cindy's world

(written yesterday, Jul 29, around 10:30p; I’m borrowing a coworker’s internet access to post)

I had a quick run-in with an old DA friend yesterday after work. He asked how the wedding planning’s coming along, and I said it was great, no stress yet. The male friend he was with mentioned how his own wife got a bit frazzled as they’d approached their wedding date, and how he used to tease her with, “What do YOU have to be stressed about? You have a wedding coordinator!” I gave my theory that women stress because they place too much importance on small details, like the color of flowers and the exact combination of the tiny factors that go into making this day, most of which tiny factors wouldn’t be noticed by any of the guests anyway and are likely overpriced.
My DA friend said, “Well you’ve always been kinda immune to stress.”
That was the best compliment I’d received in, like, forever. Of course, he was wrong, but I was VERY happy he saw me that way anyway.

And then this morning while coming to work I ran into that other attorney who obscurely complimented me last month. He said, “Hello, nice to see you again.” I said hi, and asked if he works here. He said, “No, I’m just here a lot.” Even tho I didn’t receive any further lavishing about my appearance, the last compliment hung invisibly in the air, and again contributed to starting my morning on the right foot.

I had just spent over 2 hours working on my wedding seating chart. I updated and printed out my attendee list, got back in touch with my kindergarten roots and cut out the names of people coming. Then I grouped these people according to a seating chart the Garden provided letting me know how many people can be seated at what table number (half the tables seat 4-5, the rest seat 6-8). I tried my best to move my little slips of guests around and put people together who either already know each other, or whom I know would get along. I paid special attention to requests to be seated next to so-and-so, and to requests to NOT be seated near so-and-so. (I know.) The next part is trickier. Following a map of the Garden layout telling me what table number goes where (reception dinner tables are scattered all over the garden around the pond, on the bridges, under trees, etc.), I ingeniously and strategically placed groups of people either close to or far away from each other. Joe Schmoe wants to avoid Jane Doe? Well, I seated them across the Garden from each other, separated by water. Too many people in the “coworkers” group to put together at one table? I put them in tables next to each other. Mandy Pandy desperately wants to avoid the disapproving glares from her mother? I placed Mandy Pandy at the south end and her mother at the north end on the same vertical line, so that the mother couldn’t look across the water and see Mandy Pandy. I was darn proud of myself.

And then came that awful dreaded moment. I ended up with 2 leftover groups of 4 with no seating. What the heck? I studied the seating chart, compared it to the Garden map, and then realized that the two totally don’t match up. There are some tables that the chart says seat 8 but the map says seat 5, and vice versa. And tables 27, 28 and 29 are completely MISSING from the map.

I guess I’ll be making some phone calls in the morning. Either the Garden is going to send me the correct map and/or chart, or I’ll be calling these guests and asking if they mind taking their dinners with them to their cars in the parking lot. Or MAYBE I’ll float 2 tables for 4 on the koi pond! Hmm…

Our association president called the City, and turns out that the City law is that any man-made dividing wall structure may not go beyond a maximum height of 6 feet. Plants and shrubs are not subject to that rule, so it’s okay to plant a tree or row of shrubs that reach beyond that. However, in order to change the height of a shrub wall, both parties on either side of the wall must reach a written agreement. Obviously this wasn’t done when our older neighbor decided to just have the portion before her front door hacked, violating both Association and the neighbor’s rights and properties. And yet we can’t put up a higher permanent wall like the biker neighbor proposed. The City said that if both parties can’t reach an agreement about a shared wall, then it has be brought to the Courts to decide.

GREAT. I did not want my work to come that close to home. It’s enough to make me turn to WINE.

Today is Mr. W’s birthday. Hippo birdie, Mr. Double-You! If I had double yous, I’d stand in the middle and make a sandwich. Or make both of you make me a sandwich. Yeah, that’s probably more likely.

