Hey y’all,

This is Alice Wilder, the producer on this week’s “This is Uncomfortable” episode, all about the extreme lengths two friends went to for free housing. The episode started a lot of conversations on the team about our own adventures in housing.

Mine started when my sister sent me a Zillow listing with the message, “Jump on this now, people are going to be fighting for it.” I could immediately see why.

The kitchen was sage green, with an obscene amount of counter space. The living room windows were huge, looking out over a magnolia tree. In the yard were raised garden beds hand-painted with flowers. The rent was shockingly low. 

I was trying to get out of a housing nightmare of my own: I shared my duplex with mice, the front yard was littered with dog poop courtesy of the neighbor, and I had gotten a creepy note at my back gate. I had to get out, and I had to get into this house. Durham’s skyrocketing housing prices were heavy on my mind. The house felt miraculous, but I knew every other renter would have the same drive to find affordable housing. 

When I got to the open house, I found the landlords in that gorgeous kitchen and started the charm offensive. Turns out, this couple lorded over the whole block, but wanted to see themselves as cool and progressive. I answered all their questions about public radio, not correcting them when they thought Marketplace was part of NPR. When they let slip that they were Christian, I asked if they had any churches to recommend in the area (I do not believe in God but I do believe in having a washer/dryer in-unit). 

By the time we finished talking, all the other prospective tenants had left. I told them to look out for my application and sent them a thank you email when I got home, as if I’d just finished a job interview. 

They called on Sunday, asking for a recommendation from my (not NPR) employer. They said they’d rent the house to whoever got back to them first. I had to interrupt my boss’s brunch, but I signed the lease just a few hours later. 

— Alice

Defend your splurge

Tell us how you treated yourself lately and why using the form at the bottom of this page — we’ll include the best ones in our newsletter! This week Bea Koch, author and co-owner of The Ripped Bodice bookstore, gives us a history lesson.

I will try and not make this a sad “my dog died” essay, but my dog did die and I was completely devastated. Fitzwilliam was my constant companion through some very difficult years of my life, and I still miss him every day. 

My family, friends, and therapist were all relatively concerned about me in the immediate days after his passing. We were… devoted to one another. I was lucky enough to have another wonderful dog to keep me company in my mourning, but the absence of such a tiny, one-eyed dog turned out to be enormous. 

I desperately wanted some way to honor and remember him. I considered any number of morbid things, before I returned to my historian roots and remembered a favorite (creepy?) Victorian tradition: mourning jewelry. 

The Victorians loved to gift each other wildly sentimental items, like jewelry made from the hair of someone who had passed away, or an acrostic piece, where the first letter of the gemstones spell out a word like DEAR (diamond, emerald, amethyst, ruby). 

I decided to commission a piece from an artist on Etsy who seemed to understand my impulse to honor my dead pet in the most over the top way possible: a locket with a portrait of his eye, in the manner of a Victorian lover’s eye. The locket itself was $77, and the eye portrait was $132, so $209 total.

I wear the locket every day. When people ask to see what’s in it, I have to explain all of this, but I don’t mind. It gives me an excuse to talk about Fitz and keep his memory alive, which is all I really wanted from this bizarre piece of jewelry. 

The comfort zone

• A very Uncomfortable novel about upwards mobility we’re still chewing on.
• Cool brand alert.
• Reema’s been playing a lot of “Wavelength” lately.
• From Dwell: “How to Navigate the Wild World of Facebook Marketplace.”
• Alice binged “A Murder At The End Of The World” while out sick last week.
• She also made this soup.
• Dream job alert.
• Read this great story on what it’s like being a feminist on social media in China.
• We took some time this week to ponder the economics of “Star Trek.”
• Your weekend vibe: “Our House (Demo).”

Tell us about your splurge, or anything else!