A Chick Called Mick

I had a car accident this week.  I'm fine.  No one was hurt.  I did, however, learn that when a Chevy Malibu takes on a Dodge Ram pickup, the Malibu will lose.  Badly.  In fact, my little 'bu's whole front crumpled while making a sound that was eerily similar to a can of biscuits popping open.

I'd already had a rough few days at school, and I was just getting over the flu, so let's just call it a solid week of crappy days.  I experienced a few break downs of varying length and intensity for the next hour and a half, including a moment of shame when I realized my accident would probably be mentioned during the drive time updates on the TV and radio, and another pang of embarrassment when my friend Mike--who kindly came to pick me up and drive me to work--confirmed that I had indeed made the radio. 

There comes a point, though, when I'd cried all I could cry, and my team teacher made me laugh a little and then bought me a candy bar.  ("If I wrecked my car and then it had to be towed away, I'd want to mainline sugar," she explained.)  My insurance company authorized a rental car, and I was feeling slightly calmer.  Everything sucked, but I would get through it.  My friend John gave me a lift to an Enterprise car rental place by my house.  I went in and told them my insurance company had made a reservation for me.  After consulting a list, he assured me I could pick my truck up in a few minutes.

Truck? 

My heart sank a little because before that very moment my biggest fear had been that I'd be issued something kind of lame like a PT Cruiser.  I just assumed it would be a car.  Part of my shock was the result of a language thing.  My insurance told me they'd get me a rental car, and I called it the rental car place, and everyone says the word "car" so I just assumed that's what I'd be getting.  I also quickly remembered that one of my earliest experiences driving my dad's pickup truck ended with me hitting a mailbox that I never would have hit if I'd been in a small car.  But mostly I was mildly horrified because I don't see myself as a truck person.

Part of our identity is wrapped up in what we drive.  Just ask anyone who drives a fancy sports car.  I drive cars. I drive small cars that get good gas mileage.  That's my deal.

And I wasn't going to be driving just any truck.  It's an extended cab Ford F-150, which is a really large truck.  I sputtered.  I protested.  I begged for something else and stopped just short of saying, "I listen to NPR and have the short stories of Dorothy Parker on an audio book in my car!  By definition, I'm not the kind of person who drives something like that."  Meanwhile, the two guys working behind the counter decided to deal with my freak out in decidedly different ways.  Scott, clearly service oriented, explained it was all they had right now, apologized, and tried to convince me the truck was really nice and not as big as I thought it was.  His partner just made fun of me. 

Continue reading "Accident Prone" »

Posted by Ashley McKelvy | Permalink | Comments (2)

It's been a while, and let me explain.  First, it turns out teaching high school is kind of a lot of work.  I naively underestimated just how much work, but also--and I hope I don't sound like too much of a conspiracy theorist--events have been conspiring against me.  A few weeks ago, I was going to go to something called The Hairy Man Festival.  I felt almost duty bound to go and take some truly horrifying pictures to share with you all, but, alas, it got rained out.  I wasn't clear on the makeup dates and cancellation policies, so I couldn't follow up.  Next, I heard about a musical, live action version of the Evil Dead movies, and after I asked someone to get me a ticket, I developed a cough and a low grade fever.

This last thing presents a particular problem because I don't know how to find a doctor in a new city.  When I was in Tallahassee, my permanent retainer broke, leaving one side glued in place and the other side just a loose, exposed wire that poked me in the fleshy parts of my mouth.  I called several orthodontists, none of whom were taking new patients at that time.  So, what I considered to be a dental emergency was, to them, a personal problem.  It took about two days before I got someone to see me, and that guy basically put a really clean pair of pliers in my mouth and pulled hard.  There are things that I can be a bit of a princess about, but if I'd known that was the best solution to my problem, I'd have grabbed my toolbox and invited my friend Ginger over to take care of that problem two days ago so I could eat a damn sandwich in peace, you know?

So, I'm sick in a new-ish city, and since I teach school there's no telling what kind of germs I've been exposed to.  My students are great, but it's cold and flu season, which means they're also human petri dishes, and I live in Swine Flu country.  My roommate told me about these clinics that can be found in CVS pharmacies, and there was one about 5 miles from my house.  When a few attempts to contact doctors' offices by my house didn't pan out, I headed to CVS.

The fact that I was exhausted and sweaty after my five minute drive was a bad sign.  I waited about half an hour before a woman with rainbow colored glasses and no discernible upper lip called me into her office.  Let me be clear: she had made an attempt to draw an upper lip, and her efforts conveyed the idea of lips.  But the arcs were small-ish and way too far apart to have been real.

Because 'tis the season, I agreed to have a flu test.  The test involves a nasal swab, which I was fine with until the moment that the swab actually penetrated my nostril.  Because THAT is the moment that this lipless sadist in a lab coat decided to tell me, "This will be a little bit uncomfortable." 

That honestly hadn't occurred to me.  Mostly because I've watched a lot of CSI where a cheek swab seems like a fairly gentle rub that doesn't involve Marg Helgenberger sticking her gloved hand halfway down someone's throat.  But if you're going to issue a warning that "this will be a little bit uncomfortable," then it needs to come in advance of the event.  So I can brace myself.  Or you just let me figure it out, hoping that I started out oblivious and therefore relaxed,  which might make the process easier.  But now, I'm flinching and freaking out at the exact moment she's trying to jab something up my nose. 

And then she hits something solid.  I don't know what.  The side of my nasal cavity, some cartilage, hard to say.  But she kept jabbing away until tears started coming to my eyes and I grabbed her wrist.  I was just going to make her slow down and readjust, but she kept trying to push forward, so I pulled on her wrist until she took the swab out.  Her response: "Well, it's supposed to go further in than that, but maybe that will do."  So this is what it's like to be at war with your medical professional?  She just stabbed me in the face with an incredibly long Q-tip, made me cry, and now she's going to express disgust when I refused to let her poke a hole in something inside my face?

We had a mildly combative Q and A session while we waited for my results.  I told her I was taking some generic cold medicine, and she demanded the name.  I didn't know.  I thought the box just said "Cold Medicine" as though that was the name.  It's generic.  It's a yellow box.  She works in a place that sells tons of nameless stuff like that, why does she think it's crazy that I can't be more specific?  After a tense ten minutes, she confirmed that it's the flu, and I grabbed my things and left.

I've spent three days almost entirely in bed, which is more awesome in theory than in practice.  I also learned that Maury Povich is still doing that "I Slept With a Bunch of People.  Which One is My Baby's Father?" episodes that seem to be his specialty and keep at least one DNA testing center busy.  There are some new faces on General Hospital, and yet it seems like they're still doing the same plotlines they were doing when I was in college.  I still find it impossible to watch The View.  My roommate was very supportive and bought me some juice with a ton of vitamin C and then politely asked if I confine my germ-infested self to my room until I am no longer contagious.  Fair enough, really.

I'm going slightly stir crazy is what I'm saying, and after a lot of fluids and plenty of sleep, I think I might just feel healthy enough to make to the Evil Dead musical tomorrow night.

