Category Archives: Ramblings

These ramblings aren’t nonsensical things, they’re more or less endless tangents that run through my head that I’d figure I’d share with you :)

2013, the Year of Big Things

This post is entirely way too early but I’m all about action preparedness. The coming of the new year is supposed to be a time of reflection and evaluation, however, I’m not really one to dwell too much so instead, I’ve spent some time trying to figure out what I want to get done next year so I can start preparing now!

2012 was a grand ol’ time, but I’m slowly approaching my quarter-life and want to take over the reigns in my life once again. My girlfriends and I have already planned a trip to Vegas so that’ll most definitely be out of control, but what do I want to achieve other than that?

One of my achievements that I want to to see come to fruition are races. I’ve vowed to enter at least 3 races this year of which I’ll actually compete in and not just flop around at, so I’ve (slowly but surely) started training for that. Another thing I want to do is travel more around the country this year, so I’m looking to do some races outside of the tri-state area – seems like a tw0-birds, one stone, sort of scenario. What kind of things do you want to get done next year?

This One Goes Out to the Teachers

Facebook creeping is one of my daily fundamentals. It helps me catch up on people whom I may not talk to all the time while simultaneously checking out just how fat that brat from chemistry class has gotten. Every now and then a golden nugget of knowledge makes its way into my newsfeed and today that came in the form of a website where you can adopt a classroom!

Joyous, I immediately contacted my dear friend E who recently got a job in education. Teachers reap many benefits, particularly in being real life Obi-Wan Kenobi’s who help to shape young Skywalker’s in to fierce Jedi’s. That being said, teachers are amazing people, as is my wonderful friend E. Unfortunately, as you’ve probably been reading in the news as of late, teachers (especially young ones just starting out) are not paid their full worth and in most cases are required to pay for their own classroom supplies with their own salaries.

Here’s the deal. We’re in an era where people are carrying anywhere from 5 to 6 figures worth of education based debt. How are young teachers expected to pay off their student loans and then buy pencils, paper, paperclips, staplers, markers, notepads, educational tools for students, and other what-have-you’s to help the youth of America thrive?

Adopt-A-Classroom is a great tool and I hope you take a minute to donate to my friend E’s classroom as well as to the AAC cause. Every donation is 100% tax deductible, so help make my friend’s first year as a teacher a memorable one. As if you need any more of an excuse to donate, here’s my her bio:

My name is Erin and I am proud to say that I am a first year teacher! It has been a dream of mine to have my own classroom, and am so thrilled to have that dream come true. Slowly I have been trying to gather materials for the upcoming year, but am finding it difficult to afford all that I need. As a teacher I strongly believe in a hands-on approach to education, especially math. I found that when I was a long-term substitute I was constantly using math manipulatives in order to provide students with a strong understanding of the concepts being taught. Any money raised would allow me to provide my students with a strong math foundation that they will carry with them throughout their lives. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Single Girl Seeks Meaning of Love, Finds HuffPo Divorce

It’s been a solid 24 years since I’ve had what mere mortals would define as a “proper boyfriend”. This is, of course, excluding all of the hand holding, hallway ignoring, and unsophisticated frenching with the young chaps whom I affectionately shared AIM profiles with many moons ago (“xoxo luv u john! <3<3”). Not to debase those clearly meaningful middle school romances to complete nothingness, I don’t necessarily categorize any of those AIM profiles or sappy away messages as a real, pure, ceremonial “I am yours and you are mine” type prose or those silly relationships as real by any means.

 

We’ll completely ignore my early adolescence and skip straight to college where, while holding a series of relationships with men for various time frames, I didn’t consider any of them to be my own, nor I theirs, in what others so proudly define as a monogamous relationship. This brings me to today: 24, single, and infatuated with the idea of learning what it means to be in a true romantic relationship.

 

Now, before you go pegging me as a crazy whore or whatever just know that I’m twenty fo’ and not a ho’. Also, if you’re about to feel bad for me, don’t, because I’m not that pathetic – I think…  Either way, I’ve always felt that our 20s are best spent being selfish and trying to figure ourselves out (mostly as sexual beings if you ask me), only to become tame somewhere in the 30s.

