October 3, 2009
My kids are KILLIN’ me!!!!!!!!!!!
Tomorrow is my ‘little angel’s’ 3rd birthday. I bought her a Dora tv from Craigslist, but we didn’t have an extra Direct Tv receiver to put in her room and couldn’t afford to lease one for $69. So, I’ve been looking on Craiglist, and finally found a used Direct Tv receiver in Athens for $25. I went to Wal-Mart and shopped while the woman I was meeting took a shower and got ready to leave her house to meet me.
I left my husband (Robert) at home with our three kids….
Our toilet has been stopped up for 2 weeks. It wouldn’t flush properly, sometimes, not at all. He did figure out that if he plunged it enough to break up the solid ‘matter’ that it would flush somewhat. Apparently there was something lodged IN the toilet. I bought a snake from Home Depot, and that did no good at all. He said there wasn’t anything in the pipes anywhere, it was in the toilet itself.
When I returned home from getting the Direct Tv receiver, I walked in the kitchen and thought he was burning the pot of beans he was cooking. I could smell something burning. The beans were close to getting burnt, but they weren’t. So I looked around… the trash can was smoldering, smoke billowing out of it.
This is a PLASTIC trash can, mind you. I yelled for Dakota to go turn the water on outside and bring the water hose around the front of the house and Robert took the can outside.
Apparently my middle child decided to burn paper while his dad was in the bathroom taking the toilet up. Had I not walked in when I did…. oh boy, the house could have been on fire!
So ok, fire drama over. Kid got in trouble for burning paper.
I walked into the bathroom to see the toilet upside down in the bath tub. Joy.
I came in the kitchen to start cooking a ham, and Robert was busting the toilet to see what was lodged inside it. A MEGA BLOK! It was stuck in the bent part of the toilet. He said he touched it with his finger, and it fell. After using a snake, and plunging the stupid thing over and over didn’t work, touching it made it fall out.
Oh, by the way, this toilet probably isn’t even a year old. The old one was cracked down the side from the boys slamming the seat and lid shut so much!
Robert is having to buy a whole new complete toilet too, the tank bolt is rusted on one side, and he can’t get it off to use the same tank.
So, about $100 he said.
And… he was just laid off Thursday! Yay! Now that he’s out of work, it seems like we will get to spend money that we need to live on on just crazy, out of the blue crap that happens.
ARGH!!!!!!!!!! Sorry, needed to vent!!!!!!!!!!!!
I just wonder…. what will my kids destroy next?!?!?!
September 15, 2009
Tuesday’s WAHM of the Day
Hi, what’s your name? Kimberly Sebeck, CLD, CCCE
What type of business do you own? I am a doula, which is a professional birth partner. I also am a postpartum professional and assist families in the postpartun phase of having a baby. I also am a childbirth educator, so I teach prepared chilbirth classes, along with new parenting classes, breastfeeding classes and more. Much of my job is spent being a source of support and information for pregnant women until their “big day”.
In what city & state is this business located? Knoxville, TN, but I do travel to local areas.
What type of services do you offer? The services I offer are classes, one-on-one support during the labor and birth process, comfort measures, and postpartum services such as newborn care, breastfeeding support and advice, nutritional advice, light cooking, errand running, etc. I do also make some handmade baby items such as burp cloths, baby blankets and comfort items such as rice socks. Also I support local handmade businesses by other moms making these items. For moms not wanting a traditional baby shower, I also offer “birth blessings”, with alternative ideas such as henna belly painting and belly casts.
Kim's job... loving beautiful babies!
What does ‘doula’ mean? It’s a word from the Greek, meaning “Mother’s Helper” or “Mother’s Servant”.
What makes your business and/or your products different than your competitors?
One thing that I offer as opposed to other doulas in the area is overnight postpartum care. I will come to your home to help a new mom and family get as much rest as possible. I am also highly trained in postpartum depressions scenarios and moms on bed rest. For my childbirth classes, I offer private OR group classes. For moms on bedrest, I can even bring my class to them. After attending over 100 births, I have encountered many different situations and I keep myself up-to-date on countinuing education. I have a whole “bag of tricks” to make birth a wonderful experience!
