cindy's world

I’ve been good about gymming Thursday (did it on the way home from work) and yesterday (did it during lunch) because the freak cheeks are really inspiring that way. I also sucked down some dandelion root capsules yesterday because my Gym Trainee swears by them as a natural diuretic to debloat. She takes 1/3 the dose and pees out more water than she knew was in her. I took maximum dose (3 capsules each time) and it didn’t do squat. Either it’s not working for me, or I’m NOT bloated, which means the cheeks are here to say! Waaah!

Mr. W made my dad a tuxedo appointment with his contact for today at 6pm, and my mom and I have that bridal gown alteration appointment at 3p, so apparently my dad decided to come with my mom and me so that we’re all together and could hit both appointments as a family. My dad is gonna be sooooo bored at the bridal fitting. But maybe he could distract my mom from criticizing me too much.

Okay, I’m now off to the gym to do some massive cardio round, my parents will meet me at the bridal place at 3, we’ll all come back to my place, Mr. W will come here to pick us all up, and then it’s off to the tux fitting. I get to hand them their invites that they’re gonna hand-deliver to their friends, too. Then we can have dinner together and hopefully meet up with our realtor to talk about house-hunting for real. If you think that sounds productive, my mom has already been up for 5 hours doing tai chi and country line dancing at a local park that offers recreational classes and is now shopping at a nearby store, and my dad’s been fishing since the buttcrack of dawn.

What’s up with my chipmunk cheeks? Gah. I don’t get it. It’s not like my body is that bloated. I mean, I’m not at the lowest weight I’ve ever been, but I shouldn’t be fat enough to look like I’m hiding marshmallows in my cheeks. Is there such a thing as cheek lipo? But if I really AM fatter than I think (bathroom scale still not working), I’m sure my mother will tell me on Saturday. An hour ago she invited herself to come with me this Saturday to my wedding gown alteration appointment. She initially invited my dad along, too, but I convinced her he wouldn’t want to go to something like that. I can hear her now when she sees the dress on me for the first time. “I still think you should get something with sleeves to cover your big arms. Maybe they’ll take this dress back as a trade-in. Want me to go ask them?”

But it is my fault if I did chunk up. Due to our current child molestation trial (my court reporter discovered that the common denominator among child molesters appears to be ownership of a van. Hence, if I am ever a mother I will not buy a van or befriend anyone who owns a van.) running late into lunch and our marriage license appointment yesterday among other factors which mostly translate to “we didn’t feel like it”, Gym Trainee and I missed our noontime workouts this entire week. But we did walk Monday, Tuesday and today at lunch to run our various errands. We probably put in a solid hour of walking the first two days. Today, however, the walk ended at a local Mexican food restaurant, I ate half a wet burrito that had such a spicy red sauce that the heartburn lasted me through the afternoon, well into the evening, through my gym workout after work, and made me so sluggish and sick that I took way longer breaks in between sets than I should have. I’m sure the crumb donut and half a cookie I had before I left work (leftovers from the jurors) didn’t help, either.

I’m a house mouse with chipmunk cheeks.

Poor Mr. W. He’s cranky. He just went to bed warning me I’d better not keep him up. We had a very productive Wednesday. We’d applied for our marriage license online and made an appointment to sign and pick it up at our lunch hour yesterday. Those suckers are expensive! $61.50 just to get the County’s permission to officially forfeit our respective freedom and sovereignty. (“And you magically become property!” my head supervisor said.) And to think, when same-sex couples are allowed to legally marry after mid-June, the Registrar-Recorder offices in California will be flooded with even more people, cash in hand. To capitalize a little more, there were signs all over the offices saying if we’d like a photo to memorialize the event of getting our license, it’s $10.

