Weekend Warrior [part 1]

HOLY CRIPES, BATMAN! Weekends off?! I forgot what those were............but I love them. Here's the dealio, since New Year's Eve (which I spent bad dancing at Karma), I've been a weekend warrior. The titan of the truck stop. The pop star princess of car concerts. I've been able to give into every whimsical fancy that floats across my mind involving a car and the open road (within reason).

And now I present to you, my weekends in Reader's Digest form:

1) Britani turns 25+2 birthday celebration extravaganza. This particular weekend started by going out with friends Friday night. Then Saturday morning rolled around, and Ben and I tentatively decided to go to Louisville because, hell, it's within the 6 hour radius perimeter that we had just set and neither of us have spent any time there. After a little Google search I found underground zip-lining outside the city limits. Sold. BAM-A-LAM and we're headed south early Saturday afternoon.

Then the snow started. The freakin' snow. North of Indianapolis, we were creeping along. Our trip was taking longer than planned (granted, not a lot of planning went into the trip other than "head south"). That's when traffic stopped. Just stopped. Before long, tow trucks and police cars and hazardous waste clean up crews were driving past us. And we stayed exactly where we were for the next 3+ hours. The worst 3+ hours of hoping that my bladder would not explode, because that's right folks, this chicka had to whiz from minute uno. (btw, no one was killed in the gigantic accident) After that special bonding experience with my man of choice came to an end, we figured it was best to stay in Indy and leave early for the Lou. Ben found a room, and we ended up staying downtown at a hotel hosting a middle school cheer competition. There were fake eyelashes, glitter, and high ponytails everywhere.

By early Sunday afternoon we were in Louisville, hanging out at the Louisville Slugger Museum because sidenote, I wanted to be a baseball player when I was younger.








We also did a whiskey tour at the Evan Williams Experience, where we tried two shot sized glasses of whiskey.

Then Ben booked a hotel online and we drove over to check in and drop off our luggage. As we were standing in line, we looked at each other and commented about how it smelled like old perfume. We had a chuckle, and waited like perfect angels until our turn came. During this time, I figured I should check in on Foursquare because sometimes I'm social media conscious like that. As the Internet delivered my request, the front desk beckoned us to come forward and check in. At this exact moment, the Foursquare stars aligned and the top comment for Seelbach Hotel popped up onto my phone "careful, the 8th and 10th floors are haunted." I don't do haunted. I don't do scary. I do do Google researching though, and Google researching revealed that yeah, that place has had a few things go bump in the night. One of the things was people smelling perfume...
So long story a little less long, we stayed on the 7th floor which means my ceiling was definitely haunted. I think we were the only living humans on that floor. I may or may not have screamed because I saw my own reflection in the window and maybe I tried to pee with the bathroom door open while maintaining eye contact with Ben. All alleged activities keep in mind.  Creepy stuff...especially when I woke up at 3am to use the restroom and our tv was on (did we leave it on?!) and Insidious was playing.........Ben woke up as I was getting out of bed, saw the tv, and knowing that I'm 100% chicken started yelling "DON'T LOOK AT THE TV!!!" which of course made me freak out. Very little sleep that night... and not even for fun reasons.


Monday was my birthday and for my birthday we went going cave zip lining at Mega Caverns!!!!!!!!! Never been zip lining, and definitely never zip lining in a cave so check that one off the ole bucket list. I adored dangling by a rope and going fast, which my mom tells me is "not right." She's such a nice lady.


Monday afternoon consisted of driving back to WI, and getting Kentucky Fried Chicken while in Kentucky. Obviously.

2) The following weekend was a trip to Winter, WI. This trip was also a last minute "hey-ya-wanna" trip, and also included snowy weather that made us take an early pit stop. This time it was a pit stop in LM at my parents' house for the night. It's cool though, because I got to have a glass of wine with my mom and pop and shoot the breeze. And Ben got to say sassy things to make my dad laugh and my mom's "ears bleed." The next morning we proceeded up nort', stopping at the Leinenkugel Brewery for a tour, then in Hayward for lunch, and finally a stop at the casino before getting to the cabin after dark.

super long walk in the dark...

