Patience is a Virtue

Do you find yourself having less patience now that we live in a permanent state of pandemic? 

I understand that a lot of people are just pretending that Covid is over or perhaps that it never existed at all. These people fill me with rage. (I live in the South -- this summer has been very...challenging.)

It’s just… I can’t. 

But for those of us who care about our impact on society, it is tiring - amirite? 

If only there were someone I actually could call, sigh. 

Anyway, back to my point - intolerance. Upon reflection, I realize that I have always been at least nominally intolerant. For example, one time I was considering dating a man who was vegan. After I told him that I was not vegan, he replied in a joking manner, “Well, no one’s perfect.” 

I never spoke to him again. 

Furthermore, I do not enjoy when people break plans, arrive late, and/or do not respond to my texts within 12 hours. (Mostly because I immediately assume that people are dead when they do not follow the plan that was clearly laid out in my mind.)

Did I mention that this summer has been very hard on me? I honestly had no idea how rigid I was until every single thing that I planned for fell through over the course of four months. RBG dying before the presidential election took place pretty much put me over the edge. WE DID NOT PLAN FOR THIS! I am sure that you can relate. 

Me every single day during the months of June, July, August, and September. 

I am working on becoming more accepting. To be fair, I consider myself VERY accepting of the patrons at my library. Take the Murder Sisters for instance. Their book preferences revolve around calamity, serial killers, animal attacks, gruesome encounters, and Westerns. They always have excessive fines - which they argue about with vigor. They cuss loudly at the circulation desk. They demand a staff member walk them over to the gore section on each and every visit. But I don’t know, I find them kind of charming. You know exactly what you are going to get with them. They are consistent. I like that about them. Now if only I could roll that accepting attitude over to the rest of society that behaves poorly. 

God, they make it so hard for me to be nice. 

Speaking of Murder Sisters, one time when I was on a pre-pandemic stroll through my neighborhood (something that I now neurotically do three to four times a day) a strange woman approached me waving her arms wildly above her head. She wasn’t fully dressed, wearing only a bra on top. Her hair was snarled and caught fitfully in the breeze. She croaked out in a witchy voice, “Excuse me young miss (I was 38) - I need you to help me move my groceries.” As I looked up at the decrepit house behind her, I sighed. This was it. This was how I was going to die.

Like this but with less clothing and more terror.

She gesticulated to a flat of water laying on the side of the street and I took that as my cue. As I stooped down to pick it up I repeated to myself in my mind, “You are being a good citizen. You might one day be alone and in need. You are helping humanity.” Outwardly I said, “Nice weather we’re having.” 

Without a glance back she gestured vaguely with an outstretched arm to the general vicinity and announced, “Me and my sister are on disability. We can’t do all these things anymore.” Before I could respond she continued. “We been living here for near our whole life. But these steps aren’t gettin’ any easier. My sister is worse off than me. She can’t much get out of the house these days.” I immediately felt terrible about my assumption that she was going to kill me while I simultaneously considered the fact that her ‘sister story’ might be the decoy for a murder plot that she has been concocting for the last 113 years. I followed her into the house. 

My brain started singing The Monster Mash as I approached the house. I inwardly tipped an imaginary hat to myself for the magnificent soundtrack choice.

Turns out her sister was real. She was waiting for us inside the house, pantless, at the top of the stairs. I said hello and she launched into a somewhat garbled speech that touched on the topics of soup, joints, and a neighborhood pest of some sort. I couldn’t be sure if the pest was of the human or animal variety, but I suppose it doesn’t matter much in the long run. I politely listened as I took in my environment which was filled with drawn blinds, dust, and piles of forgotten items. 

When I felt like I had listened for an appropriate amount of time, I said my farewells and extracted myself from the dank manor. I thought, “I should come back. I should bring them groceries. I should have a cup of tea with them.”

But I never went back because honestly, I did not want to do so. 

