Tag: Post a week challenge

Vacation week (continued, day 3)

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

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Sunday (Day 3) started off great. Got up early but for a good reason: to meet friends for brunch. We were on the road by 8AM headed for Cape Elizabeth’s The Good Table. We are forging a tradition with our friends of semi-annual Sunday brunches at this lovely place. Our timing was perfect and for the first time, the place wasn’t already packed before we got there. Plenty of table choices; we chose the screened porch but the tweens were cold (sweaters in the car) so we moved inside, next to a sunny window with views of wildflowers.

Izzy was adventurous and tried the Blueberry Crepes, and I (a creature of habit, apparently, as well as a Lover of All Things Italian) ordered The Italian Villa. Appetizers were in order: one big-as-your-head cinnamon bun, which my daughter and I split (and we still had some left over to bring home!).

Dropped our friends off at home, then stopped off at Spiller’s Farm Store for a box of K-cups and a quart of their delicious peaches. Next, I buckled down to work on my Legal Nurse Consulting class, lesson 10 of 12. Sort of. (Actually, that is what I should be doing now instead of writing this…:) )

Talk amongst yourselves…be back in a little bit. 🙂

Finished the class and the quiz (but not the assignment, oh well) at 2:00pm and decided to get outside to see what was going on in the garden. Fast forward to 4:00PM: I have tomatoes (and the chickens got to eat their fair share while I was picking them…happy chickens!), string beans, eggplants, a few blackberries, blueberries…and found 3 strawberries! Yay!

I briefly debated watering before I came in but my daughter was asking for supper to be started (we ate the big brunch and skipped lunch) so I came in and we ate…and then the thunder rolled in. Glad that I didn’t waste time (and water!) watering.

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?

Spaciousness (or: A Theory of Relativity)

by Karen, posted in book reviews, books, family, friends, health, Midlife Crisis, no fear, relationships, yoga

In the book What Alice Forgot by Liane Moriarty, she talks about the idea of spacious days.

What a concept!!!!

Mostly, my days feel jam-packed to me, without a moment to spare for anything. That’s how I usually think about them, at least. My to-do list is longer than my arm. I suspect that other mothers feel this way as well, since today I heard my friend Donna (also a mother) say those exact words.

In yoga, spaciousness is sought in your body through postures, in your mind through meditation. I’ve been searching for spaciousness through yoga for 4 years now (I’ll let you know when I find it).

🙂

Four years seems like kind of a long time to me…but as a percentage of my age, it’s not that long really. Could it be that all I really need is an adjustment of perspective?

Back to yoga class: this week, our instructor Kristen happened to mention that there was a period of her life that she would gladly relive, which sparked a conversation among the women in the class on this topic. As some of them mentioned ages that they would be interested in repeating, I did a quick review: high school? No way! Early twenties? No thank you!  I soon realized that I couldn’t think of any time period of my life that I would want to live through again, but then I reframed the question: What was a happy memory?

When I asked myself this question, I got a very clear image in my mind. It was in the summer: August 1991. It was in the first apartment that I shared with my husband after we got married.  The sun was streaming in through the large windows in the dining room, shining on my infant son, born just a couple of weeks prior. I remember being in that room, gazing at the baby, standing in the sun, and realizing that I’d never been happier than I was at that moment. Twenty years later, I can still stand in that room in my mind’s eye, and still feel that happiness just as strongly as I did that day.

So, I guess time is relative, just ask Einstein. Or Liane Moriarty.

Or me.

🙂

Working from home, week one

by Karen, posted in family, friends, Life in the cube, Work from Home, writing

At the end of my first week working from home, I thought I’d reflect a little on how it’s all going. There were several things that I knew would be different, but my days are shaping up to be much different from how I envisioned them. One of my friends said that she was worried that she’d be too isolated if she worked from home, since she lived alone. I never thought for a minute that I would feel that way, but it is sort of an isolated feeling to be sitting in your office alone all day, interacting with no one face to face. I mean. there are certainly people in the house sometimes while I’m “at work”, but I’m not a part of their activity, their day. I am APART.

What I thought I’d be doing once I started working from home:

  1. Exercising more, since I would have more time in the morning (you know, that part of the day before you talk yourself out of exercising?).
  2. Writing more. After all, I would be gaining more than 2 hours a day of not commuting and not getting meals packed and unpacked.
  3. Gaining weight. There is actually some walking involved in getting to and from Portland every day, parking the car, walking from the parking garage, taking a few sets of stairs…that would not be part of working from home.
  4. Seeing my husband and kids more.

