flowery state of mind

It's feeling like spring and all the flowers in Texas are coming out to play :-). Here's a few pictures from Tuesday.

Any idea what these are? There was a field in San Felipe, TX covered in these. Very low to the ground so you couldn't see them from a distance

Pearsall, TX. In the morning these yellow flowers open up like a morning glory. This picture was taken in the afternoon

Indian paintbrushes? Again Pearsall

Well, not a flower, but she's definitely a stinker, lol

traffic, traffic, and more traffic

Some weeks are relatively smooth sailing traffic wise, other weeks, well..........are not. This past week, Wednesday in particular was a bit on the hellacious side.  Spring break plus SXSW plus St. Patricks' Day makes for a very long trucking commute on the I35 corridor in Texas.  I do love Texas but this interstate can be very trying on the nerves.

First backup--Road construction on the north side of San Antonio, they narrowed I35 down to ONE lane right at Rittiman Road. There is no good way around this unless you take the 410 loop around to the west side which is waaaaay long on the mileage, grrr. Spent over 2 hours to go 5 miles. Yep, that was fun!

2 SUV's that spun out and slid into each other while trying to illegally enter the freeway in San Antonio during the traffic jam. How do you explain that to your insurance company?

At least I had pretty skies Wednesday unlike Tuesday when I faced backups going thru Houston.

Houston

Trailer load full of empty beer bottles

Loop 1604 around San Antonio, bit long on the mileage but kept me out of traffic :)

Anyways, I faced several more backups on Wednesday and that combined with a shopping trip at New Braunfels plus a trailer lighting issue kept me away from home until Thursday afternoon.  No big deal because I don't have to be in Tennessee until Monday morning.

Oh the trailer lighting issue--the trailer I picked up out of Laredo this week has a short in it somewhere and at night when all the lights were on it was causing the system to overload and whenever I would turn or veer right all the lights would start blinking or go off altogether.  Might as well have had a huge sign on my truck saying "GIVE ME A TICKET", grrr.

Another thing that we truckdrivers occasionally run into is the occasional flasher/masturbator.......Fortunately it rarely happens or I'm just not paying as close attention to what's going on in the vehicle next to me as others.  I did however have one of the weenie-waggers in Austin Wednesday in broad daylight that was doing his business on the lower-level of I35 northbound. Full-on masturbating, ewwww. People, we can see inside your car or pickup, please, please, don't do that!!!!!!!!!

I'm baaaaaack!!!!!!

Yeah, first race of the year is done!!!!!!! The Chase Race 2 Mile Grand Prix race and the 1 mile pet race.  Considering that this is my second week back to running and the fact that the ex and I were up over half the night prior arguing, I'm quite pleased with how well I did.  Last year I ran it in 15:11, this year was 15:20. Not going to complain about that, lol. 

I do love this race, lots of people, excellent goody bags full of pet stuff, great entertainment, awesome cause. It's just a lot of fun even though it was cooooold yesterday.

Oh, to celebrate my first race back and the upcoming St. Paddy's Day, I wore a lime green tutu to race in. Let me tell you if you want cheering specifically towards you--wear a tutu!!! I think it would even work for the guys. Heck, it may work even better if you're a guy, lol......

Elsie wore a tutu also! We had so many little girls coming up to us wanting to pet on her and tell her how cute the skirt was, such fun!  One little girl carried on quite a conversation telling her she was pretty and pink was her favorite color, awwww.

Finish line is in sight! I'm smiling because it felt so good to be back in the game but I was hurting too (not the ankle though)

Back of the skirt at the finish line

Carol and I lining up for the 1 mile pet race

Elsie and I approaching the finish line, she's all excited about it until 2 feet before the mats and she put on the brakes, I had to pick her up and carry her over them. The crowd got a kick out of that, lol!!

Debbie & Louie with Elsie & me waiting for the pet awards (Debbie also won a grandmaster's award yesterday, yay!!!!)

Ok, race recap. It was COLD!  My shoulder started aching about 1/3 of the way in which means I'm back to tensing up my upper body, grrr. Overall felt good so that means I probably could have pushed it a bit harder but then again I did have to slow down the pace a bit right before the 1 mile point. The garmin reflects that--mile 1 was at 7:32 pace, mile 2 was 7:43.  Definitely shows that I'm out of race form & have had no speed work since last year.

