#prayforallofus

I deliberately do not watch or read the news.

I stopped doing it years ago. I used to be involved and passionate about what goes on in the world, politics, all the hot-button issues... and then one day I just stopped the dialogue. I thrive on dialogue, but I found that the more I talked, read, etc. about all the major debates in our world, the more depressed I got over the direction we're heading. So I just kind of... checked out. Granted, I still have my beliefs, and I still stand behind them. I just don't get involved in the debates, I guess.

But on Friday, I felt a passion, a rage, a blood-boiling reaction to the news that could not be avoided, and I can't keep quiet about it.

The mass murder in Paris on Friday was not the only devastating event that happened that day, and I find myself mourning them all... but to me, it is the most poignant. A stark, vicious reminder that we live in a world where there are people out there who want to murder others just for being who they are. Make no mistake: Muslims are NOT all evil, just like Americans are not all evil. The plain fact is that there are good people in the world, and there are evil people. There are do-gooders, and there are cold-blooded killers. The Islamic EXTREMISTS, the fanatics, these calculated, remorseless murderers of innocents... they are the evil.

And evil must be eradicated.

For a long time now, I've kept quiet about the war. But as a friend said in response to the outpouring of opinions on Friday: "I have seen two different posts that have used the words 'going to war' over last night's events in Paris. I hope everyone understands that we are not going to war: WE ARE AT WAR." He continues to explain that just because Friday the 13th's atrocities occurred in a familiar city doesn't make them anything new. I couldn't agree with this more.

What happened in Paris is horrific. Heart-breaking. Terrifying. And it's SOBERING. This is what we are up against, people. These monstrous, hateful, murderous religious psychopaths that want nothing more than to destroy everyone in this world that does not fit into their ideal. Forget EVERY OTHER ARGUMENT you want to spew upon reading that; trust me, I already know. It doesn't matter. History is important, but right now, it's our future that matters. This Jihadist extremism IS NOT COMPATIBLE with what the greater good represents. The only way to win this war is to vanquish the evil that started it. The evil in question is not Islam as a whole. It is the fanatics hell-bent on taking over the world with their warped, perverted version of an otherwise peaceful religion.

We have to learn from this. We have to hope our government and our people learn from it, and that the entire world learns from it. If we, the good, do not stand shoulder to shoulder to destroy the threat to our freedom and safety, we will eventually be consumed by it.

Did you see this? I'm sure you have... it's all over Facebook. But look really closely. San Francisco, Toronto, London, New York, Dublin, Sydney, Tokyo, Belgrade, Rio, Berlin, Shanghai, Mexico City... do you see this? Do you see what we're capable of? If we can come together across the world to support a long-time ally, we can come together to destroy the extremist beasts that devastated them and so many others.

(image origin: Will Black)

But, then again... that's just the humble opinion of a mere stay-at-home mom worrying about the world her children will live in.

Pray for Paris... and then pray for the rest of the world. We cannot stick our heads in the sand any longer.

A day in the life...

I've been living in the Pinterest House for almost five months now.

The twins have settled in just fine and have left their mark on the house. Literally. Marks. Every-freaking-where. The walls, the floors, the cabinets. I can't keep up with the magic erasing, so I gave up. So much for the days-on-end spent painting this place before move-in.

I'm very, very slowly getting things done. I keep telling myself, "one room at a time!", but evidently, motherhood comes with a special brand of ADD. This is a pretty normal day for me:

-Make breakfast for Stinky Twinkies and set them up to eat. Make coffee.
-Go to put contacts in and pants on (LOL just kidding, who does that?) while babies eat and coffee brews. Step on stray cat litter. Get mad and storm off to find broom to sweep cat litter.
-"Mommy! Down!" Abandon cat litter.
-Set boys up with Thomas the Tank Engine and go to get coffee. Trip on toy truck, kick across floor, immediately go to pick up truck and put away.
-Might as well put rest of toys away.
-Finish picking up toys, find five dirty socks in process. Shit, haven't done laundry in a week.
-Start laundry while twins systematically remove every.single.toy. from toy shelves.
-Finally pour coffee and sit down to watch kids play and enjoy my liquid energy.
-Toddler disappears into Mommy's room. Chase toddler out. Remember that stack of towels on dresser should have gone in bathroom a week ago. Take towels to bathroom. Cat barfed on carpet.
-Clean up cat barf. Should vacuum.
-Vacuum all rooms. God, I need coffee.
-Chase toddler out of bedroom again.
-Naptime, because I said so.
-Intend to do ALL THE THINGS. End up sitting on couch playing Pet Rescue for an hour or three.
-Lunchtime! Kids eating. Where the hell did MY lunch go? (cold coffee)
-Reheat coffee after finding cup on bathroom shelf (wtf?)
-"Mommy! Down!" Forget coffee in microwave.
-Take kids outside to distract from house wreckage.
-Garage wreckage instead.
-Okay, let's get out of the house for a bit. Take kids to store. Buy maybe two things I needed. Rest is fluff. Forgot shopping list on desk when toddler ran out back door without me.
-Home. Toddlers playing with electrical sockets. Lamps. Washing machine. No, no, no. Son of a muffin, I forgot about the laundry.
-Wet clothes smell like mildew now. Wash again with vinegar. Forget clothes again until tomorrow... maybe next week.
-Toddlers ran out back door again.
-Sit on deck and chain smoke while toddlers "mow" the lawn. Did I really just go all day without a cigarette so far? No wonder I'm grumpy-pants.
-Time to make dinner. Forgot to defrost meat again. Order pizza.
-Mentally check out as twins smear pizza sauce all over. Is it bedtime yet?
-YAY! BEDTIME! "No! No! Pway twucks!" No, it's bedtime. "Mommy no!" G'NIGHT!
-Return escaped toddlers to cribs. Twenty times.
-Man, it must be 11pm. I'm exhausted. WHAT?? IT'S 8:15?!
-F*ck it, goodnight moon. (Mentally recites entire book)

