Memorial Day Weekend and a White Dove

Posted on May 30, 2017 by flowerjovia

I love going down to Nokomis for the weekends, especially when it’s a three day weekend, but after packing up to go down and then cleaning up to leave, and then coming home and unpacking and putting everything away, by Tuesday morning I feel like I got hit by a mack truck.

We left Clearwater on Friday night and drove down to Nokomis. MacGyver wanted to leave early but I had some rewards points from my credit cards and I had to spend them or lose them so I HAD to go to the mall. Had to.

In case you had any doubt about my skill, this entire outfit, including shoes was less than 30 dollars.

After power shopping we headed down to Nokomis and on Saturday morning I got up bright and early and got in a long run on my favorite trail.

MacGyver and I had some lawn debris to pick up and some garage sales to visit so we piddled around for much of the day on Saturday doing those things.

We didn’t find too much at the garage sales but we did go over to the jetty and we met this guy who had a metal detector and he was picking up things right and left. He told us that he had found 28 rings in only 6 months, twenty eight, including diamonds and sapphires.

hmmmmmmmmmmm

On Sunday MacGyver got up really early in the morning to go work on the boat and I went out for a run. He was supposed to change out the prop while I ran six miles and walked the dogs and then we were going to go out and try to do some fishing. Here’s what actually happened.

I did run six miles and walk the dogs but on the walk Hank got over heated and fell down which scared the hell out of me so I picked him up and carried him back home, (he loved it, I’m not sure but he may have planned it).

MacGyver pulled the boat out of the water to change the prop but the dealer had given him the wrong parts so he had to put the old prop back on, which meant he wasted a shit ton of time for no reason.

Finally, around 11am, my mother in law came to pick me up so MacGyver could get the boat back in the water since it was at their house in Englewood. When she showed up, this was what she walked in on.

My mother in law and I loaded my things, and by things I mean, my menagerie, into the car and then we headed off to Englewood.

(In case you’re wondering were Hank is, he insisted on driving.)

We finally made it onto the boat around 1:30 in the afternoon and made our way out to Stump Pass. I haven’t been to Stump Pass since last year and I was super excited to get out there, mostly because I really wanted to fish but also because I knew there would be a lot of people out celebrating and enjoying the holiday weekend. I was shocked when we got there and I saw this.

Nothing ever stays the same

Apparently the pass isn’t deep enough for the larger boats so they are ‘fixing it’. In my opinion, it will never be the same. Progress? I’m not sure that’s what I’d call it but it is what it is.

Anyway, there hasn’t been any bait fish anywhere. MacGyver is convinced that the red tide we recently had ruined the fishing but I disagree. We went to a few spots looking for bait and didn’t see any and we threw a few lures out but MacGyver was getting frustrated.

Eventually MacGyver and I decided that we should maybe start metal detecting but I said I wasn’t really ready to give up yet and that’s when I threw out a lure one last time and I landed the only fish of the day, and it was a snook!

Boom! What you can’t see in that picture is that when I was holding the snook, he flipped hard and his gill caught my thumb and cut it pretty good, and when he flipped, because I caught him on a double lure, the second lure flipped up and caught my hand as well so in that picture I’ve got blood all over my hand.

About 5 minutes after I threw the snook back I looked to the left of the boat and saw a large fin. Yep, a shark. I had hoped to get a closer look but it swam away.

After locating some band-aids we decided to head back and have some dinner. Later that night we had desert back in Nokomis and we decided to go over to the Jetty to try some metal detecting with a unit that MacGyver had bought at a black Friday sale a few years ago.

It didn’t work. (I’m searching craigslist for a new one today.)

Yesterday we hung out in Nokomis for most of the day. It was so hot that I really had no desire to go out in the sun at all. MacGyver and I watched some TV and hung out with the animals and worked a bit in the yard. We just enjoyed the day.

Late yesterday we met my laws for dinner before leaving and had a really nice time. The restaurant pulled a bait a switch on us which was annoying but there was a white dove hanging out there and I really wanted to take it home.

Wouldn’t you like a woodpecker brother?

I didn’t.

We got home last night around 9PM and MacGyver and I made it to bed around midnight. I managed to get up and run/walk around 4 miles this morning but I have no idea how I did it because I’m exhausted and I still have a full day of work ahead of me. This is why lunchtime naps were invented 😉 and why I excel at them.

How was your weekend?

Did you do anything special?

And just when I thought it was over……

Posted on May 22, 2017 by flowerjovia

On Saturday I ran 10 miles on the Legacy Trail and ended up with a mid-level migraine that ended up lasting for the entire freakin weekend. It sucked. This is what I get for playing doctor and not taking my thyroid medication for almost three weeks because now the long run migraines are back and I’m sure it will take a few weeks to get rid of them again.

Oh, if it were only this easy….

The bad news is, I might have finally solved the mystery of the eye twitch and it has absolutely nothing to do with the thyroid medication and absolutely everything to do with another medication I was sure I needed and it’s the only thing that got rid of my migraines when everything else failed previously. It turns out that the twitch could actually be caused by the topirimate! The blessed Topirimate!

In case you’re wondering, I’m not going to play around with my medications this time, I’m going to make an appointment this week and talk to my doctor about it, but since the ‘twitch’ started around the same time the doctor increased my dose of topirimate, I’m pretty sure that’s the culprit.

