Off the Grid and Out of Their Minds

Maude here.

It has been awhile since I’ve written! Mostly because I haven’t had much to complain about lately and/or I’ve been busy writing other “real life” things outside of this blog.

Let’s get on with it. Quincy and I often have HGTV on in the background while we’re around the house, doing busywork. Tonight, we sat down for an episode of House Hunters Off the Grid in Morocco. Leopard USA summarized the episode like this:

“Fulfilling Dreams in Morocco

City life in Melbourne, Australia had Art Director Karen feeling run down. After an invigorating a trip to Morocco, she was inspired to open up her own artists’ retreat. She’s hoping to find an off the grid compound with enough room for herself and a few artists to stay and work. Life in the desert can be harsh, but for Karen solace can be found in the most remote parts of the desert. It’s a huge risk, so her friend Jess is concerned starting a business venture in the middle of nowhere, may not be such a good idea. Local contact, Youssef struggles to help Karen achieve her ambitions dreams while considering Jess’s prudent advice.”

Artistic types are swooning everywhere. How magical! Morocco! Land of darker people and “mysterious” desert adventures! (And a woman-centric art community? Now you understand why “Women and Women First Bookstore” memes have taken over this post. It left and undeniable feel of Candace and Toni all over it.)

Reality check, assholes. No plumbing, no electricity, and the middle of a very dry, very sandy, very WINDY desert and a bunch of loopy old Aussie foreigners honing in on local culture. This is another example of white ladies with weird ideas. “I just want to be isolated,” Karen says, dreamily. Let’s see how magical isolation is after a few months of not having a toilet.

Not to mention Karen’s “business plan” is to have an artist collective in the middle of fucking NOWHERE. Uh, lady? Do I really need to say it? YOU CRAY-CRAY. On what planet does isolation equal a thriving business of any kind? I don’t mean to be presumptuous (okay, that’s a lie), but what’s going to happen when your dream of an artist collective for women fails miserably because of cultural etiquette differences when you import flakey white women? (Let’s be real… younger generations of “artists” just want to upload their “photography” to Instagram anyway. I’m pretty sure Coachella booty shorts aren’t en vogue in rural Morocco.)

The Best Part:
The end of the show, but not why you’d think. (SPOILER ALERT) Karen partnered with Youssef and her business is “slowly growing,” according to Karen’s last words on the show. I’m happy to be wrong, but what I came away with was a bunch of unicorn farts and rainbows, nothing on solid ground. Sometimes, the most bizarre ideas work… and sometimes, they flop and vomit like a dying hamster.

In all sincerity, please stay safe, Karen! And good luck chasing your dream… whether I understand it or not! 😉

“Dance Moms” are Dicks

Maude here.

I’ve been watching the show “Dance Moms” on Amazon Prime. I’m on season 2 and it has become something I’m probably more emotionally attached to than is socially acceptable.

DUDES. Dudes…

This show is phenomenally repulsive and addictive. It’s confusing, it’s infuriating, and it is one of the most emotionally shallow things I’ve ever witnessed. I love that these grown women squabble like 13 year olds, I love that their kids are more mature than they are, and I love that I don’t live in their world.

More than anything, above all else, I love that Abby Lee Miller exists. This is obviously an unpopular opinion, but hey, this is the internet and I’m unashamed to adore the behemoth Abby, who rules with the might of a thousand Hitlers in the dance studio. She makes me giggle with power and unencumbered loathing for the inadequacies of the human race.

Let me be clear: I don’t dislike the children or feel good about the insanity that goes on before their eyes and I abhor it when grown adults systematically ruin their offsprings’ lives with their sniveling, putrescent verbal abuse. I find myself wagging my finger at those dried up old dance hags who subject their children to their mental illnesses. I do, however, feel like Abby Lee Miller should have some sort of authority to smack the moms silly every time they open their gap-toothed mouths. Abby Lee Miller is LAW, bitches.

I’m sure I’ll type out more of this later, but for now… Abby Lee for PRESIDENT.
Actually… that’d be like having the love-child of Ayn Rand and Joseph Stalin, so scratch that.
ABBY LEE FOR SUPREME LEADER OF DANCE!

