tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-67372980457240650272024-03-12T23:14:34.505-04:00Grammar's Daily Blog“Daily poem, weekly song, plus narration.” | These days it's mostly narration.
Ashley Spencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09397508998348962392noreply@blogger.comBlogger56125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6737298045724065027.post-33002145206307171632022-10-16T17:15:00.002-04:002023-01-18T14:24:43.175-05:00<p><span style="font-family: inherit;">I'm blogging from a random restaurant by the running trail that my husband is running on today. I was planning to hang out in a cafe against the wall and play some Satisfactory on my laptop since I have it with me, but I decided it would be too much to do here where I'm kind of feeling out in the open...but then I chose to blog instead? Who knows. I don't know what to watch that I wouldn't watch with Alex, and there's not a specific project that I'm working on right now that I could work on, like an image/sign for church or a writing or musical thing, so I'm just blogging/journaling. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;">I'm looking at the far wall as I think, but when people walk by and happen to get in the way of my line of vision, it looks like I'm looking at them, which is whatever except when it's a server and they think for a second that I might be trying to get their attention for something, but I'm just sitting at my table and listening to music trying not to stare at people, lol. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;">I haven't really taken any cool/interesting photos lately, but I used to post some here and talk about them. I know I have some photos from years ago that I could bring up and talk about, but if I look through the photos I have on my computer or maybe scroll through my Google Photos gallery, I'd have my entire camera roll in front of anyone walking by, which isn't as hard to see by accident as this tiny white-on-black text in my blog post... So maybe I won't do that.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span>Lately I've been thinking and talking to some of the people in my life about how I wish I was currently working on writing something. I know that back when I had my poetry going strong, and when I was working on a novel or short story, that I loved getting in the zone and just writing for hours and hours.... I miss that feeling, and I wish</span><span>—</span><span>no, I want to start something up again. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span><span>But what kind of project should it be? There have been several different types of projects that I've considered over the past few years, and a lot of them were either cool novel ideas that would take a lot of dedication to start, work on regularly, and complete, or research paper ideas that would require kinds of research and data collection and analysis that I have never done before. If I had any ideas outside of these two categories, they were usually related to my desire to seek having more fresh poetry to publish with an actual publishing house, rather than self-publishing like I did in 2018, and not with the same poems held in that edition, and under my married name. I've heard that publishers and agents tend to look down on writers who have self-published in the past, as if it conveys that their work wasn't good enough to try to get it published professionally, or that it had even been denied by a publisher. That's not really the case for me, because I really do think I'd be happy with trying to submit what I wrote to a real publisher</span></span><span>—I just didn't know at the time that there was anything wrong with self-publishing. So maybe trying to publish something completely new with no ties to my previous writing could actually work, and negate the potential drawbacks from having self-published before.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;">—I don't know when Alex will be finished running, and I kind of want to be able to just close my laptop and go, so I might try to wrap this up pretty soon here so that I'm not working on it when they finish running... I do have earbuds in, noise cancelling ones, and I'm often sneaked up on when I'm in this working-on-my-laptop gtg</span></p><p><br /></p>Ashley Spencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09397508998348962392noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6737298045724065027.post-19380250421626672142022-05-05T23:04:00.000-04:002022-05-05T23:04:02.615-04:00On vacation<p>I'm on vacation right now... We just went to the gourmet restaurant that we'd discovered when we were here last year, and man, it was just as amazing as the first time we ate there. They even had new drinks, and I tried one called "The Slayed Dragon" that had only ever been ordered once before, it was so new and different. It was a new spin on a whiskey sour, and it had the traditional egg white included. I knew as soon as I saw even just the name of it on the menu that I wanted to know what it was, and after reading the description and ingredients I knew I wanted to try it. It had a sprig of rosemary and a lot of blackberries blended in it, which ended up as pieces of seeds and fruit and leaf at the bottom of the drink. The egg white was a lot of froth at the top, but otherwise it blended with the drink fairly well. The reason for the name was that it was made with an Irish whiskey called "Slayer Whiskey" and as for me, it was a great choice. I'd had both an old fashioned (not on the menu, but it's a regular enough cocktail for it to be something I could order at any restaurant or bar and get a similar drink, since it's a classic) before that and a chocolate martini afterward, making 3 total cocktails... I did share some of the last two with Vinny and Uncle Dan, though. </p><p>What am I trying to say.... I think tonight was really good. The food and drinks were, of course, but more than that, I had a really nice time sitting across from Alex and then next to him when we moved to sit around the firepit (which was also on the balcony in the restaurant). I knew I was at least tipsy, and that I was talking about things because I'd had a bit to drink, but that didn't mean it wasn't sincere, or that it wasn't something I took seriously and wanted to speak about with Alex; rather, it provided an opportunity for him to listen and the encouragement for me to talk about it. I talked about the discussion we'd been having about whether we want to have children, and how I'd been thinking about it and feeling less bad about deciding not to have any. He said he went back and forth between wanting one or two, and then not wanting any, and I agreed that I went back and forth as well. Then I talked about the song I'd been working on, and about a goal that I'd thought of: trying to write a song good enough to spend money on studio time to do a professional recording of it. He agreed that that would be cool, that it was a good goal. </p><p>I think I'm gonna post this and do something else now, maybe chat with Uncle Dan, or maybe even write a new poem... I just wanted to post an update, and capture the mood I have right now. :)</p>Ashley Spencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09397508998348962392noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6737298045724065027.post-14797561305569191202022-04-24T22:57:00.005-04:002022-04-24T22:57:54.656-04:00Going on vacationI'm going to be at the beach a week from today. ^_^ I'm honestly excited and I hope it's nice weather and that I don't get sunburnt. I've got a beach umbrella, lots of sunblock, and a nice big hat to wear when we're there, so I'm hoping that'll keep my face from the sun at least. But yeah. <br /><br />Last year was really nice because it had been so long since I'd been to the beach. I missed Lily while we were gone, but Josh and Lee did a great job taking care of her and they even sent a few pictures of them playing with her string toy with her. They're gonna watch her this time too and I'm glad. :) <br /><br />I saw a new therapist last week, and it was really good, even though I was really strong on the ADD symptoms during the hour I was there... She eventually started to stop me and tell me the next question since I'd answered her previous question. And I was totally ok with it since I always feel like the 1-hour constraints of therapy appointments always feel too short, so I also wanted to move along so we didn't run out of time before we'd gone over all the stuff she wanted to go over. She honestly reminds me of my general prac doctor that I've been seeing since I moved here, which is great. She's succinct and doesn't seem to be either insecure about how well she's doing or focused on being my friend, which is what I need, I think. I need honest answers, the right questions, and solid advice.<br /><br />Oh I need to post this because my laptop battery is low but I don't feel like plugging it in. Anyway. Next post will probably be pictures from vacation. :)<br /><br />Btw I wrote this while a youtube video was playing on the TV so I may have said a few things multiple times xPAshley Spencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09397508998348962392noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6737298045724065027.post-67597644198840556442022-03-24T22:13:00.001-04:002022-03-24T22:13:15.887-04:00I Don't Have That Job Anymore Thank God<p>I was just looking back through a lot of my poetry stuff and I realized that it had been a long time since I'd written anything, and that some of the most recent stuff was literally from the time I tried out being an insurance rep. That didn't last very long, and I think I honestly will need to consider future job offers with a lot more scrutiny since <i>they literally talked me into signing into their pyramid shaped company and telling me I could make my own hours</i> but they thought they could train anyone, and they were wrong. Not everyone is meant to be a salesperson, and I am certainly a great example of that. >_< I hate pretense. I hate following a script. I hate putting on a show in order to convince someone of something they wouldn't have thought of in the first place. I thought I could <i>believe</i> in the importance of having insurance policies, but that wasn't enough, because I had to sell them, too, and that takes more than just "I know people out there are driving around without an insurance policy on them or their partner and their kids are not going to be provided for financially if something<i> </i>happens to them." </p><p>So now I'm a nanny again—I really like it, and that's a good thing, because it isn't easy. This baby isn't even 5 months old yet and he's already exceeding 20 lbs. He's so tall/long and he eats so frickin much! But mostly he's heavy. And holding him takes *groan* upper body strength. T_T But if I'm honest, I'm happy that's the biggest of my worries. His parents are my cousins, I love hanging out with them, they're wonderful people and it's a blessing to be close by them, and I don't know what I would be trying to do as a career if it hadn't been for the chance to nanny for them. Sure, I'm not charging them the rate I would have charged a stranger I was contacted by online, because they're family. But it's worth it to me, in so many ways. </p><p>Anyways, I just wanted to update my blog so that the first thing anyone saw wasn't the "I got a job in insurance!" anymore. I won't be posting any photos of the baby for privacy's sake, but lemme tell ya, he's the cutest chumpey to ever chump, I say. Gah he's just so cute. x)</p><p><br /></p><p>Here's the latest poem I've written, I think the inspiration came to me when I was clicking through Spotify and saw some of the old playlists I used to love that brought back a wave of memories.</p><p style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://hellopoetry.com/poem/4558507/tinge/" target="_blank"><span style="color: black;"><b>Tinge</b></span></a></p><p></p><div style="text-align: center;">It comes from nowhere </div><div style="text-align: center;">It's the faint, burning prickle </div><div style="text-align: center;">Springs behind your eyes </div><div style="text-align: center;">Bidding you stop and wonder </div><div style="text-align: center;">Why your breath caught in your throat. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">—ACB 3.24.2022</div><p></p><p></p>Ashley Spencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09397508998348962392noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6737298045724065027.post-62941962870346869302021-04-03T14:00:00.003-04:002021-04-03T14:00:00.188-04:00New Job as insurance benefits rep!<p>10:50 AM - Yooo it's been a long time but I'm posting again! I kinda just want to do some writing to clear my head after being sleepy and having a second cup of coffee after an hour nap on the couch and realizing I really need to get myself up and running so I can get this stuff done.</p><p>So I started working with an insurance company called AIL, the local branch here in Ohio is SSBH, and I've been working on getting into this job for a month now. Yeah. </p><p>First, I had to get the state insurance license, and that course took me almost 2 weeks before I completed it and then signed up to take the exam as soon as I could. Luckily, I passed (only needed a 70%, and I got 77%, whew), and from there I also had some waiting to do before my orientation or training could start. Then, they gave me the script that everyone memorizes, and that's currently where I'm at in the process. I have my final script check on Monday at 9am, and I'm scared I won't get it done. I know I <i>can </i>do it, I just have to <i>make myself</i> do it because it's going to take hours of just plugging away at it.</p><p>So I'm getting over my self-conscious embarrassment of needing to read and repeat this stupid script (it's fine, it's just annoying to anybody who doesn't need to learn it) when Alex is home, I know he doesn't mind because he wants me to start this job just as much as I do, but I ask him to close the office door whenever I'm working on it just because it helps me a bit. So that's something I need to get over, because I literally have just today to work on it, and he's home today so it won't be the "I'm home while he's at work so I can be as focused and loud as I need to be without overthinking it." </p><p>But <b>I can do this.</b></p><p>I'm gonna start working on it here after I use the restroom (second cup of coffee is kicking in lol) and then maybe I'll update this post with how it went. If I don't pass my final script check on Monday, I will have to wait 3 weeks until Brandy's training is finished so that Sky can start training me at the beginning. Brandy's starting on Monday, so I need to be ready, too. oof -.-</p>Ashley Spencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09397508998348962392noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6737298045724065027.post-63160474636190766162020-11-13T12:13:00.001-05:002020-11-13T12:13:30.811-05:00Aerobic exercise! Aerobic exercise in the neighborhood, woo! <div><br /></div><div>I just went for a walk with earbuds and sunglasses and a headband covering my ears and a cloth mask and I gotta say, my lips didn't get dry at all since all the condensation of my breath just got breathed back in, and there wasn't any harsh dry wind blowing on my face either. And it's a good thing because I forgot chapstick. I had a packet of tissues just in case my nose started running, since sometimes it does that when I'm in the cold. But it didn't! 😊 Also my sunglasses stayed on even though the headband over my ears and earbuds was keeping the side pieces of the sunglasses from going between my ears and head like usual, so that was a relief. </div><div><br /></div><div>All in all, it went great and I definitely want to do this again. This time was only about a 25 min walk to the park and back, but I want to go longer and also work on doing some leg and core workouts as well. And sure, earlier this year I went to our community gym owned by the apartment complex, but that was only once. This time I want to aim for small, doable sessions so that I build up my stamina and strengthen my muscles. ^_^ now I'm gonna take a shower because I NEED one now lol</div>Ashley Spencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09397508998348962392noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6737298045724065027.post-44161105874347112952020-11-01T18:08:00.007-05:002020-11-01T18:08:59.620-05:00Coffee in my veins<p>Hey it's been a while!!! </p><p>These days, I've been home most of the time, but my goal is to start back up at work again this week. The reason I stayed home from work in the first place (I'm working with Shipt so it's up to me how much I work or don't work) was because I ran out of my meds and it took about 3 weeks to get all of them refilled. That long without them took a hard hit on my mental health. And it wasn't just my adderall that I ran out of, which would have just sent me back into sleep-all-day-without-energy-to-focus-on-work-or-anything, but it was my antidepressant too. I shoulda gotten back into the groove of things sooner than now, but that's in the past now and I'm just gonna focus on getting up tomorrow on Monday and getting my coffee, meds, breakfast, and being dressed for a day of shopping down in the part of town that gets more Shipt orders in the morning. I think that I'm going to also get something ready for Alex to eat for lunch so that I don't feel tied to coming back at that time so that I can cook him something. </p><p>Lol, Lily is staring at her shadow on the carpet floor... </p><p>Anywho, tomorrow's gonna be good. So during September I decided that I wanted to see how I would feel if I cut out coffee, so I started on October 1st so that I could track it as a month. I made it to the 14th and I was just so drained of everything I needed to do work, and I decided 2 weeks was enough to tell me all I needed to know. I need coffee. After that, I went back to the previous single cup in the morning, but then the past couple days I've been making French press coffee and having a second cup at lunch. I started using the French press because I ran out of normal coffee grounds :P And I've had the special grounds for the French press for a while now, they've just been sitting in my cupboard. And from everything I've seen after having more coffee during the day, it's a lot better, and I've had the motivation I needed to move around and clean the apartment and get things done. I CERTAINLY need to exercise. I've started to become more aware of that lately, and, well, I guess I've finally been able to separate the shame I associated with my general dislike of exercise and failure to meet the expectations of what I should have been able to do physically. My heart rate always skyrocketed whenever Mom would make me work out with her (which was mostly just walking! Speed walking, but still. Also if there was ever any incline, it was instantly a killer for me) and I never made aerobic exercise a routine or habit in order to try to fix this. </p><p>Oh I see what Lily's been staring at!! It's a bug, probably a fruit fly from the bag of garbage I have sitting by the door for me to take out to the dumpster tomorrow...she's hunting it, haha. </p><p>Well :) If anybody reads this, send me a text or an email and let me know how you are doing! I have so much stuff that I need to get better at, and keeping up with my good friends through the internet is one of those things. I just need to establish habits for all of it. Please pray for me, I really need to get these habits in place soon. In a year we might start having kids, and that'll be another thing to learn, so I need to have this stuff down so that it isn't another thing to add to the pile!