Love Ashley, 12/31/13

January 2, 2013January 2, 2013 / Ashley / 2 Comments

Dear Ashley,

I know you sort of hated 2012, so you’ll be pleased to hear 2013 was much better. You rocked this year.

You started the year off right. By that I mean singing along to Roses by Outkast with your best friend. Remember that night? You and Andrea had made plans to go to Milwaukee to go dancing or something, but a few nights earlier, Andrea confessed she was rethinking Milwaukee. You were relieved. New Year’s eve has never been your favorite night – it always makes you feel alone, no matter if you’re with friends, a boyfriend, or family. You’ve always been filled with this disgusting melancholia on the evening. You reminisce about the year, trying to remember the good parts while skirting over the bad, but inevitably you think of all the things you didn’t accomplish. So you were glad that you wouldn’t have to dance in the New Year with a bunch of east side hipsters, thinking of all the things you imagined your 2012 to lack: a smaller dress size, a boyfriend, an age-appropriate balance in your savings account, a new car, a decent collection of essays you’re proud to have written…

So instead you drove 50 minutes to spend the night drinking pink vodka nebula drinks (“nebula drank” as you and Andrea called them throughout the night) that glowed blue near a black light while talking in a baby voice to her bunny (Betsy Bun Bun) and dancing to the Hood Internet. Since you became aware of its significance, you weren’t concerned about locking lips with someone at midnight. Instead you just belted out, “Carolinnneeee. Caroline! She mighty fine!” And it was weird, the way the changing of a few digits on your computer’s toolbar, you felt rejuvenated. It might have been the eighth vodka drink kicking in, but suddenly you were excited for the newness to begin. And then you remembered that every day, every hour, every minute, and every second has newness – and in that newness is all the excitement, beauty, and anticipation that you decide. So you decided to be excited about the newness in every day, no matter how terrible the last.

And you know what? You held onto that every day in 2013. Some days were harder – like the mornings after disappointing dates, the arguments with your mother, the car troubles, and the overtime in the summer when you would have rather been sipping lemonade and reading. But overall, you were good. You regained some of the optimism you lost over the last five years because you began to realize that everything is temporary – your happiness just as much as your depression.

But I bet you want more specifics, huh? You’ve always been annoyed by generalities (that won’t change in 2013); concrete details work wonderfully when describing abstract concepts.

First and foremost, your dad eventually got over the tattoo you got on the first of the year.

You started saving. You flossed every night. You took a multi-vitamin everyday except two. You were better about moisturizing. You let your hair grow and finally got okay about your bangs. You got rid of one thing everyday. You drank 64oz of water everyday. When it struck you, you did yoga. You worked out – even the arm and ab exercises that you hate so much (you still hate them and you don’t exactly have Michelle Obama arms, but you no longer loathe sleeveless tops). Your room was clean more often than not. You stopped dating students, because you have a 401k and a queen-sized bed. You drank better wine more frequently. You tried a new fruit or vegetable each week. You blogged more. You wrote in your journal more – you really began to realize that every one of your thoughts doesn’t need to (and shouldn’t) be broadcasted on the internet. You tried to read a new book each week (2013 was welcomed with a refreshing reread of The Great Gatsby. You caught yourself saying “Fucking Fitzgerald!” several times). You reread Lolita like you’ve been doing for the last few years and you’re still just as enchanted by Humbert Humbert.

The thing you’ll remember most about this year is the trip you took by yourself. I don’t want to get in the specifics, because I know how much you love anticipation, but you took a weekend trip by yourself. You got a good deal on a roundtrip ticket to a city you’ve wanted to visit (maybe it was Boston, Philadelphia, Portland, or DC), and you just went. All by yourself. And it was great. You thought you’d be scared, but then you realized that every city is composed of the same things – streets and intersections and freeway exits – just arranged differently. You walked around and people-watched. You sat on foreign benches drinking coffee and smelling the city air. You met new people at bars. You ate cheap food and blogged about it in your hotel room at night. You loved it.

But I need to give you a generalization that I think you’ll be okay with: You grew into yourself 2013. It’s a beautiful thing.

