Friday - morning

Probably the last day of "freedom" I have from trucking for a while.  They promised to have the thing done today. The holdup? The spindles.  I don't  know what's wrong with them but they apparently aren't holding the bearings tight coupled with bad king pins made for the drive I was experiencing.  It wasn't drifting all over the highway, it was jerking.  You'd be driving along fine and then the next thing you know the whole truck would shift to the left or the right.  

Well, they couldn't get the spindle expert to come until today.  I've encountered this before where the person that is doing spindles or axle straightening is on a very busy schedule. Whatever the case, I guess after that person does that work they can just put it all back together and be done with it.  

The good news is that I had a huge paycheck.  My manager informed me the other day he was going to "give" me money, basically, well beyond what certain things were worth. For example, moving the from the yard to the shop - that's only 5 or 6 miles but the pay was definitely disproportionate to the "work" done.  I dunno, but it's my friend giving me the rides so I'm going to give her some of that.  Only fair, at least in my view of things.  I was really quite surprised at the paycheck.  

In a week, my mom moves up into her 90's with a 9/11 birthday.  I wish I could take a few days off to go see her but I've been off for so long. I mean, yes, I worked 8 days in a row before this latest shop visit but after this? I doubt there will be much of any of the words "time off" that will be occurring.  I'm planning on going for Thanksgiving. I have no idea how that will turn out, I haven't seen my brothers in many, many years.  I don't miss them, at all.  Sounds kind of harsh but we all grew away from each other after we grew up, became adults and went about our business adulting.

And there were clashes, most notably when I went to the mission field for five years and my brother was at the time working for Boeing producing those Apache helicopters.  Their security wanted to know where I was stating that I could be kidnapped and held for ransom in exchange for information about those helicopters.  I'm not sure what the extent of that was but my brother was angry that I was out of contact.  There were no cellphones in those days and at the time I was traveling around Mexico.  I didn't care, he told mom that one day those people showed up at his doorstep demanding to know where I am and he couldn't answer any more than "traveling around mexico".  The entire family thought I was involved with a cult and had loosely made plans to come extract me from it. 

Good luck.  Some of that ministry was WAYYY off, yes, but I was serving the Lord, preaching the Gospel and feeding hungry people.  Mexico is definitely a 3rd world country.  

But the thing that really got me was when my dad passed away and my brothers refused to come to his Memorial service. They had vague reasons about it, that he had "abandoned" them. My dad informed me before his mind went out the window to Alzheimer's and then died of complications related to it that he had tried emailing, snail mailing, calling, etc.  I remember him lamenting to his then-wife that "I bet they won't even come to my funeral". Chilling prophesy in my mind that came true.  I was disgusted with both of them and I let them know about it.  

So what would a Thanksgiving dinner with these people look like? Awkward at best.  A riot at worst.  I am not going to go there to start a fight, not at all, I'm going to see my mom  and my son, I really don't care about seeing them at all, but the the dinner will undoubtedly be held at my oldest brother's house.  I'll give him and his wife credit that they are helping mom deal with finances and the day to day stuff in her winter years.  It's the only reason I would want to live there now.  But, that entire area has grown to the point of insufferable, constant traffic, pollution with frequent pollution advisories and a lot of hate and anger in the populace. 

Pretty much what happens when a city and it's surrounding suburbs grows to millions of people.  I'm well acclimated to country living now and I don't want anything to do with big cities. Well, I do like to visit them once in a great while since they have stuff we don't out here, but that's a mini vacation type of thing and usually Dallas/Fort Worth area.  

Anyway, I have been contemplating when I'll start back on that expansion project.  I'm just not going to work out in this ridiculous heat.  It's supposed to be 102 today and who knows the real feel, 110? It's the humidity that gets me coupled with intense heat.  Closer to the end of September it will start to cool down tho I wouldn't exactly call it "cool" by any stretch of the imagination, at least in the afternoons.  Still, morning temps will be nice and carry to the afternoon hours.

I'm basically just going to have to force myself to endure the heat in the afternoons since I won't be able to work in the mornings - trucking takes all of that up. But if I could do a couple hours per day, I could knock it out in - several weeks I guess.  I want to get that done and get at least 3 or 4 more lots going.  I've got the septic, I've got the electrical started, I just need to get with it.  

 Tuesday - afternoon

Well, no word from the shop yet, but then again they told me yesterday that they generally have to have it a day and a half to install king pins. They usually find more wrong with it when they replace them and it takes longer to do, of course..  having to get the parts and do the labor.  And getting parts for an older truck isn't impossible at all but it does usually have to be ordered. 

