer at each station, each teaching a different activity. To my absolute shock, my mother was at one of these tables and she waved happily at me. She had never looked so beautiful. All my control evaporated and I started bawling. She walked over toward me as I yelled, “Ma!”, broke from the line of kids and threw my little arms around her waist and I just sobbed and sobbed, like a shipwrecked passenger who had been clinging to driftwood for days, listless and hopeless, when a sudden rescue snaps the passenger out of a state of shock. I remember a part of me skeptically saying to myself, “What’s your problem? Why’re you clinging to your mom like that? Why’re you crying? There’s nothing wrong. You’re embarrassing yourself.” But I didn’t care, I told the voice. Everything was so hard, and this is the one thing I knew. My mother.
***

Wow, I’ve th0ught of that event before, but it never made me cry like I just did. So anyway, Mr. W is with his parents and his daughter, his dad driving them to a pizzeria that Mr. W had been craving forever, where they supposedly make authentic Chicago-style pizza because the Chicago-based chain ships ingredients out to the Vegas branch. (Mr. W grew up in Chicago.) After that they’re going to see an enclosed residential community that turns its frozen lake into an ice skating rink and the European style villas do an artificial snow show. I’m glad he’s enjoying himself. He needs to see his parents more often, and they’re only in the next state. He told me yesterday that his dad asked him to convince me to go, and he’d told his dad he already tried. Today, I asked him to tell everyone hello for me and sorry I couldn’t make it.

*Sigh* I’m gonna have to get over my retarded emotions and make a dent in the crap downstairs. Good grief, what is wrong with me? Just because this is the first weekend we’re going to spend apart since we started dating? It’s only been a few months!

IM conversation just now between Wilco and me:

Me (1:28:51 AM): for hors d’oveures we had fondue.
Me (1:28:54 AM): so of course I thought of you.
Me (1:29:03 AM): actually, I talked about you, too.
wilco (1:29:13 AM): oh yeah?
wilco (1:29:17 AM): i’m having fondue tomorrow
wilco (1:29:22 AM): i invited jimmy and sabrina over
Me (1:29:35 AM): I said that my friend made up a punishment for the person who dropped the food item into the fondue pot, i.e. you have to kiss the person to your left.
Me (1:29:49 AM): to which the sister of the hostess said, “I think Cindy just wants a kiss.”
Me (1:29:59 AM): so the lesbian to my right (who actually did drop something into the pot) turned and kissed me.
Me (1:30:04 AM): maybe I should blog that.
wilco (1:30:07 AM): hahaha
wilco (1:30:15 AM): it’s a real rule!
Me (1:30:23 AM): no one’s heard of it.
wilco (1:32:27 AM): http://familyfun.go.com/recipes/family/feature/famf129fondue/famf129fondue5.html
wilco (1:32:59 AM): that is a disney web site
wilco (1:33:04 AM): so it HAS to be true
Me (1:33:08 AM): omg.
Me (1:33:11 AM): okay, i’ll add that into the blog entry.

And you guys thought fondue was just a high-fallutin’ Swiss food.

Mr. W dropped me off back at home about an hour ago from Thanksgiving dinner with his friends and the friends’ family, and he’ll soon be on his way to Vegas. The Thanksgiving food was wonderful, the company was warm-hearted and light-spirited, the fire in the outdoor firepit was lively and mesmerizing, and my cheesecake was a success. (It really does taste better chilled, with dramatic dashes of Hershey’s lite syrup and a fluffy floral swirl of chocolate lite whipped cream.)

But this is what I actually wanted to blog about, and ask for feedback on.

The host’s niece asked me whether I watch “Gray’s Anatomy.” I don’t, altho I’ve heard it was a pretty good show. She said that there’s an Asian actress on the show and that I look “exactly like her.” No one else around the table said anything, altho they seemed to study me a bit. Before we left, the niece reminded me to watch “Gray’s Anatomy” on Sunday nights at 10pm on NBC because “you have to see that actress. I swear, you look exactly like her.” I asked if she remembered the actress’s name. She didn’t, but she suddenly remembered another movie that the same actress was in. I got a little excited. “What’s that movie when this woman just decides to go to Italy…” “Under the Tuscany Sun?” I asked her. “Yeah! That’s it! She played her friend.” Sandra Oh is the actress’s name.

