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Day 4: What You Ate Today
I am not even going to address the inanity of writing about what I ate today because I was all, “FUCK YEAH, GONNA GET BACK TO BLOGGIN’. GONNA BE AWESOME.” and then I consulted the handy list of shit I need to write about and it was like, “Day 4: What you ate today, in great detail” and I was like, “Fucking, god damn, gonna have to give up on the 30 Day Meme on day four.” But no. Here we go. Gonna do this bitch.
We don’t have any decent food in the house right now and I just got back from Las Vegas yesterday where I ate a bunch of boss meals, so I was NOT digging the idea of having to make myself a sandwich. FUCK THAT. So basically I grazed on death food all day.
I had the following over the course of the day:
 candy
 wal-mart cupcakes
 pig in a shitty cornbread blanket
 chips
 crockpot pot roast — the bomb
I had so much sugar today that I sort of want to stab myself in the face repeatedly until a fountain of granulated sugar and frosting pour out of the holes where my eyeballs used to rest. Like, I don’t even LIKE CUPCAKES. But they were there and I was hungry and the rest is history. I am sure I will further regret the sugar consumption when I inevitably crash in a couple hours, but right now I am basically just at peace with my inability to just suck it up and make a sandwich.
I HATE MAKING SANDWICHES. I hate making sandwiches almost as much as I hate going to the bank. There’s the bread and the mayonnaise and the other shit that constitutes sandwich filling and I am supposed to arrange it into some sort of delicious and functional arrangement! That’s just too many pieces and too many tasks.
I don’t do jigsaw puzzles, I don’t make sandwiches. Life’s too short for that shit.
I know that I am terribly remiss on my 30 Days of Narcissism meme-thing and that I haven’t even posted in forever, but I just started back to school on Thursday and everything is insane and I just want to talk about today, okay, STOP NAGGING ME OKAY.
Today was really stupid and horrible. I almost got into a really bad car accident on my way home from school after already having a FUCKING terrible day and I had to get off the freeway and park in some bank parking lot and cry and have a panic attack and I just wanted to lay down on the fire-hot pavement and melt into nothingness.
When I say “I almost got into a really bad car accident” what I mean is, “I changed lanes several hundred feet in front of a dude who decided to change into the same lane after I was three-quarters of the way into it and he got REAL AGGRESSIVE about it and tailgated me and then flew back into his lane and slammed around me in a manner that clearly communicated that he was trying to hit me on purpose.” We could not have been more than six inches from a serious accident at 75 miles per hour and if I had not slammed on my brakes, it would’ve been… bad. It was by far the closest I have ever come to an accident WITHOUT ACTUALLY HAVING THE ACCIDENT.
He then flew across the next three lanes of traffic and cut off another guy to exit the freeway.
And it’s like, man, I get PISSED in the car. I yell at people! I am a twenty-five-year-old adult woman who rolls down her window and yells at people while giving them aggressive middle fingers. I get it. Driving sucks 90% of the time and everyone else sucks at it and it’s just awful. IT IS AWFUL. The personal vehicle is probably the worst thing to happen to any of us in the modern age.
But who has that much anger? Enough to INTENTIONALLY attempt to cause an accident while moving at almost 80 mph? When the person didn’t even wrong you? Who is that angry about their life? What happened to that guy in that black Tahoe to make him THAT FURIOUS? That kind of aggression baffles me. I don’t ever want to make other human beings feel unsafe and after that bullshit today I think I’m going to make that an even more prominent effort on my part.
That said, I could’ve easily punched AN ENTIRELY SEPARATE TAHOE DRIVER (WHAT IS IT WITH TAHOES?!) in the FACE. She parked so close to me that she was actually all the way into my parking stall (The kind with the double lines! THE KIND WITH THE BUILT IN SPACE. SERIOUSLY.) and I couldn’t get into my car and I am too fat/uncoordinated/drive too small a car to climb across and I just didn’t know what to do with my life.
And then she comes out and tries to do that sheepish TEEHEE thing and it’s like, “Look, bitch, I know we all have things to do, but you need to reevaluate your life and understand that it would’ve taken you FOUR SECONDS to re-park when you realized what a shit job you did. FUCK YOU.” Paris Hilton couldn’t have climbed into my car, she was parked so close. Fuck that.
There should be a comprehensive driving and parking exam required before you can own or operate any vehicle larger than a fucking SmartCar.