UPDATE: I just called my best friend, who is a doctor in Phoenix.  She reminded me that she diagnosed me with flu via text message without sticking anything up my nose.  This is not the first over the phone medical diagnosis she's given me that's been spot on either.  I was worried that I should have a doctor's note for work because I missed three days, but I wonder if they would just accept text messages from her in future...

Posted by Ashley McKelvy | Permalink | Comments (0)

I feel most like an Arkansan when I am living outside the state.  When I'm living in state, I'm more irritated by its flaws, and especially when I've lived in the rural parts of the state, I felt incredibly out of place.  But when I leave, I become much more protective of the place and much prouder of my roots.  I find myself constantly pointing out Arkansas connections to people and things.  Studying abroad, I insisted all my Irish friends stop calling it "Ar-KANSAS."  On a date with a guy from Ohio, I was not amused when he "jokingly" explained outdoor lighting to me saying, "I don't know if they have that where you're from."  And when teaching school in Texas, I do not pledge allegiance to their state flag.

Let's go back a bit.  I was on a work trip to Michigan with most of the people from school, and for days we'd been whooping and cheering when the name of our school was mentioned.  After a particularly enthusiastic cheer at breakfast one morning, our moderator said something like, "You can always spot the Texans."  I was surprised at how quickly I took umbrage.  Perhaps it's the old school rivalry between the states, but I'm not a Texan.  I'm not sure if I'll ever feel like one.  I lived in Florida for three years, and I never felt like a Floridian.  Maybe that's because I wanted to distance myself from a state that I have often referred to as "the place where crazy goes to blend in," but still...

The first time it was announced over the PA that we should stand and say the Pledge of Allegiance to the United States and then the Texas flag, my team teacher and I just looked at one another.  She's from Kansas, and neither of us was prepared for that moment.  We're both educated women, but this isn't a thing either of us know.  I snuck glances around the room and learned you raise your hand like you're being sworn into court rather than over your heart like we do for the national pledge. 

It's been two weeks, though, and neither of us have learned the pledge.  It's one sentence long, but I'm trying to resist learning it for as long as possible.  And if there's one thing I've learned from teaching, it's that you can refuse to learn most anything.  I am convinced that some students dedicate their lives to never knowing where commas go and I've heard students brag about how little they read for a class as though they were trying to win a competition to see who could do the least work.  I was usually not that student.  I was the student who read all the words, but I'm digging in my heels on this one. 

I'm not doing it because it's Texas, although I do think they have a weird obsession with their state.  The thing is, people move around a lot these days.  This is my third state, but I don't know that it will be my last, and at least one of my students is a military brat who's lived in several other states and countries.  I plan to respect and obey the laws of the state while I'm living here and pay all the appropriate taxes, but the pledge makes me feel like I'm supposed to make a choice.  That because I have taken a job here--and to be fair, the location was a factor in my decision to move--I have to be loyal to this place and reject all those places I lived before. 

I like that my team teacher and I are from exotic places like Arkansas and Kansas.  We also went to school outside or home states and traveled the world a bit, and I think that gives us unique perspectives that we can share with our students.  When I told a friend of mine about the date with the guy from Ohio who made fun of me all night for being southern (not a recommended wooing strategy, by the way), my friend laughed.  "So, he thought it would be a good idea to make fun of the people and the place that made you who you are today?" he asked.  That line has always stuck with me because I realized it was true.  I may not always live in Arkansas, but I grew up there, and a lot of my identity comes from the fact that it's where I grew up.  I lived in Florida and I live in Texas, but I'll always be from Arkansas.

Posted by Ashley McKelvy | Permalink | Comments (0)

If you're the sort of person who loves weird anecdotes about presidential assassinations and snarky literary criticism, you might be skeptical when someone hands you a paper heart and tells you we're going to do a "fun" activity.

I've been sitting in a lot of meetings on professional development to be a teacher.  Here's the thing I'm learning about teacher trainings: they tend to skew young.  By which I mean that if a program is meant to be appropriate for teachers from kindergarten to 12th grade, they tend to favor activities that might be fun for little kids.  Sometimes this involves us doing the activity ourselves, which makes me feel like they think I'm six years old.  My reaction to that is to act like a really pissed off sixteen year old.  I sulk.  I slouch.  I daydream about getting a tattoo when I blow out of there that afternoon and feel a weird urge to take up smoking on the fringes of campus when I'm supposed to be at the pep rally.  Mostly, I want to turn on the people in charge and demand: "Talk to me like I am an intelligent, thoughtful person!"

Continue reading "Instead of Learning to Teach Teenagers, I Become One of Them" »

Posted by Ashley McKelvy | Permalink | Comments (0)

I joined a gym this week, and for whatever reason, my first interactions with public gyms always seem to be the worst.  I was spoiled early on because I started working out regularly when I was at Florida State, where the gym is much nicer than the library.  Maybe that’s because plenty of students sunbathed in front of the library, but I suspect some of them never went inside.  Whereas if you’re going to put on a strappy tank top and some short shorts to catch a few rays in front of that big building that’s rumored to have lots of books inside, you’ll probably hit the treadmill and maybe take a couple of pilates classes first.

 

When I left school, I moved and quickly joined a gym a few blocks from my house.  After I’d signed the paperwork for a year’s membership and paid some hefty signup fees, I realized that I was having a problem with the treadmills.  I’d run for a few minutes, and then the treadmill would stop suddenly, saying “User Not Detected.”  I’d start over and get maybe not quite as far before it quit on me again.  I tried different machines, but I always had the same problem.  I’m not new to a treadmill, and they’re hardly complicated to use.  Once I started running, why couldn’t I just, you know, keep doing that for a sustained period of time?  It pissed me off, and the angrier I got, the more I wished I could go for a nice long run to burn off all the rage building up inside me.

 

I came in one night around nine hoping to unwind.  When the treadmill refused to work again, I went to the front desk with tears in my eyes—in my defense, it had been a seriously rough day—and said, “I want to quit the gym.”  I’d been a member for two weeks.  I cried a little as I explained the problems I’d been having, adding that I didn’t have a job, and that while I understood I could try biking or the ellipticals, I wanted to run, and if they couldn’t do that for me, I shouldn’t have to keep paying them.  I wanted to quit the gym.

 

The guy at the desk reacted the way I suspect most guys in their early twenties would react when confronted with a crying, mildly hysterical woman who unloaded on him at work while he was stuck on the late night shift at a 24 hour gym.  He was awkward and clearly uncomfortable, but he tried to do what he could to get me to stop crying.  Actually, that’s my response to strangers crying in front of me as well.  He apologized and explained that he didn’t have the authority to let me out of my contract, but he told me to come back the next day and talk to a manager.

 

Sitting in the lobby the next day, I ran into a cute guy named Patrick I’d met at a neighborhood coffee shop.  “What are you doing here?” he asked.

 

“I’m here for a remedial treadmill class,” I confessed.

 

He laughed and kept me company until the manager came to get me, which was easily the best thing that had happened to me so far at the gym.

