Category: family

Chaos Theory

by Karen, posted in family, good grief, Midlife Crisis, no fear, relationships

When everything around you is falling apart, it can feel like the world is going to end (or maybe you wish that it would). Maybe you’re doing your level best to keep things harmonious in your life, but then somehow you lose your focus for a split second.

You make a bad decision and suddenly all hell breaks loose.

It can feel like vertigo: your surroundings are spinning and you are unable to feel stable despite exercising your strongest proprioceptive abilities. People are saying things that you’d never thought they’d say. Worse, people are saying things that you never thought they’d say to you.

To quote the brilliant, insightful Talking Heads from their song Once In A Lifetime:

“You may ask yourself, what is that beautiful house?/You may ask yourself, where does that highway lead to?/You may ask yourself, am I right, or am I wrong?/You may say to yourself, my god, what have I done?”

So, to paraphrase the illustrious Heads, how did I get here?  Why did I do/say/think that? It can all be so confusing when you are in the midst of it. Everything can happen so fast that your head literally spins.  What do I do/say/think now? Maybe your body takes over and your breathing changes to rapid gasps. You’re sitting  down but don’t remember doing so. And are you rocking?  Is this really happening?

Then, amidst the chaos you suddenly become aware of the calm. The calm inside you. And in that space you become aware of a thought forming. That still small voice says:

You have no control over how this will all turn out.

You might think this would be a scary thought to have at a time like this, but for some reason, it is not. Instead, you find that it’s a comfort.

Shanti: “The Peace which passeth understanding.”  ~T.S. Eliot from The Waste Land

Change of life

by Karen, posted in family, health, Midlife Crisis, no fear, tweens

What’s the first thing that comes to mind when you hear that phrase? I’m betting that it will have something to do with a midlife woman navigating the perimenopausal years. It certainly always did for me. Now that I’m in the thick of it, however, I’m realizing that this phrase has multiple layers of meaning and can be applied to people at any phase of life, not just midlife.

  1. Graduating from high school (or trade school or college) will amount to a huge change of life(style). No longer confined by the relentless schedule of classes and homework and studying, I still remember the feeling of enormous relief that I experienced the last day of classes when I left the room after the last final. It was a weightlessness, a “lightness of being”. Freedom!
  2. First car after years of taking public transportation. For me, this also brought with it a feeling of freedom, independence. Conversely, I wonder if going back to public transportation after years of carrying the burden of the inherent (read: crushing) costs of owning a car today would bring the same feeling of relief that finishing school brought.
  3. Having a baby. I used to just shake my head at the people (parents) who told me over and over that I didn’t know what it was like to have a child and wouldn’t until I had one. Now I just shake my head at my own naiveté. They don’t say “A baby changes everything” for nothing. A baby does change everything.
  4. Job change. Really, like the man you marry, the job you choose influences every last corner of your life. Every. Last. Corner. Once you’ve chosen, it’s easy to get stuck. Sometimes you are freed without warning (and without any say, for that matter)…angst-tinged freedom.

Of course, that feeling is quickly followed by the inevitable “Now what?” thought that follows so closely on its heels. Here’s hoping that old saying is true: When one door closes, another door opens.

Mother’s monkey mind

by Karen, posted in family, Holidays, Midlife Crisis, relationships, tweens

On a recent episode of The Middle, the mom Frankie got it wrong. For mother’s day, she thought she wanted the entire day to herself, free of husband and children, to do whatever she wanted to. This was a classic episode of “be careful what you wish for” because all she managed to do that day was fix things that were broken, defrosting things that were frozen, clean things that were dirty. By the time she finally sat down on the couch with her magazine and her baked goods, the fam came home.  The day was over. Frankie was bereft.

Frankie got it wrong because having the whole day off when you never have the whole day to yourself is just too overwhelming to be fully appreciated without some advance planning. She was not given enough notice and did not give the day enough forethought to do it right. I am completely familiar with this phenomenon. I routinely screw up unscheduled blocks of time that I unexpectedly have to myself because…because there are just so many things that I want to do that I don’t have the time for in everyday, workaday life!


