Cabbage or Sperm?

I have come down with baby fever with which I have been suffering for many months now, the temperature increases each month when I lose another viable egg. I never really noticed how utterly surrounded I am by people who do not create sperm.
And, it is REALLY hard to find sperm on the internet.
I looked on Ebay but all they had was pills to make sperm more potent.
On Craigslist there was a lonely man in a hotel looking for a "fuck fest", but he didn't have a picture posted so I couldn't mentally paste our faces together to see if our baby would be cute, oh yeah and it's probably sketchy to meet a stranger in a Motel 6.
Amazon linked me to a Halloween costume so that I could dress like sperm...

Really?

What ever happened to picking a baby out of a cabbage patch?

I'm Baaaaaaack!!

Hello Everyone,
I know it has been a REALLY long time since last I posted and if any of you are still watching you deserve a round of applause for your amazing attention span.
I am no longer taking on the open road. Dolly the wonder vehicle has been sold to an adorable, newly dating couple in their 60's named Al and Alice. He bought it for her as a one year anniversary present and I think they will have many lovely adventures.
As for me, I have decided to settle down for awhile in Silver City, New Mexico to educate myself and live in a real, bonafide house, without wheels.
Last summer I spent time in Provincetown, Massachusetts, working, making friends and soaking up the humid, salty air, It was lovely.
I am looking forward to using my blog to talk more about the small, everyday things that happen in one's life rather than being an adventure reporter. I hope people like it.

Welcome Back Readers of Zia Sophia.

Steel Briefcases and Sex in the 90's

Once again it has been awhile since the last entry. I was in a dark and twisty phase of my life, and that makes it hard to write without bringing down the party. 

I am currently back in the place where I started my road adventure, Taos, NM. 

I haven't been here in springtime for over a decade, which is unfortunate because spring is the best time to be in a high mountain landscape like this. 

Last night the boyfriend and I designed my dream house in our imaginations. It really is perfect so now all I need is approximately 1,000,000.00 USD to see my dream realized. I would really like to take pictures of it and put it on the internet so if there are any philanthropists who would like to give a small potatoes blogger and her boyfriend a pile of money, here I am. I prefer delivery of said money in a sack if possible, or a pillowcase. 

I don't want the money to change my outlook too much and having a million dollars delivered in a steel briefcase will me feel rich, callous, and power hungry pretty much automatically. 

In the meantime I have been commissioned to do household chores and yard work while house-sitting.  I've been working everyday but I've found time to watch quite a few 90's movies. I haven't done any official research on the subject, but it seems to me that there was some kind of legislation or MPAA regulation lifted during that decade that allowed for WAY more sex in each film. Almost every single 90's movie has at least one steamy sex scene. That's been pretty fun, bad fashion, terrible haircuts and hot, dirty sex scenes. 

Dabbling in Careers, Fashion Victim Mentality and a Movie Review.

I worked as an interior design assistant this weekend. 

It has a totally glamorous title right? I thought it would be totally glamorous, but just like the movie business it has a shiny veneer with very little glitter inside. 

I moved furniture and washed things with windex. I think those particular job duties are very transferable though, so all is not lost. 

Today I applied for a job that asks for someone to hand out candy and smile.

Nobody has ever been more qualified for that job than me, nobody. 

I'm sure of it. 

*Fingers Crossed*

In other news I am  trying to be accepted as a hopeless loser (fashionably speaking) for the show "What Not to Wear". I think, now that I am almost 30 I will surely qualify as a fashion victim. 

*Fingers Crossed*

I went to a movie the other day called Red Riding Hood. It was just like Twilight except without the vampires and abs. Which are the only reasons to see Twilight. There was a magic cloak that inexplicably got longer and longer, that was pretty neat.

That's all I have for you. 

You're welcome.

Some people should come with warning signs.

WARNING: 

this person is known to cause emotional turmoil, cancerous thoughts, murderous urges, and general physical health maladies

WARNING:

this person is known to spout beautiful words that sound like they have deeper meaning, leading to the belief that this person not only has a handle on reality, but is also very emotionally responsible. Prolonged exposure to this individual may result in the uncomfortable realization that one has been duped. 

WARNING:

this person will make lavish declarations of generosity and luxury and then immediately, without notice, renege on all of them.

WARNING:

this person is secretly addicted to drama.

Be The Change

It might be time to change the title of this blog. I feel like I have found a place where I would like to stick around for a bit. I am leaving the open road behind to live in a stationary house, more correctly, my dream house. The boyfriend will be here for this leg of the journey as well, at least for now. 