So I was really upset about the duel Tahoe incidences and I was frustrated with school and life and ALL THE THINGS THAT ARE WRONG WITH EVERYTHING EVER and I just got tired and frustrated and defeated. And for once, I started thinking about why things are the way they are and why I’m feeling all these inconvenient feelings and I thought about MYSELF and about OTHER PEOPLE.
And I think it comes down to figurative breathing.
I’m not asking for like, a social revolution where people start being considerate and thoughtful of one another. I know that is probably beyond the scope of our abilities as humans. I am just as entitled and self-centered and awful as most of the other people moving around on the surface of this planet. I YELL AT PEOPLE WHEN THEY DRIVE BAD. I am often unkind and impatient and self-absorbed. I recognize those things and I am going to try to practice what I preach.
I’m just looking for, I think, the tiniest iota of AWARENESS. Self-awareness or external-awareness or what-the-fuck-ever awareness. Just two seconds out of your life to be like, “Hey, I’m being a dick” or “God, maybe that lady just had a really awful day” or even just taking TWO SECONDS TO TAKE A DEEP BREATH.
I’m just asking for a little cool-down here, guys. A two-second version of counting to ten. A breath. Just one. For everyone’s sake, including your own.
I’m calling it the Two Second Breath and I’m going to start practicing it immediately.
Guy cuts me off? Two second breath. Rude cashier? Two second breath. Internet idiocy? Two second breath. Political frustration? Two second breath.
I spend so much of my life being reactionary and I just think it’s exhausting. Everything is instantaneous — email, texts, calls, television, youtube, all of this media and communication flying at us all day long — and we (I. I. I.) get so wrapped up in responding promptly that I’ve stopped thinking. I react, I don’t respond. And maybe I can’t always count to ten, maybe it’s too hard or too frustrating or too long, but I can always count to two. I can take a two second breath and respond competently and confidently.
I don’t want to kill anyone with kindness. I don’t want to fake my way through life. I don’t want to be conflict and confrontation free. But I do want to think, respond, and relax a little because being always on, all the time is finally catching up with me.
I want to take a whole lot of two second breaths.
I would like to point out that I almost immediately regretted not calling it the three second breath upon publishing the post. Hate even numbers? TWO SECOND BREATHING OUT OF MY ASSHOLE FOR DAYS.
Day 3: Your Parents
 I picked this picture because we all look equally terrible.
My parents are awesome. My parents are so awesome that the greatest guilt I have ever felt in my entire life has basically been that I am not a good enough daughter and that I have not been grateful enough for everything they’ve done for me.
Awkward admissions of offspring-guilt aside, my parents are awesome people.
My mom is one of the funniest people I have ever known, sometimes intentionally even. Her verbal filter is… minimal, so she says whatever she is thinking and never refrains from asking even the most honest and awkward questions. She has giant, giant boobs that neither me nor my sister inherited. Tragically. Or gratefully. I’m not really sure. She is really sharp, but really unobservant. She is the Occam’s Razor in the family.
She’s also one of the strongest people in my life and she’s survived, literally and figuratively, more than anyone else I have ever known. She also puts up with me and my sister and my dad and we are huge pains in the ass, so it’s really just another testament to her strength.
She likes to talk about her and my dad having sex or about the sluttier days of her youth because she knows that it HORRIFIES her daughters. We cannot drive east on Route 66 without her going, “I’ve had sex in that motel and THAT one and that one and THAT TEEPEE RIGHT THERE” because she is twisted and cruel. And was also kind of a whore. But a classy-ish one, I imagine/hope.
She loves animals and gets REALLY ABNORMALLY UPSET when people are mean to them. She has the BEST LAUGH EVER and if you get her laughing long and hard enough she will probably pee herself.
Fun facts: Mom doesn’t drive, drink, or think as highly of herself as she should. Because she’s awesome. She loves soap operas. And reality TV. And Elvis. And telling stories about getting stoned and/or drunk with her friends when she was in high school. She was the mascot at her middle school. She loved doing sports. SHE MAKES THE BEST BAKED SPAGHETTI ON EARTH. We are incredibly different, but eerily similar.
My dad is also really funny and smart and weird. He likes outlandish theories and tells everyone that he thinks Jesus was a time-traveler. He’s always been really, really good at his job and it’s something I was always really proud of as a kid. We were never rich, but I was always like, “YEAH, WELL, MY DAD’S CUSTOMERS LOVE HIM AND HE WINS AWARDS AND STUFF.” Because I knew how to throw down. My dad and I have always been really close and I look, sound, talk, and make an ass of myself just like he does. A lot of time when someone sets up a joke unintentionally in conversation, he and I both blurt out the same thing at the same time. And it’s usually stupid. And about poop.
