The life of a St. Loser

So, as it turns out, I don’t care about the Saints or the Colts one tiny bit.  I mean not even a little.  I simply watch the Superbowl for three reasons:  the commercials, the Star Spangled Banner, and the excuse to eat insane amounts of junk food in one sitting.

Tonight’s commercials, for the most part, let me down.  There were a few that I REALLY loved, however.  My favorite of all of them was the Google advertisement, titled Parisian Love.  Totally let out an “Awwwwww” by the end of that one.  Simple, to the point, and unforgettable.

My snack foods consisted of taco dip and garlic bread pizza….excellent choices all around.

Now….for the singing.  Let me start by saying I’m a huge Carrie Underwood fan.  I think she’s beautiful and insanely talented and there’s no doubt that the girl can hit a glory note like nobody else in the biz.  However, I found myself less than impressed with her Star Spangled Banner.  Don’t get me wrong, she did a WAY better job than I ever could have hoped to do, but I found myself a little underwhelmed.

Let’s first start with the outfit…sweetheart you have a amazing sense of style, so why you decided to wear a Storm Trooper/Elvis Bodysuit/Shoulder Padded abomination of an outfit it beyond me.  (Kudos for the killer platform pumps though.)  And what happened to your hair?  Were you unaware that this was televised?

The actual singing was good for the most part, minus the pitchy final note, but there just wasn’t much pizzaz to it, besides the word “wave.”  I found myself wishing for Jordin Sparks or Jennifer Hudson, who’s American Idol Alum Superbowl banners put yours to shame.  Mad props to Ms. Sparks and Ms. Hudson for singing w/ actual instruments (it’s way easier to sing it acapella!) And yes, some of you may know that Jennifer Hudson’s performance was lip-synced, but it was still her damn voice on the tape so I tend not to mind.  The National Anthem is a tricky song, which can mess with even nerves of steel.

But that’s just my opinion, I suppose!  What was your take, am I being too hard on Miss Underwood?  What was your favorite commercial?  Was anyone else getting tired of Bud Light and Doritos?

So you know how some people have this particular time of year where you really have to examine yourself and question where your life is headed?  For some people that’s Christmas, when you’re meeting up with families and showing up without a significant other, children, etc.  For others it’s New Years Eve, when they make over-reaching resolutions about how they are going to completely change their life around next year.

Me?  It’s tax time.

For one, it is a clear demonstration of how crappy I really am at math, following directions, calculations and percentages of any kind, etc.  But mostly, it just shows me how little I’m doing with my life!

So you start with the income section…..I made HOW MUCH last year?  Where did it all go?  Did someone steal it?  No?  Just checking.

Did you buy a new house?

Get married?

Have kids?  Adopt?

Collect on any investments?

Buy a new car?

Donate large amounts to charity?

Support political campaigns?

Go to church?

Any scholarships?

Gambling winnings?

Um.   None of the above.

Crap.

I want YOU to grow the hell up!

I have become Leonard Sims.

Who is that you ask?  For those die hard Lost fans out there, you’ll recognize that name as Hurley’s friend from the mental hospital.  That poor bastard sat in his chair, rocking back and forth, and muttering the numbers over and over and over again, for reasons yet unknown.

4...8...15...16...23...42

My friends, this is my future.

As most of you probably realize, Lost is starting its final season this coming Tuesday.  As a big fan of the series, I’ve been counting down the days until I FINALLY get to hear what episode “LA X” is alllll about.   (It’s LA space X, mind you.  NOT LAX.  I’m sure this will be significant.)

So I was thinking about it the other day, and I realized there was a great many detail about Lost, seasons 1-5 that I had completely forgotten about.  Adam and Eve, the hotness of Boone, and who were Paulo and Nikki again?  With two weeks to go until the season began, I made a bold statement to my coworker.

“I will finish seasons 1-5 of Lost in TWO WEEKS.”

Yes, my friends.  I am an idiot.

