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.

Will Write For Food

"Modern poets write against business, poor things, but all of us write for money." ~ Robert Frost

To learn how you can obtain reprints or first run work for your website or publication, or to bring her lively brevity and wit to any small group or club presentation, please contact lifeoutloud@comcast.net. 

She also knows a thing or two about digital scrapbooking.

And bats. 

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.