Sunday - night

Basically just about bedtime and facing yet 2 more days of a hellish truck that has no ac in it.  Tomorrow will be cooler tho, a little more bearable at least.  Tuesday, I intend on taking it wherever they want to take it and drop it off and they need to figure out in advance how I'm getting home. I don't want to be fooling with this on Wednesday, there's no good reason for it and I don't want to drive it another day like that.  

I've heard nothing about health care and now I'm at the point that if it doesn't materialize tomorrow, I'm buying a temporary plan that covers major events.  I don't need minor stuff, just if something big happens.  I hope not, obviously, but that's why you carry the insurance, so you don't end up losing everything you own to pay for something that otherwise would be covered by the insurance.

I'm telling them that tomorrow.  I've waited long enough and I'm tired of the games.  There have been no notifications from anyone and apparently my manager is sick yet again.  That guy gets sick a lot.  

So today, we went to church and when I say we, I mean everyone in the house.  Well, the other guy is on the road and basically stays on the road now.  But even the misses went again, I had no idea she was seriously getting into this stuff.  They are preaching the Gospel message, I hope something is getting through to her, especially about a current situation going on with her and someone else that I simply don't have liberty to speak about on the internet, too personal and just would be inappropriate. Down the line, after it's over, yes, now? No.

Anyway, the oldest kid is here from Arkansas and he's too old  to go to the kid's church and doesn't want to go to the teen stuff.  He's a vocal atheist at the ripe old age of 12.  I've had discussions with him about it, he has been listening to his step dad in AR who is also an atheist and steering him away from "religion". Not a big fan of religion myself, Christ is all about a relationship.  There is condoned religion in the Bible, but it's a fairly narrow description of what it is and it doesn't mention anything about denominations, or different beliefs about certain scriptures found in the bible.

So, he was already coming into the main service anyway, but the middle brother decided he wanted to, too. I said well ok but you're probably going to be bored. It is nothing like the kid's church and I don't see why you wouldn't want to finish out your time there as it stands. Not much time left and he'll be out of 5th grade and into Junior High school.  He insisted so he went into the main service as well.  Sitting there, the misses made a statement: I think you're ready to be baptized, you've done well the last year or so and it's time.  

You see, the kid's church ministry leaders said they thought he was ready for it quite a while back, at least a year ago.  They were pushing it on me, but I am not the decision maker.  Parents said no, you (he) aren't ready for that yet. I wasn't sure if he was ready or not either, tbh.  Baptism is basically an outward  showing that you not only love Jesus, but you want to live your life for Him, follow after Him, learn more about Him and strive to do the things He says to do.  Baptism doesn't save you, no, salvation is the gift of God and not of works.  It plainly states that in the Bible, none of us are worthy, it's by the grace and mercy of the Lord that we are given that eternal gift. 

 By happenstance, there was actually a baptism today as well.   I thought this great! He'll get to see what he will be going through. It's not a long, drawn out thing, whoever is doing the baptism has a headset on, asks the person being baptized if they have believed in the Lord Jesus Christ for eternal life, they say yes and then you dunk them in the water while saying " I now baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son and the Blessed Holy Spirit". Ok, they don't say the blessed part, I do because the Holy Spirit is awesome.  

So we watched the baptism and I said, well, they'll do an interview with you and they will want to make a short video of you to show the congregation.  They do this with everyone, the person sits  in the video and gives a short statement about what they like (kids anyway and it's almost always kids getting baptized), what they believe, what they want to do with their life, etc.  I then said he can choose whoever he wants to baptize him, think he'd probably pick the pastor or one of the leaders of the church or the youth ministry.  Some kids choose relatives or people they look up to that aren't necessarily any more part of the church than just coming to the services.                      