When the kids are with their dad, I do usually find time to get shit done. I clean (sometimes) and shower (sometimes) and take on projects I know nothing about. On the bright side, being forced to be innovative, cheap and hands-on, I have learned how to use a variety of tools that once would have made my vagina run screaming in sexist horror. Ladies and gents alike, my greatest discovery: if you have to sand ANYTHING, a palm sander is the bomb.com. I actually went looking for things to re-paint just so I could sand them.

Anywho, since the boys are napping and I'm running on three hours of sleep, I shall tank up on my cold coffee and attempt to bang out some household duties.

But probably, I'll pass out on the couch playing Pet Rescue.

ALL THE YAYS!

Oh my God, where has my life gone?!

Suddenly my kids are talking (more on that in a minute), my hair is looking gray, I have a birthday looming in three days, and we're about to close on a house. If I wasn't so tired all the itme, I might feel more accomplished and less OLD.

I'm going to be 29. Go ahead and tell me I'm still a baby.

Anyway, the last few months have been a clustermess of mindf**ks and chaos, mostly due to house hunting. But finally, with the help of the freaking amazing realtor, financial advisor and mortgage lender we've been working with, we found a sweet little manufactured home in EBF, Ohio and I am EXPLODING WITH:

TO GO ALL MARTHA STEWART ON THAT SHIT!

Seriously, Pinterest House. It's going to happen. At the very least, by the time we're ready to re-list the house for sale in five years or so, it'll be beautiful. I can't wait to get started, once we actually close on the house and people stop shitting all over us and postponing our closing date (looking at you, Title Company). Should've happened weeks ago. *sigh*

Also, toddlers. I don't know how many times I said "I just want them to say something! Why won't they talk?!". And now it's more of an "OH MY GOD DO THEY EVER STOP" kind of thing. They learned the word "hola" before "hello", and "Daddy" before "Mommy" (unacceptable). The fun part about talking babies, though, is pronunciation. Guess which letter they leave out of the word "clock"?

So, I will return soon with something useful/amusing/interesting to read, but this is my segue back into the world of blogging for now. And with that, off I go to vacuum crushed Lucky Charms for the second goddamn time today. Rules, people. Make them and enforce them. Don't be me.

BEST HOMEMADE CLEANER EVER!

So, this is an odd choice for a comeback post, I suppose, but I feel the need to share this!!

A while back, a friend of mine posted this on Facebook:

and I saved it, intending to test it out. Months and months later, I have finally done so, and while I haven't used it on the carpet yet, I have high hopes because it ANNIHILATED the stains on my microfiber couch! I am ridiculously excited about this.

The original formula calls for Awesome cleaner. I had everything except that, so I improvised and used the following formula instead:

1 gallon(ish) water

1 t fabric softener

1 scoop Oxyclean/offbrand whatever

1/4 C (instead of 2T) laundry detergent

My educated guess is that due to the nature of the products listed, if anything is harmful at all, it will be the cleaner. I did not use the cleaner, so I'm doubtful I'll have any damage to the furniture.

Anywho, I used this on the microfiber cushions of our bar stools, our storage ottomans, and the arm of the couch (just did one section of the couch as a test), and it WORKS! IT'S FANTASTIC! My biggest tip is to try and find the softest-bristled scrub brush you can. I bought mine at Dollar Tree (which is where you will find all the La's Awesome brand products... the stain remover is supposed to work wonders on clothes, by the way!!) and I find it a little too tough. It seemed to cause tiny rips in the fabric of the stools, but then... they were super cheap.

So I just made a gallon of this stuff and plan on storing it for future use, and I love it!! There's nothing but clothing-friendly products in my personal formula for it, and I love the results!

