Tag: family

Somethin’ Sweet Bakery in Sanford

by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, baking, family, friends, local fun, quest for the best
Jennifer, owner of Somethin' Sweet Bakery in Sanford

Maybe it’s Sunday afternoon and 86 degrees and the last thing in the world you want to do is hang around the house with your cranky kids, since you yourself are very cranky. Here’s an idea: throw…er, put the kids in the car and drive over to Somethin’ Sweet Bakery, 883 Main Street Suite 1 in Sanford, next to Get Fired Up.

Jen opens for business Thursday through Saturday  from 11:00am to 7:00pm and Sundays from 11:00am to 4:00pm.  She may open other days as well; for example last Monday Jen opened for the 4th of July to provide excellent edible support for hungry (for Somethin’ Sweet!) parade go-ers.

Jen has always loved baking and that fact comes through loud and clear to anyone who has been lucky enough to enjoy any of the Whoopie Pies (try the Coffee-filled Chocolate Whoopies! They are amazing!), cookies, brownies, and other treats that you can find at her bakery. She changes up the flavors and items daily but of course, like the ice cream parlors always have vanilla and chocolate on hand, you can always find the old standbys (vanilla and chocolate cupcakes with vanilla frosting for instance) represented at Somethin’ Sweet! Jen is working on the new website for her business (somethinsweetmaine.com), but if you need a focal point for your (sweet) meditation today, check out the picture up there now. . . you will have no trouble sitting for 20 minutes if you are focusing on that.

Speaking of Somethin’ Sweet, the decor of the store, as well as the lovely store owner, are exactly that. Jen mentioned that she is working on some new offerings (this week she made caramel blondies..now that’s what I’m talkin’ about!), so keep coming back and check out what’s in the display case. You can also check out the daily flavors which she posts on Facebook.  You may find that, despite the variety of options, your tween will always want the Cookie Dough Cupcake. Let her have it, as long as she stays away from your Chocolate Whoopie Pie with Coffee Filling…

🙂

Jen is taking Somethin’ Sweet on the road tomorrow (Monday, July 11) night. She will be at the Sanford Mainers baseball game at 6:30pm at Goodall Park, Roberts Street in Sanford. Why not eat a light supper then pile the fam in the car for an evening of baseball and baked treats?

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Date night at the Ogunquit Playhouse

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

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:

  1. Knitting supplies: Patterns, yarn stash, needles and other sundries
  2. A filing cabinet with warranties, extra office supplies, vital records, and infinite other minutiae
  3. DVD’s, and (OMG!) video cassette tapes
  4. 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.

Date night: afternoon movie

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.

A bird in the hand

by Karen, posted in chicks, good grief, no fear, raising chickens
The Big Chickens (including Pidge)

One of my roles is Farmer (well, Wife of Farmer, to be more accurate). As such, I have a morning (and evening) routine when the primary farmer is away.

  1. Get coffee. (Get coffee is always Rule Number One, no matter what). 🙂
  2. Feed the Teenager Chickens in the transitional coop; refill their water as needed.
  3. Feed the Big Chickens; they are now on a very efficient self watering system that my husband designed and set up (this totally rocks!).
  4. Gather up any eggs.
  5. Evening: repeat.

I do most chores that are part of chicken rearing without any problem, but have heretofore drawn the line with a couple of things: I don’t check the vents for egg bound chickens and I don’t remove the dead bodies from the general population. Those jobs belong to Farmer #1 (or my son does it by default when my husband is not available). In short, Man’s Work.

Well, last evening as I entered the coop with the feed scoop held aloft, the Big Chickens ran toward me in one giant chicken wave as always…except one. There was Pidge, laying on her side, legs out behind her, lifeless. Poor Pidge (short for Pigeon, so named because of her coloring and size) had not been herself for a week or so, but in the two days prior seemed to be recovering well and we thought she was going to make it. Just that morning she had flown up to meet me when I brought the morning feed out to them. I took a closer look at her.

Dead dead dead.

The cartoon-like caricature of death flashed into my mind, complete with “X”‘s where the eyes should be and I superimposed the image on Pidge. (The eyes really did look blank like that!).

As an RN, I automatically reviewed the procedure for the pronouncement of death and had a moment of black humor as I envisioned checking the apical pulse and blood pressure on the little hen. I reviewed my options: Husband and son both at work and neither would be home for hours. I couldn’t in good conscience leave the corpse in the coop with the general population for that long.

I was going to have to Man Up.

I recalled a female friend who raised chickens telling me that the worst part (of disposing of the dead chickens) for her was handling them. Her work-around method for avoiding this was to put on a pair of work gloves then get a shovel to pick up the dead bird and remove it from the coop.

I got my (husband’s) gloves. I got my shovel. I got up my nerve and I entered the coop. I focused my gaze just to the right of Pidge, picked her up with the shovel, and took her to her final resting place.

The lesson here? Don’t name your chickens.

Footnote: I just named a chicken last week: Coconut. I am ever hopeful I guess.

Coconut

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.

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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