Author: Karen

I am an RN, Author, Coach, and Speaker. I write novels about relationships to help people find insight into their own. I guide people to create comfort, clarity, and connection in their lives. By combining metaphysical tools with over twenty-five years of nursing experience, I infuse the 'art of nursing' into my practice by providing partnership and resources help people compassionately honor their health.

Gratitude

by Karen, posted in family, good grief, Holidays, Midlife Crisis
Simple Abundance Journal

I’ve been keeping a gratitude journal this year. A long time ago, I read Simple Abundance by Sarah Ban Breathnach and decided to give the “keeping the journal all year” thing a shot. 

It was an easy enough premise: write down at least three things that you are grateful for each day. That’s it. It starts off fairly easily, but as the days, weeks, and months go on, it can get more difficult. I did it though, and completed the journal on December 31, 1998.

A few years ago, I found another one of these hardcover Simple Abundance Gratitude Journals at a yard sale for a buck; I bought it.  It had one or two entries in it, but I figured that I’d just wite them out and write over them. I brought it home, put the journal away, then promptly forgot all about it.

Fast forward to December 2010: I found both that journal, and the one I kept in 1998. I decided to start the journal January 1, 2010, and I have kept it up all year. Periodically, if things were especially happy (or alternately, tough) for me in 2010, I would look back to 1998 to see how I was doing on that day twelve years ago. There were lots of ups and downs in 1998: I was expecting my second child, and my father died from cancer that year. It was difficult to read some of the entries. Turns out that the emotions may be different, but feel every bit as strong all these years later as they did back then when it happened.

Today, I was thinking that things hadn’t been going that well for the past few days, and it was looking like 2010 was not going to end on a high note. After I finished my journal entry, I decided to look back to see what I had written on this day last year. One line stood right out: “I am grateful for my life.”

It’s as true today as it was twelve years ago when I wrote it. Thank you, past self, for reminding me of this tonight, when I needed it so much.

The worst cell phone experience ever

by Karen, posted in family, Someone's gotta say it, tweens
The Offender

What’s a mom to do? When you have the whole Christmas thing under control, all presents bought and (almost all) wrapped, you might be feeling a little cocky.

The only thing that I had left to do was activate the cell phone that was the tween daughter’s big gift this year. Imagine my surprise (not to mention annoyance)when, as I tried to activate the cell phone, it would not activate!

Now, I was certainly no stranger to cell phones. I had purchased and activated more than one of these little suckers over the years without a hitch, but after one automated line and two different cell phone company reps were unable to activate it, I still had a cell phone with no service. The helpful reps suggested that I return the phone (60 miles away from where I was) that day (it was the last day they would accept the return) and start over from scratch, preferably at Radio Shack.

I did go to Radio Shack, but they didn’t have the color I wanted and they were going to charge me $20 more, so I didn’t buy it. I went online and tried to order it that way, with a very nice, helpful customer service person, Latricia, on the phone trying to help me troubleshoot. After 36 minutes we determined that this alternate route was not working either. She offered to call around to local stores to find one that had The Phone That She Wanted (see picture of The Offender above) and call me back. I accepted this offer.

She did call me back, and none of their stores had the phone I was looking for.

Meanwhile, I gave the online method another shot. An online “live chat” person was helping me, and after another 40 minutes or so had passed, it was still not processing the order. I gave up.

Thirty seconds later, I got an email thanking me for my order. Go figure.

Now, I still had to activate this one, so I was not celebrating yet. Activation  was a long, drawn out affair, lasting about an hour, and when I finally got off the phone with them at almost 11 o’clock last night, I still had no guarantee that anything they said that they did actually was done.

It will be very interesting to see the first bill when it comes.

Any guesses as to which wireless company I’m dealing with?

