Lookit! Lookit! New things!

/ Ashley / 4 Comments

A few Saturdays ago, I woke up feeling sort of bored. My options were pretty wide: sit in my bed and read or write, go to the last farmer’s market of the year, grab coffee somewhere and pretend I was some artistic genius struggling to write a poem in a spiral bound notebook, or give myself a new hairstyle. I decided to give myself a new hairstyle. Since I’ve been watching a lot of New Girl (and like every other twenty-something girl, I have a bit of a girl crush on her), I decided to give myself bangs.

While in Milwaukee a few years back, I tried to rock bangs (my Feist obsession was at an all-time high), but I ended up getting feeling uncomfortable with them, so I pinned them back and let them grow out. That time I took a scissors and cut straight across my forehead about 40 minutes before an orchestra concert. That could have ended disastrously. I’m incredibly brilliant sometimes.

This time, I took the 30 seconds to google how to cut my own bangs, and they ended up looking pretty good. I think they make me look a lot younger than what I had before then.

Exhibit A: Summer 2012, tanned and blonde so I could feel like a bombshell while my soul died in a cubicle.

Exhibit B: Autumn 2012, pale and brunette so I can feel artsy and slightly superior when I wear leggings and boots

Good god. I look like a completely different person.

Anyway, I’ve gotten a lot of compliments on my bangs. Many of my coworkers (including some who have never talked to me previously) say that it fits me. Some days, I feel really confident about it, while other days I miss my forehead being cool. I’m sure it sounds silly, but it’s a bit tiring to adjust to such a different style.

Other new things: my job. I LOVE it. I know I’ve talked about it before, but I’m really enjoying my new position. This week I have my first client visit. Really looking forward to one of my first interactions as a professional.

Last week, I got a Kindle Fire HD. I’ve spent plenty of time playing around on it: listening to music, reading books, reading magazines, watching youtube, Netflix, and Prime videos, browsing the web – it’s just awesome. I haven’t been disappointed yet. I thought I might not enjoy reading on the back-lit screen (that was my biggest hesitation when switching from my classic Kindle to the tablet), but it’s really quite nice. It’s been especially easy to switch between Infinite Jest and Elegant Complexity (the excellent reader’s guide). I may tire of it, but I figure if I do, I can always just get the basic Kindle for my serious reading sessions. Or you know, I guess I could pick up an actual book.

The latest thing to always be in my purse

I’m going to sit down and write a good post tomorrow, so please excuse this ditzy “oh mah gawd, lookit me n mah stuff!” post. You know I’m better than this.

Seriously though, I’ve got to go fix my bangs and take pictures of myself in flannel with my new gadget. Ciao!

This is me in my flannel pajamas being a dork while I try out the HD camera on my new Kindle.

Not everything is nighttime pancakes when you’re an adult

/ Ashley / 7 Comments

My computer is constantly on. I think the last time I turned it off was when I flew to Oklahoma. I prefer to make it hibernate or sleep since it’s started to take longer to power up. I really just need to get rid of the files and programs I don’t use, but I never have the time for that. I have things to do – books to pretend to read, recipes to think about making, and a room to wish was clean.

I minimized all my windows earlier this afternoon because I remembered I had changed my background to a smoldering picture of Aaron Paul. To see it, I had to minimize my sticky notes which I then rearranged so his face wasn’t covered. These notes’ lifespans vary from months to days. Why I have such a hard time deleting them is a mystery. One is titled “TO READ”, a list of books I want to read. It’s only been referenced once in the last year. Other notes contain quotes intended to inspire me to write, which would probably be effective if they weren’t covered up by Facebook.

There’s one that I don’t think I’ll get rid of until my computer calls for reformatting:

“Don’t romanticize this adulthood thing just because you get to eat pancakes at night.”

Though the context escapes me, I know I heard it from a professor. At the time, it struck me as beautifully silly.  “Don’t be so eager to grow up,” it pleaded. “Stay young, silly, and still appreciative of pancakes in the dark.” It resonated well at the time –  the end of my college years was coming to an end and I desperately wanted to revert to childhood. Or at least to the point where I wasn’t realizing I should have decided on a more productive major.

When I was younger, twenty-four was incredibly mature. My life plan was basically this: Finish high school, fall in love…….retire comfortably and die in my sleep. Did I think about my twenties  the time when I’m supposed to be figuring out my life? Of course not. I just glazed over that and assumed it would all be taken care of before I got there. To be fair, for a good portion of my childhood, I just assumed I would be raptured before I turned 16, so I figured I wouldn’t have to worry about the really tough things.

