sicky

hi guys!  charlotte here.  sorry i’ve been absent for a few days, but i’ve been sidelined by bronchitis.  i am actually one of the sickliest people i know, so i thought it’d be fun to do a rundown of some weird diseases i’ve had.  like i said in my bio, things happen to me that would just never happen to anyone else.  that includes getting diseases that the average human has about a 1 in 1,349,546,287 chance of contracting.

first up, we have a botfly.  i got that in costa rica/belize in the summer going into my sophomore year of high school.  essentially, a bug laid two eggs in my skin that hatched into two worms.  they were flesh eating.  yes, i could literally feel (and hear) the worms eating my skin.  not gonna really go into more detail than that, but it was one of the grossest experiences of my life.  google “botfly” for pictures if you don’t get grossed out easily.

after the botfly extravaganza, i got 4 mrsa staph infections.  yup, the infections they talk about on the news.  the “really dangerous” one.  not only did i get 4 (yes FOUR!) highly resistant staph infections, but i’m allergic to all but one of the medications used to treat them.  oh but don’t worry- i only had an allergic reaction to the medication they used for several DAYS.  fun times.

next up we have a jaw tremor.  very weird, but basically it looked like my jaw was running on a treadmill for months.  it happened because i had taken so many meds from the botfly and mrsa.  can’t stop, won’t stop.  took some meds, got some acupuncture, dealt with that, moved on.

most recently, i had malaria.  got that in africa this summer, despite the fact i was talking anti-malarial medication the entire time i was there.  oh, and also despite the fact that i have spent many summers in africa in the past without getting sick.  that was a great two weeks of alternating sweating and shivering from cold, throwing up, migraines, joint pain, etc.

basically, i should be thankful that all i have now is bronchitis.  who knows, next week it may be the plague?

oscar run down

hey everyone!  i’m assuming not everyone watched ALL of the oscars last night instead of doing something more productive, so i decided to do a quick run down of my favorite fashions from the red carpet [disclaimer: there were many more gorgeous dresses, but i picked my personal faves].

best dressed:

mila kunis (elie saab)

runners up:

cate blanchett (givenchy), halle berry (marchesa), amy adams (l’wren scott), gwyneth paltrow (calvin klein)

best overall while pregnant:

natalie portman (rodarte)

best hair:

reese witherspoon

aaand if you’d like some more coverage of this, i’d check out fashion police on e! because joan rivers makes me awkwardly laugh out loud while running at the gym on a consistent basis.

xx m

i belieb

i’m not out tonight (surprisingly…jk) but if i was this is probably what i’d look like:

It’s not uncommon for people to come up to me and ask me if i’m okay, or if i’m hot or having an allergic reaction because i’m usually all red and sweaty and squinty-eyed (more than usual) by midnight. I have a confession to make. The reason I’m all red and sick looking is because i have a bad case of:

haha just kidding. i’m actually red cus i get ‘asian glow’ when i drink…if you haven’t heard of that you probably have no asian friends (racist! jK) but i’ll blog about that another time. Anyway, i’m a belieber. i don’t care that he’s sixteen, hasn’t hit puberty yet, probably spends more time on his hair than me and is the size i was roughly in third grade…he is amazing! and he is uniting people all over the country. i mean me and hundreds of chubby little 10-year-olds with braces now have the same goal in common thanks to him….to become the next mrs. beiber (they probably have a better chance than i do unfortunately). if you haven’t seen it, you HAVE to watch Never Say Never (in 3D of course…totally worth the extra 3$)! it was so inspirational and cute, plus his performing was amazing. this is THE underdog story. after watching this movie though, i did get creeped out by the 40-year-old moms who were chasing him..hopefully when i’m forty i’m not lusting after 16 yr olds that look like they’re 12 because that’s just plain unnatural and wrong. seriously women…get a grip..

a few of my favorite things

hi everyone!  charlotte here.  soo i just got back from a fun and delicious dinner at the local inn with my mom in my sorority and two of our closest sisters.  of course they have seen the blog (except my mom, cough cough).  one of my friends, j, gave me a hard time for being so negative and judgmental on the blog (and in life in general).  therefore, i decided to put together a POSITIVE post full of a few things that have made me happy this week (no, i’m not actually a bitter and judgmental person all the time- shocking, i know)!

