her able hands

We all landed at home around 5:30 Monday night and hit the lawns running (with mowers and wheelbarrows and for me, a pocket full of tissues). Chris knocked down the grass at our house with the ride-on and got so caught up in it that he forgot to go to his guitar lesson. Oops. Tyler used the push mower with the bagger attachment to cut the grass next door at Chris’ mother’s house. I had him fill the wheelbarrow, and I layered in loads of leaves that I raked out of the ivy beds at the edge of the woods. Oh, lordy the leaves were much too thick in there — suffocating the ivy and blanching the hosta shoots all the way to the tips, pure white. The whole edge line looks like a gourmet endive patch (if you ignore the rotting leaves and oh, crap, poison ivy that’s taking over).

I had to focus on the small acts of completion over and over again even though my attention kept wandering outward to the bigger picture. My mother in-law joined us in the back and I felt so overwhelmed with the need for care that is racing forward in her as her short-term memory simply disappears. I keep having the thought that I need to be here every day so I can help her with the property, but she could also pay for a lawn service (easily). I get the impression that she just doesn’t believe in paying someone to do work that family should do. Regardless of the fact that all of the members of her family work full-time and also have children and properties of their own to care for…and she doesn’t come out and say that, but she also doesn’t take action. It’s a generational thing maybe. I’m trying not to judge it. I mean, miles in her shoes and all that. I was raised in the time when the service industry blasted off, and while we rarely hire outside help because we’re DIY freaks, I also see it as a reasonable answer when we just can’t manage it on our own. We may have to call someone in for her, before the property falls into that defeated decline of decay and disrepair that happens when left unattended. It needs way more than mowing and we can barely handle that these days.

Anyway, so I took those wheelbarrow loads over to the lasagna bed I’m building along the back of the deck. It’s about 4 feet deep and now after last night’s work, about 16″ high. I’ll add some manure and then next week when we mow again, will do some more layers of grass and leaves to bring it up to 2 feet. I have one giant bale of peat moss left from last year, so will do a nice layer of that in between.

Each trip back for another load, she showed me a thick piece of glass she picked out of one of the garden beds (the soil is loaded with glass back there because 50+ years ago, it was used to dump trash. She showed me that piece of glass ten times as if it was a new discovery. I’m really worried that things are going to slide downhill with her faster and faster. I’m upset with myself when I feel the thread of resentment tightening around my heart. How can I let that go? I don’t know how to rise above my own needs to meet these massive needs of a woman I don’t have a very close relationship with and who only opens minimally to her grandchildren. To do it gracefully feels a herculean task. I blew it, but hard, when I helped her after the shoulder surgery. Just didn’t handle the intimacy at all well and let my annoyance at the brothers come out with sarcastic comments about sponge baths and well…it’s a damned good thing I didn’t want to be a nurse. I’m still so ashamed that I said what I said, so much so that I won’t repeat it here. I’m even more ashamed that I meant it. That I didn’t feel good about helping, that it felt like a burden and brought up tremendous fear in me. Jeesh. Being human means carrying such a huge load of bullshit around with you everywhere you go, you know?

I keep imagining the future and it’s me having to go daily to hand her the pills she takes and watching her swallow them — morning and evening. Right now she’s taking everything in the morning, and some are supposed to be nighttime only because they make you drowsy. I don’t want to be that person. I want her sons to step up and handle that (which they will, it’s just my imagination running willy-nilly because I feel overwhelmed and tapped out and helpless around the situation). Probably exacerbated by the fact that I don’t have much of a relationship with her or with any of Chris’ siblings. I resent that we don’t live close to my mother who is an involved grandparent and misses her grandchildren so much that I know it’s a constant ache for her (as it is for me). That I don’t get to raise my children with my sister and her sweet family nearby. That all feels so unfair on so many levels.

So I build garden beds and plant food to feed my family and try to stay in the moment. It’s so easy to project myself into some nightmare future. Not so easy to send myself out into a future that’s clear and bright and filled with meaningful work and intimate connections in the community. Not without seeing the difficulties. When did I become so negative? I think it settled into me more deeply when Chris’ dad got so sick and I was working so much and it felt like everything fell apart. And another whole year has gone by and we’re not much farther ahead and in some ways have slid back more than we even realized.

But I will NOT complain about working full-time. Especially in light of the fact that I am seriously contemplating changing to an even more full-time position in a restaurant. Oh, there is so much to reconcile in my mind. As I hauled loads to the garden bed and spread the materials out in thick layers, I weighed the pros and cons in my mind yet again. It would be amazing to be working to create a business model that builds relationships with local suppliers and brings wholesome foods to the community. Feeding people is one of my very favorite things in the world to do with my time. Could I actually make a viable living doing so?

Also, I love seeing the downtown improving and think our idea will add to the integrity and sustainability of the downtown businesses. Maybe help balance out the ridiculous number of tattoo parlors? I have always wanted to learn how to do a business plan, so I’m diving in right now and doing just that, so we have something on paper to work with as we talk to the venture capitalists and to property owners who are involved in the Main St. initiative.

