Friday - night

It's getting close to 10 pm - I don't have to work tomorrow so I'm going to stay up later.  We have the memorial wreaths to lay at the veterans gravestones tomorrow but then I have the kids day fairly well planned.  

I need to find out what kind of bike the youngest wants and the only way to do that while keeping it a surprise it to take him to Walmart for something else and then just walk by the bike aisle. He'll see the bikes and point at the one he wants quickly.

But, to make the trip worth it, we'll go see the new 5 nights at Freddies movie, go get haircuts and I need to do a little patch work on some of the water outlets at the park. Nothing major, most everything is covered up.  I never take it off, once I put that stuff on there, I saw no reason to remove it.  Just some of it has come apart - not much tho - and so I want to recover it.  In fact, while I'm at Lowe's, I'm going to buy glue and replacement fittings in case any of them burst. I'm hoping that won't happen but I want to be prepared.

Today's offload in Gurdon went  much better than several previous times.  They were told to not cool the product down so much at the manufacturing plant where the glue is made and that helps a lot.  They're going to have to be especially mindful of that come Sunday/Monday because it's going to get very cold and we don't want to spend 3 hours unloading trucks up there.

As it stands, that plant is not ordering enough glue.     There was room for 7 truckloads when I got there, they can hold around 10.  When you see these giant tanks and the fill indicator perilously close to empty, you have to wonder what they're thinking.  The plant manager said today they are running at full capacity, nothing is broken. It's a good thing, sure, but at the same time, why aren't they ordering more glue to cover it?

Not that I care, I would rather work less. 

I'm getting bored with the news. It's always how much the left despises Trump in various things that are continually changing.  This has been going on since what, 2015?  10 years of this nonsense and after they figured out attacking Trump wasn't enough, they then tried to shame his supporters. Note I don't say followers. I don't follow Trump, I don't follow any politicians.  They are not God, Jesus or the blessed Holy Spirit, they are mere mortals.  But, you read Democrats and we all worship Trump, hail his name and are part of a giant MAGA cult.  

Yawning.  Who cares at this point.  But now that they've figured out we don't really care what they call us, the R word got old a long time ago and the meaning has been so diluted it's another useless term now - now they want to "fight" and violence.  It's their endless rhetoric that drives the rioting and killings. You don't see conservatives going on war paths to fight against federal law enforcement officers, do you?  Please share any example of that, I'd love to see it.  Not that I want to see our officers being hurt, the point is is that this is a leftist thing, not a righty.

I look at the news, yes, but I don't spend a lot of time at it unless I see something that catches my eye.  I figure the mid terms I'll start watching again and I am very interested in who is going to be propped up to take Trump's place in 28.  I think it's going to be Vance, but who knows?  

Enough of that.  If it isn't one thing, it's another. Days seem to be constant lists of new things to do.  Or things that are unexpected that have to be dealt with.  It's not all bad, of course, but it seems eternal.  

Anyway, if I take the kids away for several hours tomorrow, that gives their mom a break and get stuff done - or do nothing and enjoy the peace and quiet.  

As for right now? I'm going to play a few more games, then crawl into bed and watch a movie or something.  

  

 Thursday - afternoon

I was at the washout location this morning and the manager started opining about the hard freeze that's coming and what he had to do the next few days to prepare for it.

I knew nothing about a hard freeze and had not seen anything indication that one was heading our way.

I immediately got out my phone and checked my town's projected temperature forecast for Sunday and sure enough, it showed 22 degrees for a low and going up into the low 40's for a high.  I thought gee, I best get all of that piping I had to fix covered up - NOW - TODAY - procrastination is over with.  I've waited because of rain, hectic schedule and fatigue from getting up early or not sleeping well.

So, when I got back to the park today, I hopped on the kid's tractor and backfilled that entire ditch.  The dirt is still wet and hard to move, but I got enough done to cover it all up and not have to worry about it. Tomorrow, I will walk around all the lots and check the park responsibility side of the water outlets.  Most of them are covered, maybe all of them, but I need to be sure.  It was that main line and the sewer line I really wanted to get done today, just before the kid might take that tractor somewhere. I ain't shoveling that much dirt, thanks.  