Have the gift of an unscheduled block of time? Enter the monkey mind, and all can be lost in a heartbeat. This monkey mind mayhem can be wreaked on any special day, not just Mother’s Day. Just thinking about all of the things I want to do: read? Write? Knit? Practice a little yoga? Bake a batch of cupcakes/brownies/cookies? Work in the garden? Sometimes it becomes like diagnosing an illness: a ruling out process that takes so long that by the time an activity is decided upon the time you had in which to engage in it has passed (like what happened to Frankie).

The truth is this: when our family members are not with us, we may have a small undercurrent of worry (What are they doing? Are they safe?), or at least of distraction that gets in the way.

In the end, she got it right. She did want her family around, just (barely) within earshot and eyeshot in the next room, working on a puzzle together, getting along with each other. They had strict instructions not to talk to her or try to engage her in any way whatsoever.

She had the best couple of hours ever.

Divine Intervention

by Karen, posted in family, Midlife Crisis

One morning, as I was rushing around getting ready for my day, I finished getting dressed and then went to get my earrings. I reached  into the small vintage glass  Pyrex pudding dish where I keep the few pieces of jewelry that I wear most frequently, intending to get my favorites.

They were a pair of earrings that my husband gave me when we were dating. The emerald studs were chosen because a) they are my birthstone and b) they were replacing a pair I’d recently lost in his Jeep (and that’s all I have to say about that).

Anyway, I reached into the little dish and didn’t see them. I started moving the couple of other items around, thinking that they must be underneath something, but soon it was apparent that they were not in there. I looked around, thinking maybe I’d missed the dish when I went to drop them in the last time I’d worn them a few days prior, and that I’d find them right next to it, but I did not. I continued looking with more urgency, but it soon became apparent that they were not there.

I’ve had them for more than twenty years. Tears fell. I asked my son, my daughter, my husband. No one had seen them. I didn’t know where else to look. I decided to try something I’d tried when I’d lost something else recently: writing it on The Universe’s  “to do” list: Return my lost earrings to me today. Then I tried to put it out of my mind, hoping that The Universe would come through for me like it had last time I’d called upon it.

So. At the end of the day they had not shown up. The next day, I thought about revising my note and thought about what I’d written: to return them to me today. Realizing that my note was still good, I decided to just leave it alone and try once again not to think about the situation. Then at 4:30Pm I suddenly became aware of a clear thought that had formed in my mind:

“Look in the container by the door where you put your keys, watch, and phone when you come  home for the day.” Holding my breath, I looked in but at first didn’t see them, so I took the container over to the kitchen island and started removing the odds and ends that had collected in it…and there they were.

I WAS SO  HAPPY! Well, except for the fact that I have absolutely no memory of putting them in there whatsoever, and I am forced to acknowledge the simple fact that only I could have put them there, so I even though I found my earrings, it’s clear that I am losing my mind.

Hello, mid-life.

Brave New Girls

by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, family, friends, local fun, no fear, tweens
Cell phones swaying at the talent show

The other night I went to the Talent Show at my daughter’s junior high school. The cost of $5 per person was a bit off-putting at first, but when I learned that all of the money raised was for charity (to help in Japan, Haiti, and here at home), I didn’t mind. They also held a bake sale consisting of actually appetizing-looking edibles which made the $2 per baggie of chocolate chip cookies worth it.

There were many singing acts (encompassing a predominance of Taylor Swift songs), from a capella to karaoke, some singing solo and some (the less confident?) in pairs and groups. All of them were good, and two of them were excellent. Most of the performers were girls, with a few token boys thrown in like afterthoughts.  In addition to singing, other talents showcased were
  1. Hula hooping
  2. Magic tricks
  3. Gymnastics
  4. Flute playing

Initially my daughter was sitting with me but soon enough she was off giggling in the bleachers with her friends (as tweens so often are). While I was waiting for the show to start, I thought back to my own junior high days and they were nothing like what my daughter’s have been like…for which I am endlessly grateful.

These girls were mostly in the twelve to fourteen year old range and they were so talented! The flautist performed an original medley of music she wrote herself, and she played what I knew to be a quite difficult piece beautifully. When I was her age, I played a solo in our band concert: Yellowbird. A medley of original music that she wrote herself? OMG! Saying “times change” is such an understatement in this case I can barely get the words out!  One of the singing acts performed a song in five-part harmony… Hel-lo? Five part harmony? And they nailed it. It was incredible to see all of these tween and barely teen-aged girls trying on all of these different talents on for size, seeing how they fit. How confident they all seemed!

