Tag: rituals

The Annual Ides of March Quest for Fried Clams

by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, Adult children, celebrations, comfort, family, good grief, quest for the best, restaurants

My dad’s last meal was fried clams.

Flashback to 1998. Dad was dying of lung cancer. The living room was dominated by the hospital bed sent by hospice once it was clear he could no longer manage the climb to the second floor bedroom. He had been in and out of consciousness for several days when he suddenly became alert again, like himself. This day also happened to be my mother’s birthday. She had died two years prior of cancer.

After he had been turning up his nose at solid food for days, he said he wanted to eat. What do you want, Dad? Whatever it is, we’ll get it.

He wanted fried clams and french fries from (the famous!) Kelly’s Roast Beef in Revere. So, my brother drove to Revere (not so very far from where we were) to get him what he wanted.

He ate and enjoyed every last bite.

And then he fell asleep, drifting into a coma from which he would not awaken. He died peacefully two days later on March 15, 1998.

Every year, I have fried clams on March 15th to commemorate this experience and to celebrate my Dad.

This year, at the recommendation of my friend Stephanie, we tried a new place in New Hampshire, Petey’s Summertime Seafood and Bar.

It was definitely worth the trip!

So maybe I expanded on the fried clams…Dad loved ice cream sundaes, too, and I am my father’s daughter. 🙂

And he loved martinis, dry, with two olives…but that’s a different story.

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**Disclaimer: This is my memory of this experience. Other’s remembrances may differ.**

Midlife Monkey Mind

by Karen, posted in Angels, education, Midlife Crisis, Turning 50, yoga

I’ve been on overload these past few weeks, with my mind overly full of stress-inducing thoughts. Sleeping has been a challenge. Lying awake from 1:30-4:30am two nights ago, I trotted out all my tricks for putting myself back to sleep: saying my ABC’s, counting backward from 100, tensing and relaxing muscle groups, saying the So Hum meditation.

Today at yoga, the instructor coincidentally included the So Hum mediation in our class. My mind had been racing a mile a minute right up until I heard Kristen say those two words, when it screeched to a halt…for a second. I started saying the words: so hum…so hum…so hum…

Then I became aware of something interesting: although my mental voice was indeed repeating the so hums dutifully as requested, another channel in my mind was still gyrating with the monkey mindedness of my midlife brain. It never stopped. Even as my ‘good girl’ brain was desperately trying to fulfill the teacher’s request to meditate on the fact that “I am”, the ‘bad girl’ brain carried on obsessing with wild abandon.

Note to self: shut of the monkey mind when you meditate. It’s so much more effective.

Easter

by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, family, friends, Holidays, Midlife Crisis, the beach

How do you celebrate Easter? Even though my kids are older now, and the Bunny has been found out, we still celebrate the holiday in much the same way we did when they were little. I make Easter Baskets of some sort for them. I hide eggs for them to find in an Easter Egg Hunt.

Tip: to keep your older kids interested, instead of candy or colored eggs, hide plastic ones with cash in them.

We have dinner with family and friends. I over-bake when I am entrusted with bringing the dessert course and then over-eat everything put in front of me. I always make “Church Window” cookies in honor of my grandmother. She always made them for me growing up because I loved them and she loved me. I still do the Easter Egg Hunt because my father loved to do that for us when we were little and so now I do it for my kids, but also to honor my dad.

I went for a walk on the beach this morning and was thinking about how Easter was my father’s favorite holiday (I think) and St. Patrick’s Day was my mother’s favorite. I wondered what my kids think my favorite holiday is?

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.

Making Gingerbread Houses

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

I admit it: prior to yesterday I was a Gingerbread House Virgin. Through twenty-plus years of motherhood, I’d managed to avoid ever baking, never mind decorating, a gingerbread house. The desire just was not there. I couldn’t have been less interested.

Then something incredible happened: I wanted to make one.  Something shifted inside me and I really wanted to do it…and then…

I got lucky.

🙂

Tip: do it for the first time with someone who knows what they are doing!

Okay, enough double entendre. My friend Kristen (see her blog here) is a fabulous baker and she invited my daughter and me to be part of her (tenth, I think) annual ritual of baking and decorating a Gingerbread House with her son, something I’d never done with my own son in his childhood (but hey, we did make dozens—dozens!–of Christmas cookies over the years! Just sayin’.).

Our jobs were to bring something flat to put the house on the day prior, and to buy some candy to contribute to the stash of building supplies.
Oh, and to show up. 🙂

The end result? Amazing. The ideas the kids came up with were so creative–it was just wonderful to watch their minds working. Plus, my friend and I got to chat virtually uninterrupted for at least an hour.

This is definitely an activity I would like to do again next year.

The irony? My son was making his first Gingerbread House at the same time at his girlfriend’s house with her family. Go figure.

Watch the slideshow that follows to see what we used for materials. 🙂

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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.

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?

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.

🙂

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?