it's begun...

the start of tourist season around new england. this means of higher than normal prices for just about everything. the main problem is dealing with all the out of staters that don't know how to drive through rotaries.. about an hour ago. for example, we got behine someone to stopped in the middle of thr rotary for no reason other than reading a sign, i think. ack... who the hell stops in the middle of a rotary when there's no real reason to.. they even braked for the oncoming traffic that was STOPPED at the yield sign.. what's the worst that happens if you miss your turn off? you just keep on driving around the circle it'll still be there when you go around again, and no one will probably nitice tht you've missed your turn.. just don't stop... you could cause an accident.

the weather here has made it feel like summer alright. high 80's the past few days and tomorrow they're saying 90's! oh dear lord. i remember when i used to go swimming this time of year and not think anything of the cold water. what was i thinking... what was my mom thinking?! it was like a ritual to be able to go swimming on my birthday, or around my birthday and often i would go swimming after school... boy do i miss living across the street from the beach.

we're having our town elections in a couple of weeks, and both candidates for mayor are less than desirable choices. i think i'm gonna vote for the mayor. she was handed alot of crap in her first term as teh very first mayor. i'll give her another chance simply b/c i do not want that man to be our mayor. i don't like the things he wants to do with the school system here. he also seems to think he's got all the answers to what the mayor did wrong, but i haven't heard any things about how he's gonna fund all these ideas. the one thing i'd like to see happen no matter who the next mayor is, is the town paying less for health insurance to help ease the budget. the town currently pays 90% of the cost of insurance for town employees. there's no reason why we can't lower that and have the employess pay more. i know i sound mean, but jay and a former collegue figured out that in Hadley, the town only pays about 50% of the cost of health insurance, and i'm pretty damn sure there's no other town in the area that pays that much.
i also wouldn't be opposed to a price hike in the town trash bags as long as the extra income goes solely to the schools. i'm not talking a huge hike, but an extra 25 cents per small bag (19 gal) and 50 cents for the big bag (33 gal). our town has a reputation for a poor school system, and is facing some serious layoff this coming year. stupid. the schools need more money. we need to improve our schools to keep kids in the district b/c we're spending too much money letting them choice out. we need to have them want to go to greenfield schools. it's bad enough they're closing teh school that evan would go to school at to make it an early childhood education center.. aka preschool.. but the opponent candidate wants to close another elementary school.. not the answer. with the closing of these schools, is he planning on still making sure parents bring their kids to school? b/c i would think that the town would have to do some busing, b/c these would not be living close enough to be within walking distance to any of the other schools. and to make parents have to drive their kids to school if they would otherwise be able to walk if the school was still open is unfair. has he thought of this? if it comes to that the town needs to close this other school the town should start busing. atleast for the kids by the fairgrounds.... then all those kids will have to be squeezed into the newton school, which is where the kids from our neighborhood would have to go, i think.. i'm just not happy about the idea of closing another elementary school. sorry about the rant. besides the opponent isn't anything nice to look at... he looks funny. i know it superficial, but it's true.

we've also been very crafty lately. we built evan a sandbox today while he was taking a nap. we used wood that used to be our kitchen shelves when we moved into our house... (there were no cabinets, just open shelves in teh pantry) we painted it and pput it together... all we need now is sand. lol. earlier in teh season we built a swingset. spent about $80 on wood and braces at home depot and built that when evan was sleeping too. my mother in law and her bf also put up a deck this past week and we helped them put it together. they had decking already from a deck that used to be up and then got taken down 7 years ago.

ok.. got to run.. the kid wants to ride his bike..

enjoy your (hopefully) long weekend!

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kid scared the crap out of us today

ok... evan is just too smart (and too strong)for us. we have a back yard and it's fenced in. it's gated and we've been locking it with a make-shift lock with a twisted up coat hanger. well today evan figured it out and went out of the backyard without us knowing long enough it make it to the end of the street. about 30 seconds after he went outside (and mind you we were in the room with the back door, so we were not far from teh gate by any means) we didn't hear him. jay (the husband) got up and said shit, he got out! ack! so he goes out the back door.. i go out the front door and he's calling for the kid. i look down and he's at the end of the street! ack.. our street is pretty quite but not where it meets the next street. and just for reference we're the second house in on the street so it wasn't really that far, but it was definatly too far for him to go without one of us. the neighbor on the other side of the street came out just a second before i was screaming to him to come back now. and jay carried swooped him up, and we brought him in and gave him a time out. we told him it was time out time and after his 2 minutes we told him what he did was very scary and why. we didn't yell, but talked to him about why it was wrong and very scary. we grounded him to no more playing outside for the rest of the day, and no kiddie videos for the evening.

