I’m Jess.  I was born and raised in Minnesota.  I lived in Chicago briefly and hated it, so I’m pretty sure I’m going to spend the rest of my life here in the MN…although I could definitely be talked into spending my life in Italy.

I talk a lot.  A lot of that talk tends to be either whining or expressing my unwanted opinion.  I have a lot of opinions. This generally drives The Husband crazy, but he’s stuck with me now.

In 2009, right before Christmas and when I was 3 months pregnant, I was laid off from my job as the head of marketing at my small company. I spent my pregnancy unemployed, picking up freelance writing jobs here and there.  Now I make my living taking care of other people’s children.  While this has been great for my own child’s socialization (given my irrational disdain of “mommy groups”), I’m still hoping to one day be independently wealthy and spend my days convincing friends to meet me for liquid lunches.  What?  A girl can dream.

I am a control freak. I will not eat meat on the bone. I hate it when my food touches.  I usually speak before I think.  I sunburn easily, except when I’m pregnant and then I have “magic skin”.  I am addicted to bad TV.  I tend to talk about drinking a lot, but can’t even remember the last time I had more than two drinks in an evening.  I was an English major in college — this has done very little for me in life.  I am a stubborn ass.  I love to laugh and do my best to surround myself with people who help me do that regularly. 

I’m not an expert on children or raising them properly, but I am an expert on my own kid.  I’m also not an photography expert (or even hobbyist), so I’ll just go ahead and apologize in advance for all the cell phone pictures and slightly blurry Canon pictures.  I’m here to capture the moments, not stage them.  I don’t have that kind of patience.  Although sometimes I use picnik.com to be fancy. I’m unpredictable like that.

As pathetic as it might seem to some, my life’s dream was to create and raise a happy and healthy family.  So far, I’m living the dream.  This is where I write about the triumphs, the mistakes, the hilarity, the mundane, and everything in between.

(and yeah, even though it was many years ago, I’m putting up a picture of myself from my wedding day?  Know why?  Because it’s my blog, and there should be at least one picture of me looking cute!)

P.S.  I should probably note that I use Amazon affiliate links.  So if you click on a link, theoretically you’re earning me money.  But considering I only use these links once every 6 months, you can trust that I’m not actually making any money off your readership.  So why do I do it?  I really don’t have a good reason.  But consider this my disclaimer.  kthxbai.