He thought about that for a while and had noted that the baptism he had just watched, a relative had done it, not anyone in church leadership, looked at me and said "I want you to do it".  I was really quite surprised by that statement.  The church has taught those kids about Christ but I'm the one that has been taking them going on 3 years now.  Only the last 2 services did mom decide to start coming, but she has been implementing some serious changed in her life including serious dieting. She's lost a lot of weight, her friends are doing it too. I had been planning on starting the keto diet for a few weeks and had a start date for it, informing her I wouldn't be eating normal meals, I need to lose the weight.

I had no idea at the time that she and her friends were going to start going to the gym 5 days a week and that she was going to seriously cut back on her eating.  I dunno if my saying I was serious about losing weight and doing whatever it takes to achieve that goal had anything to do with it, but it's a lot easier to diet like this when others in the house are also dieting.   

Got off track there and need to end this, it's time to go to bed. I replied to the kid that I would be honored to do it and really, it really made me happy that I would have the opportunity to do it.  I suspect it won't take long for them to set up an appointment, have him go to it and do the interview thing and get whatever Sunday they determine to do it set.  I will have to ask to make sure I have whichever Sunday it is off of work and it certainly isn't happening before vacation for we are leaving on Thursday morning and coming back Tuesday.  

Yup, I'm getting sleepy.  

 Saturday - afternoon

The heat today, driving in a semi with no ac, was brutal.  I pushed it hard to get back today without being out too late and I accomplished that task, arriving back to the park and my nicely ac'ed suv at around 12:10 pm.  That's really good.  Offload time at 43 minutes was quite helpful. I was going to take shorts with me and switch out after leaving the plant - but very unfortunately I forgot. 

I don't work tomorrow - Sunday - and then back at it Monday and Tuesday and hopefully get the truck dropped off at the Peterbilt in Texarkana on Tuesday to get it over with and therefore end up with an extra day off, which would be a total of 9 days.  

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Totally sidetracked. It's bedtime now lol. The misses of the house went to a lake with a friend like 110 miles from here so I was babysitting. It's not real difficult for me anymore, they know what I won't tolerate and they won't do those things.  

I wish I was awake enough to write out  the entire post but alas, I am not. 

Night.  

 Thursday - night

Close to bedtime, but I have a few minutes.  The whole clan is chomping at the bit for this vacation to come and get this party started! I think there are 16 people going in total, tho we are all driving separately.  Well, one of the other families may be tagging along behind us, I'm not sure. I'm not driving and the queen of the house doesn't take her time, she loves to drive and she likes speed.  She doesn't drive unsafe, especially with 3 kids in the car, I am happy to not be driving the entire trip as far as I know it.  I don't want to drive. The other guy in the house, now a truck driver, doesn't even log as many miles as I do per week. Which is crazy cause' he's OTR.

I know this because Life360 keeps track of all  your trips and gives a running total of how many miles you have driven for any given week.  

Today, coming back from Gurdon? A bit brutal. The AC is not working in the truck and it was pretty warm.   I stopped for nothing, get it over with, get back to the park and get in my vehicle with the ac blasting.  I dunno about doing these next 2 loads without AC. It's going to be hot tomorrow and Saturday tho the morning are pretty nice, driving down to Lufkin won't be terrible it's coming back up that is a bit hellish.  

The thing is, I don't think they have another truck and if they do, it's going to mean going up to the yard in ElDo, switching out and  spending many hours doing it.  I may end up doing that anyway, I'm not sure what the manager has in mind, he doesn't know yet as he has informed me several times (I didn't ask, he gets testy sometimes and tho I don't have a problem getting testy right back at him, I'd rather avoid it).  One thing is for certain: that AC in that truck must be fixed. And several other issues as well.  

As for health care coverage? Yeah, I don't have any.  I don't know if I spoke about this here yet, but I misread the date when the coverage was cancelled. It wasn't the end of last month, it was the end of May!  I just thought in my mind that it was the end of last month because they didn't send me that notice about it until the 2cd of this month.   I filed a complaint with the EBSA yesterday and the lady was all over it.  This is exactly what they exist for, dealing with issues with both retirement funds and health care benefits - that you aren't getting but having money deducted from each check for.