so after dinner we went to home depot and picked us up some padlocks for the gates. if he gets these undone anytime soon, i'm gonna make him take the mensa exam.

btw... evan just turnd 2 1/2 two weeks ago.

we've also bought a chain for the back door so when we're inside he can't open the door... he's a wiz with door knobs, and our doorknobs don't fit in those kid proof things, so forget those...

what a crazy evening

stupid rain

i commented this on my mom's page, but it was long so i thought i'd post it as a post:

the flooding on the north shore is wild.. i saw it. the exit i get off of on 495 is on teh line of lawrence and north andover. route 114 in middleton completly flooded. the pictures and videos you see don't do it justice. i almost got myself lost trying to get to boxford b/c the main road to boxford from the highway was closed b/c the road was flooded in several places, and all the other roads i turned down were those friggin' cul-de-sacs.. god i hate those. why don't people build streets that connect anymore. it drives me crazy.. but i did eventually find my way only 5 minutes late to my appoinment... thankfully i left umass 15 minutes early in case there was traffic.. i never hit any... it was a miracle. then to get home i couldn't get on 495 south from my usual place b/c the water flooded the road under the highway to get to the ramp, so i had to hop on northbound and pop a u-ey (sp? lol) i went over teh river which i didn't realize was right there..oh my god.. it was crazy flooded on lawrence....

damn kids spreading germs..

that's right.. i'm damning kids. evan got sick from daycare last week adn edid up having a fever of 102 over the weekend. now he's got a nasty cough. it was a dry hoarse cough on monday when he didn't have a voice. and now it's all junky and he has coughing fits at night. i've got a bug now too. could be allergies i guess, but no fever yet. thank god, but i am taking drugs to help out the sinuses... i'll probably end up being lazy today because of it. drugs always make me tired. damn sudafed with benadryl.

so it's supposed to rain for the next couple days. you heard me right... days... it's not supposed to stop. they've given us a warning for flooding. great. not what we need, but hey we needed the rain. mother nature is bitch slapping us again. can't we just continue with the light rain off and on? maybe mother nature has become a drama queen of the past couple decades.

if bush was watcing our call lists from this house, not only would he be finished at looking at the outgoing call list in 5 minutes, but he'd be immensly bored. we dont' make that many outgoing calls. unless you count call to family, but i doubt that it would count as "terrorist activity" to worry about... maybe it would..hmmm

a bit of a snafu

some of you i hear are having problems getting to leave comments... i don't know what happened. it works fine for me and i use firefox. wheni opened teh page in IE, it was giving me crap and not finishing loading for some reason. i checked the page code, and it all looked fine. weird. not sure what to do to fix it... anybody else having issues like this?

the only thing i can suggest is to use a different browser other than IE...

life

the weather the past couple of days has been fantastic, and today i have off only by chance. i normally work on mondays but jay's grandmother had a doctor's appt so evan couldn't go. he also came down with some bug over the weekend like he normally does when he gets sick. only this time it was a high fever and chest congestion and most likely sore throut. poor kid.. today is much better, and he's taking a nap right now too! much better than yesterday. he was just plain miserable yesterday. with him being sick, he woke me up one of the nights when he was boiling up and i gave him medicine. we went downstairs watched a bit of bob the builder and threw on the ceiling fan to help cool him down. he fell asleep after an hour or so, but me? i was up until 6pm or so (he woke us up around 2) and man is there absolutely nothing on tv at that hour of the night. comedy central had infomercials for girls gone wild or something, and sadly there wasn't much else on that was better. i guess that's what we get for getting the $12 basic cable. at one point i did come across this show called "fine living and hideaways" where they profiled really expensive homes and spa hotels. to my surprise they profiled the onset pointe inn! it was quite interesting. they also showed a 2 second image of the cup of the bay coffee shop for good measure. that was saturday night, so i only ended up about 3-4 hours of sleep. surpringly i was up later than usual with no naps, and i wasn't even bitchy all day. :)

evan's been riding is bike like crazy! he just loves it. he's really good at it too. which everyone finds surprising b/c he's not even 2 1/2 yet.. in 2 days he'll be 2.5 tho! i guess that's really early to be pedalinga 2 wheeler.. even with training wheels. here's a little video of him.


Get this video and more at MySpace.com

he's also taken a huge liking to playing tee ball! our neighbors are big baseball players so they have all the stuff. man did he not want to come home the other day. he pretty much just enjoys hitting the tee over.


