I’m like Fat Amy but with introversion.

March 15, 2013March 15, 2013 / Ashley / 5 Comments

It’s Friday night and I’m in sweats. I’m alone on my couch. I just inhaled a personal pizza. I’m halfway through my first cocktail. I’m listening to Norah Jones’s discography on shuffle. If I were trying to out-sad you, I’d tell you I was contemplating the beauty of the partially deflated balloon my roommate got for Valentine’s Day.

It’s sort just hovering around a single light. Sort of like that scene in American Beauty with the plastic bag being tossed around by the wind. Poetic, the way it mocks my loneliness.

Judging balloon is judging you and your loneliness.

Stoic helium balloon knows how you really feel

Just kidding. I’m not lonely. My pizza was delicious and my cocktail is refreshing. Vince offered to make me dinner tonight, but I declined. I’ve been craving a night to myself. I say that like I have this incredible social life. Really I’m just figuring out how to be an adult. I don’t know how they do it. I feel like I deserve a parade when I work a full day, go to the gym, shower, AND put my dirty clothes in the hamper.

But I’m not trying to out-sad you. I did that a few months ago, because I didn’t know how to deal with it. I use self-deprecation as a tool for self-preservation. I make fun of my loneliness and sadness before other people can ask me how I’m doing. Sort of like Fat Amy.

If you’ve been reading for a while or if you know me well enough, you know that about a year ago, I went through a breakup. I was sad and lonely for a big chunk of time. I drank too many whiskey drinks and listened to Ok Go too many times. I ate too much bread and just avoided looking in the mirror. While my roommate was out with her boyfriend, I would find myself sitting alone, unable to do anything but make fun of myself.

True story, just use the search bar to find all my posts on heartbreak and breakup and love and relationships and all those other uplifting topics.

The optimist in me says I was dealing with my situation head-on. But the realist in me knows I was denying the issue and pretending to be stronger than I actually was. But eventually I started to believe myself. I don’t know (or particularly care) what this says about me and my coping capabilities, but eventually I got through it – I became strong on my own. Now I value my alone time. Maybe a bit too much at times.

But you know what? All that matters tonight is how quickly I can get in bed with my heating pad for my hip (I skipped training last week, ran 3mi on Tuesday night, 3.5mi on Thursday and decided I was too cool for stretching), and start reading. And anyway, I’m being responsible. My boss requested I stay in.

Well, sort of.

The last time I volunteered to help her out on a Saturday morning project, she (and several of my coworkers) saw my painful recovery from the night I went to a rave. I was so out of it that morning that I didn’t have the mental capacity to lie about where I had been. So when a coworker asked what I had done the night before, I told her, “I went to a rave.” Now, almost two months later, they’re giving me crap for it, constantly making jokes about glowsticks and E.

I bet they’ll have a hard time thinking of something to tease me about when I tell them I read the last 130 pages of Gone Girl alone in my bed.

It’s my birthday and I’ll angry-cry if I want

March 2, 2013 / Ashley / 10 Comments

I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but you’re currently reading the blog of someone who’s only had six actual birthdays.

I’ve never understood why people react with such pity when they find out I was born on Feburary 29. On Leap Years, I’m completely justified in having a gigantic celebration. Not that I have enough friends to invite to a big party, but if I did, I would have epic celebrations.

note to self: make more friends in the next three years

The general public thinks my birthday is February 28th. My family says it’s March 1st. I tend to side with my parents, but I just go with the flow by accepting the Facebook notifications on the 28th and knowing my grandma will call me on March 1st to sing to me. Last night she called around nine. She didn’t even bother greeting me, she just started crooning. While she was singing, I told her I thought she forgot. “Don’t interrupt a polack when they’re singing,” she told me after her performance. She’s full of great life lessons.

I spent Thursday evening at my parents’ house, then I went home, determined to get some reading done. Instead I ended up spending about three hours on the phone with Andrea. Sometime around 11:30, we decided to stay on the phone till midnight so we could ring in my birthday together. I think I got to bed around 1am, which made Friday a long day.

I’ll understand if you’re intimidated by my ability to mix mint, coral, and trouser-style denim.

Friday started out just fine. I woke up with an absurd amount of energy for getting about four hours of restless sleep. I decided to dress all fancy and post a selfie on Facebook because that’s a thing adults do, right? My department had thrown a small pig-out for a coworker who was moving to a different department, so I didn’t pack a breakfast. I had three cups of coffee and a donut. Around 11:3o, I decided to touch base with my brother, who works in a different department, to see if he had lunch plans.

“No, I haven’t thought about it,” he told me in a biting and exasperated tone. “I’ll probably just go out and grab something.”

“Okay, well do you want to plan on going to Festival at like 12:30?”

“Ash, just go by yourself. I just got this project and I have to work on it.”

“Fine. Bye.”

