My apologies for the extended hiatus, but the last couple of months have been quite the adventure. Due to circumstances, in mid-May I found myself suddenly single and without a place to live. The plan for this summer had been to renovate the old building into a living space and move to the farm permanently, but that plan got moved to the front burner instantly. For about seven weeks, I slept in my old Blazer out on the property and worked ten to twelve hours every day on the construction.

I started basically with a skeleton: a tin roof, rafters, a block wall along the back, a concrete floor, and part of a frame. I finished out the framing, fixed the outer walls, added onto the block wall, plumbed it, wired it, hung drywall, hung the ceiling, installed windows and doors, and sealed the place. Dad showed me how to do the things I had never done before, and two guys helped me hang the boards for the ceiling, but the bulk of the labor was me and me alone.

It’s not perfect and far from finished, but it’s mine. I built this place with my own two hands. The satisfaction of that is priceless. Pushing through weeks of fatigue and discomfort helped me rediscover a part of myself I thought was gone. There is still a little fight left in these old bones.

Twice now since my divorce, I’ve given up a comfortable place of my own to move in with women who begged me, literally begged, to move in with them, only to later be accused of using them. Well, the people who really know me know I’m not a user. I’m perfectly capable of fending for myself, thank you. So there will never be a third instance of me giving up my own place to live under someone else’s roof. End of that discussion.

My children love my new place. I truly don’t care what anyone else thinks. You don’t like it, there’s the door. You want to criticize it, go build something better in seven weeks or shut your mouth. As for me, I’m D.A. Adams, and I’ve just begun kicking ass.