oh man, i just cried at oprah. there was a segment about a kid who is a musical genius, but he was born without eyes and has to be in a wheelchair. and the parents kept saying how disappointed they were, but now the kid is in the university of louisville marching band. and his dad loves him, and wheels him around for games and stuff.
Monthly Archive for January, 2007
this explains everything about the way i think:
we are now on week two of listening to arcade fire’s “intervention” nonstop. have you downloaded it yet? get on it.
on that note, here’s a quick list of things i hate, just to even out how much i love this song:
1. people who make wedding webpages on theknot
2. theknot in general
3. cleaning
4. seriously, i hate cleaning so much, it takes up two spaces.
5. i didn’t get to play the wii at all today and i wanted to
6. but cleaning took my time up! (hate times 3)
7. dreamgirls has made me want to go see dreamgirls and i keep singing part of that song that goes, “we’re your dreamgirls” but i sing it to marques as “i’m your dreamgirl” and i don’t think he thinks it’s cute but it is.
8. my new bathmat sucks. i bought one because i’m afraid of falling in the shower and i was excited about it but it feels like i’m stepping on a porcupine when i take a shower.
9. i had to clean the whole bathtub to put the stupid sucky bathmat in it. cleaning hate times 4.
10. i am tired, and i want it to snow, but all it is doing is raining, and raining is boring.
dear target,
first off, may i say that i absolutely love these seasonal periods of times where it seems like you put everything in the whole store on clearance? shower curtains, tableclothes, dishware, sheets, blankets, picture frames — please continue this trend, and you will have earned many of my hard-earned dollars while i try to make my apartment look like it just walked out of better homes and gardens.
also, i’m feeling a little guilty about the cashier’s little faux pas the other night. see, i was purchasing the following items:
- 2 stoneware bowls, on clearance, $1.50 each.
- a new shirt, gray-brown, long-sleeved, on clearance, $3.74
- 1 box of trash bags, $5.50
- 1 tin of chocolate-covered altoids on a friend’s recommendation, $2.00
- 1 silver modern fruit-bowl, on clearance, $5.00
- something else i can’t remember that was $5.00 too.
so basically, my total would have been about 28 dollars. well, the shirt i was purchasing didn’t have a tag on it, just the clearance sticker (oh i love those orange clearance stickers, filled with hope and promise). so the cashier guy, after scanning half the items i purchased, was trying to do the shirt. he was getting off work, and we were his last customers, so you could tell he was ready to go. finally, he typed in some numbers, and scanned the rest of my items, and my total was $15.08.
now, i originally didn’t realize his error. had i realized it, i would’ve brought it to his attention. i just figured maybe some things were cheaper than marked. it wasn’t until everything was all bagged up and we were out the door when my boyfriend, marques, remarked, “i think you got half your stuff for free.”
sure enough, target, you did give me half of my stuff for free. i will chalk it up to you giving me something after the no-doubt thousands of dollars i’ve spent in your store.
thanks again!
-ashley
p.s. i totally love my new purse. it is adorable. thank you for creating it.
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dear waylon,
i love you. i love rubbing my face all over your face, and i love when you rub your face all over my face. i love your little pawsies, and your little tail, and your little earsies, and i love your little nose except when it’s cold and wet. i love when you get excited about something and your tail shakes it like a polaroid picture. i love your meow-chirps, and i’m pretty sure i know what they all mean now. i wish i could talk to you like the guy in “kafka on the shore” but i can’t, so i just have to guess that the medium chirp means “i’m hungry, feed me” and the little small chirp is “i love you too, keep rubbing under my chin.”
however, waylon, if i come home today, and my tablecloth is on the floor along with my new free silver fruit bowl, i will be one very angry kitty-mama. i’m just saying. be good.
love,
your kitty-mama, ashley
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dear huntington,
why do we never get snow? or anything fun? is it because of global warming? is it because there’s the “protective bubble” over huntington? i remember when i was a sophomore, tuesday and i were driving into huntington and it was basically iced over. and then, when lorrie and ruth ann and i lived together, i remember we were going to drive to watch a wrestling thing with zach and some other people and the roads were pure ice. what happened to those days? i miss snow.
sincerely,
your unhappy, snow-loving resident.