Love, Ashley

——

Okay guys. This is my 100th post. I want to thank you for taking time out of your day to read this, because it means more than you realize.

As a thank you gift, here are some pictures from my New Year’s Eve with minimal commentary.

Tree

So damn cozy.

Betsy Bun Bun in her natural habitat: beneath an artificial christmas tree that Andrea won’t let her eat.

Andrea putting away the Christmas tree Betsy Bun Bun wanted so desperately to eat.

NYE nourishment: top notch, all natural.

Close up of Betsy. She was obvi the star of the evening.

Just kidding, Vodka was the star of the evening.

Mixing glow in the dark dranks.

Koosh ball puppy – perfect for raves

Among my many gifts from Andrea, my typewriter is my favorite, mainly because profanities look the best in a serif font.

So sober.

Sometime after midnight, I posted this photo to Facebook with the question, “Why isn’t this purple?” It was a reference to an Aziz Ansari joke that nobody got, because why would they?

Happy new year. Remember that everything is blooming.

BONUS CONTENT:

Betsy Bun Bun’s twitching nose. So damn cute.

Happy New Year, everyone. Keep blooming.

Zooey Hair? NAILED IT.

December 27, 2012December 27, 2012 / Ashley / 11 Comments

So yesterday I got a haircut. I haven’t been into the salon since June, so I was long overdue. What I didn’t mention the other day is that after I found out another of my exes was engaged, I just about reached for a bottle of wine before I realized I had to be able to play a quartet gig a few hours later. I was also sick of my hair, so I was thinking of cutting my hair. For a split second, I actually considered cutting my hair while drinking malbec from the bottle. I decided to just go with the hair cutting.

After 45 minutes of hacking away my split ends with dull scissors, I came to the conclusion that I know nothing about cutting hair. I put some pomade in it and decided to make it look rockstarish – because what else could I do with a bunch of uneven layers?

Last night, I got sick of it and decided to actually pay for a haircut. After careful consideration (hours of Pinterest scrolling), I decided (again) I wanted to look like Zooey Deschanel. I saved the picture and showed it to the stylist.

“I want the Zooey Deschanel look,” I said.

“So, bangs, but sort of blended in towards the corners, right?”

“Exactly – not blunt, but rounded.”

So she shampooed my hair and started cutting. Like most walk-in appointments, it was full of awkward conversation and avoiding eye contact through the mirror. As soon as she found out I play violin, she kept talking about her son who has Aspergers who plays violin. That really got her going.

That was when she got to my bangs.

What I should have done was distract her. I should have told her about my cart-wheeling violin student. Or about seeing the world’s best musicians. Or even about how I had just been singing along to Taylor Swift on the ride over. What I should not have done was allow her to cut my bangs while she was passionately explaining to me the difference between Aspergers and ADHD.

The thing with bangs is that once they’re too short, there’s no real coming back. You just have to wait until they grow out. I thought about telling her to round the edges more, but I was scared to see what else she would do to them. I look like a toddler whose older sister tried playing hair stylist. So I’ll be taking the maximum daily dose of biotin until my bangs grow out.

Anyway. Zooey Deschanel hairstyle? Not so much.

Zooey

CIMG3377

Sure, Stylist I Tipped Too Much, those bangs are sort of like Zooey’s.

Also, if someone could explain to me why my nose looks gigantic in 80% of my selfies, that’d be great.

Blizzard Walking

December 22, 2012 / Ashley / 1 Comment

Since most of my readers live in a 30-mile radius, you all know that I survived Blizzard Brianna. I hate when blizzards are named. It’s a snowstorm. Stay inside and you’ll probably be okay. Hurricanes deserves names – they’re massive storms capable of real and significant destruction. The blizzards in the midwest haven’t been very bad for the last few decades.

That being said, Thursday was still a terrible day to be driving, but I went to work anyway. My twenty-five minute commute turned into an hour-long drive, mentally writing my father a thank you note for letting me borrow his four-wheel drive Durango. I joined the majority of the office by leaving at noon. I spent most of the afternoon on the couch reading Calvino. But by about four, I was bored and ready to do something.

