The New Toilet Seat

When we bought our house it was not new, or pretty.  Besides being quite dated the previous owner had a drug and alcohol problem which led him to start but not finish several projects in the house.  So the ceramic tile in the front entry was half chopped out, some of the wall paper had been partially stripped, the previously finished basement had been gutted and then about 3 sheets of Sheetrock had been randomly nailed to the ceiling. There was a door missing on the bathroom vanity and the sink dripped. He tried to burn trash in the fireplace and there was soot marks going all the way to the ceiling. And don't even get me started on the cleanliness of the place.

But, long story short, we bought it.

Then we cleaned it, painted every wall and ceiling, re-did the hardwood floors, tiled the kitchen and bathrooms, re-finished the basement, new counters, new sinks, new light fixtures, new toilets, amen.

And we moved in to a beautiful new house.

So you can imagine my surprise when John tells me his toilet seat broke the other day.  I mean it is brand new!  We just bought it...oh, 10 years ago.

How did this happen?  How have we been here 10 years?

Did you know you are supposed to update your house every 10 years?  I mean I just re-did my house, don't you think it is fine?  I still think it looks good.  I suppose I can see that the paint could use some freshening and the floors are a bit scratched up, and the door on the cheap vanity in the bathroom keeps falling off, and the kitchen faucet leaks, the basement carpet is stained, and the toilet seat just cracked...OK I may see their point.

It isn't like you have to do a complete remodel every 10 years but, little updates which, if you do on an ongoing basis, maintain your house.  And all those things that need to be done to our house to keep it in good condition could be easily done one at a time to keep our house from getting dated. We could grab a new kitchen faucet one of these days while John still gets a builder discount.  And paint is relatively cheap.  One thing at a time.  Or one room at a time.  Some projects are bigger and some projects we make bigger.

I am dreaming that when we are ready to re-do the bathrooms that we can do a total re-structure of the main and master bathrooms.  I imagine stealing space from a closet and hallway and creating a bigger master bath with an electric outlet (which we currently don't have in that bathroom) and a second sink so I can move in there with John before Isabelle hits her teen years and I am having to schedule time with her to get into mine.  That will take some money though.  I won't be able to squeeze that out of a fuller summer paycheck.  That will have to be planned for.  Like the paint job we need to do outside the house.  For years we have been talking about how we would like to re-do the brick and maybe wrap the columns in something more modern.  However, we finally realized that the paint is chipping and we don't have the money for the big project so it is time to just slap some paint on this bad dog and move on.  It will need to be re-painted again in a few years and maybe then we can think bigger.

John is in school, Jake is headed to college, I am trying to start a business and Isabelle really wants to take some lesson or be in some sport.  Suddenly I understand how my parents still had the same gold carpet and foil wallpaper in their house long after anyone thought it was in style.  And I am impressed that they were able to occasionally paint the inside and out while we were growing up.  Some days even a can of paint feels like a challenge.

Luckily, I was so cutting edge with my green kitchen cabinets that I still occasionally see the color in home decor magazines.  Along with everything else.  But the tides are changing and I suspect in a couple more years I will wake up to discover my house is the new version of gold shag carpet and foil wallpaper.  And our kids will be wishing we would do something about it and wondering why we can't see how horrible it is.  We will just smile, look around, see the life we have lived here and tell them how much we still like it.

Until then I guess we will just focus on work, school, raising kids and putting out the little fires. Like a $5 toilet seat.

How does your house look?

What I did on my day of unemployment, the reveal

Drum roll please...After working tirelessly all day Friday and Saturday morning I am pleased to present the after pictures.

As you can see a great improvement over the before pictures.  The main problem with this desk is that it is really just a desk top.  No drawers, no storage.  So I picked up a desktop drawer for little stuff and I emptied the top drawer of my rolling craft thing for bigger stuff.  Plus my to-do piles were starting to take over my desk so I picked up a paper sorter to keep it organized.  I haven't put labels on it yet but I did buy the refill for my label maker so I am ready for that next step!  I am a little bit of a nerdy organizer.

It is likely just a temporary after look as I am sure I will make more changes as I learn my new job and identify what other needs I have.  But for now I am pretty happy with it.

Isabelle has already moved into her space and spent a couple hours working on writing notes to her cousins and putting pictures in a scrapbook last night.  Her craft area is still a disaster but that is a future summer project.

