Well, we auditioned for The Bachelor...

A note from Holly:

Seriously. We auditioned for The Bachelor. And it was...interesting?

Before we get going here, I'd like to give the disclaimer that Heather was completely opposed to doing this originally. I practically begged her to choose this past weekend to come visit (she was looking at several dates) so that we could audition in Hanover. I'm pretty sure I threatened to expose secrets on the blog if she didn't oblige.

She came.

Obviously, I've got some pretty impressive dirt. ;)

Heather got here late Wednesday and after a magical day in Georgetown (shoutout to Kafe Leopold's), we came back to my house to start the process of getting acceptable looking. I feel like I should point out how difficult things started getting at this point...things got real...like, how should I fix my hair? red lips? no red lips? how big are these brows going today? Good heavens! They aren't going to make me take off my Spanx are they?!

In the midst of my nail polishing, exfoliating, shaving and praying, I looked at Heather who seemed calm as a dadgum Buddhist monk. She was checking her phone...with wet hair...and running shorts on...

Me: Kid, are you going to put on make-up?
Heather: I'll do it in the car.
Me: *Internally seething about her ability to do this* What about your dress? Are you going to iron it?!
Heather: I feel like you would care about it being ironed but I really don't.

And back into the bathroom I went...

After all necessary prep work had been completed, we trudged out the door...into a monsoon...where Heather was kind enough to give me the good umbrella. (She totes appreciated the effort that goes into dealing with my hair.)

We took off for Hanover (which is a smidge south of Baltimore) and while the GPS said it would take an hour, I'm proud to report that it only took 45 minutes. Just call me Holly Gordon.

On the drive, Heather and I decided to do a little practicing. Neither one of us had ANY idea of what to really expect but, had done enough research to know that there were going to be questions. Here's a sample of the ones Heather and I made up for practice:

Heather: What's something unique about you?
Holly: I can say "Kiss me because I'm single" in nine language.
Heather: Girl! You better be able to back that up! Let's hear 'em!

Holly: Do you have any special talents?
Heather: Uhhhhhh....hhhhhhmmmm...nope. Nothing comes to mind. Thanks, Hol.

Holly: Why do you want to be on the Bachelor?
Heather. I don't.

It was a swell ride. ;)

The auditions were from 5-9 and we arrived at 7:45 thinking we had plenty of time to go in, "audition" (whatever that meant) and then go get some dinner. Wrong. So. Very. Wrong. I'll spoil the ending here: we didn't leave that place until midnight.

This was mainly due to the fact that there were SO many people. While predominately female, there was also a nice representation of the male gender. We spent a substantial amount of time trying to figure out if the men were there to try and date the next Bachelor or to be the next Bachelor. It was unclear for a few candidates. Regardless, there were beautiful men all around!

I'm pretty sure Heather and I signed something that said we wouldn't give away details. I'm not 100% of this because when we saw the line, Heather and I were committed to hustling! We started out by filling out the paperwork that I didn't read which did include a questionnaire about my love life, hobbies, etc.

Next, we had to get in a different line to take pictures.

Heather getting her picture taken!

This is really where I started to feel the full weight of this commitment. The line was long and therefore, BARELY moving. As such, we all just stood around and stared at each other until it was our turn to be forever immortalized in a Bachelor hard drive for the rest of posterity. The picture taking lady was so sweet and after my round of pictures I asked her if I could choose an Instagram filter for my pictures. She graciously laughed at my "joke" and told me no. All chances shot at this point.

After pictures, we got in a line on the stage floor. They had a local news anchor there to "entertain" us but frankly, she was a little harsh and kept trying to force people to do dance parties. I avoided eye contact with her at all costs.

This is where Heather and I spent the vast majority of our four hours at the audition. We finally realized that they were taking approximately five people at a time from the line every 10-15 minutes. It was painful people. Painful.

To deal with this pain, they hired a DJ who occasionally played some awesome jams. Backstreet Boys made an appearance and so did "This is how we do it!" However, I'm saddened to report that "Cotton-eyed Joe" did not make the list. I mean seriously, it's not a party without Cotton-eyed Joe.

Heather kept asking me to tell her a story. I basically caught her up on every single detail of my life and during the course of that time, we moved six inches. This is when we became VVVVEEEEEWWWWWYYYY interested in the people around us. Heather noted that it's easy for girls to think they would be the kind of girl who gets along with everybody in the house but in these moments, with all these girls eyeing you up and down, you realize how quickly you might want to voice your opinions.

