Leap Day - hello blog world

 I'm in the kitchen, barely conscious enough to be making coffee. Happy juice, my partner (K) and I have started calling it. I'm in a blue, fur covered robe while she's in slacks and heels.

"What are you up to today? What're you thinking about?" K asks, much more awake than I am.

I shrug, bleary eyed, "Stuff. Things. You know."

"What kind of stuff?" She doesn't always persist, and I'm not always vague.

"Um, writing stuff, errand stuff, work stuff."

"That's a lot of stuff."

"Yeah . . . " and we leave it at that.

We've done a lot of work to be comfortable with the life style we've chosen, but it still feels weird sometimes when she's off to an office, co-workers, actually making money, and I have the entire day ahead mostly alone, making my own schedule, being at home. I suppose that makes me an odd type of housewife. Odd because (1) we have no children who would traditionally keep a spouse home, (2) we are not married, it being illegal and all, and (3) besides the cooking, crafting, and gardening, I don't really fit the housewife bill.

I'm 26 and certainly employable. I do make a little cash babysitting, but it wasn't my lack of career options that has kept me home. And it's not the "stay home and write so you can get famous one day and pay me back for supporting you all these years" artist funding that it may have started out as (even though there never is a "payback" for that kind of thing). It has been a clear choice for me to stay home, for us to live off one and an eighth income, to share a car. Mostly because it came naturally, partly because I'm really lucky.

Even though I had explained what a leap year was to a seven year old this weekend, I forgot about the "extra" day until an hour ago, seeing the 29 on my computer's calendar. I sat here, thinking about the day half gone, what I had done in it, and then randomly a conversation a friend and I had had over a year ago:  You should write a blog. What? Yeah. A blog. The way you pretend with kids, your kick-ass garden, everything. You write. Yeah, but not blogs. I don't even read blogs. So. You should make one. Put down your ideas. You never know who might want to read them. 

I did not follow up on his suggestion. Didn't even really think about it. Not my thing, I told myself. Not until this afternoon, not until Leap Day at least. I was reading a new blog from one of the mom's I help, and the lightbulb finally clicked. Hey, maybe I should start a blog. What about? My life in Durham.