Not sure where to start...

...with either my goal or my blog. I had all these great ideas in the shower - prosaic lines and all that - but when I'm actually sitting down to write, it's all gone. I guess I'll start with my reasons behind both.

As a bit of background, I'm a relatively new stay at home mom with a three year old (N) and a one year old (D). I quit my part time job when my youngest was 4 months old, and I've been home ever since. Home a lot. I was hoping that I would adjust to my new place in life with a little more grace, but there it is. I have a hard time not seeing my family and friends, and since D is still taking two naps a day, we don't get out much. I also cringe at meeting new people, which is ok I guess, since we live in a more rural area where I don't get the opportunity very often.

For the past few months, my youngest daughter D has had chronic diarrhea. It's not catastrophic or anything, just mysterious and annoying. We went to a Pedi GI specialist this week and one of her suspicions is a wheat protien intolerance. Being the sometimes proactive mother I am, I decided to go ahead and cut gluten out of her diet. This has forced me to be less lazy, which I hate, and a little more creative in the kitchen, which I am also not that fond of. As I'm sifting through the boxes of cereal, individually wrapped fruit and grain bars, and other bags of snacks that we have trying to find anything that she can eat, I step back a bit (physically and mentally) and realize that most of it is JUNK! This wasn't really an earth shaking revelation, I know that we buy way more convenience foods than we need. Now that a mysterious 'something' is affecting my daughter, I have the motivation I need to clean up my act. Making healthy food for D and junk for the rest of us would just be more work, so might as well do us all a favor and make my life a little easier. Because I'm all about that!

Speaking of making junk, out of desperation last week I made macaroni and cheese for my older daughter, N. She was feeling feisty and I was feeling frayed. After I made it, the neon orange goo of cheese(?) on pasty white little macaroni elbows was just too much. I vowed never to buy it again. Boxed macaroni and cheese has got to be the epitome of processed, pre-packaged crap. (But sometimes it really is yummy!) I need to clear my kitchen of  freezer pizza, frozen chicken fingers, fish sticks and the like.

I've come to realize that since staying home, I've been drifting along day by day without a Purpose. I guess my purpose is to make it to bedtime with my sanity and temper intact. Which rarely happens. I spend my day glaring at the piles of laundry and toys, and willing the mess to go away. Not only are my kitchen cabinets full of junk, my house is full of junk. My house is full of junk because my head is full of junk. I need to sweep out my brain and find the clarity I need to focus on what is important.

I need to rid myself of the Mac & Cheeses of life - overprocessed junk food, clutter, needless distractions, and all the aimless wandering I do in a day. I need to be whatever the antithesis of Mac & Cheese is. Roasted asparagus? Homemade guacamole?

I'm not sure what exactly, but I think it's going to be good.