A Week in Review

As I sit her and write w're cruising down highway 60 south of LA with the windows down and I'm being subjected to Vanilla Ice and "Ice Ice Baby" on the XM Radio. (ok, well it does have a little nostalgic value for me....but only a little)

If you check this blog regularly, you're probably thinking that Malcolm and I fell of the edge of the world and dissappeared forever. Well....not exactly.

I didn't mention going home, because it was just going to be our usual day and a half (or so) lay over between loads. But Friday morning they still didn't have a load for us, Saturday they said check back Monday, and Monday they said "not today, not tomorrow, maybe Wednesday. Give us a call." That wasn't what I wanted to hear. By Sunday evening I was fluctuating between an attitude of "no big deal, extra time at home," and "Oh My God, we're going to be jobless and homeless too!" It was an emotional roller coaster for me these past few days. Not that this is out of the ordinary. We've had frequent erruptions of non-existant freight over the past couple of years, particularly during the spring months. I guess it was just the knowledge that the economy is crap right now and so many are loosing their jobs....it was just a little unsettling for me.

But no fear...we're back at work.

In the mean time, we had a week off. And what a week! Despite our worries, we had a lot of pleasant (and a few not so pleasant) surprises and events during our week. And since I am notorious for being over wordy and writing blogs that take you an hour to read, and since new things come up all the time and I get behind if I try to break it into multiple postings (see I already have another post I want to make from this morning) I'm going to do this in a "nut shell" or at least as much of a nut shell as I am capable of doing. (so you know its a rather large nut shell, right?)

Arrived home Wednesday morning to discover that my bird feeder had blown over. Remember this?

Well we couldn't get it in the ground deep enough because the ground is frozen. It is supposed to wind down like a cork screw, but it was only a few inches deep and didn't go far. Malcolm said we'll re-plant it in the spring after the thaw. Malcolm, true to form, got an idea in his head and went all out. I came home from running errands and found this in its final stages of completion. I now have the mother of all bird feeding stations in my back yard, complete with heated bird bath.


As we were finishing the bird feeder station, it turned dark, windy, cold, and started to rain. We stayed and finished anyway, and good thing because the next morning it was rather frigid and just got colder. Thursday morning we got a call from a freight company. My bookshelves were in Billings, a month early! So Thursday afternoon they delivered them to us, and I spent the evening unpacking books from their boxes and decorating my library.




Friday....it snowed a good dusting. Lovely....more snow. This was the day I had set aside to try hair remover on Ella. I used Veet, as recommended by several in the Crestie world. First her furnishings had to be covered so as not to remove them by accident.
This is almost 2 weeks worth of hair growth on her back and hips. Its more than it looks. If you saw her in person you'd see how fuzzy she really is. It looks like a very heavy "5 O'clock shadow" on her.

Ella says, "This is peculiar Mom. What are we doing?"

Then on goes the Veet.

Ella says, "I'm under attack! Its chemical war fare!"

Scrape it off after 5 minutes and a quick bath, and voila.....smooth shiny skin. She looked great. Of course, three days later she was starting to get prickly again, BUT....thats just life with a hairy hairless Crested.

Ella says, "Hey, that wasn't so bad. She fed me cookies constantly for 5 mintutes and now she says I shouldn't have to have a hair cut for a couple of weeks!" (little does she know, Mommy was wrong about this last promise)

After that I worked on taxes till I couldn't stand it anymore, then sat in my library with the girls and read and puttered around the house.

Saturday, more of the same. During these two days Malcolm finished setting up and cleaning out his garage. It looks super nice. I need to get a picture of it for you. Remind me to do that.


Sunday morning dawned clear and beautiful. I woke up and layed in bed daydreaming about a nice little road trip to Roundup, MT (about 30 miles north) for dinner and a country drive. Roundup is a cute little western town where we've stopped before to eat while haulin cows. I like it there. So we planned to do that in the afternoon. But alas, around 10:00 that morning it clouded over, started snowing, and within an hour we could see less than a 1/4 mile and had three inches of snow on the ground. Goodbye leasurly drive through the country. We wouldn't have seen much scenery anyway in those conditions. So instead Brandon, who had just gotten home from his run, and his wife Jessica came over and we watched Smoky and the Bandit (a lovely little trucking movie that maybe is only truely and completly appreciated by truckers who understand more of whats going on, but still worth watching by all you "normal" people), visited, and then drove to their house for dinner. Afterwards Malcolm and Brandon retreated to his office to look at chrome for their trucks on the internet (Brandon is the chrome king and is trying to convert Malcolm I think) and Jessica and I watched a movie on TV.

Side note: its still snowing at this point. Had been all day in fact, and continued to do so all night and into the next day. However the wind was also blowing like nothing else, so we never accumulated more than a couple of inches.


Monday - Monday I did more of the same, puttered around the house. By this time I was running out of things to putter with. Malcolm went somewhere...can't remember where, then came back and called Nelson Trk. No load. They said not till Wednesday if then. So I suggested to Malcolm that we make the run to Baker than got canceled a few weeks ago due to their illness over there. We were planning to go maybe next week when Justine was home from school, but seeing as how we wer'e missing so much work, it didn't make sense to take time off next week, especially if freight had picked up at that point. So we packed the pickup, and made an evening road trip to Baker. We got there around 11:30 that night and visited/watched TV till 2:00 the next morning. Their first group of cows had started an early calving, so Malcolm's Dad was having to go out every hour or so to check on them. The next day we visited, ate, and went down to our former residence on the south part of the ranch to load some bedroom furniture we hadn't taken with us. We had planned to eventually buy something else for our spare room, but arn't wanting to do that yet, and, pleasantly, we are expecting company in a few weeks and she needs somewhere other than the floor to sleep. It was COLD. Actually the pick up therm. said -1 while we were loading the furniture.

Wednesday morning we visited more, then left around 10:00 or so. Malcolm wanted to get home in time to unload and return the little Uhaul trailer we had rented to go get the furniture., and then take a nap before we had to leave for work that night. When we left it was -7 and I don't think it went over 25 the entire day. Then I get home and talked to Dad on the phone and they've had temps in the 80's down there in TN and my sister's talking about wearing flip flops on her blog.....Gee....you know there are some things I miss about Tennessee. I'd take their spring time mud over more of the white stuff easily about now. In fact, Sunday I wore a tank top in protest of the snow. (of course I also had on a jacket and still froze every time I took the girls out)


We left Wednesday night around 11:00 for Idaho then California. Unfortunatly for Malcolm he spent half his birthday Wednesday driving, and wasn't even being paid for most of it, but the visit to Baker was worth it. We both enjoyed the time there. And now Malcolm can no longer tease me about my age because he has officially joined the ranks of those of us in or 30's. Not that he teased often, but now he can't at all.