What I actually am doing now that I am working from home:

  1. Turns out, I actually am exercising more. It will be 4 (maybe even 5!) days that I’ve done some form of excercise (yoga, beach walk, gym) by Saturday, versus the 1 or 2 days in a commuting week.
  2. Turns out, I’ve actually lost 2 lbs. Go figure.
  3. Turns out, I’m actually writing less. I really don’t have much downtime. I’m getting up later in the morning (which will end of course, when my daughter goes back to school in September) and pretty much going to bed shortly after I finish working at 9PM.
  4. I am seeing my family more, which is good. If I could only be right about one thing, I’m glad it was this one. 🙂

I’m missing a few things: seeing my friends at work,  the Wednesday Farmers Market in Monument Square, my audio books, the cupcake stores, Micucci’s pizza…

Pretty much, I’m still working on getting it together here, finding a new rhythm to my days.

Working from home, day one

by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, family, Life in the cube, Work from Home
Almost there.

It’s coming together; my office is just about set.  All of the equipment has been hauled home and (with the help of the teenager) connected to the modem and everything actually works. What’s left to do is figure out what just does not fit and let it go (read: haul it back out of the house).

Here are some of the good things about working from home so far.

  1. I got more sleep! I was able to get up an hour and fifteen minutes later than I usually do. Yay! Of course, I still woke up at the same time but I rolled over and went back to sleep.
  2. I can wear whatever I want! My daughter said, “Can you wear pajamas to work now if you want to??” and I realized, “Yes! I can! I can wear pajamas now if I want to!”
  3. Things were so much less rushed. My daughter and I actually ate breakfast together this morning, which we usually can’t do because I leave (used to leave!) so early.
  4. I got to eat lunch with my entire family! My son was working the evening shift and my husband and daughter both happened to be home as well. They even cooked for me! (Okay, so I cleaned up; it was so worth it!).
  5. I got to eat dinner with 2 out of 3 of the family members! Okay, so son was at work, but I always got home too late to have supper with them this evening they waited for me and we ate together.
  6. When my shift ended, I was all through for the day! No hour commute to get home (of course, that means I missed an hour with my audio book, but I digress…as my husband pointed out, I can certainly pop it into the CD player in the house and listen to it!).

It was the best (work) day ever!

Menaces in the garden

by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, gardening, local fun, no fear, raising chickens, relationships

The garden is doing great. I might have even said amazingly great, if my husband didn’t find the disgusting green tomato destroyers munching on the vines this week. May I just take one moment to say ‘Ew’?  They are very hard to see (think Where’s Waldo); hanging on to the stems their gross little legs almost look like little leaves. If you find one, keep looking…there will be others. These yucky little encroachers travel in packs. Check the tomatoes themselves as well; we found teeny tiny little green devils on the underside of some of the cherry tomatoes. The green devil on the green tomato and tomato branches are nearly invisible. They also do not know enough to stick to their own territory. We actually plucked one of them off the eggplants! Talk about adding insult to injury!

Do you have chickens? Well, they need protein. Maybe that will motivate you to put your disgust aside for just one moment to pluck the suckers off of your plants and into your chickens mouths…hey, circle of life, babe. Or, make your husband do it. Do something nice to–I mean, for him later to make it up to him.

🙂

While you’re trolling for protein for your farm animals, don’t forget those equally gross shiny (but not happy)  Japanese Beetles. Check the leaves on your berry plants. These guys are brazen. No hiding and blending for them. If they had noses, they’d be thumbing them at you (you know, if they also had thumbs). Show no mercy. The bug traps might catch a few of them, but most likely you will be picking them off and disposing of them to save your plants.

The garden is thriving despite them. At the moment. Here’s hopin’ we can keep ahead of them.

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Setting up a home office, continued: the purge

by Karen, posted in books, my one word, Work from Home

I’ve been reading Mary Carlomango’s book Live More, Want Less slowly over a period of months. It’s organized into 52 chapters and my initial intent was to read a chapter a week (as the author suggested), then implement the “action items”  listed at the end of each chapter to help pare down my belongings, hopefully simplifying my life in the process. I started off okay, but then lost track of which week I was ‘supposed’ to be on, so now I’m picking it up occasionally and reading at random.

