Pedal to the metal

J and I were talking last night about our upcoming night out and dinner at Baan Tepa.  I came to us that a year ago we were prepping for a move across the world.  On 12 July we left our Oceanside apartment for a few days in Los Angeles before we got our flight on the 15 July.  This year, 11 months after that, J and I get to have an anniversary dinner together in Bangkok.  

Less than a year and in that time we’ve taken the Kiddo to experience LA and the Grand Central Market including seeing The Last Bookstore and a meal at Guerrilla Taco.  A 25 hour flight across the globe with a layover in Qatar (Kiddo still calls it Guitar) that ended with us handling passport and immigration control and a two week quarantine in a hotel that is half the size of our condo here while J needed to work.  J, Kiddo, and I all turned a year older.  A rooftop restaurant meal.  Holidays like Christmas, Thanksgiving, Halloween, and all the rest.  Street food and market life.  Loy Krathong and Songkran.  Chinese New Year in an Asian country.  

And then, on day 335ish, we get to have a celebration.

Of our marriage.

Our life together.

This adventure.

All that in less than a year.

I know people who do less in a decade than that.

But, we were talking about it last night having some beer with ice in our new glasses while eating market fruit in our new bowls.  That we bought from a place that had no signage in English and spoke no English.  

I joked about the scene in The Other Guys where Will Ferrell needed to get somewhere in his Prius and he screams AMERICA and punches it.  J said that the last year and moving to Bangkok is a bit like that.

You just floor it and hope for the best.

There’s really no other way.  You gotta just punch it and hope for the best, because it’ll never be the same.  As I noted, we are ALL different from this experience.  We couldn’t just stand in place and wait and hope, we needed to act.  To move.  To do.  

We had to make cuts.  A lot of my loved kitchen gear didn’t make the move.  Books and memories that just couldn’t make the trip due to size, weight, or other factors.  We took a life we spent 15 years building, a marriage we’ve spent 9 years (in about 5 weeks) building, and a Kiddo we’ve spent 5 years raising and condensed it down to a half dozen suitcases.

You gotta just go!

Full Speed.

Do or do not; there is no try… To quote Yoda.

Ironic that on May 4th/5th that we realize this.  That it’s the best way to explain this.  We can’t half ass this.  You can’t do this at school zone speed limits.  

We needed to commit to doing this.

And we have.  We are in.  The gas is to the floor and we are getting better at slowing it down and enjoying the speed and we occasionally careen off a cultural wall or scrap a language barrier, but we’ve not yet had a full on head first collision.  No semis of doom have plowed thru us.

In fact, it seems that we’ve settled into it pretty well.  Having coffee on a lazy Wednesday afternoon that was a random day off for J and Kiddo is on the balcony blowing bubbles and waving to us.

Lastly, I’m sure many of my constant readers are waiting for my head to explode or for me to rant and ramble about the leaked SCOTUS paper on Roe.  Minority rule and MuriKKKa’s version of Sharia Law.  FFS!!!

We’ve talked.  We have info and have an international law firm that can assist us.  It may be time for us to seek asylum.  From America.  In the 1940s America fought fascism and the Nazis… Only to become that less than 100 years later.  At least the good news is that we broke free and become global citizens. 

Let’s go, Kiddo…. You have the right to yourself and your body.  You are a person.  You are a being.  You are a human.  Male, female, trans, gay, straight, Muslim, Jew, Atheist, or anything else.  Me and Mumma want you to be safe.  Loved.  Happy.  Anything else shouldn’t matter, but sadly a bunch of geriatrics (including your own grandparents) have spent the last 50 years qualifying and quantifying everything based on race, sex, gender, religion, orientation, and class foregoing and stalling progress and human advancement.

Shithole country…. It’s always projection!