I have a confession to make.
Jul. 11th, 2002 09:34 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
camwynI don’t like it here any more.
No, that’s not entirely right. I don’t like it here and I’m not sure I ever did. It’s not the Red Cross work that’s giving me problems, not primarily; it’s just the whole thing. I’ve been working in Texas since the day I arrived, 6 July 2002. I work from 7:30 AM to 6, 6:30, 7, or on one memorable occasion 7:40 PM (although that day my shift started at 9). I would really like to go home now. . . I don’t feel right here, I don’t feel right about here. I have always prided myself on my adaptability, my ability to feel at home in any place or almost any situation. Whether it’s being able to blend into the crowds on the streets of Manhattan or squat on an overturned caulk bucket and talk happily with a West Virginia farmer whose bull is scaring the bejeezus out of pretty much everybody else in the field, or moving through Toronto or Vancouver Island without being instantly tagged as an American, I like to think I can adapt to nearly any place.
But here? Here I don’t know what it is. Maybe that it’s an area where the pawnshops outnumber the bookstores six to one (three to one if you include the Bible Supply Shop, the only bookstore I have found in this mall). I doubt that’s it, I’ve been in pawn-intensive areas before. Maybe it’s that EVERY SINGLE PERSON HERE really does have a drawl, except for our local volunteers who have Spanish-influenced accents instead. Maybe it’s the food – I’ve never gotten along with Mexican food, and the non-Mexican food around here seems to mostly be pretty standard Middle America stuff, like when I was in Wisconsin. (Only with less cheese.) Maybe – and this is exceedingly likely – maybe it’s just that I have PMS and I’ve been away from home since 27 June and in that time I’ve had one day off, 4 July.
But I don’t feel right here. Except for the time a few days ago when I was walking through the Rivercenter Mall and then through About Australia, I have felt like an alien here. The shops are full of stuff I’m not interested in buying. The kind of shops I normally frequent are almost nowhere to be found. The food I know from home either isn’t present or gets made so differently that I just have to shake my head and walk away (Side Wok Cafe makes decent fried rice, but otherwise it’s kind of hard to find how its food relates at all to what they had at Empire Szechuan). The candies are different, with almost no mint anything in any of the candy aisles. The Eckerd’s sells rosaries and Infant of Prague baby Jesus statues, which is not itself a bad thing, it’s just another sign that I’m not anywhere like home. They actually wear cowboy hats here, all the time, except possibly for when they’re eating. That’s why I bought the hat at About Australia – I wanted to at least try to feel like I was fitting in, but not fit in too far. The people are pretty nice and all, and friendly, but. . . despite wanting to fit in, despite being the same hair colouration and a lot of the same physical features as an amazing number of the locals, when I walk down the street in Market Square or through this mall, I feel more blatantly obviously not-belonging than I ever did in New York City’s Chinatown. I don’t know why.
I’m going to try and handle things here, I really am. I hope it’ll pass. I have off tomorrow; I have to call my office and walk my substitute through a procedure I never trained her in (long story short: I dreaded teaching her all the different possibilities for checks that come in sans remit slip and have done them myself after she finishes the rest). Then I’m going to the mall and the movies. Maybe things will be better on Saturday, after a break like that. Maybe I’ll just have to keep up going to the hot tub every night. That seems to help.
I just hope it gets better. I’ve got ten to fourteen days left to go.
No, that’s not entirely right. I don’t like it here and I’m not sure I ever did. It’s not the Red Cross work that’s giving me problems, not primarily; it’s just the whole thing. I’ve been working in Texas since the day I arrived, 6 July 2002. I work from 7:30 AM to 6, 6:30, 7, or on one memorable occasion 7:40 PM (although that day my shift started at 9). I would really like to go home now. . . I don’t feel right here, I don’t feel right about here. I have always prided myself on my adaptability, my ability to feel at home in any place or almost any situation. Whether it’s being able to blend into the crowds on the streets of Manhattan or squat on an overturned caulk bucket and talk happily with a West Virginia farmer whose bull is scaring the bejeezus out of pretty much everybody else in the field, or moving through Toronto or Vancouver Island without being instantly tagged as an American, I like to think I can adapt to nearly any place.