(This is probably why I didn’t know what a 401k was until a few years ago. Now I have one and I’m about to change my portfolio to the high-risk/high-reward one because a six-question quiz in my 401k informational portfolio told me that because of my age and personality, I can do that. That’s probably how Donald Trump made all his money, right? His BMO Harris booklet had a quiz that told him he could handle market fluctuations and he went with it.)

So when I see this sticky note I wonder where the pancakes are. I’m only 24 and I’m already thinking about retirement –  mainly because of all the things I have yet to do. I still have to establish a career (though I think I’m on a good track). I still have to buy an appropriate car. I need to have a savings account and I should probably stop listening to Taylor Swift. I have these adult worries, so where are my nighttime pancakes?

I’d like to remember the other side of this: why spend so much time worrying about being an adult? I should be taking advantage of the freedom that comes with being un-tethered and in my 20’s. There is literally nothing stopping me from doing what I want. If I want to stay up until 1:30 reading a book, then I can. Alternatively, I can take a night drive to admire the clear sky. I can wear red lipstick all day at work and have personal victory. I can strike up a conversation with a stranger because he’s probably not going to kidnap me. I can plan a vacation with my best friend in hopes of dancing with foreign men.

Or I could just make pancakes at night.

I can have fun in whatever way I decide. That’s pretty cool, isn’t it?

Remember that, self. 

My Halloween Weekend as a Cat & Jesse Pinkman

/ Ashley / 3 Comments

I did something weird this weekend. I went out Friday AND Saturday night. This is unusual for me for a couple reasons. The first is obvious – I don’t go out very often. I’m not usually a fan of bars. I don’t have a ton of money. I like to sleep, and when I get tired, I don’t like waiting on other people to decide to call it a night. The second is that it’s Halloween, and I don’t really like Halloween.

As a child, I didn’t like the creepiness of it. I’ve never planned a costume. Even when I went trick or treating, it was always some costume my mom and I threw together before I grabbed my plastic pumpkin bucket. I was usually a pioneer girl. Why? Because that’s what I usually had on hand. As I grew up, I learned that Halloween is a time for girls to get away with wearing lingerie in public and for boys to hide their excitement beneath conveniently bulky costumes. I started to hate it because I have neither the body nor the confidence to wear a corset and tutu while ordering a 7&7 in front of a group of strangers. I did the slutty costume thing once – I was a “Sexy Camper” (whatever that’s supposed to mean) The costume cost way too much and was purposefully lost during my move from Milwaukee to Oshkosh.

I’m ashamed when I think of that costume. I bought it knowing that I didn’t want to look like a slutty girl in a re-appropriated Boy Scout uniform. I really wanted to dress up like Audrey Hepburn, but I thought I would feel uncomfortable with all the other girls wearing dresses that skimmed their cheeks. But I wore it anyway, and spent the night yanking the cheap spandex down and cursing when the iron-on patches fell off the chest.

The year I dressed up like a substitute teacher (pencil skirt, vintage-cut sweater, smeared makeup, paper airplane in my hair, “kick me” sign taped to my back) was the year I decided to stop caring if I looked slutty enough. I decided to stop feeling inadequate because I had less skin showing than Bo Peep or the Sexy Clownfish (yeah, that’s a real costume). Maybe it was the women’s studies classes I took, or maybe it was because I didn’t like my thighs. The result was the same – I felt better not presenting myself like a trashy fairy tale character. So what if guys weren’t trying to rub against me? I didn’t want that anyway. I think that’s what bothers me most about teens and 20-somethings dressing up for Halloween: it brings out the desperate and animal characteristics in women and men.

Sure, the polite conventions of sexual tension are just facades, but I like them. We all have those hungry urges, Halloween just allows us to advertise them. And though I’m blatant about some things, when it comes to romance and affection, I prefer it to be a bit more subdued and eloquent. If a guy shows interest, I’m not naive to his intentions, I just enjoy prolonging the illusion that we’re self-controlled beings instead of animals.

My room is always spotless, I don’t know what you’re talking about.

Anyway, I didn’t mean for this to turn into a rant on the sexual politics of Halloween costumes. It’s not exactly a unique topic anyway. I’ll segue by saying that I dressed as a sort of sexy cat for Friday night. I think the long sleeves and the fact that I wore a puffy vest most of the night negates the obvious sluttiness of the initial costume. I’m also pretending not to notice the obvious similarity to a Playboy Bunny, because UGH. I took women’s studies classes, so I can wear cat ears, but never bunny ears. Obvi. That’s what we call feminism, people.