 

So given my inquisitive demeanor and overall need for a hobby, I decided to take a somewhat scientific route in understanding the complexities of romantic relationships with a particular focus on 20-somethings who are “tied-down” so to speak. Having not used the scientific method since scraping by in chemistry as a high school sophomore, and being completely unwilling to look up what a proper scientific method includes, I came to the write out the following:

 

Problem: Not understanding what it’s like to be in a true romantic (and committed) relationship.

Hypothesis: Young people in committed relationships are clinically insane.

Experiment: Talk to friends in committed relationships to learn about their successes/failures in maintaining/failing at their relationships.

 

Part of the method involved not taking the normal route, i.e. reading Cosmo, and instead opting to scour all over the place for articles detailing lists upon lists of what makes relationships work. Also, I zoned out during about 90% of the interviews and didn’t want to bother my friends about it again, so the internet seemed like the next best thing (read: only way).

 

I came to realize that all types of relationships are complex entities – didn’t need to do the research on that one, just had to be a bitch to everyone in my life for a few months to figure that out. Through this practice I was also able to deduce that all relationships are living, breathing things that require a lot of attention – mostly in the form of constant communication and openness with the other party. As far as my scientific research goes on romance goes, though, I learned that I wasted my time scouring the Internet when the answers were right in front of me: A boyfriend is just a best friend that you happen to bang!

 

Jubilant, and clearly needing something to do, I ended up on HuffPo Divorce out of curiosity. Well, the headline, Ex Sex: Is It A Good Idea To Sleep With Your Ex?, is really what lured me in. (Spoiler alert: it’s sticky to bang your former spouse, and it can be cool to slam your ex-boyfriend every now and then.) That one headline lead me into a tailspin into the abyss of weird celebrity gossip, female-centric “Ahh, why me?”, and “Ugh! My in-laws are evil” type content.  Thus, we come to the end of the experiment.

 

Experimental Conclusion: I need to stop trying to figure out what romantic relationships are, get HuffPo Divorce out of my bookmarked sites (PSYCH, it’ll be there forever), and just get out there and be a crazy, cool (ish) 24-year-old who’s open to finding love. My initial hypothesis proved to be false. People my age in committed relationships are not clinically insane, they just understand the tricks of the trade. Also, for that matter, I need a fucking hobby.

24 and Graying (Somewhat) Gracefully

ImageFrom an early point in life we’re taught that physical appearances are essential to being happy (um, WRONG) and we’re constantly bombarded with examples every day of what beauty is and “should” be. Having gray hair, especially in the early quarter century of your life has always been perceived as a point of shame; a blemish in dire need of concealing. Never did I expect then, that at 24 years old my head would be home to an onslaught of gray hair. It seems like there’s a new one that pops up every single day. Each sprout becomes its own shock of silver amongst a sea of raven colored hair and arrives at the times I’m most stressed out. The petulant little grays become their own cause of fury alongside whatever other bull shit I’m going through to even cause them in the first place.

The grays began their initial attack on the sides of my head, opting at first to hide from public eye. Frantic about the arrival of the unwelcome guests, I fought relentlessly against the almighty powers of the parasitic guests. My tactics started out stealth and calculated: every day I would meticulously comb through my hair looking for the pesky varmints, a process so methodical that outsiders would certainly
assume the perpetrator du jour was in fact lice. The enemy would swiftly be removed upon discovery; defeated before he could stand a chance but they nonetheless slowly took over the territory. It began
to feel as though the rest of my hair was a defenseless little country and I their heroine: “No need to thank me, civilians, just doing my job.”

Inspired by Sun Tzu’s Art of War,  I began to strike preemptively and with due force. My swift approach at extermination appeared to be rather fruitful. Around March of this year my stress levels were quelled as were the evil follicles that accompanied it.

Jubilant after months of a dormant enemy, my life took a change of course recently after my stress levels soared due to some roommate drama. It seemed, though, that the follicular enemy used the détente to recalculate their own tactics and instead of striking the nether regions of my scalp, they decided to hit where it hurts most: an arial assault to top of the crown.

All but defeated, mostly due to the emotional shit going on in my life, I opted to a break from my defense against the foreign color. This time off was not for naught. Nervous about the artificiality of consistently dying my hair, it was decided that was simply not the way to go. It’s bad enough when I’m hungover and globbing make up on my to hide my flaws.

