si, se puede

Seven things I've done that you probably haven't:

1) Traveled alone in the interior of Mexico for eight months.

2) During rush hour, spun 180 degrees on North Central Expressway in Dallas and lived to tell about it.

Not only did I not get hit or hit anyone but noone hit anything else attempting to avoid me. By the way, this road is so infamously congested during rush hour that it earned a spot on the Atari game Frogger.

3) Lied to an immigration officer about the location of my visa and got away with it.

At two in the morning, the Transportes Americanos bus I was dozing on stopped at the Mexican immigration checkpoint on its way to the US. The lights went up and the men in uniform sauntered down the aisle with big black rifles over their shoulders, examining each person's papers. When one guy got to me, I looked as surprised as I could possibly manage and explained sheepishly that my visa was in my backpack in the luggage racks under the bus. When in fact it was godonlyknowswhere, as I had discovered when packing my bags the night before. He grunted at me to bring it with me next time and moved on.

Can you imagine getting away with that in the US?

4) Left a different visa on a bus in a bag full of trash and somehow convinced the ticket agent to get his colleagues at the next town over to hunt it down and return it to me.

For details, see http://mcbmx.diaryland.com/031223_21.html

5) Accidentally spent an evening in a Mexican crack house.

Explaining this requires its own post. Someday ...

6) Had Rachel Hunter (yes, that Rachel Hunter) tell me that we were "alot alike."

I was a production assistant on the movie Pendulum and one of my duties involved bringing her tea every morning. I had a reputation as a space cadet, hence the comment.

7) Had my purse stolen from a state park outside Sao Paulo, Brazil and returned, intact, less than a month later.

I stupidly left the purse on the front seat of my ex-brother in law's car in the parking lot of said state park under the faulty assumption that people at state parks don't steal things. After tramping through rainforest, diving into crystal lakes, and all that other Brazilian state park jazz, we returned to discover the window busted out and my purse gone. A few weeks after returning to Austin, I got a call from IBM security who explained to me that someone had found my purse on the streets of Rio de Janiero (a good long distance from Sao Paulo, mind you), and found my old IBM ID card inside. So they brought it to the IBM office in Rio who mailed it to Austin and could I please come pick up right away. They also wanted to know why I hadn't told them about the stolen purse to which I answered "I haven't worked for you in like six months."

8) Gave birth to my little buddy.

zen imbecile / child = mombecile

Boy. 

You spend years working on your shit. Your insecurities, anxieties, emnities, and all the other ities you've carried around since childhood. You read and meditate. Take lots of deep breaths. Think you've got 'em licked.

And then you have a kid and they all come flooding back to you as if your ego were pregnant and its water just broke ... all over your psyche. 

sigh (the good kind)

Summer in Texas can crush your soul like a steamroller, but on the first lovely morning of autumn, it springs back to full form and then some.