Do or Die 7

7

The late spring and summer weeks went by with Trina feeling lonely for the first time since the “reboot” and she began to realize that she did want other people around. She had changed a lot these past months. She began to realize that the changes went much deeper than her losing the weight and becoming stronger physically but she was also changing inside. Her confidence had increased which came a shock but here she was putting the roof on her new outdoor kitchen and hadn’t she been able to make the structure very sound and strong? And squared? THAT was fun! NOT! But she had done it! And she had done it all alone. Yeah, it took time and patience but she was cultivating patience whether she wanted to or not.

And how about all the wood and food she had been able to gather? Why she had turned the basement into an herbal room with all the wild edibles and herbs she had found or grown. It was almost perfect down there for her to hang the herbs and plants up so they could thoroughly dry. And she had a really good herbal first aid kit now. Even though she was hesitate at first to go to the liquor store to get the alcohol she needed for the tinctures and then she had to figure out just what type was best. She experimented with some different grain alcohols.

As the weeks passed, she had made several trips to town in order to gather more supplies and clothes. Especially shoes since she knew that the buildings would not last forever nor would the goods in them and so she wanted to get all that she thought she would need before the elements destroyed the stores.

There was music playing on a portable CD player that was up on the roof with her as she hammered in the last of the shingles. She used silicon chalk liberally to seal up any place that she thought might let rain in.

Trina mentally went through all her lists to make sure that she was keeping on top of things: Her guerrilla gardens were doing great. There were signs of nibbling on about half of them so she took that as a good sign that the wildlife was coming back.

There had been no sign of the last of those dogs from the pack that she and Timothy had tried to eliminate. Every seed in town had found a home in her basement and every garden checked for potatoes of which those found had been cut up and replanted in some of the guerrilla gardens and in one of her raised beds.

Her garden beds were doing great except for the corn. She was thinking she would add some fish to it next year like the Native Americans use to do. She had plenty of seed.

Her outdoor kitchen was almost done and she had found the perfect burners for canning. She was going to use those single burners that hook up to propane tanks that they use to use to fry turkeys! Well that IS what the shelf tag said. She was also able to find and collect 22 propane tanks but didn’t know how to fill them once they were empty which she didn’t worry too much about since she didn’t know where she would fill them anyways.

One of the bedrooms had been turned into a library since she had brought home every book she thought she would need and it was a tight squeeze between book shelves…good thing she was no longer so over weight.

One thing that she was worried about was her glasses. She had two pair but knew that she would eventually need more. How she wished she had had that Lasik surgery before the “reboot”! She had been saving up for it and they had offered her a payment plan, but she had put it off….how ironic that “hindsight is 20/20”.

She kept having the feeling that she was missing something important but just couldn’t figure out what it was.

Then her thoughts were interrupted by the ringing of the bell.