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
