That moment when: you find yourself with your shirt over your head.
Be warned, though: it’s probably best not to curse the dead…
“Please leave a note for your host with the reason for your visit…”
I stared at my computer screen, feeling like I had been trapped in a web of lies. I wasn’t about to tell the peoples at AirBnB my real reason for crashing at their little apartment for 2 nights: I had COVID like a mothertrucker.
So I told them something equally true:
“Just need a cute place to crash while house hunting over the next few days…” I typed in furiously, anxious to confirm my reservation and get on with my COVID-cation.
“Wait. What’s all this ‘COVID-cation’ hub-bub all about, anyways?” you might be asking the lightly glowing screen of your favorite electronic device.
As always, I’m glad you asked. Ecstatic, even.
If I may, Dear Procastinating Reader, let me reference you to the 3 previous installments of what I grandiosely call “The Long Tale Of COVID”:
- Just Another Boring COVID Story? Now That’s The Spirit!
- The Tongue-Twisted Guy Who Only Wanted To Get High
- Listen, What Happened Behind That Taco Bell Was Purely Survival
I’ll just chill here while you catch up…
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All done? Great! While I know you actually read those fine pieces of prose, I feel I still need to briefly bring the other slackers up to speed on what’s a-happening in this wonderful saga.
In summary, when I got COVID this summer, I promptly ran off to an AirBnB for a few nights with the hope of keeping my fam from catching what I had. In parallel–and what turned out to be a real plot-driver in this story–I wanted to use my 2-4 days of COVID vacation to do two things: write my stupid blog post for the week, and then catch up on library books. And relax and recover, of course.
Unfortunately, the entirety of Day 1 was wasted trying (and ultimately succeeding) to score some liquid fun from the pharmacy that I otherwise wouldn’t be allowed to legally ingest–but you already knew that from the last two posts, right? Including the part where I felt the weight of the White Man’s Burden every time I tried to pronounce the drug’s name, right? Good.
Well, though it’s not the point of this story, I figured I at least owed you a follow-up to that part of this odyssey. And then I can get on with the story…
After I finally had all my pharmaceuticals secured and I made it back to my temporary apartment, it was pushing 8 pm, and I had neither ate anything for dinner at that point, nor taken any of my medications.
All I wanted to do was get some food in me, self-medicate, and pass the ----- out for the next 10-14 hours. But why would life be that simple? Why?
I had two problems: 1) My stomach was queasy, and I suspected taking medicine before food would just make me vomit. Ja…I didn’t really feel like throwing up then nor there. Problemo numero dos: turns out, despite my very clear desire for a place with a full kitchen, when I was looking at the AirBnB listing, I mistook an oversized toaster oven for a microwave oven. Yeah…there was no microwave oven.
And guess what? I had specifically bought almost exclusively microwavable groceries. I was too exhausted to try to boil water, so I ended up just sitting on the couch, merely existing, for another 3 hours. Not even sleeping. It kinda sucked, to be honest.
Eventually around 11 pm, I mustered the will to boil that water and heat that rice-in-a-pouch and some overly stomach-friendly vegetable soup. I wish I could say that was the best meal I ever ate, but, nah, it was pretty horrible. On the bright side, it allowed me to finally go to sleep–even if I never got around to taking some of my hard-earned fun-time meds. The solid sleep, though, was much needed, because I had a big day of real estate hunting ahead of me the next day…
“You’re not gonna believe this–this place is not only 13 acres with a pond, but it actually has a ‘pre-Civil War cabin’! Mom is going to love this place!”
Let’s rewind back to Day 0: that fateful Wednesday my symptoms first appeared and were promptly written off as ‘anything but COVID’. That day found me slaving away in the lab scanning mice in the MRI machine for 9 hours straigt. Scanning days, while tedious, had the wonderful feature of plenty of down time while each mouse was being scanned, and I was using that to hotly pursue a new property that had popped up on my Zillow app.
It had long been a dream, nay, fantasy of my mother’s–who would be living on this property with us–to live out her years in a rustic, 100+ -year-old cabin. The reality, though, is that request is quite a tall order when looking for property (at least within our budget), so I had long ago told her to plan on not having a cabin of her own.
