| "The author's unique view of the world through her experiences is very funny, truthful, and thought provoking." |
Bio - The Short of it:
Kari Breed, writer, photographer, poet and housewife is brilliantly gifted
with averageness, strives ferociously for mediocrity and is a genius in the
vast and dark recesses of her own imagination. She has lived abroad, and
is a broad, and currently resides in Texas where everything really is big,
except for a lot of things that are very, very small. She is married to a silly,
tolerant and handsome man who enjoys junk food and online gaming a
little too much. When not overeating, writing, procrastinating or plotting the
demise of the world, she enjoys extensive forays into the vast and
bottomless pit of her own despair.
Bio - The Long of it:
I was born a coal miner’s daughter. Ok, not really. I was actually born the
daughter to my parents. According to my mother, the story of my birth
goes something like this: “It was the first snow of winter. I told your father it
was time, but he didn't want to get his lazy ass off the sofa and told me to
wait till tomorrow. I had to get your brother dressed and take him next door
to Dell’s to watch him. When we got to the hospital, I only got two drags off
my cigarette when the nurse came and got me. All the way to the room,
the nurse kept yelling, ‘Don’t push! Don’t push!’ We barely made it into the
room. The umbilical cord was wrapped around your throat. When I brought
you home, your brother ran out the door yelling, ‘My baby’s been born! My
baby’s been born!’”
And that’s pretty much the way the story goes.
It was hard for me to give up smoking after my birth, but I did it. They didn’t
have any such nonsense as The Patch back then, so I had to go cold
turkey. I cleverly substituted a stogie with my thumb, which I sucked until I
was ten years old – It was that good. When I did start smoking again, at
14, it reminded me of a warm, snuggly dark place where I could have a few
thoughts to myself.
My childhood was pretty middle-class normal, except for some fist-fights
with other kids and getting beaten up by my friends because I asked them
to share their candy with me. I think one of them is a lawyer now. But I’ll
always remember little Timmy as the kid who burned the limbs off a daddy-
long-leg. His little cohort, Chrissy, I nearly married when I was about
seven, but instead of going down the stairs to the basement where all the
neighbors were gathered, I stranded him at the altar, throwing off my veil
and hiding under the coffee table in the living room, crying “I’m not ready
to get married!” This remained my daily mantra until I was 31.
My love of boys continued throughout my youth and became compulsive
after my father died. I was 12, and it was his third heart attack. He must
have felt like such a failure, having tried it twice before unsuccessfully. He
was trying to live up to his own father’s standards, who died when my
father was still a young man. My brother came damn close four years ago,
but chickened out at the last minute, just before they were about to impale
him with an adrenaline needle like they did to Uma in Pulp Fiction. I guess
he jumped up and cried, “Uncle!” then he and all the EMT’s stood around
laughing and slapping each other on the back. At least, that’s how I like to
imagine it.
During my teen years, I discovered alcohol, rock music, rebellion and the
art of being cool. I started smoking cigarettes again (after the womb) to
impress a guy I recently was informed blew his brains out all over his wife.
Apparently they had stepped up into the Big Joyful World of Heroin
Addiction while I was busy getting all of my own vices under control.
My first forays into alcohol involved stealing bottles of Cold Duck out of my
mother’s liquor cabinet. My friend and I would share a bottle in the woods
then walk around singing, Metal Health (Bang your head! Wake the dead!
Metal health will drive you mad!), only we only knew that one line. But what
did we care? We were drunk! Then we would bury the other half of the
bottle under some pine straw and then walk around for a long time the
next day trying to find it.
I started drinking at 14 and quit drinking at 14, after sampling every single
bottle in the cabinet. My mother was a pack rat, so you can imagine what a
concoction of vomit this created when it all finally came back out onto the
kitchen table. My cousin was visiting with me at the time, and she finally
dragged me up the stairs just before my mother came home from work, but
not before Peter Jacobson came over and watched me dry heave with my
head wedged under the bottom step of the staircase. Peter Jacobson was
the most gorgeous, coolest guy in school, and this would be the equivalent
of Brad Pitt watching you crap in your pants and then rolling around in it.
I started drinking again after two years, chasing a free beer with a soda
until I graduated to just plain beer and then became someone you might
hear about in a George Thorogood song. Some people’s personal
timelines are ordered by headings such as, College Years, Working at the
Bank, and Before Baby, but mine are ordered under categories like Jack
Daniels, Jägermeister and Southern Comfort. Many of my memories are
dotted with images of random friends holding my ankles while I attempted
rolling head over heels down staircases. I was a silly drunk, thankfully, so I
kept all my friends.
I always had trouble holding down a job and worked for a short time at a
deli, a pharmacy, bagging groceries, an art supply store, a vet clinic, a
burger joint, a title company, two horse stables, a gym, designing graphics
and delivering pizza. I also once worked for a company that produced porn
magazines – Risqué (for men) and Savage Male (for gay men). They also
ran phone sex lines, and one of the girls gave me a free sample of some
slurping sounds. It was disgusting, and it’s one of the few random sounds I
still remember from my past. Perhaps the funniest thing about this job is
that my mother got it for me, and she worked there, too. My grandmother
once asked her if they made her pose for the magazine, and she said yes,
but they put the pictures in Savage Male to remind them to be thankful
they’re gay.
