"2021, 2022, whatever it is..."

...said my friend Hayley, and isn't that just the vibe of the world right now?

Call Me Daffy

Thursday, Jan 20

Y'all. It's been a while since I've traveled, so it's been a while since I blogged. I'm vaxxed, boosted, N-95'd, and ready to party... !!!!!!! ...Did that sound okay? I haven't been around people-- oh God. I think the Austin Airport is having a fire drill? Or a bombscare? Or an active shooter? What does it mean when an ear-splitting alarm and flashing lights go off at the Taco Deli but no one seems to notice but you…?

In an effort to upgrade my blog (EEE!EEE!EEE!…EEE!EEE!EEE!...I'm going deaf, I wish I could record this, but then you'd go deaf too- OH! Relative silence! THANK GOD, THE ALARM STOPPED.) I sucked the whole DemonSauce shebang onto Wordpress because I did 4 minutes of research and learned it was easy to use. It's not, actually. Reading or watching tutorials isn't as much fun as clicking random things and getting nowhere, so I'm still nowhere but I wanna blog my trip so Welcome! to my dry and incoherent blog-ish, web?site? I'm happy you're here! ***I couldn't figure WordPress out so here I am back at Blogger. As shitty as you are, Blogger, I don't have time to break in a new program and teach it the way I like things, so welcome back, baby.***

I'm happy I'm here! It means I'm traveling! This time its to London to stay with Stella. "Is this a rerun?," longtime readers may wonder. It's not! That was in 2017 when we were all naive and healthy little Sarah Conners. Now its 2022 and we've been weathered by Hell, our flowing manes haven’t had a regular shampoo in a couple years, and we've got hair-trigger anxiety attacks. We are now SARAH FUCKING CONNER. Weary, ready, eyez on the prize. My prize? Seeing Heathers: The Musical off The West End in London.

 

It's a new dawn. It's a new day.

Monday, Jan 24
How cute that I was so bloggy excited! Jet lag deflated that balloon for the last few days, but I’m (crossing fingers) feeling (knocking wood) pretty (wishing on a star) okay (sign of the cross) now. (Praying.)

Flashback to Thursday’s flying highlights:
FLIGHT: As vulnerable as you will feel, I HIGHLY recommend flying during a pandemic. On every flight I’ve taken since March 2020, if I haven’t had an empty seat next to me, I’ve had the whole row to myself. These flights were no exception. The flights were 1/4 - 1/3 full which left row upon row of seats for me to stretch out on like the masked and sweaty queen I am.
MASK: The N95 mask my partner got me was medical grade with plastic around the edges to fully encase my nose and mouth. It made me look like Howard the Duck and I loved it. Sure I was sweating under the plastic, but I wasn’t breathing in anything bad other than my breath. And even that wasn’t terrible. You know how the smell of your own farts can be pleasing in a very specific way? My minestrone soup and garlic bread breath was like that.
BATHROOM: The first time I went to the bathroom on my flight fm JFK to London, I was pleased to find the bathroom was bigger than I was used to and the water was scorching hot because these are the tiny miracle gifts you get when you fly economy on an international flight. Suddenly, finally, it sank in: I’m flying to one of my favorite cities in the world so spend a few weeks with my best of best best friends! I had to dance! It was so fun, I bathroom-dance-partied every time I saw a toilet for the next day or so. HIGHLY RECOMMEND.
SMARTYPANTS: My flight from JFK to London was a red-eye. Normally I’m a SUPERFAN of airplane food. Instead of staying awake long enough to eat the meal I’d spent full precious minutes of my life researching online (Should order an Asian Vegetarian Meal or one of the religious diet meals…? Or no, bc what if its just rice?) I smugly stretched out across an aisle I wasn’t assigned to and made 53 adjustments before I counted sheep over and over… I woke up after a couple hours of bad sleep to see it was 8am London time. I’d done it! I started my jet lag transition early because I’m A Smart Traveler ;)

Friday highlights:
JOHN: I found Stella’s driver waiting for me outside of baggage with a sign and everything. I love an airport sign. It makes me feel real special. John was so awesome! We chatted the 45 minute ride into London. He showed me Robbie Williams’ house and Robert Plant’s house. (They’re neighbors! It’s cute.)
THE FLAT: Stella and I have been lucky enough to travel and stay in flats in many countries and her current home is my absolute favorite. Its decorated in the perfect mix of both our personalities. Irreverence, beauty, clean lines, boho textiles, the female form in all different shapes and sizes, bold colors and books for days, all about art and politics. I’m in home love.
STELLA!!!!!!: OH, its so good to be with my friend. I’ve missed her so much!

See ya later, America.

