Reasons to be gruntled

No, not disgruntled. A list of pleasures, not all of them guilty, but yes, a fair share of them more than a little shame-faced and "I confess..." And as a special treat, I'm going to let my S&S girls ask me one question each about the list that I have to answer. And I think they might have some after reading it.


1. The ice that forms on cliff faces in wintertime
2. Peeing in the shower
3. Hot chocolate
4. Irish people
5. Unrequited loved
6. New DVDs
7. Peanut butter and Oreos
8. Peanut butter and jelly with the crusts cut off
9. Tall glasses of milk, with sweat beading on the sides
10. Raw cookie dough
11. James Blunt CDs
12. Poppy country music
13. Dirty, grimy, in the bones country music
14. The first crocus
15. Buttercups
16. Skype conference calls with R, M, J, and C
17. "That's what she said" jokes
18. Live music
19. Being hit on and flirting with 46 year old Irish bassists
20. Bassists, generally
21. Mustaches
22. Quotes about history
23. The (second) defenestration of Prague
24. Plaid
25. Miley Cyrus gossip
26. Zefron
27. Playing Monopoly
28. Peacock feathers
29. Weddings
30. Singing or speaking really, really fast
31. Jackson Browne
32. Pickles
33. Raspberry sorbet
34. Eating 21 scoops of ice cream every first Tuesday in June
35. Fenway Park
36. Riding the T from JFK to Kendall
37. The USS Constitution
38. River sounds
39. Honey mustard
40. Earnestness
41. Glitter
42. Dragonflies
43. The color blue
44. Falling in love
45. Kissing Dan
46. Jars, bottles, and other glass vessels
47. Seaglass (or had you forgotten?!)
48. Sequins
49. His ass, cause it's covered in sequins
50. Stupid inside jokes
51. Deep-fried Mars Bars
52. Denim skirts
53. Red-heads
54. Blue eyes
55. My parents' relationship
56. Meringues, especially melting them on my tongue
57. Live music
58. Making jokes about Marvin Gaye
59. Fake tattoos
60. Coins that trains have flattened
61. The ocean
62. Scotch
63. Tequila
64. Really terrible romantic comedies
65. Puns
66. Water
67. Swimming
68. Walking
69. Wearing Dan's sweatshirts
70. Dollhouses
71. Trees with names carved into them
72. Big Macs
73. Frozen Swiss Cake Rolls
74. Frozen Star Crunches
75. Mac and cheese
76. Chicken salad
77. Frozen yogurt with peanut butter sauce
78. Staying up late
79. Climbing volcanoes
80. Late night radio
81. Pub quiz
82. Family Feud
83. Jim Morrison
84. holding hands
85. Wearing dresses to inappropriate events
86. Candlepin bowling
87. Snowden
88. Chocolate covered sunflower seeds
89. The smell of dirt
90. Cranberries
91. Trees that look like they are dying after the foliage is over
92. Snow
93. James Dean, when he smiled
94. James Dean, when he looked broken
95. Flintstones vitamins
96. John Hiatt music
97. Farmhouses with wraparound porches and detached barns
98. Cape houses
99. Trees
100. Life can be beautiful
101. Oh, and this...

More loveliness

I quit my job.

Dear Boston:

Take me back, please? I'm sorry; I was wrong. I'm coming home to your intrepid and narrow one-way streets. I'm returning to golden domes and molasses floods and rivers named after men. Concerts in dingy-looking basements and late-night kebab adventures. I'm coming back to you.

I thought capital buildings and capital cities could replace the contentment of sitting under trees on the Common or the view from World's End. That I could make a new family as dysfunctional and wonderful and insane and crazy and lovely as my own.

I'm sorry, my love. Take me back and don't be too harsh. Remember that I love you and that was never in doubt. I just had to see what else was out there. It doesn't work, Boston, not the nonsensical way you do.

