Home by 8, not bad.  Not great, but not bad.  I was driving through the park after getting back and remembered after finally seeing the guy there (versus having never seen his pickup there in the last 3 days) that he needs to pay up.  But, I didn't have my computer fired up, it would take half an eternity to do so, I blew it off. Need to go over there tomorrow after he gets home and not terribly late.

A 7 mile backup on I-30 going the opposite direction while driving up there, I was aghast at the lengthy backup of vehicles and the fact they were going extremely slow.  One lane shut down for some sort of accident cleanup replete with earth moving equipment.  

And I once again saw a practice that some truck drivers engage in that is maddening. It frequently happens that in a major backup, 2 trucks will get side-by-side and slow down to around 3 mph.  This enables them to put their drive clocks into on-duty mode and not burn up their driving hours. That's all great, nice, fine and dandy, however....  IN almost all of these instances that I have seen them doing it, the nearest traffic in front of them is thousands of feet away.  

It's a ridiculous practice, if you want to save your drive hours, get off the highway. Pull over on the shoulder, but don't hold traffic back that far.  I can't believe some of these people actually do this.  

Hipcamp. I revised my entire setup on there, eliminating the secondary parking, since people seemed to think they were getting a regular lot, even tho it was detailed in the description of what they were getting, that option is entirely gone. I then upped my price, just a bit cheaper than my regular, overnight prices but still up there enough to actually make some money off the thing, after Hipcamp takes their rather large bite out of the profit pie.  I've had 3 or 4 bookings since then, including one that just came through and I approved.  

It's getting to the point that I'm just going to have to try that box attachment without the teeth and see what happens.

And the sleep tracker is telling me it's time to go to bed. Actually, it is, for I have to get up early for my next run.  I just have a hard time going from driving mode to sleep mode in such a short period of time unless it's transitioning from the driver's seat to the sleeper bed.  A thing I rarely do anymore and thankful for it.  

 Oh the day just gets lovelier.  The manager called and said: "They don't want the load delivered until 4:00".  

Talk about figuring out ways to screw up a person's day.  Oh well.  I'm going through my book, I have a lot of rents due tomorrow.  I have one that was due last week that they were asking to hold off until tomorrow as well - the freezing event that basically had people off of work because employers were canceling saying the roads were too icy to drive on.

They were, however, correct in that assessment, the roads were horrible.  However, I have bills to pay as well and creditors don't give me time to pay, they just ding your credit score, add late fees and tell you to have a nice day.  

I find it hilarious that Chase Bank wants to charge you $10 per month for a business savings account.  You are keeping money with them and not using it, they are using your money for loans and making interest off of it, what is the deal here?  I've had thoughts of switching to another bank, but there are so many automatic payments and direct deposit and such tied in with my Chase accounts, it would be a huge ordeal.  

OK, it's free if you have over a grand in the account.  Well, I won't have a grand in it for over 3 months, this is the savings account I was referring to in previous entry so I can start saving for property tax payments.  I'm going to start a business savings account somewhere else if they offer one for free. If they all charge you to save money, I'll have no choice, but there are lots of local banks, surely one of them has something that I can get started with for "free".  

There is a local bank that is charging $5 per month and this is the bank I want to eventually try and get a business loan through.  Not happening now, but if I get started with an account with them and show that I am saving money from the business, perhaps that will help.  They came highly recommended, I just am not interested in high interest loans right now nor do I think I will qualify with my debt-to-income ratio currently.

Anyway, I need a separate account to save this money in so I can not get hammered near the end of the year and beginning of the year with these costs.  Insurance and property taxes equal over 4 grand.  

Actually the property tax bill is a little lower than I remembered it being. $2,406.50. It was over 3 grand?  I don't get it. Still, with a $1,700 electric bill coming up, that is a lot of money.  For me, anyway.  I'm going to try and pay that bill by the end of this month.  After I get my second paycheck this month, I'm hoping to cover it, if I can't, I just am going to have to because after this month? They start assessing penalties.  

And I still have to figure out what to do with the driveway.  

