Lessons from a newly-minted functioning member of society

Guys, guess what?? I finally became an adult! No, that does not mean I got busted for a crime, had a surprise pregnancy or sat all the way through The English Patient without falling asleep or killing myself. What it means INSTEAD is that I finally moved out of my parents’ house and got my own apartment…all me, just me. Not even a pet. ‘Cause I don’t have $300 plus $20 extra a month to be tacked onto my rent to own a cat. I mean, ‘cause I’m a lone wolf…aaawwOOOOoooo… Ahem…anyway.

So I’ve compiled a list of things I have learned since striking out on my own. You could say that with great responsibility has come great wisdom. But then you’d be terribly misquoting the Spiderman line, so you should probably just say that this had better be good, Ashlee, because you haven’t posted anything in approximately a hugezillion years and I’ve forgotten all about this blog so you’re going to have to coax me back with this ONE POST. No pressure. And we’re off!

1. Seeing as how the closest I’ve ever come to living alone was having a very introverted homeowner allow me to crash at her house in the summer of 2010, and seeing as how she already had pretty much anything I could need as far as housewares go, I figured out very quickly for myself that THIS CRAP IS EXPENSIVE. I waited this long to move out so I could get “the best” of everything and not have to have hand-me-downs, and I’ve gone through about $3200 in groceries, dish sets, a mattress, a couch, a dining set, living room tables, a TV, a TV stand, lamps, blankets, rugs, cleaning supplies, baking sheets, pans, Tupperware, towels, sheets, and toilet paper. And that’s AFTER my mom was awesome and spent an exorbitant—albeit generous—amount of money in helping me. I started from scratch and IT HURT.
   
   
2. The following movies are banned from your list of things you can watch once you’re living on your own: Taken, Silence of the Lambs, Cellular, Enough, What Lies Beneath, Ransom, Firewall, Panic Room (because you will not have one), any other movie where women are attacked or abducted…and From Justin to Kelly…just ‘cause it was reeeeally bad. Even if you live in an incredibly safe complex where the parking is all full when you get home at one in the morning because people are in bed and not making meth in their kitchen, you haven’t heard a gunshot (you’re pretty sure) since you moved in, no one has keyed your car after you got the best parking space and it was pouring rain, and the guys on the 3^rd floor balcony stopped staring you down after a mere 14 times of you walking in from your vehicle, you will still gain a new sense of terror at being a single girl in a big apartment without even a guard-gerbil. (little known fact: gerbils are excellent watch-animals. And I DON’T EVEN HAVE ONE. Yeah, they were used in WWII to guard the Nazi work camps at night…totally 100% verified. *finishes Wikipedia page to back up made-up fact*) Aaaand we’re back. Living in a safe apartment building filled with nice Hispanic families and couples quietly shacking up together will not stop you from locking your door in between each trip back out to your car to get all of your grocery bags, or almost severing your arm in an attempt to grab your keys out of the lock and shut the door before someone in the completely deserted hallway forces their way in behind you and turns you into a Lifetime movie-of-the-month.
   
   
3. You might develop a slight case of paranoia…which is not paranoia if it’s totally justified.
   
   
4. Things look a little different when you’re paying for everything. You lose a lot of weight because you don’t want to open the fridge and waste electricity. You will leave your iPod plugged in or run your sound machine all night but you rethink running the microwave…does a hot dog REALLY need to be cooked all the way through? You debate whether you really need to go to the bathroom after dark. And it turns out you can do a lot of everyday things without the lights on. Who needs light to wash dishes, straighten hair, put on makeup, or read? Old people are very jealous of this talent. “You’ve got such young eyes,” they say. Thank you, Grandma. Yes I do. And now that I’ve finished Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix using only the glow of my alarm clock for light, I only need to squint a LITTLE to see road signs in broad daylight. Also, you find that cable and Internet get too much credit. Internet? That’s what Panera Bread is for! Who needs to update Facebook more than once a week? It’s not like you have tons of news after moving into a new place or anything. It’s FUN to have 57 notifications every time you log on. These are the lies you will tell yourself to keep from taking a knife to your throat. …Although it probably wouldn’t be a successful suicide, what with the lights off.
   
