"I`ll be the owner of this railroad,One of these here days.I`ll be the owner of this railroad, And I swear you pay I`ll raise.I`ll invite you to my mansion,Feed you on goose and terrapin.I`ll invite you to the racetrack,When my ship comes in.

　　Dinah won`t you blow,Dinah won`t you blow,Dinah won`t you blow your horn?Dinah won`t you blow,Dinah won`t you blow,Dinah won`t you blow your horn?"

　　I`m humming, feeling strangely aimless as I actually try to tame my wiry old lady hair and put something on that`s presentable instead of my usual grungy renovation clothes. I still don`t have a mirror in the house, so I`ll just have to save the scant makeup applications for when I`m sitting in my car. It`s not that I plan to do much besides prove that I still have some eyelashes with a little mascara, and I might try to color my thinning lips while I`m at it. We`ll see if the fancy strikes me.

　　It took the better part of a week, but my fever went away and my headaches have been mild since the fever ended. Perhaps the mold treatments helped? I`m still tanking up on water as often as I can remember too, so maybe that`s helping? I couldn`t tell you.

　　Sigh&. Squeak&. Stomp, stomp, stomp&.

　　Ah. But the house is still noisy. She`s old and set in her ways, I guess. I chuckle to myself as the thought strikes me that we are evenly matched in that regard- two fussy old biddies existing symbiotically while driving each other crazy! I think we`ve reached an understanding though. Apart from the odd echoes of the days long past, she leaves me alone to get my work done.

　　Not today, however! Today I am turning over the project manager hat to Jay. Today is sheet rocking day; today the skeleton gains flesh and the house will once again have meaningful rooms. I know that Jay has been studying the original blueprints to make sure the walls go in correctly and "as intended" so the house regains her authentic functions. He wrangled up a hearty crew of volunteers for this part from the sounds of things. Jay seemed confident that through the sheer manpower, the walls would go up quickly and really only take a couple of days. I`m just grateful that I don`t have to figure out how to do the sheet rocking myself. That stuff is heavy, and you have to treat it gently and move with control or it snaps and crumbles on you. A giant delivery truck off-loaded plastic-wrapped pallets of the stuff yesterday just in the driveway in anticipation of today`s labor crew, and I naively thought I could start carrying the sheets into the house. Nope! That idea died as quickly as it had come. I`m unusually strong and capable for my age, but I`m not that strong it seems. Suffice it to say that I am more than happy to leave the pallets of wall building materials to the strapping young men.

　　In the meantime, I am going to visit Betsy Cornwall. I first met Betsy in grade school when she was Betsy Finley, and we grew up in and out of each other`s social circles but never really became friends until well into high school.

　　Knock, knock, knock, knock.

　　Ah! That would be Jay. I pull my shoes on quickly and toss my neglected makeup bag into my purse, tucking the purse under my armpit on my way to answer the door.

　　"Lottie! Look at you all dressed up! You must be taking me up on my suggestion to get out of the house for the day."

　　"Yes, thank you. I`m off to visit an old friend."

　　"That sounds nice. Before you take off, though, I have a surprise for you."

　　"You do? Oh! Oh, you told me that about a week ago. Right. Yes. What is it?"

　　Stepping to the side and out of the doorframe and consequently my line of sight, Jay seems to be collecting something, returning to the door with a giant box. "May I bring it in for you?"

　　"Please." I step to the side, and Jay sets the box down, backing up to give me room to open it, and the grin on his face tells me he`s excited. I pull the box open and find a giant picture frame face down, and as I fumble with the corner, trying to pull it out, I realize that it is one frame in a stack of several. Pulling it out and turning it over&. "The blueprints?"

　　"Do you like it?! I had them photocopied so I could keep oogling them, but I thought the originals belonged here in this house on display somewhere for people to admire them. What do you think?"

　　"I think& it-it`s great! More than great! With all the bare walls you`re going to be putting up the next few days, there will be a lot of blank spaces to fill, and you can`t get more authentic than the original blueprints. Thank you, Jay. That was very thoughtful."

　　"So, I realized, Lottie, speaking of the blueprints and having space to fill, in some places on the blueprints, areas have been marked to show where certain pieces of furniture were supposed to go. You`ll notice in the bedrooms on the second floor, the master`s and lady`s suites, the rooms were designed with certain pieces of furniture in mind. See where the beds are marked? And then the chests of drawers and the large wardrobes?! How cool is that?! Depending on just how authentic you want to be, you could have furniture custom made to fill these spaces as they were intended. I have literally never seen that on a blueprint before, and- OH! Look, look, look! Do you remember built-in bookcases and a window bench under any of these windows?!" Jay asks and starts digging through the framed blueprints to show me what he`s talking about. "Nearly every window facing the back of the house on the second and third floor shows plans for built-ins around the windows. I don`t remember there being any though!"Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

　　"Uh&." I look at the places he`s indicating, my face lifting and pursing in something akin to a curious shrug. "You`re right. The only built-ins I found were around the fireplaces, oh! And there was one window on the second floor. Um&." I locate the right blueprint and point it out. "The study in the suite of rooms reserved for the master of the house."

　　"Interesting," Jay grins. "So perhaps Mr. Soward liked the whimsical window built-ins and Mrs. Soward vetoed them except for in his private space? That`s kind of funny, actually!"

