After weeks of driving around Austin, looking at tons of real estate sites and Craigslist, after actually saying yes to a living situation and then backing out (which left me feeling both freer and also like a giant jerk), I have decided to…move across the hall.  That’s it.  That’s the big reveal.

Let me back up a bit.  The living situation I said yes to was a house around the corner from my apartment.  It was a nice house, and I was assured that the roommates were nice, respectful people who were never there.  I got excited about the house because I’d had a string of bad luck with potential roommates who seemed like Nigerian prince email scam levels of bogus or nuts, and some apartments that looked fine in photographs but were dodgy as hell in the context of a particular neighborhood, and this situation didn’t seem bad, and by comparison it seemed perfect.  I was used to having a roommate who is gone a lot, and I liked that, but after I agreed to move in, I started getting cold feet.  Really never there?  Or “never there.”  Mostly, though, my doubts were about me.  Was I going to be a good roommate?  During the school year, I usually do my dishes regularly, but during the summer…I might let them sit a while.  Is that okay?  My boyfriend keeps odd hours, and sometimes he might want to drop by kind of late.  Is that okay?  I forget my laundry in the dryer for a day or two sometimes.  Is that okay?

I was telling my roommate about the house, and she said, “There are three roommates?” and I heard her say it, and I realized sharing a space with other people wasn’t what I wanted.  They might be respectful; they might be gone a lot, but there is still some sharing involved, and the more people you have, the more you have to negotiate.  “Have you talked to them in the office about one bedrooms here?” my current roommate asked.

D’oh.  I meant to, but then I found a house and got excited because it was a house and my bedroom was really big and I said yes before I asked about the possibility of living alone.  So, I backed out of taking the room in the house.  It was an asshole move, and I should have taken more time to think about that situation before actually agreeing to it, but I hadn’t signed any papers, so I decided, shitty thought it was, to do the thing that would make me happiest, which is living by myself.

Better yet, when I went and talked to them about one bedrooms, the lady said she had a one bedroom on the second floor in my building.

“That’s the one I want!” I said, and when she said it was across the hall from my current place, I just started writing a check.  Because my biggest reservations about getting a new place were the sort of unknown element of “what if this place is much, much worse than the place I was living before” and the sheer dread of packing all of my things in boxes and taping them up, lugging them downstairs, driving to a new place, and lugging them inside and unpacking them all again.  The sheer irritation of multiple trips where I only carry a lamp and a bag of toiletries because it’s all I can carry at one time, but it’s barely making a dent in all the stuff I’ve got to move.  The handful of crap that won’t fit into a box because it’s irregularly shaped, leading to more little trips to carry a table or rolls of toilet paper, bottles of mustard that I’d rather replace than move, laundry detergent.  That quickly becomes irritating, hot, sticky work, and it becomes overwhelming to think about.  But carrying stuff across the hall…no big deal.  The lady in the apartment office even suggested I could swap my kitchen drawers out with the ones in that apartment and not even have to deal with relining drawers or moving boxes of plastic wrap and sandwich bags!

I wanted something new and different.  I wanted to be closer to my boyfriend.  I wanted a house.  I wanted a lot of things that contradicted each other, but when I agreed to the smallest move possible, I realized I felt completely at peace with that decision.

Now, I’ve lived in the same apartment for two years, and I haven’t exactly made it my own.  In fact, I’ve been living in apartments and houses for approximately twelve years, and I’ve never hung a picture on a wall.  I’ve framed a few and left them around on mantels and bookshelves, but with a nail and a doodad and a hammer?  Not one.  But when I get ready to move, and change and real estate are on my mind, I get a little Martha Stewart-y in my brain.  This is the apartment where I’ll decide upon a theme for my bathroom!  And maybe I’m fooling myself, but finally, at 33, I’m thinking I might actually do it for real this time.  Because I have some money to spare, and I have taken some photos I like and want to display.  And I’ve discovered a few websites that have cute design and style ideas that don’t seem über complicated or overly dependent on floral patterns.

