Not So Ready Anymore

I chose the name ReadyRachel because I was ready.  I was ready to go on my trip.  I was ready to see the world.  Once I was in a hostel in Germany and a boy came in with a knife and a bucket of warm water.  “what are you doing?” I asked. “I have an ingrown toenail” he said, “and I need to cut it out”

“Well here, I have some nail scissors and antiseptic if you want” I said, considering he has just lukewarm water and a Swiss army knife.  “yeah, that would be great” he said.  So I brought him antiseptic and nail scissors and a Band-Aid.  “you have a whole medical kit in there!” he exclaimed.  Like a Boy Scout, I was prepared.

Throughout my trip I gave out aspirin and directions and moral support.  Backpackers create a strange community. I’m not friends with all of them, I couldn’t be, but we are there for each other.  Every person you meet becomes the person you need to meet at that time.  When my tummy was getting butterflies from thinking about boys too much the next girl I met was my best friend who I had known forever and could give me advice.  When I didn’t know where I was going next someone would have just been somewhere great, we all have stories.  If I showed up in a Chiang Mai and didn’t know anyone I could meet Sara who I stayed with for a week, I could take a cooking course because she was taking one, I could go to Cambodia because she was there.  We were roommates for 5 days but looking back it feels like we traveled forever.  She’s not the only one. Time flows strange sometimes.

The more I was ready for, the more happened.  I was ready for ingrown toes in Europe, I was ready for cold and rain, I was ready to sleep in a hostel or a train.  I was ready to rock climb in Asia, I was ready to eat all animals, I was ready to sleep on a bus, or a bus platform, to pay $9 for a ride that could be 8 hour or could be 18. I was ready to talk with anyone, I was ready to take scary boats with unclear destinations and I was ready to befriend almost anyone.

I don’t think that one can stay ready forever though.  I don’t think that one should.  A few weeks ago I was hanging out with some friends when one of them got a bloody finger.  “does anyone have a band-aid?” he asked.  I looked in my purse, but I did not.  For 9 months I had always had a band-aid.  I was no longer ready.

So what’s the point?  I don’t know where this blog is going.  But until I figure it out, I’ve started a new photo based blog, a blatant rip-off of a girl I went to school with who has a wonderful blog of life and domesticity, which is what I am ready for now.  So check out RetinalRachel which may keep up to date on what I am doing, or at least seeing.  And I hope next time I get a cut on my finger there will be a ReadyPerson there with a band aid, because I don’t think it’s me anymore.

The Hemp Temp part II

On Monday I told my boss that I was accepted to a summer study program in Wales (not exactly true, but for $450 I could attend the program) and am therefore moving to Wales - next week. She got very excited. "I'm from Wales!" she said, "well my family is!"

Then she proceeded to tell me about Wales. And this is what she said:

Welsh is a great language, it is related to aboriginal languages spoken in Australia and some native American languages as well. It uses many clicks and hisses and is tonal. In the north of Wales there is a town called Rhyl, which is the only beach in all of Wales. There is a carnival there, and it is the only carnival in all of England & Wales. There is a town called Folkstown in England which is Latin for "the town of the people" and it is where democracy was invented in 1066.

"wow!" I said "let me get my notebook so I can write some of this down!" because I didn't want to forget a thing. In case you are wondering, nothing there is correct, except there is a town called Rhyl in Wales.

Otherwise working for her has been surreal beyond belief. Every day she tells me the same stories, about her boyfriend who was a liar and a fraud, the accountant who tried to steal her business, that she has ADD and ADHD and PTSD, about how she is famous and people steal her mail and listen in on her phone lines and send spies into her house.

Yesterday she lost the keys to her rental car. Today she still hadn't found them, so she had me drive her to the dog groomer to take in her dog, then drove her back later to pick up the dog.

