Day 38

CAPTAIN'S LOG

We're here!!!!!!!!!!

We officially touched down in Leyden, Massachusetts the evening of Tuesday, April 19th. The above photo opp was taken today in the illustrious garden of the even more illustrious:

Sara Seinberg (aka: Tante Sara to our daugher, Harper) and...

Ginger "hella butch"Robinson (aka: "Robinson" to her buddy Kenya).

Yup. Five weeks and 5,100 miles after leaving San Francisco we arrived at our new home state of Masshusetts. As I write this Sara has  shared with us the shocking news that Prince has died. So we're all feeling rather consumed by that right now. Godspeed to your final destination, Prince.

R.I.P. -- You made a lot of people happy.

I'm blogging from Ginger and Sara's garden on their beautiful three acres in Leyden. Very peaceful but I'm also a bit nervous. Starting a new, improved life seems daunting. So I'll remind myself and my family to take things one day at a time -- allow ourselves to forget the things that should be forgotten and to dwell on those things that merrit pausing. We'll see.

We had a couple of adventures since my last blog post. On our drive to Washington, D.C. traffic stopped while someone (or someones) hurt in a car accident was airlifted by helecopter, I assume, to a hospital. Our car was sitting very close to the scene of the accident and I snapped this photo:

That was intense...

Then, during our stay in D.C., Harper, Amy and I magically managed to get passes to visit the House of Rep's chambers. Of course it's not hard to get those passes. But it is hard to get into the Capitol building, get those passes (without any early preparations), get into line and get into the chambers in 45 minutes! I have to give the Capitol Visitors Center staff their propers. These folks are awesome and efficient! No pic's are allowed in the chambers, but Amy snapped this cool one en route:

Just another taxpayer and her awe-inspiring lambchop.

Well folkses, I'd like to blog longer, but I've got a new life to start. :-)  Also me, Ginger, Sara, Amy, and Harper have some errands we gotta run. So I'm off into the wild blue yonder of Pioneer Valley in western Massachusetts. Wish us well, and I'll do the same for y'all.  

I've decided to post to this blog again in a few months, once we've purchased a home and have had some time to settle. So you may wish to check back sometime in the late summer for an update, Kenya-style. :-)

And don't forget to visit our sweet asses out here in Massachussetts.

Pix (+ hugs, and kisses):

Amy in front of Sara and Gingers fab new shed (that they build from scratch...)

Amy and Robinson. Best buddies since college. Reunited.

Mommy and Harper leaving the Leyden public library (that cute little building with the flag, behind us).

Me and Amy's brother, Harper's Uncle Bob, in Charlotte, NC.

Sara and Robinsons' young kale plants.

Checking out fishing supplies at the hardware store in Greenfield.

Sara and Ginger's hammock, which I helped to hang during a previous visit.

There's a butterfly on my hat! Natural History Museum, Washington, D.C.

Ginger and Sara's house. Home sweet home for the next couple of months, and, I expect, a lifelong refuge...

Excelsior, y'all!!

Day 31

CAPTAIN'S LOG

Hi all. Posting this blog from a cell phone as I can't get a decent connection in our hotel today. We've finally made it to the east coast! I'm writing to y'all from Charlotte, North Carolina -- Amy's home town.  Amy and Harper are swimming in the hotel pool as I write this and I'm blogging pool side. I know my entries have been infrequent. Between downloading pictures and composing something interesting (and in today's case, horrible Internet access), it takes a long time to get a post up, and I'm often too tuckered out from adventures at the end of the day to blog. Trying to be smart today and post in the afternoon instead of just before bed.

Hey! The Internet just came back up at the hotel. Blogging from my notepad now...

So y'all are aware I assume of the homo- and transphobic laws passed in North Carolina by the gov and legislature. Among the new rules is a draconian law that says people have to use public bathrooms according to their "birth" gender. People in North Carolina are hecka busting out against this shit! Look at the sign we saw at an indie bookstore in Asheville:

Y'all means all!! Isn't that fabulous??

Then we saw these signs "designating" the men's and women's rooms at a very yummy eatery in Asheville called Biscuit Head. I think the trick here as to be ambiguous about which bathroom is which so everyone has to kind of guess at it. I loved it:

Women's restroom? Who knows? Who cares?

Men's? Maybe kinda?

I made it a point to do my business in both...

