Karen

Date night at the Ogunquit Playhouse

July 2, 2011 by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, Date night, family, local fun, relationships, restaurants, Someone's gotta say it

Summer of Love is the current show at the Ogunquit Playhouse. May I just say this: save your money. Skip this show and buy tickets to Legally Blonde instead, which stars Sally Struthers (among others) and runs from 8/24-9/17. I have seen Sally Struthers in two other Playhouse Productions and (both my husband and I agree on this) each one was excellent.

Summer of Love would have been better entitled Evening of Boredom. I liked some of the songs that the cast performed in this show so I tolerated it a bit better than did my husband, who was not a big fan (neither of most of the songs nor of this production). The actors were okay, but no one really stood out except for the singer who performed a cover of Janis Joplin’s Piece of My Heart. She did an excellent job; it was the highlight of the show.

Consider going to The Blue Elephant if you are going out for dinner before seeing a Playhouse. It’s close enough so that you don’t have to rush to get there and the service and food are excellent. I don’t have pictures of the dishes that we ordered for once because I decided to give my husband a break from having to wait to start eating (while the food cools) so that I can take pictures. We were out to celebrate our 20th wedding anniversary that night so priorities came into play. We ordered the Appetizers for Two, Drunken Noodles (which came with beef and chicken), and Hot Basil Stir Fry with beef (which came with way too many onions~and I like onions). Note to self: beware ordering menu items which mention onions in the future.

This picture is of me and Bill taken shortly before we got married…we really haven’t changed a bit.

🙂

Clear the clutter: get real

June 29, 2011 by Karen, posted in family, Midlife Crisis, my one word, no fear, relationships, writing

I’m still thinking about my New Year’s Resolution: my one word that morphed into two words: Edit and Focus. After beginning the process of setting up a home office and the necessary decluttering that has come along with that, I am thinking it makes sense to continue the momentum that I’ve got built up and “take it on the road”…er, to the other rooms in the house. (Was that an original thought or did my husband plant it in my subconscious mind? Hmmmmm…..).

At the moment, the clutter that spilled over into my bedroom is reduced but still remains. What I have left to go through includes, but (unfortunately) is not limited to:

Knitting supplies: Patterns, yarn stash, needles and other sundries
A filing cabinet with warranties, extra office supplies, vital records, and infinite other minutiae
DVD’s, and (OMG!) video cassette tapes
All of my writing files, notebooks, journals, project ideas

I’m reading a book that mentions a resource that I was following about five years ago but forgot about: The FlyLady. Ready to get real and get rid of clutter but don’t know where to start? The FlyLady is your gal. Her BabySteps will take you right from square one to the finish line, presumably eradicating your clutter along the way.

My other decluttering activities this month: still parting with some books (one at a time, gifting them to friends), still unsubscribing from automatic emails (this month mostly from foodie ones…yes, it hurts). I’m also trying to bring less clutter into the house in the first place (yes, that’s Bill’s idea). I’m also looking at the clutter surrounding finances (mostly paper files that I’m afraid to part with).

P.S. Yes, I admit it: After I went through the house and retrieved every single book I owned…I found more books. 😦 Sad but true.

Home Office: Post book purge

June 25, 2011June 29, 2011 by Karen, posted in books, education, my one word, Work from Home

post purge bookcase — Post purge office bookcase

It took several days and lots of cold hard decision-making, but the purge is (almost) complete. It was interesting (and sad) for me to note that I had no less than 5 books about Simplifying My Life.

We don’t know when we’ll be transitioned to working at home but we’ve pretty much been told to be on standby for a couple of weeks already. This is stressful because I”m still waiting for the desk to be delivered! It would be really helpful if the desk arrives before person who is installing the ergonomic keyboard tray does! Hopefully that will come next week.

First I had the thought that I had to get honest about the books. How many are there, really? I got all the books from all the hiding places…I thought. When I was done I remembered a few more places that I was keeping books in the house and ferreted them out and added them to the (rapidly increasing) pile.

