I just found out that my CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) has scheduled their first pick up date on May 5. This is so exciting! I have NO IDEA what they’ll be offering, but I figure it’ll be some of the early spring lettuces, perhaps spinach, as well. These are things that grow well early on. I

If you have no idea what a CSA is, here’s a description of the program that I’ve joined this year.  In a nutshell, it’s a pay-in-advance program that gives the farmers much-needed funds early on when they are planting, and in return for this, you get a monthly or semi-monthly allotment of fresh veggies (and fruits).  My CSA also offers fresh dairy and eggs to order.

Because we want to support local agriculture, and because we like to eat fresh, healthy, organic food, joining a CSA seemed like a good match for us.  I don’t yet know how this will affect my weekly cycle of food shopping, nor how it will affect our family’s menu.

I do know that in spite of my life under a rock (cozy down here!) I have heard tell of a number of food shortages across the globe.  A quick search on good using the terms “food shortage” will open your eyes quickly to the fact that shortages have been on the radar and the seem to be likely to continue. One story I heard concerned a plague of rats that attacked mass quantities of grain in India — other stories involve the US growing corn for ethanol instead of growing food. Climate change related weather problems have caused a shortage: and prices are soaring. Food pantries are at a thirty-year low.

And waiting for me at a designated pickup on May 5th will be my family’s first box of fresh produce that we’ve already paid for. I wasn’t expecting our CSA participation to have any effect on my personally, other than a good feeling to be helping local farmers– and a nice assortment of fresh produce on our table. In addition, though, I feel like we’ve managed to do something smart to help our own family through what could be a summer of highly expensive fruits and veggies.

In the height of summer harvest, I am planning (for the first time in my life) to start canning things. I have never done it before, but now seems like a good time to do it.  I have friends who’ve done this before who have said they’ll be delighted to help me do it.  With a food shortage on the horizon, it seems really smart to get local food, and save it. Doing it now when we want to, will be a big help for someday — when we may have to.

(Artemisia: You asked for it, you got it!)

I was reading ConsciousMom.net, a personal blog that also discusses environmental and political issues (among other things) and from there, followed this link. It’s an interactive survey that lets you get an idea for how your personal lifestyle affects the planet.

I consider myself somewhat green — I recycle as much as I can (with the systems available to me), buy local and organic stuff (though not always),  and I don’t drive all that far. But I was surprised to learn that even my organic-fair-trade coffee is still having a negative impact on the environment.

A big surprise, though, was finding out that adding another person to my household (Cammy) seemed to have a good impact environmentally. This makes sense. If you are sharing your home with more people, then you are sharing resources that would other have to be duplicated elsewhere. If Cammy lived on her own, there would be an apartment, say, that needed to be heated and maintained for the benefit of only one person. Instead, we’re housing more of us for the same amount of heating resources.

So it’s another way that Cammy is having a good impact on the world.

I keep thinking, as I read the blogs of other people, that life is harder for families in which  parents are living isolated from the support of relatives. When people live more communally, they can share resources, and pool their energy. Helping one another eases stress, uses fewer resources, and grows greater family bonding.

Yet many people that I’ve talked to about this have expressed surprise that our situation is so much to our liking. I’ve heard from more than one mom I know that it’s hard for them to imagine having to share their personal space with anyone else than they already do. I suppose this is a part of our culture, and each individual’s personality.

In my community, I am also part of a couple of parenting networks, which provide a sense of this connection. In a big way, I’ve seen how different families coordinating their efforts (for events, potlucks, and babysitting) can really enrich family life. Having someone living in your home with you is really like an extension of that.

I’m starting to really appreciate how nice it must be for those living in “intentional communities”, communes, and kibbutzes. On the other hand, wasn’t it Sartre who wrote that Hell is other people? When I think about how many people out there I dislike (snob that I am!) I also realize that the other side of the communal living coin is that getting along isn’t always easy.