I don't really care, I'll be ready to go back to work whenever it's done and they need me.  Of course, they'll need me right away and I'll likely go on another 3 or 4 consecutive run trip.  It's just that it's easy to not go to work.  I've been working almost my entire life time, I'm ready for something different.

Well I got totally distracted and now it's late.  Since they didn't contact me, there is no work for me tomorrow, I am guessing the truck will be done sometime tomorrow and I'll have to go pick it up and probably work the next 6 to 8 days.  Lol. 

Because I figure I'm going to be working - forever - I just did nothing today.  I never even left the house.  

And one of the kids came home sick.  99.7 fever, severe headache, no energy, etc.  Foregone conclusion he isn't going to school tomorrow which is something he doesn't like, he likes to have "perfect" attendance records.  Not gonna happen, never happens really.   

I'm getting offa here. Maybe I can write a full entry sometime tomorrow and discuss the ongoing war theater - well it seems like it's still a war anyway - over in Iran and all the rhetoric both Iran and democrats are pumping out about it.  Propaganda in other words. 

 Sunday - night

Friday night, the kids went over to a friend's house to spend the night.  I went to work Saturday morning and didn't see them again until Saturday mid afternoon.  The oldest was so tired, he passed out on my bed as soon as he came home. He was going to play games but sleep called his name. Why? Because he admitted to literally staying up all night long. Like until almost 6:00 am

Well, we had already decided we were going to rent a hotel room nearby to get access to the semi-large, 9 foot deep pool.  You don't see pools that deep around much anymore. It's old school, the hotel is old but it has been completely upgraded. They apparently just resurfaced the pool.  I honestly didn't know they even had pools that deep anymore, all of the pools I have been to in many decades time have been anywhere from 4 to 6 feet at most deep and 6 feet isn't even that common.  

So, we get to the hotel and the boy then passes out on one of the bed. We're trying to go to the pool and he's just laying there.  

Well, the pool woke him up and other families came and we all spent quite a bit of time socializing and swimming and horsing around type of stuff. 

We get home around 10 pm and he wants to play some video games with me. Cool.  What does he do? Face plants himself into the bed and completely and instantly passes out.  I just shook my head and got about putting stuff away and laundry, things I had started earlier but didn't have time to finish.  

About an hour later, I woke him up telling him to get into his bed.  Did he wake up? Sort of.  I've never seen anything quite like it. Between staying up all night long and playing hard in the pool for many hours, he was toast.  He sort of stood up and walked face first into the corner wall, smashed his head into it.  Did this phase him? No. He was wandering around in circles, headed towards the bathroom and basically was the closest thing to a real zombie I think I'll ever see.  

I ended up guiding him to his bedroom, taking his shoes off for him and hoped he could crawl up the bunkbed stairs and get into his bed. He managed to do that and again, he passes out instantly.  11 hours later, he comes into my room and says he doesn't know how he got to bed last night?  Lmao.  I told him the entire story, I KNEW he wouldn't remember any of that stuff. BTW, how's your head?  

It's fine, why? Because you smashed it into the wall last night!  He was trippin'.  

Anyway, yes we went to church but he didn't want to go to the student life thing at church, he was not feeling all the well.  Perhaps you'll think twice about staying up all night long? lol.  

After church the normal Applebee's routine, home, played a few games but got bored with it and then just watched movies.  The game I play started a new season and I don't much care for it. It's got a few interesting things I like on the map - the game plays out on  a large island and everything is mapped out. I kind of get bored with it after a while and just shut it off.

Tomorrow is also a day off as is Tuesday. :They want the truck there on Tuesday morning, I want to take it there just as they're closing tomorrow afternoon.  I think they close at 5.  I don't want them getting started on it tomorrow, I'll happily take Wednesday off too if it could work out that way.  Foregone conclusion I'll be working next weekend so I might as well get what I can off. 

There isn't much else going on, at least nothing I feel like writing about right now, it's kind of getting late.  If there is one thing to note of interest here, it's the absolute lack of rain. The grass is all dark brown everywhere.  I mean, we go from flooding to near drought conditions.  But, summers are like that here, hopefully the grass will come back if we ever do get some rain. 

There are slight chances of it coming in the days ahead, nothing reported as a day of raining.  

Anyway, that's it.  About time to go to bed. 