The next thought I had was this: I almost never reread a book (I definitely won’t re-read a novel). This thought was followed by an epiphany: why, then, was I keeping any book I was sure I would never read again?

I didn’t know.

Next I thought, wouldn’t having at least one bookshelf containing only books that I haven’t yet read be wonderful? As would having empty space on the shelf to receive new books. Heaven.

Anyway, back to the book purge. Here’s what I did with them:

I put a box out at the end of my driveway with a sign: “free to a good home”.
I brought some to the library for their annual book sale.
I made a gift of some of them to several friends.
I brought some to Annie’s Book Stop, where they give you store credits in exchange for your used books.

Then I took the what was left, organized and shelved them. When I was done, I felt fabulous. Every time I’m missing one of the books I gave away, I remember the shelf on the book case that contains a little empty space now.

Bliss.

Date night: afternoon movie

June 23, 2011 by Karen, posted in baking, Date night, family, friends, movies, relationships

We haven’t had a babysitter in a while so we decided to watch a movie at home. Next up in the Netflix Queue was The Company Men. We found out about this movie from the preview of another movie (don’t ask me which one). I was surprised to know that it was a relatively recent movie starring Ben Affleck (and several other famous, well-liked actors: Tommy Lee Jones, Kevin Costner). I hadn’t heard a thing about it before seeing the preview.

I was very interested to see this movie because it deals with a topic that is all too familiar to many of us: being “downsized” from a job by a company that is “reorganizing”. I’m not a big fan of Ben Affleck but because the topic interested me (and the Q was getting a little lean) we got it.

Around the same time I was also reading Caitlin Shetterly’s memoir: Made for You and Me. Both the movie and the book are very honest (even raw at times) accounts of what it’s like when life as you know it does a 180 degree turn. The movie follows three men who lose their jobs and the effects (for better, for worse) that it has on them, their families, their friendships. The book also talks about how much having, or not having, a job influences all aspects of life.

Both remind you what is important in life, and what is not, and ultimately, what really matters to you may not be what you think.

Setting up a home office, continued: the purge

June 21, 2011 by Karen, posted in books, my one word, Work from Home

I’ve been reading Mary Carlomango’s book Live More, Want Less slowly over a period of months. It’s organized into 52 chapters and my initial intent was to read a chapter a week (as the author suggested), then implement the “action items” listed at the end of each chapter to help pare down my belongings, hopefully simplifying my life in the process. I started off okay, but then lost track of which week I was ‘supposed’ to be on, so now I’m picking it up occasionally and reading at random.

The chapter about books came at exactly the moment that I most needed it. Currently I have books in many locations throughout the house. Now I am emptying out the room to use as an office that contained the bookcase and about half of our (okay, mostly my) books. In our first home, we added on a room (not just for the books!) and my husband had a bookcase built to fit on a wall that was very tall and very wide and accommodated all of my books: past, present, and future. When we moved the big bookcase wouldn’t fit anywhere in the new house, so we found a smaller one at a yard sale which I am still using.

At first I thought I”d be able to reduce my collection and make it fit the space I had available, and I did that. Unfortunately, over the years I have amassed books. I’ve been sort of stuck for the past few days as I tried to decide about what to do with not only the bookcase (where to put it in the now empty room) but also the books on it, on top of it, and in the basket along side it (full disclosure: there are more in my closet, under my bed, and in the built-in bookcase in the bedroom…oh, and in the kitchen!). When I posed this question to my husband, he said, “Maybe you don’t put the bookcase back in at all…”

That brought me up short.

Maybe I was asking the wrong question! What if I don’t put the bookcase back at all? In that case I would have (at least)one different question: What to do with the books?

To be continued…

Date night at the Ogunquit Playhouse

June 18, 2011 by Karen, posted in Date night, family, local fun, relationships, Someone's gotta say it, tweens

Avenue Q opened up the season at the Ogunquit Playhouse this year. The show is sort of a perversion of Sesame Street that is funny as hell and certainly worth seeing. The night we went was during one of the Bruins’ Playoff games (season ticket holders have only limited say over what night the tickets are for) and was the first show in years that my husband and I could remember that wasn’t sold out. It was still impressively full, though, considering (reference: Bruins’ Playoff game).

