My long awaited graduation!

A day I have worked toward since Elementary school. I am so thankful to have reached this goal and to share this day with the children I may not have had if I chose to complete school earlier.

Lesson 1: The curse of the violent opener

I had a 10 minute wrestling match with a fruit cup today. No, it was not so expired that the bacteria grew fists and attacked me; I simply suffer from a curse. I am the worst opener of things alive. Ask my husband. Ask my mom. Ask the corpses of littered cereal boxes, gogurt wrappers, and microwave popcorn bags in my kitchen. They are mutilated to the point of horror. My curse is not helped by the fact that these cups of peaches were inexplicably sealed together. My first challenge was tearing them apart. Asking nicely didn't help. I had to apply brute force to rip them asunder. In doing so, I somehow ripped a hole in one of the fruit cups, so that as I wrestled to open it, I could also enjoy the sticky drip of peach juice down my cramping arm. After struggling intensely for a minute or two to peel back the part that should, in fact, "peel", but never DOES, I informed the fruit cup that if that's the way it wanted to play it, I would be getting the knife. Slaughtering the fruit cup was not as satisfying as I would have thought. Stabbing it did, eventually, lead to me being able to remove the cover, but at what cost? The second fruit cup stared from the counter in terror. I'm shocked that it didn't just explode out of protest. Aren't we so lucky to have these 'ready to eat' foods today?

Intro to Mommy Brain 101: Why the blog?

Welcome to the ramblings of a tired mother. Hopefully in my senile sermons you will see a glimpse of yourself; otherwise I'm alone in my delusions. After signing up for this blog, it only took me about six months to make my first post. That's got to be some kind of record. Originally titled, "The Hopeless Homemaker", I updated it figuring we all needed a little hope, hence the (foolishly?) optimistic title. Like I said above, homemaking is as elusive to me as rocket science. Other than the great love I have for my precious children, and the desire I have to be a constant positive force in their lives, I sometimes think I'm cut out more for a career than for shadowing Martha Stewart. The whole idea behind this blog is to laugh at the mishaps of stay-at-home moms, find simple ways to incorporate homemaking (for those of us who aren't Martha....if you are, you are probably too busy making ice sculptures for your children's birthday parties to have time to read a blog), and most importantly, to remember that the most important part of homemaking IS being a mother. Despite this fact, we are all in tears when we cannot whip out a patchwork quilt and cook a pie from scratch all while nursing our babies. I'm all about simplifying and addressing what's important: our precious family members. The heart of homemaking, to me, is being deliberately kind in the way we treat each-other and making a 'home' for souls that can feel accepted and appreciated. If we can perfect this art, it will not matter if our apple pie is bought from the store or our tablecloths are hand-sewn. We will have created something more valuable.