Back when I was in junior high school, the audience was mostly parents and grandparents of the people performing. This audience was made up of parents and grandparents to be sure, but also many of their peers, who came to cheer them on. This was a kind, generous audience that clapped every bit as loudly for the singers who were slightly off-key as the ones who were pitch-perfect. At one point, the audience opened up their cell phones in the darkened room and swayed, holding them over their heads, like we moms and dads used to do back in the day, only with lighters!

I periodically stole glances over at my twelve-year-old daughter with her friends, watching the show, cheering and clapping; a shiny happy person among shiny happy people. My heart was full.

So, I’ll close out with a quote from (who else?) Taylor Swift from her song “Mine“, dedicated to my daughter:

“You’re the best thing that’s ever been mine.”

Spring chicks update, week 5: Teens in transition

by Karen, posted in chicks, family, friends, raising chickens, tweens

The peeps have graduated!!!  They are “teenagers” now…each week in a chicken’s life roughly corresponding to 3 to 4 years in an adult’s life (in my non-expert opinion).

They are big enough to move to the transitional coop where they can see the big chickens and the big chickens can see them. This gives both populations a chance to get used to being together while allowing the teenagers to get a little bigger, enabling them to hold their own when they are assimilated into the larger population in the main coop.

We usually start this transitioning when the chicks get to be about 5-6 weeks old, but how big they’ve gotten, how strong they seem, how (awful) the weather is…all these things are considered when we are timing the move.

They are currently eating up a storm. Bright and active, they are still somewhat skittish as they adjust to their new digs. My son commented that he thought that his batch of chicks was friendlier overall than prior ones; they tolerated our picking them up without much fuss. This comes in handy when friends come to visit and want to hold a chick.

We have about 19 teenagers at the moment (well, 20 counting my son, who will not be one for much longer either, come to think of it), and as they get older we are learning that the breeds may turn out not to be what we ordered. Determining the sex of a chick is not an exact science, and some vendors are better at it than others. The White Leghorns  (might be White Rocks) and the Light Orpingtons (might be Buff Orpingtons) are in question at the moment, but as is true with most things, time will tell.

They should be off the heat lamp by next week. For now, they are adjusting well to their Brave New World.

🙂

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Post Easter Post

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

Easter is one of my favorite holidays, having somehow escaped the drama and bad memories with which  many of the other major holidays are fraught  for me.

Although the bunny is now known to be Mom and Dad by both kids, we continue the traditions that we started when they were little. We fill a basket (or receptacle of some sort) for each  one and have an egg hunt. In the leaner years we used chocolate pirate coins to fill the plastic eggs for the hunt, otherwise we filled them with cash.

In the baskets? Candy, of course, gum, Tic Tacs, beef jerky (for the boy), lip gloss (for the girl), gift cards…things like that. What was not in the baskets? The dreaded plastic Easter grass, banned after the year that Dad was still finding it in various household crevices in December. 🙂

We were lucky to have a nice day weather-wise: sunny and in the low 70’s. The day before and after Easter it snowed! We had dinner with family, got to visit Dad at work and bring him some dinner, and still got home early enough for a normal bedtime for the tween (it was, after all, a “school night”).

Hope you all had a nice day too!

Write it down, make it happen

by Karen, posted in books, Date night, family, fitness, health, Life in the cube, Midlife Crisis, no fear, Someone's gotta say it, tweens, writing, yoga

Okay, it’s a book (not mine!) title. It occurred to me to apply the philosophy of: “If you build it, they will come” espoused by James Earl Jones and put into force by Kevin Costner in the Field of Dreams movie which coincidently (?!) contained a female lead character named “Karen” (not sure how she spelled it!) played by Amy Madigan.

I decided to build my perfect work day.

  1. Get up–not too early.
  2. Get some exercise. I like Stephen King’s idea from his book On Writing where he would take writing breaks and jump on the treadmill that was next to his writing desk (if memory serves). A little bit of yoga couldn’t hurt…
  3. Get some coffee–oh wait! That should be first!
  4. Get some breakfast (ABO…or “Anything But Oatmeal” :)).
  5. Write until noonish.
  6. Get some lunch.
  7. Check email, blogs, FB (you know, all the usual time-sucking suspects) etc.
  8. Read until 4pm. This is when I get to make a small dent in my pile of books, magazines that I am dying to read but have no time to.
  9. Get some more exercise…go for a walk? At the beach! Look for sea glass, sand dollars, unusual rocks and shells. Sigh. Life is Good.
  10. Watch DVD’s or preferred TV series of the moment (The Good Wife, Survivor, Breaking Bad) with my husband.

