The First Day of the Rest of My Blog

I have decided to embark on a new project within this blog.

I am watching Julie and Julia this morning, a movie about a woman who, in 2002, cooked her way through Julia Child's cookbook. The movie is about the lives of both women.

My blog has a similar parallelism. I am officially beginning work today on my dissertation on the rhetoric of motherhood among nineteenth century american christian women writers. Meanwhile, I am a full-time mommy of two myself.

I am pretty conservative myself. Extremely conservative for my time. But still not as conservative as Harriet Beecher Stowe and her ilk. And I certainly don't know as much about housework and childraising. How will these women intimidate, surprise, or encourage me? How will our lives be similar, in our devotion to family, and different, in our different household arrangements and technologies?

I figure I will be working on this dissertation for at least two years. I aim to post five times per week. It will keep me going, keep my thougths together, and might even be interesting to other people.

I am going to have a piece of flourless chocolate torte to celebrate this day. It happens to be my husband's birthday; hence the cake. My blog is not about food, but I think the idea had to do with the movie. Like AA, Julie says, it gives you something to do every day. This is a place to talk about my personal reflections on what I learn about the lives of these women. I have professional questions, of course. They have an outlet - the dissertation.

Cake time!