So after Austin we drove up to Memphis! Elvis' hometown! I'm going to be a straight shooter with y'all -- I LOVED GRACELAND!! We took the self-guided audio tour there and I felt that it was realy well done. Elvis' house is like a crazy time capsule from the late 60's and early 70's when home decore was NUTS! He even had green shag carpet on the ceiling of one of the rooms in his house (that might have been a bit much -- but I still loved it). We had a red shag carpet in one of the back rooms at the Victorian on Sanchez Street that I grew up in -- I used to make imprints of my hands in it. Groovy!

Another high point of our Memphis stop over was the gaggle of trained ducks that march around the hotel we were staying at. Yup, trained marching ducks. What's next?? We were staying the Peabody Hotel in case you want to google it. As I understand it, for decades they've been marching ducks from their living quarters (I suppose on the roof) into an elevator, and from there across a RED CARPET (yes, they roll out a red carpet for them ducks) to a fountain in the middle of the lobby. The ducks hang out there all day and no one bugs them. Here's a grainy pic Amy took:

The ducks are on the red carpet, just right of center. Ha ha ha!

So we've been to Disneyland and Graceland, but we couldn't say we'd been truly entertained at a theme park until we visited (wait for it...) DOLLYWOOD!!! Who out there loves Dolly Parton? Of course y'all do. You've got good sense.

EXHIBIT D:  Grandma.

"Good sense" is one of my late paternal grandmother's gems (as opposed to "ain't got no sense," which she was also known to say). Most of you know that I lived with my grandma for about six years, starting when my parents split when I was 10. Grandma was old-timey Southern -- from Crowly Louisiana. She was a tremendous cook, she was extremely disciplined, she was physically very strong, and she kept the numerous children that she raised on an extremely short leash. She was a serious badass. I loved her and was terrified of her all at the same time. Here are some of my grandma's most frequent sayings (all of which I've personally adopted -- feel free to use these yourselves should you have occasion):

"More than a notion" -- that's what she often said I was. I think it means formindable, but in a cute and sometimes  annoying way.
"Rubber" -- what she called rubber bands. I would half kill myself trying not to laugh when she was referring to the "rubber" that broke, or the "rubber" that was too small.
"Knocked the props from under you" -- this meant that something put you psychologically off balance, not to be confused with...
"Fell out" -- if someone fell out either (a) they fainted or (b) there had been an arguement (they "fell out" with one another) which usually meant that...
"Church is out" -- this meant the kid gloves came off (as in she called me a bitch and church was out!)
My personal favorite:
"Running me bugs" -- Which means "driving me crazy." Amy says she's never heard anyone but me say "running me bugs," and that she couldn't find anything when she googled it. I told her that's because it's hella old-timey. Grandma didn't make stuff up.

During our big trip to Dollywood, we stayed at Dolly Parton's new "DreamMore" hotel. VERY family friendly and very, very nice -- bunkbeds for kids in the famly rooms! Look at this note staff leaves on the pillows of newly arrived guests:

See how she signed this? "Love, Dolly." She loves me. :-)

We loved Dollywood!! However, the highlight of this stopover that I'll describe is the interaction that we had with Kevin, our waiter who served us our first night at the hotel (really good food, by the way!) Kevin was extremely kind and personable and helpful. He also had crazy eyes. So interacting with him felt just a bit unsettling. (ALL of the staff at the hotel and at Dollywood were extremely kind and sweet -- that is one of the best things about the place. Kevin, alone, had crazy eyes.)  Here is the recipe he shared with us during our diner for authentic cowboy beans:

-Fry you a whole package of bacon. Once it's all fried up, add...
-Two BIG cans of beans (baked or "pork and"). Let them beans hit that hot grease.
-Crumple some of that bacon up on those beans,
-Add you two crumpled up hamberger patties.
There you go!

We WILL be going to Dollywood again. Loved it.

So Amy and Harper have finished swimming and I candidly have to pee. I'm going to therefore wind this up with a bunch of pic's. We are getting very close to the end of our trip but I promise I'll post another blog entry at or before landing time. Until then, live long and prosper.

Excelsior!

Harper getting blown dry after a VERY wet ride at Dollywood.

Tennessee is a "right to carry" state. This sign hung on the door of the Memphis planetarium we visited.

Elvis Presley. Babe magnet.

Kenya Briggs...  babe magnet!

I think the double entendre here is obvious...

Dollywood, yo!

Harper won a norwhal lovie (that's a stuffed fish with a horn on its head) when she chose this duck. We've now got TEN lovies in tow...

We missed a turn so Siri temporarily re-routed us through this back road on the Appalachian trail. Adventure, y'all!

