Life and Times of AlieMalie

I’ve been watching two rug rats this past week and everyday that I pick them up at their catholic school, I pass this sign. I’m tempted to ride a skateboard past it this afternoon to see what would happen. Will I disappear? Will I be immediately struck by a bolt of lightning? Will it mean I’m going straight to hell, don’t pass go, do not collect $200? I should totally try it, I’m going to hell already. haha.

I’ve tried writing this post out a few hundred times in my head and a couple of times on paper and each time I try forming the words, I get so enraged and confused and and and … I reach the point where I don’t know what to say because there’s really not much to say except that the actions of some people are inconceivable at times and try as I might, I simply cannot get my mind around them.

I cannot imagine what the thought process is of a person who takes advantage of young children – I think part of my problem in not being able to grasp it is that as I try to imagine what they’re doing to a child – a grotesque and horrific action – I become so enraged that I lose sight of the action and start to focus on what I’d like to do to the person instead. And I really don’t want to imagine taking advantage of a child, I’m in the role of mentor/tutor/auntie/teacher/big sister/whatever to so many munchkins that the idea of hurting them in any fashion makes me sick. But back to the confusion. What goes through a person’s brain as they engage in an action that will forcefully take away the innocence of a child? Which breaks the trust that a child has in virtually every single relationship? That irreparably darkens their outlook of the world? What the fuck do you think about?

Do you wonder how you’re harming this child? Do you think about the emotional turmoil they will face for the rest of their life? Does it even cross your mind that they might have lingering doubts regarding trusting anyone for the rest of their life? Does it phase you that you’ve just impacted every single one of their future relationships? Do you worry that you’re tearing apart your own family? When you’re lying in bed days/weeks/months/years later, do you ever wonder if that child is able to fall asleep easily or whether they cry themselves to sleep each and every night or cry out for their mother in their sleep or refuse to snuggle with their father anymore for fear that someone else might do something to them? When you see the alert for a missing child, does the thought that you pushed a child so far to the brink that they consider running away on a daily basis cross your mind? Do you know that they spend hours crouched in their closet hiding from you? Does it occur to you that they never feel safe? When someone tells you I love you do you hesitate to believe them like this child does? Do you second guess the words of every single person you know and meet? Do you realise that this is exactly what you’ve done to a child?

You can’t have thought of any of these things because if you had, wouldn’t you have stopped yourself? I mean, you might not seek the help you need for even engaging in thoughts that would be harmful, but at least think about what you’re doing. The life lives you’re impacting. Let us count the number of people you’ve just hurt. The child. Yourself. The child’s family, and oh wait, that would be your family as well. We’re up to 20. Good friends. Innumerable people. You’ve just fucked so many people with your self gratifying actions. Was it good for you? Does it make you feel better that you’ve tried to ruin another person’s life? Did you really have to do it for five years? Are you going to do it to another child since you’ve been caught in this instance? Will you ever stop?

What the fuck were you thinking? I can’t imagine. I simply cannot figure it out.

This past weekend I turned 25. Blahbity blah blah – not too thrilled about this age, but whatever, it’s mainly because of two reasons: 24 rocked and is hands down the best year of my life to date, and also because 25 seems so grown up and laden with responsibility and yadda yadda yadda. Anyway, instead of worrying about numbers, I decided to head to the beach and then into the kitchen. On the way back from the coast, we picked up some blue crabs and some dirt cheap shrimp who were oh so tasty. A couple of days later, I got it into my head that I wanted to make homemade peanut butter cups instead of having a birthday cake. The results? Absolutely delicious.

Don’t you just hate it when you order something and it says Next Day Shipping and then you realise the next day when it’s not on your doorstep that they really meant Next Business Day or the day after they actually filled your order would be like 7 weeks later because they didn’t have all of your merchandise in stock or whatever? I hate that. It totally blows. Well, I’d like to say that my blogging has been, ahem, virtually nonexistant for the last couple of weeks save a post a week or so because of not being able to fill orders or having a long term holiday, but I’m afraid that the only reason that I can honestly say I haven’t been blogging is because I haven’t felt the urge. I am so sorry. And by that, I really mean, when I sit down in front of my computer after having this great idea pop into my head as I was driving home from work or meeting up with friends, it just totally slips away and I’m snatched into the clutches of some other site and before I know it I can’t remember what I was going to write about. I hate that.

