It’s time for our family’s annual physicals. This morning I was there bright and early at 8am with my daughter for hers…so bright and early, in fact, that the office door was still locked (hey, here’s a tip: if you schedule appointments for 8am at your office and you tell people to arrive 10 minutes early to update paperwork, UNLOCK THE DOOR BY 7:50AM! Just a thought).
So, I was already annoyed when we finally gained admittance at 7:58AM. When we sat down in the cubicle to check in, the woman serving us made no eye contact and not even a glimmer of a smile graced her lips. I noticed then that all of the staff behind the bulletproof shield were tense, not smiling, and not looking directly at each other, never mind at us lowly patients.
I had another thought as I sat there: the necklace that the receptionist was wearing was really pretty. Recalling advice a mentor had shared with me over 25 years ago for job interviewing (pick out something about the person to compliment), I decided to tell her.
“Your necklace is really pretty,” I said.
“Oh, thank you,” she said, touching it. She turned back to her computer, still not looking at us…and then she did.
Her entire demeanor changed. She was smiling at us both, joking with my daughter, making small talk (“It’s August already?”).
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.
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.
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!”
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.
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!).
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.
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!).
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:
Knitting supplies: Patterns, yarn stash, needles and other sundries
A filing cabinet with warranties, extra office supplies, vital records, and infinite other minutiae
DVD’s, and (OMG!) video cassette tapes
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.
It took several days and lots of cold hard decision-making, but the purge is (almost) complete. It was interesting (and sad) for me to note that I had no less than 5 books about Simplifying My Life.
We don’t know when we’ll be transitioned to working at home but we’ve pretty much been told to be on standby for a couple of weeks already. This is stressful because I”m still waiting for the desk to be delivered! It would be really helpful if the desk arrives before person who is installing the ergonomic keyboard tray does! Hopefully that will come next week.
First I had the thought that I had to get honest about the books. How many are there, really? I got all the books from all the hiding places…I thought. When I was done I remembered a few more places that I was keeping books in the house and ferreted them out and added them to the (rapidly increasing) pile.
The next thought I had was this: I almost never reread a book (I definitely won’t re-read a novel). This thought was followed by an epiphany: why, then, was I keeping any book I was sure I would never read again?
I didn’t know.
Next I thought, wouldn’t having at least one bookshelf containing only books that I haven’t yet read be wonderful? As would having empty space on the shelf to receive new books. Heaven.
Anyway, back to the book purge. Here’s what I did with them:
I put a box out at the end of my driveway with a sign: “free to a good home”.
I brought some to the library for their annual book sale.
I made a gift of some of them to several friends.
I brought some to Annie’s Book Stop, where they give you store credits in exchange for your used books.
Then I took the what was left, organized and shelved them. When I was done, I felt fabulous. Every time I’m missing one of the books I gave away, I remember the shelf on the book case that contains a little empty space now.
We had a Berber carpet down in the room. Nothing wrong with it. Nothing except that it wasn’t a wood floor and that’s what we both really wanted. After we bought the house we planned to replace that floor at some point, and had been talking about it for about 5 years or so. We decided to view my “work from home” event as an opportunity to finally take the leap and replace the floor in the new office.
We went to Home Depot, Lowe’s, and Ben’s Flooring in Biddeford. We discussed the pros and cons of dark versus light wood, bamboo versus cork, hardwood versus Pergo. After several trips to evaluate the options. we both agreed to go with a darker wood, Maple? No… Hickory! Hickory it is.
But, Hickory it (ultimately) wasn’t. In the end, the most important factor wasn’t how well my husband and I could compromise on what we each liked best. In the end, the most important factor turned out to be this: What was available, could be installed in a timely manner, and was within the budget we’d set.
Red Oak it is. Hey, at least we got the hard wood!
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.
My friend Susan told me to have a: “Happy Birthday!!! Enjoy the whole day and do what YOU want!!”
My response: “Well, since I’m working it will be hard to DO whatever I want, but instead I’m going to EAT whatever I want!”
🙂
So here goes: Day 2B of “The day I ate whatever I wanted”…I’m starting to fear that this is a slippery slope…better reign it in after today. This is what I did on the actual day.
