cindy's world

Today was a leisurely day of nothing in particular. The only solid plans Mr. W and I had was to attend a friend and coworker’s artist’s boutique show in Laguna Beach. I bought a packet of stickers from her, a citrus-scented room diffuser from someone who made her own perfumes and bath products, and a beautiful earth-toned string of pearls for my mom from a jeweler craftswoman. Here’s me with the artist Jax.

Since we were in Laguna Beach, we decided to wander and enjoy the sunny day. We window-shopped around the beach stores and ended up at The Cliff, a beachside restaurant, for an early dinner. Here’s our seat.

The restaurant seating borders some small boutique shops, where I bought a pretty blue cat-eye toe ring. Mr. W says that I actually have a very hippy philosophy and make a great hippy. I begged to differ, claiming I’m too conservative. He started ticking off my hippy traits. I’m all for protecting the environment, I’m shunning red meat, I’m anti-big-business — I stopped him here and confessed I recently bought something at WalMart. But I do now have a toe ring. We window-shopped our way back to the car, and decided to find me a rash guard for our Tahiti trip, just so I don’t get completely burned to a crisp while snorkeling. The local shops surprisingly didn’t offer much selection, if any, and we decided instead to drive to REI. Turned out, REI was closed early. I suggested Sports Authority, where we found a slightly better selection and I bought a blue Body Glove long-sleeved rash guard. I also saw some athletic two-piece swimsuits, and I’d been looking for something supportive and flat to fit underneath the rash guard, so I got a new bikini as well. Talk about spending a lot of money without planning to.

On the drive home, Mr. W was tapping out the rhythm of the song we were listening to on my knee, and he said rather suddenly, “You know…I’m the happiest right now that I can remember ever being in my entire life.”
I sheepishly closed my cell phone, on which I was checking email. “Right now? Like, in this car?”
“No,” he said. “In like the past year. And I’ve been alive a loooong time, so this must have something to do with you.” He patted my knee playfully.
“Wow.” I blinked. “That’s the nicest thing that anyone’s ever said to me.” And then something else occurred to me. “But you have a horrible memory, so that doesn’t mean anything,” I said as I popped my cell phone back open again. Mr. W laughed good-naturedly.

But really, I think that comment even beats the last nicest-thing-anyone’s-said-to-me. Yup, life’s pretty good. The only thing that could make it better would be if I dropped those laaaaast few pounds until my goal (which is 118 lbs) before vacation. I dumped weight like crazy when I started a little over a month ago, and it’s slowed down dramatically. I’ve gotta stop making stuff like this for dinner:
Before…tomato sauce, organic mushrooms, organic baby spinach, cheddar cheese, parmigiano reggiano cheese, black olives, minced garlic, sitting on some dough.

After…last night’s homemade dinner with a crispy crust!!

I think I’m gonna have tea for dinner.

I haven’t had much computer access this week since my work CPU completely blew over the weekend, but now I have a new computer at work (sweet!) and McAfee is working again (apparently some programming glitch in its automatic updates blitzed a bunch of corporate computers yesterday and today, which includes half the courthouse’s CPUs), so this will be a catchup post of sorts. Oh, and hurray, my mouse now goes left! (The previous mouse had decided that “left” was no longer a direction it needed to go, and when I complained, I was immediately made fun of for even having a trackball mouse.)

This is my current favorite photo of our newest member of the family, baby Elle.

On the baby front, an ultrasound has determined that I’m reproductively healthy with “plenty of eggs,” so that gives me some peace of mind. I’d always wondered whether I was infertile or something since I’d never had a pregnancy accident. Turns out, I’m just not careless. So we’re thinking we’ll hit up a crazy adventure vacation in Australia/New Zealand and dive the Great Barrier Reef in late October, then settle down and make a baby after. Unfortunately, this brings my birthing age to 35, but it’s better than being pregnant IN Australia. =P

I had a great furlough day yesterday hanging with my old buddy Joe and having a seaside brunch in Laguna Beach. He’s one of few people who would walk with me just to walk, so we chatted while we put in a solid 2 hours walking around the shops in Laguna after eating. Secretly, I had wanted to walk off my mimosa before getting back in my car, but turned out he had secretly thought the same thing of me but was too polite to imply I’m a lush. We caught up and shared stories, good laughs, some good scoffs.