The chapter about books came at exactly the moment that I most needed it.  Currently I have books in many locations throughout the house. Now I am emptying out the room to use as an office that contained the bookcase and about half of our (okay, mostly my) books.  In our first home, we added on a room (not just for the books!)  and my husband had a bookcase built to fit on a wall that was very tall and very wide and accommodated all of my books: past, present, and future.  When we moved the big bookcase wouldn’t fit anywhere in the new house, so we found a smaller one at a yard sale which I am still using.

At first I thought I”d be able to reduce my collection and make it fit the space I had available,  and I did that. Unfortunately, over the years I have amassed books. I’ve been sort of stuck for the past few days as I tried to decide about what to do with not only the bookcase (where to put it in the now empty room) but also the books on it, on top of it, and in the basket along side it (full disclosure: there are more in my closet, under my bed, and in the built-in bookcase in the bedroom…oh, and in the kitchen!). When I posed this question to my husband, he said, “Maybe you don’t put the bookcase back in at all…”

That brought me up short.

Maybe I was asking the wrong question! What if I don’t put the bookcase back at all? In that case I would have (at least)one different question: What to do with the books?

To be continued…

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.

🙂

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Next up: the flooring. To be continued…

All things cupcake

by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, baking, friends, local fun, Midlife Crisis, quest for the best, restaurants
PB&J cupcake (CFB)

My friend Charlotte asked me a question today: ” Who has the best cupcakes?” On the surface, it seems an easy enough question, right?  Wrong! I tried to apply my “Keep it simple” philosophy to this question but found I was not able to.

I mean, come on!

So here goes my attempt to answer this question:

  1. Cupcake Fetish Bakery, Main St. in Sanford. which has the best variety and most interesting flavors. Hello, The Elvis? Peanut butter, banana and bacon? Plus Tiramisu, Pink Lemonade, Drop Kick Murphy, Chocolate Kahlua…and I’m barely even getting started here. Plus the store has a little window into the kitchen so you can watch the actual cupcaking process as it happens! And the inside of the shop is decorated with cute cupcake paraphernalia that gives it a very fun atmosphere.
  2. The Village Cupcake, Kennebunk. Owner Kristy Douglas was recently at the Keys to the Kitchen in Kennebunk to giving out cupcake decorating tips. She also brought along some mini cupcakes to sample. SO GOOD! Kristy sells her cupcake wares from her home so if you want to pick up a cupcake on a whim, this will not be your cupcake go-to person…I don’t think. Call her though; maybe she does keep some on hand for when the whimsy hits. Also, they have many interesting flavors (amaretto, hel-LO) and are open to creating new flavors at your request (Green Tea cupcakes? You betcha!).  They also offer gluten-free cupcakes. 🙂
  3. Tulips Cupcakery, Portland. These cupcakes can be purchased at Kamasouptra in Monument Square; check the website for other locations to buy. They describe themselves as  “from farm to cupcake”, since they are inspired by and use local, seasonal ingredients in their recipes. If you are a person who loves strawberry cupcakes with strawberry frosting but doesn’t want any of those annoying strawberry chunks in the batter–you like ’em smoooooth–then these will be the answer to your strawberry cupcake prayers.

This post covers the above 3 businesses because they are the first 3 that came to mind!  Apparently, I’ve never met a cupcake I didn’t like…

🙂

Of course, cupcakes made at home or by friends are really the best of them all!

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Garden update: end of May

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

Everything plantedThe veggies are in! Found some interesting tomato varieties and practiced supreme self control by not buying all of them. New tomatoes (so far) for me this year are Taxi, Chiquita, Mr Stripey. Old standbys that are returning: Sweet 100’s, Lemon Boy, Brandywine, Black Cherry, a couple of Romas. I am told by the Master Gardner in residence (my husband) that I have room for only one more tomato plant.

Things could get ugly…

Eggplant: Japanese, Italian, and new for me this year is Rosa Bianca.

Peppers: Sweet Italian. Giant Marconi, Corno di Toro Red.

Zucchini: Spineless, Raven. Yellow Squash: Sunray…the usual suspects.

I’m giving onions a try for the first time (both red–thanks, Susan!–and yellow), as well as beets (both red and gold). These and the string beans and the sugar snap peas are being grown (hopefully) from seed. We’re going to try cukes again, even though we never have any luck with them. We’re also giving watermelon another try: some from seeds and 1 or 2 are starting out as seedlings that we purchased.

Here’s hopin’.

The blueberries and the strawberries are running rampant and aren’t pictured in this slide show but will certainly show up in future ones. The raspberries are kicking butt.

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What are you planting in your gardens this year?