While driving to work that morning, I had seen a girl walking in the snow. She wore a peacoat, thick scarf, and a cozy hat. It reminded me of when I lived in Milwaukee. I used to listen to a lot of sad bands like The National. Whenever it snowed, I’d set the discography on my ipod to shuffle to walk the seven or eight blocks to campus. On the way, I’d muse in the most melancholic of fashions – noting how beautifully sad the sagging porches of college houses looked. I would imagine myself going into the Russian foods store and telling the clerk I wanted to try the vodka-filled chocolates I’d heard about. Sometimes I’d daydream about bumping into a handsome stranger at the laundrymat, both of us completely unaware of the obvious meet cute we were part of. Inevitably, these thoughts would be cut off as soon as I remembered they were either disgustingly sentimental or completely improbable. Then I would feel sorry for myself and focus instead on how the singer’s voice sounded the way I imagined whiskey would. Then I congratulated myself on such a clever description.

So I decided to bundle up and take a walk to a coffee shop about a mile away. I made a playlist of Damien Rice, matt pond PA, and Minus the Bear (because seriously, what else do you listen to during a blizzard?). It was a really beautiful experience, traipsing through the snow and feeling the cold sting of flakes pummeling my cheeks.

The coffee shop ended up being closed anyway, but I didn’t mind. The purpose of the walk was to push myself into a happy melancholia. And it worked. I was enchanted by everything: the starry headlights of skating cars, the frosted elegance of tree branches coated in crunchy snow, and the shimmery gusts flying beneath streetlights.

An hour and 1.5 miles later, I was across the street from a thai restaurant, considering curry for dinner, when I realized I lost my debit card somewhere in the snow. Instead of freaking out and telling the world to fuck off, I just called my bank and canceled my card. I’ll just have to wax nostalgic while I write checks for the next ten days.

Bridge

Boots

College ave

Lawrence Chapel

Cozy

It might not look like it, but I was totally okay with having a runny nose.

It’s only been 15 days.

December 10, 2012December 10, 2012 / Ashley / Leave a comment

Over the last two weeks, I’ve completed four short stories based on one of my favorite characters I’ve created – Ruby, an art major living in a large city (Milwaukee or Chicago, I haven’t decided). Each of the stories is centered around a work of art she has created (linoleum stamp, a re-purposed book, self-portraits, and her first nude sketch), but illustrates how she works through an issue in her personal life (her own self-perception and accompanying anxiety, ending her first major romantic relationship, her parents’ divorce, and her younger brother’s suicide). Each of the stories is emotionally raw and maintains the perfect blend of exposition and dialog. In addition to these four short stories, I’ve kept my apartment spotless, tried three non-crockpot recipes (Beef Wellington, Napoleons, and coq au vin), crocheted four scarves, bought and wrapped all of my Christmas gifts, and effectively set the foundation for a loving and mutually-rewarding romantic relationship.

Sick Pinterest Just kidding. I’m still single, eating leftovers, and I was sick with tonsillitis for over a week. I took three sick days (yikes!), drank my weight in Powerade, cried once to my parents on the phone because EVERYTHING hurt, and lost two pounds from a diet of mainly popsicles, jello, and vanilla yogurt, and spent a ridiculous amount of time on Pinterest. Then I spent a week on antibiotics – where I mainly crocheted (I tried knitting a few times, but I got frustrated because knitting is so damn boring compared to crochet), watched The Colbert Report, and scoffed at the terrible writing caliber of Nip/Tuck. Occasionally I read (Fun House – an excellent graphic novel if you’re looking for one, This is How You Lose Her – disappointing after Oscar Wao, Infinite Jest – that book is damn hard, and Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim – rereading and still laughing), but mainly I just slept a lot. I can’t remember the last time I was so sick.

Basically, I was sick and uninspired for the last few weeks, so excuse the lack of posts. I’m not dead, I’m just not writing at the moment, which will change.

I think I’ll go write those short stories now. More posts this week.