Final stats

15:20.4 chip time (15:23 gun time)

13/157 female placement

97/304 overall

1/23 40-44 female age group

The pet race! It's so much fun but after the 2 mile race my legs were trashed. about 1/2 to the turnaround point, Debbie looked at me & said "I think we should have the turnaround right here" LOL!! Can't say I didn't disagree.  This year I managed to get closer to the front and avoided most of the leash entanglements & runaway dogs, whew!

Time 8:00.73

10/117 overall

3/83 female

Here's our bling for the day

Ego boost for the day. while in the bathroom I was discussing my recent injury with a friend and fellow Cabot Cruiser when another lady came out from one of the stalls. She said her and a friend were discussing who all was there in their age group when my name came up but they decided they had a shot at placing because it was my first race back from the sprained ankle :-). Yep, nothing like a bit of friendly competition pre-race to get you fired up, lol!

Ruby's Cafe & Bakery

If you live in the Salado, Jarrell, Austin area or are even driving through Jarrell on I35, you need to stop here and eat!!!!!!!  It's kind of hidden, very little advertisement but oh the food and the people. James and I have stopped here twice ordering different things each time and we have not been disappointed yet.

Excuse the bad pictures, they were taken with my phone, but these are the two meals I've had at Ruby's Cafe so far. The top pic is of a grilled & crusted tilapia, the bottom picture is the everything burger. Both were DELICIOUS!!!!!!!! James has had the cranberry walnut salad and I think some kind of grilled fish too. Sorry I was too engrossed in my meals to pay much attention to his, lol.

It's all cooked from scratch, so it can take a while but it is oh so worth it. Everybody that works there is a family member or friend and we even had a nice chat with the lady who owns it (and is also the cook!). All the pictures on the wall are family photos, even the decor is family heirlooms, most from the namesake of the restaurant, the owner's grandmother. My only complaint is the plastic cutlery and foam cups rather than "real" ones but I also understand that having an industrial type dishwasher takes space and money so I'm more than willing to overlook that because of how awesomely good the food is.

So, in Jarrell, if you're a truckdriver, skip the D*nny's at the Flying hook and walk over to Ruby's instead. It's gonna take the same amount of time but the food is soooooooo much better :-). It's in the strip mall across the street, kind of hidden so you might not realize it's there and open. It's also in the area across from the mexican food restaurant with all the signs.

Ruby's Cafe & Bakery, 305 Limestone Terrace, Jarrell, TX. 4 very enthusiastic thumbs up from James and me.

weird dream

Very early this morning I woke up after having a bad dream. Really was nothing major and I have no clue what brought it on but I dreamt that I was hauling a load to a Pier 1 store. Get there to the strip mall before shopping hours then spend way too much time trying to find somebody that could unload it only to be told "I'm sorry, I know you only have 9 pieces on, but we have no room for it. We can't accept the shipment."  By this time, all the stores have opened up and I'm completely blocked in. Can't back up, spin around, go forward, nothing............ Now this may not seem like much of a nightmare to most people but until you have had it happen while you're in a big truck then you do know just how nightmarish it is, lol. I literally woke up tossing, turning and in a sweat. Hoping this is not a premonition of things to come :-(

ahhhh

Just back from an awesome run/walk with James & Elsie on an absolutely gorgeous day. Spring is coming, finally :-)!!!  It was so nice to be able just to take off wearing shorts & a tee and be comfortable, LOVE it!

Thought I'd add some pics from the past week or so

My new kick ass Doc Marten's. What you can't see very well in this pic is the pink stitching around the sole. I bought these from zappos.com and that site ROCKS!!!! Ordered them on Friday night, got them the next Monday with free shipping. Amazing service.

Signs of spring

This is just a couple of hours after I rammed my head in the door jamb while ill. Ignore the mess, the frown, and the very messed up hair. I'd just gotten showered & dressed + was very sick still so cut me some slack, lol.

New trail up to the water tower at Pulaski, TN

So, I've been on a shoe buying mission lately, too bad I can't wear the high heels right now due to the right ankle....What's not pictured here is the patent leather black heels that I was originally searching for. Actually wasn't looking for patent leather but it's what I ended up with.

