Tag: Post a week challenge

Losing my mind

by Karen, posted in Midlife Crisis, my one word

Here is just a small sampling of the fruits of my distraction over the past couple of weeks.

  1. Went to my hair appointment, got out of the car, looked for my pocketbook, realized I’d left it at home. I could clearly see it in my mind’s eye hanging over the back of the kitchen chair. I was sure I’d taken it off the chair and brought it with me to the car. I had not.
  2. Got up early, got dressed in my gym clothes, got to Planet Fitness, got out of the car…and realized that I was wearing my winter boots and had not brought my sneakers. Fail.
  3. Ran the dryer for 45 minutes, went to remove the clothes, and discovered that they weren’t in there. I’d never taken them out of the washer and put them in the dryer in the first place. Even though (once again) I clearly remember doing so.
  4. Told my daughter, “Go get the rest of the bags out of the trash,” after I returned from food shopping. Oh, didn’t I say “trunk”? I was sure I’d said “trunk”…

And these are just the things that I remember. Needless to say, I’m not making great progress with “my one word” for 2012.

Scary.

Not wasting my vacation

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

I think that it’s very important to get out of your rut–I mean, routine–on your vacation week. This is especially challenging, of course, if you are taking (yet another) staycation. Having part of your time off fall during the holidays can make it a little easier to break out…as in the  “Hel-lo? What day is it?” situation in which I found myself just after Christmas. Still, the gym on Tuesday and Thursday, food shopping on Saturday line up could definitely stand some tweaking.

Sunday: Christmas. ‘Nuf said.

Monday: Clean up the house, rest up from the holiday, dinner at Olive Garden. Happily, I found the $4 off dinner coupon prior to paying and then remembered to use it.

Tuesday: Friends came over to make home-made, authentic egg rolls. Last time we made chicken and shrimp. This year, to change it up some (hey, it is vacation!) we made a third version: spicy pork, which ended up being a hit.

Wednesday: Pirates game (a present for the fam) after dinner at Binga’s Wingas (a present for Dad).

Thursday: Friends day. Lunch with former colleague for our rescheduled gift exchange, then scrapbooking for the first time in a year and a half, with more friends. The understanding kind that are not shocked that, despite your good intentions, you did not remember to organize your stuff and print out the Christmas pictures to use that day. Hey, it’s all about friends, right? UPDATE: This event did not actually happen and will be rescheduled. Instead, I went to Kohl’s and bought some cute things on clearance. Yay!

Friday: Shopping at the mall with my tween with her gift cards. Got an $89.50 fur-lined hoodie at Aeropostle for $10!!!  This was followed by eating w/reckless disregard for the future at the Buffet of Gorging and Obscene Excess at the mall. Then we saw We Bought a Zoo at the movies. May I just say: Go. See. It. It was excellent. We both loved it. Movie watching was accompanied by popcorn and Peanut M+Ms (aka “the devil”).

Saturday: New Year’s Eve. Chinese buffet at East and Just Dance 3 on the Wii to work (some of ) it off. Yoga first thing in the morning.

Sunday: New Year’s Day: Pajama day! Read stack of books and magazines that have been piling up. Went for a walk. More Wii. And…let the healthy eating begin!!!! Egg whites, soup, salad were on the menu. Really.

One of the best vacations ever. 🙂

Homemade eggrolls with friends

by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, friends, Marriage, quest for the best, relationships

Last spring (we finally agreed that it was in the spring; I thought it was in the summer) my husband and I got together with another couple of friends to make authentic homemade egg rolls. Our friends make them every 3 or 4 months at home, but were gracious enough to drive an hour and a half (in each direction) to come to our house and remind us how to make them too.

They arrived with some supplies in tow. This time we were better prepared with a borrowed Fry Daddy; last time we shared theirs. They also brought their Tupperware mixing bowl that is the size of a kiddie pool. It was almost big enough. I kicked myself one more time for selling my identical bowl at a yard sale years ago. Other nice to have equipment was the food processor that we bought last year for this occasion.

We took a field trip together to Hannaford’s for the produce: carrots, cabbage, onions (they were out of scallions) and the cellophane (I think) noodles. They brought the wrappers with them. Let me tell you that shredding all those vegetables, not to mention frying the egg rolls, makes one hell of a mess. Our friends cleaned up everything, including all the oil spatter from tandem frying in the Fry Daddy’s. It wasn’t pretty.

