Heading Home

We are on our way home. One more stop, to deliver in Arkansas on Monday, and then we will high tail it for home.

We have not been in the southeast, much less home, since September 23. That's when we left the house for this last round on the road. It's been too long!

There was not an intent to stay out this long, but one thing led to another and it just happened this way. We had expected to stay out for our usual 5 weeks, and then head back in. But about three weeks into our working, we got a BIG and unpleasant surprise.

We got to buy a new transmission, to the tune of $9200.00.

Thankfully the preceding three weeks had been amazingly profitable. And thankfully the following weeks have been as well. But it did feel a bit like a sucker punch to the gut. It's been one of those things we knew was coming. But you kind of always hope it will wait till tomorrow and not come at you today. You know what I mean?

Anyway, given that, and a few other circumstances and goals, we decided to stick it out till Thanksgiving. In some ways it's been easier than I expected, but it's certainly been longer than I ever want to stay out again.

Nothing else really note worthy has happened. At least nothing that stands out in my mind worth mentioning. Probably because we've just about run our wheels off, barely having time to breath the entire 9 weeks! It's been awesome (and tiring), and I'd do it again in a heartbeat. I'd run this hard in a heartbeat. NOT necessarily for this long though. I've loved staying busy though. It makes time go by faster and your too tired to think much about what you'd rather be doing.

We should be home by Monday night, and plan to stay a week or so. Then we'll be back out for a couple weeks of work before Christmas.

We've got some work to do at home. The truck and trailer need some attention, the house probably needs a major dusting, if not more. I hope to get my kitchen painted, something I've wanted to do for some time now. Our family is coming to our house for Thanksgiving dinner, so that will be fun. I enjoy having everyone over.
And then there will be the usual. Relaxing in front of our fire (if it's cool enough), cooking, giving the girls a very long over due bath, and, of course, time with the horses. Just wait till you see how much Midas, our colt, has grown! We'll be bringing Fancy home this next week and Midas will be staying with his new owners.

That's about all I have to share right now, so I'm going to stop writing and put of a few of my pictures from this week. Next post will be from my kitchen table, probably after Thanksgiving sometime.
CAN'T WAIT!!!!

last Saturday coming across Lookout Pass in Idaho

heading west on I-80 towards Reno on Tuesday

 

Thursday evening in southern Idaho about 40 miles from the Utah state line (I-84)

another shot from Tuesday in Nevada on I-80

 

Wednesday evening heading back east on I-80 in Nevada

 

Our sweet neighbor sent us this picture a couple weeks ago. She said she thought we'd like to see our house with the fall colors before they were gone. We are still amazed at how blessed we are to have such great neighbors, all the way around!

 

 

**when I was blogging before, I could choose the size of my pictures and add captions to them by clicking on them, and a menu would pop up. Has that changed? I don't seem to have any options with the pictures now. What am I missing?

Explanations



 Welcome! If your here it's because you've asked to be. Which also means your either a friend, family member, or follower of my former blog.

Being as such, I owe you explanations.

First, why a new blog and why private. The answer is more complicated than I want to get into here and now. Some of you will "get it" without explanation. The rest of you simply, hopefully, can understand a desire for privacy. To some degrees I like having our experiences open to the public because it's interesting to people and we like sharing and educating the world about life as truckers. But sometimes you reach a point in life where you just need to withdraw a little bit and surround yourself with safe people you can depend on and trust. I'm at that point right now.

I tapered off on blogging because I lost the motivation to blog. And also because there was so much drama and trauma going on, and I just couldn't write without letting some of the negativity leach it's way into my writing. And being as my beloved blog, Between the Fenceposts, was open to the public and read by participants in the drama and trauma....well it  was just further motivation to withdraw and close up shop. I kept trying to get back into it, but I never could make myself do it. And it's something that's supposed to be enjoyable for me. I decided if I was having to force myself to blog, then it had lost it's purpose and I didn't need to be blogging.

I've been Facebooking. And loving it. I think it feeds my lifelong attraction to instant gratification. Kind of like I never liked practicing piano. I just wanted to sit down and play like a pro.
Well a few weeks ago I got frustrated with myself and my seeming inability to be concise and not wordy on my Facebook status updates and comments. I try so hard to keep it short, but I can't! And Facebook doesn't work well with wordy, rambling status updates. So I spent some late night driving time pondering how to learn to say what I want to say in shorter phrases, and why do I get so wordy anyway? And I realized this...

I'm a writer and writers use words!
I miss writing! I miss being able to use as many and whatever words I want to use!

And so I need to try to blog again.

I'm going to give this a try. The motivation still ebbs and flows. These inspirations to start a new blog happened a couple weeks ago and I'm just not getting around to doing it, because the motivation left me again. I can't promise that I'll be as thorough of a blogger as I used to be. I'd like to think I will be, but we have to wait and see what happens.

I'm glad you stuck with me through my lengthy silence and I hope I don't let you down here. But like I said, we will see.


About the name:
I'm not good at naming things! It's so hard! Take my last blog, Between the Fenceposts, for instance. I loved the name! It had absolutely NOTHING to do with what I was writing about. I'm not sure it had anything to do with anything!
I had to ask for help on this one. I wanted it to reflect what I'd be writing about: trucking, my horses, what I'm doing while I'm home. And I got some really nice suggestions. One of my favorites was Tails and Trails, but when I went to create my new blog, that was apparently already taken. The other one I really liked was Tales of the Flying Lady. It was Malcolm's creation.

It is inspired by Malcolm's beloved hood ornament. She is a reproduction 1930-32 Cadillac hood ornament, and he has loved her for a long time, so when he got this truck last year, he ordered his hood ornament. Somehow she started ending up in a lot of my "through the windshield" photos that I was posting on Facebook. And she became admired and developed a fan club.

 

I've started intentionally putting her in almost all my on the road pictures.
Malcolm's blog name suggestion was catchy and original. Two things that appealed to me. I'm still not sure how to make it relate to when I write about being home and the horses, but I liked it enough to decide to work around that kink.

The "look" of the blog is still in development. It works for now. It's not really a great reflection of me, which I think the blog look should be. But neutral is a good look for the beginning stages of a new blog. And I do like gray.

So I think that about wraps up the explanations. At least for now.
My blogging may not be as frequent as it was in years past, but probably it will be just as wordy. ;) And now that I've finally learned how to work with this Windows 8, I'll be able to include pictures without too much of a headache and that will help me stay motivated. Pictures are a big part of my blogging and Windows 8 was such a pain about how it wanted me to work with pictures...well I've come to terms with it, and had a techy person show me some stuff, and now that it's not an out right battle to post pictures I think that will help my motivation some.

Thanks for joining me here at the new location. I'll be back around in a bit to visit, but I want to give it a few days to let everyone find where I am now and get you all "invited" to join the blog.

This feels good. I hope it lasts.