The heels that are gorgeous but I can't wear (well to walk in anyways) :-(. The black & silver ones are Calvin Kleins that I got on sale for $29.40 :-) :-) :-)

The practical shoes that aren't sexy but I can actually walk in without the ankle protesting

The oh so gorgeous bronze metallic sandals that again I can't wear right now, sigh........

The best part of the shoe shopping was that all 5 pairs here were on 70% clearance at Dillards, altogether spent under $140.00. The black pumps (court shoes for the UK readers) though were right at $100, but except for the ankle they didn't hurt my feet.

Cute sterling silver necklace that I got on sale at Hautelook.com

Nagged back

Evidently if you nag at somebody to update their blog already, they then feel it's only fair to nag you back, grrr.  So yeah, what's going on with my life? Still fighting the blues, James & I are going thru a bit of a rough spell, and I'm turning into an uber-grouch.......

On the bright side, I have started back running this past week!!!!! For my first run back I was only supposed to do a couple of mile but ended up running 4......It felt so good that I just couldn't make myself cut it short and the next morning when I woke up with aching legs at first I was kind of confused but then it was like oh yeah, you RAN yesterday! Left me with a huge grin for the rest of the day.  Needless to say my next run on Thursday wasn't near as speedy, actually more of a run/walk but it was with James & Elsie so it all worked out for the best.

Need to back up a bit, forgot I missed a week. I was SICK the previous week. Started out with a headache that just wouldn't go away on Tuesday and Wednesday, on Thursday (2/25) the headache escalated and I started feeling very off balance, my sinuses were killing me, and my joints were achy. By that night I was full-on ill. Never had a fever but man oh man was I feeling awful. Thursday I was still driving home and oh, did the trip ever seem endless.

My sense of balance was so far off that at one point I bent down in the hall to pick up one of Elsie's toys and on the way back up managed to ram my head into the door jamb of our home office HARD. Everything went gray for a few moments and I ended up with a huge welt on my right temple along with some nasty bruising, ouch.....

Work was ok, although I had a helluva time backing up the truck on Monday due to still feeling weak & a bit off-balance. Took me 3 tries to setup for Gadsden before I got the trailer backed in. It's where I had the bumper incident back in the fall so I'm still a bit leery backing in there anyway.  No snow for me but James told me after I got out of Alabama one of his friends called and said it was snowing hard in Birmingham. Whew, glad to have missed that.

Had a weird stalker thing Thursday on the way home, I had passed a guy in another big truck in between Prescott and Gurdon, AR and had him say something to me on the cb. I wasn't comfortable with what he was saying or how he said it so never replied. Didn't think a whole lot about it until I was stopped at Gurdon to walk Elsie & get lunch when he pulls into the parking lot behind me. Again, no big deal, there are a limited number of places to stop if you're in a big truck but I did note it after the cb incident.  After taking care of what I needed to I came back out to find this note on my driver's side window

I covered up his phone number, but this seriously freaked me out......Honestly you just shouldn't do this guys.  The man never approached me or anything else, just sat over in his truck staring........anyways called James immediately to tell him what was up (which led to a fight later, but that's another story altogether) and hid in my sleeper to eat my lunch hoping the guy would leave first (he didn't) and posted about what was occurring on Twitter. I wanted to have some kind of record if he followed me again or did anything else. It all sounds relatively harmless writing about it but trust me, I was getting serious bad vibes from the moment he tried talking to me on the cb.

Anyway, I'll post some other stuff later. James is wanting to go for a run & giving me the hurry up talk.

another day, another week

I now haven't ran in 12 very long days.......ankle swelling is going down. Some days the knuckle is even close to the same size as the other :-). Just depends on how long I've been driving or on my feet that particular day.  Today also marks the 4th Grand Prix race of the year that I'm missing, sigh........

Trucking news--mostly uneventful, although this past week left me feeling a bit trapped but that's due to not being able to break up days with a nice little run. Yeah, it all goes back to that, lol.  Monday morning, I woke up to ice at the plant in Pulaski, TN. It had been raining on Sunday so when the cold front moved through with the snow it basically acted like a flash freeze area kinda like what you'd have in a food processing facility.  Always fun to wake up to find your truck's tires are frozen to the ground!