....seriously.....

Since we had rented a crumby little Nissan Versa (which, incidentally, is the exact same little piece that we totaled in IL one year....) we were not able to make it up the tiny snowy hill to the cabin... so we were going to have to walk. In the dark. In the northern woods where bear have been known to wander and a giant had been spotted the month before near the cabin's front porch. I pouted. I got out and tried to push the car myself. Then (mostly because Ben made me), I grabbed my bags and started sprinting through the knee high snow while wimpering and screaming and carrying on like a gawd-damn fool. Once inside the cabin, I hyperventilated for the first time in my life. I don't understand it, and I probably never will. I can jump out of airplanes, speed makes me happy, heights get me excited............ but you ask me to go down a water body slide without a tube, ride a ferris wheel, or deal with the possibility of a bear and I'm down for the count. The rest of our time there was spent watching old movies, playing games, drinking wine, and watching snow fall on the lake. Relaxing once you stop thinking about being mauled by a bear.



xoxo, b

NYE MKE 2013-14

Procrastination.

 

 

It lands us in the exact same spot every year at exactly this time..... desperately trying to figure out what to do for New Year's Eve.

 

 

Every year.

 

 

It's not like New Year's is a floating, mysterious holiday, springing out of the shadows within 24 hours of happening screaming "HERE I AM SUCKAS!! HAVE FUN TRYING TO FIGURE OUT AN AWESOME WAY TO REALLY CELEBRATE THIS HUNK OF AULD LANG SYNE (maniacal laugh)"

 

 

Champaign toast this, New Year's Eve.

 

 

I don't even know what auld lang syne means. No one does. It's just a slow song with made up words.

 

So for all purposes listed hereafter, auld lang syne means there are too many parties and my lack of commitment to any of them makes me feel like the soggy fruitloop left behind in the cereal bowl of New Year's Eve parties.

 

 

 I wonder where we will end up. I'm pretty much ready for anything-- I shaved my legs tonight. And I've got a certain young man on contract to kiss me at midnight. (maniacal laugh)

 

 

Try and stop me now, 2013.

 

 

But I'm done Google-ing MKE NYE shindings for now. There are more important things going on: Shark Week Season 25 is now on Netflix.

 

 

xoxo, b

merry christmas kiddos

I'm going to be honest, I thought about doing a Pinteresty-lovey-dovey-oh-how-adorbs type Christmas card this year. We clean up nice.

Picture it: Snow gently falling as we tenderly embrace along the lake shore. A sweet kiss on the forehead with the city lights twinkling behind us. Holding hands and looking backwards over our shoulders while cheesing for the camera.  Or maybe a smile-worthy, heart warming mishap with a string of lights, tangling us together into a PG-13 kiss.

Then I realized that's silly. We don't skip around town gazing into each other's eyeballs. Well, not all the time.... and besides, that's what everyone else is doing. Which is lame. Because I've walked around and I hardly ever see people striking a traditional Christmas card pose during my day to day activities.

So I present to you, Ben & Brit's real life Christmas card(s):

cats wearing clothes, cell phone, wine, mess.

Merry Christmas :)

fa la la la la

la la la la

xoxo, b

just be cool

An average of 17 times every 8 minutes, I think to myself "Why can't you just be cool, dude?"

Which is not cool in and of itself because I'm not a surfer dude... I'm a trophy wife in training. And if I can't even get that part of the thought right, then what hope is there for actually coolness? Nonetheless, this nagging little nugget has skipped across my mind. Usually after the fact.

Examples:

• Forgetting to switch over to windshield washing fluid that won't freeze. It's December in Wisconsin, I know better. Every time I pull over and start scooping snow onto all over my dirty windshield, I think about all the cool kids driving past me on their way to work in their stunna shades listening to indie-rock music while wearing pencil skirts and heels because the cool kids shave their legs regularly and don't forget to brush their teeth. The cool kids aren't standing on the on-ramp with a jug of half-frozen washer fluid, dumping it directly onto the windshield, trying to make sure they remove all the highway gunk. That's why some inventive cool kid designed no-freeze washer fluid to use with a simple flick of a switch while driving. So cool.

