The morning came in cold with a little rain on it, and rswfire made the call early: the day would be spent inside. There was work enough in there. He had done a good amount the day before and there was more to do, and the weather simply decided which walls the work would happen behind. He picked up the camera the way he had the day before, continuing a thread he had already started with whoever was watching, and began by naming the thing that would shape the hours ahead. He could not get the medication he had been taking out here on the road. Tramadol was the one that mattered — an opiate, and he knew a withdrawal was coming either way, so he had decided to start it now rather than wait for the road to start it for him. He was already feeling it a little. He described it as not pleasant. He said he would manage, because he had to, because he chose this. He said he had known when he picked this lifestyle that he was choosing it over that medication, and that he did not regret it at all. What remained open, he stated plainly, was what he was going to do about the pain he does have.
Bailey was at the door. rswfire heard him and named him for the camera — that's him, he would love to be out here — and then turned the moment over in the open: whether to set their things up and let the cats into the space right away, knowing that the second he did, Bailey would understand he was allowed out here and would never stop wanting to come. He left the question genuinely undecided. A little later he said he was happy, that the day was pleasant, that he was just in some physical pain, and then he corrected the frame in real time for himself and for anyone listening — it was the physical pain making today not so great, not the new home. Having separated the two, he said he was going to keep busy and do all the things he needed to do, and he went to do them.
Moving through the interior, he checked Bailey's whereabouts and found him up somewhere high — a good place, better than the stairwell, and he told him so. He greeted Oliver. Then he began the tour of what already existed. Lights going up along one run, to eventually span the whole length. Lights he had put up the day before alongside the charging station. Netting anchored over his bed with more lights strung inside it. He had used wall anchors for that, real ones, and he said he was so proud of himself for it. It needed to sit tighter to the wall and he did not have the right screws yet, which meant a shopping trip soon. The current lights were going up on command strips, temporary by nature, with more drop lights planned across the slide so the baskets could follow — if there turned out to be enough room.
There was one problem, and it sat behind a wall. He had learned to use a stud finder — another thing he named as a point of pride — and running it across the top of the slide told him there was something back there. He did not know what, and did not know what to do about it, so he reached out to his salesman at the dealership where he bought the rig to see whether schematics could be had. He said he would figure it out, because he needed the baskets up there. This is how we're living, he said. This is difficult. I'm doing my best.
From there the logic of the space kept unfolding as he talked through it. More netting over the office area, slightly larger. The bed netting had originally been imagined for journals, but he had nowhere at all for his towels, so it might become that instead — undetermined. He described the shift honestly: he had thought he was doing great getting organized in the driveway, and then he moved here, and only once you are really living in a space do you start to figure out where your things actually need to go. He said he was loving that experience, truly. Then shelving below, to double the storage under the table. The table itself had come with benches that fit squarely underneath it, two of them still sitting at his house, and he named that as something he should have known. He would strap it all down. He said he loved the Ingenuity of living this life.
The last of it was about motion. He had picked up anti-skid pads for the table, which had shifted a little — his read was that it happened when the collapsible unit on the roof came down, the one he thinks is called an inverter, and he said he wished somebody would just tell him what it is so he could call it what it is. Everything had been secure for the drive itself; it was backing into the site that moved things. So the table gets strapped, and the baskets get screwed in rather than taped, because he will not let the cats roam the interior while he is driving until he knows everything is genuinely secure. He signed off wishing everyone a good day, then paused over which day it was — Tuesday, he thought, though he had kind of lost track of time.