Continue reading "I'm Here for The Remedial Treadmill Class" »

Posted by Ashley McKelvy | Permalink | Comments (0)

I went to a conference in Michigan last week for work, where on a night out with my co-workers, we stumbled upon a pub trivia night at a place called The Bob.  I actually let out a tiny, “Yay!” when I heard the news because I spent a lot of Tuesday nights at The Flying Saucer drinking beer and debating what the average person’s walking speed is (4 miles an hour).  Trivia games are the only place where I might be able to use some of the weird things I’ve picked up over the years.  Like the fact that chess grand master Paul Morphy was found dead in a bathtub surrounded by women’s shoes (I’d love to know why, but Bobby Fischer Goes to War, the book where I picked up that fun fact, doesn’t say).  I also know that the reason Marlon Brando’s pants were so tight in Streetcar Named Desire was because the wardrobe lady made them by molding wet denim onto his naked body. 

 

Being the new person in the group, I was glad we decided to play.  It would be something we could do as a team and maybe get to know one another a little better.  I quickly realized, however, that this was not the trivia I was used to.  First of all, you had to submit answers after every question, which meant a lot of running up to the stage and back over the course of the evening.  In order to give time for debate, but ultimately keep people from taking too long between questions, the hostess would play a song.  Most of them were rock anthems and ballads of my childhood, and the answers had to be turned in before the final notes of November Rain died out.  It’s meant to keep things moving, but sometimes it sets aside more time than one really needs to identify the heat source of an Easy Bake Oven (light bulb).  During which time, you’re stuck listening to that one song from high school that everyone loved before they all realized it kind of sucked and praying it isn’t stuck in your head for the rest of the night.

 

I’m not sure if our hostess is what passes for a comedian in Grand Rapids, but she didn’t so much have patter and tell jokes as she just said things loudly and forcefully into a microphone.  The loudness is how you know it’s funny.  So she “joked” with participants throughout the evening while they mostly just muttered about why the whole process was taking so damn long.  Part of it was no doubt the decision to play Bohemian Rhapsody, but the time allotted for her "witty" "banter" with a disinterested audience certainly contributed to the epic-ness of the evening.

 

Let me take a moment to say a few words about our host in Little Rock whom my friends and I called Trivia Guy, although his real name is Eric something.  I have, in the past, sometimes complained that Trivia Guy asked too many questions about presidential trivia and world flags.  I complained mostly because I don’t know much about those topics.  But, having seen the alternative, I believe Trivia Guy is a leader in his field, the Alex Trebek of bar trivia to this woman’s Howie Mandel.  He keeps things moving, asks questions that have provoked good debates (How many states have more coastal land than Florida?  One: Alaska), adjusts the questions for level of difficulty, and saves the answers for the end.

 

He doesn’t take a break to host dance parties or an interminable round of Name That Tune that went on forever only to end with the winners taking away cheesy swag from a well known beer company.  Not to mention the fact that because this new trivia I played was sponsored by said beer, two of the questions were about the corporate sponsor.  If we had but known, we could have visited their website and gotten the answers to that night’s questions in advance.  Trivia Guy never resorted to such shameless shilling.  He also seems to have mastered basic math, whereas we got cheated out of ten points because someone forgot to carry the one, and we had to go back and convince them to adjust our total.

 

My group won in the end, and even there, Michigan failed to live up to what I was used to.  After two hours of mostly interminable play (we all wanted to quit but stayed out of a perverse need to see things through, beat a group who called themselves “Team Awesome,” and watch some older ladies at the table next to us finally get so drunk that one of them stood and shimmied in her chair a bit), we won $30, which is less than you'd make at a winning night at The Saucer.

 

There is a group in Austin who host pub trivia events, and I’m bolstered by the fact that they call themselves Geeks Who Drink.  I’m going to check it out with my roommate and a friend of mine who qualified for Jeopardy!  But I now know that not all pub trivia is created equal, and if I hear the opening of The Steve Miller Band’s Abracadabra, I am out of there.

 

Speaking of shameless shilling: Just a reminder that the blog will be moving soon to: http://achickcalledmick.wordpress.com/  I’ll post the same thing to both until such time as this one goes away, but if you’re interested, you might want to make note of the new address now.

Posted by Ashley McKelvy | Permalink | Comments (0)

I'm slowly settling into the new place.  My friends Meg, John, and Jamie helped my parents and I unload all my worldly possessions in 30 minutes, which I find pretty impressive.  Either that or I just don't own much stuff.  Just kidding, I own plenty.  Still, I got to see John carry my full sized mattress up all by himself, which I'd heard he could do, but it's really quite something to see. 

My roommate--a fellow Razorback named Brittaney--is bringing a dining room table soon, and then, we'll be more or less set.  I did have to buy a dresser, though, and other than a few brief bouts of homesickness, the dresser is the only part of the move that's brought me to tears. 

My old dresser was a little small and which I bought in an antique store with dreams of refinishing it.  I never even replaced the missing drawer pull, so after appreciating its potential without doing anything to help it live up to said potential, I sold it on craigslist.  I bought a new one at IKEA.  And, look, maybe I should have known better, but I dropped a sizable chunk of money in order to get out of my lease early (as if trying to be cartoonishly horrible, Vicki the landlady's immediate response to me telling her I needed to break my lease was to sing-song: "It's gonna cost you!") and paid various deposits all over town, so when I found a nice looking, fairly inexpensive dresser with lots of storage space, I bought it.

My parents were both willing to help me put it together, and soon, we were sorting cams and dowells like puzzle pieces on the dining room floor.  Mom and I quickly developed a system, so my father wandered over to the couch and fell asleep.  He's good at assembling these sorts of things, but my parents did a lot for me in the process of this move, so if I could screw all the pieces together while he slept, I thought that might be best for everyone.

About 1/3 of the way through, Mom and I hit a snag.  (1) There are extra pieces.  My first instinct was that we'd left something out, but after flipping through the directions several times, even I must admit we are right.  There are pieces that are completely irrelevant to the dresser.  (2) The screws on one end of the dresser do not line up with the screws on the other side.  Even if we get it together, there will be gaps, and if the drawers fit in at all, they will be crooked, there will probably be gapping, and the whole thing will look like a hot mess.  As we figure this out, my father wakes up.

We explained the problem to him, and he is understandably unhappy.  He flips through the pictographic directions and confirms that we're screwed.  His first reaction is that we should take it back.  I stared at the half assembled dresser and hate that plan.  I'll have to unscrew every screw, undo every cam, pull out every dowell, and we'll never get it back in the box.  They use some sort of sophisticated oragami to pack the pieces in there, and we'll never recreate it.  I picture us hauling in two flat boxes with pieces sticking out of the ends and duct tape wrapped generously around the whole thing.  It makes me tired just thinking about it.

My father's second plan is to call and ask what our options are.  "Look," he says, "there's a picture in here of some happy Sweedish people on the phone with customer service.  Of course, there's no phone number listed for you to call, but we should be able to call them."  He looks up a number while mom and I ponder the dresser's exoskeleton. 

A few minutes later, I hear him talking to customer service.  He explains the problem, starting out by simply saying the thing is broken and we can't to put it together.  This is true, but I suspect that anyone who's ever had difficulty assembling their furniture has made this argument.  This can't be right; it must be broken.  So, while he is right, and I can see the evidence that he is right, I'm not surprised the woman on the phone doesn't believe him.

