The One Where Tia Goes off Her Rocker

>I’ve decided that I’m going to start writing fictional accounts of things I would do any given day if I didn’t have the personality traits, morals, or inclinations I do. With no money or job (and little chance I'll get one) I gotta fill the hours somehow *grin*<

Today: Wandering Bohemian Spirit

The freeway was hotter today, it seemed. It tended to do that – shimmer and swirl and swoon you when you least expected it. It is Nevada. No excuse for it to welcome foreign clouds for a renegade native. You’d think it’d have some sympathy for a former occupant, but clearly any sort of departure was viewed as desertion, even the unwilling kind.

Desert heat is deceptive; it beats on your head even as it glistens ethereal and changeable in front of your very eyes. How many things hit you like that? Forcefully telling you what it is while daring you to ignore its stark truth for a more desirable image. I’ve blinded myself like that often enough.

“Glory!” I plucked my shirt off my sweating chest in vain imitation of a fan. At least I was still sweating – I wouldn’t think of what to resort to when I ran out of water and, thereafter, sweat. That might force me to break The Rules, and so far I hadn’t had to even question them. But when choosing between life and Rules, the choice seemed laughable – especially when those rules were made to keep me alive.

Oh, The Rules. I even capitalize them like that in my mind, and it somehow comes out in my tone. They aren’t nearly as foreboding as they sound, all official and such. Grammar. Always important. S’what I get from reading too much and growing up with English majors.

Seriously though, “The Rules” were just a set of no-no’s I set down before I started this whole crazy, bohemian traveling thing. They were meant to keep me safe and semi-honorable.

Rule No. 1: No walking in sight of a freeway when possible. Especially at night.

Rule No. 2: No sleeping in abandoned buildings – unless it’s raining and you can find an unseen corner to curl up in (this meant a hidden nook in the ceiling, an unreachable attic, or a covered bit of roof)

Rule No. 3: No sleeping at ground level whenever given the choice (a rope and some mad climbing skills meant I could almost always find a tree to kip off in. Sure, my quality of sleep suffered, but I stayed safer that way.)

Rule No. 4: No junk food while traveling from one city to the next (it pays to be healthy when you have no set home)

Rule No. 5: No rides with anyone I’ve known less than 3 months. No hitch-hiking.

Rule No. 6: No using transient bishops or homeless shelters unless I was desperate.

That last was so I wouldn’t take aid from someone else who really needed it – it was my choice/fault that I was out here, so I would take care of myself as far as I could and then beseech others. Right then, though, I might’ve had to beg a ride if I started getting heat stroke. No dying was an unspoken rule. And it was getting hotter and hotter.

Off to the west some clouds lurked over a scattered blast of shot-gun hills. Weak, cumulus clouds huddled over them, probably too tired and dry to make contact with any earth further away. I wondered if a dance would entice them over to partially block the searing sun, if not (oh, goodness, please) to rain. The thought brought a grin to my face, as I imagined little 7 year-olds on their summer trip to CA peering out of air-conditioned cars at the crazy blonde dancing maniacally as they zoomed by, already covering more ground than she had in the past day. Well, I’d have certainly enjoy seeing that when I was that age. Then again, I was always a bit different, hence why I was hiking across Nevada to California in the summer heat.