Oh my Maude, the hours. I know the hours are going to be ungodly. I know this. Yet I’m drawn to it. I keep coming back to a very calm yes, again and again. I have not felt a strong no at all as I’ve explored the ideas, just questions of doubt arise and I write them down and look for practical responses. Can I work 80 hour weeks? No. How can I make sure that does not happen? Close Sunday and Monday, do only lunch and dinner, find good, solid help (we already have several people who are interested who we know have terrific work ethics and are flexible).

Here’s an interesting thing: Cheril went to a meeting at the University about connecting the KSU students with the Downtown Main St., building work relationships with kids in a way that will make them want to stay here in Kent after they finish school. There were a lot of great ideas on the table and it gives me hope that we could find good, reliable employees. The program will be set up so that it’s part of their degree and they will have to work with an adviser and will be screened for responsibility and reliability. Interesting things happening in town. If this is my home, which it apparently is, then I’d like to be more involved.

Meanwhile, I’m watching my neighbor go from 0 to 150 on his sandwich shop in just a couple of days. He got the keys last Monday and already has most of his distributors lined up, has the menu and logo nearly finished, lined Cheril and I up for cookies and cupcakes, and is working on line processes. He plans to open the doors to his sandwich shop on June 1 and I’m not going to be at all surprised to see it happen. Granted, it’s a turnkey operation for a sandwich shop, so he’s ahead of the game with equipment and setups. But it’s good to see this all in action, to see that he’s a guy who gets things done.

My work with the grass clippings sent me into sinus hell over the next couple of days and I stayed home from work yesterday so I could do the Neti Pot every hour, warm salt water washes through the sinus are beyond bizarre, but it seems to have worked. I broke a massive sweaty fever last night and this morning can breathe through my nose a good 50% better. During the day I did take care of a few tasks around here like trimming out the double-seedlings in my lettuce starts and feeding everything with liquid kelp fertilizer. Then I moved Lila’s play kitchen into the alcove in the living room where the piano used to sit (it’s in the dining room now) to make space for an extra table for cupcake making. In a few weeks I’m going to be a baking maniac. Hope my oven holds up for a few months — it’s been acting a little wonky and is 12 years old. If we have to replace it, I’m going to sacrifice a cabinet and put in something wider.

I have a giant leap I will need to make soon — whether into the abyss of the unknown life of a restaurant manger, or into a financially risky venture working from home. The latter feels less and less enticing the more I plot and plan this other possibility. Every day more is revealed and I let myself float along in the tugging current of this river of life. I can hear the rapids up ahead and my habit is to want to start to swim the other way, but I’ve done that too many times. I’m ready to see where life is truly leading me now so I’m just going to relax into it and let it carry me. I’m tired of fighting.

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Brain full of thinkythoughts. Sitting with the possibilities. Knowing that the near future holds new work for me — work with food and people and growing. As I said to Lisa B-K today: I need to decide which side of the relationship I want to be on…the growing and selling, the buying, cooking and serving?

So frost advisory tonight, which I’m letting myself feel happy about because just maybe global warming isn’t happening quite as fast as it surely seems like it’s happening. I know, I’m fooling myself. But end of April for last frost is better than last year, which was two weeks earlier. Lila helped me to spread bedsheets over the raised beds and the m-shaped lasagna bed full of tender sprouts of chard, kale, collards, spinach, arugula, carrots, radish, and turnips. Hopefully the peas and fava beans can withstand a little frost, because I didn’t cover those.

No photos. Battery dead (but charging) and brain too full to think about it. Thanks for your patience. I know it’s boring around here lately.

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Where the frack did that weekend go? My body is so bone tired I can hardly type right now and am thinking that the cup of coffee I have in front of me isn’t nearly strong enough.

We never had any of that predicted rain over the weekend, just a few sprinkles and then nothing but sunshine and warm breezes. I mostly stayed off of the computer and focused on work outside, balanced with a bit of laundry (hung out to dry), some salad assembly, and a bit of seedling transplanting. I haven’t once picked up my camera, so the promised photos don’t exist. Ah well. Here’s what I did knock down over the past two days:

• Raked out beds around the house and weeded out the overgrown alpine strawberries and heal-all that’s taking over (love my scuffle hoe). Visited the wood mulch pile from last year’s visit with the wood chipper about 50 times with a shovel and a wheelbarrow. The pile is about twenty times bigger than in the photo on that post, minus 50 loads. Oh, my aching body.

• Yoga class. Again, with the ow.

• Mowed and mulched lasagna beds with grass clippings, and started the new lasagna bed along the driveway that I’ll add a layer of topsoil to next month.

• That’s because I got $80 worth of manure dumped last night. One by the driveway for that bed (shared with neighbors) and the other by the gardens next door at the in-laws’ house. I shoveled a lot of that last night, too. Have I mentioned my sore torso? My aching shoulders? My hands that feel like they got stepped on?

• Raked out ivy along side of driveway (not all of it, just about 300′ of the 200′ bed) for more lasagna bed materials.

• Transplanted Bee Balm and Rudbeckia into a little bed I made a year ago with rabbit bedding, right behind the playground set.