</p><p>Love you all! Have a great week and a wonderful Thanksgiving. Maybe I'll write again before then, but just in case. :)</p><p> </p><p>haiku: "artificial"</p><br />the days grow shorter<br />the nights bring the need for these<br />artificial lights<br /> <br /><br /><span style="font-size: 12px;">—</span>ACB, Oct 21<br /><br /><br /><br />Ashley Spencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09397508998348962392noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6737298045724065027.post-6632828958061285162020-01-31T11:03:00.001-05:002020-01-31T11:03:09.878-05:00Sitting in StarbucksHow do I sum up what I haven't been keeping this blog updated on for months...<br />
<br />
...First I think I'm gonna go to the starbucks bathroom real quick because my fingernails are too long to type fast. Brb.<br />
<br />
Okay. I'm done clipping.<br />
<br />
Well, there is one thing. I got my first set of tattoos for my birthday last month.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpdWGMq7uittLJVSWTAVKpDtT0PPLAgQENn2q_fOewNAQpquUIt8TERdDtC4fDcOB6zqOpfHz43hImZHYHIBed0gObu1-Tak35JrUE2loaO1PjmT7OEJMCZz5WpDGGg_rFelwixC5mmC7g/s1600/tattoo+and+dinner.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="1600" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpdWGMq7uittLJVSWTAVKpDtT0PPLAgQENn2q_fOewNAQpquUIt8TERdDtC4fDcOB6zqOpfHz43hImZHYHIBed0gObu1-Tak35JrUE2loaO1PjmT7OEJMCZz5WpDGGg_rFelwixC5mmC7g/s320/tattoo+and+dinner.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Eating at a local pizza place afterwards!</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgw5psj15Rt24KJ9WzNsgmUoN6nz7Zhl5oGksKMZp4F99mXoX5Wjxlsyz4K2CGUHEzzyxHZoH1A9QfsCFCChA2x-B_anuMGgH29yagjGaaLfcGSgQCBbquS9Xrn6ewzSz3ubqsXRqg_0w30/s1600/breathe+pray+tattoos.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgw5psj15Rt24KJ9WzNsgmUoN6nz7Zhl5oGksKMZp4F99mXoX5Wjxlsyz4K2CGUHEzzyxHZoH1A9QfsCFCChA2x-B_anuMGgH29yagjGaaLfcGSgQCBbquS9Xrn6ewzSz3ubqsXRqg_0w30/s320/breathe+pray+tattoos.jpg" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A couple days afterwards, when they had healed a bit</td></tr>
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That was really fun, and for anyone wondering, the font type was <b>Bodoni Book</b>. Just because it was close enough to the complex serif-fonts that I was looking at, but simple enough to show up in a tattoo that small (according to the artists at the shop, Moon Light Tattoos in Loveland).<br />
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Other than that, well, the job that I started back in September (just a few weeks after the Aug 31st wedding), it's coming to an end, as I put in my two-week's notice on Monday.<br />
<br />
Makes me think of that Michael Jr. standup clip where he talks about how he was just gonna leave his job, and didn't care about waiting two weeks, saying something like, "Two weeks from now, you're gonna notice, I ain't been here for two weeks." I can identify with that. I've had a couple bad days since Monday when the combination of 1) the weather being too gloomy to feel like the sun would ever come back, 2) the way my sleep schedule and breakfast habits had gotten backed up and tangled up, and 3) the simple knowledge that all my work duties had been completed in advance and I wouldn't have anything pressing to keep me occupied during the day if I went in, was all so much weight pulling against any desire to get up and drive to work just to not be needed that I called off early in the morning.<br />
<br />
...It's times like this that I look at a sentence I've just pieced together and edited a couple times and wonder, "will anybody actually understand that, even if grammatically I've not made any real mistakes?" Makes me kick myself and then think about how it would have come out even worse if I was just rambling in your ear trying to make sense without editing any of it first.<br />
<br />
Whatever. If someone cares to understand it, they can read it again, and that's what I like about written communication. Sure, you can try to remember what someone said afterwards, but man, if they say a lot for a long time, how much of it will you actually be able to remember verbatim? There's also just the human capability to misinterpret a phrase, and then reiterate it in their own words as if quoting that person, which can seem like they're purposefully twisting their words if the original speaker heard their account. God knows I've seen that happen way too much at my job in the kitchen. Sure, none of it came from my boss who hired me and holds my utmost respect for being both a hard worker, a good leader, and a kind, understanding individual with an incredible amount of patience. He doesn't try to get into the details of whose fault it was, but just tells them to quit acting like kids. I mean, he doesn't phrase it that way, I don't think. I can't remember his exact words x) anyway.<br />
<br />
So while I'm sitting here...what are some things I need to get off my chest, things that I've put off posting about, that I have the time and presence of mind to attempt a record of?<br />
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Then that makes me wonder, what is really worth writing? Is it to help me, to let people know how I am, or just to occupy my mind this morning as I try not to think about the fact that I don't have a job after this one and I just need to get in with a psychiatrist so I can start going to therapy again and also have more insight into the medicinal side of my treatment? I did look up the people on the list of psychologists that our insurance covers, and I found one that's also a psychiatrist. That's been something I've needed to do for over a year, it's what my doctor keeps saying that I'll need to do "if this next addition to my meds isn't working" because she won't have any other go-to's with her general practice's experience and training.<br />
<br />
Okay so the thing with my sentences being so long and convoluted: there's two possibilities that I'm considering. One is the possibility that I've been away from school for too long, and I've just been in a working environment where being a wordsmith or even grammatically correct was nowhere on the radar of my coworkers; another is the possibility that I've always been kind of rambly with my speech and writing, but I used to have the attention span to re-read what I'd written and then change it, while now I instead just give up and leave with a sense of having lost my capacity for meaningful and succinct communication. I think it's a combination of both. But still, I don't think I'd fix the problem just by reading books more and conversing with people whose vocabulary and patterns of speech are richer and more "bookish" the way I want to be able to think and therefore write... Maybe I'm just going through a crisis of voice. What do I want my voice to be as a writer? How do I want to come across to readers, and do I really need to try to "be something I'm not" by using bigger words or better phrases? I don't know. I do know that I do want to be able to convey deeper messages than can generally be conveyed through casual, conversational language. I want to talk about life and death, aspirations and disappointments, and all the things I try to solve in my thoughts. I want to put it in writing so that I don't just keep turning it over and over in my mind, which, while my meds have helped with that "circular, non-stop jumping from one thought to another" feeling that was overwhelming back in 2016, isn't neurotypical quite yet, I can say. There's still some imbalances of serotonin and whatever else is missing up there. The obsessive compulsion to always write in full, non-fragmented sentences is a trait of one of those imbalances, I'm sure. Or it's a result of the imbalance having been part of my growing up for those developmental years, and has now made a permanent mark on my perception of myself and the world around me.<br />
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I also use passive voice a lot, and I remember that back in 2011 and before, my MS Word grammar correction would underline sentences with passive voice as if it were incorrect. It's not only a reflection of my "passive" nature of not wanting to attribute blame to anyone in particular when speaking about a problem, but it's an aspect of the Indonesian language that I was introduced to when my parents were recounting their language learning lessons during our first year in the country. I didn't really have my own lens to look at that world through, but I knew what my parents thought of all the cultural differences. Sometimes I sided with them in their first-world bias, and other times I rejected their aversion to the culture I lived in from age 8 to 16.... Did I just jump from the subject of my speech patterns, to my mental health, to my speech patterns, to my childhood and thoughts of my parents' influence on my perception of the world?<br />
<br />
I think that this is exactly the type of thing I've needed to put into writing. I don't know if it will offend anyone reading, or if this instance of vulnerability will come back to haunt me. Not like many people read my blog. I did that on purpose. But hey... If that dream of becoming an author did come true, I think the kind of people who would be fans of my fiction or poetry would be the kinds of people who would read my old blog posts and discuss them in ways that might make me regret how open I'd been.<br />
<br />
But maybe I could just get over it and not worry about how one future version of me might think I'd been too brave. I've heard that people regret the things that they didn't do more than the things they did. One of those deathbed revelation things, like "go for it while you're alive, because there's going to come a time where you'll wish you had taken that chance while you had it."<br />
<br />
Or maybe I just have a bloated sense of self, and I should think of myself less, and instead figure out what to focus on.... But then I think, if I don't know myself, both in my strengths and my weaknesses, how will I make good decisions in situations where knowing if I would be a help or a hindrance by offering advice or assistance? One feeling that I hate is that of realizing that I made things worse by trying to insert myself into the situation, because I really didn't know the background of the issue and the root of the conflict. When I try to mediate an argument, I don't want to make it worse by interfering, of course! And I would know if I was going to be halting progress if I knew myself and my limitations. And solving arguments is just one example of things you need experience and knowledge of yourself in order to succeed....succeed in...no, that's a prepositional....what's-it-called... Split prepositions? No, that's split imperatives that I'm thinking of. It's a rule that prepositions need to have their object coming after them, but is that a preposition?<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>Solving arguments is just one example (of things (that you need experience and knowledge of yourself) (in order) (to succeed in)). </i></blockquote>
Prepositions that have that many words inside them are clauses, right?<br />
<br />
In a way, I want to go back to school to brush up on my memorized knowledge of grammar. But man, thinking about going back to school just makes my bones shake. Some of the worst moments of frozen panic that I've ever experienced were brought on by the multitude of anxieties that being a student can produce. Do I really want to do that to myself again? Or, rather, have I really grown and healed enough from that point that I could do any better a second time around? I hate making the same mistake twice. I really don't want to make an expensive mistake like that twice, either, especially since so many people's expectations would be upon me. I almost want to secretly get an online degree and not bother to tell people who wouldn't need to know.<br />
<br />
Do I really care that much about what people think of me?<br />
<br />
Yes. Parents and in-laws want me to succeed, to be happy, and to have a good job and a chance to move up in life, and I don't want to make them wonder if I'm really happy when I fail out of college a second time. If I do. I don't know.<br />
<br />
This is how my thoughts unfold...hard to follow, maybe, but probably just hard to understand the logic and reasoning in the leaps of conclusions. I have trouble getting to the root of why I think one thing about a way I feel. Like, there's so much history and cultural association and learned bias that goes into one's worldview and just general interpretation of the events of one's life. It's something that a therapist dives into and brings a fresh, structured perspective to in order to solve the barriers that their client has in front of them holding them back from a normal life. That's something I'll be really benefiting from as soon as I can get in with a psychologist/psychiatrist. I was seeing Neila last year, but things got busy and I was working almost full time and things seemed to be going pretty great every time I visited, so I came less often. Then I got married and things were wonderful and I had that extra boost to get me off of one dark thought and back to reality. But winter changes those things, and I need to get back in with a therapist so that I can regain the stability that I need.<br />
<br />
I think this has been a pretty good summary of the contents of my thoughts. I should get some solid food in me so that all this coffee doesn't just throw me into a jittery, obsessive track that ends up dumping me into an exhausted heap on the couch in a few hours... It might already be on that track, seeing as I've been writing pretty obsessively for about an hour and 45 minutes, but eh. I'll work it out. Food.<br />
<br />
I could make some pigs-in-a-blanket and clean up the kitchen while they're in the oven, that would be good. It would get me back home, too. I don't really want to run errands until I get worn out. I think this is a good plan. :) I should post more pictures of me and Lily, too. I have a cat! taken in from my cousin whose other two boy cats were harassing it into a paranoid behavior that wasn't going away no matter what she tried. She's completely changed, has a brand new personality, actually wants to be out and around people, and gives love and attention in a way she never did before. It's beautiful.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1rbCO8QXLutSmyLxxj0lwv4GiKz2GDj016rswnHvlh9NZP36ykucdIdceXeZNz1zyxIGmhLOBpuKYCRvGV3IgUiJSZkVdyfVwAD9CQT7P_X4t5yteEr4E_mhPV9R6MsYAUjFVfPwpsrzw/s1600/20200129_170045.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1rbCO8QXLutSmyLxxj0lwv4GiKz2GDj016rswnHvlh9NZP36ykucdIdceXeZNz1zyxIGmhLOBpuKYCRvGV3IgUiJSZkVdyfVwAD9CQT7P_X4t5yteEr4E_mhPV9R6MsYAUjFVfPwpsrzw/s400/20200129_170045.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Lily curled up in this space beside me on the couch and fell asleep like that. This was exactly the comfort I needed.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Okay, I'll close this off and start packing up to go home. Thanks to anyone who read or skimmed any of this, and I hope your day is filled with uplifting thoughts and that you are able to spread joy to someone else during your interactions with people.<br />
<br />
God bless,<br />
<br />
—ACS 1.31.2020<br />
(still haven't gone to social security offices to change my last name yet)<br />
<br />