JET LAG: Determined to not have a repeat of my last London experience where jet lag just killed me, I took walks, went grocery shopping, got a Covid test, and made a huge pot of lentils to stay awake. It worked! I was incoherent, but awake. Then I hallucinated that Today Tix had cancelled the tickets I got us for Pride & Prejudice the following weekend. I bought another set of tickets. I figured out that TodayTix cancelled another show (& Juliet for which I also bought another ticket). I realized I now own 2 sets of P&P tickets for the same night and I was time to go to sleep.
I dropped dead in my bed at 10:45.
I woke up at midnight.
I watched an episode of Maid. (Anyone else watching this? It is excruciating. I like it, but JESUS.) I turned off everything, determined to lay in the dark until I fell asleep because blue light and all that. I googled tips for jet lag. (Tip #4, stay off your phone before bed.) Lights out. I had a short talk with the potential ghost that was making my bed shift at random intervals, and respectfully notified it that I was staying for almost 3 weeks so… let’s be good roommates. I DM’d a friend I want to see on this trip. Lights out. For real this time. I thought about my life. I started to cry. My decisions. My career. The two extra tickets to Pride & Prejudice that I need to sell. I cried harder. I couldn't stop. This went on for a while. I went to the bathroom and started my period at that exact moment. I think I said out loud, “Oh, hello.” I stopped trying to fall asleep and instead turned to the one thing that always makes me feel better: my partner. I FaceTimed Chris and I don’t remember what we talked about, but after a while he let me go bc I was drifting off. I looked at the time: 415a. Wide awake again…

"I'm so happy here... How do I make myself feel this in America?"

I say this to Stella in my happiest of happy places, besides an empty movie theater or under a tree: the subway. 

Selfie-happy after I found
my lost hat last week.
Not so much re: my scarf

Paul A Young hot chocolate #obsession

We get back to London in time for Thai noodle lunch at Churchill Arms. (Thaiordie!) I make one last run into Central London to try and track down my favorite scarf that I lost on Fast & Furious Day. It's gone forever, so I grab a hot chocolate that I'm obsessed with (Paul A Young on Wardour St, don't miss it!) in consolation. Cashmere scarf tragedy notwithstanding, I feel great. Running around a city in the cold snap air charges me like those emergency room heart paddles. It feels like a great crush. I'm really going to miss London. 

Stella and I meet for Indian food at Dishoom in King's Cross. Family style, small plates, we order many, many, many dishes and do ourselves proud. We've elevated cleaning our plates from childhood compulsion to a skilled art. 

We have to say good-bye before she goes to bed because of her early work pick up. We agree my leaving is a stupid idea and hug. I love my best friend. 

Dishoom dinner. All the dishes wouldn't fi

Arriving at the airport early is becoming my thing, apparently. I've been killing so much time in airports lately, I don't even get bored anymore. A lentil and spinach pie, two pints of cider, and a tipsy candy raid of the airport store later, and my flight is ready to board. 

This bag is big enough to cover
both my knees.

My flight is relatively painless. I watch a few movies (ten minutes of American Women before I realize I want to watch it with my mom, 15 minutes of Passengers before I realize life is too short to watch a boring, insulting, misogynistic nightmare, The Girl on the Train, Why Him?, and the first half of Free Fire), misgauge my Ambien sleep window (hence all the movies), and finally drift off. 

I was going to do a list of things I've learned, like I sometimes do after a trip, but I've been pretty thorough in my writing. I did forget to mention the time I used the toilet in Harrod's and was so sweaty I blotted my face with toilet paper. When I exited the stall to wash my hands, my face was covered in a layer of toilet paper and I looked like a mummy. When you quickly try to roll toilet paper off your sticky face, it all ends up in your hair. What I learned: take your time when rolling wet TP off your face. 

Arriving in LA is bittersweet. It's not entirely home, but then when I fly to Austin in a few days that also isn't entirely home. Honestly, the last three weeks in Stella's flat, with my own space and my own schedule has felt like the closest thing to home that I've felt in months. It's no big deal, it's just the way life is playing out right now. 

Sometimes you have to admit, it's a beautiful world

One of the books I read in London was "Go Set a Watchman" by Harper Lee. It was a fascinating book to read right now, both with regard to the concept of home and what's happening in America. Basically, Jean Louise (Scout) is now in her mid 20s and returns home after living in New York to discover the home she understood doesn't exist anymore, not in her family, in her love, or in her town. 

This book takes place pre-Civil Rights, and the nationalism it portrays could be in any news story on any given day in the last year. Like Scout, every concept I had of home, be it personal, the country I thought I knew, my place in my family, has completely changed within the past year. The changes were traumatic because all growth is traumatic; but, if we don’t grow, we die.

Ready to cuddle with this mob

The book and my trip contextualized my state of mind. I logically and reasonably know through articles, therapy, logic, etc. that the last year (years? Decade?? Ugh, ok, all of life...) has been growing pain after growing pain however, I finally found my cathartic understanding through art and travel. In this moment, I’ve never felt more necessary as an artist and more thrilled to be a traveler. And that's nice.

Especially ready to hold this sour puss

I don’t know what comes next. This trip has been my finish line for the last five months, so I’m having a bit of the post-Christmas bummers. In a couple days, I’ll go back to Austin and curl up with our herd of cats and keep growing my voice and finding new experiences. 

Until my next trip... Thai or die! 

"It's the best thing in the world isn't it?"