I am paying a good deal of money for nothing.  

I heard nothing from my manager or corporate or anyone about this situation today, I suspect they aren't pleased that I filed a complaint and I don't give 2 rat's @$$es what they think. They've had ample opportunity to fix this situation - the company they are using I should say - and they haven't.  What is the holdup? No clue.  Stupidity. Incompetence.  Ignorance of their own systems.  I could take a large number of guesses, they might all be wrong.      

I feel like there is the possibility of retaliation but I am prepared for that possibility. I hope not for it would entail having to find a good lawyer and shell out some bucks for it, tho I would expect to get that all back and then some.  Dunno, but I'm not letting this go. First of all, I still have no insurance and second off, I called that company yesterday and they were dismissive.  I asked for a manager who refused to talk to me.  I was nice at the beginning of the call but when they started giving me the runaround and talking in circles, I got rather pissy about it. No one cares about this except me, the party affected. They don't care, obviously. I don't know how my company chose that company to handle all of this, but they might rethink it. 

Regardless, the ESBA has to start the process with my company which I would think has already occurred. The lady was definitely aghast after I told her all the details without any exaggeration or leaving things out.  I admitted I got upset with that company but only after they started treating me the way they did. She was on my side, at least on the phone.  

I dunno. Tomorrow is Friday and I will be making phone calls again.  As many as I need to.  I will call that company over and over and over if I have to. I will make myself such an annoyance that they will want to deal with it and get it over with to get rid of me.  I already promised them I would be doing that, I figure it's time to keep my word on that one.  

As for right now? Time for sleep.  

 Tuesday - evening

The day started out ok. Slept rather well last night which is always amazing the next day.  But, alas, it wouldn't stay so good.  I got up to the plant, pulled up onto the scale and the air pressure buzzer went off. It goes off after it goes under 67 psi, at least on my truck.  It's always somewhere in the mid 60's on any truck.  

Why on earth is it doing that?!! I looked at the air pressure falling, this started as soon as I had come into the plant, apparently and I could see why.  I pulled the yellow valve and the air pressure started building back up.  Ok, so there is a leak in the system that is related to the service valve.  When I got to the offload site in the plant, I quickly found the problem. I don't know the precise name of it, but it's a valve used to divert air pressure to the brakes.  It's not a big thing and there are hoses running in and out of it. 

It was dumping a massive amount of air.  Long story short: I drove to Prescott, Love's said I would have to wait until tonight before they could get to it.  TA told the same story and a place across the street from Love's as well. BUT...that place said they have a shop in Hope and they should be able to get to me. That whole area is a  bad place to have mechanical issues, seems like a lot of people have truck breakdowns there.  And tire issues too. You can wait a long, long time to get a tire issue resolved there.

Welp, I drove the 14 miles to the Hope shop and fortunately for me, they were able to get right to it and they actually had the part in stock! I was there an hour and a half, yes but that's far better than waiting 5 to 10 hours for them to even start looking at it. I had 2 air leaks fixed and that  was good.

However.  The other thing going on with that truck? You know the AC problem I have been talking about for a couple of years now - well going on 3 - with it? Yeah, well now it's gone. there is no AC working. The compressor isn't even coming on now.  Lucky me! Well, blessed me today, rains caused temps to come down temporarily and driving it wasn't bad. Tomorrow, however, a different problem.  It will be back up in the 90's and tho the morning drive is ok, once we start getting to the afternoon, no thanks.

Talk of switching trucks now instead of when I go on vacation.

The  health insurance issue has not been resolved but the problem has been identified.  Our company uses a health insurance middle man or whatever it is to pay everyone's monthly premiums. They take a lump some out all at once to pay for all of it.  

The fact that the HR gal didn't even believe me to begin with.  I have a written statement from them, lady, what more do you want? I called them twice to boot, they told me twice I have no health care insurance.  She left me a message telling me I had to call Bavvy and find out if they are the problem. 