As time goes by, and our planets resources continue to be abused, there will be less to go around. Perhaps now might be a good time for families to seek out other families that they can at least tolerate, and forge friendships and alliances that will aid in the group’s survival. I would love to think that by sharing my home, I’m not only helping myself and Cammy (while she’s helping us!) but also helping the planet.

It’s a good feeling.

Annie believes that Bur “Rocko” Bama is going to win.

That’s probably because everyone around her is supporting Obama.  She doesn’t at all understand the idea of a primary as compared to the general election, but she thinks Obama has nice ears.

And really, that’s pretty good for a gal of not quite five years.

Tomorrow, PA voters like myself FINALLY get to make a difference during the primary. Our late primary actually matters… a lot.

The three adult registered PA voters in my house will be headed to the polls tomorrow. I think I can speak with some confidence on behalf of our household’s plans to vote.

We’ll be Ba-Rockin’ the Vote.  This is not to say that we don’t have our usual cool skeptical hats and our saavy political eyes slightly narrowed watching closely for the substance behind the incredible oratory.  But far and wide, our feelings are swayed by the honesty, the intelligence we’ve seen.

D saw (mostly heard, really) Obama at the rally on Friday evening– and he called me from his cell phone and I listened as Obama’s voice was carried to my ears from the live air there in Center City. I felt a frisson of excitement. The hair on the back of my neck was charged with a certain level of involvement and energy that I thought I’d NEVER again feel after 2000 and 2004, when Canada was looking so very good to me.

This is history, for sure. Let’s just hope the Dems don’t Foul it up.

Carla’s been sick a lot lately, and I have had to go to work anyway. She’s been sick but not so sick that I feel she really required me to stay home. Of course, she would prefer to have her momma at all times when she’s feeling crappy, but anyway, she has been able to manage pretty well without me. (Cammy is taking good care of her for me!)

So to help Carla with the whole lack-of-momma thing, we wrote my cell phone number down for her so that she can call me if she wants to.

Sometimes I just don’t hear my phone, so she leaves a message. Here are two examples, VERBATIM.

“Hey Mom, I’m just calling to let you know that Annie tried to cut my hair just now. So when you get home, I sure hope you will give her one of those Talkings To and make her NOT cut my hair? Ok. Thanks. I love you. Bye.”

“Hi Mom, this is Carla. It’s already 6:47 and I thought you were supposed to be home. That’s all I wanted to say. Bye, Luv Ya.”

She knocks my socks off!

… she’s sick (again?!) and therefore she doesn’t go to school and therefore you cannot possibly get up in the morning yourself because the Will To Get Up is just. not. there.

… you make your grocery decisions based on what can or cannot be accepted in the lunchboxes

… your understanding of Facebook is that it’s a kind of Webkinz World for Grownups but without the cute stuffed animal lovey.

… you long for the child to return to wellness but are secretly hoping this will stretch out just enough that you can avoid attending an annoying family gathering involving traveling long distances to get snubbed by obnoxious relatives.

… your own clothes are less stylish, in poorer repair, and much less organized that those of your children.

… you are trying to plan a Just-The-Two-of-Us get away for your tenth anniversary but JUST CANNOT picture a WHOLE weekend without the kiddos.

—————–

Ah, yes, spring fever. That seems to be what is ailing Carla this week.  Two weeks ago, it was influenza, but today’s illness doesn’t get the fancy (oooh! scary-sounding!) moniker. This is just a virus.  She’s feeling like crap, though, is the bottom line.  And no wonder.  Her temp was 102 when I last took it, making it WORSE, not better from the day before. She’s had a fever since Sunday.  So that makes this Day 4 of Illness #2.

