It seemed that some days, work just was not allowed to get done. Wednesday appeared to be one such a day.
The start was already wet. But despite the very long day of very hard work the pastel yellow mouse woman Michelle Frelang had had the previous day, doing a lot of patching and replacing of body panels on the 1972 Chevrolet Chevelle and recording it all for the video series she was doing of the work for her Youtube channel, and only getting home around half past one in the morning, she had slept like a log and therefore was awake very early again. And as she was pretty much bouncing with energy, as the work on the car was now getting into the good and fun stuff that she was actually masterful at, Missy had hopped out of bed, smiled at the driving rain clattering against her bedroom window, taken a shower, had a power breakfast, thrown on a pair of shorts and a shirt and driven over to her garage despite her yellow 1975 Mini actually struggling a bit to make it through the windy downpour.
With the rumble and clatter of the rain and wind as a background noise, the vanilla-colored mousette calmly went through her morning routine of flicking on some lights in the Mountain Dew display refrigerator and the office - and this time several more throughout the garage as the weather was keeping the ambient light very dim - and feeding and petting Salmon, the fluffy Maine Coon garage cat before switching on the computer in the office and checking for any messages on both the answering machine and online. There were no messages on the answering machine, and only a handful online; mostly more comments on the introduction video for the new series she had posted to her Youtube channel as well as in the video section of her own company website. She might be shooting lots of footage and going through the work very quickly, but she kept to the steady rhythm of only uploading one video per week - which gave her plenty of time to work ahead, and do all the editing.
Having taken care of that in a rather cheerful manner, continually swaying her thin hairless tail in wide arcs behind her and humming along with songs on the radio loud enough to hear herself over the racket of the rain, Missy braved the rain halfway through the morning to bring her cameras and lights and tripods over to the frontmost of the two large buildings to continue work on the Chevelle and shoot even more footage. There was still plenty of work to do on the body; a good number of little dents and dings that should be smoothed out, the deck lid and doors had to be re-hung, and she would even have to improvise some kind of stand so she could also put the front fenders and hood back on the car while the body was still sitting on a dolly, so she could more easily measure, cut and weld to do the modifications needed to fit a 1969 grille, headlights and hood between 1972 front fenders, before she could even move the car to the secondary room to do the body filler and sanding stage.
As she was making a dash for the large building, the first interruption came. Right in the middle of setting up her cameras and checking the lights, the landline phone rang. Fortunately Missy had been smart enough to have the landline connected to the new buildings as well when they were being erected, and she had even bought a few more old telephones to put in the new buildings, so she could just step over to the workbench against the rear wall of the building to answer the phone. It was the powdercoating company downtown, letting her know the wheels and frame of the Chevelle were ready to be picked up. Well, that was actually pretty important, so Missy decided to take care of that first. Who knows, the rain might even let up a bit in the meantime and be less loud by the time she got to start shooting more footage.
Walking back to the main building to get a few things she needed to bring with her, the vanilla-hued mousette didn't even quicken her pace anymore. She was already pretty soaked, and the rain was always of a pleasant temperature anyway, so she just sucked it up and calmly walked back to the main building to get her things and lock the doors, then calmly walked to the back of the premises to get into the rollback truck. After starting the engine and turning on the lights and the windshield wipers, Missy did take a moment or two to pull her wet hair out of her face and squeeze most of the water from it, and dry her hair and face a bit with a small towel that was always kept in the truck for just such an occasion.
As she drove into town, Missy came upon the second interruption. The main boulevard running through the center of the city was always very busy, as it was basically the connection between the stretch of freeway coming from Easton and Beach Cove on the east, and the stretch of freeway running past Fangle Valley, Fandago, Pine Corner and Fillamy towards Merian on the west. But for some reason, by the time Missy reached it, the boulevard was positively packed with cars sitting almost at a standstill. Ahead and behind of her, people were actually pulling off First Main Street that crossed the boulevard and into parking lots of restaurants and diners to just wait it out while having a cup of coffee or tea. It's that Missy was driving such a large truck, otherwise she would have done the same.