ME?  I am a driver, not HR, not payroll, not a representative official in the company, YOUR @$$ needs to do this, I thought while reading this nonsense and that's when my manager called. I flatly told him it's the company's responsibility to deal with this, NOT ME. "Well she's out sick". How convenient. Why can't someone else in the department do it? There is no one else, one person runs the entire company's hr platform! 

But, he insisted on calling them himself (btw, I had tried twice to call them anyway out of irritation, they did not answer either time) and he got them to look into it and now? They had the money for my premium but for whatever reason, they "pulled it" according to my manager and it went unpaid.  The person my manager was talking to said the whole thing was odd ever since I changed insurance companies when the selection process was open.                

Allegedly I will have health insurance again tomorrow if not already. I don't know, but if they don't get these people to get this done tomorrow, I WILL CALL THEM AND LIGHT A FIRE UNDER THEIR DAMN ASSES. Thanks. 

As for my friend asking me when we're leaving New Orleans, I have no problem saying it here: We should be traveling to the Shores on the 17th.  NO is only an overnight stop to see some of the sights the ladies are interested in seeing.  We will probably get up early, but I don't know that for a fact, I only know they want to leave here to start the trip on the 16th at 6:00 am lol.  Ambitious, I'll give them that.  I don't care any way about it, I will not be driving the entire trip and I am QUITE happy about that. 

She doesn't like the way I drive - I don't know why and it's whatever to me, I drive pretty good I think but I don't waste any time getting to where I'm going - but then again neither does she, but more importantly, she wants to drive the entire trip.  This is a brand new Ram truck and it's a very nice truck indeed.  Personally not interested in buying new vehicles tho I'd love to upgrade that SUV to a newer model. It's a 2011 and I'd like something a little newer, maybe 2020.  New is nice but new is not a good economic move, at least not for me.  Anyone that likes to buy brand new vehicles, more power to ya! No judgment here but it's not a fairy tale when people say that a new vehicle loses thousands of dollars worth of value the instant you drive it off the lot...

Just looked at one right now from a dealer. 2020 Expedition MAX for 18k.  143,000 miles, not too much mileage.  Nice looking thing.  But, of course, we're talking payments and I have enough of that going on right now.  Maybe after I get that personal loan paid off in a few years - then again, maybe not.  The old ford is still running great.  I've had it 9 or 10 years and only put 50,000 miles on it.  

Well, not exactly cutting this one short, kind of covered some ground here, but it's many hours later and time to go to bed. I have my schedule up until vacation.  Working through Saturday, Sunday off, work Monday and Tuesday and likely taking the truck - somewhere - to get it fixed on Wednesday.  Would rather get it done Tuesday now that I think of it, doesn't matter how long that day is, I can get unloaded in Gurdon and then either take it to the yard or over to Rush (Peterbilt) and they need to figure out how I'm getting home.  He hasn't decided that yet, not my department and he still has time to figure that out (he being the manager).

Regardless, time for nighty night time.

 Sunday - night

A day off is almost like nothing off.  You just get a little break from work and then right back at it.  

Anyway, yesterday....It was plain out HOT outside.  Crazy heat.  Like, stay indoors type of heat - of which we and several others did not do.  That's because they had a 4th of July parade through downtown yesterday starting at 3:30.  We had a group of 4 ladies in a dressed up golf cart and at least one child walking - walking fast - running to keep up - beside it.  

I was sitting at the end of the parade waiting for them, but when i saw that child, the oldest kid here, I freaked out.  His face was bright red, he was barely moving and he was obviously suffering from whatever form of heat illness.  I mean, it was bad enough that I took him over to the EMS tent where the chief of the local EMS division for our town was there along with several others.  Perfect place for that child to be!

