CardiNO

Here we go again, right? Exercise is obviously not for me so why do I keep trying? Honestly, when I run (like for a bus or to get to Wendy's before it closes) I actually get a rash on my legs. My body is literally rejecting physical movement. But I workout for times like these so I can chronicle my misadventures for you. If you would click on more advertisements, I could afford liposuction and we could put this whole mess behind us.

Why do I hate working out? Well, first of all, sometimes people make fun of other people for exercising and that is just inexcusable. I have heard so many rude remarks made towards people who are in the gym to improve themselves. Whether you're working out for your health or to lose baby weight or to help deal with stress or because there's a really cute guy at your gym, no one should ever make you feel bad about yourself for working out. Anyways, if there's anyone we should be ostracizing in the gym isn't it the fit people? You're done. Why are you here? You look like an "after" picture.

And second of all, there's the whole actual physical exercise part. But not all workouts are created equal. Some are more enjoyable than others. For instance, getting punched in the face repeatedly is more enjoyable than running any distance. For me, I have the option of going to the gym and lifting weights with my dad or going to church and doing a group exercise session with my mom. These are 2 very different experiences, as detailed below.

Dad 
We normally use the elliptical machines for 45 minutes to an hour when we first get to the gym and my dad has exchanged pleasantries with his requisite 50 people. This is great because each machine has its own television and you can pick from plenty of channels and sometimes at my dad's gym, I don't know who their cable provider is, but sometimes, on some magical days, Jeopardy! comes on in the middle of the day for no apparent reason. So I normally plug in my headphones and watch the news or Jeopardy! or Lifetime and my dad normally pretends to watch ESPN with no headphones in for about 5 minutes until he proceeds to talk to me for the remaining 40 minutes. This is fine, I love talking to my dad, but I don't love talking while running on an elliptical (okay tbh barely jogging but still). After about 15 minutes in it's a struggle to breathe, let alone make conversation about Tom Brady and the republican debate. My dad also does this thing where he pretends the conversation is over, playing dead I call it. So we just run in silence for a few minutes and as soon as I have the earbuds securely stationed in my ears, he starts up again. If I have on a rerun of Keeping Up With the Kardashians I don't mind that much but when I'm halfway through a Criminal Minds I haven't seen this becomes nearly unbearable.

After our cardiOhNoI'mDying we either do a circuit of machines or do exercises that my dad has accumulated after over 30 years of working out every day. Plenty of tricks up his muscle tee. Though I must say, some of these exercises seem made up or at the very least ill-advised for a delicate girl such as myself. A few weeks ago we held weights while doing shoulder shrugs. I asked my dad what this was working on and he said the trapezius muscle. I immediately thought of that Uber Immortal giant beast from 300 and tried to explain that I don't need muscles there because I'm a girl. But for as much as my father talks at me, he never really listens.

He almost always wants to do an ab exercise and I keep telling him that I don't have abs so I can sit that one out. But it's not for lack of trying. One day I sat on an exercise ball for a full hour. And no 6-pack to speak of yet.

My dad also loves to do floor exercises which are literally exercises that we do on the floor. He particularly loves floor exercises done on one's side and they really hurt my hip bones. I didn't even realize that I had hip bones!

Not that there aren't perks to working out with my dad. Most of the time my aunt joins us and it's a family affair, we completely take over the gym with their physical prowess and my sarcastic comments. And although something tells me I won't be meeting my future husband while wearing no make up and struggling to lift a 50 pound bar, at least it could happen at my dad's gym. Stranger things have happened. I've held a wall sit for a minute and done 20 push ups in a row so meeting a nice man can't be that far outside the realm of possibility.

Mom
A group of women get together at my church to exercise 3 days a week and after my first day I promptly called my grandfather to inform him that what these women are doing in the Lord's house is purely satanic. God is love and love is not burpees.

At church the women use workout DVDs which I just love in theory. I told my mom that my favorite thing about workout DVDs is that you can fast forward them and get through the whole workout in triple time while not actually doing anything any faster. I just keep doing crunches at my normal pace and the 60 second ab blast is done in 20 seconds with the push of a button. What I hate about workout DVDs is the rampant false advertising. I bought the 21 Day Fix well over 3 weeks ago and I am no more svelte or toned than I was before I bought it. Maybe you have to open the DVD or watch it everyday? But 21 days is not doing the fixing, there's a secret ingredient involved somewhere.

The really fun thing about working out with my mom at church is that I also clean our church so I can always excuse myself at any point in our hour-long session by simply explaining that I would rather scrub toilets.