What inspired you to start your own business? After the birth of my own daughter, I realize that as much as family and friends care, sometimes you just need someone who is there 100% to take care of YOU. I had already served as an “unofficial” doula to many of my friends and decided to make it official by taking my training and getting certified. Pregnancy and birth is simply my passion. I feel it is a special time to be cherished and honored.
Kim with her Daughter
How do you manage your schedule around your children?
Well, I do a lot of my work at night when the rest of the household is sleeping, and that includes when a woman goes into labor! The hours after school and before bedtime are sort of our sacred family time and I make sure to leave a love note for my daughter if I’m not going to be back in the morning and her stepdad is taking her to school.
How long have you been in business? This is my 11th year!
Are there any new products coming soon that we can get a sneak peek of? I do have some new workshops coming up, ones designed to help the postpartum family and also families that are blended families.
What is your web site link? www.myspace.com/knoxvilledoula
Anything special you would like to tell my readers about yourself or your business that I didn’t ask you? Having a doula at birth reduces the risk of a C-section by up to 50%, the need for pain medications by up to 50%, and shortens first time labors by a good 25%. If you would like to read more information about doulas than what I have given here, please go to www.cappa.net or www.dona.org.
Kim, thank you so much for the interview! I know you are very passionate about your job, and that you’re an awesome person! Thanks for taking the time to interview for my blog 🙂
August 19, 2009
My crazy day!
My day began with taking the boys to school, then coming home and feeding little miss THING. lol She’s two, and quite a handful!
I have been dreading going through the boys’ clothes and getting rid of things they can no longer wear. Well, today…. I gathered up the steam to just do it and get it over with!
I filled an entire twin sized bed with clothes my boys can no longer wear, piled about two feet high! WOW! I knew they had a lot of clothes they couldn’t wear, but I had NO idea there was THAT many.
I hung their jackets, long sleeved shirts, polo shirts and pants. I neatly folded their t-shirts, pajamas, underwear and shorts and placed them neatly in the dresser.
Then I had the bed full of clothes they can’t wear to deal with. What am I going to do with ALL these clothes!?!?! I called my son’s school and asked if they knew of any kids that NEEDED clothes. I mean, I can donate these to a thrift store and let them sell them, but I would much rather give them to needy kids. I know there are kids at my son’s school that wear raggedy, holey clothes to school. These clothes have been passed down from friends and my kids wore them, but there is still a lot of life left for someone who can’t afford to buy clothes.
While in the middle of doing the clothes, my mother in law gets released from the hospital from having knee surgery. My sister in law was taking her daughter to the doctor and couldn’t go get her mom. I had to wake Brookelyn up from her nap and take her to get “nanny”. It was a 45 minute drive, one way.
We got home, I put my mother in law in my bed to sleep. After all, she was pretty well doped up on pain meds.
I went and got the boys from the bus stop. Came home to my mother in law UP and walking around. She isn’t supposed to be left alone, but I had to get my kids.
I took my mother in law to pick up her medicines, took her by her brother’s to borrow his walker, took her by her daughter’s to get her apartment key, then took her home. I helped her to the couch and fixed her some ice cold tea before I left.
I came back home and washed more clothes. This is my third (I think) load for the day. I’ve already taken clothes to our closet twice today. I’ve put all the kids clothes neatly away (which I usually slack at because they won’t leave them folded & hung neatly).
It’s dinner time now. But…. because of my dishwasher SMOKING yesterday when it was running, it’s no longer in the house, and oh yeah… I have NO hot water in the kitchen. I can’t wash dishes without hot water. I can’t cook dinner without clean dishes. So… I have no idea what we’re eating tonight but I’m getting really hungry!
So my kids are going CRAZY and wild. Billy swept the kitchen floor (that’s his daily chore) and Dakota picked up the living room floor.
Ok, so there’s my crazy day in a nutshell… how was yours? lol
July 4, 2009
Happy Independence Day!!