But I just sat him down at first, poured some ice cold water over his head and hoped that would help. It did help but not near enough.  I asked if there was a medic here?  Older gentlemen in excellent physical condition came over and we brought the boy in front of a huge fan they had set up.  They were prepared for this, I  give them credit.   

The fan and some cold packs and rags that had been drenched in cold water started to help, but he was out of it.  They didn't determine he needed hospitalization so I took him home. Our house is kept quite chilled.  But, even laying in bed with a huge ceiling fan over him and in a nicely cooled house, he was still complaining about how "hot" it is in this house. I told him if these symptoms didn't start to recede soon, he is going to be taking a cold shower. THAT .... WILL ....cool him down.  

From the time this started with him to the time he finally started looking normal again, it was a couple of hours.  We weren't going to hang out downtown that long anyway. It was the parade - there wasn't a lot of people comparatively speaking to other parades, but my guess is that it was just plain too hot for folks to want to sit out there.  

The drone show - replacing what this town deems as an eternal fire hazard having fireworks and having them banned within city limits, you can't even possess them - was at 9:30. We went back downtown at around 8:00 to hang out at the local brewery - it is a gathering center, 3 stories tall and people go there to eat only, not just drinking craft beer.  Well, it started raining. And raining, and raining.  Around 9:10 pm, it finally quit raining but apparently too late: they canceled the show. 

We left there after we heard that, no sense in staying there for nothing. We went and bought our own fireworks, went over to my property - which is outside of city limits and you can burn whatever, light off fireworks, whatever, whenever the only time it's restricted is during a burn ban.  They determine either the conditions are too dry or the winds are too heavy to allow outdoor burning. 

It was fun and a good replacement for a canceled drone show that had been getting hyped up for so long. Ridiculous.  

Today - church, applebee's, home.  We are not eating out often at all now. 2 adults in the house are on serious diets and eating out is difficult - not impossible - but hard to adhere to the keto diet.  Applebee's does have some offerings tho that fit the bill. Steak, salmon, chicken breast, bone-in hot wings. 

I had hot wings, delicious, very low carb and filling.  

It's almost time to go to bed already and I don't really feel like I had a day off at all, lol.  Back to that plant in Lufkin which can't get their act together. You sit and wait - and wait- and wait for them to load the truck.

With that? I bid you a good night. 

 Thursday - evening

Another good night's sleep, 2 in a row!  Amazing.  I feel energetic today such as I haven't felt in a while. I doubt that's solely sleep related but I"m sure it has a little bitty bit to do with it. I've been exercising regularly for a while now and I figure that is playing a large role in this.

Today? I open up one of my email accounts to find a cancellation notice for my health insurance.  I about flipped my lid on that one, in fact, I became incensed pretty quick.  This late pay on my health insurance has been going on for a while now and I've said something but now? I HAVE NO HEALTH INSURANCE COVERAGE.  Not  because I didn't pay it, oh no. That money comes out of my paycheck - every paycheck without fail.  

No, it's because this company has an incompetent human resources department.  This is easily and without question the final straw.  I will not work for any company not having health insurance as a benefit. But in this case, it's far worse than that. They don't PAY the damn thing on time.  Like what the hell do they think? They can just pay it when they feel like it?  

So what if something happens until I get coverage again? Here's exactly what will happen: I will sue the shit out of this company and try to force them to pay whatever. My insurance is fire insurance. Major health incident happens, I'm covered after the first 8k.  I have to settle myself down, I already blew up to my manager about this.  

It's just completely and totally unbelievable.  I have NEVER had a company - even lousy ones - not pay the health care coverage bill.  What are they thinking?  I have more than half a mind to start putting in applications.  I could do fuel hauling, that is all local work tho usually they start newbs out on the night shift, I thing I completely despise.  

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Had to let some time pass on that.  I don't want to make brash decisions, such as tell them where to stick it.  I've been telling them about this for a while now and now I have nothing. I feel vulnerable.  I'm not  young and at the age where you need that coverage for the sake of being able to deal with anything serious, God forbid, that might come along. I remember decades ago not having health insurance because I couldn't afford it and didn't feel I needed it. Not a very smart thing to do, but finances were the main problem, I was pretty poor at the time.  

