Abby Rosmarin's Blog, page 24

Day 328 of 365: The Evolution of Things

My parents suffered from what I call "New England Vacation Syndrome". Common symptoms include a downright belligerent lack of willingness to ever leave New England for any vacation, ever -- instead opting for vacations in New Hampshire, Vermont, or Maine. An offshoot of this phenomena includes buying a camper-trailer, parking it at a campground, and calling that place your one and only vacation spot for years upon end.


Now -- don't get me wrong -- I have fond memories of my campground days. I had my first love (and crushing heartbreak) at a campground. However, there is something pitiful about graduating high school and never once leaving the region.


So, the second I was off to college and out on my own, I jumped at every opportunity to travel. I remember going to New York City for the very first time: my college friend invited me to visit her out in Long Island, and I boarded the first Lucky Star bus I could get. I was such a sheltered creature that I actually gasped when I saw the, "Welcome to New York" sign.


A lot has changed in the eight or so years since I was a meek college freshman. Aside from the obvious graduations, career changes, movings, and -- well -- marriage, I've been racking up travel like I'm making up for lost time (and, in a way, I kind of am). From spending a summer in Belfast to driving from coast to coast to hopping around Italy for my honeymoon. And now, here I am, back in Long Island, to see that very friend get married.


The evolution of things is downright overwhelming. I remember when we were two freshmen, grabbing coffee at Dunkie's together, bemoaning our less-than-stellar romantic lives (we were both caught in incredibly unhealthy pseudo-relationships -- little did we know that, a year or two later, everyone, from middle school to post grad, would commonly find themselves in these situations). Neither of us really imagined marriage being in the cards.


I know the, "woah, time flies and things change," sentiment is not exactly original, but -- oh well. The same way you have to allow yourself to be sentimental from time to time, you have to look back and be in awe of how things have changed. And if they haven't changed much over the years, maybe it's time to reevaluate some things.


On a more journal-y note, we took the LIRR in to the city yesterday and enjoyed New York the way I usually enjoyed Boston: by walking around a lot. We visited the 9/11 memorial (which is easily the most incredibly-done memorial I have ever witnessed), walked through Chinatown and Little Italy and Central Park, before weaving our way through Time Square and back to Penn Station, all in the course of 7 or so hours. We ended up driving thirty minutes away from the city, further into Long Island, to have a somewhat late dinner at a Mexican restaurant -- a place where arroz con pollo is actually on the menu.

Day 327 of 365: Sentimental Like That

Virginia Beach ended up getting scrapped. From some crazy reason, we didn't feel like driving 10+ hours on our rest day. We opted instead for a little more time in Old Town Alexandria before driving up to Long Island.


It was dinnertime by the time we got to Long Island, so we decided to spend the night at the movies. 22 Jump Street was playing and I immediately jumped at the idea. On top of the fact that 21 Jump Street was shockingly hilarious and self-aware (and I would gladly watch its sequel), we had watched the first movie on our very first anniversary vacation.


22 Jump Street did not disappoint, this time poking fun at sequels in general (instead of just poking fun at remakes). I was entertained by the movie -- and possibly even more entertained by the fact that we were able to watch the sequel in theatres in June of 2014 when we watched the original in our hotel room in June of 2012.


I'm horrifically sentimental like that. I mean, given the number of scrapbooks I've made, this should not be surprising. I'm sentimental enough that I found the pair of shorts I wore to Searles Castle on my wedding day and decided to bring those along on the trip so I could wear them during the day on our anniversary.


To me, life's too short not to be a little sentimental. Granted, this can turn into hoarding real quick, but being 100% pragmatic sucks the life out of, well, life. Sometimes it's nice to have a set of jewelry that you like wearing when seeing certain people, or holding onto a souvenir as a way of remembering.


I'm sure this could be a whole lot more articulate if I weren't writing this at 8 in the morning, but, meh. What more can you honestly expect from a girl on vacation (and 327 days into this crazy project)?