What I have done is taken a closer look at my neighbors homes and yards in general so that I can make sweeping assumptions about them and then relay these thoughts to friends who join me on my walks around West Asheville. You know what is trending in terms of lawn accoutrements right now? Mannequins in various states of disrepair!! Anyone who knows me understands that I have a deep rooted relationship with mannequins and I find them to be both horrifying and inspiring in equal parts. 

Here are some snaps:

Mannequin Head Number 1

Mannequin Head Number 2

Mannequin Head Number 3

Mannequin Head Number 4

Mannequin Head Number 5

Mannequin Torso Holding Head

Subtle Mannequin Torso

Mannequin Torso with Additional Arms and Items

Stone Mannequin (also known as a statue, but spookier looking as if it used to be a real girl who had a spell cast upon her by a witch.)

Full Mannequin in an Evocative Pose

I, too, would like a mannequin for my yard. I’d like to have a theme for it, to keep things fresh, ya know? Perhaps I could keep one sitting on my porch and dress it up in various seasonal outfits like the people in the Midwest do with stone geese. I could give it awesome makeup. 

Truth be told, I’d like to set it up in an assortment of action poses around the yard. I know this would take a lot of effort to manage, but I have some great ideas. For instance, my mannequin could be working in the garden, spinning the compost bin, sunbathing, breaking into a window, taking out the recycling, and more!

When I was young I would set up my Barbies in different positions in and around the Barbie Dream House™. Then I would have nightmares that they would come to life, march upstairs single file, and attempt to murder me. Oddly, this didn’t stop me from creating their still lifes. I hope my mannequin doesn’t haunt my dreams.

How are y'all feeling these days?

Moving on Whilst Staying Still

I recently wrote about my living situation, house hunting, judging small white fences, condemning my current landlord, etc. Sadly, I have not found my dream home as of yet BUT I do have a note of good news. My landlord showed up unannounced on my doorstep one recent Sunday afternoon with an assortment of apologies and partial reimbursement funds for the outrageous water bills that have accumulated over the last 365 days. It wasn’t the windfall of cash that I am constantly praying for, but it was something.

 

Me, huzzahing with all the characters in my head.

 

Which one of you dear, sly friends convinced him to step up to his responsibilities after a year of unanswered text messages, phone calls, and Facebook inquiries? No, don’t tell me, I prefer to luxuriate in an unsolved mystery of delight.

 

In other news, I caught a plague (the test said it wasn’t Covid, but my best friend and dad are not convinced) which left me fevered in bed for five straight days. While not asleep I had the opportunity to consider activities that I do not typically take time to consider. How shall I paint the stools I found on the side of the road? Which tome will I conquer next to reach my unreasonable self inflicted reading goal of 2020? How will I deal with the moth?

 

Me, languishing.

 

While I know that you are equally intrigued by all of my personal inquiries, I feel like I should skip straight to the moth. The thing about the moth is that I feel like it is constantly mocking me. Shall we backup for a second? You know how everyone kinda got into a thing while quarantining for the last eleven years? Bread making or alcoholism or whatever? Well, I took the gardening route, and honestly, I am really quite good at it. 

Isn’t this just the cutest little Tuesday night dinner harvest you ever did see?

HOWEVER, I do have one problem with working the land that has made my blood boil (which I have been told is not the desired effect of a pastime). The moth.

 

More often than not, I find myself standing in my front yard gesturing wildly and yelling at a small white moth, viciously telling it to burn in hell. While I am not proud of my behavior, I stand behind it. This moth is single wingedly trying to take down my summer harvest, birthing its goddamn worm babies on every green piece of real estate within my garden walls. It is OBNOXIOUS. I am constantly pulling small worms off the backs of leaves and murdering them between my fingers.

 

Me, rampaging.

 

The wicked witch of the west is only one of my personalities though. I also have long conversations with my plants while giving them their ‘haircuts.’ We talk about my childhood and the hardships that I have overcome. I give them pep talks about their production rates. We sing and laugh. See? I don’t always behave like a lunatic.

