Day 2
Colorado USA
Awake: 4.29am
Status: wide awake

Daily Highlights:

1. Visit to Walmart (with camera and high dose of adrenalin in anticipation)
2. Used USA Currency
3. Cracked out camera
4. First dining out experience for 15 year old birthday

So today was awake at a time where I could skype my family for the first time since arriving and did it in the early hours trying to as quiet as possible.

You know when you are a visitor in someones’s house where they have given up all their normal personal freedoms because there is someone you do not want to share visions of genitalia with, so you do everything possible not to be an imposition…. well, when I got up at 4.29 I needed to (using the American terminology) go to the bathroom (did you say that like ba… instead of barrrr … yeah me too), and I thought, bugga, what if I wake them up with the flush? So I decided not to, fairly confident that I would hear movement and get up and flush before they had the opportunity to know that I had been up for wees and putting their sound sleep in front of any possible “ewww, you are so gross” moments… because you know, like I was wide awake.

Yeah, missed by that much.  Juli and I might have known each other for 4 years, but bathroom habits don’t come with skype friendships.  So, Day 2 started off with me a bit mortified.

So speaking of the toilets, in Colorado and Los Angeles, where I have experienced the ba-throoms, the amount of water in the bowl would have an Australian believing that there is a blockage, or that you just did the biggest pee you have ever done in your entire lifetime and you hope nothing is wrong with you, because you know, it’s been a while since you did long haul travel experiencing a new culture and country.

Anyway, will move on from that – but do take note if you ever do come here, your peeing is not the problem, it is the plumbing system.

So onto Walmart we go and I was in high anticipation of some Walmartian activity.  Colorado Springs doesn’t have a high population of people with identifiably different fashion sense, so the first tip was a no goer, but I did get to make my brain hurt looking for all the personal hygiene products I use in Australia that I decided not to bring because I didn’t want to have any opportunity to be stopped when I got here.

You know that you can by feminine hygiene products in packets as big as the big slabs of nappies you can get for infants over here. Big cars, big pads… girls you want to visit.

So got the stash, and I could feel my head nod even though I thought I was fully conscious and had to go into a mild sense of defeat that Jet Lag was going to show up in my world even though I was so confident that I could get through the day with the 4.29 start.  I’ve got two young children who very rarely sleep all the way through, I got this. Nope. Juli and I had lunch, and then I was goneski.

So afternoon nap, with exhausted and overtired brain made for an eventual coma type sleep with an incredibly weird dream, with all these people from Ipswich that have made me frown at some point and them being all weird and righteous with different things, as well as guest appearances from people in Ipswich who haven’t made me frown, but kinda didn’t fit in the picture.  So gratefully I snapped awake, and it was 6.38 Queensland time. More defeat, but also thinking ok, it won’t hurt if that is around for a couple of days because it’s just like a Nanna’s nap and we haven’t got any meetings until next week… so chill.

So wide awake again and grab the camera because the daily afternoon thunderstorm shows up.  The clouds over here are so high up and they drop huge amounts of rain. It’s quite spectacular to see, and the storms come every afternoon.

Got to see the school buses, the big yellow ones from tv that not only carry students, but also the prisoners if they need transporting.  So validation, the tv stuff is real!

Tonight we went to have dinner for Juli’s son’s birthday and we went to Johnny Rockets.  The man that served us was such a good sport – he let me be a complete tourist and I took a photo of him and then my big Route 66 Burger and sweet potato fries and this thing that Juli ordered to drink which we call a smoothy, but they call it something else. We had to go to one of their shopping malls in a place called Cherry Creek to go to JRs and holy crap – their shopping malls are like the largest Carindale Shopping Town you’ve ever seen. They have a Tiffany’s there. I think I’m going to go get me a little blue box with something in it. Yes siree Bob.

Also the snow birds are out and they have squirrels and bunny rabbits here. Haven’t seen a rabbit yet, and the snow birds look like Kurrajongs with these blueblack feathers.

That sounds promising they are out now – the snow birds – because it usually means snow.  So if the lightning and thunder storms being created by high heat and humidity would just bog off, Manda might to get to see the snow in CO.

Tomorrow Juli and I are starting our planning work, and I am going to try and convince her to take me grocery shopping – she hates it as much in this country as I hate it in mine, but I really want to go so I can do some cooking.

Juli’s son gets ANZAC biscuits made tomorrow as part of his birthday celebrations, and then I’m going to do them a good old meat and three vege dinner (its going to kill me, I don’t normally cook that) but I want stacks of left overs so I can do bubble and squeak on Friday.

So far Juli and I love each other’s company ALL day and not just in clumps on skype.  Things are falling apart at day 2 back home because my lovey can’t find stuff that he ironically requires AFTER I’m not there and children have already hit their come down from the Froot Loop breakfast he promised them on day one of me leaving, so it appears they are in a mild depressive state.  They were instantly excited when I showed them the Johnny Rocket paper hats straight out of the milkshake girls on Happy Days though.

So, off to sleep for Day 2 Colorado time; cross fingers for a new day tomorrow with no crashing of energy and dodgy dreams.

Y’all come back now y’here.

Amanda
Goddess of the Imperative. 😉