Tag: marriage

WHAT is THAT?

by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, family, Midlife Crisis, no fear

My husband usually calls to chat when he’s commuting from work. “Remind me when I get home; I have something for you,” he said. I wondered what it might be. He often brings home little surprises. Sometimes it’s a pastry of some sort, or a plant, or a book that he thinks that I might like.

Not this time. This time, my husband brought these home from work.  They were on the kitchen island in a small plastic baggie.

I looked at them through the baggie. I (cautiously! oh so cautiously!) eased them out of the baggie. I laid them out on the island.My husband stood just off to the side, watching, amused.

“So, what the heck are they?” I finally asked him.

“Guess,” he said.

My first thought was this: “Brian Dennehy called; he wants his pods back.”

🙂

He didn’t laugh. He really doesn’t get my jokes.

“Are they an insect of some sort?” I wondered, distracted by the little black “legs” protruding from the surface. “Nope,” he replied.

“Give me a hint, at least,” I begged.

“Well, it’s a fruit,” he said,  unhelpfully.

A fruit? Really? Really? I considered this.

A very hairy, masculine strawberry? On testosterone, maybe.

After a while, I gave up, but he still didn’t divulge the fruit’s identity. He cut it open, removed the center (after which I was leaning back toward my pod theory) which turned out to be a smooth white spongy oval that resembled a small hard-boiled egg, except that there was a pit where the yolk should be.

It tasted like a grape. This, actually, was not useful in helping me to identify the fruit.

Turns out, it’s a Rambutan. So I tried it, which enables me to proclaim that at the age of 49, I got to try a fruit that I’d never had before…and may I just say, “Eeew.”

It is experience that I’m not in planning to repeat.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

What do (married) men want?

by Karen, posted in Date night, Midlife Crisis, no fear, relationships, Someone's gotta say it
Blue string bikini

I don’t know about you, but when I go to the beach, I am most comfortable when almost every inch of me is covered from my chest to oh, say about mid-thigh. Let’s just say that I am a big fan of those skirted bathing suits, which my husband refers to as ‘mommy-suits’ (or in his less charitable moments, suits his grandmother wore).

I wouldn’t have been caught dead at the beach when I was in my early twenties in a bikini, never mind in my (very, very) late forties! So, imagine my surprise when  just last week I did exactly that: that thing that I thought I could not do.

That bikini in the photo to your left? Yep. That was on me. And not just in the back yard…I was out in public. At Wells Beach. In the day time.

The secret is this: you must have bikini confidence. Know you look good. Most of us women (I think) have a distorted views of ourselves, how we really look to others. What we see and what our husbands (or significant others) see are two very different things. It’s all about perspective.

State Farm has it wrong about what men want…it’s not a falcon. What  a (married) man wants ..is to see his wife at the beach in a bikini!

Who knew? 🙂

Summer Vacation: What I actually DID do

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

You know how they say, “The best laid plans of mice and men…” to paraphrase John Steinbeck? Well, true that.

Half Pecan Banana Bread, Half Cherry Vanilla Chocolate Chunk cone

Day 1: Friday:  The entire day did not end up being wasted waiting for the fridge to be delivered (and the accompanying emptying out and filling back up thereof) that I anticipated when the delivery window was given as “Between 2:30PM and 4:00PM” that day. Bright and early we got a call asking if they could come at 9:00AM instead. Hel-lo? Duh! Of course we said  yes. Bonuses: 1) I was on my way to the gym and got to–er, had to turn around and go back home.  2) My husband and I were both able to attend our daughter’s Culinary Camp presentation at YCCC which was scheduled from 3:00PM-4:00PM.

We also got to go out for dinner to Pedro’s in Kennebunk, noticeably missing from the planned vacation agenda. Later we got an ice cream cone at Arundel Ice Cream Shop, which was very definitely on the agenda! We popped in our Netflix movie when we got home: Take Me Home Tonight~Pass on this one; it was pretty awful.

A word about Pedro’s: it’s great place to go. Simple, straightforward menu without too many choices to bog you down. Nice atmosphere. We sat outside on the patio this time (the first time we went there a few weeks ago we ate inside). We ordered the Flautas (which are great for sharing: an order contains two) and the Nachos Grande. The food was excellent (sorry, no pictures; my husband is getting sick of the food getting cold while I’m snapping pictures for the blog) and reasonably priced.

It was a fairly good start to my vacation. 🙂

Anyone else on vacation?

