Turn and face the strange.

'Cause it's fun using song titles as blog titles.

My husband has had an idea for a business for years - since he first started working in the motorcycle industry. We feel like we are finally both set up and motivated to go for it. I'm not going to go into the business itself here right now, but suffice it to say it's going to involve a sizeable startup loan or a new line of credit or some such gamble on the future.

Little girl is almost two. In three more years (she was a late September baby) she'll start kindergarten. We need to be able to send her to a school that's out of our poorly-performing district, either by buying a house in a better neighborhood, or by sending her to a private school. And we need to be able to send her to college if that's the route she chooses to go.

I make enough for us to subsist from pay period to pay period, with minimal but constant saving and occasional small luxuries but no real forward progress. But I can't afford a new house in this market, and I can't send her to college and also retire. My husband believes deeply that this idea is a sure-fire thing, and it sounds good to me. If it works, five years from now we could actually be (gasp!) prosperous! Having two solid incomes would be huge. And after the money fight a few months back, the fact that he's excited and motivated to do this represents (I think) a change of heart on his part on the whole money issue.

We both agree on how an ambitious small business should be established and operated. Heck, I've run my own small business before, although it didn't involve anywhere near the startup expenses. As it turns out, I'm a lot less risk-averse than my husband by a long shot. He's very anxious and unsure of his ability to make this happen, whereas I have absolutely no doubt that he's got it in him.

He actually hit the nail on the head a couple of days back. He said "maybe it's just that I'm lazy." DING DING DING!!! Someone give that man a prize! He just goes from day to day doing absolutely nothing. He's far too busy reading the newspaper and multiple magazines cover to cover and watching MSNBC news all d@mn day long. He hasn't really learned how to just get up, put your shoes on, get out and do what's on his to-do list. I know it's just a motivational issue.

He's been telling his friends what he's looking to do, as he should, asking for help and referrals and suchlike. The only problem is, I'm worried someone else will pick up his idea and run with it before we do. So now that the idea is out there, he really needs to go for it. I've told him that I will support him and do anything I can, but that it needs to be primarily his project that he directs and moves forward.

OK, got to go now, promised the little girl I'd color with her once Miffy was over.