It doesn’t help her any that she is so difficult to convince to take a children’s chewable motrin. She is suffering needlessly because of her reluctance to taste the medicine.  Attempts to teach her how to take a pill without chewing it first have been unsuccessful.  Flavors we’ve sample so far: grape, cherry, bubble gum, and orange.  Orange is apparently the most successful; after much screaming (Cammy says it sounded like I was twisting her arm or something awful like that) and hysterical reaction, D and I convinced her to eat two orange flavored motrins. This was with much sipping of ice water, AND a soft gummi frog, AND a promised trip to get a new Littlest Pet Shop animal (IF she continues to cooperate and eat her medicine.)

It was so exhausting that D almost immediately passed out, and I then took C down to her room to go to sleep.  She was totally pleasant and calm once the whole ordeal of taking medicine had passed. She laid right down and was ready to sleep. Poor little thing, she is so anxious about taking medicine!

And what about ME? I am still decompressing.  I could blog about a dozen different things; the summer camp I’m planning (it’s going to be REALLY FUN); the supposed impact on the planet of co-habitating with more than just the family unit (yeah, hi Cammy!!!) versus a cup of coffee; my sense of irritation at ABC’s travesty of a debate this evening (we watched a few minutes of it before shutting it off — the girls agreed that Sen. Clinton has nice earrings, but Sen. Obama has “cute ears”.)  Yes, there are a lot of topics I’d love to expand upon, but my patience for writing has just reached its limit. Perhaps I’ll return to this later.

Today I celebrated one small victory on the road to de-cluttering: I freecycled my daughters’ crib. I mean really, it’s been more than 3 years since anyone around here has actually slept in that thing, at least.  And not only that, I think it was used MUCH more for bouncing and jumping in than for sleeping in, over the course of the nearly 7 years that it sat in my bedroom. D took it apart several weeks ago, and I’ve been offering it to freecycle, and this morning it was picked up by a soon-to-be foster parent who was delighted to get it.

I never really thought of myself as an organized person, but neither did I think of myself as disorganized.  I can keep track of a lot of things, without too much worry. However, I think my life has reached at last as point where the number of things to keep track of (be they events or objects) is just too great. My mind has hit the full mark, and my home as well.

Thus I’ve been trying to get more organized and clear space from both my mind and my house. Unfortunately, the piles of clutter in the home are currently winning against me.  I want to be organized, I really do. I just don’t quite know where to start, and I feel trapped by all that is around me.

Today I was inspired by this post about organizing toys. If a mom with three 3-year-olds and an infant can manage to be so organized, I should be able to get it together here as well. I wonder how she finds the time to do all that she does? (I bet she doesn’t play as much Scrabulous as I do!)

Read the rest of this entry »

While C was sick, she hardly wet the bed at all.

Meanwhile, my natural procrastination prevented me from investing in the cloth pull-ups that I was looking into. Now I’m wondering if I should really invest in these after all.

I don’t know how much more bedwetting she’ll do. This brief stretch of dryness gives me renewed patience. I will try to wait this thing out with using the laundry method.

Putting aside my tissue box for a while, I decided to bring my kids to an event called a “Propagation Party.”  Doesn’t that just have a lovely ring to it?  What does it MEAN, though, you ask?

It so happens that this was my first time at a Propagation Party, so I didn’t know what to expect either. It had been advertised as a family friendly event, so I brought my girls with me. It was going to be held at a nearby urban farm, but the rainy and cool weather pushed the group into the greenhouse.

Inside the greenhouse, a handful of people were busy carefully spooning little seedlings of tomatoes, peppers, eggplants (many varieties of all these), plus basil and lettuce, into planters so that the seedlings could continue to grow indoors, waiting for our outdoor planting season to begin in earnest.

The purpose of a Propagation Party is to get people to help with this manual labor process, carefully transplanting each seedling into its own little space.  This takes time and careful effort. If the farmer and his help had to do it all on their own, it would be time consuming in the extreme. In exchange for our help at the party, we were able to buy — VERY cheaply — whatever seedlings we chose to buy.

I picked out some hardy looking tomato starts, some exotic sounding eggplant varieties (Fairytale, Snowy White, Orient Express), and C picked out some bib lettuce.  She explained that she wanted to grow it for our guinea pigs!

