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That time I sent my fiancé to Michael’s for something…

| cheriarmour

By now, you know that I’m marrying this guy…

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And he’s so amazing at so many things.  He’s an amazing caregiver, he’s smart, he’s sweet, he’s hysterical, and he’s two tons of fun to do stuff with  Some of the most things that we have done have involved us taking trips to Target to get stuff that we need.  It’s so awesome.  But alas, my honey-bear isn’t good at everything.  And disaster struck two nights ago.

Earlier this week, I went to Michael’s to pick up some things for my button/brooch bouquets.  This time, the experience was much better.  I’m honestly really curious to see who was the heinous woman that I dealt with in floral a few weeks ago cause she was mean and she sucked.

Moving right along.

So something that I needed for the bouquets was 50% off, and in the spirit of saving as much money as possible for the wedding, I sent Austin, with specific instructions for what I needed 5 fake blooms of certain flowers to provide the shape for my bouquets.  One of which was a peony bloom.

Evidently, Austin looked up something called a pilonie (I’m not kidding), and purchased this weird flower thing that I can’t find for the life of me now that I tried.  I literally gasped when I saw him, clutching these flowers in his hands, but the look on his face was so proud, so cute, and so accomplished, that I accepted the blooms with open arms.  (I later located the receipts and had to exchange them for the correct flower).

You ever sent your significant other out for something – with disastrous results?

 

You know you went to Elon if….

| cheriarmour

Elon’s been in the news a good bit.  Remember  the camels out on the yard?  Anyone?  Yep, that was us.

I will never stop talking about what a fantastic school Elon University was/continues to be.  If you’re reading and you’re thinking of attending or sending your kids, do NOT pass go, just do it.  I’m literally not even kidding.  DO ITTTT.  And now, here is my incredible list!

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  • You can’t think of a single ugly person you went to school with.  Even that girl that shows up to your 8am in dirty sweatpants who smells like cigarettes and alcohol?  Have you seen her all cleaned up?  She looks amazing.
  • You know what SURF day is. 
  • Winter Term.  You go to class all day for a month, then go to the bar at night and practice your dance moves for spring break with the help of most of the football team.
  • Instead of being a responsible, global citizen, you spent a SURF Day or a reading day eve out until 4am.  Then you went to a presentation really early. 
  • You had a job on-campus.  In fact, you had like 3.  
  • Overcommitted was your middle name.  You went from meeting to meeting, then to a training and then to dinner with friends.
  • Speaking of dinner, despite the fact that you and all of your friends were disgustingly attractive, you gained like 40 pounds from eating constantly.  Food you ate was not limited to Cookout, Chic-Fil-A sandwiches, and sketchy food from Red Bowl place that’s on special.
  • You’ve been in the line at Cookout at 3am and seen like 40 friends there. 
  • You side-eye High Point University.  It may look like a resort, but we are a botanical garden, dammit!
  • You once (or twice) skipped class to lay out on the “boobs” in a bikini and yet…
  • Somehow, your grades are amazing…
  • Even though the weekend starts on Wednesday night.
  • Ain’t no party like a PiKapp party cause a PiKapp party don’t stop!  Now someone pass the Busch Light!
  • Nike shorts + Big nasty t-shirt + boat shoe = your new uniform.  This will only change on days that you have a presentation.
  • Global citizen?  Thaaat’s me!  Seriously, you studied abroad and found your new outlook on life like three times while you were here.

  • And finally.  You, like everyone else entered college as kind of an asswipe.  Until some amazing professor bitch-slapped you into reality with your first 79 on a paper.  You’re now a successfully working adult because of it.

Thanks, Elon ❤ !!!

Also, just cause I’m nosy, where’d you go to school?

-I went to Elon, my sister went to Duke, and my other sister went to Auburn.  My brother is gearing up for his first year at NC State which means he will be over at our house doing laundry for the next 4 years.

Body Pump!

| cheriarmour

So, for a few months now, Matthew and I, coworkers, have been waking up at the buttcrack of dawn to go do this Les Mills class called Body Pump.

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Dramatty and me!

I liked it the first time, and with the first instructor I took it with.

And then I took it with Monica.

And I honestly hope Monica never reads this because I don’t want her to get skeeved out, but she is an incredible instructor.

For starters, she’s beautiful, and I’ve heard rumors that she has a few kids.  She wears her instructorhood well, and she’s muscular and still feminine, and it’s obvious that she maintains her activity level outside of the studio.  (There are some fitness instructors who NEVER work out – I definitely was one of them many many moons ago.)  So as I started to fall in love with Monica (and with the class), the fleeting thought crossed my mind a few times, that I should look into becoming a Body Pump instructor.

