Tag: daughters

A room with a view

by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, books, writing
The view from my room this morning

I got to have an entire room of my own (with a view!) in which to work on editing my book.

This is big; you see, I’ve never had my own room before.

My husband, after realizing that I had an extra day off this week said, “Hey, get a room!”…Well, even though he didn’t mean what I thought he meant…it still turned out to be a great thing.

Here’s what he proposed: I get a room, pack up my laptop, book draft, notebooks, and anything else I thought I’d need, go there and work on my book. Alone. Away from the laundry. Away from the dishes. Away from the fam (I love them all, but I always stop what I’m doing because I want to do things for them, as my husband pointed out, instead of doing things for me).

I arrived at the (cheap! off-season! weekday rate!) room around 1:45pm, worked until 6pm, when my husband and daughter arrived with supper. It was one of my favorite meals:  sausage pizza from Spiller Farm (Jeannine Spiller makes an awesome pizza!) and a bottle of Diet Coke. We ate together, balancing pizza on napkins on our laps as we perched on the edge of the bed (Izzy got the chair). Life was good. Then they went home and I continued working until 10pm.

Having a great excuse (for the second week in a row) to skip the gym, I picked up some pre-dawn breakfast and got back to work by 6:45am. I worked until noon and managed to finish the first round of edits on my manuscript. While I was working, I set a timer, and every thirty  minutes I took a break, jumped up to do a minute or two of yoga, then got back to work.

Structure…it’s a beautiful thing. 🙂

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New Year’s Eve, tween style

by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, books, friends, Holidays, local fun, movies, tweens, writing

Today was a “Girl’s only” day for me and my tween. We had originally planned to go shopping to spend gift cards received for Christmas (both for her and for me) but then changed the plan to include a movie with a friend. (We never did go shopping with the gift cards, come to think of it…)

She and her friend went back and forth for a few days about which movie to see, Yogi Bear or Gulliver’s Travels.  Neither movie received great reviews, from the critics nor from her older brother, so as far as I was concerned, it was a toss-up. In the end, they chose Gulliver. I braced myself and we settled in for the show.

Well, from a parental standpoint, it wasn’t too terrible (except for when Jack Black was showing his “plumber’s crack” in the beginning. Eeew.). There were a few laughs, and the cast was likeable. The tweens gave it “two thumbs up!”  however, and those are the opinions that really matter, right?

After that, we did a quick food shopping (hey, Hannaford’s was right next door; why  make a second trip?), then back to the house. The girls had a few laughs playing Wii sports, Zsu Zsu pets, and listening to CD’s while I put away the groceries, paid the bills that came in today’s mail (ugh), and wrote quick book blog post.

Then we brought her friend home and came back to make supper: linguini, turkey, roasted red peppers in garlic, butter, and olive oil…pea pods added to Mom’s. After supper, we played a quick building game with magnets, thenwe finished the day with a little couch time, watching iCarly. I promised to wake her up if I am awake at midnight, but the odds of that are VERY SLIM. 🙂

Linguini with roased red peppers and turkey
...and pea pods added for Mom

One of the Best Christmases ever

by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, family, Holidays, italian, quest for the best, tweens
Our tree!

I originally thought that this would be one of the worst Christmases ever.  It had three strikes against it before it even started:

  1. I had to work late and wouldn’t get home until 8:20PM Christmas Eve.
  2. My husband had to work early Christmas Day, leaving at 5:10 AM, and would be gone the entire day and night.
  3. My son had to work Christmas Day as well. He was home in the morning, which was nice, but then couldn’t come with us to have dinner with relatives.

We tried to make the best of it. The kids each opened a couple of gifts with Dad on Christmas Eve while I listened in from work over the phone. My husband and I had a little time to exchange our gifts Christmas Eve.

Christmas morning, after Bill went to work, I stayed up and baked some bread and then put our traditional Christmas morning breakfast (cinnamon buns) into the oven. We opened up the gifts, then got ready for our (mostly separate) day.

We stopped to see Grammy and Papa before heading to my brother’s house for Christmas dinner…which may well have been one of the Best Christmas Dinners of all time. We played Wii games between dinner and dessert, rationalizing that we’d have more room for tiramisu (was that wrong?).

Then we brought some dinner to my son and his girlfriend Lauren at work. Unfortunately, we didn’t get there until 6:30PM…oh well. The food was worth the wait! My sister-in-law Andrea is an excellent cook!

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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. 🙂

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!

Eggstra special breakfast

by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, raising chickens, tweens
A double yoked egg!

I decided to cook a big breakfast last Sunday morning, so my daughter and I headed to the kitchen to strategize.

Me: Pumpkin Pancakes?
Izzy: No.
Me: Waffles?
Iz: No.
Me: Bacon and eggs?
Iz: Yes! And sausage!
Well, no surprise there; that’s almost always her breakfast of choice (we do raise chickens, after all!).
I headed to the cupboard for a pan; she headed to the fridge for the eggs.
She brought two eggs over to me for inspection, one of which was a very large egg with a network of funky ridges on it surface.
Now, I had been watching that egg for a few days…often when a young hen first starts laying, she will produce eggs of interesting sizes, shapes, and … textures.
I made Izzy her “tween omelet”:  egg scrambled with the mushrooms cooked separately and served on the side.
Then I bit the bullet and cracked the unusual egg into the bowl…and it had two yolks! Now, this wasn’t our first chicken egg that contained two yolks, but it was the first one that I’d ever personally cracked that did.
I was absurdly pleased by this.
One great thing about this egg was how bright and beautiful the yolks were. What was also great was that it was big enough to make an entire omelet from just the one egg!
Note: I put my mushrooms (and spinach!) in the actual omelet, as opposed to the “tween” version with them on the side. 🙂

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Tangled

by Karen, posted in family, local fun, movies, tweens

If you’ll forgive the tired old cliché, Tangled is a “coming of age story” for Rapunzel, Flynn, and even (in a weird way, a “coming of old age” ) for Rapunzel’s evil, passive-aggressive step mother (who continues the long tradition of evil stepmothers in Disney Movies.).