Day 326 of 365: It's Been Real, DC

Yesterday was spent mainly at the Smithsonian, particularly at the Museum of Natural History (you could honestly spend a week at the Smithsonian museums alone). We took a break to go out to the National Mall, where they were having a festival on Chinese and Kenyan culture. I took a tai chi "lesson" in the park (although I kept getting ahead of the crowd because I already knew the moves) and learned about tai chi ball (and felt like a mad badass when I could flip my paddle with the ball still in it). We capped off the night in Old Town Alexandria, where we had the best scallops of our lives and ate froyo by a wharf overlooking the Potomac.


I've spent roughly four days in Virginia/DC. Now we're off to potentially Virginia Beach (if we feel like making the drive) before crash landing in Long Island for my friend's wedding. We plan on spending Saturday (the day before the wedding) in NYC, just doing whatever (unlike our last trip to NYC, I didn't plan out a thousand different things and buy tickets to a hundred different sites). So this should make today a bit of a resting day, especially given that we spent the last four constantly going.


But, either way, we're hours away from checkout. It's been real, DC. I'm glad I finally got to experience what most people get to do as part of a school trip but, hey, details. This way was far more fun, anyway.

Day 325 of 365: Three Years Ago Today

Three years ago today, I was on NyQuil because I could not get any sleep naturally for the week leading up to the wedding.


Three years ago today, my best friend and my sister-in-law were texting updates to my fiancé on how I was doing. He told them that a walk would be a great way to calm my nerves and "get my dolphins in" -- and that I would understand the last part. My sister-in-law relayed that bit of information to me and I burst into (happy) tears.


Three years ago today, hair and makeup was taking way longer than it should and -- unlike the neurotic mess I was up until an hour before that -- I was calmly giving out directions and orders and telling people where to go.


Three years ago today, I was so sick to my stomach that I had Pepto Bismol tablets in every bag brought into the Searles Castle.


Three years ago today, I was a completely different person. I was roughly 20 pounds lighter than I am now -- all skin and bones from stressing out over my Pre-K job and night courses and moving and getting married; certainly had no muscle mass going on -- and with no sense of assertion. I was unsure about moving how to New Hampshire, convinced I was going to be a Pre-K teacher forever, and felt awkward in my own skin. I had a smatter of publishing credits to my name -- all through my university's literary magazine -- and one semi-edited manuscript.


Three years ago today, I did the one thing I swore I would never do: get married. I saw what marriage looked like and it didn't look like fun. I saw the types of relationships I would get into time and time again and had enough self-awareness to understand when a pattern is being formed. I decided at a young age that marriage was not in the cards for me -- and not in the, "Oh why are boys such jerks; I'll never get married!" way.


Three years ago today, nine months of balls-to-the-walls planning finally came together. I boogied my ass off, cried like a baby every chance I get (including but not limited to: before the ceremony, during the ceremony, during our first dance, when my bridesmaids serenaded me, and after the wedding), had exactly one glass of champagne because that's all my stomach could handle, and found myself at the end of the night sitting in one of the guest chairs, looking at the empty reception area, looking out at Searles Castle at night, and thinking to myself, "Did I really just have a wedding?"


And today, I'm almost eight and a half years into this relationship, officially three years into the marriage, hanging out in DC, and eternally grateful that I decided to give the precoscious

Day 324 of 365: We Can Not Hallow

There are two staples to every visit to Washington DC (on top of, y'know, the 4 other staples): the Lincoln Memorial and the Arlington National Cemetery.


Engraved on the left side of the Lincoln Memorial is the Gettysburg Address. I couldn't help but find a few ironies when reading over the words of the famous speech. The most noticeable: "The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here." And for obvious reasons.


The other? "We can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. [...] It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."


(I assure you long quotations isn't my way of cheating out an entry).


I take that passage as saying that we cannot treat an area of war as a fetish while ignoring why these men died and the task left for everyone else. And I found that to be a very interesting passage, especially given the time we are in, but I couldn't figure out exactly how to put how I felt into words.


And then I watched a man sit on the bench dedicated to those lost in the Korean War at the Arlington National Cemetery and scarf potato chips into his pie hole.


It wasn't until I noticed the constant signage, reminding people that the cemetery is a place of reverence and respect -- not a park where you can have picnics and act up -- that I really could put into words how ironic Lincoln's words are in comparison to the present day. I needed to see how people act at the Arlington National Cemetery, how people behaved in front of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, to have my concrete example of how we do the exact opposite now.


