Hot and fresh out the kitchen, Mama rollin' that body....

This morning I made breakfast. Scrambled eggs and blueberry muffins (from scratch...do I even need to clarify that?) Usually I don't participate in this throwback activity because I am not a morning person. However, I got the best night's sleep in a long time, due to a modification of our mattress. So I was awake at 6:30 and feeling quite refreshed. Hubby called dibs on taking dog for a walk, so that left me to rustle up some grub. What else is there to do at that time of day, even for a back-in-time housewife? Vacuum? :P

Gimme some of that yum yum chocolate chip...

As the Throwback SAHM, I must have an impeccable chocolate chip cookie recipe that I've perfected, right? Yep, I do, and I can make it from memory. I just made a batch. Instead of being lazy and mixing by hand with a wooden spoon, I dragged out the hand mixer. Holy crap does that make a difference. The cookies are divine.

I did not wear an apron or high heels during making of cookies. I guess I have some work to do to achieve true throwback status.

Line Drying

It occurs to me quite often that I'm becoming my mother. So I purposely attempt to avoid certain attributes of hers....such as not paying any attention to her appearance. I spent bookoo bucks on getting my hair cut and colored last week. Of course, after the awesome salon blowout/style, I go home, rumple it in my sleep, then get up in the AM and go for a sweaty run.

When I say I'm becoming my mother, I don't simply mean that because I'm a SAHM like she was. I mean in smaller idiosyncratic ways such as.....hanging clothes on the clothesline. I've become almost fanatic about not using my dryer. My hubby got me a wooden drying rack from the Amish shop for Xmas, which I dearly treasure and use constantly. Our house, which we purchased in summer 2008, has a very nice permanent wooden clothesline. It's about 10 feet long and has 8 lines...it's grade A clotheslining.

So I mentioned to Momoo that I have been line-drying our clothes almost exclusively. She didn't even seem surprised...she replied, "When we lived in Edwardsville I hung out all of our wash, and I did ALOT of laundry then since you kids were all home and not that old." I suppose she was secretly pleased that she had passed the torch. It still makes me feel like a throwback, despite her nonchalance.

I don't really have any way to itemize the savings from line-drying, but I know our electric bill is fairly reasonable. It also extends the life of clothing and adds much-needed humidity to our house air in the winter. The task itself I find somewhat soothing, and I love the excuse to be outside in the warm weather.

Introduction to Me.

Who am I? The S-N double O-P. Actually I am 31 soon to be 32 years old, which looks damn old when I see it in print. I am a wife and mother who lives in rural Wisconsin. I have two young kiddos, one dog, and two cats.

I stay at home with my children in the traditional sense....I do not work part-time, job-share, or telecommute. I do not operate an in-home daycare or run any sort of side business...althoughI aspire to change that in the future (the side business part, not the daycare part). For further reference, I am not a homeschooler or a deeply religious person. I do not make my own clothes (although this is another thing I aspire to do....learn how to sew) . We live in a modern house and own two vehicles and generate garbage. I aspire to be more Quaker-like or Amish-like or any other simple-living mantra, but my suburban upbringing gets in the way. I aspire to consume less, recycle/reuse more. I aspire to buy a bike and ride it instead of driving my car on short errands. I aspire to sell my clothes dryer and my husband's gas-guzzling truck (OK, this will almost certainly never happen, but who says I can't dream?) You get my point.

Some days I feel like I am stuck in a time warp....like I have set women's lib and progress back a couple decades. I have abandoned my "career" and my college degree(s) and fallen back to the role of housewife/stay-home mother. However, I don't see it as a step back. I see it as the best situation for my family, the least-stressful route, the catalyst to a better life for all of us. I know my kids will be better for it and I don't mind "sacrificing" for them. Also....honestly, if I didn't want to spend the majority of my time with them, why would I have had them? Probably an incendiary remark for most working moms, but that's my opinion. Whatever works for YOUR family is fine with me. I don't judge how others should run their families, only how mine should be run. So this is not a forum for working mom vs. SAHM rants.

Also, I feel like there are alot of stay-home moms out there, moms like me who are college-educated and had a career prior to staying home, then realized that it isn't possible to "have it all". That life is easier and simpler when you admit that raising children and maintaining your home IS a full-time job that you can't do well unless you focus on it solely.

I will admit that the SAHM gig isn't for everyone. Hell, some days it is NOT for me. Also, I don't plan on staying home until my kids go to college. I don't have any kind of timeline, but I realize that some day I will be ready for more independence from them, and vice versa. Plus I do have ambition to do things with a career and accomplish things outside of child-raising and homemaking. Just not while my kids are so little and need me for so much.

I could easily keep going, but an 18-month old is screeching for me.