Me, being glorious. 

 

Can we flashback for a second? Y’all, remember clothes shopping before Covid 19? I have never been much of a clothing shopper because I prefer to horde free items at clothing swaps. However, occasionally I will find myself needing something new and while often my newly bought items come from cruising the one random ‘stuff’ aisle in Aldi, that magnificent grocery store does not always have everything that I need. 

Partially unrelated side note: Supermarket Sweep was such a good show. Taking it off the air was a BIG mistake.

I was thinking about pre-covid shopping the other day because I have had a touch of insomnia and I was reminiscing about the intensive sleep study I performed on myself about two years ago. I checked out a book from the library (obv) about improving my sleep quality and from there I dove straight into fixing my life. While most of the recommendations were things I could do from the comfort of my own home, some aspects of sleep hygiene needed to be purchased. I.e black out curtains. Well, Aldi wasn’t selling those at the mo, so I had to think fast. Where would I go to buy something? And if I was going to expend the effort to go to an actual store, what else did I need? I wanted to make the most of the outing and so I wrote out a list. It contained three items. I headed off to Kohl’s. 

Lalala

Upon stepping inside the store, I immediately felt the paralysis of indecision take over my entire body. I first went to the slippers display and took each different pair off the shelf and laid them in a circle around me. I touched them all approximately 100 times and looked up reviews on my phone while sitting in the middle of my circle of insanity. I chose the cheapest pair. Then I moved on to black out curtains and repeated the exact same process, touching all of the options again and again. Eventually, I decided upon the cheapest curtains (which happened to be two inches too short, thus allowing the light from the lamppost outside my window to pour into my bedroom each and every night.) 

Finally, I made it to the belt section. There were so many! I couldn’t do the circle method, which was disappointing. I decided instead to take the most interesting belts off from the racks (knocking down hundreds of other belts with each of my selections) and gingerly try them on to see if they would do. I wasn’t having a ton of success with this and was about to leave, defeated, when I noticed the select-a-size belt. Now this was something new! I had never seen one of these before and so I grabbed it. Unfortunately the only option was size small and this model was not big enough to connect through the belt loops on my pants but I still wanted to see how it worked so I moved it up on my skin above my pants, you know, just to give it a go. I got it to connect and the ends stayed together - like magic! How cool! But then I realized I didn’t know how to take it off. 

Problem solving time. I thought, “Let’s be rational, Kase. Maybe this is like those finger trick tubes where you have to squeeze your fingers together to make the opening wider for release.” So I tightened the belt, hoping for a mechanism within to catch. It didn’t. At this point I began to sweat. I didn’t really know what to do and so I tightened it a little more. As I ratcheted it tighter and tighter I began to imagine myself walking over to the checkout with this too small belt cutting off circulation on my midriff. The thought of having to ask for help from a stranger to remove the strangulation device from my fluffy waist made me feel really bad about myself. Right at the point where I was pacing the belt section, justifying the idea of petty theft, I found a small button on the side of the clasp that released my stomach to freedom. 

It was like this- ish

I let an inadvertent victory call slip out of my mouth, paid for my slippers and curtains, and got the hell out of there. 

I really don’t miss shopping. 

What do you not miss?

Byeeeee

Keepin' it real estate

Hello friends! I am currently on a journey toward home ownership. This article has been written to lay out facts regarding the real estate situation currently at hand in my city of residence, Asheville, NC.

1. Let’s start with some basic background information about me, a potential real estate buyer. First and foremost, I have been poor my entire adult life. In fact, I had a revelation in my mid 20s that technically, I was poor white trash throughout my adolescence as well.

2. While this may seem disconcerting, don’t worry - I’m fine. I am actually pretty good at being poor. Consistently living like a college student for the last twenty years has allowed me to stretch my below-poverty-level income to pretty impressive standards. I’ve got some cashola saved up. Sometimes I even buy organic. Tbh, I truly think of myself as an upstanding global citizen with a keen bargaining sense and budding potential in the financial realm.

