cindy's world

(Rest mouse pointer on photos for captions.)
It was a wet and rainy Saturday. Even though Southern California’s storms tend to drop wetness only intermittently, there was not enough time between clouds for things to dry out.

So I spent the morning goofing off on the computer in the spare room. Dodo kept me company and sat next to me on the bed.

“High-five.”

And then we both took a bath.

When the weather got nicer we went to Best Buy. I saw this along the way.

I saw this and wanted it, but I didn’t buy it.

I saw this and DEFINITELY didn’t buy it, because I know from past experience IT TOTALLY DOESN’T WORK.

But what I did bring home was THIS!! I am SO excited.

I’d characterize myself as a Wham!/George Michael closet fanatic, except I’m not in the closet about it. It’s got music videos for favorites such as “Last Christmas”, “Careless Whisper,” “I Want Your Sex”, “Father Figure” (which, incidentally, was in my head since I got up this morning) by Wham! and “I Can’t Make You Love Me“, “Jesus to a Child”, “Older”, “Too Funky”, “Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me” (w/Elton John) when George Michael went solo. *salivating*
On the way home, the clouds rolled in to cover the blue.

In the resuming rainfall, Dodo curled himself up on the warm Lakers blanket.

There is nothing so soporific in my home as a densely furry cat cozied up and lightly snoring. Roundness. My furball among basketballs.

All day, Jordan sent me cell phone pictures of her birthday weekend at Universal Studios in sunny Florida.

In the evening, she sent lots of photos of a lit stage on which KC and the Sunshine Band were allegedly performing, but I couldn’t verify any of that because her photos generally looked like this:

When she sent THIS, I had to text her back and ask if she was already drunk.

She called that “a float.” I think she meant “afloat,” as in, “I am afloat in Jaegermeister Birthday Shots.”
I would have been jealous of what seemed like a great time for her, except that I was content with my:

TODAY is Jordan’s birthday! HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ONE OF MY ABSOLUTE FAVORITE PEOPLE IN THE WHOLE WORLD!!! XOXOXOXOXOXO! She turns, uh, 25. *sideglance*

My mom emailed me a bunch of photos from our Chinese New Year Eve dinner. This is one of my faves:

Look, 3 generations! Don’t we look IDENTICAL? Haha. You can also see who the sloppy dresser is among us womenfolk.

So…exciting news! A guy who has a recording studio company heard Mr. W’s daughter playing some of her songs when she was goofing off with her cousins and friends at a family friend’s house, and he contacted Mr. W, offering to front the expenses of studio time and take a chance on her, help her register her music and produce CDs. I’m gonna help her edit some of her lyrics this weekend and hopefully she’ll be registered and recorded very, very soon. That definitely allays my prior fears of people stealing her stuff. I think her music is as good or better than what plays on the radio in that genre these days, so I think it was a blessing in disguise when she was hoping to play at open mike night in a local lounge last week, but they never got to her before they closed out the night. I wouldn’t be surprised if some musician stole her stuff and got a hit single off her. This also means I will soon be able to share her music! I’m so excited.

We got home yesterday at about 6pm, and the neighborhood seemed darker than usual. I didn’t think too much of it beyond that as I was on the phone with a friend having a heated discussion about rental contracts and cheating contractors. I was also having a text message conversation with another friend. My phone was looking low on battery but I figured I’d just plug it in when I got inside. Still deep in the phone conversation, I stepped into the house and popped on light switches. Nothing happened. I tried other switches. Then I walked back out to the driveway. “Um…the electricity’s out,” I announced.
“WHAT?!”
Right then our neighbor walked down the driveway to greet Mr. W. I went back in the house and made some attempts to light candles with one hand while gabbing on the phone with the other. Mr. W entered soon thereafter and said that according to the neighbor, the electricity’s been out for an hour and the electric company may take till 9:30p to fix it. Right then, in mid-sentence, my cell phone died. And I effectively hung up on my friend. Crap! Of course I can’t charge it without electricity.

I had a stroke of genius and ran upstairs to turn on my laptop. The sucker was fully charged and I could at least shoot an email to both people I was in mid-conversation with to explain things. Except, I soon found out, routers need electricity to work. I had no internet!