1. a new real housewives location!  i am a self-proclaimed bravoholic.  aka i watch every.single.show on the bravo network.  i have yet to see the premiere of this new season in miami (i know, i know- suuuuuper busy week), but i will do so asap and report back!  ohh and p.s. bethenny is back on monday!

2. the song i’ve been obsessed with for the past 2 weeks.  i play this song (“the pursuit of jappiness”) constantly and it’s driving mary crazy.  i am in love with all things jewish.  period.

3. http://www.passiveaggressivenotes.com/ .  absolutely hilarious.  i have gone embarrassingly far back through the archives this week.  here’s my favorite (story of my life):

bOnUs: all of the lovely readers of of this blog (aka YOU GUYS!)!  thanks so much for staying tuned!

xoxo charlotte

snow

love it or hate it, it’s an integral part of our life at school.  in honor of the blizzard currently happening outside, i decided to do a rundown of the standard uniform here on the ever snowy east coast:

• a black puffy coat, an absolute essential (most commonly north face, michael kors, etc.)
• some sort of bottom, but generally black leggings (more posts about leggings to come)
• snow boots. these are the KEY to surviving life here in the arctic (yes i am being dramatic, but have you looked out the window?) [common brands here tend to be sorel, ugg (but not the normal ones because they have literally NO traction as evidenced by some massive wipeouts throughout our freshman year), and l.l. bean boots]

although these aren’t the most fashionable pieces of clothing/shoes sometimes you just need to suck it up and wear what will keep you alive.

just to reinforce, snow boots are a MUST HAVE. although our school claims to have “heated steps” and claims to “clear snow efficiently”, most people here would tend to disagree.  i am willing to bet that every student here has had at least one massive, traumatic wipe out in their college career.  now when i say traumatic, i mean TRAUMATIC.  not only falling down the stairs and hitting your back so hard you may think you’re paralzyed, but in the process having every book in your bag fly out–hitting the people around you, having your blackberry disappear into one of the many mountains of packed snow, taking down that cute boy in your calc class with you AND hearing the people around you attempting (poorly) to muffle their laughter. hey, it is pretty funny when it’s not you right?  today is no exception to the necessity of snow boots because all of the stairs on campus currently look like massive, packed-in, snow ramps. good luck navigating those…

another terrifying aspect of the snow are the AVALANCHES that seem to be happening near every building on campus.  today we were engrossed in a scintillating discussion of yet another tense of italian when we heard loud thuds and the room all of a sudden seemed to get darker.  everyone instantly looked out the window and saw PILES of snow falling from the roof.  what would happen if you were standing under there?  what about when the slabs of ice just casually slam to the ground from the roof? not cool.

clearly i am not on the best terms with the snow right now, but i do acknowledge that it can be pretty amazing.  our campus in the snow is gorgeous and NOTHING bonds college students like a good venting sesh.  how do you guys feel about this craziness?

wishing for warm weather,

xx m

administration

the administration at our school SUCKS.  they literally make everything as hard as possible for us.  it’s like we do them a FAVOR by coming here.  we (aka our parents haha) pay like $55,000 a year for us to go to a place where the administration is literally AGAINST us.  it’s like a civil war.

i just went to drop off my study abroad papers and get a form for my advisor to sign, and they WON’T give it to me.  they’re like, ohh well you have to meet with us first.  i called over a WEEK ago and they won’t give me an appointment unti tomorrow (aka the deadline), but my advisor is going to be off-campus.  so now apparently i have “last priority” to get approval to go off-campus.  ughhh.  actually double ughh (as a side note, m and i dramatically sighed at the exact same time this morning… you know you spend too much time with someone when everything you do is synchronized).  anyway, i AM going abroad.  whatever.  they’ll just have to deal with it.