Now I’ve always been one of those people who can lay around for days at a time, doing little more than watching TV and movies and laying on my couch.  But man, Lost is so different.  First of all, it averages about 20 hours per season.  That’s nearly 100 full hours of outstanding television.  And it’s not just any 100 hours…it’s JAM PACKED full of information, and clues, and bombshells, and flashbacks, and yes, the occasional polar bear.

I wish I could just turn the damn TV off for a few hours, or finally catch up on the episodes of House, Grey’s Anatomy, and the like that are chilling on my DVR, waiting their turn.  But alas, if I’m home, and I’m not asleep, I’m watching frikkin Lost.  I made my bed, now I have to lay in it.  I can’t let my coworker win, let him beat me to season 5.  So it’s on like donkey kong, and I’m determined to finish before Februrary 2nd.

Until then, it’s sweet visions of sexy, southern boy Sawyer, Jack and his whiney “my daddy didn’t love me!” episodes, Sayed’s glorious curly updos, Kate’s lack of any sort of body fat, and Ben’s all-around creepser self.  I might slowly lose my mind in the process, but damn it I’m GOING to finish.

Don’t mind me.  I’ll just be here, sitting on my couch, rocking slowly back and forth, and muttering to myself.

4…….8…..15…….16…….23…….42

Oh and btw, as far as theories go, I’m gonna go ahead and make a bold statement that Vincent is Jacob.

YEAH, I said it!!

In moments of great crisis, politicians and celebrities will often release a public apology, to express their great sorrow and regret for their actions.

And now…..it’s my turn.

I’ve done something horrible.  Something I never said I’d do as long as I live.  I see girls guilty of this particular crime, and OH how I judge them.  I said “I could NEVER do something like that.”  I look down on them.  I despise them.

How wrong I was.

Ladies, I’m so sorry.  I will never again judge you, I’ve learned the error of my ways.  I know that you can get caught up in the heat of the moment, and make an impulse decision that will forever tarnish your image, your reputation.

I now live in a glass house, there will be no more throwing of stones.

I can’t even believe I’m about to admit this to the  thousands dozen people who read this, but I can’t keep it inside any longer.  I have to confess.

.

.

.

I put a sweater……on my dog.

Don't look at me like that, Sadie

I’m sorry to have let you all down 

IN MY DEFENSE, she just got a haircut, it’s freezing outside and she was shivering all the time.  I know there’s no excuse, but I feel like you need to know where I’m coming from, and what brought this on.

Sadie, if you’re reading this, I’m sorry I put a grey and pink cupcake sweater on you.  I’m also sorry the turtleneck was way too tight at first and you made choking noises for a full minute before I cut a slit in the sweater to loosen it.  I’ll try not to shave you in the dead of winter next time.

I have let my dog down and I regret those transgressions with all of my heart. I have not been true to my values and the behavior my dog deserves. I am not without faults and I am far short of perfect. I am dealing with my behavior and personal failings behind closed doors with my dog. Those feelings should be shared by us alone.

~B

Merry Christmas everyone!

Opening presents with the family this week brought me back to the early 90’s, one particular christmas that sticks out in my mind.  I was probably 9 years old, and the one thing I wanted most of all was a diary.  A pretty simple gift, really, but I wanted it more than anything else on the planet.  It was very “A Christmas Story,” only my diary probably wouldn’t shoot my eye out.  Paper cut my eye out?  Maybe.

So Christmas morning finally arrived, and we opened what seemed like hundreds of presents.   Probably got a ton of clothes that I smiled politely at, then tossed them on top of my pile with disgust.  Its amazing how much I hated getting clothes back then, and how much I adore it now.  Oh child Brenda, you silly thing.

So anywho, we open up allllll of the presents, and alas, no diary.  Now I don’t know if this was super awesome strategy on Santa’s part, or if it just happened to work out this way, but suddenly it came to my attention that there was a final little gift, partially hidden under our snowman tree skirt.  Sure enough, it was addressed “To Brenda, From SANTA” (Santa continues to sign his name in all capitals at my house….curious.)  It was shaped like a BOOK.  I tore into the paper and there it was: a Little Mermaid Diary, with a little gold lock.  (A lock, I soon learned, could be tampered with pretty easily, I found the easiest method was a bobby pin.)  Melanie’s diary had a similar lock…mwahahaha.  Oh my goodness was I excited, I immediately vowed I would write in this diary EVERY DAY.  I went upstairs, dated my first entry as 12-25-1991 or something, and wrote my very first entry.  I can only imagine it went something like this:

Dear Diary,

I’m going to write in you ever day!  See you tomorrow!!