 Friday - afternoon

Well, kids out of school for the weekend soon, I kind of like the peace and quiet of having afternoons with no children until school is out, but, oh well.

I have to deliver tomorrow and then I'm for for a minimum of 4 days - allegedly.  Basically, they have 4 drivers now for this account and that's too many.  At the same time, I'm on my 4th run having worked 7 days in a row and finishing off tomorrow will be 8.

Welcome back to work life.

The kids want to go swimming this weekend, all well and fine but you have to find a place that has a pool and that they would like to go to.  And not spend a fortune.  There are no public pools in this area. Well, correction: there IS a public pool in this town, it's a huge one too. And it's been out of service for many years. It is covered with thick, green goop and is in a state of abandonment.  

It's actually not that far from our house, but it's quite useless.  People complain all the time about it but no one will actually do anything. The city can't afford it, that's no joke.  They have their hands full trying to keep up with just current day expenses and the only thing I can think of is perhaps local businesses could band together and create a funding pool to fix that public pool and get it up and running.'

But, who will run the operation?  

 Thursday - afternoon

I've been hitting it nicely with loading and unloading times and getting home at very reasonable hours.  Third load done since I went back to work and going smoothly. Another run starting tomorrow, I hope for more of the same.  

I'll have Sunday through Wednesday off.  I think.  It's because Sunday only one load is going out and they already have someone to do that and Tuesday the truck goes into the alignment shop and the shop already told them that truck is going to need to be there 24 hours.  No idea what they're doing beyond king pins and shocks.  

I'm almost back from the run today and get a text from my friend.  She is trying to locate the person at the church who wants to ask her about getting baptized but found everything locked up. Try the office.

The next thing I know,  I was being asked to come in as well.  The situation is that they want me to baptize them - they both asked for me to do it specifically, I did not prime the pump and suggest it at all, I figure that needs to come from the Lord.  So, they asked the kid about his faith at church on Sunday and now they had a conversation with her today in their office.

I came strolling in a short while later after getting the truck parked and doing post trip inspection and got into a fairly heavy conversation about my relationship with the Lord - Jesus Christ that is, I like to name His name for there is "no other name given among men whereby we must be saved" and "the name above ALL names" and so on and so forth.  Lots of scripture pops into my mind when I think about His Name and what He has done for all of us.  

Well, all of us who choose to believe anyway. 

I discussed my salvation and how I got to that point and then discussed my missionary work after the fact and traveling all over Mexico. He was surprised. I have just been going to church and I don't announce myself in any given way. I'm just another man in the crowd as far as I'm concerned, nothing special here.  But I gave details that he apparently didn't expect to hear from me and scripture? Is always running around through my head. 

I really mean that. It isn't often that someone says something to me and some scripture doesn't come to mind that applies to it.  I don't announce that at all either, I just think about it. 

It turns out the kid is really driving this thing here. He wants to get baptized with his mom, ok! But he also wants to do his video with mom as well.  Remember, they are both going to be baptized sort of at the same time. I don't see how anyone can baptize 2 people at once so I'll have to do them one after the other.  

The video is something they do before any and every baptism at the church. The person gives a sometimes long statement about who they are, what they like, what they are doing etc.  

  Tuesday - too late, lol, well not bad bad just I should l have gone to bed a little while ago.  Such is life, I'll hit the sack after this short entry.  

I finally went from 213 pounds to 211.  It was sitting at 213 forever.  I mean, I don't know that it will stay at 211 right off, it typically goes up and down and then will sit at 211 at some point and then, wait a long time and it'll go down again.  It took a long time to get this heavy, it'll take a long time to get rid of it. 

We booked a trip on the Polar Express!  A little pricey but it's fabled to be a glorious if short train ride replete with Santa Clause and dancers and singing chefs and such.  We'll find out.  Kind of waited too long to book tho. There were other seats I would have liked better and I would have liked to go in the dark.

Or would have I?  Hmmm.  I have never ridden on a train.  I've been on them but no rides.  I read that the scenery is beautiful so a day trip isn't going to be bad at all. The kids will enjoy the theme, they both love the Polar Express movie anyway, it's a yearly tradition to watch it together.  The oldest makes his own version of tickets and everybody has to have one to watch!  I won't go into the year 2 years ago when a certain adult in this house rejected it and gave the boy a hard time about it, we're talking kids here, they have imaginations and I just thought that wasn't so nice. 