Here's what Lola the truck looked like

This little storm also created some icy conditions out on I65 again, thankfully my side was moving ok albeit slowly. Not so for the northbound side because they had the downhill section, vehicles were sliding everywhere. 

Elsie & I went for our usual Monday morning hike up the water tower hill (no running, I promise!) and the next morning we went for another walk in Louisiana that she needed desperately. The dog needs a run almost as bad as I do, geez she's hyper.

Oh, one interesting thing, I did have a guy at the Gadsden plant try to give me his phone number!!!! Kinda nice little ego boost considering he was cute & approximately 10 years younger than me. Speaking of age, today would be my 41st birthday, not near as excited about it as I was the 4-0. Prolly because of being injured :-(. Eh, just another day this year, lol.

The rest of the week I had very nice weather, several times when walking Elsie we'd just find an area for me to sit while she rolled around in the grass. I am so ready for spring to get here and yes, I'm sure everybody else is too.

Tuesday night brought some major lighting issues with the trailer I was supposed to pick up so ended up having to spend the night in Laredo to wait for the shop to open up the next morning. First time I've had to do that in a couple of months I think.

Workouts are kinda eh although I did get 35 pushups consecutively on my last 100 pushup schedule test and I even sandbagged a bit so I wouldn't have a super hard week coming up. Yeah, I should be ashamed (not!).  I also was able to do two 2 minute planks, yay!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Adding a bit to this post, forgot about this until showing James my pictures for the week--here's why you shouldn't do u-turns in a big truck unless you're absolutely sure you have enough room.

Zoom in on this pic and you can see this guy's rear tandems are completely up in the air.

So yeah, that's it, that was my week.  Are y'all still awake? LOL!

wee bit of excitement

I must say that I've been extremely fortunate this year in missing most of the bad weather while driving.  Vast majority of it has hit while I was at home or I just managed to skirt around it. No complaints about that though, lol.

Monday, however provided me with a wee bit of unexpected excitement.  All the weather forecasts had been saying that my area was not going to get hit with the snow & sleet but they were off just a hair or two.......

Pulaski had no snow or precipitation when I docked but while I was getting unloaded & reloaded this started

See, snow flakes but nothing on the ground yet.

Three miles south on Hwy 31, we have this

Another couple of miles....

And the road just became completely covered from that point on.

As I approached Interstate 65 I could hear the cb chatter about south bound being shut down because several trucks and cars had spun out on the "big hill".  Great..........I have less than 16,000 pounds loaded onto the trailer with NONE of it being on or near the trailer tandems.  Several trucks had pulled over onto the flatter parts of the ramp but when I tried to do the same to wait it out the trailer kept sloooowwwly sliding towards the ditch and the rock wall so I just proceeded on down the ramp to join the crowd on the interstate, lol.

A guy in front of me decided to get out and play

As you can see the road is not that terribly bad but evidently too many vehicles were bunched up together when this first started and that's always the time when the road is the slickest.

Welcome to Alabama

This guy went into the median to avoid some cars that were spinning around in the road

Everybody merging over to avoid the RV, cars & big trucks that were spun out in the right lane

Chugging up the hill--note the following distance :-)

Trucks that spun out

Love this rest area :-)

Ok, automatics always get a lot of flack about not being any good whatsoever on bad roads and yes, there are a very few occasions where I've run into a bit of extra trouble but usually if you are aware of the road conditions and the limitations then you can work in and around bad weather just as well as you can in a manual transmission.  And for those other times, well that's why you should always carry non-clumping kitty litter with you in the winter. A couple of handfuls of that thrown down around the tires and those guys that were spun out could have been rolling again within a matter of minutes.  An automatic can always be switched over to manual override but I didn't bother with that coming up this hill because it wasn't that bad.  A slow, steady pace and being more than a car's length away from the vehicle in front of you can do absolute miracles with keeping ya going in a straight line (I do realize all bets are off with ice). 

Who, what, when, where, why

Yeah, not so creative in the blog title, lol.

So who am I and where have I been?  I am a very grumpy runner who is not supposed to be running right now and James says that I'm impossible to live with.  And you know what? He's completely right, sigh......

