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Showing posts from 2012

Nearly Next Year

As I am trying to mentally prepare myself for the New Year ahead, my mind drifts to the events of the past year, in a period of reflection and retrospection if you will.  I think about having made the decision to go back over-the-road for a while to boost the household income and escape the insanity of working in the field of public transit. I absolutely love being on the open roads and doing something that is both fun and challenging.  I missed home, my husband and family and friends of course, but I really enjoyed my time back out there, trucking it up for a while.  I had more good adventures and made memories that will last a lifetime. In late May, as spring was pressing into summer my husband and I celebrated our first anniversary, spending a great weekend having another great adventure. We took the tour of the underbelly of the world famous New River Gorge Bridge.  From the catwalk that runs the length of the bridge below the road surface we watched hawks and falcons soar, thr

Merry Christmas

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OMG OMG OMG EPIC CUTENESS ! **I don't own this picture, it's from the interwebs and hope whoever it was th at took the picture originally doesn't mind a little more exp osure of his/her amazingly adorable mother and baby hippo gleefully swimming photograph. Seriously, it makes me gidd y and I just c an't help but sharing. I mean really, how could you not want a Hippopotamus for Christmas? I know I do. I actually got a stuffed hippo for Christmas one year from my mom.  Come to think of it, it may have been on the last Christmas we had with her.  I still have it tucked away in a box somewhere in the attic.  It's adorable. I think having heard the Gayla Peevey holiday tune "I Want A Hippopotamus for Christmas" on the radio finally pushed me into that seemingly ever evasive holiday spirit.  I may even take some time to wrap up some or all of the gifts I've got in a massive pile in my bedroom.  Although, I won't have a tree to put them

"Light" Duty

I hated to laugh when my Chiropractor said she was going to write me a note for work placing me on "light duty".  I explained to her that I work overnights stocking in a retail store and that there really is no light duty in the traditional.  So instead she made the orders to read as such that I should be provided time to break each hour to apply ice to my "affected areas" and that she would like for me to be provided a chair from which to work from as much as possible.  I was afraid it wouldn't be met with open ears when I broke the news to my boss this morning.  But I was too pessimistic for my own good and was happy to find myself rolling a nice cushioned office chair over to my work area.  I was able to sit for the majority of the "breakout" phase of my morning, which is when we open up and unload the boxes and hang the clothes on the zee's.  I had to get up occasionally to put clothes on the appropriate zee, but other than that I was but

Crap...

I just posted the previous blog, went to play on the interwebs and decided to come back and look at the little ticker/tracker thing up there relating to my baby gestation progress.  94 days to go? Crap. I'm so not prepared.  Not even CLOSE. Heck we can't even come up with a name for our little one.  *sigh* And now back to your regularly scheduled waiting for another blog post to appear.....

Bah Humbug

Last year I signed up for a Christmas savings account at my credit union and managed to stash away nearly $1000 for holiday shopping.  I have spent a good portion of the money, paying off the Visa I used to make pretty much all of the purchases I've made so far.  I have four more people to buy for and should still come in under the mark.  And while I'm glad to have the vast majority of the holiday shopping done, I cannot find the holiday spirit.  I don't want to bother with a tree or decorations in the house.  I don't really even feel like putting the gifts together and cover them with wrapping paper and ribbons.  I haven't even bothered to pick up a box of cards or stamps to mail a many-a-merry return to those who have sent us well wishes via the mailbox on the porch already.  I can't even bring myself to turn the radio dial over to the All Christmas All the Time station yet.  When I have heard Christmas carols in random places while being out and about rec

Retail Guilt

I was hired at my current place of employment as a Part-Time Seasonal Employee.  I was hired to work in soft-lines (the clothing department), overnight, and was told to expect less than 30 hours a week.  I have to say that while I've been mostly held to those terms and limitations, I find myself staying an extra hour or so after my scheduled shift to help complete the as many of the tasks for the day as possible before my grace period ends.  Typically I make it to the time clock before the store opens at eight o'clock in the morning (which is the end of the grace period). My weekly hours are averaging about 28.  And aside from Black Friday and the following Monday when we had a double truck (two trailers full of freight) to unload, I have not had to stay past store opening, which is great because I don't do well with the general public being all up in my business.  While I don't mind staying the extra hour or so to help out when necessary, I am starting to get th

