I cheated!

I confess, I made a cherry pie with a refrigerator crust and canned filling. Never again! This is not the kind of stuff that normally comes out of my kitchen. I just thought I would try it. Maybe it was the brand I used, but it was just ok, and won't get me any bragging rights.

In my defense, I had just taken a fresh loaf of homemade bread from the oven when I put the pie in.

This is what it has come to. Blogging about cheaters cherry pie and home baked bread. That's the life of an unemployed dead beat.

I did work 5 1/2 hours on Saturday with Rich taking inventory on his service truck. Parts, hoses, starters, ignitions, filters, and the list goes on. He actually carries allot of parts in that truck. Tomorrow I will be going back to do shop inventory. His boss thinks it will take all day. His boss has Parkinson's and on top of that he uses the search and peck method of typing. While we were in there on Saturday, he was entering the parts from Tom's truck into an Excel spread sheet. I told him I could do that for him. He just said he needed to do it so he knew what was out there. He hasn't done inventory in over 10 years. His wife just came back from AZ. She has been looking for a house there. I think he is close to closing the place down. He stopped looking for new customers close to a year ago. One mechanic relocated and one mechanic retired, he didn't even try to replace them. I hope I'm wrong. I would hate to have both of us unemployed.

As for today, my oldest son and his wife are in Cancun, Mexico. They got a free trip using the points on their credit card. I am going down to his house to spend time with the kids. He left me some money so we can go out for some dinner and give his sister-in-law, who is staying at the house, a little break. I always have a good time with the kids so it will be fun.

My son and daughter-in-law travel at least three times a year. They use the credit card for everything they need and just pay it off every month. They get points that way, plus, my daughter-in-law owns an insurance agency and she wins trips by meeting sales goals. Sometimes the parent company will send her someplace for seminars, conventions, training or whatever, and they will make a family thing out of it.

Speaking of my oldest son, he got his CDL last week and he and his cousin plan to buy a truck. He has always been self-employed, home remodeling, flipping houses, and mortgage originator. He still does ok with it, but the housing market is just not bringing in the money it used to, so on to something new. He started flipping houses and when people saw his work, it turned into home remodeling. Then he went to mortgages because the work was not so physical. He did real well during the housing boom and then on into the refinancing period. The last two years, he has had to do both to bring in the same amount of money. I don't know how he will like being on the road all the time. Plus, the family is used to his work being flexible and him being Mr. Mom while his wife is at the office. She stays open late one night a week, till 8:00 and till 6:00 the rest of the week, and every other Saturday. My granddaughter is 16 now and will have to take on some of that responsibility. They live an hour away so I really can't do much to help. I might take on the night she works late just to spend time with them. I can go down and make their dinner and still be home by 10:00. I am going on their family plan for my phone next week. That will save me at least $25/month. My bill this month is $78, that's for one phone, 900 minutes and no texting or data. Maybe we can make a trade. They pay my share of the phone bill and some gas for my car and I take care of the family on Wednesday nights.

In a funk.

My son's girlfriend posted on FB that she is "In a funk and gonna go get out of it!" Must be what I'm in.


• Tired

• Run down feeling

• Bored

• Sick of homework

• Sick of the unsatisfying job search (I applied for 8 today)

• Stuck in this house feeling confined (don't want to use precious gas)

• Sick and tired of housework and laundry (waiting on my kitchen floor to dry so I can walk through to get laundry out of dryer and put more in)

• I'm starting to think I might be diabetic (thirsty, sick to my stomach all the time, craving sweets, headaches and the glasses I just got suck...I'm waiting on new lenses, )

• Disappointed (My son was going to give me some cash so I could take my grand kids out for lunch and a movie, but he forgot to tell his wife about it, so my grand kids are out doing other things.)

• The temp agency has not called now going on three weeks

I even applied at a new gas station being built about 10 minutes away. They are looking for someone to make pizzas and broasted chicken. I worked at a pizza place making pizzas in high school so I know I could do this. They will probably say that I'm over qualified. That's what I get when I try for any kinda position like that, minimum wage jobs. Over qualified or under qualified. Maybe that's what you call a funk. That place in between that gets you absolutely no place.

Tomorrow I'm taking a friend that doesn't drive shopping. It's not the fun kinda shopping; it's the grocery store kinda shopping. I can't think of anything I need since I did shopping last Thursday. She wants to try a new store and her other half gets impatient and won't take her anyplace new. He says it takes too long because she doesn't know where anything is. She wants to go for lunch too. After saying no because I really can't spend what little I have on things like lunch and shopping, Rich told me I should just go to get out. "Put it on your credit card and I'll pay the bill when it comes, JUST DON'T GET CRAZY!" So, shopping, I go! The only thing I can think of that we need is eggs. I did just use the last of the floor cleaner.