3. Problematically, my goddamn landlord won’t fix the natural disaster that sprung up underneath my rental home a little over a year ago. This snafu has encouraged my water bill to buoyantly leap into its wildest dreams - it has landed at approximately $500 per month.

4. However, I am not going to focus on that because my Brene Brown podcast inspires me to be a better person. So I will not tell you the name of my landlord or the successful company that he owns, and I will not discuss the multitude of messages that I have left for him, all of which have been ignored. Did I mention I tried to friend him on Facebook the other day so we could further discuss my issues? I’m still waiting to hear back.

5. So along comes Covid 19 and the entire world shuts down, which is a huge bummer for so many reasons that I am not here to write about. What I am here to write about is my real estate journey, and Covid 19 is where it began. See, here’s the thing: An economic disaster of global proportion is literally the only thing that could make it possible for me to afford a home in the town that I have resided in for 15 years. Being that I work for the government and was not laid off as a result of the pandemic, I realized I had an edge!

6. Please allow me to introduce you to the equation that I have formulated for this very special occasion:

*Ahem*

Global economic crisis + slumlord shirking rental duties = motivation for a Covid 19 project.
Also known as winning.

7. All this being said, I have jumped head first into the house buying market. It has been a chilling experience thus far.

At this point in time I am going to briefly sidebar into things that I have realized that I find intolerable:

a. Small white fences

WHY

WHY

WHY

Back to my original train of thought:

8. When first embarking upon this adventure, I was jubilant. I signed up for Zillow and Trulia and realestate.com. I started cruising the merchandise and found so many beautiful and outrageously priced properties! I realized I needed to fix my settings and take a more calculated approach. Once I did this, my real estate feed was filled with trailers of various shapes, sizes, and permanent states of disrepair. 

9. Who the hell is making all these trailers? 

10. Also, I feel like it is important to mention that I have come across a number of dead body sheds used as a selling point in real estate presentations. People don’t market them as such, but I know what they are. I am a goddamn professional. I listen to a murder podcast.

11. Occasionally, an actual house will pop up that is actually within my price range and isn’t straight up haunted. Typically when this happens, a bidding war develops within 17 minutes of the initial online posting and inevitably, I lose the war. I mostly lose because I don’t participate. The only thing I am willing to be super competitive about at this juncture in time is Uno. But also, I lose because I don’t have a ton of cash y’all! I get by on my charming personality. That’s all the collateral I got.

‘Tough, but cool’ is how I’d like to think 

people think of me. 

12. Rumor has it that these house buyers are all richies from New York who come down to Asheville and buy up all the pretty houses with cold, hard, cash. I don’t know if this rumor is true, but in my heart of hearts, I think it is.

13. So I am playing the waiting game. Will the housing market crash like I have predicted (using a combination of my psychic ability and a total lack of evidence)? Maybe.

14. Full disclosure: I need to tell you that I have created a beautiful pandemic garden at my current address. As a result of this effort, I am kinda into sticking around in my rental throughout the summer to reap the fruits of my lab. (lab is pronounced with a long A sound -- it is short for labor. Obv.) This makes me feel patient and at ease about finding my home when it is ready to find me.

15. Also, I believe that the universe will bring a house to me if I am really nice to people and grateful for what I have. How do you feel about that, New Yorkers?? (Also, sorry for your losses due to the pandemic.) So far I have manifested really lovely financial connections, a real estate agent whom I find delightful, and a great attitude.

At this point I am going to end my real estate presentation. In conclusion, the 15 pieces of data that I have displayed above clearly illustrate the trials and tribulations that I have been through, as well as the final positive note of confidence that is present due to purely insubstantial evidence. If you have any questions, that’s cool. I do too. We should virtually get together and put our questions in a document or something. Stay tuned for an update in the future about where I might live! I love you all!

Asking the Big Questions.

