NOTE FROM 2021 – Hi! I’m adding a preface here to explain some maintenance happening on this site. When I self-hosted my blog it was hacked (real hacked, not “I clicked a bad link and gave someone access” hacked) and I tried to repair and it got hacked again so I wrote (am still writing?) at substack for awhile so I could move all 16 years of content somewhere else. As of this writing I’m currently at a WordPress managed site and I am cleaning out my archives which are a mess (AND still full of hacked links.) So…you know…hold everything you see here with the knowledge that it used to exist elswhere and in better shape and *hopefully* it will be cleaned up here soon BUT I AM NOT MAKING PROMISES. This is not a fast/easy task so be patient with me!
My name is Kim. This is me in at the small library where I work. I was 45 years old before I got my “dream job” as a librarian.
Around here I go by “Zoot” – derivative of a childhood nickname. I’ve been blogging with that name since January 2004. I think the transition to “Zoot” went something like this: Kim to Kimbo to Bozie to Bozoot to Zoot. I answer to all of the above. I had been using the name Zoot on message boards long before I ever thought about blogging…so it seemed an obvious alias when starting my own blog.
My oldest child graduated from college at the University of Montevallo and is currently working in a marketing position here in Huntsville. (We used to call him “LilZ” but since he’s now a legal adult? That seems silly.) I married Donnie when he was 8 and we immediately tried to add to our family. This is when we entered the period of life I kindly refer to as…Gynecological Hell. After several miscarriages, a few D&Cs, a diagnosis of endometriosis, ovarian cysts, and uterine fibroids – we finally had two children. Nyoka (currently age 14) and Wesley (currently age 11). I use nicknames for my two older kids on most of my blog posts because their “real” names are so unique someone searching for them would end up on this blog. And those poor children do not want to forever be linked the website where I spent so much time talking about my uterus and boob sweat.
We had a second part of Kim’s Gynecological Hell in 2012 when I was blessed with another pregnancy which I then lost at 11 weeks resulting in another D&C. I decided I couldn’t handle any more loss emotionally; and physically my ailments were making my life unlivable for too many days out of a month. I had an endometrial ablation and we bid farewell to the days of trying to have kids.
(But I said “Hello!” to a much better life where I don’t have to stay locked up in my house for 7 days every month or carry changes of clothes in my car!)
Along with the 5 humans in our home, we have had 6 pets over the years, We are down to one now. We lost Cisco, in November 2008. We lost Lil’ Girl in 2012 after living a long 14 years. We said goodbye to my first cat Bambi in November 2016, and then my second cat Sunflower in August 2017 and then the hardest goodbye of all was to Sweetie in February 2018. Now it’s just Zoomie/Samson who is a rescue new to our family.
I lost my Dad in March 2009 (Entry here) to a short but painful battle with cancer. I write a lot about grief over that loss here. My Mom died in early 2021. I have written a lot about that too but I’m not going to try to link to those entries until everything is moved over here.
I was born into a Catholic family and raised in Catholic schools. I wore hideous wool plaid skirts and/or jumpers for TWELVE years. I am grateful for this upbringing because it made me who I am today. However…that person is currently no longer Catholic. I like to call myself a “secular humanist” because “atheist” stirs up a long of complicated feelings in a lot of people. I am still very spiritual and like to talk about religion and faith.
I proudly live in Huntsville, AL. It has every part of the South I love (food, hospitality, weather) with a nice mix of culture and science thanks to the huge presence of Rocket Scientists associated with Missile Defense and NASA. I like my tea iced and so sweet it’s toxic. I call shopping carts “buggies” and I often strike up conversations with people standing in line at the grocery store. I do call soft drinks “sodas” though – one of the few things that are NOT stereotypically southern. That and my political leanings: I lean liberal/left by supporting reproductive rights, criminal justice reform, and I’m an ally to the LGBTQ+ community.
I learned many years ago that I struggle with body dysmporphia and compulsive behaviors associated with a binge-eating disorder. You can see a lot of evidence of that on this blog as I ran marathon after marathon and talked about weightloss and dieting to a toxic degree.
I don’t regret any of that. I reached a lot of goals I didn’t know I could reach, but now I’m working to heal a lot of that shit and I love my fatter body and I love not obsessing about calories or miles or anything related to my body anymore. I focus more on radical self love and I now write a lot about the harmful side-effects of a lot of pieces of the diet/health/fitness industries.
I have been writing a lot about politics and racism and white privilege as I learn about all of these things more myself. I am very liberal but I am a blue dot in a red state (and a red family) and while I used to manage relationships with people with opposing views for years, Tr*mp changed all of that and now I write a lot about the boundaries you have to set to maintain relationships with people who vote against the interests of the people you love.
Like I said in the tagline of this site…this place is just a little bit of everything. Self-love, politics, family, mental health, and the periodic (but very reliable) rant about boob sweat.