I sat down on the floor, defeated. I hate leaving people hanging. I couldn’t even turn my phone on to get phone numbers to call them back on the landline, which probably doesn’t work anyway because they’re all cordless phones that need the electrical base to work. This is why I’d been saying that we need at least one regular plug-in phone in the house, but does anybody listen to me?

Since it was not advisable to open the fridge for fear of letting the remaining cold air out, we walked a few blocks to a local Thai food restaurant for dinner. I was uncomfortable all evening, not being able to call people back, get online, or watch TV. You know how people sometimes assume that someone’s ignoring or flaking out on them, and there’s always somebody else, Ms. Reasonable Doubt, who says, “Maybe they just misplaced your number. Maybe they’re stuck in a meeting that ran late. Maybe they were in a car accident. Maybe a plane fell out of the sky and landed on their house and they’re trying to pick their way through the wreckage to safety but in the meantime had to use their cell phone to throw through the window to break the glass, because every other throwable item in their house is on fire, and the cell phone hit the sidewalk outside and broke, and you’ll get this explanation tomorrow when they’re back at work and can send you an email to explain it all.” Well, that really IS me this time. My cell phone died, the neighborhood is out of electricity so I couldn’t charge it to call back, the laptop works but the router needs electricity, all my phone numbers are stored in my dead cell so I couldn’t call even from a payphone, and electricity wasn’t restored until almost 1am when I was already asleep, so I couldn’t charge and call later in the evening, either. And all the alarm clocks were off when the power came back on so I woke up late this morning, too.

At least I already wrote a quick apology email this morning when I got in to work.

And I now learned that I can not live in colonial times. I missed my TV time.

Someone had suggested to me a long time ago to photo-journal my workouts at the gym, but I never did because they don’t allow cameras or cameraphones in my gym.  Yesterday, however, I thought I’d take some photos.  Gym Trainee and I threw the cameraphone around between sets.

You see how my Nike gloves match my shoes? Huh? Huh? It wasn’t on purpose.

Push, Gym Trainee! Push! Or, err, something less maternity-ward sounding.

Pull, Gym Trainee! Pull!

I love the look of determination on her face. Like a woman with a mission.

I had kind of a crappy workout, despite the smile. I thought I may have been anemic, but then afterwards I realized it was cuz I skipped breakfast and hadn’t had lunch yet. =P

Vicky offered to sign up for a half-marathon with me. I want to do the Pacific Shoreline run in Huntington Beach (cuz it’s pretty scenery and it’s nice cool ocean weather). I had already run two 5Ks there. Their finisher medals are also pretty cool-looking, metal surfboards. We’ve got one year to train. I think it’s a nice goal. Altho the last half-marathon I ran, I didn’t train fully for it and lost a toe nail. Yech.

Last Monday, hippo birdie to my favorite surfer girl, my court reporter!

This is a customized hazelnut cake my judge orderered from the Great Dane Bakery.

We invited the floor to partake in our jury room.

Last Thursday, Mr. W and I went to my childhood friend Sandy’s house for her housewarming party. Yay for her first house! It was BEAUTIFUL inside. We were very jealous. Aside from the spacious great-room downstairs (living room flowed into the dining room flowed into the upgraded chef’s kitchen), when you go upstairs you arrive in a central “party room” with built-in bar. And then offshooting from that party room are the bedrooms. I salivated at the sight of the bar, which wasn’t stocked, but I instantly had fantasies of it fully stocked with large colorful bottles, which I would use to make customized cocktails. Unfortunately everyone in that household just drinks beer. =P An important discovery was made at Sandy’s house last night: Mr. W is no longer allergic to cats. That’s right. It’s not just that his body acclimated to Dodo’s dander; he’s now immune to ALL cats. Which we know, because Sandy currently has 5 running around — one belonging to her boyfriend Steve (who was a BLAST that night, we had so much fun laughing with him), and 4 fosters. I’m sure Sandy would correct me if I got the numbers wrong. Anyway, Mr. W started playing with Steve’s gorgeous long-haired calico-colored cat Molly, who warmed up to him immediately, and he didn’t have a reaction at all the whole night. He was even licked repeatedly by one of a pair of young white kitten twins, no skin rash. Mr. W was so in love with Molly’s easy-going affectionate nature that he wanted to adopt her, and I had to burst his bubble in telling him that Molly is not one of the fosters that’s up for adoption. (He just wishes he could cuddle up to a cat the way I do with Dodo, who’s now suddenly wary of him for some unknown reason.)

