Day #8

We finally were able to find someone who could weld for us! A friend from Darwin’s nine to five job Jordan, was available this weekend. It maybe took him thirty minutes to hit a few spots on the frame and fix the dangley piece by the door and bingo bango, The frame was officially fixed! By the time they were finished and packed up I had a large section of weeding completed in the front yard. Our yard duties were paid and the floor was welded….all seemed well with the world!

We spent the rest of the day working on getting the floor bolted down and the steps by the kitchen table and what will soon be our bed installed. Crawling under the trailer is a bit terrifying but between Darwin and I, we were able to get everything aligned and attached. We wrapped up Theo after doing a little jig on our newly attached floor and left feeling mighty satisfied.

Day #9

We played around with the door frame today. Even with the floor down things still seemed off with the walls. The door frame is to narrow at the bottom and to wide at the top. We pushed and pulled but nothing seemed to match up. We both wanted to throw in the towel. We felt instantly overwhelmed and tired. A long discouraging week at the nine to five seemed to have flowed into today.

Darwin however, decided the bottom piece he installed recently was the issue and went about removing it. This was easier said then done. After almost an hour working on removing the piece we still could not locate the issue. I was left to holding the piece for over thirty minutes while the sun melted my skin off and dried up my brain like a raisin. Meanwhile Darwin was pulling and pushing, cussing and hammering to no avail. The piece we removed ended up back into the same location. We sat in the trailer and babbled incoherently to each other and zoned out watching Bowie play around in the yard. I forgot to mention we brought her over today. She has spent most of her time pooping, peeing, wallowering in the dirt and sleeping in the shade. She was making more progress doing nothing then we were at anything.

After watching Bowie poop for what seemed to be the millionth time (this is normal for her) we decided our brains were too melted and we needed a break. We grabbed the Bowie Dog and left for the afternoon. We ran our normal people errands and returned later in the afternoon when the sun was less intense. We had decided while away that building a support wall would perhaps help line everything up again. Darwin would go  to work rebuilding the wall that once was part of the closet/shitter that had we ripped out.

When we pulled up in the Stallion again I felt tired and sick. I just wanted to stay at the apartment and read, clean, sleep, do anything but work anymore. While I watched Darwin cut a piece of wood Alex came out and asked us about dinner. Darwin had forgotten about plans he had made with Alex and Sierra to cook out. This is all I could handle. With a shitty week at the nine to five, spending my one day off on stupid Theo to no avail, being hot and tired all day, and now feeling like a jerk, I totally started crying. Why couldn’t we have just slapped some paint on Theo and hope for the best!

After a few tears I felt a little relieved and Alex and Sierra being the great people they are took over dinner while I tried to clean up the yard and Darwin continued to work. We ate outside next to Theo and Alex and Sierra listened to our woes of the week. We sat out while the sun went down talking and laughing trying to ignore the pile of wood and aluminum that sat behind us. After dinner we felt a bit better about life and returned to Theo in the dark. This is when Darwin discovered he built the support wall backwards. We cut our loses and hope it wouldn’t rain as we put a few tools up and said fuck the rest and left. We had reached our end game.

Day #10

Darwin had a busy day filming along with other duties so when I came home from the day job we headed off to Theo again. Darwin corrected the wall and officially installed it. After some bitching and hammering the door kinda fits although there were two pieces of wood that randomly popped out from the walls. This was a bit terrifying and very similar to playing Jenga. We keep waiting for the wrong piece to come out and Theo to implode. We buttoned Theo up and hoped the wind expected this week didn’t take him down but then again not really caring either way.