Finally, after half an hour, the light yellow mousette managed to creep forwards enough in the line of cars to actually cross the boulevard - and see what the jam was all about. First Main Street crossed the boulevard by means of a large roundabout which held one of the city's centerpieces; the middle of the roundabout was slightly raised, planted with a veritable carpet of purple and pink petunias, and it held a very large basin made of some kind of veined green marble. Around it were three inverted hockeystick-like pillars made of, or at least clad with, copper, with their short ends pointing outwards at the top and a ring connecting their apexes, in which a huge ball made of the same sort of veined green marble was resting. Water erupted from the very top of the ball and ran down along all sides of it to spatter down into the basin below it. And somehow, an older mole gentleman on a moped had managed to go straight ahead across the roundabout and crash into the basin with moped and all. As Missy made her way to the second exit of the roundabout from the point where she had entered it, the gentleman was just being helped out of the basin by a police officer and a paramedic, still looking very bemused as if he had no idea what had happened.
Missy did have to make an effort not to chortle at the sight. But it was quite amusing in a way; the bemused expression of the gentleman combined with both the rain and the water of the fountain streaming down from his very old-fashioned open-face helmet as well as the police officer's hat and the paramedic's cap in thick rivulets. Giving her head a light shake, the vanilla-colored mousette made her way into the industrial district of the city and over to the powdercoating company to pick up the wheels and the frame of the Chevelle. The work was flawless; the frame was smooth and a very nice satin-gloss Ancona blue in color all the way around, and the wheels were perfectly smooth as well and a gleaming pastel yellow in color all the way around; there wasn't even a trace of any damage or pitting, or the few small patches Missy had welded into the frame for that matter.
She did decide to alter her route back to the garage once the frame and wheels had been strapped securely to the deck of the rollback truck, however. Taking South Industry Road, she made her way over to the service road that ran partway along the side of the freeway at the west exit of the city. From there, she could follow the very large and oblong oval-shaped roundabout at the city limits which connected the lanes of the freeway to the lanes of the central boulevard, with extra exits to the industrial district, the service road, the road leading up to the A1-C freeway and the service road alongside it that connected to Shelter Valley Way. At least that way, she could circumvent the congestion in the center of the city and make better time than half an hour to cross a roundabout.
Of course, as Missy managed to skirt the worst of the tailback at the large oval roundabout and started making her way down the service road, she was flagged down by another police officer who started giving her directions of how to get to the traffic accident on the A1-C freeway where recovery vehicles had been dispatched to. It took her another fifteen minutes to explain to the police officer that she was not with any of the towing companies in South Plains and was in fact not even licensed to operate a recovery vehicle commercially, so while she would be happy to help, she would be breaking the law if she did so. The police officer did eventually apologize and let her go on her way, but by the time Missy finally arrived back at her garage and had unloaded the powdercoated frame and wheels, it was already well past lunchtime.
Well! That had been an hour-long trip into town that had taken her over two hours to complete. Resigning herself to the idea that she would hardly be getting any work done at all that Wednesday, Missy decided on the spot that she was not even going to try and just parked the rollback truck in its spot behind the large buildings to get into her yellow Mini and drive back into town. Fortunately she could still avoid the heaviest traffic as she only had to be in the commercial district and therefore did not need to cross the central boulevard, parking a bit over half an hour later in the small parking lot adjacent to the wonderfully cozy little dinner called The Patty Place. Her smile brightened at the very cheerful greeting she received from the chubby tan-colored Pinyon mouse woman behind the glass counter, as always.
"Hiya Missy luv! Gosh, lookit ya, yer soaked through! Do ya want a towel?"
"I brought one, Patty," Missy chortled, holding up the quite damp towel she kept in her car during the rainy spring season.
"Oh good, good!" Patty nodded cheerfully, setting a cup on the counter and pouring Missy a cup of tea out of habit. "So how's it going with that project of yers? Yer late for lunch today, so hard at work, are ya?"
"This whole morning, I've been hard at work trying to get some actual work done," Missy guffawed while stirring a stick of sugar through her tea. "The whole morning gone, and all I managed was picking up the frame from the powdercoater's."
"How'd ya manage that then?" Patty giggled.
"Well, on my way into town, traffic was stuck all along the boulevard and quite a ways up and down First Main and Second Main," Missy chortled. "Haven't any of your customers told you about that yet? Apparently, some poor old fellow decided to give his moped a wash in that fountain on the First Main roundabout, and he had forgotten to get off the moped before dunking it in the fountain."
"Ooohh yeah, I heard 'bout that!" Patty nodded. "I hope the fellow's okay though! So ya got caught in that jam, didya?"
