Hi.

Welcome to my blog. It's brand new. I'm not sure what I'm going to write about yet. I will try to think of some things to say that are interesting and funny and awesome but I will also write lots of stuff that's boring and crazy and TMI. I'm okay with that because I'm writing it for me, not you. Okay, it's for you, too, a little.

Who am I, you ask? My name is Lauren and for the moment I'm a full-time mom in South Orange County, CA. That's right, THE OC. And, honestly, I'm the last person who should be living here, but more about that later. My kids are two and five, and I haven't decided yet whether they will be referred to by name in my posts or whether I will follow the blogging convention of assigning them entertaining nicknames to protect their anonymity. So more about them later, too. My husband is a software engineer in the PC game industry and, more importantly, a rockin' hubby and super dad. Seriously, he's awesome. More about him later, also.

Why am I blogging? Well, there are a few things I hope to accomplish with my blog. Once upon a time before having kids, I worked as a tech writer. Before that, I wrote a lot of poetry in my spare time and took creative writing classes when it suited me. I like writing and I find that it helps me sort the ideas that are jumbled up in my brain into some sort of order. Sometimes writing about one thing helps me sort out some totally unrelated part of the jumble, which is neat. So that's reason #1: therapy. Reason #2 is mental exercise. While the stay-at-home mommy gig is wonderful for everybody and gives me precious time with my kids that I will cherish forever and all that, it just doesn't provide the same level of mental stimulation as having a job where one gets to interact with grownups on a daily basis; as a result I kind of feel like I'm losing my edge intellectually. Making an effort to come up with interesting things to say and to frame my thoughts in a way that might be appealing to other adults is something I haven't been doing enough lately. Plus, it pays to stay in shape when it comes to stuff like punctuation and sentence structure, because you never know when it will come in handy. Reason #3 is that when I force myself to be disciplined about writing I find that it makes it easier to be disciplined in areas like housework and gardening and other things that I am worse at and enjoy less than writing.

Enjoy. Leave comments. Or be bored and leave. Whatever. Blog you later!