Mermaid hair love. It’s apparently genetic.

Thanks to Jason Gibbons for perfectly capturing my daughter.

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Do you want me to stop?

I blinked away the tears that seared the corners of my eyes.

No, let’s keep going.

Are you sure, we have a whole hour, you know. You can stop, collect yourself…

No, I don’t want to stop.

Okay, we’ll keep going, just remember to breath.

In inhaled sharply, letting the air conditioned oxygen burn my lungs, and gripped the sides of the chaise. The light was muted, with pale blue walls and hints of mint and aqua in the abstract artwork.

I think it was meant to disguise the clinicalness of the whole thing with calculated and  thoughtfully placed tranquility, but I knew better. I glanced at the coral on the mahogany shelves. I was in a pretend ocean, and there was no peace in that for me. Oceans were frightening, with unimaginable depth and horrible monsters. When I think of being lost and powerless, I think of being in an ocean.

Her hand touched my arm again, reminding me to exhale, and I did.

I forced the air from my lungs as I told her about my week. My week of feeling nothing but crying over everything. How I looked at people I loved as if they were strangers, and I walked around my house like a confused rhino, bumping into things with my awkward cumbersome horn. As I spoke, tears spilled over the brims of my eyes as layer by layer was torn free from me.

Okay.

She met my eyes for the first time and smiled warmly.

Not so bad, right?

Gets easier every time.

I told you. Now get on your knees, spread your cheeks apart, we’ll wax your butt and then you’re done.

And I’m back.

Therapy. Get’s easier every time.

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This episode, we put a pause on the lady business, and welcomed a very brave group of boys to join our panel. We talked about living through childbirth, sex talks, Father’s Days must haves and no thank yous, and so many more absolutely hysterical moments.

Warning: If you are ovulating, by the end, you’ll probably be pregnant.

Thanks to my panel:
Jess Stricker
David Binkowski
Mark Pannell
Matt Culbreath
Patrick Lynch

Want even more fun, follow my shameless antics on youtube!

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Hey guess what? This Sunday is Father’s Day. Yeah, I didn’t remember, either.

So what were you thinking? Maybe a monogrammed laptop bag? A rustic leather man bracelet personalized with the kids names?

Good ideas! You should remember those for next year when you have a chance in hell of receiving any of those things in time for Father’s Day.

So, just in case you are one of those last minute (and super pretty, seriously, you look really hot today) shoppers, don’t freak out, I’ve put together a last minute, make sure you get it in time, yes I totally put way more than four days of thought into this what are you insinuating, gift guide.

E Books
Quicker than pulling out a tampon, you can load his e-reader with fun new titles.

Dad is Fat by Jim Gaffigan(Check out my review, here!)
Let’s Explore Diabetes with Owls by David Sedaris
My Booky Wook by Russel Brand
Not Taco Bell Material by Adam Carolla
A Bad Idea I’m About To Do: True Tales of Seriously Poor Judgement and Stunningly Awkward Adventure by Chris Gethard

Amazon Prime is your homeboy.
If you ever spend $80 on anything in your life, it should be on Amazon Prime. Take advantage of that free Two Day Shipping on everything from the perfect Father’s Day gifts to sex swings.

Hot Tub Time Machine $4.99
Bar10der 10 in One Bartending Tool $36.95
Monty Python Holy Trinity $48.04
Parrot AR 2.0 Quadricopter Controlled by iPhone, iPad or Android Device $279.99
Jawbone JAMBOX $129.99
Bob’s Burgers: Complete 1st Season $22.37
Logitech Wireless Gaming Headset $84.99

The Ultimate Father’s Day Experience
Hey, who doesn’t want a glimpse of their pre-kid lives? Staying out late. Taking off on a whim. Sleeping with bouncers.
Okay, not that last one. But, giving dad a day to do something fun will revive him for another whole year of butt wiping and puke cleaning. Plus, you can toss tickets or a cute description in a card, minimal effort required!

