Category Archives: guns

Traveling is eventful.

3 Replies

First: it was an a small adventure figuring out how to dispose of the expired car seat I was borrowing. Portland does not make it easy. They wanted us to drive over half an hour to a transfer station to pay like $28 to throw it in the garbage because they don’t recycle them. Instead we found a dumpster behind a hotel.

Then when we got to the airport I learned that Her Sweetness and I were not able to have our boarding passes printed for the whole trip. We got boarding passes to Hong Kong and then we got to cross our fingers everything would work out from there. That’s an anxiety producing situation for me. Holy cheese toast. But I tried to stay cool and calm and in the end it just meant an extra 15 minutes of processing in the airport. No big deal. China just has slightly different rules about traveling with a lap infant.

American Airlines website said they would only give us 1 meal on the flight. Instead they served 3 and we got to throw away a lot of food. That could be worse. But the AA flight was… not amazing. It felt budget and unfriendly and not very helpful. I have dreams about the kindness of Philippine Airlines. Such a lovely airline. I mean: AA expects you to go back and self serve on snacks and drinks instead of them coming by and offering them to you. But they also don’t want you out of your seats unless you MUST. So that’s not a fun situation for a 14 hour flight.

No more 14 hour flights in our future!

I liked the Hong Kong airport. The shops were top notch and folks were very patient and low key. That’s a relief after the US. It felt a little bit like the DMV only nicer? Like, people were just doing the thing and it’ll get done and you can wait… it’ll be fine…

The Bangkok airport was fine. Getting the taxi was fine. Then we got to our apartment. I looked 9,837 at the confirmation information I had and… no information about how I was to get into the apartment. So I started calling the host and sending her messages. This continued for an hour in the blistering heat. I had been awake for most of the previous 48 hours (If I got 6 hours of sleep added up in cat naps I’d be surprised) and I was not really feeling patient.

Eventually she woke up and asked why we didn’t call the guy who was waiting in the apartment. THE GUY YOU NEVER TOLD ME ABOUT AND YOU NEVER GAVE ME HIS NUMBER? THAT GUY?!?!?!

Then it turns out that the guy DIDN’T GIVE US A FUCKING FRONT DOOR KEY, JUST THE ELEVATOR PASS.

So that sucked. Noah was dispatched a few times to acquire food since we couldn’t all go. We ate. We rested. We bitched.

Eventually the lady had someone bring us a key and she gave me phone numbers for local people who can help with problems. I told her, “May I suggest that in the future you send an email 24 hours before check in with the name and phone number of the person a guest is supposed to meet?” She thought that was a good idea. Oy.

The apartment came stocked with 1/4 of a roll of toilet paper. Good thing there is a convenience store down stairs. But we are back in the land of bidets so my hemorrhoids are feeling better than they have in months.

Apparently my time in Kuala Lumpur was not real indicative of Malaysia in general because I didn’t see almost any garbage. Here in Bangkok I feel like garbage is raining down on us and flooding the pathways. So. Much. Trash.

Folks in Fukuoka would have a heart attack. Then get up from their hospital bed to start cleaning.

God damn different Asian countries are different. I am such an ignorant fucker. I didn’t realize it would be quite this dramatic.

When you drive into the city from the airport there are large signs telling you that speaking ill of the king will result in jail time. Also: being disrespectful of the Buddha or getting a tattoo of his image will result in jail time. They don’t fuck around.

Fair enough.

I come from a crazy ass country where every man, woman, and child in Texas owns 6+ guns and that’s not including the rest of the fucked up states. We never get to judge another country negatively for having…. views.

The food. *Fall over drooling* the fooooooooooooooooooooooooood. We are a 5 minute walk from a night market that serves absolutely amazing food. I could live happily forever on the variety of offerings they have. Middle Child and I had different types of tasty noodles in soup. Noah and Eldest Child had rice dishes from a different stall. Her Sweetness ate off of everyone’s plate until she realized how spicy Noah’s food was. Ha. We had fun drinks. They weren’t as sugary as we are used to from home but they were intensely fatty in a way the US doesn’t favor and frankly it tasted way better. MC had a “unicorn” which was sugar, condensed milk, two kinds of coloring, and flavors of I don’t know exactly what sort. Then there were a bunch of candies shoved into the top with sprinkles. I had a more plain caramel drink. It wasn’t a lot of caramel. But it was super good? Noah and EC had Thai iced teas with boba. Mmmmm.