The little tiny baby lettuce is currently so small that I am sure one of our piggies could easily eat it in one bite. And not even notice!

The party was something of a let down for the kids, though.  They heard the word “party” and were expecting something more than a few hippie types in a greenhouse, listening to jazz and getting their hands dirty.

There was, in fact, ONE activity for my kids (the only ones there, aside from one babe in arms) to do.  There were cute little terracotta pots that they could paint (only two colors of paint, for some reason: green and gold… which makes me think of “nature’s first green is gold”…. coincidence??) and then after the paint dried, they each got to pot their own little seedlings.

One of the farmers was really wonderful with the kids, though, and especially was able to engage Annie in planting.  She personally transplanted at least two dozen little baby tomatoes plants in addition to the one she put in her own little pot. This was a very sweet scene. I was told they got some pictures, so I will be watching to see if she makes it into the farm’s newsletter!

I liked the event very much. Inside the greenhouse it was warm and humid. It felt so cozy and snug. I got a big kick out of trying to guess what each variety of vegetable would look like when it was all grown up, and producing fruits.  It still amazes me, and probably always will, that a handful of tiny seeds can really grow into such wonderful and diverse plants.

Tomorrow — if all goes well tonight and in the morning — I will finally get both kids back to school. Thank goodness this fever business seems to be over.  I still have an impressive snot factory residing in my sinuses, but other than that I feel pretty good.

When the kids are sick, there’s an inherent laziness that takes over. They don’t need to be taken anywhere, and they hardly eat. So my main duties are snuggling them, comforting them, and sometimes cleaning up the messes.  In some ways, this is a lot easier than getting them up and out the door in the morning, then working like a madwoman to complete a bunch of stuff. But thank goodness I can’t just stay in bed everyday, my life would be a mess! I need their routine to guide mine, or things get really disorganized. More than anything, I need a little time away from them, as I cannot seem to adequately plan or do anything while I’m hanging out with them.

So while snuggling up in bed was fun for a while (ah, urrmm, except for all that whining), it’s time for real life to start up again. Thank Dog!!!

Oooh la, la.

I am kind of sick too, now!

I did have a flu shot (which is unusual for me, it just so happened that one was offered me when I was at the doctor for some other reason), so I think that is why I am only a little sick, instead of miserable like my kids.

No reason to stay home from work, or anything.

On the bright side … Spring is so beautiful. Philadelphia really offers a beautiful spring, with a whole lot of really wonderful blooming things. Last fall I planted a “100 days of flowers” assortment of bulbs, and the flowering has begun.  Bring on the beauty!

Given that it’s April Fools Day, you would THINK, that I would be posting some extremely CLEVER and FUNNY kind of thing.

Or that I’d try to TRICK you today with some bad thing that turned out to be phony and you were pulled in.

Look, if you want clever and funny you’ll have to excuse me.

My kids both have the flu. Yeah. Annie is sick now, too. I’m going to assume it’s the same thing that Carla has. I should be feeling sorry for my poor little muffins, but instead I am feeling sorry for myself.

Don’t want to have to nurse two little kids back to health! They keep refusing to eat my chicken soup with rice! One of them whines constantly AND refuses to take the specially purchased orange flavored Jr. Strength Motrin TM. Oh geez, don’t want to have to clean up any more barf either.

The worst part was the guilt. Today, upon telling C that it was time for me to head to work (reminder: for 3 1/2 hours) she began to wail and clutch at me, in her most dramatic voice, “No mommy, don’t leave me! I need you to snuggle me ! Stay! You can’t leave me here!”

Not an easy thing to do: walking out the door with that kind of guilt trip. It wasn’t until after I got home from work that I discovered Annie was warm as well. Here we go, thought I. Two sick kids for the price of one.

I’ll do my best to A) stay sane B) take care of them and C) not get sick myself.

Well, gotta go. Hubby and I have an appointment to work on our taxes this evening. FUN!