A few day sago I posted an article on Facebook about Susan G. Komen For the Cure (TM. Seriously.) halting grants to Planned Parenthood; grants used to fund breast cancer screening and education.

Since then, if you have had any interaction on any form of social media, you have seen a virtual cluster fuck of outcry at this decision, and a mountain of furious opinions coming in from both sides.

And now, I’m going to elaborate on mine…kinda.

First, and I know this is an unpopular statement, but Susan G. Komen For the Cure has every single right in the world to stop awarding grant money to Planned Parenthood. It’s true. They absolutely do.  They could use that money to make 50 billion pink spatulas, thongs or roll around naked in it. It’s their right.

But, I also have the right to be completely disgusted by their decision, to donate to charities focused on research and cure, and to be absolutely terrified at the direction of women’s healthcare in this country, because in my mind, politicizing women’s health is a dangerous thing.

Cancer kills women.

Not just Democratic women or Republican women or Swing Voters.

All women.

It doesn’t check your party affiliation card when it invades your body, and it certianly doesn’t check your tax return to make sure you have enough money to fight it.

This needs to be a woman problem. Not a political problem.

It is my firm opinion that religion has very little place in healthcare.

Every person has the right to instill in themselves a personal belief system with which they use to make their decisions.  Whether it be based on religion or faith or spirituality, I don’t care. You have the right to have it.

But you don’t have the right to extend that personal belief system to others.

We can’t let the beliefs of some make the decisions for all. It’s not fair.

This is not about abortion. Stop reducing the importance of women’s healthcare to such a petty political talking point, it’s insulting. Having boobs and vaginas doesn’t render women incapable of making educated decisions about our body.

If you don’t want an abortion, it’s very easy not to have one. You don’t just trip and fall into one.

I know that it’s hard, because it’s such a way of life in this country right now, to be PRO or AGAINST or just plain THIS AND ONLY THIS, but we have to stop and remember that we can’t entangle our personal and religious belief systems with the fact that women in this country, regardless of finances or race, need to be able to take care of themselves, and it’s scary to me that the ability to do so is jeopardized, both from the private sector, as well as the federal government.

That’s why this move and this precedent is important.

This is why it’s time to use your outside voice, because if we are loud enough, it works.

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I haven’t been sleeping well the last few months, and it’s driving Andy crazy, because when I can’t sleep, I feel like he should also not want to sleep, so he can talk to me about stuff until he bores me enough that I pass out.

Andy hates this idea, mostly because he has to wake up at 4am for work, but also because I refuse to see a doctor to remedy the situation.

Most nights, we talk about about random things, like the kids’ school or upcoming plans or if he thinks my hair looked good that day.

Other times, it’s weird and prolific, like when you’re laying in the field behind your parent’s house, stoned, wondering why the moon looks mean or why sassafras is even a word in real life.

Last night was one of those times.

I’ve decided this whole love thing is like a Great Dane puppy.

So, you spend years and years and years looking for someone who is ok with big dogs.

You think you find them in guys who look like pet lovers, but finger you in the back bedroom at a wrestling party, and never call you again. Guys that ditch you mid-date, leaving you at the restaurant while you are in the bathroom. Guys who are just really, excessively interested in anal sex. Or maybe even guys who strictly want all foreplay to happen through a collection of hand puppets. Have you even been gone down on by a puppet? Those kind of guys shouldn’t be allowed to have pets, at all. Maybe just robot ones, and even then, glue the battery hole shut.

But then you come across this guy who never really fancied himself a dog person, because he always had cats.

So at first, he’s kinda freaked out that the dog is so all over the place and without boundaries. He doesn’t really care about the size, or that the dog has really bad taste in movies and laughs at her own jokes a lot.

It doesn’t bother him that his family doesn’t much care for big dogs, and that the dog is super bad at taking hints and she tramples all over his shit a lot, because she’s clumsy and her feet are big, and she also probably sniffs through his bathroom garbage can to check for condoms, but she’s just a puppy you know, and probably really insecure.

The older the puppy gets, the more chill things become.

I mean, it’s still fucking insane, but you went through puppy classes with it, so she stops darting toward stanger’s crotches or peeing on the bed to show you she missed you while you were away. I mean, it’s not gross if it’s a wet spot of love.

A few years pass, and you decide you really love this dog, and just plain can’t live without it. Plus, your sick of covering your furniture every fucking time it goes into heat, so you decide to get married and have puppies and everything is wonderful, except, no matter how trained and domesticated the dog is, it’s still a Great Dane.

They’re still big and messy and overstepping and weird and complicated and menacing, but in a really adorable and loveable and awkwardly sexy way, you know?

It’s just how Great Danes are, like, inherently.

