Where's My Chauffeur? Also: Needed: Heated Bed

Well, I did it. I took a road trip all by myself. Not without incident, naturally, but I did survive. I left Friday at noon, with a buh-bye e-mail to my current employers who have yet to give me more than an hour's worth of work at a time. I billed 8 hours of time last week. Working from home has not proven to be a fruitful endeavor, thus far.

So I was driving happily along, my studded snow tires make a horrid noise, and the windows cracked because it was actually above freezing and heaven help me but I love fresh air, even if it's chilly.

I noticed the car starting to sway a bit in the wind, and as I got south of Pueblo (waaay down south in Colorado where all is flat and... well, mostly just flat) I was attacked my an army of tumbleweeds. There was no way to dodge them, they just came at the cars with loud bangs, scratches, and blind tumbling. Shock and awe- in straw!

I saw the Huge One before it got to the road, I tried to slow down, to miss it, but it kept pace, and hurled itself at my hood until PLUNK! There it stuck, in my grill. (Were I to have a grill. No, more, it was stuck in my dented hood from where it doesn't quite close all the way due to a prior incident with a damn pole that jumped out of nowhere at me, in a parking garage.)

I weighed the pros and cons of stopping along an empty, exposed highway in a windstorm to wrestle a small, mangled tree from my car while dodging other large chunks of straw and branches hurtling at my across the plains, and decided I would chance it until I got to a gas station. I've heard tumbleweeds can get hot when they stick to cars, and catch on fire, but I thought that being engulfed in flames from a rouge collection of twigs would be a much more glamourous way to go than just a regular ol' car accident, so took my chances and continued my drive with an entire bush covering the front of my car. My vision was rather impared, but the road is straight, and there aren't many cars, and I was in a hurry to get there before it got too dark.

Once I got to Las Vegas, New Mexico, I decided I needed gas, and figured it was about time to extricate the large, dead shrub from my hood. I pulled into the gas station, and pulled up behind another car at the pump, since there weren't any open spots available. (Apparently Las Vegas, NM is quite a happenin' place.) Some hick got out of the car next to me, and came walking over, with his head cocked to one side. He looked over my enormous tumbleweed, and gave it a couple of good, hard, tugs, and got rid of the majority of it. “Didja know you had that on there??” he asked, through the windshield.

No. I totally missed the large chunk of tree-sized bush sticking up across the entire front half of my car.

“Um. Yeah. I was going to get that. Thanks.”

He walked away in his too-tight jeans, shaking his head like, how sad they let such a stupid, blind person drive. But great music!

I was listening to Flogging Molly, at that point, after all. So how could he not have thought that?

So I made it to Albuquerque without further incident.

We threw a fun shower for my friend, M, at a teahouse on Saturday. It was insanely Victorian and over-the-top, but fortunately they provided old-fashioned HATS for everyone to wear, because if you're sitting in an overstuffed chair with floral wallpaper, eating heart-shaped finger food off of doilies, well, you're really missing out if you aren't wearing a hat. I put on this atrocious beige-thing covered in blue toile and faux flowers, and really all it was missing was a dead bird.

So that was a success, and M and I had a good time catching up. She even let me sleep in her bed, because her fiancé is off gallivanting down in South America somewhere, and they have a yummy bed. It is HEATED. We turned it on as we were getting ready for bed, and I just about orgasmed when I slid in between the warmed 400-thread count sheets, it was so delicious. I briefly debated moving in permanently, and staking a claim in their bed... but then I realized The Funasaurus is actually a quite good bed warmer, himself, (if a little sweaty, but much more cuddly) and reluctantly came home.

I made the drive back in record time, and now I am back to “working from home” again. I think I've billed a good two hours so far, this week.