I am working on her filing. She has files for bills. I file the bills. Then I find other things - I found a newspaper article she had printed. "Where do you want this?" I asked, "under N for Newspaper" she said. I create a new file for everything, if I find a pizza coupon sometimes I file it under C for coupon and sometimes P for Pizza. Taxes go under T for Taxes and the letter from Sears telling her that her fridge had been recalled went under R for Refrigerator.

Today she told me about one time when she hired someone to do her filing and they made organized files but when she opened them later it turned out that they had just put blank sheets of paper in a filing cabinet. We couldn't find two boxes of receipts so she told me her old book keeper probably stole them and is holding them ransom, "but it's okay" she said "Because I'm sort of dating his brother so we can get them back, I'll file with the police"

The only reason I feel comfortable working here is with the knowledge that I'll be far far FAR away should she ever decide I was actually a government agent or a thief or a thieving government agent or an alien that feeds on tax forms. It could happen - in her world.

Tioman Vacation

My Friends Raj and Gayatri and I headed to Tioman Island in Malaysia over Easter. Tioman was fantastic and delicious. Here are pictures:

On the boat to Tioman Raj met some Germans named Anders and Greggors (or something). As we left the boat they said they would meet us at our hotel lobby for 9 for drinks. Instead we decided to get some fish and didn't return untill nearly 11. In the morning we found the following note left for us outside our door (by the hotel staff, not the Germans who did not know where we were staying)
gregor & andreas

We chose to eat fish again the next night rather than take them up on their generous offer. Nice try, boys.

Factually Correct, but Awkward none-the-less

I got called for jury duty in DC. Unfortunately I will not be there, because I do not live there. I called to tell them this.

"You have to prove that you don't live in dc" said the county clerk phone operator

"But you can't prove a negative" I stated

There was silence. She asked if I wanted to defer. I said yes. In 90 days I might have a better answer.

the Hemp Temp.

Yesterday was my first day on my first assignment with my first temp agency.   My first assignment was a proper welcome back to California – I was working for the Narin Alliance for Nedical Narijuana [name has been changed to avoid googlesearch and/or breech of confidentiality].  I assumed it was some sort of lobbyist group. I assumed wrong

It was a marijuana dispensary. 

The hours were 10am to 5pm. I arrived at 10 to a room with plants and bags and scales.  “my name is Rachel and I’m the temp from Perfect Timing” I said. “huh?” said the guy behind the counter.  A confusing few minutes later it became clear they did not know I was coming, the owner wasn’t in, and that usually temps go to the woman’s home, but they couldn’t reach her so they weren’t sure where to send me.

A few awkward minutes later I was sent to the owner’s house.  My first task was organizing her desk.  Her desk had papers at least a foot high, everywhere.  I moved them out to the living room and sorted them into piles.  Every pile that I sorted had a similar makeup: bill, bill, concert ticket, reggae poster, letter, bag of marijuana, picture of musician, catalogue from smoke shop.  I made the following piles: Bills, notes (scraps of paper she had written on), contacts (business cards etc), marijuana. 

The first project she tackled was bills.  I gave her a stack of bills, she sat next to the computer and started to do bill pay.  A few minutes later she got distracted, and when I came back she had taken my pile of ‘contacts’ and put it on top of the bills.  She then handed me the whole pile and asked me to sort it.

This is how it went, for 6.5 hours.  She has (so she told me) ADD and ADHD and PTSD and so she smokes all day, I noticed no marked difference.  At one point she was trying to do QuickBooks and getting very agitated, I was watching her try to do QuickBooks and getting very agitated. Finally she left to get high, and I was able to extract data into a nice spreadsheet, and we both felt a lot better.

When my sister was 15 she had to do community service, she volunteered at PETA.  They made her watch videos of animals being slaughtered until she decided to be a vegetarian.  Working as a temp here is the anti-drug equivalent to that program.

Yo Quiero Taco Bell!

