Home again

Actually I'm just home for overnight and then I am going to Charlotte, North Carolina. Which is bound to be a distinct improvement on that three days of rain in Cincinnati I just lived through.

You see, there is a kind of formula trucking people have to follow. First, the satellite did not agree with Jimmy's log about what time we left Beloit. I bet that sounds like small potatos to you, but let me assure you it's actually a very delicately choreographed dance that only works if everyone does his part just when he is supposed to.

It goes something like this. First Jimmy calls his dispatcher and complains about the load he got and expresses his disappointment that it wasn't what he thought it should be. Then Lori goes to lunch, because Jimmy really loves her and he would never be mean to her. I love her, too. She's a peach. Really.

But someone has to hear the whole thing and it's better if it's someone we don't care for, who shall remain nameless, I'll just look at the party and whistle (Mark) and there is this whole male testosterone thing that involves everybody calling everybody else a son of a...something...at least four times.

And then Jimmy has to take a break of 14 hours before he can drive again, which doesn't exactly endear dispatch to him, so we go to the truck stop to watch some movies.

Well, I watch some movies, Jimmy calls a few trucking companies and asks for job applications and then he does this thing that's kind of like the mating dance of the wild wood duck where he calls every truckdriver whose number is stored in his phone--even the ones that work at a different company--and they have this kind of festival of outrage. That uses up like four hours.

It's not that funny but when it's raining and you've already taken all the naps one can usefully take for one day, it's at least something to listen to. You can't hear the movie anyway, what with the rain and the phone commiserating and all, so you might as well settle in with some popcorn and watch for awhile.

Then there is a brief pause to allow all the truckdrivers that work at your company to call dispatch and complain and to promise that if one of them quits they will all quit on account of it's some secret code of truckdrivers that states if Bill quits you have to go with him. I don't know why, I don't make the rules, I'm just telling you how it works.

So then pretty soon dispatch calls us again and says will we please not take fourteen drivers with us en bloc to Marten (or whoever the lucky company is this week for the purposes of discussion) and we allow as how we might reconsider if things were to improve but we aren't spending four days driving twelve miles because the baby needs a new pair of shoes and the dog just found out she has to have surgery and Shirley Temple might come in there somewhere, too, by that time I was getting tired. But I think there was a curly headed orphan somewhere and we might have been going to tie dispatch to some railroad tracks with a train coming, you know the kind of stuff I mean.

So, anyway, eventually we get a good load and Lori comes back from lunch and everybody is happy again.

Well, not me because it was still Ohio and it was still raining and I was there long enough that me and the cash register girl had begun exchanging knitting patterns and inviting each other to things like our kids' weddings and family reunions and such like that. But it wasn't as bad as that three days I spent in a swamp in Georgia, so I'm willing to overlook it.

I'm sure my trip to North Carolina will be far less dramatic. Unless someone else gets mad at dispatch and we have to promise to leave if he leaves. It happens about twice a week so I don't even know why it works except one time a bunch of them must have left in a herd and it made a really big impression on dispatch.

Anyway, I am flying around doing laundry and packing and trying to spend ten minutes with all my grandchildren, so I'll tell you all about the rest of it when I get home, again. And I hope you have a marvelously happy week--(I just found out I MIGHT be going to be a Grandma for the twelfth time so PLEASE cross all your fingers and toes for me! I'm whispering this part because it's a secret).