I slammed my phone on the receiver, appreciating the satisfying smack of a pissed off phone slam you can’t achieve by aggressively pressing the END button on a touch screen. “Well fuck you,” I said in my head. “Don’t be nice to me on my birthday.” Then I started doing that inner angry-crying thing where I threw the most intense 20 second pity party the world has ever known.

It’s my birthday and I didn’t even have cake yet and you can’t be nice to me and I didn’t even get much sleep and why is it too much to ask to take lunch a half hour later than usual and damnit, Corey, you don’t need to be a jerk to me on my birthday and gosh this is the worst birthday ever and omigosh I can’t even get my brother to be nice to me and what an asshole and what is wrong with my life if I’m about to cry in my cubicle on my birthday and oh my god if I cry and ruin my eyeliner I am going to be so mad and oh my gosh Corey should be buying my lunch anyway because it’s my birthday and oh my god nobody loves me and I am so alone because nobody understands me ever.

When my stomach grumbled, I realized I hadn’t taken care of myself that morning. I blinked a few dozen times to make my hunger tears go away and started my Dan Savage inner monologue.

You need to calm the fuck down. This might come as a shock to you, but the world does not revolve around you. What did you expect? It’s not like Corey’s supposed to coordinate a fucking food parade for you just because it’s your birthday. He’s got his own shit to deal with. Now put on your big girl heels and go get yourself some damn food – something more substantial than a damn sprinkled donut. What were you thinking anyway? Yeah, that’s some great brain fuel, Ashley. Sugar and caffeine. Breakfast of fucking champions right there.

I imagine some people kindly talk themselves out of these sorts of things. You know what, self? You normally make better food choices and you know that it feels better. So just go get yourself something with a lot of protein. You’ll have a much better afternoon. Also, you’re gorgeous and perfect. Don’t forget that, self. Obviously my brain works a little differently. I don’t react to coddling; I react to a bitch slap.

Before going to lunch, I decided to finish up the file I was working on to give myself a chance to calm down. Corey called back a few minutes later and apologized for being short. Then he asked if I still wanted to go to Festival.

On the way back from the store, I told Corey about what had gone through my head. We had a good laugh and went back to our desks. I basically inhaled my lunch (fruit and dip with a bowl of chili that was essentially a quarter pound of ground chuck drizzled with some chunky tomato sauce) and marveled at my renewed sense of optimism. Isn’t it kind of amazing how much food and rest can affect your mood? I bet Africa is full of crabby people.

All in all, my twenty-fifth birthday has been good. It’s been sort of a week-long endeavor: on Sunday I met an old friend from high school who gave me a Real Book so I can start butchering some jazz standards. My aunt sent me a package full of goodies. My roommate indulged my New Girl fangirl and gave me a copy of The Douche Journals. Last night, Andrea showed up with six and a quarter red velvet cupcakes before we went out with a few friends for shots and cucumber vodka drinks. Tonight Vince (he’s the academic, I’ve mentioned him enough times that it’s getting weird for me to not use his name) is making me dinner. Tomorrow, I’m spending the afternoon with my family for cake and quality time.

If you’ve never heard jazz violin, it’s sort of bizarre. Regardless, it’s still pretty fun to play In the Mood and Call Me Irresponsible alone in my apartment.

That necklace is the brightest piece of jewelry I own. I’m a little afraid it will blind people on sunny days.

I can stop looking for the perfect coffee table book now.

Andrea made me red velvet cupcakes with vanilla frosting and triple-double stuft Oreo crumbles. She even went through the trouble of eating 3/4 of one cupcake to properly reflect my age.

Andrea made me red velvet cupcakes with vanilla frosting and Oreo crumbles. She even went through the trouble of eating 3/4 of one cupcake to properly reflect my age.

The bar we spent the night at is kind enough to put pictures of hunky men in the women's bathroom. I had to crop this one to make it family-friendly, but you get the idea.

The bar we spent the night at is kind enough to put pictures of hunky men in the women’s bathroom. I had to crop this one to make it somewhat family-friendly, but you get the idea.

Now that I can rent a car at a reasonable price, get cheaper car insurance, I’m sure I’ll run out of things to blog about since I’ll stop making all the mistakes women in their early twenties make. Just kidding, I’ll keep drinking too much coffee and swearing at people in my head.

I love my Kindle but…

January 22, 2013 / Ashley / 5 Comments

Yesterday was a long day. I was busy all day at work with training, meetings, evaluations, and projects. I came home in one of those moods that just left me wanting to through my hands up and scoff. Not scoff and explain myself or complain, just keep raising my arms and scoffing, as if to tell the day to get up off my grill.

I put on sweatpants, poured a glass of wine, and joined my roommate to watch a mediocre romantic comedy before retreating to my bed around nine. I wanted to read and thought about continuing The Zen and Art of Motorcycle Maintenance I had started over the weekend, but I decided against because it was on my Kindle.

