At least, not for much longer!

I am so delighted because our CSA begins on Monday. Wahoo! Yay!!!

For the uninitiated, CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture– but what it really amounts to is a kind of food buying club that gives the buyer an opportunity to get the freshest, local organic produce delivered to a nearby pickup location each week. My family paid $750 in advance, early in the season, directly to a group of farmers. In exchange, each week we get a large selection of yummy fresh veggies!

So on Monday, I’ll be picking up my asparagus, radishes, rhubarb, wildfire lettuce mix, spinach, arugala, white mushrooms and scallions. All this fresh stuff is so much tastier than the winter fare I’ve been getting; spring has truly sprung now that CSA time has begun.

It fits right in with my new resolution to cool my love affair with sugary treats and fan the flames of love of all things green and fresh. I’m also so happy to be doing something a little greener in the sense of using resources carefully. Our family is supporting the small organic farms that participate in this CSA program– rather than spending our money on veggies that are shipped from California or other far flung places. Such a win-win situation! The environment! Our food! The farmers! Yay!

I just had my birthday recently; now I’m 36 years old. It isn’t one of those big milestone years like 30 or 40, and certainly not worthy of the huge and feisty debauchery that marks one’s twenty-first year. No, it’s just a quiet little nudge toward forty. And I took my quiet little birthday and spent it having my cat’s tail examined at the vet, and then running to see my kids in a talent show (they were awesome!) and then out to lunch and then zoom to work with a small group of kids, some of who are markedly talented at whining. I followed up my evening by having soup for dinner at my inlaws. I felt like collapsing into a heap, and I wanted to simply slip into a deep sleepy oblivion on the couch. Plus my feet hurt, which made me feel OLD.

Now that I am 36 years old, I’ve decided it’s time to really think hard about whether I want to end up wearing a tent for clothing or whether I want to do something now to prevent such a fate.

So as of this morning, I’m on a sugar strike. Which means I’m not eating sweets, except in extremely small amounts and in a furtive and sneaky way. Also: this coming Sunday I’m attending a birthday brunch and I’ll allow myself ONE piece of cake. I also decided that when served things like delicious homemade lasagna, I will be content with ONE piece rather than three; and I’ll have a big heaping salad rather than a token dash of greens.

Another way I’m cutting back on my intake of potentially fattening substances is to eat less of the tasty but high calorie foods I’m used to consuming. Two pancakes, not eight, and with a sprinkle of cinnamon sugar, not a huge pile of syrup. And a very modest smidgen of butter, not two generous pats.

To make up for these smaller portions, I need something yummy and quick. I discovered just the right thing, in my freezer! Yes, frozen peas! They are yummy straight from the freezer. Yup, I eat them FROZEN. They are sweet, cool, refreshing. They boast fiber and protein, and are low calorie.

WEIRD, but hey, if it works? Why not? I am also a big fan of edamame, those green soy beans. They make a tasty snack, but I don’t like them frozen, I like them hot, and with sea salt.

Does anyone else out there have a WEiRD but somehow yummy or satisfying diet food?

I can’t remember a more active, productive, and social weekend than this past one.

I am so tired, and it’s such a Monday.

It was a good weekend, though, and I still can’t understand where I got so much energy?! Saturday morning was a flurry of house cleaning to ready the house for an appraisal, while I shooed the kids outside to play with three neighbor kids. Somehow we managed to at least make the house seem more like average people live here, instead of say, crack addicted squatters. And, how it was possible for me to go out on Saturday night, get a tad lit, and come home at 3 AM… and then rise and shine at 8 AM the next morning, when I brewed some coffee, made pancakes from scratch for my family plus my friend and her daughter who’d slept over to babysit while I was out (thanks!!!!)… and the pancakes were GOOD! They had a choice of plain, apple, banana, walnut, and chocolate chip, or some combo therein.

Then after my friend and her daughter went home, I raced to the food store, did a quick grocery shopping just in time to get home for me to karmic-ly repay for the babysitting, as Annie’s friend Maggie came over for a 6 hour playdate. And it was hot out. We had fun with water play, I can tell you that for sure.

Plus, somehow, before the weekend was out I managed to clean out all the cat boxes, do about 5 loads of laundry and thoroughly clean the guinea pigs cage.