I decided not to go to the gym so that I could sleep an extra hour. Good decision. I decided not to do any laundry and not to stop to gas up the car. Those things could wait. My mantra for the day: “If it’s not ‘all about me’, I’m not doing it.”
Breakfast: Decided to wait until I got to Portland then sprinted over to the Standard Baking Company (no website, unbelievably) to get a chocolate croissant. Monument Square was packed with dressed up, suited up people at 8am; usually it’s a ghost town on the weekend at that hour. I heard there was some sort of a convention going on which almost made me late for work (reference: “sprinted” to the bakery!).
Note: Around noon I started rethinking the whole shorts thing; may not have been the best idea…it barely made it out of the 50’s in Portland.
I continued to go where the whim took me. I didn’t follow any plan at all. I had two days to celebrate: the day before my birthday with my husband (which was awesome), and the birthday itself, which was kind of the icing on the (cup)cake after Friday.
For lunch, Micucci’s Pizza was a no-brainer. I was in luck too; they were just putting out the slabs of pizza when I ran up the stairs and grabbed one out from under the noses of the slower people assembling boxes to my right. When I ran down to pay I got to say “Hi” to the baker, Stephen Lanzalotta (author of The Diet Code), who was just putting out the fresh cannoli…I resisted, since I had a piece of tiramisu from my son and a chocolate coconut cupcake from Two Fat Cats waiting for me for later on. A colleague at work, Laurie, handed me a chocolate shortbread cookie chaser after lunch, which enabled me to save the cupcake for later.
🙂
Had to miss my regular yoga class (with Kristen of Windsong Yoga) in the morning so I was thrilled when a colleague Mary Ann said “Hey, want to do this yoga dvd with me at 2:00PM?” I just happened to have my mat in the trunk, so that’s what we did.
To balance it all out, I ate half the Micucci’s slab for lunch then had the other half with a salad (with greens from the garden) for supper, followed by the cupcake and my favorite (which is unfortunately seasonal) Keurig coffee that I saved from Christmas: Spicy Eggnog.
When I got home from work at 8:30PM I had a surprise waiting for me: gifts from the kids:
An adapter that allows me to play my MP3 in the car from my son Anthony that I’ve been wanting forever and
A handmade card with 3 dark chocolate covered cherries from my daughter Izzy.
What can I say? My kids know what I like. 🙂 My husband gave me my gift The Day Prior, but actually started it last fall. He got all of the raised beds ready for my fruit and vegetable gardens (not to mention most of the actual planting and watering thereof), and he bought many more lilac bushes for me (my favorite flower) and scattered them around the yard. He knows what I like too. :D.
Since my actual birthday fell on a day I had to work (and I had no way to get out of it!), my husband and I celebrated the day prior. The weather forecast called for a bleak, cold, rainy day. Does the weather influence what you eat? It certainly does me, so I had made a pretty extensive list of ideas for meals (as well as where to go for them!) and decided to see how the day actually turned out weather-wise before making any definite plans.
Well, the weather forecast was (as usual!) completely wrong. It was warm, sunny, beautiful. A day for eating outside, moving around, enjoying the sun. Based on that, here’s what we did.
First, split a bagel with peanut butter (him), almond butter (me), and honey. Went to gym. Ugh. Glad to get that out of the way. Similarly, got a few chores done (laundry, food shopping) so we had the rest of the day for ourselves.
For once, I had a coupon to use when I wanted to use it: we split a large coffee coolata with whipped cream from Dunkin Donuts. Next we went plant shopping for the vegetable garden. We stopped at Riverside in North Berwick and Gray’s in Wells. We bought some tomato plants, zucchini, summer squash, eggplant, watermelon, peppers.
With lunch in mind, we headed down Route One to Kittery. We decided to have a grazing day: stop at a bunch of places and eat a lot of food. First we went to Terra Cotta (no website) in Kittery. Everything there always looks so good that it’s hard to choose what to order…we settled on a Meatball and Ricotta Stromboli and a pasta salad, with one triple chocolate chunk cookie for dessert and ate it outside on their little patio.