(left: couch cushion, untreated. right: arm of couch, freshly scrubbed with almost no stains left!)

DISCLAIMER: Before you try this, you may want to be certain of what type of upholstery you're working with. I know that most of my fabric-covered furniture is microfiber, and please note that I JUST TRIED THIS, so long-term effects have not been truly established yet.

A thousand years

Heart beats fast
Colors and promises
How to be brave?
How can I love when I'm afraid to fall?
Watching you stand alone
All of my doubt
Suddenly goes away somehow

I have died every day waiting for you
Darling, don't be afraid, I have loved you for a thousand years
I'll love you for a thousand more
All along I believed I would find you
Time has brought your heart to me... I have loved you for a thousand years
I'll love you for a thousand more

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q9ayN39xmsI

Snowed In

Is winter over yet?

This is just a small taste of Ohio, if you don't live here:

DAY 1:

DAY 2:

Nuff said?

5 Ways To Recognize A Mother of Twins

I've never had a singleton baby (yet... if ever), so I have nothing to compare my own version of motherhood to. And while having twins IS NOT the hell that people make it out to be --mainly those that see you in the grocery store with husband, cart, double stroller AND two babies in tow and immediately feed you the obligatory sympathetic line-- it does, certainly, come with its own set of challenges.

I am the oldest of four, and ten years older than my youngest sibling, so I was granted the privilege of watching her grow up and experiencing infancy from the outside looking in well before I became a mother. However, having your own kids is different in about a hundred ways, so while I had a small bank of baby knowledge, the Stinky Twinkies still manage to surprise me on a regular basis.

Hubby and I have had to learn to be creative, times two. Here are a few things we've learned or developed as a result of double trouble:

A mother of twins constantly looks like she's heading to the airport for a long trip. Everywhere I go with my babies, regardless of whether Hubby is with me or not, I am carrying two car seats (soon to be gone when we upgrade to convertible... my blistered hands are cheering with relief, even though I have no friggin' clue how I will manage to carry two babies out to the car, lock the front door, buckle them in and get all our shit out the car WITHOUT LEAVING AT LEAST ONE ALONE. wtf???), a diaper bag, my purse, blankets and toys (which may or may not fit into that diaper bag and purse), and a double stroller.

Twin parents know how to feed two babies at the same time, for the sake of a lovely, beautiful, wonderful feeding SCHEDULE. They also know how to feed baby food to two babies at the same time, whether in their carseats, in their high chairs, or in their Boppys (ies?) on the couch. They ALSO know how to finish bottle-feeding one baby while burping the other, and spoon feeding one baby while bottle-feeding and/or burping the other. Additionally, we have learned to use our toes to grab the remote, change the channel, shove the cat away, pick up the lost binky or toy, kick a package of diapers down the stairs, toss things UP the stairs while we follow with a baby on each hip... the list goes on. Basically, we're master multi-taskers. I can only imagine what parents of triplets or more can do.

We absolutely do not give a flying bug-f**k as to what belongs to who. In the beginning, I designated certain things to certain babies for the sake of balance. To this day, there are some things that remain specifically Dexter's, or specifically Elijah's. We get a lot of shit in green and blue, partly because they're boy colors, partly because they're two different colors, partly because they go with the nursery, and partly because we can't find anything else. So, for example, Dex has a blue puppy dog Dreamlite in his crib, a puppy lovey and matching blanket, and a crocheted blanket with a green stripe from his great-grandma. Elijah has a green dinosaur Dreamlite, a monkey lovey and blanket, and his crocheted blankie has a blue stripe. They stay there, and never switch.

However, clothes are interchanged, sometimes daily. We'll put one baby in a giraffe onesie and the other in a Spongebob onesie, and aside from looking at any photos taken the previous day, have not a clue in hell who wore what. Binkies are interchanged about twenty times a day, whether by us or the babies. They've gotten to that age where they're better with dexterity and gripping, so while I'm in the kitchen and they're on the floor playing, I may suddenly hear a banshee squeal and run in to find, simply, that Dexter has snatched Eli's binky out of his mouth and popped it into his own.

WTF is a shower? Seriously... I do manage to wash my hair every other or every two days, and at the very least I'll sponge bathe the nasties every day to avoid smelling like a homeless man stuffing his coat with rotten cheese. But a full, daily shower? I haven't done that shit since I was on bed rest, and that was only because I didn't have anything better to do.

You may become slightly dependent on alcohol where you never really even drank before. Ever since I outgrew the childish drunken bar-hopping phase about five years ago, I've been a lightweight and a terrible drinker. I have, however, always enjoyed the occasional cocktail or glass of wine, but no more than one, MAYBE two if I'm feeling particularly adventurous. Now, there is a bottle (or four) of Barefoot Pinot Grigio in my house AT ALL TIMES.