He didn’t want to have a birthday celebration this year, so I just got him something he asked for, a book with accompanying CD-Rom of Photoshop CS3 tutorials and tricks for editing portraits. He’s going to do our wedding album all by himself! I know Flip Flop Girl is doing her and Wilco‘s on her own, but I wouldn’t attempt it. This is right up Mr. W’s alley, though, the computer and digital photography addict that he is. While I was at the bookstore selecting his tutorial book, I came across a cookbook that’s also an informative introduction to traditional Indian cooking. Mr. W and I had talked about having theme-week cooking when we got married, and we’ve been on an Indian food kick this week, so this was perfect to add as the “surprise” element of his gift.

I don’t really know whether we’d ever go through with food theme-week, but it’s fun to think about. We’d go grocery shopping on the weekend at an ethnic grocery store, and all that week we’d cook that ethnicity’s food. We’d have Chinese food week, Indian food week, Italian, Japanese, and American. We were having Indian food after work today (his chosen birthday meal) and I suddenly thought, “What category of food does pizza fall into?” He said it could be American. So American week is gonna be pizza, hot dogs, hamburgers, fried chicken, soul food, Cajun shrimp. Eclectic. And then another brainstorm. “Ooh,” I said, “We can change our kitchen and eating area decor weekly to match the food theme. And then when people come over, they’ll know immediately what week it is and if they don’t like Mexican, they’ll know not to stay for dinner.”
Mr. W added, “And we can use that strategically, so when someone we don’t want to have dinner with comes over, we can change the decoration to something we know they won’t eat.”
So of course I thought of MOH Vicky and her resolute dislike of Indian food, since no one else I know has a food category they claim they absolutely would not eat. So I guess it’d be like, “Hey, Vicky’s coming! Quick, help me take down this Chinese stuff and put the Indian plates up! Where’s that golden statuette of Durga?” Haha. Guess our friends are gonna have to learn to like whatever we make if they’re just gonna drop by.

I had plans to meet up with MOH Vicky, her boyfriend, and James last nite for dinner. But as I was starving and still had another hour and a half before meet-up time, I put a marinara sauce and some Italian meatballs on stovetop at a low simmer, took out some pasta, and went to get my mail. At the mailbox, I was confronted by a large, very angry biker who looked like he may have been a Hell’s Angel.
He stormed up to me and towering overhead, huffed, “Is there an association here?!”
I told him there is.
He went on a rant about how his bushes were chopped down and who the hell authorized that and left a mess in his yard, blah blah. I was lost for awhile until I asked him enough questions for him to realize I had no idea what he was talking about. Turned out he’s the next-door neighbor of the other units in my Association, and he shares a block wall with them. A dense ivy-like shrub with hard branches grows over this shared wall on both sides, ending 2 feet above the wall like a high hedge. Apparently, one of the older neighbors (a single woman) unilaterally called for some tree trimmers to come yesterday morning and chop off just the portion of hedge in front of her unit. Now, if you look down the walkway, it’s green, then a brown square with no leaves and a huge square gap of overhead shrub, then it continues as it passes her house. The angry neighbor said he’d knocked on her door but she didn’t open it. I told him I couldn’t imagine that our regular gardener had done this as the rest of the shrubs on the wall were neatly trimmed back, and told him I’d talk to our Association president to see if anyone authorized for tree trimming of this portion. He said they’d left branches and debris on his side of the yard, too.

I called the Association president and asked him to meet me between our houses, and quietly explained the issue to him. No one on that side of the project typically uses the walkway, their primary ingress and egress being through the garage facing the opposite side of the buildings, so he was as shocked as I and the angry neighbor were when he walked around back and saw the ridiculous gap. He rapped on the older female neighbor’s door and now she was home and answered it.

