The "See-Through" Cabin

So.....yeah, it's been awhile. I been busy, bite me.

Just settling into my clinical year here in Forks, WA. Doing the rural thing and quite frankly, loving it. The town is **TWILIGHT** crazy, but then again this community needs the stimulus. A once famous logging town on the Olympic Peninsula, Forks' economy froze in the 70's (not sure if that's 1970's or 1870's). Overall it's really nice, walking down the street and recognizing all the patients that you saw the day before. Educating them for 20 minutes about the dangers of hyperglycemia and insulin resistance, then having them spot you at the only grocery store in town buying a 12-pack of pepsi and Haagen-Daz. Right now I am living with a nurse practioner in a "Mother-in-Law" apartment above her garage, but it wasn't always this way. Come along and enjoy the saga of how I fell into cowshit and came out smelling like a rose....

The 3 weeks preceding clinical year I was trying like hell to get housing in this small town of 3,000. Rental property is limited, and since the population hasn't changed since FDR got polio, it didn't look like anything new was gonna pop up. I finally got a return call from a gentleman by the lovely name of "Chigger" who was renting out a "Wonderfully rustic cabin in the Olympic National Forest" for the pittance of $350/month. He gave me instructions to his cabin and told me to go ahead and check it out, even though he would not be there (they really trust each other out here, it's cool). I drove out in the early morning, arriving at a very secluded log cabin, surrounded by meadows and a creek. All of this was enclosed by the Olympic Mountains on all sides. The added bonus was that it had phone service/Wi-fi/indoor plumbing/ and was only a 20 minute drive to town. I thought, "WOW! What a great deal, I can sit out on the porch surrounded by this beauty and write my SOAP notes, all the while being available for ER calls!"

The next morning I called Chigger, and told him I really liked the cabin. He told me to come out and meet him to talk about the details of the lease. When I got to his house, I told him I loved the cabin, with the cedar-shake roof, and rough cut barn wood in the bathrooms. His response was, "Bathroom-S?" Apparently, I had gotten the directions wrong and had taken a right instead of a left somewhere. I had inspected, rifled through, and used the bathroom in someone else's vacation cabin for over an hour like an overweight, middle-aged Goldilocks! Oh well, at least the toilet paper was *JUST RIGHT*
Then Chigger took me to the REAL cabin he had built. It was about 60 feet behind his new house.....in a swamp. It was just bigger than a postage stamp, and had been cobbled together from pastel boards from what could only be the Partridge Family's concert set. The bedroom fit a size double bed..and that's it. You had to jump from the foot up to the head because the walls on each side touched the bed. Another bonus: I was only allowed 2 megawatts of power each day. That's about enough to light a 100 watt bulb for 24 hours. I guess his main power source was a hydroelectric wheel in a nearby creek. Cool, but kinda a pain in the ass for a guy who spends all night on his computer and runs a fan in December. Also, no phone service, spotty Wi-Fi from Chigger's house, and all this for $350/month.
But the best part was the bathroom! To save on heating in the winter, Chigger had decided to build the ceiling AND ALL THE WALLS out of clear plastic used in greenhouses. Yep, not only would my neighbors get to see a daylight moon every morning, but the local ecosystem and wildlife would forever be influenced by a shy baby elephant in their midst.
As I left, I told Chigger I would have to think about it, knowing that unless my only other option was a crackhouse with a syringe laden floor, this baby elephant was taking his trunk on safari.

ER just called. The saga will continue. Keep on Scrubbin'!