Chapter 39

Working with Juan and Carlos was good for me. I always skipped lunch. I did however go to Helen's for Coffee, while the men ate their lunch. So I wasn't really hungry after my large breakfast until I got home. Even then it usually didn't set in till I finished my shower, and was sitting by the stove while my hair dried.

While I waited for my hair to dry, I usually prepared something from my small chest freezer or a sandwich made using a frozen roll. The night I had begun working on the floor, was an example of fixing something from the freezer. I microwaved a pot pie. There was a lot of bread in a pot pie, so I only heated one roll on my little Dutch oven thing. I was able to place it on the stove and then remove it when I filled the stove with wood.

It was a lot of work for the simple pot pie, but it kept my mind in the present, not dwelling on past injuries or hurt feelings. It was why I love all the rituals of my life. Even with the time consuming rituals and the toys, sometimes it all caught up with me. The reason I had been home at night so long was the accident. The weekend's work convinced me that I was just as happy at home as running around the town trying to get laid.

The point to all that was that I slept very well most nights after watching some TV show on the computer. I had chosen not to have a real TV, so my news was haphazard at best. I usually tried to read the headlines on a couple of the network web sites before going to bed. When I did get into the bed, it was like dying. I almost never had a problem falling asleep after working a full day.

Usually after five to seven hours, I was up and starting the same rituals as the day before. That pretty much described my life until Sundays rolled around. Since my work force was Catholic, I didn't even plan on anything getting done on Sunday. Sunday was more about their families, and I didn't mind.

After the first full week, the first cabin was what Carlos called 'dried in'. Drying it in included the installation of a large Church window with the top and bottom installed side by side on the tall living room end of the house. There were two more turned on their side and mounted at the roof of the taller rear wall making what was almost skylights. It also included the patio door I had to buy for $200.

The front door had been the rear door of the church. I wanted to custom fit the church's front door to an opening in the front of the cabin, but Carlos and Juan acted like it would be the end of the world as we knew it, so I didn't. I ended up with a very plain front door. If the house hadn't had Juan's rear wall and the funky roof line it would have looked like a railroad boxcar.

What I got was a quirky little cabin. It was almost perfect for what I wanted. The oak paneling from the interior of the building made a beautiful vertical siding. I bought a $200 table saw so that we could cut our own batten strips for the exterior. I also had to buy caulking for them but the finished product looked spectacular after it was stained.

By the time I bought the table saw the roof was on so we set it up in the cabin. The Rural Electric co-operative installed a saw service so we had power for our tools from day one. By the end of week one I was the proud owner of a table saw and an airless spray gun.

The spray gun came in handy when we put a finish on the exterior of the cabin. The finish was a reasonably expensive polyurethane with stain. The cabin came off a weather gray color. The door we hand painted red.

Juan made two sets of working shutters on the table saw. Those we also painted red. I was really proud of how it all looked. I had ten grand in the project by the end of the second week but the one cabin was going to be worth five times that much at least.

"So what are we going to do this week?" Carlos asked on the phone. Do we finish the first cabin or start on the second one."

"We have so much lumber laying in the parking lot, I think we need to build," I said. "I can work with the electrical, and the plumbing issues, while you build a second cabin."

"Okay then we begin on the second cabin tomorrow. I can find work for Jose after school, if you are agreeable. He can stop by and clean up. We have certainly made a mess."

"Sure why not. If nothing else he can help put tools away when we stop for the day. I just hate that part of the job," I said.

When Monday came and after a breakfast at the Hardees in the plaza, complete with eye candy in the form of State Motor Patrol officers, I headed to the work site. On the second cabin, I knew the drill so I was more help to the two real carpenters. Carlos determined that we could use the beams from the church roof to lower the rear wall a couple of feet. It was a compromise that Juan could live with as well. I could live with it since it would make the roof less funky.

We started with the floor frame on the first day, then the walls on days two and three. Also on day three, I got the electrician on cabin one. He just installed the wiring for the wall and light fixtures. It was all hooked to the saw service until he came back to finish it after cabin two would be completed.

We put up enough of the exterior siding to hold the cabin's walls in place until we got back on day four to put the roof structure in place. On Saturday of the third week it looked like a cabin. Not completely dried in but close.

I was proud that I had been more involved in the building of cabin two than I had cabin one. I was learning and that was always a good thing, I decided.

