(More Bounce In) California

Tres. 

We got kind of an early start, probably because D wanted to get out of the window seat/bed-thingie before his back gave out or something. 

We stopped to gas up Sisu, and I went into the store and had to buy deodorant because I left it, along with my platinum blonde wig, in Sacramento. 

So long, Daenerys-head! 

Because it was gas station deodorant, I had one choice: Baby Ass. 

Hooray! I LOVE wearing deodorant that smells like a baby ass…especially in the heat. LOVE IT! 

Anyway, as I returned to a newly-full Sisu, I saw 3 heads-up pennies sitting on top of the trash can. 

Hmmmm…trash pennies? 

Or good-luck pennies? 

Why not both? 

AND there were 3 of them. 

And there were three lucky, trashy (ok that is just me) humans on this trip. 

So, I took the pennies off the gas station trash can, cringing at the feel of COVID, hepatitis, cocaine, and spilled Slurpee that tickled my palm as I did so. I immediately coated the pennies in hanitizer foam, wrapped them in an In N Out napkin, and stowed them under the seat. 

More on the pennies later – it’s hella wholesome! 

Anyway, on the road again, our final sprint to sunny San Diego and the Zeez!! There was music, gossip. shit-talking, snacks, some tap dancing (again, just me), and lots of laughs. We started counting Jeeps – THEY ARE EVERYWHERE, BTW, it’s like a fecking invasion – something we would do over and over on the trip. 

The lack of jeeps in this photo is not representative of our drive, but the gorgeous scenery deffs is!

 I thought it was cute when I started to do it that day, but by the end of the trip I would rather have counted anything but MFing Jeeps. 

 (I still love you Sisu, Togo, and whatever the hell N finally decided to name his Goldfish Cracker-colored baby) 

I think we were just past LA when these totally pimped-out cars started appearing ahead of and around us. 

Custom paint, airbrushed skulls and comic villains, and cool rim$. 

It was pretty cool watching them out the window as we went through the lovely SoCal stop-and-go traffic, but I tried not to stare too much because all of the mamas behind the wheel looked like they were in a bad mood. 

But that may just be because of the way their eyebrows were drawn on. 

One of my favorite things about our trip was all of the people-watching I got to do. 

 I am the driver 98% of the time I go anywhere, so sitting in the back of Sisu as D piloted us hundreds and hundreds of miles over the surface of the planet was rad bc I got to watch all the other humans in their cars. 

 People eating – one lady was deadass eating a whole entire pizza – talking on their phones, texting, making Tik Tok videos, fighting, smoking. 

 It was wild. I am sure somewhere out there on I-5 someone was getting road head, but I never saw that, in spite of my optimism that I would, so I could record them and make a Tik Tok video. 

FINALLY, we reached San Diego, took our rapid COVID tests, raided the liquor store whilst awaiting the results – negative, obvs – and then met the Zeez at Rubio’s for tacos and a lot of salsa. 

D before cautiously doing his swab.  For whatever reason, I chose to clean my prefrontal lobe with mine. My eyes watered for an hour.

 We then went to the Zeez house, where I am pretty sure we started drinking immediately, even though it was, like, not 5:00 anywhere near us. 

(Ok, that was probably just me) 

Buzzed and basking at, like THREE IN THE AFTERNOON. 

 The rest of the afternoon was fun and chatting and catching up and just basking in being relaxed with our friends, knowing we had days to relax and hang out and make the Super-Duper Best Road Trip Ever memories. 

 It was glorious. 

We then went and checked into our hotel, where it was clear that they had either just varnished the furniture, or their sanitization process involved turning all of the ‘wood’ surfaces into the same gunk that is in the La Brea Tar Pits. 

No Bueno. 

A quick room change, and we were off. 

Uh, this is basically what happened next. 

 I am not sure if I was the ‘friend’ or the ‘me’ in this scenario or which one C was. 

 I think both! 

 There was more dancing, I believe I tap danced to All that Jazz in the living room, an entire bottle of Absolut Something-or-Other was consumed by C and me, and a shit ton of sushi was delivered with tobiko on, like, every roll even though I wrote NO EGSS all over everything. 

 I ate it anyway, but DAMN I HATE FISH EGGS! 

Finally, D decided he was going to stay at the Zeez instead of spending the night in a hotel room with 2 “walking bottles of vodka in human form.” (Thank you, Chandler Bing), so he took us back to the hotel and went to get his bags while we loitered outside smoking 

(I know, I know, DO NOT @ me, please!). 

We went inside and were immediately lost. 

 Since we were unable to remember the number or location of our room (I know, I KNOW!), we made the brilliant – if terribly obnoxious decision to run around the hotel, calling D’s name down the halls and sticking our key cards in every door we went past. 

I know. 