After he dropped me back off at my work, Mr. W went to his third acupuncture appointment. He said it’s working, the pain has dramatically lessened and the area around his buttocks have stopped hurting, but the deeper layers of muscles are still in need of therapy. So today, from what I heard, the needles went even deeper. *heebie jeebies*

When he was done with acupuncture, he came over to my house, picked me up, and we went to his place to pull an all-nighter stuffing envelopes and preparing our wedding invitations for mailing. Even tho we joked that it would be an all-nighter, I really didn’t think it would take very long. I figured he’d design the informational insert as I typed addresses in the labels, we’d print it all, cut and assemble, do an assembly line thing. We started around 7:30pm after a Costco run and worked until about 1:30am. I rather enjoyed myself; the fruits of our labor were very aesthetically pleasing and the methodical assembly made me feel very productive. I can’t say Mr. W had as much fun, though, judging by his sighs and grunts and occasional complaints. Nevertheless, they’re ready for mailing tomorrow. I walked up to Mr. W’s son and hand-served him our very first guest invitation. (No I didn’t wake him up. Yes he’s still up right now as I write this.) He excitedly examined the envelope, its labels, and carefully tore the envelope open. Pulling out the contents, he made exclamations about how nice everything looked, impressed we’d put everything together ourselves in an evening. Yay! That’s a whole lot off our plates! *checking stress meter level* Still low.

When we were in Vegas visiting Mr. W’s family for Mother’s Day weekend last month, we went on a double date with Mr. W’s gamer brother and wife to watch a musical show performed by the Scintas. Toward the end of the show, one of the Scinta brothers told us that their late father, who used to attend their shows, always asked him to play the theme song from “The Godfather.” The Scinta brother would scoff and say, “Dad, this is a conservative Jewish crowd tonight, they’re not gonna wanna hear ‘The Godfather.'” Each show that the father would make the request, the brother would laugh it off and explain it’s not appropriate for the venue or it doesn’t fit in with their routine. Their father passed away fairly recently. The performer telling the story paused, then told us how he wished he would’ve played his father’s request every time his father requested it. Then he sat at the piano and played a beautiful rendition of “The Godfather”, at the end of which he raised his hand to the heavens, looked up, and blew his father a kiss.

So I’m doing the inconvenient thing of spending the night before my wedding at my parents’ house, because my mom wants the tradition of the symbolic daughter-leaving-the-parents’-house-to-be-wed. I’m following my mom’s oddball insistence that I wear the highest high heels I can find in my wedding dress and that my bridesmaids wear lower shoes, because it’s important to my mom that we make up for the height differences in the girls. (I.e. I’m short.) These things don’t matter to me in the long run, but I know it matters to my mom. And I never want to have a day when I wish I could’ve done something small to make my mom happy but know that it’s too late. Learning vicariously is a gift that is better than turning back the clock.

I hunted down my coworker and as soon as he saw me, took the digital camera out of his pocket. When he got the photo he wanted on the screen and passed it over, I looked at the older woman on the display with the boy haircut, wearing a hat and huge sunglasses. “I can’t tell who this is! She looks totally incognito!” He laughed and pushed another button. I saw the face of this older woman now. “Is this Becky?” I asked. His ex that I had suspected he got back together with. It does kinda look like her.
“No, this is Bessie!”
“Who the hell is Bessie?”
Bessie was his girlfriend before Becky. I am not making this up. I have never seen this woman before in my life; both he and she were confused as to whether she may have met me 10 years ago when they last dated. 10 years ago I was in college. “So why did she want to surprise me if she doesn’t know me?”
“Well, because she wasn’t sure if she knew you, both she and I couldn’t remember if you were working when we were dating. But I told her you’d heard stories about her from me.”
“So which girl is this again?”
“The one who said she was divorced but she was still married and living with her husband and going back and forth.”
“Oh, the one that played with your head for years?”
“Yeah, it dragged on for 10 years. But she said she’s divorced now. It should’ve gone through Monday.”
“She dated you for 10 years, lied about being married and then said she was getting a divorce but never did, went back to her husband, you broke up for 10 years, and just NOW she got divorced? You better ask to see the divorce decree.”
“You know, I looked it up in the system today, and it’s not in there. So we’re gonna have some issues.”
We’re paying for HER dinner?!

SO lame. I can’t believe I devoted 3 posts to this. I promise my next post will be more meaningful.