One day during my extreme internal debate over further extraction tactics, I was visited on the subway by another raven haired vixen with similar follicular issues as I. It appeared, though, that she accepted a life of symbiosis with the seemingly evil invader. Was cohabiting with the enemy some crazy form of Stockholm Syndrome or just a way to tell society to suck it?

Given my overall attitude towards giving societal standards the middle finger, and completely inspired by my follicular soul sister from the subway, I decided that at 24 years old I will respectfully surrender to the enemy and begin to gray gracefully. Sun Tzu would probably put shame on me but… he’s dead and if you don’t like my gray hairs, well, you can simply bite me.

So… I Did a Cleanse This Week

The easiest way to get me to do something I already kind of want to do is to be pushed with the ittiest bittiest bit of peer pressure. Most recently, this has lead me to buy a bus ticket and participate (somewhat) in a ski trip — that’s probably in a blog post in and of itself — and, as of this week, a cleanse.

So I’m not really one for fads at all, at least at this stage in my life. Perhaps 15 (eek) years ago you could easily wrangle me into getting a Tamagachi or Ferbie but not today friends! Not today… 

Oh yeah so the cleanse – I’ve been wanting to do one around the time Gwyneth Paltrow and most of Hollywood began raving about it. At that time, though, and probably now for that matter too, people were talking about cleanses with lemons and peppers and other horribly tasting concoctions. Clearly the amount of negativity around something that’s supposed to be sooo amazing is what turned me away for this long. Until now.

One of my new year’s resolutions was to make healthy decisions which has admittedly been a smidge bit of an issue but hey, I’m trying. With that in mind, I kicked off 2012 with the idea, nay, the need, to do a cleanse. I was fully convinced that this would be an awesome way to get healthy, and boy was I right (wrong..ehh right).

Despite the fact that it’s taken me 3 months to actually get my shit together enough to do one, I am now fully done with a cleanse. Luckily, one of my coworkers was on the same wave-length as me and helped push me over the edge and do the Kaeng Raeng cleanse with her. They recommend their newcomers to do their 3-day beginner cleanse which I kindly obliged. The cleanse arrived this passed Monday and so Tuesday began the 3-day journey into cleansehood. 

I’ll try to break the days down by themes. Since my writing is incredibly choppy due to my raging ADHD that came out this week.

Day 1: “But it’s 10 o’clock in the morning!” My coworker replied as I cried out loud for a huge slab of meat. Luckily, by the graces of my psychic abilities (I’m convinced I have it!!), I went to the grocery store and picked the type of fruit most likely to be in my juices (rasberries and blueberries FTW!) and already had similarly flavored yogurts to help get rid of the blegh taste. This helped make the first day rockin’! That is, until I got to work, started drinking the cleanses, and was hit with the sudden urge to eat any type of meat on God’s great earth. “UGHHHH I WANT A BURGER!” was the exact words to come out of my mouth to help yield that type of a response from my coworker.

Day 2: “NEW YORK SMELLS LIKE FOOD” Had sweet dreams of cows, steaks, hamburgers, you name it. Noticed that everyone online posted more pictures than normal of the culinary pleasantries – those assholes. It’s like I was being chased around by food, even from the supposed confines of the internet. Tried to hide inside of my office all day to escape the sweet smells of the great city of New York. Drank half of my lunch because it was, um, disgusting, and spent the remainder of my day munching on baby carrots. Went to a happy hour after work where I didn’t drink alcohol (that’s actually a big deal seeing as I normally succumb so quickly to peer pressure). Stayed too long, felt faint from not finishing lunch/having dinner in a timely manner. Got home and got violently ill. That was awesome.

Day 3: “Queeeeeazy” called home to my mommy to let her know what the hell went down the night before. Almost went to the hospital, but luckily felt better after I, um, ate something (fruit). Had some residual queasiness up until the afternoon, even after having the breakfast cleanse. Suffered through the rest of the day. Can’t tell you how excited I am for my breakfast tomorrow (scrambled egg whites with peppers and a piece of wheat toast with a thin layer of jelly — not that I’ve been planning that or anything…)

When all is said and done, when you completely disregard how foul one of the flavors was (umm blueberry, egh), I actually feel great. I’ve never been one to go off the numbers on a scale, so just the fact that I feel great is fan-freaking-tabulous. Would I recommend Kaeng Raeng? – sure. It was inexpensive and pretty effective. If you’ve ever wanted to do a cleanse before, just go for it. Seriously, you have nothing to lose but some weight.