actually, m and i are going abroad TOGETHER!  we’re going to fLoReNcE!  soo excited!  we already have a huuuuuuge googledoc full of all the places we’re visiting while abroad in europe.  we would LOVE it if mary would come abroad with us too, but she’s going to… aUsTrAliA!  woohoooo!  australian hotties, here mary comes!

oh p.s. none of this has been approved yet.  the sucky administration is just going to have to SUCK it up and deal with it.

xoxo charlotte

cReEpEr

it’s kind of freaking me out that people are actually clicking one of the links on facebook and reading this blog because this proves that people actually read their newsfeed (too bad we can’t see who you are!) you’re probably one of charlotte’s 12903247897 facebook friends because i only have 580, proving that i am socially inept (according to her.) i would have more except i deleted over 300 friends last year because a) i’m weird and b) i creep myself out. i decided to do this last year when i was just casually thinking about my facebook habits. i’m a big facebook stalker surfer. last year i probably averaged about three hours a day. (Since i’ve gotten my blackberry i’ve cut it down to like 15 min tho!) my surfing has gotten so bad that i sometimes look at people’s profile who i don’t know and read all their wall posts and look at their pictures from five years ago. tthis sometimes becomes a problem because then i feel like i know the person, when i don’t. two winters ago, a boy i recognized came into my work and i was about to say “Hey Pat!” when i realized i did not know him, nor had i ever even seen him in real life. But I thought I did because he had commented on a mutual friends status and I had thorougly stalked his profile…oops. basically, I’M A CREEP. which got me wondering…i can’t be the only one cus everyone has a little creep curiosity in them. So who’s looking at my profile is the question? 800 facebook friends is a lot…especially when i probably only talk to about 50 of them (this might be an overestimation). 800 people can see my pics! my status updates! my wall! that is 800 people who can look at my facebook and find out about my life (except no one cares about my life) or in reality more like judge me for any pictures or comments on my facebook. i basically creeped myself out by thinking of all the people who could potentially be creeping on my facebook (except this is a little presumptuous because i don’t know any weirdos who would stalk my profile but the thought of it was still creepy). sooooo IT WAS TIME FOR A FACEBOOK CUT!!! i vowed to get my friend list to 500 which meant 300 people had to go. if you’re still my friend, congrats you made the cut! That means you are a) either a family member (except my mom), b) a friend, c) a former friend, d) a good friend of one of my good friends e) a hot guy or f) someone who I like to stalk regularly and/or live vicariously through. And it was kind of sad, not gunna lie, because everytime I clicked the ‘defriend’ button I felt a little satisfaction, like there goes one more person who could’ve potentially been looking at my facebook and laughing at my pictures! and yes, people do laugh at pictures because me and my bff have a continuous thread called ‘why the eff haven’t they untagged this/what were they thinking?’ so anyway, 300 less friends later, i felt relieved…until i got a friend request a week later from someone i had deleted. AWKWARD. and this is when i learned you cannot delete people from your facebook. it just makes you look like the biggest d-bag, especially when they know you were friends with them. and i realized, it doesn’t matter if people creep on my facebook…cus i don’t give an eff. judge me bitches cus HATERS GUNNA HATE. besides i figure i put up so many annoying status updates that people will either hide me on their newsfeed or delete me from their friends list. so anyway, this is my long-ass pointless story which is representative of me in real life where i tell stories and then people go “cool mary, can you tell it again?” and i hope you’re having a better night than i am, but probably not since you’re reading this. :)

mary

so it’s wednesday…

and mondays and wednesdays mean yoga class for me (charlotte)!  a group of my sorority sistas and i are taking hatha yoga for our gym class.  our class is… interesting, to say the least.