And then Gina at The Fitnessista posted about her experiences at her Body Pump instructor training.

And THEN, finally, the other day, I took a class where the instructor made a HUGE boo-boo.  She was really cute, and very energetic, but not the best instructor in the entire world (her cueing wasn’t great, and her form was pretty bad to be a teacher).  And in the middle of a weighted squat, which I am still very very sore from, she goes “Come on!  It’s bikini season!  You wanna fit into that bikini!”.  I will go into later why you never say that as a fitness instructor, but that very day, I started doing some research and poking around for information on how to become a Body Pump instructor.

So, here is the official announcement!  I’m demoing my skills as a teacher in general next week at the Rapid Fitness downtown, and then I officially start the process to become a Body Pump instructor!  Crossing my fingers and hoping that the training won’t come to Raleigh until AFTER we get married, but with my luck, I’ll be in training like a week before 🙂

Any of you guys taken Body Pump before?

So this one time….

| cheriarmour

This is about to be a random smattering of all this crap I randomly remember and laugh at.  Enjoy!

This one time…

// I vomited in someone’s front lawn when I was running the Greensboro Marathon.  I couldn’t help it.  But I finished!

// When I was a kid, the priest came DOWN off the pulpit, took the stairs off of the alter, and walked many rows back to scream at some kids that were being bad and making lots of noise in Mass.  One of the scariest moments of my life, because I didn’t want him to come after me.

// My dog SHAT in my car because she was really really nervous.  This actually happened yesterday, and I had to add it in here.  But she was nervous, and all of a sudden I start smelling something.  And I look over, and it’s officially my worst nightmare, come to life.

// I sprained my ankle at a party when I fell off of a stage in a puddle of what I assume was beer.  Instead of getting some ice and going to bed, I continued dancing, and my ankle was the size of Jupiter when all was said and done.

// I worked as a cocktail server in a lounge downtown in grad school. Never ever ever ever again.  If I can help it.

// I worked in Whole Foods Bakery.  Since working at Whole Foods, I’ve totally switched around the way I eat.  I used to be super calorie-centered, and that meant I ate a lot of Lean Cuisine, and frozen or pre-packaged “diet” food.  Haven’t really done it since.  It’s awesome 🙂

// I peed in my car one time on accident.  I was stuck in a lot of traffic on my way into New York, and I really had to go.  The only thing I could do was pee in a Starbucks cup.  I did the best I could.  This memory was inspired by someone else sharing with me that they had done something similar.

// I was pretending to be blind (which is highly offensive, I realize, but I was just a kid), and ran straight and directly into a tree, where I completely busted my lip.

Tell me a totally random story!

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Wedding Wednesday!!!

| cheriarmour

In case you’ve missed it, every Wednesday since I started taking the fact that I’m getting married seriously, I’ve been kind of updating you all with a kind of running update on what I’ve been working on.

Before we get into it, one word of advice for all brides to be.  

Or two, really.

Okay, just two for now.

  • Even if it seems silly, do things early.  You will mark on your calendar that you want to have this thing done by this time, and then you want to have this done by then, and this by then.  And then NONE of it will happen on your schedule.  Some of it will be your fault.  Most of it will be Murphy’s Law.  Like because you wanted your save-the-dates out by this time, the only truck in the world transporting the paper that you were going to print on will have crashed and all your paper burned up.  That is how it works.  As long as you  know that, you’re doing better than a WHOLE lot of other people.
  • People are going to try you.  Relatives will ask if they can fax their office about your event.  Friends of your parents will invite their pastor whom you’ve never met.  Somebody who isn’t in the party will pre-emptively complain about the food.  My advice?  Do like I’m doing and make sure you work out every day and take your self-care very very seriously.  When you do this, you mostly don’t care what it is that people say and you will stick to your guns.  Which is exactly why when my mother basically told me I was an idiot to consider a brooch button bouquet, I didn’t dissolve into a fit of tears.  Because I really have no energy to care.

Okay, that’s all my advice for now.  But seriously brides-to-be, if you have questions or anything, let me know.

So wedding updates!!! Woop woop!

I promised you all a big reveal on my save-the-dates, but some folks haven’t gotten theirs yet, so please, hang in there with me another day or two.

But at a little more than 3 months away, things are coming together.  Emails have been sent, checks have been cut, and now, in a lot of cases, it’s literally a matter of me taking my hands, and putting things together.  I am delighting in putting things together, and in my little trips to Etsy Store and Michaelsare quickly, quickly becoming the highlight of my week.