Survived Black Friday Retail Style

When I pulled onto the lot of the retailer I am working at currently on Thanksgiving night I felt my blood begin to race through my veins and panic start to set in.  It was 45 minutes before we were set to open the doors for "Black Friday" and there was a line of people that wrapped all the way around to the back of the building.  There were cop cars and fire trucks parking randomly along the expanse of the parking lot, keeping the peace I presumed.  And I was starting to feel a bit of a panic attack coming on.  I cranked up the heater in my car as I set there, trying in vain to mentally prepare myself for the night head.  My heart was beating out of my chest as I realized that I was going to have to walk towards the front of the line of people to gain entry into the building to get clocked in for my shift.  I was so afraid of causing a mini riot, people might assume I was out to cut line... oh crap! I shut off my engine, put my keys into my purse, opened the drivers side

Baby Update

I'm another week away from my next check-up and things have been going pretty well since my last one.  My baby (and belly) are growing rapidly now.  I feel like every day it gets harder and harder to reach my feet to put on my socks.  I get short of breath pretty easily now too and find that my meals are getting harder and harder to consume in one sitting.  Small frequent meals are a necessity.  I love love love feeling my little ninja girl wriggling around in there though.  She kicks and stretches and nudges me off and on all day long.  I think about four days ago she turned so that she is facing my spine so I feel less of the arm and leg flailing, but I think that opened me up to feeling her random bouts of the hiccups.  One thing I'm afraid will continue in March when she is born is the schedule she's becoming accustomed to because of my own work schedule.  She knows it's time for mama to get up between midnight and one in the morning and is usually kicking me to

B*tchy Black Friday Rant

So working retail during the Holiday season really wasn't my best career decision.  Actually up until today, even doing retail while pregnant wasn't THAT bad.  I love the girls I work with in my department, the whole night crew is really awesome, and even getting up at the ungodly hours I do to work isn't too hateful.  But today, even after just a five and a half hour shift, I am regretting my decision to work at all this time of year.  The retail store I work for, just like pretty much every other retail store in the country, is gearing up for Black Friday sales.  We had two delivery trucks to unload and unpack and stock this morning.  Since I started we have only had one truck at a time, with a piece count of roughly 2000.  Which is peachy, we work hard, and get that done most days right on schedule.  But today, with two trucks of nearly 2000 pieces each, we didn't get anywhere near done before the store opened this morning and will just be behind and forced to ca

Oh Sandy

Okay, so it's been precipitating in one form or another here in town for 4 days straight.  I'm over it.  Allegedly the sun is gonna peek out later, I'm not holding my breath.  I have some errands to run today and will just bundle up since it seems like it's probably still cold out and for right now it's still quite wet. Hurricane Sandy dumped on much of the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast United States.  I looked through a slide show of over two hundred pictures on the Weather Channe l website yesterday, just amazed at what happened in places like New York City and the Jersey Shore.  Complete devastation.  Here in West Virginia we mostly got rain and snow.  Some parts of the state (thankfully not my part) got over two feet of snow. No thanks, you can keep it.  Here in the city we got a wet dusting of an inch or two which melted off pretty quickly.  That is one of the nice things about living in the city, all of the concrete and close knit communities keep things a

Tootsies & 'Tards

Well I'm essentially one week in at my new job.  And while the job itself isn't too difficult, the whole standing for hours thing is proving to be a great challenge.  I've sat on my behind for pretty much all of the last five years behind the wheel of one vehicle or another and now my feet are retaliating against me putting them to use.  I hope they adjust, but something tells me it's gonna take a long while for that to happen.  I went to the drug store and purchased two different kinds of shoe inserts to see if they might help alleviate some of my suffering, but so far no dice.  I am trying the Dr. Scholl's kind specifically for heel pain first.  Then I got another from the same company for three point relief that if these heel ones don't start helping I'll switch to and give them a shot.  Something tells me that I may just have to suffer.  Payback for being a lazy trucker. I'll be on my feet a good bit today here at home on my day off as I plan to

Life Changes, Big & Smal

Okay, first of all, forgive me if I don't catch all of my typo's on this post, as I'm using the new keyboard on my new desktop computer at the house.  I've not blogged from anything other than my laptop for so long my fingers hardly know what to do with themselves on this big ass keys.  I'd like to say a few words in reference to my trucking career before I move forward with the newness and news in my life.  I am officially done with trucking (for at least 18 years I suspect) and while I'm glad to be home everyday, showering without shoes at will, and eating out of a fridge instead of a 12 volt cooler or truck stop buffet, I'll miss being a trucker. I had many adventures (and just as many misadventures) while I was out on the road.  And while this last stint wasn't quite as long as the first, I still had a lot of fun doing what I do best, holding a steering wheel and keeping a 65' rig between the lines (most of the time... c'mon someone has

