Skip went into work this morning as usual... And less than an hour after he left, he came back home.
There still isn't a 'definite' answer. The guys are still employed, but spent much of today doing absolutely nothing. Skip was in the hotel with me all day. They apparently decided to push through 29 road bores, or places where the pipe has to go underneath a roadway, in the next 3 weeks or so. This leaves very little work for the survey guys, as they more or less just sit in the truck and watch them push pipe through the ground. The chances of them keeping the surveyors out here are pretty slim, as there's not much sense in paying them to do nothing. They may end up sending them home, and then bringing them back in a month or two when the ground has dried up enough for the construction company to work on the right of way. For now, though, it's mostly up in the air.
Just as quickly as we got sent here, we could be going home. My life may, for a brief time, no longer be 'On the Line.' This is very typical of pipelining. I'm really not too surprised.
This, of course, throws a wrench into a lot of things. For One, we just spent a small fortune renting a car to get me and the dogs out here. For Two, I just told Publix (my former employer) that I'd be gone for the next six months or more. Three, my grandpa will be about 45 minutes away in Tulsa receiving concentrated/pin-point chemotherapy for his cancer over a period of the next 4 weeks. Four, we really have no affordable place to stay, as the hotel is costing somewhere in the neighborhood of $1,000 a month. But getting into a lease isn't necessarily practical, either, as he may get sent to Oregon or Texas or anywhere else in the contiguous 48 states at the drop of a hat.
For now, the tentative plan is to pack up once he gets officially laid off, and head for his mom's house in Missouri. There, we are at least centrally located in the US, so wherever he is sent next isn't a ridiculous road trip away. Hopefully I'll still be able to come to Tulsa for Pap's treatments... Really, that's one of my bigger concerns. I'm the only member of our family out this far, and he really sounds like he wants me there for after these procedures. I've already prepared my Big Girl Panties for this whole situation, because quite frankly, it terrifies me. It's not easy thinking that I'm the closest next-of-kin should anything go wrong. But... That's a story for a whole other blog post.
So, here I am. Waiting for news, good or bad. This kind of thing happens every day in this line of work, but I really wasn't anticipating it so soon. I haven't even been here one full week. Had I known it would be this soon, I would have stayed in Fort Myers a little while longer. But... We can't live in the "coulda-woulda-shoulda's", right?
All that aside... I love this kid to death. He's currently laying on the bed, and in a little voice, saying, "Baaaaabbbbbyyyyyyy, do yooou know how beautiful you aaaarrrreee?" He's such a weirdo. But he makes me laugh, and I love that. At a time when I want to worry and freak out about everything, he constantly assures me that everything is going to be okay.
"It's gonna be okay, babe. I got this."
