Category Archives: First World Problems

May 21, 2013 · 12:01 pm

LinkedIn, I hate you.

Well, I tried.

It all sounded great, didn’t it? Sometimes you just have to be faithful, and sometimes being faithful is getting on LinkedIn. Check, check and check. I wrote those words, pushed publish, and then squared my tiny shoulders determinedly because TODAY WAS THE DAY. I was going to do it. Technology be darned, my deadened soul and I were going to join the ranks of suit-and-tied-people everywhere that have officially been browbeaten into submission, and wear the LinkedIn badge of shame. Big Brother was watching, and I was going to make him proud! A grin danced across my face as I thought about how surprised and excited Kellan would be when he got home, given that he’d been pleading with me to take the plunge for approximately two years.

Also, I am an exceptionally horrific gift-giver, and his birthday is coming up. I figured the timing couldn’t hurt.

Now, we’ve established that technology and I are not amigos. Kellan has long since given up attempting to teach me how to work our DVR because the launch codes to every missile America has tucked away are less complex than figuring out how to record How I Met Your Mother. I have better things to do with my time than push a zillion buttons and pray to the sweet baby Jesus that I don’t miss another episode.

Back to LinkedIn. I decided that given the fact that I have a Facebook profile [though truthfully, much to my protest one of my college roommates set it up for me], I could certainly handle setting up a LinkedIn profile. I mean, how hard could it be?

FOOLISH.  Fifteen minutes and more than a few choice words later, I had accidentally invited 163 unfortunate, unsuspecting people to be my friend—a midday inbox surprise that had to be about as charming as finding a band aid in your burrito.

I was mortified. I mean, I’d agreed to create a profile but I certainly didn’t want FRIENDS! At least not without buying them a drink or two, first. Some witty banter, maybe an appetizer… and yet suddenly, I was that girl cozying up to people who I haven’t spoken to in years-or in some cases, ever. I felt all HEY WOULD YOU LIKE TO BUY SOME GIRLSCOUT COOKIES?!, only there was nary a Think Mint in sight and thus, nothing redeeming about the whole sorry disaster. Please keep in mind that you’re talking to the girl that once tried to defriend every person on Facebook that had ever tried to sell her something from Mary Kay. Live and let live, people!

You’ll be thrilled to know that I am now LinkedIn friends with my car insurance agent, an ex-boyfriend’s grandma, and a rather suspect fifty-something man that once stalked the interwebs for my email address and used it to ask me on a date to the Golden Corral.

By the time Kellan got home, I had straight-up crazy eyes. Have you ever seen the look on a Doberman pincher’s face right before he rips the hind quarters off a rabbit? Add in just a touch of rabies, and you’ve got the general idea. [I am lovely to come home to.] I mean, clearly this was HIS FAULT. Happy freaking birthday, are you happy now?! I told you nothing good can come of technology!!!

I announced my plan to delete the whole thing [you know, with his help], give up the job search and simply sell all of the plasma in my body. And maybe a kidney, if it came to that.

He smiled-apparently, he already knew, because I’d sent him TWO invitations during the course of his work day. [How? And did I sent everybody two? I can’t think about it. I just can’t.] Honey. Let me help you.

This is a public service announcement: If you get a LinkedIn invitation from me over the next forty years, please delete it. Thank you, and good day.

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Filed under First World Problems, My ghetto-fab life, Then I found $5.00

May 20, 2013 · 10:38 am

Faithful.

I’m looking for a job in Albany. Daily, I go to war on my overwhelming urge to channel the old couple in Titanic and simply lay down and pretend that it’s not happening. This impulse can be largely attributed to both the fact that I can’t stand the idea that I left a job that I loved in North Carolina, and my secret fear that I’m going to have to be a truck driver in New York. Unfortunately, my Dad pointed out that my driving record might have a blemish or two that trucking companies might frown upon. [For both of our sakes, I wish that I could tell you that I never hit a handicapped sign whilst taking my driving test. I wish we could have that.] And so just like the Titanic, my truck driving dreams [nightmares?] have been unceremoniously dashed.

Thus, in an effort to avoid selling cheap, knock-off sunglasses out of the back of a van in NYC, I’m job hunting.  It’s something that I’ve never had to do quite like this—I have happily fallen in to every job I’ve had since graduating from UNC. Serendipitously, my brilliant MBA husband happens to be quite the expert when it comes to resume polishing and job searching [as in, people have paid for his expertise before], and he is determined to help me. [For free! And y’all know how much I love a good deal.] Unfortunately for Kellan, I am technologically illiterate and thus become completely overwhelmed with panic and try to hide under the bed in our guest room when he so much as tries to get me on LinkedIn. WHY ARE YOU TRYING TO CHANGE ME?! Honey, I’m not trying to change you, I just think there are more efficient methods of networking than liking people’s Instagrams. OHMYLANTA, THIS IS NO TIME FOR A LESSON ON CUTTING EDGE TECHNOLOGY!!!

