So I'm stressed again. There's too much to do and not enough hours in the day and, worst of all, I've progressed to that awful point where I'm frantically buying random stuff at Wal Mart. I hate Wal Mart and yet, it's just so damn convenient when you're moving and you need a pizza and a giant thing of coffee and more underwear and curtain rods and 8 lighters and a giant coil of rope because, you know, you're moving, and while you're at it you might as well buy 6 or 7 industrial sized things of soap because, if I have learned one thing during this move, it's that as god is my witness, I will never go soapless again.
Boxes still need to be unpacked and the garage is even more full of random shit than it was before and it was pretty full of random shit. The dregs and last bits of the move are the worst part: where you find stuff like your show jumping helmet from 5th grade and the wicker picnic basket that's been used maybe twice and that horrible assortment of unmatched wool gloves. All of them get shoved into a backpack or a duffel bag or a garbage bag or piled into an open box on top of the trifle bowl and the big trivet and the small camera tripod and the box gets hurled into the garage on top of the winter coats and the bridesmaid dress I wore in L's wedding in Baltimore, a million million light years ago. All this makes even venturing into the garage some kind of terrible exercise in nostalgia gone horribly wrong and there's that sinking feeling that every. single. one. of those boxes and bags is going to have to be unpacked and the contents organized and dealt with and put somewhere. Possibly a closet. Yet did I do anything last night? No. Nothing but drink beer, smoke, make strange Thai food (first dinner in the new house and not too terrible) and whine.
Also, I need a man. Yeah, but I mean a man with a truck, for just a few hours. A truck and an allen wrench (be still my quivering heart, a man with an allen wrench!) to finally take apart Frankenbed, which proved partially resistant to my best sledgehammering efforts and then help me get all the last bits of outdoor stuff, like tomato cages and trellises and Christmas reindeer and giant moving Halloween spiders, over to the new house. Tonight or tomorrow night would be very excellent, oh faithful reader who is reading this and has a truck. I'll be over there tonight scrubbing the house and tomorrow night, hopefully, I'll be getting the last bits and pieces out. If not tomorrow night, then definitely Saturday. Please?
Showing posts with label moving. Show all posts
Showing posts with label moving. Show all posts
Thursday, May 24, 2007
Tuesday, May 22, 2007
Update
I found my camera. I haven't found my deoderant, perfume, moisturizer, rings, other comfortable shoe or my cel phone charger yet, but I have found the camera, M's baby clothes, piles of fabric I bought cheap at a warehouse outside Baltimore over a decade ago when I thought I might start sewing again, the pasta machine, with which I have been planning to make goat cheese and wild mushroom ravioli for more than seven years now although I have never yet used the damn thing, and a vitally important box full of small McDonalds type toys, lincoln logs, lego blocks and other stuff that noone has played with for five years. There's an American flag and an LL Bean boot on top of my refrigerator and I'm sleeping on my futon on the floor, which the dogs think is a fine innovation. I didn't shower or brush my teeth for four days and I nearly wept when I actually finally found the soap on Sunday so I could wash my hands.
Now, though, the shower curtain is up, even if it does keep sort of falling down. There are some curtains up even if some of them are duct taped together; there are piles of random stuff everywhere and I called my mother practically in tears yesterday which led to her spending all day in my kitchen, occasionally sighing "Oh, Felicity" in that way that she does but gods bless her, organizing the whole damn thing. The dishwasher leaks and the dogs are tied up in the backyard, since my friend D has still not posted with the damn fence. Granted, there is currently no way to call me: try email.
