What do you DO all day?!

Today is a big day, readers: it marks the one-month mark of me quitting my senior management job to take care of our home, prep for baby, and start this blog!

I've gotten a number of questions from friends and strangers alike, asking me some very similar questions. So, I thought I would mark this momentous occasion (ha!) by publicly posting the answers to the questions and comments I get on nearly a daily basis.

Q: So, you're still pregnant... What do you DO all day?! It's not like you have a baby to take care of yet. Aren't you bored?
 A: Nope, I'm not bored in the least! All of my days look a little bit different, but there is a general structure I've created so that I stay on track and accountable for each day, as opposed to hangin' out and watching worthless daytime TV. Here's the breakdown: 
- I get up between 6am-7am (this is sleeping in compared to when I got up for my 8-5 job, and it's AMAZING) and immediately start to work on my blog post for the day. I'm most productive early in the morning. What goes into a blog post? Writing, editing and formatting content; taking, editing, correcting and placing photos; drafting weekly plans so that there isn't too much of one topic per week; brainstorming content and researching ideas, answering emails and social media comments (this has really picked up in the last week with so much positive feedback - I'm SO excited about that!)
- Between 9-10am I either go to a class at the gym/yoga studio or head outside for a walk around White Rock Lake.
- Return home before noon, walk the doggies, and spend about an hour cleaning the house. Doing a little bit each day makes this task manageable! Expect a post about this breakdown in the near future, as it's a great method I've developed that works for stay-at-homers and worker-bees alike.
- After getting cleaned up for the day, I go on my "outing": grocery shopping, Target runs, oil changes, one of the many trips necessary to legally change my name to my married name (this is EXCESSIVE and out of control. Why is this so hard?! Last week I spent over three hours in the Social Security office, grrrr!), get baby items/decor/craft ideas for nursery, pick ups and drop offs at the dry cleaners... You get my drift. Usually once a week I meet up with a friend for lunch or a yoga class and coffee, which is a luxurious treat.
- Return home around 4pm, and get back to blog emails. Take photos for any post the next day while I still have good daylight, and sometimes begin to draft my next day's post.
- If my husband is in town for the week, start dinner shortly before he's expected home. If he's out of town, I usually play a rousing game of fetch in the backyard with the dogs, then feed them before scraping something together for myself. I never cook for one, it's always something obscure and lame. I just can't get into cooking for one. I eat a lot of sandwiches or leftovers.
- If the hubs is home, we usually have a cocktail/mocktail on our porch and catch up on the days events (SOUTHERN LIVIN' Y'ALL) while the sun is still out before heading inside to watch House of Cards; if I'm flying solo, I put on a college sorority t-shirt and sweats and catch up on my DVR'd trashy reality TV, like the Real Housewives franchise or Teen Mom 2. Yuuuuup, that happens. 

Did you happen to notice that stress, rushing and rush-hour-commuting is absent from this list?! I'm really enjoying this slower-paced lifestyle.

Q: You know you're not going to have all that time to blog after the baby comes. Enjoy it while you can, because everything is going to change!
A: Yup, I know! Well, I don't know exactly HOW my life will change, but I know that it will and I'm pretty excited about it, thank you for your concern! All in all I spend about four hours a day on blog stuff. I could easily condense that down to two hours or so, and plan to squeeze that work in between his naps. "Save Draft" is an amazing feature, don't you think?! It will allow me to nurse, change and/or soothe my son without losing all my work. Man, technology is great sometimes.

Q: Do you miss your old job? Isn't it hard to tell people you're just a homemaker now instead of a director at a huge organization?
A: It's true, there are parts I really miss about my former job. Organizational-wide strategy and problem-solving sessions and retreats were my favorite! But in that role, I enjoyed about 50% of my day, and after work, was stressed out about how I was going to get all the items in my personal life done.  Many, wayyyyyy too many, went undone. In my new role, I enjoy 100% of my day (yes, even when I'm scrubbing the toilet, even when I dine alone because my husband is traveling - our doggies happen to be superb company!) and my days are now centered around getting all the personal items done: for me, for the hubs, for the dogs, and for our soon-to-be son. THAT is far, far more important than creating any strategy attempting to save an organization from bankruptcy. Yup, that also happened...

Do I miss telling people I "used to be important"? No! And truthfully, I find that concept HILARIOUS. The fact of the matter is that in quitting my job, I stopped being 'important' to people I didn't care about and started being insanely valuable to those that I DO care about: my family. I'm far more important to them now that I spend more than two waking hours at home a day, am not frazzled and snappy with them over small details, and actually have time to focus on quality relationships.

In all truthfulness, big help promoting my comfort in being a homemaker has been living in the South. Here, value is placed on being a homemaker, by both men and women. I'm not sure there's any other place in the world where mothers and caretakers are valued more. From Southerners, I'm asked, "Do you work outside of the home, or do you take care of your family?" instead of, "Do you JUST stay at home?!" From check-out clerks at the grocery store to electricians entering my home to complete repairs, I'm respected and valued in Texas as a woman who has decided to prioritize her family. And I LOVE that.