IknowIknowIknow. 

 Like, I have been having to travel for work a lot over the last couple of months, and every time I am woken in my hotel room by an obnoxious, inconsiderate a*hole either in the halls or above me, the flames of indignation are immediately smothered by the torrent of shame at what C and I did that night. 

Terrible. 

Just awful. 

I am sure all of the poor humans in that hotel would have rather met these 2 in the hall than C and me.  

Anyway, C either went to the front desk and drunkenly convinced the clerk to give her the room number or D found us. 

In any case, we jumped on the beds and danced around for ages and then eventually passed out. 

I am not sure if C snored, but since I fell asleep intoxicated, you can be sure that I did.

 I woke up with the swollen and sore nasal cavity– among many, many other ailments – to prove it. 

Sleep tight, drunkies!

California Dreamin

 God, I love California.

People who hate California, i.e. PNW dwellers, are the dumbest people alive.  I mean besides people that shoot off into the atmosphere in a giant dildo.

But, seriously, California is so beautiful and every time I go there I am, like, 'Screw you guys (PNW dwellers), I'm going home."  If you didn't read that in Eric Cartman's voice, please go back and do it again.  If you don't know who Eric Cartman is, please stop reading this and go do something else.  Seriously.

ANYWAY, Day 1 of the Waxed and Vaxed road trip came to a close after a rather lovely, pastoral trip through the Central Valley of CA at sunset, and we arrived in Sacramento.  

It was about an hour after dusk, the sun had set but was not done casting some light into the sky, so our setting was still pretty fucking fabulous.

 We checked into our room, I jumped on the bed for a bit, checked for bedbugs, almost broke my foot trying to jump on the mattress of Dale’s fold-out couch, and then got ready for dinner.

 EEEEK!

 Dinner in a restaurant was still pretty stressful to me.  I mean, I had spent previous weeks with M, wining and dining on bar patios in NoPo, but INSIDE??  With all the people and germs and Coronavirus just waiting to latch onto me in the enclosed space and suck me into Hades? 

I am a warrior, of course (translation; didn't want to look like a dork in front of my friends who know exactly how dorky I actually am), so I adjusted my mask, added Lysol wipes to the arsenal of hand sanitizer in my purse, and set out into the warm night with my friends.

We roamed around, dodging hobos and frat boys on those rent-a-bike thingies, put our name in at the restaurant, and then wandered through a groovy tunnel filled with art and discarded rent-a-bikes and then up an escalator, only to see this:

 

Thanks, Jimbo, for showing up.

Literally a jab from my buddy telling me, ‘Chill the f out and enjoy your night with your friends or I will give you bad tacos and food poisoning.”

 

So I did.  We sat down, ordered drinks, ordered food and I hanitizered (Harlowspeak for ‘hand sanitizered’) everything around me.  I looked around at all the unmasked, unafraid humans eating out in an enclosed space and thought, ‘I can do this.  I am with my friends and nothing bad is going to happen to me.”  As my shoulders relaxed, I looked around more and saw this:

Hi, cow!  <3

  

Like, WHAAAAAT??  Clearly the universe was in my corner and had placed my spirit animal and twin flame right behind me to watch over me as I ate and drank with my friends. 

(ISTG, if I ever get a tattoo, it is going to be cow-related!  Cows are everything!)

After dinner we went to our room and passed tf out, and while my roomies’ dueling snores did not keep me from sleep, they both went out of their way to let me know I was the quietest snorer ever when we got up in the morning.

Um, WHAT?  Pssshhhh!  I don’t even snore, so…

 

AND THEY WERE ASLEEP AND SNORING SO HOW WOULD THEY EVEN KNOW?

We left our room, making sure to commandeer a luggage cart for all the shit we brought in for our one night stand with Sac-Town.

There is an actual picture of a human taking a shit in this post, but this isn't it..I was just tired.

We wandered around the Downtown Commons, which was clean and gorgeous (City of Portland, you should probably be taking notes here) and full of plants and music, for a bit and then hit up Old Town where I found a stuffed raccoon and C took an extremely unflattering picture of me on the dock.

This is Chad the Raccoon, I did not buy him because his name was Chad and also because he can't sit on the couch and watch Game of Thrones and eat salami with me.

 

After a fantastic lunch out in the sun, we decided to hit up the Rose Garden at the Capitol on our way South, but there were too many gates and no parking, so we got gas and I took a picture of a random dude taking a shit in broad daylight next to a building and sent it to my child.  BYE, Sac-Town!

This is that picture...sorry, not sorry.

We put more miles on Sisu, talked an awful lot about Jeeps (owning a Jeep is, like, a way of life, BTW.  Like, seriously.  They wave or salute at each other on the road, duck each other – more on that tomorrow – and probably have bizarre pre-purchase initiation rituals that non-Jeepers are not privy to), danced in the backseat – ok, that was just me – and waved at all the wildlife and livestock.  That was just me as well.  Mooooooo!