I have moved into a house that is affectionately named Babylon. There are just a few of us here, with a landscaped Japanese influenced (gorgeous) garden, a beautiful gigantic house, and two of the world's most amazing other people.

The universe has absolutely showered me with luxury and comfort, physically, spiritually and emotionally.

I woke up this morning trying to be able to realize that this is real. Realize that this amazing thing actually happened to me with seemingly no strings attached. The piece of me that understand my majesty, my importance in the universe, and my right to be happy and cared for is rejoicing. It seems to believe that the other parts have finally bowed to it, the divine self. 

The rest of me though, the skeptic, the jaded, too often let down, hurt child inside is just waiting for the catch. Is waiting for the other shoe to drop, or for the person in charge to realize their terrible mistake and send me back out, wandering aimlessly. 

I like the tiny, confident voice. I like to believe in the belief that people are generous and kind because they just are, not because they are looking for something in return. So I will turn down the bass, turn up the treble and listen contently to the tiny voice. 

Mahatma Gandhi said: "be the change you want to see in the world" and I believe that to be true of thoughts, and snap decisions of human behavior. 

Join me next time as I, Zia Sophia take on the stationary life and all the emotions that come along with it. 

Another Epic Road Tale

I made it to a rest stop just outside Flagstaff, Arizona last night. I was outside, standing between two semi trucks and listening to the bits of traffic that are still going on the highway at that very late hour. I started thinking about yesterday's post and it took me on a thought train to another delightful tale. When I came in to post it, I read the comments from yesterday and there was a request for exactly that story. Clearly it is time to tell it. By the way, all of you readers out there in internet land, I LOVE comments, please feel free to leave them for me, like little surprise gifts.

After about three weeks in San Francisco I realized that I wanted to be in a place where I could turn left, freely, among many other small conveniences that I had, until arriving in SF taken for granted. So, I left. I wandered around for a few months and settled down in Silver City, NM to go to college. I lasted a while there, and had a good time for most of it.

That winter though, was the worst winter in history, there was record temperatures and record snowfall. It was beautiful but I didn't have any heat in my tiny, roach and mouse infested house. I decided enough was enough and started planning an exit strategy. I had recently become friends with a tiny man named Alex who really liked smoking weed and trying to put his best game on my hot blonde neighbor. I am pretty sure that he only befriended me in the beginning to get to her, but later we became actual friends.

I don't remember exactly how he got to be part of the exit strategy. I am fairly certain that one day I was talking about going back to San Francisco and he inserted himself into my plans by changing all the "I" and "me" statements into "we" statements. I'm pretty sure that I just went along with the "we" as to not be rude.

At any rate, "we" decided to take his car. Ironically his was a red Pontiac too. I started selling off my stuff and giving notice to things and generally working out a way to get enough money to leave.

One day Alex ran into my house, breathless, talking about this amazing new school bus he just acquired. I was a little taken aback and somewhat disappointed, it was hard enough to find a parking place for a tiny car in SF. After hearing his tale of how he got it, I was a little less sold. He told me that it was an old, 1950's school bus that had been sitting in someone's back yard for the last few years. He passed it everyday on his way out of his own driveway and he finally decided to knock on the door of the house and ask after it. The owner of the bus said that he wanted to get rid of it and would gladly trade Alex the bus for his car. Alex immediately jumped on it and signed the title of his perfectly good car over for the giant bus.

I tried to be excited, and for a while I managed to convince myself that it was a good idea. Some highlights of the bus

*No power steering

*Air brakes broken, it stopped, but slowly

*Had been previously occupied by at least three families of rats and one family of raccoons.

*Was missing a piece of the floor in the middle of the walkway, so that one could see the highway while sitting in the bus

*No air conditioning or heat

*The paint was peeling off and it looked much older than the 50 years it claimed.

      -We attempted to fix that by spray painting things all over it, but we only had yellow. It looked awful

*There was no gas tank

    -You read correctly, No Gas Tank. When I asked Alex how an extremely old, gas hog of a school bus runs all the way to California without a gas tank he (of course) had the "perfect" solution.

He wanted to bungee small, 5-10 gallon gas containers all around the bus, and use a garden hose to feed it into the gas pump that would feed it into the engine.