Our lunch at a perfectly decent restaurant was around 900 baht. Our fabulous, wonderful, over the top good dinner at the night market was about 350 baht. Then this morning our breakfast at the grocery store cost around 600 baht just for the food (we got other staples and paid more like 1400 baht overall). 1 baht = .033 US So the lunch was around $30, the dinner was around $11 and breakfast + staples was around $45.

The night market is just so gosh darn cheap.

The traffic pattern is a bit intimidating to us: it is reminiscent of Kuala Lumpur but slightly less terrifying? Fewer motorcycles running up on sidewalks to go around cars. Here the motorcycles mostly only go up on the sidewalk if they are parking or dropping off passengers?

I am finding it fascinating that Her Sweetness is Not. Fucking. Interested. in being popular with all the local folks who would love to pick her up and chatter at her about how cute she is. She is getting a very effective “Fuck off” face. Good for her.

Sleep. Oy sleep. It’s all over the place. None of us are sleeping well. The AC helps, but it is still uncomfortable and jet lag is a bitch. Resetting a babies sleep pattern is not the same as an adult just “toughing it out”. You can’t do that to her. She melts down. She starts wandering back and forth screaming about all the things she wants but she doesn’t really want because the second she has it she is screaming about something else she wants. Sleep is the only remedy. She was super upset when Noah decided to stay downstairs and work in the common area so we don’t all have to be quiet. She wants her Bigs with her all. the. time.

Once we got through the fuss, I quite like this apartment. It is small but well laid out. The couch is awesome (it is pretty rad that I wanted to buy this couch from Ikea for our new house, I made everyone go on a pilgrimage to Ikea to sit on it in Portland. Now that we have used it for a few days everyone is fully on board with this being an awesome couch for us. This one.) and we are glad to have it here. The bed is pretty comfy. I am not sure when I became such an intense devotee of firm mattresses, but I am. Firm is great.

I am tapping my fingers waiting until Noah is done with work for the day. There are 5 or 6 Thai massage places within a 10 minute walk. Hell yeah. They all cost 300 baht or less. So… less than $10/hour. Can I have like 11 hours straight?

I had my last dose of pot on the plane. My intention (If I put this in writing, maybe I will stick with it) is to not buy alcohol at all until I genuinely feel like I have a small surplus of money in the food budget and that could not happen until October or November. I’m almost out of Ativan and I don’t intend to get more.

I’m about to be cold turkey on all of my drug dependencies.

Did I mention I plan to run a lot in Scotland? Like, when I am having feelings and I want to reach for a chemical crutch… go run instead.

I am going to learn how to be a healthy role model if it fucking kills me. I have made a tremendous amount of progress but I am not where I am going to get. Tea is going to be my big vice and I need to reduce how much sugar I put in it. (Jenny’s eyes got So Big when she watched me sugar my tea… yeah… I use a lot.) I should probably buy cubes and I get one per cup.

I am not going to buy soda again to have in the house until I also buy whiskey because I like drinking them together. Or maybe I will learn to drink my whiskey neat. We’ll see. One way or another I don’t plan to have the money to buy whiskey often enough to be a big influence on my life. Luckily I live with someone who thinks that alcohol should be served in roughly 1/2 a shot glass portions.

Yesterday was our anniversary. 13 years of marriage. I am glad we have had these adventures together. I am even more glad we are about to settle down for the foreseeable future. I want to be chilly. I want to exercise. I want to stop fucking packing.

Had a chat with EC about how much it costs to maintain cats. She wants to have two. She started panicking when she heard how much Puff used to cost me. And she wants two. We negotiated that she can do 5 hours a week of babysitting to pay for her cats. Seems like a good trade to me. We are starting with mothers helper work (she is NOT responsible for MC) and we will go from there.

