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hi, i'm ash!
Creator of the New Travel & Design Series, 'OTHER PEOPLE'S HOUSES.'
Travel writer & host, cultural explorer, and architecture & interiors freak.
Meet ash >
I THINK YOU'RE REALLY GREAT ✈ I THINK YOU'RE REALLY GREAT ✈ I THINK YOU'RE REALLY GREAT ✈ I THINK YOU'RE REALLY GREAT ✈ I THINK YOU'RE REALLY GREAT ✈ I THINK YOU'RE REALLY GREAT ✈ I THINK YOU'RE REALLY GREAT ✈ I THINK YOU'RE REALLY GREAT ✈ I THINK YOU'RE REALLY GREAT ✈ I THINK YOU'RE REALLY GREAT ✈ I THINK YOU'RE REALLY GREAT ✈ I THINK YOU'RE REALLY GREAT ✈ I THINK YOU'RE REALLY GREAT ✈ I THINK YOU'RE REALLY GREAT ✈
I THINK YOU'RE REALLY GREAT ✈ I THINK YOU'RE REALLY GREAT ✈ I THINK YOU'RE REALLY GREAT ✈ I THINK YOU'RE REALLY GREAT ✈ I THINK YOU'RE REALLY GREAT ✈ I THINK YOU'RE REALLY GREAT ✈ I THINK YOU'RE REALLY GREAT ✈ I THINK YOU'RE REALLY GREAT ✈ I THINK YOU'RE REALLY GREAT ✈ I THINK YOU'RE REALLY GREAT ✈
The Newsletter
Every week, we're exploring global culture through the lens of the home. From floorplans to fixtures, we examine how houses are built, designed, and decorated around the world (with a side of sass, of course!)
The Podcast
The only podcast where we pass on the pyramids and poke around in the plumbing. I’m Ash, and I'm, exploring the strange, smart, and wonderful ways houses are built, designed, and decorated around the world.
The Books
A new series of OTHER PEOPLE'S HOUSES books designed to help you try on a new life in different places around the world—by getting to "go behind closed doors" inside local homes to discover what it's really like to live there.
Ear bleed Beth…..gaaaaaaaaaaah! 🤪
Dear Emergency Ernie,
If it doesn’t involve an ambulance with someone I love in it, it is not urgent.
Love,
Non-assholes everywhere
As much as I’d love to match your wittiness, I just can’t on this one (honestly very rarely any day, but especially not round this topic)- because this speaks to something that I believe is fundamentally screwed up with modern western society. Women are taught from birth that we are supposed to be ‘nice’- and being ‘nice’ means putting everyone elses needs before ours, and if we don’t then we should feel bad about it. Would men relate to these situations? I doubt it- because they (as a general rule- of course I’m sure there are exceptions) don’t get them.
Yes, right now turning off the phone is a solution to avoiding these situations- but one day I hope that we’ll actually just be able to collectively say ‘no’ to all the Ernies, Beths, and all the other people that at the moment we’re avoiding like the plague WITHOUT feeling like we just did something fundamentally bad and not ‘nice’ at all.
THIS. All of this.
I’m a boomer, and I was raised to be polite but I detest the phone. In fact my phone is on silent 99% of the time and only people on the emergency list will ring thru when it is. If it’s work issue, they will leave a message and I’ll call them back but 9 times out of 10 they will rapid fire send me an email right after the call and I therefore can ignore the call and just answer the email. If you are a solicitor and you don’t leave me alone, I’ve been known to answer with, “the body is out back, bring a shovel” or some variation of that and then hang up. I remember being sixteen and on the phone with a cord for hours dragging it thru the house and annoyed when my mother would do the same before we had call waiting. LOL. Things have definitely changed. Ear bleed Beth…love it…is the one I avoid the most haha.
But if I turn off my phone I won’t get to read your hilarious posts!! 😫😫😫😫 it’s such a conundrum!
I thought your first 2 lines were the best until I read “Imagine the life we might have”. Yes. Imagine. POWER.OFF.MODE (unless you call to talk about frozen pipes, then it’s back on 🤣)
I. Am. Cackling.
This is also why my phone is eternally left on silent. It’s not even allowed to buzz. F*ck that noise. Why do I even have a phone? 😅
I, too, hate talking to people. Especially people outside my inner circle. ESPECIALLY on the phone.
I ignore texts like it’s my job. I currently have 34 unread messages. Not emails… actual texts. And that number is only that low because I broke my phone two weeks ago and missed two full weeks of incoming chaos. I’ve seen it climb past 330 unread. A good chunk is spam… but still.
Now, the broken phone saga…
At first, I didn’t even realize it was broken. It still worked…kind of. WiFi worked. iMessage worked. But cellular data? Dead. I’m not sure how long it was down before I tried calling my mom and the call failed. Probably a couple days.
No Genius Bar near me. Small-town PA problems. The closest Apple Store is 90 minutes away. But select Best Buy locations can handle repairs. The nearest one is only 60 minutes away… Wow, so much closer. 🙄
So I drove up on a Friday. They tell me the mid-system is broken. They’re too busy to replace it. I can leave my phone or come back tomorrow. Like heck I was leaving my phone. So I drove the hour home and the hour back the next day.
Different guy. Different problem. The part isn’t in stock. Won’t be in stock for days. I can leave my phone or come back when the part arrives. I take my semi-functional paperweight home and wait. The silence is nice at first.
Four days later they call. But I can’t go that day, or the next day because they are “booked.” I have to schedule for three days later. Second Saturday trip… Valentine’s Day. 😍
I spend HOURS in shit-hole York, PA. They say it’ll be ready by 3:30 PM. I show up at 5 PM to give them extra time. They make me wait because “the WiFi is slow” while it installs the operating system.
By 7 PM, I am livid. And I am not THAT customer. I go out of my way to be kind to retail workers because that job is brutal. But not that night… they saw the most Karen-version of me ever seen before. 👹
Turns out there’s a bug, and the part was dead on arrival. I’m waiting for them to say I can leave my phone or come back when the next part arrives… But they don’t. They won’t let me leave with my phone.
Another hour later (and me literally telling the guy “I don’t care what you have to do, just do whatever it takes to get me out of here the FASTEST because my 10-year-old son and I haven’t eaten all day while waiting, and I’m HANGRY”), they send me home with a “temporary phone.” An iPhone XR so old half my apps won’t function. I can’t even get the eSIM to work like they promised.
So now I’m phoneless for another week. Thanks to two-factor authentication, I get locked out of social media, my newsletter, and my banking apps. My debit card is locked… unusable without my phone. Life literally moved in slow motion.
All is well now. I got my phone back this week. But they broke my streak on Finch, which might be the real crime here.
I have never been so grateful for my phone in my life. I cannot function without mine. Turning it off entirely? Not happening.
But Do Not Disturb? Count me in. 😉
Also, I was wondering what your business email is? Our last email thread was with your Lick Newsletter domain so I’m thinking you might have a new one now.
I am receiving funding for a creative grant, and I wanted to know if you’re planning on offering any writing or courses/cohorts/consulting in the near future.
Not trying to pressure you or anything… BUTTTT that would be amazing. I would love to allocate some of those funds toward working with you. I’m working on my grant budget this week. I also understand if you don’t offer anything – manage your energy, booboo! But I didn’t want to miss out by not asking.
I can be reached by email at contact@heartofhanover.com. (Hopefully an email with a specific question is less invasive than an unexpected phone call! 💋)