First Ten Pages - Sneak Peek
Here’s the first 10 pages of book one of my three-book series travelogue that I’m currently editing. Always looking for first-look readers who want to have their thoughts help shape my book.
Enjoy!
Wiki Commons
February 17
When does a story begin?
When does an adventure start? Is it the moment you put a paddle in the water, board the plane or say, I do?
Or like me, years after a marriage dissolved, asking, what now?
Time is ticking. The significant alimony I’ve been receiving is coming to an end in seventeen months. In the six years I’ve had the financial support, I haven’t been able to match it through my entrepreneurial efforts, self-employment or traditional jobs.
Unknowingly, I moved to one of the most expensive cities in California, although that could be said about any city in California, San Luis Obispo is the most expensive place in the country to buy a retirement home. Not that I’m retired, but it gives you an idea of the zeros before the decimal point. San Luis Obispo may be one of the happiest cities, but how happy am I going to be if I’m living at poverty level?
After a few entrepreneurial failures and being cognizant of the clock running down on the support; I applied for, and much to my surprise, got a job. A real, grown-up type job at a mental health agency. One where I had to sign a stack of papers after meeting with an HR person.
I created a program for people living with mental health conditions who wanted to work in the mental health field. I loved the autonomy and creativity that my boss allowed me. I loved connecting with the students I worked with. But I detested having to show up to a windowless, cubicle with frigid gale-force manufactured air blasting down on my head and shoulders.
My boss poked her head into my shared cubicle space and folded her arms over her chill, “It’s always so cold out here.”
“I know.” We gazed up at the ceiling vent before she noticed the clock that usually hangs on the cubicle wall was missing, “What happened to the clock?”
I pulled out the desk drawer like a morgue worker, revealing the still-ticking clock, “It’s really loud, so I leave it in here. Why did they get such annoying clocks?”
“I picked those out. I don’t even hear them anymore.”
My heart froze. She’d been here for so long she no longer heard it. She’s been indoctrinated.
For me, it was a mentally torturous minute-by-minute countdown of my remaining life. One. By. One. By . . . One.
Tick, that moment’s gone.
Tick, what am I doing here?
Tick, just breathe, you’ll figure it out.
Tick, I can’t do this for the rest of my life.
Tick, what the hell am I going to do?
The financial projections look pretty dismal if I want to stay living where I am after the alimony ends. I have to make some major changes if I want to live a life aligned with my most treasured value; time freedom.
I’ve come up with plan C or maybe it’s K by now. I’m thinking of relocating to another country with a lower cost of living. I’m just not willing to sacrifice my internal peace and my compelling desire for time freedom for any amount of money. I know that might sound crazy. I’m a middle-aged woman without a pension plan and minimal Social Security benefits to collect if the program is still even viable by the time I’m sixty-five. But if I listened to the should-demon, that voice would lead me into an abysmal prison where my free spirit would suffocate and die.
I can sit still for a while but then I need to see what’s around the corner. I always managed to behave when I was a kid and my parents took me and my older brother, Brad, to a grown-up restaurant. My favorite was the one where I could get up and wander off to the buffet where I felt the chill from iced salad plates drift onto my shoulders as I approached the massive buffet contraption; my eyes level with tufts of lettuce, stacks of parker dinner rolls and crinkle-cut carrot rounds. It was mesmerizing to take it all in; the delicate gold bangle bracelets on the wrist of a hand reaching for tomatoes; the creases in the suit pants on a very tall man; the thick mauve lipstick on a woman and her wine glass. The smells of perfume, stale carpet, sizzling steak and onions and the way that burgundy vinyl booth went from feeling cool and smooth to sticky-hot the longer I sat were sensory pleasures I craved.
I have to be free. And in the past few years I’m learning the path to freedom comes from listening to, and trusting, my heart.
Most of the time my mind is a great tool for the logistics and operations planning after I come up with my unconventional ideas, but there’s a reason we say heart and soul and not mind and soul. The heart and soul are united in their quest to guide us home to our spiritual selves. The mind and the ego are the difficult family members they have to deal with on their quest.
I bought into the belief that in order to be successful you had to work in one of those towering stalagmite structures in a big city. I believed adequate income could only come from working for a company; and since I’d always been self-employed, I wasn’t destined to have the finances to take care of myself.
But the only ladder I enjoy climbing is the one to prune the bougainvillea and pick lemons and persimmons off the trees on my little fraction of land in the mobile home park where I currently live.