• Cool kids don't get caught belting out all the words to Avril Lavigne's Sk8er Boi or Seal's Kiss From A Rose while weaving through rush hour traffic. You're in a box on wheels with windows. Or, oh-em-gee, Aerosmith's I Don't Want to Miss a Thing. And cool kids definitely don't get distracted during the middle of a blog post and have a solid rock-ballad-love-song-breakdown-belt-out-concert in their living room with two cats named after socialites popular in late 20__-something and have their husband walk in and silently judge them. It's not like he's that cool either.

• Cool kids look cool at the gym. Instead of weird noodly-arms named "Fettuccine" and "Linguine," they have muscles by the names of "Butch" and "Slasher" or whatever cool kids say nowadays. And they certainly don't put on a sports bra and instantly turn into what looks like a 13 year old boy who thought it would be funny to try on his big sister's training bra. No sirree. 

• Laugh-snorting. Cool kids don't do that.

• Getting stuck in clothing-- not something cool kiddo's are familiar with. Skinny jeans stuck around your ankles in a fitting room? Bra stuck in your hair in your bedroom? T-shirt pinning your arms above your head while trying to shimmy out of your shorts and top at the swimming pool? "Absolute madness!" yell the cool kids of the world in unison.

Maybe one day I'll be smooth. I'll be suave. I'll be dripping with cool. I'll saunter into the party with a cane and a top hat tilted to one side, point and wink at the bartender and have three or four butlers with trays of champagne flutes instantly circle around me while singing a barbershop quartet-styled song about how cool I am. I haven't worked out the details yet, but stay tuned.

xoxo, b

turkey recap

Pre-Turkey Tuesday:

My last day at the jewelry store. Smash made me a pink sash and a glittery pink crown that I wore the majority of the day like a preschool princess. Roughly 1.7 million things went wrong and required me to fix them, so I didn't get much time to just hang out with my coworkers. After the store closed at 7, Smash and Co. popped open a bottle of bubbly and gave my "eugoogly"...which I had jokingly requested. Or not jokingly. After the beautiful eugoogly, we headed to Mexico for dinner and dranks.

I'm horrible, awful, no-good at having things hit me right away. Seriously. Which is part of the reason that I generally don't get too emotional......until a week and a half later when Ben finds me on the couch with a cup of coffee and mascara-face. As a whole, I'm 100% time-consuming and tiring to understand... literally a waltzing contradiction.

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Turkey Time:

Having two families too close to each other makes for filling holidays. Turkey day was no exception. A late lunch turned into dinner at my parent's house, and after wiping the gravy from our faces we were at Ben's side of the family enjoying desserts and falling asleep on the couch.
Unlike last year, no one stood up and announced any life-altering news. 

Also unlike last year, Ben and I did zero Black Friday shopping. Instead, we slept in and I telephoned my mom (who was downstairs) to bring us a couple of coffees in bed. She said no.
In my defense, 1: It worked the last time 2: At least I tried and 3: Brilliant idea, right?

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Saturday & Sunday:

To make the next tidbit make sense, I need to confess that Ben and I are raising spoiled thug cats. Long haired, fluffy, spoiled, social butterfly thugs named Paris and Nicole.

These little thugs stayed home alone for 2 nights while we went home for Thanksgiving. 

When we got home to the apartment Saturday afternoon, we found half eaten cookies all over the kitchen and scattered around the living room floor. The cute ceramic food bowl with the the painted blue script of Tuna Breath was mercilessly thrown in true riot state into the mecca of the chaos. Clumps of long black hair adorned the once cozy home that had- from all accounts- transformed into a gladiator coliseum only hours earlier when the last bit of cat food was nibbled and the undeniable possibility of certain death first crept to attention.

So we fed the monsters, and they fell asleep purring and cuddled up together. Because in all likelihood they are also un-medicated bipolars as well.

And now it's officially time for Christmas!
Which means Christmas music, Christmas decorations, Christmas cats, Christmas everything at all hours of the day and night. Christmas!!

xoxo, b