And I have a whole empty wall and floor space.  I dream of someday putting a sleeper sofa here and making it a possible guest room but I have a long way to go before I will be ready for that makeover.

Once the office was done it was on to the backyard!  Next Sunday is the party and so this is the weekend to finish up the yard work so we can move to food and decorations this next week.  I was outside most of the day.  No before pictures but just imagine clutter, mowable weeks growing out of the cracks and lots and lots of dead leaves and dirt and then you are getting close to the picture.

Isabelle put on her bathing suit sometime around mid-morning and didn't take it off til bed time.  A definite sign of summer.

Feeling like this has been a very, very productive weekend.  Also, John managed to complete his repair to the weed whip without any further accidents and the edges of our lawn have never looked so good.  I just need to deep clean the rest of the house, there is a ring growing in my toilet, and I am good to go for launching into my new job and being prepared for the party next weekend.

My day of unemployment

I have been a distracted reader this past year. I did manage to finish reading "Walden or Life in the Woods" by Thoreau last fall but I am not sure I have completed a single book since before Christmas.  Although I have started a few.  So before I start any more these are the ones I am going to focus on.  I am half way through Professional Blogging for Dummies.  I have decided to just finish it.  I was trying to absorb every word so I wouldn't have to go back but since I own it why not start with the overview and then return as I work.  "Selling 101" by Zig Ziglar is the sort of quick read I should be able to finish in one sitting.  I just need to give myself permission to sit and read it.  I am going through "Becoming More Than a Good Bible Study Girl" by Lisa TerKeust with a friend.  So far I am loving it.  I had heard great things about "Captivating" by John and Stasi Eldredge and found myself getting sucked into it while hanging out in our church library a few weeks ago.  Now I need to just finish that too.  I haven't actually started "Getting Started with WordPress" or "Mom, Inc" but am looking forward to taking the same approach with them as Professional Blogging.  Start with an overview and return for the meat.  Of course the Bible, never done reading that.  Overview and meat, I can never get enough.

The  big thing is to give myself permission to sit down and read them.  I need to see reading these books, not just the business ones but all of them, as part of my job.  I can't have success without education and learning.  I need to learn to put this whole work/home/business thing together and looking forward to reading about the experiences of those who have gone before me.

I always love book recommendations.  I have a few ideas for my next group of books but feel free to leave a comment with your favorite book as well.  

I spent most of my day preparing my office for my future work from home base.  It really needed help.  I had recently moved from the small desk to the larger one.  Jake had been using the larger one but had abandoned it in the past year or so and I finally decided it was time to move.  And I moved Isabelle's crafts out of her room with the idea of putting her in my old desk and life is busy and you would be amazed how quickly a fairly tidy and organized office can turn into these before pictures which I walked into this morning.

I have made HUGE strides in purging, cleaning and organizing this room but I want to work on it a little more this weekend before revealing the after.

I would have had more time to work on the room today but had to make a slight detour as John accidentally sprayed himself in the eye with carburetor cleaner.  Day one of our new insurance I am at an eye clinic on the phone with our insurance agent trying to get any information I can to pass on to the clinic as our new insurance cards haven't even arrive yet!  Luckily John didn't do any permanent damage and after an evening of constant eye drops should be fine in the morning.  It already is looking normal again.

This morning as I stood feeling a little overwhelmed by my office space and unsure how to begin I realized I needed to back out of the room and go sit with God and pray.  It always helps me focus my time and direct my steps.  As we sat waiting in the little room for the doctor to look at John's eye I found myself thinking and then saying, "I don't know why but I just know this is what God had planned for our day."  I knew this because I gave my day to Him in the morning and He has never failed me.  I still don't know why and I could give you a list of reasons why it was not a good thing but, I feel at peace.

I have to admit that in the back of my mind I was worried that I might feel lost once I came back home to work but today I found myself feeling more myself than I have in months.  There are lots of transitions still to come in the next few weeks and months and I may still yet find myself wishing for the simple consistency of my old job but for today I am excited to begin rediscovering myself, my family and the life I love.

John is heading out to go buy ice cream and make malts.  A perfect way to end a day of unemployment.  I think I will grab a book and curl up while I wait for him.

Can't wait to see what happens next...

