Friday - night

I wish I could tell everyone that calls that I have a spot for them. Especially the lady that called today asking if I have 3 spots available for long term? Business looking for space for employees.  I wish I could have told her yes, for those are the types of people you really want for long term. They stay a long time and no issues. 

No, I can't take 3 right now. 2?  Well, I might be able to in a week.  Ok, well they aren't coming until the 28th.  I can get back to you in a few hours? I was driving, no access to a computer. Sure!  Well, 30 minutes later I get a text: we found a spot.  The RV industry. Get them in when they call or lose them. I couldn't take them in I knew that. You know, people come and go, maybe some are leaving in the next week? I couldn't tell ya.  Maybe on lot is, for they were only staying 2 weeks. But as it happens often, people say they are leaving and then end up staying much longer.

The park is full.  But it's not going to stay that way.  I've also had to turn away lots of overnighters.  If I'm full, I'm full.  One asked, well do you have anything that has 30 amp hookup? I did but it's that motorcoach and I don't know what she did with the keys to it.  I could move it out of the way and have a spot there.  Anyway, I didn't tell them that, they asked if I had any recommendations so I gave them the name of a competitor across town.  

I've come to the determination that I absolutely need a tractor with several different attachments.  It's just a necessity with land.  It's that or endlessly rent one at near $400 per pop.  I don't know about getting into payments right now, but the driveway is messed up again with all this fresh rain.  I wouldn't rent their tractor again, their box doesn't have teeth and I won't waste my time and money with another stint without those teeth on there to tear up the soil.  I don't know what I'm going to do about this need, if anything, but it's been raised up to a "top priority" situation.  

Work again tomorrow.  This is going to continue on for another week, when i will - tell them - I am taking 2 days off for that weekend.  I'll have missed 2 weeks straight of church, the kids going on 4 weeks.  And time off.  I don't mind this job that much, it's light on hours at anywhere from 6-1/2 to 8-1/2 on a typical day, but it's still work and I get up at 5:30 am for it.  

This paycheck was absolutely pathetic.  I mean, so small it was a kick in the teeth type of thing.  The work I am doing now is allegedly going on the new pay scale.  We'll see.  I've been patient waiting on this, but my patience is wearing thin. I have a couple leads on new jobs.  I wasn't really looking, they just come through either social media, text message or my inbox.  One of them claims a local job and yes, I am researching that one.  

Well it's getting late. I am tired and I want to go to bed early. Gurdon in the am, hopefully a uneventful day, meaning nothing weird, wild and highly time consuming occurs. 

 Thursday - mid afternoon

Pretty typical day going to Gurdon and back. Product was a bit warmer so it came out faster, I was done about 35 minutes earlier than what it has taken for the last 3 loads up there.  

The only thing of note was when the other driver contacted me.  The company hired a new driver and my driver trainer - who is the "other" driver - said he's an early bird the other day.  When I hear that, I think: this dude is going to play games trying to get there earlier than the first load  - when he's been given the second load.  My guess was correct.

He already delivered before the trainer the other day, but since it didn't affect him, he didn't say anything about it. However, today?  The driver trainer pulls into the trailer washout facility and lo and behold, there is this new driver in the office, getting his paperwork so he can go get the trailer washed out.  The driver trainer just drove straight to the washout area and bypassed the office. You don't have to do the paperwork first, lmao. 

This new driver became infuriated.  He immediately called the manager to complain about what the driver trainer had done.  He apparently was raising his voice with the manager over the phone, so the manager just said "we can talk later when you cool down a bit".  Then, the driver trainer called the manager to inform him of what happened, the manager said yup, he already called. The early load goes to the senior drivers. Lol, I've bee there since September and I'm already a "senior driver".  That's because people don't stay at this company for very long and if you've been reading this blog for any length of time, you will understand why people quit and I don't feel like going into all of that right now.

In fact, the last guy that was pulling this stunt frequently, cutting in front of other drivers on appointment times, he also quit.  I'm not shocked at all if/when people quit.  

I thought it was hilarious the newbie was getting all kinds of angry because of circumstances created by his own selfishness.  I'm guessing he won't last long, either.  I don't know how the company keeps up with the schedule from the plant with people coming and going like that. 

The lady texted me yet again - 3 piles of poop she said she found at the doggy park today.  It makes me just want to shut the damn thing down, take down the fencing and be done with it. It's really annoying that people just don't give a damn and let their dogs s*** all over the place and they can't be bothered to clean it up.  Unbelievable. 

The new people that moved in yesterday didn't stay in the trailer last night. I know this because there were no vehicles parked in front of the thing either early this morning or this afternoon when I got home. Was trying to collect rent.  I'm not worried about it tho,

________

Night time. It's been raining on and off since I got home.  The new people called back. You can tell they are well up there in age.  Nice sounding, hopefully that pans out.  The man is ex-military, Marines.  

Anyway, it's time to relax, take in some show - I think I'm going to start watching Shogun, it looks interesting and the Japanese are of a great curiosity to me (not in a bad way) - just really interesting culture.  

G'nite. 

 Wednesday - night

Mostly won't write entries in the morning if I'm off to work on any given day, there's just too much to do and usually don't have enough time to write anything.  I'm not saying that is going to be a strict rule I'm putting myself to. 

It's 8:24 pm and we just got home maybe 15 minutes ago.  Baseball for the youngest alternating with soccer with the older child, that's 3 days a week right there plus a guitar practice plus games on the weekends.  This is what they are just now plunging themselves into.  An hour long practice went over 1-1/2 hours.  Too long for those kids, they lose interest quickly.  

I'd like to give the coach some advice, but that probably wouldn't go over too well so I'll keep it zipped.  He should be doing stations and keep all the kids active continuously instead of having a batter at the plate with a bunch of kids in the field standing around picking their noses doing nothing and getting bored.  I spent a lot of time perfecting that craft, keeping kids involved and focused.  You have 3 or 4 stations depending on how many coaches you have - or just parents willing to volunteer - and you move them around.  An intense hour of that non-stop and they are good to go.  

I spent 10 years doing that and much of it I still remember, what I've forgotten I would quickly get back.  

As for today, it started early as most of them do.  I have 1 run I'm currently on and 4 more in the tablet.  There is only one run that starts late, I don't remember which day, not really interested in late starts but since all the rest of them are early, I won't complain too much.  

I ordered off of Ebay a 10 box set of dog poop bags for the doggy park.  The ad says 10 boxes, the boxes are 200 count, it should have said 2,000 bags.  Instead, it says 6,000.  Honest error there, no biggies. However, they shipped me one single box of 200. I paid $47, I want all of it.  However,  Ebay didn't have a return tab available yet since they just arrived, I started a return. They can have their single box back, I want my money back.  

We'll see how that goes, meanwhile I can't keep waiting, the doggy park ran out of bags yesterday.  So, Chewy it was.  Better price than anything on Ebay anyway, excepting this set of bags.

I finally got to the front yard today. It was just too much.  You know, pushing a lawn mower is good exercise.  

I'm tired, therefore not terribly chatty right now.  A person called today saying that they were at the park, can we move in?  I was driving, I didn't have my laptop with me and I had no idea if I could accept a full timer in today or not.  Long conversation - they wanted to chat, I didn't feel like it but I obliged.  A few hours later, they are at the park again, they want in! Lol, I told her I was at Kroger's, I'd be at my computer in 20 minutes.

Well, they are still sitting at the park.  Haven't seen anyone so determined to move in like that before.  I got home, checked, saw that I could get them in, I have a 2 week stay leaving before I'll need a second lot available and I really hate turning long term away, I try to "figure it out" if it's at all possible.  I call her back, she says great, where do we pay? I'll get the money later, I'm busy atm, you can just go ahead and move in. 

It wasn't 15 minutes? later and there was a travel trailer being pulled in and they were backing it into lot 9.  

Yesterday.  Up to Gurdon, 2 hours to unload - it's this trailer, I can't do anything about it, it's going to take at least an hour and 45 minutes every time and there's nothing I can do about it.  Hope I get into a different trailer sooner or later. 

Down to El Dorado.  The lead mechanic is like, well we'll take a look and see how long it's going to take.  Oh? The manager said he just wanted me to switch trucks.  But, if you think you can get it done today....2 of them jumped right on it while basically telling me to go somewhere and come back in an hour.  They have a driver's lounge, I went in there, no one else around thankfully, and took a nap.  

They did a lot more than what I had asked for.  The oil leak was from a plug that had come out of the side of the fuel pump. The plug was wedged on top of something up against the engine block, the mechanic found it and just put it back in.  He said if he hadn't been able to find it, they wouldn't have been able to fix that yesterday.  Anyway, oil change, oil leak, AC, giant pin that hold the front end assembly together, light, hood cable, annual inspection, new windshield wiper blades and more and they were done.  

2 of them had jumped all over it and got it done pretty quickly considering the amount of work they had done.  I was happy to not have to switch trucks, especially after they told me "yes, that truck can go, but it's pretty bad inside, it hasn't been cleaned out".  The mechanics are cool people, we hit it right off.  Once I came back from my hour respite, we talked for quite a bit longer than that while they were working on the truck.  It was after 6:00 pm when I got back and even tho it was late and I started early, I was happy to get it over with and not have to go up there again, at least not for now.

