cindy's world

I just returned from lunch with my coworker. When I packed up my gym bag this morning, I’d forgotten to pack tennis shoes, so I had to nix the lunchtime gym visit. I told him about my list of things I wanted to do before turning 3o, and he was adamantly against the motorcyle thing. He said it’s a “death wish” and even tho I’d be a careful recreational rider, there’s no way to guarantee that the idiots in the cars around me wouldn’t run into me. Yeah, there ARE a lot of Corollas out there. To back up his point of how dangerous motorcycling is, he told me that California law enforcement is in the process of trying to do away with all motorcycle cops due to the high rate of death/dismemberment in today’s traffic conditions.

So what’s the new plan? I can replace motorcycling on the goals list with getting certified as a helicopter pilot! If I take the actual courses and get licensed, I can apply for a helicopter position with the LA County Sheriff’s Department. I have no problem passing their written exam (I’d taken it once already just to keep an ex-boyfriend company while he took the exam, and I only missed 2 questions. Apparently, people study and study for it and can’t pass, so I don’t expect a lot of intellectual competition.), I look forward to the physical training/conditioning, and it’s a low-risk job since I’ll be in the air and not on the ground being shot at in the action. How many quotas would I fulfill? I’m a college grad, I’m a minority female, minority Asian, at an age when I’m trainable and in good physical shape, AND I’m gonna already be licensed to fly a ‘copter so they don’t have to train me on that, and I know they have a shortage of pilots right now. If I still want to pursue writing, this’ll give me better benefits and pay and more free time. If I get bored or want to retire, I can always fly for the news or for traffic conditions, or just be a private pilot.

Why not?! Like I have anything better to do with my time right now.

Okay, I gotta go register online for my Monday/Wednesday evening Jujitsu class now. It’s gonna be a little weird since the 2nd class is on my b-day. Maybe I should take Kenpo Karate instead, that class is only on Saturday mornings. I think Kenpo is better for me anyway, since Jujitsu focuses more on grappling, throwing, wrestling-type moves. I’m partial to kicks and punches and I’d prefer my enemies to not get too close to me where I’m gonna toss them over my hip.

A friend I was talking to about my goals (see Goals entry, below) suggested I add “become a pilot” to the list. That reminded me of my cousin telling me after her first hot air balloon ride that apparently, you can acquire a certification or license as a hot air balloon pilot with something like just 10 hours training. So that’s what I told my friend. He met me with silence. I continued by saying how cool it would be to have this conversation at a cocktail party:

Stranger: So what do you like to do in your spare time as a hobby?
Me: Oh, I’m also a pilot.
Stranger: Really? That’s so cool! What kind of plane do you fly?
Me: None. I fly a hot air balloon.

My friend said, “You can take something so cool and make it so lame.”

…College students aren’t the only ones whose health may suffer with those feelings. “Loneliness and social isolation have previously been associated with immune detriments,” says Pressman.

A study of 180 senior citizens found an association between loneliness and heart disease. That report appeared in the December 2002 issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine. (Partial quote of article from WebMD)

Oh, great. Well, that’s yet another reason to broaden my social network right now. While I’m still young enough and energetic enough to do so. I’ve always been one for taking prophylactic measures, which is why I work out, save for retirement, have a college fund for a kid I don’t even have yet, take vitamin supplements. All the little problems that people have in their mid-late 30s really begin in their early 20s. The back problems, the high blood pressure, certain types of diabetes, heart/cholesterol problems, knee problems, even osteoperosis. My newest thing is anti-wrinkle cream! I figure it’s easier to keep my skin supple than to erase wrinkles once they’re in place. I’m trying to prevent the old adage, “If I only knew then what I know now…” because I think a lot of the information the older people have, the younger people also have access to, and it’s up to us to apply the knowledge to prevent one day repeating the adage.

Last Wednesday, I had a conversation with a coworker at the gym while the two of us were doing our cardio set on the stationary bike. He made a breezy comment about seeing me work out daily and how I only need to keep it up until I get married. I turned and looked at him in surprise. “You think I’m doing this just to land a husband?” I asked. He looked at ME as if it had never occured to him that a girl would be at the gym for any other reason but to sweeten the bait to hook some naive young buck. “I wouldn’t do that to my husband,” I told him, “Even after years of marriage I still want to make my husband proud to have me on his arm and I still want his friends to be envious that his wife looks a certain way.” My coworker looked impressed, and I bit my tongue against the urge to add, “I’m sorry your wife got fat on you.” Which, of course, I don’t know for a fact because I’ve never seen his wife, but I’m sure she’s lovely.

Almost every breath I uttered at work today was related to either paintball or tequila. Maybe I should don my camouflage paintball clothes and get drunk and shoot random people.