So the new furnace is warming my house, we have stuck a  nail in the lost screw hole to fix the handle on the back door and are not thinking too much about the now totally broken garage door but are instead focussed on the snow begining to fall.  John is busy staking the edges of his plow contract driveways and getting the plow out of the broken garage.  Jake is supposed to go to a training pep rally for his Cutco sales job.  I am still in my pj's close to noon and busy washing all the bedding because while there is no evidence of lice in our home someone in Isabelle's class has lice and that just makes me want to scrub down the whole house.  I CAN NOT do another winter of lice.

Then Jake calls.  He has a flat tire.  And the spare is flat.  So I guess we can't avoid buying a new tire.  While we love our 300 I have to admit it has been a little more costly to maintain.  The tires are performance tires and you pay for them.  There is no $39.99 tire out there for this car.  Luckily while I decided to add free towing to this car when I was worring for my insurnace agent last winter.  Jake gave them a call to come get him while I made some calls to figure out where they should go.

Frugal Tip #3:  Used Tires

At first I thought I had found a deal with a coupon for buy 1 get the 2nd for $10.  Even with the $100 warranty you are required to buy with this deal it was still the cheapest tire I found.  But then John gave me the number of the used tire place.  Amazing deals, my tires for under $100!  Considering I am usually amazed to find them under $200 for this car that blew my mind.  3 new (to us) tires later (we did have one good tire on the car) and a fresh tire on the spare, Jake is ready for winter driving.  Well as ready as you can be with performance tires.  The tire guy managed to mention that this car was terrible for winter driving about 2 or 3 times.  We love it anyway.

What is amazing is how God has provided for all these expenses.  We have savings for the first time in about 2 years!  Even after all this it isn't tapped dry.  AND, yesterday with the snow coming down we had calls from 3 plow clients that hadn't yet re-signed with us.  One of them brought us 5 NEW CONTRACTS!  That will more than cover the tires.

So we continue on excited to see what will happen next and how God will take care of it.  Every step leads us closer to Him as we trust follow.

Matthew 6:25-34

25 “For this reason I say to you, do not be worried about your life, as to what you will eat or what you will drink; nor for your body, as to what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? 26 Look at the birds of the air, that they do not sow, nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not worth much more than they? 27 And who of you by being worried can add a single hour to his life? 28 And why are you worried about clothing? Observe how the lilies of the field grow; they do not toil nor do they spin, 29 yet I say to you that not even Solomon in all his glory clothed himself like one of these. 30 But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the furnace, will He not much more clothe you? You of little faith! 31 Do not worry then, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear for clothing?’ 32 For the Gentiles eagerly seek all these things; for your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. 33 But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.  34 So do not worry about tomorrow; for tomorrow will care for itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own. "

Now it is just getting funny...

So the furnace is getting replaced, the garage door has exploded and I am heading off to work.  Isabelle runs after me to get one more hug and as she grabs the outside handle of the back door it falls off in her hands.

I just laugh as I give her a hug and keep going.

And THEN...

So we are keeping warm with space heaters for the week enjoying a very sunny fall weekend while we wait for the new furnace to arrive.  John is working up a sweat outside cleaning up our fall leaves while I am working up a sweat getting the inside of the house back in shape after a week of neglect when it happens.  I hear a bang outside in the garage.  I am momentarily startled but don't think much of it.  If John was to get trapped under a pile of debris in our garage he would probably lay there for hours before I discovered him.  Poor guy.  Anyway, he was fine and continued to finish up the yard cleaning.  When he came inside he announced the new problem with our house.  The garage door is broken.  At first he couldn't get it to go all the way up and down and then suddenly it just banged down (the noise I heard) and it was over.  Apparently springs exploded and tracks are bent.  Luckily all our cars were in the driveway so while I knew I would need to get it repaired if i wanted to park inside this winter I kept my focus on getting heat in the house.  I can only worry about one thing at a time.

But then it happened.  It snowed.  And we realized something.  The plow is in the garage!  John and Jake did manage to get the garage door up and the plow out but then I heard another loud bang and John assures me it will not be going up again.  Frankly it barely went up in the winter anyway, I often had to get out of my car and help it along.  I sure hope my running into the garage door a couple times doesn't have anything to do with it breaking.

Frugal Tip #2: Sale at Menard's

I was looking on Craig's List for garage doors and there are some great deals but John found a new door on sale at Menard's as I was typing this post and we decided to go with it.  Still wondering if Craig's list might be a better way to go but the sale ends today.  Home Store Tip:  They are great about returns.  Buy now, return later.

So to be continued on what we actually end up doing with the garage door.  But wait!  There's more...