"Yeah, people ahead of me and behind me were even pulling into restaurant parking lots to take a break," Missy nodded with another chortle, sipping her tea. "I would have done the same, but well, I was in the rollback, and it's quite an ordeal parking that huge long thing anywhere."
"So ya didn't park it next to here then?" Patty chortled.
"I did that once, Patty, and that was enough vehicular acrobatics for me to know I will never be doing that again," Missy grinned. "So no, I didn't park the rollback next to here, I parked it in the very spacious lot of the powdercoater's, loaded up the frame and the wheels I had to pick up, and drove it back to my garage. Taking South Industry and the oval-about just outside of town on my way back to dodge the traffic jam, and getting stopped by a cop on the M-seventy because he thought I was a recovery vehicle on my way to clean up the mess of a crash on the A-one-C. Seems like this rain is catching people out left and right. By the time I got back to my garage, it was already past lunchtime, so that is why I'm so late today."
Patty let out a cheerful laugh.
"Oh my gosh, ya poor thing! It's not been yer day today it sounds like, hee! Should I ask Harvey to put an extra egg on yer sammich? Or are ya in the mood for something else today?"
"As lovely as that fried egg sandwich is, Patty, having it every day is a bit much," Missy grinned. "Remember, Fanni finished all the work at my garage and in my backyard well over a year ago, so she's not staying with me daily anymore and I have no one to cool off that enormous libido on that all those eggs give me. So yes, for today, I will be very happy to take that splendiferous scrumptious seafood spectacle that is the Patty Special, with the spicy dip, and you can ask Harvey to make the salad a double. Because if nothing else is gonna disturb or interrupt my workday anymore today, I will be working deep into the night again, I have a feeling."
"Hee hee! Gotcha, luv!" With a flourish, Patty twirled on the spot to turn to the hatch in the wall behind her. "Harvey! One Patty Special, spicy, with double salad! And keep the aphrodisiacs to a minimum this time, Missy is having enough trouble getting work done today as it is!"
"Haha! Can do, ten minutes!" sounded the voice of Patty's silver and white hamster husband from the other side of the hatch.
Missy shook her head with a cheerful laugh as well, thumbing across her shoulder at the small single table by the side window that was her steady table.
"I appreciate that, Patty. I'll be over there, keeping an eye on all that rain to see if it's not gonna change into a typhoon and blow my garage down just to disrupt my workflow some more."
They both laughed again, and Missy took her cup of tea and took it over to the small table by the side window. She calmly sipped the tea while she looked out the window at the curtain of rain clattering against the window and warping the view of the few cars in the small parking lot. About ten minutes later, the chubby Pinyon mouse woman sashayed over to the table with a tray, setting down a plate that held three stacks of five crunchy goldenbrown patties, a tiny red bowl with a dark red sauce flecked with bits of green, and two small bowls containing salad on the table. A grab into the front pocket of her apron produced a set of cutlery rolled into a napkin which was also placed on the table.
"Thank you, Patty. I'll have another cup of tea as well, please," Missy smiled, pointing at the bowls of salad with a chortle. "And why didn't Harvey use one larger bowl? This is all extra dishes for him."
"He's got these all laid out in sets, luv," Patty chortled. "So when someone orders a Patty Special, he has all the things ready at hand, ya know?"
"I suppose that makes sense in a way," Missy nodded with another chortle. "And it's probably not too bad if you have a dishwasher back there."
"Yeah, she's called Mira," Patty giggled. "One tea refill, comin' right up, luv!"
She took the teacup, tucked the tray under her arm and sashayed back over to the glass counter, returning only a moment or two later with a fresh cup of tea. Missy unwrapped the cutlery and started digging into the seafood patties, taking her time and eating calmly. With how the day had been going so far, she figured she might as well take her time to savor the delectable taste of the seafood patties and Harvey's homemade spicy sauce. Well over forty minutes later, the vanilla-hued mousette eventually got up from the table and sauntered back over to the glass counter, taking her wallet from a hip pocket of her shorts while Patty tapped keys on the cash register.
"Ya took quite a while this time, luv," Patty chortled. "Didya enjoy the food that much more?"
"I'm not gonna tell you, because you didn't make the food," Missy grinned, beeping her card and keying in her PIN code to pay, then leaning over the counter a bit and shouting at the open hatch. "Harvey! That was superb as usual! My well-meant compliments to the chef!"
