TBT // 4

by Ashley Weeks Cart

One year ago…

There is something so liberating about closing the books on that wonderful whirlwind that categorized our 20s and entering a new decade with zero expectations besides a better appreciation and awareness that life is joyfully, heartbreakingly unpredictable. I have no major goals. Or bucket lists. Or any sort of cliché agenda for my 30s. Beyond learning how to make a quilt and witnessing the birth of a child (from another body besides my own), I demand very little from this decade.

Two years ago…

On Saturday, we will become fulltime residents of Vermont.

During the past four weeks of home ownership, we’ve torn out cabinets. Ripped down a wall. Demolished some tile. Removed a toilet. Repurposed a cabinet as a sink vanity. Laid down a hot pink floor. Reinstalled a toilet. Reconstructed a wall. Repainted the entire downstairs living rooms. And, thanks to the urgings of those with better judgement and sense than us, paid someone to remove a very large tree dangling precariously over some power lines and Addison’s new bedroom.

If left to our own devices, James may very well have turned into the Wicked Witch of the East. Flattened by the offending tree in a brazen effort to DIY Tree Removal.

Home ownership suits us (and our idiotic DIY impulses) quite well.

Three years ago…

While she revels in her growth, James and I are left wondering where the hell the time went. Where that mohawked, gurgling infant has gone. And how we have a kid with such independence sleeping in a bed in the room next door.

Four years ago…

I just want to take a moment and address the fact that I find Facebook on my birthday a strange and confusing phenomenon. At no other time would I have old high school classmates who once called me “vain” and now post glamour shots of themselves on a semi-hourly basis interacting with ex-boyfriends, fiances of my biffles, family, co-workers, friends, and acquaintances from near and far. It is the strangest haphazard display of people I have interacted with at one point or another in my life, who just so happen to log in to Facebook on April 22nd and see my name displayed in their “Events” sidebar.