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So this week, three pounds of buttons came to the house (finally!) and an additional 5 pounds of exclusively white, beige, pink, and nude buttons are coming, hopefully by the end of this week.

The brooch lady, Laura, is almost done pricing all my brooches, and I should have a full box of brooches in my possession, signed, sealed, and delivered on Friday.  That means this weekend, I will be making stems.  All.  Weekend.  Long.  But it will be fun!

Annnd I’m waiting to hear back on invites, which I want sent out that first week in June.

Lots of stuff going on! Lots and lots!  Brides-to-be, how is your wedding planning process coming? 

Getting Old…

| cheriarmour

Let me start this off by saying that I feel absolutely ageless. I’m 26 years old, and I don’t feel a day over 27.

Jk, but I think between the working out, and spending most of my summers with high schoolers, I’m kind of a young spirit.

But there’s something going on inside of me that indicates that I’m getting a little hold.

So, when I was training for my first marathon over a year ago, the Shamrock Marathon in VA Beach, I started “reading” books on tape, especially during my long runs when my partner, Jenny, couldn’t make it.  During that time I tried to read some crappy book that my religion professor told me was good, I read Kathy Griffins memoir, and I read Tina Fey’s Memoir.  All awesome.  Like, falling-off-the-sidewalk-laughing-so-hard funny.  Kathy Griffin surprisingly isn’t all piss and wind the way she makes herself out to be, she actually had some pretty sketchy things happen in her immediate family, suffered with binge eating, and suffered with a terrible end to a marriage.  Tina Fey is perfect so…

So anyways, now that I’m not really training for much, I’m kind of in my groove where I run anywhere between 3-however many miles a day, and I discovered the best thing ever to help pass the time.  I found comedians on Spotify.

photo (7)Now, I LOVE a good comedian or comedienne.

My faves are obviously Tina, Chris Rock, and Kathy Griffin.  (I can’t sand Chelsea Lately cause I think she’s not funny and really racist, and I hate that she has that little person running around her show like he’s some kinda of novelty item when he’s a human being.)  But as I was listening to a Chris Rock album from about 2005, I could not help but be a little uncomfortable in response to some of the ubiquitous swearing.

Trust me, I can swear with the best of them.  But my speech, in general, is not peppered with offensive words because I don’t want to sound like a dumb dirty idiot.

The older I get, the more offended I find myself getting with profanity, especially ubiquitous profanity just thrown in there for shits and giggles.

I kid.  But anyone else starting to feel this way?

 

I feel so guilty.

| cheriarmour

I feel so so so so guilty.

And I’m not going to include any photos on this post for safety reasons, and I’ll tell you why.

So Thursday night, I fell asleep around midnight.  I honestly felt like I may have been asleep for 15 or 20 minutes when I heard someone pounding loudly on the door of the girls who live below me.  I was confused, and sleepy, and assumed that the girls were throwing a party and someone got locked out.  But as the pounding continued, and Coco started getting riled up, I kind of started getting the sense that something wasn’t right.

And then the pounding stopped.

Suddenly, flashlights started coming through my window on the second floor, and I realized that something that was going on over this period of about 15 minutes that wasn’t as simple as the girls downstairs throwing a loud party.  I peeked downstairs, and saw that two Raleigh Police Officers were climbing up on the porch, and it appeared that a kid, probably my age, had broken into the apartment downstairs.

The next day, when I went down to speak to the girls, one of the women told me that she had met the kid a week earlier and had gone on one date with him.   ONE.  He’d wanted to come over on Thursday night, and she said that she was sleeping.  He came over, pounded on the door for a while, and when the girls refused to answer, they thought he left, when in reality, he went around the back of our building, scaled the porch (about 10 feet in the air), and found an unlocked door or window.  He broke in, and began pacing the apartment while the girls cowered in a closet on dispatch with 911.

As the girls were hiding in the closet, the kid began to pull on the closet door as an attempt to get at them.  He only stopped when he heard the footfalls of the police, and ran to hide underneath the sheets in one of the rooms.  The police were able to locate him, arrested him, and charged him with a breaking and entering.

Looking back, I feel horribly guilty that I didn’t investigate the weirdness going on downstairs further.  All I could replay over and over was if he had managed to hurt the girls before the police arrived.

And it brings me to this.

If you hear something, do something.  Had something worse happened to those poor girls, I could have never lived with myself.  So ladies, protect yourselves.  Lock your doors, meet the new dates in public places, let someone know where you are and PLEASE, once again, if you hear something, say something.  