They also recommended using an ozone generator to get rid of cigarette smoke smell inside of the camper.  We got onto that discussion somehow. They said they use them all the time and the work miracles, especially on cigarette smoke smell.  They were surprised I even knew what it was, I just said well I've been researching the best way to get the smell out and I read about it on an RV group Facebook forum.

Well, it's getting late and I want to head off to bed.  I made lunch for tomorrow, definitely don't want to deal with that at 6:00 am.  

Oh, and Medieval Times is set for next month.  It's a field trip for the school.  I already have the day scheduled off for it.  The 9 year old is going on a school bus, I have to drive over there, the only drawback to it.  But still, it's highly rated and people say it's a lot of fun.  Mom and dad couldn't go, they are both busy and asked if I wanted to? 154 miles, 2 hours and 15 minute drive.  

It's in Dallas.  I don't miss big cities anymore, but they do have offerings you don't find elsewhere.  Like, once in a while, a big city is fine.  Living in them? I doubt I'll ever go back to that unless I am somehow forced to do so.  Of course, if I had started an RV park 35 years ago when I first started thinking about it, in Phoenix metro area, I'd be a very rich man right now.  

I'm seeing more and more RV park construction all over the place.  Sorry, I don't really think there is that big of a demand for it. There IS demand, but not THAT much.  I still marvel at how I ended up with the property I have now that I initially rejected.  

Uhh, yeah, I was going to bed.

G'nite. 

 Monday - afternoon

The oldest was in a very bad mood this morning.  Out of character and amazingly, the roles were reversed. The youngest was as happy as a bug in a rug, of which he normally is difficult to wake up, slow to get out of bed and often times moody. 

So much for a total of 9 days off for them.  

The alarm went off this morning and I was in a very deep sleep.  I could have slept for several more hours.  Took a while to get into the swing of things, but I was good to go by the time I got to the washout.  

The plant, however, a different story.  There was a crane service there that had blocked the loading bay with a bunch of scaffolding stuff and they had parked their vehicles in such a way that made it difficult to back in there while avoiding their trucks and trailer.  It took a while for them to get a forklift out there and and move that scaffolding stuff, why they would put that junk in an active loading bay? No idea.

The loader was in a bad mood, very visibly scowling and not having a good day. I said a quick prayer for him instead of condemning him.  I was sitting there an hour and 10 minutes before he even started loading the truck.  But, I was out of there in about 2 hours, nothing to really complain about, I just go in there with the hope that I might have a quick load and get out.  It was 2:00 by the time I got home, not terribly late.

I texted the dispatcher about the truck needing repaired after I looked at how much work they dumped in there.  12 consecutive days worth of work, I am not going to drive that long without getting the thing fixed.  My manager called 2 minutes later after that text.  We have 25 something or another and you can just get into that truck while they fix yours.

These people have no clue how much trouble it is to switch trucks.  Or the huge inconvenience it is to do so. MOST drivers in the trucking industry despise slip-seating, which is the practice of a trucking company to not have assigned trucks for the drivers and they are constantly moving from one truck to another.  This is a little different, switching temporarily to get my truck fixed, so much for sitting around and waiting for them to do it. 

As much as I hate the sound of that, I hate the sound of switching trucks even more.  So I'm supposed to drive over there after delivery tomorrow, it will add hours to  the trip. It adds another hour and forty-five minutes to the drive time, plus switching stuff out between trucks, plus discussing with the lead mechanic what's wrong with it and please fix it all and fix it correctly this time.  The AC, specifically, was given what amounts to a band-aid last time and called it good.  

But I can't keep driving this truck like this, so I just have to suck-it-up-buttercup and take it over there.  

____________

Many hours later.  I am considering getting up even earlier than normal to get up to Gurdon early enough to get out of there - earlier than normal - and get moving towards El Dorado. I really would like not to have tomorrow drag on literally ALL day long concerning work factor.  

 Sunday - early

20 minutes until departure time.  I don't much care for delivery on Sundays for it takes a while to get security to the scale to open up the scale, print my weight and then I can go offload - and then come back and wait again.  

It has rained so much that when I got back to the park yesterday, I drove through the park instead of down the main driveway, turned around and backed into my spot versus driving to the end of the driveway and potentially getting stuck.  

I've got 2 more runs scheduled after this and then on Friday, if they are available, I need them to fix this truck.  

The latest report on the many ways the government went wrong with their approach to Covid 19 is out and the governments from Feds to local governments basically blasted for their approach.  We all knew this.  No, we didn't all know this.  The government is always right!.. people blasted anyone that spoke a differing opinion, qualified doctors with a different view of it were silenced and we were all silenced on social medial, most notably Facebook, for saying anything different than what Lord Fauci had to say about it. 

It was an unprecedented and outrageous period of time where the spectacle of governments with unfettered "emergency powers" told everyone to stay home, shut down business, wear masks, shut down schools, etc. We were called conspiracy theorists and lunatics at the time for saying something different.  Well here we are, and now they predict that the effect on school children will have impact on society for decades to come. 

Meanwhile, we have an illegal "immigrant",  more properly titled illegal alien, who was the cause of a Sheriff deputy death was let go because "no speaka" and didn't understand what they were trying to tell him to do.  If you went to Guatemala, where this man is from and the police were trying to arrest you and you resisted, do you think you'd be walking a free man out of the jail house after causing an officer's death?

Yeah, I think not. And here comes the conspiracy theories again, at least what leftists say: WHO, exactly is coming across the border that has escaped capture and roaming free on the streets of America?  We already know some crazy Venezuelan gang is running loose in our nation.  But talk of terrorists cell groups isn't exactly conspiracy theories when you start looking at the startling amount of "gotaways", they call them.

Back to reality. The kids came home, the grandparents with them, of course.  The kids wouldn't leave me alone but I knew that would happen. 

Well, time to go. I can hear the rain dripping off the roof onto the window ac unit in my room.  

G'day.  

 Saturday - early

Got up, took a shower and then realized - check the damn tablet.  Did they pull another cancellation on me? The answer is, no, I just looked for I just got out of the bathroom. 

Apparently it's St. Patrick's day, the news just informed me. I rarely turn on the tv in these early morning hours before work, but wanted to see the headlines.  It's just another excuse for people to get rip-roaring drunk on green beer.  No thank you.  

So, I should be going for the next - 6 days? I think is what's in there.  After that, I want to take the truck up there and have them fix everything.  It will be a get-up-early day, get up there early and hope they can get it done quickly.  But I figure several hours at least, so I will take my laptop for entertainment and online work purposes.  

It's supposed to rain again today around 1ish-2ish.  Good for the grass seed? Sure if it isn't already washed out lol. 

I dunno, my head is a bit foggy this morning, I'll move on with this one and do some more later.  

Time to go anyway.

G'day 

 Friday - late morning

It rained half the night last night and we're talking a major downpour.  My pond was at least 5 inches below the top and now it's completely full and obviously was running over the sides of it.  Nice, fresh rainwater for the fish and the dogs! Yes, the dogs drink out of it.  In fact, they like it so much I don't even put a bucket of fresh water out there anymore, they just drink straight from the pond.  

Anyway, I slept in.  Til about 9:00 am. 2 days off that I didn't expect, rainy days are good days to sleep in and just enjoy the luxury of not being forced to do something that you probably didn't want to do anyway. I will be back to trucking tomorrow morning- unless they pull another trick on me.  I just checked the tablet, it's all still the same after they changed it to drop the last load.

With the check from the AG loan company, I can go pay the rest of the property taxes.  I might do that today just to get it over with.  I was expecting to have to pay myself a grand or so out of it, it appears I won't have to do that and I will get another paycheck before I run out of money in the personal account.  Now, that paycheck probably won't be so much, but hopefully it will be enough to hold me over until the new pay scale is put into place and I can start making some decent money and not living paycheck-to-paycheck.  

I guess that's not an absolute, I always have money in the business checking account to pay myself with when it becomes absolutely necessary.

Today? Well, I got the monitor and I hooked it up here, at my desk at the house to make sure it works. It's bigger than the old one so I'm just going to keep the new one here and take the old one over to use for the surveillance system.  I still don't get why I must have a monitor. The system has an app for my phone, which I installed but it wouldn't let me get past a certain point in the setup stage without being able to take a pic of a QR code.  I guess it's a safeguard to keep anyone else from accessing it, just think it's more than needed. I already had to verify the account by confirming the email account was mine.  

Then there's that pole that I just left there to - rot, lol.  I stopped because the people that came in for a couple of weeks need relative quiet to do their work-from-home job and I was going to be making a lot of noise cutting the board and putting in the screws. The workaround is to move the posts to the shed, get the setup completed there and then install the post into the ground.  

Yeah, that means hooking up the trailer to move it over there or carrying those posts all the way to the shed.  

 I'm afraid it rained too hard and too long last night for the grass seed. Meaning flowing water probably carried a lot of it away.  I "wanted" a light rain to get everything wet but no flooding.  Rest assured there was a lot of water flowing through both sides and that isn't good. However, I do expect the seed that ended up in the existing grass to be able to do something other than flow away and seed the area behind the west side trailers.  I guess I'll have bermuda grass out there!  Lol.  

Nope, I'm not going to sit around watering the stuff. It's too much time and work involved. If it grows, it grows, if it doesn't, it doesn't and another summer of mostly barren lots with no grass and a lot of dirt.  Not idea, not even close, I'm just not that motivated to be walking around all day long watering everything.  It's going to rain again later on today and tomorrow forecast even more.  Give it 7 days or so and see if anything comes of it and make a decision then.