Tonight I have to go bust my old bed up for firewood. It will not go out of the room. No, we tried and tried but, see, I built that bed. It started as an Ikea bed and then it got moved a couple of times during which, naturally, I lost the special Ikea allen wrenches and the special Swedish bolt and nut thingies and so I just started using my own mad carpentry skillz on it. I am using mad in the British sense here, as in, "She's gone completely mad! Run, run away!" and anyway I kept right on using those carpentry skillz every time the bed collapsed, which was unfortunately not as often as one would hope due to my several years of singledom there, although, given that, was still more often than a bed should really collapse. At those times I would go to Lowes and haul more lumber home and start sawing and nailing and screwing (again, not in the fun way) the whole thing together. Well, what I achieved was Frankenbed, and Frankenbed must die, alas.
Tonight I'm going to go finish junking out the old house because they're taking the giant mountain of trash away tomorrow, or at least I hope they are, although it's not really my problem anymore since I was careful not to leave a forwarding address with any of my old neighbors so they won't be able to lynch me. There are probably 2 or 3 carloads of stuff still at the old house and I doubt I'll get it clean, which means another night or two spent over there scrubbing before it's done.
My whole body aches and I have bruises in places I didn't think could get bruised. I've learned new things about which muscles you use to lift boxes and this is knowledge I could conceivably have done well without. But there's food in the new fridge (also in the old fridge, although I don't think it really qualifies as "food" in the strictest sense of the word anymore) and the recycling people took a mountain of cardboard away and there are a few pieces of artwork up on the walls. The new house is not as cute or as big as the old house. It is just a house, not a love affair and that makes me kind of sad, but on the other hand the shower works and I found the soap.
Now, though, the shower curtain is up, even if it does keep sort of falling down. There are some curtains up even if some of them are duct taped together; there are piles of random stuff everywhere and I called my mother practically in tears yesterday which led to her spending all day in my kitchen, occasionally sighing "Oh, Felicity" in that way that she does but gods bless her, organizing the whole damn thing. The dishwasher leaks and the dogs are tied up in the backyard, since my friend D has still not posted with the damn fence. Granted, there is currently no way to call me: try email.
Tonight I have to go bust my old bed up for firewood. It will not go out of the room. No, we tried and tried but, see, I built that bed. It started as an Ikea bed and then it got moved a couple of times during which, naturally, I lost the special Ikea allen wrenches and the special Swedish bolt and nut thingies and so I just started using my own mad carpentry skillz on it. I am using mad in the British sense here, as in, "She's gone completely mad! Run, run away!" and anyway I kept right on using those carpentry skillz every time the bed collapsed, which was unfortunately not as often as one would hope due to my several years of singledom there, although, given that, was still more often than a bed should really collapse. At those times I would go to Lowes and haul more lumber home and start sawing and nailing and screwing (again, not in the fun way) the whole thing together. Well, what I achieved was Frankenbed, and Frankenbed must die, alas.
Tonight I'm going to go finish junking out the old house because they're taking the giant mountain of trash away tomorrow, or at least I hope they are, although it's not really my problem anymore since I was careful not to leave a forwarding address with any of my old neighbors so they won't be able to lynch me. There are probably 2 or 3 carloads of stuff still at the old house and I doubt I'll get it clean, which means another night or two spent over there scrubbing before it's done.
My whole body aches and I have bruises in places I didn't think could get bruised. I've learned new things about which muscles you use to lift boxes and this is knowledge I could conceivably have done well without. But there's food in the new fridge (also in the old fridge, although I don't think it really qualifies as "food" in the strictest sense of the word anymore) and the recycling people took a mountain of cardboard away and there are a few pieces of artwork up on the walls. The new house is not as cute or as big as the old house. It is just a house, not a love affair and that makes me kind of sad, but on the other hand the shower works and I found the soap.
Thursday, May 17, 2007
AAARRGHH!!!