I didn’t wait for my coworker to come visit me today. The moment there was a break this morning in our trial, I ran up the stairwell (the elevator takes too long), burst into the courtroom where he’s working, and demanded to see the photo of the mystery x-factor date he insists on taking to our wedding. His eyes went wide as he gasped and said, “Oh, I forgot! Tomorrow, I’ll bring it tomorrow. I’ll put the camera in my car as soon as I get home.”

I gave him a piece of my mind about how not cool a stunt like this is. He swore that there’s no bad blood between me and this woman and that we’d never hung out or had any sort of personal history. He said she only knows me through past contact when she’s come to the courthouse to meet up with him and so I would’ve seen her with him and that’s it. In fact, if I were to see her photo, I wouldn’t recognize her except in the context of seeing her in the courthouse with him. I said I don’t remember his introducing me to any strange women at the courthouse, and he said maybe they saw me in passing and he just pointed me out to her, but she thinks she knows who I am. He told me to trust him, and that this isn’t a big thing, it’s not gonna be some surprise confrontation or something. So I asked for her name again and he again refused. Wtf. He sent me out with more promises to bring his camera in tomorrow to solve the mystery.

I walked away in thought. Something still doesn’t sit right. If she had such limited contact with me in the past, what would possess her to think she would “surprise” me? What would I care? And what’s the big deal with the big name reveal? Also, I have an amazing memory and I do not remember him walking around work with some woman who was just visiting. UNLESS…

Unless he got back together with his ex-girlfriend! I’ve definitely run into him with this woman a few times in the past, but this was years ago. He’d picked up on her at Subway when a bunch of us was out at lunch together. He’d suddenly asked if our coworker wanted a refill on her soda and grabbed her cup and took off to the soda fountain. When he returned he was glowing with a phone number in his hand. They dated and met up regularly for lunch and soon bought a house together and moved in. When their relationship went sour, he still lived with her (albeit sleeping in a different room) because they couldn’t agree on how to dispose of their co-purchased property. Eventually it got bad enough that he just took her lowball offer, let her buy him out, and scraped together barely enough money to overpay for a condo in Long Beach, and couldn’t even afford furniture for a long time. It doesn’t make sense that he’d get back together with her, but the pieces fit. How do you date someone this new and then decide to move her in? Obviously he doesn’t feel that she’s a stranger. And she’s the only person he’s been involved with that I’ve ever met. We even had lunch together (with him of course) a few times so she definitely knows me and hence could want to keep her name (which I’d recognize instantly) a secret to “surprise” me, as in, “Surprise! We got back together!”

But I still have a hard time imagining how he could get back with someone with whom he had such an ugly end… Guess we’ll see tomorrow.

I’ll do my weekend update tomorrow or when I can figure out why the photos aren’t loading. But for now…do you guys wanna hear something weird? Well, of course you do, that’s why blogs exist.

I’m learning about odd things that are strangely lacking “out there,” things that you’d think would go without saying, such as if the bride gives you free reign to pick whatever dress you’d like for your bridesmaid dress, she shouldn’t have to specify that you’re not to pick a bridal dress. Today, it had to do with the propriety of bringing dates to someone’s wedding. We’ve told everyone that it’s a very small venue and that guest count is extremely limited. We’re not able to accommodate our invitees bringing a date unless the date is the invitee’s significant other whom we’re friends with or have at least met, or if it’s a spouse. Not just some person to tag along or whom they just started seeing. Well, I asked a coworker last week (whom I know had ended a long-term live-in relationship) for his mailing address, and then I said just sort of aside that the invite is going just out to him, right? He’s not bringing his son. He paused and said thoughtfully, “Mmm, gimme a couple of weeks. I’ll let ya know if I’m bringing someone.”
“What? Are you dating someone?” I asked. Altho we coworkers usually know when he’s seeing someone, this is the first I’ve heard of this.
“Yeah, pretty recently. I’m not sure how it’s going yet, so I don’t wanna –”
“I totally understand,” I said quickly. “I can’t tell you how many friends I’ve had who made plans with someone they didn’t know very well cuz they’re in the honeymoon stage and then months later they kick themselves cuz they’re trying to get rid of him and they’re now stuck with plans they made a long time ago.”
He laughed. “Yeah…plus she may not even feel comfortable going. I know you guys are tight on space, so I’ll let you know.”

