Okay.

Well, I was awakened out of a deep sleep this morning at 3 am to get up and get going to get back to the yard by noon. I was still 450 miles off and in a truck that maxes out at 65 mph and going through Houston - well, it's gonna take a while. But ....  it is Sunday so I didn't run into any sizable amounts of traffic. 

I was begging for sunlight tho.  3 plus hours of driving in the dark after that kind of awakening? Doesn't work for me.  Much better if I'm driving into the night, not getting up in the night and trying to shake off sleep in the dark. Just not me.  6:30 am, the sun finally started to breech the sky. Thank you Lord! And yes, I finally woke up after that and drove almost 8 hours.  

I had to stop for this mandatory 30 minute rest break, with the yard so close that this rest break was quite irrelevant. But, stop I did and slept for 25 minutes to freshen myself up, drove out the rest of the miles.  That was a rather grueling trip with getting up early both nights in a row and not getting much sleep.  I can't go to bed at 7:00 pm, it just doesn't work. I do sometimes go to sleep at 8 or more, but that after driving all day long and early rise, totally out of it, I sleep great on those occasions, not the case here.  

Sooooo, the situation I spoke of yesterday. Yeah, not good. Donny, as it turns out, is a crack cocaine addict.  Rene has been saying this for a while now, but I didn't know whether to believe her or not.  I mean, I won't call her a liar, I just have to have facts to back anything up. He said she said doesn't work.  I don't really have real proof of it now, but yes, I believe Rene now.  

Yesterday, I went over there at 3:30 am - about the time I got there with the dogs,, ,went in, put the dogs in "my" room, I have a bed in there for them to lay on, left Rene the dog money and her $20 request for money to get to the hospital on Tuesday.  $85.  I left went to work, got in the tractor, started heading down to Brownsville. I get a text 4 hours later......Good morning Ben.  I hope you didn't leave any money on the table because if you did, it's gone......

Wait, what?  You want to talk about waking up?  There's only 2 people in that place. With all the troubles I've had with Rene, taking money that doesn't belong to her isn't one of them.  Well, not with Donny either. A lot of conversation took place. Donny  took the money, left.  Came back yesterday afternoon, got his laptop computer, left.  Came back again, took his TV, left again.  He hasn't been seen from or heard from since.  He wasn't driving his truck, either, some "dude" was driving it for him.  Do I think ill has happened to him? Sure, at his own choosing.  I remember him alluding to the idea that he was doing crack but I thought he was joking at the time.  

There isn't a single person I have ever encountered that does crack that isn't a liar and a thief.  And let me tell you, in the area I used to live in? That is no small number. There's a reason I went around the neighborhood and up into people's faces telling them if so and so comes around my house again, I'm going to hunt them down. In fact, one person, Jarod, was coming over to my house even with people at the house and stealing stuff from me.  Not while I was there.  I went after his @$$.  I chased him down several times, but he was always on a bike and I was on foot.  And other instances where I knew they were hiding him, went up to a hoard of people and demanded they bring his face out there.  I was "warned". Warn me all you want, you do stuff to me like that, on a continual basis, all bets are off. 

Anyway, Donny is messing up big time.  His addiction is now at the point of taking people's money that doesn't belong to him. Believe me, the man off drugs and booze too is a great guy.  He's really cool, but this stuff here? No. And no. And double no.  I'm not going there.  Rene says he has excellent insurance and it would pay for him for rehab.  He even let his dog!  I mean, this dude just up and takes off.  I texted him yesterday morning after Rene told me what was going on and asked him "did you take the money off the kitchen table?'.  No reply.  That's a "yes I did" without saying it. Never a time he hasn't replied to me and that was before he came back for his computer and tv.  

So what's up?  Rene thinks he's hanging out at his dealer's house.  I dunno.  He's not done anything like this since I first met him a few years ago.  But, I know the guy well enough.  

Rene is going in for surgery Tuesday morning.  I'm leaving town tomorrow late morning and not getting back until Tuesday night - at the earliest.  It may well be there are no trailers available in Brownsville so I could get stuck down there - no bother to me, I love detention pay in most cases. So, the dogs are staying here tomorrow.  They can stay out back until James and Taylor gets home. They'll deal with them, I'm confident of that.  I'm only uncomfortable with Aspyn and not supervision all day. She jumps the fence like it's not there.   Addler has no such aspirations and is content to stay in the back yard.  I think he could high walk over that fence if he wanted to, lol. 

But even if Donny was there, I wouldn't leave my dogs there. Only if Rene is there. She absolutely loves my dogs and she will take care of them.  She has her moments with them that I don't care for, but not enough to not entrust them to her care as I have been doing all along since I started this job.  

She doesn't believe Donny will come back until he gets his monthly government check, to pay back what he took. I have no idea.  He might have completely gone over the edge and said to himself, screw it,  and just let his ambitions and everything that is who he is go to hell in a handbasket  and decide to live the rest of his days smoking crack until he dies.  I don't really know.  

He's still a friend, tho. Money freaked me out at first, I was pretty damned livid about it.  But I have gotten past the "what the hell" part and okay. This dude has problems, I hope to be able to direct him to some help. But I can't trust him, that's quite evident. Addler and Aspyn will no longer be staying under his care if she isn't there, period. 

So...tomorrow is another run to Brownsville. But none of this get up early and then get up early again stuff to get there and back.  I'll do that on occasion, nothing I would want to do on a regular basis.  It helps tho, for detention pay. I went down there without a trailer and pulled an empty back up.  That creates a "vacuum" of one trailer for availability.  This problem wasn't created by our company, so I have no issues with it.  They wanted a Mexican trailer filled up - with no explanation.  None of our trailers  cut it. Lots of speculation, nothing that anyone actually knows for fact.  I figure to ask one of the Mexican drivers.  The last one i spoke to went rolling off last time I encountered one of them - I still can speak some Spanish and understand it if they don't speak too fast but of course that isn't the way they talk lol.  I still got enough to understand what he was complaining about.

Anyways, getting late. Time to get myself headed towards "off to never-never land". Sometimes that is quite true.  Strange dreams.  I've always had them but recently some "Twilight Zone" type of stuff.  Fascinating, tho.