7 Stages of Grieving Your Graduation

It's a hard time for the class of 2015. College students are going back to school. Our schools. As much as I want to be happy for you current college kids, I'm blinded by jealousy and my taste of what adults are always referring to as "the real world". So yes, it's petty, but I'm not "liking" your Instagrams of the Old Well on FDOC. I'm not going to retweet #UNC16. Imma let you finish but...UNC 2015 had one of the best senior years of all time.

And here's what we're all going through now:

1. Shock
(The literal second they hand you a piece of paper that's like an IOU for your diploma that will be mailed MONTHS later.)
4 years and 2 hours later is my collegiate career really over? It really seems like just yesterday that I was buying my first energy drink and making Wikipedia my homepage. I feel like such a fool now for once complaining about time spent in the library and food questioned in the dining hall.

2. Denial
(When your family goes home after your graduation and you go through your ice cream stockpile while watching rom-coms and ugly crying.)
No. There is absolutely no way I have spent 4 years here. I graduated high school like 3 seconds ago. What do I do now? Get a job and use terms like "401k" and "mortgage" and "cholesterol"? As if! I'll stick to quoting Clueless.

3. Anger
(Your first FDOC post-graduation.)
Who are all these infants on my campus? There is probably someone living in my first-year dorm room who wasn't even alive when O.J. was acquitted. Now THEY get to go to MY parties and MY classes and hang out with MY friends while I go to work and pay bills. Now I see why old people get frown lines.

4. Bargaining
(When your parents ask you if you have a job yet for the 5th time that day.)
I can always go to grad school right? Let's brainstorm ways I can have an income with all the flexibility of unemployment. I know! Write a super successful blog and get paid every time someone clicks on an ad. (That's where you guys come in.)

5. Guilt
(When friends you graduated with post pictures from grad school and that could have been you.)
How could I have let this happen? I ALMOST failed a few classes, it wasn't that hard. With more absences and less completed assignments I could have easily stretched it out another semester. I will never forgive myself, or my adviser, for letting this happen.

6. Depression
(Might wanna go ahead and set up shop here, make yourself comfortable.)
Basically the rest of forever.

7. Acceptance 
(TBD.)
Not an actual stage. This never happens.


*I was either challenged or asked to blog about cheese this week, I'm not quite sure which. It was either a dare or someone just has reason to believe I might be particularly adept at blogging about dairy products. So...my personal favorite is goat cheese but it's not very versatile so I'm also quite partial to American cheese but, and this is very important, white American cheese is much better than orange/yellow American cheese. Think Subway or the Top of Lenoir at UNC and wow this post has really come full circle.

Universe Wish List

Today's post is a look at the innermost workings of my mind. Below are my hopes and dreams for this world. Everything that I want to happen so that I can be proud to someday share this planet with my children and grandchildren, or more likely, an impressive collection of Beanie Babies since I don't care for pets.

• Ann Coulter will have her own channel kind of like OWN. All programming will be 100% focused on her fabulousness. She will have several political shows of course as well as talk shows and entertainment news programs.

• Big Rich Texas will return in all its reality show glory.

• Helena Bonham Carter and Tim Burton will get back together and become my godparents. 

• David Sedaris, Khaled Hosseini and John Green will release new books every single month. 

• There will be a sequel to Bride Wars. Honestly the lack of a second movie for the past 6 years is infuriating. The film ended in the perfect position for a part 2. I look forward to seeing all of you at the Baby Wars premiere.

• Someone will teach me how to contour my face.

• There will be HUGE developments in the science behind fingernail polish. Major breakthroughs. Don't sleep on it.

• Mullets will be illegal. 

• I will not rest until Brendan has a decent Twitter handle. I will leave no stone unturned and no hashtag unread. 

• There will be a simple way to see if someone follows you on Instagram without searching through all of your followers.

• Raccoons will be domesticated and will make loving pets.

• There will be a television series based on The Baby-Sitters Club where each book is turned into a 30 minute episode. Completely different from the attempted show in 1990.

•  Tinder will add a search option where you can look for the specific profiles of specific people you know before you match.

• Every restaurant will have a drive through option and every store will have self-checkout. Because honestly mankind is trending toward the complete obsolescence of human interaction.  

• Selfie shame will be eradicated and selfie stick sales will skyrocket.

•  In the near future, a feature film will be made about the U.S. Women's National Soccer Team. I'm not talking about Dare to Dream, another film. It is very important to me that Sandra Bullock play Mia Hamm, and it has been for as long as I can remember.

•  ABBA will get back together and tour continuously.

• Friends will pick up where it left off and continue, uninterrupted, forever. 

• Harry Potter fans the world over will recognize Severus Snape for his devotion and loyalty.

• The Oxford comma will be vanquished forever.