I’ve also been feeling the drive to be in a house rather than a massive apartment complex, too.  One of the things I loved about living in Hyde Park years ago was that it was a neighborhood.  You could walk around and look at cute little houses and bungalows, and it had personality and character.  So, I’ve been looking at tons of real estate websites, and I stumbled across a housing development that I’d actually seen and found interesting before.  One day, when I was feeling a little restless at home, I took a drive to photo graph a “cubist neighborhood” on the outskirts of Austin.  It’s still very much being developed, and there was construction on a few new homes, and there’s a lot of open space to grow and develop, but that hasn’t happened yet.  I’m embedding links to some of my favorite pictures, and you can check out the rest by clicking on the link to my Flickr page.  They are in a set labeled Agave Cubist Neighborhood.

Little Square Houses All in a Row

Not All Cubist Homes are Square

But Many of Them Are Very Square

Now, I’ve gone to laundromats. In Florida, I went to one where the owner called me baby, and offered suggestions for how I could do laundry in a way that was more pleasing to her standards. (I did laundry fine, but she didn’t like how I combined certain things into a single load, and she was not afraid to make this known.) The best thing about that place was that they had a Ms. Pac-Man machine where I spent 50 cents for every load of laundry that I did, making a $2.50 wash and dry cycle a nice, even $3.00. In college, I often had to but cross the street to do laundry, and I’m ashamed to say a lot of shirts got sprayed with perfume and worn more than once because I put off washing clothes until the last minute.

I know myself, and I know that I have a professional job, where I can’t go to work in clothes that smell like yesterday or run by a thrift store and pick up a used t-shirt for $1.00. So, while I’ve been apartment hunting, I’ve really had to ask myself how much of a deal breaker is having washer and dryer connections. Last week, a very nice apartment locator did some research and showed me my two options. One was older and not in the best part of town, and it’s completely shallow to say this but the real deal breaker was not that it might not be that safe but rather that the chandelier in the kitchen was ugly and the carpet looked like it was made out of teddy bear fur.

The other was cute. Soooo cute! Dark wood cabinets, a very cool swimming pool and huge stainless steel grills. Somehow even the parking garage was sexy. It was the epitome of style, but it was small (a tad shy of 600 square feet) and expensive ($920 a month for rent alone). I did the math, I called my mother and discussed budget. She pointed out that I can be a bit of a tightwad, which is sort of true, but ultimately it’s not a question of losening purse strings. It’s a question of freezing any frivolous spending, especially in the summer months when I work less. It’s getting a summer job instead of having a few months off.

My friend Mike had warned me this might happen. He told me that it was uncommon to find washer and dryer connections in apartments where he lived and that it was usually more expensive. I heard him say those things, but I never really believed it would be the thing that priced me out of the market. I knew it would be more, but not that much more. And those were the two options available to that were remotely within my price range. And suddenly, this one thing that I was fixated on and hung up on seemed kind of stupid. I felt pressure to give on this one thing, and I would suddenly have so many options available to me.

I was a little heartbroken at the end of the apartment tours, but my locator, Dwight, was pretty great. The last locator I had tried, just didn’t show me places that had a washer and dryer option. They were small, and laundry machines wouldn’t have fit anyway, but I had asked for them specifically, and had soured when I realized he gave me three options that just didn’t have the thing I wanted. Did he think I wouldn’t notice? And it felt like he was suggesting: Well, that’s impossible, so get over it and look at how great the location is at this place!

Dwight on the other hand, said, “I need to you to think on it tonight, and let me know what you want to do tomorrow. If it were me, I’d want a washer and dryer, but if you decide you can live without it, we’ll look at a few other places.”

And that was a huge relief to me because it made me feel like what I wanted wasn’t stupid. That I wasn’t impractical or naive to want this one thing. I did think on it, and decided that of the two options I saw, the best was the hidden third option of staying where I was. I’m currently looking for a new roommate when mine moves out in August, and if nothing pans out in the next few weeks, I’ll be calling Dwight up again and reconsidering my options. Is there another part of town I might be happy to live in? Am I willing to pay more than I originally wanted to spend (which was still pretty far south of the $920 I might pay for a sexy, sexy parking garage)? And maybe I’ll have to go out to do my laundry, which probably means first spending $200 on gym clothes so I can get another week or two between doing the load I do about once a week now. But at least I feel like I’m not wrong to want what I want even if it isn’t what I end up getting in the end.