Saturday (last night), Mr. W and I attend a coworker’s son’s wedding.

The bride was incredibly beautiful, and she was wearing the gown that I wanted but didn’t buy. It was perfectly suited for her type of wedding, though. Huge cathedral ceremony, followed by an ornate banquet in a classy restaurant atop a hill with a view. Customized rotating ice sculpture, giant 4-tiered cake, jewels hanging off each centerpiece. (We won the centerpiece, and check this puppy out.)

You know how some people stage the item they’re photographing in some nice background for the best display of the subject, as opposed to photographing all the clutter in the actual setting? Yeah, I’m too lazy for that.

This was the kind of wedding I’ve seen in the reality show “Platinum Weddings.” They gave away small bottles of wine with their photos on the labels as their wedding favors. Total opposite of my simple outdoor Japanese Garden wedding. If I had that gorgeous dress on with the long jewel-encrusted train, it would’ve slipped off the bridge we were married on and I would’ve been pulled into the water by hungry koi fish. Another friend made a good point that I had so many dress changes, it would’ve been almost a waste to spend that much money on a dress I was only going to have on for 40 minutes, whereas this bride got a nice solid 10+ hours in this dress. I wish I had a better photo, but I was only armed with a cameraphone and I was pretty far away.
I guess theirs is the classic traditional wedding, which helps me understand why everyone keeps saying how “different” our wedding was.

I have a crappy thing to confess. While I was taking pictures, I thought I’d send this one to my bridesmaids with the compliment, “My bridesmaids are hotter than her bridesmaids.”

So I did. This resulted in some less-than-nice text communications for a minute. And then I tried to send this one:

Weird thing happened. As soon as I pushed “send,” my phone vibrated, went to the Verizon screen, and froze there. It wouldn’t let me do anything, and I’ve never seen that screen before. I first thought my phone was turning off, but it was fully charged. It then went to a different Verizon screen as I mouthed, “WHAT the–?” and froze there. And then finally, it returned me to the regular screen, wiping out my prior efforts to send the picture.
*blink blink*
I think I just got smacked upside the head from the Other Side while I was sending catty text messages in church. I took the hint and repented.

Mr. W’s daughter came by my work today to visit since she had the day off from school. She also brought her guitar for entertainment. A lot of people at my work know her since she sung at our wedding, but that was before she picked up her first guitar, three and a half months ago. She taught herself to play the instrument with some light instruction by a friend her first few weeks. With a musical instrument to accompany her voice, she has now written eight or ten songs that all sound different, catchy, and amazing. I put her on the witness stand (where there’s a microphone) and had her do a few songs for my staff. The first I requested is probably my favorite that she’s written so far. I don’t think she’s titled it, but she basically used a short tumultuous fling she had recently as inspiration and wrote songs around a drop of emotion or event. The result is something so beautiful, and real. The reason I like this song in particular is because of the buildup of the message. Here’s the song’s turning point, which happens about 1/3 of the way through. She starts off singing about the devastation the guy left her in, and then the lyrics say something like, “This may sound like a sad song to you, but I’m happy as can be, because you won’t believe what I found when you left. I found…me. I found me.” It brings me to tears even thinking about it because it taps into something raw in my history, what I had to go through to stand up and be myself again, and the way she wrote the melody around it, the word “found” is dragged out slightly, as if to build suspense, and then the “me” is sung very emotionally, starting low, almost on a minor key and builds into a strong major key note, and her voice also gains strength, and you can almost see a flower blooming in a shaft of sunlight in the snow. *sniffle*

I wanted to take a cameraphone picture of her up there but my phone died earlier this morning. I wish I could share her songs and lyrics with all of you, but I want her to be discovered first. 🙂 And she’s definitely working on that.

Court reporter: Aww, animals are so precious. They’re like little gifts.
Me: Little fuzzy gifts.
Court reporter: Little fuzzy gifts that throw up.

Aww.

I’d always thought, in the back of my mind, that married people are a different species from unmarried people. Married people are grownups with serious and adult responsibilities. They have outgrown childish desires like opposite-sex friends, partying, getting drunk, staying out all night, cussing, extravagant vacations, spontaneous plans. They are good examples for society.