But whatever.  I don't want to get too involved in this entry since I need to go to bed,  a few items in politics that have caught my attention, nothing major. We also need rain around here badly.  Yes, it's the time of year we don't get any but the grass all over the place is dark brown, dying and we're in a burn ban.  Not that I would want to light a fire anyway, the heat here has been very high.  

So that's it.  Mostly just finally got past a roadblock on my weight loss journey.  

Oh, I delivered today and was supposed to take the truck in tomorrow to have the rest of the work done on it. Yeah, no.  I was called today and informed that two more trucks are in the shop, they need me to work tomorrow.  Whatever.  I don't really care at this point, I'm fairly back into this wonderful routine called work and certainly I want the money so my savings don't go down.     

But, I have to get up at 5 am and get out here by 5:30 am, they want me there "earlier" so that I don't run into another driver who is constantly running. Unlike me, he doesn't go home every day, he just keeps driving until he has to take his 10 hour break.  Good for him! But his paychecks are nice! And whoopdedooo!  Hey, if my situation  gets bad somehow, I can always ask for more work.  Either Gurdon or pop me on Ennis runs temporarily.  

No thank you.

And good night : )

 Saturday - night

Not a lot of time here, I want to watch some tv before bedtime which is going to be early for I need to get up at 5:30 am.  

But, today went pretty well for my 1st official day back at work. I didn't have to have the trailer washed out, it was already cleaned out when I picked it up.  That saves quite a bit of time.  I'll have to do that Monday, just part of the job.

I got to the plant, they scaled me in, got me in a bay and got me out of there quickly. I was back at the park at 11:55 am.

That's very good.  I mean, so good I was pretty pleased about it and hoping tomorrow goes well too.

It should, unless something happens to the truck. Not a fan, as I have endlessly stated on this blog, of working on Sundays.  I need to go to church, it's beyond an "I want to go to church".  

Anyway, I want to get some tv time in. The kids are gone with the father at a local hotel. So a day of peace and quiet. They are apparently going to try to have a new approach and see if things can work out. They being the mom and pop. 

I suggested to her they start over when she said she was having doubts and thinking about trying to get back together.  Yes, but you need to start from a clean slate. Let everything go, all of it, as he will have to, and start out like you don't even know who each other is.

Apparently that had an effect for they are going to try to become friends.

I didn't know they had started the relationship out the way they had.  Many successful couples become besties first before marriage.  I do hope and pray it works out eventually but after hearing that I also suggested they should stay separated during this process. Not a hard thing to do with him being an OTR truck driver.

Anyway, that's it.  Watch a show I like and then go to sleep.

 Friday - morning 8 am-ish

I kind of posted yesterday's post this morning lol, forgot to do that when I went to bed.  I decided last night I best start getting to bed at a reasonable hour so 10:15 pm it was.

I got up early simply because i had 7 hours of sleep and after that? Hit or miss. Might get to sleep, might not.  

I have no idea when I might get a phone call from the alignment shop or a phone call from management saying, gee, they had to order parts.  Whatever the case, I am ready to go get it. I don't have to do anything else beyond that today, tomorrow is when I start back into the grind.  Starting back on a weekend.  Yuck. 

Then again, weekends you typically get loaded faster.  There is sometimes a silver lining in a cloud of undesirable "things to do".  

As for the situation around here, who knows.  I was asked if I want to move to Colorado. That wasn't my first thought.  Or even second. But after a bit of conversation I think I fairly well identified why that person wants to move there and I simply said that changing your geographical location will not offset any despair or depression caused by severe marital stresses.  

One thing I know that helps is personal counseling. I have actually thought about going through that again.  It's kind of a mental/attitude/outlook checkup.  When I went through it several decades ago, it wasn't actually too pleasant.  Those counselors aren't trained to sugarcoat as well they shouldn't be.  And they dig dig dig into your past and identify things that are causing you experience or see things the way that you are.

I haven't decided yet, I feel like you should be 100% to go through the process no matter how difficult it becomes to continue on with it.  It's been what, 3 decades since I did that? I think that I might benefit from another round of it.  

_________

As usual, I get busy or interrupted with "stuff" and leave the blog and come back to it later. Like 9 hours later lmao.  I got the truck out of the alignment shop.  They had a huge list of parts that needed to be replaced including the king pins.  THAT would definitely cause some of that problem I was describing in earlier posts and hadn't even thought about that as a potential problem.  

