New developments

1. My sister might be moving into my upstairs in like a day. I am entirely unprepared for this since I am in the middle of two projects and have entirely neglected housecleaning in a way no Mennonite ever would. The fear of someone seeing it feels not so great. Honestly, it's like when you read the tragic stories in the newspaper, where some child gets forgotten in the car and the police come to find the parents at their address and they report the cleanliness of the house to be substandard to filthy. It's not ideal. But I'd rather keep my job than to clean my house. It's a shame that it has to be a choice between the two.
2. I got a new job starting on Monday. Yes, I know. Why am I starting a new job when I'll be so soon leaving it. Well, that is the cut-throat in me coming out, looking out for myself and not so much the company. (Hey, it's time for punching it out like the big companies.) I want benefits for the next few months and I would like a paid vacation to use for a packing day or something. My temp company was giving me paid holiday for Christmas and Thanksgiving Day. 2 days--that's it. I was considering skipping family Christmas and Thanksgiving just so I could work on packing and or a house project. I was grateful for the nearly $3/hr raise my current company was willing to pay me to keep me. But the new company was offering the same payrate and they are located a mile from my home and they have benefits and perks and all that good stuff employees get. I also got the job with a cold application, 20% chance of this occurring. 

Basil, chicken and cheese ravioli soup

• 2 cloves garlic
• 1 onion
• 1 sweet red pepper
• 2 carrots cubed
• chicken broth
• chicken
• 3 pieces bacon, chopped
• sweet cheese ravioli
• 2 T. flour
• lots of finely chopped or puréed basil

Fry the bacon or finely chopped salt pork. Grill the garlic, onion and red pepper. Set aside. Boil the carrots, chicken, in the chicken broth and water till soft. Ensure broth is seasoned with a pinch of paprika, salt and pepper. Add ravioli, bacon, grilled onion, garlic and red pepper. Simmer for 5-10 minutes. Mix a cup of cold water with 2 T. flour and add to soup. Add puréed basil till soup is a nice green color. Simmer till thickened. 

Aesthetic tip. If the color isn't green and the basil flavor is sufficient, likely the "grilled" aspect/color of the soup is overpowering the green basil color. So, don't grill your veggies in the soup pot and add the grilled aspect of the soup as late in the process as you can.

Other thickeners can be used. I will be trying green split pea or potato flakes.

To add flavor, my "cheater" ingredient for soups is this bullion I get from the Asian store. No MSG in it. I'm not sure what it is called.

My twins approve this recipe. They were born with their father's palette. It must be savory before they eat it. They ate a few pieces of chicken, then protested. So I fed them the broth and they loved it. I even slipped them the veggies in the broth!

Another weekend.

Recently, Ibuprofen and Advil have become my friends. I can't seem to deal with the muscle pain otherwise. After a long weekend of very physical activities, my body feels like its been hit by a truck. I got a lot of crack sealing done this past weekend. And since I was using the caulk gun, I decided to finish caulking the windows on the west side of the house. The weather was great for it. The caulk was super hard to squeeze out of the tube. Therefore, I'm having some difficulty typing.

The twins loved the outdoors for the most part. While I was sealing cracks in the back yard, they ran around playing and inspecting, while a Hmong ceremony took place in the house immediately adjacent to my back yard. The rattles, gongs and chanting, wafted down to us like the smell of lemongrass and barbecued meat. Their kids played hide and seek all around us while I caulked and the twins played, until they cried in protest.

The have's and the have nots.

Last year at about this time I was working at NMDP. I was a bit unambitious. It was a contract job, purposed for replacing a maternity leave. And I knew I didn’t have it quite made yet but I had little energy at the time to pull all the heartstrings and impressive feats for the company, while I breastfed two infants and kept the household running. I landed the job at the interview and I knew I had. I charmed the socks off of the two ladies that interviewed me and I intended to. But because of the overload outside of the job, and likely the level of wellness attained after birthing twins, I wasn’t impressive enough to stay with the company.