   
5. You discover whether you are ACTUALLY a slob or if, deep down and too scared of the piles of clothes to come out of hiding, you have a semi-competent housekeeper inside you. This will be revealed the first time you make a meal (I use the term “meal” very loosely, as it really should read “grilled cheese, strawberry Jell-O, a Poptart, and a tumbler of cheap white wine”). You will either leave the skillet on the stove and the spatula-flipper-thingy in the sink, or you will have an epiphany. “If I don’t clean up my shiz-nit [paraphrase], no one else is going to.” No one is going to yell at you to wash your brownie pan but then begrudgingly do it anyway because it’s taking up her whole sink and even though she raised you better than that she’s a longsuffering mother and wife. Nope, that’s you now…only without the wife or mother part...and you’re not really suffering either. Point is, you’re now the vacuumer, toilet cleaner, laundry folder, and brownie-pan-washer. Lucky you. You can either rise to the challenge and enjoy the fact that Mommy doesn’t hold your hand anymore, or you can become one of those people on Hoarders that thought the scuttling under your mountain of five-year-old newspapers and used Kleenex’s was probably just the cat you lost six years ago…until the cleaners find that cat flattened under your bed/table/couch/toilet. For the record, I rose to the occasion, even BEFORE I ate my meal…because even without cable, that wretched show sticks with you. Bleck.
   
   
6. There are about a million and six ways of preparing an egg, and all of them are fast, cheap, easy (except for Eggs Benedict—Hollandaise, are you kidding me right now?), and pretty much taste all exactly the same, so you’re really just changing the shape and texture of the egg to tell your brain that your diet is full of variety and so that, if asked, you can cook “a whole bunch of things.” Also, grilled cheese and soup is highly underrated. You can eat these every day, even if you didn’t just come in from making a fort on a snow-day. Go ahead, cut the crusts off and slice it into quarters. Your guard-gerbil will not judge you.
   
   
7. If at all possible, find a place that has something amazing called “radiant heat.” …I think that’s the name. All that the feeble-minded women like myself need to know about this is that it means there are no vents in the ceiling or the floor for heat. There are pipes in the floor instead, which is great. You can’t hear anything from your upstairs neighbor except occasional footsteps. There’s no blaring music, no crying kids, no sounds of people doing the no-pants dance, no trumpet practice, no screaming at people halfway around the globe because your Marine unit got blown up by some Latvians while you were trying to get supplies from a tank…er…supply transport…yeah I’m pretty ignorant of these military video game things…so…WMD’s, Desert Storm, Panzers, and, uh…OO-RAH. Anyway, point being that it’s blessedly quiet because there are no vents anywhere. Although maybe the vents have nothing to do with it and my upstairs neighbor is just very quiet because he’s breeding cockroaches to put into the ears of his victims after he carves lines from The Iliad into their backs to lead the FBI on a wild chase until he finishes his twisted mission from the devil and uses me as his final work of sick art. …See bullet point #3. So, yeah, the radiant heat thing is nice.
   
   
8. When you go grocery shopping (as you really should do, since eggs are great but even they need to be replenished, and it’s hard to take them in to work every day), you will probably go a little crazy buying all your favorite things, because YOU FINALLY CAN! You can buy Pop-Tarts and Count Chocula cereal and bacon and perogies and Jell-O and cheese…so much cheese. You will quickly discover, however, that you probably shouldn’t binge on all these things in the first few days, because once all your favorite things are GONE, you don’t have the fallback plan of your mother’s crappy health food that is at least better than nothing. You just have nothing. So, if you don’t want to find a new thing that you have to restock every other day, probably go a little easy on the “I can buy any food I want and eat as much as I want at all hours of the day” approach. A 2^nd shift job is a great way to make sure this happens. I get off work at 12:30am, so I might have a small snack at home while winding down with The Office reruns, then I go to bed at 3am, get up at noon, eat a real meal (cereal, toast and orange juice—yes, my noontime meal is breakfast; don’t judge), go to work at 2:30—where I can’t snack because my college degree has apparently given me just enough skill and experience to work in a factory—and I get a 20-minute lunch break which is just enough time to scarf down a Lean Cuisine or some Mac n’ Cheese (surprisingly not that bad for you in the normal serving size...which is not a whole box, unfortunately). So on a good day where I get all the meals I am physically able to get, I eat two meals-ish. Not square meals, not fancy, and not deliciously greasy. In this way, you don’t go through many groceries and you actually stop resembling a sausage still wrapped in its casing. …Aaaand now I’m adding sausage to the grocery list.