…And can somebody fire that Cathy from all dance for the rest of time?

Fin. 

Giving During the Holidays – A Guide for Introverts

Maude here.

To follow up on the last blog, I wanted to share what we’re doing this holiday season a bit further when I mentioned charitable acts. Personally, I’m finding a fine balance between being introverted and being helpful. I realize that when I’m actively helping others as an introvert, it can be energetically draining, thus my number one slice of advice is to spend as much time helping yourself as you do helping others. If it takes a day to go out of your way to help someone else, spend a day taking care of your own needs (even if that need is to shut down for a day and regroup).

Tip number two is to give wherever and whenever you can. This doesn’t have to be monetary AT ALL. Giving is simply putting out the word that you are available to help someone in need. Quincy and I have been helping friends out with various things, like end-of-the-semester studying, a listening ear, treating people out to much-needed outings, and creating a space where people can be themselves in our company. It’s as simple as that! It doesn’t need to be grand gestures… it’s all about making people feel loved and cared for. If you can do bigger things, DO IT. If you can’t, stick with gentle commitments and give your friend and family community some extra help.

Tip numero tres: LISTEN. Listen a lot. Ask questions and hear the answer. Some people just need to be acknowledged and heard.

Listen, everybody… whether you’re introverted or not, giving is easy. It’s easy when it comes from your heart. That’s the secret. It’s gotta be real, it has to be sincere, and it has to be something you can share wholeheartedly. It’s called “the season of giving” for a reason. It’s not an obligation, it’s a privilege to make someone’s life a little easier.

Get out there and do it.

Quincy and Maude tackle the holidays

Maude here.

Well, t’is the season… the season of stress, overcharged credit cards, travel, and flu-like diseases. This is the time of year where we always overcommit to social engagements and find ourselves utterly exhausted until January 1st. American Christmas is basically the worst time of year… that’s why Quincy and I have committed ourselves to doing ABSOLUTELY NOTHING from December 24th to January 1st… except for spending quality time with each other and our families. We will be exchanging food items and nothing more, because we all like to eat and be around each other. Why not take the pressure off and just ENJOY the season?

Mindless consumerism is insane. We love to give to people, but the greatest gift that each of us can give is our time, our attention, and our compassion to people or causes that inspire us. It doesn’t cost any of us a thing to go out of our ways and give someone a hand-up (versus a “hand-out”).

Our social calendar is completely booked until the end of our work and school break, which is CRAZY for people as introverted as we are. It’s good practice for us though, not because we’ll magically turn into extroverts with practice, but our collective thresholds for social events will probably be a bit more worn in.

Also, I’ve decided that Quincy and I should probably get married in the next two years, as we’ve already been engaged for almost two years already.*

Me: “Oh gosh, does this mean I have to actually put a date on the calendar?”
Quincy: “THE TIME HAS COME.”

**I’m the worst wedding and event planner EVER. If any of you out there have some tips on coping with the stress of wedding planning or just some basic pearls of wisdom, feel free to share in the comment section. I could use all the help I can get, especially with our champagne tastes on a beer budget. 

That’s all for now!

Professor Marge is Reported

Maude here.

Darling readers, you may have read my post “The Redemption of Professor Margarine,” among other posts (1, 2, 3, 4). Now, I’m getting ready and compiling all of my notes to present to the school and to file a complaint.

I survived the worst teacher I’ve ever had and one semester of her verbal butt squirts has finally come to a screeching halt.

Yes, we’ve all learned some great lessons from Marge, but her class has left an indelible stench on my GPA. I took my last quiz from this saggy-titted roast beef and I squeaked by with a “B.” A FUCKING “B.” Not an “A.” No, there is no wondrous life lesson in this blog post. There was no heartfelt hallelujah chorus playing or me, having some kind of metaphysical revelation about the imperfection and mystery of humanity… because this time, that “B” grade was NOT, and I mean NOT, my fault.