• Dug out a bunch of overgrown bedding plants in the front, some of which became compost, and some transplanted to bare spots. This to make room for fruit trees, which I should order this week.

• Planted a dozen fingerling potatoes and thought about doing more, but the manure hadn’t been delivered yet and the beds next door really could use a good run with the rototiller (which I’ll have to borrow). Plus, I promised a friend I’d dry some violets for her, so I need to run over there and dig those up first.

It felt so good to see the property looking cared for after such a long winter, and to feel the earth under my feet, a shovel in my hands. The kids played and I shoveled and raked and dug. I let my thoughts wander but kept bringing them back to my body, to my breath.

I know I did more than that, but that’s all I have time for. Now I need to wake up the kids and get us all out the door. Tyler won’t be riding his bike this morning because it’s raining and cold. It’s meant to drop down to 31º and snow tonight. Hard to believe that when it was in the 80s on Friday, but okay. Spring in the Northeast/Midwest is never predictable.

Monday. Back to it, eh?

Tonight I play catchup on my freelance work.

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Thank you all for your encouraging words and for pointing out bits and pieces that I just might be glossing over. I spent quite a lot of time yesterday talking with several people, including Cheril, and writing down a list of my requirements and of what I’m looking for the next big adventure in my life to entail. When I got home I sat down with my neighbor for a bit and told him this:

We’re interested, but don’t like the space. We also feel that in order to open strong and memorably, we would want to have the menu focus on a few things and do them really well, and then leave room to add in other experimental items over time. We want as much organic as possible and to find a way into that niche. We recognize that it will be very challenging to develop a franchise using locally produced food, but still want to make that at least a tiny corner of the plan, where a monthly special uses a local, seasonal food item.

If he wants to do the sub shop in conjunction with the organic foods, we feel that’s just a marketing nightmare (healthy, whole foods and uh…submarine sandwiches!) and we’re not philosophically down with that. We’re two women in our forties who have worked hard to make other people wealthy over the years. We’re not doing that anymore. We’re ready to dive into work that is meaningful for us, and will be much more willing to put extra time into a project that aligns with our values.

I also said I’d done quite a lot of asking around (thanks Becca!) and using my own restaurant experience and my own fuzzy logic, I knew for a fact that his goal of opening his doors in three weeks (or his revised four) is absolutely unrealistic and way optimistic and is a recipe for disaster. And that his idea to have us hand over a menu and he take care of getting it all set up and just have us start when the store opens is crazy because we are the ones who know the food and would need to set up the line process, figure out the timing on everything and then train the staff to do what we do and to do it even better.

So if that’s his plan, he’ll need to find somebody else to help him with that, but we will joyfully provide him with cupcakes and cookies via our SugarBuzz home catering gig (our business cards arrived yesterday).

So it turns out he had a difficult afternoon with the man who owns the building, trying to iron out a lease that has quite a lot wrong with it. He’s having second thoughts and took in all I had to say and more. He said he loves our ideas but doesn’t know enough about the market and wants to do more research to see what the numbers are for health food restaurants. He also said that several other people have mentioned that it’s a bad location (a strip plaza with zero personality and a lease that states you can’t do anything to the outside of the building to make your store stand out from the others). He said “If I look for a place in downtown on Main St., would you be interested? If I found that space and turned you two loose in it to run with your ideas?”

Uh…yes. Yes, we would be very interested in a project like that.

So he went off to thinkthinkthink, and I went home to stop thinking and worrying about it for the night. And that felt so bloody good. It only took two days to go from white hot excitement to really seeing what is true for me. Phew.

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I’ve got nothing. Camera still sitting in bag with uncharged battery. The three photos I took last week came out too dark because it was so close to dusk and in the back yard. Things are moving fast around here and I’m sitting with a huge life-changing decision for probably one more day and then I have to give an answer. Yes, I’ll stop working here and come to work there, as long as it’s not a drop in pay—but understanding that I’ll likely be working more at least in the beginning. Or no, I’m going to keep doing what I’m doing for a little while longer.

See, my neighbor is starting a small restaurant in an old sub shop, a turnkey operation, and he’s looking for someone to help manage it. Two someone’s actually (Cheril and I are in talks and both weighing the load against our lives to see if we can carry it comfortably). It’s daunting because the desired goal for startup is fast (3 weeks!) and we have some requirements for what we are willing to put our energies into: healthy food (at least half vegetarian, fresh, seasonal/local on the menu, organic whenever possible, sustainable waste management and meaningful interaction with the community — beyond mere profit.

Those are all things much easier to do with a restaurant but his idea is to use this space as a testing ground and to build a blueprint that can be franchised. That’s a major challenge implementing even half of our philosophical requirements, but he seems to think we can make it work. We have to make our decision today and if its yes begin immediately working on a simple menu.

I’m at 99% yes even though I have some reservations about certain details. I think this will be an incredible opportunity for me to learn how to and how not to do things in preparation for me starting my own kitchen garden catering business in the future.

My biggest question this morning? Can I deal with likely having even less time to work in my gardens this year? And if that’s my most pressing concern, well, I suppose I’m ready to move on.

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