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dear landlord,
i understand that the recent emmons fire has made you a little paranoid, but this is not a good time for us to let you into our house. it is not very clean. we work a lot. we care about our safety too, but i would rather not have you enter our apartment and see a stack of dirty dishes.
sincerely,
your tenants
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dear fish,
i am sorry that you died. not really. but i apologize that you died because i am a bad fish-parent. your untimely (but welcome) death has reminded me that although babies are cute, they are not for me.
sorry again (but thanks for the reminder!),
ashley
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dear marques,
thanks for putting up with me. i know it’s difficult. i love you, muffintoes.
love,
ash
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dear ashley,
stop. just stop.
sincerely,
yourself.
i cannot stop listening to “intervention” by the arcade fire. it’s from their new, soon-to-be-released album, and you can buy it off itunes. i encourage you to, because it’s great. that’s all.
it’s true. i bought these fish during a time when i had broken up with my previous boyfriend (the one who was not as nice as marques). you know how when someone breaks up with you, you go into this period of self-examination that is totally crazy? like someone really broke up with me because the ends of my hair are too dry. or because my apartment was disjointed and not cohesive. or because i downloaded all of the r.kelly trapped in the closet saga.
(in this previous case of the breaking up, i’ve realized that i was broken up with because i am a) not as skanky as the girl he broke up with me for. b) he didn’t really want to be in a relationship at all. c) i think that r.kelly thing might be true)
so yeah. we had broken up, and i was very angry. i was cycling through all of the stages of grief, except not really because i was pretty much staying on the angry one. so in my anger, i did a few dumb things. i went and got a tattoo, which i really like, so i don’t really regret that. i also pierced my lip and got a lip ring, which i still don’t regret, although it fell out one evening and now the hole is closed, so it is no more (dix, i know you’re excited about this). i was obsessed with gay bars and drag shows. in fact, i met some kid at taco bell, who invited me to come to one of the gay bars that evening, and by the end of the evening, i ended up sitting in some strange guy’s apartment, drunk, and letting gay men tell me i was pretty while braiding my hair.
i also bought an aquarium.
the aquarium set was cheap. like, 20 bucks. and i bought all the little accessories for it — the gravel, which was the hardest decision i had to make that day (i ended up with a nice mix of blue and greens. no way would i go with the nasty brown gravel). the plants. i had to be talked out of the cheesy pirate ship that bubbles AND the scuba diver replica.
and the fish. i had to buy the fish. i originally started out with 2 pretty little fantail goldfish, and 2 regular 18 cent goldfish (i figured those would the fish that died, and i wouldn’t have to worry about it if they died). within the first three weeks, all but one of the fantail goldfish had died. so i went back and bought 2 more 8 cent goldfish. they’ve been alive ever since.
they lasted through the great move — we drove them across town while they were swimming around in a glass pyrex mixing bowl. they are HUGE fish — one of them is seriously five inches long. after we all got settled in, they ate the fantail goldfish. like fish cannibals. ate it.
and now, they’re still alive. though i don’t know how. i’ve done everything to kill them aside from actually, you know, killing them. i don’t feed them very often. i don’t clean their aquarium. i don’t do anything to these goldfish at all, and yet they survive. they’re mutant goldfish. i don’t want to do anything to kill them like pour bleach in their tank, or flush them down the toilet. but i want them to die. i want them to die so i can give the tank to my mom to put in her garage and never use it again. i want them to die so i can get rid of the little fish-corner i set up in my dining room, which could be used as a space for a new bookshelf.
but no. they thrive.
so i’m 24 and 2 days old, and my back hurts.
my back hurts really really bad.
it’s in the lower back area, and sometimes it will radiate to my thigh area. i can’t bend down without wincing, sitting for any period of time is painful, and standing is not so good. and then when i lay down, i have to lay down in a certain position or else it hurts. i have been taking aleve like candy trying to stop the pain, but it’s not helping.
i’ve never had back problems before, so i don’t really know what’s going on. i think it may be the mattress that we’re sleeping on — i mean, seriously, this mattress is 30 years old.
but then also, on saturday as i was helping my mom carry in my new dining room chairs, i slipped in some mud and fell, so maybe that’s why it’s hurting.
but regardless, it’s hurting. and i made a “bed buddy” the other night out of one of marques’s dirty gross socks and the rest of my white rice. he laughed at me at first, but i think he understands the wonder of the heat radiation from the bed buddy now.
i do have an appointment with a chiropractor on friday morning, so hopefully they’ll either fix it or give me some sort of hardcore pain reliever so that i won’t die.
i can’t help thinking that this is nature’s way of saying, “you’re 24! and old! here’s an achy back! hahahahaha!”
24 and 2 days old and i’m already falling apart. what’s next, wrinkles? breaking my hip?

