Reality

I started this blog when I was an idealistic senior in college with views about the world that I thought couldn't be marred. Even the title, "Chasing Fireflies" sounds romantic in an innocent way, but this title is a lie. If you think about it even a little bit, you would realize that FIRST: I live in the Northwest. There are no fireflies here. I have never caught a firefly, let a lone chased one. I'm naming blogs with ideas that I don't even know about but think sound inspiring, just like the naivety that comes with thinking that the world only offers answers to dreams. SECOND: Chasing fireflies in real life would probably be a bummer. It probably takes hours to actually catch one. And when you do, even though it's ass is glowing, you're still holding a bug.

It has now been two years since I last wrote, and I am much wiser and slightly more jaded. I know the drag of going to a 9:00 to 5:00 job every weekday with only 5 sick days and no vacation, of paying rent and utilites and the cable bill and gas and insurance and bar tabs every month, of living in a flea-infested apartment, of using a dating website, of seeing a headless mouse, of heading off to a foreign land just to be overcome with homesickness. So I have decided to stop writing about ideals (even though I do have them) and start writing about reality. Because even though reality is less inspiring than dreams, I'm tired of trying to create these "moments" that are special and important enough to include in a blog. When you are just living life instead of traveling to new places and getting that drugged-up, high feeling from that beautiful royal palace, or this rock formation, or that hot Brazilian guy who's making sexy eyes at you, you understand that it isn't those ideal moments that create your life, it's all the crap in between. Without all the reality, those moments wouldn't be as spiritually orgasmic, which is why we need to appreciate the mundane parts of life so we can have really good orgasms.

Hopefully your reality is interesting enough to get you to the next "moment," which doesn't seem to be a problem in my life, as I live in Portland with my best friend, Claire, and have many other close friends nearby. There are things to do in Portland constantly; for instance, right now we have the Rose Festival going on. There were fireworks on last Friday night, so we decided to go watch them. We arrived at 8:00. The fireworks were to be at 10:00. Not suprisingly, it was raining when we got there so what did we do? Spend an hour in the beer gardens, and then another hour hanging out in a bar down the street. Oh there was a fair going on, but we weren't to be bothered with lame rides and bouncy cover bands. As we took a seat in the bar, a friendly drunk old man began berating us.

I need to take a moment and describe Claire. These are some of my favorite things Claire has said recently that I saved in my phone until I found a better place to record them, like here:
"I'm good at alcohol."

"In one mile, I-5 spreads her legs like the whore she is."

"Are these stinging nettles?" Me
"No.... are you wearing pants?" Claire
"Yes."
"Then no, they're not."

And finally, the conversation that happened with this drunk old friendly man:
"You girls are so beautiful, where are your men tonight? You must have men crawling all over you all the time. I come to this bar a lot and I have never seen girls as beautiful as you two. You must have great boyfriends!" Old Drunk Man exclaims, his face pink with happiness and alcohol.
"Oh you know, we have yet to find --" I begin.
"How do you know we're not lesbians??" Claire interrupts.
"Oh... are you two together?" Old Drunk Man says, looking stunned and confused.
"No, we're not! Claire, why do you say things like that? We are not lesbians."

You see, Claire works as a substitute paraeducator for the Portland School District, which means she subs in special education classrooms for the people who help out in them. Which also means that her bullshit tolerance on a Friday night is exactly nonexistant. We were playing "Find That Alcohol Bottle," a game we invented on the spot where one of us would pick a bottle among the hundreds against the bar wall, and the other would have to find it in a reasonable amount of time. Old Drunk Man kept interrupting our game with little antics about the distinct lack of males surrounding us. So when we ordered onion rings as a snack and Old Drunk Man said, "You guys are going to eat that?" Claire held her knife backwards in her hand, pointed it in his direction, gave him a serious glare, and said, "Yeah, we are, so back off dude." Old Drunk Man was confused at her threats but laughed it off. And later he interrupted our next game of "Guess This Celebrity" when he looked at us and said, "Wow, you guys ate all of it!" and Claire again gave him a serious glare and said, "You calling us fat?" Again, Old Drunk Man looked confused but then promptly invited us up to his private residence above the bar to watch the fireworks. Apparently he found Claire's threats to be sexy. I almost started hiccuping from trying to contain the hystarical laughter bubbling dangeroulsy inside me. We declined and he left to magnify his inebriation at another bar. I could finally laugh freely. It must have lasted half an hour.

We ended the night by oohing and ahhhing at the fireworks while some middle-aged homeless people stood in the doorway behind us and smoked pot, which made their experience much more incredible than ours was; they seemed to be truly blown away with the spectacle in front of us, while we were just mildly interested. They appeared distracted as well, as we overheard the phrase, "There was this huge trout." Classy way to end the night. The only thing missing was Julie.

Julie is our other best friend. That night, she was in California on a wine adventure... meaning she had been drinking since noon, was drunk by 4:00 and calling me to describe her wine tasting experience around 5:00. "ASHLEY, you should so be here, I have been to like twelve wineries and only had to pay $8 because I keep telling people I just graduated! YOU SHOULD TRY THAT! And I keep telling people that you would like this Chardonnay or you would like the Mexican restaurant we are going to for dinner tonight. I told them, 'My friend Ashley loves Mexican food. She can speak fluent Spanish.' and they seemed really impressed! Then I tried this horseradish that was really really spicy, and I told them, 'My friend Claire likes really spicy things. My friend Ashley likes medium spicy. And I like no spicy, so my tongue is BURNING!' But I think we are going to walk to dinner now. I can't remember where I parked."

Julie has this habit of talking about Claire and I when she isn't with us to people who don't care. By the time I came back from Spain and met her friends from her Masters program, they had to ask me, "Are you the one who was in Spain or the one who was in Korea (Claire)?" Which, you know, makes me feel special but I'm sure annoys the crap out of the average human being.

And so, what is the moral of these stories? I have awesome friends. Dose of reality number one.