oh yeah, and coronavirus. we're worried it'll become a panicky thing. so we got shelf-stable foods and water bottles just in case nationwide panic ensues. I feel like it's a kind of "prepper" sort of action to take, but at least I'll use all this stuff anyway, even if we don't lose power or need to stop using the tap water. Just in case. :/ Okay. Bye!Ashley Spencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09397508998348962392noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6737298045724065027.post-32358383904726418282020-01-19T08:51:00.001-05:002020-01-19T08:51:42.777-05:00poem of a winter morning<div data-reddit-rtjson="{"entityMap":{},"blocks":[{"key":"7jh0k","text":"1/10/20","type":"unstyled","depth":0,"inlineStyleRanges":[],"entityRanges":[],"data":{}},{"key":"569t6","text":"Even though the sky is dreary \nAnd of my own thoughts I'm leery \nI must not give in to them \nSomehow I must think more clearly. \n \nI turned on the living room light \nAnd thoughts of sleeping all set flight \nWhy I sat in the dark alone \nI don't know, but this feels right. \n \nI've taken the dose of vitamin D \nI've listened to my stomach's plea \nTo give it healthy, complex carbs \nSo I hope today is better for me. ","type":"unstyled","depth":0,"inlineStyleRanges":[],"entityRanges":[],"data":{}}]}">
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="8913ea" data-offset-key="8913ea_initial-0-0">
<div class="public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="8913ea_initial-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="8913ea_initial-0-0">1/10/20</span></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="8913ea" data-offset-key="9oepc-0-0">
<div class="public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="9oepc-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="9oepc-0-0">Even though the sky is dreary </span></div>
<div class="public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="9oepc-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="9oepc-0-0"> And of my own thoughts I'm leery </span></div>
<div class="public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="9oepc-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="9oepc-0-0"> I must not give in to them </span></div>
<div class="public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="9oepc-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="9oepc-0-0"> Somehow I must think more clearly. </span></div>
<div class="public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="9oepc-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="9oepc-0-0"> </span></div>
<div class="public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="9oepc-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="9oepc-0-0">I turned on the living room light </span></div>
<div class="public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="9oepc-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="9oepc-0-0"> And thoughts of sleeping all set flight </span></div>
<div class="public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="9oepc-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="9oepc-0-0"> Why I sat in the dark alone </span></div>
<div class="public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="9oepc-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="9oepc-0-0"> I don't know, but this feels right. </span></div>
<div class="public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="9oepc-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="9oepc-0-0"><br /></span></div>
<div class="public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="9oepc-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="9oepc-0-0">I've taken the dose of vitamin D </span></div>
<div class="public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="9oepc-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="9oepc-0-0"> I've listened to my stomach's plea </span></div>
<div class="public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="9oepc-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="9oepc-0-0"> To give it healthy, complex carbs </span></div>
<div class="public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="9oepc-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="9oepc-0-0"> So I hope today is better for me. </span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="9oepc-0-0"><br /></span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="9oepc-0-0"><br /></span></div>
</div>
</div>
Ashley Spencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09397508998348962392noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6737298045724065027.post-48312799883881998252019-07-03T18:09:00.000-04:002019-07-03T18:09:11.070-04:00we got professional photos taken o.oThese are our engagement photos:<br />
<br />
<a href="https://gallery.yoxphotography.com/-ashleyalexengagement/gallery">https://gallery.yoxphotography.com/-ashleyalexengagement/gallery</a><br />
<br class="Apple-interchange-newline" />I think you should be able to access them, but there might be a login thing, I don't know. but if it works then sweet 👍These are just some of my favorites, but the full rez ones will be in the link.<br />
<br />
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<br />Ashley Spencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09397508998348962392noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6737298045724065027.post-14754349151699062662019-07-03T11:53:00.006-04:002019-07-03T11:56:55.102-04:007.3 Whew, wedding planning...<h2>
I Want To Invite Everyone</h2>
<h3>
And I don't know what to do about it.</h3>
<div>
But seriously. If you read this blog then you're someone I want to invite. I didn't share this blog with eeeverybody on, like, my Facebook friends list, or anything like that. Just y'all. Like 6 or 7 of you. </div>
<div>
It's August 31st in Ohio, and if you could make it and want to come, I've probably already added you to my guest list (the invitations are going out really soon, I promise!) and you may have received my Save-The-Date email if I had the right address for you. </div>
<div>
I think of new people every week that I want to invite, people that I want to be able to come and just have fun and get to be there for my wedding, and there are so many already in my list from my 75+ extended family members, to my parents' and Alex's parents' family friends from both AZ and OH, to the special little group of my college roommates I was able to round up to be part of my bridesmaids.... There are just so many. And Alex doesn't want me to add a hundred more people just in case we have to feed 300+ people because we are not prepared for that. :/ </div>
<div>
I'm just so torn. </div>
<div>
Like, back in November when Alex proposed to me, and we hadn't started talking about wedding dates yet, I thought it would be sooner than it ended up being. And I sorta thought it would be SO long to wait. But now, I feel like I wish I had more time to prepare, or at least had set my due dates a month earlier than I needed them, because now I HAVE to send out all the invitations and I just now finished designing them (my dad's printing and mailing them all, thank the Lord) and I realized I haven't organized everybody's mailing addresses in one place. >.< What am I doing? How did I miss that?</div>
<div>
And then there were some people whose email addresses hadn't been correct when I sent the Save-The-Date back in April or whenever it was. So they don't know when or where my wedding is and they're asking my mom. >.< aaaackk </div>
<div>
So many of the people I love <i>are</i> on the list, though, and that's awesome and for the ones that I already know are going to be there, that's amazing! I am excited, I am glad, and I'll be thrilled to see everyone on the big day.</div>
<div>
But now I need to go make a little document with the RSVP and Registry info on it so Dad can put that slip of paper in with all the invitations. xP</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
--ACS, July 3rd, 2019</div>
Ashley Spencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09397508998348962392noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6737298045724065027.post-60633744131816366722019-05-15T10:21:00.003-04:002019-05-15T10:21:51.851-04:005.15 Sitting in StarbucksSo I'm sitting in a brand new Starbucks right now. It's so new, I hadn't even heard that they were opening a new one here until I drove by last week and saw the sign on the unfinished building. And today, I saw that the parking lot was full and the drive-thru screen was on, and everything looked like it had opened!<br />
so I pulled into the next road, which was a gas station, haha, and since the parking lots didn't seem to connect, I said "oh whatever, I'll just park here and walk over." So I did.<br />
<br />
(So there's a man with a David Crowder-ish beard, glasses, and a cap that I saw in the corner of the cafe and did a double-take because he looks just like Alex's uncle Dan from this distance. It's his dad's never-married brother, who's never come up to visit us, so we just stop in to visit him every time we're in town. He's a cool dude, owns an art gallery and plays Dungeons & Dragons. The first time I met him, it had been a while since Alex had seen him, and Alex kind of discovered his awesome uncle and it was really cool. ^_^ But yeah. It's not him, he wouldn't be here, but lol it really looks like him.)<br />
<br />
Okay back to whatever I was going to be talking about. I'm loving this slow jazz music they're playing. It's totally relaxing and makes me feel like it was a good decision to come here :)<br />
Ah yesss. So, I'm starting to think about switching this blog from Blogger over to another platform. Blogger was connected with Google+ and it made it easier to log in and post that way, but now that Google+ has been absolved (lol or whatever you would call it), some of the functions aren't working as well, and I'm just feeling like I'd like a change.<br />
Blogger's been a great place to post content for a long time, and as I've been using it since, like, way back in 2012 or something when I used it for my serial story The Note, I don't want to put in all the work to change host websites if I am going to have to do it again in a few years. But I don't want to spend a lot of money on, like, a whole website....but I could have a really big one, if I used it as both a blog and a place to post my new music and maybe have some marketing stuff for the book I self-published in 2017. And maybe I could start some other projects, things that I might want to go to school for, like website designing and programming. I don't know if I'll go into IT specifically or if I'll decide that I want to do teaching or tutoring, or something else like that. Maybe speech therapy.<br />
Anyway, it would be super fun to build a website and I think I would really enjoy the nitty gritty details and just getting to learn stuff along the way. The few times that I've done basic HTML code were always a fun exercise. I have a cool uncle who's given me some tips and a few places to start. :)<br />
So yeah. If I do build a website, I'm pretty sure I could set this old blog up to redirect to the new place. There's a spot for that in the settings, anyway.<br />
I'm gonna go research that stuff. ^_^<br />
—ACS, May 15, 2019Ashley Spencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09397508998348962392noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6737298045724065027.post-2484824221824235712019-04-23T11:26:00.003-04:002019-04-24T20:19:13.820-04:00Surprise days off :O<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
Hey =) Positive update on how I've felt slightly stressed with work:<br />
<br />
I had a really nice day yesterday when I decided to check my work schedule to make sure I was supposed to come in -- and I had the day off! Praise the Lord. because I needed to take a morning to breathe. and make a breakfast sandwich. from bread that I baked on Wednesday. :)<br />
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I even ended up going shopping with Mrs. Broening to look for a new dress for the engagement photoshoot that Alex and I are going to have. I tried on 8 dresses at JC Penney's (lol yes it was a lot, but I at least like to think that I go faster now than I did in the past when shopping with her or my mom.) There were several dresses that I really liked, 2 that I would have bought, but we were just there for one, so I made the choice and maybe I'll go back with Alex sometime to look at some of the less fancy dresses that I had to pass over because of the occasion we were shopping for. :) But it felt good, uplifting to me, to <b>analyze</b> the clothing racks, discover a <b>hint</b> of a nice color behind the blacks and the jewel tones that would just absolutely make me look like a ghost, and to feel like an explorer in the jungle when I'd find the one <b>medium</b> in the sea of X-Small's and XX-Large's. The rare finds in the clearance section. The ridiculous styles that I saw and thought, "You know, I'll just try it on for fun." It was a breath of fresh air and a great time with my future mother-in-law.<br />
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After JC Penney's (where we bought the one dress), we tried Kohl's, but I didn't like the way any of the 5 or 6 outfits looked when I tried them on...there were a couple jumpsuits (the kind where it looks like a summer dress from far away and then when you take it off the rack, you realize it's not a skirt but Pants that are just flowy) that I tried on just for fun, because hey, I'm tall, but if there was one that looked good on me, it would be nice (and with jumpsuits you never have to worry about the wind blowing your shirt around). But none of them were a good fit, but it was okay because we already had the best JC Penney option. We just wanted to make sure there wasn't one gem waiting in the Kohl's store that would completely blow the other dress out of the water. But there wasn't, so we kept the JC Penney's dress. *ahem*<br />
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At that point it wasn't too late in the afternoon yet, so we talked about what else we could get done for wedding planning while I still had the day off. And I felt super proud of myself for being prepared and thinking ahead and being mindful of the errands I'd need to run/items I'd need to purchase: I had <i>a List. </i><br />
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(I just really wanted to show some kind of dorky excited gif about how I felt when I pulled that out and had the perfect thing for us to accomplish next.)<br />
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And everything turned out awesome: of the stuff on my list that I could look into without needing to choose them with Alex, most of them were bridal accessories.<br />
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So I don't know if I've shared this on my blog before, but a while ago when my family was staying with me (after Christmas when I'd traveled with them for several weeks and we were in my apartment while my dad & brothers did some maintenance on my car and my mom and I tackled some wedding planning stuff), I made a list of the aspects of a wedding, and I ranked them by how important of an issue it was to me.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizPUaRp-TRNYsJPWiOlIhmvsYW-iUu9cFKh1cOfRnNZNhbhCQlMsFEmK5Dn1xd0Nko5KQF8PJvkFD2zaRdLV73up3mUpvETLAsVciZOx_hM2eqSBw8meFOo5S8sH9iYqXVMDkEkeE8YMSl/s1600/Screenshot_20190204-065840.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1280" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizPUaRp-TRNYsJPWiOlIhmvsYW-iUu9cFKh1cOfRnNZNhbhCQlMsFEmK5Dn1xd0Nko5KQF8PJvkFD2zaRdLV73up3mUpvETLAsVciZOx_hM2eqSBw8meFOo5S8sH9iYqXVMDkEkeE8YMSl/s400/Screenshot_20190204-065840.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This is completely unrelated but I saw it while scrolling down to find the picture from January that I actually wanted to share, and I remembered it and had to post it so I can laugh at it and share an ADD moment with you...okay...on to the actual topic</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3tWxIvgEkNBKgUIGHln778jE2RDeO4-S7NO2BQBCqVDZq4lloPLoGjRnxJQ6kTErPF0Cr_P3Wce2gZloEazZTznGtXl4D_2USgjteR34iEXiuOOTmDgOQQVPVSA3NCAAFWbpLCv0zKNW2/s1600/image000000_01.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3tWxIvgEkNBKgUIGHln778jE2RDeO4-S7NO2BQBCqVDZq4lloPLoGjRnxJQ6kTErPF0Cr_P3Wce2gZloEazZTznGtXl4D_2USgjteR34iEXiuOOTmDgOQQVPVSA3NCAAFWbpLCv0zKNW2/s320/image000000_01.jpg" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This is what Mom and Rickey were doing while I wrote up my master plan on the sweet new whiteboard they'd helped me install on my pantry door. </td></tr>
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Here!! These are all things I need to plan for the wedding, all things that need to be decided on and planned and bought and scheduled and organized, and I put numbers to them all so that I could express which ones were important enough for me to spend more money/more time on them, and which ones I just needed someone to help me make a quick decision about and move on with. <br />
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And guess what Mrs. Broening and I had the time to do? <br />
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Shoes.<br />
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The shoes that I wear at my wedding are a really important part of the whole day, to me, and I was going to make sure that adequate attention was given, ahead of time, to picking just the right pair of shoes so that I would<br />
<ol>
<li>be comfy while standing,</li>
<li>feel awesome while dancing,</li>
<li>feel good about the shoe style in the pictures, and</li>
<li>be able to afford them.</li>