Because everyone was leaving anyway, I didn’t say anything until Mr. W and I were back in his truck with the doors closed. I asked him if he knew who the actress is that the niece was talking about. He didn’t.

***
Margaret Cho is one of my favorite stand-up comedians. In one of her shows, she talked about an incident where a cab driver recognized her and raved on and on about how he loves her because she looks exactly like his sister. He then handed her a photo of his sister and Margaret’s first thought was, “Oh my God, she is sooooo ugly.” She then goes on, “Don’t you just hate it when people say how much you look like someone, and then you see the person they were talking about, and she’s sooo ugly?”
***

Even tho Mr. W said, “I think cross-racial identifications, especially on a first impression, aren’t exactly accurate,” I still felt compelled upon my return home to immediately take a photo of myself and give you guys a side-by-side comparison. So here is me, right now, no touching up whatsoever just the way the niece saw me, and actress Sandra Oh.


Photos of Sandra Oh courtesy of Yahoo!Movies:


Just for kicks, I’m even gonna show you guys a photo of me in which I look the most Korean:

I will say this: I take it as an extreme compliment that she’s really skinny.

For more comparisons of me to the few Asian celebrities in American media, see previous posts here and here.

Happy Turkey Day, peep holes. Well, for the people living in the US of A, of course, altho I don’t know anyone here who can actually trace back their roots to the Mayflower, the harbingers of smallpox, or the American Indians with their generous disclosures of how to raise maize.

I made (with Mr. W’s assistance) 2 lowfat, reduced calorie chocolate cheesecakes. By substituting Splenda for sugar, Neufchatel cheese for cream cheese, Special Dark chocolate for milk chocolate, leaving out the butter, sour cream, and by using premade reduced cal pie crust, I’ve managed to get each slice to about 150 calories. But I will never cook with Splenda again. Remember the NutraSweet aftertaste? Splenda has it. After you swallow the cheesecake, your mouth suddenly tastes sweetness, and your tongue sorta goes all over your mouth in a hunt. There’s no food in here, but something is sweet! Where is it? Where is it? It’s all rather confusing for my brain to process. I will be serving the cheesecake tonite with loads of Hershey’s syrup (fat free) and fat free whipped cream.

Speaking of the dinner tonite, Mr. W and I are having Thanksgiving at his best friend’s house, and I hear they’ve been up cooking since the wee hours of the morning, and his best friend has already made numerous trips to the market for things they’d forgotten. It’s gonna be an outdoorsey, campfirey Thanksgiving in Huntington Beach. I can’t say I’ve done that before, but I’m sure it’s gonna be fun. I like being outside (sometimes), and his friend’s backyard is so…Martha Stewart with a nautical theme.

After dinner we’re splitting up for the rest of the weekend. Mr. W’s going to visit his parents in Las Vegas, and I’m hoping to get some of my neglected chores done, plus spend some time with the god-family, the ‘rents, and the puffy fur-everywhere-leaver. Wow. Friday, Saturday and Sunday all to myself. What to do, what to do? Heh heh*.

* “Heh heh” means probably nothing because I’m Procrastination’s bitch lately.

I’m not gonna turn on the TV for a week. The TV is the kiss of death for me. Despite the fact that there are no shows I feel compelled to watch (since “Friends” is over), when the TV comes on, it inevitably moves from its intended purpose as background noise to foreground obsession.

I’m gonna replace the TV with organizing my financial statements, reading, working out, maybe even finally sending out Christmas cards!

Eh, who’m I kidding on the last one? I don’t know where anybody lives anymore. Unless all the cards are to be e-mailed.

I made it in to work. The office didn’t even have our courtroom scheduled as “dark” (no judge), so they’re unofficially letting me sit in my own courtroom to do with the day as I see fit. I’m divorcing people.