But, if I don't find out that I have health coverage immediately restored tomorrow, I am going to tell them to shove it.  I would rather not be working at all and just find another job than to keep dealing with this company and all the bs it shoves at people.  Health insurance is about 50% of the reason I am working for this company the schedule is the rest.  

I'm not really sure I can talk about anything else here.  The whole situation is just surreal, absurd, ridiculous, outrageous and several other adjectives I could think of.  

Enough. I"m going to bed and sleep on it.  I started looking for a job, it's just something I don't really want to have to do right now, start all over yet again somewhere else, gag. 

 Tuesday - evening

Much better sleep last  night, thankfully.  Up to Gurdon, offload quickly, over to the tire shop yet again in Hope to get that bad tire replaced on the trailer I just picked up yesterday.  I'll say one thing about this trailer: the offload valve where you hook up the line to deliver the product is on the side of the trailer instead of underneath it.  I have been crawling under trailers for quite a while now, this one you don't have to do that at all.  

Loading yet again tomorrow.  I am very much disliking going to Lufkin, 8 or 9 loads in a row I have been there at least 3 hours, some days much more than that.  They are shorthanded - they are always shorthanded but some days are worse than others. When you see a plant manager coming out to load you, they are shorthanded that day.  

Other than that? Well, I did nothing at the park today - it was a real feel of well over 100 degrees and after driving in a not-so-cool truck all day long, laboring out in the worst heat of the day didn't sound palatable. I really want to get this guy working but I just don't have it in me to sit out there in this heat.  Nevertheless, I am going to try to get him out there this week on whatever day and try to get at least that sewer finished.  It probably won't take more than 4 or 5 hours? 

Or much longer than that, who knows.  Sewer line is the hardest part as far as I'm concerned and that only because you have try to get the slope "perfect". Not too shallow and not too steep.  Not to shallow for obvious reasons.  But, did you know if you have the slope too much, the fluids bypass the solids and the solids - well they just sort of sit there. And once they dry up, you have a problem.  

I have the slope way too high on the shed, but that's not an issue because of all of the washing machine water flushing it out on a daily basis. 

Whatever.  Not today, that's for sure, it's almost 9:00 pm, but crazy enough, there's still plenty of daylight out there! Amazing. Arizona is even worse, there are times of the year where you can still see a hint of the sun near 10:00 pm. 

Oops, forgot to check if I have the early load tomorrow. I just know I'm working through Saturday, Sunday off and then start it all over again.  16 days until vacation.....2 more full weeks of work and then a few days of work the following week and then 8 glorious days off. 

To that end I have been dieting and tho I am at a plateau right now, it'll eventually fall off and I'll start losing  fat and weight again.  Doing the bicycling too. I just made the kids go with me, lol.  80 more pushups today, best get busy after this entry, trying to do 100 per day again previously and made it - I think around 140 days?  Or was it 120? Meh, who knows, my arms were super pumped up as well as my shoulders. My chest wasn't showing anything, too much blubber there lol.

That's about it. Now that I reminded myself I need to finish off the pushups for today. 

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This was yesterday's entry, I was just going to leave it in the unfinished entries list but, since it explainsa miserable night's sleep? Might as well publish it.  

Monday - evening

What a miserable night's sleep. Started out with going to bed early, kids making too much noise.  About the time I finally decided to give them what-for, one of them came barging into my room to say goodnight.  

Later, one of the lady of the house's dog started barking right outside of my window.  I was screwed after that.  You do that to me while sleeping you might as well just wake me up for the night, I'll be lucky to ever get back to sleep.  I think I might have gotten 3 hours of sleep.  

The reason I got up early was go to go Haughton for a different trailer. Although uneventful, it adds about 100 miles to the trip - a couple of hours and then some.