My whole life I’ve been hearing, “OH, WELL HE SURE CAN’T DENY YOU, CAN HE?” every time that people see us together. And it’s still as annoying as ever. HE WOULD NEVER DENY ME BECAUSE I AM FUCKING AWESOME OKAY. Even though I grew up thinking the Japanese gardener that took care of our front lawn was my real dad. NO JOKE.
My dad was a slacker and a stoner and his stories about growing up are the BEST. Like how one time he broke his best friend’s face and how he fell on a stick and the NAIL JUTTING OUT OF IT stuck it to his face and how his mom (my sometimes uptight grandmother) got stoned with him one time. HIS STORIES ARE THE BEST. Or how one time he got an F in art and that same grandmother stormed into the class and was like, “HOW CAN YOU FAIL SOMEONE IN ART?! ART IS SUBJECTIVE!” and the teacher showed her what my dad had done in class and she said, “Oh, okay” and left.
My dad tries to be good at the internet and he has an angry political blog! And he’s pretty passionate about the US Constitution, which is a decent thing to be passionate about if you have to get all passionate and shit.
Fun facts: my dad collects guns (for target shooting) and likes the History and Military channels. He is really good at saying the right things. He played baseball in high school and was a boy scout. His high school principal called him Line Drive. He and his sister (my awesome Aunt Sisi) are a year and ten days apart in age. He is a really good cook and loves to fart. We are eerily similar, but incredibly different.
I was conceived on the Fourth of July 1984 shortly after my mom had her trusty IUD removed. They had sex (UGH GROSS — FOR THE ONLY (my sister and I have different dads) TIME EVER — DENIAL DENIAL I LIKE DENIAL) and my dad said, “Well, that made a baby.” My mom said that if she didn’t get pregnant by her thirtieth birthday, she wasn’t going to have another kid (my sister was already eight). She turned thirty on August 14 and I was already 1/9th of the way to being ripped out of her abdomen with medical instruments. TAKE THAT, AGING.
My parents are awesome enough that at different points over the course of my sister’s and my lives they have let one of her friends, one of her boyfriends, two of my friends, and my girlfriend live in their home. They’re letting me mooch off of them in my lost twenties. They have always encouraged me no matter what stupid thing I wanted to do. They bought me booze when I was underage in college. They used to come to my college apartment, buy us groceries, wash all of our dishes, clean our kitchen, and MAKE US MEALS.
These are good people, seriously.
I don’t know how I got so lucky, but if there’s any balance to the universe, I will probably have the worst children ever to be conceived. Like, the antichrist. JUST ANOTHER REASON TO NEVER HAVE ANY.
More narcissism here.
Day 2: Your First Love
I’ve talked about her before, extensively, but my girlfriend Crystal is my first love. We had a really weird and complicated courtship because we were friends for more than a year before we finally talked about dating and I thought she was straight and she didn’t think I wanted babies/marriage (I didn’t/don’t, but I tricked her good!) and she made me promise that I would at least consider the possibility of children and marriage before she would date me. (She will say that I am lying and that “it wasn’t like that” but she will be lying through her fake front teeth.)
And then we did like lesbians do and moved in together really quickly. Or, rather, she moved in with me and my parents. Granted, we’d already planned to live together as roommates once we got our shit together, but that still hasn’t happened and we have sex, so I don’t think you can really call us “roommates”.
We’ve been together for two years, three months, and three days. We plan to eventually get married — she cares about the marriage license-y part where I have to legally agree to share my life with her, I only care about the awesome party — but I have a really complicated timeline that I deem acceptable for the development of our relationship and I don’t think we should get married for at least another three years. Or at the very least until we’re not living with my parents anymore. Which will probably be like, ten years at this rate.
I love Crystal because she is funny and smart and generous and takes care of me even though I usually fight her about it. I threaten to break up with her about once a week over both trivial and serious shit. Sometimes I’m joking, sometimes I’m just trying to make her cry. Because I’m a dick.
We like a lot of the same things and we get on each others’ nerves a pretty significant amount, which I constantly have to convince her is normal. (She thinks people who are in ~love~ should never fight or bicker, but let’s get real here.) We live in a 13×12 room together, so we’re on top of each other a lot and it’s hard when we want our own space. I was a SUPER SOLITARY person before we started dating/moved in together, so it is still weird for me to have someone around all the time who wants to hang out with me. I DON’T EVEN WANT TO HANG OUT WITH ME.