My Top 10 Alternative Christmas Playlist

by Karen, posted in Uncategorized
  1. The Waitresses:  Christmas Wrapping
  2. The Killers: Don’t Shoot Me Santa
  3. Adam Sandler: The Hanukkah Song
  4. Sarah Silverman: Give the Jew Girl Toys
  5. Bob Rivers: The 12 Pains of Christmas
  6. Bob and Doug: The 12 Days of Christmas
  7. Blink 182: Won’t be Home for Christmas
  8. Ramones: Merry Christmas (I Don’t Want to Fight Tonight)
  9. The Kinks: Father Christmas
  10. John Mellencamp: I saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus

Why this list? Because sometimes, you just can’t stand even one more Mariah Carey song.

Full disclosure: my husband was a strong influence in the compilation of this list. 🙂

The best yoga class ever!

by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, baking, fitness, friends, quest for the best, yoga
Kathy, Alexis, Kristen (our teacher!), Janna, Me, Jeannie
Last night was a special yoga class at Windsong Yoga Studio in South Berwick. My friend Kristen (right in the center) is the instructor, and she teaches nice blend of many different styles of yoga. She has studied with some of the top teachers in the United States,  including Doug Keller, Desiree Rumbaugh, Sianna Sherman, and Judith Lasater, to name just a few. A bonus: she teaches women (no men allowed!). 🙂
She planned a special class to celebrate the winter solstice (the shortest day of the year).
After this excellent class, we were treated to an excellent meal, prepared for us by Kristen. A Tempeh Wreath was the main course, accompanied by a side salad of mixed greens, lightly dressed. Dessert was partially by way of Whole Foods  (and may I just say, OMG! Especially the chocolate covered figs? Unbelievable!). There were also some delicious Christmas cookies made for us by Janna, because, after all, what is Christmas without the cut outs? I ask  you.
Now, if you are someone who practices yoga, and midway through most classes you start thinking about pizza and/or assorted baked goods, this was like a class made in heaven. Thank you, Kristen! Put that Tempeh Wreath recipe in your cookbook!
What holiday celebrations are you participating in this year?

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Hello, last minute!

by Karen, posted in tweens

Okay, you (and you know who you all are)…it’s time to get serious! There is less than a week left before Christmas, so it’s time to get your butt in gear. Still need to get a few presents, but the thought of dodging all of those crazy people at the mall makes you feel faint? Well, here’s an idea: Don’t go there! Stay away! Go elsewhere!

Maybe you think that you have to go to the mall because you need that gift card to Abercrombie and Fitch, or Justice, or Kohl’s…think Shaw’s in Sanford. Need a bookstore gift card? They have that. An Amazon gift card? Check.  Old Navy? Check. About the only thing they didn’t have last Tuesday morning at 8AM was a crowd. No crowd equals no line at the register.

Here’s another idea: go to the new Tractor Supply Store, which just recently opened in Sanford (right next to Wal-Mart). They have some cute things in the front of the store that are kind of unique.

Where NOT to go: Portsmouth AT&T. We bought a phone there and added a line and when we went to activate it, it WOULDN’T ACTIVATE. Now, there was no problem with the phone itself (cute, blue, the one my daughter wanted); it worked fine. The problem (which took about and hour and a half of my life on the phone with AT&T customer service to figure out) was that even though they said you could activate the line at a later date (you know, so you weren’t paying  $30 plus taxes and fees for the new rate plan, the line itself, text messaging while the phone sat in its box under the tree, unused)…wait for it….wait for it…you really CAN’T do that! It has to be activated by them at the Portsmouth store! Fifty three miles from where you are now! Surprise! Fooled ya!

The only thing worse than being a “Last minuter” is finding yourself scrambling at the last minute through not fault of your own (this transaction happened 11/22/10!)

So there you are: three shopping(and full working) days before Christmas, and S.O.L., as my grandmother used to say.

Hello, Radio Shack. They’ll be open until 9pm tonight. 🙂

Give yourself a break

by Karen, posted in family, friends, local fun, no fear

Is your birthday coming? Are you wondering what to get yourself for Christmas? Have a really good friend that  you want to appreciate?