This is my life currently, should have followed through with my plan earlier last year to save even $200 per month towards these bills, I didn't do it - tho I really couldn't. I was struggling to make ends meet hence getting the job.  The job helps, it isn't really enough but it does help. 

So, I'm facing getting home around 8:30-9:00 pm, go to bed and get up again in the morning for another load.  I have Saturday and Sunday off, my birthday on Monday where I go into my 6th decade of existence.  Lord willing, of course.  But, I'll work all of  this I have been working to get this coming weekend off and hopefully if I get a load on Monday it will be done quickly and early.

I take that back, they dumped a load on me for Monday, just remembered, but it's the 10 am instead of 2 pm slot, I'll take it, hopefully home no later than 2, leaves me the rest of the day to enjoy my day off, I intend on cheating on this Keto diet and eating to my heart's delight.  Namely, a Dairy Queen triple chocolate chunk Blizzard, large, or whatever that thing is called. It's chocolate to the extreme and that's what I want to treat myself with.  I'll get up earlier on Monday to get to the washout place at their opening time. I usually get there around 8:30 am, it basically works out to getting to the plant either early or on time.  The plant doesn't really care when you get there, but if you get there early and other trucks are ahead of you, yup, you wait.  

Speaking of property, back to that subject, there should be a check coming my way here sooner or later from the mortgage company.  It's a nonprofit and they send back whatever overages ther are, percentagewise, to everyone.  Last year I think it was $600, money I could definitely use right now. 

Anyway, I need to get to the bank and deposit the now-reduced monthly check from the pipe welders.  

 Wednesday - early.  

I have one more payment on the washer/dryer set, I thought I was done as of this month, I thought wrong.  That will free up some money every month to help pay for other things, it comes nowhere close to what I am facing financially right now.  

The tent lady affirmed to me yesterday that she will get her tax return completed and "give you money".  I've made it clear to her that it's time to start paying.  She isn't using a walker anymore and she is getting around just fine.  She may not be 100%, I'm sorry.  

Of course, no dog poop has been left in the park since I put up the camera.  Of course not, people understand that I am not happy about the situation and I have made it well known my intentions if I find out who is doing it.  Like, tell that person to take a hike out of my park, permanently.  Or, pay a heavy fine - and if I could actually get someone to pay a heavy fine, I'd just give it to the lady that's been cleaning it up.  I don't want to leave a camera out there permanently, but apparently I have no choice if I want to keep this from happening again.

I still think someone is going to just blow it off, walk out of there with their dog and not clean up the pile and bam.  Someone is doing it, no one is confessing to it.

Those are, of course, the least of my problems yet still, it's irritating.  Others take their dogs in there and find a pile of s*** sitting there.  It's not my fault, of course, but the park gets blamed anyway, right? That's how stuff works in this society.  

I had a pleasant conversation with a man that is staying with his with for 4 days.  "You have a nice park here". I haven't heard that in a while, it was nice to hear. He was commenting on the nice job of the gravel and how everything looked nice.  That coming from people that travel full time in their RV, that's a pretty good compliment.  Makes me feel like I'm doing at least something right.  

I'm going to have to at least do a temporary fix on one of the potholes, it has evolved into a giant mass and it's pretty bad.  Filling it with dirt will do much of nothing, I think I can mix dirt with that river rock in the back and try to see if it will stay put for a while.  Or not, I dunno. Someone tried to tell me that "oh that box attachment on that tractor" will definitely do the job of fixing that driveway.  I replied it has no ripper teeth on it. They didn't care, they thought it would do the job nicely. 

Maybe with 100 passes of it? I don't know.  It'd be one of those things where you spend the entire day trying to go over and over the affected areas and hope that it all comes loose and then work it until there's nothing but smooth, level driveway with a lot of the gravel brought back up to the surface.  

I did find a bobcat for rent with a "planer" attachment that would work. However, the daily rental fee is so high might as well just pay an expert to do it for me.  I'm still waiting on that expert to quote me a price.  I mean, at some point I may be forced into trying this tractor with the box blade that has no teeth.  It would likely simply mean that I would have to run over and over and over the same areas until the dirt and rocks are loosened up.  If I had my own tractor I would have already tried this.