On a more feminine side of things, I’m really excited about going either to the Niagara Peninsula or the Hotel del Coronado in late September this year with a buncha chicks. I hope I don’t get overly attached to some guy and muck up my travel plans. My court reporter had once said to me, “Once you come out of that place where you’re so hurt and disappointed all the time, you will find you become very protective of your peace.” How true that is. I’m working on being “comfortable in [my] own skin,” which is another phrase she uses a lot. I think presently comfort means being able to enjoy my freedom without feeling lost in the vacuum of spare time.

Pain was so constant and so deep that to simply feel nothing is such a blessing.

In a conversation with a friend last night, I realized that as my journey of self-discovery unfolds (I am figuring out who Cindy-the-person is when she is no longer Cindy-the-girlfriend), there is a lot of fun stuff I want to do, and I should put them in a list and add a deadline. Age 30 is a good deadline for me. That gives me a year and almost a month. That’ll light a fire under me to flesh these musings out so that I’m not just talk. Plus, now is a great time to do these things as some of them are quite irresponsible and I won’t put my future kids or family or body thru it when I would require a longer recovery time after I age a bit more. In order of increasing difficulty/realisticness:

1. Stay at the Hotel del Coronado in San Diego.
2. Get back into kickboxing or take up a new martial art.
3. Take an automobile simple mechanics course. At least so I can change my own oil/tires.
4. Learn to surf.
5. Stay at a bed-and-breakfast at the Niagara Peninsula.
6. Buy a motorcycle.
a. Learn to ride said motorcycle.
7. Lose another 10 lbs without chopping off a limb.

The college roommie and I have discussed #6 recently. We decided we shouldn’t start with Ducatis because we should train on cheaper bikes (like the Honda CBR600F4i, pictured above) that we wouldn’t mind scratching up or scrapping if we decide it’s not for us. Working our way up to a Ducati is a nice goal. We would be responsible – both of us have a lot of common sense, we’re careful, we’d read all the manuals and take the appropriate courses and be safe weekend riders – and then our innate lameness took over and we decided I should get a yellow bike and she would get a blue one so that if we rode together we would form Bruin colors.

Hey, how would we form Bruin colors if she’s a bizillion miles away from me? I’m not flying a bike up there when I visit her, and I’m certainly not gonna ride all the way up there and have all these bugs stuck in my teeth.

I had about an hour of sleep 2 nites ago, and the following nite, I had spotty sleep, so yesterday after my lunchtime workout, I could not seem to keep my eyes open. I constantly got out of my seat to wander around the back hallway and talk to my court reporter in her office or to the personnel in the courtroom next door, because I feared getting to the point where I would fall asleep for a few seconds every time I blinked had I stayed at my desk. (This is the point where a friend would’ve said, “THIS is where my tax dollars are going?! I’m gonna complain.”)

At 4:45pm, the day was coming to a close, and I realized I would not survive the 7-mile drive back home unless I took a little cat nap. We have an old-fashioned pleather couch-like piece of furniture in a small lounge room between the women’s restroom and the jury room, and I laid down on the couch in the darkened room to rest my eyes for 15 minutes or so. At what I thought was 5:20pm, I woke up and thought, “Oh wow, that was longer than I wanted…but what a restful nap!” and wandered into the restroom. I looked at my face, washed my hands, looked down at my watch again, and WHOA, it was 6:22pm! I hurried out of the restroom, glancing at the wall clock in the jury room and in the courtroom and sure enough, I was down for over an hour and a half!! It briefly crossed my mind that as I go into the Clerk’s Office to do my distribution, I should feign to my supervisors “Whew, what a tough day!” but I knew no one would be down there anymore. I grimly drove out of the parking structure at 6:45pm, shaking my head at myself. I can’t believe I left work this late when I didn’t have to. I should get a T-shirt that says “I Heart Work.”

I had deliberately held off writing my first entry the day this blog site was set up because it was a bad day and I didn’t want that tone to seep into my writing. Today, however, I log on for the first time to see that my generous blog benefactor had found it appropriate to write the first entry for me by keying a threat. I’ll keep that entry in here, because there is a small truth in his words. Very small. Tiny. Negligible. Those of you who are current with my friendship dues have nothing to worry about.

At this point, I have told no one about the existence of this site, because I don’t know in what form or direction my online presence will grow. If nothing else, the record created on here will show me whether my dark days are truly outnumbered by my happy days (a goal I’m working toward), or serve as a tool for me to seek and display the silver sunlit lining around the ominous cumulonimbus clouds.

That being said, I send a hug to my college roommie for spontaneously emailing in the midst of an email chain 2 days ago, “You should blog. I’m gonna see if Mike has space on his server,” and to Mike, my no-longer-anonymous blog sponsor. (Like you can’t tell by the site address that it’s Mike anyway.) Heh, the parenthetical was totally unnecessary since the only ones who know about this site ARE these 2 people. And here we go… *flexing fingers*

fear me, for i am cindy.