I went home and made a Mediterranean pie for dinner that made Mr. W’s eyes roll into his skull upon eating it. I love that my husband isn’t a picky eater and always loves everything I put together.

Mr. W and I had just spent a whirlwind weekend in Vegas. My father-in-law had hip replacement surgery last Wednesday, so Mr. W and I drove to see him on Saturday morning. My stepkidlet rearranged her work shifts so that she could come with us. My father-in-law is a trooper; he did everything he was supposed to, got up and walked around a couple of days post-surgery, and was discharged earlier than anticipated. Everyone was comfortable enough with his recovery that when Mr. W’s Gamer Bro scored 5 free tickets to see a singing act at the Las Vegas Hilton, the three of us went with Gamer Bro and his wife.

I’m now on Week 5 of the cold-turned-sinus-infection. Most of the symptoms are gone now, but I still get coughing fits (probably due to post-nasal drip). Tuesday, I hacked so hard at the gym that I threw up into my workout towel. Good thing I hadn’t eaten all day so it wasn’t a painful sort of vomiting. =P The antibiotics are all finished, so I should probably be replenishing my probiotics now. It also means I can drink, so I had a little something in the past few days; nigori sake with sushi on Monday, margarita on Taco Tuesday at Sharkees in Huntington Beach (we met up with a couple of Mr. W’s friends there since we had to go pick up our Tahiti travel docs in HB), and of course my mimosa with brunch on Wednesday in Laguna Beach. (Yeah, life’s good.) This morning I was stupid enough to go chew on some peanut taffy when visiting in another courtroom. The syrupy sweetness rolled down my already raw throat and I started coughing, gagging, convulsing. One bailiff offered to Heimlich me. I finally had some water and spit out the mouthful of candy. Okay, thanks up there; I’ll take the hint. I have no business eating candy when bikini days are just over a week away.

I was chatting with a friend the other day via text. She’s in a bad-timing rut, where it seems like everything that could go wrong are all hitting at the same time. I told her to grit her teeth and bear thru the storm, and gave her a happiness challenge. I suggested that she write a list of small easy things that make her happy, such as a hot mug of Starbucks coffee on a rainy lunchtime (it’s been raining off and on for a few weeks now, with lots of sunlight in-between; things are lovely and green!), and to do one of those items each day. She agreed, and I offered to join her in this challenge. Things I’ve thought of so far that make me happy are
* a cocktail with someone whose company I enjoy
* driving and exploring a new local area
* trying out a new restaurant
* spa-day!
* sushi
* listening to 90s R&B and hip-hop while dancing along in my car
* spooning Dodo
I remember when I was having a really bad time some years ago, and my cousin Jennifer advised me to not think about the other person or give him any consideration, and instead go do something that purely makes me happy. Sounded good, but I came up with nothing. I decided then to take better notice of things that made me happy — things that don’t involve a significant other, or even another person, necessarily. Everyone should have a simple hedonistic pleasure once in a while, just as a fluffer to life. …Or something less tasteless.

My Floridian nurse-sister Jordan posted a photo of us in Vegas and said that it was her favorite photo of us. I reciprocated by posting a photo of us on a Dr. Seuss kiddie ride in Florida, saying it was one of my favorites of us. On this ride, you sit in a big fish that spins in a circle and you can control your fish’s up-and-down movement to either avoid or go into streams of water that are randomly squirted from the mouths of other fish on the perimeter of the ride. So here’s the ensuing conversation.