I'll wait until the dirt dries up before finishing the job, the lines are sufficiently covered and that was the objective. I also placed flags where the lines are and then I'm going to put markers in the ground to identify where the lines are for future reference.  

I am tired today.  I slept ok last night but still not great, the 2 nights previous, however, I did not sleep well and it's catching up to me.  I have no plans for the rest of today.  Tomorrow is the Beignets thing at the restaurant, Saturday is the wreaths they place on war veterans graves - surprisingly large number of vets in the ground in this town.  

+++++++++++++

Got distracted. I needed to finish sending Christmas gifts.  My oldest brother and my son now completed, I only have 1 person left. Uhh, make that 3 but just families we know, nothing grand.  They're nice people, a simple gift to let them know we like and love them.  I have a middle brother but I never hear from him, I don't send him anything and I don't feel bad about it at all.

Uhh, well one kid here I haven't bought for because I don't know what kind of bike he wants.  I'm going to have to get them all to go to Walmart with me and nonchalantly head over to that aisle and say, ooh, look at THAT bike! And the kid will invariably say, NO! Look at THAT one!  I wish I could have it!  He won't know about it until Christmas.  He's outgrown his current bike, he definitely loves to get on it and ride around the circle.  

It feels good to have most of that out of the way long before Christmas Day, at least by my standards.  

 Wednesday - night

Early load yesterday, early unload today. Exhausted. But I go to bed too early, I'll just wake up a few hours later and it serves no useful purpose.  

I still can't believe this company gave us all a 2 day notice to sign up for healthcare. Mind you, I already had healthcare coverage, they said nothing about changing the provider to us until 2 days before the deadline. If we didn't sign up by 5:00 pm CT today, we would be without healthcare for the entire year.  This is half the reason I am even doing this job.  

I did misread it at first tho. Turns out, my employer pays $907 into it, I pay for the rest of whatever plan I wanted and boy howdy, were there a lot of plans. Christus, United Health, Blue Cross, etc.  They didn't even have Cigna in there, the current provider.  

I decided I would land on a plan that is costing me about the same per month. The deductibles are very high, this company is absolutely cheap skating in that department.  There were almost no plans for "out of network" and I ended up taking a plan that doesn't have it, I would have had to pay almost $900 per month to get that.  Then there are emergency room visits.   Almost $1000 copay for the plan I got, other plans were has high as 2 grand. 

Again, this is all on the employer being cheap @$$es.  That is THEIR decision as to what they are going to pay for and what they aren't.  They try to tell you it's the health care provider that is doing that, NO NO NO.  Don't EVEN try to get me on that one.  Anyway, I went with a Christus plan. Christus is in town and the doctor I already have is on that plan. They forced me to choose a doctor right off the bat. The whole thing was very time consuming, just trying to figure out which plan to take took me hours of looking at them and pondering over them.

Then trying to fill out their online paperwork. Very confusing.  After I selected one, I still couldn't submit it.  That's when I contacted the provider - why won't it let me submit it? That is when I found out that I have to pick a doctor first - no where does it say that is mandatory before you can submit it.  Bottom line is yes, I picked on, around $400 per month for me.  It's not great, but it's no worse than the stuff I have now. 

It's more like fire insurance, you have a major event, you pay the deductible, the rest is covered.  Hoping I don't have a "major event" any time soon.  

These early loads make me not want to do anything after I get done. It's too early, I dont' sleep well and I just end up rather lethargic.  I take naps, they help but it's not the same. I'll try to get 7 hours of sleep tonight, see what happens but at least I'm getting up at 5:15 am, not 3:30.  

As it stands, I took the kids to church tonight, put them to bed, getting them up for school tomorrow - the mom requested to be able to sleep in and since I'm getting up anyway it's no big deal. She doesn't have to start work until 11 but then she's busy until later tomorrow night.  So, I'll feed the kids when they get home, make sure they do their homework and chores, put them to bed and that's that. 

