A country mouse heads to the city

When I was a little girl my parents called me Mouse.  It was a nickname that my Dad came up with when I was a newborn.  He said it was because of my long brown hair and how small I was in size.  Over the years my parents would buy me little mouse figurines and books to add to my growing collection.  One of my favorites was my Little Golden Book titled, "The Country Mouse and The City Mouse" which told the tale of two mice who lived in very different areas and took turns visiting one another.

I grew up much like the Country Mouse.  I was born in Oklahoma and then moved to the mountains of Colorado when I was 14.  When I was 22 I moved to the east coast and still managed to find relatively small communities in which to live.  I've been into Baltimore and Washington DC less than a dozen times in the past 15 years.  Clearly this mouse likes her places small and cozy.

But that is all about to change!

Tomorrow this Country Mouse is headed to New York City!!

This will be my very first time visiting New York City and I'll be meeting up with my blog & Twitter friend Veronica Diaz (AKA: The City Mouse).  Veronica was raised in the city and returns numerous times each year and when she invited me to join her I jumped at the opportunity.  We have a list of sights to see and we're both giddy over the 3 day girl's weekend.

Best of all is our plan to live tweet our adventures using the #NYCVirgin hashtag.  I hope you'll follow along and interact with us via Twitter and check out my pics I'll be taking via Instagram!

Look out NYC...this Country Mouse is on her way!!!

Kids = Messes. Autistic Kids = TOTAL DESTRUCTION

We all know that kids are messy.

Hell, LIFE is messy, but life with kids is messy on crack!

Which is why when I saw my friend Jessica from Four Plus An Angel was having a contest to find the blogosphere's messiest kid(s) I knew I had to enter!

Because if there is anything The Trouble Brothers dominate at its making messes of mass proportions!

For instance:

This poor couch of ours didn't stand a chance against the ravages of The Nornado.  Just like its more commonly known natural disaster, the tornado, The Nornado can also level a home in under 30 seconds.

Then there is the disaster that is their bedroom:

The walls are veritable canvases for their drawing, writing, and the like.  Not that I gave them the crayons and colored pencils with caret blanche to decorate their room to their heart's content....this is two years worth of sneaky pilfering of writing instruments into the bedroom when Mommy is in the bathroom, making dinner, or otherwise distracted.

My kids may not be the all time most destructive on record but I would think we are in the higher echelon of mess producing families.

Of Tattoos and Ampersands

For over a year I have been itching to get a new tattoo.  I wanted to get my boys' names but I couldn't decide where on my body to do it and picking a font I loved seemed nearly impossible.

And then I saw this picture on Pinterest and I knew I had answered both questions at once.

So on Friday night I picked up my friend Nic and we made the trek into the District to visit the awesome Jinx Proof tattoo studio.

I paid my money, proofed the artwork the artist had done freehand and before I knew it I was laying down on the table and giving my left arm over to the names of the two people who have shaped the woman and the mother I am today.

The artist asked me why I had chosen such a prominent place to put my tattoo and so I told him the story of my boys and I.   I explained to him about how my boys are such a profoundly huge part of who I am, about their shared diagnosis of autism, and how I feel like we're the three musketeers taking on the world one day at a time.  I remember saying that Sam and Noah are two halves of my heart walking around outside my body and for the rest of my life they will be one with me.

And then he told me he wanted to shake my hand.

And so he did.

It wasn't until I got home that night and took the bandage off my arm that I realized their was a wee bit of a problem with my new ink.

Can you see it?

Wanna hint?

The ampersand that should have been between Samuel and Noah's names was backwards.  Instead it looks like a cursive "S".

And then it hit me.

He didn't mess it up.  Arguably I messed up by proofing it and not catching the error before it was tattooed onto my arm.

But deep down I don't think it was an error on anyone's part.

I do believe that cursive "S" is there because it was meant to be there.  Fate intervened and duped both the tattoo artist and me into never noticing it.

My first name, as most of you know, is Sunday.  So if you look at it from this point of view it makes a lot of sense.

I will always and forever be linked with both Samuel & Noah.  Truly I cannot see a day when I will not be standing between the two of them, holding their hands, and leading them through the years to come.

So, its rather fitting that my first initial is seated firmly, and permanently between the two of them.

And I rather like it that way.

If we are what we eat I should be dead.

On Sunday night I watched the documentary Food Inc. for the first time.  To say it was enlightening would be an understatement.

I have always been the type of consumer who has blind faith in my government and its agencies.  I believed that if a product is sold, whether it is a medicine or a food item, it has been tested and proven to be safe for consumption.

I could not be more wrong.

Instead it seems the only people the government is looking out for is the large corporations and their interest in making more money faster, easier, and at the expense of our health.

Don't believe me?  Watch Food, Inc. for yourself and make your own decision.

I know I have.

Its not going to be easy....or cheap.  But, from here on our when my family eats meat its going to come from a certified organic farm with free-range, forage-only, animals for our beef, pork, and poultry.  If this means we eat 1/4 of the meat we used to then so be it.

Our fruits and vegetables?  Those are going to come from local organic farms and I'll travel a bit further to shop at local farmers' markets.

Eggs, milk, and cheese?  Same story.

I can't help but think that this way of eating is the best choice for our family.  Many years ago I used to bake my own bread from scratch every week and while labor intensive I was sure of exactly what went into it and most importantly...what did not.

These choices are not altogether radical to me.  For quite some time I have held this dream of someday living more simply.  Ideally someday I would love to have a home "off the grid".  While it is somewhat out of the ordinary here in Maryland it is quite commonplace in the Northeast and also in Colorado where I lived for seven years when I was younger.

Solar is sexy!

Living off the grid consists of living self-sufficient thanks to solar, wind, or hydro-power which allows you to remove your home from one or all public utilities.  Imagine the power going out due to a thunderstorm or a blizzard?  You'd still be toasty warm and with electricity power thanks to your solar panels, wind turbine, or a water wheel.

Right now its something of a pipe dream.  Its not cheap to build an ecological house and its nearly impossible to do so where I am living right now.  Still, its something I want for myself, my children, and my planet and so I'll hold tight to it and take baby steps to making it happen.

But starting today I can make a real difference in my life and that of my family by changing the things I put on our dinner table....and I plan to do just that.