I've got a 2 night stay coming in today sometime, I will have 2 lots open tho even with that 2 night stay.  I've run the Facebook boost ad and it only netted a couple of calls from people saying they were interested and even 2 of them showing up at the park, but didn't convert into anyone moving in. Disappointing at best.  I'm undecided as to whether I should run another ad.  Google is actually the best resource for new customers, but running ads through them is expensive.  I can say throwing away $20 for a Facebook ad, I can't see throwing away $100 or more on Google and potentially getting nothing out of it.

It may just be a dry season for people moving into the area.  It may be that I'm being undercut by someone, somewhere, potentially that new park.  I haven't check other's rates in about a month so i guess it's about time to go through all of that and see who is doing what.  I will not lower my rates any lower than they already are, I don't care if I don't get anyone new at all.  It's not worth being in business to just barely be scrape by.  People will have those AC's cranking  - they already are actually but the temps aren't that high - and summer is coming.  I'll face up to $2,500 per month electric bills. I'd rather have less people in the park than more who aren't paying enough to make a decent profit.  It's just my thinking for right now.  I know I'm one of the cheapest in the area.  

I'll probably keep it there for a while, brand recognition is what I am shooting for. In other words, I need to be around for a couple of years or even longer to get that recognition.  Word of mouth helps and I am getting a much larger share of the overnighters than I was getting last year.  It just takes time and now - hopefully - that I am set to get more money for the trucking job - I can deal with that.  

My goal at this point is to save up 20 grand in the business account for a down payment on a loan. Or more, maybe, depending on how much of a loan I want to get.  The other option I have discussed endlessly: just start building out as the money is saved up for each phase of the expansion.  I have no idea about that right now, I'm just trying to get this ship on the right financial track.  

And it's raining again.  The forecast? Showed no rain until much later on today, lol.  Now it's showing a medium to heavy rainfall going on until around 1.

So, that gives me the excuse to not deal with that pole today. I really don't want to do that right now and I certainly won't do it out in the rain.

As for right now? I guess I'll start working on bookkeeping. 

 Wait, one more thing today! 

I gave that giant dog a bath!  

It is 80 degrees outside, that dog smells HORRIBLE.  It was FAR past due time, I just haven't done it because it's been too cold.  NOT TODAY!! 

It is actually the first bath I've ever given him.

I give him an A+ for his participation.

Instead of fighting me about it, he just stood there the entire time while I soaked him nicely with water all over and then scrubbed him down with shampoo.  Washed it all off and the let him run free as the driven wind to shake it all off. 

Of course, the animal immediately started rolling in the grass, which I made him stop doing.  

He will be getting bathed once a week now that better weather, or at warmer weather I should say, is finally here.  We have thunder storms coming tonight so I dunno if that's "better" by any standard. 

 I'm being entirely too wordy today, but I just had to mention this.  I was trying to put the surveillance system together, right? And I needed a monitor for the system. So I found one on Marketplace and the guy is bringing it over and selling me the cord as well (those are never included unless you're buying brand new then they have one in the box) for $5 which is cheap. 

Okay, so I have to go to the bank to get cash out. I pulled out the mail from the mailbox on the way to my vehicle and lo and behold:  A letter from the AG lender for my property.  It's a non-profit, once a year they send out checks to everyone for whatever is "left over"  after all expenses are paid. It was $614!  This couldn't have come at a better time!  

I took that check up there, deposited it, got out the cash and now I'm sitting pretty enough with enough cash in the personal account to last until my next paycheck. I won't need to take any money out of the business account this month for personal paycheck! yayyy!  That turns this property tax nonsense into a completely doable situation. I'm still going to wait until my next paycheck anyway, just to ensure I have money laying around in case "something" happens, but I'm not sweating this now.  The entire bill will be paid by the end of the month and that will be that. Over with until the beginning of next year....

IF I can save $300 per month out of business account for this junk, I won't be caught red handed the beginning of next year.  I KNEW this was going to happen this time around, there was not a lot I could do about it - well I could have started working a job sooner I guess.  What's done is done, let's move on.  In fact, I knew I was going to be screwed for money quite a while before I actually ran out.  I mentioned in this blog that I expected to run out of money in September of last year and that's why I went looking for a job.  It's exactly what happened. That first paycheck I got was quite healthy for it included a 2,500 mile drive and weeks worth of work. 

It came at the exact time I absolutely needed it.  Just like this check today, I knew it was coming sooner or later, they do this every year.  I just didn't know when. Today was THE day I needed that check, even tho I wasn't exactly expecting that blessing to be sitting in our mailbox, it was indeed there, and I think it's a good time to thank the Good Lord for taking care of my needs.  Thank you Jesus!  Amen and amen.  

I'm just sitting here waiting on this guy to show up, I need to run over to the park and collect some money from overnighters.  These seniors - like much older than me in their late 70's and 80's - like to pay for everything in cash.  The generation they grew up with, I have no problem with that except it makes me have to drive over there after I was already there today.  I guess I could finish setting up the surveillance system if/when this dude shows up. 

What else...well, we've been enjoying a quiet house since Sunday.  It will continue on until sometime Saturday, but probably mid to late afternoon.  Unless they change it yet again, I will be going down to Lufkin to load on Saturday. So, tomorrow is off.  The dude just texted me he's on his way over, I think I will just finish up that project tomorrow instead of today.  Don't really feel like it at this point.  I don't hate going to the park, per se, at the same time I'm not a fan of multiple trips per day.  Sometimes it's necessary, if I don't go get that money from these overnighters, their stay will be free.  I saw the rig they drove in with their new 4 door pickup and a very nice bumper pull trailer, they have money lol.  

Ok enough for now.  I'm just a little bit excited about this pay raise.  Things will start to get much better in the financial department.  

Well that was fun. Not.

I know there are 2 separate places to pay taxes, one at the ISD and the other at the County.....I thought they had the entire amount owed on one site.  I thought wrong. The $1,900? That's what I owe the ISD, that doesn't include the $722 I just paid to the county. Now, that includes a late fee and 3 other properties, but the other properties only amounted to $32 worth, they're undeveloped and not worth that much.  

So, that was a blow.  I paid the county, I did not pay the ISD yet. Entirely outrageous tax rate for a county whose seat is only 23,000 people and not that much of anything out here, really.  I have decided to wait until my next paycheck and then I will probably pay around $1,200 of it out of the business account and the rest? I"m going to have to put on a credit card. There is no way I am going to go into next month where they will add $175 to the bill for a penalty fee.  

After my pay raise, I will be able to just keep the money in the account for any profit and that will fund the property taxes and insurance at the end of the year.   

It's basically making me rethink my overnight prices.  I might raise them at least a couple of dollars per per night.  I already did that once and it didn't affect occupancy, people are using the lots I have available right now.  I have 4 available and 3 of them have temp people in them.  One is coming tonight for overnight.  

My monthly prices are also low, I just can't charge higher, I won't get anyone in.  I had a guy call me 2 days ago complaining about other parks in the area and how "high" their prices were.  He thought $450 was outrageous.  Might be a bit high if electricity weren't included, but, electricity IS included in their price, I know because we talk occasionally.  I didn't want to waste time with him, he's likely found out by now that everyone charges at least that much and some much higher.  I mean, you are giving them the spot to park on, electricity, water, sewer, trash and WiFi.  

The lady contacted me again today - this is the one with the German Shepherd puppy - and said she found 3 piles of dog poop in the park.  I looked last night before I left, there was nothing in there.  The tent lady is gone, so it's not her dog as they continued to allege.  This is why I couldn't do anything about it, I had no proof.  And now I'm glad I didn't. I didn't throw those people out, they left on their own volition and left me hanging.

So, I am pretty sure whose dogs are doing it and I am going to have a discussion with them about it.  

However.....I just went and started hooking up the new surveillance system. Just one camera for now with an extension cord instead of going through the trouble of installing outlets.  It is aimed directly at the park and it's kind of hidden on the shed.  I don't want to tell anyone it's up there, hopefully they won't see it.  

Unfortunately, it needs a monitor, I didn't know that I figured I could just use my phone, but it requires a monitor to set it up.  Already found a used one on Marketplace, I can just keep it over there.  

Anyway, that's today doings so far. I'm not done yet, I just came home to get some lunch.  

 So. 

The manager calls me. At 8:30 am.  Now, on the first part of this run, I would already be at the washout getting the tanker washed out by that time.  Oh, we had 2 load cancellations, he tells me.  Yea, I went and got everything ready to go this morning, then go into the tablet and found the load gone.

This happened last night, they didn't bother to give me a head's up.  By the way Mr. Trucker?  Yes, you don't need to get up at 5:30 am. I do have an inkling of an idea of why.  The other driver said yesterday that when he arrived up there to offload, they told him they were having a glue problem and wouldn't be able to get to him right away.  

Yeah, well one tank was completely full when I was up there and after I was done offloading, there was probably enough for one more load in the other tank.  

There was good news, tho, in that phone call, I won't lie.  He told me he was finally able to get to the pay raise and that he was going to give me X amount per load (just not gonna say what I'm getting paid on here for a variety of reasons) and that would be a substantial raise by going per load instead of per mile.