As you can imagine, the job search is going swimmingly. Also, we are out of wine.

There is something rather soul-numbing about summing yourself up on a resume. We live in a culture where What do you do? carries an implied, What are you? It is ugly and unfair and I am guilty of it. The difficulties of being unemployed in a new city are myriad, and they go beyond the bank account and right to the heart of the matter: my heart. The fight to believe that I am valuable and worthwhile because of Jesus, and not because I do something impressive with my 9-5 is daily. My desire to prove that I am worthwhile exposes an ugly pride that needs to be uprooted from my life.

There’s a story that I love about Mother Teresa. She and a wide-eyed visitor from suburbia, USA spent a dreary afternoon walking through the devastatingly impoverished streets of Calcutta. As they waded through the “least of these”, they passed a filthy little girl too weak to lift her hand to beg. Flies swarmed around a crusted, dirty mouth that could no longer remember the taste of food, and vacant brown eyes fluttered open and shut as if hoping to discover that death had mercifully come. Upon the defeating discovery that she was still alive, the disappointed little girl exhaustedly slipped back into semi-consciousness. She was one in a sea of thousands like her—the untouchable, unwelcome poor. Stricken and overwhelmed, the horrified American turned to Mother Teresa. You’ll never help all of them! You can’t even make a dent. How do you continue this work when there is no way that you can be successful? Mother Teresa simply smiled. I am not called to be successful. I am called to be faithful.

There is a sweet simplicity to that. We are not called to be successful: we are called to be faithful. Wherever God puts us, whatever He calls us to do. Even if it’s something as utterly mundane as getting on LinkedIn.

Here’s to being faithful today.

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Filed under First World Problems, God's faithfulness, The love of my life.

May 16, 2013 · 11:01 am

Got Milk?

DSC_0011Confession is cathartic and this is mine: I have a highly illogical but very real fear of running out of milk.

I mean that quite literally—there are few things in life that make my heart race and bring me closer to the brink of losing my ever-loving mind like an almost-empty milk jug.

The explanation is deceptively simple: I stir skim milk into my Carolina-blue mug of caramel truffle drip coffee every single morning.  If you’re the kind of person that channels Snow White when you rise with the sun and greet the day by cheerfully  singing songs to small woodland creatures, I salute you. My Mother used to be one of you, and when I was a little girl she’d often wake me up by singing to me. I recognize that this ought to have been one of those precious moments that people make Hallmark cards about, but I’ll have you know that the second I figured out how to start locking my door at night, I did. And we owe our present loving relationship to that sage six-year-old decision of mine.

Y’all. Until my first cup of coffee in the morning, I am hanging on to this world by a gossamer thread and the hopeful gurgle of my coffee pot is my proverbial light at the end of the tunnel. I stumble out of bed convinced that my name is Phyllis, and often refuse to respond to anything else despite the trivial little detail that nobody has yet been notified of the change.

The bottom line here is that coffee is critical to life as I know it. No milk in the morning=no caramel truffle coffee=Ashley behaving something like Cruella Deville from 101 Dalmations. Normally I love a good puppy, but sans coffee I am entirely capable of skinning a small army of them and promptly proceeding to prance around my apartment in my new puppy fur coat singing “Baby I’m a fiiiirreewooorrrkkk!”.

I might recommend staying away from myself before cup number three every morning.

The milk thing is easy enough now that I’m married, given that I do most of the grocery shopping and thus get to decide how much chocolate pie we’re going to eat on any given week [answer: at least one] and whether or not it’s rational to buy two gallons of milk at a time. [It is.] This was NOT always possible when I had roommates who rotated buying milk with me, and didn’t always share my dedication to milk in the mornings. [The HUMANITY!] Kellan and I had a coming to Jesus moment about milk early on in our marriage [though who are we kidding-it’s going to be “early on in our marriage” for quite a while, still], and my heart melted just a teensy bit when I discovered two jugs in our fridge upon my return to Albany on Tuesday.

The man gets me. What can I say? I think it’s one of the sweetest things about marriage, thus far—someone knowing all of your little idiosyncrasies and neuroses, and loving you without a single “unless”. To be both known and loved is beautiful.