In addition to stares and sizing each other up, Heather and I were fortunate enough to have the life of the party a mere 5 people in front of us. Seriously. This girl was there for a good - scratch that - GREAT time. She was drinking and dancing and "wooing" and drinking and dancing and "wooing" and drinking and dancing and taking pictures with the security men and drinking and dancing and "wooing." I developed an affinity for her and told Heather that she was growing on me.

Heather told me to avoid eye contact with her as she might beat me up. (Note from Heather: No, I told Holly to stop STARING at this girl because it was weird. And, I felt like the girl had plennnnnnty of attention as it was.)

Valid point.

We also spent a solid amount of time discussing the guy and girl directly in front of us. They were fun to discuss because their relationship appeared to be an interesting one. They were standing very close to each other and were a little flirtatious. This meant they were either there to break-up over the Bachelor, try to date him together, or they were really awkward friends. It turned out to be latter.

We discovered this when they kindly turned around and offered us $5 to hold their place in line so they could go gamble. Heather and I politely declined the $5 but told them we would hold their spots with no problem. They then offered to give us half of any winnings they might incur. We still declined. They then offered to bring us food. Nnnnnnoooooowwwwww we're talking.

We wound up holding their place for around an hour and a half and in return, we got these precious things:

French fries have never tasted so good.
(Note from Heather: Add this to the list of times I was so excited about food that I could have cried...)

When they returned with wonderful sustenance, it was then that Heather and I asked the girl, Hailey, about her relationship with the young man. After much discussion, I decided to take matters into my own hands and discuss the situation with the boy who was too blind to see Hailey's wonderfulness. Unfortunately, I don't think I was able to make much progress because we FINALLY got to leave the line. (Note from Heather: Holly is downplaying this. She approached the guy when he was by himself and was aggressively interrogating him, while I tried to fiend off two potential bachelors who were hell bent on convincing me that the current bachelorette is a "slut". Ew. Go away. I don't want to be your friend, dumb boys.)

We left the line and were walked to another room where, wait for it, we got put in another line. At this point, it was 11:30 p.m. and I was seriously thinking about crying/walking out. However, this line was moving faster as there were about four closed-off curtain areas where each individual was taken back and interviewed by a Bachelor producer/assistant.

I won't type out too many details because a) I'm already about to bore you to death and b) I seriously don't know what I signed but I think it went well? I mean, it didn't go poorly?

Basically, I made a new friend, Kristen, who used to work at Disney! We talked about Disney and entertainment and CP programs and had a grand time! And then she turned on the camera, asked me some questions not related to Disney, and I walked out. Actually, she told me when she was going to turn on the camera and that I should be smiling when she did (this was much nicer than Heather's interviewer, who did not give such a courtesy, which resulted in the fear that the first 5 seconds of Heather's video shows her holding a sign with her name and number and a face that screams "mugshot.")

Heather was waiting outside, we said good bye to Hailey and her boy (GET IT TOGETHER, GUYS), got in the car, drove back to D.C. and crashed.


A note from Heather:

Holly summed up the night's activities pretty well, so I won't re-hash all of that. I will add a few of my notes about the night, though.

1) I understand that any reality TV show has negative and taboo connotations with it, especially the Bachelor franchise. I had a hard time agreeing to going to the casting call, and I'm having a hard time announcing it to all of y'all. The fact that my sister and I went to an open casting call isn't something we're really bragging about here. We understand the taboo; we understand we're being labeled as "those girls". I'm not striking it rich with desirable suitors via other avenues, so, I've really got nothing to lose. I mean, except for my pride and credibility, but, who needs that? In the grand scheme of things, we had a funny night of sisterly bonding and now have an interesting story that we can laugh about for years. (A note from Holly: And if I can get a husband out of it then I'm all for it!)

Holly: Excitement and Anticipation
Heather: Trepidation

Holly's attempt to prevent her makeup from settling
 into her smile lines. How's that for blog transparency? 