People continuously ask me why I don't have my own tractor? Money, folks, they are expensive and even if I could get one on payments, that's too much money for me to handle on a monthly basis right now.  If I had a tractor, I could keep the driveway repaired before it get as bad as it is now and also could slowly work the terrain in the field that are just weeds.  I'm at least a little hopeful that all that grass and ground level weed stuff is going to stay put and not just die out, it's thick and should keep weeds from growing.  

Oh, did I say that someone just dumped a bunch of trash in front of the dumpster? Yeah, household trash laying all over the place.  I haven't been able to get my hunting camera to work and I keep saying no to buying new ones but perhaps it's just something I have to do, buy a couple of new ones.  

Oh, the reason I"m up so early is kids making a lot of noise this morning.  Strike that: ONE kid making a lot of noise.  It's to the point with me that I will just not have anything to do with that one when they come home from school. Explain to him why I'm doing what I'm doing and stay out of my room, stay away from me, do not bother me today.  He does it all the time and doesn't care one way or the other.  

And my offload time is 2:00 pm, I'm going to show up there around 12:30.  That will be after the first load is done and should be fine to do it that way.  I let him know, the other driver as well. He doesn't have a problem with it and neither do I if someone shows up early - but after the first load time is done.  Not, show up so early that you are there at the first load appointment time or even earlier.  I don't want to be on the road until 6 or 7 pm.

That's it for now. My fantasy of getting a new septic system are trashed and stashed on a memory shelf somewhere, I have no way to even think about doing anything like that unless I get a loan and I don't want more loans.  This would be the year to get that park increased in size to vamp up for accommodating for highway workers coming in 2025.  Or whenever they get here, but 2025 is the beginning date for that stuff and I would think that also means a lot of workers are going to show up and it definitely means that at least some of them have trailers.  Without another septic system, the only other thing I can do is tie into the existing one and then face pump out charges however often.  It's $400 I think  it was to have a truck come in and pump it out.  

I just giving up on it for now.  Praying and asking God for guidance, definitely.  Loans are at such high interest rates now anyway, it would be ridiculous to get one unless it was just an extreme thing where "I have to do it".  Property taxes aren't anything to fool with, I just have to find the money somehow and pay them.  They were lamenting here at the house that their property taxes have more than doubled.  Yes, we are living in a greedy little town that wants to build new schools - one of which they already have - and greatly expand and rehabilitate old schools.  "There will be no new taxes" they keep saying, I voted that one down last election, I did not see the results of that election but I suspect people probably voted it in, duping citizens into thinking that it "isn't going to cost anything more".

The proof is in the pudding, if their property taxes went up, everyone's did.  I knew mine would go up for building the RV park, but I also knew after they shut down that power plant that those millions of dollars would have to be made up for somewhere.  Just ream people that own property, everyone else gets away with paying nothing.  It's "always" been this way but I have "always" hated it.  Why do so many people that have kids in the public school system not have to help out paying for that system? Texas was supposedly doing something about bringing down those taxes on property owners, but so far, I've heard nothing concrete about actual results.  

The real problem I have with property taxes is that in essence, you really never own the land even if you paid it off.  If you can't or won't pay those taxes, they will come take it away from you, auction it off and you are screwed regardless of how much money you dumped into that land or how much you are losing.  Instead, there should be some sort of school/ISD tax added to county or city or both sales taxes or some way to come up with the money without forcing it down land owner's throats.  How many land owners are paying for schools that they don't even have children in the system?  

The thought of losing the land is why I am stressing over this.  It wouldn't happen right away, of course, but they start tacking on fees/fines and the amount goes up that you owe.  It really lends to the thought that I should just be taking out the money every month so I am not caught up in this nightmare every year.  It would be something like, ok, once that last washer/dryer payment is paid, start taking that money and dumping it into a savings account so I have money at the beginning of next year to cover this nonsense.  Oh, and thank you Californians for forcing the prices of housing and land up around here.....

G'day