I Did Cardio & Lived to Blog About It

This is not a joke. I have actually been...working out. I wish I could say this was part of a "new me" or a resolution or that I am finally listening to my doctor, but honestly after Bring a Bachelor to Church weekend flopped, I have moved to the gym to meet guys.

This nonsense started Christmas night when my father asked my brother if he wanted to go to the gym the next morning. At this point, I have been denied the Manu Ginobili jersey I so desperately want for 3 consecutive Christmases and birthdays. Meanwhile, my brothers get $20 Nike socks AND jerseys. I have been a victim of traditional gender roles, something I'm normally a fan of. So after my brother declined, I took one for the team (my Spurs) and said I would go, thinking maybe my father would be more inclined to get me an NBA jersey to show off my guns if I actually had aforementioned guns.

The first day I worked out was a leg day. I thought we were taking it easy, we being myself my father and my aunt, or my "success squad" as Cosmo's workout section would call them. Instead of lifting weights we repeated a circuit of lunges, squats, planks and pushups. I definitely felt it but I didn't think I would be terribly sore the next morning. I was wrong. I awoke pleasantly surprised because I felt fine. Then I moved. I spent the rest of that day avoiding all activities that required movement of the legs. That night my family went to watch my brother play basketball and my dad moved seats three times before the game started, leading us up and down the bleachers. When I asked him to carry me he laughed as if I was joking.

As bad as my body ached after the first day, I really felt like I was hitting my stride my second day, when I was able to watch two of my favorite programs, Sex and the City and Jeopardy! while burning a mean 2 calories per minute walking a 15 minute mile on the elliptical. I soon learned that soreness only really set in once I got home and my alleged muscles rested for a bit. While still at the gym, my big enemy was complete loss of sensation. I made this revelation as I was laying on a bench with 70 pounds on a bar my dad thought I could lift. I managed to keep it off my trachea until someone noticed, but it took a few seconds of frantic struggling to make eye contact. My arms soon went numb and I started accidentally slamming doors on everyone because every attempt to support weight with my noodle limbs was futile. Someone tried to high five me and I had to use my left hand to raise and position my right palm to receive contact.

On my third day of being a fitness guru, we hit arms after 2 episodes of How I Met Your Mother on the elliptical. I was delighted to find that I could do twelve whole assisted pull-ups. I'm pretty sure I could have done more if the television showing Dr. Phil had been angled toward my machine. After several rounds of curls and rows, my Dad suggested dips and I was psyched to go to Taco Bell after we finished. Spoiler alert...not the dip he was referring to. I realized just how far I still have to go when attempting to curl a 30 pound bar halfway into our workout. My dad and aunt started talking and didn't realize I was just blankly staring at the bar. When telekinesis didn't work I tried to exorcise my exercise and whispered "the power of Christ compels you!" a few times. Eventually dad remembered I existed and got me the baby weights. Talk about insulting.

My father keeps mentioning different workouts he wants to try, the one that sticks out in my mind most is the Terry Crews fitness plan. I don't know Mr. Crews as a fitness figure, but I have seen White Chicks. I have seen Terry's 12-pack enough to know that whatever he's doing is NOT for me. I keep telling my dad, I don't want to get too buff.

I will leave you with this nugget of assurance from my youngest brother. "Working out isn't hard. It's just hard for you." Truer words have never been muttered more smugly.

A Very White Girl Christmas

Just consider this your holiday handbook for making Christmas 2014 your most White Girl Yuletide yet. Below are the most basic things about Christmas, please use this to make the white girls in your life happy this holiday season.

Food
Christmas cookies.
White girls love Christmas cookies because of the photo potential. Sugar cookies are super simple to make, you can even purchase them already stamped into Christmas shapes. Then you can decorate your cookies with icing and sprinkles and take a picture with it. Or a selfie with it! Christmas cookies are a great way to sneak a selfie onto someone's timeline. They make really cute pictures and show how creative you want everyone to think you are.

Ornament
Anything with glitter and a monogram.
Because obviously. If you want to make DIY ornaments as Christmas gifts, just remember the 3 rules of glitter.
1. When it comes to glitter, more is more.
2. Glitter is a neutral, it goes with everything.
3. Glitter is the herpes of craft supplies, there is no getting rid of it.

