Utah. 20 miles from the Idaho border on I-84.

We’ll be switching out at the rest area just over the border in Idaho. From there we’re heading for Portland. It’s my turn to drive. We picked up this load in Denver, and are desperately hoping that U.S. Xpress will allow us to drop the load at their dropyard in Portland. If they refuse, we’ll have to sit on this load until Monday evening, and that will screw up the good week we were hoping to have. We’ll still have a pretty good week. But we’re both tired of “pretty good weeks.” We sorely miss the “damned good weeks.” We had gotten used to bringing home $1,200-1,400 a week at times, and we haven’t seen that kind of money in a very long time. We sorely need it, now that we’ve picked up Loretta’s part of the bills.

I’m in one of my “woe is me” moods. Not that I’m depressed or feeling particularly sorry for myself. More than anything I feel simply that I’m a long way from home, and that I would rather be doing anything than driving a truck. But, of course, the job market at home is very bad. So we’ll be out here for at least another year, or until Mara starts nursing school; whichever comes first.

I’m still tinkering with the melodramatic idea of writing that book, The Assimilation Soundtrack. I got off to a promising start, but have sort of bogged down. In spite of the fact that we have had some down-time, I haven’t brought myself to picking it back up and continuing. I need to. At the moment it looks like the only way out of this never-ending cycle of driving mile after mile and mile is to write that book and change the rules of the game.

Hopefully I won’t be sitting in front of a computer ten years from now, pining away about all the wonderful things that I’m going to do someday.

My next entry will be more hopeful.

Oh. I haven’t talked about my physical problems. Or have I?

No. I just checked my notes. I haven’t mentioned anything. It’s funny how I can ramble on about minor things, aches and longings, and completely leave out important happenings. I suppose that comes from the fact that this journal isn’t used very much. Maybe if it was more of a part of my everyday life, I wouldn’t spend my time ruminating on how much I dislike truck driving.

Shortly after my January 30th entry, I woke up in the night with my neck feeling rather stiff. This was nothing new. I turned my head somewhat to stretch the muscles of my neck and, perhaps, pop a few of the more stubborn bones, when I felt a sudden, sharp pain in my neck. It did not ebb. I lay back down, uncomfortably, assuming that I had pulled a muscle and that it would eventually ease off. It did not. In fact, it bothers me to this day, although I believe that I’ve gotten better at dealing with it. I’ve learned what I can and cannot do, and how I can and cannot sleep, and am very diligent in finding ways to appease the stiffness and pain. For the most part, I’ve done alright.

When we were at home last, during the first week of this month, I visited Mama’s doctor, Dr. Anderson. He scheduled me for some x-rays and an MRI. We had the x-rays done that same day, but had to wait until the 2nd for the MRI. When Mara and I went back out to Kings Mountain Hospital for the MRI, we found that I couldn’t fit into the machine. My shoulders were too broad (or so they told me; I wondered if my belly was too broad). They told me that I would have to go for an Open MRI in Charlotte. Given that Mara and I had already been home for a week, we came back out on the road on the 3rd. Dr. Anderson’s office scheduled the Open MRI for April 1st, as well as an appointment on the same day with an orthopedic specialist to finally have my left knee examined.

Basically, I’ve hurt my neck. But given the problems with the MRI, we still don’t know anything about what is wrong. I’m hoping that we can sort this out the next time we’re at home. I don’t expect that we can do anything about correcting the problem any time soon, but I would feel better just knowing what’s going on.

Well, Mara just pulled into a rest area in Idaho. It’s my turn to drive.

And speaking of interesting things that have gone unmentioned, perhaps in the future I can talk a little bit about my new uncle, Allen Lovelace. I don’t see any mention of him in the few scant entries that I’ve made in the past few years. I really should transcribe some of the hand-written entries I’ve made, just to keep track of what I’ve mentioned and what I haven’t.