A Pregnant Trucker's Story

As you can see by the new layout, design and header, this little truckers life is about to make a drastic change. Actually, the changes have already begun. But they keep telling me they'll just keep growing and growing.... ;) I've not blogged in quite some time, as some of you have pointed out via e-mail and comments. I appreciate the concern, as always. But it's been nothing more than just having been too darned exhausted most of the time to even bother breaking out the laptop. Heck I think this is the first time since my last blog that I actually have taken the laptop out of its' case. Luckily, I can moderate blog comments via e-mail on my iPhone so that part has been easy peasy. But honestly, by the time I'm done working for the day all I have energy for before my eyes close on the world and I drift off to never-never land for 8-10 hours is call and talk to my hubby and maybe post an update on FB. So far, though, pregnancy hasn't been too terrible. I

Lazy Biotch

I haven't blogged in a while. I'd love to say I'm just lazy but honestly I've just been too tired most of the time to bother. Plus, nothing too exciting to blog about. I had a nice little three day holiday last weekend in the North Carolina mountains with my hubby and a couple dozen of our dearest friends. It was a hot but completely awesome weekend. I'm so glad I had that little mini vacay. Since then I've been running hard and falling face first into bed at the end of the day. Today was the first I decided I wasn't going to go straight to bed before pulling out the laptop to check on some things. I'm not gonna say much. Just a big thanks to Allen & Rachel for taking me out for an evening in Atlanta. The food was amazing. The company was amazing. And the laughs... well... pretty sure I pulled muscles from laughing so much! I really appreciate you guys muscling through traffic and then putting up with my unfiltered, crazy ass for the durati

Southern Hospitality

So I was at a small truck stop over in Louisiana just the other day when I had an experience that was annoying and shocking. I had been at it all day, shutting down the truck with barely an hour left on my fourteen hour clock. I was exhausted and hadn't really slept well the night before. Let me say up front that I don't really feel like my exhaustion had anything to do with how I was treated at this truck stop. I tried quite hard to be positive and upbeat during the whole thing, you'll understand as you read on. I wanted a hot meal before I crashed out for the night, and I was pretty much starving (the downside to trying to keep fresh fruits and veggies in the truck is that they either spoil or get eaten very quickly and leave me stuck purchasing food). So I pulled into this truck stop with food on my mind. I went inside and used the restroom to wash my hands, because I was raised right and like being clean before taking a meal. Once my hands were as clean as they were

Tweet No More

Today I made the executive decision to stop using the social media outlet known as Twitter. I know, that was short lived huh? Only one person questioned my doing so (so far) and the best reason I can give is this: 90% of the people I followed and who followed me on Twitter were what I called "fake life friends". People I'll never meet in real life, people I don't really "need" in my day to day life. So what's the point of interacting with them as if they mattered in the grand scheme of things? I'm not in a place in my life, personally or professionally, where I need to "network" so I found it pointless. It was often amusing, yes. Especially Bigfoot the Bigfoot... he had the best tweets really. But honestly, the rest, while mildly entertaining, was just f*cking pointless. At least with FaceBook 90% of the people I have on my friends list ARE people I care about and know in REAL LIFE . The people with whom I have chosen to stay in touch f

I love new toys.

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Well I went to Best Buy and bought myself a new digital point and shoot camera during my last time at home. I blame my sister, because she got a new camera and I was jealous. But I did want one since my old camera has a dead pixel that pisses me off every time I print a picture and see the red dot it leaves behind. Plus this one is 16 mega pixel with an 8x zoom. My old one was something way more pathetic and sad than that, with it's 8 mega pixels and puny 3x zoom. So I'm thrilled to have a newer better camera. The hubby is also happy to have my hand-me-down. So far what I like about it the most is that it has a lot of new preset program features that will make for some super fun photo taking. Like this little ditty called "fisheye". I mean, just look how lovely I am through the eyes of a fish! But I digress... So yeah, new toy! I can't wait to start snapping new pictures with it! Maybe I'll finally snag one of those elusive weenie waggers! Or not.

The New River Gorge Bridge

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During our Anniversary weekend back in May the hubby and I decided to do something different. We have seen the New River Gorge Bridge from many different angles, thanks to the trails and various accessible overlooks in the general area of the bridge. But we had learned about a new opportunity to see it as never before. We headed over to the HQ for a company called Bridge Walk and got ready for "the walk of a lifetime". After a brief safety run through and a quick slip in to the safety gear, we were loaded onto a small bus to head over to the trail head of the Bridge Walk tour. This is where we started. Everyone got strapped onto a zip line of sorts as we filed onto the narrow catwalk to begin the tour. The picture below is a portion of our small tour group which consisted of about 6 people and two guides. The tour took about two hours from one side of the bridge to the other, not because that's how long it takes to walk straight across, but because it's time allo

The Welcome Back Weenie

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Well today I experienced the welcome waggin'... Yep. Dude in a car, windows down, fly down, going full throttle on his wiener. He was pretty proud of himself, and honestly I can't blame him, he did have a good sized trouser snake he was wrestling while simultaneously trying to drive. He got a little camera shy though, while I was trying to get my Cannon out of the overhead, fumbling with the power switch he realized what was about to happen and slowed down so as to not be in my direct line of vision. Oh well, another time I'll snap a pic of a guy whacking off in traffic. In the meantime, you can enjoy this video a friend shared with me awhile ago about such a topic.