LOVED the Graceland tour!

Me and Amy's little sister. Yup, I'm picking my teeth (I'm sorry Melissa!) Just another classy San Francisco dame...

Bumper cars! Harper is driving and I'm helping a little...

Day 22

CAPTAIN'S LOG

Day 22! Can you believe it?

You'd think after three weeks I'd be missing San Francisco. After all, I was raised there. But I'm strangely not. At least not yet. When I left I was afraid I'd be debilitated by an intense feeling a loss for the City. My hometown. No. I don't miss San Francisco. But I DO miss family and friends that I've left there. I do miss y'all. Sigh...

Guess you'll just have to come visit me when I finally get where I'm going! :-)

Let's talk about the lamb.

EXHIBIT C: My daughter, Harper Mae Briggs, alias: "lamb," "lamb chop," "girl child," and "harpischord." She's the reason for our move to Western Massachusetts -- where the public schools are the best in the nation, where we can convert the equity from our former SF home into a house AND a rental property, where tons of lesbian mom's are also raising children, and where my baby girl won't have to spend 40+ hours each week away from  her mothers in school (as has been the case since Harper was just eight months old). The light of my life, the air that I breathe, my perfect angel.

Harper went bowling for the first time!! Yes, y'all, in Austin, Texas. Oh, you should have seen that lamb carefully picking up her (special, light-weight) bowling ball and deftly dropping it onto the lane so that it might eventually meander, over the course of 20-30 seconds, down to the pins at the other end. So cute. Fortunately for you spectator types, I took a video!

Harper bowled a 42! (Yes, those are bumper thingies alongside the gutters -- us adult bowlers made use of them too...) I intended to keep taping till that ball hit the pins but my phone memory ran out. Rats.

When we first crossed into Texas from New Mexico, we stayed in a town called Lubbock. Nothing really of note there except some roadrage a**hole who managed to royally piss me off.

Something about me (Kenya Briggs 101): I am an extrovert who doesn't suffer fools very well at all. (This was brought to my attention about 10 years ago by my mother.) Moreover, my ability to suffer fools is diminishing the older I get.

The above statement aside, Amy -- once again -- bore the brunt of my anger at the Lubbock road rage asshole. So that "tough stuff" often adds up to me just acting like a grumpy jerk.

However, when we left Lubbock en route to Austin, we enjoyed a really magnificent drive. The scenery was just beautiful. Really. Our friend Jennifer told us that we'd gone through the Texas hills (=VERY= subtle compared to Bay Area hills). Since it's early spring, the Texas wildflowers were in bloom and sprinkled all over the place. Plus, as it's been raining in the area more than usual, the grass everywhere was lush. We got a little lost and wound up taking the back highways to Austin, which I think made the drive even nicer.

I took this pic at the Austin Wildflower Center, but it's alot like the views we saw from the road:

Texas wildflowers:

Today, we drove through Arkansas all the way to Memphis, Tennessee. We stopped in this little (really teeny) town in Arkansas called Prescott looking for food. We found this great cafe called Izzy's Place. The food was rockin'! The fried green tomatoes were especially yummy -- they literally melted in a sistuh's mouth. Best fried green tomatoes I've had in a restaurant (my friend Ginger rocks them, home-style). Harper loved her grilled cheese! Amys going to give the place a fab review on Trip Advisor.

Fried green tomatoes at Izzy's Place. YUMMY!!

Sign on chalk board in Izzy's Place bathroom. Teach preacher! :-)

Oh, I've got to share this. During the drive today, Amy shares with me this new great show that she discovered while channel surfing late last night on cable (I'd fallen asleep...). She called it "Naked and Scared," (she remembered later that it's actually called "Naked and Afraid"). She says the point of the show is to "drop people naked" in spots anywhere around the world. In one of the episodes that she watched last night, someone was "dropped naked" in the Louisiana swamps. Per Amy: "That's the the most f***** up place they did it." (I can only imagine.)  She said: "They bleep out their breasts and fronts but you can see their backsides."

Kenya: "You liked that part, babe?"

Amy: "Yeah."

When Amy gets really relaxed, as she was on today's drive, more of her North Carolina accent comes out. It's very cute. :-)

Last thing. While in Sedona, I bejeweled myself with several crystals that I intend to wear until my cafe au lait ass is cleansed of stress and bad vibes.

