And with Austin this year here:

Friends, never let it be said that I am too full of myself to hide the less than attractive photos of myself...it's what keeps me real and in touch with the people.

Anyway, read the other post if you want to know exactly WHY I didn't leave Chattanooga as planned on Wednesday. No, here it is Saturday--NINE frigging days after I left home for a 4.5 day jaunt, and I'm preparing to leave. You can imagine how thrilled W. is with me a this point. He's a good egg no matter how much I bitch about him. Frankly, no matter how much he's complained about me being gone, I think he and Five have actually probably enjoyed having the sty, er house to themselves for the whole week plus.

Since Sarah left, I've had lots of free time. I could have gone out w/ a friend on Thursday night, but I just didn't feel like it. Everyone that I know had to do mundane things such as work or spend time with family, so I had lots of solitude. I went to see Sex and the City. I ate at Panera a lot. I stayed up faaaaar too much (last night was freakish and I went to sleep at SIX a.m.) and watched all sorts of my favorite cable rerun shows, Top Chef, and Regis and Kelly. Good times, but pretty damn boring after awhile.

I miss having something to actually DO. This is a clear sign that the Wellbutrin is kicking in, I think. So, I'm heading home in just a few--meeting the parents in Murfreesboro to pick up my kids on their way home from their trip to Wyoming because I don't want to wait for them to drive all the way here and then leave. I'm that ready to just be home. Weird, but true.

I will update here more often, but if I disappear other places, you understand why. I have summer school for two weeks and many, many weeks worth of housework to deal with. Plus, I have to begin my holy-shit-I'm-almost-40 workout regimine so that I don't cry when I see pictures of the unfortunate event. To quote a smart lady, "Be safe!"

Labels: announcements, domestic stuff, good times, mr kim, my life, pictures, travel

Then read about MY day yesterday--Thursday, June 4, which is evidently the day of Satan.
After staying up waaaay too late, I got up at 4 to get sarah and the girls off to Calgary. She stayed here with me because it's closer to the airport (I'm in Hixon at my parents' house). I went out to check my van because we were afraid that a light had been left on last night--it had not, but I left the keys in it like a dumbass. turned to the kill-the-battery-position and then left them there for close to an hour.

We get outside with the girls to leave and my fucking van wouldn't start. Igo tearing around the house and get dad's Jeep keys, start the jeep--thinking that surely he has jumper cables or we can drive it if we have to. I can't get the back doors unlocked for some reason, so i get out--with it running--and shut the door. as SOON as I shut it, I realised that I had locked it. so now the Jeep is running with the keys locked in it AND the van won't start. Sarah is starting to panic and the girls are getting freaked.

I had to call Daddy and wake him up---3.55 a.m. mountain time. He told me where to find more jeep keys AND that he doesn't have jumper cables here, so I can't jump it off. there are no backseats in the Jeep and it is loaded with tools and stuff. Well, if you know my parents, then you know that means there is only one vehicle left to choose from (techincally, there are three, but the VW Thing isn't running and there's no way in hell I'd drive the 64 1/2 Mustang....that leaves the 15 passenger white Dodge van affectionately known 'round these parts as Big Ugly. It's a leftover from my parents' antique show hauling days and they still use it for camping. I have never driven it before--for good reason.

Sarah and I unloaded her four lead-filled suitcases, along with the biggest jogging stroller on the planet, all the kids' stuff and piled into Big Ugly, which I then proceeded to drive to the airport. My parents' driveway isn't long, but it's got a weird curve, so I always turn around and drive out 'normal' in my own car. Given my luck of the day, I wasn't about to chance turning around--I'm sure I would have hit my van, the house or backed off the edge of the driveway, so with Sarah hanging out one door and me the other, I successfully made it out fhe drive in reverse.Yay for me! Once we got out of the driveway, it was a piece of cake, but my nerves were shot. Got to the airport in plenty of time.

I returned home. Tried my van...it started. I was like, WTF?, but glad that I wouldn't have to bother anyone. Oh, silly Kim, if you'd only known.

I went back in and cleaned up, washed the sheets that we'd used, showered, dressed, packed, etc. Around 10.45 or so I went out and tried the car again--it started. Then, like a complete Simpleton, I turned off the van, plugged my cell phone into the car charger and left the motherfucking side door open. Didn't even cross my feeble mind that I should have left it running.

You can guess what happened next---the damn thing was deader than hell when I went back out. I gave it an hour. Still nothing, so I had to call Aunt Barbara to come jump me off. Bless her heart, she came right over and we managed to get it running. Whew. Off to home.

Or not.

After driving all around southeastern Tennessee, the Check Transmission message started blinking at me and my overdrive light began to flash as I drove down Amnicola Highway. Even a mechanical ignoramous such as myself knew that this was bad. I found a place to pull over, called W. in a panic. He said to check the trans. fluid and add some. (Sidenote--my van had been driving oddly all weekend, but I didn't really put it all together at the time). I made it to a Conoco, which didn't carry the fluid, but I checked my level there and I was almost totally out. Yikes.

