Chapter 68

When we returned from our first walk of the day, we began working together as a couple. We were the odd couple of screen writing. Janet began to show off her new found confidence. I thought she was beaten down emotionally, but she was on the mend before she came to live with Mikah and me again. She began by demanding things be changed to suit her.

“I need a real desk,” she said over breakfast. “With a real computer, not one of these off the wall operating systems.”

“Okay that can be your first goal, after you get your finances and your life in order. For now use the laptop you have. Use one of these folding TV trays as a desk. Spread you papers on your bed and the floor if you need to. First we need to decide, if we can work together. In order to do that, we actually have to work,” I demanded.

“Then you need to convert your document files into rich text files for me,” she said.

“No we need to discuss the work we want to do. Then you need to take the recording to your room and hammer it into a script. Have you finished with the backlog?” I asked.

“No, but I could finish a lot faster if you provided me with the right tools,” she said.

“We are in this together,” I said. “We don’t work for big daddy Durham now. We are working for ourselves. Lets got blasting out the scripts, and you can dig yourself out of the hole,” I explained.

“I’ll be caught up by lunch,” she said.

“Then get to it,” I suggested. “I’m going to home depot.” I had to admit, she did have a point about storage in the bedroom. I drove to the home depot with an idea, not a plan. I bought two twelve foot long, 1x10 dressed fir boards. Then I rolled them to the table saw and had them cut into approximately four foot lengths. The shelves would be about four feet long and nine inches wide. Then I bought some eight inch concrete blocks. I figured I could use any extras in the yard so I bought twenty five. I didn’t mind building a desk, and shelves. I could easily reconfigure the desk, when Janet got tired of living with me again.

I had a little under a hundred bucks in the project, but I liked it, and the components would last a hell of a lot longer than a fifty dollar book case from china. I was barely able to get everything into the back the open space of the Metro. What once was the back seat and trunk, just didn’t have a lot of square footage in it.

“When I got home, I found a couple of tubes of silicone caulk and assembled it. The configuration was a table top about three feet off the floor. It backed up to, but was not attach the outside wall. Then above that sat Three more shelves about eight inches apart, and nine inches deep. I was glad that the concrete slab in the old car wash floor was a monster.

Janet turned her nose up at the desk/shelve unit, but she put her laptop down and went to work. I went back to the living room to fix a boiled ham sandwich for lunch. If she wanted a sandwich she would have to fix her own, I thought. It was my intention that she do her own thing. I was not going to build another mini me. Well maybe forcing her to be independent was a mini me, I thought.

.

She worked right through lunch and missed the midday hike. Since we weren’t used to company on our walks, Mikah and I didn’t mind. It was a treat for Mikah when she had a new friend, but she didn’t seem to have an opinion about Janet one way or the other.

During the afternoon, while Janet continued to work, I did something I had been wanting to do since I came off the road. After I checked the cameras, I used for surveillance. I carefully packed the backpack which I wore when riding the scooter. I made sure the scooter would run, then I told Janet to look for me in about thirty minutes.

I rode around the hood making pictures of anything and everything that interested me at all. From cars up on blocks, to kids standing in their front yard waving at me. I enjoyed the thirty minutes on the scooter, and the pictures I took along the way. I even took pictures of the kids who ran when they saw my camera. Everything interested me I discovered.

My cameras were much easier to use, and carry around than those used by professional photographers. The image quality might only be 99% when compared to their’s, but it was plenty for me. I wasn’t planning to do any model brochures or wedding. Those type things were like real work. I just wanted to shoot images for the fun of it.

I walked through the door in time to think about dinner. “Hey Janet, I shouted from the front door. What you want to do for dinner?” I asked.

“How about take out from McDonalds?” she asked.

“Good choice,” I agreed.

“I’m on a roll, I don’t want to quit. It feels good to be working again,” she informed me.

“I’m glad to hear that, but you are going to have to think about the salvation army’s community center again. They may not need you, but you might need them.” I suggested.

“I’ll know when the time is right. In the meantime I want a big mac and fries,” she said. “You wouldn’t mind going would you?”

“Not at all.” I said cutting her some slack. It would also be a good time to call Mica and let her know the good news about Janet. Mica didn’t want to be pressured. She should know that Janet and I would be ‘roomies’ but nothing more. Thia wouldn’t come in the car wash with Janet staying there. So Mica got her wish. No pressure for a commitment, and no Thia’s visits to contend with either.

I spent the evening watching old TV shows on the computer. I wore headphones so Janet could work. I had bought the headphones, so that I could better understand the British accents. They did help for that, but they also worked for killing the volume. I needed the higher volume to hear and understand all the sound tracks.