Cheep

“Banish the ghost of coronaaaaahhh…”

Before my trip to Kenya, I went to Passport Health, a traveler’s clinic for immunizations and fear needling. There, I was handed a terrifying brochure filled with the potential dangers of my destination. Typhoid. Hepatitis. Yellow fever. And a long list of other shit-inducing diseases borne of filth and mosquitoes and the social nature of human existence. It totaled $1500 to completely mitigate the fear of the unknown. I paid $500 to slightly assuage it, which my Kenyan friend found baffling and idiotic. I also paid dearly for taking the live Typhoid pills that made me vomit for hours on end over the course a week.

I took off into an exponentially panicked world. When I left one week ago, the novel coronavirus drifted in and out of the public consciousness. It still felt like a somewhat foreign concept. Other people’s problems. A few days after I landed, COVID-19 did too. Blessedly not via the conduit of me. Since then, it feels like the entire world has screeched to a terrified halt.

As I hiked through the vast Karura Forest in Nairobi yesterday, I passed a group of 20-something Kenyans, and the guy at the end, smiling wide, sang while staring straight at me, “Banish the ghost of coronaaaaahhh…” I found it hilariously apropos, as I am the whitest person I’ve seen in this entire country. Now a specter of doom and death indeed.

no label multicolored-virus-patterned silk tank top – $3, Idaho Youth Ranch thrift store | ADAY almond Easy Days pants – $119 (discounted as I keep pretending I’m a new customer through alias email addresses to get the promo code) | Nike hot pink, yellow & blue cross-country mesh shoes with hot green laces – $5, Restyle Thrift Store | SavageX natural tiger print chiffon bralette  – $9.99 (during epic site-wide sale) | Quicksilver yellow fanny pack – $2.50, Idaho Youth Ranch thrift store (pick a purse outta a giant bin sale, I had to dig my way to the very bottom to find this) |pink & black multi-striped pink pashmina (the best travel accessory in the entire world) – gift from friend from Turkey

Cheep it while social distancing…

“I always know where I am by the way the road looks. Like I just know that I’ve been here before. I just know that I’ve been stuck here. Like this one fucking time before, you know that? Yeah. There’s not another road anywhere that looks like this road. I mean exactly like this road. It’s one kind of place. One of a kind. Like someone’s face. Like a fucked up face.” – River Phoenix, My Own Private Idaho

no label – vintage beach dress $5, ReStyle thrift store.

“Do you know how fast you were going?” the state trooper inquired, inching down his aviators.

He lay in wait in a mirage-like speed trap on the desert highway. I spotted him too late, then caught him creeping out onto the highway in the rearview.

“Fuck.” This vintage white Caddy with the blood red interior must look like a drug dealer’s wet dream.

I fluttered my Bambiest of doe eyes. “I actually don’t. This only goes up to 85.” I gestured to the speedometer, that did, in fact, cap off at the age of the grandmas usually behind the wheel of this particular old-school luxury vehicle.

A wry grin flashed across his face, turned on as instantaneously as those red and blue lights.

When he came back, he gave me a warning, and this cogent piece of advice, “If that needle gets to 85, slow down!”

Jessica McClintock maroon(ed) long sleeveless dress – $3.99, ReStyle Thrift Store | ADAY Something Borrowed black traveling button up shirt – $125, thisisADAY.com | Crocs (but the fashion-y kind) black fleece-lined slip-ons – $20, Crocs.com

Kim got this amazing shades-of-blue winged cotton jumpsuit at ReStyle on the same visit, probably $4.99.

1993 Cadillac DeVille with only 86,000 grandma-driven miles – $3,000, Boise’s Best Auto Sales (thanks to Ryan for tracking down/loaning me the $$$$)

Speed Cheep

On the menu…

appetizer: Polish sausage w/ sauerkraut, split in two – J Dawgs (pictured)

main: A dozen oysters on the half shell w/ fresh grated wasabi. Arugula salad. French onion soup. – White Horse

dessert: J.S. Ondara show – The State Room

Ralph Lauren gold & black striped long-sleeved shirt – $2.99, ReStyle | Liz Claiborne black skirt – $3.99, ReStyle | Frye knee-high black leather boots – $75, Bombshell & Blokes “head to boots” fall make-up event

Cheep eats

I’m lost. Not, like, literally. I’m not still in Wendell, being gawked at by pumpers at the gas station across the street, as Kim and I pose in our driving clothes in front of the abandoned Ace (one storefront over from the brilliantly-named Grizzly Dairy Wear).

What I need is a big phallic tarot card, telling me, in what I assume is a Barry White ASMR voice, “Hey girl, you’re magic. Poof. It’s all in you. Everything you need to do.”

And then—like magic, like I’m wand-renewed with a psyche scrubbed clean of the plaque of regret, longing, fear, and inertia—I do everything I am designed to do. Like it’s in the cards.

12 pm by Mon Ami floral print long-sleeved shirt – $2.99, ReStyle Thrift Store | Hot Kiss jean jacket – $5.99, ReStyle Thrift Store | Dizzire black and white print pants – Idaho Youth Ranch, $4.75 | Crocs (but the fashion-y kind) black fleece-lined slip-ons – $20, Crocs.com

Note: Every outfit for this trip was recently purchased during one glorious visit to ReStyle.

Card-carrying Cheep.