Subscriptions & Of the Month Clubs
Getting stuff in the mail is fun. Unless it’s bills. Or jury duty notices. Or bags of dog shit. But packages full of goodies? Always awesome.
Set dad up with a monthly subscription service that will have him smiling at the mailbox at least once a month.

Box of Brew. For as little as $15 a month, you can have your dad home brewing in no time! Just pick the beer you want to brew each month, and they’ll send it right to your door.

LootCrate. A whole box full of goodies for the geek or gamer dad in your house, for only $19.37 a month.

The Ashton Kutcher Fancy Box. Fancy is known for their epic box subscriptions, from food to kids to pets to celebrity curators. Fancy teamed with Ashton Kutcher to create an epic monthly box full of items hand picked by Kutcher, himself. Only $39 a month.

Still stumped? You can always DIY-it with some handmade coupons for fun things like car washes or uninterrupted TV time, a custom made Spotify playlist of his favorite songs, or a whole day of his favorite meals.

Want more? Join our hilarious Father’s Day Pre-Game tomorrow night live at 10pm EST, on Last Call Brittany. We have booze, gift ideas, and a panel of daddies on hand to chat. Click here to check it out!

But wait, there’s even more! In honor of Father’s Day, I’m giving away a $100 Amazon Gift Card just in time for you to do your baby daddy shopping! All you have to do to enter is leave a comment telling me what you are buying for Father’s Day this year, or if you’re a dad, what you’d love to get.

This giveaway runs through tomorrow only, ending Thursday June 13th at 9pm EST. One (1) winner will be randomly selected to win and the winner announced live on Last Call Brittany tomorrow at 10pm EST.  Email confirmation is required within 24 hours, or a new winner will be drawn. You may leave as many comments as you want, make sure you use a valid email address.

images courtesy Wiki Commons and Alaska Fishing 411

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Today I joined New York Magazine, Esquire and CNet to chat about what’s hot this Father’s Day. I, of course, made bondage jokes and served as comic relief.

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Do you ever have those days… weeks…. months? Where you feel like you walk around all day with tears burning the rims of your eyes, knowing any moment, they’ll come bursting from your face?

You don’t know why. Or maybe you do, a little. It doesn’t really matter. They are there, they sting, and you don’t really want to bring them up, because then they’ll just fall out everywhere and you’ll be all, I don’t know why this is happening, quick somebody make me laugh so they stop!

So, I’m looking to laugh today, because my eyes sting.

I’ll start here… wooden hands make me laugh.

Your turn.

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It’s that time of year. The time, before heading off to the graduation parties of relatives that were young, like, four seconds ago, and I sit there holding a foam plate of pasta salad mentally doing the math on just how fucking old I am now and how fucking long it’s been since I’ve graduated high school, that I find myself in Target staring blankly at the wall of greeting cards, reading the grand words of encouragement, deciding which cliche is less of an eye roll to the reality of actual adulthood.

It’s like when you go to your friends house to pick her up for a girls night out, and she’s wearing an eye patch because she scratched her cornea, and she’s all, do you think people will notice this eye patch, and you’re all, what eye patch?

These cards are liars, they offer nothing of value except false platitudes that set graduates up for disaster.

Maybe this is just me being cynical because I just watched Reality Bites and I’m all, the world doesn’t owe you any favors, Troy about shit right now, but there’s a big difference between what these cards say, and what they mean.

Here’s the reality.

You are our future! Yeah, we all are, dude. That’s how the time continuum works. Unless you’re Sam Becket in which you’re both our future and our past and oh my God. I just made a Quantum Leap reference, I need to apply RoC undereye cream and put my head between my knees for a second. Hold on.

Okay yes, technically, you are “our” future in the sense that now that you are older, you are way more likely to take actions that could potential benefit or fuck up the way of life for an entire population of people. So, that’s an awesome perk, right?