... said a stranger to me about my iPad (and her iPad which she was also on) at the bus station in Melbourne. And then iPads notwithstanding, we actually talked like people without devices which was a beautiful surprise.

Melbourne, Day 3 - (pretend this is four days ago)
Travel is SO important! Yes! I proclaim, and agree, with enthusiasm every time I have this conversation in my life, but especially in the 5 times it's come up in the past 24 hrs. I think the Universe was front loading the travel cheerleading so I wouldn't try to lay down in traffic out of frustration and exhaustion once I returned to Sydney- because I AM THAT exhausted and frustrated.


yeah, thanks for nothing horse

It wasn't even that bad-- but there are certain things that push my buttons, and many of them happened today, not least of which was the loudest child I've ever heard not get to ride the magical child masturbation ride - you know, those plastic poly-something horses you can ride for a minute?- they had at the tiny Avalon Airport (which is different than the regular, larger Melbourne Airport Teeluride-- if you're flying into or out of Melbourne, please figure this out faster than I did). This kid not only made me never want to have children ever, it made me want to talk my friends out of having any more. It was the worst creature ever conceived.

choc flavoured centre w
cruchy biscuit pieces encased
in thick caramel, all covered
in cadbury milk chocolate

Military time mix ups that ate hours of my last day in Melbourne (my fault), flight delays (I'm blaming that hideous loud child because I can), bad food choices (meat pie? Why do I do this to myself? Why??? Ugh.) and more bad food choices (candy bar to kill the memory of the meat pie) all wrapped in the bow of being elbowed at alternate intervals during my flight back to Sydney by a Japanese teenager with bad breath and an Indian woman who made me climb over her (a culture thing? I TRIED to be pleasant but not so much) made a should-have-been-easy travel day into another monster entirely.

God I hate traveling.

But it's SO IMPORTANT.

And here's where I, at long last, have a point. Yesterday, I returned to the hostel and finally got down with the whole hostel-ness of it all, all of 12 hours before I was to check out. It was a moment that saw me and my three dormmates all together in our room, all awake at the same time. With me was Michelle from Night 1 (the middle-aged alarmist with 2 grown children, who may or may not have passed me her gross cold), Anna, the cute Aussie girl who stole my bed 2 nights ago (and never returned it, and it also turns out she is German?? In the dark they all sound the same... ), and Anna-mean (certainly not the way you spell her name, just the way I spell her name) a med student from Holland who had just moved in. We had a discussion you ONLY have in a hostel ONLY because of the opportunity you get living with multi-generational strangers from different countries. I won't bore you with specifics other than to say it was very special and should have taken 30 minutes less than it did except that Michelle is a repeater. But I wouldn't trade a minute of it.

After our room meeting, I treated Anna-mean to nice wine down the street and she treated me, again, to those great conversations you only get when you travel. Different backgrounds, different perspectives, different beliefs and yet we still can share life experiences like love, learning, and wine.

A friend called me brave and adventurous for traveling the way I do, and I shirked it off because I'm too shy to talk to most people, therefore I see myself as neither. However, after all the TRAVEL IS SO IMPORTANT conversations over the last day, I can tell you I'm pretty wrong. The common denominator of those conversations came down to this: a traveler is brave, adventurous, and, more important than those qualities, open-minded. Not just about having new experiences but, even simpler, about getting out of the house.

Every travel conversation I had touched on how little the US values it compared to other countries. I'm lucky enough to have a father who is a dreamer and a traveller and a mother who is boldly open-minded and values squeezing all you can from life, and even with that background I had to be pushed into my first international traveling experience when I was 20 years old. At 20, I was safe and comfortable in my little Texas bubble. I was more interested in not missing out on what my friends were doing than I was in seeing/eating/feeling things I had never seen/eaten/felt before. Travel was work, it was expensive-- and I didn't discover til I was forced to: totally worth every penny and glisten of sweat (and even every screeching strange child-monster). It's only now that I realize that first trip at 20 saved my life- or maybe more correct to say, the trip created my life.

Travel tests you, teaches you, inspires you, enlightens you, and after all that, it makes you value yourself and where you're from. For my part, I'm going to shove my kid out the door the first chance I get (especially if its anything like that horrible loud beast of a kid from the airport.)

Here are some randoms from my last 24 Melbourne hours...

genius Aussie ads

more trust from the Aussies
 

**More from the "why
Australia is better" file: I love how they give you the gambling and they give you the warning and then trust you to make the best decision for yourself. Another example of "here ya go. If you're not an asshole, you'll be just fine..."








Some choice shots from my last morning in Melbourne at the Royal Botanic Gardens (aka "the Tan")...

at the Shrine of Rememberance: the WWII memorial

awesome Muppet tree

i love flowers

early morning sun over the lake

i'll take a flowering bush any day

i thought this said "Talking to plants it illegal" & I thought they were joking

rugged pretties

reminded me of red velvet cupcakes

like play-doh monsters but with HARD SHARP THORNS

teehee, hello prickly little penis cacti
 



last morning in my Black Cat happy place