Journey to American Mexico: dog "stools", baby vomit, and marriage proposals

I can happily begin this story with the ending - I am sitting in a super funky coffee shop called Moonbeam Coffee in the middle of what I've decided to call American Mexico. I desperately want to buy myself some coffee because I'm absolutely beat, but I just spent $20 on a super sketchy cab ride, which was a lot more than I expected, so I'm just chilling here, trying not to let the smell of deliciousness get to me.  So that's where I am now, but the question is, how did I get here?

The Journey:

New Haven, CT
It all started yesterday, when Dahlia drove me to Union Station in New Haven to catch my 8:30 p.m. train to Hartford.  She drove at a sluggish pace after Cassie put the fear of God in her not to screw up her car.  About 20 minutes later (note: exaggeration), when we finally got to the train station, I gave her a kiss goodbye, feeling slightly guilty for leaving her for a week, watched her struggle to figure out how to pop Cassie's trunk, grabbed my shit, and wandered in.  I got my eticket off those weird little box things, turned around to the board and discovered that my train was running 25 minutes late.  I should have known right there that I was doomed for the next 24 hours, but what can I say, I've got a lot of optimism...and I selectively believe in omens (late trains not fitting into that category...though I may be adding them).

I had a train ride to Hartford during which I had a quiet conversation with my Mom on the phone about how people should and should not be allowed to speak to her.  Which, of course, due to protective instincts and empowered female-ness, left me a little "rawr"-y (angry and irritated isn't the right word...maybe growly?

Hartford, CT

I got off the train in Hartford and because I'm going to a place that apparently never drops below 90 degrees, and I didn't want to check a bag, I had no warm clothes.  It was freeezing in Hartford.  I waited for my friend, Rachel, who goes to Trinity College in Hartford, to pick me up.  I didn't want to make her wait so I sat outside.  I got outside at 9:47 exactly, by 10 p.m. I was shaking with cold, by 10:25 I had walked back inside, and called her.  "I'm a block away," she said.  At 10:35 she finally showed up.  We went back to her dorm room and hung out with her friends for a while, had a little Andre (you know, keepin in "k"lassy) and then went to bed.  "Going to bed" meant she fell asleep and I read in her common room because 11:30 p.m. was too early to think about sleep when 4 a.m. had been my bed time for two weeks.  I finally got to sleep at 1:30 and woke up when she (in her sleep) ripped all the covers off me and rolled over with them. I wasn't having it so I just yelled her name at her and she woke up and was like "oh, dude, sorry." and then rolled over and fell back to sleep.

Woke up at 6 a.m., got some coffee, she drove me to the airport.  hahah She gets confused between Arrivals and Departures, "Well, technically, we've just arrived so I always want to go to arrivals...but you're departing, so..." Don't worry, we made it.  I checked in, hung out, got on a plane, and flew to Chicago.

Chicago, IL

I was told in Hartford they couldn't print out my boarding passes for the rest of the day because United and Continental are merging but haven't really done it yet, so anyone who flies with either of them gets kind of screwed over.  I had a ripped piece of notebook paper that told me where to go in Chicago.  I should mention that at this point my foot was throbbing so badly I was hobbling through terminals.  I don't know if I have a stress fracture or what but it sucks A LOT.  It kept me up last night and has ached sooo badly today.  Anyway, I hobbled my ass to the right gate in O'Hare, which happened to have a leak in the ceiling (on a sunny day?)  I promptly discovered that my Chicago flight to Houston had been delayed 2 HOURS!?  I would have loved to hear a reason for that.  Well, with that flight delayed two hours, I was going to miss my connecting flight in Houston to McAllen.  I asked the guy to move my flights and he said he would, but then just didn't.  He told me to talk to a guy in a red jacket when I got to Houston if we missed my original connection.  I sat down, hoping the guy wasn't screwing me over.

Dog Stools
I happened to sit down next to a woman who was freaking out because she didn't get that United and Continental were merging and no one had told her, so she thought her ticket didn't match her flight anymore.  I explained it to her, and then let her borrow my phone to tell her daughter when she would be getting in.  I then proceeded to hear all about her life.  She has a grand daughter who is graduating from Texas A&M. Her grand daughter studied education and wants to teach 4th, 5th, and 6th grade.  For now she is getting paid $30 to $50 dollars an hour to tutor various kids.  Her daughter has had about 50 dogs who have all gotten Cushings Disease (or something?) which results in them losing basic functions, going blind, and "they get bloody stools at the end".  She had been trying to persuade her daughter to get that looked into because it had to be an environmental factor that was killing all her dogs. She said her daughter's maltese is already in the early stages and needs to be put down and she asked that her daughter do it before she showed up so she wouldn't have to deal with it.  I found out she lived in Houston for 10 years, and worked for a tutoring firm that paid her lots of money and only had hundred dollar bills, so if she billed them for $340, they would give her $400 (yeah I got multiple examples of what rounding up was like).  I was told she moved to Chicago and bought a house, but she regrets it now, and it is worth 11,000 less than when she bought it, so she doesn't want to sell it now, and she has put $6500 into repairs and improvements to the house.  We then moved on to a discussion about how process foods can give your dogs Cushings and how she only feeds her dog food that she makes.  She apparently cooks her dog roasted turkey, vegetables, and squash (on a daily basis?).  "She's spoiled" is all she said.  She then told me that dogs can't digest corn.  It apparently goes right through them.  Apparently processed dog foods use corn as a filler but this one time, she fed her dog a vegetable mix pack that had corn in it, and, "you know, the next day, I knew that it was true that they don't digest corn...you could see it, in her stools".  So after that she didn't buy her dog vegetable mix packs that had corn in them.  She apparently really bonded with me because she was touching my arm and talking and talking.  Good to know I make people feel instantly comfortable enough to talk about poop?

