The perils of being part sloth...

Reader, were you to meet me in real life, you might be fooled into thinking that I am an energetic lass with buckets of get up and go. You would be wrong. I am incredibly busy, yes, and constantly doing stuff, but buried deep beneath all the meetings and auditions and international jobs and projects is a sloth whinging that 'I JUST WANT TO STAY IN BED AND BE FED PIZZA AND HAVE SOMEONE SCRATCH MY BACK'. For, dear Reader, I am a secret lazy bint.

If given the choice, I would always choose to stay in my cosy flat with a delicious meal and a pile of books bigger than my head over going out to a cooler than cool event where I have to schmooze. Don't get me wrong, I love a bit of a schmooze too, but I am so rarely in my home, that the chance to be in front of my telly in my pants with my home made aubergine bake in front of me and an episode of Friends on the telly is just a dream come true.

So this evening, the first evening in a kazillion years when I've actually been in and able to cook a beautiful meal (pasta made out of courgettes in garlic and basil, chicken stuffed with mozzarella and sun dried tomatoes and drizzled with pesto in case you were wondering...) and 3 episodes of Friends later, I am feeling a little guilty about not having done any work or any tidying (I've been out so often of late my room is a rubbish dump with a small space for me to sleep in), I thought I'd share with you some of the struggles of being half sloth and a quarter mattress (on top of my quarter human obviously).

SLOTH GIRL STRUGGLES

1. Mornings

Oh mornings. These days I set three alarms because my bed is SO COMFY, leaving it makes me die a little inside. It's summer at the moment and when I see sun shining in in the morning my first thought is 'Oh, what a beautiful day!' and my second is 'I have NO EXCUSE to stay in bed. Arses.' My favourite kind of day is a day where I have nothing to do and it's pouring down with rain. This hasn't happened for about a year, but even so. 

2. Eating healthily

So, as you might have remembered from previous posts, I am a rather fantastic cook. I can whip up traditional and innovative recipes that will make your head spin so fast you'll get whiplash. But because I'm really really lazy, my current favourite dinner is a cheese string and a bowl of ice cream. Thank god for green smoothies, I'd definitely get scurvy otherwise...

3. When people tell you they're in the area and are going to drop in

 

One big issue I have with being a sloth girl is that my bed very quickly becomes the epicentre of everything. It is my desk, my dressing table and my library. And because, at the moment I am so horrendously (but in the nicest way possible) busy, I have no time to clear it all up. Nor do I have time to tidy the kitchen. Or put on a clothes wash. So when people 'just drop in' it's like panic code red and all of a sudden some very creative 'mess hiding' comes into play

4. People thinking I'm super feminine when I'm actually not



You know why I wear dresses? Because it's only one piece of clothing. Less to wash, less to coordinate and people think I'm FANCY. Know why I have long hair? Because I'm a lazy fucker and cutting and stying takes forever. Also partly because I can whip it back and forth. (Just whip it)

5. Stairs



Much like a sloth, I am lazy, clumsy and do not have lots of control of my limbs. Stairs are not my friends.

6. Exercise



When I do exercise, I am genuinely exasperated that I am not instantly a toned size 8. If I do exercise once a week, I'm so smug that I have issues containing it. A friend of mine who has my ideal figure told me she worked out four times a week for an hour each time. WHO HAS TIME FOR THAT? I'll stick with being a bit lumpy thanks...

7. Thinking one of my arms is a branch, reaching for it then falling to my death



Oh no....wait, that's real sloths...

I bloody love sloths.

Anyway, hope you're well Reader! I'm in bed. Predictably.
Ash
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p.s don't forget to check out my vlogs! 

I'm the one sitting facing the wall with my arms crossed...

Reader, I am sulking. Why am I sulking? Because I don't want to go to work tomorrow, that's why. No, it's not the first day back since the Christmas holls. That was last Thursday. No, I'm not going back to something hellishly difficult. I'm actually going to be working on a rather nice account, which is selling organic, free range, happy fruit and veg to jolly nice middle class people. And my work colleagues for this account are a rather nice jokey lot, who are rather lovely to chat to.

But the thought of being on the phones for 8.5 hours and staring at a computer screen all day (yes I realise that's what I'm doing now) is rather dreadful. The thing with being an actor is, in order to do the thing you love most, you usually have to spend 85% of your working life doing something that is not what you want to do. Unless you have wealthy, very generous parents. Some may say that actually, that's a bit of a fib, because you could be a teacher or work in a theatre related business or something, but essentially, you need to be able to drop your jobbing job like a hot chicken nugget if an acting job or even just an audition comes along. And if you work in a proper job, you'd be letting people down if you did that. I even get massive guilt over cancelling babysitting if I get an acting job! The handy thing about the company I work for is that it was essentially designed for actors. So they tend to actually be happy for you if you call in and cancel at short notice because you have an audition or a job. Which is wonderful. Although, they don't pay holiday wages, so if you DO have to take a day off, you'll really miss the pay.