I'm coming back to the city that prompted James Carroll to write:

To talk of the purely imagined elements of the mental map Americans carry of this city is the farthest thing from debunking these fondly held ideas as “mere myth,” as if there were anything mere about mythology. What we dream of, whether a lost past or a longed-for future, does, in fact, tell us something quite real about ourselves. Thus, the sentimental fog that wraps even Boston’s hard-edged actualities can lift to reveal something deeply authentic.

Love,

Ashley

Loveliness is divine

AS YOU KNOW:

there's a new boy in town. But we're going back to an old favorite for this challenge post. A little someone I liked to call the Magic Charms (because he's magically delicious?) or more frequently, Paddy O'Furniture (because Robert created the name). Anyway, the scene:

I, cold and alone, have just moved to Scotland like five days ago. I'm jetlagged and all I want is some hot chocolate. So I step into a little cafe called "Juice Monkeys" and I order myself my favorite cold weather beverage. The person sitting at the counter on his laptop, I noticed as I approached the empty register, was rather lovely. He stood, slid behind the countertop, and took my order and two-pound coin. Then he brought me my hot chocolate.

In the meantime, we had a lovely conversation about how he was Irish and thus reminded me of home in, er, Boston, because Boston is wicked Irish? Anyway. He has these gorgeous cornflower blue eyes that just bore into me. And I have a lovely, blustery morning chocolate. I sit there filling out a postcard to my grandfather while I indulge. When I leave, I drop the postcard in the postbox just outside Juice Monkeys, right near St Patrick's Square (OHSOFITTING).

Ten minutes later, my mother calls me to inform me that my grandfather died a few minutes before. I cry and return to the coffee shop for a few more delicious hot chocolates.

It becomes a ritual for me and eventually, I learn Magic Charm's real name (Paul) and that he is older than he looks (31, at the time). He gets so friendly with me that he lets me choose the music he plays and, at one point, sent me with a tenner for strawberries. To this day, I believe that he was as taken by me as I was by him. We remain in occasional communication and some awkward but endearing IsItFlirting? is prone to ensue. It makes me smile, right?

The lasting legacy of this most lovely of encounters (spanning six months, is it still a mere encounter?) is something simpler and altogether lovely, itself.

Hot chocolate. I can't drink it without hearing Paul clear his throat or picturing the way he'd smile through his hair. I feel the warm, comfortable peace of sitting in Juice Monkeys on a gray winter/early spring afternoon by myself, reading a David Sedaris book and carrying on a fascinating conversation about nothing with him. I drink hot chocolate every day and remember a person with whom I had a lovely, perfect friendship. I remember a feeling of sublime peace and sedation. Every single day, I indulge my desire for something sweet and lovely and simple and with it comes an avalanche of lovely, simple, sweet memories of a time when I ought to have been sad, but instead felt warmth and affection.

It's Thursday in America

Who am I? Where do I come from? Where am I going?

All things I've had to consider lately. Turns out, I'm not really sure the answer to any of these questions, but I do know what I love. Well, actually... Sometimes I do. Not always. Right now I feel pretty good, but tomorrow I could feel pretty down. I suppose we'll see what tomorrow brings when it brings it.

I'm a person whose life is in flux, whose brothers won't speak to her, and whose dog is the best friend she's ever had. Like I say, some days I feel like Van Gogh's sunflowers and some days, well, I feel like his self-portraits. With whom would I eat dinner? Probably the children in my toddler room. What did I study in college? (I just finished TODAY!) Writing, but not correct comma usage. I've a bad habit of misusing commas and ending sentences with prepositions. It's been going on much longer than you need to know. Oh, I also studied history, but it's an afterthought now.

The best concert I've ever been to was probably the Todd Snider concert at the Paradise on June 12, 2009. The concert with the most potential was the David Gray concert in October 2005. The most transcendent and important concert was Jackson Browne, solo acoustic, on April 1, 2008 in Northampton.

Favorite blogs include The Unicorn Diaries and Postsecret.