So, what with N leaving and my subsequent need to go to Broadways and get all emo on my friend J's long suffering shoulder and then the night before when something or other happened that has faded into the mists of time but surely did not involve putting tchtochkes into boxes, I'm way behind on the packing. And my new landlord has not called me back and I don't know when I can go get the keys to my new place which I totally want, like, right now so that tonight I can go over there and reassure myself that I do in fact have a place to live and it wasn't all some kind of weird elaborate scam. And the U-Haul people have not called me back either and the craigslist guy I emailed has also not called me about helping me move and I'm freaking out and did I mention that, naturally, o just naturally, it is of course that time of the month? My glasses are not ready yet and my Amazon order is delayed and Django already lost the new tag N & I made for him on Sunday.
So I really, like, NEEDED to have my current landlord call me around noon and tell me that he's selling the house I have lived in for the last six years, without, mind you, asking me if I wanted to buy it despite the fact that I offered to buy it a few years back. Not that I could afford it, but still. He could have asked. So he's selling the house which explains the slow parade of people who have been driving up and down the street peering at me the last few days but now, to add insult to injury, he wants to show it TONIGHT. And I tried and tried to get out of it because, jesus, my house looks like Tobacco Road only far worse right now because I'm a mess in every way and I haven't got time to pack AND clean and also I sort of gave up cleaning in February when I had my 19th nervous breakdown and then what with N living there and M being a teenage boy who prefers to live in ultimate squalor and me having decided that life is too short to clean, well. Plus the huge piles of trash everywhere since I'm sorting stuff by boxing things I want to keep and throwing things I don't want into piles. I tried and tried to say no but I failed and THEY ARE SHOWING THE DAMN HOUSE AT 7:30 TONIGHT even though, for chrissakes, the house will be all theirs a fucking week from today but no, that is not soon enough. So I ran home for one hour around noon and my friend S, (I really do have the best friends in the whole world; I am not worthy) came over and washed dishes while I frantically swept floors and threw clothes and sheets and stuff into a pile and discovered that Django, who I had locked into the house this morning since he's gotten utterly brazen about breezing through the fence and touring the neighborhood, had taken it upon himself to shred a box of records - fortunately, he had so far mostly only eaten the box and a corner of The Association, Windy, which I very likely will never listen to again anyway if I ever even have since I got it for a quarter on a street corner - so I had to clean that up too and then let him out, at which point he disappeared, which led to incoherent shrieking on my part and then when he finally came back I tied him up in the backyard and came dashing back to work, since I had to take the desk at the museum this afternoon, argh, grrrr, meaning that I won't be able to leave the museum for the rest of the day even to smoke or pee. I cannot believe this but it's happening; I'm furious, my head hurts and I think I might be losing my voice.
MOVING SUCKS. PEOPLE MOVING AWAY SUCKS. THIS WHOLE THING FUCKING SUCKS!
So I really, like, NEEDED to have my current landlord call me around noon and tell me that he's selling the house I have lived in for the last six years, without, mind you, asking me if I wanted to buy it despite the fact that I offered to buy it a few years back. Not that I could afford it, but still. He could have asked. So he's selling the house which explains the slow parade of people who have been driving up and down the street peering at me the last few days but now, to add insult to injury, he wants to show it TONIGHT. And I tried and tried to get out of it because, jesus, my house looks like Tobacco Road only far worse right now because I'm a mess in every way and I haven't got time to pack AND clean and also I sort of gave up cleaning in February when I had my 19th nervous breakdown and then what with N living there and M being a teenage boy who prefers to live in ultimate squalor and me having decided that life is too short to clean, well. Plus the huge piles of trash everywhere since I'm sorting stuff by boxing things I want to keep and throwing things I don't want into piles. I tried and tried to say no but I failed and THEY ARE SHOWING THE DAMN HOUSE AT 7:30 TONIGHT even though, for chrissakes, the house will be all theirs a fucking week from today but no, that is not soon enough. So I ran home for one hour around noon and my friend S, (I really do have the best friends in the whole world; I am not worthy) came over and washed dishes while I frantically swept floors and threw clothes and sheets and stuff into a pile and discovered that Django, who I had locked into the house this morning since he's gotten utterly brazen about breezing through the fence and touring the neighborhood, had taken it upon himself to shred a box of records - fortunately, he had so far mostly only eaten the box and a corner of The Association, Windy, which I very likely will never listen to again anyway if I ever even have since I got it for a quarter on a street corner - so I had to clean that up too and then let him out, at which point he disappeared, which led to incoherent shrieking on my part and then when he finally came back I tied him up in the backyard and came dashing back to work, since I had to take the desk at the museum this afternoon, argh, grrrr, meaning that I won't be able to leave the museum for the rest of the day even to smoke or pee. I cannot believe this but it's happening; I'm furious, my head hurts and I think I might be losing my voice.