Here’s What! What three things are you obsessed with today!

| cheriarmour

It’s Friday, Friday, gotta get down on Friday….

Okay, so are you kinda obsessed with the fact that it’s the weekend again? And that Monday is Cinco de Mayo? And that means that I will be drinking tequila. Pictures to come. Or maybe not. I want to keep my job.

Here’s what three things I’m obsessed with this Friday!

mean-girls-im-from-michigan1.  Mean Girls 10th Anniversary.  It literally never gets old.  Ever.  I wish Lindsay the best…I’m serious!

2.  When the drug reps bring lunch to the office.  I’m starting to get obsessed with budgeting a little bit, and I’ve figured out an awesome little trick to making sure that I get a free and healthy lunch.  Now, I try and pack my lunch each day.  On the days that I pack lunch and a drug rep brings lunch, I make a plate of the healthy stuff that most of the folks avoid, and shove it in the back of the fridge with my name on it.  The following day (or sometimes two) I have lunch that’s healthy, and it’s free!  Best. EVER!

3.  The Nike Women’s Half Marathon.  I talked about this earlier today, but look at this.

photo 4My smile could not get any bigger that day, and I was floating on clouds for like days.

This is what I’m obsessed with this week.

What three things are you obsessed with?  

 

 

Epic Damned Post. #Werundc

| cheriarmour

So this past weekend (don’t you dare ask me what took so long to post this), I ran the Nike Women’s Half Marathon in Washington, DC.  This post is going to be split up into two posts, one for the race itself and the prep leading up to it, because I don’t want your brain to explode from how awesome all of the deets are.  But they are awesome.

Okay, so I drove up to DC last Friday night, and arrived to my place in Georgetown, which, luckily was right down the street from Niketown Georgetown.  As SOON as I got settled into my spot, I changed into some running clothes, and made the quick run down to Niketown to see the set up for the expo.   photo-1

Thanks to insomnia that night, I really didn’t sleep that well (think like 3 hours), and I headed down to the expo super early so I wouldn’t be caught in the shitshow that was the expo last year.  The lines were really too nuts for me last year, and I really don’t do that well around all those people in the sun.

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I meet up with these beauties for the #runnerslove meetup at Sprinkles in Georgetown after, and unfortunately, I wasn’t feeling great, so I skipped the cupcakes and went for a coke instead to try to settle whatever was going on with my stomach.  I will forever be known as “bike girl” in that group because I rode my bike down to the cupcake shop, and had to tote that thang around while we tromped around Georgetown.

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I could not eat any of these.  How cruel is this world!

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We determined this might have been this easiest way to eat the cupcake without making a mess.

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DSC_0450Here were all of the beautiful bloggers getting to work.  They were a BLAST.  A blast, I tell you.

The girls lead me to this amazing spot where I snagged some new bracelets to jingle and jangle my rest of the way through the night…

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And finally, we arrived to race day.  (Don’t worry, I will fill you in on the rest of the amazing things we did in DC, including this insane hotel I stayed in next post, to come tomorrow 🙂 )

Race morning, I woke up around 4:45, and jumped in the shower, since I wasn’t really feeling well enough to do it the night before.  I ate half of a nasty-ass bagel that I found at CVS, and made my way down to the Foggy Bottom metro station and road down to the start line.  Once I was there, I tucked my skinny behind in a corner, and called Austin, and observed people, because pre-race chatter makes me really nuts and nervous.  And about 15 minutes from the start, I made my way into my corral.

**I must have been smoking crack when I estimated my finish time because even though I finished in just a smidgen over 2 hours, I was in the 10:30 pace group, which proved to be so wrong, because I spent far too long in the race bobbing and weaving and trying to work my way up.  DO NOT underestimate yourself.**

And with that, off we went.

I cruised.  I cruised, I cruised, and I cruised some more.  I ran, I talked to people.  I read the signs.  At one point, when I was running back through the tunnel, a drummer hit on me by grabbing my arm, and I have to say, it was an awesome race.

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photo 2-1This handsome mane delivered me my Tiffany’s.

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My blannnnng!

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My new boyfriends.

The race in review?

The bad?

Seriously, none.  I have nothing bad to say about this race.

The good?

Too much.

  • The Whole Foods chocolate table at mile like 11, staffed by women giving out chocolate.
  • The course.  Tons of entertainment, and tons of people came out.
  • The swag.  A Tiffany’s necklace, water bottles, Luna Bars, Nuun along the course
  • The friends and family station done by alphabet, where we could easily meet up with our friends and family?

The race was sick.

Anyone else out there do this race?  What did you love?