Memoirs

i’ll update soon enough.

Compulsive Disorder’s Obsessive.  Har har har.

So I’m sitting here at my desktop kinda mad I just lost a pointless entry because I decided that maybe my fan on my laptop would shut up if it was sitting off for a few minutes.  Wrong.  I just turned it on because this chair is quite uncomfortable and I want to lay down again. Ugh I hate having to sign on and off over and over again. (Yeah I know it’s annoying my AIM friends too) Anyhow, that’s not what I was going to say.

I think my mother has completely lost her mind and is spreading it to anyone who hears her voice..myself included.. but we know what my insanity causes.. sometimes.  So I was walking out past the living room to go to the bathroom to wash my face and whatnot, and I hear my mom on the phone with someone whose karaoking.. while she’s on the phone. What the hell?!  Weird.

I told myself I was going to start to wear my necklace again and not take it off.  Why? Well cause I have a gazillion amulets and charms so why not.  Plus, since I broke the other clasp and am using a replacement off another necklace.. I can’t exactly take it off with ease. You know for a barely practicing Buddhist I have quite a collection. It’s kinda funny.  Oh and yeah, I’m still pissed about the one I “lost”. What can I do though?  Supposidly the one I’m wearing right now, is called a Salika bird.  Which is suppose to help out with convincing and generally pleasant conversations.  I dunno. It’s less religious looking than the others.. so yeah.  Accompanying it is the thing that my dad bought from his second to last trip to Laos.  Funny story, dad asked me, I asked mom, mom didn’t want it, so I got it. So yeah it’s a momento I guess you can say.  It’s not perfect but nothing that I have is..  but I make it work.

Oh yeah, so random.. but how about I having some missing friends.  They just disappeared from like existance. Odd.  No warning no nothing.  I guess that’s karma working on me.. I mean I haven’t really seen these people in some time or had a real in depth conversation, so it’s okay.. just weird.. that’s all.  Cause you know, I only act like an avoidant bitch when my buttons get pushed.. or not pushed at all, depending on the situation. *shrug*

Crap. I need to slow my thinking down. I have like two different sentences in my head but I forget what I said and end it with the other sentence..  hence my fobbylicious typing sometimes. You should know what I mean by now though. I’ve proof read a bunch of times but it still sounds funky to me. Sorry!

As most of you knew, I disappeared for the day on another quick multi-state journey to be the driver whilst my mother wanted to go to a temple to do stuff.  I went to middle of nowhere Alabama.  Like literally, I was probably about ~ 10 minutes away from the Mississippi border. So from the top of the South Carolina to the almost bottom of Alabama… One way took 8 hours. Of course getting back- 9 hours.  But I’ll discuss that at the end because I want to go in chronological order as how events occurred.

Just like the last time I had to do a religious weekend quick trip with my mother to a location I have never been to, we leave at while it’s still dark out. This time was no exception.  It was 3:30 am.  I went to sleep at around 2 am. I tried. I just couldn’t.  So anyways, set the GPS and head down Interstate 85. The trip down was pretty mundane as my mom was sleeping nearly the entire way down thankfully except waking up a few times when the roads got bumpy or she’d feel me slowing down.

Somewhere around upper Alabama I have to stop and get gas. Well I figured maybe an exit that has a casino would have a somewhat modern gas station or something. Yeah I was wrong.  I pull in and it’s like run down, and real ghetto. I’m like seriously? It’s right off the highway.. this isn’t right.  So I’m a little scared. I want to turn back cause I see these people looking at the car. Uhhhh…  I see my mom walking out of the doors and I hurry up and pump the gas. I want to get out of there! My mom goes around back to use the restroom.. ewww.. I wanted to tell her to wait, but I didn’t want to scream out and make a scene. Besides she said she couldn’t hold it in any longer for the next rest stop.  Which by the way I don’t get why that state’s exits were so far and few in between each other.  Anyways, finally get to a rest stop and I have to wait for Toukta’s car to catch up and we take a food break. (Toukta is the daughter of my mom’s friend who lives in Spartanburg, SC who volunteered to go with her parents because she wanted to drive. In contrast with me who got stuck going because her mom didn’t have anyone to go with her and drive if she got tired.) After the rest stop, she got a head start because my mom wanted to plug in the radar detector so I say maybe a 5 minute lead?  That’s when the “fun” occurred. Corolla vs Civic.  For a while I was behind because as soon I was close to passing her, my mom would say slow down you’re going too fast.  Boo!  But oddly enough, when we’re about to get close to the temple she had to get gas, which meant I actually got to the temple first. :)  It was  hotter than balls down there.  I open the door, stand there for a minute and I’m already sweating. We finally go inside and as usual gotta help out with the money tree. Nipping the bills together in rows so they can be placed on the tree.  I nipped myself with a pin also in the process.  In older people fashion when they said we’d go look at hotels to stay in they said: “Jaak noi” which translated means, in a little bit.  Yeahhhhhhhhhhhh I think we were there for about another hour or so.

We finally get to going and we couldn’t decide where to go.. so randomly we just picked a  hotel, but they had a smoking room only. Next!  The next one which was across the highway was a little more expensive but our safety was a little bit reassured so they chose that one, plus they had to hurry up and get back to the temple.