Candy
Peppermint bark.
White girls love this stuff. I prefer candy cane Hershey's kisses myself, but for some reason, December 1st every white girl goes to buy peppermint bark. I do not recommend DIYing this, it would involve hours of real life candy crush.

Gift Given
Cologne.
White girls love to give their boyfriends cologne. Or their husbands. Or their crushes. Or the guy they sat next to in Spanish first semester freshman year and have loved ever since. The best part about this gift is that the giver is also an indirect receiver. If your guy is always wearing Axe and you hate it because you're actually not in middle school, you can hook him up with some Drakkar.

Gift Received
The new iPhone. A warm infinity scarf. Yoga leggings. A statement necklace.
We're really not hard to shop for. You've been on Tumblr, you know what we like. A little Starbucks gift card will go a long way.

Socks
Rudolph. White girls love Rudolph socks.
I think Christmas socks are an important part of every day below 50 degrees. But I do feel a little extra special wearing them in December. And the rest of the world is finally catching up to this. My Christmas socks feature trees, lights, reindeer, Santas, elves, presents, candy canes. It seems white girls prefer Christmas socks with just Rudolph. If you have any information on this, please contact me. I'm a self-appointed expert on Christmas socks considering I've been wearing them year-round for a decade. Dress Barn's Christmas socks are my absolute favorites. Bonus points for Christmas socks with jingle bells.

Movie
Elf.
Everyone should love this movie, but I think white girls have a particular affinity for Elf because the way Buddy acts is the way we act at Christmastime. That childlike enthusiasm and unharnessed excitement for everything about the season. Christmas brings out the Will Ferrell in all of us.

Song
Last Christmas.
Ultimate white girl Christmas song. Taylor's version, the Glee version, I'm sure several other white girls have covered this song as well. I don't really connect to this song because the only people I see every Christmas are my family members so I'm not pining after any of them, but I still love to shout the chorus while baking gingerbread cookies.

Decoration
Tinsel.
Because tinsel combines 2 white girl faves, glitter and fringe. Tinsel is also a fashion accessory, white girls flock to "ugly" Christmas sweater parties wrapped in tinsel. I don't understand these parties thought because I don't find Christmas sweaters ugly, I think they're awesome. I wear my Christmas sweaters and sweater vests all December. And not just to parties. To class, to Wal-Mart, to church, to the mall.

Sweater
Christmas cats.
Apparently white girls love cats now? That's a new thing (thanks T. Swift). I have seen numerous Christmas sweaters this year featuring felines in festive Christmas attire. I have no use for such sweaters and will be sticking to my XXL sweater featuring a tree with ornaments that light up. Yes. My sweater connects to a battery pack and lights up. Merry Christmas.

Bring a Bachelor to Church Day

I have always recognized church as a great place to meet guys. Even though I am directly related to half of the males at my home church, you gotta have faith, even in the guys you can't see (like God and someone willing to marry me). My parents met in church. Almost 30 years later, my dad still falls asleep on the floor around 9 every night and my mom still leaves every single ingredient out after she cooks, but they're still together, so obviously something went right.

Looking for a future mate at church is like genius, it's like when you skim through a legal document before signing it. If you meet a guy at church you don't have to pay as much attention when you're getting to know him because what's the worst that could happen? It's like if the main quality you were looking for in a potential partner were tattoos and you made it a habit to hang out in tattoo parlors to find your dream guy. When you know what you want, you can skip a few steps.

So in the spirit of Christmas, I am proposing a new holiday. Bring a Bachelor to Church Day! It has a double meaning considering I am looking for a male who is A) single and B) in possession of a college degree. Celebrate the season of giving by bringing an eligible bachelor to church. It can be any male between the ages of 21 and 30 with no criminal record, no history of voting democrat and no use for the Oxford comma. Really, I'm not picky.

Now people have tried to set me up in the past but I am convinced that a "completely random" sanctuary encounter is the way to go. First of all, the gentlemen will have easy access to dozens of sparkling reviews of my personality. If I met a guy at say, a concert, or a party with my friends, their commentary on my character would be more of a mixed (and likely slurred, depending on the concert/party) bag. At my church, everyone either loves me or feels obliged to say only nice things about me because what would Jesus do? Marriage is all about compromise. I am 100% unwilling to attend any church other than my own. So not to alarm anyone but meeting my spouse at my church is kind of my only hope.

