Monday morning arrived later than rswfire intended — nine o'clock, the cats having spent the night playing across the small floor of the Scamper while he tried to sleep. He surfaced tired, but not the kind of tired that had flattened him the day before, when he had worked until crashing was the only option left. Today was an inspection day. He turned the camera on himself and then on the trailer, showing what a full day of work had made of the space: the fire extinguisher staged where an inspector would find it, and beside it more fire safety equipment than the check required, placed there deliberately. He named the gesture for what it was — sucking up a little — and let it stand.
He moved through the interior the way a person moves through something they built. One corner held the only disorder in the trailer, and he defended it as organized: each pile a project, each project a thing not yet finished rather than a thing abandoned. The solar stayed disconnected for the duration of the visit; he wanted nothing plugged into anything while the inspector was inside, and said aloud that he might be being paranoid about it, then kept the decision anyway. The cat gear had been consolidated to the rear. The cats themselves had taken over the front area, which he noted was what he had wanted. He showed the door screen, the insulation, the three hanging fans he had promised and delivered — one, two, three. He showed the Kohl's blanket he had found in a bundle on the floor with no tag, priced almost to nothing, and said plainly that he loved it.
There was the bag with the electronics, the one that goes with him everywhere, and the second bag that goes with him most of the time — a hierarchy he stated without explaining, because it did not need explaining. There was still wire to run the length of the trailer to the rear window for the dash cam, strip lights to mount, a cup holder to install. The temperature reading said one thing and the air said another; he tracked both and made no attempt to reconcile them. Then he named the sequence ahead of him — inspector, then sheriff, then registration — and said he would feel a lot better once all three were behind him, because then it would be registered in Kentucky and he could drive it anywhere. Right now it wore temporary tags. He did not know when the inspector was coming. He said he would keep working until he arrived.
The inspection went well. The man was, by rswfire's account, super nice, and rswfire liked him. The sheriff came after and was less friendly, but did his part, and that gate cleared too. Only registration remained. Back inside, in the warmth of a trailer now reading almost seventy-four degrees, he tested the laptop against the space and found it cumbersome, considered the new tablet, considered the table that also would not work, and left the question open. Bailey was chilling. Hazel was, as usual, being a terrorist. He said the space felt kind of nice, and that it was theirs.
The last segment came before light, at 6:40 in the morning, the screen nearly black, birdsong loud enough that he addressed it — too early for these birds to be out. A cat was there with him, close to the camera. He said hello to her. Then he told the audience it was almost time. Thursday was the departure. He would move his updates to the second channel, linked in the description, and there would be one big update before the migration. The full walkthrough of the Scamper would come later — around his birthday, the day he left for the campground — and he would show them the house, too, once what remained inside it was only what he was trying to get rid of.
He said being in that house had become surreal, and reached for a way to explain it before settling on the plain version: you are giving up a whole life and starting a new one, and there is an emotional toll to that. He said a weight had been lifted, with the compliance gates cleared and the Scamper looking great. He acknowledged he looked like crap and had been working nonstop and still had a lot to do. Then he turned toward whoever was watching and spoke directly to anyone carrying the same fears he had carried: you can do it. He offered no promise of sunshine and rainbows. He expected challenges. He expected there would be parts of this he would not like. He said he would like a lot of it, and that it was making him happy, and closed on the measure he had been holding the whole time — it's the change I needed, it just is.