Things I will not be telling my kids if I ever want them to believe I'm cool

Embarrassing moments. Like farts, we all have them; some people have no problem talking about them, and others are a bit more private about them. I keep my farts a secret, but I WILL tell you some of my most embarrassing moments. How's THAT for an A+ introduction?!? My high school English professor might have written next to this, "Crude, but effective." Thaaaat's me!

My freshman year of college, I stayed out past curfew (that's right, curfew at college) so I could stay late after a concert and hang out with the band. They were from my school anyway, but they were still Indie rock stars (in my eyes) and therefore infinitely cool. We went to the equally infinitely cool but also very classy International House of Pancakes, because even in the "big city" that's the only thing open past 11. I have said on this blog before that I learn all my humor from funnier people, and that was especially true my freshman year. I hadn't quite learned the subtle art of stealing STYLE of humor...no, I preferred the easier method of directly quoting lesser-known comedians without credit. People assumed it was my material, and I gladly let them. I tended to be overshadowed by my even more outgoing and much funnier friends, so any leg-up I could get was incredibly helpful. We sat across from the lead singer, a very gangly, redheaded, quiet, inexplicably-godlike guy who could sing the ugly off a Klingon woman. Yeah, that good. Seriously, if you see a picture you won't get it, but somehow he's really hot. So I decided now would be a fantastic time to show off my totally original comedy. I said, "But really, I don't get why they call it 'IHOP.' I never leave here feeling like hopping. Shouldn't they call it, 'I...barely move' or 'I...need a wheelbarrow'?" And I got a really good laugh out of it from friends and band members alike. Then Corey softly, almost hesitantly, chimes in with, "Didn't a comedian say that?" Tennis-match style, everyone swivels to look at me. "Uh...yeah," I croak. "It was Jim Gaffigan. Thanks, Corey." Then I proceeded to turn 6 shades of red and get a flash of my future, filled with disappointment and disillusionment as a humorist. CBFF Christi still tells that story to anyone who starts to think I'm sort of funny...or anyone who will listen to her if I start to think I might be funny.

I currently sell furniture at a major company in Michigan. One day I was showing a man a bedroom set for his spare room, and he asked me to figure out the price on the whole group, but he wasn't going to buy it that day. If we know they're not going to buy that day we have to get a second person to try to convince them to buy it then, or at least to give them two people's names to hopefully remember when (if) they come back in. So I got an older man named Bill who has been there about twenty years. Bill chatted him up for a bit while I got the prices written down on my card, and I put Bill's name on the card as well. I handed it to the man, showed him both our names for when he came back, and he said, "Could you write down some identifiers too?" Confused, I said, "Sure," and took the card back. I looked at it for a second and next to Bill's name I wrote, "Older man w/ glasses" and next to my name I wrote, "Young, dark hair" and showed him what I'd written. He looked at it straight-faced and said, "That's great. ...Could you also write down what the furniture looks like?"

We had a male gym teacher in high school who also taught Bible classes, history classes, coached soccer (JV and Varsity, both the boys' and the girls' teams), and was married to the Physics/Chemistry/Earth Science teacher/volleyball coach. Yeah, it was a small school. Seniors babysat their kid in the halls during their afternoon classes. His favorite thing to do was have us play indoor soccer. It didn't take much organization, we all knew the rules, he could sit in the corner and watch videos of the boys' games, and his girls could practice for spring season. I had discovered the awesome and oh-so-cool tearaway pants, and since they were PANTS I didn't see a reason to wear shorts under them. That's just begging to sweat through your underwear and get some serious swass* that you'd have to deal with for the rest of the school-day. BFF Cori told me on a few occasions that I should wear shorts, but I would not. I was going to march to the beat of my own drum, be a unique butterfly that intimidated people and that's why I never got asked out, and other cliches my mom told me during the 9.7 years I was in my awkward stage. While playing indoor soccer one day, I ran after the ball (which meant all eyes were on me), and hooked my thumb between two of the snaps accidentally, thereby revealing to everyone the utility and efficiency of tearaway pants...and also my underwear. I instantly collapsed like a rag doll, desperately trying to reattach a few of the snaps and possibly disappear into the floor as well. Unsure whether to laugh or cry hysterically, I settled for shaky laughter and misty eyes. Unfortunately, our teacher occasionally looked up from his soccer tapes and chose those few minutes as a good time to check in on our game. We didn't make eye contact for a week.