Only two years after I was legal to drink, I quit. I was tired of feeling tired,
and I went on a health spree, quitting drinking, smoking, caffeine and
refined sugar – all at the same time. And, boy, did that make me feel like
hell. That was 13 years ago, and I haven’t stopped reeling yet.
Occasionally I will binge on sodas, coffee and sugar, and then deeply
regret it, lying to myself that I will never do it again.
I have moved 19 times in my 36 years, which has given me a very serious
case of feeling unsettled. That and the Mexican food I had two nights ago.
I've lived in Michigan, Georgia, North Carolina, Germany and Texas. The
one thing that all of this has taught me is that, aside from architecture and
railways, every place is pretty much the same, provided it has a Wal-Mart,
a good home improvement center and pizza.
I've been married for five years and have learned a lot of horrible things
about myself, like my desire to guilt-trip and the belief that I inherently
deserve more than half the bed. The most horrifying and hopeful
discovery has been that I am in charge of either making myself miserable
through negative thinking or making myself feel better through the
strategic use of chocolate.
My hubby and I are really into home improvement, which has its good side
and its bad. The good side is that we’re cheap labor and our house gains
value with every project. The bad part about it is the aches and pains and
the fact that the projects, in actuality, go a heck of a lot slower than all the
brilliant ideas we dream up and antagonize each other with every day. I
find myself feeling tired every time he comes up with a new idea. It turns
out that you can’t do everything all at the same time no matter how hard
you try.
It has taken me many years to finally admit that writing is a real career
choice. I have spent a huge amount of time dreaming of doing it but
perfecting the art of procrastination instead. Even though I have under my
belt a humor book, a children’s story, a screenplay and over 600 poems, I
still struggled with the idea that maybe I can do it. One of these days I may
even sucker some people into reading my stuff.
Perhaps the hardest part about writing is treating it like it’s a real job and
showing up for work every day. The good news about this is that my
husband is the only person who gets offended if I don’t bother to bathe,
and he’s legally bound to me, so it would be a pain in the butt for him to
change the status quo. The secret to marriage, I am discovering, is that
you can annoy your spouse as much as you want, provided you keep it
just under The Divorce Threshold.
The muse turns out to be someone you have to seek out and beat into
submission. If you didn't play the role of pimp, she’d be out there randomly
whoring around to anyone, all for nothing. You gotta put that bitch to work.
You gotta make it clear that you’re the boss and she’s the cheap little
tramp providing you with your livelihood.
Kari Breed, writer, photographer, poet and housewife is brilliantly gifted
with averageness, strives ferociously for mediocrity and is a genius in the
vast and dark recesses of her own imagination. She has lived abroad, and
is a broad, and currently resides in Texas where everything really is big,
except for a lot of things that are very, very small. She is married to a silly,
tolerant and handsome man who enjoys junk food and online gaming a
little too much. When not overeating, writing, procrastinating or plotting the
demise of the world, she enjoys extensive forays into the vast and
bottomless pit of her own despair.
Bio - The Long of it:
I was born a coal miner’s daughter. Ok, not really. I was actually born the
daughter to my parents. According to my mother, the story of my birth
goes something like this: “It was the first snow of winter. I told your father it
was time, but he didn't want to get his lazy ass off the sofa and told me to
wait till tomorrow. I had to get your brother dressed and take him next door
to Dell’s to watch him. When we got to the hospital, I only got two drags off
my cigarette when the nurse came and got me. All the way to the room,
the nurse kept yelling, ‘Don’t push! Don’t push!’ We barely made it into the
room. The umbilical cord was wrapped around your throat. When I brought
you home, your brother ran out the door yelling, ‘My baby’s been born! My
baby’s been born!’”
And that’s pretty much the way the story goes.
It was hard for me to give up smoking after my birth, but I did it. They didn’t
have any such nonsense as The Patch back then, so I had to go cold
turkey. I cleverly substituted a stogie with my thumb, which I sucked until I
was ten years old – It was that good. When I did start smoking again, at
14, it reminded me of a warm, snuggly dark place where I could have a few
thoughts to myself.
My childhood was pretty middle-class normal, except for some fist-fights
with other kids and getting beaten up by my friends because I asked them
to share their candy with me. I think one of them is a lawyer now. But I’ll
always remember little Timmy as the kid who burned the limbs off a daddy-
long-leg. His little cohort, Chrissy, I nearly married when I was about
seven, but instead of going down the stairs to the basement where all the
neighbors were gathered, I stranded him at the altar, throwing off my veil
and hiding under the coffee table in the living room, crying “I’m not ready
to get married!” This remained my daily mantra until I was 31.
My love of boys continued throughout my youth and became compulsive
after my father died. I was 12, and it was his third heart attack. He must
have felt like such a failure, having tried it twice before unsuccessfully. He
was trying to live up to his own father’s standards, who died when my
father was still a young man. My brother came damn close four years ago,
but chickened out at the last minute, just before they were about to impale
him with an adrenaline needle like they did to Uma in Pulp Fiction. I guess
he jumped up and cried, “Uncle!” then he and all the EMT’s stood around
laughing and slapping each other on the back. At least, that’s how I like to
imagine it.
