The Cassie Chronicles

Welcome to The Cassie Chronicles, a collection of fictional vignettes featuring the adventures of veteran new home sales representative, Cassie Petersen. Cassie’s been at this job a long time, through the many ups and downs of the real estate market. She’s seen her share of difficult people, both customers and co-workers, and situations that have been challenging, sad, heartwarming, funny and even downright disgusting. It all depends on who happens to walk through the sales office door and the stories they bring with them.

Today’s episode takes place at the Bella Vista model complex where Cassie is the Sales Manager and introduces one particular nemesis, the dreaded Vice President of Marketing.

Pillow Talk

“Oh God, Cassie, here comes Skinny Bitch,” my assistant, Sarah, said.

Skinny Bitch is Tina Masterson, our Marketing VP, and sure enough, there was her icy white Mercedes in the parking lot. I’d just spent half an hour on the phone trying to keep a skittish buyer from canceling. I was in no mood for Skinny Bitch.

Tina got out of the car, smoothed her black pencil skirt over narrow hips and put on her suit jacket. After flipping her long jet-black hair away from her face, she reached back into the car. I hoped at least she’d brought the granite samples we desperately needed, but all she retrieved was a clipboard.

I girded for battle.

“Hi Cassie,” Tina chirped as she swept into the office.

“Hi Tina. Good to see you,” I sang back. I can turn on the charm, too. After twenty years of selling new homes, I should get an Oscar for my acting. “What can we do for you today?’

Tapping the clipboard, she said, “I’m walking the models. We have to put our best foot forward, you know.”

Skinny Bitch has rules about our models, including having scented candles she personally selected burning all over the place, even in the models. We don’t have any.

“Where are your candles?” she asked right away.

Deciding not to tell her that customers hated the smell, I said, “I think they’re a safety hazard.” Tina’s frozen smile cracked. We’ve disagreed about this point before. But she hadn’t seen the little girl who held her sister’s finger in the flame or the little boys playing catch in the Plan 1 living room. She thinks parents watch their kids.

Lips pursed, Tina started through the models with her clipboard, but soon was back in the sales office.

“I’d like to show you a few things,” Tina said curtly.

I followed her into the Plan 2 model like a naughty child.

“The fireplace isn’t lighted,” she said.

I reiterated my spiel on the dangers of open flames in the model homes. Her eyes narrowed.

“Hmmm,” she said and moved into the family room.

“The pillows aren’t fluffed right,” Skinny Bitch scolded. “Let me show you,” she said, grabbing a pillow. “Plump it up, place it on the sofa and karate chop in the middle. Like this.”

Her karate chop left a calculated dent in the pillow top, puffing out the sides like fat cheeks. She handed me a pillow. “Now you do this one.”

I sucked it up and obliged, plumping, placing and chopping the next pillow. My karate chop was especially energetic. It felt good.

“Nice job,” Tina said. “Let’s plump all the pillows today, then you teach everyone the plumping process so the pillows always look right. In this challenging market there can’t be enough attention to detail.”

Then where are my granite samples, I grumbled to myself? How many homes will plump pillows sell?

That was yesterday. Today when I arrived, people were already waiting at the door, including our new temp, Judy. I sent her to open the models while I talked to the customers. After I got them squared away, I realized that Judy still wasn’t back. I was about to go check on her when she finally returned.

“I’m sorry it took so long,” she said, a little breathless. “Someone made big dents in all the pillows and I had to fix them. Do you realize how many pillows there are in four model homes?"

Oh, boy, do I ever.

Copyright Liz Zuercher, 2009

My Inner Artist

In a writing exercise, I was instructed to write a letter to my “inner artist” and discuss the dreams she has for me. This proved to be valuable because I am a writer who has great difficulty actually writing.

I read about “how” to write constantly. I have every book ever written about “how” to write. I take classes in writing—how to write a novel, a poem, a screenplay, a memoir, an essay, a short story. I attend events where I listen to other writers read what they have written. I meet with a writer’s group once a week. But, basically I do not write. Instead, I think about writing. It’s so much easier than writing.

What I have discovered is that my “inner artist” is in conflict with my inner piddler, my inner child, and my inner bitch. What’s even worse, my inner piddler is winning the contest, although my inner bitch runs a close second.

The dictionary says that “piddle” means to dilly-dally, to idle, to putter, to potter. My God, this is my resumé. After years of therapy, twelve-step groups, meditation groups, exploring-the-meaning-of-life-through-crystals groups, running with the wolves, and reading all Deepak Chopra’s books, I have found my identity in Webster’s. I no longer think of myself as a writer. I think of myself as a piddler. I can’t tell you how much better I feel.

Tomorrow, when I begin to write, my inner artist now knows the drill. I’ll sit down at the computer. I’ll stare at the page. I’ll re-arrange all the papers on the desk, ready for my muse. Then my inner bitch will start complaining that she’s bored and needs to go to the bathroom. I take the bitch to the bathroom to shut her up.

Returning to the computer, my inner child notices that it’s time for lunch and starts whining for food. While making lunch, I’ll notice alien life forms in the refrigerator that have begun to ooze. Oh, no, I’ll think! What if I am murdered in my house and the CSI team comes to investigate and finds jelly-like substances oozing from my refrigerator? So, I clean out the refrigerator. Then I feed my inner child.

It’s time finally to write, but first I walk the dog so I won’t be interrupted. The dog and I run into a friend. She wants to chat, but I tell her I don’t have time because I’m writing today. It takes me two hours to tell her that. Finally, I’m back at the computer. I stare at the blank page. I type today’s date. Then, I sigh with relief and decide that I have drained myself of creative expression for the day.