Jordan: let’s do that again!
Cindy: we really need to! we didn’t explore NEARLY enough of the parks to my little heart’s content!!
Cindy: ooh, we’d need to do that soon, tho. =P
Jordan: well… at least up until your 7th month of pregnancy 🙂 just no roller coasters or things like that. But I think we can get squirted on from a fish… while sitting in a fish.
Cindy: I thought flying was the problem.
Jordan: yeah when you’re about to deliver… I’ll be the one traveling west at that point missy
Cindy: I thought you’re the one with all the good doctors and stuff! Don’t let them give me an epidural.
Jordan: I’m going to block any attempts at epidurals for you my friend… i want you to experience the JOY of labor! Just so you can say later on.. oh, in about 15 years “I went through 10 hours of HARD labor.. with NO epidural and NOTHING for pain for YOU!!… YOU!! DO. YOU. HEAR. ME?!!!” somethin’ like that.
Cindy: “You know why you’re so smart, you and your smart-ass back-talk? Because I REFUSED to take an epidural thru all FOURTEEN minutes of labor, so that YOU wouldn’t be doped up when you arrived, so that YOUR IQ wouldn’t suffer!! DO.YOU.HEAR.ME???”
Jordan: “Yeah! take THAT!” we could keep going you know…
Jordan: wait. 14 minutes? BAH HA HA HA HA HA
Cindy: YOU NEVER KNOW, OKAY?!
Jordan: Ok. *I* never know.. after having 100 kids and watching 10,000 more born. But hey. What do I know. I will spray fairy dust on you in labor? 🙂
Cindy: people thought there’s no such thing as an unstressed bride, but I proved them wrong on that, too!
Jordan: You absolutely can. I will bring crayons with me so that you can print out your delusions and color them yourself. haha.. actually… you’re going to have a fantastic and almost-pain-free labor… I just know it!

The funniest part of this conversation is…I’m not pregnant!

Marine Corps Boot Camp Challenge. Saturday, September 25, 2010. Who’s with me?

Yeah, I know, my last time was such that I never thought I’d do it again. But let’s not leave the Boot Camp experience on that note.
Read about my 2007 experience here.

Today is kind of a big day. In the grand scheme of things, it will be just one step toward the myriad paths and jaunts I will soon have open before me. I would like to share my journey publicly, I think it would have some value especially since I didn’t find many personalized road maps and travel stories when I was looking, but I’m unsure of how to share it. For now, I’ll just be happy to be meeting the wizard in a little over an hour. At last, I’ll be among people who possess the magic to decipher all the mysteries thus far written in code. Wish me luck.

Because, like I had mentioned in the previous post, it seems like every time I turn around, another pregnancy announcement is made, I started wondering who would be next. I thought of one couple who got married a little before we did, who as of yet has not made such an announcement. I made the comment that they’ll probably be next. I was then accused of “racing” people.
“Racing…them?” I asked, confused.
Apparently, some people think the only reason why baby thoughts exist in my head is because I’m trying to keep up with the Jones’ Pregnancies. I found this offensive because

1) it implies I compete with what everyone else is doing and I’m just gonna jump on the bandwagon. That is not me; I resist trends if anything, and a huge decision like this is not determined by other people’s lives. When one of my childhood friends were getting married (she was the first in the “group”), my then-boyfriend had said that when I’m standing up there by her during the wedding, I’m gonna be really envious and want to get married myself. I looked at him dubiously and said that I don’t FEEL like I need to be married anytime soon. He said, “Trust me, you will; all women are like that. They watch one of their friends get married and they’re gonna start bugging their boyfriends about it.” Well, he was wrong. On her wedding day, I was happy for her, but I knew it was not for me — at least not then. It stirred no desire in me because it wasn’t my time, and I obviously wasn’t with the right person. It would’ve been crazy to marry the person I happened to be with simply because someone else got married at that time. As for competing with pregnancies, I’d never seen my friends’ pregnancies as pressure for myself; I’ve always seen it as, “Ooh, cool! I’m happy for them! Now that I’m gonna have people in-the-know, I get to find out all sorts of stuff about pregnancy and labor, things my mom wouldn’t tell me because she doesn’t want to scare me away from giving her grandbabies.” I did use them for my personal research, too, and they (especially Christi and my cousin Diana) were very helpful in relaying how bad morning sickness REALLY is, how irresistable cravings REALLY are, how hard it REALLY is to get back in shape, etc.