Why Buy the Cow?

by Karen, posted in books, relationships, writing

My proof copy of my book arrived in the mail yesterday. I found it on my kitchen island when I returned home from work around 8:30 last night, in a most undignified place (at the bottom pf the pile of mail). I picked it up and said to my husband (who was standing at the sink with his back to me):

Me: Do you know what this is?

Bill: A book?

Me: Not a book…the book.

Bill: {Blank stare}

Me: My book.

Bill: OooooooooooOOOOOOOOOoooooooooooooOOOOOOOOOOhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh; your book.

Then he turned his attention back to whatever he was doing in the sink.

I started to tear open the cardboard encasing it when a thought stopped me mid-tear.

I worked on this book for about 2 years. It was now about 9pm, I was tired, my husband was distracted…I was not giving my book the respect that it deserved. I stopped.

I’m going to wait until I have an uninterrupted block of time. I’m going to open the package slowly and savor the moment, fully aware that I am about to hold the first book that I wrote myself in my hands.

I can’t wait.

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.

🙂

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.

Date night at the Ogunquit Playhouse

by Karen, posted in Date night, family, local fun, relationships, Someone's gotta say it, tweens

Avenue Q opened up the season at the Ogunquit Playhouse this year. The show is sort of a perversion of Sesame Street that is funny as hell and certainly worth seeing. The night we went was during one of the Bruins’ Playoff games (season ticket holders have only limited say over what night the tickets are for) and was the first show in years that my husband and I could remember that wasn’t sold out. It was still impressively full, though, considering (reference: Bruins’ Playoff game).

This show’s ticket has the warning not to bring children under 17 due to the explicit language and, um, live (puppet) sex onstage (two darn good reasons, don’t you think?) but then I read an interview with Brad Kenney this month in the York Independent and became confused. He is quoted in the article as qualifying the aforementioned good advice by saying:

“Well, we recommend parental discretion for anyone under 17–but, if you do bring them, you will be considered VERY cool! And they probably know all the songs anyway!”

Huh?

I attended a Playhouse show a couple of years ago (The Full Monty) which was a show (obviously) intended for adult audiences.  Parents in the front row somehow thought it would be okay to bring their kids to see it too, one of which looked to be about tween-aged. Not only was the poor boy uncomfortable, but the actors on the stage were uncomfortable as well! How do I know this? Because one of them gestured to the boy in the front row and made a comment about having a child in the audience cramping his style, or words to that effect.

Parents? Leave your kids at home for adult-themed live shows.

Brad? My 12-year-old does not already know any of the words to any of the songs in Avenue Q!

Setting up my home office, Part Three: Paint

by Karen, posted in Life in the cube, no fear, Work from Home

The walls and ceiling of the office-to-be are white, so at least it will be easy to cover. Earlier this month I went paint color shopping with my husband at Lowe’s. I spent an hour browsing through all of the paint samples. My favorite color is yellow so that’s where I started out, but then gravitated toward the lilacs (my favorite flower), the blues (my second favorite color)…I could have made a day of it. My husband (wisely) left me to go look at some tools or something while I basked in paint heaven.

When he came back, I roused myself from my stupor as he said, “Have any luck?” I proudly displayed the dozen or so paint chips that I had chosen, fanned out like a hand of cards. He looked at them briefly then pulled one lonely paint sample from his back pocket.

“How about this?” he said, and showed me a foresty green color. “Oh. That’s nice too,” I offered. “Well, you don’t have to decide today,” he said, so I put my paint samples into my bag to be revisited at a later date.

So I never did revisit the paint samples because day to day life got in the way. Then I talked to my husband on the phone from work one morning and innocently asked “Whatcha doin’?” and he said, “Painting”.

Whaaaaaa…? I thought, but did not say. “Oh,” I said. “What color?” I asked, feigning nonchalance. “Eggshell,” he said.

Whaaaaaa…? “What happened to the foresty green?” I managed. “I saw this and liked it better,” he said.  It really is just that easy for him.  My husband is spatially talented; he can look at a stick, plant it in the ground, and know what it will look like in five years; he can literally see the tree it will be. 🙂 I, on the other hand, look at the stick and see only the stick, in all it’s “Charlie Brown Christmas Tree” glory. Bill’s talent that translates well to interior design. He can sort through those millions of little paint chips and find THE  little paint chip of my dreams. More importantly, he can know what the entire room will look like when the painting is done.

It looks amazing. I totally love it. “Eggshell” turned out to be a pale yellow color, the pale yellow color that I was hoping for but unable to locate on my own.

🙂

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Next up: the flooring. To be continued…

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