Are you the Great Dane in this story, or are you just trying to get me to like the dog more, because if it’s the latter, I’m honestly a little freaked out about all the dog sex imagery.

I don’t think either of us slept last night.

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I have the memory of a panther.

Do panthers have good memories? You don’t know, because they’ll eat you if you get too close.

Like me.

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I’m singing this today.

I would like this shirt.

Sometimes, people are born with tails and I like to talk about it on the radio.

Video streaming by Ustream

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I’ve decided to randomly continue the made up things I wish Andy would say to me.

Although this one is basically a fact. Duh.

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I have gotten lots of request about my hair. Like what I use in it, and how I make it do… whatever it is it does.

So, here is a probably ineffective tutorial on how to get my hair. I actually did it two ways, a picture by picture breakdown, and then a video tutorial. (FYI video sound, horrific, courtesy my new laptop with, apparently, the worst mic in the world.)

This is a super quick tutorial on how to get the lose beachy-type waves you often see in my pictures. You can do this is you have straight, curly, or thick and assy hair, much like myself.

I have begun this tutorial with a fast prep that I swear by, if you’d like to skip the tips and prep, head on down to #5.

So, here is what you need.

Moroccan Oil (Organix $6, Walmart)
Mousse (got2be Curling Mousse, $5 Walmart)
Hair Spray (Pantene, $5 Absolutely Anywhere)
Curling Iron (Remington Curling Wand, $24 Target)
*You can do this style with a curling iron,  just don’t use the clamp, wrap your hair around the whole outside of the curling iron.

1. First up, the shower. It all starts in the shower. If you have curly hair, you know that combing out your hair after a shower makes it all weird and stringy, like an 80′s perm, but if you don’t brush it out, you look like Bob Marley.

Curly Hair Lifesaver #1: Comb out your hair in the shower.

I shampoo with a cheap cleansing shampoo, then use a detangling conditioner, and let it sit on my hair for about 2 minutes. Then I use a wide tooth comb, and completely comb out my hair, in the shower with the conditioner still in it. Once it all combed out, I gently rinse out the conditioner and lightly dry it with a towel.

2. Once my hair is towel dried, I run a dime size amount of Moroccan Oil through my hair, avoiding my roots so they don’t look oily. And then I flip my head over and scrunch in some mousse. (Everybody knows dirty hair holds curl better, adding the mousse achieves that same grittiness without smelling like a hobo.)

Let it air dry for about 10ish minutes, because your goal is to braid this and have it be dry by morning. If my hair is sopping wet when I braid it, it will not be dry by morning, so I let it get to a damp-ish point.

3. Now you put your hair in two braids to sleep in and dry over night, just like Little House on the Prairie. I try to pull the top part of my hair tight, because I like the look of the curls starting midway down my head, and not at my scalp.

Curly Hair Lifesaver #2: I sleep in braids every night, it keeps my hair dread lock free and holds the body. I can get three days of hairstyles out of my hair when I braid it, and don’t need to add a single puka shell.

Straight Hair Lifesaver #1: If you have straight hair, braids are a great base to add curl to, this will totally help hold them in place.

4. In the morning, when your hair is dry, unbraid your hair.

Your hair should be kinky. Now, if you know me in real life, my hair often looks just like this, because it’s easy and I am lazy.

5. Now separate your hair into sections, take your curling wand, and selectively curl pieces of hair.

When you don’t curl every piece, if looks more natural and beachy, and you avoid that Toddlers and Tiaras thing. Instead, just touch up the pieces that are laying funny or have a weird bend to them. Spray each finished section with hair spray and move on, do not loosen the curls yet, let them set.

6. Once you get through all your sections. Gently shake up your hair, loosening the curls and blending them in with the natural ones you have from Jesus…. or the braids.

Keep playing with the style, because the more you mess with it, the more natural and gorgeous it’s going to look.

This is a little tight for my tastes, but the beauty of this style is that it will loosen a bit as the day goes on and I keep compulsively twisting my hair as I worry about things like war, internet laws and how many days until the Shamrock Shake comes back.

Wanna see me in action and way more in depth, awesome, turn up your speakers.

The Wavy Hair Tutorial from Brittany Gibbons on Vimeo.

Questions?

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If I use 9-1-1, that means it’s important. EVERYONE KNOWS THIS.

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Poppy ate my glasses.

I got new ones.

Andy says I remind him of Lisa Loeb, which is good because she is on his list. The only girl I approve of, might I add. Unlike Megan Fox, Jenny McCarthy and the girl from Top Gun. I’ve told him four billion times Kelly McGillis is a lesbian.

But he says I have no room to argue because my list includes Christopher Plummer and Bill Murray. That’s called class, Andy.

Absolutely none of this is earth shattering.