2) it disregards all the careful thought and consideration I’d put into this baby thing. If I came to this stage of my life thoughtlessly, simply because I’m following suit, I wouldn’t have had gone through so much debating, weighing, projecting immediate and future consequences, imagining, etc. Evidence of this is all over my blog, most explicitly in this post from January of 2009, when I suddenly realized I’m close to my pregnancy-cut-off age. A part of me wishes I were 29, so that I wouldn’t have to think about this stuff. (Mr. W had also said on several occasions after we got married that I’d better figure this baby thing out soon because he’s not getting any younger.)

3) people who would say that about me really don’t know me at all. Not just that, but they also think I’m a mindless trendfollowing drone, and they didn’t take to heart anything I’d ever said on the topic about my thoughts and desires before. That hurts.

I have a secret hope about 2012. I don’t believe it’s going to be the end of the world; I think it’s supposed to be end of the World As We Know It. That’s a good thing, because the World As We Know It is shooting down the crapper with alarming velocity. I don’t have to get into examples, because they’re everywhere; politics, economics, sociology, accountability, responsibility, health…did you guys know that in this generation of American children, chances of getting childhood Type II diabetes is 1 in 3? That’s ridiculous for such a preventable disease. And look what we’re doing to our planet.

Simultaneously, it seems like everyone’s having babies around me. Is it responsible to bring a child into a world like this? What if the world ends in 2 years and I have to worry about a toddler on top of stressing over the safety of my parents, my immediate family, and my cat? I’ve actually had apocalyptic nightmares in which I was okay until I realized I have no idea where Dodo is, whether he got out okay or had drowned, and I would break into panicked hysteria. I imagine it’d be worse worrying about a child. So it’s a good thing the world is not ending in 2 years. It’s merely going to shake off its cancers and carry on with renewed vigor. Right? That would explain the presence of all these children. It seems like 80% of my friends are either pregnant or have recently had a baby. These aren’t just newlyweds from all the weddings I’d attended in the past couple of years, some of these are people who have been married for up to a decade or more and suddenly find themselves pregnant. A few aren’t even married. What’s with this mad rush to incarnate right now? Do all these souls want to see 2012 from this side of the fence? If that’s the case, then we’re in for something really special.

If the spiritual world wants so badly to be on this side right now, I reasoned with myself, then even with obvious fertility impediments, I should just miraculously find myself pregnant, right? Of course that didn’t happen. I may not have the urgency of a spiritual being in fetal form pushing on me to bring it into physical existence, but I do feel a different kind of influence. It is that influence, every bit as urgent intangibly as it may be to my friends physically, that propelled me to action today. It had been floating for awhile, taking more form in conversations in the past weeks, and had nearly solidified in serious discussions over the past few days. We’ll see what this all means soon.

The weather is beautiful, making sunshine abundant through windows, providing lots of spots for sunning.

This morning, my jungle cat inspects his domain from above, master of all he surveys.

Master of…even me.

(as always, rest mouse pointers over photos for captions)

May your Easter be as warm and fuzzy as mine.

Yesterday, Mr. W left at 7:30 a.m. to meet up with his friend for a 10:00 a.m. massage, and when he still didn’t return by 1:30p, I decided to go get lunch on my own. I deserved something decadent, since I’m sick AND I’d just run 4 miles and walked another 1 at the gym earlier (I had to do the dreadfully boring treadmill because with these antibiotics, I can’t go out in the sun, or drink alcohol. Or even take multi-vitamins. Claudio had commented, “Jesus, she like a gremlin. Comes with instructions and shit.”). However, I don’t normally have lunch on my own, so I checked with a couple of male friends first, asking if they’d find it odd if they saw a chick having lunch by herself at a sushi bar on a Saturday. The responses were that they wouldn’t think it odd at all (and that given my age, I shouldn’t care if strangers think I’m a loser anyway), so off I went to my favorite local sushi joint on the lake. I hadn’t been there in a long time, since Mr. W is rather tired of sushi and when he goes, he’d rather spend $25pp at the all-you-can-eat Minato Sushi than get $50pp omakase on the lake. Perfect opportunity. And I had one of THE best lunches ever on my own!!

