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