About

August 8th,2009 an About Update was added

Hi,

My name is Katybeth and I live in Chicago with my thirteen-year-old son, Cole, and the spirit of my husband, Joe. On June 2, 2009, Joe died without warning from a heart attack at the age of 52.  On that day, our lives were changed forever. I share those changes on My Odd Family, sometimes with humor and sometimes with tears.

My Odd Family was born out of a love to write, a love of family, and a love of the humor found in everyday life.  Joe was My Odd Family’s biggest fan and still relentlessly encourages me to write.  You should know that while Joe is, indeed, dead, he is still very present in our conversations and in our lives.

I am a professional pet spoiler, running my own business, Camp Run-A-Pup.  We spoil other people’s pups, and we do it really well. We have three dogs of our own, Rascal, a Parson’s Terrier (AKC recognizers her as a Parson’s; you would recognize her as a Jack Russell), Skippy, a Schipperke with a personality disorder, and Scooby, a beagle that might belong to a neighbor. Our newest family star is SOQUEL’S LAST SOUVENIRE, or as we call her, Trinket, a show-stopping Doberman pup.  I co-own Trinket with my mom because I like being on the winning side of the dog show arena and I want the rights to tell the real unabridged stories of the oddities of dog showing. The movie Dog Show did not even come close.

During the week I spend more time at my son’s Chicago Waldorf school than he does, volunteering. On the weekends I’m a soccer mom; a soccer mom who believes it is more fun if you are winning and can yell “what were you thinking” at a team of 6 year olds. I hate it when the team loses, the players cry and some parent asks, “But did you have fun?”  In spite of me, Cole loves the game and is a good sport.

My hobbies don’t include cooking, baking or sewing.  My cannon camera, laptop, iPhone, and National Geographic field bag are my life’s essentials. Joe always said,  if our house was on fire, my first question would be, “Where is my camera?!” I was born in Roswell, New Mexico after the aliens had already visited, grew up in El Paso, Texas, and ended up in Chicago because I was born in Roswell, New Mexico, and grew up in El Paso, Texas.

Each morning, I wake up asking,”What next?” and I say YES as often as I can throughout my day. And Yes! I am always on-line, the question you are bound to ask me sooner or later.   I’m crazy about my kid, mom and pups, and crazy is what all three make me on any given day. My dad never ceases to amaze and amuse me,  I’m the best thing that ever happened to Joe, even if my idea of an adult drink is a coke over ice, with a twist and, in his opinion, I always  took too many showers.

Now enough about me, I hope you will share about you in the comment section of this blog. I am one of the most accessible people you will ever meet, so I hope you will friend me on Facebook, follow me on Twitter, or e-mail me any time. In other words, odd loves company!

Oddly Yours,

Katybeth