By mid-June the site had become familiar in the way a room becomes familiar when you have measured every corner of it. rswfire had been at it two weeks, and two weeks was the mark where the antsiness arrived — not gradually, but as a discovery, something he noticed about himself and named aloud the way he names anything else worth logging. I get very antsy after about two weeks of being at a place. The reservation ran another two and a half months. The dental sequence ran roughly the same length. He was not trapped; he was contracted. He said so directly — he technically could go — and the distinction mattered to him more than the constraint did.
The day had already spent him outward before he ever picked up the camera. Laundry first, finally, and he did not enjoy it. Then the store, and he did not enjoy that either, and the reason was the same reason both times: too many people, everywhere. He came back with chili ingredients and rugs — rugs chosen specifically because they would be easier to clean if Bailey threw up on them, though Bailey had not thrown up since the white one, which he found interesting. In the house it had happened more. Something had changed and he did not know what. He noted it without resolving it.
Inside, with the door shut and the crowd behind him, he took his teeth out. One spot along the gum line digs in, and he pressed on it and said so — very painful, needs a break, he would have it adjusted at the next appointment. He liked the dentures. They looked nice. He was clear that this was an adjustment period and clear that he did not intend to make it a running subject: I'm not going to talk about this all the time. A new experience, that was all. The implants were coming for the top, and those would clip in, and he expected that to solve most of it.
Then the contacts. He had ordered a year's supply when he decided to move into the rig, and they were out of stock, and he was leaving within days, so they substituted something else. The right lens sits wrong on his eye. His prescription had changed; the optometrist now says both eyes carry astigmatism and rswfire thinks he is wrong about that. Either way: stuck with them. He said the word stuck twice in the transcript — once about the lenses, once about the bed — and both times it landed on a hardware problem someone else had failed to solve for him.
The bed was the one that got the heat. He had called the camper place that day and they had nothing — no solutions, absolutely none, just an offer of a mobile tech, and he asked out loud what a mobile tech was supposed to do about geometry. The slide and the mattress interfere. Bringing the slide in means pulling the mattress off, and the angles make that genuinely difficult, and he owned the decision that produced it: I kind of made a mistake doing that. The eventual fix was already scoped — an RV mattress, hinged, one he could fold in half — but that was a purchase for later, and today it meant breaking camp to get level again. Which is what he intended to do: get everything up off the floors, then deal with it.
The AC had been running since morning, holding 71, and outside it was 77, not the ninety they had forecast, and he was pleasantly surprised and irritated at the same time. Yesterday they said ninety today and ninety all week. Now they said low eighties, with ninety pushed five days out. How are you supposed to make plans if you can't trust the weather app. The heat was the thing that worried him most, and the worry ran to Bailey before it ran to himself. Outside, a woman was screaming at nobody.
He caught himself mid-list and named the shape of it — not a bad mood, he said, though he had been in one most of the day, and it wasn't complaint so much as accumulation. Then he stated the method plainly: sit down, think about the issues, find solutions to them. That's really the answer. What followed was the honest part underneath the inventory — he does not like being stationary, he is tired of this view, he wants a different one, he wants to go. The next site was already picked, shadier, and he had been looking at it with something close to envy. The thirtieth. He corrected himself on the date and let it stand.
He turned the camera down toward the floor, where Bailey was hanging out, and asked him if he was happy. His hand kept getting in the way of the shot. He decided Bailey looked pretty happy. Then, almost in passing, the last piece of the audit: the cat doesn't like to go outside anymore, which is strange, and rswfire asked him why, and offered heat as a possible reason, and then set the question down where it was. Probably for the best, really. The rest of the day was leveling and chili.