Don’t get me wrong, I love my Kindle, but I just couldn’t deal with it. All I needed printed words. A few years ago when I got my first e-reader (the Kindle 3G keyboard), I looked forward to reading on it, because it was truly an escape. In the middle of a Toni Morrison novel, it ceased to be an electronic device and became a book.

Then in October when I got my Kindle Fire HD, that sort of stopped. Instead, it became a tool to more effectively look at pictures like this on Pinterest:

Owning a Kindle went from being an intense and passionate literary experience to a disturbingly efficient pinning obsession. (If you follow me on Pinterest, you know that My “Lolz” board is the most well-developed. It doesn’t take much to entertain me, apparently.)

But last night I didn’t want cat memes. I didn’t want 27 ways to rethink my bed. I didn’t even want a recipe for peanut butter caramel ice cream bars. I just wanted a book. Turning to my stack, I realized how wonderful it was to have so few choices. Instead of having dozens of books, apps, and websites to choose from, I just had three books. And since I just wanted to remember the beauty of words, I reached for Joyce Carol Oates.

For about an hour, I remembered what it was like to read before I owned a Kindle: Smelling the air that escapes from the crack of the spine’s glue, appreciating the thickness of a roughly-cut page as it’s turned, finding the most comfortable way to hold the book (One hand? Two hands? Resting on a pillow?) While deciding whether to reach for a pencil to mark a passage or just dog-ear the lower corner, I told myself I need to do this more often.

I love the portability of my slow-growing Kindle library, but nothing will replace the satisfaction I get from holding a book.

I also don’t think I’ll ever lose that thrill I get from marking anything in a book – a holdover from being forbidden from writing in library books.

Thanks to Jennifer for the idea for this post! If there’s something you’d like me to write about let me know by stopping by the Everything is Blooming Facebook page, writing me a message, posting on the wall, and checking out some of my previous posts. And don’t worry, you’ll get a shout out if I end up using your idea.

This morning, Everything is Blooming hit 10,000 views. Thank you for reading! I love you!

Bye bye, Nutcracker

January 10, 2013 / Ashley / 4 Comments

For the last four years, I’ve played with my string quartet at The Paine Art Center’s production of Nutcracker in the Castle. What on earth is “Nutcracker in the Castle,” Ashley? Basically all the rooms in this mansion are decorated with Christmas trees and festive touches (nutcrackers). It’s sensory overload in a very festive (and nutcrackery)way. From mid-November until the January, guests are free to go on self-guided tours during the week or go on guided tours on the weekends.

We play on the weekends for the guided tours. Groups are taken by Godfather Drosselmeyer (who is usually mistaken for a pirate at least once a night) through the “castle” to see the rooms and a performance by a local dance studio. Before the guests go on the tour, they gather in a large gallery room to eat cookies, drink punch, play with toys, and take pictures in front of a gigantic tree. This is where we play.

We play the same music for each of the tours (seven on Saturdays, eight on Sundays). It gets old very quickly. Since the tours start the weekend after Thanksgiving, I’m usually in the Christmas spirit and feeling cheerful. But by the time Christmas comes around, if I hear Waltz of the Flowers, I’m about to go ape shit on somebody.

Playing the same music for eight hours each weekend for two months takes a certain stamina. When you’re playing Miniature Overture the 500th time, you recognize that you’re going insane, but you have to stop yourself from actually doing so.

Over the last four years, we’ve found ways to entertain ourselves. Though the players have changed (we rotate a few different violists, just got a new cellist, and now have two different first violinists to pick from), we still sort of do the same things: gratuitously long improv sessions during Arabian Dance, staring contests, adding ridiculous flourishes (super fast single octave scales), and lip-syncing the Drosselmeyer’s monologue. New forms of entertainment this season included the violist signing the monologue, Fruit Ninja battles on my Kindle, blowfish face ambushes (two of the musicians make blowfish faces and stare at me till I laugh), and stifling laughter at the expense of children who fall over for no apparent reason (yes, that happened).

Last weekend was the final performance of the season. Now that it’s over, I’d like to say that I’ll miss it, but I won’t. I’m not sure I’ll know what to do with myself. If anything, I’ll miss seeing the group. We bonded, not completely unlike the way soldiers do. Hopefully there will be more gigs and even more after-gig beverages.

Nutcracker at sunset. This was before we got a foot of snow.

Curious what my weekends looked like? THIS.

I think this tree is 25ft tall, so it’s probably really easy to decorate. Also, in the foreground is the coolest dollhouse ever. I would have cut a bitch to have this when I was a kid.

These 5ft tall dudes line the perimeter of the first room, so if you’re creeped out by nutcrackers, I’d advise not arriving early for the tour.

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