Changes...

The last few years of my life have brought about some pretty dramatic changes. When my husband and I discovered that we were expecting another child, we decided to do everything we could to give him the sort of childhood I always wished I could have given my older children: a stay at home mother dedicated to his care and early education and fresh, home grown, homemade food and plenty of fresh air to grow on. So, I left my full time job shortly before my son was born and now only work on the weekends and we made the move North from suburban Detroit to a much more rural area. 

Obviously, the subtitle of my blog, A Diary of a Suburban Kitchen Witch, is no longer appropriate. I'm thinking "Homesteading Hearth Witch" instead. 

Just a few years ago I was the mother of teenagers. I had two dogs. I lived in the suburbs with my delightful husband. We had two cars and a tiny house and a postage-stamp sized yard. My husband and I both worked full time. While were weren't wealthy by any means, we had enough cash to occasionally dine out, have date nights, go to the movies, have annual memberships to the local museum and zoo and go on vacation annually. 

Now we have a bigger house, a big yard, one car, one job (and a quarter) and no extra money for fun stuff. I'm a little worried about how Yule is going to turn out. Somehow I thought I'd have extra time when I left my day job. I thought I'd make all my Yuletide gifts. I thought I would write more, maybe finally write that book I've been thinking about since I was 8. This was naive. It hasn't turned out that way at all. All of my time is spent keeping the house together and preventing my extremely active little Sunshine from injuring himself, incurring the wrath of the cat, or burning down the house. (Wow I can't wait for preschool next year.)

My plan to supplement our income by growing the majority of our food is put on hold until next spring since we didn't manage to get possession of the house we put an offer on in May until the middle of September. Painful tendinitis in my arm has made swinging a hammer, turning a screw, raking and shoveling agony. So my chicken coop goes unbuilt, my beds go unturned. I. Am. So. Frustrated. I can't help it, I'm a Gemini.

Do not for a minute thing that all this complaining means I'm unhappy. When is a Gemini happy when she doesn't have something to complain about? Something to change, to fix, to fantasize about making better?

This too will pass. This time next year I will have hens giving me eggs, lovely greens sitting in a coldframe, a cellar full of root veggies and jars of tomatoes and sauces and this blog will be full of my journey. I know that I am not the only one going through this. I know a lot of folks out there who grew up in the suburbs or cities who are trying to make a more natural life for their families close to the land. And I know its an adjustment. I know because I read their blogs to find out how they do stuff I am trying to figure out how to do.

Historically, I have tried in my writing to be as generic and impersonal as possible but, you know, this is pointless in a blog. I can do impersonal at the Witchipedia. Here and at Sacred Hearth it's personal. After all, this blog claims to be a diary. Yet I sometimes refrain from writing things because they are too personal, why do folks want to hear about that? I am not so interesting. But why not? After all, who else am I going to talk to stuck in the house with a baby out in the middle of nowhere?

So, changes have happened and changes are coming. And I am going to try to write more. It's good for me. And maybe, as I struggle to be a homesteader and a writer and a stay at home mom and homemaker extraordinaire and all that stuff I always wanted to be, you will find something to help you out with your own struggles.