Such is the nature of finding a good company to work for and keeping your job with it in today’s market.

As I have just learned a good Seminary education no longer needs experts in hermeneutics and Church History. That seems about as foreign and bizarre to me as eliminating the Old Testament department at a Bible Seminary. It seems that is the nature of today’s economy. Everything, gets worked over and cut. I have come to see and understand what positions in a company are the “fat” and will get cut. I see it through more calculative eyes and I toss aside my emotions, when looking at company practices and structures.

All that is to say that I have, as an employee, become more calculative as well, not to the point of cruelty but to the point of survival. I think it will take more than 3 years of suffering to bring me to cruelty.

In today’s job market, cut-throat does not describe it fully, although that is the case also. There is this element of the “haves” and the “have nots.” Once you have a job or your spouse does, you rule the world and the have nots have no impact or argument toward you. There is no obligation to the have nots as they struggle and toil away. There is a sense of entitlement for the haves, concerning all that they have. A salary. Benefits. Paid vacation. They feel they have earned it and the folk who’s jobs got eliminated or downsized—well, somehow the don’t deserve the salary or benefits of everyone else.

Somehow, this mentality feels really OFF to me. A bit like the silence about the disparity between a CEO's annual compensation and the lowliest worker in his company. Sure, that is an extreme disparity, begging for criticism. However, I'm not so sure those who currently bask in their benefits on a 5 figure salary, would behave much differently than the CEO, with an 8 figure salary.

Pushing their weight already.

Glory didn't even need instructions. She just picked up the shovel like she knew what she was doing. Wow, baby! Who needs to fight to get a handyman out? For me it's proven to be more expedient to birth children then wait a year. LOL.

Chutes and ladders.

Before twins, I would have gotten these projects done in a month. It's not that much to do--for the Mennonite me anyway. But now with twins, I've been struggling the entire summer to complete them and it is now the middle of October. Last Friday I left an hour early from work and did a marathon on a project for about 2 hours before I picked up the girls from daycare. That was an amazing accomplishment.

For the past month or two, I've been trying to hire a reliable handyman. By the looks of it (below) my twins have been more reliable.

Gracie climbs the ladder while Glory looks out the door. The "snow" in the photo is the evidence of sanding plaster.

House project progress

So it didn't really work to hire the handy man of a friend. So, the project goes on...

Here's the evidence.

This is how we started off...
My all too willing helpers got barricaded into the kitchen.

They destroyed the kitchen. There was a lot of screaming when the highchair got tipped over.

The barricade didn't last long. 

To people that keep saying stupid things about welfare…

… welfare is where the government pays all your bills while you sit on your lazy ass and do nothing but eat food stamps.

… there is government assistance that is out there that people become dependent on and that the taxpayers slave away to pay

… or those who say that before you put people on government assistance; they should be subject to a drug test.

I used to be as ignorant as the next person when it came to knowing what kinds of government assistance there is. Then, I got laid off, became pregnant with twins and immigration refused to allow my husband to enter the country even for the severe emergency that became my birth experience.

I knew things would be rough, even with my husband present. But I knew I would at least survive, if he was with me. However, the chances of having him get a Visa were slim and I had to make alternative plans if he was denied. I drafted a plan and a budget for before and after the twins were born and I handed it out to family members at Thanksgiving and Christmas. It was met with kindness and some skepticism but largely, I don’t think anyone realized the true health risks I faced in birthing twins. My family only started to realize how serious things were, when I began to end up in the hospital repeatedly. Everything climaxed when I finally had an emergency C-section and had to stay in the hospital because those in charge of releasing me wouldn’t because they knew I would be going home as the sole care provider, and I was not well enough to do it. By then it was too late to move in with a brother or sister, as it would have required moving across the country.