I had a tutor sit with me as I was taking my last quiz of the semester, blessedly online, so I wouldn’t be tempted to go absolutely apeshit in the middle of class. Frankly, I needed a witness to see (from an unbiased perspective) the kind of crap we’ve all had to put up with during the Fall 2014 semester. What my tutor and I gleaned from this experience was that Marge had probably cheated her way through 3rd grade english composition. Misspellings, fragmented sentences, and a very real denial of the difference between opinion versus fact riddled the online quiz. It was almost unintelligible at times. With the help of the tutor, I managed to score a perfect “F” on my first of two attempts. (We were given two attempts per quiz and the computer would automatically choose the higher score.) I think my tutor was in shock, because he kept repeating, “This can’t be right. No. That’s not an actual sentence.” I agree, dude. We know. The entire class has been in utter disbelief of the eclectic “teaching style” that Marge brings to the table.

Here are the evil twists:
1. When the quiz is automatically graded, it doesn’t show you what the correct answers are, so it’s not exactly a teachable moment, per se. (Also, the instructor has control over how each quiz is set up and has the option to reveal the correct answer.) Even if the right answers were revealed, when you go for a second attempt at the quiz, you’re given entirely new questions in a new, random sequence.

2. The entire quiz is open-book, so if a topic is not IN the textbook, it shouldn’t be relevant to our studies. The catch with the relevance issue is that most of the questions we encountered on this quiz (during both attempts) cited information that was not in our textbook, in a lecture, or in our online or in-class content at all.

The obvious result was that I spent most of the 40 minutes allotted for each quiz attempt GUESSING for what Marge wanted to see instead of using actual facts and figures to understand the course material.

As you all know from reading “Redemption” I still totally get that Marge is a human being, worthy of all of the fabulous opportunities and consideration that we all should be afforded… but as a teacher, her version of class instruction is akin to a dusty queef. Her lecture style is like sitting through an obnoxious conversation on public transport and her train of thought is constantly derailed. She’s identical to that one person you ALWAYS meet (and try to avoid) on the bus that rambles on and on with no real point, other than to annoy the living piss out of you. She is a TERRIBLE teacher. She is an affront to the word “terrible” for that matter. Most of all, if we’ve all learned anything from my own ramblings, it’s that Marge should not be a teacher OR a PhD in her field of study.

With that, tomorrow I’m waking up bright and early to stroll into the admin building and present my case to anyone who will meet with me over this matter. The school should be embarrassed that they allowed someone like this to prance around their halls and call themselves a college-level instructor. It’s insulting to the teachers out there trying to make a difference and it’s offensive that anyone would put this intellectual toilet-bowl-of-a-woman to work in an academic institution. It’s the principle of the matter. Though I’ll obviously never have her as a teacher again, I do not want some other unwitting student to be stuck with her.

Goodbye, Professor Margarine. I hope you have a pleasant retirement and you come back as a stink bug in your next lifetime.

– THE FUCKING END –

The Redemption of Professor Margarine

Even though Professor Margarine is a racist, sexist, stale toot, she does have some goodness in between her outlandish rants and incoherent babbling. (For the entire story, see previous posts 1, 2, 3, and 4.)

I’m convinced that even though she appears to have mashed potato brains, she has a warm, baked potato heart under those folds of saggy skin. Today, I want to reveal the pleasantness of this woman… because she is kind when it counts.

Part 1:
I am an anxiety bomb. I, personally, explode every time I come home with anything less than an “A.” I work hard, I edit myself quite a lot, and I derive a lot of unhealthy joy from excelling more than the average student. In class, I’m a brown-noser, I’m a hand-raiser, and I’m that annoying student who always wants to get MORE out of every instructor or situation. I hold others to a high standard because I hold myself to a high standard. This typically pisses other students off, but for teachers who have a real and profound desire to teach, I am their perfect pupil.

