Who I am :)

I am currently a part-time working mom to my beautiful 2 month old baby girl, Sophia. I grew up in suburbia where you can reach out both arms and touch two houses at the same time. All my classrooms growing up had 28-32 kids in them and shopping meant a 5 minute drive in any direction. I lived in a small enough town where we still leave our houses and cars unlocked, but large enough where I only knew a handful of the people living around me. It was diverse enough where a kid with a faux hawk, tattoos and enough piercings to set off a metal detector a mile away wouldn't cause a second glance. I worked about an hour away in a business hub mixed with grand homes that probably housed wealthy families that came with professionally groomed lawns. I drank Starbucks more than I'd care to admit and I window shopped boutiques that I couldn't afford. My friends and I often took our lunch at sushi restaurants. On Friday or Saturday night, it was not unusual to go out for a couple drinks. And I never knew meeting a man 3 and 1/2 years ago would change all that.

For one particular mother's day, my mother, my neighbor (who has been like an aunt to me) and I drove up to visit my neighbor's mother. It is a two hour drive north and when one arrives, it's as if the world has transformed to a quaint country paradise. We all got our hair cut and headed out to the bars to have fun on our girls' weekend. Little did I know, when Marmie (my neighbor's mother) called her great nephew up, I was being set up. Saving you from the mushy love story, I'll jump to the part where we ended up together. For 2 years, we drove the two hour trip every weekend, never missing a week from seeing each other. A year and a half ago, I took a part-time job to live with my boyfriend and start on our life together.

Now I'm still adjusting to the full-time, small-town living. To say it was, and continues to be, a culture shock would be an understatement. From not knowing my neighbor two doors down to knowing almost all my neighbors that live on our mile. That's right.  "The mile" replaced the term "neighborhood" or "street". The closest store is 20 minutes away. Sidewalks only exist in town, which is also where the stores reside. Tractors going down the road are just as common as cars. I can now correctly identify the crops growing in a field 95% of the time. Restaurants are majority mom and pop shops that have had their regulars for the last 20 years. If you're new to town, forget trying to blend in. You will stick out and fitting in will be a daily challenge. You will be identified soley by your last name at times. (something I have naively thought died out in the 1800's. "Oh, you're a 'Thompson'? Great family..."). Life moves a little slower and yet, it's difficult to find one truly lazy person. If you are in a bind, it's not naive to think someone will stop to help you. Actually, you'll have lots of people wanting to help. A small community seems to have what a big community no longer values: a strong bond to each other. While in a large community, there are enough resources at hand where you may never have to know your neighbor, a small town must rely in each other to survive. But with that reliance comes friendships and bonds that strengthens the community as a whole.

I'm getting off track. Let me push my soapbox aside for moment and get back to the subject at hand. Me. So I'm a displaced suburb-loving girl who fell in love with a down home country boy. While I always pictured myself a mother, I never pictured myself doing all those extended motherly tasks, like laundry. Or organizing stuff. Or doing dishes on a daily basis. So they have become my challenge. For years I've taken care of myself by doing my laundry, made my lunches, cleaned my room, etc. I never thought running a household would be so different than what I was already doing. Now it seems like an overwhelming task that I can't quite get the hang of. But I'm trying and maybe one day, if I'm lucky, I'll have it down to the perfect science like my mom and so many other women out there.

This will be my journey, where I juggle motherhood, being a girlfriend, keeping a sense of self, random thoughts and soapbox speeches and trying to sneak in this domestic glory that I so desperately seek!