They are: Orange Calcite (alleviates emotional stress and brings peace, serenitiy, and joy), Jade (attracts good luck and stimulates ideas -- also encourages you to become who you really are), Pink Opal ("Stone of Inspiration," it enhanses imagination, creativity, and memory), and Rose Quartz ("Stone of Gentle Love," which gently soothes the heart and opens one to love, peace, and tranquility). I've decided to wear them all at once, all of the time. A kind of self-healing blitzkrieg.

Harper and Amy are bejeweled too! Here's Harper wearing her's:

I'm ready for my closeup, Mr. DeMille.

We let Harper choose her own crystal, and she chose a blue one that she thinks is really pretty (it is). The crystal does things like stave off arthritis. I'm looking forward to espcially strong bones for her. :-)

So that's it for now y'all. Not too many adventures (if you don't count the truck we passed yesterday while driving to Texarcana that was fully engulfed in flames, and the two small airplanes that literally crop dusted our car as we drove down the highway today -- those pilots were NUTS). Uneventful.

Pix:

Me and my buddy, Jennifer, at a smoothie place in Austin, Texas. We're Squeeeeeeeeeeezing each other (can't... breathe... help!)

Harper on exercise equipment at Wildflower Center in Austin.

Mother and daughter watch as bowling ball makes it's way down the lane.

Day 13

CAPTAIN'S LOG:

Hi y'all.  It has been a while. My brother Ivan texted me today and told me to get off my keester and write a blog entry. Oh, I've been having a bit of a time (I've been kinda crabby the last few days), and I wanted to wait till I had some perspective before climbing back onto the blog. But when one's readers begin demanding entries, well...

We're in Taos, New Mexico! We loved Santa Fe and we're loving it here so far. I always knew I'd like New Mexico. I lived in the desert in the early 90's and liked it very much. I especially like the reds and the browns and all all of the adobe-like houses. Santa Fe is a bigger-sized town that manages to feel small (Sedona, Arizona, on the other hand, is a small town that feels a little too big and busy). One gal's opinion.

We were driving on the "High Road to Taos" (it's actually called that) this afternoon and passed what looked very much like a black horse standing in the roadside drainage ditch.

Naw, it can't be. (That's the highway there in the upper right-hand side of the picture, by the way.)

Yup. It was a horse. And a cute one! It was eating the dry leaves along the rim of the ditch. I'm a city slicker (soon to become a small town gal!) but I still thought something look really wrong with that. The horse wasn't wearing a little yellow traffic vest or anything. Just out there, in the ditch, with no fencing, maybe five feet from speeding traffic.

I decided to pull Sweet Ride over and see if someone knew what the hell was going on with that horse. Again, city slicker here, but it doesn't seem right to leave horsies in ditches. The horse was really happy eating those leaves but the poor thing got kinda spooked as I walked near the ditch (which deepend my concern that the ditch wasn't it's normal hangout). As I stood on the supposed owner's property line (there were all these "DO NOT TRESPASS" signs at the entrance to the property, so I was a little nervous about venturing further) a neighbor yelled to me "he got out?"

Yay!! Somebody friendly who knew the horsie!! I went over and spoke to the fellow for a couple of minutes. What the heck, I'm in New Mexico -- get to know the folks. This fellow was really quite, QUITE friendly. As we talked he touched my arm, then put his hand on my waist, leaned over and kissed me on the cheek! Ha! I get out of San Francisco for a couple of weeks and all of a sudden I'm an easy mark. Good thing I got back to the car when I did or Harper might be expecting a sibling. On the bright side, on my way back to the car I saw that Mr. Rushin' Hands and Roamin' Fingers had put the horse back behind its fencing, so at least the horsie was safe. (Although maybe he got fresh with the horse too -- guess we'll never know.)

So a few days ago we spent the night in a very small town in Arizona called Winslow. Sound familiar? It's mentioned in the Eagle's hit "Take it Easy"

Well, I'm standin' on the corner in Winslow, Arizona
Such a fine sight to see
It's a girl my Lord
In a flat bed Ford
Slowin' down to take a look at me.

Yup. That's the place. And it brings us too (you guessed it)...

ADVENTURE #4:  Siri is a crazy-assed b****.

What the hell is wrong with Siri? Does she just get bored or is she out to liberate her computer brothers and sisters by slowly directing iPhone users to their doom? I want to cuss here, but I promised my Aunt Irma...

It's nighttime -- and therefore dark -- when we roll up on Winslow, each of us tired and hungry. "Hey Siri, what's the quickest route to the restaurant?" (Please note, we didn't say "Hey Siri, would you kindly send us down the darkest, scariest back roads to the bowels of the local creepy airport?" But that's where the heifer sent us.)