Anyway, I think I’m due to write about Morocco. Wow, it’s so strange sitting here wracking my brain for good Texan stories and not having any come to me, though I’ve gotta be really happy about that because if the Texans had gone to Morocco with us, I’m pretty certain that I wouldn’t be writing this out in a nice, posh, American house. No, in fact, I’d probably be journaling it out on paper while sitting in some barren, horrifically hot, Moroccan jail cell while awaiting trial for public indecency or perhaps accomplice to murder. Who knows what trouble the Texans would have gotten us into? I don’t even want to imagine.

So, fast forward through the hell of me traveling from Amsterdam to London and being told that if I came back through London on my way through to Canada and didn’t have my boarding pass IN HAND as I proceeded through customs, they’d deport me. Yea, I’d get deported by the Brits. Because I look like that much of a bad ass. You’ve been warned. Since I only had six or seven hours in London ’til they started boarding my flight, I figured I’d just rough it again and sleep in the airport. Or get a giant cup of coffee and read. Or not. Or people watch. Or wander around aimlessly because I was bored out of my mind. Or all of the above. La La La. Finally the security area opened and I raced through so that I could wait for Jen to arrive. Thankfully, she’d managed to get a temporary passport and some money wired to her from home so she was still up for making the trip. I sat right at the exit of security so I wouldn’t miss her – you should note here that at 5AM the departure lounge of virtually any airport isn’t going to be terribly busy, especially in the minutes RIGHT AFTER security even opened to allow people access to the gates, but whatever – I was sitting there, surrounded by tens, if not hundreds, of empty seats when this gaggle of Indian women (so sorry to Indians, Indian lovers or whatever out there, but when there are 12 or so Indian women together who are really excited about traveling without their husbands and going on holiday and blah blah blah and they always end their sentences like each one of them is a question, it starts to get really, really old – they sound like a flock of chickens) who decided to sit RIGHT NEXT TO ME, like, nearly on top of me. And then they had the audacity to ask me to move. Hmm. No. I wasn’t in the mood. Anyway, I ignored them – and didn’t move.

Jen found me, we made our way to the gate, boarded and were nearly asleep – I know, ME! Asleep on a plane! Amazing! – when this little shit decided that he was going to go racing at top speed up and down the aisle – screaming. Then leaping over seats. And over people. And shrieking as he pointed out the window at the clouds. I got up to go to the bathroom, and I’ll be honest here, I hesitated next to his mother as I considered telling her to reign in her beast or I would do it for her, but I thought better of it and continued on. Apparently, my hesitation was noticeable because both Jen and the people in front of us teased me about nearly stopping as I made my way back to my seat. Suffice to say I didn’t want to end up in a Moroccan jail on charges or doing severe, irreparable harm to a child. Not my style.

As we were in our descent to Marrakech, I spotted an airport with one lonely air strip on it – no taxi way – just a long strip of pavement meant for landing and taking off. I thought it was quaint, really, we hardly ever see those anymore unless we’re in a itsy, bitsy cessna taking off at a private airport – and though my grandparents fly their own little plane out of a place like that, I avoid it at all costs since I am phobic about airplanes to begin with but even more so about planes where you can feel the guy in the next plane over sneeze. Eek. Anyway, as we continued on, I realised that we were making circles around this little strip. Mhmm. And apparently? Yea, that was the airport. haha. Um, what?! I was definitely landing somewhere in Africa. Oh My God! Africa!! As we deplaned, I made the really dorky/nerdy/goofy decision to lllllllleap off the stairs and onto African soil, high five Jen and jump for joy about being able to cross off another continent on my list (fyi, four down, three to go). Yea, I was a real big moron that morning, but what more would you expect?

