Ashley Hackshaw, Author at Ashley Hackshaw / Lil Blue Boo

Very Dark

July 5, 2013 by Ashley Hackshaw

Technician: So you’ve been trapped for over 20 hours.
Me: Oh no, 12 hours really…..I was asleep for 8.

Mr. LBB and Boo went on a little trip by themselves for a few days. Yesterday I watched a few movies and got some work done.

I was happy as a clam….and then….

…the power went off.

When the power goes off and Mr. LBB is home: no big deal.

When the power goes off and Mr. LBB is NOT home: flashbacks of every horror movie I’ve ever seen: The Ring, Texas Chainsaw Massacre…..

The darkness = Boogie Man.

After I overcame my initial heart failure, I felt my way around in the pitch black darkness until I found a few candles. I pretended to be brave so that Diesel wouldn’t be scared. I folded some laundry by candlelight:

A few hours later the power came back on…..about the time that the temperature in the house reached 108 degrees.

And then…..around 11pm….the carbon monoxide detector went off. And it’s hardwired into our alarm system and they send a direct signal to the fire department.

And I could hear them coming….and I’m running around trying to find shorts because I don’t want to answer the door in my underwear.

Five firefighters and the huge ladder truck:

They didn’t find any carbon monoxide.

And……they thoroughly checked the house for the Boogie Man.

*****

I woke up at dawn on the verge of starvation….I guess I forgot to eat yesterday with all the excitement. I got up enough courage to drive Mr. LBB’s big diesel truck (scary). I figured out how to turn it on and get it into reverse….and then….the driveway gate malfunctioned. The driveway gate that we put in for security, securely trapped me in the driveway. After a few hours of not being able to figure it out…..I got out all the tools ready to dismantle the whole thing:

But Mr. LBB found someone to come and free me. And finally…..by about 7pm today….I made it out of my driveway:

And then I did what I always do when I have the weekend to myself….I ate dinner at Panda Express in the mall food court and browsed Barnes and Noble.

Then I accidentally ate my fortune…spitting it out, the only words I could make out were LCULATI. Sounds like a message from the Illuminati?! I think I’ll watch Pollyanna or Little House on the Prairie so I’ll be able to sleep again tonight.

******

You know….all kidding aside….those fireman who showed up at my door actually made me really emotional. I watched them as they walked around the house trying to figure out if I was going to be okay in my home for the night. One kept looking at me and asking questions “Do you feel okay? Light headed? Headache?” I told him I was a little shaky but that was only because my alarm had gone off 3 times….and it was really loud. But I was shaky because I was thinking about the 19 firefighters that lost their lives in AZ this past week. I live in the desert…and in the summer….it’s kind of like living on the surface of the sun. I think about those firefighters in that monster…trying to do their job and something goes horribly wrong….it’s just too haunting. I’ve been praying for those families all week. And then those Palm Desert firefighters showed up at my house…..I wanted to say something but I couldn’t come up with the right words. I wanted to tell them to be careful. I wanted to tell them thank you. It ended up coming out all jumbled: ok…well thank you so much…sorry you had to come all the way out here for nothing…phew sure is hot out…..I hope this is the most dangerous thing you have to do all night…take care you guys…..God bless. I hope they got the message.

Mammogram via Mammograph

July 2, 2013 by Ashley Hackshaw

Mammogram: noun A message or communication sent by a mammograph. Used in a sentence: The president received a message by mammogram.

Or maybe it’s like a pajamagram?
Delivered in beautiful keepsake gift packaging.

Just a little factoid I read: the last telegram EVER will be sent on July 13th in India. This is horrible. I would have been sending more telegrams.

So yeah, I did have my first mammogram this morning. It wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. I mean I did feel a little trapped once the machine smooshed my boob. The only thing I worried about was a machine malfunction….and I’d be trapped….and what if there was an earthquake at the same time? (because you do think about that when you live on a fault line and you are in the only multi-story building for miles) Would the technician save me….or save herself?

Technician: So you had a hysterectomy?
Me: Yes.
Technician: And when was your last period.
Me: Before the hysterectomy.
Technician: So you haven’t gotten your period recently?
Me: Uhhh…no.
(She asked me that a few times….and I didn’t have the heart to tell her you can’t have a period without a uterus.)