So I got my first “B” of the semester in Professor Margarine’s class. Of course, this meant that I flew off the handle and blamed poor old Marge. “Oh hell nah… a “B”?!?! What the fuck, man. What. The. Fuck. I went above and beyond what I was supposed to do. My annotated bibliography was fucking perfect, not to mention I added 4 more sources than the minimum due, when I’m sure the rest of those plebs in the class only did the smallest amount required. I am the queen of all schooling, bow to me Marge, for I am your greatest student ever.” Some ego trip like that. And as always, Quincy is the receptacle for all of this nonsense… at 2am on a weeknight before he has to take a very large exam himself. Great.

At this point, I’m obviously heated by this astounding lack of pandering to my ego. The next morning, after rage-sleeping in a coma of hatred, I woke up refreshed. “Today, I do battle with Marge. I will show her that I am the most bad-ass student who ever walked through those shitty community college doors.”

And then, a miracle occurred.

I was stuck on the highway on the way to the college behind a large “Source Naturals” brand truck. I shit you not, this was the most profound and wonderful moment of my week thus far. I’m a big fan of seeing “signs from the universe,” and today, God/The Universe/Giant Whatever in the Sky decided to speak loudly. On the back of the truck in bold letters was written, “May the Source be with you.” I froze. I was overcome with a Jedi mind-bender. It quickly dawned on me that old Marge was made by whatever made me… and just like that, the anger went away. I’m not even kidding… the despair, the feeling that I needed some kind of retribution, and the need to manipulate the situation for a measly “A” became irrelevant. Marge was a child of God, for Christ’s sake! 

As I walked into the classroom, I felt immense compassion for Professor Margarine (as she dozed at her desk while we watched some horribly dated movie on Anthropology). It didn’t matter that she wasn’t actively teaching that day or any other day… because she had been teaching me all along. This wonderful woman, with all of her senial drivel, was teaching me to stop being a total asshat. She cut me a slice of humble pie.

When I approached her after class, instead of demanding an explanation for my unholy “B,” I asked her what I could do to improve my grade on the assignment. She carefully explained to me what I was missing… and she was right! Therefore, without complaint, I admitted that I was wrong and that I could do better.

Me: “I’m worried about my grade.”
Marge: “Let me pull it up on my computer… oh, why? This is your first grade that wasn’t an A.”
Me: “Yes, but I want all As.”
Marge: “Well, if you do (the extra credit), you’ll still technically have over 100% in the class.”
Me: “Done.”

Part 2: 
Right after that conversation, another student approached her. This other student is a woman who is, shall we say, of the same generation as Professor Marge. She’s a kindly old lady and she’s always happy to be in class… even though I’d probably freak the hell out if I was still in undergrad in my 70’s. (Oh hey, welcome back, ego!)

This other student was SO HAPPY. I started to overhear the conversation… she had just had eye surgery and she was so happy to be able to SEE the crappy Anthropology videos Marge kept showing. My eyes welled up with tears. Marge embraced this student in a tight hug and they began to talk about the miracle of medical technology. I had to leave the room from all of the emotions. My throat was tight and I almost felt tears pouring down my face. HOW COULD I EVER JUDGE MARGE WHEN SHE WAS ABLE TO EXPRESS SUCH LOVE?! I felt like the biggest fool.

Part 3:
This part occurred in a separate classroom, but it was so pertinent to Marge, it drove the point home for me.

On a very serious and somber note, our school has had some unusual difficulties the last two weeks. My Spanish teacher sat us down and talked frankly about the problems some of the teachers had been encountering with a slew of unruly students making threats to various instructors.

“We may look like we have a lot of authority because we issue the grades, but we’re just people,” stated my Spanish teacher. “You don’t have to like any of us, but please respect us as people. Myself and my colleagues have been physically threatened by an inordinate amount of younger students the last two weeks and it has been terrifying. If you know anyone making physical or emotional threats, please report them.”

We all listened silently. There was so much sadness in the room, because my particular class is full of lovely people who all have high ambitions. All 30 of us genuinely like each other as people, and likewise, we adore our Spanish teacher. My heart ached for all of my teachers — especially Marge. Professor Margarine is just a loopy old lady, and even through she curses like a sailor and doesn’t like certain minority groups, she’s a person. She’s a human being. I would never, ever wish anything harmful on her or any of her academic colleagues. It would be great if she’d consider retiring from teaching, but all in all, she’s someone who is just as worthy as any of us. Aspects of her could certainly evolve, but I wouldn’t know what to do if any of the teachers or students were hurt by some confused individuals. Luckily, the students that were the culprits of the threats were expelled, but my Spanish teacher was clear about the reality that there were still people out there in our hallways that were causing unrest. We have a duty to protect our teachers and students. Schools should be a safe place for everybody… even awful teachers with big hearts.

