A little detour

Recapping my previous post: I was jobless, homeless and hopelessly devoted to the idea of turning my life into an adventure.

Ok, done. But this doesn’t explain how I ended up in China 5 months after quitting my job. Let me elaborate. Without a working visa (sponsored by my company), I could no longer stay in Germany. This meant I had to seek the adventure elsewhere. So I did what any unemployed-slash-desperate person of any age (who does not yet qualify for social security) would do when life gets tough: I speed dialed my mom. And told her I was coming home.

"Mom? MOM! It's me"
"Honey! How are you? Are you well? When are you coming home?" (I think all mothers are trained to ask this exact same question when their daughters are working/living abroad)
"I'm good, still in one piece. I called to let you know that I'll be coming home soon."
"Oh how soon?" By this time, you can hear the excitement in her voice. Afterall, it has been a year since I last saw her.
"Uhhh..... soon as in this saturday soon! I'm already packed. Gosh Mom, I can't wait to see you. How are..."
"What? THIS saturday?.... Is everything okay with you? Are you sick? Did you get fired?"
Holy! You gotta hand it to Moms. You give them one second of hesitation and they know you're upto something.
"I'm fine! I did not get fired (Quitting is more like it but I really needed her to pick me up from the airport so I will tell her this later). Just homesick" Did I sound convincing enough? I could feel that Mom was ready to fire arrows of questions and I wouldn't be able to dodge them. Not even with the Atlantic Ocean between us.
"Well we'll talk later. Give me your flight information honey. This is great news! Should I tell Abby to come with me? Have you told her yet?" Abby is my best friend who is uber business oriented and successful. As much as I loved her, I feared her even more. More than my mom. So I needed to intoxicate her first before telling her how I quit my job. With no backups whatsoever.
And Mom rambled on for another 30 minutes about her last trip to Ventura and how Californians (at least the ones she met) are in constant fear that the earthquake was going to consume them all.

At this point, I have to tell you a bit about my mom. Simply because I love talking about her. Because she is the core of my universe.

For years, she deceived both my brother and me into thinking that she was a dead serious conservative. She certainly played the part, brilliantly if I may add, with her neutral colored outfits, pearl necklaces and God. The Roman Catholic kind. So my upbringing was something like a reality show when the original Carol Brady tries to raise two MTV worshipping kids of the 21st Century. With rules like:

No boyfriends until Colleage (ha!)
No makeup (I still say this is the sole reason why I was a band geek in High School)
3pm Curfews (.. oh wait, this came from Dad. He's much more evil)
Church every sunday. Baptism and Confirmation are Mandatory, not voluntary

So imagine my surprise when I accidentally found her first secret at the age of 13. I came home after school with a couple of friends to bake the cookies for the next day's fundraiser. While watching MTV, I turned the oven on and set it to 220 degrees to preheat it for 15 minutes. Couple of MVs later, I smelled something burning which was strange because the cookie dough were still resting on the kitchen table. I ran towards the oven, opened it and gallantly saved what was unexpectedly frying inside the oven. A pack of Virginia Slims. My friends came seconds later and gave me a puzzled look while I stood there grinning. Mom was busted.

To cut the long story short, I found all 5 of her secrets and confronted her before I graduated High School. She was shocked, stunned and embarrassed all at the same time. Mom confessed over brunch that she felt like she had to uphold an image of what a Perfect Mom should be like. Having her first born (me) at the age of 24, she didn't exactly have the time to prepare herself for the role. ('I did grow up in the 70s with super flared jeans, platforms, weed--i mean cigarettes--and Beatles you know. So I copied what everyone else was doing at the time and well, it just kind of stuck. Now it's like I'm an auto-pilot playing Mom all the time' to quote her exactly) And I sympathized with everything she said. My plans to unravel the evil queen became a bonding time between a mother and a daughter. She wanted both me and my brother to grow up in a stable environment (minus violence, drugs, sex) until we were old enough to venture out on our own to find trouble. Who could blame her? Behind all those rules was an insecure women, scared to death, that she might lose her most beloved treasure--her children. Mom loved us, enough to lock away her former self to keep us safe from harm. Towards the end of that brunch, I came out a better person. A more compassionate person because I realized there was more to a person (any person) than their facade. So you probably expected my mom to come out of her conservative closet after her heartfelt confession huh? Wrong. She stayed the same. She said something like, 'Conservative Mom is the only character I know how to play. I am type-casted. No one will ever accept me as something else. Like Meg Ryan. She really needs to stick to her romantic comedies.' Then she lit up her Virginia Slim. 'I guess conservative moms can smoke in public infront her daughter. Once. Don't think you can smoke young lady. It will fill up your lungs with all the poison in the world and eventually kill you in the worst possible way'. And just like that, she was back.