I did a little quick math in my head and figured it would be anywhere from $1,200 to $1,500 more per month. This is exactly what I have been needing from them.  Actual pay, not some pauper's pittance.  Ok, it wasn't quite that bad, but you get the picture.  It isn't a done deal yet, he - my manager - has to get permission from the CEO, but the parameters of pay for the drivers falls in my manager's lap for the drivers he is over.

In other words, he is given X amount of money to pay everyone, out of that pool he has to figure out who gets what and who might get a raise and who won't.  He strictly forbade me to discuss my pay with anyone else.  Rightfully so, I suspect I will be making a lot more than my trainer driver, tho I have encouraged him to ask for a raise as well.  He doesn't know I'm getting more money and I'm not telling him. I have no desire to mess up what very well may turn into a lucrative and very good setup for me, finally, after all the hell I've been through with this company. 

IF the amount of the raise equals to about another $1,000 give or take per month in net pay, I will no longer have to take pay from the business account.  And therefore, no longer pay taxes on those self-written checks.  Remember, I am an LLC and I don't pay Federal taxes if I'm not paying anyone including myself.  If it just sits in there and grows, that's not taxable.  It's business money and it will be used for business purposes.  This is what I have been wanting to happen for several months now.   This is entirely good news, regardless of the bad start today had.  

He said the new pay would start in April.  So, one more check of these low wages and then the new pay structure begins.   There will be no more detention pay - which doesn't bother me because with detention pay I wasn't making much.  It helps a little, but nothing like an actual pay raise that is substantial such as this is going to be.  

On to other things.  A man made a reservation through HipCamp for the tenting area and then 15 minutes later, cancelled it saying "inaccurate description".  Huh?  Inaccurate description of what, exactly? So I wrote him and asked what the alleged deception is?  He writes back and says that I have the town name correct, but in the wrong state. Arkansas instead of Texas.  Huh?  No way.  I didn't believe that for even a millisecond and went straight to the HipCamp software to check it out.  And I was correct: it doesn't say anything  about Arkansas.  To further cement my conclusion, I went into incognito browser on Google - meaning I would be visiting my HipCamp site like anyone else and not showing all the "host" stuff on there. Plain as day, it has the entire address including TEXAS. 

I wrote him back and informed him he was incorrect.  I don't care if he cancels a reservation, but making a claim like that? Please.  

6 rats so far.  I thought they were mice but upon closer observation, those aren't mice in those glue traps inside of that coach. Those are baby rats.  Rats have disgusting tails that are really cringeworthy, at least to me.  I put in 4 more glue traps and left those traps be, still room for more on those other ones, come join your brothers and sisters! By the way, mama, you are invited too!  I haven't caught the mama yet.  I'm going to blast that thing with fumigant again today.  It wasn't just rats, honey, there were cockroaches in there as well.  They came crawling out when I set off those bombs and many of them are on the glue traps as well. 

I am not going to bother doing anything to that coach until I am sure that all of the infestation of rats and roaches and whatever else is out of there.  Just a waste of time to do anything with it until that is completed.  The carpet - new carpet - will have to be thrown in the dumpster and I'll probably chuck the fridge as well. It's disgusting.  It works, but it's totally puke-worthy.  I mean, how could those people live in such squalor? The beds are getting thrown out as well.  Then it will be scrubbed with a soapy bleach mixture as well as vacuuming everything and throwing all their junk out.  Ridiculous.

I think the family of 5 should be pleased today.  They are in town for their daughter's acrobat tournament. They thought it was going to rain today - we ALL thought it was going to rain today. You know, those things called forecasts?  Yea, that completely changed. Now it's showing rain after midnight tonight. 

The family thought it was going to rain all day long today, they are outdoorsy type people, very active the entire lot of them.  The kids love going into the woods on the trails and have named some of the spots, lol.  They are leaving tomorrow, but at least they won't all be cramped up inside that little trailer all day long.  They had a bunch of people over yesterday evening.  I was leaving the park and there was a group of them out there and yes, they did ask for permission first. 

If I would have thought about it, I probably would have taken the truck up to El Dorado today to get it fixed.  Actually, I did think about it and thought, well, I can't go up there without them telling me if they can get to it today. The man told me he can't tomorrow/Friday, he has a day off. And they don't work weekends.  So It's going to have to be next week.  I dread having to sit up there for untold hours waiting on them to fix everything, but that's what they say they intend to do.

That will be a long day. 

The power bill cleared the bank and upon looking at my finances, yes, I am pretty sure I can pay the property tax this month.  Waiting for the trucking paycheck to come in on the 22cd before I make that move.  I have to take a paycheck out of the business account today - I have no choice in the matter. Take the money or bounce auto-pays.  Otherwise I would just go up and pay it today.  If I do that, that only leaves $600 in that account after taking a paycheck.  

Hmm. Going over my prior activity, I don't actually have any more payments this month for the business account.  I could go ahead and get this over with today. $600 is enough to cover any emergencies.  

Wait what?  It's showing I only owe $1,900 and that is with the penalty incurred for late pay.  Huh?  The last time I check, and yes I scrutinized it, it showed I owe $2,400. Now THAT is doable today. That leaves me over $1,200 in the business account even after paying myself, I'm good to go, that is today's "project", tho it usually doesn't take very long.  I just didn't want to leave myself too short on available finances in case something comes up.  There is nothing I can think of that would cost me more than $1,200 or even anything close to it.  Frees up money to get more grass seed, but again, I'm waiting on the results of what I just spread before I spend more money on that stuff. It's just too expensive to take that kind of gamble on it working or not.  I could buy stuff for the coach, but again, we aren't anywhere near that yet.  I don't know how long it's going to take to get all of those rats out of there, just going to buy more glue traps if these new ones get filled up and bomb the starlit Jupiter out of that thing. 

What is really amazing about this, is that my house in AZ is valued more than my property yet the taxes are something like $800 less per year.  My property is in the county, outside of city limits, the city itself is only like 23,000 population, but they feel the need to tax citizens this high?  What are they doing with all of this money? Because rest assured, it's not being used to fix any roads.  

 Lovely.

Just absolutely wonderful.

These people.  

They change runs frequently on me and usually say nothing about it.  Exactly what happened apparently last night.  I get to the park, turn on the truck, lights, etc, do a pre trip, get logged in, go the loads on the table and there it was.

No run today or tomorrow, working the weekend.  I was originally scheduled for 10 days in a row, trust me, I check this stuff all the time now that I know they are just going to change things up. 

I guess I should have checked this morning before leaving here and no, they didn't give me any notice that they had changed it yet again.

Irritating? Oh yes.  Ridiculous, actually.  

Because of daylight savings, it's still dark outside so I just decided to go home and now, this entry and then? I'm just going to plop my butt back in bed for a few hours.  Might as well.  I've got plenty to do over there but I wouldn't dare start making that kind of noise in the dark and this early. Talk about a good way to piss people off. 

Maybe I'll write some more later. 

Thursday - early

Well, I guess the rain today isn't going to happen, but it allegedly is going to start later tonight at around 2 am.  That will likely change as well, I need a nice, light but steady rain to come down and get the grass seed nicely saturated, for yes, I did put that 15 pound bag down yesterday.

It covered most of 14 lots.  I'd need another bag to cover everything.  I'm not doing that, yet, I'll see what happens with this $83 15 pound bag.  If it works, I will probably get another one but that's too much money to gamble  getting another bag before seeing what kinds of results I am going to get.  

IF everything stays the same, I should be able to make that property tax payment before the end of this month.  I think there is one more payment coming out of that business account this month, the rest I can spend on the property tax and, unfortunately, having to pay myself.  I'm wanting to my trucking pay to the point I don't need to pay myself out of the business account and just save that money for expansion or loan down payment, either-or. 

They don't seem too keen on collateral loans in this current lending atmosphere.  I'm not keen on high interest rates and wouldn't do it right now anyway.  I'm trying to pay down debt as it stands, not get into more of it.  

Anyway, I have no choice but to take a check out of the business account in order to stay afloat.  I'm gonig to dump Verizon here pretty quick as soon as I can afford to pay off the phone - it's down to $239 owed on it - and then I won't be spending any more on phone service for I already have it covered under the T Mobile plan for almost nothing more than what I am already paying for the other services.  

Well, I got started late today, it's time to go - Nacogdoches and Lufkin that is.

G'day. 

 Wednesday - early\

The motorcycle was fired up and woke up up out of a dead sleep.  Sleeping tracker showed it was a light sleep, I begged to differ with it.  I looked at the clock: 5:27 am.  I was so out of it, I set the alarm to go off at 5:45 instead of the 5:30 I had it at.  It was a waste of time, I knew I couldn't get back to sleep just got my @$$ out of bed, took a shower, got my coffee and that was and is that.

On the docket today, up to Gurdon, deliver the glue and back.  I'm not sure what I will do at the park, it really depends on how I feel once I pull back into the driveway.  I've had an amazing amount of energy the last several days and the only thing I can think of is the multi-vitamins I started taking.  I haven't taken those in quite a while..I think Keto might have left me deficient on some vitamins/minerals is the reason I started taking them again.  