.

.

.

And I never wrote in the thing again.

I’m afraid this is kind of how my blog has been going as of late.  When I first started, I would do one post a week, sometimes more if I had some serious time to kill or if I had some really interesting story to tell.  I’m certainly not out of stories yet, I but I haven’t posted in months.

Well friends, this is about to change.  While some make new years resolutions about improving their health, financial status, mental stability, mine will be slightly less noble.  Screw losing weight, establishing a steady savings account or attempting to stop watching quite so many Gilmore Girls reruns:  I’m going to be better about blogging.

And since I didn’t get most (read: any) of you Christmas presents, you can just go ahead and count this as your Christmas present too.  Woo!

So since 2009, the “year of Brenda” as my good friend Jeri has named it, is now closing, I will leave you with a few of the highlights (good and bad) of the past 365 days, in no particular order.

- Slapping/Punching (we call it the Bear Claw) a stranger on the Chicago sidewalks for making fun of me and my friends

- Getting my nerd on in Chicago while browsing through the Harry Potter Exhibit and being a sneaky picture taker (VERY against the rules, btw)

- Meeting little Alexis Marie and already making Melanie mad by giving her a less-than-traditional nickname.  Aunt Brenda will not be told how to give a nickname, woman!

- Starting to date Mr. Devine, and continuing to annoy him with questions like “How do you not like cheese?”and “Really….how hard is it to land an airplane?  Could you fly that plane?  How about THAT one?  Do you ever get scared?”  and “Did your parents know that your name makes you sound like a porn star?”

- Going to Mexico with some of my bfff’s (3 f’s, mind you) and learning how to make a guac turkey, and that Jess has nice boobs (thank you, Mexican parasail salesman)

-Getting my very own apartment, and learning how to trap bugs of various sizes, as well as killing/bashing in the head of the occasional snake (It’s Snake Stopper and a shovel, btw.)

-Being introduced to what might be in my top three funny movies of all time (along with such greats a Super Troopers and Dumb and Dumber)….The Hangover.  (And I learned things too!  Like tigers’ preference for pepper over cinnamon, and that satchels are unisex, and can be used for carrying Skittles.)

-I will leave you with my favorite picture of me from 2009 (possibly very late 2008 but I’m just gonna go ahead and round up here.)  The year of Brenda was indeed a good one, let’s see if 2010 can compete.  Happy New Years, everyone!!

Como se dice shitshow?

So my super awesome cousin Sarah posted this on her blog (check out the blogroll, fools) and I figured I could follow suit for the following reasons:

1. I am trying to be better about posting

2. This reminds me of all the redic surveys I used to fill out back in junior high via email.

3. This is a way easy post and I kind of felt like cheating. I’ll try to keep it entertaining and fill it with random facts you probably don’t know about me.

So here….we……go!

A = Apples- love them raw, HATE them cooked. I’ll eat a sliced apple like nobody’s business, but put it in a pie and I want to gag. Something about the texture. Very strange.

B = B- my pseudo-nickname. I’ve never had a solid nickname that lasted me for very long, but B has stood the test of time. Generally reserved for my closest of friends, and Beyonce? I had it first, bia.

C = Cain- my last name. I was pretty much convinced that I would never love another last name half as much as I could ever love Cain. It’s short (great for filling out scantron sheets,) it’s at the front of the alphabet, and it’s biblical for crying out loud. (Named after a murderer but hey, bible is bible.) But THEN I met my current squeeze, Mr. Devine….my last name has been trumped.