Get this video and more at MySpace.com

there is his with a couple of the neighbors. he's getting so huge. the nurse weighed him at the dr's office today. lol... he weighs a whopping 36 lbs! he's so big compared to other kids his age. i notice it most when i go to playgroup. otherwise i'm so used to it, i don't notice. he's been over 3 ft tall since december.

the trees inour yard are full of leaves. other trees in the enighborhood we'll still waiting for to finish. still to go is the cottonwood in teh next yard over. damnt hing makes it look like it's snowing in the middle of summer. it "snows" these little puffy things like dandelion seeds all over the place, only the puffy thigns are about th size of pennies maybe nickels i can't recall. but last year we had so little rain we were kicking around about 6 inches of this crap before it finally rained and then my garden got contaminated with all the itty bitty trees/weeds that grew, and that was teh beginning of the end of my garden last year thanks to the weeds. i can only hope that it doesnt' happen again so bad this year.

i know i don't usually talk about politcal issues, but this whole immigration thing is getting outta control.
it's not like all these illegal immigrants came out of no where, all of a sudden. they've been here for a long time. the country was even founded by immigration. something needs to be done about getting these illegals to become legal and become better americans. if they don't want to be permanant citizens of this country then they need to get the proper visa. it's only fair to all of those who made the effort to live in this country the legal way. the exact solution? i don't know, but it needs to be done. and something needs to be done about el presidente de méxico, Vicente Fox. he needs to stop encouraging his people over the border to the north. he needs to make his country a desireable place for his people to live. or atleast a place that's liveable without an over abundance of poverty, and i imagine some famine in the poorest regions. and americans who hire immigrants need to pay them a liveable wage.
and a liveable wage these days is way higher than what it was even a year ago, simply b/c of the cost of fuel driving up the cost of living.. and that isn't just one place. the cost of living has skyrocketed everywhere, and it's not easy for anyone who doesn't own stock in a major oil company. somethign needs to be done and soon. too many people are living in poverty in this country who a legal citizens and for the past ump-teen years we as taxpayers have been footing the bill to keep these illegals on federal aid, such as welfare and food stamps. i believe a bill was passed that is not going to allow them to get this aid. it's sad when this country has to take people off of federal aid when they need it, but it's not fair for the citizens of this country to be paying for these illegals to be on the system. many of us are having a hard enough time supporting our own families.

and another point to be made.. if you're illegal looking for support from americans to keep you here, that's fine, but why aren't you waving american flags in your rally's. wouldn't that show us you have pride in our country,... that you want support? by waving your own nations flags, it gives me the impression that you're trying to take over the country and turn it into another méxico or whereever, even though i know that's no necessarily the case. you're just proud of who you are and where you come from. and i understand you came here for a better life and all that, but atleast become legal in some form.

ok.. different subject...

why is it that all of a sudden the gov't idiots in beantown are paying to teh needs of western mass in the way of road work. all the state roads and bridges that have deteriorated way to long over the years are get fixed... all at once, and it's obnoxious. route 2 is a disaster. i can't avoid it. between dropping off evan at daycare and driving further east for work, i'm hitting it everywhere. don't get me wrong. it needs to be done and i'm glad it's getting done, but why is it happening all at once?? it started last fall with the paving of 202 from Pelham to Orange and the paving of rt 23 in Otis, and then the work on widening route 2 from Orange to Templeton started.. and will be going for a while yet, and then there's that bypass on route 2 in Erving that is completely done, but not open b/c they have to drill a stinking well for the paper mill which could've been done months ago. and then there's the area of route 2 by the bowling alley that is gonna be a lenghty job as well. i found out from my daycare this morning they'll be lowering the highway to get rid of the blind spot, and then on 63 in Erving they're doing some work on the bridge by the river there again. i can't seem to avoid it.

i'm dreading the day they start on the gill-montague bridge.. traffic is gonna suuuuck! seeing as how the bridge on the other end of town isn't allowing trailor trucks over it b/c it's ready to fall down too, all the trailor trucks are going to have to exit over the canal st. bridge, and if anyone knows anything about that bridge it was not designed for trailor trucks. it as a tight 90 degree turn onto the side of the mountain on one side, and often people fly around that corner when you really can't go much over 20 unless you want to cream the oncoming traffic. so trailor trucks all the time exiting TF over the bridge there. not looking forward to it.

and of course that's not all the stupid road work that's going on, but that's all that gets in my way on a day-to-day basis.

i've got to run.. i'm at work. suppose i should be doing work or something.