The same is true of making decisions, though that’s something I never really enjoyed.  But, my students ask a lot of questions.  Some of them are interesting or thoughtful, a lot of them are along the lines of “What is the last possible second I can turn this in?” or “Can I redo this assignment?”  I could do a better job of being consistent about some of these things.  Assignments are due at the beginning of class or by 5:00 pm.  But, there are always extenuating circumstances, some of which are legit, some of which are not, and all of them have to be heard–not because I am fair and balanced that way but because they will always offer an explanation even when it is a hail mary pass.  The desperate explanation of why something is late will be presented more fervently than all the rest.  So, you make a lot of decisions.  There is also the decision of what our next project should be that contains multitudes of other questions: what should they make?  When will it be due?  How are we going to teach them this thing?  What should the groups be?  And then, things interrupt your daily schedule: What should we do about TAKS testing?  Half the juniors will be gone in the morning, what should we do with the half that stays?  And what about the half that is gone?

After a day of that, I’m incapable and uninterested in answering the question: Where should we go for dinner?  I don’t think Eric has ever asked that question and gotten a definitive answer.  I’ve made 1,000 decisions that had to be made, so take me to a place with food: restaurant, grocery store, gas station, I’ll figure it out.  Or I’ll stay home and have a bowl of cereal.

So, now I’m on summer vacation and I have the opposite problem.  I have time to hang out, and my friends are at work.  I’ve decided to stop deciding things because it was so exhausting and now I can’t decide what to do with my day.  I don’t have to go to work (yay!), but now I don’t see the people that I regularly eat lunch with.  Now, it’s just me and a sandwich and Netflix instant streaming.  Not only that, but during the school year, I longed to have more time with my Netflix queue to watch documentaries and finally check out Battlestar Gallactica.  That was going to make me happy, and now I’m spending maybe too much time doing it.  I am lonely and miss people.  The same people that I was too busy to call back during the school year.

This may well be a personal problem, but I find it really hard to find balance when I’m a teacher.  For all that the school day ends at 3:35, my professional work day does not end then.  And it doesn’t always end at 5:00 either.  It also doesn’t end on Friday and stop there until Monday morning.  I work more than 40 hours a week, and the reward for that is supposed to be–among other things–two and a half months off.  In May, I’m living for that time off.  The epic break within which to relax and unwind.  But I find that having nothing to do for days and days and weeks and weeks, is weirdly oppressive in a different way.

My friend Megan called today, and that was great because she is also off this summer and she is less lazy than I am.  She’s got plans to leave her house and do things, which is inspiring and I’m also making plans to tag along on a few of her adventures.  Maybe I won’t squander my summer after all.  Still, I sometimes miss the life I had where, though I had to request time off, I almost never had to work weekends.

It should be said that I think she’s pretty great.  The first time I met her, my brother brought her to my apartment in Benton, Arkansas to, help me move.  She hauled boxes and toted kitchen appliances down a flight of stairs and headed back up for more with a big smile on her face.  Even I was cranky about moving, and it was my stuff.

But when it became clear that she and my brother were serious, I knew the name thing would be an issue.  My friends call me McKelvy.  Hell, even my boyfriend calls me McKelvy.  My parents, however, picked Ashley out from all the other name possibilities in the world, and regardless of my own feelings on the matter, they think it’s a nice name.  Plus, McKelvy is only distinctive as a nickname when not everyone in your house has it.  When Ashley joined my family for Christmas, I suggested that one of us needed a nickname, but no one seemed to really take the lead on the Great Re-Naming Project.  First of all, how do you decide who should change?  I’ve been in the family longer, but I’m also not particularly married to the name.  I might be willing to change if a suitable nickname could be decided upon, but I learned long ago that it’s not about what I’m okay with.  This is really about other people having to change, which is a far more difficult proposition.

