Times, they are a'changing...

I've got plans for this blog.

Namely, to stop taking ~8 month breaks from writing.  I really love writing and not doing it makes me sad.  So, I'm going to try and do it more.  Not any special number of times a week or anything... because deadlines make me anxious.  But writing... writing makes me happy.

You'll see the blog title has changed.  And that little "About Me" section got longer.  I've been thinking... this blog was a fun outlet for stories and stuff, and I certainly intend to keep sharing those... but I was struggling with it's purpose.

It had become more than a place for me to get stuff down for posterity, but not quite something that I felt had a clear reason for existing.  That is going to change this year!

I have come to the conclusion that I really WANT to get more deliberate about my life.  Having young kids kind of necessitates being comfortable with sometimes slipping into survival mode... but I don't want to LIVE there.  I want that to be the place I end up when all my good intentions fail.  Not the place I'm constantly trying to dig out of by dreaming up good intentions.

I have also come to terms with the fact that I'm pretty much just a home maker these days.  PLEASE don't get me wrong... I'm glad this is where I have landed.  I really am.  BUT... it wasn't where I intended to end up.  When I was in college, I totally planned to become the real life Michelle Pfeiffer character from Dangerous Minds and conquer public schools one illiterate (redneck) thug at a time.   I scored a job out of college at a great little rural middle school that had plenty of illiteracy to go around and I thought, "Yes!  I've arrived!"

Then I suddenly found myself living overseas on a two year mission trip.  Hey, "travel the world before having kids" was on my bucket list, so even though I never fancied myself living as a missionary it became a real dream come true for my husband and I.  So I still counted it as "part of the plan."

Then I had my first baby and discovered in myself a real desire to stay home with that baby... random!  I remember telling my husband once (who from our first date has always expressed his desire to have his wife stay home and raise his kids) "Um, I'm sure there are people who LOVE taking care of babies all day.  I'll just hire one of those to take care of mine while I work."  Cue the shock of a lifetime when I received word that my maternity leave was being shortened by 6 weeks and I was DEVASTATED at the thought of having to leave my baby with someone (albeit, a person who loved taking care of babies and is now my best friend).  I pretty much made up my mind that day that I would do whatever it took to be able to quit my job.

And I did.  I worked another year, got pregnant with another baby, and finally got to quit that Michelle Pfeiffer - if Michelle Pfeiffer's character were real, a lot chubbier, and taught at a small school in rural Georgia - job.  And for about 6 months I was really happy.

Then I had my second baby.  At home.  With a midwife.  And it was AMAZING.  Life changing stuff I tell you.  I remember laying there with my fresh newborn baby and saying to myself, "THIS is what I want to be when I grow up.  A midwife."  And for about 2 years I pursued that dream hard core, full time... and got so burned out on birth stuff that I needed to leave my training last year and remind myself that I had already quit one full time job to be a full time mom and that the midwife thing was something that could wait a potentially very long time. 

And that's what I'm getting around to with this blog change up.  I still have dreams of becoming a midwife when I grow up, or maybe by the time I have time for that I'll decide I want to be the older and even chubbier version of Michelle Pfeiffer at a different rural school with different average run of the mill redneck thugs.  But for now... now is the season when my babies are small, and other than attending the occasional birth as a doula or teaching the occasional childbirth class, this home making thing is the best thing I've got going right now.  I'm ready to just say it...

I'm a dang home maker.  In a world where women are celebrated for having the job and the degrees and the status symbols... I'm a chick that spends most of my time folding laundry and writing grocery lists.  And I'm okay with that.

And I know I'm not alone!  Most of my friends are "just home makers" too.  But even my working friends (whom I respect SO much for the double workload they take on, and whose lifestyle I remember and occasionally envy) lament about the same stuff... how do we, as women, do it all?  Raise the kids, keep up the house, and still have time for the job or the hobbies we love?  Well, I personally have picked my muse and I'm going to invite you to come along with me on a random journey of "let's get better at this home maker thing."

Raise your hand if you loved reading the Laura Ingalls books as a kid... I see those hands!

I LOVED THEM.  Loved.  Them.  I've probably read the whole series ten times.  So when I started thinking about what kind of a home maker I really admire and want to be like... Ma Ingalls totally came to mind.  Ma had this thing down!  She could live in a cabin, a dugout, a house on a prairie, or a town house... and even with each new set of difficulties, she kept the family fed, in clothes, and relatively content.

This is really all I want for my family... to be relatively content.  We live a modest one income lifestyle (our "Pa" is a farmer, and by farmer I mean IT network engineer) in a little house in the suburban woods.  I'm just making it my goal to get better at that.  Nothing super complicated, no slaughtering our own livestock or tapping trees to make our own maple syrup... just being frugal, cooking more, making stuff instead of buying it, and maybe busting out a corn cob doll once in a while just for fun.

So... who's with me?