I had an amazing time off. It’s funny how you don’t realize just how mentally and emotionally exhausted you are until you have a chance to sit with your thoughts and just be yourself again without anyone needing or wanting something from you.

When my lovely and hilarious friend Tonya picked me up to whisk me away to Tulsa last week, I expected to have a nice time seeing friends. What I didn’t expect was to be giddy to cook food for another person again (it’s been awhile). I apologize if you’ve already seen these pictures but zomg cooking is awesome.

(In order: 1. Ribeye with polenta goat cheese stuffed mushrooms, bacon roasted red cabbage, and broiled asparagus. 2. Mushroom ravioli with pesto and goat cheese. 3. Endive boats with blood oranges, goat cheese, and almond slivers.)

I also didn’t expect someone to cook a delicious meal for me. (Thanks Amanda for the amazing salt crusted rib roast!)

More importantly, I didn’t expect Tulsa to have turned into a really cool place to be. Honestly, if Tulsa was as cool as it is today back in 2002/3, I might not have left. No, that’s not true. I needed to go and find out a few things about myself, but I gotta say that Tulsa has me thinking about the future and what the word home means.

There is no way I would have gotten a gin and sake drink there before I left (although I didn’t drink gin then so maybe I could but let’s pretend), nor would there have been this lovely craft brew in such a cool space. I know part of that is the change that’s happening all over, but I’m really happy that Tulsa is keeping up with the rest of the country at least in this way.

I came back to Springfield to finally pick out a truck on Sunday. I made the mistake of sleeping in a bit on Monday, so by the time I got to the leasing office, the only trucks left were short leases on old trucks with a ton of miles. I did look at a 2018 with 50k miles on it but it was an Internaltional truck which I’m not familiar with. While it had some cool things about it, I didn’t like the sound of the engine and overall I just wasn’t feeling it.

I trudged back to my hotel a bit frustrated, mostly at myself, and vowed to go to bed early and be first in line the next day.

This morning I did just that, but alas I wasn’t the only one who did. When I entered the office there were 6 people in front of me. One was a girl who I knew from Salt Lake City, but she was looking for a lightweight. A lightweight is different from a full size (what I wanted) in that it is only meant for a single driver. It only has one bunk instead of two. We sat and waited for them to update the lists, and when they were done we lined up.

As I was queued, I pulled up the website and saw they had two 2019 Freightliner, one blue and one green. I tried not to get my hopes up but I was bouncing with excitement. The first three people were looking for specific trucks (Peterbuilts) so they would be coming back tomorrow to hopefully be rewarded for their persistence. The gentleman ahead of me decided to look at the blue one which mean the mean green machine was open for me to look at.

I took a walk across the parking lot and as I walked up I heard the truck say “Hello beautiful, come drive me!” I broke out into a smile and said “oh yeah, you’re mine!”

As I opened the door to climb inside I had a wave of “new car smell” wash over me and I was happy. Yes I know it’s VOC (volatile organic compounds) but I don’t care, it’s new and shiny and I’m happy.

So, my day was spent getting ready to not only have my own truck but establishing my LLC and getting ready to be a business owner. Now as I sit her typing, I know that when I’m done with this post I have a huge contract to read over and sign.

So to quickly sum up my day, it was amazeballs awesome.

Now I will leave you with this, my first ever video. I apologize in advance for being a bit scatterbrained and for all of the ummms. For my first video it isn’t bad but it’s totally off the cuff, I did it with new truck brain overload, and I contradict myself at least once I saw. Eh, we’re always our own worst critics.