I think I might finally be finished with feeling badly about not fitting in to what I thought I should be in order to live a life aligned with my soul. If I’m only going to be alive for eighty or so years, why on earth would I try to fit into a constricting pair of spiritual Spanx?
I need breathing space.
I’m starting an international journey doing volunteer projects in other countries to see what it would be like to live there. First stop is Thailand where I’ll be volunteering at an elephant sanctuary. I did extensive research to find an ethical animal refuge, not like the ones I’ve been reading about that are abusive toward the elephants and only interested in profiting from unwitting tourists.
And so it begins.
February 22
I called China, desperate for help. I don’t have an international calling plan so I tried to speak as fast as I could.
Hours before, all was going well with my Thailand travel preparation. The quart of Picaridin mosquito repellant arrived with the mosquito net and the oral rehydration salts I’d ordered. The feeling came back in my arm after the Hepatitis A, tetanus, measles, mumps and rubella vaccinations 4 days ago.
But after midnight while I was on the China Southern Airlines website, I couldn’t figure out how to select a seat for the long-haul portions of the twenty-plus hour flights. I got anxious as I pictured myself having a full-on panic attack at about hour six of the fifteen hours I’d be squished in a middle seat between two other people. And I wasn’t imagining their bodies or breath smelling pleasant.
First world problems . . . no big deal. Forty minutes on hold with China Southern Airlines. Thankfully the toll-free number at first.
No one is available now. Press 1 to wait, press 2 to disconnect. As I waited on hold, pressing 1 over thirty times, I had plenty of time to contemplate the message and read between the lines like it was a Shakespearean passage with hidden meanings. Did it mean the call center is closed, that literally no one is available because the lights are out, nobody’s home? Or did it mean, our representatives are helping other customers, please continue to hold?
After a brief search on a Trip Advisor forum, I concluded the long hold time was the norm for the airline and that seat selection could be a tricky issue.
The China Southern Airlines agent I spoke with told me I had to pay to reserve a seat. Apparently, some international carriers charge customers to reserve a regular old seat, not even one with a few more inches of legroom, extra gas-producing nuts or fresher air to breathe.
I navigated through the technological quagmire that comprises the China Southern Airlines website, selected my seats, filled out my credit card information and clicked to finally bring this way too time consuming thirty-six dollar transaction to completion when this error message came up:
Error. Phone number must begin with 13, 14, 15, 17 or 18 only.
A countdown clock popped up showing the remaining time I had left to complete the purchase. Wow, this shouldn’t be so complicated just to purchase seats on an airline!
Nine minutes left to complete the sale. The toll-free line wasn’t available. I tried to contact the airline through Viber, Facebook Messenger, Skype and Twitter.
With just four minutes left I called China directly from my US phone. Ca-ching, every second counts as dollars!
Just as the agent said hello, I saw that I had mistakenly selected Credit Card instead of International Credit Card. The website took my phone number as valid, and my call disconnected from the Chinese agent at the same moment I got this message screen after clicking submit payment:
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Three hours of my night have been spent trying to get seats on an airplane and I was in the comfort of my own home feeling a bit frustrated.
How the hell am I going to deal with all the travel unknowns when I actually get to Thailand?
Whose idea was this?
Oh right, mine. Adventure and time freedom and all that good but very unpredictable stuff. Why couldn’t I have the idea to get certified as an x-ray technician, or hospitality manager; something that held the promise of a good paying in-demand job? How exactly is a middle-aged woman supposed to make a living as a free-spirited hippy gypsy?
But I’ve been learning that I can trust myself. That I can take risks even though they feel scary. I’ve also learned that deep discontent visits me when I don’t listen to my intuition. When I don’t stand up for myself and just go along with the status quo because it’s more comfortable for other people, or when I don’t feel strong enough to protect or assert myself.
I’ve felt drawn towards elephants since I was a young girl. Now is the time in my life when I’ll finally get to connect with them. Is the elephant my spirit animal? Is there something I need to learn from this great pachyderm?
Has the story begun? Is this the adventure?
March 2
Poisonous snakes and millipedes. It didn’t even cross my mind there might be either of these creatures in Thailand. I’ve been so focused on the mosquitoes. Oh, and parasites that apparently can swim up through your lady parts if you’re in river water.
I leave in eighteen days and I’m having a freak out moment. There is way too much to do. I haven’t even learned any of the twenty-seven elephant’s names. There’s a sixty-six-page information booklet covered in socks laying on my bedroom floor.
How am I going to endure the long travel, will I get sick before I even arrive, will I get crushed by an elephant, did I make a will, I have to ask my friend to take care of my cats if I die, how do I do the Wai greeting, will I be too hot without air conditioning, was this a mistake . . . I hope I lose weight while I’m there.