The downside is that working in a call centre is tedious, repetitive work. It;s a great company, I like what I'm selling, I think my workmates are brilliant in a number of magical ways, but my god, the work itself makes me want to bash my brains out with my headset. Because on the whole, every conversation you have is the same. Yes, occasionally you get really great ones, where the person on the other end of the phone is hysterically funny and also makes a stonking big order from you then thanks you for calling them, but the rest of the time it's 'oh hi is mrs. wassername there? Oh ok, I'll try later' or 'You're not interested? Oh, ok then, no worries'. Working on a new account alleviates the dullness a little (as does finding out that there's someone vaguely famous working on the floor) but this is why actors have to do the job. Because we have something else to give our lives a bit of excitement and can go 'ah well, at least this isn't the career!' If we're still in a call centre at 50 plus, we may not be quite so cheery.

For the moment, I just need to get through the next three weeks or so. Because after that, I have a month off from the call centre, rehearsing for the theatre tour. Which will be incredible. But also scary, because it will be my first tour, the longest I'll have ever have done a play.

In other news, since Christmas 3 of my friends have got engaged. Is this year some kind of special astrology based boom year or something? It's all very nice and very romantic, but I think The Lad thinks I'm dropping hints, because every time I turn on my computer I go 'Oh, so and so's engaged' and then talking about their weddings for ages. He's been walking round with a slight scared expression ever since. To offset his fear, whenever anyone goes 'It'll be you next' I get very childish and go 'AS IF! BOYS?! BOYS ARE SMELLY!' So he doesn't think that I'm some crazy bridezilla who's despo to drag him up the aisle. Instead he now thinks I am a crazy man hater who never wants to marry. I am in fact, neither of those extremes. I am a normal person who's got lots of friends who are getting married. Oh god, I just realised how many wedding outfits I have to get this year.Wedding outfits are hellish. Because there are so many rules. You can't wear white, because that's tacky and rude at someone else's wedding and implies you wish you were the bride. You can't wear off the shoulder, above the knee or busty outfits, because people will assume you're fishing for your own hubby. You can't look too good or people will think you're trying to upstage the bride. You can't wear too much black or people will think you're terribly sad about the wedding. You can't wear massive heels or people will think it's a footballer's wedding. This list cancels out most of my wardrobe. I may just go in my yellow flowery duvet, with arm holes ripped in it. Sorted!

Right Reader, off to learn some lines
Ash
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Hair today, gone tomorrow

Hey Reader! So today is a great day. Why is it a great day you ask? Because Reader, I just got my hair dyed and cut by someone that wasn't me, and wasn't done with kitchen scissors. As such, I feel seriously groove-tastic. I've got a bit of a swagger on, my hair is A-lister glossy and best of all, I smell of that really expensive coconut conditioner that they always use on you to tempt you into buying it *I never do, it may smell good but £25 for conditioner is uber crazy*. I also had a fantastically camp new cardie to wear to work. It's green and woollen and has a brown stag knitted on the back! The Lad can't stand it, he says I look a bit like the slow kid in the class, but I think it's gorgeous and very jazzy. I've had loads of compliments on it too!

Both of these lovely things are compliments of my wonderful mother, who paid for the hair and surprised me with the cardie last night. I am very lucky to have one of those mothers who likes to see me looking all glossy *she herself is a very glossy lady so I have been trained well* and knows that it takes a bit more moolah than I can afford to be glossy to her standards. As such, on occasion (usually when she notices I've been cutting my hair with the kitchen scissors and leaving my dye job so long I'm back to my natural mousey brown colour) she treats me to lovely things like hair cuts in proper salons and clothes that aren't second hand. In return, I won a bottle of wine for her and my dad tonight at work, and I'll do my nails properly *do all mothers hate chipped nail varnish like it's the reincarnation of Hitler or is it just mine?*. I'm currently actually having a bit of fun at work. Why is that? Because we have a competition at the moment to see who can sell the most add on mystery cases of wine at work. Whoever wins, wins a lovely case of wine, and I'm one of the top candidates for it. It tends to be a constant competition between me and my colleague Ryan, a very good salesperson who's just as competitive as I am, so we're bantering all the time and sneakily checking out each other's scores on the commission pages. It makes the day go a bit faster. Quite sad really that it takes a bit of competition to make me actually not die of boredom at work! In other news, I'm going in to record my advertising voice reel this Monday with my new voice agent, very exciting!

Hope you're well reader!
Ash
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