But, yet here it was–an opportunity that seemed to have come down to us miraculously from the heavens…this bad boy:
Okay, so maybe it would need a little TLC, but nonetheless, there was at least a possibility to fulfill my dearest mother’s lifelong wishes. So of course we were going to at least see it. You know, in person.
For the record, before I knew I had COVID, we had set up an appointment with Lonny, our grandpa-esque real estate agent, to see this property Friday afternoon (aka Day 2). And since the main farmhouse on the property was in such bad shape that they didn’t even include interior pictures, we figured we could keep that appointment despite my sickness, on account of being outside 98% of the time we would be there.
So, after spending most of that Friday/Day 2 not blogging nor reading my books, I rendezvoused with Lonny and the Boss Lady at what could be our future forever home: 2310 Wildcat Creek Road.1And yes, as a Kansas State Alum, I basically jizzed in my pants at the prospect of having ‘Wildcat’ in my eternal address.
When we rolled up (separately, of course), Lonny was already there checking things out, and he was quick to point out that the farmhouse pretty much just needed to be demolished. Not a good sign, I would say.
We checked it out anyways, and yeah, he was pretty much dead-on: the remodeling that would be needed to make that place livable was way beyond what I, handyman extraordinaire, would ever care to do. Still, not a deal-breaker though…
“Welp, let’s go check out that cabin!” I said, my optimism springing ever-eternal.
So we plodded on over where the cabin sat, me eagerly leading the way.
“Watch your step!” I yelled back to the Boss Lady as I spryly navigated the rickety porch on my way to the front door, like I was Little Red Riding Hood or Goldilocks or some shit.
This was immediately followed up by:
“What the fuuuuuuuuuuuuu**?!? Fu**! FU**!”
The exact instant my foot crossed the threshold into the cabin, I felt a searing pain in my back–I could have sworn I had just been stabbed in right between my should blades!
“Aaaagh! Ooooh, that hurts, that hurts so bad!”
It didn’t take long for this Sherlock Holmes here to realize he had been stung by a wasp or a bee, and so, if you would, now visualize me with my shirt over my head like the Great Cornholio,2This is a Beavis and Butthead reference, my friend: https://beavisandbutthead.fandom.com/wiki/Cornholio simultaneously instructing the Boss Lady to “Get it out! Pull out the ----- stinger!” while profusely apologizing to Lonny “So sorry for dropping the f-bomb–I swear I never cuss…around strangers, at least…”
After the dust settled–and after Lonnie pointed out that the dust (i.e. soil)3Truth is, the crappy soil was the actual deal-breaker, not the haunted ----- mansion, believe it or not. would make for the most worthless muck one could imagine when it rained–the Boss Lady got down to the completely rational process of deciding if this was a property we might actually buy:
“So, let’s see…crappy dirt, a farmhouse that would be worth more if it were already torn down…”
“…and that ‘pre-Civil War cabin’…say, you know, there’s something about that phrase…”
“Yeah, it’s been bugging me too…”
“Ah hah! I think I’ve solved the mystery! You know how we always talk about we would like some sort of divine sign whether or not a place is right for us?”
“Of course, otherwise we get lost in our perpetual collective indecisiveness. Go on…”
“I’m pretty sure that cabin was where slaves had lived…and I don’t think they have quite vacated the premises yet.”
“What exactly do you mean?”
“Well4And this is where I take creative liberties with the story……when I got stung, I could swear I heard a voice whispering:”
“Die, Ghost-Face, you pale-ass, enslaving, colonizing mothertrucker! You want a sign? Here’s a sign–to get the ----- outta my house!”
Now There’s a sign for ya…
…a sign that you should drink up, biscuits! Yup, that’s right–there is your first of three usages of the term ‘ghost’!5Turns out, ‘GhostFace’ ain’t as racist as I had believed: https://www.quora.com/Is-Ghostface-Killah-from-the-Wutang-Clan-a-racist-name Or as they would say in Pee-Wee’s Playhouse:
Is that the point of this whole story, though? NO! We’re only getting started!
I’ll even give you a little teaser to whet your appetite to keep you hungry for the next seven days:
Should I stay or should I go: how hard could it possibly be to extend my COVID-cation for a few days? I’m sure that will go off without a hitch. Or the need to file a Missing Persons report…
Content created on: 23 September 2022 (Friday)
Footnotes & References:
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