　　"I suppose it`s also possible that the built-ins were built but as the house changed hands and got updated, only the one survived?"

　　"That would make sense too," Jay shrugs. "I like my theory better though," he says with a teasing chuckle. "It`s interesting to me how so much of the second floor is just a pair of apartments for the mister and his missus."

　　"They must have really valued their privacy," I tease wryly.

　　"Yeah, since you bought this place, I`ve been reading up on the history of the house. The people that built this place, Mr. and Mrs. Soward, they never had kids, right? Or did they?"

　　"I don`t know, actually, but I don`t think so."

　　"I just know that the house has been bought and sold a few times. Like, it was never passed down` to anyone."

　　"And I only know that before the city declared it abandoned and took possession of the house, it belonged to the Swanson family."

　　"Yeah&." He trails off, lost in thought, returning to the moment in an abrupt snap after a second or two. "Well, Lottie, leave this to me. You go have yourself a nice day out, and I`ll see you maybe when you get back or maybe tomorrow morning depending."

　　"Thanks, Jay." I twiddle my fingers at him in parting and head for the door, crossing the creaky front porch (that still needs replacing) as a line of cars pull up into the driveway and a mob of younger-than-me men start gathering by the pallets.

　　"You must be Mrs. Evered?" I am waylaid as I reach the bottom of the steps.

　　"That`s right. Uh, you`re here to help Jay?" I ask, uncertain of where to start a conversation.

　　"Yup. My name`s Greg."

　　"Greg," I repeat awkwardly. "It`s nice to meet you, Greg. Thank you for being here. Thank you all for being here," I say with an intentionally louder volume, directing the comment at the accumulating crowd with a slight nod of my head. "I`m going to get out of your way, though," I say, indicating my car with another nod.

　　"Bye, now!" Greg says, and I sidle away, reaching my car and slipping into the front seat to gratefully shut the door against further conversation. I`m not really sure when I became antisocial. I`ve never been the most outgoing person, but I`ve also never considered myself a hermit. On the scale from introvert to extrovert, I`m an ambivert. At least, that`s what I learned someone in the middle of that scale is supposedly called, not that I put much stock in such things.

　　Sigh&.

　　Well, goodbye to you too.

　　Where was I before Jay got here? Oh, Betsy! She`s one of the few fellow old guards left in Raesport, but it`s looking like she won`t be for too terribly long. She had an accident a couple of years back- fell and broke something in her leg. The recovery was slow and difficult as it often is at our age, and with her mobility severely limited during that recovery process, other health issues cropped up. There is something to be said for the adage that you`ll die if you stop moving. At least, that`s what I`ve observed of my peers. Once they stop moving, for whatever reason, be it health, habits, or something else, things deteriorate rapidly. Perhaps that`s another reason why I feel compelled to keep a project&.

　　I`m driving to the Silver Pine Assisted Living Center and Nursing Home in Helensborough. It`s about an hour away, but it`s one of the better assisted living homes in the area, and it`s closer to Betsy`s daughter which I know was a big selling point for her. One of the other major selling points, when you reach the threshold of needing more care than a standard Assisted Living Center would typically provide, instead of moving to an entirely new location, Silver Pine just helps you transfer to an identical room in their nursing home facilities. All in one. No need for a second wave of shopping around. No fuss for your family. No enormous stacks of papers to go through and sign. One and done. And you are presented with the care choices of, say, dementia or resuscitation procedures when your mind is still sharp enough to make informed decisions.

　　Oh, the joys of aging. Inevitably either your intelligent mind, your emotional mind, or your body gives out on you, and like a three-legged stool, once one of them snaps, the rest topples quickly after it. And yes, I do separate intelligent mental health from emotional mental health. I don`t know what else to call them. But where some people lose the cognitive ability to make sound choices in their old age, others sink into a deathly depressive spiral. I do not think of the two mental disorders the same way, and yet both fall into the category of mental health, and they are equal in their destructiveness. Hopelessness and despair are every bit as damaging as Alzheimer`s disease in my less than humble opinion. Both are horrific ways to spend the final moments of your life.

　　I think of the three legs of my stool, I`m the least attached to my physical health. If I had to choose the one to snap on me, I`d pick that one and then hope the rest of the stool collapses quickly. Yes. I think I want to just run and run and run until I give out, and then I want things to end quickly. That is preferable to the prolonged lingering I witnessed with my mother. For her it was her emotional mind that gave out first. She never let me in, never told me why, but she was plagued with guilt and self-hatred at the end. It paralyzed her, figuratively speaking. She didn`t want to get out of bed. She lost the motivation to take care of herself. She just& gave up. And yet she stuck around for nearly three years. At some point she stopped taking her heart medicine but didn`t bother to tell me or her doctors even while they continued to prescribe the pills and I continued to get the prescriptions filled every month. She eventually died of a heart attack. And then Uncle Jack died in basically the same way. His emotional mind snapped after the mine accident that killed some of his men, and then he spent a few years drinking himself into a slow, agonizing death of liver failure and angry tirades.

　　I would imagine that losing your mind would be its own horror, and I suppose that losing the use of your body could feel like being trapped in a prison of your own flesh. I shudder.

　　New plan. I want to die in a freak accident like a bug splatting against a car windshield. Never see it coming, death is instant, no prolonged agony. By the time you finish snapping your fingers, it`s already over.

　　And suddenly I find merging onto the freeway a little unnerving.