Stacey Brooks from Mainely You Massage in North Berwick

Stacey at Mainely You Massage  is there to help you. Never had a massage? Don’t be scared. It will be both the fastest and the slowest hour you’ve ever experienced. You can just lie back (and you won’t even need to think of England!) and relax for the duration, with no demands made on you (except, you know, to turn over). Short on time? You can book a half an hour session instead of an hour; do what works for you.

Like a meditation the way it should be (but often isn’t because of the monkey thoughts that are ravaging your mind, increasing exponentially the more you try to quell them), you will probably notice that your thoughts are taking a very nice rest. One or two might meander to the surface of your consciousness, but they will most likely take the form of a non-urgent question to ask Stacey, nothing too distressing.

Of course, sometimes some unpleasant emotions can and should be released. If you feel the tears a-wellin’, just let ’em come. You will feel so much better after you let them go.

Massage might help you if:

  1. You are a cube-dweller by day, sitting for hours hunched over your keyboard, on your way to carpal tunnel syndrome and sciatica.
  2. You are an athlete of some sort (runner, gym person who overdoes it, yoga practitioner or teacher with a misbehaving muscle or two) with some annoying aches and pains.
  3. You are on overload, too busy doing things that you should/must/have to do, most often for others (e.g. not for yourself).
  4. You suddenly realize that there are only 7 more shopping days until Christmas (How did this happen?)!      HINT: Mainely You Massage Gift Certificates are available now! Call Stacey!

Call to book your massage (or buy your last-minute gift certificates)!

Mainely You Massage

73 Elm Street, South Berwick, ME

Phone Number: 207.676.2263
Cell Phone Number 207.651.6277

Car RIP; thanks VIP

by Karen, posted in Someone's gotta say it

RIP to my car, and thanks to VIP in Arundel for killing it on Monday, when I took it in to have the snow tires put on and for a simple oil change.

I dropped it off in the morning for the service, then got the call from them a couple of hours later that it was ready to pick up. My husband and I finished our errands, then went to get my car.

As we were about to pay, they mentioned that there was a belt that was pretty loose and either needed to be tightened or replaced, and that we should do it sooner rather than later. “Just do it now,” we said,  since they already had the car and I had the day off from work.  “Well, I’m not sure if we can just tighten the belt, or if we have to order the part. Hold on for five minutes and we’ll get you the answer.”

We go to the waiting room. We wait ten minutes. He returns with a grim look, saying, “Come with me,” and leads us behind the counter to the garage, where I am now certain, no good news awaits.  My car’s hood is open, guts exposed.

“See this?” the “mechanic”-type person said. “That’s the bolt that was holding the belt on.”  I know enough about cars to have caught the “was” and then I knew we were in trouble. “It snapped in half,” he said. “The bottom line,” the “supervisor”-type person took over, “is that the car is not drivable; you have to get it towed, preferably to the dealer,” he said. “I’m not equipped to deal with this here.”

Funny, I was thinking how my car was drivable ten minutes earlier when I came to get it, and that suddenly, after they “checked the belt”, the bolt was now broken off, and the other end of it was somewhere in the engine (at least, he that was where he thought it was.

Well, to make short a long, sad story, that bolt that mysteriously broke off at VIP and probably cost about two bucks, was (according to Toyota, who called us 21 hours after they received the car) going to cost almost two thousand bucks (not to mention at least three days) to fix. Putting that much money into a car with almost 120,000 miles on it was not an attractive proposition. In other words: Hel-lo, deal-breaker.

Also, heads up to any new car buyers: of course it always pays to do your homework, but especially “nowadays”. We were offered a loan of 0.9 to finance the new car that we ended up deciding to buy when the best rate they were actually advertising online (where we checked the deals and printed them off before heading to the dealership) was actually ZERO percent financing.

Go figure. But hey, we got to meet Ira, so it’s all good.

The Chicken Whisperer

by Karen, posted in family, raising chickens
Anthony with new chick

This morning, as I was rushing around the coop, trying to let the chickens out in their run, feed them, and give them a treat before I left for work, one of the smaller ones slipped past me and got out into the garage. I wasn’t too concerned at first, hoping that she would hear the feed rattling around in the plastic scoop and just come right back in.