Dad's final solution is to buy a power drill.  He's actually surprised that I don't own one, but I'm actually relieved to send him out for it.  Everyone was frustrated by then, and I couldn't help but think the source of their frustration is this thing I chose to buy.  I didn't make it wrong or include the extra parts, but I bought furniture that had to be assembled.  After they were good enough to load me up and helped me move, perhaps they'd done enough and deserved a nice vacation instead of a bonus round that prominently featured a hammer and an Allen wrench.  And so, my tension grew and as soon as they were gone, I shed a few hot, guilty tears.

My father is a decent carpenter.  He's watched countless hours of building and home improvement shows on PBS on Saturday afternoons, and he built my entertainment center, my bookshelf, and for a while made homemade grandfather clocks.  So, armed with a power drill and a hammer, he forced the assembled pieces to bend to his will.  One of the drawers stuck a bit, but I figured I just wouldn't put anything in it.  Dad grabbed my hammer and pounded away until it slid smoothly in and out.  Against all odds, I have a dresser that looks remarkably like the one in the store.

I'm more or less moved, but I wanted to mention that the blog will be moving too.  They're working on redoing the Arkansas Times page, and when they do, this blog won't be on the new site.  I've been looking into my options, and I'm working on moving my stuff from her to: achickcalledmick.wordpress.com  I've laid the groundwork, but I'm flying out to Michigan tomorrow for several days for work and may not have time to get to it right away.  I'm working on it, though.  I've enjoyed writing it and appreciate that you have taken the time to read it.

And now, I'm off to bed a mere two hours after when I planned to go to bed and roughly four hours before I will wake up and head out again.  If there are typos in this, please forgive me, but if I want to get any sleep at all, I'm going to have to skip the proofreading.

Posted by Ashley McKelvy | Permalink | Comments (0)

I mentioned before that I've moved pretty regularly since I left for college.  This last move was smoother than most because I'd already learned a few key lessons the hard way.

1.  Do NOT arrange to have the electricity shut off on the day you're moving out.
This sounds obvious, mostly because it is, but somehow I did it anyway.  I'm not great with dates, so now, I don't make any utilities decisions without a calendar in front of me.

2.  If you DO make mistake #1, and have to move out of an apartment with no electricity, move during the daytime.
Not only did I have no electricity, but I decided to finish my move after I got off work at the restaurant around 10 or 10:30.  That move came at the height of summer, so I figured if I waited until the sun went down, it would be a little cooler. 

So, when I realized that I had no power, I had to find a way to clear the place out in the dark.  My only option was to light a ton of candles, which is not only a fire hazard, but all those tiny flames made the apartment even hotter.

3.  Measure twice, move once.
I had this really cute red, wooden dining room set.  The sides of the table folded down, making it pretty narrow.  I figured it would easily fit in my Geo Prism; it didn't.  I'd already carried the table down two flights of stairs with the leaves occasionally hitting me in the shin, so I wasn't about to carry it back up.  I couldn't get it in the car, and I couldn't just leave it there.  What if someone took it?  I loved that table.

My new apartment was about three blocks away, and since I couldn't think of any better options, I carried it.  Picking it up, I managed to grab it by the bottom legs and carry it more or less on my back.  Halfway there, a guy saw me, and offered to give me a hand. 

"No, I've got it.  Thanks, though!" I told him.  (There is, perhaps, a lesson within this lesson, which is that if anyone offers to help you carry something slightly heavy and totally unwieldy, you should say yes.) 

Let me explain: At the time, I felt like I could easily make it.  The table wasn't too heavy.  I had a good grip on it.  Also, I am not good at asking for or getting help.  I feel like I'm imposing.  Plus, I am very, very stupid sometimes.

I carried it all the way to the porch in front of my new place.  At that point, I couldn't carry it another step, and I abandoned it there.  I dragged myself inside and drank a lot of water.  That walk had changed things between my table and me.  Just sitting on the couch thinking about carrying it a few more feet, I realized I wouldn't care if someone stole it to save me the trouble of bringing it in.  No one did, and half an hour later, I scrounged up the energy to move it into the dining room.

4. Don't mess with Mom.
When I left Florida, my parents drove out to help me move.  My mother took one look at the living room and gave me A Look.  It's a look that says: "I'm actively keeping myself from killing you right now."

The problem was that I had spent weeks getting my things boxed up and stacking those boxes near the front door for easy access, but my roommate had not.  Her stuff was still scattered about the house, and there were even giant tufts of stuffing strewn all over the floor from a stuffed animal that her beagle had destroyed.  When I explained that all my stuff was ready to go, she softened.  I stopped worrying that she would try to choke me with the power of her mind, but I have filed that expression away as one to be avoided at all costs.  When they came to pick up my stuff today, it was all neatly stacked in three centralized areas.

5.  It will get done.
All week, when people have asked about how the packing is going, this has been my answer.  Sometimes I didn't believe it, but I'm intensely deadline driven.  Things might not come out the way I want them to, but they will get done on time.  I worried Thursday night that I had spent too much time at goodbye dinners and Trivia Night and not enough time packing, but I looked around the room, took a deep breath, and grabbed another box.  It needs to get done, so it will.  Because if it doesn't, I have to face my mother's wrath.

These are the things I can never get right:
1. The food situation.
Moving food from one fridge to another a few blocks away or even across town is no problem.  But, for the big moves, I try to plan out meals to eat most of what I have.  At some point, though, I don't want to buy more groceries, but what I have left doesn't go together.  This week I tried to figure out how to make a full meal out of frozen waffles, a can of soup, frozen fruit, a jar of pickles and beer.

At least this time, I conserved enough milk for my coffee, so I didn't have to steal a handful of creamers from the coffee bar at a gas station.

2. Pack everything you don't need/I need everything.
Last night, I got to that point where everything I hadn't packed seemed essential somehow, but there was so much of it, that I wouldn't have time to pack it in the morning or at lunch.  So, I packed all of it, regardless of it's usefulness.  This afternoon, I realized that because I had packed all my silverware, I didn't have anything to eat my leftover pasta with.  I meant to grab a plastic fork from the break room at work but forgot.  So, I stopped by Sonic and ordered an ice cream sundae because it would come with a spoon.

After all the moving I've done, I'm still not good at it.  I am, however, trying to avoid making the same stupid mistakes twice.  If I'm going to screw up, I like to do it in new and different ways each time.

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So, I’m moving next week.  Moving is mostly a terrible experience, so it never ceases to amaze me that I do it as often as I do.  In college, I once moved a total of 6 times in a calendar year, and that was when I could fit move everything I owned in a Geo Prism.  Now I have an entertainment center and a seven foot couch, and it occurs to me—as it always does when I am preparing to move—that I should know more weight lifters and guys with pickup trucks.  I tend to know guys like my friend Jeremy who referred to his black Honda as his “sensitive man car.”  Since I left for college, I don’t think I’ve ever lived in one place for more than two years, so the smart thing to do would be to court the burly, truck driving demographic as soon as the dishes are unpacked.  But I never do.