(To be contnued)

The unpredictable turtle

Do you know what I hate? Being umployed. And disguising the shame with phrases like "Oh, I'm a freelancer" or "I teach part time". I see tons of people blaming their recent financial crisis to The Economy but I think it's really the desire for a little excitement in life (plus a lack of motivation) that put me here: Sitting at a cafe, ordering one cappucino after another (sidenote: what IS the difference between cappucino, cafe latte and latte macchiato?!) pretending to look important while youtubing the most viewed clip or bombarding my best friend's email (Sorry hun!) with questions like "Sooooooooo anything new since.... an hour ago?" For awhile, I did have it good. The high paying career (as an expat in Germany), weekend getaways to Paris, Prague or Barcelona, latest Louis to go along with the black Hugo Boss dress. You know, like something out of Devil Ate My Prada (or whatever that movie was called with Anne Hathaway. Point being, I was too damn career focused and important to even see it). I was Miranda minus the white hair and the wrinkles. And honestly, I wasn't too unhappy. People like to tell you these feel good stories by saying happiness is worth more than money but come on. We live in an era where BUYING THINGS have the ability to give you a dose of endorphin to last a couple of hours. Rocking an outfit from Massimo Dutti was a new way to relieve stress (move aside binge eating, new sheriff has come to down!) Anyways, 3 years of leading that sort of life did take its toll. While both my bank account and my closet were getting nice and fat, I began to lose it. I could pretty much sum up my life in a single (run-on) sentence:

Dori Turtle climbs the corporate ladder, settles down and grows old.

As much as I tried, I couln't squeeze in fun&exciting adjectives to describe my present or the future. So I did what no one else dared to do in the middle of a recession. I quit my job for no good reason (bless my manager's heart for giving me a day off to reconsider. I spent that day acquiring boxes and gambling my savings away) and jumped onto the unemployment train (no first classes here!). All in search for those fun&exciting adjectives (verbs, nouns, pronouns, I'll take whatever I can get) to add onto my life:

The adventure seeking Dori Turtle courageously abandons her career in hopes to .... in hopes to... (I guess I can work on this part later on. But you get my drift)

5 months later (at the present time), I can't say I don't completely regret the decision I have made. I'd rather tell you the God's honest truth rather than to give this post a happy ending. I still think money can buy a form of happiness and I am scared shitless (can I curse on blogs?) because I don't know how to keep myself smiling after my savings run out. But this I can tell you for sure. I did find one adjective: Unpredictable. (Wow I think I just had a slight orgasm typing that) And I am determined to make the rest of my life an adventure.

By the way, did I mention I am writing this from a cafe.... in China?
(wink)
Like I said, the unpredictable Dori Turtle.
To be continued.

The beginning.

It's embarassing but the truth must be told.

My place is filled with what my mother likes to call "cockaroachies." The ones that breath in Raid fumes like an addict and roam about the kitchen in search for whatever leftovers to stuff their cravings. I swore to myself month after another that I would do something about it but here I am. Stuck with my roommates. Eating with them (shudders). Writing with them. Sleeping with one eye open in fear that the darkness might mislead them to think that my bed is theirs.
As the higher force as my witness, I will pack these freeloaders off to the neighboring pastures before the year is over. I just need to know how. Sighs.