But here? Here I don’t know what it is. Maybe that it’s an area where the pawnshops outnumber the bookstores six to one (three to one if you include the Bible Supply Shop, the only bookstore I have found in this mall). I doubt that’s it, I’ve been in pawn-intensive areas before. Maybe it’s that EVERY SINGLE PERSON HERE really does have a drawl, except for our local volunteers who have Spanish-influenced accents instead. Maybe it’s the food – I’ve never gotten along with Mexican food, and the non-Mexican food around here seems to mostly be pretty standard Middle America stuff, like when I was in Wisconsin. (Only with less cheese.) Maybe – and this is exceedingly likely – maybe it’s just that I have PMS and I’ve been away from home since 27 June and in that time I’ve had one day off, 4 July.
But I don’t feel right here. Except for the time a few days ago when I was walking through the Rivercenter Mall and then through About Australia, I have felt like an alien here. The shops are full of stuff I’m not interested in buying. The kind of shops I normally frequent are almost nowhere to be found. The food I know from home either isn’t present or gets made so differently that I just have to shake my head and walk away (Side Wok Cafe makes decent fried rice, but otherwise it’s kind of hard to find how its food relates at all to what they had at Empire Szechuan). The candies are different, with almost no mint anything in any of the candy aisles. The Eckerd’s sells rosaries and Infant of Prague baby Jesus statues, which is not itself a bad thing, it’s just another sign that I’m not anywhere like home. They actually wear cowboy hats here, all the time, except possibly for when they’re eating. That’s why I bought the hat at About Australia – I wanted to at least try to feel like I was fitting in, but not fit in too far. The people are pretty nice and all, and friendly, but. . . despite wanting to fit in, despite being the same hair colouration and a lot of the same physical features as an amazing number of the locals, when I walk down the street in Market Square or through this mall, I feel more blatantly obviously not-belonging than I ever did in New York City’s Chinatown. I don’t know why.
I’m going to try and handle things here, I really am. I hope it’ll pass. I have off tomorrow; I have to call my office and walk my substitute through a procedure I never trained her in (long story short: I dreaded teaching her all the different possibilities for checks that come in sans remit slip and have done them myself after she finishes the rest). Then I’m going to the mall and the movies. Maybe things will be better on Saturday, after a break like that. Maybe I’ll just have to keep up going to the hot tub every night. That seems to help.
I just hope it gets better. I’ve got ten to fourteen days left to go.
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Miss you.
Date: 2002-07-11 07:55 am (UTC)Miss you; want you to be home, so that we can see you again. I understand the shock of feeling foreign: Texas is one of those places where I stop being a cheap date and start being a miserykitty, because I just can't cope with the way the world is structured.
There's been no one to fill your shoes -- none of the rest of us can swing your particular brand of surrealism, no matter how hard we try. You missed the coyote in my bedroom, and the night I kicked the remote (don't ask).
'Croc Hunter' opens tomorrow, as does 'Reign of Fire' -- and tomorrow afternoon, I fly to Minnesota. Go to the movies, call me if you feel like it; I'll be in California until roughly 5:00 PM PST (so around 3:00 PM CST, where you are), and would gladly talk to you, if it'd help. And once you get back to a decent connection, you can listen to my scary new Judysong -- she's finally taking after her mother and writing bad chickrock.
Miss you, sweetie.
Come home soon
Hang in there
Date: 2002-07-12 12:39 am (UTC)I would say "It's a shame you can't come over here and deal with the flooding problem" but then I realise that we don't have one... THEN I realise that Seanan is sending me MORE rain, so we MIGHT have one before long.
Want me to mail you some 'polo mints'? 10 days ought to be long enough for them to reach you :-)
no subject
Date: 2002-07-12 03:21 am (UTC)Things People Learn When They Come to Texas!
