"You should be an author."

"You should write, Joanna. You really should."

I can't remember the first time I picked up a pencil. Probably by the second time, though, my mom had started saying this stuff. Probably by the third time, I'd started brushing her off.

Today, something remarkable occurred to me: my mother might be right.

Not only might my mother be correct about my writing, but I might actually have something to write about.

People like stories about love. People like stories about other people taking chances, growing, learning new things, and finding themselves. People like back-to-the-earth, homey, crunchy granola sorts of stories.

Good god, that's my life. Or, at least, it's about to be. I hope.

I'm going to try updating this thing more regularly. I'm going to try to take more pictures with my fancy new camera (thanks Dad!). And maybe, after a while, I can lump it all together and make something more than a blog out of it. That'd be cool. In the meantime, dear reader, you can hope to hear more from me.

Posts that I intend to eventually be part of this bigger thing will be tagged with "love and lettuce" for navigational convenience. You can expect them to be a little more focused. Rants, lists, and rambles may be left untagged; I might not want to publish that stuff later, but I need to put it down somewhere.

Expect to see some changes 'round here.