Hello, friend.

I'll start by saying that Man taught me the proper use of the comma a while back and I'm pretty excited about it and take every opportunity to make up for my misuse of it the last 23 years as often as I can. Thanks, Love. 

In other news I had round one of my cardiologist appointments this afternoon. It was- gooey. But in the last eleven years they have mastered the art of the goo and now it's warm when it hits the chest. If someone would have told me that two years ago, going to that appointment would have been a horse of a different color. I can just picture the nurse twittering the latest updates in echocardiogram technology and me thumbs upping in approval (can you do that on twitter?). But yes, there were a couple hmmms from the technician, questions I did not have answers to and answers she was not allowed to give me- turns out this lady can rub my boobs for an hour but is sworn to secrecy by the doctors and I have to wait for appointment number two to hear the results. Oh well. She did transfer me to a doctor more specialized in this, although she wouldn't say what this was, and moved my appointment up a couple days causing a little intrigue and slight worry- but as my weekend horoscope said there's nothing more in life that I enjoy than worrying- true. 

It was a long whirlwind of a weekend that sucked in part of last week too. A lot of mom time with a two day celebration of my mom's birthday last week then Man's mom in town from the other side of the country this weekend. There were many trips to the mall and dare I say too much eating although it was a much appreciated break from our eggs and top ramen meal plan around these parts.

It was all pretty great and I am pooped. Yet instead of catching up on all the work I should have been doing this weekend I will share all the pretty things I have found tonight. A compromise, a bit of real news and a hint of fun stuff. But I warn you with all this family in town, too many episodes of the Cosby Show and a little too much boozin on a couple nights got me thinking, and more embarrassingly talking, about family and futures with Man. Gasp. Point being I want them. And in celebration of not finding out that I'm not dying (or at least not hearing it from the nurse today) I spent entirely too much time here looking up pretty pictures. Hello my name is Ashley and I'm a lady: I have uncontrollable hormones this week, my heart swells when I see babies and some day I want to get married. Suck it, because I'm not pretending anymore. 

genius.

So. I’ve been sitting in front of my computer for a couple hours reading eloquent entries into this young family’s life and remember that I used to be a good writer. Or rather, at some point in my early childhood I had the potential to be a good writer. Now writing is almost harder than speaking because it seems in the last few years my brain has purged a good chunk (chunk, really?) of its vocabulary and I cannot seem to form coherent thoughts at my own command. Anyway, I decide that I should do something about this and instead of writing the paper that I have been avoiding like the swine flu, which I DID have by the way, I decided to do this. So this, my friends, is a very long update as to what’s been going on in me lately.

Let’s start with the absence. I stopped writing (here) for a couple reasons. The first being that I waste way too much time on the internet finding new fascinations in other peoples lives and their pretty things instead of cultivating my own overgrown pile of interest and priorities. The second is that there is no real reason for me to pick and choose through the pile of crap that is the internet (why do I have to capitalize internet? I refuse.) then re-post my favorite things except to distract other people from their own daily piles of crap.  So I declare now that I will write here when I have something to say (with the occasional crap pretty picture in case you are only in need of distraction). I’m guessing this is a pretty common blogger reaction, somewhat of a midlife crisis/ whiney tween bullshit kind of deal so I don’t feel that bad about it. I just don’t want to contribute to the virtual landfill out there. I fear getting some huge garbage bill for overloading some blog server when they realize I have been wasting their precious web space. Ugh.

Alright so now that that’s out of the way (I told you this is going to be long): The good stuff. Welcome to the self obsessed/indulgent/critical world of me. It’s my blog, you came here to read it, suck it. My life as of last week was an exhausting juggling act of working and schooling frosted with the guilt of doing both pretty piss poor and the self resentment of falling further in debt by my fat tuition bills and my lazy ass not working more than three days a week. Fine. Fast forward to today and I’m trying every self prescribed combination of both distraction from real life and intense concentration necessary for priorities like writing a history paper. (Maybe I just don’t get it because clearly, I don’t, but why the fuck do I need to write a paper on the vague history lesson I have chugged in the past four weeks that will be identical to that of 167 other fucks in this class? To prove what I’ve learned? Fuck you and give me my money back because I didn’t and don’t need you to make me feel bad about it.) Whew. I digress, but really this teeter-totter of productivity and self denial had my head ready to explode. Then I got fired.

