Something Different

While my precious husband put Ben to bed so I could take a leisurely soak in the bathtub with a book (HEAVEN), I started thinking about laundry detergent again. Seriously. And something occurred to me. This blog is mostly quick updates and pleasantries. I used to LOVE to write. I was passionate about it. I would sit and write all kinds of narratives and stories when I had free time. Then it seemed like I had less and less free time. Then it became something that wasn't okay for me to have because it was just for me. And I gave up. I just stopped. It wasn't worth the fight any more. And over the years I would think about starting to write again, but I still just didn't; even though I had an awful lot to write about that would probably make me feel a whole lot better. But, those are not the stories that you share. While I was in the tub thinking about laundry detergent it occurred to me the reason why I was writing about laundry detergent. That's exactly the moment I realized, I have something else to write about. Dude.

You'll see from my infrequent blog posts prior, we recently became a one income household when I quit my full time job to stay home with our beautiful son and take care of our home. Today is the first day I've really realized what a huge change this is for us. We didn't take the decision lightly. We talked about it for MONTHS. I started feeling more and more strongly that my kid needed a whole lot more from me than what he was getting. One of the days I was talking about the decision with a friend over Chinese food, my fortune cookie said, "Family is more important than money". I went home that night and told my husband that I had decided I wanted to stay home and quit my job. His response? "I was just waiting for you to be ready". I cannot gush enough over what an incredible man I married. He worked out our budget anticipating where we would have to cut back. Primarily, the "fun stuff" part of our existing budget. We were living comfortably. Not rolling in the money by any means, but we could afford to do all kinds of random trips. Last minute road trips. Overnight trip to Seattle just because. Concerts. Regularly eating at nice restaurants. We knew all of this would change when we lost almost half of our income. Yes. Close to HALF.

So that's what I have to write about now. This is a huge lifestyle change for us. Which brings us back to the laundry detergent. Over the last couple of years, I have been spending a lot of money on laundry detergent. I have been spending a lot of money on unnecessary things. And now that I have a household budget that I'm responsible for (Josh still does all of our bills, hallelujah! I get a chunk of money out of Josh's paychecks for grocery shopping, buying toys or clothes for Ben, etc.), I'm a lot more careful with how I spend it. It never would have occurred to me to try to make my own laundry detergent before. But now I not only have the time, but also the incentive.

I didn't say what I had to write about was all that interesting, but still, it's something to write about. Word.