Online Dating. Not Embarrassed, Just Cheap.

Recently took a trip into the online dating world on a website called sparkology.com, also dabbled in another site called howaboutwe.com. Both are very interesting, and hey, Sparkology even has an iPhone app. The only thing keeping me away from maintaining these online experiences is that you have to pay for them. Don’t get me wrong, $15/month is certainly a very cheap price, especially if it means you can scam on dudes from the comforts of your morning commute, but… I’m one of the cheapest people on the planet, and while I don’t want to be single forever, paying for an online flip-book of dudes doesn’t really seem like a beneficial way for me to spend some dough.

It should be said, I’m not against online dating at all – everyone knows someone who knows someone that met their significant other on a dating site and it clearly worked out. Just not sure I’m ready and willing to shell out some greenbacks to a website in order to find a man.

Hm – also didn’t help that my psycho cousin decided to play around on my Sparkology account and start poking/winking/whatever’ing at people. Maybe that was the source of being turned off from online dating. Okay, well, I mistakingly gave my cousin my login information because I thought she was a sane person and would go on the site just to look at it one time which seems like a relatively sane idea considering she’s in a very happy relationship. Far be it from me to think she wouldn’t abuse her privileges and log on to my account multiple times per day (more than me) and comment on all of my potential suitors, “He’s way too old for you!” “He’s a smidge too ___” and so on. She’s totally going to get pissed when she reads this, but whatever – you’re insane.

Do you use a dating site? How’d you meet your significant other – that is, if you have one..

Workout Plan – The Equinox Edition

photo from http://livingnotsurviving.com/“Trying out Equinox tonight with my roomate. A gym which imports its water from the fountain of youth, uses money bags as medicine balls, and gold bars for free weights.”

Okay peeps, we’re into the beginning of February which means all of those new years resolutions are at their sink or swim point. If you’re like me, you made a generalized resolution like “quit smoking,” “read more,” or “be nicer.” My resolution this year, however, aside from being less bitchy was to “make healthy choices” so yeah it’s generic enough that it can cover a variety of regressive behaviors i.e. drinking like college student, smoking like a chimney, disregarding the need for physical fitness, and eating like a heifer.

In the last few weeks, I’ve significantly scaled back on my drinking, haven’t smoked at all (actually I kind of gave that up last year), started working out again, and began eating like any self-respecting adult should. Everything is going smooth sailing thus far and the gym is becoming noticeably less busy which is way more convenient because I can finally get my ass on a treadmill.

I’ve never been a fan of fancy gyms – they’re overwhelming and filled with people who are too attractive and physically fit to be around those who… aren’t. I go to Planet Fitness – a gym comparable to Average Joe’s from the acclaimed feature film Dodgeball. It’s $10 per month and I love it because it has all the shit I need minus the hoopla of needing to be a sexy Manhattan gym. Yesterday, however, my roommate convinced me to go to her gym Equinox for a one-week trial. This place is the Globo Gym to my Average Joe’s. It also costs more than 10 times my monthly membership and boy does it show. They have towels infused with sweet eucalyptus, padded stretching zones, numerous studios, sexy looking locker rooms, a juice bar, good looking people, massive space…

I had my first Equinox experience this evening and holy mother effing shiz. I was so taken aback because this place was loud and kind of erotic in a weird way – there was just a lot of good looking people sweating all at once, it was kind of like an orgy… or a Britney Spears video. Either way, not sure I would go back after the 7-day trial just because it was incredibly intimidating to be sweating like a beast amongst a sea of beautiful people.

Either way, my cousin ended up going with me tonight and we did a class called Barre Burn. It was awesome, if you’re in to being yelled at by a petite former-ballerina. I actually really enjoyed the class, and please rub it in my face when I complain for the next 5 days over my inability to walk. Okay, maybe I’ll go back…

Gone Huntin’ – Fall Edition

 

Currently in the same position I found myself in about a year ago: unemployed. There’s been minimal room for moping around and optimal time spent figuring out exactly what it is I want to do with my life. Without dwelling too much into the nitty gritty – if you know of a cool digital gig, hit your girl up.