And very proudly announced that she had indeed spent $220 of her own money to have this chopped down. Our president (with my intermittent attempts to help talk to the female neighbor) spent almost a full hour explaining to her that she shouldn’t have done this, that this was not her property to alter, that it was shared association property, and one that was shared with another neighbor who was not part of the association. She was stuck on that the shrub, 18 years ago, was planted on our side of the wall and hence belonged to us and that gives us the right to chop it or whatever we want, regardless of the fact that now, 18 years later, it half grows out of the other guy’s yard. She also claimed that she’d spoken to our president and requested that the shrubs be trimmed closer to the wall as she’s scared of potential lizards or whatever (altho I know she uses the garage on the other side as her main entry/exit, too), and that he’s done nothing. Our president was like, “You told me this weekend! It’s TUESDAY and this morning you already had the shrub chopped down! You didn’t give me a chance to discuss this with the gardeners!” I told her trimming back against our wall is one thing, taking two feet of height off the center of a wall that half belongs to someone else so that his yard now has a giant gap in the middle, which decision she made unilaterally on shared Association property, was wrong. We’re just hoping that the guy doesn’t want to sue the Association. He was really ticked off.

When I got back in my house, the sauce was dried and burnt and my house stunk. And I was late for meeting up with everyone for dinner. But I still had to quell this fire.

I called the guy back after taking the sauce off the stove and explained to him that we’d spoken to the female neighbor whose house the tree trimming was in front of, and that she did indeed call the tree trimmers but that she’d done it without Association permission or knowledge, and that we apologize for his inconvenience on behalf of the Association (since I’m still Secretary). I asked what remedy he’d like, and said we can pay for additional trimming to be done to even out the hedge or leave it and let it grow. He said he wanted to sit on it and calm down and think.

He called me half an hour ago. He wants to add a length of chain link above the wall to give it the height back, cover the chain link portion with green tarp, and let the hedge grow over it or not, but he wants his privacy back up. He said yesterday, he was able to see the older neighbor’s walkway light which glared from the gap into his living room, and he could see people walking up and down that walkway if they’re tall. Plus, it’s cosmetically displeasing to see that 10-, 12-foot gap in the middle of his shrub. I told him that technically, legally, the height of a block wall between property lines is as high as a dividing wall is permitted to be, and that to add height would likely be against City laws. He said, the shrubs grew 2 feet over that, so what’s the difference? I said the difference was that the shrubs were not permanent additions to the height and no one had a problem with it so no one complained to the City, but to add permanent height to a wall would require City permits. Plus, now we know that this neighbor apparently has a problem with the height of the wall. Not to say the way she addressed her issue was correct. (I can still hear her wailing, “So he likes privacy. But what about ME? *I* don’t want it that high. So it doesn’t matter what *I* want?” Well, it’s not HER wall. And even if she did live there alone and it WERE her property and not an Association’s, she’d still have to deal with that neighbor before changing shared property. The difference is that *I* wouldn’t have to deal with it then.) I was SO NICE to the neighbor during this phone call. I put it out there that I believe the city would prohibit the wall addition, but I surrounded it with sugar and understanding and commiseration so that he’d swallow the pill, and he was pretty nice to me in return, altho he was obviously still upset about the whole thing. I thanked him for his brainstorming idea, promised to bring it to my Association so that we can work on a compromisable solution, and told him I couldn’t tell him yea or nay because 11 other units share that wall and may have opinions on how they’d like it to change or not change. He said he understood and knows I can’t give him an answer, and expects there to be some back-and-forth for awhile. I said he may be right, but it has to start somewhere and his open communication with the Association through me is an important and appreciated action, and promised to keep him in the loop.

I’ve passed the neighbor’s requests to my President, who’s going to look into City laws and if it’s as clean as, “No, you can’t alter dividing wall height,” then that’s easy. But we’d still have a ticked off neighbor.

Mr. W thinks the older female Association member should pay for anything we’re gonna have to do now to remedy the problem she caused.

Mr. W and I weren’t going to pick this one, as it looked very Catholic and I’m not Catholic, but the makeup lady really liked it and said my mom would, too, as it’s in a style popular when my mother got married, so we got it. Even Mr. W’s daughter wasn’t too thrilled with this one. I had to post it cuz it reminds me of one that Flat Coke & Flies posted of herself.

This one I did like. I think I just love, LOVE this ballerina dress! And the fresh flowers (plumeria and 2 pink baby rosebuds) in my hair ain’t half bad, either. I just kinda wish they’d kept my original left arm, tho.

