no idea for a title :-)

I've been neglecting my blog again. I don't know how it happens, but days and weeks seem to fly by now. Once you have a baby life seriously does change. Not that I am complaining, but the summer is half over already! Well, it is in Maine at least :-) My maternity leave ends in just 2 weeks. How sad. I have really been enjoying being a full time mama.

Last week I went into work to talk to my boss about working from home. I'm not entirely sure how it was taken. I sent in a work from home proposal on Monday. I haven't heard anything back yet. I'm hoping that they let me at least attempt to telecommute. It is a good option, since I am an accountant and all, and I can login to my work computer from home. Really, there is nothing that I can't do at home besides signing off on invoices, which I could do in the evenings if I needed to. Not a big deal. Whether my boss and his boss will think that is reasonable...no idea. Let's all keep our fingers crossed though!

My garden is doing really well this year. My peppers are growing really well, tomatoes are doing well, and the cukes are doing well. I ended up with a zucchini plant that I thought was a cucumber (yeah I really know nothing about plants). I thought I had bought a zuke plant, but convinced myself that I hadn't because it looked like the cucumber plants. So, that isn't doing too well since it is in a tiny pot. I'm hoping to get a bigger pot this weekend and see if I can transplant it. It's already dying, so if it dies from me transplanting it, well, such is life. Next year I will try and pay better attention to the tags before I plant.

The CSA is going great as well. I know I haven't been posting the pictures, and I really want to, I just have zero time. I'm excited that I have a second to sit down and write for a minute. Who would have known being a parent would be so tiring and not allow a lot of time for "extra" things. Well, maybe once she is a tad bigger it will go a little smoother. This past week we got 2 bags of new potatoes, 2 bunches of carrots, a bunch of dill, 4 zucchinis, a red cabbage, 2 bags of peas...oh and some early onions. All of it is really good. I shelled the peas yesterday and plan to freeze them. I think I will freeze the carrots too. The potatoes have been fried up with the zukes, yum :-)

We are currently working on changing the upstairs into a studio apartment. Our house is technically a duplex, but the upstairs is not really a great 2BR apartment, because the kitchen is kind of small. But, the living room upstairs is huge. I think it would be great as a studio. Plus, then we would only have one person living above us, instead of the family of 4 and sometimes 5 we had up there before. This area is not the best for rental income, so having that many people really just made us lose money. We are trying to get my Nana to move up there, she is 88 and paying more than her social security on oil. Not sure if she will come though. She has been in her house for the past 50+ years, and is stubborn...If not, we will try and get someone else from around here.

There is an awful lot going on in my life right now, lot's of thinking going on. I guess that is all I do though, think. Trying to figure out life constantly. I am trying to simplify my life, but man is it difficult. It makes me wish that I had thought of all of this simplification before I got into so much debt! I keep thinking, if we could just pay off the student loans, or if we could just pay off the car, or sell our land we would be set. Yet, none of those things are happening right now. The economy isn't great at all. I'm worried that it is going to be a long time before it gets better. And if it doesn't get better, what can I do to make sure that my family is ok? I know, I am always thinking about the worst possible thing that could happen, but sometimes I wonder how right I am. Last year I was convinced that the economy was going to keep getting worse, it has. I was telling my bosses in one of our lovely lunches that we were going to start seeing food shortages, we have. Maybe not us personally, but all over the rest of the world definitely. And think of how much food costs have continued to rise?! I'm worried about the ethanol production, and continuing to have farmers farm corn and soybeans for fuel. That's just wrong, especially when people out there are starving. And our dependence on foreign oil? Yeah, it is a lot to get my head around. Seriously my head just keeps spinning and spinning. I guess that is why my posts are so disjointed :-)

Matt and I, well more me than Matt, are thinking a lot about what food we need in order to survive. How much can we do ourselves, how much would we need to get from other people. Well, as of right now all of it. I am hopeful my garden will produce a lot so that I can can and preserve, but tomatoes and pickles are not going to sustain us for the entire winter ;-) I've been trying to source farmers in Maine that grow what we need, wheat for flour, oats for oatmeal, meat (actually already buy the majority of our meat from Snafu Acres). Milk...well...I don't like milk as it is, so I'm not sure I can really go for the raw milk, not to mention it is almost $8 for a glass bottle...not sure how big the bottles are, but I did see them at the health food store. We'll get there I guess at some point. I'm planning on building the raised beds in the fall. Any ideas on what I am supposed to do in the fall? This is why I do container gardening...easier to figure out :-) I think I read somewhere that I need to put newspaper down and then put soil on top of it. What kind of soil though? I guess I still have a lot of research to do. I'll keep my fingers crossed that we can get everything all done in the fall. We also need to put up a fence to keep out all the animals that live around our house...and to keep the neighbor from mowing our lawn. How can we ask the neighbor to stop mowing our lawn? It is very nice of him, and he is a retired veteran, but I don't like that he kills our lawn. And I was hoping to be able to pick some of the dandelion greens, since that is just about our entire lawn. Ahh well, when the fence is up it will obviously give him the hint...hopefully :-)

OK, well I guess that is about as much jumbled writing as I can manage right now. I hope that I will post more frequently, but we all know that is a stretch :-)