I don’t know why I never considered it before. As it turns out problems with the eyes are a known side effect with topirimate. Go figure. So much for my miracle drug.

I still managed to rally on Saturday and have a little fun. We went out on the boat and had dinner with the in-laws. We also went swimming and I found out that my Fibit Charge HR is definitely water resistant. I’d almost go as far as saying that bitch is damn near waterproof. I mean, I know it’s not, but it certainly seemed like it when I was showing off in the pool.

MacGyver was showing his dad how to execute the perfect swimming stroke. Is that even what you say? I don’t know because I obviously know absolutely nothing about swimming but that didn’t stop me from jumping into the water and showing off my perfectly imperfect breast stroke while forgetting to remove my Fitbit Charge HR. Yeah, I did that.

And then I swam across the pool a few more times. And then, I remembered I had it on.

It still works!

I slept in on Sunday morning and I slept a lot of the day on Sunday too but I could not get rid of the migraine. It just did not want to go away so I finally just gave in and decided to rest. For some reason that’s a hard thing for me to do.

This morning I was rewarded for it because I woke up migraine free and I was able to run again. It wasn’t a lot of fun though. If you follow me on Instagram or facebook you may already know why.

How was your weekend? Did you do anything exciting? Did you know the Fitbit Charge HR was water resistant?

I won the lottery, sort of.

Posted on May 8, 2017 by flowerjovia

The mini vacation is over and we are back to the grind over here. I don’t mind it so much except that, okay, I do, I mind it. I mind it a lot. I hate being behind on anything but especially work because let’s face it, work generally sucks anyway regardless of whether you’re ahead or behind but behind is worse because then it just takes forever to get through the day.

man returns to work

Thankfully I’m not too far behind because we were only away for four days. We left Wednesday evening after my appointment with the cardiologist, which, by the way, went okay. I was pleasantly surprised to find out that he was an ironman but not thrilled when he told me that endurance running was not really good for the heart according to recent studies.

back up hater

I told him that I had read many recent studies that contradicted some of those theories and we agreed to disagree and then I told him about my favorite trail in Venice and suggested he try it out sometime. He told me endurance running is not good for the heart and that he should really listen to his own advice because neither are triathlons but he said he understood the endorphin high.

Then he scheduled an echocardiogram for a later date and we parted ways.

cash me ousside

On Thursday I had a blast taking my Mom and my Mother in law shopping at University Town Center. It was my mother in law’s birthday and mom and I wanted to take her out all day and shop til we couldn’t shop anymore and that’s exactly what we did. I may have even gotten a few new things from lululemon because, LULULEMON!

lululemon

On Friday we had some friends down from Vermont and we all went out to celebrate at the Casey Key fish house.

Casey Key Fish House

After dinner, we showed our friends how the better half lives and drove down Casey Key. The wind was blowing really hard and the waves were crashing over the road but I got some great pictures.

Casey Key Beach

Mom went to Fort Meyer’s to visit with a cousin on Saturday and MacGyver and I took our friends down the Shakett Creek canal. It was cold as shit and I froze my ass off for most of it but the pictures were totally worth it. Take a look at a few of them.

Shakett Creek

up the creek

On Sunday we went over to the in-laws and MacGyver took us out on the boat. It was chilly but there were a lot of people out on the water, more that I expected.

The hat lasted about 2 seconds!

Boats on the Water, Fire in the sky….

We drove down towards Venice since the wind was still pretty bad but instead of heading the way we typically do we went in to an alcove and headed toward a beach area. It looked like this,

Hidden Beach

We got out of the boat and and walked up the beach and there were trails everywhere.

Beach Trails

So we decided to follow them. I took pictures of course, for scientific reasons, you know, to share with you on the blog. And also in case we got lost at sea and someone found the phone they could possibly locate us.

hidden beach trail

It seemed to go on forever but it got more and more interesting.

trail hill

And then it opened up to this scene.

Hidden Beach

paradise beach

Paradise! Who knew?

It was waiting there all this time and we had no idea! It was breathtaking. Apparently it’s a well-kept secret but people do know about it because there were people with tents camping all over the island and lots of people with lounge chairs hanging out. It was stunning though.

Paradise Beach

And just in case you’re wondering, I did run quite a bit this weekend as well. I ran a total of 26 miles on the legacy trail. As always, it was wonderful but my long run on Saturday was epic. I was plugging along around mile 3 or 4 when a bicyclist came rolling up and I looked over and saw an ironman logo on the shorts and at first I thought it was a friend of mine whom I always see when I’m running there and I got ready to say hi but even though the face was familiar it wasn’t my friend.

It took a minute to sink in but then it hit me. It was my cardiologist!

I sped up to get right beside him and then I said, ‘I’m glad to see that one of us listen to the others advice!’ He laughed and said that it was an awesome trail.

That it is, and running is good for you too!

On more thing that happened this weekend. Mom and I had bought lottery tickets on the way to Nokomis and I totally forgot about them because I almost never play. On Sunday morning I checked them and of course they were losers, except for one. I picked the powerball number. Did you know that you win money when you pick the powerball number? You do! I won 4 bucks! I’m a winner! Winner winner, chicken dinner.

How was your weekend?