Since I’d gotten there after the lunch rush at almost 2p, the restaurant itself was close to empty, and what patrons there were, were sitting out in the back patio enjoying the beautiful sunshine and the sparkling lake. Thanks to my meds, I was the lone customer at the sushi bar. I had never met sushi chef Fumio before. I asked him politely whether it’d be okay to do an omakase lunch, and he pointed me to a seat in front of his station. He started me off with toro (fatty tuna) sushi, with more diced fatty tuny as a topping. Next course, my favorite fresh raw sea scallops seasoned with a dusting of sea salt and a squeeze of lemon. HEAVENLY and sweet. Then yellowtail belly, the most expensive and indulgent cut of hamachi. He served that with grilled yellowtail belly ribs. I was already getting full, but since we were having a nice conversation, I stayed on. I found out that in Japan, at least when Chef Fumio was there, they didn’t do salmon sushi, one of my favorite fish! The salmon served there is always cooked. What?! To me sake sushi is a staple. He also said that the oh-so-popular seared albacore sushi here is not served in Japan, either. “All the albacore in Japan comes in a can. We call it ‘ocean chicken.’ We don’t eat sushi.” Wow.
The owner of the restaurant, who is usually my omakase chef, walked out and recognized me. “Hey, you haven’t been here in a long time!” he welcomed me. “How come?” Eek!
“I’ve been vegetarian for awhile,” I said, which is not really a lie. I assured him that I am pescatarian now and will be back.

Around this time, Fumio had disappeared into the kitchen and returned holding a clear plastic bag filled with liquid and something brown-gray inside. I watched him happily cutting open an enormous shell, humming as he worked in extracting the edible parts of a giant clam. “Is that live?” I asked.
He said, “Yes, I just got this! I have three of them.” He trimmed some stuff off, separated other parts, and cleaned the cut parts in a bowl of ice water, leaving them in there to soak for a few minutes as he loaded a big round bowl with ice cubes and arranged the giant shells, decorating them with strings of carrots and turnips, and translucent coins of radishes. I had something similar, albeit with abalone, at Toro sushi with Eddie and Michelle, so I knew it was expensive and exotic. I kept looking around outside on the patio, wondering who of these white patrons out there, who had been sent standard rolls that I’d watched Fumio make, would know to order something like this. When Fumio simultaneously finished his humming with his clam arrangement, he lowered the finished product in front of me, saying, “Sashimi, for you!” My jaw dropped. For me? For just one person?! This stuff is so expensive that usually a whole table shares one!
“Oh my gosh, I thought you were doing this for someone outside! I feel so special! The presentation is beautiful! I have to take a picture,” I gushed.
Chef Fumio smiled and said, “Thank you. But I didn’t put on my makeup today, so please don’t take a picture of me.” I laughed at him, and took this:

I expected the texture of this “yellow clam,” as it translates to from Japanese, to be firm, similar to the abalone sashimi I had, but it wasn’t. The taste was most similar to the big sea scallops, tender with a touch of sweet. I couldn’t molest the delicacy with soy sauce, it was so fresh and good straight, with just the dash of salt and pepper he’d put on it.

I now expected this to be an $80+ lunch, but that’s okay, I was prepared for that. And this meal was such a treat. I closed out the tab, and the bill came. Less than $40!!! WHOA, I got special treatment!! As I paid, Chef Fumio made me a traditional Japanese dessert (no charge), the sweet flesh of a piece of Japanese pumpkin wrapped like a bun around a piece of banana, with a slowfall blanket of powdered sugar. It tasted like a guilty pleasure. I tipped just short of 40%, thanked Fumio for the best lunch I’d had in a long time, he told me hopes to see me again soon, and I danced out of there.

I have GOT to have lunch on my own more often!!

Claudio, being a competitive boxer, turned out to be a really good boxing trainer. He invited me to his boxing gym for a workout on Wednesday, which was a holiday for me. We started out with a jumprope warmup. Altho I killed in jumping rope in third grade, turns out it is TOTALLY not the same thing when there’s not two other girls turning giant ropes on either side of me chanting rhymes about double-dutch buses. Granted, this individual rope is long for me, but I don’t think I kept up the skipping for more than 5 seconds at a time. At one point I managed to knock the bobby pin right out of my hair and it flew across the floor (the pin, not my hair). Claudio finally got exasperated enough to say, without missing a beat in his own skipping, “Lose the rope! Just throw it away! Every time you stop you’re wasting cardio time. Just PRETEND you’re jumproping without the rope.” I was really good at THAT, and it saved Claudio from having to explain to other boxers how his friend here managed to hogtie herself with a jumprope.