• There will be newspaper full of trivia, crosswords, word jumbles, sudokus and no actual news.

• There will be no need for private social media accounts.

• All DVDs will be manufactured so that you can insert them into your computer's CD drive and import the soundtrack to your iTunes library. 

• In the same vein as Prince of Egypt and Joseph King of Dreams, DreamWorks will release movies about all the other great Bible stories and accompanying soundtracks.

• Pluto's planethood will be returned. The time for planet equality is now. Or 2006 I guess.

• Bojangles' will bring back the southern chicken biscuit. The cajun chicken is just a little too spicy for me and I don't know this is a small thing but it would just really improve my quality of life I think.

• There will be a musical of my life with Lea Michele starring as myself. This is utterly non-negotiable.

• Laughing at your own jokes will be socially acceptable, encouraged even.

• Dunkaroos will come back full force and be sold in Walmarts across the globe.

• Songs on iTunes will go back to being $0.99.

• Ants will be extinct with no repercussions to the animal food chain and we will develop a new food source for anteaters. Like chihuahuas.

America's Got...Talent?

If you’ve never seen this series, it’s like what a middle school talent show wants to be when it grows up.  There are no participation ribbons and contestants are judged on factors other than applause. Simon Cowell is an executive producer so that certainly tells you…something.

My immediate family really loves this show but I stopped keeping up with it once I moved out because an inherent part of the show is judging people. I just hate seeing people feel bad about themselves. (That’s why I don’t look in mirrors. Too far?) Sometimes there are acts that are legitimately terrible, and the judges have to be honest with the contestants. Well, not every judge. If a bad act has already gotten bad reviews from the first 3 judges, the 4^th and final judge has some leeway to play good cop. It’s normally Heidi Klum or Mel B. After the other judges completely eviscerate the act and there is no chance of it moving on, the last judge, knowing he or she will never have to see this person again, can really lay on the charm. “I completely disagree with the other judges, I thought that your brother-sister yodeling of Total Eclipse of the Heart was fantastic!” But watching someone who really believes they’re talented being told that they aren’t good at what they do is heartbreaking. It reminds me of literally every time my family hears me singing. 

Furthermore, sometimes the judges comment on performances that they are completely unqualified to speak on. I completely understand Mel B. saying that a singer was pitchy, or Howie Mandel saying that a comedian’s timing was off.  But the second Howard Stern tells me I didn’t hit a note…no. Stay in your lane. It’s like if John Stamos told me I was ugly I would say “You know what, you’re right and I’m sorry” but if Marilyn Manson told me the same thing I just wouldn't care as much, his opinion doesn’t hold the same weight. 

I try to get past the fact that this show crushes the hopes and dreams of perfectly nice people every week and I watch it when I’m home. Which brings me to another fun AGT fact. Only 1 current judge on this show is an American. That wasn’t a political statement just a point I find humorous. But then I realize that as Americans, we are terrible judges of talent. France had Coco Chanel. Italy had Michelangelo. Canada has Shania Twain. And we are a nation that idolizes Paris Hilton. Suddenly I see why with all the jobs America outsources, we've added these 3 more. 

Maybe that’s why there are so many acts on AGT that I just don’t get, TMZ has made me soft. One drag queen had a singing act. That I don’t understand. The whole point of this show is that the winner gets their own show in Las Vegas (and like a million dollars). Why would I want to spend 60 minutes in Las Vegas watching a guy who looks better in an evening gown than I do? Talk about demoralizing.

Pretty much any act that isn’t comedy, I don’t enjoy. There are a lot of great magicians I’ve seen on this show that incorporate comedy into their acts and let me tell you, magic and comedy is a beautiful union, like pineapple and A1 (I promise it's delicious). I even love the magicians who just do magic because magic makes you think, and not just about the world we live in, but also about the world that rabbits live in. Every time a magician reaches into a hat I imagine the chaos going on in the bunny realm as they choose a sacrifice. 

Watching this show I can’t help but think about what my talent would be if I were to audition. After weeks of contemplating it has become apparent that I have no discernable talent, but I do have a lot of quirks that could pass as talents. For instance, I can stand on an empty stage and have audience members send in personal photos that I come up with Instagram captions for. A talent that’s giving back, I like that. A natural extension of that show would be a follow-up act where I tell audience members which filters to use. I can pull random celebrity names out of a hat and list everyone they've been married to and all their children. I can recite every card in Cards Against Humanity. I can do a number of daily tasks with only one hand while my other hand holds my book open. I can't imagine the kind of people who would pay to watch me brush my teeth and put on makeup with one hand but a few more years of Paris Hilton and who knows how low American standards will drop?