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And with the saving that I've been doing lately, I believe the 2 pairs that I had to decide between (I bought both, brought them home, and Alex helped me pick the right pair when he came over, so I'll be returning the other pair on Wednesday) were a great fulfillment of my 4 criteria. I felt great. And now, after showing it to Alex and having the chance to chat about the overarching purpose of shoes (not just to be comfy for one day, but to display the image that we are wanting to impart in our wedding ceremony and the image that we want to look back and remember when we look at our wedding photos for the next 60 years), I feel even better. I guess this is what being productive and accomplishing goals feels like. :)</div>
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And then after that, I checked <i>the List</i> again, and ooh, planning & booking honeymoon lodging was on there. Something Alex and I needed to get done together. And we had time to do it. >:D I was on a roll!</div>
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And after looking at stuff for a few hours and finding something perfect that was completely in a different area than the state that we had been poring over for the past few weeks (lol), we decided on a spot in Gatlinburg, TN, and Alex went home and booked it last night. ^_^</div>
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So I have to get ready to go to work now, but yesterday was pretty great. I just wanted to share the exciting stuff I was able to get done, and talk about how helpful it was for me to actually accomplish something instead of just talking about getting it done at some point (while not having the time to ever get it done, since I was always either waking up preparing to <b>go</b> to work, or was <b>at</b> work and keeping up my energy and motivation to <b>keep</b> working, or <b>home</b> from work <b>recovering</b> from the mental exhaustion that I'm getting better and better at handling now that I've had this 40-hr/wk job for a few months now). </div>
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Things are looking up. I am smiley. Thank you all for your support and prayers for me, and just the little things you say and the ways you make me smile. I love you all, and can't wait to see you soon (at the wedding, or even sooner!)</div>
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Bye! <3</div>
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-ACS (for now), April 23, 2019<br />
<br />Ashley Spencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09397508998348962392noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6737298045724065027.post-63503310622001277612019-04-05T09:57:00.001-04:002019-04-05T09:57:53.504-04:00Alex's birthday today :DOkay. I have a little bit of time as I'm coloring my hair this morning to write about everything I've already done today (and it's only 9:45 AM).<br />
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So I woke up super early (that's been happening a lot lately, especially when I have work, which is at 10:30 this morning and 10:00 on most weekday mornings). At first, I was just going to try to go back to sleep since I didn't really have to be up for another 3 or 4 hours, but then I remembered that it was Alex's birthday and that I hadn't done anything special for him yet, even though I'd been coming up with ideas the past few weeks. And then it hit me.<br />
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Walmart. I can go get him some groceries, like he's been needing for a while, plus his favorite cereal and some breakfast chocolate shakes and some other things for his mornings. I'll buy it this morning and bring it tonight to the cousins' apartment when we get together for our weekly game night. OR I could drive down and bring it to him before he left for work!!<br />
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It was a brilliant plan. I had hours until I needed to even get to work, and Alex started work earlier than me so I would have time to bring him the grocer<span style="font-family: inherit;">ies<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: 16px;">—</span>and<span style="color: #222222;"><span style="background-color: white;"> </span></span>oh! coffee, I should bring him coffee!<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: 16px;">—and still have time to see him off to work, come home myself, get ready, and leave for my work. It was foolproof.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: 16px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: 16px;">(I kind of feel like I'm quoting the Megamind movie at some point but whatever. I loved scheming. For a birthday surprise.)</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: 16px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: 16px;">BUT yeah. I was going to order the stuff from the Walmart Grocery app and see what the earliest pickup time was, but alas, even at 5:20 AM when I was looking at it, their earliest time was 9-10AM. Maybe I wouldn't have time to bring it to him before he left work after all. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: 16px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: 16px;">I picked that slot and started filling my online cart, and had new gift ideas as I went along. I was having fun. I got up and cooked myself a sausage for breakfast and warmed up yesterday's coffee (the 3 ounces or so that were left in the pot....yeah....writing it out makes it sound weird now...) and then I remembered I hadn't checked out and bought the groceries yet. I needed to pay and order it so that I could pick it up at that time slot that I'd selected....but then when I looked, I had waited too long and that time slot had expired so the next time was 10-11AM. </span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: inherit; font-size: 16px;">I wasn't going to have time to get it before even I went to work. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: 16px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: 16px;">And then the plan took new form in my mind. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: 16px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: 16px;"><i>What if I just went to Walmart and shopped for this stuff right now? It's open 24 hours, and I have a car now (and I won't need to get a ride like I used to have to) and I have enough time.</i></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: 16px;"><i><br /></i></span></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: 16px;">So that's what I did. And it felt great to venture out and put my plan into action. x)</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: 16px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: 16px;">Okay...I have to finish my hair now, so I'll post this but I might write a part 2 about how I got lost on the way to his apartment and didn't know if he was even waking up early because he might have taken the day off from work like he had been thinking of.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: 16px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: 16px;">Bye!</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: 16px;"><br /></span></span>Ashley Spencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09397508998348962392noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6737298045724065027.post-51437698576464761902019-01-08T14:36:00.001-05:002019-01-08T14:36:46.773-05:00I'm Bored at Work....what??<p dir="ltr">So I got this new job as a dishwasher, and they're not even always bringing dirty dishes. It's pretty slow so far today. I came in at 11, and it was so weird... <br>
It's because it's a movie theater (I'm working in the kitchen, which this theater has because it's a Dine-In theater) and movies don't start showing until early afternoon... And it's an 11am-7pm shift... So yeah it's a weird feeling to be bored at work. Just needed to say that here. <br>
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Ashley Spencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09397508998348962392noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6737298045724065027.post-17805292565366969432018-12-11T15:53:00.003-05:002018-12-11T15:53:37.336-05:00Starbucks and me just being relaxed<b>Location:</b> <span style="background-color: #e06666;">Starbucks</span>, I've stopped on my way home to redeem my birthday drink :)<br />
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<b>Time:</b> 2:30 PM, after seeing Neila and painting for a really nice therapy session<br />
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<b>Mood</b> (1 to 10, 10 = fantastic, 1 = absolutely horrible): <span style="background-color: #e06666;">6</span>, better than 3 hrs ago because I am making decisions and deciding to live my life and not care that I'm walking into a Starbucks (with maybe 2 people even sitting inside) in my house slippers, and not caring :P<br />
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<b>Last Meal: </b>I ate cereal this morning<br />
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<b>Coffee:</b> I had one small cup at like 11, and I'm at Starbucks drinking a grande peppermint mocha. :) I can tell that <span style="background-color: #e06666;">I needed more coffee</span>. xP<br />
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<b>General schedule of the day:</b> Tonight, Alex and I are going to hang out, whether we go out to dinner or hang out at his place, I'm not sure. We're going out either tonight or tomorrow night.<br />
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<b>Objective:</b> I'm writing here so that I can figure out where I am at the moment, and what I feel like I want to do with the rest of my day. I want to get into a headspace where I can decide what will be helpful for me when I feel "meh" and "ugh" like this morning and so many other mornings. Like knowing that <span style="background-color: #e06666;">coffee really helps</span>.<br />
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<b>Dump Zone:</b></div>
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<a name='more'></a>Whew. :)<br />
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I enjoy coming to Starbucks and sitting with my laptop, or a notebook, or my Nintendo Switch, or whatever. It's a place where no one knows me or has any expectations on me, except that I will be quiet and not make weird eye contact with them or try to interact. I like that. No expectations. </div>
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It's also fun to be in a different environment. There's that ambient noise, the big windows, the cute art on the one wall, and the baristas working and wanting to be good employees and also have a fun time at their job. </div>
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When I came in, no one was in line, and the parking lot was pretty empty, so it was a relief to know that I could take my time with making sure I did still have my Gold membership to get the free drink with...and choose said drink... So yeah, I came up to the counter and I had been looking around at the building and seeing how it was big and had an interestingly-placed front door and awning. And I said to the guy (who kinda looked like a discount Ed Sheeran, with a...hm, what's it called...a newsboy hat), "Have you guys recently renovated this location, or have I just never been inside this one?"</div>
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And he kind of looks around and says, "....I think you've just never been inside." </div>
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And it was the haha-he-must-think-I'm-a-weird-customer moment where I laughed at myself and smiled, thankful that he wasn't reacting in a way that made me feel stupid. In my head I was confidently accepting, <i>"I'm a drive-through customer, and I'm loyal to coming here when I need Starbucks coffee. I've just always gotten it at the drive through and then parked and sat in my car as I processed whatever I was trying to process. I've even sat in this parking lot waiting for a mechanic to come help me restart my battery after I thought it died."</i></div>
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Out loud, I said, "Yeah, I guess I just always use the drive through. But yeah--" I looked around with an impressed expression-- "this location is nice!"</div>
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He smiled and asked, like, what I was here for, and I hmm-ed and huh-ed for a split second and then went into "I'm ADD but I can get the point across and he's here to help me so I can just start talking and not feel self-conscious, it's okay" mode.<br />
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"So, it's my birthday, and I want to redeem my birthday drink, but I'm not sure if I have to do anything to make sure...." And I started digging in my purse and talking about how I was tangled up (because I had my drawstring bag around my shoulders on top of my purse cross-body strap)--</div>
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<b>oh my gosh</b> xDDD Will, Alex's brother, who I saw last night at my birthday celebration and everything, is here at this Starbucks!<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEg2vumZ_bKPYacV1RCHNv9MsHgdkeL86Wy2_O3Ik7jJZMpSeTtPp7Zx2mCesm77ttny6NmGYRqXEPaGonCIVCtBZyBpfTaW6NT7_WwvPUJT800WpUJCHcu_J9ovJb4Brl5K3IdmzgJvYl/s1600/IMG_20181211_152253_01.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1280" data-original-width="720" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEg2vumZ_bKPYacV1RCHNv9MsHgdkeL86Wy2_O3Ik7jJZMpSeTtPp7Zx2mCesm77ttny6NmGYRqXEPaGonCIVCtBZyBpfTaW6NT7_WwvPUJT800WpUJCHcu_J9ovJb4Brl5K3IdmzgJvYl/s200/IMG_20181211_152253_01.jpg" width="112" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">I didn't take a pic when he was here<br />but he was literally in front of me lol</td></tr>
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Lol I didn't even realize he was here until the person in my peripheral (in front of me lol) turned around and lifted his hands and said, "What are you doing here?" in the most incredulous, what-kind-of-coincidence-is-this, why-didn't-you-notice-me-first kind of voice. It took a moment to click that the guy was Will, and I did a little gasp and threw my hands in the air and exclaimed, "Oh my gosh!" and then covered my mouth because I realized everyone in the coffee shop (which does have a lot of ambient noise and music playing, but still, I was kinda loud) turned around when I shouted, hahaha.</div>
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"You know that I work in the building right over there, right?" he said, and I was like "Ohh, yeah. Haha" "What are you doing here?"</div>
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"Oh, you know, just hanging out, writing--" and he was like "But why here?" or something and I was like, "Well, I'm still loyal to my coffee shop, but, it's my birthday" [duh] "and Starbucks gives you a free drink, so here I am" and he nodded like yeah that makes sense</div>
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And he said how he had to come in to work an hour early, and he'll probably have to stay an hour late, so he's taking as many breaks as he can, lol. He was there with a coworker who just stayed over at the counter waiting for her drink, she looked like older 30s or 40 and like a normal coworker from a place, like yeah she didn't really say hi or anything. But yeah it was funny. </div>
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I said, "Well yeah I hope you have a good day, even though it's long!" and he said "Yeah thanks. Happy birthday!" and went over and got </div>
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They keep playing the toby Mac song "I See You In Everything" even when he's a Christian artist, it's kind of funny but cool! I loved Toby Mac in middle school and stuff when I discovered him when we came back to the States in 7th grade and he was on the radio and stuff. Like when "City On Our Knees" came out. And Mom and Dad were like, "Do you know who this is? This is the rapper guy from dc Talk! We were huge fans of them back when we were dating! We went to like three of their shows, and since we were at a big church, they came and did one of them there at the church! We were the OG fans." Hahaha</div>
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Anyway Will went back to chatting with his coworker and I smiled at my computer and laughed to myself. I didn't even notice that it was him, it's so funny. </div>
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I just texted Alex that I saw his brother. x) </div>
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Haha...okay. I really wish that I had been able to find my earbuds in my purse, because listening to music would just absolutely make this perfect right now. As it is, I need to pee, and I'm sitting with my stuff scattered around me on my chair and on the floor next to me and my phone is plugged in and I'm cross-legged with this laptop and I put my hair up in a bun without a hair-tie by using the string of my hoodie to scrunch it up on my head since my hair being down was making me feel hot......</div>
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I don't really feel like going home yet, because I feel like I could hang out here for so much longer, but unless I could just ask these two people next to me who are talking if they could watch my stuff while I go to the bathroom, I might pack it all up and go in, hoping that my chair would still be open when I get back.......</div>
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But hm...</div>
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Okay. I'm gonna ask them to watch my things, and I'll bring my phone.</div>
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Sweet. Everything was still here and so were the people I asked to watch it. :P for the, like, 1 min 30 seconds that I was gone. x) But yeah. </div>