*It had a salvage title that neither of us could afford to work out, so we couldn't get it registered or insured

*It was the WORST IDEA EVER

I went with him everyday to the spot where the bus was parked and diligently cleaned and painted it, tried to get excited about arriving in SF with the ugliest, most obscene vehicle known to man. If we could even make it at all, without bursting into flames from all the gas we were surrounded by in the 4 ton bus without brakes.

I tried to picture my life involving the bus and I slipped into a thick bog of depression. I cried myself to sleep a few times. I felt like that was the only option to get out of Silver City, and I needed to get out of there.

One morning about three days before we were planning to depart I realized that the only reason that Alex and that fucking bus were even involved is because I was trying to be polite in a conversation. So I tried to back out.

I went to the parking place as usual and tried to tell Alex that I was out. I didn't want to go in the death bus to SF, and I would figure something else out. He was naturally devastated. He had very high hopes for death bus and thought that everything would work out. I am usually the first one to jump on the "everything will work out" train, but I hated that bus. I walked away from him, and tried not to look back as he held his head in his hands and cried. We had tried on numerous occasions to trade back, but the previous bus owner had finally succeeded in getting rid of it, so all of our pleas were to no avail. Alex even offered to trade back and throw in a couple hundred dollars...no dice.

The next day Alex again, ran breathlessly into my house. He said, "get your stuff we're leaving right now!" I wasn't ready and I told him that I wasn't going in the bus. He informed me that it was okay, he got his car back and we could take that. Relieved, I started gathering my things, throwing stuff into a suitcase and doing last second figuring of what I could leave behind. Alex kept looking out the window and checking his watch. His body language was incredibly sketchy. I asked him what was going on and he assured me that he was just eager to get going, and happy to be rid of the death bus.

I went outside so that I could say goodbye to my neighbor and Alex's car wasn't in front of my house where one usually parked when coming to visit me. I looked around the side of the house and finally went around back. I found the car, parked as far away from the street as possible, hastily covered with snow and branches. I marched right back in and demanded to know how he got his car back.

He stole it.

My options for going with Alex basically amounted to risking my life in death bus, or grand theft auto. I told him that I was just going to take the bus, and that he should return the car before he went to prison. I bummed a ride to Albuquerque the next day and arrived safely in San Francisco via Greyhound. 

I never heard from Alex again.

Traveling tales of the I-40

I've been on Interstate 40 for about 350 miles now and it has brought me to Albuquerque, NM, the land of my youth. I lived in Albuquerque through many of my teenage years, which were filled with desperation, poverty, drug addiction and eventually some success. That is a story that could be a blog all on its own though, so today I will focus on the time I said goodbye to Albuquerque as my residence for good. 

I was 18 years old and (finally) finished with high school after a long struggle. I was newly out of the closet and ready to see the world. I had my sights set on a coast, either one as long as it was attached to a giant city with bright lights where I could find my fame and fortune. After a late-night coffee shop discussion with my bff it was decided that the two of us would take on San Francisco.

We had a grand total of roughly $700, an old, red Pontiac, Sunfire with about three million miles already clocked, some clothes and other personal items, and great hopes. We didn't know anyone in San Francisco, but I have always been pretty good at making friends and we were sure that we would be fine. So, we hit the road. 

The first day was totally uneventful, we cruised through Arizona, stopping once to take pictures with the world's largest jackrabbit. The stereo was broken and only played tapes, of which we had exactly two, Madonna (the best of) and The Beastie Boys (Ill Communication).We drove until it was impossible to keep going, and then we slept at a rest stop. 

Day two was when the real adventure began. We drove through the seemingly endless desert-scape of Nevada. That night as we were crossing over the Sierra Nevada mountain rage it started to snow. The roads are very narrow, curvy and  dark. The snow felt magical, and since San Francisco doesn't get snow we felt like it was one last taste. All the way up the road we were alone on the highway, and we speculated about whether the highway was secretly closed and we were about to plow into a snowbank around the next blind curve. On the way back down we were very tired and in need of a place to pull over to sleep for the night. Suddenly a semi-truck pulled up behind us and started speeding up. It felt like he was about four centimeters away from the bumper of the Sunfire, so, naturally, we sped up. Then the truck sped up more, and we had no choice but to speed up again. The truck didn't back off a millimeter, but continued to gain speed. There were plenty of pull-outs that we could utilize to pull over and let the truck pass but they weren't marked by signs, and it was snowing, and we were going 85mph around mountain curves with no guardrail on the side that immediately plummeted into what we were sure was about to be our rocky grave. We continued in that terrifying fashion for about twenty minutes, which felt more like seven hours since my life was flashing before my eyes with every slippery turn. Finally, we sped up to 95mph and took the first turn off we saw and the truck screamed past picking up even more speed. With all the adrenaline coursing through our veins we were no longer sleepy and decided to push on. 