March 5
I dreamt I was in a nursing home that was themed like a Liberace Disneyland ride. Wheelchairs were bejeweled, ornate heavy wooden relics from the past. Nurses wore puffy pantaloons in circus colors and everyone was accessorized with a lithium smile.
I found my way to a large restroom, carpeted in a dusty rose color. The toilet was clogged and full. I tried to levitate above the contraption and just as I got my balance, a young woman burst through the door.
“Get out!” I yelled. But she kept moving toward me, mumbling something about she just needed to get something. I felt powerless, hovering above the clogged toilet, peeing and yelling, “GET OUT!”
She finally left and didn’t close the door behind her. I felt exposed. Traumatized.
Some staff members saw how upset I was and asked if I wanted to file a report about the incident. I told them that woman needed to be educated on Trauma Informed Care, and yes, I wanted to file.
I know this dream is part of my travel anxiety. It’s normal for me to have some, but especially so since my Christmas volunteer trip to Costa Rica a few years ago.
March 6
Travel anxiety. Maybe I should take one of the ten Xanax my doctor prescribed for the trip. My mind is all over the place, wondering if I have enough Band-Aids and Imodium. At last count, I have over one hundred assorted sized bandages, one hundred alcohol wipes (maybe I can just suck on them) and forty-five packages of World Health Organization approved ORS (oral rehydration salts). I’m starting to freak out a little bit that I’m voluntarily going to a place where rehydration salts are even necessary.
As per my usual manifestation of travel anxiety, I’ve decided fifteen days before departure to hire a couple of guys to fix the crappy job I did with setting down grey stone pavers on the dirt patch/patio that looks out onto the amazingly lush Ireland-green golf course at the back of my mobile home.
My mobile home. In a mobile home park. I used to be embarrassed about telling people I lived in a trailer park; especially after having lived in a beautiful home with my husband. I felt badly about myself that I wasn’t capable of making the six-figure income he’d made. But I’m letting that shit go. I love my little mobile home. I love the sunlight shining in through the windows looking out onto the golf course; the plentiful fig, persimmon and lemon trees and sharing the bounty with my neighbors. I love finding random cats curled up in my garden, having friends over to chat about life, and snuggling with my kitties for afternoon naps, letting the birdsongs lull me as I drift off.
But right now, I can’t sit around and write about the love I have for my mobile home when there are twenty-seven elephant’s names I do not know. I don’t know how to say hello, thank you or emergency, where’s the bathroom? in Thai.
Breathe, Patty.
March 8
Scorpions, spiders, lizards and jungle rot.
Jungle rot?!
Isn’t that what the US soldiers got while in Vietnam?
Two people have warned me about the dangers of standing behind elephants. One guy told me of a zoo-keeper who had given an elephant too much laxative and was unfortunate to be situated at the rear of the giant animal when explosive poop exited the elephant’s ass and knocked the zoo-keeper to the ground. He hit his head on cement and died.
A quick Snopes check proved that story false. But it’s interesting to gather people’s travel advice and perspectives.
A woman who’d spent time living in Southeast Asia warned me, “Shake out your shoes before putting them on. You want to get out any scorpions.”
In my elephant adventure visions, I’d left out elephant poop and all insects except for mosquitoes, which I pictured to be as big as elephant poop and oozing with Zika, Dengue, Chikungunya and Malaria diseases. But I hadn’t considered the snakes, scorpions, roaches and millipedes that my dear friends have mentioned to me.
“Don’t wear your socks twice. Very important.”
I was puzzled. “I wasn’t planning on bringing any socks.”
“Oh, you’ll need good shoes. But if your socks aren’t dry, the moisture will give you jungle rot. Make sure the socks are dry before you put them on.” She warned.
I added shoes to my packing list and I wondered how people could look so happy and carefree in the pictures from Thailand’s beaches and rainforests. Shouldn’t they be shaking in fear from the threat of diseases, poisonous snakes and jungle rot?
I added more Advil to my toiletry bag as my friend on the phone continued, “Be ready to be touched. People are going to want to touch you.”
“Where are they going to try to touch me?” I asked.
“Your arms. Or your hair, your head. They’ll just touch you.”
I was confused, “But I thought it was insulting to touch a Thai person on the head?”
“It is. Don’t touch them on the head, it ruins their energy flow to their connection to heaven. But your blonde hair will stick out, they’ll want to touch it.”