WHY am I watching We TV’s “Platinum Weddings”? ONE pair of these brides’ earrings already blows my entire wedding budget out the water. Who needs a 7-foot custom cake shaped like Cinderella’s carriage with $4K worth of gold airbrushed on it for $35K?! These grooms say stuff like, “It’s IMPERATIVE that Carlie gets the wedding that she wants” as they send expensive thousand-dollar gifts to their brides every half-hour on the wedding day leading up the wedding moment.

Well, it was on after “Bridezillas,” which I’d told both Mr. W and dentist pal/childhood friend Andy that all men should watch so that they can appreciate me. Mr. W’s response was, “I already appreciate you. I wouldn’t marry you if I didn’t appreciate what a great person you are.” Andy’s response was, “That’s like saying, ‘I’m a small-time petty-theft crook, but look at all these violent mass murderers so that I look better cuz I’m only a small-time petty-theft crook.’ ” Hey. I wonder why I’m marrying Mr. W. =P

I had a coupon for Masala Bowl, and with this PMS thing going on, just the thought of Indian food brought on cravings you wouldn’t believe. So remembering that MOH Vicky had suggested in a comment a few posts ago that we have dinner with James to catch up, I asked James if he ate Indian food. He loves Indian food. Vicky, not so much. Vicky, myself, Grace, and some other people who were all International Club officers in high school were traumatized with our first exposure to Indian food during “Indian culture day,” when someone’s mom made some incredibly nasty stuff that was like mushy chick peas stirred in cold sugary stomach acid with mint leaves. I don’t think Grace ever got over it as up to the point of leaving this planet she would not eat Indian food, Vicky obviously isn’t over it, and the only reason I am is cuz I got into an experimental food phase a couple of years ago and gave Indian food another try with as open a mind as I could pensively spread it. It helped that we went with bridesmaid Sandy and her then-date, who knew what to order at an Indian food restaurant. (Sandy had not attended that International Club event, or it may have ruined her, too.)

So James and I decided that we would do our Indian food tonight as a duo, and we’d meet up with Vicky for a more mainstream dinner tomorrow. But I was *starving*, the cravings were kicking my butt, and James said he didn’t know when his carpool person would be able to leave work today, so it may be a late dinner. Mr. W and I went to eat our usual Indian food spot, Ambala Dhaba in Little India, Artesia instead. I was happily satiated, except it turned out that James and his carpool partner DID leave work on time and I found myself eating a second meal of Indian food 2 hours later. Thank goodness we thought the restaurant was closer than it actually was and had to walk half a mile there and back. I think we’re both still full right NOW.

It was worth it.

My mom, grandma and I went to the photo studio yesterday to look at the engagement photos. To my surprise, the makeup lady (who apparently is also Photoshop Queen) had busted her rump to get our order done so that my mom could pick them up for us. All the larger photos had weatherproofing done on them, giving them a canvas effect, and were mounted on cardstock backing so that we don’t need to find glass-covered frames to put them up. When we got there, the makeup lady opened our package and laid out our photos on a large table for our inspection. The first thing my grandma said was, “NONE of these look like you! How come you look so thin?! Why is your face so long and narrow?”
My mom actually defended me with, “That was the way she looked the day they took the photos. The hairstyle is flattering on her.” And then she said happily, “HEY! Your arms don’t look big in these photos!”
The makeup lady aka Photoshop Queen said, “I’ve cut all those arms down for her in the computer.”
Then the three of us were seated in front of the large monitor as the makeup lady displayed all our photos for my mom and grandma, making note to tell them which ones we’d purchased and which ones we were letting go, giving my mom the option to buy some photos on her own if we didn’t select them. I didn’t select a lot of photos with just me in them, cuz I can’t justify making Mr. W pay half for photos that he isn’t even in. But my mom definitely wanted those. The women discussed how of COURSE the bride gets all these solo photos cuz the wedding is about the BRIDE; the GROOM is just the prop to accompany the bride in all these photos. The makeup lady said engagement/wedding photo session breakdowns are typically 1/3 solo bride photos. And then she added hesitatingly that sometimes a vain groom would fight for camera time with a bride. How funny.