"Thank you, dear!" came the hamster man's voice from the other side of the hatch. "But don't forget, the exquisite flavors I put into my food are brought out to their best effect because it's served with a sweet smile and an amazing friendly and cheerful attitude!"
Missy and Patty both laughed cheerfully, the Pinyon mouse woman thumbing at the hatch.
"See, luv? Man knows what's good for him, he's got my back! Hee hee!"
"Guess I can't argue with that," Missy chortled. "Well, have yourselves a wonderful day, regardless of what the weather's gonna do, and I'll see you later, okay?"
"See ya, luv!" Patty smiled. "Don't work too hard now!"
With cheery waves, they said their goodbyes and Missy calmly walked out of the diner with her damp towel, using it to wipe the worst of the rain from her face once she had gotten behind the wheel of her old Mini. Just as calmly, she drove back to the garage, went into the personal room that had been built inside the stockroom, peeled off her soaked clothes and dried herself a bit better with a fresh towel from the small bathroom and shower before putting on a fresh pair of her light, full-body pastel yellow coveralls.
Of course, she still got quite wet from walking to the large building, but at least she could evade a decent amount of the rain by darting between the old fuel pumps sitting under the roof extending from the front of the main building and then darting under the small roof over the regular door in the frontmost building. And there were some towels in the disassembly hall as well, so Missy could at least dry her hair before setting up the cameras and lights. Before she turned any of them on, however, she took a good amount of time to roll near a second dolly in front of the Chevelle's bodyshell, put the trunk hinges and the deck lid back on, reinstall the door hinges and hang the doors back on the car, and bolt on the front fenders, core support, upper front valance, the hood hinges and the hood, letting the front fenders rest on the second dolly by lack of a frame to support them.
Once that had all been taken care of, Missy did switch on the lights and the cameras, leaning sideways into frame from the side up close to the main camera.
"Alright, we live? We-e-e're live. Hey ho all you wonderful people out there in Youtube land! Missy here from Mousie Motorworks, bringing you yet another exciting episode! As you can see behind me, the car is looking much more like a car now! I put all the other bits and pieces of the body on it, because in this video, I'll be modifying those front fenders and the hood, check the basic panel alignment, and take out all the little dings and dents and scuffs so the whole thing will be ready for the next step, which is the body filler stage! That's gonna be a dusty one, so sit back, relax, and follow along with another bunch of bodywork, right here on Mousie Motorworks!"
One, two, three, Missy counted in herself to give herself an editing point... and right then, a knock on the door sounded and a timber wolf man in a white and purple uniform stuck his head around the door.
"Hello, anyone in... oh, I do beg your pardon, miss."
Missy gave her head an amused shake and shut off the cameras.
"It's fine, don't worry. What can I do for you?"
"I have a delivery for you, miss Frelang," the wolf man said, checking a tablet. "Two large boxes, very heavy ones too."
"Where are they from?" Missy asked with a smile.
The wolf man checked the tablet again.
"American Powertrain, and Silver Star Transmissions are listed as the senders."
"Ah, good, that's the transmission and the rear axle for this car," Missy nodded with a smile, pointing at the large garage door. "I'll open that door, if you back your truck up to it, I can grab them out the back with that forklift over there."
"That'll be very helpful, thank you," the wolf man nodded.
He disappeared behind the door, and Missy stepped over to the large garage door, unlocking it and hitting the 'Up' button to open it. Just outside of it, a purple and white Volvo box truck of MinnaTrans was being maneuvered around by the wolf man, backing off the lot via the right-hand side entrance a bit, going back forwards between the old fuel pumps under the roof, and from there backing up to the opened garage door in the frontmost large building. In the meantime, Missy got onto the smaller forklift and drove over to the garage door as well, waiting for the wolf man to lower the platform at the back of the truck and open the cargo door. He walked into the box of the truck, stepping backwards a few moments later while pulling a pallet jack holding a pallet on which were one very large and wide wood crate and one smaller but higher wood crate.
As the wolf man swung the pallet jack around and lowered it, Missy slipped the forks of her forklift under the pallet and carefully lifted it after the wolf man had pulled the pallet jack out from underneath it. She set the pallet down by the large racks and walked back over to the truck where the wolf man was closing the cargo door and lifting the platform back up. After singing her name on the tablet with a stylus and giving a friendly wave, Missy closed the garage door again while the wolf man got back behind the wheel of the truck and drove off. Turning back to the cameras and switching them back on, the light yellow mousette chortled softly.