This show’s ticket has the warning not to bring children under 17 due to the explicit language and, um, live (puppet) sex onstage (two darn good reasons, don’t you think?) but then I read an interview with Brad Kenney this month in the York Independent and became confused. He is quoted in the article as qualifying the aforementioned good advice by saying:

“Well, we recommend parental discretion for anyone under 17–but, if you do bring them, you will be considered VERY cool! And they probably know all the songs anyway!”

Huh?

I attended a Playhouse show a couple of years ago (The Full Monty) which was a show (obviously) intended for adult audiences. Parents in the front row somehow thought it would be okay to bring their kids to see it too, one of which looked to be about tween-aged. Not only was the poor boy uncomfortable, but the actors on the stage were uncomfortable as well! How do I know this? Because one of them gestured to the boy in the front row and made a comment about having a child in the audience cramping his style, or words to that effect.

Parents? Leave your kids at home for adult-themed live shows.

Brad? My 12-year-old does not already know any of the words to any of the songs in Avenue Q!

Setting up a home office, Part Four: Flooring

June 15, 2011 by Karen, posted in my one word, Work from Home

We had a Berber carpet down in the room. Nothing wrong with it. Nothing except that it wasn’t a wood floor and that’s what we both really wanted. After we bought the house we planned to replace that floor at some point, and had been talking about it for about 5 years or so. We decided to view my “work from home” event as an opportunity to finally take the leap and replace the floor in the new office.

We went to Home Depot, Lowe’s, and Ben’s Flooring in Biddeford. We discussed the pros and cons of dark versus light wood, bamboo versus cork, hardwood versus Pergo. After several trips to evaluate the options. we both agreed to go with a darker wood, Maple? No… Hickory! Hickory it is.

But, Hickory it (ultimately) wasn’t. In the end, the most important factor wasn’t how well my husband and I could compromise on what we each liked best. In the end, the most important factor turned out to be this: What was available, could be installed in a timely manner, and was within the budget we’d set.

Red Oak it is. Hey, at least we got the hard wood!

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Setting up my home office, Part Three: Paint

June 12, 2011 by Karen, posted in Life in the cube, no fear, Work from Home

The walls and ceiling of the office-to-be are white, so at least it will be easy to cover. Earlier this month I went paint color shopping with my husband at Lowe’s. I spent an hour browsing through all of the paint samples. My favorite color is yellow so that’s where I started out, but then gravitated toward the lilacs (my favorite flower), the blues (my second favorite color)…I could have made a day of it. My husband (wisely) left me to go look at some tools or something while I basked in paint heaven.

When he came back, I roused myself from my stupor as he said, “Have any luck?” I proudly displayed the dozen or so paint chips that I had chosen, fanned out like a hand of cards. He looked at them briefly then pulled one lonely paint sample from his back pocket.

“How about this?” he said, and showed me a foresty green color. “Oh. That’s nice too,” I offered. “Well, you don’t have to decide today,” he said, so I put my paint samples into my bag to be revisited at a later date.

So I never did revisit the paint samples because day to day life got in the way. Then I talked to my husband on the phone from work one morning and innocently asked “Whatcha doin’?” and he said, “Painting”.

Whaaaaaa…? I thought, but did not say. “Oh,” I said. “What color?” I asked, feigning nonchalance. “Eggshell,” he said.

Whaaaaaa…? “What happened to the foresty green?” I managed. “I saw this and liked it better,” he said. It really is just that easy for him. My husband is spatially talented; he can look at a stick, plant it in the ground, and know what it will look like in five years; he can literally see the tree it will be. 🙂 I, on the other hand, look at the stick and see only the stick, in all it’s “Charlie Brown Christmas Tree” glory. Bill’s talent that translates well to interior design. He can sort through those millions of little paint chips and find THE little paint chip of my dreams. More importantly, he can know what the entire room will look like when the painting is done.

