Category: friends

Angels dropping a dime

by Karen, posted in Angels, family, friends, good grief

I dreamed about my mother last night. We were in the house she grew up in and ultimately died in. We were standing together on the back porch, looking out at the snow-covered street. It was very sunny and bright, and we were watching a plow making its way through the snow drifts, clearing a path in the street. We didn’t talk, but I felt happy.

I woke up from this dream Christmas morning, and had a clear thought: thanks for letting me know that you’re with me today, Ma.

I was at my brother’s house for dinner later in the day for dinner. At one point, I stood up from the table to get a drink and we could hear something hit the floor. My sister-in-law picked it up and said, “Did you drop a dime?” so I said yes, and put it back in my pocket, not giving it much thought.

A little while later, after I had just finished telling my brother about the dream, another coin hit the floor. It was another dime. My sister-in-law said, “What’s with the dimes today?!”  I said, “It must be the angels letting us know they’re here.”  Another guest (who did not know about the dream) said, “It’s your mother!”

And so it was.

Coffee or tea?

by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, friends, local fun

I love coffee.

I became a regular coffee drinker in college. My friend Diane and I would go to HoJo’s for late night breakfasts and bottomless cups of coffee. Because I drank it faster than the waitress could replenish the cream, I soon became a black coffee drinker. This worked well for us because then Di could have all of the creamers and I could have more of the straight coffee.

Life was good.

After I graduated from college (and from HoJo’s), I managed a restaurant for years so I had access to unlimited bottomless pots of black coffee, of which I took full advantage. I could make a fresh pot any time I wanted it and then just drink the first cup or two before the remainder was sold to customers, and then I could start another fresh pot. Repeat process.

Fast forward thirty (gasp!) years. I am still a black coffee drinker. I spent many of those years as a slave to Dunkin Donuts Medium Black French Vanilla. Too many. Currently my loyalties have shifted. I can enjoy a cup of whatever the local coffee shop is serving up, but I recently realized that I am now a slave to the Keurig. I can go through a half a dozen K-cups in a single day.

Today I tried an experiment: I started the day with a cup of Tulsi Tea instead of the coffee that I am usually sipping no later than 6am, often as early as 5:30am. To my surprise, the caffeine headache didn’t surface until 11:00am, so I had my first cup (Spicy Eggnog!) of coffee of the day then. I held out until 6pm before I had a second cup.

The great thing about Tulsi Tea is that it comes in many flavors, just like my beloved coffee. Maybe I’m on to something?

To be continued…

National Cupcake Day

by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, baking, family, friends, Holidays, local fun, quest for the best

I just got this in under the wire…I can’t believe that I didn’t know it was National Cupcake Day today! I must be pretty darned distracted to miss this. I’m not even in any position right now to bake or obtain a cupcake to consume, so I must celebrate vicariously through Thoughts of Cupcakes Past.

Look what Jen is serving up at her bakery, Somethin’ Sweet in Sanford~sweet snowman cupcakes! They are just the cutest things ever! Of course, all of the cupcakes and treats here are amazing, so I hope you were able to get over there to buy some cupcakes to celebrate today.

If  you missed the boat (or had to work) like me, consider tomorrow a “Do-Over”!  At your earliest possible convenience, buy or bake yourself (and your family, and your friends….) some cupcakes to celebrate the day. After all, cupcakes make any day just that much nicer.

Consider placing an order for lovely baked goods for Christmas while you are there. Jen will be open on Christmas Eve (morning only, 9AM-12N) for pick-ups and last minute impulse (the best k ind of) buys.

Enjoy!

Alternative Christmas Songs

by Karen, posted in family, friends, Holidays

*I am republishing this list from last year. I haven’t heard any songs in 2011 that I feel compelled to add to it. Enjoy!

  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. 🙂

Christmas Music and other minutiae

by Karen, posted in family, friends, Holidays, quest for the best, relationships

Since I’m feeling all Christmas-y at the moment, and since (more importantly) I have a huge leg up on my Christmas shopping (and wrapping) this year, I decided to write a little more about Christmas.  Here are some random thoughts:

  1. When I was wrapping up the gifts I’d bought so far this year, I had the presence of mind (for once) to get out the Christmas CD’s and play a little mood music. My favorite is the one that my son made for my husband for his birthday last year, “Alternative Christmas Songs“. Best. Christmas. CD. EVER. Consider breaking out your own Christmas music this year…you know, before Christmas is over.
  2. Nothing beats a cup of mulled cider while you’re wrapping, unless it’s a cup of hot chocolate with tons of whipped cream crammed into the cup. If it’s evening and you’re done driving for the day, consider putting a shot of Amaretto in your hot chocolate…yay!
  3. What to buy? For me, this year is (essentially) a Gift Card Christmas. Yep; I gave the issue of gifting enormous thought and then decided that most people want either a) money or b) the equivalent thereof. How do I know this? Scientific research. Everyone that I asked said they wanted either money or a gift card to (fill in the blank). Be honest. That’s what you really want too, right?
  4. FOR YOUR KIDS:  Apart from the gift card strategy, which I am applying to (almost) all of the people for whom I am shopping, I have a sort of a formula that I use for buying for my two kids. After all: gift cards under the tree, even if it’s several hundred dollars worth (note to husband: It’s not! It’s not!) doesn’t look very impressive or generate much excitement on Christmas morn. Here’s my basic formula for the kids: a book, a new set of pajama’s, a new outfit, a game (for Wii, Nintendo 3DS, or whatever they have). 
  5. I like to have one joint gift for the kids to open on Christmas Eve, sort of a family gift, like tickets to an event, or a game that everyone (hopefully) will like. 🙂

Also this year: I am trying to just use what I have already for gift bags and wrapping paper. I have a roll of pink Santa paper that I bought to wrap my daughter’s presents and blue Santa paper to (you guessed it!) wrap my son’s years ago. Using this eliminates the need for name tags.

Making Gingerbread Houses

by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, baking, family, friends, Holidays, local fun, tweens

I admit it: prior to yesterday I was a Gingerbread House Virgin. Through twenty-plus years of motherhood, I’d managed to avoid ever baking, never mind decorating, a gingerbread house. The desire just was not there. I couldn’t have been less interested.

Then something incredible happened: I wanted to make one.  Something shifted inside me and I really wanted to do it…and then…

I got lucky.

🙂

Tip: do it for the first time with someone who knows what they are doing!

Okay, enough double entendre. My friend Kristen (see her blog here) is a fabulous baker and she invited my daughter and me to be part of her (tenth, I think) annual ritual of baking and decorating a Gingerbread House with her son, something I’d never done with my own son in his childhood (but hey, we did make dozens—dozens!–of Christmas cookies over the years! Just sayin’.).

Our jobs were to bring something flat to put the house on the day prior, and to buy some candy to contribute to the stash of building supplies.
Oh, and to show up. 🙂

The end result? Amazing. The ideas the kids came up with were so creative–it was just wonderful to watch their minds working. Plus, my friend and I got to chat virtually uninterrupted for at least an hour.

This is definitely an activity I would like to do again next year.

The irony? My son was making his first Gingerbread House at the same time at his girlfriend’s house with her family. Go figure.

Watch the slideshow that follows to see what we used for materials. 🙂

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Thoughts on writing

by Karen, posted in books, family, friends, my one word, no fear, Work from Home, writing
My first book written during NaNoWriMo 2010

Okay, I was going to entitle this post “On Writing” but didn’t want to piss Stephen King off. This is my second year participating in the NaNoWriMo challenge. For those of you that wonder what that alphabet soup of letters stands for, it’s National Novel Writing Month and it takes place annually in November. Basically, we commit to writing a 50,000 word novel in 30 days.

Seriously.

Why did I participate this year when the book I wrote last year is still languishing on the shelf, so to speak? When I asked not only my husband but my Angels (at the Clay Hill Farm Angel Reading in October) if I should do it and they said, in a word, “No”?

I don’t know. But here’s something that I do know: as I sat here on November 27, and I typed my 50,000th word….it felt freakin’ fantastic!!!

So now I’m going to borrow one of  Oprah’s favorite sayings: “What I know for sure” on the evening that I finished my second NaNoWriMo and my second book (draft):

  1. Writing flourishes when you have deadlines.
  2. Writing is prolific when you stop editing yourself and just write.
  3. Writing gets done when you commit to doing it publicly (to me, NaNoWriMo is sort of the writer’s equivalent of Weight Watchers).
  4. Writing begets writing. The more I write, the more I write.

I also wonder if the fact that thousands of other writers are taking part in their own personal NaNoWriMo Vision Quest somehow results in a metaphysical momentum (you know, being part of something larger than yourself?)  that carries us all forward to reach the finish line.