When I got home on Friday of week three, there was a phone message from Jeremy. "Alice and I are home. That was quite the experience, but we graduated," his message said.

"Good for you, how do you feel?" I asked when I returned the call.

"Like I could sleep for a month," he said. Then after a pause, "And kick the shit out of a mountain lion." He broke out in a quiet laugh.

"Yeah, I remember that feeling," I said. "So you guys want to go out for dinner?"

"No offense Rose, but we just want to sleep for a week," Jeremy said.

"You do know that you have to stay in shape," I said.

"I know run three miles minimum or bike at least an hour every day."

He sounded resentful. "You know it will keep you alive, even if you never have to run the Mogadishu Mile," I said.

"I know Rose, but we are going to need some help," he said.

"You know, it is not going to do our cover any good if we are seen working out together," I said.

"Actually I think it might. I talked to Andrew about it and won him over," Jeremy said. "Can we get together tomorrow to discuss it?"

"Not tomorrow, I'm working on the cabins tomorrow," I said.

"Okay, I know you don't work on Sunday," he said.

"Okay how about we meet at the plaza for breakfast. But I warn you I go to breakfast early, very early," I replied.

"You may not this Sunday. There is supposed to be a snowstorm starting tomorrow. With your last snow storm adventure, I expect you will want to wait till the roads are absolutely clear," Jeremy said.

"Hell, last time the roads were clear. It was the over night refreeze that got me. Give me a call tomorrow night and we will work out something," I said. That pretty much ended the conversation.

Just like the recent nights before, I went to bed early without any visits to adult chat rooms. I did wake up in the middle of the night to use the toilet and put another log on the fire.

Saturday morning I did the usual things before I took the trike out to the Plaza. I pulled it into the Hardee's restaurant, found a place to park it, so that I could watch over it, then went inside.

The four Road Warrior cops where eating biscuits and drinking coffee. As I walked by, one of them said, "Ma'am, you need to be careful on that thing. You are really hard to see out there at night."

"I know that's why I bought the lights and the large reflector," I said.

"Even with those lights, a car pulling up from behind you might not realize your speed till he is right on you, then if he happened to be meeting a car in the opposite lane he could choose to run over you," he said.

"If that happens, you can break the boredom for a while," I said. I did not say, you might even get to see my boobs without the sweatshirt that you keep staring at. I smiled and went to sit near the spot where my trike was parked just outside the window. The new state cops were still in the restaurant when I walked out the door. I unlocked the cable I always stretched from the frame though one of the rear wheels making it impossible to roll the trike away. No it wasn't impossible to steal, just difficult.

When I got home I dressed for the construction site and went to work. The truck was my vehicle of choice since I could sit in the cab to warm up. But since cabin one was closed in we could have heated it to work on the interior but we chose to work on the outside of cabin two. It was close to being dry inside.

"Have you heard about a snow storm headed this way?" I asked Carlos.

"I do not listen to the weather," he said. "I simply do what I do."

"Well we have to get the roof on, and I have a couple of extra plastic drop cloths, So before we leave, I want to cover all the openings in both cabins," I said.

"Cabin number one is tight. It will not need anything. We can put the roofing shingles on number two today. We can work on the windows if we have time if not we can cover the openings with plastic and go home for the weekend," Carlos agreed. I helped to nail shingles that Juan and Jose brought up to us. Since it was Saturday we had Jose all day. We breezed right through it, then moved on to the Plexiglas for the windows above the ceiling line. They were smaller than the half windows in cabin one, but they would still give a lot of light.

At five o'clock I gave the men their wages. "Carlos if you can get to work on Monday, we can work on the windows and doors for this one or for start the interior on number one."

"Si Senorita," he said with a smile.

Jeremy was right the snow started in the afternoon and snowed all night. Because of the snow pile up in front of my door, I had insisted that the cabins have tall foundations. I went to bed with the snow still falling.

I looked out when I got up to pee and the snow was still falling. When the clock buzzed at 6 AM, you guessed it, the snow was still falling. The phone rang at 6:30. I couldn't believe that it was Jeremy.

"What the hell are you doing awake?" I asked.

"These new habits are hard to break. So what about our meeting?" he asked.

"It's about a mile to your house. I expect I could get dressed and walk there," I said.

"We could meet you half way then walk back with you to our place," he said.