Recently I have decided to have a revival with nail polish. Historically, painting my nails has never been a huge thing for me because:

a)     It’s hard

b)    I’m lazy

c)     I’m too cheap to pay someone to do it because I can do it myself but I won’t because it’s hard

d)    It chips and that is so annoying and then people judge me for not taking it off for an additional two to six months

So that is my history but ALSO I’ve just recently realized cuticles. What the hell are they? By that I mean what the hell is their purpose? I know I could look this up on the world wide web or potentially ask anybody over the age of twelve, but I would rather just pose the question here knowing that I will never get a response. Since I have been painting my nails, they (my cuticles) are far more obvious. I either have to paint around them which looks terrible or I have to paint over them which looks terrible. I have attempted to remove them by scraping at them which is the worst. But I am not letting ANY of this hold me back.

I’m about to type something that may sound braggy but it’s not because ew - My cuticles are really strong. Are everyone’s? I really have never talked about this out loud. All I know is that whenever I eat seaweed, I visualize my hair and nails growing, prolifically, like a goddamn super power. As an aside, I said this to a date at a sushi restaurant last summer and consequently we never spoke again. But anyway, I wonder if my ocean-rich diet affects my cuticle health.

I’m just trying to step up my game people. I live in a town where you can really let yourself go if you’re not careful. Last month I decided to pay attention to how many people were randomly barefoot. I want to mention that I do not live anywhere near a beach. I counted nine in one day. NINE. I live in a city and it was a Wednesday. I realize the day of the week is probably inconsequential, but I really want y’all to have as much context as possible.

Stop putting my life in danger by forcing me to photo document your shit while sitting behind the wheel of my car.

Trying to enjoy a nice show at the wine bar but then stop it.

I didn’t photo document them all, but you get the point.

I will admit, however, that even though I am trying to counterbalance the dirty of my city with nail polish, the randomness of people does delight me. Sometimes I will just glance through my phone notes to look for a recipe or a to do list and I will find reminders that I sent to myself like these:

May 12, 2018 at 3:18PM

What is that coming out of that man’s purse. OhmygodIthinkitisananimal.

May 12, 2018 at 3:21PM

Dear god, it is a white squirrel. He has smuggled a white squirrel from some far away land and it now lives in his purse.

I am glad that I make notes to myself about these happenings, because I truly remember none of them, none of them at all. 

I had a friend in town over the summer and I wanted her to have the full Asheville experience while here – mountains, rivers, music, microbrews, and mildly uncomfortable interactions with strangers. I brought her to one of my fave places, Crow and Quill, which is an establishment decorated in dead flowers, taxidermy, and shadows. We ordered a couple of brilliantly prepared cocktails and settled in to listen to the jazz band that was performing. They were pretty good, but one couldn’t help but be distracted by the lead musician who was making a lot of really hard eye contact and blowing kisses. We thought we might leave after set break, but it was pouring to the point that the streets had been engulfed in a flash flood and we decided we should wait a little longer at the bar. We sat back down and what do you know, that lead musician came right over for a bit of conversation.

He started by reflecting on his younger days in Asheville when he lived with his girlfriend in an apartment downtown with no plumbing. (Side note: I am 100% sure that none of his story is true.) During the summer months, they (he and his girlfriend) were really lucky because they could go outside and “catch a shower” when the gutters leaked. He loved a good flood like the one we were experiencing tonight. Then, he found out my friend was visiting from Berlin, so he changed gears and started hitting on her in elusive German, full of pregnant pauses and weird catch phrases. After that, he decided it would be a good idea to bring up the topic of hovercrafts in Germany. A few minutes into the hovercraft discussion I thought it would be best to bring out my pendulum that I always carry in my purse and start swinging it before his eyes without saying anything about it. He wrapped up his conversation quickly and walked away and I turned to my friend and said, “You have to know how to out crazy a crazy person to truly be free.”

I take my ammunition of nail polish and pendulum and walk confidently in this world my friends. What makes you free?