2) Standing in the lines for hours was rough. Not only because of the amount of time spent standing there, but because I have never felt like I was being sized up by everyone in the room. On the other hand, I was doing the same thing to everyone else. I was so disgusted with my judgmental internal dialogue, that I tried to stare at the floor or the walls rather than the other people. I'm sure if producers were observing the people in line, I looked like a reeeaaal cool girl based on this decision. Not. I usually operate on a "don't do anything to attract attention to yourself" mantra, but, this was especially true that night. I wondered to myself why I live in a world where invisibility cloaks aren't real...And then I wondered if anyone in the world has a job to create an invisibility cloak. If not, I think someone should create that job. I'll get the startup fundraising campaign started now.  I digress. I think this whole "sizing people up" business hit Holly hard too, considering the photo to the right here. 

3) This is along the lines of my previous point, but, I noticed some girls becoming catty about the other girls. I know mean girls are everywhere and we all can have nasty tendencies, but, this was surprisingly blatant. This really hit when we were in the final line/room with the curtained-off interview rooms. A girl seated next to me made a few catty comments about the process, which I assumed was anxiety/jealousy induced. We'll call her Stilettos (because she was wearing hot pink suede ones..) At one point, we could actually hear the answers of another girl who was in the middle of her filmed interview. The question asked of her was "What would your perfect date be?" I don't remember her exact answer, but it was something along the lines of going to an elephant rescue in Asia. Stilettos immediately laughed loudly and began degrading the authenticity of the interviewee's answer. Finally, when the interviewee walked back out to our waiting area, Stilettos said "Ohh, sorry. You didn't make it? Well, too bad. You can go save all the elephants on your own." Stilettos didn't necessarily say it TO the interviewee, but she definitely said it in ear-shot of the interviewee. I blinked at her, mainly in total bewilderment. In hindsight, I feel horrible that I didn't say something to Stilettos on behalf of the interviewee (and everyone else).... 

4) The filmed interview was surprisingly short and shallow. Actually, I guess I shouldn't be surprised by that, but I was. I expected there to be more questions, so I gave somewhat brief answers to everything. Anyway, the most shocking part happened right at the end. We'll call my interviewer "Unimpressed", because...well..I think she was unimpressed. After my final comments to Unimpressed about why I think I'm the bee's knees, Unimpressed told me that I would need to stand up in the corner of the curtained room so that she could film full body shots of me. Immediately, I asked her if she was joking. She wasn't. I hesitantly stood up, walked to the corner of the room, and I saw the camera following me. (This is the same moment where I thought to myself "There's no way to suck in your back fat, huh? Welp.) I stood in the corner of the room and watched the camera scan my body up and down. I asked "Is anyone okay with this? Like..does anyone stand up here with confidence and like this part?..." Unimpressed, who clearly wasn't sympathetic to my comment, said "Well, maybe they don't like it but they all do it." Egads. My inner feminist was revolting. I asked, "So..I just stand here? Am I supposed to move? Is this really happening? Do I put my hands on my hips? Should I turn? I'm confident but this is weird." 

Unimpressed said "You're fine" as she continued angling the camera to scan me from head to toe. I remember thinking "Should I have worn something skin tight? Is that what you're looking for here? I'm not okay with this. Also, I should have self tanned.", but I can't remember if I said any of that out loud. It was a weird struggle between "Um.. this is disgusting and dumb and y'all suck." and "Omg.. do they think I'm pretty?". I dance between that struggle on a daily basis, but, we'll save that for another blog titled "Feminists can like makeup, too."

5) Given the vapid nature of my interview and my not-so-brief freak out about the full body camera shots, I think I have a better shot of marrying Ryan Gosling himself than getting a call back. Even if I did get a call back, I don't think I could maintain any sense of professional credibility and be on the show. "Oh yeah, Ms. Stephens..I would love to chat with you about the 16 y/o kiddo I'm trying to find an adoptive home for. And yes, Ms. Stephens, you have seen me make out with a guy on national television...Yep..that's me.." Even though I know all of this, I still have the feeling like the producers are supposed to want me, which I think many of us experience with dating. Even if you know you're not interesting in a person or in an outcome, you still want to be wanted. You still want them to think you're worth it. I know it's an immature and inconsiderate mindset; I'll beat you to the punch and admit that. Insert Cheap Trick's "I want you to want me" lyrics here...

6) They gave out roses to all of the girls ahead of us, but ran out of flowers before they got to us. Kewl. I felt gipped and needed a darn souvenir from the experience, so I tried to get Holly to steal a cup from the bar. She refused. I tried to steal a pen from the casino, but, I lost it in one of the 2198437 lines. Double kewl.

