You tell a lot of stories about your childhood in Roll With It: Living, Working, and Parenting by the Seat of Your Pants. Some of them are heart-wrenching, like the one where your drunk mom abandons you when you fall asleep at a lake beach party when you’re 7 years old, and you wake up sunburned and lost, miles from home. But you write these stories almost glibly.
I don’t look back on it as a bad thing, and I wouldn’t change anything. I bet it’s relatable to more people than you think. In her defense, my mother never should have had a child. There are some people who just shouldn’t bear children, and she was one of them.
Did you really eat dog food with ketchup?
I did. Honestly, it’s not that bad when you’re hungry.
Why did you decide to write an advice book rather than a straight-up memoir?
For one, I’m not a celebrity. I mean, nobody cares about Kim Garrett as a memoir.
But I could flip that around on you and say that no one cares about what advice you have either.
Totally true. And that’s kind of the point of the book, too. I say several times, I’m just a common person who’s going through the same thing other people are going through. The book started out as being more therapeutic. I wrote most of it in two days. I didn’t go to sleep. And then I realized, God, I’ve got so many good stories. And from those stories, it just seemed like a parenting-themed book.
“I’m just aommon person who’s going through the same thing other people are going through.”
They are still bars, on East Lancaster. The Red Barn is really a red barn, just a divey bar. It’s one of those bars where when you open the door from outside, you can’t see anything because it’s so dark inside.
When’s the last time you shot pool?
I do it all the time. Anytime I’m somewhere there’s a pool table, I can’t walk by it without playing.
Still have skills? If you and I were in a bar right now, would you take a $20 bet?
I would. Yeah. That or darts.
You retired at 40 as the national director of sales for Facebook. You write about how you’re trying not to ruin your children as you raise them. But you mention one of the ways you keep your kids grounded is you take them out to the ranch and make them work hard. You must realize that a lot of people don’t have ranches. And they’re going to say, “Screw you, rich lady.”
Totally. Yeah, I know. I’m prepared for that. It’s funny, though, my father-in-law passed away. It was his ranch, and he left it to my husband. So we would have had it no matter what happened. I think there’s a lot of advice that our grandparents would give us that we don’t give our own kids. Like respect for nature. I feel there’s a disconnect. Everything is so tech. It doesn’t have to be a ranch. It could be anywhere, the park or whatever.
What’s your social media profile like now? Do you use Twitter and Insta-gram, or are you just a Facebook person?
I use Instagram probably more than Facebook now. I don’t want to hear somebody’s political or religious stance at this point. I just want to see pictures. To me, Instagram is more like a magazine, and Facebook is more like a newspaper.