People I have worked with rarely call me McKelvy, even if we are friends.  The reason?  Paperwork.  I fill out a form with my legal name, and people automatically start calling me Ashley.  I can and have persuaded them to use my last name or “Mick” for simplicity’s sake, but if you don’t introduce that idea early and often, people will either fall into the habit of calling me Ashley or only about half of them will change and there will be a lot of confusion about what the new girl’s name is.  Now, imagine that instead of working with those people for a few months during the summer or a year and a half, that is what people have called you YOUR ENTIRE LIFE.  It is ingrained.  My grandmothers will never call me anything else, and so it is unlikely that I will be allowed to change my name, though I am willing.

So how do you tell your new sister-in-law that’s been part of your family for mere weeks: Great to have you!  Welcome!  Now, what would you like to be called form this point forward?  Our names are who we are.  It’s our most basic form of identity.  It’s pretty difficult to find the most polite but firm way to say, “no offense, but that’s mine.  Change yours.”

Something has to be done though, and here’s why: My Grammy was telling some story about Adam and his wife, and she referred to them as “Adam and Ashley” and I can’t remember what the verb for that sentence was, but it clearly implied something they’d done as a couple.  “Gone hunting” or “kissed” or “first started dating.”  Whatever it was an implied romantic relationship that, regardless of what you may have heard about Arkansas, is not something my brother and I do together.  But it was still kind of out there.  All five or six people who heard her tell that story knew that she meant the other Ashley, but the implication still hung there in the air like a giant incest meatball until she finally clarified which of us she meant.

We all knew, and when she pointed out that she meant Adam’s then girlfriend, I was irritated that the clarification was made because, um, obviously.  And yet, I had also been glad that she had explained herself just so the ambiguity was gone.  Grammy couldn’t win, and neither can we.  If one of us gets a nickname, it will be a long process of getting everyone on board with the switch, but if we don’t the rest of our lives we may just become “Adam’s sister, Ashley,” or “Ashley, Adam’s wife.”  I think I’d rather be called Nerdy McReadsalot.

“Just jump in! Get your head under,” he said. But I refused. This was my process.

Last week, he mentioned that he’d been going to Barton Springs every day, and on the other end of the phone, I shuddered. It takes me a while to adjust to the water in a pool, I’ve never managed to adjust to Barton Springs. I went with friends years ago, and I never got past mid-thigh.  I hate being cold, and that water was freezing.  I eventually fled from the water to the safety of the grassy shore never to return again. I used to joke that the water must be runoff from a glacier improbably located in the heart of Texas.  I knew people loved it, but I was actually a little afraid of Barton Springs.

He suggested we go several times, and while I always said I was willing to go, he claimed to see the fear in my eyes and never forced the issue. Now I was torn between two things I hated: freezing my ass off and being a coward. Finally, I called his bluff. We should go swimming, I decided.

We started by riding bikes for a while to get hot and sweaty, so that cold water would seem more appealing. When we arrived at Barton Springs, Eric quickly jumped in and got acclimated before meeting up with me and walking to the end where the water is shallow and plenty of children were jumping around in the water proving that I was reluctant to do something that even 7 year olds were able to do.

Fine, whatever, I put a foot in, and immediately…that shit is cold, ya’ll. But I felt spurred on to prove that I was willing to try and that I was at least as bold as small children. Up to my calves…still cold. To my knees, which seemed to be particularly susceptible to the chill. That water can’t be more than 65 degrees. Eric walked with me, patiently respecting my process. My waist, where I start to be amazed that people don’t die of hypothermia on an hourly basis. Then, the hardest part: the nipples. After I managed that, it was cold but I knew I would make it. I fully submerged and came up more or less acclimated. I mean, sure, there were a few minutes where I couldn’t tell if I the water was freezing or burning my skin, but I did it!!

That’s what I kept saying, “I did it! I did it! Holy Shit, I’m doing it!”

We didn’t stay in the water long, but when we got out, the summer sun didn’t feel so hot. It felt like a gorgeous 75 degrees instead of a sweltering 96. On our towels, we lay back and soaked in the rays. Eric gave me a congratulatory kiss, and again, I announced, “I did it!”

“I knew you could. I just thought it would take longer and that it would be a much angrier process.”

