Damn the Plunging Dollar!

I'm a horrible proofreader. Really, I shouldn't even allow myself that title because I'm so thoroughly embarrassed about publishing a post with judgment misspelled "judgement" in that last one. Yikes! I must fall back on the old standby excuse of pregnancy brain. That and the old PPD have certainly given me a run for my money this time around. Therefore, my official and profuse apologies go out to all the militant grammarians and sensitive spellers whom I've offended. At least you got me on a repentant day. Most other days you would have gotten nothing more than a "Huh! Up yours!" Moving on, though...

This morning, a lovely lady came by our house to check it out and give me an estimate for a weekly cleaning. A house cleaner is an extravagance in which I never, ever thought I would indulge. Or so I thought BT (Before Twins).

Everything about our lives changed when we found out about the Beans. Anyone who's had kids will say the same. Anyone who's had twins will say the same twice, with double the circles and bags under her eyes. Don't get me wrong! I'm not complaining that I have kids. I know tons of people would kill for the family we have. But oh, my GOD, families make a lot of messes.

At our other house, a friend of mine, who owns a residential and commercial cleaning company, helped us out by sending her girls over to clean our house for her cost. In other words, from the time the Beans were six weeks old, we paid $30-$50 per week for our house to shine top to bottom and I never had to worry about it. I cooked, did dishes and laundry and everything else magically took care of itself once a week. And, I know I had a swingin' sweet deal. Alas, it looks like that is no longer to be.

I really liked the gal who came over. She sounded so nice on the phone. She was sweet to the Beans and to my mom, who was over for the morning and lunch. She had such a nice smile and seemed really good-natured. Then she gave me her quote and I decided that she really wasn't that great. Honestly? Really? Is that in US dollars? I mean I know the dollar is dropping, but you gotta be kidding me! It isn't like I'm asking her to milk snakes' venom or scrub Hubby's underwear or juggle flaming chainsaws in the nude on the roof. I'm going to have to shop around and that's going to suck. Allow me to illustrate just how sucky said suckiness shall be.

I'm Super-Duper -Ducky-Lucky to belong to a local Mothers of Twins Club. It's pretty fantastic, I must say. No matter what comes up, if it has anything to do with kids someone has been there, done that, so I almost always have an answer before I even ask the question. Now, I'm a pretty decent problem-solver on my own and haven't had to run to the group too often. Once, though, I had a smell that I just couldn't handle on my own. Here was what I posed to the group:

While I'm here and the girls are napping, I have another question. One of my awesome girlfriends gave me her daughter's highchair, which was wonderful and i love her for it. However, when I was cleaning it up to get ready for my girls to use, it has a FUNKY smell in the seat cushion that I can't get out. It has a leatherette cushion and the part that's stinky is the fabric sewn around the passive restraint hole. Ordinarily, a little stinkiness is not a problem but I can't begin to describe how truly fetid the odor is that's emanating from this thing. It made my 12-year-old son gag and he's a tad hygiene-deficient himself every now and then, to put it nicely. The thought of one of my darling little girls' bum smelling like this (even with as stinky as they get themselves) gives me the howling fantods. I've tried all the old stand-bys and still it stinks. It's black vinyl, so i don't think i can go with bleach and i'd rather not buy another cushion for practically the price of a new high chair. Any suggestions? Let me hit it with your best shot. Thanks in advance!

Now, this is an extremely well-experienced group of moms and you probably wouldn't believe the sheer numbers of responses I got, let alone the details of how to remove the smell and the moms' individual retellings of their own stinky experiences. I tried everything. Nothing I did got the frickin' stink out of that cushion. And yet right at this moment Bean Two sits in it, coincidentally, pooping. Does it still stink? Well, at the moment, yes. But once Bean Two's poopy keester is removed from it, no, it won't. Why? Why, you ask? Because one of my incredibly fantastic cleaning ladies got the stink out. How? I have no idea! All I know is that I mentioned something to her about how I was going to have Hubby tack it to the back fence and powerwash the hell out of it and by the time she left the thing went from stinking like a mixture of Hubby's undies, my feet, Biscuit's hat-head, and some super-nasty puked-up cheese left out in the sun on a polluted beach to smelling really rather minty fresh. I think of it fondly as my cleaning lady's Christmas miracle to me.

So, what I'm trying to say is that I'll really miss those girls and no matter how greatly I appreciated then, it could never have been enough. And that's that. I have poopy pants to change now. Au revoir!