Who knows, but on the way out of the park yesterday, the lady of the family that has been staying there quite a while approached me.  It looked like she was doing spring cleaning, but that wasn't the case at all.  Her toilet had overflowed unbeknownst to them and flooded the entire trailer. This is a newer trailer, btw, not old junk. Newer trailers tend to have poor craftsmanship and cheap parts installed nowadays. I have read enough material about it to understand that if you want to buy a good trailer, you are better off buying a used one that the person has taken care of, they went through the problems that the trailer had and got them fixed.

Oh, well yesterday I also mowed the doggy park. It had clumps of grass that had grown very tall and there was dog poop hidden in some of that.  The old man approached me about the dog poop over by his trailer and didn't try to argue about it.  He simply stated he's old and it's hard for him to pick it up, they are getting a pooper scooper.  I sympathize getting old, I do not sympathize leaving piles and piles of dog poop laying all over the place.  If you can't pick it up, DON'T HAVE A DOG!    Sorry if that sounds uncaring, but they have 2 dogs and one of them is a husky puppy. It's going to grow much bigger and so is it's waste.  

I really don't know what this guy was thinking, like I would never see it?  Or that I would somehow give it a pass? Or worse, that I would clean it up for them? 

Looks like my morning coffee time is already almost over.  Not really feeling it today, just don't feel like going anywhere much less driving a truck to Arkansas and back.

Oh well.

G'day. 

 Tuesday - early

You know, some nights sleep is so poor and you wake up yet once again, you might as well just get out of bed.  So, instead of getting out of bed at 5:30, I got up at 5. 

I think it was all the physical exertion yesterday.  It took a long time to get to sleep and I kept waking up.  Digging out that post hole was no small effort, topped with mowing almost everything along with a trip to Lowe's and later on, a trip to Walmart, dealing with people, lots of people, it just went on and on yesterday.  

Also included texting a person about their dogs pooping and them not cleaning it up.  I was push mowing that giant yard next to lot 1 and saw pile after pile of dog poop. Small dogs, not obvious from a distance, but amazingly ridiculous to think that man can bring those dogs out, let them shit everywhere and not clean it up. 

My text was pretty direct,, for this is a pet peeve of mine.  "I do not clean up other people's dog poop.  When you take your dog out to let it do it's duty, it is fully expected that you will immediately clean it up." etc.  

The couple staying for 2 weeks said something in gentle terms about the guy next door, who plays his music and/or video games obnoxiously loud. So, I texted him as well.  Please turn it down a couple notches.  He was cool with it, I haven't heard anything - yet - from these people so we'll see.

Then there was the ant hills.  I was mowing and noticed them on one of the pads itself.  So I was going to get to it before the next people came in, but, they showed up before I got the grass mowed.  It's a family of 5 in a rather small trailer, lol. With a dog.  They also asked for a picnic table. They were here last year for the same thing: their daughter is an acrobat and is competing in a tournament at one of the local universities.  I dealt with that -that was the trip to Walmart in fact.  I am not going to concern myself with every ant hill out there, that's too much, but I will deal with it ON the pads themselves or possible in the lots next to the pads.  

I did, indeed, buy a bag of Bermuda grass seed yesterday. This was a bag big enough to cover 15,000 square feet, or so it says.  It is not a 50 pound bag, it's much smaller.  I guess that seed has a lot more coverage than the same amount of rye grass seed.

I'll put that out tomorrow.  I am still working on that pole for the router.  The 4x4's are out there, I just need to connect them together and put it in the hole. Yeah, that couple that came in? They work out of their rather large 5th wheel and I will accommodate the man in not making too much noise next to his rig, that's where this setup is.  I actually wanted them in the available pull through lot tho. Too late!

So today? Just truck down to Nacogdoches, wash out the trailer, over to Lufkin, fill the trailer and come back. IF the schedule holds out, it will go on like that the next 10 days.  Every time they try to load me up with this much work? It always fails. Something happens along the line and that is the end of that.  I don't wish it, working this job is necessary for now.  

I can tell ya that when I get back today? It will be up in the air if I actually do anything else. Not with the sleep I had tonight.  The lack of it, I should say.  I get naptime in Lufkin tho. The driver's seat is pretty comfortable and it reclines as far back as I want it to go. I usually sit there a while before they even start loading it and then 50 minutes to an hour or longer to load.  It makes no sense, the same product taking 50 minutes 1 day and then an hour and 15 minutes the next time.  Cold has something to do with it, the product thickens up considerably in colder weather and obviously makes it slower to move.

Anyway, it's time to get the thermos filled with hot coffee, get a lunch together and get out of here.

G'day

 Monday not-so-early

Woke up in the middle of the night and it was hours before I could get back to sleep.

I was lucky I didn't have to work today, that would have been miserable.  Instead, I did eventually get back to sleep and I didn't bother getting out of bed until almost 9:00 am.

A text awaiting me: Are you working this weekend?  They at least ask me now.  I'll do what originally was agreed upon: work one weekend, off the next.  So I said yes and they have already loaded my tablet up into next week.  Working every day.  I'm going to find out about this idea of getting paid more this next check, allegedly.  

We'll see.  I thought it was going to be the last check I got on the 7th.  

It was "supposed" to rain this morning, at least what it showed while I was unwittingly awake last night, now it's completely changed to maybe a little rain at noon.  I only say that because I still plan to go get that post and cement, take it over to the park and attempt to dig the hole.  I do have a post hole digger.  

The hard part, of course, is digging out that hole, otherwise it's a fairly simple process.  I've dug enough post holes in that ground to understand it's both digging into roots and digging into the clay that makes it difficult.  

Anyway, I'll look at grass seed prices while I'm there. Maybe I can get a smaller bag and cover some of the park instead of leaving the entire place barren.  

There is nothing else, really. The kids are gone, there is peace and quiet in the house, in fact it was so quiet last night, everyone was commenting on it.  Not that anyone misses it and that was also verbalized.  Like, the youngest especially getting mad at everything. An aunt bought him a headset with microphone for playing his online games, it's very likely going to get much worse with him getting mad at other players.

Personally, I won't stand it, if he's yelling loudly and disrupting the entire house I'll go out there and tell him to zip it if the parents haven't already done that.  Which they normally do, but sometimes it goes on for a while and then I just go out and make him stop.  It's a game, it's not life and death.  They're not allowed to play games that much, thankfully.  Never during the week and limited on the weekends.  

If my business account doesn't go down too much besides paying the electric bill, I should be able to afford the property taxes later on this month after i get a paycheck.  We'll see, but this month it's getting paid regardless, I will find a way to pay them and that will be that.  More debt isn't desirable, losing the property is far less desirable.  I'm trying to not have to do that, that's all I can say about it.  

On top of that is tax day coming up soon enough.  I haven't even started on that but I do expect to get a start this week with the kids gone.  Just a lot better environment to do such work in a quiet house where  you can concentrate without disruptions.  

I hooked the trailer up yesterday when I went to the park after going to church.  I'm ready to just drive straight up to Lowe's and hopefully, they do, indeed, have a 20 foot post.  That would really be optimal in getting well above the nearest trailers and broadcasting the signal to everything in the park.  If it works well, I may do it with the other router in the shed as well.  I wouldn't mind having better coverage behind the shed.  I do get hipcamp stuff in there here and there. 

A lot of Hipcamp lately, however, has been reserving regular lots.  This is why I jacked up my prices on Hipcamp, it's way too much of a loss to have cut throat prices on there even lower than what I'm normally charging through my campground reservation software.  I may up it a little more to get the profit where it needs to be considering people are using my electricity/hookups. 

I think that's about it and daylight hours are burning up. It's only 10:00 am, lol, but I'd like to get this project started and hopefully over with. I would like not to have to rent an auger machine to drill a hole, that's almost $200.  I will definitely try my bests to get that hole dug out without machinery, but it does, indeed, need to go down around 4 feet and that may be difficult.  

Oh, yesterday I was contemplating going to church early and attending one of the adult groups.  But I started thinking about it and continued on thinking about it after I went to church at the normal time, skipping that meeting.  

I know a lot of people who don't go to church because the church burned them.  We're talking about the treatment they received from people in the church, not because they thought the sermons were awful. This is a common theme and it's a wonder that people call themselves Christians and then turn around and treat their so-called brothers and sisters in Christ like that or even worse, the lost in such a mannger. Judgment and gossip.  Knives stuck in your back. I've had all of that and it's the main reason (there are other reasons as well) that I don't get involved with church at all.  Which in turn means why I haven't made a single friend there, I haven't tried and I haven't wanted to.

I have found that worldly people are much more genuine and down to earth AND treat you better than people in church, who are mostly putting on a show and attempting to make themselves look "better" than they really are. I make no such attempts, I am who I am and I don't try to hide my problems.  I don't necessarily discuss them all the time, that's my personal stuff, I just don't go around making myself to look like Saint Paul or Peter or one of the other disciples or claiming I'm the male version of Mother Theresa.  

I am not attempting to say every person in any given church is a pile of mayhem and chaos in fancy clothing, but there are enough people like that to sour the bunch for pretty much everyone that has left the church and declared they would never go back.  I wouldn't recommend my church to anyone, only for the fact that I have no idea how they treat people for I have not gotten involved - at all - with that church because yes, I have been burned by more than one church and I just am having trouble attempting to cross that bridge to go back into some sort of involvement.  

I may go to one of those meetings sooner or later, it will probably be a bit uncomfortable and if they ask me questions I am not going to sugar coat anything.  