MOVING SUCKS. PEOPLE MOVING AWAY SUCKS. THIS WHOLE THING FUCKING SUCKS!
Monday, May 14, 2007
project 365 #135: peony bud with ants
The house has figured out that I'm moving and in retaliation things are starting to break down. I've seen this process before: the house gets all mad at you when you plan to leave, or maybe it's depressed, or maybe, like most of us, it produces this toxic mixture of sorrow and fury that it trots out at the least hint of change. Whichever it is, I'm terrified, because I'm watching the last few remnants of my security deposit go swirling away down the drain with the broken mirror and the round thingie that goes around the thermostat thingy and the ominous sudden murmuring of the refrigerator. That's another reason why I have to move as fast as possible; the other reason being, of course, that if I give myself 2 weeks to move I won't do anything about it for the first week anyway, so might as well freak out completely and all at once.
Still, it's difficult to concentrate on work and homework and, for chrissakes laundry right now, let alone feeding everyone. Everyone complains about vegetarian chili made from all the stuff that hasn't been eaten yet and cornbread anyway and does not understand that I am not buying groceries simply to move them across West Asheville a few days later. Also, the dogs shredded a box across my bed in what is either an attempt to help "Wow she sure likes cardboard boxes right now! Let's give her a hand by chewing one up on the bed!" or hinder. "This is one box you won't be filling up, lady. Bwah ha ha ha! Now you cannot change things!" Whichever; I still have a pile of lovely damp shredded cardboard all over my bed and that doesn't even address the complex tactical maneouver that I am trying to figure out at the moment: to wit, how to make sure I have clean sheets on my bed for my first night in the new house, which may be impossible. I'm also beginning to get all choked up and teary eyed about getting rid of so many books and even self pitying statements of doom like, "You don't deserve those many books anyway, Fliss. Huge libraries are for the rich people who get to own houses and you? No books for you! Get back to your dumpster with a torn up Archie comic, scum of the proletariat!" don't seem to be helping much. Although they do, a bit, because then I laugh and toss another book into the going away box with wild abandon, a sob, a swig of beer and a little, muttered curse.
Then I bitch for a while about the goddamn missing tape gun. Which is what I'm going to go do right now.
Still, it's difficult to concentrate on work and homework and, for chrissakes laundry right now, let alone feeding everyone. Everyone complains about vegetarian chili made from all the stuff that hasn't been eaten yet and cornbread anyway and does not understand that I am not buying groceries simply to move them across West Asheville a few days later. Also, the dogs shredded a box across my bed in what is either an attempt to help "Wow she sure likes cardboard boxes right now! Let's give her a hand by chewing one up on the bed!" or hinder. "This is one box you won't be filling up, lady. Bwah ha ha ha! Now you cannot change things!" Whichever; I still have a pile of lovely damp shredded cardboard all over my bed and that doesn't even address the complex tactical maneouver that I am trying to figure out at the moment: to wit, how to make sure I have clean sheets on my bed for my first night in the new house, which may be impossible. I'm also beginning to get all choked up and teary eyed about getting rid of so many books and even self pitying statements of doom like, "You don't deserve those many books anyway, Fliss. Huge libraries are for the rich people who get to own houses and you? No books for you! Get back to your dumpster with a torn up Archie comic, scum of the proletariat!" don't seem to be helping much. Although they do, a bit, because then I laugh and toss another book into the going away box with wild abandon, a sob, a swig of beer and a little, muttered curse.