I didn’t wake up in the best of moods. I’m still not awake, and still not happy about the way I woke up……..
My two year old daughter was sleeping right up against my back literaly as close as she could get. When I woke up, I heard my son say “Brookelyn peed in ——– bed”. (The ——– is the word I didn’t hear.) I said “she better not have peed in MY bed”, and my husband said, “she peed in her bed”. Ummm she WAS in MY bed… So ok whatever…. UNTIL I felt it.
In my bed there was a HUGE wet spot. Soaked way through the sheet to the mattress, of course. Oh, but that’s not all! The entire back of my shirt up to my shoulders was soaked too!! And my hubby’s boxers I was wearing were wet too! I had a pee bath in the middle of the night!!!!!!!
Robert tells me not to get up grouchy, it’s a Holiday. Well I for one didn’t like waking up in a pee soaked bed and pee soaked clothes. I did have a shower right before bed last night. It’s a good thing I was planning on taking another one before going to my brother in law’s today anyway.
We’re going Reese’s house to swim in their pool and have a huge Miller family cookout followed by going to the city of Kingston’s firework display.
The Miller family knows how to put on a cookout too. There are three families, three siblings and their spouse’s and children. There are also two grandmothers and one teen’s boyfriend and another teen’s girlfriend. So…. let me count… that’s 17 people. Then, there’s no telling who else may be there.
Everyone pitches in and brings food, and we always have a ton of food. We are taking 24 hamburgers & buns, 2 watermelons, 48 forks, 48 spoons, 2 bags of chips, homemade salsa, tortilla chips, cheese, lettuce, three 12 packs of drinks, and some beer to cook hubby’s bratwurst in.
I hope everyone has a great 4th of July and that you stay safe!
I’m going to take my shower then load the cooler and take it to fill it up with ice and drop it off at my sister in law’s. I don’t have room for it, so she’s going to take it in her truck for me.
June 21, 2009
Our Busy Weekend….
Yesterday was Dakota’s day to see Michael (his biological dad that he just met). When Dakota met Michael, it was just myself, Dakota, Michael, Jona (Michael’s girlfriend) and Raven, their daughter. This time, I took my other two kids to meet them.
Dakota has been wanting a skateboard for a LONG time. We really have nowhere for him to ride one here at home, but there are places we go that he can ride. There is also an awesome little park in Loudon that has a skate park inside with several big ramps for kids to skate on and do tricks on!
We met Michael, Jona & Raven at K-Mart yesterday, planning on buying skateboards for the boys. They were so excited when they learned what we were doing. I bought my son Billy a Spiderman skateboard and Michael bought Dakota one with skulls and flames on it.
We took all the kids to the park in Loudon so they could skate at the skate park. They had a blast!!! We stayed out there for hours. It was so extremely hot, but luckily we had a table in the shade and a cooler of drinks.
Today is Father’s Day! We didn’t really plan on doing anything much. I took my boys to K-Mart to pick Robert something out for the big day. They chose new swim trunks and a tank top, refill blades for his razor and a Reese’s Peanut Butter Brownie. He seemed happy with his gifts!
When we left out, I noticed that the neighbors that just moved out last night left their little dog!! The poor thing was sitting at the front door waiting for his masters to return home, but they never will. I felt SO bad for the little guy. He looks like a full blooded Chihuahua, but he’s a fat little thing. I walked down the road and put a harness & leash on him. It took a little coaxing, but he walked home with me. I brought him in and gave him some water. After all, it’s in the 90’s today and he’s been outside in the heat since they left him last night with NO food or water! I loved on him a while, which he really enjoyed! Then I was mean to him… I bathed him! He didn’t mind the scrubbing but he really disliked the water being sprayed on him! LOL After bathing the little booger, he acted as if he needed to go outside, so I opened the door and off he went. I was really worried he would go gome… and he did. 😦 Robert’s gone to the store, so I asked if he would stop by and pick Peppy up on the way home.
They also left a kitten we gave them a few weeks ago, and I brought him home too.
