Mexican in Rome Part 2

Welcome to the second installment of my Travel Tuesday. If you are still following my blog...thank you and I promise to get as gross as possible in future posts. This one won't be so gross...

As mentioned previously...I was in Rome once when I was really young. I was a novice at this travel thing despite thinking I was the shit and knew everything about travel. I had my fluorescent clothes so I could blend with the Italian locals, I used broken phrases to get around. But I had made a few mistakes.

The first was that I had scheduled a trip in crotch sweat August. Everything stuck to me. It was hot, it was smelly, it was gross.

The second was that I had booked two week accommodations in one location. What that meant was that I would be stationed in Rome while only being able to travel on day trips. The trip was prepaid and it would have been a waste of money if I had taken off. I made the best of the situation and went on trips to Capri, only being able to spend two hours on their beach before hauling ass back to the docks to make the last boat back to the mainland.

It was on one of these day trips that my story begins.

The guided tour traveled to little towns that dot the Tuscan hillsides. The expeditions took us to places that sampled Orange flavored liquor and shoved raw hide goods in your face. So we ended up on this town called Orvieto. It was a medieval town located on some cliff. It was told to our group that this town was so exclusive, that it never allowed any tour buses to or cars and therefore had to hike up to this town. Made no difference, I was in Italy, I would have hiked to a death camp. So while in this town I find a novelty store that was selling swords....SWORDS. And this was no little plastic sword, this was metal, and big, not too sharp, but big. I buy the fucking thing because back home I had a teenage brother that would have believed me to be the most awesome sister ever if I brought a sword to him.

I was sitting on the bus making my way back to Rome and my hotel. I was tired, I was hot, but ecstatic. I had a sword. So the bus driver, an oily man with a profuse belly, announces the stops, Trilussa being one of them. My stop. At this point I had been in Rome for almost the two weeks. I knew exactly where Trilussa was in Rome. So we get to a stop, the bus driver mumbles something, no one gets off. Ok no biggie, he continues to another stop and says some other stop, a couple gets off. I start to worry. I make my way to the front.
"um, excuse me, Trilussa stop?"
If you had been there, you would have seen the large belly swell as his breathing became labored, saying "I stopped at Trilussa, you no get off! So you get off here!". He stops the bus on this narrow little Roman road. I look in disbelief as he opens the door, yelling "this isn't my stop". His fat face retorted, "I no care, you get off here."
"This isn't my stop, you have to take me to my stop"
"you get off"
"I paid to get taken to my stop!"
"you get off or I arrest"
"Fuck this!" I yell as I gather my bag and my sword. I make a huge display, stomping my feet and dragging the sword like some Edward Scissorhand.  I step on the asphalt, and as the orca closes the bus door, I turn and use all of my body weight to kick the shit out of the bus door. It cracked.
My eyes widened and I see that this bus man is trying to open the door and get his ass up to yell at me, but more likely to call the cops on me.  I yell "hi-ya" as I dash down some random alley way, with a sword in hand.

That sword was confiscated at the airport.

TT: Goals...not the futbol kind

In stages, the goals in my life:

Age 5-11: Meet Rhett Butler, and possibly marry him in a Southern Wedding. Be the most perfect Scarlett O'Hara. Do this by dressing up as her for every halloween. If this does not work, try being the "little mermaid". She got the dark haired guy in the end...he can pass for Rhett Butler, can't he?

Age 11-13: Lose this baby fat before high school. The rolls are not cute and no one will ever kiss me. NO ONE. Meet Weezer, possibly be their band bitch. Become an Egyptologist, discover something awesome that changes every anthro/archaeology text known to man. Do this while entering in to the FBI Academy, meeting Fox Mulder, and having fraternal boy/girl twins.

Age 14-18: Don't get pregnant. Study for the SAT's. Get into AP English and History. Scrape through math and science. Don't get pregnant. Make friends, not enemies. Be a good friend. Don't get suspended...again. Don't get pregnant. Graduate and go away to college.

Age 19-21: Transfer in to SFSU. Don't party too much. Don't fall in love. Start to remove yourself from everyone. Develop a bad attitude. Travel. Travel a lot. Do it alone, or do it with someone, but do it.

Age 22-26: Get a job at a law firm in preparation for law school. Graduate and start working on the LSAT. Travel more. Don't have kids. Don't fall in love. Try something new. Make new friends. Keep your old friends too...

Age 26 - Present: Find a new career, because the law thing is a no go. You hate lawyers. Write more, because its what you love, and if you don't do it now, if you don't risk the criticism, you'll wake from a lifelong dream full of regrets. Marry the man that surpassed all of your dreams, even the ones that you never thought you could dream. Have a family. Adopt a dog. Travel the world with the person you fell in love with. Show him all of the things that you love. Move to another city, try it for a bit. Tell your family you love them because they have always loved you. Buy another car, the one you have is a your baby but its starting to fall apart. Get your credit in tip top shape, and dwindle the debt. You are almost there. Find the people you love, the friends, the family, and respect them for what they are. Find the people that bring the worst of you and cut them. Don't be afraid of this. Enjoy it, this day, this time, this moment. Because its going to be over. That life you knew, the people that you loved, they sometimes go when we don't want them to, and there is not much you can do about it. So make sure that its today that you do whatever your goal was to do.

Another Chapter in Awkward Handbook

If you are my friend on FaceBook you may have already read that I made a career change. I did, after all, blast the shit out of my recent change. Leaving the law office was bittersweet, leaving it for a different field? That's some exciting shit right there.

After seven years of working in the law field, and after briefly flirting with the LSAT, I left this field. Seven years of other people's health and liberty within the grasp of my pudgy fingers.
I wanted to be a lawyer, I wanted to get experience. So I decide to work for attorneys to get experience before graduating college. I didn't want to get myself in to law school debt only to find out that I fucking hated it. And guess what...I fucking hated it. Attorneys are weird. Helpful, but lack empathy. Not all of them, but some of them. They are the poster children for successful asperger stories. I thought I would fit right in....But I failed. I thought I had empathy, but my client's annoyed the shit out of me.

Let me explain.
I loved what I did. I helped the disabled population get their SSI benefits. And while doing this, some of them died on me. That's right...they fucking died waiting for the US government to give them their medical benefits after working their whole life and losing it all because they were sick. Well I left that  and dabbled in Immigration law. I got to tell people that because the notary they used when they first got here because they wanted to save a buck, filed their papers wrong, that they were going to get deported and permanently barred from the US. Didn't matter who they married, that they were educated, hard working, etc.
Immigration is a personal passion. And regardless of what you think, its an ass backwards institution. It's set up for failure. It's set up to mentally fuck.

I spent many years caring about the lives of others while failing to make a dent in mine. I was unhappy in what I did, I hated the money, and resented the people I chose to help. So I left. I jumped at the opportunity to enter the glitzy corporate world of commercial property management. You know the kind, pant suits and fancy coffee mugs kind of place.
And here is where the story gets awesome. Because this awkward Mexican walks in to the upper echelon of propriety. And do you know what I say? Do you know what I answer when I am asked how I like my change in career? I say, "its great, its not like the buildings I manage are going to get deported".
Their bleach blonde smiles went limp as I caught "the fuck?" expressions they exchanged. Oh well. Wait until they see my cubicle covered in Fox Mulder pictures... I might even bring my WWII SS Panzergrad cigarette case to show and tell!

This is going to be fun.