As many of you know I just relocated to Arizona. My parents were lovely, and helped by driving the truck packed full of all my stuff, while Taylor and I blazed the trail in my little Yaris with Leeloo roaming the car with us. Taylor wasn't too keen on the manual transmission, but she only stalled twice on the whole drive. The timing worked out beautifully so that on our drive down from Bellingham, WA we could go halfway and stop in Sacramento, CA for my cousin Jon's wedding. The drive down was pretty standard with the high point of Taylor getting really excited about what she thought were baby cows, but turned out to be goats.
We scheduled it so we had one day to socialize in Cali, and then the next day the wedding took place. Taylor and I ended up with my sister and my one year old nephew Max driving downtown. For reasons known only to his infant mind, Max was the least happy about being in his car-seat. Moments after my sister set him in it he began to wail. She sat in the backseat while Taylor drove and I rode shotgun. Her best efforts to keep him quiet met with resounding failure, and about when I thought my eardrums were done in, he quieted. Taylor and I probably wouldn't have looked back if my sister hadn't said, "We're just going for a drive," in a really odd voice. We both glanced back and burst out laughing. She didn't think it was safe to take him from the car-seat, so she'd unbuckled and was crouched over his seat breastfeeding.
The wedding was lovely, and I saw a tiny frog, and regardless of how irrelevant that is, I felt it was worth a mention.
We continued our drive the day after the wedding, and it went a bit less smoothly. I took the first shift driving, and didn't go for a whole tank before I felt like I was nodding off. We pulled over and Taylor took over after I filled up. I dropped off to sleep and woke up an hour or so later. After a while I noticed Taylor was being pretty quiet. I asked if she was okay and she just nodded tersely. With a little more coaxing I found she had to use the bathroom urgently, and needed to eat. I suggested we find a place to top off the tank and grab a bite and use the restroom. After several more miles it was apparent that none of the little California towns were offering all three things. She took an exit to try to get us to a McDonald's before I realized the GPS was trying to turn us around. She pulled into a little parking lot and gave up on driving. I took over, and we had the deep misfortune to wind up in Bloomington, California. If my blog had a soundtrack, this would be where a sharp, ominous sound would crash in the background.
After passing several exits that didn't announce food or gas just to watch a gas station fly past, I finally just took an exit. I was initially determined to backtrack to the last exit where I'd seen both a McDonald's and an Arco, but then I saw the the one I'd taken had a Valero. Thinking of Taylor's urgent need to use the bathroom I tried to get to it, only to find that there was no left turn access. I ended up having to trail a construction zone for a mile or two before I could do a U-turn and get back to the gas station. I pulled in and Taylor was out like a shot. I started to fill up the tank and it was topped off by the time she got back. "Do you have the bathroom key? I have to go to." She looked like she'd just returned from a war zone and slowly shook her head. "You do not want to go into that bathroom." She finally told me that it was the worst bathroom she'd ever seen, there was no seat on the toilet, and it was utterly disgusting. Having not seen it, I'm going to assume it was the kind of bathroom with fluorescent lighting that flickers malevolently at you, with cracks dripping moisture and mildew down the walls and cockroaches that shuffle out of sight when the light turns on (regardless of the fact it was in the desert).
So we headed out, and I intended to leave the godforsaken little town when I heard my gas cap clunking against my car. I swore and avoided the freeway entrance to pull onto a side street. Taylor then reminded me that she was hungry and we'd passed a Taco Bell. I screwed on my cap and headed us back in the right way, managing to stall my car on the way. I was utterly frazzled and fed up with the shitty little place, with its complete lack of left turns, its scary bathrooms, and it's endless construction zones. We got some tacos and got the hell out of there, and if I saw a news report that Bloomington had burned to the ground (and there was miraculously no casualties at all) I would sigh a tiny sigh of sweet sweet vengeance.
I'm pretty well settled in now, with a job at a small shop called Oil and Viegar (I bet you can't guess what they sell.) I'm still on the job market since the pay isn't what I'd feel comfortable living on. Leeloo has overcome her overwhelming terror of ceiling fans to start joining us around the house.
