Hello, Summer

In any other town, you might feel like kind of a yippie d-bag waking away from the farmers' market to load your cloth Whole Foods bag of local, organic produce and fresh-baked bread into your Prius, but here, not so much because most people WALK to the farmers' market or at least bike or at the very least have "Recall Walker" bumper stickers on their Priuses, so you're still kind of an a-hole in the grand scheme of things. You don't even have an Etsy knit bag for your farmers' market spoils for goodness sake. Poser.

Anyway, we had a lovely day yesterday. We planned to clean the house for today's Open House, but it was just too darn nice. Instead, we went downtown for our first produce paradise of the season and had fewer balloon mishaps than usual. Sure, Harry's popped on blade of sharp grass while I stood in line at a smoothie shack (sharp grass? wtf?), but he got a new one at lunch, and Jack kept his tied to his belt loop all day, so it floated above him like a thought bubble.

Smoothies for all (but not me. I have lived here for like 8 years, and I still can't totally trust the portable food huts. It's crazy, I know).

Jack's balloon came in handy because he is totally a runner.

Also, as an aside, Jack has been completely potty trained for over 2 weeks, and he almost never has accidents and wakes up dry. About a week and a half ago, though, he pooped his pants at Target because he did not recognize signs of urgency fast enough. He was really bummed about the whole thing (even though I had pants, undies, toddler wipes and a plastic bag in my bag and it was easy peasy). Now? If we are out and about, he claims to have to poop at least 5 times and will not pass gas without being seated on a toilet, which was really hard yesterday because our fascist governor has closed most entrances to the Capitol and there's a bit of a line to get inside, so there's a shortage of public restrooms. We kept squeezing into coffee shops and restaurants so Jack could fart.
Instead of joining the throngs of slow-moving shoppers around the capitol, we walked the opposite direction on the grass, and Ben darted through the crowd to grab things like the best spinach ever and green onions the size of my forearm.

As an added bonus, it was Cows on the Concourse, an event where local dairy farmers bring their cows. To the concourse. It's fun, and we met a dairy beauty queen, who gave us free tickets to the State Fair. In mid-August. Which should be the best time ever to waddle around the fairgrounds.

Jack came home and contined his car nap on Harry's bed, thought bubble and all.

Harry and I went to the pool where I appear to have gotten tan through my UPF 50 RASHGUARD-- WTF? Then Ben marinated chicken in raspberry vinegar (my brother manages a speciality oil store in town, and that's what he gave me for my b-day-- a collection of delicious vinegars which make us feel like we know how to cook) and grilled it for our fresh farmers' market salads with spinach, onions, and a variety of berries. We ate it with a huge, round loaf of fresh-baked cheese bread. Yum.

We stalked our new house on the way home yesterday and discovered that the only road that goes straight into our subdivision is closed from next week through August 31. Neat. We also found a 15-minute road-construction detour. Hello, summer.