D = Dooney Monster- my hamster. After a particularly bad breakup in the fall of 2006, I was at Meijer shopping for some comfort items. (Ice cream, beer, chip dip,) and I spotted this cute little furry hairball that begged me to take him/her home. (A rebound hamster…who woulda thunk it?) She lived for several years at one place or another, finally being adopted by aunt Shannon and slowly dying from a broken foot, we think. She was hours of entertainment, especially when she escaped and hid under the water heater. She was a bit of a daredevil, that Dooney.

E = EPIC!- This is the word I use to describe a night that can not be described by any other word. It involves mass quantities of alcohol (generally vodka,) and always involves at least one completely random act. (Examples: making out with a “mediocre” guy, trying to guess Papa John’s phone number at 3:00am, blackouts, brownouts, piano bars, “getting the meat,” <– not what you think, crashing a bachelor party, stealing seats on a party bus, clotheslining creepy guys, etc.) It is my FAVORITE party word and I will never love another word as much as I love “EPIC.“

F = Frank in the Tank- Nicole and I moved to the dorms of ISU and felt like we should get a pet, so we went to the local petstore and bought ourselves a beta. They were cheap, pretty, and had short life spans. Little did we know that the little booger would live for 4 YEARS. We loved our little Franklyn Karl Cainoberlein, may he rest in peace.

G = Google- I google EVERYTHING. I mean it, everything. Movie times, directions, symptoms, salaries, hairstyles, real estate, clothes, blogs…you name it, I’ve Googled it. (And that’s also why I clear my search history fairly often…nobody needs to see the specifics. Kind of embarrassing. Mortifying.

H = Hank Williams Jr- I lived in a little tiny farming community and thus my high school was full of nothing but little Podunk kids like me. At any school dance, there was one song that packed the dance floor like no other: A Country Boy Can Survive. It was our football “theme song” I guess, and people went nuts. I still know every word.

I = Ice Cream- favorite flavor at Coldstone? Cookie Doughn’t you Want Some, easy on the chocolate chips.

J = John- the name of my grad school teacher. The man is very nice and super smart, but I can NOT pay attention when there’s a computer sitting in front of me. I am currently blogging in class. Why am I in grad school again?

K = Kool-aid- still my favorite drink evah! (Besides beer, probably.) I very much doubt I will ever out-grow kool-aid, though now I use Splenda instead of sugar. Strawberry is my go-to choice, followed by any other “red” flavor. Orange or grape are the WORST!

L = Lice- I’ll admit to having lice once in my life, in elementary school. Gross, I know. I still consider it to be the WORST experience of my life. I had long thick hair down to my butt and trying to get rid of it without cutting my hair was damn near impossible. I spent countless hours with my mother combing through my hair and shampooing and combing and crying and sighing, it was seriously awful. To this day if I ever get any sort of twitch or itch on my head I’m convinced it’s lice and I look all over my scalp for several minutes before I can assume it was something else. Gross gross gross. I’m still ashamed to admit it!

M = Mutten Tag/Marmie- nicknames for my mother. Mutten Tag because all of us kiddies took German and we’re all weird and it sounds like “Guten Tag,” and Marmie because of Little Women. I’m sort of hoping her grandkids pick one of these instead of calling her Maw Maw or Gramma or the like.

N = Nougat- My friend Ben once told me he loved the nougat in a Snickers bar so very much that he would just prefer a bar made entirely of that. I told him to just buy a 3 Musketeers bar. He argued that it wasn’t the same kind of nougat. “What about Milky Way?” I asked. He said no. So we went out and purchased those 3 bars and had a blind taste test of just the nougat. Sadly, he was right, and Snickers nougat is totally different. Now you know!

O = Organism- In 7th grade, while reading aloud to the class from our science book, I accidentally pronounced the word “organism” as “orgasm.” (Did I even know what that was in 7th grade? I went to a Catholic school! We had “Family Life” not Sex Education!) I immediately realized my mistake, but decided to just push through and act like it didn’t happen. It haunts me to this day. No idea if anyone else even noticed, but it still makes me cringe.

