Mara called a few minutes ago. She was pretty upset. The City of Kings Mountain is threatening to cut off our power next Monday if the bill isn't paid, and refuses to work out any kind of arrangement. No partial payments for the City of Kings Mountain. No, sir. I'm trying really hard to be understanding here, but this is just another example of why I hate the government in Kings Mountain. It's like the city is run by a bunch of in-bred rednecks who've established their own country club. The City constantly fucks over the citizens, and there really isn't anything anyone can do about it. This seems to be the prevailing attitude of the City itself. “Whatcha gonna do?” People watch their power bills go sky high for no particular reason, and then when it gets so bad that people start raising hell about it, the bills just as mysteriously go down. There are few people in town who don't believe that it's some kind of racket. I'm not saying that we don't owe the money. We do. What has upset us so much is the fact that the City is acting like a loan shark; “Either we get ours by next Monday, or you'll get yours.”

Mara was really upset. We've worked so hard to dig ourselves out of this hole that we're in. The only people who won't work with us is the City of Kings Mountain. Actually, the thing that upset Mara so much was the attitude of the woman she talked to. I reminded her that she had talked to a drone and that she shouldn't take it personally. I think the thing that offended her most was the woman's snarky comment that she could refer us to Social Services. Well, I called Mama. I wanted her to know, just in case. She wound up calling her sister, Sue, who agreed to let us borrow the money. That wasn't the reason I called Mama. I hadn't thought about asking Sue or anyone else. I just wanted Mama to know in case the power got cut off. I thought maybe Mama could talk to someone about it. That's all.

We're slowly digging our way out. I got paid today. That got us back in the black. It kills me that we just paid $300 in, essentially, NSF charges, when so many other things are looming over us. But what do you do? At least we're in the black. Mara will draw a check Wednesday. It'll actually help us that she's going to be getting paid on Wednesdays and I'll be paid on Fridays. I see that as constant cashflow, which we're really going to need in the coming weeks. I imagine there are going to be a lot of little fires to put out. But at least now we can address them. A few weeks ago there was absolutely nothing we could do. Now we have a few, albeit limited, options.

Well, USX just sent me a message. Probably something stupid. I picked this load up last night, and it can deliver any time until midnight. They sent me a message this morning asking for my PTA and telling me that this load can deliver early. So they want to know why I haven't rolled with it. Well, I needed sleep for one thing. Although I slept yesterday, my sleep has been so intermittent that I've accumulated sleep debt. No matter how much sleep I got, it just didn't seem to help. So I had to get some sleep, man. Another thing is that I'm out of clothes. I'm going to be washing clothes today. USX be damned. I see today as an opportunity. As long as they can't put another load on me, I have some time to attend to personal things.

Assholes. I just checked the satcom to see what the message was. They sent me an empty preassignment notification. Functionally, that would be a “ping.” They just sent a blank message to the truck to find out my location. Yup, assholes, I'm still here in Paducah. Well, I was about to roll anyway. There are no washing machines here at the Pilot, so I need to wander on down the road and see what I can find. I don't know how I'll afford to wash clothes, or even if I can find any available machines (someone is bound to be washing clothes during the daytime), but I really don't have a choice now. Oh, well. Let's get going before USX comes up with some great idea.