"Well, while you guys were looking at that amazing intro of my channel, I took delivery of the new transmission and the rear axle assembly for this car. And I can tell you, that definitely took longer than eighteen seconds! Par for the course really, this whole day has been a mess of disruptions so far! But hey! At least we got some of the big important bits for this project sitting right over there by the racks now, so that's a plus! I'll be getting to all that later, but I can tell you that in those big boxes is a Tremec Magnum six-speed manual performance transmission with a two point sixty-six close-gear ratio and a conversion bellhousing to bolt onto a Chevy three-fifty motor, and a full custom-built Chevy twelve-bolt rear axle assembly with disc brake and four-link suspension setup, a three point thirty-one to one gear ratio and thirty-three spline axles. That is way overbuilt for what this car is going to be, but it's always better to be safe than sorry, right folks? Right! And no, don't worry, that's not an original twelve-bolt axle housing, because those are pretty darn rare; that's a very good and durable and strong reproduction. Anyways! What say we get to work, before I get interrupted again? Yes Missy, yes, that is a very good idea. Alrighty then! So, as you can hear in the background, the rain is absolutely bucketing down today, so it's a good day to do some bodywork! I'm gonna have to do a lot of hammering on that poor car, but you won't hardly hear anything because the rain is so loud already, heh. As I said in the intro, I'll be taking out all the small dings and dents and scuffs, and we do that with these kind of tools right here." Missy took one of the smaller cameras and stepped up to a folding table filled with many hammers of different sizes and shapes, some that even looked like elongated spatulas, and several things that looked like steel half ovals with a solid handle on one side. "Some of you already recognized these as bodywork tools; hammers... and dollies here. This here is my personal collection that I have built up over the years. Funnily enough, at my previous workplace, I didn't have much use for these as most of the cars we worked on there were built out of paper mache and... oopsie, I mean, fiberglass and carbon fiber and stuff like that, heh. But in my own time, I liked working with cars that were actually made out of metal, and I liked doing it old-school so I started collecting a bunch of these tools. There won't be much welding in this episode, as I have already patched the doors and the trunk lid, but I will still have to do some welding on the front fenders. So let's start with that to get it out of the way. All the rest will be a timelapse, because with all the interruptions of today, I just have to get it done. So here we go!"
Adjusting the lights and the cameras a bit, Missy pulled near the large cart with the yellow welder and the large gas bottles on it, as well as a tool chest with a couple of cordless grinders laying on it. She also brought over the set of reproduction 1969 front fenders and lay them on both sides of the car before lifting the hood and supporting it with two broom handles. Over the following two hours, the vanilla-colored mousette did a lot of very precise measuring, lowering and lifting the hood time and again and bending down in front of it to look very closely along the sides of it where it rested over the front parts of the fenders, measuring some more, and eventually cutting a very elongated triangle out of the inside front of each front fender, taking a lot of care to make sure she cut away enough for sections of the 1969 fenders to go in their place, but also left enough to not disturb the opening with the small brackets for the 1972 fender-tip turnsignal housings and lenses.
When she was satisfied with the result, Missy also cut a similar elongated triangular section out of the front inner side of the 1969 front fenders and spent several long minutes grinding along the cut edges in small, quick swoops, fitting them to the fenders on the car, grinding them a bit again, fitting them again, holding them in place with one of the triangular welding magnets, lowering the hood, checking from very close by, wiggling them about a bit, lifting the hood, taking the sections off and grinding them a bit more, also doing some swipes along the cut edges on the fenders, and fitting, lowering the hood and checking yet again. It was no wonder she planned on time-lapsing that in the eventual video, because it was incredibly tedious work.
Eventually however, Missy tack-welded the sections in place, did a final check with the hood lowered, and then slowly stitch-welded the sections fully to the inner front corners of the front fenders. After grinding the welds super smooth and even grinding a touch along the inside edges of the fenders and the outside edges of the hood, she lowered the hood again and took one of the smaller cameras to zoom in on it.