PLUS, I even managed to squeeze in a phonecall to my mom. PHEW!
I am exhausted just thinking about it. I need another weekend to relax, now, please?

If you aren’t a cat person, you might want to just skip this post. It’s boringly about cats.

Somehow, the cat we adopted in January managed to get pregnant. This is a mystery, because our two male cats are fixed, and we have been careful to keep the new cat inside. The plan was to nurse her back to health, then get her spayed. I had an appointment earlier this week, but our vet told me she was pregnant! And due in about two or three weeks!

Seems IMPOSSIBLE. I am really puzzled.

Meanwhile one of my male cats somehow injured his tail, it’s horribly mangled at the tip of it. I took him to the vet this morning; and the really bad news is that the vet thinks he will have to amputate the tip of the tail. Poor kitty! I feel just awful! How could this happen?

A part of me is saying I should get a second opinion on the pregnant cat and on the tail amputation. I mean, all this worry and what if he’s wrong? Suppose the cat is not pregnant? And we’re all hyped up over nothing? And suppose there is a way to save my other cat’s tail?

But it costs a lot of money to go the vet, and this is a vet we’ve known and trusted for a long time. So why would I doubt his opinion? I guess it’s because logic dictates that two fixed male cats can’t impregnate a female cat, no matter how much she yowls when she’s in heat. And oh boy, did she yowl and stir up a fuss. And she’s stopped being in heat, now that she’s pregnant. So I shouldn’t doubt it.

Besides, if she’s pregnant, that will be confirmed by the birth of kittens, so we could just wait and see.

I don’t like living with uncertainty. I want to know what’s coming. I am unhappy when I have to wait and see.

There are other things going on in life right now, and in no particular order, here’s a list. Not for you (we’ve already established this is a dull post, okay?) but for me. I just want to get this out there, boring or not. Things going on:

- house refinancing so appraiser coming tomorrow, must tidy up. A lot.
- there’s all this spare furniture on the front porch. Ugh. So cluttered. And with boxes of crap, too. UGH!
- there’s a mountain of laundry
- I’m hungry
- I had a cup of coffee so far today, and that’s all. It was weak. Ugh.
- There’s a house warming party tomorrow night for some of our Child-less Friends. Hanging out with them is probably going to be fun, but somehow looking forward to it is depressing me.
- Carla’s room smells bad. Perpetually. Some kitty peed in there; the carpet needs to go; plus she still is wetting the bed pretty often. So there’s a lot of bad smell. I feel horrible about that.
- It’s supposedly going to be HOT this weekend. I don’t want that. It will make all the bad smells worse, I guarantee.
- There are bills to be paid.
- I need stamps. Why should it be so freaking annoying to get some freaking stamps?
- By now, I’m REALLY hungry.
- I’m tired, too.
- What a sucky morning.
- The cat litter boxes are P.U.
- UGH. Just, UGH.

It’s here, my week off from work. But I don’t feel happy and relaxed. I feel stressed and pressed for time. I have a bunch of things that I would like to do, and I don’t know where to begin. At the same time, I want to curl up under the blankets and nap all day. At the same time, I want to go see 3 films today, it’s the last day of the Philly Cine Fest. And there’s approximately 75 loads of laundry that need to be done. Because Carla has no clean pants to wear. She’s literally walking around the house with nothing on her lower half. And it is chilly. We had HAIL earlier for dog’s sake. And we’re out of cat food. And there’s meat in the fridge that needs to be cooked into something. And there’s a pile of dishes the size of Miami in the sink. And the living room needs painting. And the garden needs tending. And there are accounts to be balanced. And. And. And. And.

And the kids say I should make crafts with them. And go to the zoo. And. And. And.

And I have my period. And I’m out of tampons.

We’ve decided Enough is Enough!

We’re moving to a small farming community in a rural area. Our new community is cooperatively raising chickens and ostriches for meat. We’ll be helping to grow an all-organic garden for the family’s consumption. I’ll be home schooling the kids, but mainly they’ll be schooling themselves along with the other children who live on the communal property. There are about 5 families already doing this who have kids close in age to Carla and Annie.

Reading books and doing hands-on projects around the farm will be their education. We’ve simply had it with the complexities of life in the city, and dealing with education in a school environment. We’re tired of the daily grind, running around, with meetings at work and school.

Done! We are done with all, and we look forward to our future life of simple, hard work.