Additionally, meeting someone at church would allow them to meet my large family in a neutral setting where they are slightly less likely to be ganged up on, made fun of, victimized, or tripped. But only slightly. Church is like a safe zone where my dad can't call everyone he knows for letters of recommendation and my uncles can't rule him out based on his favorite football team. My family will save all that for later if their first interaction is in the house of God.

The worst thing about Christmas season is December 26th, or as I affectionately call it, the saddest day of the year. The best part about Bring a Bachelor to Church Day is that it's the holiday that keeps on giving...to me. Until there is a ring on this finger, it never has to end! It's not even exclusive to Sunday mornings. Bring a Bachelor to Prayer Meeting. Bring a Bachelor to Vacation Bible School. Bring a Bachelor to Easter Sunday. In the advertising world, we call this an idea with legs.

I get your mass texts, I watch your snapchat stories (okay not really but they've really gotten out of hand in the past few months) and I see your Facebook posts. So I know several of my friends celebrate all sorts of made up holidays like Valentine's Day, St. Patrick's Day and Groundhog Day. Seriously, they're just woodchucks people, open your eyes. So I assume you will have no trouble participating in my very own made up holiday. See you Sunday.

The 5 Stages of Finals

1. Denial
Right after you leave an exam or turn in a paper.
As soon as you turn a final in, you might be thinking "hey that wasn't so bad". You'd be wrong. At first you tell yourself "Well I know I have 5 points for writing my name and the date. Crap, what day is it?" and you start calculating all the questions you're positive you got right, which takes all of 3 seconds because let's face it, you made up most of the answers. The more you think about it, the more you realize that you are likely looking at a career in pizza delivery.

2. Anger
When you realize this is all your professor's fault.
At this point you've already turned in the course evaluation. Back in mid-November when you were still young and naive you loved your chill, hipster professor and the fact that he didn't care if you were on the internet or texting in class. But as soon as the course is over you realize you never really learned anything other than which celebrities got new tattoos this month (thanks Buzzfeed!).

3. Bargaining
You start to promise the higher education powers that you will really study next semester if your GPA survives this one.
You calculate how your GPA can make a comeback. You think that if you can somehow just manage a C+ in this class, you will find a super easy class to take later to make up for it. As long as you get the credit, you will do anything. Then you pray because you know Jesus can raise people from the dead, so how hard could a GPA be?

4. Depression*
After you recognize that any optimism was misplaced.
You get realistic about how well you didn't do on that exam. You realize that no matter how you spin it, the 3 pages of size 18 font you submitted for what was supposed to be a 5 page paper probably won't warrant an A. And that exam you needed a 150 on to get a B in the class? Not happening.
* I feel like it is important to make the point here that depression is a serious mental disorder and not an adjective. So when you fail an exam, you're not really depressed. When you change your mind about what you want to do tonight, you're not bipolar. Just annoying. Carry on.

5. Acceptance
YOLO.
When you realize you're a strong, independent black woman who don't need no GPA. If there's any number that defines you it's the number of carats in your future engagement ring. Or the number of times you've been to Taco Bell this week. Certainly not a GPA. At the end of this 4 years, you will still have a degree (maybe). And that's all that matters.

For those smart cookies, psychology majors and fellow NC State fans who recognized these as the 5 stages of grief, 10 points for Hufflepuff!(just being honest). I have added a 6th stage for finals...

6. Self-Defeating Reward
When you tell yourself (lie to yourself) that you can relax.
After writing a paper or taking a test you tell yourself that you have earned a break. You deserve some time off from constant studying. So you decide to just watch one show. 7 hours later you can't stop researching American Horror Story fan theories on the internet. At least you're researching something?


To get through the rest of finals, I leave you with an inspirational quote. Someone very wise once said "The older I get, the more I realize that the area of my life where I really need to splurge is therapy." That someone was me. You're welcome.

The Blind Leading the Blind: Dating Advice

I spend a lot of my time thinking about dating. You know what they say, those who can't do...blog? Naturally, I have a lot of opinions on what makes a compatible couple. So I have compiled this list of dating website and app ideas that will make online dating more successful. You're welcome.


1. An app that lets you fall in love via creepy pick up lines. Your profile is one picture of yourself with your funniest caption and once matched you each throw out your 5 creepiest/cheesiest/most magical pick up lines and decide if you wish to continue communication.