*Update: I realize I never explained "swass." This is what my coworker Tom affectionately calls "swamp ass," or the point in the day when you're sweating enough that your damp underwear begins to chafe your buttocks. And it's very uncomfortable. And apparently he gets it a lot at work. Because he sweats like my mom during a hot flash.

New Kind of Post...

OK, so I'm sorry to inform you of this but...I've been drinking tonight. GASP yes I drink sometimes. Seriously not very often. Like BARELY ever. What are you, my mother? I'm old enoough, get off it!

It's a good thing I'm very careful about my spelling/grammar...you might never know I've been drinking except for my random thought-jumps. Yes, that's an awesome new word I just made up. Thought-jumps. Use it...but give me credit or you'll owe me $3 every time you say it. Yes, I've definitely copyrighted that word just now. No, not kidding.

OK, yes, I was kidding just then.

Wanna hear a funny story? Too bad, you're going to hear my story instead. (haha...self-deprecating humor joke) Anyway, so last night I came home from work with my name-tag on because my job is one of those awesome ones where you have to wear a name-tag and someone who barely graduated high school could get my job and I'm not sure why I work there because I graduated college with a 3.95. Uhhhhh, anyway, I was still wearing my name-tag when I got home, so I thought, "OK put it in your coat because you would NEVER go without your coat at this time of year, so you'll definitely bring your coat to work with you tomorrow, and you'll thusly have your badge tomorrow." (Thusly: a very awesome old-English word like THUS but cooler because everything's cooler when you add an -ly) It was a foolproof plan. FOOLPROOF I TELL YOU. ...So I got dressed today and wore a sweater-coat and THUSLY (again, awesome) did NOT wear my coat. WHAT are the odds? Crazy, man. Life is crazy.

Just as randomly, I made a new best friend. Don't tell Cori or Christi. Her name is Katie. (something about that "K" sound, apparently I love friends with a "K" sounding name) Anyway, she's my best-work-buddy-Tom's girlfriend, and I love her. That's not just the alcohol. She's super sweet and funny and best of all she thinks I'M FUNNY which gives her like a gazillion points in the "Points towards becoming Ashlee's new BFF" category...which is really the only category in life that matters at all. Besides salvation. ...Where did THAT come from? And salvation isn't a point system at all! ...See where this thought-jump thing became an awesome word to copyright? Genius. Point of the story (cuz even I lost interest in it): I love her and will keep her forever.

I also replied to an eharmony.com message in this inebriated state. GASP yes I am on eharmony. As of like 2 weeks ago. OK, the thing is, it's like my friend Alex and her love of peanut butter on pizza, I couldn't KNOW it was awful until I tried it (the pizza, that is). Then I did and guess what? it was WRETCHED. But I didn't know until I tried it. Same thing of online dating. Don't hate until you have tried it. YES it's super lame. NO I don't think it's the only way I could ever find someone who "completes me." MAYBE I think Mr. Right's on there. Whatever, that's unimportant...this blog isn't about me. WHO AM I KIDDING of course it is! Anyway, I replied to a guy that I don't really like, so I don't really care if I'm slightly sloshed when I reply to him.

OK, this is not the comedic gold that I try so hard to put on here every time I post something new, but I felt bad about not posting in a little while. I hope all 3.5 of my viewers enjoy this, and I'll try to post something that I've legitimately thought out very soon. Thanks all!

God bless us, every one!!! (Tiny Tim???...where did that COME FROM?? This Christmas spirit thing is really getting to me, and it's annoying...)