Tomorrow is this annual Christmas thing where you go to a local restaurant who hosts a Santa Clause but there is also an entire room devoted to making Christmasy stuff for the tree and such.  I don't know if I'm working the weekend, one moment please, I must find out and forgot to look, they put it in the tablet earlier today:  

YESSSSSSSSS...... I have the entire weekend off. Just load tomorrow, deliver on Friday and off until Monday. It's late load Monday, but I'll take that in exchange for having the weekend off. I worked the entire weekend last weekend, I was due, but they don't always see it that way .

Too wet to do anything on the expansion but honestly? I wouldn't have done anything anyway in the last week or so, just too much going on and sleep is good one night, bad the next, etc.  I would take sleeping pills but, I have experience with those. They don't work for me. In fact, they keep me awake!  

The news? I am in and out of it, currently out of it. I scan it, look at all the trump hate garbage and junk about Mandami, lawsuits against the Trump administration, yawn. Same s***, different day.  Wake me when something important comes along.  I used to religiously read and watch the news every day for hours on end. Not any more.  I read headline news, maybe watch 15 minutes of it on a cable news network and then I call it quits.  I see no point in reading more Trump hate nastiness, it's been going on for many years now, it got old long ago and I just don't want to subject myself to too much of that. 

I had the first overnighters come in in quite a while tonight.  I haven't had any for a long time for the park has been full. There is a person allegedly coming to stay for a month this coming weekend, then again, they never called back so it's up for grabs. Haven't been getting a lot of calls for that lately, but it's holiday/Christmas season, people like to be where they're going to be for such things and not moving around.

With that, it's 5 minutes past my bedtime.  

 Monday - late morning

Haven't posting much, recurring theme I guess.  Just get busy with stuff and forget about it, then when I do remember, I only have time to write a few sentences and then kapoof, off to bed.

Anyway, I was volunteered to give the use of my trailer and pull it for a friend's business who always has a float in the annual Christmas parade here.  Ok, I agreed and thought it might be fun but I've done this before.  The parade was on Saturday and it was amazing.  Well, it was hectic at first. 

You see, the lady that is supposed to put it all together and get the volunteers to put the trailer together as a float didn't actually get started on it until the day of the parade! So I got over there at 4:30 pm as asked and there were a couple people working on it, yes, but it was far from done.  I spoke with here and asked her about it, she just said well I haven't had time unfortunately.  

So, I hook up to the trailer - I had dropped it there earlier in the week - pulled it the 3 miles to downtown at 25 mph and parked in our assigned parking lot. That's when things got amazing. Parents showed up (this business is a pre school and after school place for kids) and started jumping right into it. The lady friend had brought all the stuff with her to set it up, it was a matter of having about 8 people all over the thing getting it done.

After an hour of that? The float looked amazing.  At 6, we started moving. About 2 mph through a maze of streets.  I couldn't believe the amount of people out there, there were easily thousands of people that showed up for this parade and most people were in the Christmas spirit shouting Merry Christmas! to each other, i was doing the same yelling it out of the driver's seat window while navigating through this maze.  There were no areas where there weren't throngs of people.

An incredible experience, we then went to the brewery after we got our part of it done - I parked the suv/trailer at our parking space and walked to the brewery.  My friends were there and we hung out for a while, not too long tho, I had to go to work the next morning.  That's it, just a fun night.

Meanwhile, I have gotten nothing done on the expansion project. It's been raining unrelenting here.  I can't even think about doing any of that stuff in muddy ditches, no thanks.  I think I said something in an earlier post about kicking some people out, the 18 year old that goes to school nearby found someone for me. That person is moving in on the 10th.  That will make 3 people living in the park that go to that school.  

On other fronts, I am confronted with an outrageous health care bill. Our company is cheap as hell, but I was okay with around $450 a month. Now? I have to decide whether I want to pay almost a thousand dollars a month for healthcare coverage!  Outrageous, for an employer to dump that on a single person? You should see what they are charging for families. I can imagine it costing entire month's worth of paychecks for those people just to get health care coverage. 