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Ooh, I found a hair clip in my pocket. I'll use that instead of my hoodie string. :P</div>
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Memes from this morning that were relatable:</div>
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Well it's been a day. Painting today was really nice, it looks pretty cool so far, too!<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgr_3XLCk3byXo-gHefve8J_97i5_ZPoz5M3cYfVoN-mJ3th0k_8XCttWlbtU9LDhtks6Lty8bFexjT3dBE5zTzU2mJm2xFxhnWL2ffQEMYxzQlqpxBepR8b50VEbya8hitIje6VMoaIanY/s1600/IMG_20181211_135717200.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="900" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgr_3XLCk3byXo-gHefve8J_97i5_ZPoz5M3cYfVoN-mJ3th0k_8XCttWlbtU9LDhtks6Lty8bFexjT3dBE5zTzU2mJm2xFxhnWL2ffQEMYxzQlqpxBepR8b50VEbya8hitIje6VMoaIanY/s640/IMG_20181211_135717200.jpg" width="360" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Therapy painting at Neila's, it was great. I could stand or sit as I painted<br />and not have to necessarily face her as we talked about this seasonal<br />bout of depression I'm going through these days. It helped, a lot. </td></tr>
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Well :) I feel like I want to go home and turn my own music on, so I can bounce around my apartment and maybe clean up before my roommate from college (haven't seen her since we got together last summer I think, while she was doing an internship and came over with fellow students on a weekend). I'll be needing to get a blow-up mattress from Alex's mom, too...I need to remember that.<br />
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But yeah :) Good music is a great reason to go home. I'll post this and be on my way, and then I can have an evening to myself (Alex and I decided to go out tomorrow night and just have tonight as an introvert time for both of us). :)<br />
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Bye!<br />
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-A.C.S. Dec 11, 2018</div>
Ashley Spencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09397508998348962392noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6737298045724065027.post-58089611250722205092018-09-25T11:05:00.001-04:002018-09-25T11:05:16.154-04:00Productivity is the bomb<p dir="ltr">I want to document this because this morning, I'm feeling great. I'm proud of my accomplishments and confident in my abilities. I was so proud this morning of my idea to use my hand mixer to whisk the milk in my coffee and make it frothy—I don't understand why it made me so gleeful to see the bubbles and the fact that I didn't make a mess when I used the mixer in a coffee cup. But it was so great. x) I couldn't stop smiling. <br>
And lately, I've gotten on top of several things that had been weighing me down. The mountain of dirty dishes and the sea of dirty laundry were finally dealt with, and while I'm still working at both of them on the daily, it's such a relief to not feel so overwhelmed about them anymore. <br>
Also, I found a face soap a couple weeks ago, and this morning I used it and my face feels so soft and clean!<br>
There's also the issue of food and groceries. I'd been avoiding spending money, but then I just didn't have any food. I especially needed meat. But yesterday, I did a Walmart grocery pickup, and it was great. <br>
So now I have clean dishes and a countertop that's not cluttered, fresh clothes to wear instead of worrying about not having anything clean, a good cup of coffee to get me up this morning, and a kitchen stocked enough to get me a yummy, protein-rich, nutritional lunch. <br>
This afternoon, I'm going with my coworkers are the restaurant to a food show in downtown Cincy. I'm excited, and I also don't know what it will be like. But it'll be good. :) <br>
So here I go, I'll see if I can post pictures later. <br>
^_^ yay for productive mornings. Thank God. </p>
<p dir="ltr">—ACS, September 25, 2018</p>
Ashley Spencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09397508998348962392noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6737298045724065027.post-41477672740383305662018-08-27T13:20:00.000-04:002018-08-27T13:20:35.418-04:00I research randomness<h3>
Oh memes...</h3>
So I was just watching my daily meme vids, laughing to myself and taking screenshots of the best ones that I'd want to save & share.<br />
Please enjoy a representation of my meme humor: (1) random human comedy, (2) mental health jokes, and (3) puns.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1K_sA8x2iC6Z39R233wbEakkJrV8q_o18FocNNtXxyWfGKMiKJEewsKPxO8XYskIVt8_V00ft10NDv5xykgAGovQ73MqZErV-dA58xJGN4VPBHc9VcDDYJcNssu06hEBnf1g2DwxRVYb1/s1600/Screen+Shot+2018-08-27+at+10.58.07+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1574" data-original-width="1600" height="392" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1K_sA8x2iC6Z39R233wbEakkJrV8q_o18FocNNtXxyWfGKMiKJEewsKPxO8XYskIVt8_V00ft10NDv5xykgAGovQ73MqZErV-dA58xJGN4VPBHc9VcDDYJcNssu06hEBnf1g2DwxRVYb1/s400/Screen+Shot+2018-08-27+at+10.58.07+AM.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">(my apologies for the strong language)</td></tr>
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I've been saving memes from "meme dealers" (like those facebook pages where they repost things from tumblr, and twitter posts, or those vine compilation videos, or this one app I had called Smile that had pretty clean funny content, or what I watch these days, just meme awards videos on YouTube, and etc) for years. And, since I transferred all my files from laptop to laptop as I got hand-me-down computers as a teen (and then my very own Mac after HS graduation), I still have all of the thousands and thousands of memes and text posts and random funny content that I laughed at 10 years ago. I have ones from probably the beginning of my internet days.<br />
But anyway. Those were the ones from today.<br />
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And then, there's this one: it made me laugh out loud a couple days ago when I saw it in another video, and I saw it again today in the same video as the previous memes and decided to find out what it was about.<br />
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I want to see this video! Haha it sounds so sad!!</div>
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So I looked it up, and this short bit was what I found first:<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/qkTzDh8IKNU/0.jpg" frameborder="0" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/qkTzDh8IKNU?feature=player_embedded" width="320"></iframe></div>
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It's 6 seconds, and there's garbled Japanese narration in the background, and I have no context...</div>
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But then I looked at another Google result, and this one made more sense:<br />
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Poor raccoon, haha. But he learns on the third try! yaaaay</div>
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Anyway. This reminds me of how I had decorated my half of our window when I was at Liberty in the motel-dorm, The Annex, with printed memes. I wonder if I have a picture...I still have all of the little papers from when I moved and took them down. </div>
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....I just spent like an hour looking for pictures of that, but completely forgot what I was there for, so I ended up saving a bunch of photos from my Google photos in the cloud. xD</div>
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Like this, at least this one somewhat relates to my search, but it was the wrong semester:</div>
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And then I looked in the right semester, and I did find a picture of our window (hehe):<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqXrltROdSj7FWpQvbWtFp4rHAx5kPw_zllYDgkiNNgGdjK6WYBc3WCuBhQT34__3abaFAAChB76JaFn6wJWlcKDAz_eW4ElN_cckuOAcjBE-gMjGdvaJsKs2kNimYX40-l7VQ2TZ_yUQ9/s1600/IMG_20160823_103633522.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqXrltROdSj7FWpQvbWtFp4rHAx5kPw_zllYDgkiNNgGdjK6WYBc3WCuBhQT34__3abaFAAChB76JaFn6wJWlcKDAz_eW4ElN_cckuOAcjBE-gMjGdvaJsKs2kNimYX40-l7VQ2TZ_yUQ9/s400/IMG_20160823_103633522.jpg" width="300" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Rachel (left) and leaning-over-to-make-the-names-readable me (right)</td></tr>
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But that was before we decorated the window. Hmmmmmm. I still have a folder of the memes I'd printed out to put <i>in</i> said window.</div>
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Ah, and here's a picture I had Rachel take when she pointed out that I was very dainty (or maybe she used a different word) in the way I'd pointed my toes, and it looked like the a photoshoot with a big fancy dress or something:</div>
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<div>
Okay, I'm going to stop getting stuck looking through old screenshots of Snapchats from Alex, and finish up this blog post...which is kind of a mess now...lol. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<h3>
Here are a few of the memes I had in my window:</h3>
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<br /></div>
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<div>
I loved all the music-themed ones, because in addition to being a music student myself, my roomie was into music as well--she would have made a great music student, but she had mechanical engineering to study, and that 5-year major takes a lot of intense work. </div>
<div>
But yeah. :) ...The following poem resulted from my attempt to close this post quickly. It failed, but the poem was fun to create. x)</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<h3>
That Meme Section</h3>
<div>
Enjoy this selection </div>
<div>
from my meme collection,</div>
<div>
which began as a study on culture.</div>
<div>
If you have an objection </div>
<div>
to an imperfection, </div>
<div>
I apologize for anything vulgar.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
So upon inspection,</div>
<div>
if I find a connection</div>
<div>
relating to anything crude,</div>
<div>
I'll make a correction,</div>
<div>
for I respect the protection</div>
<div>
of any who have not yet viewed.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
But my own election</div>
<div>
is simply deflection</div>
<div>
of content that sometimes disturbs;</div>
<div>
They come my direction</div>
<div>
and escape detection:</div>
<div>
Sometimes I don't notice bad words.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
—ACS, August 27, 2018<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
Ashley Spencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09397508998348962392noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6737298045724065027.post-16374491375042696752018-08-22T15:29:00.003-04:002018-08-22T15:29:59.627-04:00Coffee shop pt3<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCfu63-brnlT5QtxmPJiSL1UrYj68Pr-sEh378LUGObLIV9Bx6oXjqcMhBy1FYhDShBaLOIrdD31Wx8i53pO4mq7oImD7-5jeFc6Tibd_tSPLS-adkMiSwhFk2nfnDdWK2QwM8lTT7ExMz/s1600/Screenshot_2018-08-22-15-15-00.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="1280" data-original-width="720" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCfu63-brnlT5QtxmPJiSL1UrYj68Pr-sEh378LUGObLIV9Bx6oXjqcMhBy1FYhDShBaLOIrdD31Wx8i53pO4mq7oImD7-5jeFc6Tibd_tSPLS-adkMiSwhFk2nfnDdWK2QwM8lTT7ExMz/s200/Screenshot_2018-08-22-15-15-00.png" title="" width="112" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhP65bvZ8dBIF4AXCprivRmfArqZL2OYqi3uSJlxxIS3XtWe-wcYICvruxQG9OU8uW3HGj4BxmWVBkWrP02-Vi9WIxxNDu1xIXSHEKuieajcjGsNM8ilmvOI4ZHqncSQ3fBLnEJn96YgD8o/s1600/Screenshot_2018-08-22-15-15-04.png" imageanchor="1" style="display: inline !important; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1280" data-original-width="720" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhP65bvZ8dBIF4AXCprivRmfArqZL2OYqi3uSJlxxIS3XtWe-wcYICvruxQG9OU8uW3HGj4BxmWVBkWrP02-Vi9WIxxNDu1xIXSHEKuieajcjGsNM8ilmvOI4ZHqncSQ3fBLnEJn96YgD8o/s200/Screenshot_2018-08-22-15-15-04.png" width="112" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikvd_3aoS-lS5qP-cWAONc0eti3uBotzCv3zWWFeov3gpZNRT_vWzFtXHPWoiamBn6wHsPpGkYF9VAP6PVOkkDmClQfSU_1v3kk2he2PFLwxmD1c-8i9lQNGQ0_DPbZFdSkJsUte487OGf/s1600/Screenshot_2018-08-22-15-14-53.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1280" data-original-width="720" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikvd_3aoS-lS5qP-cWAONc0eti3uBotzCv3zWWFeov3gpZNRT_vWzFtXHPWoiamBn6wHsPpGkYF9VAP6PVOkkDmClQfSU_1v3kk2he2PFLwxmD1c-8i9lQNGQ0_DPbZFdSkJsUte487OGf/s200/Screenshot_2018-08-22-15-14-53.png" width="112" /></a></div>
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<h2>
A Job Offer!</h2>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"Hey, just wanted to update everybody--I just got out of my interview with The Main Cup coffee shop/restaurant in Milford, and I have a solid job offer!! I'm so excited!!<br />It's going to be the same number of hours & rate of pay (a bit more actually) as my nanny job that I did during the school year. I could look for a part-time job to supplement it if I need to, after working there for a few months and figuring out what I need. :)<br />After learning the details of the job, I now know that I am even more qualified and prepared for it than I believed I was at first. It's more food prep than barista, and I'll get to use my ServSafe certificate knowledge. I'm going to be in a learning environment, and I'll get to work with a chef and several other people in a close-knit group in the kitchen. I might get cross-trained on the Front of the House positions as well.<br />It's really more than I could have hoped for. Thanks for praying :)<br />It's a coffee shop that's expanding into a restaurant that serves weekend brunch, so the new building is going to open around September 22nd. The manager/consultant who interviewed me said he'd let me know by next week when I would start training, but most likely it will be 2 weeks before opening. So I'll probably start working the first or second week of September."</blockquote>
<br />
SO.<br />
FRIKIN.<br />
PUMPED.<br />
<br />
I was really expecting that I'd have to spend a lot more time looking for a job before I got one that worked for me, or even a job that would call me back. But here I am, all set to make enough money for rent and utilities and everything I pay for while living on my own, and it hasn't even been 2 weeks since I found out I needed to get a job for the fall. God is so good. =)<br />
<br />
--ACS, August 22nd, 2018<br />
<br />Ashley Spencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09397508998348962392noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6737298045724065027.post-20455794905172103182018-08-16T15:09:00.000-04:002018-08-22T15:30:30.504-04:00I finally got to use my Pokemon card!<h4>
So this week, I'm babysitting one of my second-cousin's kids, like a second-niece and second-nephew or something.</h4>
<div>
And her little girl, who's 8 years old, is a total kindred spirit when it comes to all things nerdy. I don't know if I'm allowed to give her name online, so I'll call her Skylar. </div>
<div>
Skylar's gotten into Pokemon from her dad, and their family has a huge collection of Pokemon cards. Like, a 3-inch binder with pages and pages of them, plus the three Poke-decks that they play from. And the cover of her binder has a picture of about 15 Pokemon that she drew herself! It's so cute, and it totally makes me wish I'd played Pokemon when I was little. She knows all their names, and all their evolutions (she calls them "evolvements" and I don't know enough about Pokemon to know if that's what they call the next one up, or if I'm right in thinking that they're called "evolutions" instead. Hehe). </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9BPVzM74pjIhUuxxR-lYFI6E_SRoYFIAvxLBt49cGeHGVOLqQk4xge16XeITFh6nx05TbYAs1YgztbjCfcCy-4UagDGCs1Ut6mMWf3iHyhnF05XqAWwmjbjHZ-Z5ntH9al6jxpm4mLi9b/s1600/1200px-759Stufful.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1200" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9BPVzM74pjIhUuxxR-lYFI6E_SRoYFIAvxLBt49cGeHGVOLqQk4xge16XeITFh6nx05TbYAs1YgztbjCfcCy-4UagDGCs1Ut6mMWf3iHyhnF05XqAWwmjbjHZ-Z5ntH9al6jxpm4mLi9b/s200/1200px-759Stufful.png" width="200" /></a></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
So I have a Stufful card, and it's one that Alex bought at Toys-R-Us and gave to me. It's a really cute Pokemon, and this one has an ability called "Baby Doll Eyes" where it can keep the opponent's Pokemon from being able to retreat on that turn. Its secondary ability is a tackle that does, like, extra damage, and that's really good—After you've used Baby Doll Eyes and trapped your opponent, you can do that tackle and they can't get away from it.</div>
<div>
I had no knowledge of this before Skylar's dad told her she should teach me how to play Pokemon, since I was showing her Minecraft (she picked that up lightning fast, by the way). So she got out her personal Poke-deck and her mom's deck and set it all up at the kitchen bar for us to play. </div>
<div>
I was so lost, and I had that newb feel hitting me as I had to ask her to explain each and every move to me. But she explained them all, and the cards and what they were for, each time I asked. She's a great kid.</div>