Tale of the Downstairs Smokers

Maude here.

I’ve been badgering Quincy from the moment we moved into our newly renovated condo (our first “adult” purchase) that our neighbors are filthy mole people that need to be put in their place.

Why, you ask?

Because they smoke.

Now, I could fucking care less if they smoke. Just don’t put it in our handmade drapes and fresh, new carpet. OR IN MY LUNGS. C’mon.

You’re probably in 3 categories whilst reading this:
Group 1: “I’m a smoker and I can smoke if I want and I’m offended that you’re grossed out by my disgusting habit!”
Group 2: “I’m neutral. It doesn’t matter if I smoke or not.”
Group 3: “Fuck those people, they smoke and should be punished. I obviously do not smoke.”

I do not smoke. Quincy does not smoke. We have collectively decided to live in a smoke-free household. I’ve never said that people should not smoke (even through they’re finding a fabulously terrible way to kill themselves and everyone around them slowly). No, that’s not our place to say what other people should and shouldn’t do, but when it’s affecting our property and our bodies, I feel that these people should have the H.O.A. crawling up their butts for being such a nuisance.

Lately, renovations have been taking place all over our neighborhood and young couples are moving in. Everything is being updated and our condo complex is incredibly safe and aesthetically pretty. Yet, in all of this progress, these crusty turds squat downstairs with their lit cancer sticks, draining the joy out of owning our first property.

“So Maude, why aren’t you confronting these assholes?”
Well, dear readers, the reason is that the man downstairs looks like a hairy rapist and his wife ALSO looks like a hairy rapist. Two hairy, smoke-filled rapists + one angry little hairless, smokeless Maude = a recipe for disaster. I’m chicken shit here. I’m nervous about confronting them because they look more than capable of making our lives worse. We already have to hear the male Sasquatch hacking up his smokey old lungs at 2am every night and suffer through their blaring news viewing during dinnertime, so all of that plus the smoking has been pretty miserable. I’d hate to see what they’re capable of if they were actually TRYING to ruin our lives.

If I were just a teensy bit taller and a wee bit more brave, I’d march down there right now and give those twits a piece of my mind… but I’m not intimidating, I’m not feeling like I can handle this in a friendly way, and I’m not fucking moving to a new condo… so this weekend, I’m going to send a scathing, passive-aggressive message to our homeowners association about the issue.

And I’m busting out the H.O.A. rulebook too! It’s times like these that I LOVE being a brown-nosing rule follower.

So that’s that. Other than the practical steps, if I find a vent that we share with their condo, I’m going to toot the most unladylike, ungodly, Chipotle-chilli fart into their home.

So there.
*Stomps away childishly*

Professor Margarine’s Psychic Attack

Maude here.

Ohhhhh she’s up to no good again! That loopy old community college instructor, Professor Margarine, gave us another feast of learnin’ today…

For the first 3 episodes, see post 1, post 2, and post 3.

We students stumbled into class at 9:30am, ready for another round of batshit crazy and we were not disappointed. As promised in our last meeting (much to the dismay of all of the students), Professor Marge served up an entire class time of tarot readings, rune stones, and other esoteric forms of psychic paraphernalia. The cultural significance, as this was a Cultural Anthropology class, was half-assedly explained last week… but I think this was an attempt to avoid teaching from the textbook yet again. (To be clear: we’re now significantly passed the chapter on Religion and Culture, so this was an awkward transition back a chapter or two… and the reading assignment in the past had very little to do with New Age practices anyway.)

The first thing I noticed was that our squat little Marge was adorned in a headscarf. I spent a moment musing about what could be under it… was it a lady bald spot? A bad hair day? An homage to Professor Quirrell in the form of a maniacal second face that takes over her entire body and tries to dominate the known world?