I’m moving to Austin, Texas, where I’ve taken a job teaching high school English.  I’m going to continue doing the blog for as long as the Times will have me.  Frankly, I’d like to maintain a connection to my home state.  You guys, I’m moving to a place where the blind can hunt, but legislators did try to outlaw sexy cheerleader dancing.  Not to mention that, in my experience, Longhorn fandom is a mental disorder worthy of being in the DSM-IV.  I lived in Austin once before, and I really liked it.  I think this will be a good opportunity for me, but if Texas follows through on their occasional threats to secede from the union, I’m heading back to the Natural State with a quickness.

So, I’m sitting right now on my seven foot couch surrounded by the half dozen boxes that I’ve managed to pack and wondering what I’m going to do with all of my stuff.  The prevailing philosophy just before a move is to go into “fire sale” mode.  Everything must go!  I’ve made the first trip to Goodwill with a trunk full of stuff.  I’ve got three bags of things I’m donating to the library.  (Among them is the copy of Confessions of a Video Vixen that I was previously too ashamed to give them.)

I’ve started to ask myself the hard questions.  Like: Why have I carried a pale blue wig with me across three states?  I decided this is the move where I say: No, the wig isn’t coming with me.  But I want the wig to have a good home.  That?  That is a trait I get from my grandmother.  We tend to keep things longer than we should, which is why she still has an old textbook my father used when he was in high school that he or one of his brothers hated so much they actually took it out back and shot it.  We hang on to these things because you never know when you might need a blue wig or a textbook riddled with bullet holes.

I’ve held on to the wig because I have thought for many moves now that maybe it would come in handy for Halloween.  And the fact that I might use it combined with the fact that I couldn’t think of anyone else who might has been enough to keep me dragging it from apartment to apartment.

But last week I had a thought.  I sent a message to one of the guys I met when I took the workshop with Improv Little Rock, asking if they had any use for a blue wig.  Specifically, one that looked like this:

 

 

His response?  “Yes.  Yes, we do.”

Now that that’s been taken care of, I just have to fill up the rest of the empty boxes stacked all over my apartment.  I'll confess the urge to just get rid of it all is strong, but where would I ever find another Xena Warrior Princess doll or the Cher workout video circa "If I Could Turn Back Time"? 

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My friend Robyn is one of the nicest, sweetest, kindest, most badass women I know.  She is blunt and sassy and she is not interested in any B.S. you (or her students) might be trying to sell.  She is also engaged.  I got my wedding invitation in the mail this weekend, and unlike on the Save the Date card, she even spelled my name right this time.  We're very close, really.

I have only one regret about Robyn getting married, and it is that we won't shop for her bachelorette present together.  After we graduated from college, about half a dozen of our friends got married in quick succession.  Robyn and I were roommates at the time, and we were invited to the same parties and showers, so we usually pooled our resources at our friendly neighborhood sex shops.  She and I didn't embarrass easily and between the two of us, we never missed an opportunity for a good double entendre.  To hear us talk, we were our generation's versions of Mae West.  So, when we got invited to a bachelorette party, there was a certain degree of pressure.  We had reputations to protect.

That summer, we made enough shopping trips that we became familiar with the inventory, and we evaluated each gift on a case by case basis.  Was the bride more of a Condom Sense lady or a Curry's woman?  Were we getting them something the couple was likely to use or wildly impractical?  How much was too much, and what was so tame as to damage our aforementioned reputations? 

There were also unspoken rules about how to behave while shopping.  We never pointed or giggled or made any face that even hinted we might be surprised or scandalized by the things we saw.  Because for reasons I can't quite explain, I don't like to appear shocked.  Maybe because I grew up in a small town, I'm afraid of looking unsophisticated or inexperienced in the ways of the world.  Or maybe I just don't want to give people the satisfaction of provoking me in that way.  But whatever it is, and whatever Robyn's motives were, we played it cool.

For one shower, a friend of Robyn's from church asked to tag along.  We reluctantly agreed, then cringed as she repeatedly pointed, giggled, and called out to us, then held up merchandise with a mix of glee, embarrassment, and just a pinch of fear.  She seemed like a lovely girl, but there was probably something a little Mean Girls about the look I gave Robyn.  The one that said, "This simply will not do."

Along the way, at least one cashier mistook us for a couple.  She recommended a book for us to try for when you didn't know how to communicate your desires to your partner, which I found hilarious because if there's someone I could say anything to, it's Robyn.  And she's never been one to hold back her feelings either, which is one of my favorite things about her.

She's one of my favorite ladies even though we don't see each other very often since she moved to Cleveland.  It's mostly an email here or a voicemail there about movies we think the other might like.  Sometimes those messages start of with, "I don't know of anyone else who might like this but you..." One of those was a movie so dark and disturbing I almost threw up, but she was right that it was amazing.  She is truly a kindred spirit, and while I'm having trouble finding the right dress for the occasion (somthing that says, "I love you.  Thank you for not getting married in Cleveland in the winter.  Now, where's the bar?"), I'm thrilled for her and her fiancee, Steve.  Congrats, guys!

Posted by Ashley McKelvy | Permalink | Comments (2)

My father likes to brag that he has 1,000 nicknames for me, and I think his estimate is not far off.  They range from "Sweetart" like the candy to "Carla."  They make me crazy, but I have no power to stop him.  I have tried to break him of the habit of identifying himself when he calls me.  Between caller ID and his distinctive voice, I know who it is by the time he says, "Ashley?" his usual greeting to me.  Trying to short-circuit the inevitable, I would say, "Hi, Dad" or "Hola, Papa!"  But he always insists on identifying himself.  "This is your faaaa-ther" he says dragging the vowel out and using a vaguely Boston accent to make the pronouncement.  Somehow I feel the New England based wood working shows he watches on PBS every Satruday are to blame, and breify get annoyed with both my father and Norm Abrams.  He's done this every time he calls for years now.  It's our little patter.  Just like every time I come home he will joke about how it's good to have me back under his roof and the influence of his guiding hand.  He's got a million of 'em.

Since I went to college, I've proved quite resistant to the wisdom he's tried to give me.  I stay up too late, I had male roommates, and most notably, I wear very high heels.  I have a collection of shoes with heels that range from 2.5 to 4 inches.  "You're scaring all the men away!" he tells me when I put on shoes that make me 6 feet tall.  "Men should be braver" I usually tell him.

Dad laughs whenever I give him a particularly sassy answer.  Every once in a while he describes my personality as "salty," but I can tell he approves.  I'm pretty sure I haven't turned out the way he expected his daughter to be.  When I was little, my grandmother kept me well stocked in sweet, hand-embroidered dresses, and among those 1,000 nicknames are both "little girl" and "baby girl."  But he's always teased my brother and I, giving us a hard time, and as a result we learned to give as good as we got.  It's partially his fault that I turned out as salty as I did, and I don't think he'd have it any other way.

This year, I've sent my appreciation for all those years under his roof in the form of a clock radio and in his honor I'll spend the entire day in a nice sensible pair of ballet flats.

Posted by Ashley McKelvy | Permalink | Comments (0)

Before I moved to central Arkansas, I worked for a program called Upward Bound in the southwest corner of the state.  We helped prepare high school students to be the first in their family to go to college.  It's a fairly rural area, and even though I grew up there I only knew the path from my house in DeQueen to Texarkana, where I went to go shoe shopping or watch movies or eat at fancy restaurants like Applebee's.  When my boss told me she wanted me to do a recruiting presentation at the school in Saratoga, my first question was, "Where exactly is Saratoga?"