<div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2PQfeIONOCzsMMGjoUBidb_qRcVMet4tyiAt5FvHioDYet47edS6-MhAvKegEpbBzO0FTb5eZJbObnGHgBbSL5MiQPfo2UPxgsSCsboSxXiKWcdXZ_zMom-NoPEaMI-RS_g_ocDX76545/s1600/IMG_20180815_140227536.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2PQfeIONOCzsMMGjoUBidb_qRcVMet4tyiAt5FvHioDYet47edS6-MhAvKegEpbBzO0FTb5eZJbObnGHgBbSL5MiQPfo2UPxgsSCsboSxXiKWcdXZ_zMom-NoPEaMI-RS_g_ocDX76545/s320/IMG_20180815_140227536.jpg" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Appraising my Pokemon card</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Soon after she set it all up, I told her, "You know, I have a Pokemon card. Just one."</div>
<div>
"Really? What card is it?" she asked, instantly interested.</div>
<div>
"I think...I know it has babydoll eyes, but I don't know..." </div>
<div>
She was confused, and when I went to my purse and pulled it out of the pocket where I keep business cards, I said, "Stufful. That's the name of the Pokemon."</div>
<div>
"Oh, Stufful—can I see?"</div>
<div>
And from there she wanted to take it out of the shrink wrap cover that it was still sealed in, and she carefully slid it into one of her extra sleeves. "You can keep this," she told me, and she continued to inspect the card. "This is one of the last Stufful cards they made," she said, pointing out the number 110/149. I asked, "So there are only 149 of those cards? And I have one?"</div>
<div>
She then explained that there are 149 different <i>types</i> of Stufful Pokemon cards, and that this one has the Baby Doll Eyes attack and the Tackle attack. Then she went to her deck and pulled out another Stufful, which had a different illustration and a different set of attacks. I was intrigued. </div>
<div>
Time flew by as Skylar showed me how to attack with the cards in my deck—how to set them up on my "bench"—and how my Stufful could be played at the end of a round (idk what they'd call it, a match maybe?) when the opponent Pokemon's HP was low enough for that damage from my second attack to take it down. It was so fun! </div>
<div>
One of the greatest things that I've experienced has been finding that connection that someone shares with me. </div>
<div>
Sometimes it's discovering that another student grew up with the same Abeka homeschool curriculum that I did (it was at a Knowledge Bowl competition, and both of us knew the answer to a question about who invented the automatic reaper from our history book in 5th grade, because we could picture the exact spot on the page that talked about Cyrus McCormick). Other times, it's finding out that another MK has a common love of Tolkien and other fantasy series like The Inheritance Cycle. Once, I met the guy who had grown up with the books, and had first read The Fellowship of the Ring when he was about 11, just like me! (can you guess who that was? 😊)<br />
<br />
I got distracted on this post but I'm finishing it up so that I can write more posts and have them come in order... x) I had a fun time with these kids, and I can't wait until I get to see them again.<br />
<br />
—ACS, August 2018</div>
Ashley Spencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09397508998348962392noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6737298045724065027.post-12289560421992433792018-08-09T11:45:00.003-04:002018-08-22T15:33:12.279-04:00Coffee shop pt2<h4>
Update — They called me about my resume and wanted to schedule an interview!!</h4>
<br />
It's not until the 20th, but that's alright. It gives me time to apply to other places, too, just in case that one doesn't work out. I'm so excited!! <br />
<br />
Right now I'm struggling with the desire to make it a habit of going to that coffee shop in the mornings, just because I love the atmosphere, and because I want to get to know the people—staff and the regulars—so that if I work there, I'll have them in my memory already.<br />
<br />
But coffee is expensive. And I don't know what the pay will be. Their website says that they do Belgian waffles every Saturday morning, and I'm especially interested in coming in for that. They say they go fast, and to arrive early. <br />
<br />
It's a dilemma! 😣(Lol I love these emojis, the alternative text for them is hilarious. "Persevering Face" for that one, whereas I would have named it "mfff, ugh" or something lol.)<br />
<br />
Anyway :/ How much money can I afford to spend in my efforts to acquaint myself with a potential workplace? I spent like $5 on the coffee that I bought as a courtesy on Tuesday when I went in to ask about applying. Smallest size, too. And it was so delicious. 😋(lol another emoji, this one is "Face Savoring Delicious Food"—very appropriate.)<br />
<br />
I'm about to record all my gas station receipts (I just always stuff them in my car's little cubby above the stereo, you know, where I keep my Altoids) from the past month or two, and while I do that, I'll be keeping this in mind. I really want to go back to that coffee shop, but I don't want to be a rude customer who doesn't buy coffee and/or brings their own and uses the free wifi 😬("Grimacing Face", yes yes.) Maybe I can budget a weekly or bi-weekly visit, and maybe they have a cheaper drink option that I would feel better buying. (On Tuesday, it was one of their specialties—a "Purple Rain", a vanilla lavender latte. Sweet hallelujah. I'll need to hope that I'd burn a lot of calories as a barista if I'm gonna work in a place with such heavenly decadence. 😵["Dizzy Face"—I would have called it "Mind-Blowing Excitement" or "Miraculous, Shocking Discovery" or "Disbelief And Ecstatic Realization"]......I think my Adderall and coffee is starting to work, haha. Anyhow. I am definitely going to Planet Fitness today, not only because I'll most likely have the motivation to go and the energy to work out with FIRE IN MY VEINS, but because I was going to cancel my subscription, but realized that I'd already paid for August.)<br />
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So yes. I'm excited about possibly working at The Main Cup, and today is going to be a go-and-get-'em day for me I think. I've already begun recording receipts, starting with gas stations and then all the Walmart ones, and I'm about to finish that here in a bit. <br />
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Please pray for me as I start a new job in the next month, whether it's at this coffee shop or somewhere else. The last time I got a job in the summer (last year), it was too much all at once and I had to leave after barely three months. I'm doing so much better right now, especially thanks to the Adderall, so I have a good feeling about getting a job this summer. :) Thank you for all of your support, guys! I love you all!<br />
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—ACS, August 8, 2018Ashley Spencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09397508998348962392noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6737298045724065027.post-40386325259588947802018-08-08T13:47:00.000-04:002018-08-08T13:49:55.200-04:00Cleaning the kitchen<h4>
Today I'm doing the dishes.</h4>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiel_1ODFDzd2k86ASlLQ-0Qcy5zgBOZoWqmA_fma1Dy27jue-lwz9AnpwEwf0j07HQtC_GP4mNqEsEI6LySJVfzMpwJr47r5n8Mv0YyK2sJj6dyYtzSGKSBSvd1QIqZR1z2dqvBmrTPGzb/s1600/IMG_20180808_120008808+edited.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="1280" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiel_1ODFDzd2k86ASlLQ-0Qcy5zgBOZoWqmA_fma1Dy27jue-lwz9AnpwEwf0j07HQtC_GP4mNqEsEI6LySJVfzMpwJr47r5n8Mv0YyK2sJj6dyYtzSGKSBSvd1QIqZR1z2dqvBmrTPGzb/s320/IMG_20180808_120008808+edited.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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There really aren't as many as I feel like there are when I pass the kitchen on my way to my room and avoid looking in the sink for fear that the guilt of leaving them there will descend upon me and keep me from being able to slack off in bliss.</div>
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There really aren't that many.</div>
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-_-</div>
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In fact, I counted the number of forks, spoons, and knives that I own, because I always feel like I need more (and not just because I dirty them up and don't wash them). Man, I look bad in that picture. Anyway. I counted them and discovered this: </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_tUZDhyphenhyphentOB2O0PSTIcCo2PcI5oWBJ4FdKbbRFXxdbRY2ZlynqBcuqzhHFSZYhnLE9f6pa-OK74kaN_M7B_cNl1uHwI6_DjhrSXoinJ_lEck0t_PEjWLJuZU_4gKH30bWhtXokCYz3ECes/s1600/IMG_20180808_122049697_HDR.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_tUZDhyphenhyphentOB2O0PSTIcCo2PcI5oWBJ4FdKbbRFXxdbRY2ZlynqBcuqzhHFSZYhnLE9f6pa-OK74kaN_M7B_cNl1uHwI6_DjhrSXoinJ_lEck0t_PEjWLJuZU_4gKH30bWhtXokCYz3ECes/s320/IMG_20180808_122049697_HDR.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>
Ugh, I don't have an even, consistent number of <i>anything! </i>I texted Alex the results and just said..."So this is...kind of...blegh :p I will enjoy having enough money to properly stock a silverware drawer someday."<br />
And he agreed...I think he has, like, one fork and a spoon? I feel like he must have more than that, but that's all I remember seeing in his drawer when he moved into his new place a couple weeks ago, and I haven't seen any more since then.<br />
I'm proud of even having any silverware at all. There's a story to how I acquired such a random assortment of silverware, and it begins with Project Grad, 2015.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiN2L_KmUSjQqqN8hWkB5ghzZ1WJStHc8OiAnEIM26eEO1ADiPCRf3Q1gaiPp4mtonmXTcVybMVL7SpD1STib8OKCPitpvgI8_Gs_LOGpk2LywEF6kDOKOn2V0A4yw7EOoHNPSlpn_DU6cX/s1600/IMG_1777.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="1280" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiN2L_KmUSjQqqN8hWkB5ghzZ1WJStHc8OiAnEIM26eEO1ADiPCRf3Q1gaiPp4mtonmXTcVybMVL7SpD1STib8OKCPitpvgI8_Gs_LOGpk2LywEF6kDOKOn2V0A4yw7EOoHNPSlpn_DU6cX/s320/IMG_1777.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
It's not really very dramatic like I seem to be making it. But I wanted to add this picture that we miraculously remembered to take while we were there.<br />
"Project Graduation" was a tradition at our high school, and was a big lock-in party after the graduation ceremony for the seniors and their friends. Each senior was given a ticket and two friend tickets each, and that was the only way any underclassmen could attend. I picked Alicia and Tori, and while I wanted to invite our fourth friend, Mahliya, who was a freshman like Alicia and my brother Rickey, she wasn't allowed to come, and that was too bad. :/ But those three were my best friends from public HS.<br />
So this party had lots of fun activities, a buffet of food like pizza, oreos, and brownies, an art table stocked by our school's art teacher (I think, if I remember right), and--biggest of all--a bouncy house obstacle course in the gym. It was pretty sweet.<br />
Aside from getting to run around all night drinking soda and riding tricycles through the cafeteria and the gym with your best friends, there were also gifts for each of the graduating seniors. Since the party was parent-organized and wasn't school-funded, it depended wholly on the group of moms and dads of that year's seniors to raise money for the bouncy house rental, the food, the tricycles, and the games. They also put as much of the funds as they could into the gift baskets. Thinking back, not only was I blessed to be a senior when Miss Pam was on the Project Grad planning team, but I was also lucky (blessed!) to be at that small town school where everybody was somebody, and each student was personally thought of when they graduated and given such a wonderful graduation present.<br />
That year, the "baskets" for the gifts were these black duffle bags, and they were filled with things a kid might need once they moved out, either on their own to start a career or into a dorm at college. I brought almost everything that I got in that gift basket with me to Liberty, and the few things that I didn't need (like a discounted laptop that had half the capabilities and features of the Mac that I bought later that summer) were easily exchanged at Walmart for in-store credit. I sold that credit to my parents and put that couple hundred toward my own computer purchase, and it's been a magnificent deal. I'll never forget how incredibly I was gifted on my graduation. Thank you to anyone reading who made that celebration happen.<br />
These are some of the treasures that I found waiting inside my very own duffle bag:<br />
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<li>a big plastic turquoise bowl (my favorite color at the time!) that I would definitely use as a popcorn bowl</li>
<li>a little bottle of Tide laundry detergent (I was going to need to have my own at the dorm)</li>
<li>a set of Ziploc-brand plastic containers with lids (great for organizing things in my desk, as well as saving leftovers in the fridge)</li>
<li>a drawstring net laundry bag (I also got a couple other net laundry hampers, including a three-section one from my grandma that makes it easy to organize clothes by color)</li>
<li>Other things that I can't remember right now</li>
<li>Silverware from the dollar store (the ones where a set of 4 forks is taped together and sells for $1) including:</li>
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<li>4 knives</li>
<li>3 forks, tape cut open to remove one of the original 4</li>
<li>3 tea spoons, also with tape removed</li>
<li>3 dinner spoons, also with tape removed</li>
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It turned out that they only had enough for each student to get 3 of each utensil, and there wasn't an even number, so some people got to have the full set of 4. </div>
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That's the story of how I got some of my silverware. But the whole story continues a year later in the summer of 2016.</div>
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I couldn't find a picture from the wedding itself without going on Facebook, and I mostly want to post pics from my own photos, but this is from a wedding in Wisconsin that my friend and I (pictured above) were bridesmaids in. We flew up with her mom and stayed in the bible school's dorm, which was in the same building as the reception and was right up the hill from the chapel where the ceremony would be located. However, since it was a dorm we were staying in, and we came up a few days early to help prepare for the wedding, we needed to be able to prepare our own food while we stayed there. I don't think we knew that when we were packing, because we ended up buying pots and pans and cheap dishes to eat from while we were up there. Her mom actually carried a cast-iron dutch oven back on the plane. I contributed on this shopping trip by getting a cute yellow coffee mug from the dollar store and some silverware: knives, teaspoons, and forks, all sets of 4 that were almost the same as the ones I already owned.</div>
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Now that I think about it, I should have another fork somewhere... I know I got 3 when I graduated and I'm pretty sure I bought 4 in Wisconsin, but I don't know where the other one is. Maybe it's lost in my apartment, or maybe while I was at Liberty, it got swept up with someone else's belongings when we were dividing everything up as we moved. Who knows.</div>
Anyway. I dropped everything an hour ago to count my silverware and then write about it, aaand now I've been blogging and haven't finished the dishes. I can put away the ones that have dried, though, and I won't have to dry them with a towel. 😀I would always rather let them drip-dry than have to dry them off. It's because I'm lazy. But anyway.<br />
I'm going to get back to doing the dishes and cleaning the kitchen and throwing away expired food from the fridge and taking out the trash. I'll see you the next time I get excited about a memory, or how my day is turning out, and just have to share it.<br />
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—ACS, August 8, 2018Ashley Spencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09397508998348962392noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6737298045724065027.post-8778249175871496122018-08-07T10:38:00.000-04:002018-08-09T11:46:26.779-04:00I'm in a coffee shop<h4>
(My email to Neila after she recommended that I walk in and talk to Jim or Jill about applying to this little coffee shop down the road from her counseling office:)</h4>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Hey!! I’m in my happy place :)</span></div>
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<span style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-size: 12px; text-size-adjust: auto;"><span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">And Jill gave me a card with their website so that I could send in a resume. She said that they’re having open interviews in a couple Sundays, so I’ll be coming in for that. I ordered a decaf Purple Rain latte (the lavender and vanilla flavor! so good!) and I’m hoping that I can update my resume here and then send it. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">I think I need to upload it to Google Docs so that I can email them a link, since the “Contact Us” page on their website doesn’t have an option for directly uploading files.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Thank you for recommending them to me! It turns out that they’re only hiring 21 and up, so that’s perfect for me. I am very excited and I really hope it works out. I might just hang out in this coffee shop anyway, it has a hipster Christian radio coming through the speakers right above my table and it’s so pleasant and familiar to me. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Sipping coffee (very, very delicious coffee), listening to the sounds of the regulars chatting and laughing with the baristas…it’s such a nice little spot right now. And I was carrying my Lord of the Rings hoodie, and when I sat down and took out my laptop, it was just a bit chilly so I was able to put it on.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Can I express just how relaxing, invigorating, calming, enthusing, and lovely this is right now? </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Ashley Spence</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"The Main Cup in Milford grinds their own their own beans", photo from Yelp!</td></tr>