Needless to say, if the sole care provider of preemie infants is still laid off and too ill to work or look for a job, there is no money coming into the household. Who is going to put a roof over their head? People helped here and there and gave baby gifts and that part was all good. I was tremendously grateful. But nobody was paying the mortgage or the utilities but myself. As things progressed and I began searching for jobs and applying, I saw the writing on the wall, when stumbled out the door to an interview and I nearly passed out. This was just the beginning of the day, not the end. How was I supposed to work to my fullest of potential and keep a job if I was exhausted at 10 am before I even got to the interview? Needless to say I didn’t get that job, nor the next and the next.

I had begun to research state assistance (welfare), while I was working, even before I gave birth. I researched it as a last ditch option and a worst case scenario. And for The Visa application for my husband, I spelled out how much it would cost the government to support me in my husband’s absence. It may be a shocker but the truth of the matter is that to go on the maximum benefit, government program, for my family of 3 it would cost the government a direct cash amount of $1,005/month. I am quoting DHS’s 2013 informational flier. Note that this number has increased ever so slightly from the 2011 number I was quoted before my babes were born.

A family of three — two children, one adult — with no other income receives $532 in cash and $473 in Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program support monthly. https://edocs.dhs.state.mn.us/lfserver/Public/DHS-4737-ENG

This might be another ingenious observation but there is no housing available for $532/month. Further, this is assuming you buy nothing else but housing with your cash grant. Diapers, clothes, shampoo and any other baby items as well as energy costs and car insurance all need to remain in that $532/month budget or things will start looking pretty dismal really fast. This is 100% of what a person is eligible for.

Wow. Thank you Uncle Sam and Obama!

Me an my po’ babies be gett’in sooo hungry with’ ot yo’ kandness. I be mighty ‘appy wit dis dime u gave me. Lemmie, go un buy me a drop a milk at de gas stashon. Mebee I kin sneak some papa’ towls out de ressroom to rap ma babies in from de co’d.

…oh, and by the way, the food assistance kicks in right away when you apply but the cash assistance begins 2 months after your income drops to $0/month. So, to clarify, you need to first live on $0 for 2 months then you will get help. 

Another ingenious observation here but if your income drops to $0 for two months, whether you rent living quarters or pay a mortgage, you quit paying for 2 months and you are evicted by the end of the 2nd or you have a foreclosure happening. And no you can't pay for the 2 months with your savings because the application for assistance, ensures that you "really need" assistance by disqualifying you for assistance if your savings exceeds $1000.

I wonder how many people, if forced to live within this budget, would call this kind of existence, “sitting on your ass and eating steaks bought by food stamps?” If you were so unlucky to have found yourself in the $0/month situation for 2 months, your ass would be sitting in a homeless shelter or the street. I don’t call that easy living. I don’t call that desirable living. I certainly wouldn’t begrudge someone for living off a “government handout” in this situation. How could anyone in their right mind become dependent upon this lifestyle?

There were a number of people that encouraged me to apply for government assistance during this time. The way in which they encouraged me to do so, seemed to indicate that they thought my basic needs would be easily met. When you do the numbers, it simply doesn’t balance out and it’s not because I can’t do the math while I’m on drugs. The only drugs I was taking were the Mg and the other pallette of drugs they had me hooked up to at the hospital.

It’s time people started to see the truth about welfare and government assistance. When I saw the borders of this picture being framed in front of my very eyes, I began to panic a little inside my head, as I felt my leaden limbs and looked at my teenie tiny twins cuddled closely to me in my twin bed. I saw images of me homeless, on the street with my babies in the middle of winter. I began to fear they be taken away from me. I considered giving them to foster care for a while but was afraid they wouldn't be returned to me.

How did somebody with such aspiration and promise and spirit end up like this?

I'd like to remind you, gentle reader, we are all only a couple mis-steps away from the same fate. Lets say an accident and a job loss happened to your family. This will immediately put you in the same situation I am describing above. I hope you don't become one of those lazy ass welfare recipients.

Modern Slavery

I believe slavery is one of the biggest problems we need to address in the next decade.