It took immigration forever to approve our passports and my heart started to race as we approached baggage claim – they forced me to check it, the bastards! – when my bag was no where to be seen. So after freaking out to the baggage chief, my bag magically appeared at the end of the hall. Strange, but I’m not complaining. We got a cab into the city center where our hostel was just off of Djemaa el Fna which is the largest square in all of Africa. Pretty cool, eh? We checked in and then went out to explore said square. Jen was excited to be able to browse through the souks and also to try some authentic Moroccan cuisine. We stopped off at a little hole in the wall – and mind you, when I say hole in the wall, I really mean a hole. in. the. wall. – for lunch where she ordered a tajine which is quintessentially Moroccan and has a bed of couscous topped with either veggies or chicken or pretty much whatever you want. After lunch, we went exploring through the square and were told that we needed to come back out at dusk so that we could see them transform the square from the merchants during the day to a place of entertainment in the evening. They drag in over 140 different mini restaurants and barbeques between 5 and 9PM and as the merchants selling their wares leave, they are replaced by storytellers, musicians and dancers. Oh, and also strange men who like to press themselves against you and follow you back to your hostel.

That evening, after having our fill of the souks, me having a bunch of snakes draped over my shoulders against my wishes, and Jen getting what she wanted in the bazaars, we headed back only to find that we were being followed by two men who’d tried to proposition us earlier in the evening. We ended up having to head back to the hotel part of our hostel which was a few blocks from the hostel part and request an escort back to our room. I can chuckle at it now, but I was scared out of my mind in the moment.

Jen was leaving the next morning to fly back to London so she could travel back to her summer job of being a camp counselor somewhere in the UK, so I was left to my own devices. Luckily for me, a sweet girl from Australia took Jen’s bed that morning, so I ended up bumming around town with her. A lot of the store owners call the white girls fish and chips as most of the people who visit and speak English in Morocco are from the UK, but I decided that since I wasn’t from the UK, I wanted to have my own name. Aussie egged me on, eventually challenging me to stop the next time we were called fish and chips and tell them that, actually, in fact we’d prefer to be called steak and potatoes. We told one of the nicer merchants who wasn’t also cat calling and who’d tell his neighbours to stop being obnoxious as we walked by, and funnily enough, by the end of the afternoon, most of the men working in the souks on that particular alley were instead calling us steak and potatoes. So, if you go to Morocco in the next few years, let me know if I’ve started a trend. heh.

So, other than being molested our first night in town, Marrakech was actually pretty nice. I mean, I’m a hard core people watcher and as long as I can do that, I’ll be perfectly happy. I totally could have done without being chased through the square by an irate orange juice stand man, but he’d told us that we could take photos with him in his stand, actually came out, took us by the elbow and escorted us into his stand, then handed his buddy our cameras and had him take our photos. Then, as we were leaving, he started yelling at us that we owed him money. Hmm, I distinctly remember him telling us that it was his present to us, but then he got a hold of one of the other girl’s bag and wouldn’t give it back ’til we gave him money. Strange folks.

I avoided the square my second night in town as I didn’t want to be followed or groped again and the next morning made my way back to the airport. Sat next to a cute boy on the flight back to London – he tried using the line of, weren’t you and I on the same flight to Morocco on Monday? and then proceeded to invite me to the Glastonbury festival later that week. Too bad I had plans for Canada the next day.

Bad, AlieMalie, bad bad!

That’s what y’all should all be telling me. I’ve been an absolutely terrible blogger lately and while I’d love to apologise for that, I can’t. I’ve been having an absolutely fabulous time, weeks are flying by left and right – which, yes, means the end of summer is near – but what’s that old saying? Time flies when you’re having fun?! Oh yes, yes it does. This’ll be the second weekend in a row that I’m going to Austin. I may go next weekend as well as it’s my birthday and, well, why not spend it in the place where you have the most fun? Relatively speaking, of course. Then in mid September I’ll be heading there again to take in the very awesome Austin City Limits music festival.

Not much else to report around here, I’d bang out the next episode of Europe, Morocco & Canada but I’m a little short on time. Tomorrow afternoon, I promise, a little bit of Morocco all around. And yes, that means you’ll have to wait one more episode for Canada. Patience is a bitch, isn’t it?