She’s pretty big on personal hygiene for herself so she usually smells nice and has soft hair, but is kind enough not to care if I don’t change my clothes for three days or if I have B.O. Also, she laughs at all my jokes, which is REALLY IMPORTANT. And she always supports my writing even if I get all pissed at her because she was TOO ENTHUSIASTIC or NOT ENTHUSIASTIC ENOUGH or MAKING TOO MANY SUGGESTIONS or NOT CARING ENOUGH GOD DAMN IT.
She puts up with my fickleness and my insanity and she buys me stuff ALL THE TIME.
My family loves the shit out of her too, which would be a 100% dealbreaker if they didn’t.
Anyway, she’s my first love basically because she has boobs and she lets me touch them. Usually whenever I want. She’s the best.
More narcissism here.
AKA: A Bunch of Shit You Probably Don’t Even Want to Know!
So this is one of those internet questionnaires that probably went around in emails and then into the blog and online journal spheres until it became a narcissistic series of THIRTY POSTS that are supposed to reveal your ~true self~ to the internet. And since I am nothing if not a COMPLETE NARCISSIST, I’m doing it.
Day 1: Introduce Yourself
My name is Ash. I’m 25. I’m getting ready for my second and last year of grad school where I am trying to get an MFA in writing (fiction) and writing a book and being a reader for a pretty okay group of other writers.
These are the three most recent pictures taken of me, least to most recent:
The top and bottom were taken by my gf because she is obsessed with my hair and also putting things into my bun, like pens and flowers. The middle one is a self-portrait! Told you I was a narcissist.
I like all of the media things that I talk about: books, movies, tv shows, the internet, music, and comic books/graphic novels. I also like taking pictures of shit, but I think all of the conceptual/technical photography stuff is really, really boring. If I like a picture, I like a picture. Fuck your rule of thirds.
I’ve been writing since I was little and I spent all of third grade carrying around those black and white composition books where I wrote stories about the kids in my class then told them that I wrote stories about them, but wouldn’t show them the stories unless they did things for me and then always, 100% of the time, refused to show them anyway.
I was, and am, kind of a dick.
I am not a great or a dedicated writer. I have never been a devoted or hardworking person. Ever. I write because I like it and it comes easily and my basic number one goal in life is to never, ever have to work hard at anything.
My first novel is a young adult story and I love it even when it’s a huge fucking cunt that I want to punch in the face over and over again. I am pretty certain that young adult is really where I belong as a writer (and a reader!) so I am already looking at other MFA programs that specialize in YA/children’s lit to go to after I finish this program, since I am obviously not at all ready to try and be part of the real world.
Also, I have no marketable or useful skills to speak of. I have only ever taught and written for money. I am useless at everything else except for working at a video store, which I was great at! But is now totally obsolete as a career choice. God damn it.
I am really fat and loud and usually smart and funny. I am not into outdoor activities at all unless it’s going to Disneyland or walking from my car into a place of business. I am into fat acceptance and body positivity and feminism and equalism and gay rights and human rights and the general ability for awesomeness that I believe the human race probably does possess deep down inside somewhere under all the evil and body odor.
I’m an adamant atheist and I think religion is basically stupid. I don’t understand people who aren’t pro-choice or pro-gay marriage. Basically, I was born and raised in California.
I have absolute faith that there is intelligent life somewhere in the universe. I will absolutely punch you in the mouth if you somehow infer that believing in the statistical probability of aliens is comparable to believing in ghosts/werewolves/vampires/Jesus.
I live with my parents (fail!twenties, represent!) and my girlfriend and four dogs and two cats and we are all pretty awesome. I am close to my parents and my older (by nine years) sister. My family is really weird and one of my neighbor friends once said to me, “You guys are, like, really loud.” and she was totally 100% right. I don’t think she meant it as a compliment like we took it though.
I can be really rude and brash and obnoxious and because of these awesome personality defects, I have a really hard time making friends. The few I have are basically stuck with me whether they like it or not. I never know if the people around me actually like/tolerate me because I have a really hard time reading people and body language. I am also sort of bossy and demanding and I have unreachably high standards when it comes to public decorum. I AM A GREAT PERSON TO BE AROUND. CAN’T YOU TELL?! WHY DOESN’T EVERYONE LOVE MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE?!
Basically, I have spent my entire life being incapable of keeping my mouth shut, completely unable to stop the torrential outpouring of verbal diarrhea that makes up my personality.
I am fucking awesome.
More narcissism here.
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