How cruel is it to leave helpless animals at a home you’re moving out of?? NO water, NO food, NO master, no one to pet them and love them. It’s so sad! Oh, and not to mention, the heat index was 105 yesterday! And it has been miserably hot today also.
Robert finally changed my brakes today!! YIPPIE! I just hope they stop squeaking and hope they aren’t as ‘grabby’ when I use them.
I was planning to cook pinto beans, meatloaf and cornbread for Robert for Father’s Day today, but when I walked down the road to get the animals, the beans burned 😦 . So… we’re having meatloaf, brocolli & cheese & fried potatoes instead. Yes, my honey likes country cookin’ lol
Anyway… there’s my big adventurous weekend!
June 18, 2009
Let’s play ‘Catch Up’
Ok, so since I last blogged, here are a few things that have happened:
I purchased a Durango in Atlanta, GA. My real dad lives about 20 minutes from where I bought it, so I went to visit him! We went out to lunch and talked a while before he rushed me off (to miss the crazy Atlanta Friday traffic). It was very strange to meet him after never knowing him! But at the same time, what a relief!! By the way, I LOVE my Durango!!
My business partner Summer and I have started a new web site. I can’t tell you anything about it as of yet… we want it DONE and open for business before we spill the beans! We have over 1000 products loaded in the site right now, with probably that many or more to still add! It’s going to be HUGE!
I joined an awesome local Knoxville, TN forum for Knoxville and surrounding area moms. They get together and have playdates with the kiddos, mommy’s nights out and so much more! If you’re local to Knoxville, TN you should totally join us! www.KnoxvilleMommies.com .
Thanks to the ladies at Knoxville Mommies, I did my first ever Tupperware party! It was awesome to do a party! I also had one the next week hosted by someone else.
I’ve been trying to come up with ways to market my Tupperware business lately. I found a local Mary Kay consultant and we met to discuss ways to market our businesses together. I was really kind of disappointed in our meeting, because I wasn’t there to join her company, or try to recruit her. But she totally tried the ENTIRE time to recruit me.
My husband FINALLY got a job!! He had joined the Electrician’s Union and they finally called his name to go to work! He’s close to home, so that’s very awesome! The job was supposed to be a 4-6 week job, but MAY last until September!
We told my son that he has “another dad and sister”. He hasn’t seen his real dad since he was 2. My husband has raised him since he was 17 months old, and is the only dad my son has ever known. My son has a sister that he’s never known about and we felt it was time to tell him so they could meet and grow up together. My son thinks he’s lucky to have two dads lol I took him to meet them weekend before last. He went fishing and swimming with his real dad, Michael and his other sister, Raven. He seemed to really enjoy himself!
Speaking of my son, Dakota…. he had to go to summer school! He has the rest of this week and next week and he’s done. I don’t really see that it’s helping him because he LIKES summer school. He doesn’t even like ‘real’ school… so it can’t be helping much lol
My dad is being forced to move. His landlord has breast cancer and has been footing the bill for her son’s condo which she can’t afford to keep paying for. Her son needs a place to stay, so she’s kicking my dad out so her son can have the house. I went to help him pack and clean the house some this past weekend. I arrived on Friday and spent the night and left Saturday evening to come home. My dad and I have been talking on the phone on a regular basis, getting to know one another. I’ve asked him to come move closer to me, and although he said he probably wouldn’t, I think he’s really considering it.
It’s Summertime! I’ve been tagging along with my sister in law and her group of teenagers (two of them are hers, the others are girlfriends/boyfriends to her kids and their friends). We’ve had a blast! It’s been SO hot here, and humid too! It would just be wrong not to go swimming!
My best friend and I of 18 years decided to get matching tattoos! We got a heart with tribal swirls on the sides. Mine is on the bottom front of my left leg, and hers is at the bottom front of her right leg.
I have two insect bites on my knee that have gotten infected. I went to the doctor yesterday to have them checked out, and I have a staph infection! The doc gave me two antibiotics for the infection. He also checked my blood sugar, and I told him I haven’t been taking my diabetic medications as I should be. He told me he will probably end up putting me on insulin. 😦
Ok… I *Think* that sums up most of what’s been going on in my life since I haven’t been blogging regularly! Please comment if you feel the need! (Maybe I will feel like someone actually reads my blog and will be inspired to keep writing! LOL)
January 15, 2009
Mystery Hostess Campaign!!
