Kymberly Foster Seabolt - The very public blog of a not-so-private life

I can relate ...

When you care enough to send the VERY best ...

To Mike, from Kassie. She made this card back in May and carefully saved it for this special day.The "Happy and Healthy and Active" line sounds like a PSA for some Government Nutrition and Fitness Program but it really is her sentiment - in her own words.

I have made no bones about the fact that I did not, in fact, buy a house. I bought a porch that just happened to have a house ATTACHED to it. That's how that worked out.

Some years I feel quite frisky come spring and I drag out the hose and the buckets of warm soapy water and the scrub brushes and I spent the first passingly warm (but not warm enough) Spring day scrubbing all the dirt and lint and cobwebs and bugs off my porch until it gleamed. Then I would immediately realize it needed painted and (sometimes) I would do that.

This was not one of those years. I scrubbed it, yes. But I just can't get motivated to paint when it's only 60 degrees and apparently going to be damp all summer.

Instead I'll just enjoy my photos of my porch of year's past and close my eyes and pretend it looks that way now.

Mr. Wonderful in the Flesh

Is it wrong to lust after you son's Boy Scout Leader?

Okay, now what if he's your HUSBAND?

Mr. W. In the flesh. I'd marry him again. Yes I would.

Real Mothers

This is an excerpt from cribchronicles.com. I couldn't have said it better myself.

Real moms sometimes have children you can’t see.

this goes out to all the mothers who don’t get tagged for things like this. the ones who’ve given birth but had no baby to take home. who sit on the sidelines of conversations about back labour, with stories to tell but no room to participate. who have a little gravestone or an urn or just a memory in the place of a child. who have adoption papers saying “relinquish all rights…” or ultrasound photos but nothing more. or who have two smiling school photos on their desk, but really, inside, count to three when you ask “how many kids do you have?”

this is for all the real moms with children invisible to the eye.

Happy Birthday Baby Girl

Today is my baby's 10th birthday. This means she and I are getting closer and closer in age every day.

New profile pic!

I'm calling it my "MySpace Face." If you are online at all you'll see so many people posting this type of pose as their "avatar" (aka profile pic).

To achieve this awesome and oh-so-realistic effect you want to hold camera at arm's length.

Turn flash on really bright (to best achieve that deer-in-the-headlights-look).

Purse lips in a vain attempt to look sultry (particularly effective if you are, say, 14 years old and wouldn't  know sultry if it bit you in the, well, somewhere).

Post online and swear it looks just like you. Just a natural snap taken on the spur of the moment.

Extra points if your username is something like nobodyunderstandsme or MissUnderstood. 

But weight, there's more ...

Look, I don't want to frighten anyone but you know how when you are growing up and into your, say, 30's all the slightly older-than-you friends like to make ominous warnings about how you just wait, age is going to slap you silly one of those days? No? That only happens to me? Okay, note to self: you run with a bad crowd. Anywho, if you  have friends like this, or just the vague notion that despite your best intentions, delusions, and flat-out denial you are, probably, going to succumb to aging, have I got news for you?

 Aging bites! Seriously. I turned, ahem, 40 last November. And whereas I thought my friends were kidding when they said the metabolism takes a nose dive - they were so not kidding. Why did they not take me? Shake me? Force me to subsist on spinach and endive alone? Come January I hopped on the scale to figure out why the heck all my pants were shrinking? What was that about? And lets just say the numbers were not kind. I normally am a big fan of rising numbers - stock values, bank accounts - but high numbers are not your friend when it comes to debt - or your backside. I'm just sayin' 

So I embarked on a little healthy-diet revamp. It's worked before right? Except, this time after eating healthy - whole grains, healthy fruits and vegetables, and so on and so forth - I have to date lost two pounds. Maybe. That's if I remember to remove my wedding rings - and socks.

So I am now on a quest to figure out why weight loss is so much HARDER these days? WHY??? And, if one is going to carry extra weight, why that weight doesn't plump out the wrinkles? It seems the least age could do?

This one's for the yaysayers ...

This is the most excellent article EVER espousing a skill that far too many of us (particularly of the female, mother variety) simply do not utilize enough - the power to say "no" (or, more graciously "no thank you.")

OnSimplicity.net is sharing an amazing primer on How to say "No."

Now showing ...

Since this week's column is all about a boy and his barn turned movie-plex I thought a visual aid of the awesome was in order.

Behold the work in progress! Here the children are being menaced by a giant "Sharpay" from High School Musical. Good times or therapy of the future? You be the judge.