7) We met a guy who has half a brain. Well, that's what he and his friend told us at least. I'm no neurologist, but, I couldn't imagine that being true. He told us Ben Carson was the doctor who operated on him. Ben Carson's Wikipedia page indicates he specializes in "the hemispherectomy, a drastic surgical procedure in which part or all of one hemisphere of the brain is removed to control severe pediatric epilepsy." So, maybe this dude really only had half his brain. Woah. Fascinating. I digress.

Anyway, this guy waited with the rest of us for hours and then when we were all finally walking over to the final waiting area for the filmed interviews, he and his friend disappeared. Holly and I can't figure out if he left due to nerves, or if he really had no intentions of ever trying out. A third option (that I hadn't previously considered) is that maybe he got distracted by the slot machines and then got abducted by mafia dudes. Hmm.

Hugs and frogs,
Holly and Heather

Poop and unicorns.

A note from Holly:

Wow, well, it's been an interesting few weeks in this gal's dating life. Before anyone gets excited, no one has offered to buy my dinner, but it's been interesting all the same.

Let's start with a conversation I recently had with my friend Eva. She is now on Hinge and has another friend who hinges as well. We were discussing how often we get matched with boys (we heart them and they heart us back) but then no conversation is ever initiated. She shared that her friend is actually doing a little experiment and is having great success! The second that she matches with someone, she's been starting up a conversation with one little symbol: the poop emoji.

Her return rate has been quite impressive. While I'm sure this speaks to male humor/frat talk, it is also probably strange enough to get her on their radar rather quickly.  My personal fear in doing this would be that I would instantly enter the friend zone. I have NEVER dated a boy that ever talked to me about bowel movements nor do I want to do so. Therefore, I feel like this kind of humor is better suited for a conversation amongst bros (a category I'm naturally trying to avoid at this point in my life). However, Eva, like myself, was rather intrigued by this concept.

As such, Eva took off with a plan of her own. Upon being matched with a precious little muffin, she also started a conversation with an emoji (okay, in Eva's case it was a demonstration of emoji skill that I may never possess)...but look at the darling (excluding profanity) conversation that followed:

Kevin, you're adorable.

So, next match I'm opening with an emoji!

So....that explains the first part of our title - let's get to the second.

I've been very fortunate to have exceptional bosses/mentors. Starting in high school with my cheerleading coach, I've been surrounded by amazing women that not only give support, but also guidance...and sometimes, harsh/constructive guidance. ;)

This is exactly where I found myself on a work-related trip with my boss last week. She is well aware of the frog blog (and supports it entirely) and I was actually discussing it with her on the drive. This is when she shared that she had read my last entry and wanted to know why I hadn't yet signed up for Christian Mingle. If I said it was the next step, why hadn't I done it?!

Uhhhh....

And then in true leader fashion, she gave me a deadline. Not just a deadline, but she put it in my calendar. We were doing it that night. Together.

I feel as though I'd like to take a moment to assess this situation for what it is. I would argue that very few people discuss their dating lives with their bosses. Even fewer seek out the advice of their boss on potential suitors. I daresay that I may be in a striking minority that sits down and creates an online dating profile with their superior.

However, that's exactly how it went down. After dinner we went out onto the hotel balcony and got after it! We started by choosing my username. After trying some obvious choices (RobertsH, HRoberts, RobertsH1, HRoberts1, etc.) we were getting nowhere. We sat there for a second and then she said "DCUnicorn."

I laughed.

She was serious.

I am now DCUnicorn.

It really was a stroke of genius on her part. My username has essentially become my conversation starter and as my boss pointed, it's a flattering one. My very first published article dealt with an online hoax surrounding unicorn meat. This starts a story where I *hopefully* come out sounding intelligent and ambitious.

Well played, boss. Well played.

Once a name had been established, we started creating my "about me" section which, as Heather described in a previous blog post, is a miserable experience. How are you supposed to make yourself sound desirable, sane, intelligent and altogether the perfect candidate for doing life together while keeping everything accurate? Impossible!

In true fashion, my boss took off tackling this head on. She started talking and I started typing. The end result wound up looking something like this:

I'm an Oklahoma gal who recently transplanted to the DC area. I love travel/adventure (lived in China for a year). I love sweatpants, a movie, and Nutella. 

