catalina in bloom

Having Meredith here over the weekend and staying in the camper with me, I got to thinking about how far I’ve come with Catalina. Merry went with me around Christmas to put a deposit down on her, in a normal residential neighborhood in a dumpy North Shore town. Catalina had been sitting in the driveway for a long time, tires flat, propped on wooden pallets and cinderblocks, filled with all sorts of trash and carpenter’s odds and ends.

Looking at the pictures now, I’m not entirely sure what I saw in her. The $200 price tag, to be sure. But really, she was a fixer-upper of fairly epic proportions. I am not a plumber, a carpenter, an electrician, not even a born tinkerer really. I’d prefer to pick up the phone book and get somebody who knows what they’re doing to come help.

But somehow, in the height of summer, she’s become this rather dreamy place to live, shady and simple, and I’m proud that I was actually able to put such an oddball idea in motion. It’s a little tough when I have guests – she’s really built for one or two. And it seems that something or other is always breaking – most recently, one of the benches on the dinette gave out when my friend was sitting down to dinner.

I’ve already found a buyer for her, a farmer I used to work for, and she’s going to stay on-island after I go, when the winter comes on. I thought about keeping her, maybe towing her somewhere else for the winter, but it would be really expensive, and she’s really old, and I’m afraid I’d mess up my beloved truck, which always comes first in my heart. Also, I love the idea of other twenty-something flower girls sleeping in the little loft in summers to come, adding to her bit by bit. Maybe somebody’ll finally finish the goddam electrical wiring – sure as hell won’t be me.