Besides the obvious here (my current state of excessive job hunting) – my newfound free time has allowed me to explore my new neighborhood. Yes, it’s true. The middle-bird has flocked the nest and landed in the distant territory known as Brooklyn and I’ve been a resident for about a month or so.

There’s been impressively good weather this past week. Considering the chaotic shitstorm that mother nature subjected us to for the past few months, it’s nice to see her giving us all a solid favor with the 60+ degrees and sun. That being the case, I’ve been trying my best to not confine myself to the potential doldrums which excessive amounts of time in my apartment would create.

Early this week I opted to take a two hour sanity break. Being new to the area, it felt best to use this time towards urban exploration. Part of the process included a stroll down the Eastern Parkway and the ultimate quest – actually stepping foot in Prospect Park. Boy did she not upset. That place is simply beautiful. I am, of course, relatively biased in this observation seeing as my ideal dream land is similar to the that in the opening sequence in The Sound of Music (best version I could find…) and the Long Meadow. I found myself completely overcome with excitement at the sight of an open, sprawling, hilly lawn, surrounded by trees sprinkled with newly minted foliage. This quickly led to me collapsing to the ground in joy and 20 or so minutes of breathing in the fresh autumnal air.

Alas, there wasn’t enough time to devote to proper photography of my new favorite place on the planet or to explore the park further, as I had to return home to the ultimate hunt – finding a job.

(photo from http://www.inetours.com/New_York/Brooklyn/photos/Long_Mdo.html)

On 9/11

Like most Americans, I’ve been spending the anniversary of September 11, 2001 as a way to soak in as much information as possible about the events that happened that fateful Tuesday morning and to recount my own “Where were you…” experiences from loved ones. This was rather upsetting to members of my family, particularly my parents, who simply couldn’t bare to go to through the emotions of that day once again. That whole idea enraged me to a certain degree and left me thinking to myself “How could they NOT want to watch this? To understand it?”  Why is it that they fully understood the extent to which our nation was affected by the 9/11 terror attacks and I didn’t?

I didn’t do any deep-diving investigating prior to this year mostly out of blissful ignorance, but I work in New York now so the attacks suddenly seemed more personal to me than ever before. Finally, after the hours of documentaries, news specials, op-eds, and columns came to a close, I finally had some time to reflect on the reasonings behind my almost fanatic style weekend researching. It dawned on me that I was only a precocious 13 years old eighth grader at the time of the attacks. To be able to fully emotionally synthesize all of those events was difficult for everyone, especially children, and I had blocked that day out of my memory for so many years. An intense rush of guilt and remorse hit me like a tidal wave – why had I been living for 10 years not wondering?

Then came the memories that I tried to block out from my brain all this time. Flashes of my entire eighth grade class taken down to our school auditorium to hear about what happened and the confused look on my young friends faces. Then there were quick glimpses of the utter bewilderment experienced by the adult figures as they themselves tried to piece things together and console their young charges. Most of us left the auditorium and were picked up by parents or other guardians, only to go home and watch the footage. It would be days before many of those young students would return to their classes.

My little Connecticut town being in such close proximity to New York meant that there were students whose parents worked in Manhattan. What haunts my 13 year old mind most is seeing the faces of the kids whose parents worked in Manhattan turn to absolute white – stricken with terror over the thought of their family life changing forever. The memory fragments are still difficult to piece into one complete story.

(There were 26 people with ties to my town who perished that day.)

The path on Memory Lane came to an abrupt end when by 1 am, my original question remained unanswered. My parents fully understood the events because they not only experienced it wholly in real-time, but they’ve seen the affects in the years prior without rose colored glasses. Everyone talks about how my generation has a somewhat jaded perception of reality and I had until that time considered myself an outlier in that sweeping generalization until yesterday.

The only thing I can say to that affect is that we all need to wake up. We’re the ones who elected a president under the pretense of “Yes We Can” and “Change” but what have we done under those ideals to honor the lives lost on 9/11 and our country?

My hours of researching brought me to AOL’s “New York Says Thank You” movie about the New York Says Thank You Foundation, an organization that sends hundreds of volunteers from New York to help communities around our own country who are recovering from disaster. AOL is now partaking in a joint effort among corporations, individuals, and non-profits with the ActionAmerica movement. With this, we can all answer my final question by working together to turn September 11th into a day of positive action. Check out their site and figure out a way that you can help make some change.