He knows me pretty well. I’m proud to have exceeded his expectations by both moving faster and swearing less than we both probably expected.

Being in charge of things also meant that I sometimes said things like, “I don’t feel great, but I have to go to work tomorrow because I’m in charging of bringing batteries and crackers.”

Which prompted my boyfriend to laugh, “Sometimes your job sounds crazy.”

There were five students helping me plan and in seven weeks, we had to come up with three spirit competitions.  This is the hardest part because we have about ten minutes each week to come up with a way to provoke and then quantify “school spirit.”  Mostly, we just did it by seeing which class could yell the loudest.  But this week, I finally gave in to one students repeated request.  “I just want to see someone eat something!” he said every time spirit competitions came up.

I always protested because an eating contest is won or lost regardless of pep and the point is to measure excitement and enthusiasm.  But after putting him off for weeks without coming up with something better, maybe we should just make someone eat something.

It worked like this: one representative from each class came up on stage, was given six saltines, and had to be able to eat the crackers and then run up, grab the microphone and say the full name of the school.  The first attempt resulted in a visible spray of cracker crumbs, and I instantly realized this was a genius idea.  The second attempt failed in a similar fashion before a student finally completed the task, winning his class the spirit award, a giant spirit stick, and pizza.  Meanwhile, I simply ate a little crow as I congratulated the student on his clever idea and his dogged persistence. I can’t believe that I was so oblivious to the joy of watching people eat stuff.

But I’m a pretty big geek, so, sometimes I spot writers on the street and…act like I’m about to take some pics with my camera phone and submit them to US Weekly’s “They’re Just Like Us” section.  I felt weird when I caught myself pointing to David Rakoff one year.  He was on the phone, but I couldn’t stop myself from telling my friend Ben, “That’s David Rakoff!  I read his book last year, and I really liked it!”  I was glad that if he overheard me talking about him as though he weren’t five feet away that at least I was saying something nice.

This year, I got on an elevator and did a scan of the people around me and after a quick double take realized I knew the man standing right next to me.  “Hey, you’re….” I started, and then I stopped because it felt weird, like I was just about to announce to everyone as the doors closed and we all became confined to a small space that we were in the presence of someone who’s Kind of A Big Deal.  And, it wasn’t Matt Damon or Alton Brown, for that matter, but it was an Austin writer who was voted Best of Austin for 2010 and works or worked (I’m not 100% sure) with Master Pancake.  So, not Brad Pitt, but someone I’ve seen doing quite a bit in Austin’s literary scene.

I recovered with, “You’re, uh…you’re very funny.”  Which is true.

“Oh, hey, thanks” he said.

And then because I can’t stop talking, I said, “I’m sorry.  I don’t know what the etiquette is for stopping someone in an elevator, but I just wanted to say that I’ve seen you around town, and I think you’re very funny.”  Apparently, I feel that babbling=adorable.

He thanked me again, and assured me that he thought I’d behaved quite appropriately.  “I’m sure I’ve done worse,” he laughed.

I headed to an awesome panel about a book called The Zeroes, which sounds fascinating, when I realized that I had the perfect response to what he’d said because when I met Dorothy Allison, I asked her about using baby piss as a hair treatment, which, I think we can all agree, is “worse” than sincerely complimenting someone in an elevator.  But he’d left and the moment had passed, and while I was tempted to use the line if I ran into him again, I finally had to realize that that would be trying way too hard.

And that’s the weird thing about the Texas Book Festival, which is that authors become celebrities, and I have to fight off the allure of being a geeky fan and treating them like they’re Elvis.

A few weeks back, one of my students kept telling me that I reminded her of an actress from a movie that I hadn’t seen.  I did, however, recognize the title and knew it was a horror film.

“What are you trying to say,” I asked teasing her, “when you tell me I look like someone in a horror movie?”

She got flustered and tried to explain herself, but I sort of waved her off and assured her I was kidding.  But as I watched myself in the video clips while I was editing, all I could think was that I looked vaguely…muppet-y.

Oh, God.

Because there’s no denying the video evidence.  That is what I look like, and I realize that while I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about what I look like, I am forced to admit that I clearly had a few misconceptions.  Why is my face so big and broad?