What’s totally great about Rapunzel is that she is a normal looking girl. This is huge for a Disney movie.  They have deviated from whatever mathematical formula that they have applied to prior princesses that make their faces flawless and perfectly symmetrical and give them bodies that are anatomically impossible. You know, like Barbie.

What’s also great about Rapunzel is that she saves herself from Flynn (the would-be hero), when he breaks into her, um… house, and without giving too much more away, she repeatedly saves herself in other situations thereafter. Flynn doesn’t save her; she saves him.

The horse Maximus and Flynn have a comical, sibling-type relationship going on throughout the movie which was so much fun to watch that it elicited a few disapproving “Mom! You sure laugh loud!”‘s from my tween.

This movie also brought to mind a few other clichés: “If you love something, set it free,” embodied by Rapunzel. “If it doesn’t come back, hunt it down and kill it,” embodied by the evil stepmother.

The lights that are launched annually recall the tune “This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine”, which is reflective of Rapunzel’s optimism in spite of the deck being completely stacked against her…and I mean: Completely. Stacked. Against. Her.

Then there’s the frying pan, which is perhaps a nod to the woman who can “bring home the bacon and fry it up in a pan”. At one point, Flynn asks: “A frying pan! Who knew?” A woman knew, that’s who!

Don’t get me wrong; all of these cliches are comforting, familiar. They help to make the movie accessible, and overall, EXCELLENT. Bring your kids and go see it (but try not to embarrass them by laughing “too loud” at Maximus and Flynn). 🙂

Grieving my dead relatives, Thanksgiving edition

by Karen, posted in good grief, Midlife Crisis

While driving home from work last night, I was thinking about something

Mom and Dad, way back when

from my past and wondering if I should share it with my kids. Now that my parents are gone, I realize that there are lots of times when I have a question about their lives and am sad because there’s just no one to ask.

Every so often when I was growing up, they would tell me something about their own growing up years, and more often than not, I would roll my eyes and wonder, “Why are they telling me this? Who cares?”

Well, now, having had the same impulse last night, I get it. They just wanted me to know them better, to know them (even a little bit) as real people, instead of just mom and dad.

I wonder if this lightbulb moment I’m having is a function of being in the midlife crisis stage of life. It’s nice to have the insight, but it makes me wish that I had cared a little more about , and had shown a little more interest in, what they had to say when they were here.

Fun with tweens on the weekend

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

My tween daughter invited a friend to spend the day, and as the 7 hours loomed ominously unfilled ahead of us, I wondered:  What the heck should we do?  

First, I decided to do something for me: I had a 20% coupon to Kennebooks in Kennebunk so that was our first stop. A quick check of the local paper told me that they were having an Open House that started at 10:30am, so it was just me and my tween for this. When we arrived, there was a kids “author event” so we headed down for that, but it turned out to be for littler kids, so we did some browsing for an hour. I bought a book for a friend for Christmas.

Sigh. I love to be with the books. But I digress…

Next, we picked up the friend and headed for the library. They browsed the shelves, and checked out some books, and then harassed me until I gave up and said, “Okay, yes! I’m ready to leave too!”.  While we were there, we found a new cookbook called Betty Crocker’s Just the two of us, and they spied a recipe while flipping through it that they wanted to make. Since we had all of the ingredients already, I agreed.

Lunch was next, and I’m embarrassed to admit that I took the easy way out: McDonald’s was right nearby, and since it was almost 1pm and they were “starving”, we headed there next. In my defense, we haven’t eaten McD’s food in months, so here’s hoping that it didn’t do us too much damage. We drove through and brought it home to eat it (their choice).

Then we made the Double Chocolate Snack Cake.

Izzy and Ivy, the bakers

They did a great job! I helped a little but they were really in charge of the recipe (I was in charge of the oven) and it turned out really great. We ate most of it fairly quickly.

After that, they hula hooped and played on the swing in the yard, fed bread to the chickens, and played a few hands of cards: Uno, War.

Then, they actually read the books that they checked out of the library for a little while.
I had to run to Hannaford’s and they were thrilled to come with me. They got free cookies at the bakery, and free samples of cheese and turkey at the deli. They even watched the cart full of groceries after I realized that the most important thing that I went there to buy, I had forgotten, so I had to go back and get it and run through the cashier’s line again. (Hey, at least I remembered before I got back home; I figured that I was ahead of the game!)

When we got back, I made them spaghetti for supper, and after we finished eating they had another little bit of time to play.

They watched a little TV: one episode of iCarly, and one episode of Drake and Josh. Then they played some songs on the electric keyboard for a while.

When it was time for her friend to go home, they had even picked up after themselves!

It was a great day; I even was able to get my 2,000 words written in between everything else. Life is good!

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