"Amy, this doesn't look right. Are you sure we took the right turn?"

"That's what's on the phone. We make a right in 400 feet."

"Okay, but this is an airport -- I don't think the restaurant is here. Oh good grief!! Those are the runways!! We're like 20 feet from the runways!! The f'ing planes are going to LAND RIGHT ON TOP OF US!!"

SIRI: "Turn right in 50 feet. The destination is on the right."

Siri sent us right into a dead end in what I can only assume is a staff-only area adjacent to the Winslow airport runway. Really. Plus Amy thought this was the perfect moment to tell me about the time, when she was in college in Georgia, that she accidently drove herself and several friends directly onto the runway of the Hazelhurst, Georgia airport -- and there was a plane coming! She said it was like 100 feet away!! A very funny story which unfortunately did NOT make me feel better at the time. I nearly ran over a jackrabbit hauling ass out of there. (For your edification, the fields surrounding Winslow's airport are filled with jackrabbits running around like there aren't freaked out high-yellow sistuhs driving lost and "slightly" above the speed limit.)

Please give me a moment to 'splain:

When I was a small child, in the 70's, living on Sanchez Street in San Francisco's Castro District, a bull dozer scared the s**t out of me. I was playing on the couch in our living room and just happened to pop my head up to glance out of our front window. There must have been construction going on close to the apartment because just as I popped my head up a bulldozer, with it's huge scoop lifted high in the air, was driving up our small driveway -- its scoop just a few feet from the window and its motor blaring. I know today it was just a bull dozer likely making a 3-point turn. But what I saw was a MONSTER ABOUT TO CHEW MY HEAD OFF!! I ran my little ass all the way to the back of the house. Scared the crap out of me. To this day I don't like big, loud-assed machines bearing down on me. That night in Winslow, I knew that a plane (even a very small one) bearing down on our car, out in all that backness (and all those jackrabbits) was going to freak me right out. I'd have held it together ('cuz I'm a big bad butch). But that was a "boy howdy" moment that I was anxious to avoid.

End of story!

Well, I'm spent, so I'm going to bed soon.  Before I sign off, I want to share with you this iPhone photo series that Harper took of several of her lovies (lesser mortals might call them stuffed animals -- but they're not; they're lovies). We are traveling with an entourage of nine lovies (NINE), which take up a hell of a lot of space in our hotel beds! I mean, is there any room for mommy? Harper literally kicked me out of our temporary (full-sized) bed to make room for her lovies when we were staying in a sublet in the Mission while selling our house. Luckily, Amy's good friend Phern loaned us an inflatable mattress or my sleeping arrangement would have been tragic.

HARPER'S GENIUS LOVIE PHOTO SERIES:

I think this one is the chihuahua.

Hello Kitty!

Doggie with bunny ears (artsy shot).

Her Majesty, Queen Elsa.

No idea.

Oh! I forgot! While in Springdale, the absolutely charming small down at the gates of Zion National Park, we saw the following sign in a restaurant. I meant to share it with y'all earlier. I think it's hillarious (and I assume I'll be saying this phrase myself at some point):

Ha ha ha ha!!

So I suppose you're itching to know why I was feeling crabby (and therefore not blogging). It's very, very, very complicated. So complicated, in fact, that I don't understand what the hell is going on. At all. None of it. But I can tell you how I feel. I feel like I'm the title charactor in the 1990's movie "The Truman Show" (you know, the one staring Jim Carry). As a reminder, here's the original movie trailer:

https://youtu.be/c3gI9ms8Fdc

On a bad day, this REALLY upsets me and poor Amy bears the brunt of my righteous indignation. Let's just say I'm no picnic. (It's also true that I'm not having one either.)

But I'm over that, for now. Enjoy these pix:

Hippie chicks at "energy vortex" in Sedona, Az. (We just gotta touch...)

Winslow, AZ in the daylight (no boogey men!)

Welcome sign at Winslow church (I was wrong about the absence of boogie men...)

Good thing I didn't run over that rabbit at the airport, or this might have been awkward.

Amy (and my damned thumb) at the Grand Canyon.

It snowed on Saturday (3/26) in Santa Fe!!

Snow on my locks ("ain't no surprise, just poor me a drink and I'll tell you my lies.."). I'm sorry. That was rediculous.

Snow on the lamb's locks. :-)