Friday Nights at the Coffee Bar

Written by Heather of Heather’s Eden

Everyone just needs to take a break. Especially women who work all day, and then have to come home and maintain a home and family in the evenings and on the weekend!

Around here, we do that with Friday night at the coffee bar. Nita’s Sweet Bean Cafe is a little coffee bar that is run out of a real estate office. During the day it is one of the largest real estate offices in town. But a few nights a week, it evolves into a quaint little coffee bar with conference tables and rolling office chairs to accomodate all of the patrons. While Nita’s offers the “almost famous Toffee Coffee” (yum!), the real attraction is the open mic.

Nita’s has a small stage, and amateur performers bring their instruments and each person gets to perform two songs on stage. There are some really talented people that perform! Here’s a few samples of what I may see on a Friday night. I apologize for the low quality. This was shot on my little point-and-shoot camera:

Tommy is a regular that all the other performers have a great amount of respect for. Tommy’s mother-in-law is over 100 years old! The young man next to him is George. George is a very talented guitar player. What you see here is unrehearsed. Tommy just asked George to join him on stage. George often doesn’t even know the song that Tommy plays. He just watches his fingers on the strings, and runs with it!

This is another of Tommy and George, along with Alan on guitar and his daughter Megan. I forget the name of the guy on drums.

Alan is a regular at the coffee bar, and is a songwriter. This night was a special performance with both his son and daughter, and a very talented classmate of his daughter on violin (Omar was his name. Very cute, very humble, and very talented. Triple threat!)

John is another regular. He plays a lot of “fun” stuff.  Some of it is raunchy, some of it gets you clapping your hands. And he looks eerily like a guy I dated for a few years. It really is freaky how much he looks like him!

So that is where I like to go on Friday nights, to relax and start my weekend.

So now that you know what I do on Friday nights, what do you to when you need a break? Is there a special “date” spot for you and the hubby? A traditional getaway or weekend thing that you do to unwind and recharge? Share your good times with us! And Happy Halloween everybody!

Any good books?

By Judy at My Freezer is Full

I love to read.  Anywhere, anytime- almost anything.  But, with working full time and trying to keep up with the house, garden and children, I have little spare time to read.  Oh, I tried for a while to read before I went to bed but that didn’t work out so well for me. Either I fell asleep or, more likely, I would get sucked into the book and lose track of time.  Then I would pay the price the next day when I needed to get up at 5:30 am to get to work. So that didn’t work.   Then, I went through phases where I would just leave the housework and read for a day, but then I would feel guilty.  So for a while, I just gave up on reading, even though it was hard on my spirit.  I needed to find balance.

But now, I have discovered my reading time.  Since we moved in July, I have been riding the city bus to and from work every day.  I have about 25 minutes each way where I can read, so I have rediscovered my passion for reading.  I’ve also been finding other moments recently: waiting for the latest batch of apples to come out of the canning bath, waiting in the car for one child or the other to be picked up, every little moment counts. I just have to carry my book with me.

I love our local library, although, with riding the bus now, I don’t walk by it every day anymore (sigh) on my way home.  We have a huge library of our own that we have collected over the years so I can almost always find something to read.  I don’t often treat myself to new release books but a few weeks ago I indulged.  As I was waiting for the bus I noticed that the local bookstore was having a 25% off sale on Dan Brown’s new book, The Lost Symbol. It was a fun read.  That book finished, I was looking for something to take along on the bus this morning and picked one of the books my youngest son just got with his school book order from Scholastic.  You remember Scholastic book orders, right?  And you know, for a spooky mystery story for kids, it isn’t half bad.  It’s got a family curse, the ghosts of six children and stone circles.  For a quick read on the bus, it was great. I’ll have to find something new for tomorrow though.

I’m loving my bus riding reading time.  I’m much happier now that I’m getting my reading fix on a regular basis.  How about you?  How do you manage to fit time to read into your busy day?

Relaxation

By Paulette of Smith Funny Farm

Take rest; a field that has rested gives a bountiful crop.
Ovid (43 BC – 17 AD)

Isn’t it the truth? I know that for myself, when I go and go and go and don’t give myself the opportunity or permission to rest and relax I will pay for it. A headache will come along that will knock me out for awhile, I’ll get cold, a mood will come over me that is less than pleasant and I can’t shake it…there are many, many ways that I get knocked down.

One of the challenges I have had is getting my husband to understand this concept. He feels that he has to be doing something every minute. If he isn’t being productive he feels guilty. But I have been working on him. Work has been extremely busy and a bit stressful lately, and he has been going 110% during the week, then coming home and never sitting down from Friday evening until Sunday night. And he’s paying. Not feeling good. Getting down and not being able to get anything done. Uh huh. Told you so.

One thing he’s never seemed to get until now is that relaxing takes many forms. We enjoy Yoga…that is definitely relaxing. So is a bubble bath or a ½ hour in the hot tub. Or sitting on the porch with a cup of coffee and soaking in the sunshine and reading a book. But…for me, so is cooking. Almost nothing relaxes me more than getting creative in the kitchen and trying a new recipe, or making a lovely pot of soup or loaves of delicious home made bread. He had a hard time realizing that cooking is therapy, relaxation, stress relief, fun, and productive all rolled into one. That is until one day he was building something in his workshop and I suggested he try to relax a bit before the weekend was over. And he said ‘this is relaxing. This is de-stressing’. He does get it.

He said today…”so, yesterday we worked around here until 3:00 then rested and watched ballgames. That kind of worked. I feel rested today”. YES! It’s all about balance. So he agreed to do the same today. It’s 2:45 on Sunday afternoon. He’s been staining stairs and working outside. We’ll see if he can do it, stop for the day.

One of my relaxing activities today was making a big batch of Butternut Squash Soup and a pot of Split Pea Soup. A great day.

How do you do it?