Well, I got sidetracked and I need to get about the business of this day.  Tomorrow and the next many days after it is trucking, I'd like to get some stuff done today at the park beyond just that post. 

G'day.

 

 Sunday - morning

Time change.  I looked at the clock last night and realized I was losing an hour and it might as well be midnight versus the 11:00 pm it showed. So, I went to bed, waking up twice, but only for a few minutes and going right back to sleep.  9 hours of sleep.  

Kids are leaving today, I will relish the lack of bickering, fighting, screaming, crying and all the rest of it.  That isn't all they do, of course, but it's what stands out, especially when discussing having a whole week off from school, which basically started after school Friday and will continue on until next Monday morning.  Instead of being here, doing that nonsense all day long, they are going to grandmas and grandpas, where they will be endlessly spoiled, but they will start their s*** anyway, lol.

I intend on doing nothing today, tho I will go to church, I mean nothing in terms of work. Tomorrow, I will go hook up the trailer, go to Lowe's, get the 20 foot 4x4 and post hole cement and then I will have to try and dig out a 4 foot deep post hole. It's a challenge in digging out such a hole in this kind of dirt with all those old roots from trees that are gone, but the roots are definitely still there.

The movies.  Well, we went to see a movie 2 nights ago, we being the kids and I.  We sat down in our usual place, the very top row.  There were 2 large groups of teenagers, 1 on our right and 1 on the left.  I figured there would be a problem once the movie started, I was not wrong.

They continue right on with loud talking, completely ignoring the movie and making everyone mad, after the movie started. To the point another group of people lower down yelled at them, "Y'ALL NEED TO CHILL OUT!"  Who needs to chill out? the group of mouthy teens yelled back.  YOU! Well, that was ignored, of course and they kept on disrupting the movie.  I was tempted to tell them the same thing, but thought better of it. They would just mouth off to me as they had the others.

Instead, I went to the lobby, found a group of employees, asked for the manager. The lady said yes, can I help you? Yes, these teens in the theater are talking, making all kinds of noise, using their phones to do a strobe light type of thing, it's ridiculous. 

I went back into the theater and several minutes later, an employee came in and said something to both groups in such low tones I couldn't hear what they said. Yea, that didn't work either.  There was a surprise coming, tho, once that I did not expect at all.  A couple of minutes after that, a cop came in there, stood against the wall in plain view and - just stood there.  

All of the noise, flashing lights and mouthiness completely stopped.  That officer stood there the entire movie and not a further peep out of those kids.  I dunno, but I kind of think if they are going to let teens in without adult supervision, they need to have an employee monitoring them.  Whatever the case, I thanked the officer who had moved to the lobby after the movie was over - we just waited until everyone left before we got up - and he just nodded his head and said anything to help!

Sort of recapping Friday night, Saturday and now into Sunday.  My empty long term spots are, amazingly, being kept relatively filled up with overnighters, 2 nighters, etc.  If it could only stay that way, I wouldn't bother with long term at all.  Far more money to be made with short term stays if you can keep them coming.  I did have a person call me yesterday - she called from her car sitting in front of my amenities shed - asking about a lot? After the conversation was done, she said she'd be "calling you back". 

She never did.  I'm having trouble getting long term in there right now, no idea why but whatever.  They'll come eventually, just hopefully not too long.  The railroad guy said in a month he'd be coming back after his vacation, but I need a couple of long term, well at least one, now. 

Well, looks like almost time to get ready for church. No kids this week, they didn't go last week cause I was working and they probably won't be going next week either for I will likely be working as well.  I kind of don't like getting them started on something like that and then they are not being able to go for weeks' stretch at a time.  But, whatever, life dictates how things work out, schedules are nice but they are often times interrupted with reality.

 So, I want to pay off Verizon - it's still a little up there but I think I can manage it - the phone and then I can switch to T Mobile.  Get rid of Verizon - high priced nonsense I don't need.  T Mobile has good enough coverage and Verizon doesn't have any coverage up in Gurdon or the washout. It does have decent coverage in Lufkin.  Still, I want to give T Mobile a chance since I already have them and it's only going to add a little more every month to what I am already paying for the wifi and the cameras.  Literally, 2 phones added is only $60 more, I think it was.  My verizon bill is ridiculous and I want to get rid of it. 

I am looking for ways to decrease my monthly expenses and this is the most obvious one.

I have tried to find a service to bring down dumpster rental, especially after they jacked the price up, but now that they agreed to bring it down for 1 year under contract, I'm ok with it.  I can't get by without a dumpster there, it gets filled up every week or close to full. Usually full tho.  

I think my house in Phoenix should be able to use T Mobile gateway for internet as well. I am spending $200 a month for internet there.  Bringing it down to $50 a month would be wonderful.  

And I just saw that the shed will be paid off later on this year!  All of this will free up a good deal of money to - have actually.  Save or pay off debt, mostly I want to be able to pay my bills with paychecks and just leave the park money in the business account without taking any paychecks from it.  That way, I not only save up money for expansion or down payment on a loan, I also don't have to pay taxes on it.  

I wish I could do something about the water bill from the city of Phoenix, it's ridiculous.  Like, anywhere between $150 and $200 per month.  

Another thing that would be nice is if Texas would do away with property taxes. It was on the ballot for Republicans in the state that I voted in on Monday.  IT doesn't actually do anything, but it gives the Texas legislature the signal that we do, indeed, want to get rid of property taxes. I don't know if anything is going to come of that, there must be a reason they had it on the ballot.  Over 70% signaled yes, please get rid of it!  

I have not understood why property owners have to bear the brunt of paying for schools on the local level for some time now.  Property taxes and apparently the state throws money into it. Why doesn't everyone have to chip in? 

Anyway, the boys were begging to go see a movie that just came out, so we are leaving in 10 minutes to go see it. I figure a good way to see them off, they are leaving for an entire week on Sunday with their grandma.  I do enjoy the time without kids asking endless questions, fighting with each other, stomping around the house, etc ad-infinitum. It allows me to have some peace and quiet to get some business work done as well. '

Monday, if my day off stands, well 2 days off actually, Sunday as well but I won't work on Sunday unless something has to be done, I am going to get a 20 foot tall 4X4 and stick it into the ground vertically and hook the Gateway wifi device up at the top of it.  This will give much better coverage to everyone and should eliminate the guy at the end who says he doesn't have enough reception to get it.  He is retired, he is sticking around and I want to make him happy.  He seems to like the place but he is definitely not happy about the wifi situation.

I texted him earlier and told him my plan to get the 4X4, dig a 4 foot deep hole, put it in there, put some post mix in there, let it dry up - that will take several days, get a long ladder, install the thing up there and see what happens. May have to get another extension cord, I'm just running an extension cord to the current one now. I see no need to run an actual line with outlet to it.  It's a lot of work to do that, tapping into a pedestal, digging a trench over to the pole.  I don't know that it's a permanent set up anyway and I don't know if it's going to work or not.  

We will see.  So, actually, he still won't be able to get a signal on Monday cause' I ain't climbing up 16 feet - how high it will be after sinking 4 feet into the ground - on a pole with concrete that hasn't yet set. 

I just mowed everything not long ago but you couldn't tell by looking. It's all popped up again.  Oh, this project won't cost much, maybe $35 for everything.  I already have extra extension cords if one is needed beyond what I already am using. 

A simple fix to make a person happy? Yes, hopefully they stay but it should up the reception for everyone that is using that router.  

Well, that's that.  I have the movie to go to and then go to bed, for I have work and I am getting up at 5:30 am tomorrow.  Get up there around 9:00 am and hopefully be out of there by 11. This time, I am going to get up on the tanker before I go into the plant and make sure all of those lugs are secured tightly.

 Friday - morning, editing to load In Lufkin.

in Lufkin.

It dawned on me a Few minutes ago that with a Hipcamp reservation for tonight I need to fix that sewer outlets. So I will try to dig that thing out of there without breaking the PVC pipe, but the last time this happened, I ended up breaking the entire pipe and having to replace the adapter.

 So I will try to dig that thing out of there without breaking the PVC pipe, but the last time this happened, I ended up breaking the entire pipe and having to replace the adapter.

I have a two nighter coming in plus a 2 1/2 week or plus an overnighter coming in tonight to fill up all of my available spaces. I just really don’t like spending money right now on anything unless I absolutely have to. But you’re talking 20 bucks for the adapter you’re talking 20 bucks out of my pocket.

 I just really don’t like spending money right now on anything unless I absolutely have to. But you’re talking 20 bucks for the adapter you’re talking 20 bucks out of my pocket.

By the way, this post is being done with voice on my iPhone. it’s not bad actually. Voice translation is getting better. It just so happens and I completely forgot the glue traps to bring with me this morning. I hate making duplicate trips back-and-forth between the property. It’s just a waste of time and fuel. But today I may drive home, get them and go back to the property with them for I want to get this started.

I figured that if nothing else I can find someone to rent a unit temporarily while I decide what I want to do with it. I don’t really want to rent it because I become responsible for repairing anything that’s broken. But if I spell out in writing before, anyone moves in the things that are wrong with it, and that not going to be fixed, and they sign off on it, then I should be clear. it is likely that a person will want to use the restroom in the shed then trying to use the one in the coach. I should specify the shower, not that toilet. The toilet in the couch works fine and so does the holding tank and the line that the wastewater to the sewer outlet.

 the wastewater to the sewer outlet.