So I asked her, “What DID you change on me? I can tell you altered the arms and you softened my skin and removed my bug bite scar on my shoulder.” The makeup lady opened up an unaltered file of me to do a side-by-side comparison, pointing out her changes. She redefined the jawline (I knew it! I knew I had more significant chipmunk cheeks!), softened the coloring on the face, took AWAY my tan, carved off the bicep, tricep and deltoid muscles on my upper arms, shaved off some forearm muscles (I got those from gripping heavy weights at the gym), and trimmed off my calf muscles! I’m cool with complexion repairs, but SERIOUSLY, how much time have I invested in making my body look a certain way, only to have it photoshopped OUT?! But of course my mom and the makeup lady were happy, talking about how all the customers leaving this studio are delighted with the effects. Obviously they don’t have a lot of Americanized gym rat customers.

(Arms, calf and hamstring shaved off in the above photo. To me it looks like I have the limbs of a quadriplegic. Not that there’s anything wrong with atrophied muscles, it’s just that I don’t have them.)

My grandma out of nowhere said, “Why do you have that on display? I think neither person in there is good-looking.”
I turned and saw her still sitting in front of the monitor with two of my solo photos on the screen. I thought she was implying shutting the monitor off, but then my mom asked her, “Ma, what are you talking about?”
And my grandma pointed to a giant sample portrait of a couple hanging on the wall. “They’re both ugly.”
My mom hit her mother on the shoulder lightly in embarrassed horror, as the makeup lady said awkwardly, “Well, only some people would allow us to use their photo as our sample, others who may look better may not want their photo on display in our store…”
Is this what happens in old age? Like, tact? Tact is for sissies who can’t handle the truth.

(My hands look HUGE in the photo above cuz they slimmed down my arms so dramatically.) This is the photo I’d written about before. My mom said I should’ve done the mouth open, hand on my cheek “ooh!” expression which she thought was really cute, but I DID do that and the photographer didn’t snap that.

My mom ordered 8 extra poses that we hadn’t ordered, and a couple of enlargements of her and the makeup lady’s favorite pose, the one I wrote about in which the makeup lady kept talking about the bust and waist proportions. She did that again this day, fluttering her mouse pointer around the bust and waist and the arc in the back.

(You can ALMOST see the shadowing around my shoulder created by deltoid, but WHERE’S the deltoid?! Where’s the tricep?)

When we got back to our neck of the woods, we called my dad to join us for lunch. He did, and we handed him the envelope of developed photos. My dad knows me so well. He took one look and said, “Hey, they cut out all your muscles!”
“I know,” I wailed, “And I worked so hard for those muscles!”
He chuckled. Then looking more closely at the other photos, he said, “They made you look like a movie star, but you look like a Japanimation cartoon, all white with skinny stringy limbs.”
“I know!” I wailed again.

I totally understand old or fat people loving this type of photoshopping, but I’m not sure I’m a fan. Maybe it’ll grow on me. I’m just not the ultra-femme type. When I brought the photos to Mr. W, pointing out where the editing was done, he (a fan of healthy toned women) exclaimed, “What makes her think she can take this type of liberty with other people’s photos?!” I explained that it’s the cultural and generational difference in perception of beauty. Well, there’s always the wedding day photos that have a chance of looking like me.

You can compare what I actually look like with the (crappy) photos I took of myself yesterday morning.

Hi Cindy,
Quick note with good news

Dr [K]

Wow, I’m behind. Not having internet at work sucks ass. It really blows. …It sucks AND blows. a-whoo a-whoo a-whoo!