During my teen years, I discovered alcohol, rock music, rebellion and the
art of being cool. I started smoking cigarettes again (after the womb) to
impress a guy I recently was informed blew his brains out all over his wife.
Apparently they had stepped up into the Big Joyful World of Heroin
Addiction while I was busy getting all of my own vices under control.
My first forays into alcohol involved stealing bottles of Cold Duck out of my
mother’s liquor cabinet. My friend and I would share a bottle in the woods
then walk around singing, Metal Health (Bang your head! Wake the dead!
Metal health will drive you mad!), only we only knew that one line. But what
did we care? We were drunk! Then we would bury the other half of the
bottle under some pine straw and then walk around for a long time the
next day trying to find it.
I started drinking at 14 and quit drinking at 14, after sampling every single
bottle in the cabinet. My mother was a pack rat, so you can imagine what a
concoction of vomit this created when it all finally came back out onto the
kitchen table. My cousin was visiting with me at the time, and she finally
dragged me up the stairs just before my mother came home from work, but
not before Peter Jacobson came over and watched me dry heave with my
head wedged under the bottom step of the staircase. Peter Jacobson was
the most gorgeous, coolest guy in school, and this would be the equivalent
of Brad Pitt watching you crap in your pants and then rolling around in it.
I started drinking again after two years, chasing a free beer with a soda
until I graduated to just plain beer and then became someone you might
hear about in a George Thorogood song. Some people’s personal
timelines are ordered by headings such as, College Years, Working at the
Bank, and Before Baby, but mine are ordered under categories like Jack
Daniels, Jägermeister and Southern Comfort. Many of my memories are
dotted with images of random friends holding my ankles while I attempted
rolling head over heels down staircases. I was a silly drunk, thankfully, so I
kept all my friends.
I always had trouble holding down a job and worked for a short time at a
deli, a pharmacy, bagging groceries, an art supply store, a vet clinic, a
burger joint, a title company, two horse stables, a gym, designing graphics
and delivering pizza. I also once worked for a company that produced porn
magazines – Risqué (for men) and Savage Male (for gay men). They also
ran phone sex lines, and one of the girls gave me a free sample of some
slurping sounds. It was disgusting, and it’s one of the few random sounds I
still remember from my past. Perhaps the funniest thing about this job is
that my mother got it for me, and she worked there, too. My grandmother
once asked her if they made her pose for the magazine, and she said yes,
but they put the pictures in Savage Male to remind them to be thankful
they’re gay.
Only two years after I was legal to drink, I quit. I was tired of feeling tired,
and I went on a health spree, quitting drinking, smoking, caffeine and
refined sugar – all at the same time. And, boy, did that make me feel like
hell. That was 13 years ago, and I haven’t stopped reeling yet.
Occasionally I will binge on sodas, coffee and sugar, and then deeply
regret it, lying to myself that I will never do it again.
I have moved 19 times in my 36 years, which has given me a very serious
case of feeling unsettled. That and the Mexican food I had two nights ago.
I've lived in Michigan, Georgia, North Carolina, Germany and Texas. The
one thing that all of this has taught me is that, aside from architecture and
railways, every place is pretty much the same, provided it has a Wal-Mart,
a good home improvement center and pizza.
I've been married for five years and have learned a lot of horrible things
about myself, like my desire to guilt-trip and the belief that I inherently
deserve more than half the bed. The most horrifying and hopeful
discovery has been that I am in charge of either making myself miserable
through negative thinking or making myself feel better through the
strategic use of chocolate.
My hubby and I are really into home improvement, which has its good side
and its bad. The good side is that we’re cheap labor and our house gains
value with every project. The bad part about it is the aches and pains and
the fact that the projects, in actuality, go a heck of a lot slower than all the
brilliant ideas we dream up and antagonize each other with every day. I
find myself feeling tired every time he comes up with a new idea. It turns
out that you can’t do everything all at the same time no matter how hard
you try.
It has taken me many years to finally admit that writing is a real career
choice. I have spent a huge amount of time dreaming of doing it but
perfecting the art of procrastination instead. Even though I have under my
belt a humor book, a children’s story, a screenplay and over 600 poems, I
still struggled with the idea that maybe I can do it. One of these days I may
even sucker some people into reading my stuff.
Perhaps the hardest part about writing is treating it like it’s a real job and
showing up for work every day. The good news about this is that my
husband is the only person who gets offended if I don’t bother to bathe,
and he’s legally bound to me, so it would be a pain in the butt for him to
change the status quo. The secret to marriage, I am discovering, is that
you can annoy your spouse as much as you want, provided you keep it
just under The Divorce Threshold.
The muse turns out to be someone you have to seek out and beat into
submission. If you didn't play the role of pimp, she’d be out there randomly
whoring around to anyone, all for nothing. You gotta put that bitch to work.
You gotta make it clear that you’re the boss and she’s the cheap little
tramp providing you with your livelihood.
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