Never a Dull Moment

It was a regular day like any other.  A Tuesday.  And I came home from work just like usual.  John had dinner almost ready and I headed straight to my room to change into regular clothes.  As I was walking back to our room I made some comment about it being really cold back there.  It is fall and the temperatures were going back and forth between 30 and 60 each day.  John walks over to the thermostat and says, "that's not good."  Words you never want to hear when your furnace is over 20 years old.

The next day our friendly furnace repairman stops by and long story short red tags our furnace.  In other words, do not even try to turn this thing on.  It is too dangerous.  Suddenly understanding why Isabelle has been having headaches and feeling very blessed by the mild fall weather we have had.

Frugal Tip #1:  Order your furnace online and install it yourself

After talking to a couple friends that installed furnaces themselves we ordered a new one online for ridiculously cheap.  It arrived the Monday after our furnace went out.  Space heaters kept our bedrooms warmer than our furnace ever thought of keeping them during the 6 days in between.

The old furnace used to sit under the hood of this big duct.  John decided to take the opportunity to move it over a few feet and open up the space into the storage/work room.

The official red tag.  Actually still red unlike pink slips and green cards.

I think the look on his face pretty much sums the whole thing up.

Our friend Andy helping move over the gas line.

The new furnace.  Not done, the big vent hood still needs to go over the back.  John is at Home Depot as we speak.

And these wires are still hanging in the location of the old furnace.  Somehow thinking that isn't very safe.  But the house is nice and toasty warm and we are all breathing deeper confident the air is safe with our new CO detectors checking things out for us.

New problem:  These chairs used to be in the location where the new furnace now sits.  I see a storage room cleaning/organizing/rearranging coming on soon...

But that is not all, Oh no, that's not all.  Tune in tomorrow for the continuing saga...

Melanie's Must Read List #3

For several years I sort of stalked a book at Barnes and Noble called "Home Comforts: The Art and Science of keeping a home" by Cheryl Mendelson.  I loved the idea of the book, loved to glance through it but did not love the price.  Even when it went on clearance I was too cheap to buy it.  Then Martha Stewart came out with "Martha Stewart's Homekeeping Handbook: The essential Guide to caring for everything in your home."  It was even more expensive.  But I was in a homemaking zone one year and put them both on the Christmas list.  I got the Martha book as a gift and found Home Comforts at a used book store for a price I could live with and then I had both. 

(Hey I suddenly realized I could be getting pictures of my favorite books to put on these posts.  I am smart like that.)

They are both about 2 inches thick and while they have similar information they are totally different books.  The Homekeeping Handbook is written in Martha's usual detailed, informative, high brow style and has lots of photos of her various homes.  The Home Comforts book is more well...comfortable.  Its style is more like your grandmother's advice, which makes sense since the writer learned to care for her home from her two grandmothers.

I just love reading about housekeeping.  While I am hardly a great housekeeper, I call it the "illusion of clean", I like to know what to do when inspiration hits.  It helps keep the dirt and grime at bay.  Every spring and fall I think about and read lists for seasonal cleaning.  They are so entertaining.  Sometimes I actually do a couple things on the list.

Mixed in with all the tips for keeping a house is some of the history behind why we do what we do or why our grandmothers did what they did and I find that to be the best parts of these books.  It really gives me an appreciation for how hard the women before me worked and how blessed I am with something as simple and basic as a washing machine or a clean burning furnace.  I don't have to spend an entire day hand washing and drying my family's clothes and I am not left with a layer of soot over the entire house when winter comes to an end.

Now that I have read them both, I actually have read the Home Comforts book twice, they just sit as reference guides on my shelf.  Just a couple months ago it came out when Jake needed to iron his kilt.  "Mom, could you show me how to iron pleats?"  No problem I told him.  Of course I didn't really know if there was a trick or not so I just lead him to Martha's book, it was the one closest to us, and looked up pleats in the index, turned to the page and discovered a very simple method for ironing pleats.  I did have to explain to him what an ironing cloth was and then he was off to iron perfect pleats back into his kilt.

Definitely going on housewarming list for when he gets his first apartment.