They said it's good to drive until they get the parts in, so I'm on the hook for working the next 4 days.  Not the end of my world, but I was astonished to see a paycheck with 3/4's of my pay on there. Like, how did this manager invent this for me? I looked, he gave me an excessive amount of money for just moving the truck around.  I don't know how he gets away with that stuff but I'm glad he does.  He's pretty good about stuff like that, it's the communicating that needs serious improvement. 

And I just spent several HOURS trying to figure out how to move files from an old computer to another.  I first tried the microsoft one drive method.  I ended up wanting to just chuck the old thing in the trash but I persisted until - I gave up on that. I tried other methods and finally got to the memory card.  

I was using AI the entire time, I am absolutely sure that if I didn't have access to it, I would either have spent days trying to figure it out or I would have  just said screw it.  I almost said screw it as it stands.  

But I have never done that before and there are a LOT of steps to take to first download the photos and apps to the card and then upload them to another computer. The whole point of doing this? Well, I have photos on that old computer that aren't anywhere else.  I have been wanting to do this for a long time, but I knew it would turn into a major ordeal and I was right.

However, what forced me to do it today?  My rv park reservation system app disappeared on my new computer and wasn't on my laptop either, it used to be on both?!!!  

I can't have that park without access to it. I don't really need the reservation system atm for I have all spots rented to long term, but I do need access to the card processing software that is also in that app.  I don't get a lot of credit or debit card payments now, everyone wants to pay either cashapp, venmo, paypal or cash.  But, I have one hold out that wants to use that card and I really need the ability to do so.  I just wish I had more spots for some overnighters.  

Enough. I"m going to bed early enough to get a decent night's sleep.  Or try to anyway.

G'nite. 

 Thursday - late afternoon

Just got home a few minutes ago. Took much long than it should have to get the truck and trailer and get back down here with it.

Why, you ask?

Because when I arrived there, the mechanic was doing something to it. Upon inquiry, he said the truck won't start.  Uhh, how long have you known about this? Since this morning.  Ok, I wonder why they didn't tell me.  He fiddled with it for quite a while before I just left and went to the office.  Chatted there then back to the truck.  Hung out there for quite a while and then realized this isn't going to happen anytime soon.

During all this back and forth, the manager was indicating he wanted to go to Plan B. I knew what he was going to say before he even said what it was: No thank you. I don't want to drive that truck - referring to a pile of trash truck that I had no intention of getting into. I gave my reasons and I just held firm, even tho he kept bringing it up.  Nope, fix THIS truck and let's get this over with.  

I went to the driver's lounge and went to sleep, actually. No one was in there - there hardly ever is - and I was tired from not having a good night's sleep. The manager came in after a while, chatted with me, brought up that POS again, nooo, thank you.  

Another 30 minutes and the manager came in again, it's done.  So, I go to the truck, turn it on and off several times and confirmed it was working. However, the seat wasn't. It wouldn't air up and it was sitting all the way down on the floor. Then I noticed wires hanging from underneath the truck and actually laying on the ground!  

But, another mechanic had shown up and he fixed those issues and I finally got out of there. Drove it back to my town and decided that yes, I'm taking it to the shop now, why get up at 6 am when I don't need to?  So, I dropped the trailer in their yard and then pulled into a bay. They wasted no time - literally seconds after I parked it - pointing out the fact that there is one new shock absorber but the other 3 are leaking oil. 

"We will check this truck out from front to back and give them a quote".  

He made it sound like there was going to be a lot of work.  I don't care at this point, another weekend off would be great.  I doubt that will happen but you never know!  

I called my friend, she came and got me and we got home ... to... the guy.  He came into town to visit the boys and apparently to discuss this marriage situation.  He told me a few minutes ago he apologizes in advance, but things might get a little ugly...

I want no part of it, not my crusade and none of my business, at all.  If they want to fight and argue, I only think they should not do it in front of or within hearing range of the kids.  They don't need to hear that stuff.  Just going to throw them into mental chaos.  But, who knows? Maybe face to face they will keep it civil?  I simply asserted a few times that I am divorced twice and not my fish to fry. 

....So now the oldest comes into my room crying, they are arguing out front, in front of the kids, something I hoped they wouldn't do.  AT 11 years old, it's going to be hard to process all of that. I don't recall them ever getting into real arguments or if they did, I never witnessed it.  

Not trying to sound unsympathetic, but I'm starving. It's almost 5 pm and I haven't eating in about 24 hours.  Not by design. I mean, yes, I am doing intermittent fasting but I don't go this long.  I was thinking I'd be up there, get in the truck, leave and be home no later than 1 pm.  I should have known better.   `