john adams snow day

So last Wednesday I had a snow day.  It was tremendous.  In the morning I read a book and played with Bella and Pablo. Then I drank copious amounts of hot tea and chocolate. Then I made a really delicious potato soup with many extraordinary embellishments. Then Joe, Ashley and I watched a marathon of John Adams, the HBO series about the man of the same name. If you haven't seen it I'd suggest you watch it, it's awesome, very well researched and to top it off engaging and entertaining.  A bit gruesome but I guess that was the time period. We are living in a bit more tame era, although we deal with cancer the same way -- barbarically. Anyway, that factoid will make sense if you watch the last episode.

Check out Bella's mouse obsession and then aversion to snow.

Bella's mouse from tina Ford-Cox on Vimeo.

Bella hates snow from tina Ford-Cox on Vimeo.

Last night I drug Ashley to a work party I had for a departing stylist at Beauty Parade. Morgan, who is my grandmother's stylist of choice, is moving to Austin for better prospects and because Asheville can be pretty stagnating.  As Ashley aptly concluded, my coworkers are all very strong personalities, which may explain why I find them very exhausting, although I do enjoy their company.  Then Ashley and I hit the town, going from Ed Boudreux because our mutual friend Brent was bartending, to Fred's Speakeasy, a shabby but cozy basement bar where a friend of ours was strumming.  The great thing about Fred's is that they give very generous liquor shots in all of their mixed drinks, and all of their mixed drinks are four dollars. Which explains my hangover today. Below is in my kitchen around 3am last night.  I don't recall making this video or what my intention was -- besides capturing my experience as I apparently keep repeating.

Drunk from tina Ford-Cox on Vimeo.

Ashley and I have been hanging out a lot more since we are newly 'single'.  I confessed to her that I really wanted to make a point of hanging out less with Joe, even though it's fine that I do, it's just that mostly I don't. Mostly my schedule is school, work, the gym, errands, and then home.  Once home I find myself in perplexingly the same situations that I did when Joe and I were dating and it's becoming difficult to move on.  I know what you're thinking, why doesn't he just move out, well if he could just move out then he would probably have a fairly large sum of money in order to pay rent and deposit at another location, and if that were true he would have probably also had enough money to get his license straightened out, and pay for his own groceries, and be fairly independent of me and probably would still be going out with me.  Or maybe he could move in with family? Let's not even go there, this is not where I wanting this blog to go anyway. If I had $10 for every time someone asked why he doesn't move out I would have a large sum of money that I might be tempted to help him move out with.  But seeing as how I am rarely reimbursed for revealing mundane knowledge about my life, I remain with my complicated downstairs tenant.  Besides I'd rather have an ex-bf I get along with than a random person.

Anyway, post break Ashley is more of a rager as far as going out and socially masks her pain by inviting new ones in, ie is already inviting old flames to come hang out, like this weekend.  I am not against moving on, in fact I am all for it, but I have come to realize that in a lot of ways when our life fucks up, and we ask ourselves why, we usually only have ourselves to blame. That pretty much sums up the situation a la this weekend with ex-flame. But, fate has shown that I am often a poor judge, so maybe this is unfair of me, and this will be really good for all involved.  We shall see.

Ashley is one of my best, closest friends although we don't often stop and ponder to each other how important we are to each other -- I have a kernel of sadness, and its growing day by day, to know that she is going to be moving back to Maryland next August.  Ashley to me has always been one of the extraordinary people in my life that I always thought was beyond reach because they are so extraordinary that I am unable to understand what they would get with hanging out with silly, bumbling, raving me.  At least that's what I thought when we met 6? or maybe even 7 years ago now.  We've had some great adventures and now it seems we are handling the dissolution of our relationships at the same time but in vastly different ways.  My break-up is simmering away but never quite evaporating, where hers packed up and left in the night weeks before she physically left.  Ashley was dumped, I am the dumper.  We have perspective to give each other.

Anyway, hope you enjoyed the videos. It was my hungover on Sunday project. Wee.