Q & A with Gi-Gi Roxx - Round 3

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Thanks to Trucking Tiger for these ten fabulously fun questions! You got questions? Send them in! 1. Name your top 5 states that you love, in order from 5-1. WV cant be included. 5) Wisconsin 4) North Carolina 3) Georgia 2) Pennsylvania 1) Utah I love these five most (since I can't put WV on the list) because of their natural beauty more than anything. 2. What is the weirdest animal you have seen while driving a truck? Honestly I think it was what I call the Thunderbirds. I thought were going to attack me at a rest area in BFE Nevada. I was out in the middle of nowhere, miles from anything and pulled into this little wayside with rustic facilities and found myself shocked by the size of the three birds that were standing by the trash cans. They were normal size trash cans and the birds were TALLER than the cans. They scared me. And I tried to get a photo of them but I was unable to snap anything that wasn't blurred even though I wasn't walking while trying to shoot...

A little update

Just been trucking, taking a few days off and back to trucking. Nothing too exciting to report. Unless you count sitting on the side of a mountain while a clean-up crew opens the road at the top of the mountain where a big truck lost its brakes and slammed into the cliff wall exciting. I didn't get to see the accident site, it was much farther up the mountain from where I got stopped, behind a LINE of big trucks waiting to pass. I did, however, see what was left of the big truck as two separate wreckers brought both the tractor and the trailer down the mountain about an hour and forty minutes from the time I took my place in the line of trucks. And I did also see the mangled mountainside where the crash had actually occurred once I got moving. It was a nasty accident apparently. They took the guy out in an ambulance and allegedly met with a life flight chopper to get him to the hospital stat. The fellas in front of me, all milling about outside their trucks, talking and killin

Mother's Day

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I have a lot of very special mothers in my life these days. My stepmother , my family members and so many of my friends, all wonderful mothers. I wish them all a very special day today, and everyday, as they navigate the roads of motherhood. But honestly, I've always felt like Mother's Day only is for the one woman in my life who made me, raised me, and guided me through the trials of growing up. My mom was a wonderful person, with her own special sparkle in the world of motherhood. She wasn't perfect, by any means, but who is? But, despite her faults and imperfections, she was the perfect mother to me. I will always keep her in my heart, day by day, missing her, yet feeling as if she is with me always. My siblings and I lost our mother on New Years Day 12 years ago. But though she is not with us in body, she will always be with us in spirit. Guiding us, keeping us safe, and reminding us that her love is eternal. Barbara Ann - 3/8/1953 - 1/1/2000

Q & A with Gi-Gi Roxx - Round 2

I have three plus one questions from anonymous posters I'll be answering today. Keep the questions coming folks, and if I haven't gotten to your question(s) yet just give me time! 1) Why did you choose otr trucking as a career? I love driving and love travel and wanted to see the country. I also have had trucking in the back of my mind for many years before I finally jumped ship and decided it was time to sink or swim in the world of transportation. I can remember countless instances where I would tell a friend or family member that being a truck driver just seemed like something I'd quite like to do. And as it turned out, it was a really good fit for me. Plus how awesome is it that I can drive a big rig? Pretty awesome if you ask me. 2) Why did you leave otr trucking for awhile and then return? I could give you a generic answer that is a common answer I give when people I know in the industry realize I'm back after just over a year off... which is typically "I

Q & A with Gi-Gi Roxx Round #1

Round one of questions is in response to the top ten questions that were on The Daily Rant 's mind. She's always got great questions for these Q & A sessions! But don't fret, I'll get to the rest of your questions soon. I have gotten a great response and have been thrilled to see so many of you sending in questions! ....on with the show. 1. Do you feel better going to work every day now that you’re out of the bus and back in the truck? Are you happier? Yes and yes. I have a few mornings, mostly the ones where I have to get up by 4 am that I drag my feet and dread "going" to work. But overall, I don't find myself feeling that overwhelming sense of horror knowing I have to go to work each day. No no, those mornings are a thing of the past. Thank goodness! So, to answer your second part of this question, means my world is a lot brighter happier place. Happy Gi-Gi. 2. Now that you’re married, is it different being away from h