There Ain't No Devil, It's Just God When He's Drunk

For those of you out there who don't know, I happen to live in one of the most remote, backwards, white-trash, hillbilly areas of California. That is, when I am not living in Scotland. Normally, when I tell people in the UK that I am from California, I get the typical not-from-California responses: The weather must be so nice! Everyone must be so tan! What's is like having Arnold Schwarzenegger for a Governor? And almost all their comments (apart from the last one) is location specific, as in anything SOUTH of San Luis Obispo. For those of us North of that pseudo-equator, its a different story. We have trees that have been around since the ice age, live half the year in fog, the other half in rain, and every once in a while get to enjoy weather in the mid 70s/80s Fahrenheit in the summer. Then there is the sliver of California that even Northern Californians blink twice upon hearing about its existance. It's dry as a desert, rattlesnake infested, and contains neither trees, beach, fog, rain, or any form of civilisation. It is so un-Californian that I think most people just call it Nevada, and in fact, Nevada county is just 40 minutes away, even though it's like 2 hours from Nevada state. I believe that this is because California secretly wants to let this part of CA cede from the state.

And that is where my family has ended up. Here's a list I've drawn up of what I've noticed so far.

-More women have mullets than men...and that is only because there is a larger female to male ratio
-Children under the age of 4 have Mohawks...when they turn 5 they get to graduate to mullets
-They list the day's hunting hours on the front page of the local paper
-You see people walking their llama up the driveway
-Your driveway is over a mile long
-The freshest milk available is at the gas station next to the highway, a 10 minute drive away
-You're the obvious outcast if you don't have at least one gun
-Your household only has 2 legal drivers, but your yard has at least 4 cars, 3 of which have dogs, goats, chickens, or cats living both on and inside of them
-You still use livestock as a form of currency (my mom had 10 guinea hens butchered and paid the butcher 5 hens for the task of killing and cleaning them)
-The roads don't have lines painted down their centres
-Everyone has a truck that has 4 wheel drive, covered in dirt, mud, and won't get washed until it rains
-The illiteracy rate is 20%
-Your mom waters the garden with a hose in one had and a rifle in the other...just in case there are rattlesnakes
-Dressy attire at a restaurant is dusting the dirt off your jeans and scraping the equine/bovine manure off your steel toed boots
-There are two sit-down restaurants, complete with menus and waiters/waitresses for ever 14 fast food ones. 1:8 = classy dining.
-The town consists of (1) post-office, (1) "mercantile" shop which sells jerky and chewing tobacco, (1) elementary school, and (1) bar.
-The bar opens at 9- this most likely leads to
-Headline in paper: Farther shoots son in car chase, injures friend.
-Also could lead to : Four assault rifles, about 40 pounds of frozen meat and piles of 20-year-old deer antlers all point to a case of poaching against a father and son
-Might also be the reason the deputies drive into canals
-It's not uncommon to eat rabbit, deer, and any animal you happen to find in your back yard
-You're not hard pressed to find a varriety of people selling produce out of their homes, trailers, cars or trucks every mile or so, most of which looks like it was previously purchased at the Grocery Outlet store beforehand.

I'm sure this list will grow, but I've only been visiting home for about a month now.

Holy hell, I miss Edinburgh SO much!

Back to my mini-holiday last week- it was FANDABIDOZI! I love reconnecting with an old friend, and it really made me feel so relaxed and happy how easily we slipped back into each others' lives. Even though I am rubbish about keeping in contact with people while I am in the UK (me and phone don't happen too often), my friends matter, and I figure that a good friendship is one that you can just pick up right where you left off, no matter how long it's been since you've last spoken. Missy and are are like that. After barely speaking for a year, we jumped in the car, drove up, and had the best time ever. Always had something to talk about, were thinking the same things, and never at any point felt awkward.

Anyway, our trip began to a late start thanks to being New Years Day, aka hungover. Well, not so much me, but Missy. So I drove up to Eureka since I was full of pep while Missy tried to keep her stomach through the twisting dark roads. We arrived, found a Motel 8, and crashed. The next day we went into Old Town Eureka. It just so happens that at the time we were talking about...knitting. Apparently Missy knits too...and had brought her knitting...just like I had brought my crochet project. As we turned a corner looking for parking, I mentioned how we should look for a knit shop so I could get some double pointed needles for her to show me how to use, when BAM, we literally almost ran into a knit shop! Que spending 4 hours at the knit shop, spending too much on our non-existant budgets, and not moving apart from knitting and purling. But seriously, what else is there to do in Eureka?

Not wanting to waste all our time feeing our crack habit, we up and left at lunch time and shot our way North to Arcata, which, we were told, was 'A college town like Berkeley'. Ha. If Berkeley were the size of one city block. However, we did get FANTASTIC views going to Patrick's Point:



The next day marked our desecent back to the living via Avenue of the Giants and the horribly tacky throwbacks of 1950's tourist trap delights.

Avenue of the Giants is probably my favourite place in CA apart from the redwoods of Sonoma county. The trees are massive, ancient, and there is something so magical about the intense, verdant ocean of life that surrounds you.

A local giant Totally reminds me of Twilight...not that I am obsessed with that or anything...

We also made sure we caught the delights of the Loleta Cheese factor, with it's 39 different cheese, all of which we could sample at our pleasure. Heck yes!

We opted to take the senic Hwy 1 down the coast of Mendocino to Jenner before cutting back into the redwoods for home. And managing to catch some lovely sunsent along the way.


Our trip included Confusion Hill, Ledgend of Bigfoot, Chimney Tree, and the Living Tree House, all of which were ridiciously over the top and harkened back to when road trips were the 'thing' to do.

It was two night and three days of absolute fun, relaxation, and the exact escape I needed from live on the ranch...aka life with grandma again.

New Years Eve was sad and depressing rather than than celebratory- it was the gut wrenching day when I had to take Scottie to the airport, alone, and not know when I would see him again...ON OUR 4 YEAR ANNIVERSARY! I know, I know, drama queen, but it was very sad having to leave him at the airport to wander off to his fate (can I add that we had to leave the house at 5:00 AM), a fate which turned out to be hellish.

There wasn't enough room on the plane for him, so Scottie was forced to pay $200 for a last minute flight to LAX. Where he stayed for at least 6 hours before boarding. Once off the ground, the plane needed to make an emergency landing in Chicago. After finally taking off once more, he made it to England, only to find that he had missed his flight to Edinburgh and had to fork out £200 to buy a new ticket.

This was all unknown to me.

Having dropped off my sweetie before the sun arose, I turned around to drive my sorry self home and mope. Having failed at going back to sleep, I decided I might as well head out of my leg of a journey. Since my family's version of New Years Eve is having friends over, eating pizza, and heading off to bed at 9:00 PM, I decided to hightail it back to the glorious Sonoma country to see my best friend from elementary school.

And proceeded to have 6 or 7 margaritias and two or three lemon drops. All in all, it was a fantabulously drunk night of party revelery, and I magically managed to NOT be ill OR have a hangover. Giggidy.

The next day one of my best friends from university drove up, and together we escaped reality and ran away to Humboldt county to get our fill of redwoods, rain, hippies, and hicks. And we got plenty of all of those. Stay tuned for the adventures of Shady and Missy on holiday.