I’ve been looking at prices for you sofa, beds, or fold out couch type things and even futons and I figure I can get one relatively cheap. I haven’t gone to Ollies yet because it is just a waste of time right now, I don’t , want to start spending money on repairs to that thing until I have the mice out of there. I’m wondering if the feral cats that lives underneath the shed is feeding them? It must be eating something. I see it on the video surveillance all the time now. 

And now I haven’t had any new leads for someone to come in and take one of these spots for a longer term. Actually, if my dream were to come true, all the empty lots would just be rented out consecutively for overnighters or three or four day days and I wouldn’t need long-term and I would make much more money doing it.

Actually, if my dream were to come true, all the empty lots would just be rented out consecutively for overnighters or three or four day days and I wouldn’t need long-term and I would make much more money doing it.

Well, I don’t want to get too carried away with this post, for I can see that is messing up some of my words. And I’m not going to fix it, thank you.. 

 Thursday - evening

Honestly, I'm glad they're gone.  Leeches, I neither expected nor didn't expect them to give me any of that tax return money.  It was a wait and see proposition.  I waited, I saw.  It is people like this that sometimes make me have second thoughts about helping my fellow humans.  A thank you would have gone a long way.  She basically gave me the finger without actually giving me the finger.

I haven't done anything with it yet, just dug out the rat traps, I assume they'll work on mice, it's just a much larger glue trap.  I'll be placing those in there tomorrow after work.  I'm going to deal with the mouse problem before I do anything in there. No point cleaning or tearing stuff out until that is accomplished. I wonder if the bug bombs would flush them out of there?  Some say it won't, many say it will after reading several websites. Yup, I tend to get distracted while writing these blog entries lol.

They didn't seat the dome on top of the trailer - it's the giant lid they open in order to fill the tanker - correctly so the thing was leaking profusely when I started pumping air into it today.  It still held pressure but it took about an hour longer than it should have.  They don't allow anyone to climb up on anything higher than 4 feet at that place unless you have "fall protection".  Oh well, I got home at a little after 2, no biggies.

I've got one more run - down to Lufkin on Friday and up to Gurdon on Saturday and then 2 days off and then work again on Tuesday, at least as the current schedule stands.  

At this point, I believe it's going to be another Trump V Biden election.  It won't go down the same as last time, which was an "anything but Trump" election, hence we ended up with Biden.  Now, Biden is disliked by both republicans and some on the left, especially the far left (communists/progs) who are now dissing him for wanting to help Israel.  

Trump didn't start any new wars during his tenure, but the left is now trying to paint him as a warmonger that will get us into all kinds of war theaters with Russia, China and who knows who else, maybe Iran.  The problem you people have that want to paint Trump with some of these brushes of things you declare he will do is that he didn't do any of that stuff you predict he will do during his 4 years as President.  There is no good reason to believe otherwise. There are plenty of illegitimate reasons......

In fact, I have been reading quite a lot of Trump haters making all kinds of ridiculous statements.  I get it, you don't like Trump.  I don't particularly care for Biden and what he is doing to our nation with electric vehicle mandates, attempting to wipe out/drastically change natural gas appliances, making us dependent on foreign oil, hyper-inflation, prices at the grocery stores and everywhere else, etc.  His track record sucks, quite frankly.  I basically see Biden as trying to make America into a giant California. 

No idea how any of this will turn out or what other little devious plans the left has to attempt to oust Trump before election day.  As I said before, the left has made a political martyr out of Trump and they don't even see what they are doing.  The SCOTUS just trashed their idea of leaving him off of ballots.  They think they can get him thrown in jail.  They also want to make him go broke.  Trump may not have the greatest way of sharing what's on his mind, he isn't stupid and he did far better than Biden now that we can compare the 2's track record.  Oh, do you remember when the left wanted the electoral voters to change their vote? If we're going after people about attempting to illicitly change the outcome of an election, why aren't we going after them?  

Whatever.  Between the election, the border, the woke bs and the anti-semitism, media outlets are pretty whacko right now.  OH and Haley is out, she's been out she just didn't want to admit until after Super Tuesday where she was trounced.  BTW, I do hold it against Trump for signing off on and wanting multi-trillion dollar budget bills.  OR reconciliation, or whatever the freak they are calling it.  

I haven't had any hits on the coach yet and I haven't had any more hits on the 2, available, back-in sites.  I just think people are going to show at suddenly and they will be filled. When, I don't know but that seems to be how it happens. You start thinking it's now a dry season and then bam, people show up, want a spot and stay awhile.

I'm seeing new RV parks opening up all over the place in this region. I would like to hope they won't build any more in my town, who knows.  These people are building them right next to very busy highways.  Like, very noise highways.  No, I don't regret building my place off the beaten path but not that far off the beaten path.  

My hands are tied at the moment, I have no money for upgrades, a thing I would very much like to do. I'm struggling just to pay the property tax.  People have expressed over and over the desire for a pool and a jacuzzi.  Yup, I'd love to be able to offer it.....one can dream.  

Well, off to Lukin in the morning, early of course.  Hopefully back early and then can get some stuff done at the park. But, I have Monday off if I don't have time tomorrow for some of the things I need to get done. Which reminds me, the last dude at one of the back in sites broke off the fitting that screws into the sewer line. The last one I tried to fix? The entire pipe broke into pieces and I had to replace the adapter.  Those adapters are $18 a piece. Of course, I'm expected to eat these costs?  No.  

 Wednesday - afternoon

Well, I confirmed it. After trying to get the tent lady to reply to numerous texts yesterday, I simply stated that I was going to enter the coach unless she says something different. 

She never replied, which is what convinced me that they had, indeed, left and who knows if they actually went back to California or they are staying at the daughter's house nearby.  I don't know exactly where that is, I am not going to go hunt them down.  They obviously got their tax return of which they promised to pay me some of, obviously that isn't going to happen.

So, basically, I have footed the bill for them to live there for what, 4 or 5 months now for free?  She was doing so good in working, making her payments and attempting to make something of her life until she had that stroke.  The real problem here isn't that she didn't pay, it's the lying.  She lied about her intent to pay after she received her tax refund. She got it, she left without even letting me know or bothering to say thank you for helping her.  She left the place a mess and it smells like a giant ashtray in there.

Yes, I entered after knocking loudly tho it was obvious no one was there, the other lady had dumped dog poop on the doorstep and it was still sitting there. I do wonder if the tent lady was actually telling the truth about the dog poop, for I now have information that leads me to believe the family of 3's dogs are the ones pooping and they aren't cleaning it up.  ]

As the old saying goes, no good deed goes unpunished. It will cost me money to find a sofa bed and replace the carpet at the very least.  I have posted it on my Facebook business account, the stickler is I also posted it won't be ready for probably a month.  There are mice in the thing and there is mouse poop literally EVERYWHERE.  On the counters, the floor, everything.  Like, they had to be living in that filth and not dealing with it, disgusting.  I just happen to have glue traps at the house and will be putting them in there.  Like how expensive are those traps? Or the old fashioned ones that snap the mouse basically in half? Those old style are cheap, put some peanut butter on it and kill them.  

Anyway, I opened the door, left the screen door close and the main door opened and turned the fan setting on on the AC unit to help start clearing out the air in there.  I have read in the past that the best thing to get that kind of smell out of there - both cigarettes and poop smell and dog smell while we're at  it - is to use an ozone generator.  I have found several for reasonable price, I can't try to sell that thing smelling like that. 

 So, new project. Trying to find a good used sofa bed and enough new carpet to tear out the "new/but now old" stuff, replace it and scrub that thing down inside.  There are no signs of water damage from the roof, I was a bit concerned about that but it appears to still be solid. The flooring is solid, I am not sure about the refrigerator.  I opened it and it was absolutely disgusting.  Vileness.  

 Can I afford this right now? Well I'll tell ya what, if someone shows up and says that want it, yes, I will make a way to afford it.  Yes, I know I have the property tax issue. I think I will be able to cover it along with everything else later on this month. I'll get back to that after I collect more rents and overnight payments.  I should be getting paid tonight - whatever that will amount to, I'm not sure if they started this pay-by-the-load thing yet or not.  If it's another small check, then yes I will be contacting the manager directly to find out what's going on with that.  

Oh, and there is still a feral cat living under the shed, I think. It keeps showing up on the surveillance footage and it heads directly to the shed. I only say this because the door to the coach is open, feel free to go in and kill some mice!

I just remembered that Ollie's has a huge selection of carpeting for far cheaper than pretty much anywhere else.  This might be the option I will choose for new carpet.  There are a large number of sofa beds advertised on Facebook marketplace, that will likely be the place I will find something decent without a huge price tag.  I'm looking to spend as little as possible.  I'm hopeful that that post on Facebook will generate some interest and possibly a solid decision by someone to take it. I'm going to want a down payment this time tho.  Like around $500 to deal with this stuff if another person does the same thing: leaves before paying it off.  

Basically, I'd let to get someone on the hook for the unit before I spend any money on it.  Get the thing fixed up and get the money from that person quickly to replace what I will have to spend.  

On another note, the driver trainer just texted, his turbocharger is leaking anti-freeze. Gag.  That is probably a major repair. He is going to take it to a nearby truck stop, drop the trailer and they are going to have a tow truck tow it clear up to the shop in Arkansas.  That's about a 4 hour tow, that's going to cost them some serious money.  This is the consequences of having a fleet of old trucks, frequent break downs and nothing you can really do about it.

