I am well up on my settlement cycle. No thanks to many of the morons I supervise.

Friday morning is filled with hourly settlements, after that the load settlements begin. I have tried to build them all through the week. Making my weekends a little more leisurely. I was right in the middle yesterday when there was a knock on my door. It was a driver. He told me he was having a problem with the seed poker. These were the two participants from Tuesday morning's accident. The driver was the one who rubbed the incline ladder, the poker was the one who who jumped from the ladder before it over turned. They were having a shouting match, yelling all sorts of Mexican insults back and forth. The poker refused to load the trucker, the trucker didn't want the poker's help and on and on. I went out there and got between them, making new rules for each of them in dealing with the other.

Later I got to wondering how many knives were in close proximity when I was brokering the peace accord. Both of the men are pretty sizeable and salty. It could have gotten nasty.

When I last talked to the trucker he told me he did not want that poker loading him ever again. I told the trucker, "That will show him". The poker will get paid the same whether he loads the man or not.

Duh!

The poker was very upset with me earlier in the day. He had brought his pay statement to me telling me I had shorted him twelve hours. For his three days off I had only paid him for eight hours a day. He wanted twelve. He never got out of his trailer except to make a beer run to town. I guess he thought he had it made. Crazy thing was all twenty-four hours were at time and a half. I told him I would take the pay off his check and request disability for him, he would probably get it in about six weeks and it would be almost exactly the same money. He could have been watching seed boxes of something if he had been out and about walking like the doctor told him. When everything was finally explained to him by a third party he agreed to his pay settlement.

Fred's kids can't seem to catch a break, they have had two bale trucks go down this week. That has caused us to do some major shifting just to keep the shipments moving. This week I shipped 112 loads of seed, 75 loads of bales, and two loads of motes. Not a bad week.

We are at about twenty-five thousand bales ginned. We are well over a hundred thousand bales tagged in to be processed. Anything tagged now will be ginned after the New Year begins. If harvest were to end today (which it won't) it would take us about ninety days to complete processing it!

E and the kids are at Memama's and Pepa's. This is the first visit they have made since TJ died. I am sure there will be difficult moments, but it is part of the healing process.

Kyle Patrick hit a snag in his truck driving school program. I think he is taking a leave of absence. He told his Mother he had let everyone down and disappointed them. I told her I wasn't disappointed as long as he continues to try. We all know he does not test well. He may just have to do more preparation. Best part is he can take a leave and return to school when he is ready.

Pepa gave me a report on his crop. If it turns out at the gin, this may be one of the best ever. He made 54 modules of burr extracted cotton on three hundred thirty acres. That is going to be about two bales to the acre, give or take. Not bad for dry land.

Tomorrow is a maintenance day! Yippee!

We haven't talked but I figure we will make the trek to Midland. I just don't know if it will be the Cattle Barron or Abuelos for lunch. We still have some office supplies to pickup as well as groceries.

I just can't wait to hear the plant go silent.

Hope you all have a good weekend.

FATHER, help us to persevere. Grant us YOUR peace and patience.