On our travels south, we stopped at Fields Family Winery in Acampo for a tasting, where D and I proceeded to annoy the shit out of C by talking about wines’ top notes and berry flavors and acidity the way annoying people do on TV.  Also, she hates wine and there was no vodka so she talked a lot of trash while I got a buzz and then a splitting headache from the wine and sunshine combo.

D bought, like, ALL the wine at the end of our tour, and we hopped back into Sisu to roll South again, until we got to our hotel.

Southern CA sunset, Seen from Sisu.

 

I regret to inform you that no one saw fit to record what happened next, but I can assure you it was funny as hell.

We get to our room, 2 queen beds, and I notice that the window has a cushion in it, so I fling myself onto the window-bed-thingie and announce I am sleeping there for the night.

I get up to jump on the beds and check for bedbugs, and D proceeds to test the window cushion and declare it HIS space for the night.  He would not listen to any arguments in favor of him sleeping in a bed like a normal human (which he is soooooo not), and spent the night in the window sill.  I still maintain to this day that, had I clambered into the armoire and declared it comfortable, he would have slept in there instead.  Possibly upside down, like a bat.

 

I was so tired and so full from the IN N OUT BURGERS that I fell right asleep like a giant starfish in the middle of my queen bed and neither heard the Dueling Chainsaws, nor my own – practically inaudible – snores.

My God, I missed you!

Tomorrow: Day 3.  Or The One Where We Counted Jeeps, Cruised With the Vatos, and C and I Drank an Entire Bottle of Vodka and Lord Knows How Many (barf) Truly’s

Evermore

 Those of you that know me know that I love Taylor Swift more than I love most humans.

Sooo...

Evermore.

Yeah, this song undid me the first time I heard it in November 2020.

Gray November
I've been down since July
Motion capture
Put me in a bad light

I spent all of 2020 being scared of dying, being scared of leaving my girls...just being scared.

And very down.

Yes, I look old and half dead.  I was, so...

The only thing that kept me sane was my weekly chats with my friends.

Ugly Sweater, Christmas, New Years...Random Saturday nights.

You guys kept me sane.

Okay, you also kept me ugly and fat -- haha!!  Oh, wait, that was just me.

Those calls and our silly group chats kept me grounded.  Reminded me that I was not totally alone in my inability to completely wrap my head around our 'new normal'.  (ISTG, I loathe that phrase even though I catch myself using it all the time!)

Hey December

Guess I'm feeling unmoored

Except I wasn't exactly unmoored, because I had the best humans ever giving me a safe berth whenever I needed one.

Thank you guys for that.

Ugly Sweater 2020, starring my chins!

I hope you get that, I hope you know how important you all were to me.  I mean, you still are, obvs, but between trying to negotiate my own fear, work, Roo's (lord have mercy) "schooling" and her isolation, me missing the Twin Terrors and all the other littles....Ya'll saved me.

Getting my ass (and chins) kicked in the best way.

The 'Holiday Season" was absolutely saved by being able to connect with my friends in that way.  My heart was saved a bit too, as well as the few vestiges of sanity (ha!) that I have been able to carry with me through the years.

In 2021, we stopped the calls, and them some friends moved away.

2nd to last or very last call with all of us.  :(

Anyway, we planned a road trip to see those friends in 2021, the first non-family, non-kid, no obligation, all-for-fun friend trip I have had in my entire life,

I hung onto the thought of that trip through weeks -- through weeks of absolutely insane Tinder dates, through shitty work days, through all of it,  

I could not wait.

Road Dawgs planning 'waxxed and vaxxed 2021' road trip! <3

Our trip started with some hitches, but once we were on the road, it was salami, nuts, me mooing at cows and shrieking at crows and tap-dancing in the back of Sisu - the best Jeep there ever was.

C and D and I sang, laughed, and talked our way through Washington, Oregon, and half of California.

Why, thank you!

It was gorgeous.  If I could have recorded us to save us for the rest of my life, I would have.

Instead, all I have are the memories of those hours of us laughing and trashing and car-dancing.

Glorious Mt. Shasta

Plus, there was that amazing rest stop in Shasta where we stopped to smell the roses (there is literally a spot for you to do that there! - and let I had to take my shoes off and walk in the CA dirt and yank some pine needles out of trees just to have.

To be continued....

Spoiler - we had the most fun ever.

On Mill Plain, ready to head South!!

Oh, can we just get a pause?
To be certain we'll be tall again


2 things about this post:

1 - I hope we start doing calls again - not because we need to, but bc we can.

2- none of these lyrics from "evermore' were used with permission.  Oooops.