It looks amazing. I totally love it. “Eggshell” turned out to be a pale yellow color, the pale yellow color that I was hoping for but unable to locate on my own.

🙂

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Next up: the flooring. To be continued…

Creating a home office, Part Two: Choosing a desk

June 10, 2011 by Karen, posted in quest for the best, Work from Home

Choosing the desk was the next step. I have to be ready when the tech person comes out to set up my computer equipment so I must have a place for them to set it up on! Finding a desk sounds easy enough on paper, doesn’t it?

It’s not. Well, if your space can accommodate a desk that is 6 feet by 6 feet then you’re good to go. If it can’t, then your starting off at a distinct disadvantage. Distinct. Disadvantage. We were told that there was a chance we could buy our desks from our current job, so I waited a couple of weeks, but then the word came down that we should act “as if” we would not be able to buy them, so off I went: Target, Staples, Bob’s Discount Furniture…I checked online after someone mentioned that Overstock.com had desks (they do, but they aren’t cheap).

Then my husband remembered a store on Rt 1: Fisher James. I walked in, looked around, then…I saw it. The desk that had been in my mind’s eye whenever I saw myself working from my home office.

It was love at first sight.

For some reason I envisioned a wooden work surface with black metal filing cabinets for a base, which this desk had. Alas, my room couldn’t accommodate the size of the floor model, but it turned out that having it custom-made was cheaper. I would lose one of the filing cabinets but I could live with that. I use one of my filing cabinets at work right now mostly as a pantry anyway…but I digress. We ordered the desk. It will take 3-5 weeks to arrive. I’m saving some money because my husband will pick it up and assemble it. You gotta love a man who knows how to use tools…

Other considerations are setting up an ergonomically friendly work space, a chair, a tray for the keyboard and mouse, a coffee source…all still TBD…but since right now I’m sitting on a yoga block on my kitchen chair, it shouldn’t be too hard to improve on that!

Painting comes next. To be continued…

A (working) room of one’s own

June 9, 2011 by Karen, posted in family, good grief, Life in the cube, writing

As part of some, um, reorganization of staff at my place of employment, I have been given the opportunity to work from home. This will start on or before August 5, at which time Life in the Cube (as I’ve known it) will basically be coming to an end. As exciting as this prospect sounds to a girl who is a card-carrying, white-knuckled driver when it’s snowing, it necessitates (shudder!) setting up an office at home.

My current “home office” is actually decentralized: my computer for bill paying and writing and such is in the kitchen. I’m set up at the end of the table which is situated in the corner of the room between two windows (and is sunny all day long, which is why I chose this spot). The filing starts out in a basket on a shelf of the kitchen island, then gets permanently filed in the cabinet in the upstairs spare room, or in binders to the left of the built-in desk in my bedroom. Stamps, stapler, envelopes, pens are kept in a kitchen cabinet.

The built-in desk is a good idea in theory, but in practice? Not so much. It faces a wall (I want a sunny window) and has a flourescent light (I want incandescent), both of which I hate, and therefore is not conducive to any actual work getting done. If I would be working 10.5 hour shifts from home, something (preferably almost everything) had to change.

Our mission (since we choose to accept it) is this: make the spare room into my office.

This might not be as easy as it sounds.

Step one was to check my internet speed to see if it was up to speed.

It was not.

Hello, incompetent technicians from my cable company. It took them 3 tries to get this working correctly and to repair what they damaged while installing the new cable modem. The third time was the charm.

Knock on wood.

Then we emptied out the room. “We” consists of me and my husband, with the emphasis on husband. He did most of the work: taking out the book case, the cd tower, the filing cabinet, the end tables, the love seat.

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All of this had to be put somewhere for the interim. That somewhere is our bedroom. It’s sort of overwhelming. The idea of “keeping your eye on the prize” now makes much more sense to me.

Now that the room is emptied, the next step is: Painting and flooring.

To be continued…