Turns out the reason he was unsure wasn’t because he didn’t know whether he wanted to keep dating this girl. It was quite the opposite. Cuz some days later he came to me and said, “Hey, I talked to her about going to your wedding and she said yes! I told her where it was and she’s really excited. So put me down for two.”
“Really?” I said, “You’re pretty secure that you’ll still be dating her in 3 months?”
“Well, I asked her to move in with me and she said yes! That’s why I wasn’t sure the other day whether you ought to include her or not, cuz she hadn’t given me her answer yet.” He was glowing. So since this seemed serious, I asked him about her. He would tell me nothing but, “Well…I’ll show you her picture.”
“So what are you saying, she’s so hot that you’ll overlook all your reservations?”
“No, I wouldn’t say I overlooked any reservations…but I do think she’s pr-etty attractive…”
So there’s my only guest (Mr. W has one, too, who sprung this on him also; it’s actually the guy we went to China with) who’s bringing a “date” who’s just a “date” to our wedding, nobody I know, doesn’t even seem like someone he knows well. OR SO I THOUGHT. Now here’s the strange part.

I emailed this coworker today and asked for the soon-to-be live-in girlfriend’s name so that I could put it on the wedding invitation. He called and told me to just put “and Guest.” I said it’s kinda bad etiquette to put “and Guest” when we know specifically who he’s bringing, plus I don’t want people to think I’m allowing invitees to just bring a guest and start asking if they could bring a friend or some random person that we’ll have to pay for and who is possibly taking the seat away from someone who actually IS a friend or a distant family member. He still was really hesitant to give me a name. When I asked why, he said that SHE wanted to “surprise me” and didn’t want him to tell me who she is. What? “What are you talking about? Why would that surprise me?”
“She thinks she knows you.”
“What? From where?”
“I’m not sure. But she doesn’t want me to tell you who she is and she said she wanted to surprise you.”
“You can’t do that to the bride! That’s not cool. We can’t have a wedding with some x-factor running around out there!”
He apparently liked that term, and said laughingly, “Yeah, x-factor! Just look at it that way! She’s a surprise x-factor!”
“That’s NOT cool! Why would she think she knows me? What if we had some past bad blood or something? Am I gonna see her at the wedding and recognize her as the girl who my ex had cheated on me with or something?” My mind was reeling with the possibilities. It just seemed really unkosher and tacky to me. You don’t play games with someone’s wedding! It’s just…not cool! I mean, if my fiance wants to “surprise” me with someone, that’s acceptable, I’ll trust him. But some random girl?!
“I’m sure you guys don’t have a past history of bad blood,” he reassured me. “I would never in a million years bring someone to your wedding that had that kind of history with you.”
I pushed him for more answers and got out of him that it’s not someone who was a peer, i.e. not someone my age whom I’d gone to school with. He said she’s 10 years younger than him so that’d make her about 15 years older than me, someone in her mid-40s. He was vague on how she specifically knew me, he said he thought she believed she knew me from when she’d been in the courthouse some time before. So I started wondering if this was someone I’d trained in the past. But people whom I’ve trained, he would know for a fact knew me, he wouldn’t be unsure, only going by her belief that she knew me and that I would recognize her. Might this be an old co-worker who transferred out a long time ago? I can’t imagine who.
So I finally said accusingly, “You said you were gonna show me a picture of her!”
“Oh, that’s right, I did. Okay, I’ll bring it in tomorrow, it’s on my digital camera.”
“So if I look at the photo and I know for sure whether I know her or she’s mistaken, then will you tell me her name to put on the invitation?”
“Okay.”

I guess the mystery will be solved tomorrow.