According to the map we figured we would be in San Francisco on day three. On the morning of day three we were overwhelmed with joy. We were almost there! We followed the map carefully, and crossed the border of California where we exuberantly honked the horn. We were entering the promised land. Then we crossed the Nevada border, confused. Then back to California, YAY! Back to Nevada? California! Nevada? Why wasn't this on the map? We should have been going southwest towards San Francisco, but we couldn't seem to get out of Nevada for longer than a few miles. The map said we were crossing through the right towns. Suddenly the highway veered off and left us on a narrow road that led us to a small town. The houses were all very cute and obviously intentionally built, but there were no people, anywhere. There were giant stalks, the size of sunflowers in August, covered with purple flowers as far as the eye could see and a delicious, delicate smell wafting through the car unlike any smell I had ever experienced. The bird song was deafeningly loud and unlike any song I had ever heard from birds, pleasant, but strange. A three legged dog darted in front of the car and we swerved to avoid it. After that narrow miss, the highway suddenly reappeared and the smell drifted away, the birds returned to normal and the highway picked back up again. All told, the unexplainable detour took about 9 hours, but used very little gasoline. 

We finally crossed into California, and this time we stayed there. YAY! We were about an hour away from San Francisco, but it was very late and we had been driving for what felt like days without sleep. We couldn't stand Madonna for one more second and we were at each others throats. It was clearly time to stop. There was an exit that only led back onto the on-ramp but had a small pull-out where a trucker was parked for the night. We stopped there, put the seats down and draped a blanket over the windshield to block out the light. We said our goodnights, and were just settling in when we heard a pickup truck pull in and stop behind us. My bff sat bolt upright and pulled the windshield cover off. There were three guys who are best described as back-woods creeps, carrying crow bars and sneaking up to the car. When they saw that there were people in the car they jumped back into the truck and peeled out.

All exhaustion that we had been feeling was immediately extinguished and we also peeled out of there and returned to the freeway. It was mutually decided that we would just go to San Francisco. 

Before we left Albuquerque we got some advice about San Francisco from people that we (at the time) thought were very worldly, and therefore should be trusted. Here are some of the highlights. 

*You can sleep on the beach, so try to find the beach first thing.

         -North Beach is a good one to camp in.

*If you find yourself in the "Mission District" RUN!

*Parking is easy, as long as you stay in the residential areas

*There are glitter, sparkle, fairy queens everywhere you look. 

There was more, but those were the pieces that were immediately disappointing. 

So, we drove into San Francisco and followed the signs to North Beach. Inexplicably, the signs stopped and we didn't seem to be at the ocean. I asked a guy on the sidewalk where North Beach was and he pointed the way. Again, we followed his directions and still, no ocean. The strip clubs and Italian restaurants were plentiful, but the Pacific Ocean was elusive. We felt like it was a big enough body of water that we wouldn't have missed it, but there was no sign of it. Somehow we figured out that maybe North Beach was the name of a neighborhood rather than the name of an actual beach. There was a pretty blonde girl standing in a doorway, and I decided we should confirm our suspicions with her. She told us that North Beach was in fact the name of a neighborhood and that we couldn't actually camp on any beaches within San Francisco city limits, but that we could camp at Stinson Beach and she would gladly show us the way in exchange for a ride. We put her in the backseat and drove across Golden Gate Bridge. 

At this point we had been actively driving for approximately twenty-two hours since the last time we slept. There was a great amount of delirium, mixed with adrenaline, frustration and deep seated joy. The blonde girl was from Sweden and immediately started flirting with my bff, aka, the flamingly gay boy in the passenger seat. She was running her fingers through his hair and tickling his ears with her fingertips, but on the window side as to hide it form my view. About an hour passed before we finally got to the turn-off. The blonde got dropped off and gave us directions the rest of the way to Stinson Beach, saying it was just over the hill. 

