I'm excited -- can ya tell?!

My Land's End corduroys arrived today!!! I was so jealous when Caroline got hers a few days ago, but she sent hers by UPS and I used the postal service. That way I get to talk to my wonderful postman, and plus the postal service delivers on Saturday and UPS doesn't.

These cords are LOVELY. I love them! It's so hard for me to find jeans anyhow because I have, as some so cleverly put it, quite a bit of junk in my trunk. It doesn't make for easy pants buying when you consider my relatively small waist. Usually pants gap really badly in the back, and wearing a belt is just a huge annoyance for me. This is why I normally stick to my Lane Bryant jeans.

But alas, Lane Bryant makes the style of jeans I like in just a few colors -- dark denim, medium denim, and light denim.

I'm tired of denim colored jeans.

So now I am the proud owner of a pair of light brown cords and a pair of sage green cords. I have color in my wardrobe!!

These are stretch bootcut cords, which is even more lovely. I hope bootcuts NEVER go out of style; they look so good on me and are sooooooooo comfy. I also was able to choose my inseam, which is a bonus when you have insanely short legs.

Now if only designers would quit designing their shirts for people with arms the length of their bodies....

If you haven't noticed, I'm built kind of weird. Like I told Caroline, I think God forgot his blueprints the day He created me because my measurements are all out of whack!

The weather here has been lovely. I'm so enthralled with it. It's cool and overcast, and it even rained overnight, which is amazing because it never rains in Seattle in the summer. No, really, it doesn't! Folks here tease me all the time because I like it when it's cool and rainy. They're constantly hoping for heat and sun -- but most of the folks who tease me also have houses that are well-shaded. When it's hot and sunny here, my house is correspondingly hot. If they had to deal with a house in the mid 80s to 90s when the mercury starts to rise, I think they'd look forward to the cool days as well.

I had a comment left on the last entry that asked how I manage being well-educated and a good housewife, in that her opinion was that many well-educated women have issues being good housewives.

I guess the first part of the answer is that it was modeled for me. My stepmother was a US Navy officer for the first several years of her marriage to my dad, but a few years after they adopted my brother, she decided to be a stay-at-home mom. Not only does she have a bachelor's degree in anthropology (hey, it was the 70s! EVERYONE got a degree in anthropology!), she also holds a Master's degree in Library Science. Yet she chose to be a stay-at-home mom and housewife. Not that she was a very good housewife; her housekeeping skills definitely leave something to be desired. But she showed me that it was my choice whether I wanted to be a housewife or a career woman, no matter what kind of education I had.

I also had no real career plans either before or after college. I had the thought of becoming a geneticist which was squashed when I nearly failed biology for majors in college. Of course, that could have had something to do with my lack of attendance and studying, rather than a lack of aptitude for the subject. I majored in computer science more because it was the thing to do in the late 90s, in the middle of the dot.com boom. But I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life; nothing really drew me.

Then I met Kurt, and he saw nothing wrong with my being a housewife. I did work for about ten months after graduation for a small company doing research and development, as well as quality assurance and quality control, in their laboratory. However, the company imploded and it was no longer a place I wanted to work. At that point I threw all my energies into being a good housewife.

I'm not quite sure "how" I do it, especially with Kurt being out to sea and my having to run everything. But I am an independent woman, and I actually like having the time to myself. I keep myself busy with taking care of Grace, which makes the days fly by. I'm very good at entertaining myself as well; I can almost always find something interesting to watch on TV (not Jerry Springer, that's for sure), I have tons of books waiting to be read, and I'm trying to finish a cross stitch project that will complete the decor in my bathroom. I very rarely get bored or even lonely.

Maybe the question is how I find fulfillment in simply being a housewife after receiving my degree. That one's easy -- every day I learn something new or do something new or watch my daughter figure out something new. Every day is a new day, and being the best wife and mother for me is the ultimate in fulfillment. Not all women feel the same way, which is why they wouldn't make good housewives. But I believe that if a woman finds fulfillment in a career, then by all means she should be a working woman.

Because when it comes down to it, a happy momma is a good momma, whether she's a stay-at-home wife or a working woman.