P = Poop- I HATE talking about it. I hate even typing the word. As far as I’m concerned it should never be talked about in public EVER. My friends often use this information to torture me. My family is all the same way, apparently we were the only ones who were raised CORRECTLY!

Q = Q-Tips- I tolerate these cotton-topped death traps to clean out my ears, but I’m not comfortable actually touching the fluffy top with my fingers. Did I mention I’m terrified of cotton balls? The boys at Enterprise knew I was scared of Cotton Balls so they decided to torture me with them. UNCOOL (and kind of hilarious.) http://vimeo.com/2234307

R = Roger Rabbit- (As in Who Framed Roger Rabbit.) Growing up this movie taught me many things. It made me believe that Jessica Rabbit was THE hottest woman on the planet (cartoon or not, wowza) and that Christopher Lloyd was the scariest mother effer EVER! When his eyes bugged out of his head at the end when he got in that crazy cartoon high pitched voice, I think I died inside a little bit. Oh and when the cartoon shoe gets put in “The Dip” and slowly dies? HORRIFYING!

S = Sorority- Alright, Greek life gets a bad image, and a lot of it is probably pretty accurate. BUT, my sorority was still THE best thing that ever happened to me. I met some of my very best friends, we did tons and tons of charity work, partied like nobody’s business, and still had the highest GPA on campus. I’m way proud of my girls and super excited to see the baby squirrels at Homecoming this year!

T = toys- Growing up I wanted to play with one of two things: Barbies and My Little Ponies. In fact, Mom and Dad would sometimes give us an entire day to set up “BarbieLand” in the living room, and we would be allowed to leave our toys laying around alllllll day! I remember if a boy and girl were laying in their Barbie bed together, I always took their clothes off, cuz I thought that’s just what grownups did. My love for My Little Ponies was short lived when we jacked my little brother in the face when we stacked the 2 person swing from our playground w/ Ponies. Mom didn’t like that…I still say it was his fault for walking too close to the swing.

U = Underwear- I hate thongs. There. I said it. The thought that a thong could even be remotely comfortable is laughable. I’d rather go commando than wear one of those stupid things. It is boy shorts and cheekers all the way!

V = Vodka Brenda- an elusive creature (much like Drunk Jen,) who only comes out at weddings and certain EPIC nights. She must have at least 1 full day of recovery, for her hangover will be legen…wait for it…dary. She doesn’t get mean, like Vodka Jeri, but rather just makes a fool of herself in every way possible, even if there is “no vodka in this drink!!”

W = Windshield wipers- one of my biggest pet peeves on the planet is when your windshield wipers don’t have the appropriate setting for the amount of precipitation falling from the sky. Either they go too fast or too slow, and I can’t handle the crazy noise they make when scraping over a dry windshield, so if its just baaaaarely raining/misting, I’ll physically move the handle every few seconds so that the wipers run, so that I can control the speed. I never said it was a GOOD idea, but that’s what I do.

X = XXX (porn)- once while leaving my computer unattended, someone downloaded pterodactyl porn on my computer. Seriously. A cave woman getting it on with two dudes dressed as dinosaurs. I deleted it in my shock and horror, but I wish I hadn’t cuz come on, that’s hilarious.

Y = Youth- I remember looking at a 25 year old and thinking “Wow, 25 is soooooo old! By the time I’m 25 I’ll be married with kids and a house in the suburbs!” Yet here I am, on the cusp of 25, with none of those things, and THANK GOODNESS.

Z = Zzzzzzz (sleeping.) I have a tendency to sleep in class. In one particularly boring accounting class, I shouted the words “JERRY VANDYKE” to the entire group. Apparently the teacher had asked the class who the spokesperson for BigLots was, and while sleeping, I decided to answer. Can you imagine the TERROR I felt when I shouted “Jerry VanDyke” to a room full of people and had no idea why?! I still claim this as my most embarrassing moment. And yet I’m amazed my subconscious knew who Jerry VanDyke was, cuz I don’t think awake Brenda even knows who he is. Impressive, no?

Well there you have it, the ABC’s of me. Hope you learned a little something. I’m out, you stay classy planet earth….

~B