first of all, the instructor is a guy.  and he’s not like a man.  he’s like a 20 year old boy.  do normal 20 year old boys do yoga?  ehh, debatable.  he breathes extremely loudly and even chants occasionally.  my sisters and i are constantly biting our lips to stop from laughing.  we canNOT look at each other during yoga, or we will collapse in a fit of laughter.  the instructor is very intense about yoga, treating it like it’s his lifestyle.  he claims to have been doing it for 12 years.  not too sure how an 8 year old boy got started doing yoga, but whatevs, no judgement there…

on that note, he thinks we’re WAY more advanced than we are.  the first week of class was super easy and everyone could follow along and do all the poses, so i think that really boosted his confidence.  he’s overcompensated for that easiness and has decided to make the class like a full on advanced level.  plow?  ehh, we can try.  crow?  nbd.  headstands?  sure no prob.  like, this is a GYM class at a school.  this is not an ashram in india.

which brings me to the absolute worst part of my yoga class: the showoff bitches in the front row.  they think they are hot shit and want everyone to know it.  they make modifications to every.single.pose.  these girls always have to take the poses like 8 levels above everyone else.  cool girls, i could do those modifications too.  i just don’t because nobody likes a show off.  plus, if i wanted to practice my own yoga and do poses that the teacher wasn’t even demonstrating, i would stay in my room and do yoga by myself.  even worse, these girls CORRECT other people in the class.  “open your arms more.”  “twist further.”  “take it into a bind.”  ugh!  nothing is worse than a show off who isn’t satisfied with just demonstrating her superiority; apparently correcting everyone else to bring them down further is the new thing.  oh, and the funny thing?  these girls are ugly and weird.  i’m talking like brown, frizzy hair, and no cute yoga clothes in sight.  $50 these girls have never even heard of lululemon.

to quote naomi from 90210, “namaste, bitches.”  off to yoga, (in lululemons of course)!

procrastination

so charlotte thinks that i’m not very interested in the blog but I AM :) .  this is going to be a GREAT procrastination tool. charlotte also came up with about a million things to write about and i am going to draw from that list for inspiration.  i’m lying in my bed attempting to do work while my roommate, a, is trying to tempt me to watch glee.  first thing about me: i LOVE glee, and basically anything where music is involved.  so she’s sitting here trying to tempt me by telling me that they’re drinking in school, and while that sounds fun i’m already procrastinating in blog form.

the first topic that i’m going to choose off of the list is blackberrys.  i am OBSESSED with my blackberry (it’s already been almost a year since i switched over and i cannot imagine my life without it, sad…) but it does come with its own set of problems.  while bbm is awesome because it’s soo quick, it also means that you cannot hide from ANYONE.  at our school this tends to be a problem when you live, eat, take classes, AND go out with all the same people–sometimes you need to escape and you just can’t.  this becomes a problem especially when you’re attempting homework, like i was a few minutes ago, and your phone does not stop buzzing with bbms.  it becomes an even bigger problem when the phone just freezes because the bbms are coming in too fast. why do blackberrys always freeze? or is it just my blackberry? anyway, once the three of us all had blackberrys it was amaazzing because we could have group chats.  those have made our lives.  my parents didn’t understand why we needed to be able to text, call, AND bbm each other while most likely in the same room, but like charlotte said–we’re clearly obsessed with each other. it also helps us live up to our names of bitch 1, 2, and 3 and to have quick convos about all of the craazy people around us. sometimes it feels like we’re the only sane people at this school which is really saying something =P

i’ve never blogged before so i hope this is an adequate post and i’m really excited that we started doing this!  my next post will be longer/better, but for now it’s time to go back to italian and research methods…or at least until i find a new way to procrastinate.

xx m

p.s. t-17 days til the dominican!

three best friends…

that anybody could have!