Alright, well I have a plan in place for the coach anyway.  I'm really wanting to get some more people in RV spots, I wish that guy yesterday would have taken the spot, I guess he decided it wasn't for him.  I think he thought that space wouldn't be big enough for his 5th wheel, but there are already long 5th wheels in back in spots as it stands. 

Anyway, I am tasked with making dinner today so I best get about it.  

 Tuesday - late morning

The youngest' birthday today, I didn't get up to see him out.  I went to bed late last night, just because I wanted to. Didn't get out of bed, wait for it, until....9:30 am lol. It was raining so I just said no thanks and went back to sleep.  Well, not just rain, but thunder/lightning as well.  Like, scare the dogs type of thunder.

Anyway, today is an election day in Texas, I have printed out who I am voting for, there is a lot on the ballot.  Going there, dump more money into the business account at the bank, go check on the new people at the park and probably try to get something done over there. 

Oh, Facebook. Yup, I was scrolling Facebook earlier and it logged me out . Great, I thought, I've been hacked.  I've seen it happening to other people lately and the person/people hacking put some pretty uncharacteristic stuff on their FB wall, to the point you know it isn't that person.  

However, I asked Taylor and hers was out as well.  I then googled it and sure enough, a lot of people have been logged out of Facebook on some error.  Mine finally came back up on my phone, but still can't access it on my computer.  No huge deal, I mostly look at Facebook on my phone anyway.  I like to be on the desktop if I'm writing longer responses to people, otherwise the phone works fine.  

SCOTUS said no thanks to Colorado's determination to keep Trump off of the ballot.  That ruling is a national one, none of the states can do that.  You can hate Trump all you want, but if this ruling from a lower court would have stood, it would have started a cascading event with every state, or many anyway  - my guess here of course - doing the same thing on their ballots. You would have states such as Texas saying Biden can't be on the ballot and probably use the reasoning that he's a traitor, therefore, he can't be on it.  Remember, Trump was never prosecuted, stood trial or found guilty of inciting an insurrection.

Why? because there was no insurrection.  I don't care what anyone thinks, you don't show up to a government building in DC and attempt to take over Washington without any weapons, armament, etc.  There might have been rioting there, but there was no attempt at an insurrection.  I could go on with my reasoning, but I am not going to waste my time. I have been in these types of arguments with leftists and it never goes anywhere. Almost always, the leftists will start calling you names, cussing you out and engaging in ridiculous denigration to the point you wonder how these people can function in this society. Believe what you wish.

Anyway, the farmer couple that showed up yesterday is taken care of. They're only staying a month but I'll take whatever I can get.  Another guy just now called me, said he's at the entrance and can he take a look? Sure thing.  I don't know if he's going to take it, I certainly hope so, that would put me back on track with finances and paying the property taxes later on this month.  Actually, if I can get the 2 remaining lots rented before the end of the month, it's good to go for paying the property taxes. If not, I'm going to have to hunker down and make a decision. I'm not going to let this situation get loaded with increasing fees and potentially at some point, someone paying it for me and then I have to pay a lot more money to get out of this situation.  

He's not there with a trailer, he wanted to look first. Sure thing, hopefully he'll take one of the back in sites, my pull throughs are occupied excepting lot 2 which has people coming in 3 days from now, they'll be there almost 3 weeks.  Back-in lots are all I have available ATM.  They aren't necessarily "bad", but some people prefer and others demand pull throughs.  I couldn't have made them all pull throughs without creating an additional driveway at great expense.  

This is the way people do it a lot, lol, they just show up without any prior notification. I have it on my ads that you can come and take a look!  I do not say they have to call first, I just think that would turn people off.  I don't care if I'm not there, they can inspect the place without any pressure whatsoever and make their own decisions.  I see no upside to attempting to talk someone into take a spot they may not like.  I'm not of the used-car-salesman mentality anyway.  But it is encouraging that people are showing up and my ad has actually been viewed by thousands of people, at least according to Meta reporting.  

I get those lots filled, hopefully, I'll shut the FB ad down before it was scheduled to be shut down. They're not free but they're definitely not pricey or even mildly expensive.  

Anyway, it's kinda getting late and I'd like to get this day moving.  Especially with voting.

G'day

 Monday - mid afternoon

Yesterday wasn't bad.  Not great, considering it was a Sunday, but not bad either.  The only negative was the loader at the plant in Lufkin.  The slow dude, he won't load more than one truck at a time, while everyone else there will load 2 or 3 trucks at the same time.  So, I had to wait almost an hour before he got to me.  But other than that, it was a short day.  

Today, however, was a bit different.  When I got to the plant in Gurdon, I knew something wasn't right. Well, after I scaled in and got parked and hooked up the air line to begin pressurizing the tanker.  There was no one around except a couple of people on the production line. Very odd, that line entails using a lot of personnel working various portions of it.  

A lady finally came up to me, realized what I wanted and told me to wait while I go find "them".  She came back and informed me they were busy and "trying to get the level in the tanks low enough so you can offload".  Oh, there's plenty of room for one more truckload in the west side tank. Well, they're just busy, something is broken and they are trying to fix it.

Outside, closed the valve for letting in air pressure, who knows how long that is going to take.  In fact, got in the truck, tilted the driver's seat back and took a nap.  The line manager comes knocking on my window however long later and told me about it.  Some "worker" came in last night, he said, and totally destroyed the press.  The press is where the plywood goes into and gets pushed together with hydraulics.  "I've been working here for 24 years and I've never seen anything this bad".  

Whatever the case, it was over an hour wait, not great, not terrible.  He signed off on the paperwork and I got busy.  Had to keep working around a crew of construction workers installed new rails for the railroad running through there.  It's a spur where cars are dropped to load with wood.  Anyway, about 50 minutes and the tanker was empty.  I turned the air pressure valve off and the water valve on, they require us to wash out the lines with water.  

Nothing.  I'm looking at all this menagerie of lines coming into this area and I'm not seeing anything that would answer the question as to why water wasn't flowing through there.  I finally had to go find the same supervisor and he came and started opening and closing all the valves. I had already done this, but more power to him. He got frustrated and started following lines back into the depths of the building.  He came back and said he couldn't find anything.  

Well, I replied, I'm done offloading it's just that y'all want us to flush out the lines when we're done.  Yes, you can't leave without flushing out the lines first.  So he gets on the phone and starts talking to someone, follows another line which lead to a dead end and I'm standing there thinking, hmm, how long is this going to take?   He then goes off yet again following lines and finally, after a while, he must have found where someone had shut off a valve, because water pressure came into the line, I could hear it bang up inside the pipes.  

The end of that story, it took me 3 hours to get in and out of that plant, far longer than it normally does.  Shrugs shoulders.  Doesn't matter, the dispatcher had removed the other loads for this week out, she didn't contact me about it, but I already knew why, because the line supervisor had already told me: he canceled the rest of the loads for two days.  

I didn't even get back to my park and it had all changed again. They must have figured they could get the thing up and running faster than they had originally expected, for after they took all of that work out of my tablet, they put 3 loads back in.  But, instead of working tomorrow as originally planned, I am working on Wednesday.  I guess that's ok? I don't have any control over this stuff, the work has been pretty sporadic the last week or so.  

So, I'm about to enter the park and the lady that is always cleaning someone else's dog poop up said she was going to deposit 2 piles on "their" doorstep.  I already knew who she was talking about and I didn't try to stop her. These people lie to me about it, I know they are, I just can't prove it.  And she did exactly that, dumped it right in front of their door, lmao.  Sorry, I don't normally take pleasure in such things, but this has been going on for quite a while now.  

After that, a man calls me.  Is this the RV Park? Yes.  Back and forth, the man acted like I knew who he was, I had no clue.  Not expecting anyone in until Friday, I just went  with it. "We're over at the Convention Center, how do we get there?" I give them instructions.  "Ok, we'll be there in a little while".  Well, I thought, not too long please, I assumed it was people wanting an overnight spot. I have plenty atm, come on!  Sure enough, they showed up 10 minutes later.  Farmer John and Jane.  Literally.  They spent 50 years running a farm, sold it and now? Rich. 

We got into this incredibly long conversation and then I found out they have family in a couple of nearby towns. They wanted to stay near where they are, but not near enough where it would be assumed they would be seeing these family members too frequently. "How much is it for a month?" I told him the price. He pulls out an envelope filled with $100 bills, there was a lot of money in there.  Hands me 4, fresh, crisp $100's and that was that. "Can we have a receipt?" Sure, but I'll have to go home to get one, my office is over there, not here, that building has a laundromat, shower and toilet in it.  

I can't say I didn't welcome the finances.  The welder's money showed up today, odd for them, it usually shows up either early or on time.  So now, I'm looking at my business account wondering if I can make that property tax payment?  Maybe.  But, whatever fees are being assessed, they are assessed already. Won't go up again until next month.  I figured if my next paycheck is enough, I could probably make the payment. However, my paychecks have sucked and just because I was promised more pay doesn't mean it will show up in real life.  I can't be screwing myself and not be able to pay my bills.  

So, I"ll definitely wait until the second paycheck of the month and hopefully, there will be enough to pay the power bill, pay the property tax and still have enough left over to pay my personal bills.