Armadillos sleep in the middle of the road with their feet in the air.
Roadrunners don't say "Beep Beep"
There are 5,000 types of SNAKES and 4,998 live in Texas.
There are 10,000 types of SPIDERS. All 10,000 live in Texas, plus a couple no one's seen before.
Possums will eat anything.
Armadillos love to dig holes under tomato plants.
Raccoons will test your crop of melons and let you know when they are ripe.
If it grows, it sticks; if it crawls, it bites.
Nothing will kill a mesquite tree.
There are valid reasons some people put concertina wire around their house.
You cannot find a country road without a curve from corner to corner.
A tractor is NOT an all-terrain vehicle. They do get stuck.
Texas has 5 seasons:
Spring, Feb 16 to April 15
Summer, April 16 to July 15 (temp 90 to 98 degrees)
SUPER Summer, July 16 to Sept 10 (temp 100 to 115 degrees)
Summer, Sept. 11 to Oct 1 (temp 90 to 98 degrees)
Fall, Oct 2 to Dec. 1
Winter Dec. 2 to Feb 15
The wind blows at 90 MPH from Oct. 2 until June 25, then it stops totally until Oct 2.
Onced and Twiced are words.
It is not a shopping cart, it is a buggy.
Fire ants consider your flesh as a picnic.
Graduating 1st in your class means you left in the 8th grade.
Coldbeer is one word.
People actually grow and eat okra.
Texans really don't have an accent.
When the world ends, only cockroaches and mesquite trees will survive.
Green grass DOES burn.
When you live in the country, you don't have to buy a dog. City people drop them off at your gate in the middle of the night.
The sound of coyotes howling at night only sounds good for the first couple of weeks.
When a buzzard sits on the fence and stares at you, it's time to go to the doctor.
Fixinto is one word.
A tank is a dirt hole in the ground that holds water for irrigation.
The word dinner is confusing. There's only lunch and then there's supper.
Tea is appropriate for all meals and you start drinking it when you're 2.
Backards and forards means I know everything about you.
'Jeet? is actually a phrase meaning "Did you eat?"
You don't have to wear a watch because it doesn't matter what time it is.
You work until you're done or it's too dark to see.
As If that wasn't enough....More Texanisms:
You (we) know you're from Texas if:
1. You measure distance in minutes.
2. You've ever had to switch from "heat" to "A/C" in the same day.
3. Stores don't have bags; they have sacks.
4. You see a car running in the parking lot at the store with no one in it, no matter what time of the year.
5. You use "fix" as a verb. Example: I am fixin to go to the store.
6. All the festivals across the state are named after a fruit, vegetable, grain, insect or animal.
7. You install security lights on your house and garage and leave both unlocked.
8. You carry jumper cables in your car ... for your OWN car.
9. You know what "cow tipping" and "snipe hunting" is.
10. You only own four spices: salt, pepper, ketchup, and Tabasco.
11. You think everyone from a bigger city has an accent.
12. You think sexy lingerie is a tee shirt and boxer shorts.
13. The local papers covers national and international news on one page but requires 6 pages for local gossip and sports.
14. You think that the first day of deer season is a national holiday.
15. You find 100 degrees F "a little warm."
16. You know all four seasons: Almost summer, summer, Still summer, and Christmas.
17. You know whether another Texan is from east, west, north or south Texas as soon as they open their mouth.
18. There is a Dairy Queen in every town with a population of 1000 or more.
19. Going to Wal-Mart is a favorite past-time known as " goin wal-martin" or off to "Wally World."
20. You describe the first cool snap (below 70 degrees) as good chili weather.
21. A carbonated soft drink isn't a soda, cola, or pop ... it's a Coke, regardless of brand or flavor.
22. You understand these jokes and forward them to your friends from Texas
23. Your lawn and flowers and shrubs are a salad bowl for the deer.
John Stanfield
PO Box 786203
San Antonio TX, 78245