I totally did just spend my Sunday making two loaves of bread, two batches of homemade granola bars, corn chowder for this week’s lunches plus breakfast and supper and also spending the afternoon on some emergency web programming while Ian tore apart the wall beside me.

Maybe I have more energy? I don’t know because this is pretty much what my weekends look like these days. It’s those efforts that have allowed me to reduce our grocery bill by more than 25% which is one of the things that affords me the luxury of spending my weeks on programming my own thing.

It’s a weird space to be in because I don’t really have any homemaker affinity. I do like doing things around the house. I like baking and fixing up the house, but that’s because I like the immediate results of baking and projects. But “a well run household” as the objective and those things as the means to it? I can’t say I really care. Still, regardless of how I self-identify, and regardless of the fact that I’m baking in order to program and not to please my husband and take care of my brood, it puts us in a very bizarre and traditional space. We still find ourselves having conversations pregnant with patriarchal overtones – where Ian compliments my baking by way of complimenting me, or says how lucky he is on account of what great soup I make, and where I am looking for approval on my home-making efforts because they take a lot of effort and so who wouldn’t want to be noticed and approved of in the areas where they are working hardest. And given the narratives that surround us in media, it’s not remotely bizarre if I feel like I should be getting approval for my efforts and if when Ian comes home to a house that smells like baking he feels like he somehow owns that or that it reflects well on his life.

I try to not overthink the political and just stick to my goals and remember that everything else is a means to that end. Programming gets my application built, but so does baking my own bread and snacks, freelancing and hanging out with Hannah. I’m also trying to work through all this without being patronizing or dismissive about women who do identify as homemakers – though that’s a whole different set of pondering.

Anyhow, with regards to vitamin D and concentration – yesterday, like I said, I spent almost four hours doing emergency web-programming while Ian was tearing apart a wall beside me. But it didn’t distract me. Also note that I sat and worked at the computer for four hours and I didn’t look at Pinterest once – because I was busy and engaged.

Of course now I have an unbelievable amount of Pinterest to catch up on.