Confession

I'm not catholic so I don't go to confession...I'm a lapsed baptist, but really not much of anything these days which is becoming very uncomfortable in the Bible Belt as I've been asked about our 'church family' by everyone and I mean everyone. I had a 5 minute uncomfortable conversion experience when I tried to buy a night stand off craig's list. Somehow explaining the 'Church of Highland Fling II' might not go over so well in these parts...but I digress. I'm not catholic or religious but I've got a few things to fess up to or get off my chest.

We've been back in the States over a month now and I can't seem to settle in. I love my country but not sure I like living in it.

I hate K-mart I think it's run by rednecks and organized by the president of the trailer park association. It's disorganized and dusty (actually sounds a little like my house) and I can never find anything. I should love it for the people watching opportunities alone, but I hate it and I make no apologies.

I do however love Wal-mart as it has the same clientele but a tad bit smarter employee. I must look like a K-mart shopper though as yesterday when asking a Wal-mart employee where the face wash aisle was located she said , "cosmetics" and I said "thanks, where would that be" and she very slowly and deliberately said "that means make-up" and shook her head as if to say "go back to K-mart you ignoramus."

Other things I don't like about the South or the US in general are snotty stores. Today I had a job interview of sorts...which means I convinced the head of a department to meet with me, but she actually has no job to offer me. So, when this fake interview was lined up I scrambled to find a sitter. The fake interview then was switched to a new day but having asked the sitter to reorganize her entire schedule I figured I better not cancel.I used my two baby free hours to run a few errands and then wandered into one of those stores where everything is monogrammed. I'm southern. I like monogrammed things. I have a cheese platter a necklace and several bags with monograms so I've been into a few of these stores in my time, but I forgot what I dislike about them is the sales lady with the insincere perma smile and pearl earrings and the name dropping, social climbing clientele that these places attract. After my frosty greeting by pearl earrings I heard no less than seven times that  the lily pulitzer clad woman was there to pick up invitations for so and so, head of the junior league... and then I heard all about her fabulous condo in gulf shores. I couldn't help myself I just couldn't...I may have let it slip that we just moved back from the Caribbean and it was so hard to leave our "waterfront property..." While waterfront is not a stretch, the cement hot box with the gorgeous view that we lived in; I have to confess is not what I portrayed. Why I felt the need to compete with this woman I have no idea. I think maybe just because I found her so over the top annoying, but I should have just given her a steups (a brilliant Caribbean sucking sound that means piss off) and moved on.

Two of the Seventeen we saw

While I am confessing I also had no intention of buying monogrammed stationary for Charlie. With no job paying the sitter was going to be tight so the reason I didn't buy the overpriced stationary was not because "you don't have anything with giraffe's? she's loved giraffe's since she saw 17 on safari. " It is more because we have about 17 dollars in the checking account...

Speaking of jobs I am searching for one and I forgot how much I hate job searching. It's made worse by the fact I don't actually want one. Well I do, I want the money and I want something to do in addition to singing itsy bitsy spider several times a day but the thought of leaving my daughter causes me to break into a cold sweat and hot tears.

Last confession of the day is when visiting the anxiety inducing childcare facility last Friday I may have had a tiny hangover due to too many margaritas the night before.


Since I'm not Catholic there should be no penance. However, I've done mine. Watching a seven month old with a hangover was it.

Recycled

I posted this a while back but John made me take it down as he thought we might get kicked out of the country...now we are gone I'll post it again because my goal is to post more, however I am too lazy to come up with something new tonight. Maybe I should see if there are any openings in the immigration department...


Last week I had the pleasure of packing up Charlie and trekking up to the Botanical Gardens, which is a bit of a misnomer as its actually a badly planned concrete maze of hideously ugly government buildings without a flower in site. It is also the home of the always hospitable immigration officials. I have been dreading this trip since we landed on the island and the blank faced,money hungry immigration official at the airport granted Charlie and me a three month visa instead of the five month visa they gave John.

Last week our three months were up and it was time to pay the head blank faced official a visit. I can't really describe how nasty these people can be. They don't speak they really just bark in some sort of pigeon English, they won't look you in the eye, likely because they are on some level embarrassed by the abuse of their limited power, and they hide behind a beaten up metal door bearing a sign that says 'knock and wait." What the sign should really say is "don't bother knocking because we only open the door when we feel like it." On second thought it should just say "WAIT, we will open the door only after you've been sitting there clueless for hours and we've had our tea and made several long distance phone calls to the USA where our relatives are living illegally.  We will be prepared to harass, interrogate and abuse you only after your blood pressure has reached the boiling point and you are forced to speak in grunts through gritted teeth less you unleash your pent up aggression on us and we then will deny you an extension of your visa."

I was not looking forward to this experience and really could not bear the thought of doing it with a baby. I walked into to depressing govt. building A and saw the typical confusion. Bored and broken looking yachtys, students and peace corps workers were lounged all over the place. There was no line and the woman behind the glass counter was ignoring everyone. I filled out my forms and knocked on the scary door and a blank faced minion answered the door and, then the unthinkable happened. I thought to myself "is there a trace of a smile on this blank faced androids lips? Oh my goodness I think there is." I look at my daughter who is staring intently at probably the first emotionless human she has ever encountered.

Before I knew it we were whisked back to the woman in charge and this nasty, bitter, power hungry woman engaged in the most shocking piece of behavior I have ever encountered in an immigration office and started cooing at my daughter. I swear to you I almost dropped Charlie from the shock of some emotion coming from an immigration officer.

Now was the moment of truth. Would Charlie take after dad who has a long history of abusing public "servants." There was an incident at the Zambian border a few years back which involved threats of "languishing in the cell." Or, would she take after her mother who is so petrified of these people I bribed them with tubes of Colgate and bottles of red wine during my stint in Zambia. Inwardly I am thinking please smile at this woman whatever you do do not give her your 1,000 yard stare. She is extending the olive branch. Please, please smile.

And my girl is her momma's girl. Big grins prevailed. The next thing I knew we were being stamped , approved and I was looking at pictures of this woman's children. Who lived, you got it, in the USA.

So after four years living abroad, countless tubes of Colgate dispensed and a layer of enamel missing from my gritted teeth, I have figured out the formula for cracking the toughest of immigration officials. A baby. Charlie and I set a new record. The whole process took 37 minutes.