Warning: Leaving PC Area; Enter at Own Risk

I apologize to all my die-hard fans that have been on the verge of suicide without an update from me for the past (few?) month(s). So sorry. I’ve been working about 50 hours a week making a pittance selling furniture to the cheapest people on earth. Nope, not Jews. Old Dutch people. No, seriously, those Holocaust survivors have nothing on Hollanders. They come in driving brand new Buicks but want me to cut them a deal on a $100 ottoman. I could make a fortune if my boss gave me $5 every time I ask someone how they’re doing and they tell me they’re “just looking.” One of my favorite lines (yes, that means this has happened more than once) is when they want me to show them the $88 mattresses and I tell them I wouldn’t put a dog on those, but show them anyway. They see it, feel the metal springs through the 1/8 inch thick padding and say, “Well, it’s just for my daughter. She’s only 8. It’ll be fine. And delivery’s free, right?” Really? If you’re going to buy this POS mattress for your kid and you DON’T want to spend as much on delivery as you did on that mattress, I think you can fold down the seats of your Escalade and just find a way to git ‘er done, you cheap son of a – Anyway. Even the Asian people know how to blow me off. When they’re not trying to get me to pay their sales tax, give them free delivery and throw in a couch for 20 bucks, they give me the same “just looking” as everyone else…except that they’re more like “just rooking”. Oh, sure, they just nod, smile and act like they don’t understand English when I explain to them that if I give more than $200 off a $500 chair I'll make about 27 cents, but they sure know “just rooking.” Is that the first thing they teach them in ESL class? After “free derivery?” and “no, is too much, we go Big Rots instead” of course.

This is shaping up to be a very racist post. First the Jews and now the Asians. Is there a major people group I have NOT offended? I’m sure I can fit them in here somewhere. Oh…yeah…I found them. I knew I was missing a large, dark part of the population. But I can’t. I’ll tell a short anecdote of someone ELSE’S un-PC-ness instead. (**Did anyone else say "PC-ness" out loud and hear "penis"? Was that just me? OK, yes, I'm a 12-year-old boy laughs when someone says "pianist"...anyway...) My boss this summer (not the cool young one but the ignorant older woman) was in a meeting with some very…diverse…members of the Fort Wayne community and kept saying “Afro-Americans.” My cool boss was mortified. He thought he was going to get shot. When he related it to me, of course I laughed heartily at his uncomfortable expense. Also, one of my co-workers asked me the last name of this black guy who works next door to us, and my friend Tom said he was pretty sure his last name was “Blackman. Brian D. Blackman.” AAAAND…she believed him. She probably would have called him Mr. Blackman if we hadn’t set her straight. (For any slow readers/auditory learners out there, say "Brian...D. Blackman" out loud...a few more times...you'll get it eventually.)

…And don’t get me started on the Mexicans!! Sorry, I had to. I actually have nothing bad to say about them. They might not be here legally, but they pay with cash and they don’t typically come back to complain. However, we have ONE Hispanic woman that works at our store, and I’ve tried not to stereotype and joke that every Hispanic person that comes through the door knows her, BUT THEY DO. Even if they don’t ask for her the second I greet them, I work with them for 5 minutes and they ALL—WITHOUT EXCEPTION—ask, “Does Maria work today?” I’d also make a ton of money if my bosses paid me $5 every time THAT happens.

Tom and I were the “lucky” ones who got to walk in the Holland Parade of Lights behind the store truck tonight, and I decided to make the most of it and pass out my business cards; I even did Tom a favor and wrote his name on them. But then TOM (who, by the way, typically has no qualms about making a fool out of himself) got really embarrassed when I went into the crowd and asked if anyone needed a mattress or a sofa!! It’s called networking!? I was singing along with the Christmas carols and dancing with Jingle Bell Rock, so clearly they would rather work with me than a creepy old man who watches them lie on a mattress for 20 minutes. If those people come back in with my card and I split half the deal with Tom, he’s not going to be so embarrassed, is he? Eh, he probably will be anyway. But he’ll still be spending that commission check, regardless of how embarrassed he was at the way I got them to come to the store, won’t he? How very “Tale of the Little Red Hen” of him…or…some other fable that accurately mirrors this real-life story.

In other news, this week is the busiest my social life has been in like…a month. Dinner with family tonight, out to the brewery wearing ugly Christmas sweaters with Tom and my new/his friend Katie tomorrow, date on Thursday, and maybe something Friday. Is this what normal extroverts feel like?

…And on Black Friday I had an Indian woman with curried B.O. coming from every pore.

Ah...bigotry mission accomplished. CBFF Christi would be so proud.

Update: I retract any and all statements that may have offended Asians, Dutch people, Mexicans, Africans, African-Americans (who I think actually go by "black" now?? not sure), and God's chosen people, the Jews. We all have tendencies and quirks that make us unique and set us apart from everyone else, but that does not mean that one race/people/creed is better than another, and until we break the cycle of hate and satirical "truth," we will never be truly ONE.

Update again: I retract my retraction. It's a freakin' humor blog. Get some thicker skin, ya PC Commies.