Yesterday late afternoon, my manager sent me a trip sheet for a run to Brownsville.  Going out today.  After that, she simply said: Let me know if you want to be home on Thanksgiving and I will give it to the next driver.

I had to think about that for a looooong time.  I didn't respond to her for a couple of hours - she wasn't asking for a response unless I wanted to stay home.  After getting rid of the "I'd love to be home and hang out with everyone" stuff out of my mind, prudence took over.  If I don't take this run, I thought, next week's paycheck is going to have one, single run on it to Oklahoma. It will be a very not-so-nice check.  My mind went all over the place.

But in the end? I decided to take it.  Christmas coming up, I don't want to dig into savings for presents and I certainly don't want to load up credit cards.  I think I have 6 people to buy presents for and none of them are people that "must have" expensive things to make them happy.  Well there may be a 7th and 8th - the house in Phoenix, but they took their Christmas present in the form of shafting me out of rent money going towards the electric bill.  I'm sorry, but it's really hard to get past that shit.  Lying to me all this time.  For a year at least. 

Well anyway, Christmas was the day I wanted off, and Christmas it is.  The thing is, if I didn't take this run today? I would be placed clear at the back of the list.  This is how she, my manager does it. You don't take a run, you go all the way to the bottom of the list and work your way back up.  She does that to anyone, not just me lol.  Just saying, she has actually been giving me quite a lot of good runs in the last month and a half or longer.

But then, Maria informed me that today would be a miserable day to be traveling, the news said the roads are literally going to be full of people heading home for the holidays.  She wasn't wrong, either.  After wasting 3 hours at the plant - they have a guy working the scale house that is just slow - and getting down the road, well at first it wasn't bad.  Just normal traffic. But then, northbound traffic was getting very heavy!  I thought, well, once I get south of Houston, I'm probably going to run into all of that down there. 

And sure enough.  My truck only goes 66 mph top speed, so I spend most days getting passed.  And it was incredible the constant stream of vehicles flying by me.   I had looked on GPS - it showed large red spots where there are usually none.  I knew before enlarging the map to see where the spots are, the volume of traffic passing me would all get caught up at lights in the small towns ahead of us.  Refugio, Odem, north of Kingsville and Riviera.  I lost a great deal of driving and on-duty time, I was nervous about making it down here.

Two reasons.  1. Perhaps there would be an empty down here and I could get  up and go in the morning and be back in time for the last half of the festivities at the house. Or 2, nope, no empties but I'll be there tonight and start the detention clock.  I literally ran the clock out getting down here, getting fuel (near empty, I couldn't risk running the thing all night long without filling it up), stopping at store and then coming to the yard and getting the trailer dropped and getting this day over with. 

No empties. Kind of a let down, but now that I've been here a couple of hours, it doesn't matter.  I'm used to being on the road, I'm used to spending holidays on the road, and I wouldn't care if no empties showed up tomorrow. I would spend the night in a hotel, attempt to find some food to eat - who knows what's open on Thanksgiving down here -  and deal with it.  There is supposedly going to be 13 people there tomorrow, lol.  Or more, who knows. 

Back to Phoenix. The folks at my house have no clue I am coming to Phoenix and at this point, I am content to keep it that way.  I will park in the driveway and inspect the exterior of my house and what damages the felled  tree from the neighbor's yard did.  I was never sent photos of it.  If I were taking care of someone else's property and a tree fell down, I would take pictures from different angles and send it immediately to the owner/s.  I was "told" that no damage had occurred excepting to the fencing that separates one side of my property to the other.  I have had no word of that fencing being replaced or repaired.  I really have no clue what damage was done.  Just concerning that they take the liberties they have taken without my knowledge and no communicating with me.  I need to assess what is going on over there and whether I need to rid myself of that property and move on. 

Well I'm wiped out. Time to go to sleep.