Jessica Ashley facebook twitter babble voices pinterest is a single mama in the city, super-savvy editor, writer, video host and shameless shoe whore.
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Wednesday
Dec052007

Things I've Seen at Starbucks: Make that PASSED OUT FROM

Drakkar_ad Attention middle-aged men in to get your four-shot frappucinos with extra whip and double sprinkles who want the rest of us in Starbucks that you are stopping in between high-powered entrepreneurial-type meetings in which you move and shake yourself to local celeb status worthy of tall, slender, peroxided arm candy when really you've just emerged from the basement full of damp-smelling orange carpet where you did a bit of day trading while intermittently watching Drew Carey on the Price is Right:

Please, please, please lay. off. the. Drakkar Noir. Walgreens is not doing women, nor the general population who happens to be trapped in between doors and closed windows with moderate-at-best air circulation, any favors by selling gift packs of this cologne to men like you. I kid you not, three - THREE! - men have come through the doors in the last hour reeking of Drakkar. It is almost like they're outside taking drags on one Camel Lite and then hits off of the last bits of an old eau de toilette.

Sure, in the early 90s, I may have snuck my boyfriend's bottle of Drakkar Noir* and sprayed the inside lining of my pink fake fur jacket and my gym uniform t-shirt with the stuff so I could dream up the (*cough*) smell of him from zero-period school newspaper workshop through ninth- period PE hell. In those days, my grrrls and I may have even swiped as many samples from department store counters as we could to dab at our wrists and between our itty-bitty perky teen boobies while we drooled over Marky Mark, wept to PM Dawn lyrics and danced in synch on platforms to (mom, look away)Fuck You Like An Animal.

But seriously, today? This side of the millennium? For a maple scone and pumpkin latte? In that horrible, violating, cringey quantity?

Do the neighborhood a favor, boys, and tone the musky stuff down. Waaaaay down, like all the way to the dumpsters behind Jewel where the old bread and landfill worth of plastic bags might just mask the smell. At least while I finish my coffee a few blocks away.


* Note that this review was clearly written by one of this Drakkar-dipped dudes, as evidenced by the highly descriptive "real, real good."

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Tuesday
Dec042007

Party of one

Fishnetsfina I've been nursing a NaBloPoMo hangover and even after the weekend of blissfully not posting, could not make myself get something going for Monday. I'm better now. Or at least happy to be back here.

After putting myself -- and my wedding rings -- out there, I've been amazed at the comments and support that has flooded my screen. While I am still reaching to twist the phantom bands on my left hand on occasion and still getting used to the nakedness I find there, I am glad that part is done. And what I love is that there has been and continues to be infinitely more support and grace and kindness than I ever imagined, most of it offered up when I take a deep breath and reach out with as much honesty as I can muster.

This helped as I pulled the black satin cocktail dress from my closet at the apartment, shimmied into it with a new pair of high high heels, and made my way alone to a good friend's wedding.

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Friday
Nov302007

Today, I took off my wedding rings

Just before I signed the Dissolution of Marriage papers several weeks ago, I paused for a moment with my pen hovering above the line with my name printed neatly below. I'd let them sit idle on the table next to my laptop where I was working for an hour or so while I processed what my pen and my heart was about to sign away. Then enough was enough and just once more, I read through each neatly numbered item -- the factual remains of a ten-year relationship that produced a son, few assets and more pain than my swollen heart could ever have dreamed -- and then dashed my handwriting across the page.

The fax machine buzzed productively and I felt the weight of the months and lies and betrayal and appalling behavior rise up out of me. I felt lighter. I felt a great sense of relief. The end was beginning and that was right.

While I waited for the papers to be served, my grrrlfriends and family tightened their circle around me. Molls and I agreed to plan a ritual, a blessing of the wedding tiara I hopefully passed on to her to wear in her own wedding next March but now felt tarnished. For me, we decided we'd make a ceremony out of removing my wedding rings, of offering the hope embedded in them up to the universe for greater things to come. In the weeks since, I've turned those rings around and around on my finger anxiously, sentimentally. As the sad weight has been subtracted from my body, the rings have fit more loosely and maybe that's why I've noticed their presence more than I did when they were shiny five years ago.

Maybe it was because the rings came to represent something unfelt, uncommitted, unattainable, untrue. Or at least almost all those things. Still, I held on to that ritual, to the vow to myself that I'd have a deep sense of knowing when the time arrived to slip them from the finger that traced to my heart.

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