Try new things! Unless those things are cashing Nigerian lottery winnings or eating room temperature oysters. But, yes, go explore, stumble around, experiment. Do things that are scary and exciting while you still have freedom and skin elasticity. Just remember that tattoos are permanent. And so are sex tapes. And also herpes.

Believe in yourself! It’s an amazing realization that outside of your immediate family and friends, nobody cares about you, knows about you, or even expects anything from you at all. So, it’s up to you. Believe in yourself so you have the strength to get out of bed in the morning and compete against all the other millions of people who believe in themselves. Also, if you have great hair, a charismatic personality, and a solid game plan, you can get others to believe in you, too! Cults can be a crazy lucrative industry.

Aim high! Ok, this is a recipe for disaster, especially if you are 1. shooting an arrow straight up into the sky or 2. attempting to succeed at anything on the first try. So instead of aiming high, why not just aim reasonably. I’m a firm believer in failing along the way to success, and achievable milestones happen to be great confidence boosters. Pass your Econ exam? Awesome. Figure out how to order coffee at Starbucks so the baristas don’t look at you like you’re Toby from The Office? High five. Beat level 65 of Candy Crush? You’re basically almost a CEO.

Follow your dreams! This would be easier if your dreams weren’t always about making out with Captain Von Trapp (I have a thing for whistles) or having cuddle parties with Hoggle from Labyrinth. But if by dreams you mean aspirations, sure, follow those. Unless you aspire to develop a reality singing competition show, then I’m going to stop you right there, because we don’t need another one of those.

Do what you love! Confucius said, “choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.” I can tell you, from experience, this is true. But, you should also know that before you can make a career of doing what you love, you’re probably going to have to do lots of things you don’t love first, because you can’t pay utility bills or student loans with passion. I tried, and not having running water is super inconvenient.

Be true to yourself! Great advice, but first, you seriously need to figure out who the hell you are. Not to get all MTV Diary up in here, but at 18, “you think you know, but you have no idea.” So to start, I’m going to give you permission to feel okay about not knowing who you are as a person yet. After graduation I thought I knew exactly what I wanted out of life. To go to college. To get the fuck out of my hometown. To get married and have kids and be a stay at home mom and take care of my husband and be happy. I literally just rolled my eyes at myself typing that… from the couch of my house… in my home town. Irony. But seriously, that life would have made me miserable. I had seven different internships and a complete nervous breakdown in college, and I still left there having no idea who I was. Let go of the reigns. Take a deep breath. Find out what makes you feel completely alive. Go from there. Oh, and be okay if it takes until your thirties to figure any of it out.

Make a difference! Making an impact during your life is an important thing, whether it be to the world or just one person. Between internet and social media, you have an unprecedented platform for change, and it’s really hard to go through life and not achieve this. However, it’s exponentially easy to fuck this up. So make a difference. Just make sure it’s the good kind.

This is the first day of the rest of your life! Sure, you are entering a point in your life where you have the opportunity to be adventurous and careless, and selectively mature; you should rejoice in that. But don’t write this period of your life off as throw-away experience. This period of your life totally countsies.

So, perhaps this is why only optimists are greeting card authors. Not much of a market for the Brittany Gibbons line of  graduation cards with such whimsical themes as…

Don’t rape. Anyone.
Love your yourself now.
Don’t get credit cards from people giving out free tee shirts.
Google: empathy.
Don’t get alcohol poisoning.
Wear sandals in public showers.
Figure out how to calculate restaurant tips unless you like to eat pubic hair.
It’s okay to realize your parents aren’t dumb-asses.
The computer is lying to you about your online bank balance. No seriously. You don’t have that much money right now.

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13abc.com Toledo (OH) News, Weather and Sports

Bringing more awareness to my goal. And then talking about my booze internet show. AS I DO.

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I love knowing talented people. And this young woman, she blows my fucking mind and embeds herself into my brain for hours. Where The Sun Breaks Through The Mist is a personal favorite of mine. Enjoy being lost for a while, y’all.

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Mindy Kaling does this thing I love, get ready, because it’s groundbreaking…

She wears mini skirts and she tucks her shirt in.