Great news! The Great German Teacher Hunt of 2008 is now officially over! We’ve found Mr. Englyng! After the search for our high school German teacher was announced in March, a few readers emailed me some research with some potential addresses and phone numbers and in April, Dwaine and I had the contact information narrowed down to 1 possibility. The address seemed to match the area we vaguely remember going to when Mr. Englyng invited a bunch of students to his house for a summer backyard party in the early 90s. It was Dwaine’s job to call, but he kept chickening out. I’m not sure what he was nervous about, but it was probably a multitude of factors: being out of touch for so long, not knowing the circumstances under which Mr. Englyng left our high school, trepidation over what state of health, mind, and/or attitude we’d find our favorite former teacher in. Yesterday, another former student of Mr. Englyng’s who was googling him in his own search for this unforgettable teacher led this student, Andrew, to my post (see link above). Andrew commented with the address and phone number he’d found (which comment was sent to my work account via email), so while I was waiting for my child molestation jury trial to begin, I thought, “What the heck” and called.
Clear male voice: Hello?
Me: (dismayed to realize I sounded like a telemarketer) Hello, may I speak to Finn Englyng, please?
Clear male voice: (suspiciously) Who is this?
Me: (overly chirpily to make up for sounding like a telemarketer) I’m actually a former student of his, I’ve been looking for him. (Now realizing with more dismay that I sound like a stalker.)
Clear male voice: This is he.
Me: Mr. Englyng, this is Cindy [last name]! I don’t know if you remember me, I took your class in high school over 10 years ago…
Mr. Englyng: I remember you!

Not only is Mr. Englyng well and happy, having retired a year ago with what he called a district “golden handshake” that was too good to pass up, but he’d gone and purchased a sailboat after retirement and has been sailing. His memory is sharp as a tack, although he is indeed diabetic like Dwaine remembered, he’s got it under control and is presently healthy, and is preparing for a month-long road trip with his wife to visit his grandkids and attend their high school graduations through the month of June. So for any of my readers or random strangers who may stumble on my site in their own search for Mr. Englyng, know that he is well and happy. *whew!* I must admit, I was scared as I prepared to call, that I would find him in failing health or in a state of senility. We reminisced for awhile, I caught him up on a few students that he remembered, and I think I surprised him as to just how big an influence he has had on the daily lives of so many of his students. Great men almost never have an idea of their own gravity, right? He’s also apparently never googled himself or he would’ve found this site.

I told him I recalled the summer party we had in his vast backyard. He chuckled and informed me that actually, his backyard is quite small. I was shocked. I remembered it as humongous. “Or maybe I was just smaller back then,” I said thoughtfully. Everything appears smaller than you remember when you revisit it, or maybe it is that memory makes things larger than life. But he is every bit as smart as I’d remembered (even though I was likely dumber back then, too). “I had no idea you’re diabetic until Dwaine told me; I remember you always having a Pepsi on your desk.”
“I had to stop doing that,” he said. “I stopped having sodas and sugar 12 years ago. People lose hands and feet and legs from diabetes.” He’s right; diabetes is serious stuff but so many people don’t bother making lifestyle changes to prevent such preventable effects of this disease. My courtroom assistant is overweight to the point she’s borderline diabetic but she claims her blood pressure’s normal and doesn’t have cholesterol problems so she’s not bothering to lose the weight or eat better. I’m glad Mr. Englyng is smart enough to know he doesn’t have to go out like that. I told him that was great because if he went into a state of denial over his health like so many people do instead of taking the bull by the horns like he did, he may not have been around to get this phone call today. I told him of all the people looking him up, both people I know and strangers who’ve found my blog, and he was surprised and touched.

On my Quotes page, I’d written long ago this little gem from Mr. Englyng:
“Go to the wedding. Because you have to go to the funeral, you should go to the wedding.”
Guess who I invited to MY wedding. He said he’d do everything in his power to be there.

When Mr. Englyng returns from his summer road trip, Dwaine and I are gonna meet up with him for lunch. I can’t wait!