It is neat hearing her strategize how she wants to do her room. She is highly cognizant of how expensive her plans are (she wants a custom built loft bed that looks like a treehouse) and she is trying to figure out which parts she can do, which parts she wants to ask me to help with, and which parts she will need to have the £ to pay someone else to help her. I feel so proud of her. Her planning skills are still nascent but she’s going to be fucking bad ass as an adult. She thinks things through. I mean, she’s still impulsive as fuck because she has ADHD like whoa but she can also plan. It’s amazing.

MC is more focused on the school part of moving. Setting up a room is not really on the radar yet. School supplies, uniforms, how to make friends, how to write in cursive… kiddo really can’t move past those details and that’s totally ok.

Her Sweetness is learning words at a blistering rate. She is going to be closer th ECs curve with talking than MCs. Doesn’t matter, they are all fine and normal and doing what they ought to be doing. But holy cheese she says a lot. People keep asking me if she is 3 or 4 based on her size and talking. Nope. 18 months. And she’s my smallest baby. Cue the bug eyes.

Folks have asked me if I am pregnant more than once. I laugh it off and tell them I am just fat. If I got upset I think the interaction would be tense but instead we all have a good laugh and move on about our day without strife. I am trying so hard not to let other peoples judgments of me impact how I view myself.

I am pretty fat at this point. I’m riding the 200 lb line and on my frame… that’s not small. The lightweight pants I have that zip off into shorts are so tight they are really uncomfortable. No bueno. My dresses barely fit. I am not going to fit into my flannel lined jeans unless I lose some weight.

It’ll be ok. My body does this. I bounce between the 150’s and the low 200’s. I have done this over and over and over since I was 16. This is my range. It is all normal for me.

I hope I can go to bed early tonight and I hope I actually sleep through. I sure could use it.

We go home in six days.

Our house is paid for and legally ours. Miss Jenny will be picking the keys up this week for us. I am elated. I feel really glad that she gets to be the first one to take possession of our house for us. I feel so welcomed. I feel so wanted. She is being super awesome about telling us to go ahead and start ordering things to her house and we will get it over to my place lickity split once we are there. She wants us to feel comfortable and happy.

I know there will be days we struggle and feel home sick because that is part of the journey of change. But I want this change with my whole being. My entire family wants to be there for a wide variety of reasons. I have great faith we will figure this out.

We figure a lot of things out. We are pretty cool like that.

4 hours of sleep feels awful

Leave a reply

I didn’t sleep last night and as a result I feel awful today. I feel sick. I mean, I did also puke night before last. I feel bad. I feel like I want to freak out and scream and rage and throw things and break things and…

Ugh. I’m not doing that. I’m carping to Noah about how cranky I feel. I’m not taking it out on the kids. I just feel bad and I feel like I can’t get away from it because it is my whole body. I can’t tell how much of it is related to leaving California and all of my feelings there. I did not see any family members. I didn’t even see many friends. Just a couple. We saw a whole bunch of neighbors and people in the community we know–that part was nice. We know a lot of business owners and they will miss us. We are good customers.

But my mother. My nephew. My niece. Auntie. I don’t even know how to wrap my mind around the feelings I’m having.

I just know that in 18 days I will arrive at my home far far far away and I will never have to worry about seeing them again. It’s over. My anxiety can plummet, I hope.

I love my extended family. But I brought my children into the world and it is my responsibility to protect them from being abused.

I will run away. I will take my children with me. We will go somewhere new. Somewhere my children can go to school without fear of being shot in school.

The gun stuff is really getting to me. I have come to realize that several of the people I associate with probably have guns in their homes and I feel completely freaked out that I let my children go to their homes. I wish I hadn’t.

I don’t think I believe in “good people” with guns anymore. And that’s so dogmatic and absolute and a complete 180 from what I used to feel. I know people who have good reasons for guns. They have been stalked. Someone threatens their life.

But I don’t know. People deal with stuff like that in other places without having to have loosey goosey gun laws that result in more than 3,000 children dying from gun violence every year. Almost twice as many children die from being shot than die from cancer.

We choose this. We want to live in this system. We want these results. If we didn’t want this we would change our actions and we are absolutely unwilling to… which means we as a nation are totally ok with thousands of children dying every year so adults can play with their violent toys.

