here comes peter cottontail, hopping down the bunny trail...

we're up to our ears in lettuce! we joined a CSA (community supported agriculture) farm this year. this means we bought shares inthe farm and paid a few hundred dollars for a seasons load of fresh veggies every week, and right now it's pretty much all lettuce and field greens.. and some strawberries, but mostly lettuce. we still have lettuce left over from last week and after getting this weeks share of "take all you want we have plenty" we made a couple pit stops to jay's family to unload the lettuce, some ginormous scallions and radishes to grandpa. they said b/c of the rain the lettuce won't stop growing... lol.. great. but it's great b/c it means we don't really have to buy any veggies for the rest of the season (until october!) unless we want something that's out of season. we bought a "full share" this year, which they say is enough to feed 2-3 adults or 2 vegetarians for the week. they also have a 1/2 share options, and a farmstand option where you can get discounts at the stand. it's well worth it. and we're hippies i guess... it's an organic farm too. in all honesty we were indifferent about organicness, but the closer CSA farm to us, never got back to us, so whatever, we lucked out.





it's been super muggy out here the past week with the sole exception of wednesday. weds was beautiful. what a great way to start the summer! i've determined that western mass is full of poo-poo heads.. but only for this reason: there's no where where you can swim for free in a body of water around here. so for that all the people that decided that you have to pay to park at all the places to go swimming.. you are all poo-poo heads! so there. there is one exception (pictured, beach not shown) that i know of, and that's puffer's pond in n. amherst by our old apt, only there is pretty much no parking for the pnd except along one side of a narrow road. when we lived in the apartments by there i used to walk to the north beach all the time. that was the nicer beach to me b/c it was never crowded, but there's no sand to play in up there so if i wanted to bring evan i'd have to go to the main super crowed beach so he could play in the sand. the greenfield swimming pool... which is actually the green river, costs money, and so does laurel lake and lake wyola.. atleast the latter ones belong to the state park system so once you buy a season pass you can go to any of the state parks with the pass. hopefully we'll be able to buy one soon, but we get paid bi-weekly and this is not a pay week, so we have to wait... again... but there's always hope.



and b/c of this, i miss the beach. (pictured is my old stomping grounds) i miss being able to cross the street and taking a dip when i felt like it b/c it was hot and/or sticky. i miss swimming across the drop b/c i could or to see friends b/c it was quicker to do that than to walk around over the stone bridge. i miss the best beach in town only available to residents.. however i do not miss the horsefylies we always had to flee from b/c mom's allergic.. nothing like a trip to the ER on fourth of july b/c of a fly bite just to be told to take some benadryl.. oh and i definatly not miss those mutant spider crabs.. yuck..

we bit the bullet

jason broke down and put int he air conditioners yesterday. we held out as long as we could.. personally i don't prefer them, but they sure do come in handy when it gets super muggy like it's been for the past couple of days. i'm not sure how hot it got today, but the past 2 days was above 90 degrees! and just a little bit ago, we got a blast of thunderstorms even with some hail. i looked at the radar after the storm and great barrington is getting clobbered... they always do. they saw tornadoes a few years back i guess. i don't remember when. we're still yet to go swimming. jay's grandparents' pool just opened today b/c they needed sand for the filter. and you need money to go any where to swim around here. we really need to get the pass for the state parks... we just haven't gotten there yet.

we're heading down cape this weekend to go to edaville railroad on sunday for thomas the train day. i hope evan has fun. i'm afraid that he'll be scared of the train upclose.. he has this things about screaming when anything too big gets too close. when you buy tickets for this shindig you get to pick a time to ride the train. we made a point to get an early morning ride so if it turns out the event stinks we can get out of there. that and evan does better in the morning. we gonna head down saturday night and then come back here tuesday morning. i don't have to work either of those days and jay is done with school!

I've finished yet another michael connelly book.. i've almost all of them, and he's written alot. i need to read Blood Work and i've got them all so far to date. he's coming out with a new one in the fall... i'm very excited. jay says i should read another author but i said that i will when i finish all of connelly's books. i'm almost done.

one of these days i'll get to taking some pictures and posting them up. i just havent' been taking pictures with all the rain we've had.

i'm curious who my kansas reader is... do i even know anyone in KS?

no witty title available yet. suck it up

i need to keep my blogging up.. i've been getting lazy. but at teh same time i dont' know what to write about half the time. whatever.. so you get me when i hve somehting to talk about. or when i get the chance.

so we had our mayoral elections yesterday, and our incumbent mayor won! thank god, b/c she was away better of a candidate than the challenger. let me jsut add that our mayor is the pick of the crop,b ut does deserve another chance to wrap some stuff up. she had a lot of crap to clean out of the town administration when she took office 3 years ago as our first mayor. and the challenger Athey just happened to be part of the cause for all the shit that forgey got. so that's that.

the weather here has finally gotten better.. we're supposed to be getting rain later, but frankly i han handle one night of rain in a week. rain is good,, just not in extremem excess... people seem to be less bitter this week. people are just relieved that the sun didn't blow up on us.

evan has been sleeping alot better the past couple months.. only instead of waking up and crawling intoour bed to finish sleeping.. he wakes up, wakes me up and goes back to his bed to fall back asleep... he likes to cuddle with me. it could be worse i guess... this morning he idn't come get me until about 6 am.. which is way better than 4 am.. and then it takes about 30 seconds for him to fall back asleep and then i can go downstairs or back to bed depending on what time it is.. he's like a little alarm clock.

our next task with the kid is potty training. he'll go pee on the toilet some of the time.. but the trick will be to convince him to do it all the time and when he has to go number 2 as well.. we plan on doing this over the summer... wish us luck.

oh.. a friend of mine is working on designing me a new template for my blog! woot woot! janelle rocks like that! b/c i need one pretty badly. my current one was a freebie from bloggertemplates.com... it works, i'm just bored with it. she also found out recently that she's pregnat! and i'm wicked excited for her!

i'm getting sick.. it's *possible* that it could be allergies, but i'm starting out teh way i normally do when i get a cold... grr..

enjoy the sun before it runs away again.. no go.. that's an order!

new career here i come..

i passed my real estate liscense exam yesterday! woohoo! so i'm offically able to sell houses and help buyers in MA... only now i have to locate an agency to join... i'm hoping to be able to work for the realtor we used to buy our house.. she was fantabulous!

anyone want to buy a house? i could use some clients soon.. Razz

You are a Social Liberal (71% permissive) and an... Economic Liberal (25% permissive) You are best described as a: Democrat Link: The Politics Test on Ok Cupid Also: The OkCupid Dating Persona Test

the pictures i've been promising

here's the swingset we built earler in the spring.

and here's the sandbox we made the other day


here's our honeysuckle that our neighbor got for us from th woods a couple years ago. it's growing like mad!

here's the rose bush that came with the house. when we bought it, i don't think they ever trimmed it. it was like 8 ft tall! we made the trellis the other day too. the bush was getting out of control and it grows like a weed


here's the front garden i put in the first summer we moved in the house 2 years ago. i need some bushier stuff on the right... b/c we have clay soil stuff tends to die over the winter and spring b/c the soil gets all soaked. i doctored it up before i planted everything, but root rot happens i guess.

here's the garden i put in last year on the other sid eof the house. it's still very young as you can see. surprisingly all my mums i planted int he fall cam eback tho!
my gorgeous columbine, with the gnomes playing cards in teh background

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!