Drove a little bit further, praying all the way that the transmission wouldn't just lock up on me. Made it to a Chevron. Bless the lovely man who worked there. He called me "Sunshine" and helped me put the fluid in, check everything. I felt confident that the worst was behind me.

I? am notorious for being inept at judging the future and this? was another example.

I start driving down Amnicola again and get to almost the same exact spot and the frigging transmission light comes on. Fuck me. I managed to pull over and drive up a block or so to an empty parking lot...this involved going up a hill and I wasn't entirely sure I was even going to make it, but I did. I got out and checked. Damn fluid was empty. I looked under the van for the obvious and yes, there where even I, Kim the Automotive Moron, could see it was transmission fluid flowing freely out and making an impressive puddle on the pavement. The black asphalt pavement. The black asphalt pavement that was super heated because it was about 95 degrees outside and there wasn't a lick of shade.

More panicked calls. Clearly I wasn't going anywhere in the van. I'm smart like that. After much, much cursing and such, I had to call Aunt Barbara yet again to come get me. As I waited for her, I got hotter and hotter. I swear I have never sweated so much in my whole entire life. I had sweat rolling down the backs of my legs. Nasty.

To make this incredibly long story a little shorter, I will spare you the details about trying to figure out where to take my car. I knew that the Ford dealership was my last resort because those folks are slow as Christmas and dumber than shit. After calling like a million people that live in and around Chatanooga, friend from high school, David Poe, found me a place to take it, but they didn't advertise transmission work. I was going to call them and see what they suggested, but then my dad remembered that the name of the place where he had the Mustang worked on is called Mr. Transmission. Needless to say, my search for a mechanic was over.

So here I sit in my parents' house with pretty much nothing to do. Car was towed today to Soddy Daisy and will hopefully be repaired cheaply and quickly. I'm just going to stay here until the weekend when the kids get back from their trip out West with Mom and Dad. And I'll probably be driving the Jeep home, which makes my back and knee hurt just thinking about it--stick shift, no frills, three hour trip. Ugh.

I have been to Walgreens and bought mascara and lipstick because they were on sale. Had a prescription for Tramadol transferred here so I won't be forced to go seek out drug dealers w/ Percocet or Demerol downtown. I'm going to ice and heat my back and just listen to the silence for a couple of days. And try not to go bonkers in the process.

So unless you ate accidentally live slug for breakfast or you peed yourself in public yesterday, consider your day much better than mine.

Labels: dumb shit I do, my life, pictures, ramble, rant, travel

1. My neice gave birth at 21 weeks this morning. Needless to say, the baby did not survive. While a baby was positively the LAST thing this child needed (she's 20 and already has a 5-year-old with mega special needs), I am so sad that a beautiful baby girl is an angel now.

2. Tomorrow my mini-me turns nine. NINE. I just do not see HOW this is possible; I mean, come on, there is no way that I am anywhere near old enough to have a nine-year-old as one of my 'little' boys. If he's nine, that means Sam is seven, which means I am..........shit. Old, that's what I am. Here are Jay and I in a self-portrait at the state fair back in September on some ride that nearly shook our livers out. BTW, that's not my finger in front of me, even though it looks like it is. I'm just doing the Myspace duck lip look...he's got the gangsta fingers flyin'.

3. My school collects aluminum pull tabs. Sorry, Estee. It's not a legend.

4. I like wine. A lot. I wish I had more money for it.

5. The people who make policy in education in Tennessee, as well as at a national level, are buffoons. As long as education is a political issue, it will continue to be mired in b.s. Our state is now going to require FOUR years of math and science. Okay. I can almost, sort of, live with that. But the fourth math? Must be higher than Algebra II. Um, okay. That leaves trig, calculus, pre-calculus or statistics. That also means that everyone has to take Algebra II. Quick, think back to high school--do ya think everyone in your class could have/would have passed Algebra II? Uh, not just no, but fuck no. Yet the PTB seem to think that kids have magically gotten smarter over the generations and will just embrace higher-order math skills because they have to. Yeah, right. Their asses will be dropping like flies...hello, NCLB target list. WOOT!

6. I need someone to create a viable protein pill so that I can live off of popcorn and Lorna Doones. Get to work on that, mmmkay smart peeps?

7. I actually had a reason to come post, but I cannot for the life of me remember what it was.

8. Did I mention that I love wine? That probably explains number 7.

9. W. made me chocolate chip cookies. He's ridiculously good to me.

10. I did not get my living room clean per the previous post. I did get the bathroom cabinet and counter and drawers cleaned up and the kitchen sort of straightened. It was cloudy and cold and gloomy and I ended up succombing to the pull of the aforementioned domestic epicenter.