Then, my student sent me a picture of the actress she was envisioning, and it was Vera Farmiga, who is gorgeous.  Did you see her in Up in the Air?  Holy smokes!  After watching myself in our video document, I kept thinking about how distorted my face seemed until I practically saw myself as the kid from Mask, and this student of mine thought I looked like the babe from The Departed.  That went a considerable way to restoring the balance to my ego, I must say.

The student in question also made me feel great when she came in one afternoon to ask for help.  I gave her some tips for an essay that she was working on, and mentioned for whatever damn fool reason that I’d thought more than once about going to law school and had even thought about it a few days before.  She told me not to do it this year because she liked me and my coteacher and thought we were amazing teachers and she really enjoyed our class.  And then my huge muppet-y brown eyes misted up just a little bit.

As one of my fellow teachers once said: “That’s how they suck you back in because that’s the reason that we do all the other stuff.”  So true, but it is a really great feeling.

So, when I went to Cleveland, I packed very carefully.  I made a list and checked it twice, making sure that I was keeping things streamlined but still taking my facial wash and sufficient underwear.

And then I came to Chicago.  Where I thought I’d packed everything simply because I thought about how I should pack certain things.  I arrived and realized I didn’t pack tinted moisturizer or basic makeup supplies, so I asked for directions to a nearby drug store and got a few basics as well as some hair product since I didn’t have any in bottles small enough to meet FAA regulations for carry-on luggage (I didn’t check my bag).  I got back to the hotel and a few hours later realized that I didn’t pack a toothbrush.  So, I went back to the small store in the lobby and picked one up.  Last night, after dinner, I came in exhausted and rooted around in my stuff to get ready for bed and discovered I hadn’t packed saline solution either.  I would have to sleep in my contacts for the night.

When did I become Survivor (Wo)Man, and think that leaving home with a comb, running clothes, and 30 bobby pins would get me through a 4 day stay?  Let me explain: I recently got a travel set of some key things: contact solution, toothpaste, toothbrush, face soap.  These are all things I had two of, and the benefit there is that I could pack a set and still use my regular stuff.  But most of that stuff is regular sized.  It’s not a travel toothbrush, but one from a three pack I bought months ago.  The contact cases are all the same.  So, I got confused and seemed to think I’d packed the things I needed and also decided to do what I used to do when traveling and just throw the stuff I’m using in a bag after I use it the morning I fly out.  But I didn’t do either of those things because I always thought I would do/had done the other.

Let me also say that this happens in the morning before I’ve had coffee because I’m going to buy it at the airport.  This may also have been a factor.

So, today I made my third trip out to buy supplies I should have had in the first place.  It was my second trip to the grocery store down the street, and I can only assume that there will be some reason I’ll have to go tomorrow, too.  I just haven’t discovered it yet.  I also have a running joke with the Spanish teacher who had her hair gel confiscated by airport security as being too big for carry on luggage.  She is understandably upset because (1) it’s kind of ridiculous and (2) one of the few things I did remember to pack was a Gillette sensor razor that I carried onto the plane in my bag as well as an extra tube of hand lotion that wouldn’t fit in my quaart sized plastic bag as per FAA guidelines.

I didn’t know you couldn’t bring a razor, but Angel was shocked that I carried it on, while she had to throw away her gel.  To be fair, she was given the option to get out of line, put some gel in a rubber glove the security guard provided and carry some gel on that way, but she declined for rough a dozen reasons.

One final note: at the conference we are staying at a Marriott hotel, and through some fluke my room happens to be at the exact opposite corner of the universe from everything.  There seems to be a short cut through a pool area that is closed for construction, and so either way I go from my room I must walk exactly 1/2 the perimeter of the entire bottom floor.  I hiked roughly 4.5 miles in roughly three trips from my room to the lobby yesterday.  Everyone else in my group who was assigned to that wing asked to be moved a little closer to…anything.  Today, a fellow conference goer told me about the short cut, which involves going from the first floor (where we’re staying) up to the third floor, cutting across to the other side of the third floor, and taking the elevator to the lobby.  So much for the closest difference between two points being a straight line.