I talked to my mom and my brother on the phone, texted with Sam about the flight delay, made the airport people put me on the later connection flight, and then asked this really nice guy next to me if he liked his Kindle because I'm thinking about getting one for the Peace Corps.  That dude should be a Kindle salesperson.  He's got the well polished look, but is really laid back and honest looking so you trust everything he says.  Seriously, I want a Kindle.

Baby Vomit
Finally left on my flight from Chicago to Houston.  I sat next to this mom and her not quite 2 year old daughter, this little adorable blondie.  The little girl was soooo excited about opening the latch to the tray table and having it come down, then putting it back and using the switch to close it.  Her mom and I were on relatively constant surveillance to make sure she didn't get smacked in the face with it.  She also opened the flight safety manual and made a "woooooooooooooo" sound, like she was really impressed.  You had to be there, but I laughed for like ten minutes.  As soon as the flight went up though, she promptly fell asleep on me.  Her mom felt so bad but I figured it was better than wailing baby, and she was cute, so we just left her there.  She slept almost the whole way until the last half hour, when she woke up and just started crying.  Her mom thought it was the change in air pressure and so we both kept saying "almost there!" but she kept crying, then she promptly threw up EVERYWHERE, multiple times. It was a shit show.  I stopped breathing through my nose because the smell was going to kill me.  I helped clean everything up but felt pretty grateful when the plane landed and I could run out of there.

Houston, TX
By the time I finally got to Houston it was 3:30, the time I was already supposed to be done traveling and I still had a flight to go.  By that point I could barely walk my foot hurt so bad, and I needed to change my shirt because I had vomit on me.  I thought I had packed ibprofen in my bag, but turns out I packed Midol instead.  I was pissed at myself for about 5 minutes, when I realized that midol also has acetomenaphin in it and now I just wouldn't be bloated as an added bonus, so I took two.  I went to get my ticket sorted out and make sure I had a spot on the plane to McAllen.  The woman who was working on my stuff almost put me on a flight to Tulsa, which would have been bad but it was figured out in the end.  I then went into a random restauranty/cafe place and sat by a window to just chill for a little while.  Is it just me, or do you think really morbid thoughts when you're flying?

Let me explain - I have this ritual when I fly where right before I take off from the ground I say a little prayer that is usually some slight variation of "Please let me get back to the ground safely, please let me touch the ground in one piece again".  I say it when I step into the plane and with my eyes closed as we're taking off.  I also, when we hit the runway after a flight, say "thank you".  It is a weird ritual of mine, and I don't usually stress out about flying while I'm in the air, it's just taking off and landing.  But, for whatever reason, it leads to super morbid thoughts during the day. For example, while I was sitting at this wall of windows, these two big trucks carrying tanks were out on the pavement, and one of them backed up so it was about two feet apart from a similar truck.  I was probably about 100 feet away, and I couldn't help thinking, watching that truck back up, that if he went fast enough and hit that other one, the tanks labeled "FLAMMABLE" would blow up and I would be killed. And then, being the ridiculous writing oriented person that I am, I tried to think of how I would describe that death and came up with something awful that involved the phrases "bits of charred smoking flesh" and "shards of glass".  I, immediately, thought "wow I'm so morbid." I turned my attention to the ridiculously thick Texan accent I could hear on the guy behind me, and giggled to myself.  I seriously saw the most ridiculous people in the Houston airport I was giggling left and right.  I felt like I was on another planet, so many people were so overly groomed they looked ridiculous, like slightly better intentioned Jersey Shore people.  I must say, this doesn't go for everyone, for most I was pretty impressed by how sharp looking everyone was, very put together.  Either way, felt like another planet.

Got on my flight to McAllen, little puddle jumper that had SO MUCH TURBULENCE I actually gasped out loud.  It also didn't help that I was right next to the uncovered propeller and felt like something out of a WWII movie.  I had another morbid moment, when we were still on the ground and they were testing out the propellers before we left the gate and they were vibrating really violently.  I was like, if that shit comes lose, I'm done for. I don't know why this happens to me.  It makes me sound like a miserable person - which I'm not! I swear it's just when I fly that I think these things, and I can't be that bad because that woman talked to me about poop.

McAllen, TX

I walked out of the airport to the only taxi available and the guy didn't speak english (i'm that close to Mexico right now).  I thought I would be ok, because I used to be nearly fluent, but they speak spanish so differently here, and i'm SO out of practice.  When we finally got going though, and i fell more into the flow of it, he started asking me how old I was (he's 31).  Then he asked if I had a boyfriend.  When I said no, he asked me why not.  Did I not want a boyfriend? He kept repeating that he didn't understand why I didn't have one.  Then asked if I wanted to get married. I said no. Then he asked me when i wanted to get married, and I said I wanted a job not a husband.  I don't think he knew what to do with that. We talked about marriage and boyfriends, and what was wrong with me because I didn't want to be married and I didn't have a boyfriend and then I was at Moonbeam. And here I've sat, recounting my story.  I'm SO excited to finally see Sam and not feel like I'm traveling anymore.  I've been up since 6, in texas since 3:30, in his part of Texas since 6:30, and it is now almost 9 (he had TFA stuff).

To end - yay for American Mexico, dog stools, baby vomit, and marriage proposals. I will fill in more about this strange place over the next few days.

My mom just emailed me "you're less than 5 miles from the Mexican border. I'm worried. Please be careful. Call me when Sam gets you." hahahha

The end :)