This morning, I was just on my way to work when I heard a little blurb on the radio telling me to stay away from highway 441 because a car had flipped. I thought I would save my brother an hour stuck in traffic, so I called Corey to warn him to stay away from the highway because there was a car on its roof.
“What are they saying?”
“There’s a car on its roof. Over by the Racine street exit.”
“You know who that is?”
“Who?” Please don’t say Ryan, please don’t say Ryan. Please don’t say Ryan.
“Ryan.”
Ryan is about five years younger than me. I love the kid. You wouldn’t have known it when he first came around. When I was in kindergarten, I had my mom bring in our dog for show and tell. I told my class all about TJ – how she looked like a fuzzy bear cub and how she chomped at water when it shot out of the sprinkler. At one point, my teacher interrupted and asked if there was anything else I had to show the class.
I was clueless. Since Ryan was just a baby, my mom had brought him in too, but it didn’t occur to me to share him with the class. He was a baby. Pooped and cried. Got all the attention. “This is my new brother, Ryan,” I mumbled.
Ryan stole the attention from me. For five glorious years, I was the center of attention.Then all the sudden, Ryan came into the world. Corey and I sort of just tolerated him. He didn’t do anything. Just sat there drooling and occasionally sucking on a pacifier and eventually his toes. I thought I would have been able to play with him like a doll, but I couldn’t even do that. He was SO boring.
“What happened? Is he okay?”
Ryan and I became close over the last few years. I gave him advice with girls, counseled him through a breakup, and eventually we started bonding over Kanye West. When Corey told me Ryan had flipped his car, all I could see was him as a small child, squatted over a puddle in a striped shirt, reaching for a piece of playmobil.
He had hit a patch of ice as he was getting onto the highway, fishtailed a few times, slammed against a barrier, and landed upside down. Amazingly, he was able to punch and crawl out a window without any injuries. He didn’t even go to the hospital.
I was distracted for most of the day at work, thinking of Ryan and what it would be like if anything had happened to him. Since it was too much to think about, I just decided to think of what I would do when I saw him. I decided that I needed to give him a big hug, tell him I love him, and then smack him and tell him not to flip cars anymore.
Now we bond over Taylor Swift and our ability to tolerate kittens.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Now we bond over Taylor Swift and our ability to tolerate kittens.
First and foremost, your dad eventually got over the tattoo you got on the first of the year.
Everything is Blooming 