Well, not really. In the most passive aggressive Seattleite way my boss (who we like to call The Greek because he’s just as fucked as that guy from The Wire) laid me off. That’s really a whole other long winded story that YOU probably don’t need to hear because you already have. A long enough story that was cause for congratulations from most people. Celebrating the hope that I would no longer be bullied by the most ridiculous cast of assholes anymore and celebrating the fact that you will never have to hear about it again. You’re welcome.

So yes. At this point I am jobless but hopeful (and already have a job interview tomorrow so you need not worry, Dad), completely disillusioned by school and my seemingly unreachable art degree (another whole separate post), and I find myself sitting next to my grandma on Mother’s Day. I haven’t seen my grandma in what has probably been years but today she has decided to take a break from her Reno traveling, care-taking in Arizona (for a man who can’t be more than a few years older than herself) wild and crazy life to hang out with us shmucks all day, probably because we were celebrating her. But it was great, we sat together as she laughed at crappy MTV reality television, reminisced over how difficult I was to babysit and telling me how she just lost fifty bucks betting against Manny Pacquiao in the big fight.  It was good times. We cooed over the newest addition to our family (thanks to my cousin who apparently makes gorgeous children) and she warned me not to have children too young as she slips into a story about her exhaustion as a seventeen year old mother and how she would cry when the baby, my oldest uncle, would cry and how you don’t sleep for days when babies get sick. Check. Then she turns to me and asks, “Can you have babies?” [Insert record needle screech here]

Over head spinning and the deafening sound of my heart stopping I manage to catch some “because of your heart?” and “I thought that’s what they said when you were a baby?” blahblahblah as much enjoyment as I was having moments ago in this rare connection with my grandmother she managed to rip the world out from under me. Happy effing Mother’s Day. kid. So like anyone would I pretend it never happened, sit patiently for a polite amount of family time, hug my mom goodbye and hope she can’t hear the five bajillion questions that are pounding through my head then rush home to google my brains out.

Okay, time out. In case you don’t know, which I’m guessing you do because I’m pretty sure only four people read this blog and probably only two of you have made it this far into this beast, I’ll catch you up. My heart is effed up. And not in a messed up, I have a hard time loving way, which I’m not saying I don’t, it’s just not what I’m talking about today. I was born with a quarter sized whole between my hearts two upper chambers. I usually try to break it down in the same infantile way my parents did when I was little but it requires too many hand gestures and sympathetic-don’t-feel-bad-for-me faces so you can just google your little fully functioning heart out. It’s ASD, and not down syndrome which is the first thing that pops up, that would be too easy. It’s atrial septal defect. I was listening to this inspirational speech on-line (shut the F up) and this lady talks about creative minds and that we shouldn’t be ashamed of the things we were born to do. Well, I was born to die. BUT I DIDN’T so don’t feel bad, actually don’t feel anything. It is what it is, I got surgery before my first birthday, probably caused more than my share of grief and heartache, not to mention debt for everyone that knew my tiny self and was all good after that. I couldn’t’ even get a doctors note to get out of gym class. I have a freaking heart condition people.

Fast forward to today and my ignorant ass is avoiding doctors appointments out of sheer laziness and a lack of excitement of the thought of someone rubbing cold sonogram gel on my chest for hours. Pretty hot, I know. Well…turns out at this check up, now twelve years after my last cardiologist appointment, half my life ago, they tell you these things. Like which birth controls are bad for people with congenital heart disease (hello, I’ve been on birth control for almost 10 years, it’s the 21^st century) and the bajillion tests I’m going to have to take before I even think about becoming pregnant (one that involves a catheter, awesome) to see if my little old heart can handle it. Bitches. This appointment is pretty much to tell you all the big scary things you were too young to hear at the last appointment. And yes, they are right, if I learned these things at age eleven my Spice Girl loving ass would have been first in line for a lady bic razor after a long night of steno notes folded into hearts and table footballs to my closest friends and a tear soaked diary entry longer than this one, yes it is possible. Or maybe just a eating disorder, whatever.

But yes, after almost 1,500 words to get to the good part I’ve become exhausted of thinking about this, which was really the covert intention of the whole thing and I’ll wrap it up. After a long night of crying, whimpering, laying on Man’s lap in silence, with him eventually able to drag my ass out of bed with the promise of baking cookies and watching the news to reveal how fucked the rest of the world is in comparison to my own problems (my own inference, not his, but yes he really did bake cookies) I calmed down and realized there just wasn’t anything I could do about it. I made a doctors appointment first thing this morning and we’ll get to the root of this, or rather they already did 22 years ago and they’ll just tell me all about it. And I’ll tell you all about it.

Thanks for listening.