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.  

 Wednesday - late afternoon

Well, today wasn't horrible I guess. Awfully tired, my sleep is a bit whacked with all of these different hours I keep getting thrown at me. Drove straight to the plant, got a pre loaded trailer and came straight back.  No washout or loading needed, it was a nice break from that for once.  Tomorrow is normal, deliver and come back. 

But, I also went to the eye doctor today.  My vision has been growing worse and I needed to make sure I didn't have glaucoma or some other eye problem.  I don't like going to those things because of the very bright lights they shine into your eyes.  I don't necessarily think that level of luminosity is particularly good for your eyes, but then again, glaucoma is far worse.  

The end result is no glaucoma or macular degeneration at all.  I'm just getting old and my eyes are getting old with me. The doctor had me looking through lenses and asked me if I had considered getting glasses for - all the time, not just reading glasses.  Nope, I can see well enough for driving and reading glasses are ok.  Not great but ok. 

He then had me looking through a series of lenses. At the end of that, he wanted to prove his point to me.  Ok, look through the lenses now. It was a bit blurry.  And now?  Perfect.  He kept doing this and finally told me that the blurry stuff was my regular vision and the perfect vision was with what glasses would do.  Ok, he sold me.  I ended buying a pair of regular glasses and polaroid glasses for driving.  Oh, yes, I have a "mild" cataract and he said if I would wear protective lenses outside that would help keep it from getting worse.  

I thought it nice however that I don't have the really bad stuff, cataracts can be fixed if they get bad enough.  He didn't even suggest that, it's not that bad, yet anyway. 

He sort of mildly scolded me for not having had come for the last 3 years, annual checkups are important. If glaucoma does start up, you can control it if caught early enough. If not? Well I have a family member who can attest to the destruction that glaucoma can do to your eyes, namely one of her eyes is completely dead.  

That out of the way, I can focus on other things.  

________________________

The SUV. It's at the dealership. It's been at the dealership for eight days now.  I called this service dude again - I've made a lot of calls and getting a lot of nothing answers from him.  He tells me the same exact thing we discussed last week: Well we are having trouble finding OEM abs module.  Dude, we discussed this on Friday  and I said fine, let's just fix the noise issue and get the key fobs made.  You're telling me that you have done nothing to this vehicle since Friday? 

I decided not to allow temptation to take over - that would be to give a total, earned earful. I asked to speak to one of the owners.  He said ok, comes back a minute later, well I don't know where he is. I did make a comment to him at that point and after he said something else that came off totally wrong: You are a real piece of work, aren't you? Yes, yes I am was his reply. 

I hung up, called back and asked for the owner. This time? One of the owners got on the phone.  This guy was totally professional, didn't try to pass it off as some sort of "mistake", took ownership of it and said after a lengthy conversation that he would get into the vehicle with his service manager and they would figure out what's wrong.  

He called back an hour and a half later. I got that thing off the rack, we drove the first few feet and could hear the noise, this is going to be easy to find!  They couldn't find it. Next, they put in electronic detection devices next to the issue that the garage said it has.  "We couldn't hear anything coming from that mount and that detection device was right there next to it".  This was another lengthy conversation. They checked the entire front end and said it isn't the body mount but we aren't really sure what it is. It could be a suspension part that is just a little bit off and making that noise.  Ball joints, stabilizer bar, forks, everything all looks good.  

The end of the story? Short of pulling the entire front end suspension off and checking everything and replacing everything, they really don't know what else to do. I give up on it, I"ll live with that noise.  He said yes and I won't charge you any labor because of the way we treated you and the fact you bought the vehicle from us.  Albeit some 8 years ago lol. I tend to keep vehicles until they are completely worn out and really ready for the junk scrap pile.  This one is far from that even with that problem.  

So, I'm getting the new key fobs - which they hadn't even ordered yet after, again, eight  days of sitting there.  He said he would have them brought in by air and would cover the shipping costs, I'm paying for the keying and the work it takes to get them matched to the vehicle.  

And after that, excepting for regular maintenance, I am done fixing things on it.  Taylor said it sounds like the entire body is going to come crashing off of it.  Yeah, no.  A bit of an exaggeration, she's like: "Time to go buy a new one". Oh please nooo.  I'm not doing that, thank you very much. I have enough payments right now, I don't need another 5 year loan on top of that. I will drive it like that. 

At some point, I expect something somewhere in there to break and then it will self-identify.  You need to understand here that pros that have been in the business 30 plus years were looking at it, including one person that ONLY does front end stuff.  

Anyway, unless I find somewhere else to take it where they can tell me what's wrong - I doubt I'm taking it to yet a third shop tho - I'm just live with it until I get sick of it and get rid of it I guess.

And with that, I am outta here.  I want to watch some tv, go get the kids from church, watch some more tv and go to bed. At least I don't have a super early load tomorrow.