Ashley Gets Lost

Friends, I have Halloween’d so hard this week that the devil himself has asked me to lay off and take a break today. I am currently wearing my absolute favorite costume, pajamas, which he said is fine. However, I attended three Halloween parties this week, wearing three different costumes, and I am now very tired!

First up was my actual homemade costume for the year, a Midsommer inspired number brought to you by a cute puffy sleeved shirt gifted to me by Olya (she also gave me that skirt!), twenty something euros of plastic flowers, and approximately 25 glue sticks.

I wore this to the party at our local bar on Tuesday, which was an absolute riot! Two of the local expat bands played and the bartender made up some fun cocktails, including “The Devil’s Horns”, which had rum, cranberry, and chili peppers! It was really good! I won third place in the costume contest, which was an assortment of candy.

This band is called GBH, and I literally have no idea what that stands for, but they are always a good time.

And this is The Vibes. The guy on the right is Gabi’s husband Chris, who is an incredible guitar player!

My next Halloween event was karaoke in Chania with Olya, Simona, and a bunch of other digital nomads. My costume was uh… trampy princess? I don’t know. My thigh highs got here and Olya gave me a see through dress. Burlesque dancers gotta sparkle every once in a while, you know? How cool is it that I live somewhere where I could literally pick an orange off a tree at the end of October if I was just a little taller?!

Apparently people here don’t know the proper way to spread fake cobwebs, and Maribeth caught me trying to get it spread out.

I think this might be my favorite picture of us actually singing (and you can also see that hastily applied cobweb). I can’t believe that I am really liking going to karaoke and actually singing, but it’s the closest I’ve gotten to being able to do burlesque. I throw in some PG-13 dance moves. It’s scary and potentially embarrassing, so the thrills are similar. Haha!

Last night was my third and final party, which was a charity event for an organization that donates to help the stray animals in the area. It was a dinner at one of our local tavernas.

I busted out my outfit from my friend Erin’s fortieth birthday party, put on some wacky eyeshadow, forced my hair into a side pony and called it good!

I drank some beer out of a boot and pet several of my favorite local cats. This one is Fluffernutter, who is the softest cat in the village. Or the softest one I’ve pet so far anyway! Kevin, Ron, Smoky, Tony, and an army of Alternate Kevins were also in attendance.

I had such a fun and tiring week, but I had such a blast with my friends and made some new ones, including a DJ from the naval base radio station. She’s on in the mornings, and I need to remember to give her a listen one of these days!

I’ve been up to other shenanigans as well that I’ll write up soon, including but not limited to ancient adventures, a community dinner, seeing storybook creatures in the wild, and riding my new scooter! I hope you all had a deliciously evil week as well!

Bonus content: I stole this butthole fruit (ok fine, pomegranate) off a tree in a parking lot. So yes, I can indeed pick fruits off of random trees here. A lot of them were over ripe and exploding, so I don’t feel too bad about my petty theft. Nobody seems to be eating them.