After all, like Scarlett O’Hara said, “Tomorrow is another day. I’ll think about it tomorrow.” So, I’ll think about writing tomorrow. My inner piddler will cheer and my inner artist will take a nap.

Now if I can get my inner bitch to relax and my inner child to stop whining, my inner piddler can have her way. And, if she is occasionally interrupted by my inner artist who wants to write, she’ll just smile indulgently because we all know who’s in charge here.

Copyright 2009 Susan Matthewson

To Forgive or Not to Forgive… Or How I Learned to Stop Judging Myself and Love the Pain

I belong to a Yahoo group made up of people in my University of Santa Monica (USM) masters in spiritual psychology program (the program meets one weekend a month for two years with a break in the summer – like regular school only better). This program is life changing, but the problem is that life itself changes and as it does, we do, and so do our "issues." One of the keys we’ve learned is a very helpful process called self-forgiveness; it’s the antidote for self-judgment. I am not going to explain that here because it’s not really the point.

The point is that one of my fellow students posted the following within the last few days, and I had to laugh (in a good way) – I’ll tell you why after you read this…

“Just curious......are there any other classmates that, even after 9 months of class, still sometimes get into spots of SELF-JUDGMENT.....which then in turn requires moving into SELF-FORGIVENESS?......I am starting to suspect that this is an ongoing process, a tool for a lifetime............ It seems that when I've cleared one thing, something else subsequently surfaces in my awareness regarding my relationship with my Self around the theme of SELF-JUDGMENT which then calls for SELF-FORGIVENESS. Any thoughts?”

I’m sure this person never suspected that they had written the kernel of another’s blog post, but this posting opened up a chasm of ponderings for me. This is my second round of USM; the first time was 20 years ago, and I’m still working with self-judgments and self-forgiveness. Maybe I didn’t “get it right,” and then again, maybe there is no "right."

My laughter was a realization (and a happy one because it means I am not the lone ranger here) that we all hope that some day, if we do enough classes, learn enough information, get spiritual enough, that our issues will somehow magically disappear, and we won’t have to do “this” (whatever “this” is) any more. "Some day," I think, "I’ll be 'fixed,' and never judge myself or another.’ But then something happens or someone says something, and there it is, laying in wait for the opportunity to show me just how not perfect I am.

Heck, I think I’ve judged myself at least a dozen times already today, but the good news is I don’t wallow! Judgments pop up every time I procrastinate on writing my blog post, every time I get to the end of the day and haven’t accomplished most of the things on my to-do list, every day that I don’t write something that feels like it has value, every day that I do not lovingly support my family or myself, every day that I spend too much time playing internet games. The best I can discern is that it’s just part of the "game of life." The good news is that I catch myself more quickly. I don’t wallow in self-pity and self-hatred for ages. I have become a kinder, gentler self-nation.

What I believe has happened is that I trust that I am doing the best I can in each moment, and I know that it does no good to beat up on myself. Self-flagellation only results in extra pounds and more computer games. It has NEVER made me want to do better next time. What I do have now are a lot more skills to use when I find myself slumping, and that is a blessing.

I really think that life, for me, is about staying in the present as much as humanly possible, and doing what my heart calls me to do, and when that doesn’t happen, self-forgiveness and my other tools assist me in getting back up on the horse, so to speak.

Yesterday, for instance, I completely brain locked as an aunt. My sister called and told me my niece was in the hospital. I had to wait until someone arrived at my house to do something, and then I could go so I’d miss traffic. In the mean time, I found out where exactly she was and how to get there, and after a call found out that she was having a CAT scan (good aunt). When the person showed up and my obligations were complete, I just got busy doing other things and somehow didn’t think I should go to the hospital until I spoke with her – I still don’t know what I was thinking because I knew I was going up to LA no matter what. I knew that I could call from the car to get updates (that would have been, after all, a masterful use of a cell phone), and I knew that what I had to do at home had been done. I really don’t know what part of my brain wasn’t working when I decided that I would wait until I reached her. I called, she was out of x-ray, but she was sleeping. I decided to wait until she woke up (she was in the emergency room). When I finally did leave, she was being released. She was going to take a cab home. I told her not to, that I was picking her up. She was grateful, but I think a little confused that I was still an hour away (bad aunt). But that is when I woke up – that is when the self-castigation began - "what the hell were you thinking? You should have been there to talk to the doctor, you should have BEEN there when she woke up! Weren’t you supposed to be the surrogate parent? Isn’t that what you would have wanted for your child?!?!”

She was doing okay, but she was tired. She lovingly and patiently waited for me at It’s A Grind. When I arrived, she was drinking coffee and reading the paper. I still don’t know what I was thinking, and I did spend a nice chunk of time yelling at myself in the car. After I figure I’d beaten myself enough (it wasn’t as long as it might have been in days before USM), I remembered that there was no way to do a "take 2" on this situation, and that all I could do was learn from it. I wanted to see my niece in a frame of mind that was loving, supportive, and available to her and not just to my own angst. When I am busy giving myself 40 internal lashes, I am completely unavailable to myself or anyone else. So good riddance to self-flagellation, and hello to ‘I wonder how I could do this better next time.”

As someone once said, life is a journey not a destination, and I have often discovered that it is my failures and foibles that bring the greatest insights, though I do like having more ups than down. It is my intention to be happy most of the time, but to be good to myself no matter what.

So I guess my response to my classmate would be life goes on and isn’t it a good thing. How utterly boring and uninteresting it would be if everything always went exactly right. Even gambling. If I knew that every time I gambled I would win, that would be great for a while, but what would be the point? Isn’t it the "chance" aspect that brings excitement and enthusiasm when the win does happen? Life is a great adventure, and it is ONLY an adventure when we are not sure about every future event. What is truly exciting is when we know that sometimes it will get hard, but that we can AND ARE WILLING to handle it.