"So why did I go to all this trouble to do such precision work, you might ask? Well! As you know, the seventy-two Chevelle has single headlights at the sides of the grille and these turnsignal lights in the front corners of the fenders, and there's this lip on each corner that forms a fender extension and sort of lays over where the headlight is, plus the middle section of the hood comes all the way to the front and ends at the top of the grille. But the sixty-nine Chevelle has double headlights at each end of the grille that come all the way to the top, and there's a front valance here that lays between the fenders and over the top of the grille, with an indentation in the top of the fender and the top of the valance where the headlights are, while the hood only comes up to the inside of that valance panel. So what I have done here is move the part of the sixty-nine front fender that has that indent slightly further inwards to keep room for the seventy-two turnsignal, and now I will have to modify the valance panel a bit as well to make up for that, basically narrowing it a bit, and I will have to modify the grille a bit to move both sets of headlights just a touch further inboard, so I'll have to make the grille a bit narrower as well. And while I can just simply use the full sixty-nine hood, I will have to tweak it slightly to make the lines of it match up, because it has these slight bulges on the side that run all the way to the windshield from this headlight indent backwards, so I'll have to move that slightly inboard as well. I won't do that by cutting a strip out of this hood though, because that would leave me with two huge long stitch welds all the way up this hood that I'll have to bodywork out, so I'll just do it by welding a little extra metal onto this hood and then sculpting that line with a good deal of heat and hammering, and finally some filler to make it perfect. That's all going to be a timelapse again, and I'm gonna be tweaking that grille off-camera because, well, quite frankly, its tedious as anything. Heckity, I'll probably take it home with me and do it there. But anyways, back..."
A-a-and her phone rang. Wouldn't you know. With a playful smirk, Missy gave her head an amused shake and winked at the camera.
"Back to work, as I was about to say. And I will get back to it after I take this call, so for you guys, I will be back in an actual second!" She switched off the cameras and swiped her phone to answer it, tapping the loudspeaker button with a smile as she saw from the cute picture that it was her lover Fanni, the cream and white skunk woman who had done the landscaping at the garage and in Missy's back garden, calling. "Heya darling, what's up?"
"Hi Missy," sounded the still somewhat timid voice of the skunkette from Missy's phone. "Uh... am I, uh... calling at a bad time?"
"It's never a bad time when you call me, darling. Although I was actually shooting footage for my Chevelle series, hee. But I was right at a break point, so it's all good, darling. So what can I do for you?"
"Oh, uh... okay. I'm, uh... I'm sorry for interrupting you, Missy. I just, uh, I just wanted to ask if it's, uh, if Friday is a good time for me to, uh, to drop by your garage? With all this rain and wind, I want to check up on that laburnum, and those lindens over your parking spots to make sure they're not, uh, getting damaged, you know?"
"That sounds perfectly great to me, darling. I'll just be working on the Chevelle anyway, so you can drop by whenever and do your thing with the plants here, because I have no idea how to do that myself anyway, hee." A light grin. "Should I perhaps wait with doing the sanding stage of the body filler until Friday? Because I'll be doing it in my bare butt and all?"
The cream-tinted skunkette's blush was almost audible through the phone.
"Ah... uhm... uh... That, uh... that's... uhm... Whatever, uh, works for your, uh, schedule, Missy. I'm, uh... I won't... tell you how to, uh, do your work..."
Missy bit back a chortle.
"We'll see, then. It may actually work out like that, they delivered the rear axle assembly today, so I'll be finishing up the bodywork today, then probably take a step back from the body and do some assembling on the frame on Thursday, and that will work out to me doing the filler and sanding stage on the body on Friday. Hey, tell you what, darling; pencil me into your agenda for a check-up on the plants on Friday, and a full day of re-tying all those branches and whatnot on Saturday, so it'll be an official work order for your company, okay? And that way you can just leave your truck here and stay at my place from Friday on instead of from Sunday on, how's that sound?"
"Ah... uh... yes, that... that sounds like a, uh, a good idea, Missy. I'll, uh, I'll do that, and you'll, uh... you'll see me coming Friday then."
"Good, darling, good good. If I'm not in the main building, you can ask Salmon where I am. She'll probably tell you meow, which means I'll be in the sanding hall. And if she says meow purr, that means I'm in the sanding hall in my bare butt. See you Friday, darling!"
"Yes, uh... yes, see you Friday, Missy."