Then I bitch for a while about the goddamn missing tape gun. Which is what I'm going to go do right now.
OKAY, This is Where I Beg
Ah, friends. Wonderful, wonderful friends who I cherish so much and who are so important to me and for whom I do all kinds of terrific friendly helpful things, never asking for anything (well, not asking for much, or maybe just beer) in return - until now. Now, I need you. Now I am going to beg and plead shamelessly. Yes, it is that dreaded moment that you have all been, uh, dreading: the moment when I Ask You To Help Me Move.
I am moving on Saturday, May 19. I have reserved a U-Haul truck and I am busily boxing stuff and throwing junk away and organizing and planning and I have put an ad up on Craigslist looking for a couple of paid guys to help as well - this offer is also open, y'all - but as we all know, the more the, if not merrier, than certainly less grueling. And if I manage to get some paid people, then they can do the really heavy stuff. So. FREE PIZZA AND BEER, Y'ALL! It will be FUN! Noonish to sixish, Saturday. From one end of West Asheville to the other - please, please, please come and help me move. Email me for directions.
I am moving on Saturday, May 19. I have reserved a U-Haul truck and I am busily boxing stuff and throwing junk away and organizing and planning and I have put an ad up on Craigslist looking for a couple of paid guys to help as well - this offer is also open, y'all - but as we all know, the more the, if not merrier, than certainly less grueling. And if I manage to get some paid people, then they can do the really heavy stuff. So. FREE PIZZA AND BEER, Y'ALL! It will be FUN! Noonish to sixish, Saturday. From one end of West Asheville to the other - please, please, please come and help me move. Email me for directions.
Saturday, May 12, 2007
project 365 #132: gas station at night
I went out for a couple of drinks with my friend J last night at Broadways and there was a huge rainbow over Town Mountain. That was nice, although the pictures of it, which can be seen here, sadly aren't so great. Ah well. Then I came home, stopping first at the liquor store where I spent vast amounts of money on vodka and rum, thus ensuring that my moving crew will be a very happy moving crew (if N and I don't drink it all before next week, which is a disheartening possibility, alas) and picked up beaucoups de boxes. Those boxes are now all over the house and I'm packing and tossing books. I think I can live without Agatha Christie and Ngaio Marsh (in 90% of Ngaio Marsh books, btw, the murderer is a sex starved spinster. Yet another reason why celibacy is just so BAD for one.) but I need Dorothy Sayers and Marjorie Allingham. And Steven Brust and of course Tim Powers but not Sean Russell or Robert Heinlein, although I am saving Podkayne of Mars, god help me.
The books are filthy and I'm covered with grunge and that weird crud that gets all over books. What IS that stuff? No, wait, it's possible I don't want to know.
The books are filthy and I'm covered with grunge and that weird crud that gets all over books. What IS that stuff? No, wait, it's possible I don't want to know.
Thursday, May 10, 2007
And There Was Much Rejoicing
I gots a house!!!!!!! Sing hallelujah! Yes, I have just now come back from signing a lease on a funky little 2 bedroom ranch house in West Asheville, on the other side of West Asheville from where I currently live, near the Malvern Hills Park. It has a fireplace! And a dishwasher! And a garage! And a big if somewhat rickety deck! And a huge yard! It is nifty! It is kind of like a scaled down Brady house!
I get the keys a week from today and I'm thinking I'm going to try to move that weekend if I can get my shit together. I'm happy and sad all at once and a bit trepidatious about what young M is going to say, since he hasn't seen it and it's not as convenient to stuff like convenience stores as the house where we now live. Saying goodbye to BJs Food Market will make me sad, too, but saying hello to much leafy greenness and a park with a pool and tennis courts is pretty damn cool. Young M will just have to get a bike and suck it up.