Because what do we do after times of tragedy? We make the ground sacred. But we do way more than that: we fetishize it. It becomes a place you must go to -- compelled for the same reasons people have to visit that pawn shop in Vegas that they saw on TV -- to take pictures and say that you've been there, as if the land itself holds inherent value. And yet, we have people who take selfies by John F Kennedy's gravesite. We have people stuffing food in their faces when the signs clearly say no food. We have rangers who have to constantly remind people to show some respect.


To these people, there is no difference walking past rows of men who died in the Vietnam war and walking past stars on Hollywood Boulevard. They do not take a moment to think about not just the great sacrifice, but what their sacrifices mean to the living, and the obligations we have to each other in light of it. Politicians are guilty of this too -- possibly even more guilty, since they are the ones in power.


I'm sure this would be a lot more eloquent if it were not 11:30 at night and this were not a 365 blog. And maybe I'll return back to it (the same way I returned back to my girls/women thought). But it is really saying something when people will pose by a countless number of little white tombstones because it will make a good Facebook profile picture, all the while turning a blind eye to the things that really matter.

Day 323 of 365: A Constant Reminder We're Human

Washington DC and Virginia has been a blast so far. I'm exhausted out of my skull; I haven't spend this much time walking around outside since my honeymoon in Rome. But it's awesome to say that I've finally seen the White House, the State Capitol, the Lincoln and Jefferson Memorials, and the Washington monument (helloooooo, phallus). I also got to do some sick yoga moves in front of some of the various landmarks.


We also visited the Holocaust Museum today, which touches upon the history and the sociology of genocide. They had areas dedicated to other genocides of the past and, unfortunately, in the present day. It's enough to make you despair for humanity when you realize everything that is going on.


It's frightening how we, as humans, have to be constantly reminded that the person across from us is an actual human being, with feelings and emotions and family. Genocide is an extreme example of what happens when we lose that constant reminder. What we say in text messages or how we act on the road is a more common situation. Suddenly, they;re not humans. They're assholes whose only purpose in this life is to make you annoyed. And you hope their car explodes or your text message renders them speechless (and in a bad way).


Evolutionarily speaking, it makes sense. Those who were quicker to dehumanize probably won the wars quicker, which mean less of them were killed off, which meant more genes being passed on to the next generation. There's a lot of shitty shit humans do that make perfect sense evolutionarily speaking, but that's for another time.


Like I said, it's easy to despair for humanity when you look at things this way. No wonder authors write about aliens studying humans like it's the most fascinating book in the library.

Day 322 of 365: Jesus Christ it's New Jersey

...get in the car!

I'm writing this en route to Virginia. We are enjoying New Jersey at its finest: the turnpike during rush hour.  And, for those who don't own a map, we get to drive all the way through NJ in order to get to the DC area.  The only thing keeping me sane amidst this traffic is that our next potential road trip will be to Montreal, which involves three hours of driving through northern NH and VT -- and there is no such thing as rush hour traffic in the boondocks.

There's something about travel that makes my husband and I talk about ... well, more travel.  I've got a wanderlust (as in a literal lust for wandering) like no other. Even when we get stuck in traffic (or have our plane rerouted like our last &#$!ing fight) we love talking about the next place we want to explore.  Before entering New Jersey, we talked about going to Puerto Rico as a way to help with our meager Spanish. Now, who knows when that trip(s) will happen, but the fact of the matter is, is that travel apparently spawns more travel. 

To be fair, the topic of Puerto Rico came up when our flight last March got rerouted and the flight across the gate from us was going to sunny Puerto Rico instead of freezing cold Boston.  If there were ever a time that we would say, "fuck it," and take a spontaneous flight, that would've been it.

Kind of hard to do something like that when you're stuck in lane #5 of the New Jersey turnpike in bumper-to-bumper traffic.  But, hey, imagining you're on a sandy beach or old French streets is not a bad way to pass the time.

Day 321 of 365: Cleaning House and Knowing How to Adult

There are only two events that will get me to properly clean my house (and, before that, apartment): when someone outside of my immediate group of friends was coming over or when we're about to leave for a while.