And during the mammogram I made my usual awkward small talk:

Me: Sorry I’m sweating all over you…but you said not to wear deodorant and it’s 109 degrees today. Not that deodorant helps in 109 degrees….there’s a point of diminished return with deodorant and it happens to be 109. Just kidding I made that up. Do you ever get anyone with horrible body odor? You’d tell me right…if I had body odor….because once you are able to smell yourself….other people have been able to smell you for FOUR WHOLE HOURS. I hope I remember to put deodorant on when I leave. I’ll remember in four hours, right? All the old ladies I know always smell so nice. I can’t imagine they even need deodorant. They smell like powder and perfume. That’s one reason to look forward to getting old, right? Does deodorant cause cancer? Do you ever pop an implant in this thing? I knew what to expect today….I just watched Life at 40. So funny. The J Jill and Chico’s part? Oh I shouldn’t have said that….you might shop there. I mean I’ve shopped there. Well my mom has.

PG version of my smushed boob:

Technician: Oh no, we have to do this side again….it’s blurry. No idea what happened.
Me: Oops. I know what happened. You took too long to take the picture and I was gasping for air before I fainted.

I was chatting with a nice lady in the waiting room. She talked the entire time we were in there….and the time flew by even though I apparently had to wait a long time because everyone was apologizing later. When they told her she could go she said to the technician “you take care of my dear Ashley, okay?” I didn’t even tell her my name. It gave me goosebumps.

Then I had to do an ultrasound. And the ultrasound technician thought I was neurotic I’m sure:

Me: Don’t push my nipple inward.
Technician: What’s wrong?
Me: You’re making me nauseous when push my nipple in.
Technician: Are you going to throw up?
Me: YES if you keep pushing my nipple in.

A covert ultrasound photo. I’d make a great spy. Minus the nervous small talk.

Doctor: Cancer shows up white.
Me: Well…that looks white to me.
Doctor: Yes, but it’s breast tissue and it’s symmetrical to the other side so I don’t see anything to be worried about right now.
Me: Oh good.
Doctor: But…it is hard to detect cancer when your breast tissue is dense. So your risk goes up. Oh, and there is a rare cancer that doesn’t really show up white.
Me: And your telling me this because it all good news right? It’s like getting struck by lighting twice. What’s the likelihood that I get two rare cancers….like negative %.

And in my head I’m thinking….actually negative % and positive % are really the same thing. You’d want to take the absolute value. Oh that’s just with percentage of error you dodo. Error? Error!

And so this was my result:

Probably Benign Findings.

Probably?

To a math nerd this is not an acceptable result.

There are way too many degrees of probability to have just 2 boxes.

I think I should send them a new result form.

And I think I’ll send it via mammograph:

Anyway, the results are probably great. It’s probably benign. I’m probably happy and ecstatic. I hope you probably have a great day!

P.S. As I wrote those mammograms I wondered…what if I wanted to just send a message that said STOP. Would I say STOP STOP? Are you allowed to use the word STOP in a telegram? What about STOP IT? Would that be STOP IT STOP?

P.P.S. Did I spell “stop” right? It doesn’t look right when it’s capitalized. Nevermind. I just googled it. It’s S-T-O-P.

[Read more…]

The Good Girl

July 1, 2013 by Ashley Hackshaw

I went on my first real date when I was 15 years old. I had such a crush on this boy. I’d met him on a church ski trip. I remember there was this really pretty dark haired girl on the trip too….and I could tell this boy liked her. As we all put on our ski gear at the slopes she pulled out a 70’s brown snow jacket with matching pants. (which you can buy on eBay now as cool vintage for $64.99). Amazingly you could hear an audible gasp from group as she put it on. I guess it wasn’t trendy:

And at precisely that moment….as I put on my brand new aqua and purple ski jacket….I became interesting to this boy. We were both great skiers so we broke off from the rest of the group and tore the whole mountain apart. At the end of the trip he asked for my phone number. And I gave it to him…fully aware that he hadn’t picked me for my amazing personality….but because of my ski jacket.