There should be pictures later today. Yay! I have a house!
I get the keys a week from today and I'm thinking I'm going to try to move that weekend if I can get my shit together. I'm happy and sad all at once and a bit trepidatious about what young M is going to say, since he hasn't seen it and it's not as convenient to stuff like convenience stores as the house where we now live. Saying goodbye to BJs Food Market will make me sad, too, but saying hello to much leafy greenness and a park with a pool and tennis courts is pretty damn cool. Young M will just have to get a bike and suck it up.
There should be pictures later today. Yay! I have a house!
Monday, April 23, 2007
project 365 #113: my soon to be ex house
I have had one of those not so good very bad awful gruesome days today. Nothing particularly extreme happened; it's just that I woke up tired as hell with a sore throat and then work was meeting meeting meeting basically all day and then I went to look at that house that I knew I couldn't afford only to discover that a) it sold for the asking price already and b) it's exactly the house I would love to live in and c) I'm going to have to leave my neighborhood and it's no good thinking that there's any way I'm going to be able to stay here and it makes me want to cry or scream or rant or throw things or possibly strap on some Doc Martens and kick me some yuppie ass. I ran into a couple of friends at the Ingles (another reason for the bad mood - the weekly gigandor Ingles trip) and that just reminded me of how much I love living here and how many friends I have here and fuck, I'm going to have to move out of my comfy west asheville enclave and go to a whole new neighborhood because. . .
Because, in a story that has been repeated many, many times in the history of the world, I'm an artist and I moved here back before West Asheville got cool and hip and yet then more people moved here and more and then more and all of a sudden there were people with more money than I'll ever have buying up everything in the neighborhood and so now I have to leave. God fucking damn it. I should probably go back to Baltimore or somewhere similarly unscenic - Detroit? South Dakota? - where noone with any money wants to live and give up on the lovely garden spots of this world.
Maybe I'll be able to come back to Asheville one day after the developers have finally killed off this egg laying goose and the derelicts and feral street children with tattooed faces and Uzis are living in the ridgetop McMansions and the wailing of the yuppies can be heard throughout the cracked pavement that covers each and every inch of what was once a small valley in the mountains. I am living for this day, when I'll roll into town in black leather and spikes in my specially reinforced Saturn station wagon with my own feral children leaning out the window manning the grenade throwers and we'll take all the water and oil and go dance with Tina Turner. Or something like that. Clearly, though, black leather and spikes are a growth market and I'm going to go invest my money in canned food and shotguns. I think I can probably afford half a shotgun and a rather largish can of black beans.
Because, in a story that has been repeated many, many times in the history of the world, I'm an artist and I moved here back before West Asheville got cool and hip and yet then more people moved here and more and then more and all of a sudden there were people with more money than I'll ever have buying up everything in the neighborhood and so now I have to leave. God fucking damn it. I should probably go back to Baltimore or somewhere similarly unscenic - Detroit? South Dakota? - where noone with any money wants to live and give up on the lovely garden spots of this world.
Maybe I'll be able to come back to Asheville one day after the developers have finally killed off this egg laying goose and the derelicts and feral street children with tattooed faces and Uzis are living in the ridgetop McMansions and the wailing of the yuppies can be heard throughout the cracked pavement that covers each and every inch of what was once a small valley in the mountains. I am living for this day, when I'll roll into town in black leather and spikes in my specially reinforced Saturn station wagon with my own feral children leaning out the window manning the grenade throwers and we'll take all the water and oil and go dance with Tina Turner. Or something like that. Clearly, though, black leather and spikes are a growth market and I'm going to go invest my money in canned food and shotguns. I think I can probably afford half a shotgun and a rather largish can of black beans.