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Next we looped back on Route One to Bob’s Clam Hut for fried clams. We briefly considered whether or not to order them crunchy or Bob’s way with a softer batter. We agreed on crunchy and it was a great decision. Then we took the long way back along the coast to see the ocean (sigh; love the ocean).
Then we went to When Pigs Fly to buy a loaf of brown sugar cinnamon bread which we had a hunk of for an afternoon snack with some coffee. Almost as good as my own bread. 🙂
Then home to get the seedlings in the ground. For supper, we decided to go to Big Daddy’s (no website) in Wells and have ice cream cones. I got what I always get, Kahlua Fudge Brownie, and it was as good as it always is. Bill got Coconut and Izzy got Maine Blueberry (in a wafer cone) and we switched cones periodically so we all got to try all 3 flavors.
Ice cream cones: they’re not just for breakfast anymore…
The planets somehow aligned last week. That’s the only explanation that I can come up with for this phenomenon that occurred at my place of employment. Are we a restaurant? A cafe? A bakery? No. We are an office full of nurses.
Yet we had 4 (count ’em) cakes to share during the work week. Birthdays, comings and goings, TGIF days…any of these are good enough reasons to let ’em eat cake. Some are store-bought, some are baked by colleagues…and we have some amazing bakers where I work.
The one in this picture was baked by Kathy (a fellow nurse) and this is just a small sample of the wonderful treats she bakes for us (which include breads, cookies, and whoopie pies, to name just a few things in addition to the cakes!). One bite of this cake and you completely forget that you are eight hours into your ten hour shift, your fourth one that week. Yep; those are raspberries in the midst of all that chocolate.
The next cake we had was this lovely chocolate cake with vanilla frosting from the Wild Oates Bakery in Brunswick. Shirley bought this cake for Pauline to celebrate her birthday this week. It was the best birthday at work ever!
We also had two other supermarket variety purchased cakes, one (you guessed it) chocolate with vanilla frosting and the other (sorry, didn’t get a picture of this one) was marble with vanilla frosting. We were inundated with cakes! Both of these were very good, but were eclipsed by Kathy’s homemade one and the Wild Oates bakery cake. Really though, it was a win-win situation for us all. Well, except for the people who avoid gluten. Sorry guys.
Sometimes life in the cube can get overwhelming. Have you ever been at work and just wanted to take a break? I mean, really, take a break. Change the scenery for a half an hour? Not make small talk? Not force positivity for just a little while?
This is when an audio book can come in handy; it’s particularly conducive to hands-free eating. Okay, so the price of gas is prohibitive, I know. You wouldn’t want to sit in your car with it running for 20+ minutes every day (especially in the winter when you need to have the heat on, but once in a while it can be very restorative).
If you brought your lunch you will gain extra precious minutes of solitude in your car (read: oasis of calm); just grab your lunch bag and go. Otherwise, try to choose a place from which to buy that is not known for its lunch time crowds. Standing in line for 10 minutes can make a serious dent in your alone time.
If you have to purchase your meal and you have any control over the timing of your lunch break, that’s even better. Choose a time that is off-peak: perhaps 11:00am or 2:00pm. This ought to get you out of the store and into your car more quickly. Don’t forget extra napkins. Eating in the car can be fraught with peril, what with the gear shift and the steering wheel to navigate and all. Also your choice of meal can make things more tricky (hel-lo, meatball sub?).
On this day I chose soup from Kamasouptra in Portland. The curried Pumpkin Bisque Soup won out over the other five options (so okay, maybe it’s winter-almost-spring, but it feels like fall-almost-winter). The real draw for me (even though the soup is excellent) is the bread, still warm from the oven. What can I say? The value of comfort food cannot be overstated.
It’s time for our family’s annual physicals. This morning I was there bright and early at 8am with my daughter for hers…so bright and early, in fact, that the office door was still locked (hey, here’s a tip: if you schedule appointments for 8am at your office and you tell people to arrive 10 minutes early to update paperwork, UNLOCK THE DOOR BY 7:50AM! Just a thought).
Karen Creamer Author, Coach, Speaker 
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