Soon after that, the boy called me and asked if I wanted to go out on a date. He came over, met my parents, we went to dinner, walked around the shopping center where the restaurant was. Then we got in his jeep to go home. He didn’t head home though…he drove his jeep to a secluded cul-de-sac. He leaned over and kissed me and then he jumped in the back seat. I remember feeling nauseous and wondering where this was going to go. I’d only kissed a few boys up until that point….mostly playing truth or dare at the beach with friends. I climbed in the back seat with him and we made out some more. Things started to go too far and I asked him to take me home. I made up some elaborate excuse about having to wake up early to go visit my horse. He seemed annoyed….but he did take me home. He drove up to the house but didn’t get out. He just dropped me off….and he never called me again. And instead of feeling great that I’d gotten myself out of that car with my virginity intact…I felt embarrassed…and ashamed…and awkward. And that was the first little chip…chip… chip… away at me being the good girl.

Fast forward 2 years and a friend who happened to be a boy would say to me:

I’m just telling you this because we are friends…but all of our guy friends know that if it’s late, and you are drinking….they can probably make out with you.

And I’d laugh at him and tell him I wasn’t going to make out with him, but deep down it made me shrink inside of myself a little more. And then I’d drink myself into oblivion and tell everyone to f@#$ off.

I think that’s the same night my BFF made out with another friend’s boyfriend…and that friend confronted my BFF and I piped up and said “well he’s not that great of a boyfriend because I’ve hooked up with him too.” And I thought her broken heart was blown way out of proportion because, well, I really didn’t feel much of anything at that moment. And my response was probably something like “oh cry me an f@#$% river” because that’s what I remember saying to another friend in college. And by that time there had been so much chip… chip… chipping away….there was barely any of me left.*

*I know I’ve overused the word “and” in this post….but it seemed appropriate because it’s all a run on blur.

The alcohol didn’t just enter my life overnight. The first time I drank I didn’t feel so gangly and awkward and tall. The next time I was a little more outgoing and talkative and brave. A dozen times after that I was the life of the party: Oh my god, you were so hilarious last night. Or you are so fun when you drink.

And then it turns into a vicious cycle because I had to drink more because the fear would creep in:

What if people don’t like the real me?

I wanted to be liked….and popular…which I thought meant I had to hide things and keep secrets and say things I didn’t mean. Drinking was like a putty to those little chips…filling in those empty voids. But eventually there’s nothing left to chip away at and you need a whole lot of putty….because you’ve left pieces of yourself all over the place.

*******

But all of this is strangely aligned because the night my guy friend told me I was the “go-to-gal-for-hooking-up-with-our-friends” I happened to be in the exact same place where I’d skied with that boy and the brown-70’s-snow-suit-girl 2 years earlier. And later that night my BFF and I ended up driving off the side of the mountain in my Landcruiser. Luckily we only ended up a few feet over the edge but the wheels spun wildly digging the car deeper into the snow as I tried to get up back onto the road. We were drunk, without winter coats, and only about a gallon of gas in the tank.

stock photo

We tried repeatedly to dig out the tires and then crawl back into the car close to hypothermia. The snow melted on our clothes with the car heat and then we were soaked. We’d take turns getting out to dig out the tailpipe so we wouldn’t die of carbon monoxide poisoning but we knew the gas wouldn’t last much longer and we’d probably freeze to death. As my fuel warning light came on, I slammed my door for the last time to conserve heat and it wouldn’t close: the car mat had come off of its hooks and was wedged between the door. I reached down to pull it back in and I felt the little half inch spikes on the bottom. Traction. I yelled to my friend to pull all the car mats out and we put them under each wheel. She drove and I pushed the mats underneath the tires. At first the spinning just shot the mats out like one of those baseball pitching machines….but eventually they started to get traction and the Landcruiser made its way inch by inch up towards the road. Of course… at the time…. I gave myself all the credit for that brilliant idea…but now I’m sure it was divine intervention.

And I can blame it all on that 70’s brown ski jacket, right?

So I’d love to know….what was your first “chip”?