In case you were curious, I did get my Taco Bell fix. My parents, being the best parents ever, came to pick me up at the airport. I breezed through security even though my arrival card had the following written in the 'visiting countries' section: "England, Spain, Laos, China, Cambodia, Hungary, and more." I did not even get my passport stamped, which made me sad because I thought I would get an America stamp. Zachary had an America stamp in his passport. he also gets searched fully every time he returns to the country. But he chooses to have dreadlocks and I choose to look like the kind of person one should want in their country so, well, that's how it works.

Anyways, the taco bell. I ordered my 2 bean burritos and a small soda, which now costs almost $3.50, and enjoyed them greatly. Things that I enjoyed about them include: room temperature mild sauce (2.5 packets per burrito), free refills on the soda, ice in my drink!

Adjusting home is not easy, and I'm still having moments of strangeness and moments of sheer excitement. For instance, I went to the store to buy dinner food and while there I stopped at the bagel display. "I missed you so much" I muttered at the fresh everything bagels. "what?" said the woman I didn't notice next to me. "nothing" i said. There is so much of everything in the store, so many different kinds of ketchup and a whole isle of pasta sauce. I spent 20 minutes looking at the cracker section just because there were so many different types of crackers! I read some food labels just because I could - everything is in English!

Yesterday I went to the library. I've decided I want to pretend to be a tourist in California so I checked out a Lonely Planet guide to my own state. Did you know there is a place called 'Cardiff by the Sea'? It is down by Solana Beach! Also, the real Cardiff is by the sea too, so maybe someone should look into that. But I'll be checking out Cardiff by the Sea on the 17th, and the other Cardiff also by the sea on the 27th, so I'll be able to properly compare and contrast then...

My Accidntel Deth*

While home I decided to become better friends with Scout – my family’s dog.  Scout and I have never really gotten along, for a number of reasons.  I was always opposed to my family getting a dog, growing up I was much more of a cat person and my family always had 2 cats.  When I was 15 I went on a year-long exchange program, and while I was gone my parents took the opportunity to get a dog.  I could have dealt with the dog, and their decision to wait until i left and instantly replace me with a four footed friend, except for one thing.  Before I left there was a hot tub outside.  When I came back there was no not tub, just a fenced in area for the dog.  This was unacceptable.

When I went away to college a year later my parents semi-adopted my pseudo-sister who lived with them for four years.  And now that I’ve returned from my travels I’ve met Niko, the Finish Exchange student they took in less than a month after I left the country.  I guess I’ve come to the realization that my parents collect strays, and I better learn how to get along with them.  So I started with Scout.

Scout and I went for a walk on horse hill, a hill just up the street that is home to (surprise!) some horses. Scout likes horse hill because it has horse poop and Scout likes to roll in poop.  I like horse hill because it reminds me of when I read lord of the rings and wanted to pretend to run away but never made it up the hill because hills are a lot of work.  At any rate, I managed to get lost and climb through a barbed wire fence and ended up in back of a school for deranged children (not sure what the school is really for, but I went to the good kids school next door and we always thought it was for deranged children) before finding the street again.  I took Scout back to the house, cleaned her, and we started our new friendship.

Our new friendship lasted about 20 minutes, until i touched my neck and found something unusual, which was some sort of bug attached to me.  Behaving more like a fifteen year old than a twenty four year old, I called my parents and shrieked into the phone, then blamed the dog.  After all,  if I hadn’t walked scout I wouldn't have gone on Horse Hill and wouldn’t have gotten bit by a tick and now be dying of Lyme Disease or total grossness.

No one was home to examine the tick and let me know if it really was a tick – I’ve never actually seen a tick before – so I did what any normal person would do.  I put it in a Tupperware, attached a note, and left it on the kitchen counter.  It turns out it was a tick.  as I yelled incoherently on the phone to my mom, “I traveled through Asia for 3 months and this is soooo much more disgusting than *anything* I encountered out there!!!”  Next time I’m walking Scout at somewhere dead and full of concrete.  Gross!

 *Intentional spelling error.