We started up the hill, hoping it was close because we were almost out of gas, and the exhaustion was returning with great conviction. Two miles or so up the road we slowed down because something was in the road. Turns out it was a raccoon that had recently been hit by a car and was desperately trying to peel its mid-section off of the road surface. Another raccoon was standing on the shoulder seemingly trying to offer encouragement to his very injured friend. We watched this scene, unable to look away, for far too long. I finally swerved around it and continued up the road. We both started crying, giant, tears laced with exhaustion and grief for the poor raccoon. After driving ten or fifteen miles we started to worry about the dwindling gas supply, and wanted to turn around, but having just recovered from the raccoon situation we were not in a hurry to turn around and risk seeing that the raccoon didn't make it after all. At some point we realized that we had no choice, and turned around. We drove all the way back down with no further raccoon sightings. We were almost to the gas station when a deer wandered into the road. I stopped as fast a possible and ended up gently tapping it, it looked at me with giant, angry, eyes and then trotted off. When I pulled into the gas station I drove past the pumps, put the car in park and we cried ourselves to sleep. 

Eventually everything worked out, and I found great happiness and success in San Francisco, though I still can't listen to that Madonna album.

That was the last time I was on Interstate 40, and now I find myself once again, In Albuquerque en route to San Francisco. I hope for better luck this time!

Viva La Revolution!

The boyfriend discusses starting a revolution approximately every.single.day.

I'm like, then start one, and he's all "you can't just start one it takes planning" 

Apparently in order to start a revolution one needs to talk to their girlfriend ad nauseum about all the reasons the government is fucked up right now, and all of the brilliant plans to fix it, without ever doing anything more about it. Knowing that, it's hard to believe that there aren't more revolutions going on, or maybe there are millions.

I like talking about the state of the country and the problems/solutions that would fix everything for about 4 hours a year, tops. After that it feels like I am bringing giant piles of negativity into my life for no reason. 

I get it, the country is not run ideally, and there are about eleventy million things that one would change if they were in power. Ever notice the people who want things to change the most have never been in any kind of position involving bureaucratic  power? 

I used to be way more activist-y and idealistic, but over the years it has become clear to me that the only power I have over change is the power to change my own underwear whenever I want. When I first realized that great power I changed my panties four, five times a day. Then I realized the great responsibility that comes with such power... I had to wash my laundry pretty much constantly. Other than the small personal changes that I can do all by myself without organizing great herds of people, I am not interested in change. 

Mundane, mediocre, denial-based happiness is way more my speed. I'm happy here, just like the rest of Americans who would rather have their affordable priced home decor items from Walmart than to carry a giant gun and risk my life for future generations. I'm probably a selfish asshole, but I have inexpensive home decor to make me feel better. 

In other news, the boyfriend and I were called back to Austin with a gimmick that promised us fame and fortune, we were let down and we are back in the vortex. We may never get out, though the plan is to leave tomorrow morning. 

Texas is BIG y'all, that's why people spend their whole lives here, it's not Texas pride, it's lack of will to spend three days in a car and still be in the same state they started in.

I did a short Google search on Texas and found out that there are plans to put a giant, bamboo reinforced, helium filled banana in the sky that would only be visible from Texas. It will be 300m long. That is fucking brilliant.

If I do get behind the revolution it would only be to insure that the giant banana over Texas actually happens.

 

Green is the new Poor.

A few weeks ago the boyfriend and I went through a documentary phase where we only wanted to watch true stories of people trying to live their lives. One such documentary that we found was called "No Impact Man" 

The movie was entertaining, and the consistent break downs by the wife were more than a little delightful. I'm sure that this project speaks to the bulk of middle to upper middle class white families living in the United States, but I don't think it has the broad spectrum that No Impact Man hoped it would. 

I look at the way poor people live in the United States and see the same things happening. The electricity gets shut off and the residents have to do without, but in the case of poor people they can't go out to the farmer's market and get hand dipped candles by the dozen.

Laundromats are expensive, and often less affluent people do their laundry in the bathtub and hang their clothes to dry. No Impact Man reacted as if he had found the holy grail when he discovered that option. 

The wife is most concerned with having to give up her reality television, shopping,  and Starbucks coffee addictions, but in order to make it through a year without, she goes on a shopping spree the day before and spends nearly $10,000.00. It seems to me that ten thousand dollars worth of designer clothing will get her through twelve months.

I appreciate what No Impact Man and his cohorts are trying to do, I appreciate that somebody is trying to raise awareness about how much Americans consume and throw away. I don't however think that he deserved all of the fame and fortune that giving up meat, toilet paper and electricity for a year graced him with.

There are people who do that every single day as a way of life, and don't get to end it at the close of a year with the promise of a huge paycheck.