This is going to sound weird for someone as liberal as me, but I love Texas. Texas is filled with nice people, people who dress like Flo from Alice, and people who Do Not Care (honey badger style) and will wear full length furs to the airport in 2013. Texas has some of the most amazing food I have ever put in my mouth available at all hours. All of that said?
Texas is one of the flattest places I have ever been, and I lived in Illinois for 7 years. Texas is so flat that I imagine I can see the curve of the earth. Literal tumble weeds (which are real things and are not just in cartoons) roll across highways in front of your car, impact, and explode into a million twigs. Texas is also really fucking cold sometimes, and sometimes has 50 mph constant winds and rain, which is exactly the kind of weather we had at the tail end of day one of our trip east, when we arrived in Amarillo.
Texas: this is unnerving.
(This is not Amarillo.)
Howling wind, rain and a hotel with outdoor corridors and pet friendly rooms on the second floor, which meant not only taking a luggage cart loaded down with pets in the elevator (two trips worth of pets) but winding around open corridors in howling wind in poorly chosen footwear*, no gloves and a cotton hoodie for a jacket. I was pretty sure that my eyes were going to freeze open. I also really under estimated how wiped out I would be after driving for 9 hours with a howling Siamese/Maine Coon mix in a carrier in the seat next to me and was genuinely shocked when I didn’t make it to the gym that night.**
I am an adorable, furry asshole who will howl for 3 hours at a time.
Day 1 Lesson: No matter how much valium you give a cat if they were locked in a carrier for 9 hours that day they will run around all night chirping and recreating the squirrel dance from Emmett Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas.
Day 1 Most Memorable Billboard: “Don’t Meth With Us” which, aside from inspiring a conflicting emotional response (it had a subheading that was fearful… so are you tough or scared?) is also fairly insensitive to people with lisps. Who let that get by?
Deep Thought of the Day: When you break up with a musician delete all of their songs from every play list and device you have, but keep a hard copy. Someday you’ll probably be okay with listening to it (and either enjoying it or mocking it, depending on whether or not they actually had talent), and if not at least if they get famous you can sell it. Part 2 of this thought will probably turn into a much bigger blog post at some point, or maybe a chapter in my tentatively titled autobiography “I Dated an Asshole Just Like That,” but – can people stop being shocked when John Mayer treats women like crap? Have you ever dated a musician? 95% of talented musicians are asshole narcissists who were nerdy kids sitting in their rooms practicing their instruments for too many hours by themselves to not be socially awkward. Once they get famous and their talent unlocks chastity belts throughout the land they take advantage of it. Not making excuses for him, but the fact that grown women are somehow shocked when he doesn’t play nice is beyond me. No excuses for him and no excuses for you, ladies. In the words of Peppermint Patty, feel free to “give the kid a tumble,” just don’t bank on everlasting love.
*Look, flip flops seemed like a solid choice after 48 hours of cleaning our house in Arizona.
**Spoiler alert: the only time I saw a gym on this road trip was the last night and that was to walk past it and have my husband openly laugh at me as I said, “Oh, maybe we could go running in the morning.”
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There are even some towns in Texas that are fairly liberal. I have debated San Antonio in my mind before I was married to the Alison beast.