My Lost and Found Life (Pgs 244-312)

Summary:
Ashley and Patrick go out to ear again before he leaves Thursday. After a night out she spends three nights with Patrick. She kisses him goodbye and just like that her romance with Patrick is over and he goes to Ireland. However her thoughts are not about Patrick instead about her mother. For thanksgiving she goes to Gloria's house and the only thing she can think about is missing her mother and wanting to hear her voice again. When getting gas she meets up with Cindy, Nicole's mother, and finds out that she is going out with Phil and that she is the reason why she is staying in the camper. Ashley goes back to Gloria's house to get some money from the cabinet in the garage. While searching she does not find the money and tells Gloria. For Christmas Ashley goes to Earl's house and spends it with his grandchildren and his daughter. One day at the coffee house a crazy comes in and lights the coffee house on fire and Ashley has to rush and get everyone out. She finds out that Jerry and the crazy man dies during the fire and is in shock.  She denies that she is not okay and goes back to the camper. Few days pass by and she starts to get sick to the point that one day Earl had to call Strobel, a cop that was keeping an eye on he since her mother disappeared. She is sent to the hospital and gets many visits from Mal, Nicole, and from Gloria. After a while staying at Glora's she finds an apartment with two girls, gets a new job at a restaurant and starts to take classes at City College. While everything seemed like it was going great Strobel comes to her with news that her mother is dead and was found near Curtis's cabin and that she might have been there for a year and Boone had ever noticed.  Gloria plans to arrange a funeral and a few people attend.  Life goes on but Ashley promised herself that she would never forget that her mother did it all because she loved her that she would risk her job and that all that mattered was the future.

Quote: "There's no one to call". (Bowsher 273).

Reaction:
This quote was said by Ashley when she was asked if she wanted them to call someone.  I think that this was a very power moment in the novel because Ashley all of a sudden realized that she was all alone. Even though she already knew this but she had a epiphany that her mother was not going to be there for her or anyone else because people believed that it was cause of her that her mother stole all that money. I also think that this was foreshadowing because she is saying that she has no one to call, which could mean that her mother never came back. As we see her mother doesn't come back because she dies before anyone was able to find her. When I read this quote I could not see myself in that situation having no one to call during a horrible event like that. I think that if she did not get help that she would have been in a depressed state because a lot of things were going wrong in her life and this would just be another load for her to handle.

My Lost and Found Life (Pgs 186-243)

Summary: 

After a rough night sleeping in the damp camper, Ashley yelled at Jerry for snapping her bra, as a joke. She also called on him for always starring at her and always watching what she is doing. She embarrassed  him to the point that Jerry leaves the coffee house. Mal her boss who is also gay, agreed with what she told Jerry. however he told her that she should try not to make everyone run away from the cafe because they need costumers. While Mal was doing one of his usual routines, which was talking to Patrick, Ashley was listening to their conversation. Without an invite she entered the conversation and told them some very good advice in Mal's perspective about relationships. This conversation was able to show the reader that even though Patrick was six years older than Ashley she had a thing for Patrick, and the feelings were mutual. After a long day at work she went to the camper and fell asleep. The next minute she heard banging at her door and thought it was a robber. Waiting for five minutes in the silent camper she went to check on Earl. She found him on the floor blending so she called the ambulance and Phil. So for the night she went to Gloria's house and slept in her car for the night and left early in the morning. Later that day she rented a room to sleep in and got reacquainted with Tattie. Who had quit her job because she got sick of old men looking at her naked body for money. While at a book store she meet Patrick who was so amazed that he would find her reading. She left the bookstore and he followed behind her, after walking with each other for a while they decided to go get a cup of coffee to drink. While drinking coffee they started to talk about their lives, and find out that they both like movies and plan to go to the movies latter that week. When they meet up to go to the movies they make more plans with each other and Ashley finds out that he was going back to Ireland. So they plan to spend a weekend together at his friends cabin. That is when Patrick finds out that Ashley is six years younger than him but Ashley did not care because that was the best time she had since her mother left her.

Quote: 

"No, he couldn't have known you were there." (Bowser 205 ).

Reaction: 

This quote was said by Earl to Ashley when she went  to go see if he was okay after the robbery. When i read this quote, and image of someone going to Ashley's camper popped in my head. For  a while I thought that the person that went to her camper was her mother. I thought this because if it wasn't the robber then it would be someone that Ashley knew. And if it was the robber i think that he would have been more aggressive. Would had broken the lock to get into the camper. But how it was described in the book, it felt as if someone was trying to warn Ashley that something was wrong instead of trying to steal her stuff. It was part of the book that i thought that her mother had come back for her daughter and was going to bring her with her. But instead the reader just does not know who the mystery person is. I believe that by the end of the novel we will find out who the stranger was by the end of the novel. 

My Lost and Found Life (Pgs 124-185)

Summary: 

Forgetting that she sent an anonymous letter, she went along with her job search. However she was stumped when the managers would ask her if  she had a resume. After a couple of interviews she created her resume. But she started to see that many places do not want someone that has no experience and just got out of college. couple of interviews later she was able to get a job at a cyber cafe for $8.50 an hour. Even though it was not the best job in the word, Ashley still took the job because it was better than nothing. After a long time of thinking she also decided that she had to start to change her life style. She choose to give her cat, Stella, to Gloria to take care of because is was going to cost her more money to take care of her and also have to buy her food. then she asked Phil, her mother's ex-boyfriend, if she could live out back of his garage in his camper. after some consideration and quick thinking he believed it would be a good experience if she lived by herself and told her yes. But for safety she had to make sure no one saw her go into the camper because her living there is illegal. The next day she started work at nine, she was late for work because she was too busy looking for a parking spot. But she did not get in trouble for getting to work late, on the first day she started to learn her co-workers and and learned many different skills. After a couple of weeks working hours at the cyber cafe she started to notice that a lot of people would just talk to her freely about their life, and at one point she had saw that she had to make up lies about her life, so that people would not know the truth about her. after Tattie came from rehab she meet her at he job and Ashley found out that she got a job as an exotic dance. But she could not believe that Tattie would expose her body to strange men, they both got into an argument to the point that Tattie stormed out of the cafe. After living in the camper for a couple of weeks Ashley and Old Earl, person that is one the night shift for Phil's business, started to get more acquainted with each other and started to tell him more about her life and her mother and Earl would just sit and listen until it was time for closing.

Quote: 

"The only normal people are the ones you don't know very well." (Bowser 185).

Reaction: 

Old Earl said this quote to Ashley while they were talking, and he said that this was one of his favorite quotes including others. the reason why i chose this quote was because i mad me think and read the line twice.When I read this quote I kind of agreed with it because if you do not know anything about someone then that means that you cant categorize them as someone that is abnormal or weird. This got me thinking if the people that I know are normal. I guessed that  some people were normal like those people that i barely knew at school and teachers and strangers. because i do not know them at all and i just cant categorize them as weird because how they look. Like the  quote "don't judge a book by its cover". Looking at the novel, Old Earl would be considered normal to Ashley because she barely knows anything about him because he just listens to her, and gives her advise instead of talking about her life. Ashley would not be considered normal to Earl because he knows a lot about her, but a question that i had was then what would Ashley be considered as to Earl?