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Ashley Spencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09397508998348962392noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6737298045724065027.post-19000982556494083402018-07-27T14:36:00.002-04:002018-07-27T14:42:09.556-04:00Photo Prompts: The top 20, Photo #4<div class="separator" style="clear: both;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">~For all freewriting-based blog posts, see the tag </span><a href="https://grammarsblog.blogspot.com/search/label/Wells%20Of%20Thought%3A%20Notions%20and%20Expositions" style="font-family: "trebuchet ms", sans-serif;" target="_blank">#Wells Of Thought: Notions and Expositions</a>. </span></div>
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*cough* So.....This one is really, really long. Instead of ≈1,000 words, I peaked at 3, no...<b><i>4,312 words</i></b> today. o_o <u>WAIT NO let me add 9 so it's <b>4,321</b>.</u> 😁</blockquote>
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I go off on tangents about the following topics: Grandma's earliest memory, why I don't use foul language, how sheltered I was, what it was like going to public high school, why French horn is hard to learn, a teacher who was a mentor to me in that time, the difference between an optimist and pessimist and why I'm an idealist, how I feel about my parents arriving this evening to visit for the weekend, and finally, a list of 10 things I'm proud of myself for achieving (which you might think are kind of lame or sad, but no!!! I take pride in the battles I've won. No more depression, worthlessness, and self-pity for me.)</blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Here's prompt #4: 2014-B</span></h2>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">2014</span><br />
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Haha... there's quite a story behind this one. </div>
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But right now, it's making me think about Grandma Spence's earliest memory that she shared with us at their 50th wedding anniversary celebration, where she begged her older brother Kenny to let her ride on his horse...I can't remember what his name was, and I googled 'names for horses' and none of the names on the first article sounded close enough to jog my memory. It was just a week ago, no, 6 days ago, and I can't remember her horse's name. :( </div>
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Anyway, Grandma tells this story about when she was three years old, and her brother, who's my great uncle Kenny, had a horse of his own out there in the country. She always wanted to ride the horse, and <i>not </i>with her brother, on her <i>own</i>. I don't blame her, I wanted to be a big girl when I was three, too! Haha. My uncle Kenny was about 10 years older than her, and he always said no because she was so little, but this time he said yes. </div>
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When she tells the story, she says that when he got home and was inside the gate, usually the horse would just trot back up to the stable, without having to be told where to go. So her brother decided that would be a relatively safe solo ride for his sister Donna. He hoisted her up on the saddle and told her to <i>hold on</i> to the saddle horn and <i>don't let go no matter what</i>. </div>
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But as these stories wouldn't be such well-remembered if everything went the way it was supposed to, that's not what happened. </div>
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I can imagine her at three years old, I don't know if she had blonde hair when she was born, or if it was always brown, but pictures from her childhood are so cute. I bet she had a determined look on her face as she sat there, holding on as tight as she could. And then when big brother let go, and...the horse...shot off for the pasture instead.......I bet she looked pretty heroic as she held on tight to that saddle horn. My uncle Kenny ran after the horse, yelling, "Just let go, I'll catch you!" But of course, she was <i>determined</i> not to let go! </div>
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He didn't catch up until it had run all the way down the hill through the trees and to the meadow (if I'm remembering her story right.) He stopped at the fence, and brother Kenny finally reached her and helped her down. </div>
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When Grandma told us this story last week, one of my dad's cousins asked if she "got back on the horse," or if she was afraid to ride after that. She shrugged and said that she had her own horse once she was big enough, and she rode all the time, but she didn't get back on her brother's horse for a while. </div>
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This picture makes me think of that story not only because of the horse, but because it was a time when someone else also told me it would be an easy ride, and that it would be fine for me to get up on a horse, untrained, and also bareback... We weren't thinking at all, and my friend said her dad could saddle the horse up as soon as he got home, but I wanted to sit on a horse <i>now</i>, and I didn't care if there was a saddle or not. Riding bareback was...how would you say it without the a-word.... It was something impressive and cool and dramatic if you rode without a saddle. </div>
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...I keep thinking one of these days I'll be able to just <i>say the "language words"</i> that already come to mind that express certain situations perfectly, but my social qualms still keep me from uttering them, for fear that if my mouth were to become used to forming the words, that they would slip out unbidden at inopportune moments. But then... You know, I'm just going to go off on a tangent to talk about foul language. </div>
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I grew up super sheltered, like, the first time I heard the F-word was when my mom was having "the talk" with me when I started puberty, and she told me it so that I wouldn't, I don't know, hear it somewhere and repeat it? I don't know. But it was like, Dad was out of town and she and I had a slumber party and we talked about maturity and modesty and chastity and chaperones and dating, all on a level that an 11 year-old could pretty much understand. But yeah, she might have asked me if I knew what the F-word was, and I'd barely even heard that there was such a thing, and I said no. So she started to spell it--and then backed out at the first two letters--and said it rhymed with "duck." And then I whispered the word that rhymes with "duck" that starts with 'f', like, "<i>...F...uck?" </i>And Mom freaked and hushed me like "Yeah yeah, don't SAY it, it's a very, very bad word!!" She told me that it was a crude term for sex, and that was her segue into explaining in simple terms the way that God's perfect creation of love had been tainted and corrupted by mankind. A beautiful thing between man and wife was now used as a curse and "intensifier" (my dictionary app, WordWeb, that I've been using since I got my first iPod Touch when I was 13, used this term in the definition of any bad word I'd casually look up. I see a bad word and I think "intensifier," and that kind of describes my feelings about bad language. It intensifies what you're saying. Whether you should intensify it or not is what the issue is about. </div>
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So yeah, there was that first encounter, and then I didn't think about it again until I started getting on the internet and would see uncensored memes and text posts. It shocked and repulsed me at that age, but then, after we came back to the States and I went to <i>public frikin high school, </i>man. Those first two weeks, as anyone will tell you who knew me then, I was just in shock. One thing that shocked me was the way the teachers were accustomed to the students' propensity for foul language and, while they wouldn't just let it slide, there was definitely not a strong consequence or reparation. </div>
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(I'm really breaking out the thesaurus here, I love when I get to do this. It's half of why I love blogging. But I'm using Thesaurus.com instead of my hard copy...why?? I have it sitting on the shelf...Oh well. No time to grab it now, I need to finish this up so that I can start doing the dishes and cleaning up for when Mom and Dad arrive this evening; they're going to be staying at my apartment for a few days while they're passing through. I'm really excited but I've been busy helping Alex pack his stuff and move to his new place, so I haven't done any dishes since my brothers left from their visit on Tuesday morning. Rickey and Noah and Alex helped me wash everything Monday night, and I absolutely adore them for it. I think that if washing dishes could <i>always</i> be a social event, I'd be less biased against it in my mental motivational processes.)</div>
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Anyway. The first two weeks of school in the US back in August 2013 were crazy...Not the craziest since, but definitely the most stressful in their unexpected nature that I had experienced up to that point. In that first week, at age 16, I started learning to drive standard with my Dad, because he wanted us kids to learn stick first before driving an automatic, and he'd bought the sedan just for that purpose. Also in that week, I jumped into picking a class schedule (thankfully we were there to start the year and I wasn't completely jumping in at the middle of the semester or anything), learning my teachers' names, and locating the classes, bathrooms, gym, and most important--the cafeteria. Haha. </div>
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I also started learning French horn, because I'd <i>always </i>wanted to play as many instruments as I could have a chance to learn, and now that we were in the States where we had a school to attend that had a high school band, I could finally have lessons on something and <i>play with other people</i>! I'd had piano lessons since I was 5...I talked about that a couple posts ago, I believe...and I taught myself basic guitar when I was 14 and one of our family friends lent me her guitar while they were away for a year...My brother gave me his old recorder from kindergarten, and I sort of played around on that... And now I was getting to have real lessons on a brass instrument. It was really difficult, and not in the way that learning an instrument is difficult when it's the first one you've ever had lessons on. I knew how to read notes, and I was even reading in the treble clef (lower instruments were in bass clef, and I <i>can</i> read that but it wasn't as natural to me at that point). What was hard about it was the ambresure...embrechure... Ugh. (Google is one of my best friends, it understands me and magnifies my thoughts into cohesive language. Ahem.) </div>
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<span style="font-weight: normal;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embouchure" target="_blank">Embouchure:</a> the use of the lips, facial muscles, tongue, and teeth in playing a wind instrument.</span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-weight: normal;"> So yeah. The hard part was the embouchure, having to learn how to make that buzz with tight lips, AND steady airflow that was ALSO angled in the correct direction for the note I was playing, WHILE pressing the right valves for the fingering of that note. And...You know what, I'm going to go off on another tangent. Miss Sarah Graham, you don't read this blog (because barely anybody knows about it anyway), but you are an amazing woman. Your encouragement to me, both in my 20-minute lessons during this first week and in your involvement with my learning during the rest of my two years of high school there, it's stuck with me. I know that my self-esteem, personal worth, and confidence in my ability to succeed, in time and with practice, were strengthened greatly in that short time you had with me. Of the people who've impacted my life, you've been one of my greatest mentors. You watched me toil through that first semester of lessons before I was ready to join the rest of the band, and you encouraged me with both advice and stories of your own struggles. Your transparency and your support made me who I am today. I'm not sure exactly what that is yet, haha, but discovering who God made me to be has been easier because of the time you invested in me. </span><br />
<span style="font-weight: normal;"> The embouchure was hard, and it was kind of discouraging that I didn't pick it up right away. Driving stick was hard, I stalled A LOT and was hesitant to slam on the brakes because I wanted to be a "smooth driver" and create a comfortable riding experience for any passengers. Finding my classes was kind of hard, too. French horn lessons, driving lessons, and my class schedule which was constantly folded up in my pocket: these concrete routines helped me to cope with those abstract variables, such as: </span><b>making</b><span style="font-weight: normal;"> friends, when I only knew one girl who was a senior and had very different interests (cough<i>, sports, </i>ahem<i>)</i>, </span><b>deciding</b><span style="font-weight: normal;"> what to wear for the ever-shifting Arizona temperatures, </span>and <b>talking </b>to literally anybody.<br />
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My gosh, I'm almost at 2,000 words, and these were supposed to be "a picture's worth 1,000 words" types of deals. I guess I'd better attach a couple more pictures so I can keep going. ;)<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvJcXfqAyYX0Go101HsW1ADe-ZmRwJL9AgQVxNUJZ4rrFlK9f3CwkMKMi7C5WO6x9exobuxlFfuQRGZHLmNk1uIKqW19Tjv_JkrL6AM1AkAg7l_0R-KuiES-J5Gbu-I2aMVIfnytMb4Pzb/s1600/securedownload+%252811%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="720" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvJcXfqAyYX0Go101HsW1ADe-ZmRwJL9AgQVxNUJZ4rrFlK9f3CwkMKMi7C5WO6x9exobuxlFfuQRGZHLmNk1uIKqW19Tjv_JkrL6AM1AkAg7l_0R-KuiES-J5Gbu-I2aMVIfnytMb4Pzb/s400/securedownload+%252811%2529.jpg" width="300" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">2013</td></tr>
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Talking was hard, because the talking I'd done previously had been in relationships with people who I knew through my parents who were, for the majority, in the same tiny minority as I was. I did talk with other people, such as the college-age girls who came to practice their English with us and became great friends. But that was also a relationship with someone who I knew through my parents. Learning to establish a relationship based on simply the commonality of peers was brand new to me. In person, that is. I attended an online high school and chatted it up with all the other chatty kids from around the world that attended the online academy. We even Skype called sometimes, but most of us had pretty scrappy internet, and we were also in <i>numerous</i> timezones, so those group calls were rare. I keep up with those online friends from time to time, and I've met a few of them in person as well.<br />
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Peers. Interacting with peers in person. Interacting with peers, in person, whose backgrounds didn't resemble mine in the slightest. I didn't think it was going to be 'scary', the way kids think the first day of kindergarten will be scary. </div>
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I remember crying during math in 1st grade at a new school, and also crying (in math class, too, actually) in 7th grade at a new school when a boy wouldn't stop whispering, <i>during class</i>, trying to force to me thank him for saying "God bless you" when I sneezed, but I was shy and hadn't been able to get the phrase out because I was awkward and didn't know how to interact with boys because I had an irrational fear, a phobia, of what might happen if I did talk to a boy...my gosh, that one was embarrassing...ha. </div>
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I started crying, and I couldn't keep the tears from welling up in my eyes, and I actually raised my hand and the teacher (who was kind of eccentric but was the best teacher for that rowdy group, and who threw me a farewell party three months later when I left) asked me what was wrong, and I <i>honestly</i> don't remember what happened but <i>whew</i>. I was so glad when that panic of a moment was over. He did get in trouble to some degree, idk if he was like, sent to the office (I feel like it wasn't that severe), or if the teacher just gave him some sort of "What the heck, man? Stop distressing this young lady, she's new and she's an MK!" That was a common phrase at that school about me, since it was the private school affiliated with our church there. </div>
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<a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=1aY89N6Sk18WBLnn_NpA8oiSpf7kor48e" target="_blank">Video from 2014, Google Drive file</a></div>