11. For some reason I am leaning back as I type this. Turning my head to the right, too. I'm almost cross-eyed and in a backbend while I sit here. I do believe that it is due to numbers 7 and 4 and thus, I must go to bed.

Labels: all the cool kids like Dweeze have blogs, inebriation, kids, mr kim, pictures, sad, who doesn't love a list

This was taken on December 29, so I still had stitches and quite a bit of swelling around the actual knot. It looks less scabby now and the bruising that you can sort of see on the lower right and swelling that is all around the top left are gone. Homer is much more red now for some reason (I suppose because of all the blood that's under there?) and is mushier sometimes. Other times, he's rock-hard and really sore.

The side view is a little wanky looking because of all the swelling--this ridiculously unflattering shot makes it look as if I don't have a kneecap. That swelling has gone way down, and that actually makes Homer stick out more from the side now than he did in this pic because all the puffiness around him is gone. Damn, I need to go tan.

The ortho says that it can take two weeks (which would be Thursday) or so to diminish. I can't imagine how it will be gone by then.

Homer is my body's way of reacting to the removal of a Baker's cyst that was evidently quite large. I had six stiches to close the incision, and that is, from all I've been told, a big ass incision for a Baker's cyst. Lucky me, right? The only upside is the lovely Demerol. I'm down to one dose a day now--just at night or after lots of walking and bending. Sitting at my desk all day today really did a number on him--Homer doesn't like being crushed when I cross my legs or sit with them bent, but he likes to wait and remind me of that two or three hours later when he grips my leg in paralyzing spasms and throbbing pain when I walk. He calls in all his fluid friends and they have a party around my kneecap. Good times, good times...I just invite Demerol and plant myself on the couch.

Now, admit it--you came to the blog purely out of morbid curiousity. Reveal yourself in the comments if you aren't too grossed out by the image.

Labels: narcotics, pain in general, pictures, whine

sam and me on the first day of school. this is before I took the reds out of my hair (and covered my atrocious roots).

Labels: hair stuff, pictures, sam

soooooo, i got my hair cut. and when i say cut, i mean serious, no-holds-barred, shorter than my sons' in the back, cut. i was just ready for a change and i decided to embrace my inner posh and go long in front, short in back. i wanted it more like hers but my bangs aren't long enough to pull that off yet, so we did it shorter on the sides and in the back--this way it should grow out fairly smoothly.

anyway, when i got home, i had some serious roots and higlight gaps because she cut a lot off the top and we sort of changed the part. no problem-i always have highlights and/or color around, so i just whipped out the highlights and fixed the problem. or so i thought. i didn't look at the back in the full light and it never even dawned on me that the majority of the color on the back of my head ended up on the floor of the shop (i'm not always brilliantly logical irl). today, sam was checking out my hair and he got very excited.

how cool! your hair is brown like mine in the back!

yeah, sam, really cool. and now i've got to color--but i just did highlights, so if i color over them, i'll lose them and have to do them again--and i really like them right now. damn, damn, damn.


photo--not particularly flattering, but you can see how short the hair is.

Labels: hair stuff, pictures, sam

I posted myself on OT today for the first time ever. I had to sit and think about it for a long time before I did it because once upon a time, sleeeve and I had a bet (if you don't know sleeeve then this will be pointless--sorry). It came about in the bar one night when we were discussing age. His age was one of several deep dark secrets that he guarded fairly closely--such as his name, where he worked, etc. Anyway, somehow we came up with this bet where I told him that I could find out his full name and age before he could find a picture of me online. It sort of grew from there.

I took all pictures of me down everywhere that was even remotely public. He would try to trick me or other people into letting him win. He actually almost DID win one night when he hacked into my yahoo mail totally on accident while we were IM'ing. Because he has ethics and the like, he automatically signed out (I wish I still had the archive of that chat. It was hysterical when he realized that he had figured out my insanely easy password). If he'd just looked, there were a couple of emails sitting right there in the inbox from sheila labeled PICTURES or something like that. They were from a concert in Memphis we'd been to.

I never posted a picture of myself anywhere he could get it and all my friends who might have one were sworn to uphold the agreement. His solicitations on my blog requesting photos were never successful and I was equally unlucky in my quest, although I did get fairly close on some stuff thanks to my super-sleuthing skills, lmao.

And then he just disappeared on me. Gone. I'm not sure what happened--life, I'm sure. He had a girlfriend and there was a lot going on at work. We went from emailing frequently and chatting every weekend to once every couple of weeks to nothing. No idea what's going on with him or anything.

So, feeling very nostalgic and being absolutely immersed in photos from the past few days of school-related things with my seniors, I decided to just give him the win and post a picture. It was harder than I thought it would be, oddly enough. I'd put pics on my myspace for a few months, but that was pretty private. Putting one on OT just sort of sealed the deal. I guess I can post one here now, too. No sense in "hiding" anymore.



On the Tube in London with a student. Excuse the dire need for powder.

Labels: getting old, good times, inquiring minds, pictures