After that, he put on target mits and called out combination punches to me to check my technique. I hadn’t really done much boxing since college when I fooled around with recreational kickboxing. Plus, the very different punch, block, and stance forms from my jujitsu practices got me kinda turned around. After some adjustments on my motions, he had me go through various combination drills. It seemed like a blur of motion and gasping after that. I know we hit the punching bag and a couple of other practice punching targets, one mounted on a wall and another on a tight rope, and just when I thought we surely must almost be done with our workout, he forced me into a boxing ring to spar with him. “WHAT?!” I remember saying incredulously. He promised he would only block and not hit me back, and we went a few full rounds. I was still struggling with breathing problems as my runny nose and coughing overtook me a few times (and my Kleenex was in my workout bag downstairs), and I’ve had to tell him “no” more than once when he pushed me to keep going, as I insisted I had to have a water break or had to go blow my nose. One time after a few consecutive rounds of sparring in the ring, I felt like I was at the edge of consciousness from exertion and exhaustion as boxing is incredibly cardio-intensive, and I heard the bell ding (“Thank GAWD!”). Claudio said, “That’s the 30-second bell. Keep going.” I wanted to punch his lights out but I couldn’t lift my arm anymore. And then we finished up with a gazillion crunches and pushups. At least he treated me to lunch at House of Blues after that. =P

The next day, Thursday, I woke up feeling like I had been run over by a truck. My right wrist and hand, especially, were sore, weak, and the knuckles a bit swollen. At work, I had trouble typing as I didn’t have full control over my right fingers, especially when I had to turn my hand up at the wrist to get in proper position for the keyboard. Claudio and I exchanged texts as I described my motor impediments. He told me I need to go back to the boxing gym and “beat them fingers until they act right.” Then later, I wondered if I ought to skip the gym at lunch, given how sore I already was. Claudio texted, “Go to the gym! Seriously. Go! Do light work tho.” So I went. On the drive home from work, I had already made an appointment with Kaiser for 7pm (see previous post), and Claudio and I exchanged a couple more texts.
Claudio: “Wait until you get your cardio up. We will be able to have a boxing workout and not just the boxing warm up! Lol!”
Me: “That was just the boxing warmup? *discouraged*”
Claudio: “Ha ha ha. I was kiiiiiiiiiiidding. :)”
Me: “*crying* No you weren’t!”
Claudio: “Maaaaybe I was a teeny itsy bit serious.”
Hmmph!!
Me: “I know you were. I have so far to go. But at least I didn’t totally forget all my boxing stuff. Just 90% of it. You have your work cut out for you! Muahaha…”
Claudio: “Bring it.”
Me: “Maybe one day…if I’m a very good girl and I train very hard…I can beat Dwaine up.”

I thought I’d get back at him for his ruthless tyranny at pushing me, so later, I played my one and only April Fool’s joke this year. At Kaiser, I texted him.
Me: “So guess what. I’m at Kaiser right now.”
Claudio: “Y u at kaiser?????”
Me: [after some time went by and I had gotten home] “Well, I was. Now I’m home.”
Claudio: “Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaat?”
Me: “Know how my right wrist was weird and hence I couldn’t control my fingers or type right? Hairline fracture.”
Claudio: “When did you do that? On the heavy bag?”
Me: “It swelled up like crazy after gymming at lunch, despite the light workout. I probably aggravated it by gymming. =P” I stopped short of saying, “This is all your fault!” Haha!
Claudio: “Sowy to hear it. 🙁 So when r u coming down for boxing again??? =P”
Me: “April fool. I went to Kaiser to see why I wasn’t kicking this hacking mucus thing. Turns out, not allergies, sinus infection. Came back with antibiotics & codeine.”
Claudio: “U r in for a whole lotta hurting next time we box!”

Oops.