I know this isn’t necessarily a given, but that’s the kind of grownup I grew up looking at, and the kind of grownup I thought I’d be. But now that I’ve been married almost 5 months, I don’t feel any more grown up. I still have the same quirky humor, “off” comments, and co-ed friendships I’ve always enjoyed. I still bounce around the house on my toes, “accidentally” bouncing into my now-husband and he bounces back with me. We were having lunch with his recently legal adult daughter and her friend over the weekend at a panini restaurant when we (Mr. W and I) got into a shoving war in the booth and I had to brace my hands against the wall and use my back to push back against Mr. W as his daughter and her friend laughed and called us children. And today, I’m meeting up with Anny for dinner and hanging out and Mr. W is meeting his old neighbor for dinner and a movie. Life as a married person isn’t much different from life as an unmarried person, and I’m pleasantly surprised. For Chinese New Year, my parents and grandma gave us both red envelopes like we were kids. “You’re not really a grownup until someone looks to you as a grownup,” Mr. W said. That makes sense; we have to be grown-up relative to something else.

Something else would probably have to be offspring. We had the “baby” talk some days ago quite inadvertently. We were driving somewhere, talking about babies, and I said as long as I have one before turning 35, I’m okay. Cuz the amniotic (sp?) fluid testing for Down Syndrome they do on age 35+ expectant mothers just gives me the heebie jeebies. And then I realized I would be turning 33 this year. Which means I need to have the baby next year. Which means I need to be pregnant soon. And I started having a panic attack. Good thing I was in the passenger seat, because I lost sensation in my legs.

Mr. W is oddly better adjusted to the idea of having this kid than I am, considering he was the one who’d previously made the decision to never have another baby. But then, he’s done it before. Twice. This is about to change my life as I know it forever. My mind ran though all the random things I’d wanted to remember in case I was ever to become a mother. Don’t give toddlers cheese, they can’t digest it. Don’t give them peanuts early, it may develop into peanut allergies. I want to document the whole process on the blog. What if the kid googles me when he/she is older and finds this blog?! Seeing a baby hand or foot sticking up through my stomach skin is creepy! I hope I can re-use my adolescent stretch marks so I don’t develop pregnancy ones. Cocoa butter, my friend swore by it. Don’t be oversensitive to what the kid says, he/she will think you’re a moron and hate you at some point. Don’t be overbearing or they’ll rebel. I’m never going to sleep well at night again worrying about where my kid is.

And this doesn’t even begin to address the most immediate hurdle: conceiving.

My mom wanted to do a traditional Chinese New Year Eve this year because, as she put it, she may not live long enough to pass on the tradition otherwise.   (She’s so fatalistic.)  She even made sure to leave me a voice mail with instructions on what to do before going over there.  Shower before blessings to cleanse off the old year and start anew.  Wear red undergarments for luck.  Wear red clothing for luck.  The only red undergarments I have presently are not parent-appropriate, but I wore them anyway and sent a cameraphone picture to Jordan, who wanted to know if I was going to follow all my mom’s orders.  Jordan threatened to post the picture of me in my red undies.  =P

We went over to my parents’ house at 3p yesterday and I was surprised she actually decked the inside of her already-Asian house out for the occasion.

From the simple stuff, like flowers…

(A saying in Chinese calls daffodils mistaken for common garlic bulbs before sprouting, but revealing their secret splendor in bloom. These flowers are therefore symbolic for, to use an American colloquilism, a diamond in the rough.) 

(classic Chinese ‘mums)

…to red paper poetry and symbols on the doorways and walls…

 …to an actual ancestral altar.

(food offerings to the ancestors on both my mom’s and dad’s sides)

Dad at least had the good sense to do this outside.

I think there were at least 10 dishes, plus desserts and appetizers.

I was convinced to join one of those ubiquitous social networking sites this weekend. I find the damn thing to be one of the most user-unfriendly interfaces ever, as warned by Dwaine. A few minutes ago, I don’t know what the hell I pushed, but apparently it sent out “friend” invitations to everyone in my email address book! That means people who are ALREADY my friend on this site, people who may not know me but who had included me on a forward list, people I’ve responded to in a group response to some email forward, EVERYONE. What.the.fock. I do not want that many people knowing my business!

If you get one of those invitations, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it!