The contact was cut, and Missy tapped out her phone as well with a cheerful grin. It was always so funny to tease Fanni a bit like that; even though they didn't live together, they'd been together for well over two years now, and still Fanni was a bit shy and timid about the free nudity. Even while she and Missy were both members of a nudist club. But of course, being naked around a bunch of other naked nudists at a nudist outing in a specific nudist area was quite different from being naked in a publicly accessible place, like Missy's garage. Not that the reactions of any people visiting the garage was any different; with the entire population of the southern half of Minnaluna, and 99.9% of the population of the northern half of Minnaluna being natural nudists, nobody even batted as much as an eyelid when they found Missy being naked while doing work at her garage, but it still felt different.
Slipping her phone back into her pocket, Missy turned back to the cameras to switch them back on and adjust them a bit, as well as some of the lights. For the last couple of hours until dinnertime, the vanilla-hued mousette proceeded to do the work she had mentioned to the cameras earlier; measuring the upper front valance panel from both sides, cutting the part with the indents for the headlights off of either side, grinding down the cut until enough material had been removed and welding the outer pieces back on, after several repeated times of careful fitting to make sure the proper amount of material had been removed. She also did some fiery work on the 1969 hood, grinding away some of the black coating, cutting some strips of very thin metal, heating both those strips and the hood with an oxy-acetylene torch, welding the strips of metal onto the surface of the hood and heating them even more with the torch so she could more easily shape them with a variety of the bodywork hammers, basically moving the vertical body lines on the surface of the hood inwards a bit on both sides.
A short break was taken to relax on the mezzanine with a cool drink from the display refrigerator, a couple of sandwiches and a cup of instant soup for a simple and quick dinner. With the extensive lunch she'd had earlier, Missy figured she could have a much simpler dinner right at the garage, which saved her at least an hour in not having to drive into town and back. After the simple dinner and some time spent petting Salmon the shop cat, Missy went back into the large building, took some time to roll near a home-made rotisserie and attach the bodyshell of the car to it, and started using her hammers and dollies to bang away at the bodyshell of the Chevelle, as well as the doors and the deck lid laying on sawhorses, smoothing out any and all small dents and dings she could find. The rain was actually letting off a bit, no longer clattering down in thick sheets whipped by the wind, but steadily and still relatively heavily drenching down, but Missy didn't even hear it anymore as she fully went up in the work she was actually one of the best at.
Light taps at each small dent, around the perimeter of it and slowly working inwards. Squatting by the car and almost resting her cheek against it to look along the body while shining a large light at it from different angles. Ever so lightly running her fingertips over the areas she had hammered at, back and forth and in little circles while looking from very close by, every now and then even squirting the body panels with water from a squirt bottle before scrutinizing the areas from very close by with both her eyes and her fingertips. Twisting the bodyshell this way and that on the rotisserie to get different angles of the light falling on it. Working slowly and meticulously, from the cowl along the insides of the door apertures, along some spots of the roof, over the deck filler panel and across the bumper filler panel. Not along the quarter panels, as those were brand new panels and super straight and dent-free, but Missy did take a decent amount of time to also meticulously measure, mark and drill lines of holes in the new quarter panels for where the fasteners of the trim strips would have to go, and once done with the bodyshell, took even more time to smooth out every last dent and ding in both doors and the deck lid placed on metal sawhorses.
As ten o'clock crept around, the light yellow mousette eventually recorded a cheerful outro for the video she would be making of the footage, took the hood, front fenders, front valance panels, doors and deck lid and put all those loose body panels on the secondary dolly and pushing both the dolly and the rotisserie through the large sliding door into the secondary hall with the four-post car lift, all the extra lighting and the rows of extraction fans. That was the hall where Missy did the applying and sanding of body filler on any car she restored, that was where the Chevelle had to be for the next stage, and that was where it was going to sit out of the way for the next day while Missy would be working on reassembling the frame. While doing her final round through the buildings and around the premises, the vanilla-colored mousette took some more time to put new valve stems in the powdercoated wheels and put the new white-stripe tires on them - at which she found out she was almost out of tire grease. She did manage to put all four tires on the rims and made a mental note to pick up a new tub or two of tire grease the next day while she inflated the tires and lay them in the rack with all the other parts of the car.
Lights switched off, doors locked, and it was still a good bit before eleven o'clock when Missy arrived at her house. Not bad! She peeled off her still damp clothes, had a last drink and a small snack, a quick shower, and flopped into bed just as the flaps with the digits on her old-fashioned flip-over alarm clock flipped over to 23:00.
Even despite the exuberantly wet weather and all the strange interruptions and disruptions, it had been a good and productive day! Another step closer to finishing the project!
