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.

TT: Geek and Freak?

Let me tell you gentle readers, I never imagined this subject would make me think so hard and ponder on what to write. Geek. Its connotation once held such negativity that I sometimes shudder to hear the buxom blonde with black framed glasses to proclaim her moniker as geek. The fuck chick, the only thing geeky about you is your barbie collection softly stored in the hall closet, and even I have something like that. But its true, in this day, the word no longer means the end of a social life. Geek no longer encompasses trench coats and dungeons and dragons ( I had a brief d & d phase, and I didn't call it d &d). In this day, almost all can quote Star Wars, make references to Khaleesi, and explain the history of House Harkonnen. But in my infancy, in my dawn of creation, I had many phases of geekdom,  many of which lead people to believe that not only was I this geeky chick wearing two sizes too big pants and band shirts, but that I was a amrginal frreak. I present to you, my many stages of Geektacity:

The Truth is Out There
The truth is out there, and I was certain that the love of my adolescent life, Mr. Fox Mulder was going to lead me to this truth. Let me tell you people, the X-files was more than just a show, this was THE show that introduced me into puberty. I didn't know what crushing, daydreaming, or tingling was until I watched this show. Yeah, I know what I just said. This was more than sci-fi, this was my life. It helped that I had been softly steered towards sci-fi whle I was still a toddler, but it was Fox, Mr. Hot man Mulder that really dragged me in to the depths of the unknown. He was the one that made me question our existence and to look for signs everywhere. I didn't care that they weren't on the cover of teen people, or that his hair didn't wisp like JTT (in case you didn't know, that's Jonathan Taylor Thomas), this was a man's man, with a gun, and a badge! I was going to join the FBI and find this man, and together we would gather the evidence to prove once and for all that the existence of aliens is here!!! And then after we would settle down on Catalina Island and have geeky FBI babies. I had to settle for the X-Files special edition barbie dolls. But I want to believe.

ASOS
Let me tell you, if you don't know ASOS, you don't actually know Game of Thrones. And if you only know Game of Thrones through HBO, that's ok, but shut the fuck up, because you don't actually know shit. You don't know what it is to sit there, at 16 years old, and cry yourself to sleep because the hero of the hour just had his head chopped off in front of everyone. You didn't lay awake at night wondering why George hates you so fucking much, why he chooses to pick off those people (and they are people, not just characters) and leave you there in a vat of tears, your heart in your throat, compounded with a loss of appetite. I do want to take this time to thank my friend for introducing me to the series and essentially making me the most annoying girl that my boyfriend has ever had to endure. Thanks for letting me geek out on you babe. And quite honestly, I am grateful to HBO...that show is fucking amazing.

History
I spent my Senior year perched on a tree in the quad of my high school, or in the corner of the media center reading about Henry Rex (VIII) and his marital conquests. Why? Because he was bad ass whose dick prompted a religious reformation and broke ties with the Pope. He was also a bad ass because the guy married six times...six times!!! I believe that number can only be rivaled by Elizabeth Taylor, who conincidentally was married to Richard Burton (twice), who played the role of Henry in "Anne of the Thousand Days". But now I have gone off on a tangent.

Lets not forget Schindler's List and the impact it made on my historical brain. Ralph Fiennes in a SS uniform. Holy shit...I was sold. I had to know everything and anything about World War II, Germany, the SS, Hitler, genocide...my world had become endless, a vast canvas of lives and events that had all come before me. I had to learn of them all. I had to know them, their speech, their dress, their friends. I devoured each sentence and voraciously searched for the next chapter. I still do.
It doesn't stop there. Each event that passes I somehow tie in to fascism and fanaticism. My references to the wars, great or civil, sometimes are too much for my listener to comprehend. Many a time I have gotten the "here we go again the with nazis" or "the romanovs are dead".
But those that know me and love me, and maybe not love me, but know me, will tell you, "that's just her, she really geeks on this shit."

TT: Yankees vs. Confederates

For those of you unaware...I am a big fan of "Gone with the Wind". Film and Book. My three year old little mind basques in the southern charm and beauty of hoop skirt and pantalet. Now, this movie might be set in the Civil War, but it certainly does not share the true atrocities, or the content for which the United States had decided to turn on each other. To me, and maybe to many, but mostly me, this film was about a southern way of life completely destroyed by those "damn dirty yanks", the scoundrels of the north whose sole purpose was to uproot a tranquil, quiet world. It was not until I wandered in to the history section of Empire Library that I learned about whipping posts and middle passage. As I got older, I felt guilty for rooting for the Confederates. After all, the dashing Clark Gable/Rhett Butler (same man) enlisted at the end of the war, but fought for the South none the less. So naturally I was torn. How I could I choose between the dashing men of the South but still accept the atrocities of the "S" word. Eeeek. So I did what I do as always. I made a list of why Confederates suck, and why Yankees suck.

