Not dead yet

The deadness of my blog aside, I am still here. Life has just been very busy, with a definite lack of the quiet that generates blog posts.

School ended in the usual flurry of field trips and concerts. And last-minute trips to buy gifts for teachers.

LW finished up his last day at the preschool he's been attending for two years. He's looking forward to joining NB and IM at the Big Kid's School in the fall for his first of two years of preschool there. (Darn fall birthday.) He's especially eager to ride the bus.

NB and IM are excited to keep their teacher for next year. (Our school likes to keep kids with the same teacher for two years in a row, but the special circumstances that put the twins in the same class won't exist next year, and we weren't sure if the school would move one of them into the other 3/4 class.)

EM won end-of-the-year awards in Spanish and math. His track season ended in a drizzly whimper when the last meet of the season fell victim to a very rainy spring.

I've been working the sort of insane hours that cause Michael to mutter about work-life balance. Let's just say that my SWAGs for this project turned out to be really wild. Aren't learning curves fun? I'm awaiting word tomorrow on whether the train will hit as scheduled on 7/24 or whether we get a small reprieve.

I did make time to paint the upstairs hall (finally!) and complete a massive decluttering of the kids' rooms.

Oh, and I finished my 26th book of the year. Halfway through the 52-book challenge and right on schedule. I hope to post more on that later, once all of my complete sentences aren't going to work.

What about the CSA?

The past two years, this is the time I start getting antsy for the start of the CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) season. Not so, this year.

Basically, the summer squash and kale did us in. And sadly, no, I'm not really joking. We allow the older kids to each create a three-item Will Not Eat list. At one point last summer, summer squash was on all three lists. That left a lot of squash for Michael and I to eat. And despite my determination to find ways to prepare kale that we would enjoy, we found a grand total of one recipe we really liked. And it had sausage and heavy cream, so I didn't want to serve it that often.

So this year, we decided to take the cost of a CSA membership ($375) and spend an equivalent amount of money on local produce purchased from road stands or the weekly farmer's market. I'll keep track of what I buy, and at the end of the summer, we can compare it to last year and see which way is the better value for our family.

The CSA pickups don't start this early in June, but one of the advantages of this method is that I can start when I want, so I started yesterday.

Purchased: one head of romaine lettuce, one-pound bag of spinach
Cost: $8.50 ($2 for the lettuce and $6.50 for the spinach)
CSA last year: n/a