I mean, I expected to pay that much after I quit trucking and have to provide my own health care coverage. Not - gee, let's jack employees up the ying yang and basically"offer" them nothing. At least, nothing more than I can get on my own.  This was forced on us this morning, they gave late notice that we need to decide before the 10th.  That's 2 days from now...

I signed up to get into their site after it told me that price and then I was "offered" a maze of different options - much cheaper options - options that have almost nothing. And the deductibles on all of them!  Almost 10 grand. I don't recall working for such a cheap ass company.  This is all the company's decision to dump that on employees, this has nothing to do with the health care provider. They think we are stupid and will say "well that's what they are doing with us"> YES< BECAUSE YOU CHOSE THAT.  

I could see a HUGE deductible with a cheap plan, I dont see this at all.  I see stuff like this with this company and it just makes me want to quit.  Go find another job and eat it even if it is long hours.  Their middle of the road plan at around the same price I am paying now isn't good at all.  You have to pay boocoo bucks if you want vision and dental added to the mix and I'm not sure it's worth it.  

I'm going to have to take a day to think about it and decide tomorrow, tomorrow is the 9th and I have to make a decision before then.  Just totally lame, not only the pricing but the company not even telling us they have switched plans completely with a totally different provider AND we have 2 days to decide? 

Anyway, the weekend worked out with having Friday off, working Saturday and Sunday and then having Monday off.  Today is Monday and tho I like it, I really like having 2 consecutive days off instead.  It gives you time to actually rest and recoup from working 6 to 8 days in a row.  

As for politics....I was watching a video that Fox news diverted over to X (Twitter) yesterday and then I started scrolling down.  It was post after post after post of these people saying how horrific it's become to live in the US and now they are being "forced" to move abroad.  They go into the idea that they are going to end up in gulags and their constitutional rights are being stripped from them and that they can't stand ICE removing "immigrants" - they always conveniently leave out the part that these people are ILLEGAL ALIENS.  Immigrants don't illegally cross your borders, just walk in and expect us to cater to them.

And that's the part that REALLY irks me.  These people get FREE health care coverage. They can get whatever they want done for virtually nothing. Meanwhile, citizens like me facing ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS PER MONTH JUST FOR THE COVERAGE AND THAT DOESN'T INCLUDE DEDUCTIBLES AND CO PAYS AND PLAIN OUT SITUATION THAT THE COVERAGE DOESN'T......COVER!!

Free health care, free rent, cash subsidies, food stamps, phones, etc ad infinitum.  But the media and left politicians?  They leave all of that stuff out.  They say republicans are evil and want to starve children. They'll show videos of a father being deported and forced to leave their wife and kids.  I'm sorry, it IS tragic, but it's also what you gambled on when you just decided to ignore our immigration laws, wander in here and start partaking of our generosity without hesitation.  Some dude got on one of the videos and proclaimed that if Trump gets his with with doing away with birth right citizenship - so that's a person that comes over that is not a citizen, has a baby here and the baby is instantly a citizen. If the birthright nonsense is removed, then that is no longer the case.  Obviously.

But, this man projected that "everyone in the United States will be subject to being removed!". EVERYONE, according to this idiot.  Endless videos of these people crying - literal tears coming down their faces - of saying how nazi like and authoritarian and abusive this White House without a single reference to what, exactly, the White House is doing to accomplish that level of alleged evil.

These people are unhinged and fueled by endless propaganda.  

Enough of that. It's endless and I just don't really focus on it anymore, you can't, it becomes maddening. People acting out like children having meltdowns and temper tantrums, ignoring the reality that there is literally NOTHING going on like they say it is and if they would take the time to do a LITTLE research, they would understand they are being fed heaps of lies.  Trump is not perfect, we are not Maggots and we don't worship him.  We are not in a cult, I worship the Lord Jesus Christ, not some mortal man.  Jesus is Lord and KING! Not Trump or anyone else. Not in my life.  We support him because he more closely resembles what we want in a government. The left has gone crazy and so far left it's unrecognizable compared to even 10 years ago.  