Enjoy.

Confederates:
1. It's the South.
2. Slavery.
3. The cute Southern accent, its not so cute anymore.
4. They threw a monster hissy fit because they didn't get their way, and they fucking seceded. Wah.
5. The men don't actually look like Leslie Hamilton/Ashley Wilkes and Clark Gable/Rhett Butler, not at all.
6. Gone with the Wind was fiction, Margaret Mitchell lied to us ALL!
7. Jefferson Davis. End point.

Yankees:
1. They tried to kill Leslie Hamilton/Ashley Wilkes and Clark Gable/Rhett Butler.
2. They tried to destroy that beautiful Southern way of life, a world of cavaliers, gone with the wind. 
3. They raped and pillaged many of the unmanned homes of the South...those women were not the enemy. Well, I guess they were, sort of, but still. There was no uniform on them.
4. Lincoln was a liar whose last resort was the Emancipation Proclamation. He really did not care if slaves were free. He wasn't a fan of slavery, but rather, at best, ambivalent.

If I was asked which side was the better side, what little semblance of humanity I have left inside of me would always say the North. Slavery was deplorable, an institution that remains alive in the world today. It's disgusting and barbaric.

On a lighter note, I always wanted to be the Mexican Scarlett O'Hara.

Ode to Canelo v. Mayweather.

September, you are much too far for me.
I long to see those heavy arms as they smash in to the face of the one I loath.
"Hit him, kill him", I yell as my hero of the flat screen lunges towards the king of pomp and arrogance. The dip splattered across my chin, a chip left crushed among the sea of unwashed rug.
The pre-fights, oh how they drag on. Those men who dare to call themselves fighters, mere pansies tap dancing in the ring.
Come to me September 14, come to me as I host an early Mexican Independence day party.
Come to me as I eagerly watch that beautiful Guadalajaran beat the arrogance out of that dick whose father etched his name in boxing history.

I will wait for you. I will read on you. I will watch you.

Because its Monday

After an unintentional hiatus, I decided to come back on to the keyboard and type something that had nothing to do with Immigration Law. So here I am.
After this unintentional hiatus, I have come to appreciate my blog, my rough and unedited writing, and to toot my own horn.

While I was gone, I received the news that someone I love is dying faster than I would want them to go. It's a certainty that we will die, but the time frame is what I hate. This dwelling on time forced me to dwell on this word we use, "love".
I had a grandmother that died almost three years ago. It was sad, a lot of people cried. But in an effort to maintain transparency, I only cried because she was my father's mother. Yes, in the last years of her life I had gotten to know this woman through and through, more so than when she was virilent. But it was not until she was close to the end that she seemed to care on who I was and whether or not I came to see her. It was nice to see her so humbled, and in turn, creating an emphatic and humbling experience within me. But the day she died, it was not sadness for me or for my loss, but a sadness for my father who's complex relationship with his own mother has yet to be unearthed. I often wondered if he was sad, regretful, angry? But I have never dared to ask him. And it was for those reasons that I was sad, that I cried. Not for the love of a woman, but for the selfish answers that I will never have answered, and for the father who couldn't seem to bring himself to visit his own mother in life.

Now it is me that is legitimately crying. This will be the first "family" member that I have loved, and will now lose. Perhaps I have lost this person a long time ago. I had stopped my frequent visits to Texas years ago, and only recently resumed on a vacation a few months ago. A wave of guilt went over me. These were people I loved, that loved me. These were people that were excited to receive my call, and embraced me with the largest hugs I have ever felt. And now one of them is leaving sooner than I would want.
I got to visit with him one last time. He sat up at the table, proudly showed off his PICC Line, and told me how the next time I visited, he was going to kill and grill a goat in my honor. He still looked the same, just slightly slower and with a bit more white hairs. That is how I want to keep it.

You will have to excuse the "dear diary" entry. But its been quite some time and there is so much I want to say. I will have to cut it here. I can't seem to continue without shedding a tear.