She didn’t.

I finished feeding the others, then I approached her but she started a combination run-fly thing and headed to the area of the garage with nooks and crannies…into which she could fit but I could not.

Let the stress begin! The closer I got to her, the closer she got to wedging herself into a small space. If chickens had thumbs, she would have been using it to thumb her beak at me. I backed off.

Happy that I had my cell phone in my pocket, I called the house phone and asked my son to help.

He walked into the garage a few minutes later where I was still standing, rooted to the spot, afraid to take my eyes off the little offender in case she hid somewhere while I wasn’t looking. I explained the situation to him, and as I did, he just walked over to her, scooped her up, and was stroking her back while I just stood there with my mouth open.

He had done in one second what I had been trying to do for five minutes, but every time I “invaded her personal (chicken-al?) space”, she moved further away from me.

I’ve decided not to take it personally. I think she let him catch her because she bonded with him a couple of days after her birth. He was the one who picked her up out of the cardboard box upon her arrival from the post office, offered her a drink, and started her on her life’s path while I stood nearby, taking pictures of it all, as moms so often do.

She has now rejoined the flock. But I’m gonna be keeping my eye on her….

To frost or not to frost?

by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, baking, family, friends, tweens
Iz ready to bake!
My daughter and I were looking for something interesting to bake last weekend and came upon a recipe for blondies. Not just any blondies…pumpkin blondies.
Now it’s not often that we bake things that don’t list chocolate as one of the top ingredients, but these looked and sounded so great that we decided to take the leap.
We found the recipe in this month’s issue of Mixing Bowl Magazine.
My husband happened to call during the decision-making phase and I told him that we were baking, and the recipe we had picked. “What’s in them?” he asked. I told him that besides pumpkin, there were white chocolate chips and coconut, and he interrupted me. “White chocolate chips? Sounds gross,” he decided. “Don’t save me any.”
(Note: Never ask my husband his opinion about anything if you don’t really want it). 🙂
Well, we made them anyway, of course, and they were excellent. I thought a little maple frosting would kick these up a notch (I mean really; what isn’t better in life with a little frosting on top? I ask you), but my daughter didn’t agree.
We compromised by frosting half of them with some maple cream cheese whoopie pie filling that I’d made, and left half unadorned.
Well, they turned out great! We’ll definitely make these again. Our compromise on the frosting issue is this: next time, we’ll make a maple glaze and drizzle it over the bars.

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Dinner, revised

by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, family, tweens

As I was rushing to get out the door the other morning, trying to make it to the gym before my workday, I heard my daughter say to my husband, “What’s for supper tonight?” He replied, “I don’t know yet. What do you want to have?”

I didn’t hear the response, having made it outside and to the bottom of the stairs by then, but I thought about it often throughout the day after I got to work.

Making supper every night had usually been my job, since after we had kids that were old enough to sit at the table and eat human food, I usually worked during the day, and my husband usually worked at night. About five years ago, however, we did a 180. I started a new job that required me to work evenings at first,  and so my husband changed his work schedule, and became the primary supper cook.

Now, it’s not like he had never cooked a meal before; he was a restaurant cook when we met, and he’d worked as a pizza maker for several years as well. It’s just something that he had rarely been called on to do at home, since a) I loved doing that job and b) he wasn’t home at suppertime. 🙂

His style of cooking is quite different from mine. I usually think about it for hours in advance, shop for all the things I need or may potentially someday need, and often will painstakingly follow a recipe, but he almost always just walks into the kitchen, looks around to see what we have, and then makes something out of what’s there. If there isn’t anything appealing in the house already, then he’ll go to the grocery store, and do basically the same thing: look around to see what they have that looks good, then go home and put the ingredients together into a meal…

…a meal that the kids (more often than not) actually like, and will eat. Really, what more could a parent ask?

So, here’s to all the Dad’s that are cooking dinner for the fam tonight; YOU ROCK!