We made three varieties: chicken, shrimp, and an experiment: pork. My husband wondered what would happen if he mixed Ah-So Sauce with ground pork and stuffed them into the egg rolls. They turned out great! Next time we’ll drain them of some of the extra fluid prior to cooking because they turned out a little darker than the other egg rolls, but that did not affect the taste. 🙂

Here’s a slideshow of the fun:

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We can’t wait till spring so we can make them again! 🙂

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.

Angels and the creative process

by Karen, posted in Angels, family, tweens, writing

Instead of writing my blog post and examiner.com article and more NaNoWriMo words yesterday afternoon (and well into the evening…), I helped my tween daughter with her project for school.

The assignment was to make a collage that showcased the following:

  1. Your career aspirations
  2. Your interests
  3. Your talents
  4. Something else that I can’t remember (*midlife disclaimer)

She had already made a good start on it. We spread out the construction paper on the extra kitchen table that we brought up from the cellar and put in the living room for Thanksgiving (yep; it’s still there taking up every bit of extra space there is in that room. Don’t care. It’s very useful for… collage projects and such).

As we went through the stack of pristine magazines (that I had been too busy to read in November) looking for images to fill up the page, we talked about what her likes, talents, aspirations are. Want to get to know your tween better? Spend three hours making a collage with them.

As an aside, maybe it will help you get to know yourself better too. I started cutting out images to make my own collage as a result of this process!

Anyway, as I staring at a page, some words caught my eye: Joy, Peace, and Noel. I started cutting them out and then remembered the angel picture I’d seen on the previous page, which reminded me of an angel message I received from Stacey (Mainely You Massage) a few weeks ago.  She said that a Christmas angel had come through for me and my daughter, and was showing her the words “Joy” and “Noel” for us. There we were, sitting at that table, looking at those words in the presence of a (print) Christmas angel.  Oh my gosh!!! 

I suddenly felt that I was exactly where I was supposed to be, doing exactly what I was supposed to be doing.

As an added bonus, all that cutting and pasting fired me up to write. I have notes all over the place containing story ideas that came to my during and after our project.

**In the collage, the Christmas Angel is toward the bottom left corner, and the words “Joy, Peace, and Noel” are toward the top right corner, just above the raccoon..

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.

Clearing clutter (continued)

by Karen, posted in Life in the cube, my one word, Work from Home, writing

I decided to take two days off from the computer and surprise! When I logged into my email today there were 97 messages.

Ninety. Seven. Messages.

I blame myself. I have subscribed to so many food blogs (for recipe purposes) and department stores and restaurants (for coupon and discount purposes) and writers and agents blogs (for writing tips and hey, maybe someone will publish my book!) that I have no time to actually read, and thereby potentially benefit from, them.

I have created a monster. With 97 legs. Now what?

Here’s my plan: If I receive an email and don’t have the time or the desire to read it at first glance, I shall just delete it. If I notice this happens more than once or twice, I shall unsubscribe.

That’s my story and I”m (hopefully going to) stick to it.

Addendum: The email count morphed up further to 102 in the time it took to write this post. Heavy sigh.

Distracted

by Karen, posted in Midlife Crisis

Almost every day, when I go to check my watch to see what time it is, I see that I’ve put it on backwards. Day after day…after day. What’s up with that? Even after I noticed that I was doing it, I’m still doing it.

Like today, for example.

I thought it might be sort of symbolic for “You don’t have enough time,” or “Slow down”. I mentioned it to my husband, and he (ever blunt) said, “It’s because you’re so distracted. You’re all over the place. Focus on one thing.” Doesn’t focusing on just one thing at a time seem like such a time waster? I used to knit while watching TV shows that I’d taped while baking bread and have a magazine open in my lap. I’d congratulate myself on how much I was accomplishing.

Then I read a magazine article (sorry, can’t remember when or how or which one…do you think it’s because of the TV watching/knitting/baking that I also had going on?) that said, “research has shown” that you actually are less productive when you carry on like that. In the long run, you end up burning out, getting sick, retaining nothing (of what you read or watched), making more mistakes that lead to you having to re-do or start over (can you say “dropped a stitch??) or whatever.

It seems counter-intuitive to me, but you get more done if you just focus on one thing at a time and do it.

Maybe I should start with putting on my watch correctly?

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.

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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? 🙂