Wedded bliss had a close call yesterday afternoon when my husband almost had to hop a plane for an impromptu business trip. Mercifully it was postponed until next week at the last possible second, and so date night is saved! With milk in my fridge and my husband at home, I think we can already declare this weekend a winner. :)

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Filed under First World Problems, Love, The love of my life.

May 23, 2012 · 2:57 pm

Ladies Who [Are Out To] Lunch.

My 25th birthday was hallmarked by the rather terrifying realization that it’s finally happening. In a sort of “I still vaguely recall what to do with this tooth brush” kind of way, I am officially losing my mind.

It became impossible to deny the blatantly obvious when at approximately 8:20 AM on Monday morning, I discovered that I had walked out of my house, driven to work and sat down at my desk wearing two entirely different shoes. Justin Timberlake and I are in the business of bringing sexy back, and we’d appreciate it if you would simply leave us to it.

I felt very “ladies who lunch” sitting in my skirt and mismatched footwear. They added a certain “Je ne sais quoi” to my outfit-and technically, I AM a lady, and I DID eat lunch on Monday. Even if lunch consisted of a rather suspect stalk of celery, four limp grapes and a cube of Munster cheese. It might have been alone under fluorescent lighting, and it might not have been white wine and a strawberry salad, but there is no shame in lunches comprised out of the dregs of my refrigerator! Or in eating Nutella straight out of the jar with a spoon. Or taking purple Flintstone vitamins for adults.

There is no shame in that.

My fading mind is frazzled. Which is unfortunate, because I used to be able to remember an impressive variety of things and have now reached a point where the only thing I can recall with total clarity are the words to approximately every. single. Rascal Flatts song. Which is a handy life skill.

Sadly, I’m not even sure that Sudoku can help me now. …especially because I’m not entirely positive that I correctly understand how to do Sudoku.

Give it to me straight: is everything just downhill after twenty five? At this rate by the time I’m thirty, you’ll find me wandering your local Walmart parking lot and rummaging through their recyclables.

…while eating a strawberry salad.

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Filed under First World Problems, Life at the Frat House, My ghetto-fab life

April 16, 2012 · 1:50 am

Bagged Lunch Baggage.

It’s nice to see all of you again. You haven’t changed one bit.

I trust that the past several weeks have worked out beautifully for you and humbly apologize for my propensity to get sidetracked and forget that just because I’m not thinking about my blog does not mean it doesn’t exist. It’s very reminiscent of my sophomore year of high school, during which I temporarily forgot I was taking Algebra II because it was Spring and the sun was shining and I needed to be tan by Spring Break.

Speaking of Spring Break, why is it that adults don’t get one? The florescent lights atop my cubicle at the frat house are slowly frying my retinas and driving me to drink.

Which is unfortunate, given that keeping a bottle of Jack under your desk at a Baptist church is generally frowned upon.

And while we’re talking about food, if I weren’t too cheap to quit I’d be just about ready to give up on the whole “bagged lunches” idea. Don’t get me wrong, I love to cook-…just not at six thirty AM. I know, I know. PULL YOURSELF TOGETHER, ASHLEY. IT’S A BAGGED LUNCH-NOT VIETNAM. But you’ve got to understand that at six thirty AM, you’re more likely to find me rummaging through the neighborhood recyclables than you are to engage me in any form of intelligent conversation, much less find me being creative with healthy foods.

Though actually, I suppose that hinges on what your definition of “healthy” is. My definition includes Nutella.

Every morning in a dazed stupor, I stumble into the kitchen to make my lunch-which given the fact that I routinely forget to go to the grocery store looks something akin to one of those bizarre Quick Fire Challenges on Top Chef. Except this doesn’t so much involve making a canapé in forty seconds using Brie and chilled lobster tail so much as it involves what kind of sandwich I can make using no bread or lunch meat or cheese. If not for a few rather questionable lettuce leaves and single triangle of Laughing Cow cheese I discovered on happenstance at the eleventh hour, all would have been lost last Wednesday morning.

Though caffeinated, pencil-skirted, hungry Ashley didn’t find anything humorous about the aforementioned cheese triangle six hours later at lunchtime that day. “Maniacally Taunting Cow” might have been more appropriate.

A wise woman might wander downstairs right now to pre-pack a healthy, creative lunch before drifting off to sleep. But like Scarlett O’Hara, I’ll think about that tomorrow.

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Filed under First World Problems, Life at the Frat House