What I am getting out of this

This week I was asked an interesting question.  Noting that my husband gets to go back to school I was asked, "what do you get out of it?"  Honestly I was momentarily stunned by the question.  I simply do not think in those terms.  What do I get?  I have been home for 17 years raising my children, drinking coffee with friends, spending my days at zoos, museums, pools, teaching, playing, learning, growing.  I have been free while my husband has been tied to a desk, a hammer and demanding clients.  The question is not what do I get but what can I give?  How can I not give my husband 6 years of my life when he has given me 17 years?
There is a lot of danger thinking in terms of "what do I get" as we proceed through life because we will never get what we think we deserve and will  never be fully satisfied.  When you think about yourself and what you can get you sometimes miss seeing what you actually have.  Life is filled with blessings.  Everyday all around us.  We can choose to see them or ignore them but they are there.

Too much focus on myself and my needs, trying to be sure I get something from all I do and give has never brought me peace or joy in my life.  Instead it has brought disappointment and frustration.  Only when I trust God to care for me and turn my focus to serving Him has my cup been full and my joy made complete.

So what I "get" out of John going back to school is far more than I am giving.  I "get" the joy of serving the Lord and the privilege of experiencing His care for me while I work.

What more could I want?

Lord, make us instruments of your peace.  Where there is hatred, let us sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is discord, union; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; where there is sadness, joy.  Grant that we may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love.  For it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen.--St Francis

One step at a time

When Jake was in 2nd grade part of the curriculum was that all students pass timed addition and subtraction tests by the end of the school year.  The point being to assess whether they had learned and memorized their math facts or if they were still figuring out each fact on their hands.  Although I knew Jake had memorized his math facts he continually failed these tests and often by large margins.  We decided to work on his math at home.  I had a math-it curriculum from when I was homeschooling him which was essentially a timed math game.  He had cards with the math problems on them and a board with the answers and was supposed to lay them all down in a minute.  I watched my totally capable son choke under the pressure of the ticking clock many times.  I could see he just didn't believe he could finish in 1 minute and was panicking.  I realized I needed to prove to him it could be done.  I took the cards started the timer and calmly and slowly laid out all the cards finishing just before the timer went off.  His first comment, "you didn't hurry."  Nope, there is plenty of time.  He finished faster than I did the next time and passed his timed tests at school with ease.  In the panic of believing he couldn't finish on time he wasn't actually focusing on the task but dwelling on its impossibility.

I have thought of this many times over the years, having done this many times and seen many people do this in their lives.

When I was at home I would feel overwhelmed with all the responsibilities before me.  My house needed to be cleaned but simultaneously I was home to care for and nurture my children who wanted to play with me.  Dinner would need to be made soon , what should I make?  Plus church called asking me to organize the next potluck and my girlfriend's life is falling apart so she wants to go have coffee.  And now my husband car broke down so I need to stop everything to go get him and we will spend money we don't have to repair it.  With all those tasks to perform it is easy to believe that there is not enough time to complete everything and start to panic.  It has landed me on the couch staring at the walls many times.

What I finally figured out is that, like Jake and his timed tests, the secret isn't in going faster, it is to just keep moving.  Many afternoons I would lay on the couch and tell myself to get up and do everything which led to me doing nothing.  When I finally started telling myself to get up and do one thing, go do the laundry, and do it at any slow pace I wanted I was able to get up.  When I was done I would decide to do one more thing and one more and pretty soon I had done all I needed to do in less time that I had anticipated.

A body in motion stays in motion.  Once I lay down it is hard to get back up but once I get back up it is much easier to just keep plodding forward one step at a time.

Now that I am working I see this truth even there.  I noticed one day I had several things left an hour before the end of the day.  I wanted to say I didn't have time to complete them all and sort of slack off but instead I just kept going.  I didn't know if I would finish but I was going to see how much I could do.  Even when there was only 10 minutes left I began my final task unsure I would finish.  Turns out that task only takes me 8 minutes because I found myself staring at the clock the last 2 minutes of the day with nothing to do.

I would say here that life is not a race but I Paul actually uses that analogy to tell us it is a race. Still the one who wins the race doesn't just fly forward in a panic but runs very specific and intentionally putting one foot in front of the other.  Paul also tells us to press on:

"I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.  Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it.  But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus."
Ephesians 3:12-14

Forget what is behind you just get up and start pressing forward today.  One step at a time.

The Cabin in the Woods

For years I have romanticized the idea of living alone in a cabin in the woods.  Something with a pond.  I imagine how wise and deep I would become with all that time for self discovery and introspection.  During especially crazy times in my life this little thought has gotten me through.