What does a perfect day for you look like? Quick! Go right it down; then maybe you can figure out a way to make it happen! 🙂

Congdon’s Donut Shop

by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, family, friends, local fun, tweens
Awesome blueberry pancakes at Congdons

I have to restrain myself or I’d go to Congdon’s every day, since it’s just a few miles from where I live.

It’s dangerously addictive.

Why? Well, let me count the ways:

  1. 1. The donuts are amazing. The variety is quite extensive, and includes my favorite: Blueberry filled (see slide show below) donut. (Note: Dunkin Donuts does not have this in their repertoire). Order a dozen at Congdon’s and you will be pleasantly surprised to receive a baker’s dozen: 13 lovely donuts of your choosing. Go when you have plenty of time; it can take a while to decide. If you consult the menu of donut flavors with your family before you go, then you can make a list at home and not annoy the people behind you in line. 🙂
  2. They have a full breakfast and lunch menu. The blueberry pancakes are excellent; I highly recommend them. The service is usually very good. The dining room is cozy and in the warmer months there is extra seating on the enclosed porch that abuts the dining room. Go very early during tourist season: the line to be seated will be LONG. L-O-N-G. (Come to think of it, the line for takeout will also be L-O-N-G).
  3. The muffins are also great. My favorite lately is Carrot, but I have yet to have one that I didn’t want to have again.
  4. They make a whoopie pie that is bigger than your head.
  5. Speaking of a baker’s dozen…sign up for their rewards card now and they’ll give you a baker’s dozen of donuts to thank you. They’ll also send you coupons every month, with extra generous ones for your birthday.
  6. Congdon’s is family friendly. Not only will you want to go there; your kids will as well (this means no whining when you tell them where you’re all going!).

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If you’re going to Wells, Maine, stop in to Congdon’s for breakfast…money well spent!

Pause and reflect

by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, family, fitness, friends, health, local fun, Midlife Crisis, Someone's gotta say it

Spring has sprung me–and as they say, better late than never. My cocoon of too much food and too little exercise has cracked open. What I’ve learned this winter is this: the more I eat, the more I want to eat, and the less I exercise, the less I want to exercise.

My wake up call? Well, that’s just it; it hasn’t been just one thing.  I had 4 this week:

  1. My husband said that the way I can always be go-go-going and doing so much and having so much energy have so many projects going was something he loved about me when he first met me. Now? Not so much.
  2. My yoga teacher said: “Are your pants on backwards? That little white triangle thing is usually in the front, isn’t it? Well, it’s on your butt right now!”
  3. Those shorts that were loose last spring have not one iota of extra room in them now. Not. One. Iota.
  4. When I unexpectedly had some unstructured time, there were so many things I wanted to do that I wasted some of the time because I couldn’t decide what to do!

I decided first to pause and reflect…this lasted about 30 seconds. Through my indecision I was conscious enough to note that it was 61 degrees out and sunny, and the huge snow banks had (finally! finally!) melted so that it was safe to walk my neighborhood streets again (read: drivers could see me). Before I did what I do best–that is, talk myself out of exercising, I grabbed my jacket, shoes and keys and headed out.

When I got back, I realized that it was time to eat something…not because it was suppertime (although it was: 5:10PM), but because I was really hungry. Usually I have others to cook for and feed, but tonight it was all up to me; I had only myself to please~”Party for one!” as my friend Denise would say.  I had a greek yogurt doctored up with frozen blueberries, flax meal, and cinnamon and a big cup of ice water. After I finished, I checked in: yep, still hungry. I slathered a slice of my homemade bread with almond butter and honey. Yum!

Then I wrote this blog post. I wrote a book review. I made and froze some lentil soup for work lunches this week. I edited several pages of  my book.

Sometimes by pausing, you get more done than if you just pushed full steam ahead.

P.S. This is my 200th post!!!! Yay!!!!