I got a bad-news call from my bridal party’s dressmaker earlier in the week saying that the fabric Mr. W’s daughter had chosen for her dress design is no longer available, and that she would have to select a different fabric or a new color. Of all people to have this happen to, it would be Daughter, who is slippery-er than an eel when you’re trying to get a hold of her. I left a couple of unreturned voice mails on her cell. She finally picked up on Thursday afternoon and I explained the problem to her. She was sad, but to my surprise, offered to come with us that evening to select a new fabric. Mr. W and I had an appointment to view and choose our engagement photos after work that day, and the studio was only blocks away from the dressmaker’s shop. Daughter canceled her volleyball event with her friends and drove out to my work to meet up with me.

We hit a couple of snags at the dressmaker’s, as certain other fabrics weren’t available to go with the second fabric Daughter had selected, but I think eventually we did arrive on something Daughter was relatively content with. Next was the engagement photo appointment. Daughter oohed and aahed over how I turned out in the photos, but I was less impressed. I mean, the photos looked pretty, blah blah, but can they photoshop me any more?! I know what I look like in the mirror, unless all my home mirrors are distorted, and in these photos they narrowed my face, lost my chipmunk cheeks, and I could swear that at least on one pose, they totally CUT OUT half my upper arm. It just makes me wonder what *I* would’ve looked like in these photos, not this strange girl they’ve created by manipulating my likeness. Mr. W and Daughter disagreed with me and said it’s clearly me in the photos and Mr. W thinks that when I see myself in a mirror, the image that enters my brain is distorted by anorexia anyway, but they both did agree that Mr. W himself apeared to be severely airbrushed. He looks something like a man-boy in some poses, instead of the man I’ve come to love when I look at him. I guess this way, we appear to be closer in age… =P

Anyway, out of the many poses the three of us viewed on the large computer monitor, we only selected 15 to purchase. The makeup lady and her husband the photographer had their favorites, and they kept raving about certain features on me that make me “model” material, such as the way the corners of my lips angle up when I smile (apparently a lot of their customers angle back or down, like Kate Winslet), the great teeth, the way my body is SO unlike an Asian’s body because I have a chest and butt and proportionally smaller waist. She complained that most of her Asian customers’ torsos are shaped like a square. She REALLY pushed for purchase and blow-up of one photo in particular (her “favorite”) in which I slightly had my back to Mr. W as I lounged on a chair, and her mouse pointer kept traveling embarrassingly to circle my chest and delineate the arc in my back as she explained the figure thing.

Okay, I just did a similar pose right now from my computer chair and looked in the mirrored closet door, and the woman apparently photoshopped out the definition in my deltoid and tricep! I know that traditional Asian women are totally anti-tone and don’t think it’s feminine, and they’re always telling me to stop weightlifting, but I WORKED HARD FOR THAT DEFINITION! I wanna see the “before” pictures!

Wanna hear something more exasperating? I tried to take photos of myself to illustrate my point, but either 1) the flash kept going off ruining the photo, 2) taking the flash off made the exposure time longer so it was totally blurry, or 3) finding a setting that turns off flash and does the steady-hand thing changed the lighting (or maybe I turned funny) so that you can’t see definition in the photos after all, altho it’s clearly in the mirror.

*sigh*

(As w/all my photos, resting your mouse pointer on it brings up a caption.) But anyway, see what I mean? Chipmunk cheeks. Please ignore the glasses, messy hair and jammies. I just got up.

Oh, and the studio, as I expected, absolutely does not sell the digital images. You pay for every print you want.

After I got home, I grabbed a bag of DVDs Busykitty Vanessa had wanted to see and brought them over to her place, as she was on lockdown for 10 days after her surgery. I met the last sister I hadn’t met yet, and the three of us ended up chatting until I was dozing off on Vanessa’s comfy couch. MAN her TV is huge. I’m happy to report Vanessa is recovering well and her doctor doesn’t expect the lab to return any significantly bad news. Oh yeah, my Happy Bunny jammies (above) was a 30th bday present from Vanessa!

Speaking of no bad news in lab results, I see my doctor had left me an email regarding my pap last week. I’m gonna read it and I hope I don’t have another abnormal pap that requires further cutting, like last time! *crossing fingers*