Who fucking knows. I’m going with a half-assed “days of yore psychic” costume. Today, our old broad was in full-kook and on a mission to show us that she was, in fact, an intuitive AND a PhD. I guess stranger things have happened in the history of community college instructors…

And here she is, in all of her glory. (Face blurred to spare her some dignity.)

Some of my favorite quotes from today:

1. “I sold something in a bottle labeled ‘Whale Regurgitation’ for around $3,000. That’s just whale barf. Are you stupid?” (No, lady… you’re just a con artist who could probably bumble her way into selling a blind man contact lenses.)

2. “When I was a fortune teller, I put this little crystal ball on the table… mostly just to impress people.” (What ELSE would you have as a fortune teller??)

3. “Someone asked me to do ‘screeing’ for them. Does anybody really do screeing?” (Note: She was trying to say “SCRYING.” Of course, a real fortune teller would probably know that. Then again, a real fortune teller would be able to see that her entire classroom was taking a mental dump with every word she was saying.)

4. “I didn’t flush every time I used the psychic storefront’s toilet. People were pretty mad.” (This may be construed as eco-friendly, but I digress.)

5. “If it’s dark, you can’t see. If it’s light, you can.” (This was in reference to how to make your psychic reading room more “authentic.” You can see in the light?! No shit, Sherlock.This was the most “deep” thing her farty, dilapidated head could come up with.)

We literally spent an hour and a half passing around various ‘Crystal Shoppe’ items like sticks of unlit incense, samples of essential oils, and gagging on the smell of decaying ‘mysticism’ books. Now, I’m not unfamiliar with any of this junk. I used to frequent many a peaceful New Agey store, but this level of bullshit was nauseating. As we were passing around her dusty old spiritual items, she’s telling us how she manipulated a number of people when she used to read tarot. I’ve personally known some wonderful people who make a living trying to HELP people with tarot and psychic readings, and there are so many people who are into New Age fluff that genuinely want to help people… but Marge must want us all to hate her. She was so cynical and so profoundly irresponsible when explaining alchemy and esoteric spirituality, it left me with a bitter taste in my mouth… and I wasn’t alone.

Whispers ensued throughout the class as the “lecture” went on. Many people thought the whole thing was pretty hokey, and it was. Another group of students were flabbergasted that she would actively try to harm people by preying on their spiritual and personal growth beliefs.

I fell into both camps. I do not understand people who get high off of the smell of their own butts… and Marge has become infamous for that. She thinks she’s so sly with her mystical head wrap and her oh-so-trendy candy skull tee-shirt… but it doesn’t take a genius to see that this woman is a total sociopath. I repeat: a total sociopath. She admitted several times that she had swindled people into making decisions that would benefit her wallet over others’ wellbeing when she was a tarot reader. She also went on to call all of her “alchemy” the “real deal” and that tarot was a way to pay the bills.

The word disingenuous comes to mind, but that doesn’t do this woman justice. Marge is one of those people who has found a way to flub her way through life and has caught a few breaks here and there, and somehow has found herself in a teaching position. These sorts of people need to be weeded out of the educational system, period. While these stories about Professor Margarine may be somewhat funny, this sort of person has found a way to weasel her way into higher education. Students CAN and SHOULD put these foul frauds in their place and call them out on their sheer lack of teaching… I have been collecting all of these moments to present to her employers upon my semester’s end.

All I can say is…

…and at least we don’t have Ebola this week, but it’s only Tuesday.

Well shit… it’s time to workout.

Quincy & Maude here.

Well, it’s Saturday. That means we bloggers must depart from our lazy morning activities and exercise.

There is never a day when we’re like, “ERMAHGERD!!!! It’s so fun to move our bodies!!!” We just go out, turn off our brains, and do it. Yes, there’s a certain chemical/hormonal component when you’re really in your exercise groove, but for the first 30 minutes, it is NOT fun. After that 30 minute mark, it’s smooth sailing when our endorphins (or VEGA pre workout drink) kick in. Note: we only use the pre workout on particularly strenuous days, when we’re lifting an inordinately large amount of weights or cycling very long distances. Otherwise, straight up fruit smoothies do the trick.