I don’t know what’s wrong with me lately. I’m bummed a lot, but I can’t put my finger on a reason. Let’s check my pillars.
1. Work? It’s fine, it runs itself. I get along with my coworkers.
2. Family? Mom and Dad are the same as usual.
3. Friends? No drama there. They’re all around, busy doing their own things but generally responsive when I initiate contact, if they don’t already initiate it with me first.
4. Boyfriend? He’s Mr. Wonderful, what else can I ask for?
5. Health? I haven’t had a need to visit Kaiser again in a couple of months, so that’s good. I can be more proactive about the workouts and jujitsu, but it’s not a life-or-death thing and there’s really no consequence to my taking it easy, except for the slower progress in weight loss, and it’s cosmetic weight right now anyway; I’m not in danger of having a heart attack.
6. Cat? Dodo’s been the same as always, sometimes pesky, always good company. I do feel guilty for not being around more, tho, since he likes to be underfoot and hang out with me.
7. Finances? Same as always. No problems paying off the bills, mortgage, insurance, and I have enough fat to play with for frivolities.
8. Am I bored? I don’t think so. Every weekend and weekday evening is filled with something; if anything, I’ve been doing more stuff than usual what with all the not being home and traveling.

The heck is wrong with me?! Am I burned out? What the heck am I burned out on? The guilt of being anchored by pittily tasks and not being productive, probably.

Ya know, I think I just hit the nail on the head. Cuz I feel better and more inspired already.

Maybe I should stop blogging now and divorce more people. =P

So I’m up procrastinating from cleaning up the house, watched 2 middle-of-the-nite episodes of Angel (1 hr each), then I finally showered, applied the lint roller to various surfaces, Windexed other surfaces, and then the big task: vacuuming. I started with the cat area. Immediately the stench of burned rubber permeated the air. Damn it. The rubber band broke inside my Fantom Fury again. It’s a pain to get more bands because the stores don’t carry my model anymore, so I have to order it online. I’m fed up enough to get a new Fantom. Maybe that’ll be my x-mas present to myself. (Yeah, yeah, I spoil myself.) I went to backup handvac. It barely picked up anything and then faded in the next 10 seconds or so. It’d been doing that the last few times I tried to work with it, but I always blamed it on the lack of charge. Now, it’s been charging for at least a week straight, so that’s clearly broken, too. I went to second backup broomvac. It turned on, sniffed, and then died. For some reason the charger plug had been pulled out of the wall, even tho there’s no reason for me to have done it. I don’t get it.

So now the house is unvacuumed, there’s cat residue all over the carpets, and my broomvac is charging downstairs, but I’ve had no sleep all nite. I think I’m gonna try to call in sick tomorrow because, I have a feeling, I will be. Either that or I’m gonna take an hour nap, then get up and vacuum and try to go to work.

I am sooo sleepy. I had lunch with some coworkers instead of doing a 3-mile run. They were going to a new Italian restaurant and it’s hard for me to resist Italian. I had a great manicotti. My coworker Andy advised me before we got there to not drink the water provided by the restaurant because, apparently, “it can choke a horse.” He’d brought this to the attention of the restaurant staff before, and their response was “Yeah, we know, the water in Santa Fe Springs is a bit heavy on the metal.” “Heavy on the metal?! You can float a spoon in there!” was the response. The food was not at all greasy or overly heavy, but golly, I hit food coma anyway.

I need enough energy to hit the grocery store after work to buy ingredients for what I am in charge of bringing to a Thanksgiving dinner hosted by a friend: lowfat, low-cal chocolate cheesecake. I know, sounds fishy, but I can do it, darn it! Since i have jujitsu Wednesday, I should make the cheesecake tonite and let it just gel in the fridge. Otherwise, I suppose I can make it Thursday morning. Yeah, Thursday morning sounds good.

I should really clean the house, too. Gawd, the cat can sure spew fur.

Meanwhile, must…force…self…to divorce…more…people…

And then there’s the packing required to go with Mr. W to Vegas for the long weekend, and it can’t just be any sloppy ol’ comfy clothes, cuz it’s meet-the-‘rents weekend. *sob*

I need a maid! And a clothing-packer! And a shaved cat! And a chef!

Last nite in jujitsu we went over 14 ways to disarm and disable 14 types of knife attacks. (tanto no kata.)

I got stabbed so many times…

This Thanksgiving I’m going to be grateful for rubber-tipped knives.