I feel sick. You want to feel super powerful. You want to feel like the “good guy/gal with the gun”. Only you are more likely to kill yourself or a kid than to ever effectively use the gun for protection.

Oh well.

I need to leave. I really do. This didn’t use to bother me the way it does now. But when I look at my children…

I can’t subject them to this.

On guns

1 Reply

I can’t remember the first time I saw a gun. I am pretty sure I can remember my first time shooting. My father took me out to the desert with my brothers. I was four or five. My brothers were five and eight years older than me. Old enough that I thought my brothers were basically already grown ups. I didn’t think of the as kids like me. When they told me to do stuff I had to jump or get hit–same as the grown ups.

I remember my father taking great care as he showed me how to line up the sight on the rifle. I remember the thrill of knocking cans over. I knocked the can off a rock from twenty feet away. It was like magic.

I don’t remember seeing a gun again until I was nine or ten. I can’t remember which. Even when I try to write my whole life out I don’t remember for sure when this happened. The next time I remember seeing a gun was when my father set a hand gun on the couch next to him before he made me suck his cock. When he was done he picked up the large, shiny revolver and he held it to my head. He asked me if I deserved to live. I shook and cried.

When I was sixteen the middle college program I was in made everyone do aptitude tests. Over and over I was told I should go into the military. I am well suited. I would always turn to the teacher and say, “I’d have to touch guns, right? Then–no.”

All of the gun sightings in the rest of my childhood were benign: through shop windows and the like. When I started dating Tom at eighteen there was a sticky issue. He sleeps with a loaded gun right next to his head. If I was going to be sleeping with a loaded gun less than three feet from my head I should probably know how to handle it safely.

When I think of Tom as my Daddy this is the kind of thing I remember. This is part of why I loved him so much. Tom didn’t entirely understand my gun issues. He knew “something bad happened”. Tom didn’t want to know my story. He actively discouraged me spilling all the details. But he took me to the shooting range. He helped me learn safe gun handling and firing. He taught me how to check to see if a gun is loaded. You never touch a gun unless you know for sure if it is loaded or not. My Daddy would make me practice safe handling methods until I was shaking with fear so hard I could no longer physically grasp anything. Then he would take me outside and hold me while I calmed down. Then he would bring me back inside and switch to rifles.

I do fine with rifles. I’m a good shot with a .22 rifle. Quite accurate. It’s the hand guns I can’t handle. It’s the hand guns that make me quake with fear and unable to think coherently or rationally. I believe that human beings have the right to live even if that means we must kill other animals and eat them. I’m ok with being up the food chain. Hunting makes sense to me. Rifles make sense to me.

Hand guns scare the ever-loving-shit out of me. In another year or so I am going to find a gun safety course for Shanna. Calli will have to wait a few years then she will do the same process. My kids will re-up every few years. Guns are tools. I want my children to understand and respect them. They don’t have a Daddy who will teach them. I will have to find a way. I thought Uncle A would do it. But he’s gone now. That happens.

Sometimes I feel daunted by the things I don’t know that I want my children to know. How can I teach them to move through the world without being paralyzed by fear? How can I teach them to be safe without also triggering them learning my ridiculous panic? I don’t know. So far the explanation is, “I know I’m over reacting to this but it’s not necessary. This is one of those places where my brain is being broken. Crying is not mandatory at this stage.”

I’m trying to get to the point where I believe in my gut that the point isn’t about whether you cry or not while you do things–the point is that you do them. I do. I do things over and over. I do things that are very hard for me. I don’t deserve a medal. I do deserve to keep living.

If I ever own a gun it is likely to be a big shot gun. I won’t buy ammunition. I’ll just buy it to practice cleaning about three months before my daughters start dating. I think it is really weird that I have any impulse to laugh and agree with this sort of behavior. Why do I think it is good to threaten teenage boys? Because in general my life experience tells me that boys will be nice and respectful towards a girl if they believe there will be extreme negative consequences for ill behavior. Otherwise they are abusive and terrible.

One of these days I’m going to have to have different life experiences so I can stop hating everyone in the whole world. I hear there are nice people out there. Somewhere.