The first makes sense: hey, these random people are coming over. And, for some reason, you care about their opinion of your residence way more than the people who are closest to you. Hurrah for flawed human logic.


The second makes sense if you are even the least bit anal-retentive. Who wants to come home from vacation and see dirty dishes in the sink, floors that need cleaning, laundry that needs to be done, and a bed that needs to be made? If you don't give a flying shit (or even a meandering shit) about laundry or dishes, than a pre-vaca clean-up makes zero sense.


I've spent the last three days completely overhauling this house. From the standard, "pick your random shit off the floor," to washing the doors -- to scrubbing the fridge to within an inch of its life. What really shocked me was the level to which I cleaned up the house. I mean, I ironed the tablecloth for my dining room table. When did I become someone who irons their tablecloths? Or washes doors? Or even realizes that doors can get dirty in the first place?


Wait, rooms have doors?


It's a stark contrast from even just a year or two ago. Before this, I would clean up the apartment before a vacation by making sure laundry and dishes were done and no cat vomit had been left unattended. Now I fret over the wrinkles in long swatches of fabric. Is this what being an adult is like? Does this mean I have to start wearing pants now?


Somewhere along the line I drank the Kool Aid and started doing things my parents would do. Well, other people's parents, really. I haven't yet started acting like my mom, and I won't until I start chatting with the telemarketers about my dog's diarrhea problem or womanly issues associated with menopause -- and not in a way to troll the poor telemarketer.


I'm not kidding about either of those, by the way.


But, seriously, preparing for this particular vacation has been a huge reminder that I somehow learned How to Adult. And knowing How to Adult includes cleaning soap scum out of shower door runners and dusting things.

Day 320 of 365: See What Resonates

Be forewarned: this is about as hippy-dippy and pseudo-life-poetic as I get.


Yesterday, I got to buy my tingshas. As I mentioned yesterday, tingshas (or Tibetan chimes) essentially look like brass flying saucers connected with a leather cord. Chiming them together creates this absolutely gorgeous ring -- a perfect way to end that last pose in yoga (aka savasana). I remember my main/favorite instructor using them during my very first yoga class in Nashua and I thought to myself, "Holy God why don't all yoga teachers have these?"


I lucked out tremendously: the instructor (who also owns the studio and is an assistant instructor in my teacher training) was able to order them wholesale, and pass them onto us without any markups. I paid for my tingshas roughly 1/4th of what I'll be paying for my new mat (and the ultra-tally version of the mat I'm looking at is roughly $75) and the quality of these tingshas beat anything I saw on Amazon. I came into class early yesterday to play around with the various tingshas. Each had a different, intricate design on them, which affected the ring it made when chimed. The differences were subtle but noticeable. I chimed away until I found a pair that literally resonated with me.


I've been holding onto this "pre-graduation, almost a yoga teacher" euphoria as hard as I can, because I recognize it can and will not last. The feeling is all-too familiar for me: this is exactly how I felt my senior year of college when I realized I wanted to be a preschool teacher. And we all know how that played out.


However, the euphoria between the two are similar because, at least at one point in my life, I was ecstatic over something actually resonated with me. I was bored when I interned at a library. I was unsatisfied when I interned at a publishing company. I came alive when I did volunteer work at a Belfast primary school. I was in love with my job when I student-taught at an elite preschool (and those exist, especially in cities like Boston). I dove headfirst because working with children like that resonated with me.


In a way, that never changed. When I see my friends' kids, I immediately gravitate towards playing with them (and they immediately gravitate towards playing with me -- this right here was why I was the go-to teacher for new, unsure kids when I taught Pre-K. Not so much when I looked after one- and two-year-olds and they just screamed all day, but that's for another time). But what didn't resonate with me was the politics, the overcrowded classrooms, the parents who could not be bothered and -- most of all -- working with toddlers en masse (there's a reason why the turnover rate for teachers who work with toddlers and infants is exponentially higher than teachers who work with, say, 4-year-olds). What didn't resonate with me was the realization that schools operate a lot like businesses sometimes, and your intentions will get squashed under the bottom line.