Toukta and I were trying to research any civilization and we found stuff, nearly an hour away.  We kept finding links to this place called Orange Beach.. yeah there probably was a beach 20 miles away south of Grand Bay but it was probably in uninhabited Alabama.  As soon as the parents left, we just devised a plan to drive around since basically any direction we go in, we’re not going to see anything fun for a while.  At one point we thought about going into Pensacola, Florida cause it was about an hour and half or so away.. but then we spotted a shopping center and the exit for the route to Orange Beach.  Originally we thought well going to Orange Beach would have been a good idea since there’s bound to be tons of activities plus a beach right?  WRONG.  As soon as we get there, downpour.

Then when we’re going to come back to the shopping center, her dad calls her to bring the camera back. So hopes were dashed. Plus I had to cross the Bay to get back which took a while. Get there and a ceremony starts and we’re like crap how are we going to walk out now.. it’s kinda rude to just get up and leave. So we’re stuck there for around 30 minutes when we handed off the camera and left while everyone was doing the 8 precepts because regardless we wouldn’t have been able to participate in that part.  Those were for the honorary followers in white.

Side note: Being Buddhist and being a female is hard.  You can’t touch the monks, whenever a monk is around you have to bow down or lower your head. Not to mention sitting down always have the legs fall asleep due to no circulation.  So taking pictures nearly impossible if you’re any sort of follower as a chick.  That’s why all my pictures are from sitting down level.. I couldn’t just stand up and move around to take pictures at any old angle.

Back to what I was saying.  At this point, it’s 8:30pm and I’m starving. We go back to the hotel to see what we can find. Sushi came to mind because well, we are near the shrimping area so they are bound to have something. Unfortunately by the time we got to figuring out what we wanted the restaurant we chose would have been closed. So we decided on KFC. Somehow, the area the place was located was surrounded by plenty of retail centers.. such a disappointment since everything was closed then.  I pull in to park and I accidentally scrapped my under bumper on the barrier. Walk in, take the order and I swear it took forever for them to do it. Even then they ran out of what I asked for so they threw in the other flavors of chicken that they had to make it 12. Ugh.

We get back, thinking maybe we’ll search out for a WalMart or something cause we ended up needing bowls and spoons but the internet wasn’t working and in the lobby the computers were all being used. My Garmin wasn’t working inside the room and I was lazy to walk out of the room for the millionth and one time. We just ended up watching TV for a while and talking until we played the game of “you should.. you know you want to” when we had nothing to do or watch.

Sleeping was the next agenda. Since we both were going to drive back.. I had the most difficult sleeping at first. Then as I got comfy and was this close to sleeping, my phone rings. Finally but crap! I answered it anyway. Seeing as the person I was talking to was on Eastern time and I was on Central and they had to go to work within a few hours.. bleh. It was nice to hear from them. Made sleeping..er napping a hell of a lot easier! After I got off the phone, I was out until 5am-ish. That had to be my body working on Eastern time.. I rolled around and then said screw it and took a shower at 6am.

No sooner that I hopped out of the shower did the parental units show back up.  Of course, I can’t go back to sleep now.  Having my mother right besides me snoring and hogging all of the covers.. yeah no. So I stayed up and watched F1 racing on SPEED and a little Food Network. So I was the only one awake at 7am in the morning in the hotel room while everyone else is snoring and passed out. Finally at 8:45am everyone starts to get up. Freaking figures that once SPEED starts their RaceDay coverage on Pocono, I have to leave. No fair! Get to the temple it’s packed!  Chaos really.. that’s all I could say about that.  Between the Alms offering fiasco,  clambering in line for food, the honored guests wanted to show off some dancers and have a little blessing ceremony and the fact that the water blessing was going to happen who knows when, left the temple at 2pm I think? Driving back I got a Monster… the travel back took some time because I had to pee from drinking so much water to keep hydrated. So Toukta and her family ended up like 30 minutes in front of us.

It rained once or twice in Alabama but it was manageable. Got into lower Georgia and first there was an accident, had to stop and get gas and a bottled Frappachino (and seeing my car hit 40,000 miles on it), in Southside Atlanta / Fulton County the sky went nuts and completely emptied itself onto the highway. The entire drive through Atlanta was slow, wet, and ridiculous I was holding my breath the entire time it seemed. I was so glad I didn’t have a CAI at that point.  Got to Northside Atlanta / Gwinnett County and it stopped. Was going to stop by International Village for some Vietnamese food but…. it was already too late! Pissed me off.  To make matters worse, it rained harder and for who knows how many miles after that…  Like Commerce had heavy storming too.  I was only going 30-40 mph on the highway. What should have taken me 30 minutes to get from Commerce to the bottom South Carolina border took me an hour.

As soon as I took another quick pee break, it was smooth sailing all the way back pretty much. 2 hours :)  Except when my mom’s phone rang non stop.   Got back here at 11, on the dot.  I wanted to just lay down but my mom made me unpack stuff and eat. GRR. Then this morning she woke me up to shower and eat again.. I could and actually still can barely move without something being sore.  I specifically told her don’t bother me tomorrow. I knew that wasn’t going to happen but it was worth a shot.  Oh well. 2 bowls of Pho and I didn’t feel better.. crazy huh?  I think my body hates me today.  I was sleepyish all day like if I closed my eyes I’d be out but otherwise I’d be awake or hungry even if I just ate. I hope I get back to my old self soon.  I hate feeling like poo.

Driver lag blows!

P.S. I think I forgot something but I can’t remember what. Figures.

Edit: Here’s an article about the temple I went to. This article was published in May.. when the building got done but before the head monk went to Thailand to help out the monk that was staying at the temple my mom goes to.

http://blog.al.com/living-press-register/2010/05/triumph_over_trouble_grand_bay.html