I will be doing my long awaited hair tutorial on Sunday, be excited.

In the mean time, check out the post below to see how unromantic our romantic weekend was, and then definitely head over to Amuse Bouche to see all the hilarious things I have decided I want Andy to say to me.

This is basically his most favorite thing ever. (not.)

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Did you pack the camera?

For what?

I don’t know, in case we want to take pictures?

But, the kids aren’t going.

Right, but we can take pictures of other things.

Like trees?

I don’t know, what did we take pictures of before we had kids?

Mostly us, either drunk or naked. Or other people drunk and naked. Or people I thought looked like Robin Williams.

We spent the weekend in Westlake, Ohio. It doesn’t sound incredibly romantic, but he picked it because it had a Trader Joes and a Cheesecake Factory, and he knows I adore both.

Want to get in my pants? Feed me cheesecake and shrimp. I’m not Alcatraz.

(Was Alcatraz really hard to get in and out of, or did we just all make that up for Nicholas Cage?)

We didn’t have hotel reservations, but that was part of the adventure, assuming there wasn’t some sort of taxidermy convention going on, booking every thing solid. But, dude, I’d sleep in my car for a good deal on a bear skin rug, because that would give so much credit to my story about seeing a bear in Kentucky that mouthed the words “November 8th” to me.

I know, I have no idea what that means either, that bear was super cryptic.

Now, if you follow me on Facebook, you know the trip got off to a bumpy start when I remembered an hour into the car ride that I had left my clothes in the dryer, which would have been less of a problem if I didn’t insist on traveling in what I call, my automobile pants.

(A pair of faded black leggings, cropped so they don’t touch any public restroom floors, and stretchy so I can pull them up above my belly button and feel skinnier with a seat belt on.)

A last minute run to buy clothes and do some quick shopping set us back, and we missed our dinner reservation, which placed us at a very romantic TGI Fridays.

It would have been awful if it wasn’t positively hilarious, mostly because I had semi-talked Andy into pretending I was his non-English speaking mail order bride trying American cuisine for the first time. It was actually a lot funnier to me than to Andy, but he’s horrible at improv. It was like Meryl Streep acting next to any actor in The Happening.

By the time we reached a hotel, I was exhausted and regretting everything I had eaten.

And what kind of room did you want?

One with a king size bed.

Alright.

And far away from, like, any kids.

Hmmmm…ok….

I like them and I’m totally legally allowed to be around them and all that, it’s just…ugh, right?

I pregnant with our first, so…

Oh dude, we have three at home, we just want to pretend we don’t have any right now, if that makes sense?

We were given a ground floor room next to the pool.  There could not have been more kids in that pool if it had been filled with ADHD medicine.

Do you know how hard it is to watch Boardwalk Empire on free HBO with your husband, when a gaggle of pre-teen boys are running up and down the hall, knocking on doors, fighting, and making, what I am guessing were supposed to be, sex sounds?

I made Andy call the front desk. Twice. They were really polite, but super busy, so nothing happened.

More stomping down halls, pounding on doors and yelling, plus I am 99% sure one of them peed on the carpet at some point, and the rest of them were daring each other to touch it and then screaming faggot at each other.

I gave Andy my annnnnnnd enough look and walked to the door.

I just do not understand that in 2012, when we have robot maps inside our cell phones, parents are still letting their kids act like assholes in public and use words like faggot.

Hey guys! I just called the front desk to complain, plus I’m about to have really loud, gross sex with my husband, and if you beat on my door again, you’re paying for my room.

blink, blink

Also, something like 1 in 10 people are gay, and there are like, 12 of you, sooooo…..stop saying that word. Jesus hates it.

I’ll probably never go to a Holiday Inn again, but the Trader Joes Chocolate Covered Potato Chips? Worthsies.

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from	Brittany Gibbons brittanymarie81@gmail.com
to		Andy Gibbons <agibbons1@gmail.com>
date		March 23, 2009 at 9:20 AM

I had a dream last night DON’T ERASE THIS YET KEEP READING that we owned a B&B- and the house was made of candy, like Hansel and Gretel. So when I woke up this morning, I still thought it was the best idea ever, plus I told Jude about it, and he was pretty psyched, so I started pricing land and flour, and then my mom called and I told her we should do it because nobody ever did it before, and she started lecturing me on mold and flies and it’s like WHAT THE FUCK JULIE, THIS IS WHY DREW BARRYMORE DIVORCED HER PARENTS IN THAT MOVIE.

The point of this is- now that I have decided to not build the candy house- I am so not going to tell Jude he can never build candy houses, even if it means his entire clientel dies of food poisoning and whatever diseases flies carry because Laura is going to law school and we should be fine-legally speaking.

mmmkay?

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