Slavery: global comeback.

There is also the book I recommend

A Crime So Monstrous: Face-to-Face with Modern-Day Slavery by E. Benjamin Skinner. The book is gritty with details of a harsh reality.

Amish avoid Obama-care

I think we could take a lesson from this.

Here's an article about an alternative to our current healthcare system. It would benefit us greatly if we could avoid the healthcare middlemen.

http://news.msn.com/us/as-us-struggles-with-health-reform-amish-go-own-way

The Amish system doesn't always work perfectly. I remember the church I grew up in. During the time my mother was having babies, she seemed to be the only one having babies. Traditionally, birthing babies was done through a mid-wife who didn't incur great expense. However, when people began giving birth in hospitals, the church began to assist with the hospital bill for every child born. With our church, I happen to remember how, it wasn't until my mother quit birthing children that someone thought this practice should be adopted.

Unfinished work

I woke up at 3 am last night in a panic. I couldn't get back to sleep as I looked at the unfinished walls. How am I going to get this done? Sending out a universal request for help didn't have good results. Asking individuals to help with certain projects helped a little. There is so much more to do. I began looking online and found some carpenters and handymen. That might work. I also remembered by morning that a family friend had told me of a young man who was looking to do handy man work, while his case for asylum gets processed.

I know if I were still in the Mennonite community I would just hire a young Mennonite to come over and do this and that. I'd trust him better than the handymen from the Yellow Pages. Further, I recalled the days when my parents were overwhelmed with more work than they could handle. The church would arrange a "shaf taug" (work day) and a bunch of people would come over and the camaraderie would help the work get done in short order.

I feel like a fish out of water in my current situation. After some plumbing disasters by professionals, I've avoided contractors and opted to fix things myself. One expensive disaster could have been avoided had the plumber read the directions listed on a large sticker posted on the product.

The void that stands beside me.

It might not be so bad if I could pick up the phone and call him at any time or skype. I could at least have an emotional connection on an as needed basis. I could work with that. But as things have been going, $5 buys you 20 minutes of phone time to Uganda. The rates used to be better but anymore this is the best they get. I’ve spent a fortune on phone cards. Then we’ve switched to skype and used google voice both of which are dependent upon a decent internet connection and on power. Needless to say those two items have infringed greatly on good communication with my husband. Sometimes I can’t speak to him for over a week.

It’s been a super hard week. I’ve missed him so much. I’ve been sick with a feverish cold. The babies are so much bigger now than before. And I’ve blown through another deadline for leaving the continental US. It is definitely fall now. My low wage job is not helping me save much for our flights to Uganda. I’ve been interviewing all summer here and there, trying to get a higher paying job to no avail. I work hard every weekend to get the house into shape and to pack up my life here. The items on my to do list get done very slowly. Perhaps if I would have started working that list a year ago, I’d be done now. But I still remember how sick I was last year about this time and how needy the twins still were at that time.

I have my strength back now. I remember being too weak to care. Perhaps that is the difference between missing my husband and caring that he is not with me. Last year the loneliness didn’t hit me because I didn’t have the strength to feel much. I remember a lot of things fell behind as I lay on the couch last year. One evening I had fallen asleep with the lights on. I woke and saw a portly mouse walking across the floor and squeezing under the closet door. Normally, such an incident would have roused me from slumber to clean out whatever it was that drew that mouse to be in the closet. Instead, I simply lay there. I remember making a mental note to do that later. By morning that mental note had completely disappeared. Months later, I re-discovered the closet mouse remains.

Now, time eats away at our lives together. Hard work helps but a little. I’m weary with trying to keep up but know that if I don’t put in a brute effort, I will eventually be stranded here in the US and this painful separation will go on and on. The sadness settles like the cold before dawn. Like the death of a sister, I’ll remember it less and I will only weep occasionally. I want to call out for help but like the last cries of a mouse caught in a trap, I know I am near the end.