So this is an interesting place to be. I've considered starting a blog for some months, but have felt kinda embarrassed about it without typing word one. It seems a little...arrogant. I mean, who cares about my day-to-day musings? And then I realized: I do. So here I am. I guess I'll start at the beginning.

I met my husband, Dude, 15 years ago when we were set up by a mutual friend as a one-night stand. I was 18; he was 26. I was a waitress; he was the tour manager for a popular, international rock band. And nothing actually happened on our first date. Nada. Zip. Zero. I thought he wasn't even interested in me. Needless to say, I was wrong. We eventually (two days later) hooked up and we're still together. We started dating in Milwaukee; moved in together and got married in Los Angeles; bought our first home and had our girls in Washington DC. I'm no longer a waitress and he's not a tour manager. We've yuppified to a certain degree. Dude's an entrepreneur and business consultant with an MBA and his hair is about 6 inches shorter. I was a nonprofit executive until I quit to stay home with our kids.

We are the parents to 13-month-old twin girls - Belly and The Bug. Twins do not run in either of our families and we conceived them completely au naturale. A "spontaneous twinning" is what my OB called it. We were beyond stunned at that first ultrasound. I kept laughing a little maniacally and immediately suggested that it was time for Dude to schedule a vasectomy. Perhaps this was a tad inappropriate...but I totally freaked out and inappropriate is what I do in those kinds of situations. Anyway. Now I can't imagine only having one of them. They're just awesome. I won't expound on that point further because, while I think their shit DOES stink, I am their mom and am somewhat biased in their favor (but really - ask anyone that knows them and they will back me up).

After the girls were born in October 07, I completed my maternity leave and went back to work at my job at a national nonprofit organization. Talk about stress! I found it utterly impossible to be the totally dedicated employee that I needed to be (and had been previously) and then come home to be a full-service (read: breast-feeding) mother of twins. Plus maintaining balance in our marriage and a sense of personal identity. I almost had a full-blown breakdown about seven different times. Although I loved my job (mostly - somewhat - that may make a future blog), something had to give and that was it. I quit at the end of June, just as the girls turned 8 months old. Life slowed down and developed two naps a day. I felt like I could breathe again.

What I haven't mentioned yet is that right before I got pregnant, I cried to Dude that I missed our life and friends in LA. I cried hard. In a nice restaurant. The couple at the table next to us looked so unbelievably uncomfortable that my husband started saying, "It's not you - it's me. We can still be friends." This is one of the things that I absolutely love about him - he is so WRONG sometimes that it's breathtaking. This is one of the many reasons we're married.

But I digress. Dude, being the perfect husband for me, agreed that we could move back. But then I got pregnant. And then there were TWO of them in there. We switched gears a little and decided on Portland, Oregon instead of LA. That was a year and a half ago. It took us awhile to get the ball rolling - we did become first-time parents of twins after all - but we finally put our house on the market this fall. The sign out front currently says "SOLD" and we are scheduled to settle on December 15th (my birthday, btw) at 11am. Then we will go to the airport and the moving truck will pull out to haul our lives the 2800 miles to Portland. A new adventure will begin.

This is a good time to start my blog.