Not to sound like a drama queen, but today has been rather - agonizing.  My back, my butt, my side and my right ankle are so swollen up, I look like I just gained about 50 pounds of fat.  

My right ankle? You can even see the bone that sticks out on the left side of it. I don't know how many times I got stung there, many many times, I could feel it while I was trying to get away from those damned things.  Actually, now looking at it, both sides are swollen up, it's actually gotten worse since I started this morning.  

But the itching, all day long. And the pain and the swelling.  

I just got done, finally, with everything and the first thing I did was get into the sleeper and strip down into my underwear.  That helped immediately to not have the clothing rubbing up against all of the swelled up areas.  I then took a Benadryl - found some at a gas station convenience store this morning, I didn't take any cause' they cause drowsiness.

I already didn't get enough sleep last night as it was, maybe 4 hours.  Put Benadryl on top of that and I probably would have had to stop driving. It was bad enough when I stopped for my 30 minute rest break - that I pushed into 45 minutes - that I was still quite tired when I woke up.  I could only dream of getting down there - here - and getting this miserable day over with.  I can only hope for better sleep tonight with that Benedryl hopefully reducing the extreme itching.  

Onto other things.  The chainsaw is boxed up and ready to go back to Makita.  An almost $500 pile of rubbish, good riddance to it.  I was looking at chainsaws online again today, but I think I'll just go to Home Depot in Longview when I get back, if it's still open tomorrow and see what they have.  I'm going to get 2 cheaper ones this time instead of one expensive one.  I thought - you get what you pay for. Well, I don't expect to pay $500 for a brand new chainsaw and have nothing but problems with it.

I would have liked to have hoped Makita would have a better product, they didn't  I'll get 2 saws - cheaper versions - and have them available for if James can work again, we can both be sawing down trees and get a lot of that mess over with.  

Taylor wants to have a garden over there!  That was surprising to hear.  I guess she hates the back yard - it is a mess and the dogs get into everything - and there really is no way to have a garden out front of the house.  I am thinking of an area where she can have a garden out of the way of RV stuff, at the back of the driveway, off to the left.  Can't really have a garden there tho until I get water run onto the property and can run a 1 inch line back there and put up a spigot for a hose.  

She'll be able to just drive back to it, stop in front of it, get out and do her thing with it.  It's going to be winter soon tho, we didn't get into specifics but I would assume she is more referring to a spring start for a garden than now.  And without any running water, she'd have to haul water over there if she wanted to start one now.  I think it would be delightful to have a garden going over there with all kinds of different things growing.  Onion, tomatoes, squash, watermelon, whatever you want to grow!

The cold air in this sleeper sweeping over my body is also quite refreshing.  I have no idea how long Benedryl takes to work, but I suspect it's got a tough job ahead of it with as much as is going on with me right now. Perhaps I would have been better off taking two of the pills instead of the one I took?

Well, as is become the norm down here, there is always empty trailers now.  It has much to do with them having two yards down here instead of the one and having two separate companies hauling trailers up and down to Alta Mira instead of the one company that's been doing it for decades now.  It's sad to see detention pay go, I've done at least 10 trips down here without any, probably more.  I still contend that the plant down there will eventually have problems and they will start having issues with getting empties up - but who knows. I'd like to ask my manager about it, he's the one that's been gung ho about getting rid of detention pay down here since he started here.

It is likely they started getting serious about it in the last round of detention hold overs where there were 4 or 5 drivers sitting down here waiting on empties.  That puts a huge strain on the rest of the system where other companies need deliveries as well.  The product we are hauling? If a plant runs out of it, the plant shuts down.  They are all 24 hour operations, shutting down means losing a lot of money. 

Okayyyyy, Benedryl just said hello to me. Like, all of a sudden I am extremely drowsy and hopefully means I can sleep a bit...

G'nite.