Things I am Thankful for: My Home

Man, is it EVER good to be home again. I'm thankful for many things, and the one on the top of my thoughts right now is that the Pilgrims and the Indians only hooked up once a year. There's really not much use for a holiday if it requires you to spend most of it in a car going from one place to the next place and basically rendering you more exhausted than before the 'holiday' began. That's how our holidays always end up. Wed after work we loaded the car up completely. With our suitcase, other random belongings, and Pippin's crate the rental car we are STILL driving was packed. First on the agenda was Brent's family in Hohenwald, TN. Ever heard of it? Prob not..... The drive was pretty uneventful, we goofed around in our normal manner and the highlight was being stuck on a small, winding country 2-lane highway stuck behind a slow car with a stupid Hummer behind us, blinding us. The 'glow' even woke Pippin up and he huffed and puffed about it. Finally we passed the slow car and then the Hummer passed us. Brent cracks me up and he turned his bright lights on. I'm not sure why it struck us as the most hilarious thing ever, but it did. I doubt they even knew we were behind them in our tiny little car. The funny thing is this town is so small that we know exactly who the people in the Hummer were. Maybe that's why it was so funny. So, we arrive at Brent's family's house and settle in. Thurs morning we did our Turkey Trot, but I'm not going to blog about that 'til Monday when I add in everyone else's BRPTT results. The rest of the relatives arrived pretty soon after the Trot, and immediately Brent's old Aunt W started in on Pippin's weight. AS IF she couldn't stand to lose about 30 pounds. He's a dog for Pete's sake! We weren't interested so we ignored her. Pippin had already found his perfect place - laying in the kitchen near all the action or anywhere near someone with food. Then it was time for T-G lunch. I'm not into 'country cooking' at all. We just don't eat that style of food. We're baked and grilled chicken, salads, lighter fare than mashed potatoes, dressing, etc etc. I really didn't eat much, but I could tell it wasn't working for me. When you're so accustomed to eating a certain way you just can't go back. I should have stuck with straight turkey and left it at that. I had a case of Montezuma's Revenge like nothing I have ever had before. Between hot sweats, cold sweats, twitches, and wandering if I could yell loud enough for Brent to hear me and come and hold my hand in case I died I finally felt slightly better. Just in time for the family picture. Yee haw. The rest of the afternoon was spent sitting in a semi-daze, Pippin asleep in my lap. I guess that's what you do in small towns - sit and talk about who did what, who's kids did what, and who may do something.

From there we headed to my parents house in Clarksburg, TN. Ever heard of it? Didn't think so.... Until April my parents lived in Memphis, where I was born and raised. Once they retired they got this strange notion to move there, I have no idea why. My dad was born and raised there, and my 97 yr old grandma is in a nursing home there. There is NOTHING in this town, and so there's nowhere there to shop. When we got there we found out my brother totally bailed and did not come for Thanksgiving. My parents are bored to death in this town, so they hadn't passed on the tidbit about my brother and his family not coming because they probably figured (rightly so) that we would have rearranged our holiday travels. So, I am pretty mad at my brother and plan to buy my nephew the loudest, most annoying toys I can possibly find for Christmas. So we spent the rest of the weekend watching paint dry with my parents. Brent and I ventured to the local 'park' for a run Fri morning. My original training plan was for 20 miles. With the bad stomach conditions I'd had and the lack of rest I knew that wouldn't work for me, and I really want to be rested and prepared for next Saturday's Memphis Half Marathon. The park "near" my parents ended up having a quarter mile track and a half mile track. We ventured off the track a little and ran 2 miles through the woods/pasture. The grass was so clumpy it was really hurting our ankles, and we were also pretty nervous about being shot by good ole TN hunters. We headed back to the track and ran about a million laps to end up at 7 miles. It was 27 degrees at the start of our run and 32 by the end. COOOLLLLDDD! Actually, after 2 miles I was really warmed up and felt great. I didn't even realize it was cold until we were finished. I'm not happy that my training plan has gotten off recently, but I think a huge part of my difficulty at the Team Nashville half was too much mileage in too little time. On Sunday of that week I had run (a great) 18 miles, and then the half on that Saturday. So, I'm getting refocused this week and will be back on plan and totally ready for Saturday and the marathon in late January.

Fri afternoon we ventured 40 miles to the nearest 'city' with my parents to do some shopping. Although my brother did not come for T-G he did call repeatedly telling us what to buy them for Christmas. We didn't end up finding most of it, though. For this morning my mom had orchestrated one of her typical, painful experiences where she drags my grandmothers out of their cozy homes and into her circus. My mom's mother is in her 90's and lives 1.5 hours to the NW. She had her in home health nurse (B) drive her down for the day. B obviously cares a lot for my g-ma, and is great to her. But she's a really loud lady. She'd be much more pleasant to be around if she turned the volume down a LOT. Mom also had my dad go and get my other 97 yr old g-ma out of the nursing home and bring her to their house for the day. She's always been a little feisty, and nothing's changed there. She recited her ABCs backwards for us, recited a Thanksgiving poem, and called my Aunt Jan during the middle of our T-giving lunch to tell her how good the bread was that Brent's mom had sent with us. Oh, and she also is convinced that the doctors have implanted something in her brain that is now coming back out of her head. Pippin is pretty used to kids now, but he still needs to work on old people etiquette. He really didn't understand the tennis balls on the bottom of one grandma's walker and he kept trying to go after them. Hey, the dog loves to play ball! My mom is not a good cook, so T-giving dinner wasn't so great. One 'new' item on the menu that the Pilgrims probably didn't have with their turkey was pizza rolls. Yup. Turkey, mashed potatoes, and pizza rolls.

We left to come home a little after lunch today. It's about a 2 hour drive home, and man, is it nice to be home! All the way home we laughed about our insane families and how glad we are that Thanksgiving is over and our lives can return to 'normal' in a nice, quiet house with just us and Pips. We unpacked and headed out to dinner at Waffle House. We also stopped by Lowe's to see what kind of grills they have this time of year (which is not many). We spent of our time there laughing about who in the store had on the worst Mom Jeans. We had a MAJOR spotting tonight, probably the 2nd worst pair ever. Tomorrow we'll start getting all the Christmas stuff out and hopefully have a medium length run, maybe 7 or 8 miles? We're supposed to have some rain sometime tomorrow so I'll play it by ear. I think my cold was really allergies, by Wed I was feeling much better and I've been staying on top of taking all my allergy medicine. I'm still a little sniffly but nothing like I was on Tuesday.

Hope you all had fantastic Thanksgivings! A lot of you guys have already started emailing your BRPTT results and I'm going to put them all together in one big post on Monday. So far I know Jon, Shore Turtle, Tammy, & Liz have already run and put their times together. I know I've missed someone so I'll sort it all out before Monday!