Which is, in chubby Brittanyland, a mind blowing concept. I mean, my grandma always told me to tuck my shirt in, but she was old and didn’t know who Shanice was at the time, so her advice was questionable at best.

But, now it’s 2013, and between my decision to shave above my knees, the rise of the scuba skirt, Mindy’s hot curves, I’m suddenly all, I Love Your Smile Wha-!? It’s mini skirt time.

The majority of my posts feature really great foundation pieces. I’m a firm believer that curvy women need to bypass the overpriced, cheaply made trickery many of the “well known but shall remain nameless” plus size retailers shovel out to cater to a fad that lasts, oh I don’t know, a nanosecond.

I’d rather help you scavenger around for the perfect item that you can use ten ways to Sunday, than spend an afternoon with you on the couch crying over the irrelevant neon green lace tunic you just spent $89 on.

But, that’s not to say I don’t love a good trend. Like last week, when I showed you wedge sneakers. Do I expect them to be fashionable this time next year? Absolutely not, but they were $20 and they seemed fun. Not all our fashion needs to be utilitarian. Big girls are allowed to have fun, ya’ll. That should be a song….

That is why I spent fifteen dollars on a mini skirt last week.

First, I want to tell you about this picture, because my hair is a hot mess, but I smile when I see this photo and I want to tell you why. This was taken on Memorial Day. I had every intention of snapping a super cute picture of my outfit, but it was pouring. Not raining, pouring. With the photoshoot a bust, and the kids at my moms making cookies, Andy and I snuck off to get ice cream and drive around. Not terribly romantic, but whatever, we got to listen to our own music and not share our food; that equals date.

As we were driving through this particularly industrial and barren area of our town, Andy noticed a train stopped on the tracks, which is not unusual, as I cuss this exact occurrence out on the daily.

Get out fast, I wanna take your picture next to the train, the colors are great.

No way. It’s pouring and with my luck, the graffiti probably means “rape all the babies,” or something.

Come on, I’ll be really quick, you won’t even get wet, I promise.

Last time you said that we ended up with Gigi.

Brittany…

Ugh, fine.

So, we parked on the side of the road and sprinted toward the train. I leaned against the graffiti watching Andy as he tried to mess with the settings, all the while keeping the camera safe and dry under his coat, and after probably ten minutes of me standing there, he called it.

Sorry, it’s too wet out here, just forget it.

Maybe the train will be here tomorrow?

It wasn’t, but it didn’t matter. Because Andy did take one photo. Only one. The camera was at his waist, and I was staring straight at him, and as he adjusted the color, he took a test shot. And then immediately after that shot, he gave up, walked over to me, and kissed me in the rain against a train like we were 17, only this time, with more beard. It was like The Notebook, if The Notebook had trains in it. Which it might have? Is it horrible I’ve never actually seen the whole movie? Also the train conductor was there. He had a beard, too. It was just the weirdest Memorial Day ever.

Anyways, the mini skirt. I adore it. Trying it on was scary, because my legs are big, but wearing it up high and tucking my shirt in is not only totally in fashion at the moment, it does for me exactly what adding a belt to a dress does… it creates a small waist. I can dress it up with a lacy cami and sexy heels, or be casual about it, like in the photo, with an old vintage tshirt and wedges or flip flops. And the best part? The flare of the skirt hides everything. Stomach flap, maternity underwear, whatever, it’s all under there, and nobody is the wiser… except for the bearded hobo you’re making out with against a train. If he puts his hand up there, he’ll know.

Skirt: Knit Maxi Skirt, size XXL, Target $14.99 (Note: I really wish I would have sized down in the skirt.
Remember when you are wearing something higher than your natural waist, you may need a smaller size. Always try it on first!)
Shirt: Vintage Grey V-Neck, size XL, Old Navy $9.50
Shoes: Floral Wedges, Target
Necklace: Turquoise Pendant, Old Navy
Hair Frizz: Global Warming

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