Well, it's the Christmas season and I still have shopping to do. My oldest brother, my mom and I have a lady that was picked from a draw out of a hat for the Christmas party our friends are doing together.  I got Taylor something that allegedly just arrived (literally while I was writing this, I got a text but I didn't hear Fedex pulling up, I dunno yet, I want to finally finish a post and then get to other stuff).  Oh and my son, I have no idea what to get him, he never really says much. He likes the Harkins theaters movie passes I get him, probably do that again.  I need to get busy now that I just wrote that, lol, it's getting close to Christmas and I want to ensure everything arrives on time!

With that, I bid you a good day and no promises when the next post will be put up. lol.

 Sunday - evening

Brrrr, it's getting cold.  42 degrees with real feel of 39 at this hour of the day? I'd call that winter, at least by my standards.

Yes, I haven't been posting much.  Just too much going on and I just get tired and don't want to do much of anything once I am finally done.  We just had a whole week of 3 brothers - the oldest came down from Arkansas - and that was a quite the handful.  It got to be so much that another adult in the house asked if I would take all of the responsibility of them for a day and I agreed, that person was overridden with kids constantly asking them things and pushing the envelope of limitations.

I have no problems with that, the answer is usually no and when it is, there is not going to be any arguing about it. It's usually requests for endless snacks when they haven't bothered to finish a meal or right before meal time and it's .. nope.  

Anyway, this week was met with a lot of things, including someone killing a deer on the property, harvesting it and throwing the waste in the trash can. Yeah...no.  Take the thing out into the woods, dump it and let wildlife deal with it. That thing is going to be sitting in there until wednesday morning and who knows if the trash company is going to like having that in there?  Or if they even got a permit?  Not my fault, maybe but at the same time, I will be the one dealing with the consequences, not them.

It's been raining and I have been getting wet.  Yesterday was no fun up in Gurdon and even more so coming back, all of this ridiculous amounts of traffic heading home from holiday travels, people driving 90 mph in 70 zones, zipping in and out of traffic, you sit there hoping they aren't going to cause a horrific accident and the end to someone's or several someones. lives.  

 Wednesday - early afternoon

Enjoying 3 full days off.  

I needed it.  When I woke up yesterday, I felt like hell.  My head was aching and my body wasn't feeling too great either.  I've just been working too much and especially the uber-early hours taking it's toll. I didn't feel right all day.  Last  night? Slept like a baby.  Woke up once but got right back to sleep. Stayed in bed til around 9:00 am.  I'm taking these days off to do much of nothing.

I can't do anything at the Park anyway, we had a heavy rain storm and the ditches are filled with water.  That will take a while to disappear.  I wouldn't have wanted to anyway excepting to backfill the ditch for the repair job, I was going to do that today or even yesterday.

In fact, 2 days ago it rained so bad I was getting soaked up at the Gurdon plant.  It was not a fun day, for I had to go over to Bossier City to pick up a trailer that was well off the Interstate - adding a lot of time to the day's work - take it up there in pouring rain, bring it back to that place, drop it in the rain and finally go home. It was a 12 hour day but was also the day I found out I wasn't going to be working again until Friday.

I was and still am all down for that.  The last 5 days I had off were working days at the park. I really haven't had any time off since the Colorado trip in July.  

We've got some new drivers, I'm hoping they can cut me some slack on the 6 to 8 days in a row working stuff.  That started wearing on me long ago.  

I am feeling better today.  Not sick, just exhausted. Sorry, I'm getting old and my stamina is slowing down along with energy levels.  I do the best I can to get stuff done while still understanding my limitations.  

 Sunday - morning

Slept in like a baby, it's 8:30 am and I just got out of the shower after getting up. It might not sound like sleeping in to some people but for me? Getting up at 4:00 am or earlier 5 days in the last 7? Working 12 days out of the last 13? 

I get done with the load yesterday and I noticed the load for Monday was gone.  Yayyy!  I don't care, don't dump me with all of this work, get some more drivers and take some of this off of me.  Well they did get another driver but they are fixing to dump one who has every excuse in the book to not come to work. This dude is in his 40's but his work ethic is non-existent.  And of the new drivers, who knows how long they will last? This job definitely isn't for everyone. It's not even for me, it's just the schedule works the best of any job I have been able to find out there. 