Today marked my 3rd DNS (did not show) of the year for the Grand Prix races so I was NOT in Russellville this morning.  Yep, 0/3 for the races, grrrr.  Last week was the 15k and I decided to show up early and cheer for all the racers.  Here's what I learned--the lead and the back of the pack runners kind of get screwed in the cheering department.  I'd never experienced that as a runner because except for one race I've always been squarely or near the front of the middle of the pack group from the time I started participating in races.  So please, anybody that is a spectator at races try and make an effort to cheer/clap/yell for everybody!!!!!!!!!  Some of the runners at the back of the pack just lit up at hearing somebody tell them they were doing awesome.  And guess what, they did do awesome no matter their time, they just completed 9.3 miles, that is a hella long distance especially as windy and cold as it was that day.

Why have I not been running (or rather not supposed to have been running)--that goes back to the sprained ankle from last month's trail run.  During the work week, I'm stuck behind the wheel of the truck for up to 11 hours a day and that's causing my ankle to stay swollen up around the knuckle bone :-(.  Once I come home after 36-48 hours the swelling goes down dramatically but that only lasts until I go back to work, then up it balloons again, sigh......  The ankle is still a bit stiff and achy but there's no dramatic pain, I have zero problems putting weight on it and I've even gone for 3-4 easy runs on very flat surfaces. However, I've had 3 online friends convince me that I needed to step back and take another 2 weeks off to see if I can get the swelling to go completely away.  I am soooooooo not happy because running quite simply is my stress reliever.

One quick PSA--if you have a canister of pepper spray that's at least a year old, BUY A NEW ONE ASAP!!!!  I had a bit of a run-in with a dog on Tuesday that I tried to use my pepper spray on only to find out it had completely gummed up.  Fortunately it turned out ok but it was a close call.

Details on the dog incident--I was running in an area new to me in Louisiana and had turned into a residential area where I was greeted by this very friendly chow-retriever mix dog.  All went well except the dog kept following me and when I tried to turn onto another street, she immediately became aggressive.  Literally jumping up on me nearly knocking me down several times then started "grabbing" at my hands with her mouth. Not hard enough to draw blood but it certainly wasn't comfortable.  Finally got away from her enough to backtrack and she immediately calmed down.  Not only did the dog calm down, she followed me for over 3 miles, couldn't get rid of her no matter what I tried. Dog even followed me back to my truck.  I guess she decided we had bonded......very, very weird.  I got cleaned up, went in for coffee and food & she's still waiting for me at my truck.  Not only did she wait,  she followed my truck out of the parking lot when I tried to leave out.  Heart-breaking really even after she nearly scared the crap out of me.  Irresponsible dog owners need to "enjoy" some jail or community service time, no reason for this kind of behavior.

Workout recap--I'm managing to get in at least 2 core workouts a week with the SPS Trifecta and it's visibly paying off. My upper body is starting to get some definition again instead of just being plain skinny :-).  I've also worked my way back up to 4 pullups in a set, that's not quite the 15 I could get consecutively last summer but the strength and muscle memory is returning. Hiked on Monday with 2 treks up water tower trail at Pulaski and my mileage is increasing on the trainer, yay!!!!!!!  So no more runs for at least 2 weeks and I think I will go get an xray/mri on Thursday if the ankle is still swollen.

Shoes or the lack thereof

For the past 3 years it seems like I've only purchased running shoes and the odd pair of work boots........well last summer I did buy a couple pair of Fit-Flops due to the plantar fasciitis but they are gawd-awful ugly so they don't count.  The problem is that this winter I decided I needed dresses for the off time but I have been having a heckuva time finding dressier shoes that I like or that my feet can tolerate.

Don't know exactly what the problem is but it seems like I can find nothing but stripper heels, shoes that look like a grade school craft project, old lady shoes, or they just look & feel plain old cheap..........I've been shoe-shopping so many times for the past 3 weeks and have come home with NOTHING.  Ok, so that's not completely true, today I did come home with a pair of hiking boots and a pair of work boots--things that would lace up and be snug around my right ankle since I'm still kind of nursing it.  BUT they're not what I was shopping for!! I'm starting to feel like my girl card needs to be revoked, grrrrr.

Searcy has been scoured, likewise for Conway. Next week when I come back home I'm going to make a stop at Dillard's to see if they have anything that will meet my evidently way too picky standards.  I'm hesitant to order online because you never know how they're going to fit or what the leather quality is like.  Any suggestions will be greatly welcomed :-).