And I recognize that there is a lot in yoga that probably won't resonate well with me. From finding a place that will hire me to people who cannot be bothered to enjoy the class to any slew of issues with payment. But it's about finding that balance: seeing what truly resonates with you at the base and seeing if it's worth it to invest more into it. Whether that's a literal, "the sound vibrations just feel right and I'll buy this tingsha," or a metaphorical, "This feels right in my gut and I'm pressing forward." It's about seeing whether or not you still feel right about where you are, even when the reality and the setbacks come seeping in.


The reality of working with young children was more than my pie-in-the-sky, elite-preschool-with-ideal-teacher-student-ratios, self could handle. But I have a good feeling about my yoga classes. And it's just a matter of time and letting things unfold naturally and exactly how they're supposed to unfold.

Day 319 of 365: Small Town Living

Yesterday turned out to be one of those days where I lived out every stereotype of small town living in the northeast. I picked wildflowers while on a walk, I visited a pond with a bunch of wooden pallets serving as a dock (which results in a spooked cat jumping into the water, then attempted to run in a perfect semi circle with a look on his face that can only be described as, "BAD DECISION BAD DECISION BAD DECISION."), I tended to my chicken and collected a good number of eggs (four eggs for three chickens in the span of 24 hours). I also noticed that the garden filled with plants that the former owners said were strawberry plants but really looked more like poison ivy turned out to actually be strawberry plants. This resulted in me picking strawberries and pulling out weeds for an hour.


One of my favorite memories of my childhood isn't even a memory at all, but a smell. The smell of the forest in the heat of summer. The smell of humidity and leaves and pond scum and dirt. There's something so incredibly comforting in it, something that brings me back to a unbelievably innocent time. And now I experience it every time I step out of my house.


If you had asked 2010 Me what I would be doing in 2014, I would've told you this:


"I'm going to be a bad-ass Pre-K teacher, probably with my M.Ed or going for it. I'll be living in Boston and relishing in the city living."


If you had told her that she'd be living in a house just outside of Manchester, NH, right on the border between civilization and the absolute boondocks, where she'd relish in nature trails, fruit and vegetable gardens, and scenic views as she drives to work -- if you had told her that the teacher would she romanticized is an absolute nightmare and she'd quit the entire field before she could even pinpoint which schools she'd want to apply to -- she wouldn't believe you.


Oh -- and if you told her that she'd not only get into martial arts, but be proficient enough to teach it to others, she'd call you an outright liar. If you told her that she'd get so stupidly good at yoga that she'd go on to become a 200-hour RYT and market her class ideas to studios, she'd -- again -- call you a liar. She'd point out that she's nothing more than an awkward oaf who quit her kung fu classes the second she injured her knee.


Life really never happens the way you expected it to happen. There are some things in my life that turned out differently than what I expected and I'm not so thrilled about it (I always assumed I would have a bestselling novel by the time I was 28). And there are some things in my life that turned out differently than what I expected and I'm incredibly grateful for it (after an especially heinous pseudo-relationship my freshman year of college, I "realized" that my dating life would be nothing more than a string of douchebags -- oh, and there was no way I was ever getting married. I had seen enough negative examples of marriage to know I want nothing to do with that!!). And there are some things that turned out differently, and proved to be exactly where I needed to be.


Maybe I'm waxing philosophical over something as simple as strawberry picking because I'm in the process of ordering the various items I need to run my own yoga class (including an actual professional mat -- no more $15 cheapos from Marshall's -- and these adorable chimes called tingshas. My own instructor ends savasana by gently knocking the two tingshas together and it's like being woken up from a nap by the smell of freshly-brewed coffee). Never in a million years would I think this is where I'd be just two months before my 28th birthday, and there's really no where else I'd rather be.


This morning, I went out to do a little more weeding in this strawberry garden (since we didn't really believe the original owners, we let the weeds overrun the garden this year). After I write this, I'll be letting the chickens out so they can stretch their legs (and eat the bugs in my backyard). Then I'm going to a two-hour yoga class to learn the ins and outs of arm balances (which I have gotten frighteningly good at). This isn't the Pre-K classroom or the classroom at UNH to get my M.Ed, but I really wouldn't have it any other way.