Wednesday, April 11, 2007
project 365 #101: malachite
I took this for work today: a big beautiful chunk of malachite. That has little or nothing to do with what I'm about to discuss, which is whether or not Asheville has changed for the worse in the past few years. My daughter and I are having this conversation right now and our consensus is yes, it kind of has. There are just so many damn people here now, and it always seems like more than half of them have no visible means of support yet they can afford big fancy giant homes and cars. Where do they work? Where do these people earn their money? Where do they spend it and can I get some?
I've just been priced out of my house and my neighborhood and yeah, okay, I've made terrible various mistakes in my life over the years which, if you really want, I could enumerate, boring us all to tears, but still. I've lived here for seven years. I've held a couple of fairly high profile "upscale" jobs downtown for most of those seven years. When I moved here it was still a livable if a little decrepit city where you could rent a beautiful old bungalow for not much money or a grand apartment in Montford for even less. And I look around now and everything's been cleaned up and fixed up and some people are making money hand over fist, but the rest of us are not in great shape. It's unfortunate that all my mistakes led to me not having the money or the credit or the ability to buy a house seven years ago when they were still in my price range but that's the way it was and frankly, my income hasn't risen one iota in those seven years and now I'll never, ever own a house. I don't know if I can even find one to rent.
And I don't like gentrification; I never have. Yeah, I like good coffee and good beer and those supposed hallmarks of gentrification were already here a long time ago. Better coffee and beer, actually, because I miss Bean Streets and Vincent's Ear and a couple of Starbucks and an Indian restaurant (okay, it's a really good Indian restaurant, I give you that) haven't replaced them in my heart. I confess to being tired of the eternal snotty hipster scene (who are these people? Why are they so obnoxious? Where do they buy their clothes?) and the early retirement baby boomers (to quote the Bobs, first I was a hippie, then I was a stockbroker, now I am a hippie again!) and I don't really want to live in a town where the working classes are increasingly forced out into ever more distant and depressing trailer suburbs.
So more and more, I don't know if I'll stay. I have family here. I moved here because of my family; I've been coming here my whole life; WNC is a big part of me. My friends are here and I love them; I've built a whole life here. But I'm not certain, anymore, that this is the Asheville I've known and loved and I'm not certain either whether I belong here anymore.
I've just been priced out of my house and my neighborhood and yeah, okay, I've made terrible various mistakes in my life over the years which, if you really want, I could enumerate, boring us all to tears, but still. I've lived here for seven years. I've held a couple of fairly high profile "upscale" jobs downtown for most of those seven years. When I moved here it was still a livable if a little decrepit city where you could rent a beautiful old bungalow for not much money or a grand apartment in Montford for even less. And I look around now and everything's been cleaned up and fixed up and some people are making money hand over fist, but the rest of us are not in great shape. It's unfortunate that all my mistakes led to me not having the money or the credit or the ability to buy a house seven years ago when they were still in my price range but that's the way it was and frankly, my income hasn't risen one iota in those seven years and now I'll never, ever own a house. I don't know if I can even find one to rent.
And I don't like gentrification; I never have. Yeah, I like good coffee and good beer and those supposed hallmarks of gentrification were already here a long time ago. Better coffee and beer, actually, because I miss Bean Streets and Vincent's Ear and a couple of Starbucks and an Indian restaurant (okay, it's a really good Indian restaurant, I give you that) haven't replaced them in my heart. I confess to being tired of the eternal snotty hipster scene (who are these people? Why are they so obnoxious? Where do they buy their clothes?) and the early retirement baby boomers (to quote the Bobs, first I was a hippie, then I was a stockbroker, now I am a hippie again!) and I don't really want to live in a town where the working classes are increasingly forced out into ever more distant and depressing trailer suburbs.
So more and more, I don't know if I'll stay. I have family here. I moved here because of my family; I've been coming here my whole life; WNC is a big part of me. My friends are here and I love them; I've built a whole life here. But I'm not certain, anymore, that this is the Asheville I've known and loved and I'm not certain either whether I belong here anymore.
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