don’t lose your passport. just don’t.

So many of you have probably already heard my sad sad sob story, and even the invaluable lessons I learned when I discovered, 17 days before my departure date, that I’d lost my passport. I’ve replaced it now. It even has a new shiny picture in which I sport a lovely lazy eye compliments of my 7 a.m. photoshoot at Walgreens. It also features the new I’M FROM THE UNITED STATES! layout which basically suggests George Washington drank enough amber waves of grain to puke up a remarkable amount of print patriotism onto my passport, so if anyone is confused, I’M AN AMERICAN. I will still be able to go to Dublin 5 days (eek!) but it was looking a leetle sketchy for a while.

Now I would like to share some secret government code words what I’ve learned from the experience when I called and said I needed a passport in 17 days:

Monsieur GOV Man: Hmm, let me see what your options are.
Translation: This is bad. You are a grand champion supreme dipshit for losing your passport.

Monsieur GOV Man: You are not going to Dublin.
Translation: I am a wanker who works in a small cubical in the downtown courthouse where it smells like burnt rubber and wet cardboard. I administer passports but I never go anywhere and so I have to entertain myself by seeing if I can make you cry. Oh, look you’re crying. Nice.

Monsieur GOV Man: We do not have your informatin on file and your copy of your passport is useless.
Translation: We need to send your information through a branch of the FBI (true!) because you might have a plot to blow up Ireland, or to just go there.

Monsieur GOV Man: You could do the 7-10 day option…
Translation: This option takes 3-4 weeks, but we like to call it the 7-10 day option.

Monsieur GOV Man: You will have to do an expedited order.
Translation: You will have to give us lots of money.

Monsieur GOV Man: We have authorized outside companies to walk your passport process through.
Translation: You will pay another company [In Florida!] lots of money to do our job, because we are understaffed and surprisingly inefficient at shipping and printing passports to Arizona.

Monsieur GOV Man: I’m glad we could figure out a solution.
Translation: I’m glad you have enough money to make this go through. Also, I was getting bored with the crying and the begging.

Monsieur GOV Man: That will be 2-4 days.
Translation: Keep checking your mailbox. We’ll see you in 7 days.

orange sky

I haven’t really been able to sleep for three days.

This could be due to my recent nyquil intake and my shopgirl-work-position induced retail nightmares. Ones where I am ringing up the queen beast beowulf mother of all transactions. With hundreds of items, piles of slippery clothes, bags, enormous neon yoga mats, slipping and sliding from the counter, while an angry customer who looks a lot like Hilary Clinton (with that grotesque smile mask of fury she put on when someone accuses her of being against change) hands me coupon after coupon and waits for me, impatient, angry. The ancient computer, which, in this nightmare actually sports a long silver cotton candy beard, acts as my register but groans and finally dies while I fumble to hit tiny buttons with my now ballooned fatty clown fingers. While I wait for it to re-load, I try to stall by smiling and turning away from Hilary who has started emitting red fuming breaths and I realize the gauzy tissue paper we wrap clothes in is wrapped around my face, sealed with our signature orange sticker. I can’t breathe.

So I wake up. Bolt straight. Awake. Last night it was at 5:30 AM. I went into the purple kitchen, of my purple adobe house and crossed the cool burnt orange tiles, some with little puppy prints in them, and got a glass of water. I looked out our large windows. The cactus and sad little spiky shrubs all looked a little greener with morning dew than they usually look, dried out, tanned, by desert daylight. The sky was the color of peach fuzz. Something wasn’t right though, so I went outside and felt the light, clean air shift my hair on my shoulders and make the ocotillos lean. I listened to the familiar morning coo of the doves, and the scratchy stirring of the bugs beneath the cracked sand and I realized the orangesicle mist had covered up my mountains. The giant ridges that are my home’s back drop.

And I realized I couldn’t sleep because I’m leaving soon. Not because I’m afraid Hilary Clinton is going to come into lucy looking to stock up on power pants and camis with shelf bras. I’m leaving the desert and the 5c bubble, the only homes I’ve ever known. I’m leaving my sweet turbo silver volvo s-40, my cell phone, my books, my friends, my family, my life. I’m going across the world to Ireland.

A place that I’ve read about and seen in movies and almost tasted in my Nana’s little stories about my great great grandparents. A place I’ve never been to but have always had others associate with my identity and me.

I don’t know where I’m living, what classes I’m taking, I don’t even know yet how I’m getting from the airport in Dublin to my orientation in Limerick. I have to register with the police, the gardai. I have to get insurance. I have to get an Irish bank account. I have to start packing…eventually, when I decide what I’m taking with me.

But I’m going to figure it out, and I can’t wait to go. I want to see what it looks like at 5:30 AM in Ireland.

Time for my second shot of nyquil.