Now that everyone else is as bored as I am, my floor is dry, and laundry awaits! Maybe I'll bake some homemade bread.

I should do as much school work as possible so that if I find work, it wont be so hard to keep up. I am a week ahead in two classes and it wouldn't be a bad idea to get ahead in the other two. That's the beauty of Internet classes. Next semester I have some classes that will require me to go to class; tougher classes so I will need the classroom interaction to understand fully and be able to do a good job. It feels like I will never get that degree.

This is a link to a website very important to our family. It is in memory of my brother's grandaughter who died of cancer.

http://pages.teamintraining.org/sctx/aust12/cynthiarussell#.Tz1autYZgIE.email

A week OTR with my son!

 

My temp assignment ended Feb 3rd with no new temp assignment in the horizon. They did asked me to get them a resume just in case things got behind again and they could hire some time in the future. 

I decided to take my son up on his offer to go OTR with him for a week. We started with a load to OH, then picked up a load in OH and headed back to IL. Then we picked up a load in IL and headed to GA. Got a load in GA and off to SC, picked up a load in SC and headed home.

Here are a few pix from the ride. I really didn't take many because we were on interstate most of the time. I did see some pretty country side in the Carolina's.

This is my boy...OK, so he's 32 and not a boy any more. He's still my kid, OK!

 

 He mounted that mirror on his front bumper so he can see how close he is to objects and how close little cars are to him. From his view point, he could miss a small car in that blind spot. While going through Atlanta, GA; a girl to the right of us was texting and started drifting into our lane directly in front of us. Any one who has driven through Atlanta during the afternoon rush hour knows, this is not the place to be texting. People have no idea how hard it is to stop a semi with nearly 40,000 lbs pushing it. He gave me the pleasure of pulling the horn. Should've seen her jump! Serves her right. I would have laughed my ass off if it had not been such a serious situation. She was in a small car and that truck would have flattened her if he hadn't been watching out for her. Unfortunately she didn't learn from it. She just kept on texting. So for all you truckers, please have patients with the ignorant, they know not what they do!



While riding with him, he reminded me of his dad...the way he smokes with his elbow rested on the door, the way he sits, the way he holds the steering wheel. Now he's growing a beard and looking way too much like his dad with it. I kept that thought to myself. I figure he'll get tired of it soon enough...I HOPE! 

The sun was just going down; not long and we would be heading into rain.



 

I took this at the top of a mountain, just as the rain was turning to snow. He had 2 1/2 more hours left that he could drive and stay legal with his log. At this point we had a load coming back to IL. If we kept going, we could be home by 4:30 Saturday afternoon. This is his first winter in a semi, so I was a little unsure about going on, but this had to be his call and I just let go of the mom instinct. After all; this is his job, he's drove this rig in more snow than this and he knows what he can handle. I think he noticed the concern and explained to me that if we stopped then, we would be starting out at 4:00 a.m. at the top of a pass and the temps would be at freezing. He explained that the ground at this point was not yet cold enough to freeze and we were better off to keep going. This would give them time in the morning while we were sleeping to clear the roads before we got back on the interstate. "Besides", he said, "We have just over 39,000 lbs of steel behind us and weight is good for getting through snow where an empty trailer tends to fish tail on slick roads, we're good to go Mom." He felt good about going on.

We stopped at a rest area for the night at the bottom of the pass and by 6:30 we had ice on the ground in the rest area but the roads were totaly clear. He made me feel allot better about him being out there on the road for a living. He makes good decisions because he thinks things through. He doesn't just think about the, "here and now".

It's a hard life, on duty 14 hours, off 10. He is hoping for a local or regional job soon so he can be home every night.

This is my grand daughter, Milaynah. she loves his truck. She's actually able to climb up inside by herself.

My daddy's truck is this big!

If anyone knows how to rotate this, please, fill me in. I had it rotated before I uploaded it, but it didn't stay that way.

If you see my boy on the road, wave to him and wish him a safe trip home. He drives as far north east as NY and NJ, as far southeast as GA and SC, as far northwest as NE and MN, and as far southwest as Laredo, TX.

I had a good time with him and I'm very glad I did it.

I have homework waiting for me and I need to do a job search, so I guess I should get busy. AND PLEASE! NO TEXTING ON THE ROAD!!!!