On Friday night, Andrea and I stopped by a party in Oshkosh, then went to Peabody’s where we listened to some great live music. We had a guy introduce himself three times in five minutes. Then another guy threw a tantrum because instead of waiting for him to order me a beer, I bought my own. I’m pretty sure that’s where I’ll meet my future husband.

Bathroom pic with a Shel Silverstein book because we’re classy

On Saturday night, I wasn’t feeling the cat ears. My brother suggested I go to Home Depot and get a yellow hazmat suit, use his gas mask and be Jesse Pinkman. I didn’t want to buy a hazmat suit, so I went as Jesse Pinkman getting a breath of fresh air (and a beer) from a meth cook.

Jesse Pinkman probably has a metal sculpture of a tree above his kitchen sink, right?

Andrea lent me her leather jacket (I need to get one – the second I put it on, I felt like a badass). Corey lent me his gas mask, beanie, and big red magnet. I was hoping that when someone asked me what I was, I could point to the magnet and say, “Yeah bitch! Magnets!” and he would understand. That only happened twice. In the end, I just told curious people I was a hazmat worker and they should watch better television.

Not sure why this is the face I think Jesse Pinkman would make, but let’s go with it.

All in all, I had a surprisingly fun Halloween weekend and I went into work on Monday with my dignity in tact, which is more than I can say about the year I dressed like a scout.

The following photos are courtesy of my friends Kaleigh (the pinup Rosie the Riveter) and Andrea (the adorable kitty).

I hope you all had similar fun weekends. Stay safe and keep blooming.

In Defense of T Swift

/ Ashley / 6 Comments

T Swift came out with a new album on Monday. I’ve listened to it more than once. Since I’m not seventeen, I feel like I need to explain myself.

A few years ago, a boyfriend asked me if I thought T Swift had staying power. I tried to think of a way to say, “Yes, you moron.” What I did say was something along the lines of “Yes, she does. She sings the songs that every girl can sympathize with.”

There are some musicians I really love (Esperanza Spaulding, Broken Social Scene, Bon Iver, Santigold). And there are other musicians that just entertain me (Kanye West). Taylor Swift is somewhere between those two places. I don’t think that T Swift makes complex and challenging music. I don’t think she claims to do that. But she does make damn catchy pop songs.

I started listening to Taylor Swift during the disintegration of the “Scott” saga. At the time, I was still driving my family’s Geo Tracker. I remember driving home on the highway, sing-screaming You’re Not Sorry (He wasn’t) and Picture to Burn (I tore up them up because I didn’t have a fire pit) while the wind kicked around the vinyl top. I was relieved nobody could see my sob-screams, because I was 21 and convinced that T Swift made teenage anthems that were the epitome of commercialized carp.

It was obviously therapeutic. I had finally found music that was reflecting exactly what I was feeling, but with this air of empowerment. While I was feeling shame and embarrassment about the breakup, she was embracing the feelings unabashedly. She was hurt. She was pissed. And she was making a lot of money off of it.

For the last few months, I’ve been brainstorming an essay about my transition from a girl to a woman. I’ve felt a pressure to be mature and womanly from a very early age. I don’t know why and right now, I don’t care to speculate. The point is  that I never felt comfortable embracing my girlish feelings. I didn’t want anybody to know that I could be insecure, the victim of unrequited love, or feel like that crazy girl who wanted to humiliate her ex-boyfriend. Listening to T Swift is how I reconnect with the part of myself that I feel like I didn’t allow to surface when I was a teenager.

This isn’t to say that I was a cool, mature teenager. My diaries from that time eliminate any possibility of that. I just didn’t want people to know about my craziness, which is probably why I listened to a lot of emo and wrote about it all in notebooks.

What I’m trying to say is that I’m enjoying Red. It’s annoyingly poppy and catchy, but I love it. It doesn’t make me think deep thoughts about the intricate feelings of love and longing, or the quiet intimacies that happen in my head during a crisis.

But it does allow me to connect with those emotions that occur so obnoxiously that I don’t care to examine. They’re those universal emotions that feel unique, despite that they’re anything but. It’s what I hate and what I love about pop music.

Pop music is not for the cynical or skeptic, which is probably why I don’t listen to it much. Though it’s my default setting, it can be exhausting to maintain. T Swift gives me a break from that.

Alright, girls. Go find your new anthem to sing into a hairbrush. We’ll be here when you stop dancing on your bed and decide to put on something more than a cami and undies.