Back in Bangkok... Where there will be a chance of sleep and Pad Thai Prayers...

You know that feeling you get after a long boat ride, the feeling that you are still moving. What's it called? Sea legs? Well, after 32 hours of travel, I have some serious air legs. I wish I could sleep it off. With the jet lag and my bursting excitement at seeing my kids again,  there will be no chance of sleep in my near future.  Maybe tomorrow, I'll sleep.

In the meantime, I 'll head down to my favorite mom and pop thai place,  carb -load up on the best Pad Thai, EVER. I'll say quite prayers to the sleep Gods in between breathless gulps of noodles, my glasses fogging up from dish an the afternoon sun, sweat dripping down my face. I may even wash down my noodles with a Singha. Who knows? I'm an MFA candidate at 40, I'm all over some crazy shit like beers at 10am and no sleep for days!!

I'll let you know how it turns out.

Post Residency... Part II

Post residency travel - 

I'm in DC with my niece and nephew (in law) until next week which is good. I'll be easing into my life without the community of writers. I'm a bit lost. I don't know what to do with myself. I should be writing but I not there yet. I should be reading but again, not there yet. I'm antsy. 

And I need coffee. 

Lost on the coffee thing here at my niece's Her coffee maker is an all in one, grind and brew. It probably can perform minor surgery. I have no idea how to work it. 

I'm out of clean clothes too. 

I arrived at my niece's  with one clean underwear, if I can call it underwear. More like affixing-eye- bulgers that "shrink the waist and gut" by 2 - 10 inches depending on the peddler.   I call them my magic pants. I typically only wear these babies on special occasions like anniversary dinners with my hubs. I have no idea why I do this because getting out of the magic pants is one of the most exhausting and completely unsexy to witness. 

So today is all about finding some coffee, doing laundry and changing my magic pants which of then I'll be totally exhausted to get any real work done. Tomorrow is another day so tomorrow, I will release the Kraken!

Four Days Post Residency...

Laundry done, sorta. Books hunted and purchased, mostly. Time to destroy that blank page. RELEASE THE KRAKEN, hopefully.

Deciphering (Random Word Pick From Poetry by Pablo Neruda

Word Trigger Exercises.

Deciphering. 

Southern Comforts, deciphering the code. 

Skills for deciphering your southern spouse.

There is always a catch when trying to decipher what a southerner says. Whatever they say, it's never what they are saying.  

"he does not know shit from shinola". That's a great one. I asked my MIL what it meant. She replied "I have no idea" and giggling, presuablely at me, for not knowing how to speak southern. 

The catch is that underneath the saying, there could possibly be an insult waiting for me. 

"She could scare a cat off a gut wagon" - that's pretty self explanatory. 

Starting a sentence with "Bless her/his heart..." is never good. It usually always followed by something negative, in southern code speak. 

For example  'bless her heart, she could scare a cat off a gut wagon'.  

See? Not good. 

Deciphering Part II

His look was impossible to deciper. In one way he looked focuused, determined but with wrinkled forehead and his eye brow touching like that, he could very well be pissed off. 

Then of course his bag as by the door. 

He was due home today but that was hours ago. 

Why was the bag still packed, and by the door. 

Decipehring Part III

If I were a boy of say ten or eleven, I would save all my proof of purchase and mail in for that secret decoder ring advertized in almost all of the popular comic books. Then in 4 to 6 weeks, I would use that ring to to decipher all the big mysteries of guys. I wonder though if a tool from the behind the magic curtain of men could be used on men themeselvles. Surely they would have a loop-hole to counter it affects. 

On second thought, probalby not.