Mystery Hostess Campaign!
I need to fulfill a sales requirement I agreed upon when I joined UBAH. My husband has been out of work since November, so I cannot personally purchase anything to help myself out.
So, I am holding a Mystery Hostess Campaign!! Any orders emailed to me at hillbillymoma77@yahoo.com will have a chance to win the Mystery Hostess specials! (You can win FREE books!! Amount dependent on orders I get)
Visit my UBAH site here–> www.ubah.com/X2566 and email your orders! Easy Peasy!!
I accept Paypal or Revolution Money Exchange as payment!
**Don’t forget to enter the FREE Book Drawing on my site while you’re there! You could win $50 in books totally FREE just for signing up for the drawing!**
December 14, 2008
I can’t wait…
…to see my kids faces on Christmas day when they open their gifts.
Santa told me what he’s getting them *wink*
Santa got the boys both a Leapster hand held video game system with one game each. Leapster teaches kids spelling, math, reading, etc. So I hope they will have fun and learn some cool things at the same time.
I bought them an old school Nintendo 64 off of Ebay! They scratch up cd’s, computer games & dvd’s so badly that I decided old school cartridge games would be safer with them.
The system I got has 18 games with it, plus I bought another game they will love at the flea market and a couple more off Ebay. They will be all set to play their hearts out!
I think they will LOVE the video game systems…. even though the N64 is a tad outdated… it will be new to them and they’ll have a blast!
We got Dakota this awesome graphics thing for the computer. You hook it up to the pc and there’s a thing he can draw on that puts his art into the screen for him to see. We also got a printer to go along so he can print what he wants to. (He’s our little artist!!)
Billy asked for this art thing… not even sure what it is, but we got it for him.
I think they’ll be happy… although Santa nor mommy & daddy got what they REALLY wanted. (Billy wanted the Night Vision Goggles $60, and they BOTH wanted a D-Rex for $150… OMG!) Santa nor mommy & daddy could afford all that. I hope they’re not too disappointed!
November 22, 2008
Cleaning House
It’s not something I enjoy doing. I hate to clean house.
My boys’ room is NASTY. I make them clean it, yes. But they don’t REALLY clean it. We took the single twin bed out of their room and are going to separate the bunk beds. This way, it will be easier for me to move the beds around to clean under them.
Have you ever moved a set of solid wood bunk beds to clean under them? OMG! I liked to have killed myself the last time I did it.
They didn’t want the bunk beds pulled apart. But they aren’t the ones moving them to clean under them either, they can deal!
Anyway, waiting for Robert to bring the tank for the carpet shampooer from his mom’s house so I can BLEACH the carpet in their room.
Hunter green carpet, getting bleached. Yes, the smell will kill me, but GOD I hope it cleans their carpet better than carpet shampoo does!!!
Wish me luck…………
September 17, 2008
I missed him
My husband has been in Georgia working for over a week. He only came home yesterday because of his uncle being in the hospital.
I got offline when he came home. And even though I had to wait on him hand and foot (he was tired from working, then driving home for 5 hours, and taking his mom another hour to the hospital and visiting his uncle, then another hour home), I enjoyed laying around on the couch with him watching tv.
I got to cuddle up with him. I miss that. I miss him being in bed with me every night. When he’s gone, I stay up way too late. I don’t like going to bed alone in that huge bed. It’s cold. It’s lonely. It’s just not right.
I woke up and took the boys to school. Brookelyn woke up, so I fed her, gave her some medicine because she’s feverish and has a runny nose. She watched Elmo and now is playing. She spotted her daddy! “Daddy seepin’!?” she says lol
I’m waiting for her to be ready for her morning nap so I can crawl back in bed with my honey. I know by the time she’s ready to lay down, he’ll be ready to get up though, so I doubt I’ll get to cuddle with him before bedtime tonight.
All About Shannon 