Locks of Love

by Karen, posted in family, friends, Midlife Crisis, no fear

Every three years or so I donate my hair to Locks of Love , and my daughter Isabelle has donated once as well. This entails the relinquishing of at least 10 inches of hair, more if the ends are kind of thin, which they usually are by the time hair gets to that length.

This time around the total cut off was 13 inches.

I had already committed to doing it, but for a split second I almost back pedaled. Then I remembered the past several months of prepping my family (not to mention myself) that had preceded this day, and sucked it up.

The hair was measured, braided, banded, and…extracted. The most difficult part, I think, is how light-headed I feel right after it’s cut. This feeling usually dissipates fairly quickly, as long as I’m careful not to turn my head too quickly…kidding!

The next most difficult part is that at the current length, my hair is too short to pull it back into a ponytail or a braid, and my daughter is torturing me to take out the clip that I have perched on the top of my head to keep my hair out of my face while I’m cooking, reading, or whatever.

“It looks stupid!” she proclaimed, grabbing for the clip as we were leaving to make a library run.

Oh. I thought it looked cute. “Leave it alone!” I snapped back. “Let’s go! I want to get there before they close.”

I left it in. Until I got to the car. Then I took it out. What if she was right and I was wrong?  I wasn’t willing to risk it.

One of those women

by Karen, posted in friends, Midlife Crisis, no fear

I realized today, as I peered at myself in the bathroom mirror, deciding whether to eat breakfast first or shower first…that the roots of my hair were looking kind of gray and dark. Then I had my second realization: I’d become one of those women.

You know, one of those women who dyed their hair, only worse. I’d joined that club about two (OMG! I think it was two!) years ago when I gave in to public opinion and dyed my hair for the first time. How did I make it to my late forties without ever dying my hair, ever? Not even highlights.

Well, I had some bad encounters with some perms over the years…’nuf said.

When I finally decided to dye it, it was just to try to cover most of the gray (that truthfully, I really didn’t even see. It was mostly on top of my head, so I had to tip my head and look down to see any gray, which I rarely did). I didn’t want to change the color one iota. In fact, I didn’t want anyone to know I’d done it at all…can you say, “Subtle”? That was my goal.

The wonderful woman that agreed to take me on was very brave. I have to give Deb tons of credit (and Susan tons of thanks, for introducing us). She listened to me tell her how much I didn’t want to do what I was about to hire her to do. She patiently listened to me debating the choices (permanent? semi-permanent?) and to me imploring her over and over to make sure that it would match my normal color so that no one would notice it was dyed. She did this. She pulled it off.

Anyway, once I started dying it, I got into a routine. A routine that I didn’t think too much about over the past two years (maybe three?). . . until this morning. When I realized I’d become one of those women.

One of those women who didn’t know what color her hair actually is anymore.

I’m not sure if this is a good thing or a bad thing.

Angels at Clay Hill Farm, part 2

by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, friends, local fun, no fear

I attended the Angel Dinner the other night with a friend and I loved it. I wasn’t sure what to expect, so if you are wondering how it works, let me clue you in.

You come in and are seated by the waitress.

Ruth Kramer is the Intuitive featured at Clay Hill Farm’s Angel Readings. She is a lovely woman with a British accent who is full of energy and enthusiasm for her work. First, she comes right over to introduce herself to you and explain how the evening will go.

You will be seated at a table with other patrons (there were six people total seated at my table). Usually the small room is sold out for Ruth’s Angel Reading dinners, but on this night we were at about 1/2 capacity. This was lucky for us because she had a little more time to spend with each of us for our readings.

Little notepads are provided on the table along with pencils for you to write down any questions that occur to you to ask Ruth as you are waiting for your reading. Dinner will be served in a parade of amazing courses which you will choose upon arrival from a small menu. Warm rolls, then soup or salad. There will be several entrees, including a vegetarian one. Several incredible dessert choices will follow that will most likely be your most difficult decision all evening…which one? Can I have two? 🙂

If you think of it, you can bring a device to tape your reading, if “the angels will allow it”…Ruth says sometimes the angels will not allow her words to you from them to be taped.  So as a back up plan (if you go with a friend like I did) you can take notes for each other as Ruth is speaking (my friend’s idea) so that you can fully concentrate on what she is telling you versus trying to write it down and listen simultaneously.

I took pictures of the food, but the lighting was so low that none of them are really good enough to include here…maybe the angels didn’t wish the food to be seen? 🙂

Ruth will be at the Clay Hill Farm one more Monday night, as of this writing, on November 14. Call 207-361-2272 for reservations.