I asked everyone in my office, and they all said the same thing: "Okay, so you know how you're leaving Mineral Springs and you're headed towards Tollette..."  One of them also added as an aside that some people refer to Tollette as "toilet," which I could have guessed since they have similar pronunciations and also because I was once a third grader myself.

None of them noticed my blank stare at their explanation, though, so I finally stopped my coworker, Tina, and said, "Why would I be driving toward Tollette?  Am I lost in this scenario?"  I finally learned that Tollette is near the community of Schaal (pronounced "shawl") and halfway between Mineral Springs (a city with a population of about 1,500) and Saratoga, which is more or less a suburb of that thriving metropolis. 

I'm a city girl.  Even when I'm not living in a big city, that's where I want to be, and I try not to drift too far from the beaten path.  Nature's nice and all, but I don't want to live in it or even visit, really.

At work, we have a Page-A-Day calendar in the bathroom.  Last year it was 365 days of great books, but this year it's one of those survival handbooks.  I always thought those were meant to be a joke.  Like, their tips for how to avoid being bitten by a shark would be limited to things people learned from watching all the Jaws movies back to back, and the number one tip would involve Roy Scheider somehow.  But they're actual tips for surviving really dangerous situations.

Continue reading "By "Roughing It," Do You Mean Sleeping on Scratchy Sheets?" »

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Two people I know this week have referred to a YouTube video called Total Eclipse of the Heart: Literal Video Version.  It's basically the original video but the old lyrics have been replaced with new ones that just literally describe the weird ass stuff on the screen because have you seen that video?  With the school boys with the glowy eyes?  It's messed up.  You can watch it here. 

My friend Regina sent it to me in an email, and I didn't know what it was.  When I heard the opening notes, I screamed and closed the window immediately.  I was an Orientation Leader for the University of Arkansas one summer, and we had to do a skit...but, not really a skit because we didn't talk, so a pantomime, I guess, to that song.  It was an anti-drug bit, and I'll never know why we chose that music.  It was decided before my time, and all my fellow OLs and I could do was commit to it.  The bit went something like this:

All but two of us stand with our backs to the audience.  We are wearing black sweatshirts with the names of various drugs on the back in white letters like you'd see on a sports jersey.  For my money, the best one was the one that just said X, and it should be noted that when it got cold in our office, we would put them on.  So, I'd frequently be typing in a sweatshirt that said HEROIN.

As the music plays, a girl whose name I can't remember would wander out and then my buddy Jason would join her, frolicking onstage.  They'd skip around and cavort, but then the people in the drug shirts would seductively wave to her.  She'd begin glancing our way becoming more and more interested in us.

Breaking away, she starts hanging out with ACID, MARIJUANA and the rest.  Then, the drugs all hold hands, encircling her and running playfully around her.  But lest we forget, there's a dark side to drug use, the drugs keep Jason away.  When she tries to escape from the circle to join him, she discovers (gasp!) she is trapped.

Here, to be honest, my memory falters a bit (mostly due to how I've been suppressing it.)  This or something thematically similar happens next:  The girl begins to get scared.  She loves Jason and misses him.  They have drifted to opposite ends of the stage to represent how drugs have separated them.  Finally, she's had enough and breaks free.  Across the stage, the couple see each other and then (as the song builds in the background--Briiiiiiight Eyyyyyes!) they run to each other and embrace! 

There you have it, an anti-drug message brought to you in the form of interpretive dance.  We did that number for every session of orientation, and I think it averaged out to two shows a week.  In rehearsals, we melodramatically lip synced to the song because, really, how can you not?  Eyes squeezed shut, clutching our chests with one hand, we would just go for it.  By the end of summer, I'd head that song more times than I'd care to count, and I sort of overdosed on it.  Maybe there's a finite number of times you can hear that song, and I used them all up?  Whatever the reason, I cannot hear that song without out the totality of that whole summer hitting me at once.  It's too much.

After I'd calmed down from hearing the song for the first time in years, I finally remembered I could control the volume on my computer, and I watched the whole YouTube video on mute.  It's a different experience, but the subtitles still work pretty well to carry the joke.  And that way I can get through the whole thing without screaming and with minimal flashbacks.

Posted by Ashley McKelvy | Permalink | Comments (2)

I meant to write this post days ago, but it's been one of those weeks where I just couldn't convince myself to do the things I should.  But I wanted to talk for just a minute about the Scripps-Howard Spelling Bee that was on TV this week. 

The first thing I want to say is that I am an abysmal speller (and don't think I didn't get a little help on the spelling of 'abysmal.')*  When I lived in Austin, I applied for some jobs with UT, and they required a spelling test.  I took the test twice and never scored high enough to apply for a secretarial position with the school.  So, I was never a viable spelling bee candidate.  But there's a documentary about students participating in the National Spelling Bee called Spellbound that I am in love with.  I'm actually watching it as I type this.

*In fact, if you spot any typos in this post, let's consider them an intentional inside joke between you and me.  A little wink and a nudge.  Definitely not something you should point out to me because, obviously, I did that on purpose.

When the movie first came out, I suggested to a friend that we should go see it at a local art house theatre.  Sometimes I'm such a nerd, I become embarrassed about something as I'm talking about it.  When I taught, I sometimes brought in this game called Apples to Apples, and I'd explain how to play to the students by saying, "There are noun cards and there are adjective cards..." and some of them couldn't stifle the groans and sighs at how lame this sounds.  But that game is awesome and by the end of class they want to keep playing.  Sometimes I'm a nerd who just happens to be totally right.  I think I'm right when I say that Spellbound is awesome.

It's "Academy Award Nominee" levels of good!

The film follows eight kids who are competing in the Scripps-Howard National Spelling Bee.  They are from wildly different backgrounds.  Ashley lives in inner city D.C., Ted is growing up on a farm where his family raises peacocks, Angela's father doesn't speak English, and Emily references her au pair and equestrian lessons.  April compares her parents to Archie and Edith bunker, and bless her, she's not wrong.

As you meet these kids, they are all awkward in a way that is cringingly reminiscent of my own adolescence.  I would have fit right in with them at that age with my frizzy hair and braces only on my bottom teeth.  Maybe that's why these kids got to me so much.  But once I'd met them in individual vignettes, I wanted them all to win, and that's where the drama begins.

Because, of course, they can't all win.  And as they started being eliminated, it occurred to me that maybe NONE of them would win.  This isn't a Hollywood movie.  I'm not guaranteed a happy ending here.  The film doesn't provide a correct spelling on the screen for the audience, so my friend and I would wait anxiously to see if they would ring the bell to indicate a misspelling.  It also led to a few embarrassing moments where we would shake our heads because clearly it's an "e" not an "a" only to realize the kid was right.  It's really intense, you guys!

The film is also full of really funny, quirky moments like catching Alex Cameron, the bee's official pronouncer, practicing words in his hotel room or one eliminated contestant's older brother saying, "I still think he spelled it right."  Me too, kid. 

