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.