I met Butch and Cassidy when they limped up to me at a campground by the Deschutes River in Oregon. They were in terrible shape. Starving. Hurt. Pathetic. They had been abused; there were marks and cuts all over their bodies, their frayed leather collars choking them. When I left the Deschutes River for the Wallowa Mountains, they happily climbed in the van with Sundance and me, their wounds healing, their diseases healing.

Six months and three thousand miles later, when I was done camping, and could think again, and did not want to jump off cliffs, when the black fog of desperate depression lifted, I asked my mother and aunts if I could live in the carriage house.

Of course they said yes, but my mother wanted me to live with them in Rose Bloom Cottage. “I’ve missed you. We can make hats together every night and read books and help your aunt Camellia make her lotions and potions in the basement and go on photography expeditions with Aunt Iris so she can take her odd but lovely flower photos. Do you think some of her flower photos look phallic? I do. Do you think some of her flowers look, well, vagina-like? I do.”

My aunt Camellia said, “Let me first light vanilla candles inside the carriage house and pray and use a generous amount of lavender to invite eternal peace to come calling, then the home and I can welcome you with pure vibes,” and my aunt Iris said, “I’ll put wine in the fridge, don’t worry. And a bottle of scotch. Welcome home.”

I lived in Rose Bloom Cottage for about a week, and mostly I slept on the new king-sized bed my aunts and mother bought me. It is amazing what sleep can do and what a lack of sleep can do, too. Then I asked if I could remodel the carriage house. Of course they said yes, that they would pay for it, but I refused to let them, and we had a fight, and I was stubborn and so were they, and I finally told them I would rent another home on one of the islands if they didn’t stop arguing, and they sulkily gave in.

For three days I hauled dirt and rock at Mr. and Mrs. King’s house, an eighty-year-old couple, with their fifty-year-old son, Artie, who was a contractor. In exchange Artie came over and knocked down two walls in the carriage house, taking out the bedroom so I would have an open living space. He raised the ceiling and put up two wood beams with some buddies so the ceiling wouldn’t fall in.

I watched Neil Somo’s mother for five days, who has dementia and likes to wander around town in her nightgown, while he went to Seattle on business. Neil, who knew how to install wood floors, worked with me to put wood floors in my house. Neil is independently wealthy but quirky. There I was, laying wood with a millionaire.