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Anyway. I didn't think it was going to be scary this time, because I wanted to keep my chin up, stay positive, be optimistic. But I'd experienced lapses of emotional control on stressful occasions at a new school (besides the fact that I am an emotional human being and feel things very deeply anyway), so I should have known. But I'm also an idealist, and I tend to like believing that the best and easiest sequence of events will occur (also known as <i>naiveté</i>...I tried to spell it "naivety" and spell check allowed that, too, but the spelling I googled looks more grandiose. ha.) More than an optimist, who, in my book, looks for good things, notices the positive outcomes, and uses that to frame their expectations and their perception of reality, and very far from my definition of a pessimist, who looks for bad things, notices the negative outcomes, and frames their expectations, their perception of reality, and their impression of how life is treating them with these unfortunate circumstances. I guess I do 'look for good things and notice positive outcomes,' but I don't do as much <i>looking</i>, as I'm caught up in my daydreams and well-wishes, and am not overly concerned with whether this or that was good or bad. If I'm going to talk about something coming up, like my parents visiting, for example, I first consult my impression of what I hope it will be like, not what good or bad <i>things</i> I think can <i>happen. </i>I think about how I <i>feel</i>, and I <i>feel</i> <b>excited</b> to see my mom and dad, <b>proud</b> of my own little apartment here, a little <b>anxious </b>about letting them into my sanctum, the "physical manifestation of who I am", as Jordan Peterson says about one's bedroom...and I'm <b>dreading</b> having to do all those dishes and pick up all the clothes off the floor and clean up the clutter...well, no, that's actually enjoyable, because it's organizational and there's "instant gratification" that Mom talks about, haha. But there's a <u>time constraint</u>! That makes me <i>feel</i> anxious. And I perceive an <u>expectation</u>--which my parents may or may not have--of a clean environment and signs of my good mental health, manifested in the way I conduct myself (and I'd better be conducting myself in a manner which looks a lot like Mom's manner of conduct, at least in the areas of food prep, household cleaning, hygiene, and yeah..... I feel like Mom expects everything to look great, and like if my apartment doesn't meet her expectation, she is going to think that I'm as healthy of an adult as she'd hoped for me. And I don't want Dad to be disappointed with the way I don't keep it neat and organized all the time...) </div>
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But you know what? As an idealist who can slip into anxiety when her ideals seem unattainable, I'm going to flip those thoughts around. There's a <u>time constraint</u>? Well, I'd have time for all the cleaning I want to do if I'd just close up this blog post, or get to a good stopping point and return to it later. I'm perceiving <u>expectations</u>? Well, I can just <i>text</i> Mom and tell her I'm doing okay even though I'm not keeping up with laundry or dishes or picking up blankets and folding them. I'm doing a lot better at some things that were stressful before. I'll make a good list I can be proud of, and then that'll be a nice positive ending to this blog post. Haha, and maybe later I'll add the story that goes with the original picture, lol. </div>
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">Little Successes</span></blockquote>
<b>The battles fought and mostly won in the war of mental health.</b><br />
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<li style="text-align: left;">I'm keeping up with taking out the trash when it gets full or smelly or before I leave on a trip.</li>
<li>I'm rinsing and scraping food off of dishes and not leaving the crumbs around on the table or counter to attract ants anymore.</li>
<li>I'm putting food back in the fridge and not forgetting it out on the counter like I've done with creamer or something I just cooked that needs to be put into a container.</li>
<li>I take my evening meds every single night, and I mostly have a handle on getting refills on time instead of procrastinating and then panicking when they run out...</li>
<li>I know how caffeine and sugar affect me, and I monitor my caffeine when I'm on my Adderall so that I don't get that horrible antsy, fidgety, <i>agitated</i> feeling.</li>
<li>I keep creamer or milk in stock.</li>
<li>I haven't run out of gas or kept myself from going somewhere because I didn't want to refill (for either the anxiety of how much money I'd have to spend, or the social anxiety of the getting out of the car in a dirty, smelly, wide open place, and being in close proximity to strangers who might be weird and who might stare...social anxiety or <i>anthropophobia</i>, fear of open spaces or <i>agoraphobia</i>, fear of germs or <i>bacteriophobia</i>, fear of smells or <i>olfactophobia... </i>I can list fears that used to keep me from stopping for gas until the last possible second. I guess the fear of failure that running out of gas and having to call for help would imply is worse than the sum of those other fears. Anyway. I overcome that by being OCD about where I get gas and trying to make sure I always get the cheapest price that I can. It helps me cope with the other stuff I think.)</li>
<li>I don't beat myself up about maybe saying something kind of stupid in a group that nobody gets and doesn't make anybody laugh. I've learned to reverse those thought patterns, and a year of therapy has helped teach me to fight back with "these people love me; they don't wish I wasn't here; nobody notices my 'failures' or thinks of me as 'a failure' if I say something kind of stupid; I'm going to keep contributing to conversations today and I know that I will be glad I didn't shrink back because of a little thing like that that doesn't matter."</li>
<li>I am working at standing up for myself when I have an opinion that matters to me, instead of never wanting to share opinions that I feel strongly about so that nobody can hurt my feelings. I still don't speak out a whole lot, but generally that's because there aren't many occasions for debates or serious, critical, relevant moral discussions. Usually, I'm just defending my rules as a babysitter when I'm with the kids that I've been nannying on and off during this summer, and that's the closest I get to standing up for my "opinions." I don't even call them opinions there, because it's stuff like "do your homework" "because your mom put it on your chore list" "because if you don't keep up with studies and learn things, your brain won't be ready to absorb things when school starts back up" "just do your homework" "do you want to get in trouble when your mom comes home and sees you didn't do your homework all day", etc. Heavy sigh. I just prefer harmony when I'm with friends, and the most arguing I find myself engaging in is usually just the general joking type, where I lay aside the rules I generally follow that keep me from making outrageous statements or drawing faulty conclusions from flawed data..... What am I even talking about anymore? I don't shrink back for fear of rejection or disagreement when there's something important to say, I guess. Not as much as I used to. On to the last thing on the list of things I'm proud of getting better at, lol.</li>
<li>I accept the responsibilities that come with living on my own. Paying bills and rent, maintaining quiet hours for the sake of my neighbors, keeping myself from lying in bed all day, knowing that no one will get me out of the house except me, and cooking relatively nutritious and varied meals for myself... These are the things I was working to accomplish so that I could be ready to move out, and I've done so well. I mean, sure I haven't eaten anything today except my coffee, and I'm procrastinating terribly as I've been on my blog since 10:49 AM and it's 2:04 PM now, but hey, I got out of bed. I took a shower! I updated my hair color, too, as touching it up often is important to keep it looking sharp. I made coffee and drank it before it was too late in the day. I took my Adderall (sure, it was later than it should have been because I turned off my alarm at 9:30 when it went off and then got distracted and forgot until 11). I've been drinking water, too! I've got a water bottle here and I'm taking good sips. </li>
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If this sounds depressing or sad to you that <i>these</i> are the things I'm proud of, I'm sorry but that is not my intention... Celebrate the little things with me, and be happy for the good instead of dwelling on the negative side (which I avoid like stepping on fallen ice cubes in the kitchen while wearing socks!) And thank you, by the way, for reading my rambling updates and freewrites about these old pictures. </div>
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There's a lot more things I could list that I'm proud of, too, like how well I've learned how to drive in a big city by myself, and how I'm making friends and putting in the effort to plan times to hang out with them... But 10 is a good number, and those are the things that I interact with on a daily level. And also I have a maximum of 4 hours now to wash the dishes, organize my dirty clothes to put them in the wash once my parents get here with more quarters, and plan a dinner that my mom can eat (she can't have carbs!). </div>
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So I'm gonna close this off, close my windows so I can blast some music through the speakers, and open my motivational reserves to get this stuff DONE. :)</div>
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YOU'RE<br />
AWESOME.</blockquote>
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Here's a potato.</blockquote>
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--ACS, July 27, 2018</div>
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Ashley Spencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09397508998348962392noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6737298045724065027.post-64254428612013342372018-07-18T21:51:00.000-04:002018-07-27T14:24:07.278-04:00Photo Prompts: The top 20, Photo #3<div class="separator" style="clear: both;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">~For all freewriting-based blog posts, see the tag </span><a href="https://grammarsblog.blogspot.com/search/label/Wells%20Of%20Thought%3A%20Notions%20and%20Expositions" style="font-family: "trebuchet ms", sans-serif;" target="_blank">#Wells Of Thought: Notions and Expositions</a>. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Here's prompt #3: 2014-A</span></h2>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">2014</span><br />
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This was a picture from when Dad was teaching us kids how to change the oil in the car. Of course, it was nice having a car lift in the shop back home, but since I'm moved out now and I don't have a car lift, I've gone and paid to have my oil changed.<br />
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We all had to take pictures to illustrate how to change the oil, and the idea was that we would then take each photo and make a caption for it, and thus create our own instructional slideshow to use for later. I started working on the captions, but I really needed help with it. I was trying to remember the list of instructions from looking at the pictures I took, and I had so many that I was pretty overwhelmed with the thought of writing the directions from memory. </div>
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There were no consequences for not completing the slideshow, but I always wished that I'd been able to do something to lock that lesson into my memory, since the suggested method didn't work out. </div>
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This makes me think about my previously undiagnosed ADD, and how I used to view unfinished projects and unfulfilled promises like this one. I thought that I struggled to complete stuff sometimes because I was lazy; I thought that my dreams of doing something else were wrong, and that I should fight against my instinctual reluctance to do things the way I was told. </div>
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I was really interested in knowing how to change the oil in the car. Dad always told us how much money he saved by doing the maintenance on our vehicles himself, and in our house, saving money was the highest of virtues. Saving money on things was right up next to obeying your parents and studying the Bible and telling people about Jesus. It kind of stresses me out just to think about it. </div>
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I completely understand why my parents placed such a big emphasis on that, though. Just like I wrote about the other day, they received their income not in a salary related to their performance, but in donations from churches, friends, and family who supported us so that we could do God's work. So it was God's money. And we couldn't spend it however <i>we</i> wanted, but we were under the pressure to spend our limited funds the way <i>God</i> wanted. I grew up knowing that my parents couldn't buy us Nutella at the store from the imported German chocolate section because they were saving up and only buying the minimum that they could budget for food. </div>
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Not buying Nutella must have been a thing, because that's what I always think of as the golden standard.... If you buy Nutella, you must be rich. Because if you're budgeting, you don't buy Nutella. If you can't decide whether something at the store is okay to buy on a budget or not, you just ask yourself, "Is this as frivolous as Nutella?" And if it is, you don't buy it. </div>
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These days, I'm having to budget for myself. It's hard! I've made some mistakes. But in the end, I've discovered some pretty cool tips.</div>
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Did you know that you can get two medium, 2-topping pizzas for cheaper than one large, 5-topping pizza at Domino's? They don't even have a large, 2-topping deal going right now. I ate off of those two medium, 2-topping pizzas for a week, including when Alex came over for dinner one night. That's pretty good for $5.99 each. </div>
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Did you know that buying a whole chicken is cheaper than buying the same weight of meat in thighs or chicken breasts? But you also have to have the time to chop it up. So guess who bought the cheapest thing of chicken breasts for her chicken noodle soup the other night? :P </div>
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Did you know that buying a half-gallon at $.49 is exactly half the price of a gallon of milk at $.98? That's good news for me, as I like getting both whole milk and 2%, and can't possibly drink a gallon of either by the expiration date.<br />
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Did you know that the powdered form of Carnation breakfast drinks vs the bottled form is cheaper? The 12-pack of 8-oz bottles is $14.98 (at $1.24 a serving), but the powder value pack with 22 8-oz servings only costs $9.98 (at $.45 a serving)? I finally figured that one out when I was shopping with Alex a few weeks ago. </div>
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Anyway. I took a break from writing this post and now I don't know what I was going to say next. But tonight I have to clean up my apartment (which will be fun) and wash the dishes (which will not be fun because I'll want to be done already but there are SO MANY dishes) for when a couple of friends come over. I have ingredients to make a lot of things, but recently I've made chicken noodle soup, and it was yummy. I think I should make that again, but I'd need more chicken stock! </div>
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I took another break. </div>
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I just said goodbye to both of the girls, we had dinner and played Uno for almost two hours, and it was so much fun. The timeline wasn't what I thought it was going to be exactly, but it worked out anyway: I got off work later than expected, stopped at Walmart for chicken stock and a stock pot on my way home, realized I left my phone at work and just got my stuff and came home, started cooking the chicken, made great progress on the food as I hurriedly cleaned up everything, hid my dirty dishes in a laundry basket in my closet, washed bowls and utensils for cooking the meal, and then the girls arrived after I'd been home for just enough time to not be embarrassed by the mess that was left. They liked the chicken noodle soup (and it was almost done by the time they arrived, too). </div>
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To bring it back around to the photo prompt, my dad (and both of my parents) worked really hard to prepare me for living on my own. Whatever things I was able to retain, I use daily, and I'm so grateful for the strong sense of the need for a good work ethic they imparted to me, among many other things. I work every day to live up to that work ethic, and honestly, Adderall has been helping me to achieve it. It's really something.<br />
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--ACS, July 18, 2018</div>
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Ashley Spencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09397508998348962392noreply@blogger.com0