Everyone wants you to work 14 hour days.  If I were forced back into that? I would be going into desperation mode with the park.

Anyway, I called dispatch, it was the manager who answered.  Yes, we took that off of you and working on it.  Turns out, the glue plant is shutting down again - I suspect something amiss when they put everything back together after already being shut down 4 day -s and they want us to load out of some place in Mississippi.

There is no way on God's Green Earth that I am driving that old pile of junk clear over to MI and back for loads.  Fortunately, he didn't expect me to.  There is a loaded trailer in Bossier City - about 40 miles from here - he wants me to pick up tomorrow, deliver and then drop it back off there.  That will make for a long day but not near as long as driving to Mississippi lol.

Church in a couple hours, haven't been there in a month. Well, I've been there taking the kids but I haven't sat through a service for I have been working.  

 Saturday - late night

Today was - stay busy all day long day! Slept unbelievably miserably last night, might have gotten 4 hours of sleep.  Got up at 3:55 am, did all the junk I have to do, headed up to the plant, delivered, came back exhausted.  Saw 2 unbelievable accidents on the way up there.

But the thing that really got me was approaching the second accident.  I was just getting passed by a truck that was going at least 75 if not more mph, I was going around 73 when he passed me.  We came up on a trooper that was facing us with his headlights on only, no flashing lights, he was sitting right next to a weigh station sign. I figured he was turning the sign over from closed to open.  

The next thing I know, that truck that had passed me went over the crest of the hill and immediately slammed on his brakes. His entire trailer started sliding sideways - this dude was moving fast, it looked like he was going to slam into the vehicles that were stopped  on the damn highway. Those vehicles had no choice, they were all stopped for whatever was going on ahead. 

The problem was that you didn't see this stopped vehicle nonsense until you hit the crest of that hill. That cop wasn't doing anyone any favors just sitting there like that without his flashers going. It made no sense to me at all, especially where he was sitting looking like he was dealing with the sign, not attempting to warn drivers of impending danger ahead.

It was an absolutely spectacular save by that driver - that truck was sliding sideways AND heading straight for the rear ends of vehicles stopped. There would have been death and destruction occur right in front of me. I was lucky it was him and not me, I was loaded at 79,000 pounds, as soon as I saw him shutting it down, I immediately started shutting mine down and that was before I could even see what was going on.  That person got lucky or blessed, whichever it was, because the entrance to the weigh station was right there, he dove that truck into the scale house ramp, slowed all the way down to what appeared to be about 2 mph.

I would be shocked if he didn't piss or s*** himself after that.  It's hard to describe what that truck was doing, something out of a movie style move that I frankly thought it was impossible for him to pull himself out of.  It took 15 minutes of stop and go to get to where the "action" was.  There were 2 pickups, 3 cars and a detached utility trailer all over the place on both sides of the highway in the trees, ditched and on the shoulder. Both pickups were completely destroyed.  Mangled heaps of metal.

Truck emptied, I started heading back but noticed the run for Monday was gone. I was like, yayyy! I also have Monday off.  NOT. I called dispatch and the manager answered.  For whatever reason, the plant is shutting back down where we load and we are now supposed to load out of.....some town in ......MISSISSIPPI.  NO THANK YOU.  But, he wasn't asking me to do that. I won't drive that pile of trash truck that far, no thanks and no way.  He instead asked me to go to Bossier on Monday, pick up a loaded trailer, deliver it and bring it back over there. Bossier is across the state line maybe 40 miles or a little more from here. 

I'm gonna just have to cut this pretty short for it's late and I"m finally so tired I can't keep my eyes opened - a good thing and I don't have to get up early tomorrow.  We had Friendsgiving tonight and that was what I did after my nap, get up and cook potatoes and make sweet potato casserole.  It was a great dinner, we had it at a church that one of the families father is pastor and owner of.  Not a bad place to have a  get together like that.  LOTS of food and good conversation.

But, as I: said, I'm totally trashed, time to hit the hay.