So, if you can't get enough of likable young people being incredibly literate, you might want to check it out.  And then we'll discuss why you should watch Murderball, the documentary about quadriplegic rugby.

Posted by Ashley McKelvy | Permalink | Comments (0)

My parents called this morning and wanted to come up for a few hours to spend Memorial Day with me.  It was a nice surprise--although if I'd had a little more notice I would have vacuumed, but dirty carpet is what they get for giving me little advanced warning--because my parents are kind of awesome.

Mom mentioned that they'd thought we might cook out, but since it was rainy and I don't own a grill, I didn't give much credence to that idea.  I was surprised, then, when my parents came up to my place carrying bags of groceries and a grill in a box.  A tiny grill.  One might even go so far as to call it cute, but the punishment for undermining the grill might mean one doesn't get to partake in the delicious charbroiled food cooked upon it.  So, I didn't call it cute.

I let them in, and since it was close to lunchtime, Dad started prepping the food while Mom and I sat on the couch and got caught up on the latest news.  It took me a while to realize we weren't having hamburgers.  Or hot dogs.  We were having kabobs.

Generally speaking, there's nothing wrong with kabobs, it's just that it wasn't what I was expecting.  He got this idea and wanted to try it out, and that's the sometimes weird but often wonderful thing about my dad.  He and my mother live in the small town where I grew up, and I sometimes used to joke that it was a town that almost forcibly resists culture.  But sometimes major trends and fads make it all the way to our little corner of the state, and people like my dad find out about them.  Five years after I tried my first mojito, he heard about the drink and decided he'd like to try one. 

He grew his own mint for the mojitos, and the thing you should know is that my father is a much better gardener than he is a bartender.  We had an abundance of mint, and the result was that he became very generous with it in order to prevent waste.  The first time he handed me a glass, I stared at the veritable forest floating amidst the liquid ingredients.

"Next, time, I don't want a salad at the bottom of my drink," I teased him.

When the mint started to overrun the place, he put it in the iced tea as well, and insisted on calling it "mohi-tea."  Because while he is often a really, truly funny man, my father sometimes cannot resist the siren call of a cheesy joke.

I like the fact that my father is curious and willing to try new things.  Sure, I wasn't thrilled when he commandeered a bottle of my wine to try his hand at French cooking, and we have actually had an argument about what truly makes a sandwich a panini, but generally I think it's an admirable quality.  It's one that I think I've inherited in small ways--I prefer to sample pop culture more than food, but I can be persuaded to try a new drink now and again. 

The kabobs were good, even the slices of grilled pineapple that I pooh-poohed early on turned out to be delicious, and I was glad Dad decided to try something different.  I did have hot dogs for dinner, though.  You know, just to be patriotic and all.

Posted by Ashley McKelvy | Permalink | Comments (1)

I am off today, and I am sitting at home in what, sadly, might be my favorite pair of jeans.  I say "sadly" because after close to five years of denim-y good times, they need to be retired.  They were a gift from someone who couldn't wear them for some reason, but they fit me perfectly. And perhaps because I knew that they cost almost ten times what I normally pay for a pair of jeans, I have come to believe that my ass looks ten times better in them. 

No doubt this is why I have held on to them for so long.  In places, they've worn away to a few strings struggling to represent basically the idea of pants, but I've still been wearing them.  Their slow demise has come about at a time when I'm having trouble finding pants that fit well.  Too tight, too baggy, too short, too long.  I found a pair that fit ok, but they are four inches too long.  I'm not that short, which begs the question: What kind of mutants are they making pants for these days?  And all this time, my favorite pair began to erode more and more.

I stopped wearing them for a few weeks when I spotted the hole on the upper, inner thigh, but eventually I pulled them back out of the closet figuring that the hole was small and in a weird place, so maybe no one would notice.  Besides, I wear swimsuits in the summer.  People have seen my upper, inner thigh.  Big deal.  The hole has since grown, moving towards my upper, upper inner thigh, so last night, when I wore them out, I made sure I wore cute underwear, lest they be visible at the fringes of the ever growing rip.  I told myself that this, too, was not that big a deal since I used to buy and show off my cute underwear all the time in college.

Sometimes I lie to myself.  I usually know when I'm doing it, but I believe my own lies anyway because I'd really like them to be true.  Usually, it's promising that I'll get up earlier or cut back on caffeine or start eating more vegetables, but I'm reaching a point where I can no longer keep convincing myself that it's okay to wear these particular jeans.  I've seen What Not to Wear, and I know Stacy and Clinton would not approve.

But look it, I also have a pair of $12 flip flops that have tried to kill me twice, and I still have them. 


My best friend calls them The Flip Flops of Death, but they're only dangerous on rainy days.  When they get wet, their smooth bottoms become slick and caused me to once slip and crash into a door jamb before sending me crashing to the floor, where it is possible that I may have bounced a bit.  My solution is to wear them on sunny days with no chance of rain.  Because the shoes have molded to my feet, and when I slip them on, it's like their soft, rubber wraps my toes in a warm embrace and caresses my arches.  It's very comforting, which is sometimes what I want in a pair of shoes.  I need to intimidate someone, I go with the high heeled boots that put me right at six feet tall.  You've had a rough day, you want these shoes.

I'm slowly accepting that the jeans and the flip flops, and all right, a pair of red belly dancing shoes with a hole in the bottom are going to have to go.  I'm ready to look for replacements, but until I have a new favorite pair of jeans, I'm not quite ready to let the old ones go.

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I've been running on fumes all week.  My best friend came into town this weekend and stayed through Wednesday morning, so we'd been staying up late catching up, sometimes over pomegranate martinis.  Wednesday afternoon, I should have come home and taken a nap, but instead, I changed and headed out to the Little Rock Film Festival.  I didn't make it in time to get into the movie, and could have gone home and taken a nap, done a quick workout, and gone to bed.  Instead, I drank a beer and read a book called Rapture Ready, which is about Christian pop culture.  I skipped getting caught up on sleep in order to learn about Christian stand up comedy and Christian wrestling. 

I don't exactly regret making that choice because the book is really interesting, but this morning, I drank as much coffee as I could stand, edging towards the early stages of caffeine poisoning where I buzz around like a hummingbird and start to think I can actually feel my hair growing before falling asleep on the nearest flat surface.  Still a little draggy, I went to work.

We hadn't been open long before a patron who'd checked out one of our laptops came to ask me how to log on to the machine.  I followed her back to the corner where she'd set up, pushed a few buttons, and up popped a picture of a smiling woman proudly showing off her vagina.

That woke me up more than another cup of coffee could have done.

Continue reading "What a Way to Start the Day" »

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Today, I needed to buy something train related for a work thing.  I could explain why, but you'd stop caring well before I finished.  The main thing is I kept putting it off until we've gotten to the point where I'm running out of time to purchase something train-ish.  At first, I thought the idea of Hobo chalk would be funny but maybe that's because I'm a fan of John Hodgman and I saw that one episode of Mad Men.  The thing is, my item will go into a basket of similarly themed items that will be auctioned off, and I thought sidewalk chalk with a shoddily made label proclaiming it "Hobo chalk" might not be a reference everyone would find as amusing as I do.  I'm not even sure it would make sense.

