Life at the Home20

GetAlong turned 50 last week.  Now he didn’t mind turning 30 and 40 was no big deal either but he seems to have hit 50 pretty hard.  To quote him - “It’s all downhill from here.”  He got home on Saturday and I feel like we’ve been in therapy ever since.  Consequently I have been AWOL here for over a week.

Of course, it didn’t help that the big truck was in the shop for that clutch repair I mentioned earlier.  The estimate was $1620.  It was under warranty the first time it went out.  Obviously they didn’t come up with a better engineered clutch (or spring actually) to replace the faulty one.  The second one has now failed and hopefully something better is taking its place.  I don’t understand mechanical things so don’t ask me.  Big truck repairs can be depressing to say the least, especially when you are still making a truck note.

Anyway, GetAlong has been unusually quiet this time.  I thought he was just tired from the last three weeks.  He ran pretty hard.  The loads were good and he hates to turn anything down that pays well.  Business is picking up somewhat and there are fewer drivers on the road.  But he was worn out when he got home.

Now he suddenly admits to suffering from fatigue while on the road.  Now this is not surprising when you take into consideration the wacky schedule that drivers keep.  You would think that they could drive from 8 - 5, park their rig and be done for the day.  But that is not always the case when they have sat for hours trying to get loaded and need to meet a delivery date and time.  Meeting deadlines and driving “legal” at the same time can be a challenge and often does not lend itself to regular hours.

Eating habits while on the road are irregular to say the least as well.  GetAlong is pretty good about not eating large meals at inappropriate times but the selection available to him is not that great and can contribute to weariness.  He removed the refrigerator from his rig awhile back because he felt it would force him to get out of the truck more.  You just can’t win for losing sometimes.

And with the big truck in the shop he doesn’t have anything to “fiddle” with at the moment.  Of course I could give him plenty to do but I try not to harp on that stuff when he’s home.  I think he’s just down because of the birthday so I’m laying low this week, doing what he wants.   It’s been a long time since we have watched 2 movies in one weekend.  But I feel like I can’t get anything done and then I become down and unmotivated.  My house is a mess and it doesn’t help that his “stuff” is everywhere in the house because the truck is in the shop.

But it’s been a week and he’s returning to normal.  The big truck is back home and hopefully his freshly laundered stuff will be back in its place soon.

Things are looking up.

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I know.  I know.  You’re supposed to do I before II.  Forgive me.  Anyway…

About 3 weeks prior to College Planning Trip II, all three of us made a 10 hour trip (and never left the state) to visit Sweetpea’s No. 1 choice for higher education.  And we are talking the middle of nowhere.  Beautiful, but the middle of nowhere.

We really do love this school.  It’s small - smaller than Sweetpea’s high school.  About 2000 students attend school here.  The student-teacher ratio is extremely low and Sweetpea needs that extra attention.  But let’s face it, it’s small because of the location.   The countryside is beautiful but there is nothing for miles and miles and miles.  Nothing but small mountains, miles of open range and cows.  The nearest shopping mall is 2 hours away.  How do the girls do it?

This was, once again, an event put on by the college to recruit students.  Not as big as the one we would attend a month later but still well organized.  The school’s president spoke to us in a banquet room in the student center, followed by a faculty member who had relunctantly fallen in love with this place over the last several years.  Then we took the tour, ate lunch, shopped for a hoodie and headed home.

It was supposed to snow the weekend we were there but much to Sweetpea’s disappointment, it didn’t.  But it was extrememly cold and windy.  She definitely got a dose of reality in that department.

GetAlong and I just don’t see Sweetpea making that 10 hour drive to school on a regular basis and of course, she would not be able to come home too often, not with the price of gas right now (who am I kidding? it’s never going back down).  And we were concerned that being in the middle of nowhere would get boring and we all know what bored teenagers/young adults are capable of.

But Sweetpea’s mind was made up.  This was the school of her dreams.  That was until about 2 weeks later when she and her old boyfriend got back together.  Haven’t heard much about this school since then.  Why am I not surprised?

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Speaking of snakes, this is what I had the pleasure of finding in the feed room a couple of days ago.  GetAlong’s friend, Jake the Snake, has apparently awakened from his winter hibernation.

GetAlong really needs to clean the feed room, huh?  Now I don’t know how much time elapses between the wake up call and the shedding of the skin routine but we wondered where he has been because there is a rat in the barn and there are never rats in the barn.  Jake always takes care of them.  That is the only reason I tolerate him.

He scares the living daylights out of me.  His empty dead skin makes mine crawl.  I enter the feed room under extreme caution.  I lift the lid on the feed can with extreme caution.  I don’t dare look up if possible.  And I did not need to be reminded that he can climb walls.  I can just see him slithering up the corner of the room and disappearing through that hole into the next room.  Something caught that dead skin and he just crawled right out of it.

GetAlong asked me how long the skin was.  Does he really think I’m going to retrieve it and measure it?  I said it was “long enough, thank you”.

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Well it’s the weekend again and I have been contemplating the whole purpose of this blog.  Do I leave it as is or split it up?  Change the content?  Post more frequently?  Then it occurred to me that I really haven’t honed in on what makes my life different from most other people.

Take this morning for instance.  I woke up to reports of violent weather, tornadoes and death in the Oklahoma, Arkansas and Missouri region.  Yesterday, GetAlong left Ardmore, Oklahoma and was headed to West Virginia.  Now I don’t pay much attention to where the major highways are that crisscross the country but I do know that he would have to be in the general vicinity of those storms.  I hadn’t heard from him this morning and that’s a little unusual.

Now I am not one to worry much about people.  Money or job security, yes.  People, not really.  Does that make me shallow?  I don’t think so.  Anyway, I tried to call GetAlong on his cell phone.  It went straight to voice mail.  I tried his other phone that he uses mostly for a data line.  Straight to voice mail.  I don’t leave messages because he never listens to them, he just calls back and then I have to explain the whole thing all over again.  I’ve learned to save my breath.  I waited.  No call back.  About an hour later, he called.  “What’s wrong?  You called twice!”  Apparently the weather was bad but he managed to sleep right through it.  I’m not surprised.

He didn’t sleep through the earthquake in Illinois a couple of weeks ago though.  He couldn’t wait to call me and tell me about that one.  And I didn’t even realize he was in Illinois at the time.

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This is what I did today.

Perfect day.  No breeze.  I got alot done.  GetAlong doesn’t get to enjoy these chores anymore since he is always on the road.  Lucky dog.  See the pile below?  It was almost 3 times that size when I started this morning.  Of course, GetAlong would have torched the entire pile all at once but I didn’t want to burn down the entire county so I kept my fire small, moving a bit at a time.

Not long after I took those photos, something in the pile moved.  It didn’t come out, it just moved.  Now I thought there may be a snake hiding in there so I was very careful about moving anything.  Just when I was secure in the belief that I was safe, something moved.  I don’t think it was a snake.  But what else would be living in there?  I’m thinking rabbit.  I’m hoping rabbit.  Whatever it may be, it has about 20 hours to vacate, because I’ll be finishing up this chore (that GetAlong has avoided for the last 2 years) tomorrow afternoon.

Oh and here’s guard dog No. 1, AKA Mona.  Notice she is alert and ready for action.

She guards the inner perimeter at all times.  Here’s guard dog No. 2, AKA Birddog.

She guards the outer perimeter.  Here she is lulling the enemy into a false sense of security.  But I assure you, she sleeps with one eye open.

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