I’m one of those people for whom a book can be made or broken by its first paragraph.  I’ll stand in the bookstore and read the first page of books I’m considering, and if it bores me, or at least doesn’t intrigue me at all, I put it back on the shelf and walk away, looking for something else to read.

So maybe this first post has a bit more significance to me.  I’m hoping to come up with just the right paragraph that will set the stage, tell my story, serve to introduce myself and this project.

It’s a lot of pressure.  I think I need more coffee.

In a lot of ways, I’m a first-time housewife.  We’ve been married for two years now, my husband and I, but for a lot of that time, I’ve been fighting against the internalized belief that I had to do something.  Make money.  Be productive and responsible in the world at large.  Have a career my husband would be proud of.  Somehow, I thought that taking care of him, the dogs, and the house, and preparing for and working toward having children wasn’t as good as if I’d been out in the world, bringing home a paycheck.

The other day, though, I sat down and looked around at my life.  I’m relatively successful, I work at home, and my body is falling apart.  We won’t even talk about the state of our house.  (Let’s just say that the dust bunnies?  Spawned.  They’re now dirt elephants and they keep trying to carry off the dogs.)  The whole point of my rearranging of my work so I could do it from home is lost when I’m working from home for eighty hours a week or more, and there are two weeks’ worth of dishes in the sink.

I have strengths and weaknesses, and goals I want to achieve with this project.  I’ll list them over there in the sidebar, under the “About the Project” page.  (Understand, this project and site are primarily for me to keep track and record my own process.  It might also apply to you, but I’m not trying to make this universal.  Feel free to use the information as applies, or not.  Either way.)

Through this blog, this Project, I really want to learn things.  Improve things.  Stop being ashamed to tell people that I’m a housewife or homemaker, or feel like I have to gloss that part over when people ask me what I do.  I want to focus on what’s important, my (hopefully soon) growing family and our lives.  I want to make my husband’s life easier the way he wants to do the same for me.

And I’m inviting you along for my wild ride.

Enjoy the roller-coaster.  I know I’m going to.