 I'm pretty social. I'm fun-loving, always open to a challenge, tenacious

 a love for college football

I'm a program manager and also teach at a local university. Additionally, I volunteer with sorority

So at this point, I read back to my boss what I had gleaned from her points. I did provide the disclaimer that it still wasn't well-formated/typed-out/done but I felt that it had good bones. I read, she laughed, and then stood up and said "I'm going to get my laptop. E-mail that to me and I'm going to fix it."

Again, my boss is exceptional.

We ultimately wound up with something much more complete and flattering and my boss also provided unique input. For example, we took out "sweat pants" and replaced it with "yoga pants" under the assumption that men would find this sexier. (I feel that the real problem here is that they don't want a girl who wants to veg out with Nutella and watch Pretty Little Liars but it was kind of my boss to not point that out). She also had me add in the fact that I love children as this would make me seem more serious/more marriable.

Then, we took a hard look at my pictures.

My boss and I had already discussed the findings of a recent Ted talk I had watched that indicated that if you show a little skin, men are more likely to start a conversation. I felt that this was lacking from my Hinge profile. We strategically picked a few that provided a representative sample of my interests/personality with the caveat that I need to add a professional headshot as my boss pointed out that DC culture merits one. Still working on that...funny...all my headshots feature a crown on my head...anyway...

 Once we had DCUnicorn's profile all set up, my boss decided we should also tackle my Hinge profile. I still needed to show a little more skin and I had shared earlier in the day that I felt that I might need to bite the bullet and get a tagline for Hinge. I've found that men with taglines come across to me to be a little more serious (i.e., you took the time to make one so you're probably more invested in the outcome) so it makes sense that I should get one too. Heather and I (mainly Heather) had been working on a few but, as the picture of our conversation indicates, I wasn't feeling 100% committed.

I started reading through some of the ones that Heather had thought up, and my boss agreed with Heather's stroke of genius. We finally settled on one and updated Hinge as well.

So to recap, I created a Christian Mingle profile and updated Hinge IN ONE DAY. I mean, I'm not saying I deserve a medal but guys, that's hard work!

But maybe it's worth it...there seems to be lot more "someone in today's match has already favorited you" messages popping up when I log in. I suppose if this works out, I'm gonna owe it all to my boss! :)

Heather here.

While my boss hasn't jumped on the Two Sister Too Many Frogs bandwagon as emphatically, I do have support at work from coworkers, which is 45% weird, 50% awesome, and 5% terrifying. (I didn't even have to use a calculator on those percentages. Shout out to elementary school math....)

Many of you have asked about home boy that was mentioned in the last post. From here on out, we'll call him Law (he works in law enforcement, so, there's the simple explanation for that..). 

Law and I are donezo.

That was short lived, huh? Que sera.

Really, it came down to a few things that I couldn't get past and eventually made me want to stab him with a salad fork. (No, really, I thought about that over a lunch date at Houlihan's..) I'm pretty sure he didn't listen to the majority of things that came out of my mouth. This is fine for some people, but, I tend to think I've got important things to say (Shout out to an inflated sense of confidence and importance..) Also, throughout our brief stint of dating, it became glaringly obvious that he didn't value serving others on a micro or macro level. 

I already knew this was important to me, but, after my experience with Law, I've realized it's VERY important to me. 

He made several comments to me expressing confusion over why I don't get paid for my volunteer work. I'm lucky to surround myself with people who are also servant minded and enjoy attempts at altruism. Most of my friends and coworkers strongly believe in giving back and helping others. It's in my profession and in my social circles. Because of this, I was dumbfounded by his ineptness with the concept of volunteering. He also didn't understand why I was focused on getting another foster dog as soon as mine was adopted. He said "It's someone else's turn now. You've done your part."

Insert Heather's lunch-date-daydreams of stabbing Law with a salad fork. 

I won't ramble about why my priorities are what they are. That would be more appropriate in a blog titled "I do what I do because I care and because other jokers sit on the couch and don't step up..", so...I'll end my rant here.

Law also admitted to me on one of our last date that he had forgotten to brush his teeth and that's why he had ordered a Mojito..because it had mint in it....I can't make this up, y'all. 

Anyway,
So I'm back to the drawing board.

Hugs and frogs,
-Holly and Heather