It took me an hour to drive from work to my wedding makeup consultation apppointment at their Temple City studio, in spite of which I was an hour early. The place was way bigger than I’d expected. They had a very visible storefront in the same plaza as major department stores, and they were also a storefront selling not just makeup/hairstyling services, but also photography, bridal gowns and accessories, special occasion dresses and shoes. After I made contact with the award-winning makeup artist Sylvia and her photographer husband, I was taken apart by their expert artistic eyes. The verdict: I am “not bad.” No major facial problems, good bone structure, nice size eyes and features. But the gray contacts had to go, they warned. They explained the contacts may look unique in person but in photography, it’d look freakish and artificial. That was a point I’d been debating and I was leaning toward my natural dark (dark dark dark) brown eyes anyway so that future generations don’t look at my wedding photos and go, “WOT da fok?”

I was shown before/after photos of past customers and Asian celebrity customers, as well as makeup done by other professionals vs. makeup redone on the same people by Sylvia. Sylvia pointed out why certain people were given certain hairstyles to hide flaws, and apparently she knows some Hollywood makeup magic, because she evened out crooked uneven eyes, slimmed down square jowls, narrowed wide noses, opened sleepy-shaped lids, hid protrusive cheekbone angles. Based on how fugly (yeah, I said it) some of these girls looked before makeup, I can’t wait to see how I and my three naturally beautiful bridesmaids turn out.

I was happy to learn that their photo studio had a small package that fit what I’d been wanting for engagement photos. I had decided to forego engagement pics because I didn’t want to pay all these studios’ costs of $2000+ for giant bound albums (who’re we gonna show those to? We’re gonna have a separate wedding album.) and ridiculous 48-inch framed portraits (how do you put that up without looking terribly conceited?). But for under $400, this place will do full bridal wedding makeup and hair, touchup makeup on Mr. W, studio photography, and print out a modest number of photos of our choice. I can handle 10 4x5s, 4 8x10s (+1 more free cuz of the referral from bridesmaid Sandy’s mom), and 1 11×14 that we can frame and use for our welcome photo at the wedding site front entrance. Plus it’s a perfect trial of the hair/makeup for the actual wedding day.

I ended up walking out 2 hours later with not just a makeup/hair package for me and my bridesmaids, not just an engagement photography session, but also my bridal shoes (half the price of what I was gonna pay for similar shoes at David’s Bridal!), a secret surprise gown (Mr. W’s gonna see me in my white bridal gown before the wedding in order to pull off the logistics of timing for photography immediately before the ceremony, so SOMETHING I wear should still be a surprise) that I should’ve paid at least three times its actual price for, an appointment for a facial, a recipe for a homemade facial mask using basic and edible ingredients, and a special medically-approved, proven-effective quick weight loss diet plan. The last 3 items were free.

Oh, and I got a referral to a florist they recommended. The florist is blocks away from the makeup/photography studio, and although I was unable to talk to the head designer/storeowner who was engaged in a planning session with unbudging customers, a sales rep at the shop chatted with me about my options and gave me some prices. It looks like everything is going to be cheaper than I’d expected.

What a productive day! Shoes – check! Hair/makeup artist – check! Bridal shoes – check! Engagement photos – check! Florist – check! Pretty much all that’s left is to finalize the guest list, mail out invitations, and figure out what veil and headpiece I want based on my hairstyle.

Vanessa emailed this picture to me from Vanessa night this past weekend. It’s Vanessa, me, and Mr. W at Tapas Restaurant.

Speaking of the weekend, I can’t believe I forgot to mention in the post that on Monday, Mr. W got even more acquainted with his Asian side by going in for his first acupuncture treatment. We must’ve gone to 4, 5 Asian sundries stores trying to find those wooden beaded car seat covers as he’d hoped that the acupressure massaging action would relieve his sciatica pain. No one carried the item anymore. I called my mom asking if we had any covers at home, and mom said she’d just days before thown theirs away. Apparently those seat covers are too fobby even for my parents. My mom then recommended her acupuncturist, who she says not only miraculously cured her sciatica pain in just 1 session, but also cured that of many of her coworkers.

I have to say it was pretty gross to see 30 needles sticking way out of Mr. W’s nekkid back, butt and legs. *heebie jeebies* He’s got a second treatment appointment tomorrow at the same time I have a makeup appointment to do a meet-and-greet with my wedding makeup/hair people.