2. An app that pairs people based on their opinions on the Oxford comma. Because I have never seen a relationship survive different opinions in this area. For $9.95 a month, this app can also select matches for you based on a preference of run on or fragment sentences. Because writing style incompatibility is a leading cause of divorce. Imagine leaving notes every morning that are 5 paragraphs, MLA format with an introduction, conclusion and bibliography and then coming home to "luv u" on a Post-it and you will understand.

3. A website that connects people who love the same pizza toppings. Because my idea of a great date involves eating half of a pizza, so it's important that a couple can agree on which pizza to order. Anyone who insists on mushrooms is obviously not my soul mate. And if you don't think bacon makes an excellent pizza topping we're not meant to be.

4. A dating app that keeps Droid users and Apple users separate. This is important for so many reasons. 1-I live in a basement so I rarely have enough service to send an actual text message. 2-On second thought, maybe catering to the needs of basement dwellers isn't what online dating should strive for. My apologies.

5. An app that gives you a list of potential mates based on who likes your pictures on Instagram and Facebook and who retweets or favorites your tweets. Potential mates are ranked for how often they like your social media posts. Because every time a cute guy retweets me or likes my selfie I tell myself that we're in love, it's basically the millennial mating call. And who has the time to go count how many of your photos your new crush has liked? (7 as of noon today)

6. A website that makes suggestions based on what you watch on Netflix. Not only will you be able to easily pick a show without fighting, but you won't have a messy breakup custody argument over a shared Netflix account. This website will also allow you to skip that phase in a new relationship where you both pretend you're only into really high brow entertainment, so instead of spending your first weekend together watching Indie documentaries you can watch Honey Boo Boo.

7. An app that pairs couples based on which Kardashian you see yourself as and which Kardashian you are looking for. Because the Kims can't be with the Kims. Ideally, the Khloes find the Scotts, the Kourtneys fall for the Kendalls and the Kims and the Kylies fight over who can take a better selfie. Kanye belongs with only himself.

8. An app that matches people based on their favorite Law & Order: SVU D.A. Honestly, I think this should just be a rule for the general population. Do you think the divorce rate in America would be as high as it is if there was a system in place to keep the reckless alcoholics like Sonya Paxton away from the by the book, win at all costs Rafeal Barbas of the world? I am in desperate need of a crusader like Kim Greylek to go with my compassionate Casey Novak.

9. A website that works like Tinder and when you match you can see all of their exes and decide if you wish to continue. Because if a guy I'm into has only dated blondes with less than 10% body fat, that's something I'm going to want to know. If he's only dated Norwegians named Olga with over 40% body fat, also something I'm going to want to know.

10. An app that connects people based on which emoji they identify as. Because a moon face doesn't belong with a pink bow and a sass girl could never find lasting happiness with a stack of books. I've said it before, I'll say it again, emojis are the window to the soul.

11. An app that connects people based on their favorite Taylor Swift songs. Because I've made some of my best friends this way. If a guy you like is super into Better Than Revenge and your favorite is Should've Said No, I can tell you how your relationship is going to end. With lots of Pictures to Burn.

12. A website that shows you what hashtags they use most. Because if I like a guy but find out that he uses #WCW every other week, I don't like him anymore. I just don't. Don't you deserve to know if a potential partner has typed #foodporn over 30 times? I think yes. Currently working on the technology needed to differentiate between sarcastic #YOLOs and serious #YOLOs.

13. A website that shows you how often different people view your social media accounts or your address on Google Earth. Because some guys are shy and don't understand that they are supposed to make the first move. So they need the little confidence boost of knowing I drove by their house 3 times last weekend before they ask me out. I get that.

14. A Pottermore extension that would match people based on their Harry Potter houses. Note this is not as simple as it sounds. Slytherins should never date Ravenclaws because they value tradition and creativity, respectively.  Slytherins would want a simple and classic wedding while Ravenclaws are hipsters who brew their own craft beer. You see the problem?

15. An app where each user must provide a letter of reference from an ex. This would be so interesting. I lowkey included this because I hope that it would encourage guys to stop being jerks to their exes. There would be required sections like pros, cons, best feature, worst feature, grossest habit, sweetest thing he ever did, how the relationship ended. It's like CarFax for guys!


The downside of this post is that I actually have none of the skills needed to make any of these ideas a reality. So if any of you know how to use the internet and computers and code and all that good stuff, please, help a girl out.