* Quincy typically runs/bikes/swims throughout the week, with one weight training day thrown in the mix. Some resistance training.

* Maude likes to do shorter runs, long spinning intervals, sprints, and HEAVY weight training. Maude also enjoys Pilates classes.

* We both like yoga occasionally. (We probably should be doing MORE yoga, because it’s relaxing and we both need to learn how to de-stress after heavy work weeks. YES, we have day jobs and lives outside of our blog.)

We eat clean, 100% plant-based vegan diets and we’re pretty darn happy about it after a few years living this way. We mostly subscribe to the RawTill4 method (with slight modifications for intense weight training days) and we’ve had a lot of success on it, even though we have completely different sports and specialties when it comes to fitness. We eat anywhere between 2,500 – 3,500 calories per day, which makes it ideal for athletes and aspiring athletes. It takes consistency, but we wouldn’t change our lifestyle for anything. We’ve been living this way for quite a while and it seems like we’re aging slower than our peers, which we noticed the other day. We also have very low (yet still healthy) body fat percentages and muscle tone. Maude has noticed that her skin is much clearer and Quincy has noticed that his endurance for cycling/running/swimming has increased. Both of us have noticed that compared with a regular vegan diet, our energy has increased significantly on the RawTill4 method.

It’s clear that everyone struggles with getting off their asses, so it really helps to be around other fit people. While we do our own, separate workouts, we really like to hike together or with friends. We eat A LOT, so we’re always looking for fun, new vegan restaurants locally and while traveling, by ourselves or with our fit community & friends.

When it comes down to it, healthiness is a lifestyle choice and while Saturdays make it extra difficult to stop being lazy, we both know we’re better people and better partners to each other when we’re feeling amazing. That’s why we do what we do. We want to live long, QUALITY lives with each other and our friends/family.

We hope this inspired you to get out there too! The only failure is not trying. 

If you’d like to see more Quincy & Maude fitness/health-related posts, feel free to say so! We both like talking about this stuff, so if you have any specific questions about our success with this, go for it. Leave a comment or message us.

Love,
Q. & M.

Mod Maude Fashion

Maude here.

Let’s talk about fashion, babez.

We had a post on the Belligerent Rhino, but other than that, we haven’t said much about fashion at all on Ermahgerd Perterters yet. Let’s jump right in.

While our page will, in all likeliness, never rise to the epic level of Maddox’s BEST PAGE IN THE UNIVERSE, I had to link you all to this fantastic compilation of insights by Maddox himself: “Fashion tips for women from a guy
who knows dick about fashion.” This is, by far, everything I’ve ever contemplated about women’s trends. As a woman myself, some of the fashion tomfoolery I see on a regular basis makes my stomach churn. I, myself, truly know nothing about fashion or trends, so this should be… uh… totally unenlightened.

For instance, what the world is THIS?
1. Spiderman’s Crotch

Okay, upon first glance, I totally get it. It’s classic black and white mixed with some sort of urban bondage thing. Mission accomplished for geometrical uniqueness. Until you realize THAT equals THIS:

Yeahhhhh…. unless burning a spiderweb onto your body is sexy, this sucks.

2. Traditional Wedding Dresses
That’s right, I’m about to crap all over weddings. I can do this because I’m engaged and I see a lot of bullshit that looks like it belongs on a 16 year old during her Quinceañera. I give you David’s Bridal:

And now, Quinceañera:

Ladies, I don’t know which one is more wrong. You all look like cupcakes to me.

3. Steampunk
Steampunk has the potential to look amazing, but when it’s bad, it’s heinous.
GOOD Steampunk: Elaborate Costume

BAD Steampunk: Girl, are you even TRYING or did you just fall face first out of Colonial Williamsburg? Put a little effort into it. If it’s fantasy, make it fancy. Just slightly more oomph and you’re there!!

So that’s part one. Mod Maude Fashion OUT.