While I haven't thought about it quite as much in recent years, as I launch back into the busy world of work, a world without a great deal of "ME" time where I am constantly having to make a decision about how I will spend my non working time and what my true priorities are I have been thinking about my cabin dream. 

I am coming to realize that my years at home were my "cabin in the woods" years.  I may not have been alone in the woods but  I did have plenty of time.  They were my years of self discovery and introspection.  I was blessed with time to walk through the woods, or my neighborhood, a park, a playground, Target...at my own pace and observe and experience all that was around me.  Admittedly I didn't always do that, sometimes I rushed forward as quickly as possible from one thing to the next in a hurry to go nowhere never looking up, but definitely there were days, more in recent years, where I stopped and enjoyed what was happening around me.

On one literal walk in the woods with Jake and my nieces several years ago we came around the corner and found a red fox standing in our path.  It looked at us and began walking toward us, we were all frozen until it jumped into some bushes off the path.  We relaxed and began to go forward again only to have it jump back out of the bushes moments later with lunch in its mouth and run off.  It wasn't easy to keep 4 little kids marching through the woods alert and watching for nature but it sure was worth it that day.

I have met neighbors while pushing a stroller around the block who have become a wonderful necessary support system, I have sat at parks with friends listening to their stories and sharing mine, and a trip by myself to Target has at times had the refreshing quality of a week long vacation.

Through it all I have seen and done things I never would have dreamed.  I have met people that have influenced how I go about my day to day.  I have gone places and experienced so many things that I could never begin to document them all.

And while I did all that I was definitely not alone in a quiet cabin in the woods.  However I did get in some self discovery, in the moments between the adventure of life I thought about myself, my choices and how God wanted me to respond and learned a lot about myself.  I might not have spent my years in silence but God spoke to me in the noise of life, He met me where I was and taught me lessons only He could teach me.

It turns out I have been living my cabin dream all along.  The opportunities and understanding that I thought I had to escape my life to get were waiting for me at home all along.

Identity Crisis

Once upon a time I worked full time.  Then I had a baby.  I know that for a lot of women, at least according to all the books on being a stay at home mom I read, it is hard to transition from being a working woman to being a stay at home mom.  You go from feeling like you have a purpose and identity to feeling like your life doesn't have purpose and you don't have an identity.  At least that is what I read about.  I actually did not experience that.  I felt relieved to be able to stop telling people I was an "account clerk" at a large bank and I was under paid and under appreciated and not at all using my brain to its full potential. 

I was proud to announce to people that I was at home with my child.  I don't even try to dress it up.  In fact the more fancy your job the more mundane I tend to make my job.  I personally really like the good old fashioned "homemaker".  It is funny how many people respond to me as if I have apologized for what I do by telling me what an important and difficult job I have.  As if I didn't know it. 

I love my job.  I am not embarrassed by it.  When I tell a CEO that I am a homemaker I feel like I am announcing that we have the same job.  We both have challenging jobs with lots of responsibility and are not always appreciated by the people we are trying to help.  But I don't feel compelled to refer to myself as the "CEO of the Home."  I feel good about being at home and I feel like the fancy job titles women give themselves when they are at home is just an attempt to justify something I don't feel I need to justify.  I feel important at home and it doesn't matter to me if you agree or not.

Maybe if I had been a doctor or lawyer or teacher or some other notable profession I might have struggled more with giving it up but I wasn't and I wasn't sorry to loose my work identity and gain a more noble title.

Now I am back working.  It is part-time but none the less work.  And when people ask me "what do you do?" I find myself having an identity crisis.  What do I do?  Who am I?  I want to continue to be a homemaker, and yes I realize I still am, but part of me isn't anymore and to deny that would be a lie to myself as much as anyone else. 

If I thought my going back to work was temporary maybe I would feel different.  But I feel like my going back to work is long term.  How long I don't know but I do see myself working for many years into the future.  And big picture I am OK with that, I like the thought even.  But short term, I am having an identity crisis.

I guess it will be a process, just as everything else is, to transform my own thinking and be able to redefine in my own head who I am and what I do and be comfortable.  I always said that it was the working women who weren't happy working that were the ones that scoffed the most at my being home, the ones that were comfortable with their own decisions tended to be just as comfortable with mine.  So the sooner I get comfortable with my own place in my life the sooner others will be comfortable and then we can all move on with our lives because really what I do doesn't matter nearly as much as who I am.  And that I am comfortable with.