She went on to caution me to be careful at the markets in Bangkok where I’ll be staying for a few nights in an attempt to adjust my circadian clock. Although, in a city that doesn’t sleep combined with my excitement, who knows if I’ll get any rest.
I imagined strolling through the night market and picking up some Thai treasures for friends back home. Perhaps I’d try the tasty street food I’d been reading about and enjoy some people watching.
I put my friend on speaker-phone and listened intently as she warned me not to take a purse to the market. To put my money in my shoe; I imagine in the very dry socks. Don’t put money in my bra; it would be improper to reach in to get money out. Have the correct amount of money in my hand. And bargain down on any price. It’s rude not to.
I thought about the personal safety phrases I should learn to speak in Thai; Help! Call the police!, as my friend continued, “Watch your drink be made. And drink it in one sitting with your hand over it, so you don’t get drugged.”
Oh, I thought, so that happens in Thailand, too?
I recalled some of the travel warnings I’d read about and wondered if they really happened or if the scenarios were made up. In the 1980’s before a trip to Greece with my college boyfriend, we were told to be on the lookout for packs of young boys who might surround us and push wooden boards firmly up into our rib cages as other boys picked our pockets, helped themselves to the contents of our fanny packs and ran off howling like a pack of wolves, never to be seen again.
We waited for the ferry in the industrial port town of Brindisi, Italy, on high alert, standing back to back, away from the other tourists gathered to catch the ferry to Greece. We were on guard for wood-plank carrying young thieves while all the other travelers chatted together.
I’d travelled alone, first to London and then made my way to Paris; even hitchhiking to Brest, the small coastal village where I was meeting my boyfriend and his father on their sailboat. I was twenty. Paris was overwhelming. Boulangeries, Patisseries, Fromageries, culture, history, artwork, perfume, smoke, diesel exhaust, pigeon poop (on my head), the swishy language, church bells, coffee smells and the dizzying condition of jet lag and those eight flights of stairs lugging my overstuffed backpack to a small room in a pensione were exciting but draining.
And the flea market. The one I walked through slowly, touching all the fabrics of the clothing laid out on tables and draped over mannequins. And that Frenchman who lured me into his stall. He pointed to pouty models with big hair on the posters pinned to the curtains around his stall. He motioned toward the poster, and then his eyes locked on mine as he raised his eyebrows inquisitively. He gestured as if he had a camera in his hand and made a clicking sound. “For pay. You?”
The Frenchman spoke just enough English to talk me into believing I was going to be hired for a photo-shoot in Paris for a clothing company. He handed me a business card with an address where I was supposed to show up the next day for the modeling job. They would pay me in Francs and I could keep the clothing.
He said he needed to know my size for the photo-shoot wardrobe and asked me to try on a few of the stylish tops lining his stall flowing in the warm breeze. They looked very French. I couldn’t wait to try them on. I recalled Christie Brinkley telling the story of how she was discovered in Paris by a photographer. I couldn’t believe I was going to be so lucky.
At first the Frenchman gave me privacy when I changed into the tops and his compliments blinded my better judgment. His praises grew as the tops got smaller. He became more interested in adjusting how the tops fit across my chest. I rounded my shoulders forward, trying to inch my breasts away from his hands. I didn’t like the way this was feeling.
But I knew models were half naked all the time, it was no big deal. Why was I being so puritanical? This was France. Women’s breasts were allowed to be shown on television. I should stop being so prudish; after all, he was certainly a legitimate man in the fashion industry who saw my potential to be a model. Why shouldn’t I trust him? I like to think I’d learned a few things by that point in my life. That I wasn’t some naïve young woman who hadn’t experienced a few life events beyond my years that opened my eyes. But when the Frenchman put both of his hands over my breasts, I pushed him off of me and told him if this was a real modeling job, he could have a car pick me up at my hotel the next day.
I felt conflicting feelings sloshing around like oil and water. I was mad at myself for being so stupid to be scammed by some pervert. I was mad at myself for being paranoid and ruining my chance of being discovered as an international model in Paris like Christie Brinkley was.
It didn’t occur to me to be mad at the pervert.
My friend on the phone brought me back to the mosquito net I’d managed to stuff into my brand new bright red suitcase.
“It’s also cheap to get your sex changed there. People all over the world go there for the surgery. A lot of gay men go there to get their sex changed.”
Did gay men get sex changes? I thought gender identity and sexual orientation were two different things . . .
She continued, “Be ready to be stared at. And little kids are going to touch you. You’ll probably get into the tourist traps. You might meet other foreigners though, that could be fun.”
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