I thought I'd get a copy of Strangers on a Train, which would be sort of theme related, but it's also good on its own.  I checked a couple of places where I might be able to buy a classic movie.  The key word, though, is "might."  It's a long shot because the first place I'd try to get it would be online, but I don't have that kind of time.  So, I checked Hastings with no luck and was left with Target.

First of all, I feel like if you're going to have signage claiming you have great movies at great prices, you should not have Center Stage displayed beneath it.  I'll let Troop Beverly Hills slide because I was once nine years old and thought that was fine comedy.  But I have seen Center Stage.  I saw it in the theatre as a matter of fact, and my friends and I enjoyed it immensely...just not in the way we were supposed to.  If we're talking about awesomely bad movies, it's a fine choice.  You have to put great in quotation marks, though.

That one quibble aside, I almost thought I would pull it off.  They have a small classics section with a couple of Hitchcock films, but they didn't have the one I needed.  I scanned the section twice, walked through the entire movie section, and then went back to the classics.  Strangers on a Train still wasn't there, but maybe they'd have The Great Train Robbery.  Planes, Trains, and Automobiles?  Or...those are really the only train related movies I've heard of, and none of them were on the shelves. 

There were movies about planes and cars and Speed was handy if only I needed something bus related.  One movie had a trolley on the cover, which seemed to be taunting me with how much it's almost a train.  I discovered that there are quite a few transportation-based films out there, but none of them was related to the one I needed.  A quick trip through the books and then the magazines convinced me that trains are woefully under represented in popular culture for adults.  What happened to the glory of riding the rails?  I mean, that's mostly the self-pity talking because I couldn't tell you where the nearest train station is.  If I had to guess, though, I'd say Atlanta.

Now, I was in that mood where I was determined to buy something just to have done with it.  Here's where a liberal arts degree comes in handy because I remembered a quote from The Importance of Being Earnest : "I never travel without my diary.  One must always have something sensational to read on the train." 

I picked up a gender neutral black journal to which I hope to find a relatively untacky way to attach said quote (Just long enough make the connection clear.  It will also be easily removable.)  I also grabbed a copy of Hot Fuzz for myself.  Done and done!

Posted by Ashley McKelvy | Permalink | Comments (2)

At work today, a patron asked me how to spell a couple of words.  I always think it’s funny when someone asks me to do that because for someone with a master’s degree in English, I’m a pretty terrible speller.  I managed both of today’s words without having to look anything up, which is a nice ego boost, but I’m still surprised when I’m called upon to do it.  A few months back, there was a man who used to fairly regularly approach me and ask how to spell different things.  One afternoon, he asked how to spell ‘lettuce’ and later ‘cabbage,’ but then things took a darker turn as he asked how to spell ‘alcohol,’ ‘marijuana,’ ‘intoxicated,’ ‘assault,’ and ‘angrify.’  We spelled that last one E-N-R-A-G-E-D.  On the one hand, I found this fascinating, like a reverse sort of Mad Lib.  I spent most of the afternoon trying to come up with a story that contained all of those words.  On the other hand, it would never occur to me to ask a librarian how to spell something.  I would ask how to get online so I could look it up, or I would ask where I could find a dictionary, but I wouldn’t take the direct route and just ask the thing I really wanted to know.

 

Working in a library is interesting because I discovered people call us to find out all kinds of things.  When I first got the job, someone called to ask what sort of Easter activities were happening around town, which threw me because I’d just moved and wasn’t familiar with local traditions, but also because if I wanted to know that, I’d probably call any of the local churches, the most relevant city government office I could find in the phone book, or the local newspaper and poll my neighbors before I called the library.  Someone recently wanted to know what time a local skating rink opened, which was a much trickier question than it should have been since the rink didn’t feel they should have either an answering machine or a website that gave their hours.  A patron who overheard me on the phone actually gave me the answer, for which I’m truly grateful. 

 

When I emailed some friends and mentioned the variety of questions I’d been researching, two of them anonymously called up to ask me: “What does it mean if it burns when I pee?”  I stammered a bit, and basically told them what I wanted to tell the lady who brought in her art for us to appraise: Perhaps you should consult a professional.  I don’t want to underestimate what I can do with a liberal arts education and the power of the internet, but…

Continue reading "Just Ask" »

Posted by Ashley McKelvy | Permalink | Comments (1)

My friend Sherry and I had a plan.  Some people hope to make it rich by winning the lottery, but Sherry and I decided to write a series of mysteries.  We both read them a lot, so we know the genre.  For the type we're planning to write, the kind we've seen in dozens of incarnations all over the library, we need to have a few key things: a spunky heroine, a sassy sidekick (preferably a woman of color or an old lady although in a pinch a slutty friend will do.  It helps if the friend in question is rich to finance the heroine's snooping.), at least one hunky love interest--although two is fairly common, and titles that are puns.  But mostly, you gotta have a gimmick.

Sherry and I have talked about this quite a bit, especially after we've been shelving because that's usually when we come across books we'd never heard about before.  There are quite a few cozy mysteries that are based around the main character's job or hobby.  The quirkier the better.  We've been keeping a list of unusual themes.  So far, we've found the following: Nuns as sleuths, knitters as sleuths, Roman Empire mysteries, Rat Pack mysteries (with titles like Everybody Kills Somebody Sometime and Luck Be a Lady, Don't Die --see what I mean about the titles?), priest mysteries, art therapy mysteries, mystery shopper mysteries, fly fishing mysteries, stand up comedy mysteries, wine lover mysteries (the most recent of which is entitled Corked by Cabernet), and home renovation mysteries.

It's kind of mind blowing, and sometimes when Sherry comes across something unusual, like the book that somehow involves both murder and award winning preserves classified as "a home crafting mystery," she'll leave it on my desk for me to find.  It's always quite a treat.  The problem was if we were going to write our own series, it would be best to stake out our own unique niche that no one else has used yet.  Sherry told me that she used to make false teeth for a living, and we thought there might be something there.  But it turns out there is already a dentist themed series on the market.  I do a little yoga, but there are a few of those out there as well.

   

There are some other possibilities we haven't researched fully.  I used to work as a Sno-Fun girl making shaved ice treats in a gas station.  Sherri used to work in customer service for Wal-Mart, and I'm sure there's a book or three in that, although I'm not sure any of them would be mysteries.  Maybe the mystery of why someone thinks they have the right to return a phone they bought a year ago from an entirely different retail chain, but that's more of a character driven type story.  Perhaps we could write some sort of travel mysteries, which would allow us to see the world in the name of "research," but something tells me that if we've already got Sudoku mysteries (and we do), then someone's probably already thought of that scam.

Still, we daydreamed about the project off and on until we made two recent discoveries:

(1) Sherry pulled a novel about an army brat family since she grew up in one of those.  It was one of her last remaining ideas, and it's been taken.

(2) I read a review of a mystery that centers around a former dancer turned "cruise entertainment director." 

At this point, I'm not sure there's any subject that hasn't already been mined.  We may have to give up our dream.  The good news is, soon we'll be able to buy lottery tickets.

Posted by Ashley McKelvy | Permalink | Comments (5)