Happy Goon Year!

At the end of my work day today, finishing up washing dishes at the sink, a fellow vendor said to all who were listening, "Happy New Year. May 2012 be better than the last year." Sure, it's always welcome if the next anything is better than the thing that came before it, but I said that I'd be positively overjoyed if 2012 stayed right on par with 2011. Heck, it'd probably still be cool if went a few notches lower; with the year that 2011 was, it can afford to. From what I've been hearing from friends and acquaintances, though, the past year wasn't kind and folks are ready to put it behind them. Not to gloat, but I have only the most pleasant of memories of the last year. I think it would do me good to reflect:

1. In February we upgraded to a nicer and larger apartment. It's not ideal, by any means, and we're still a tad snug in here, with scant kitchen space and natural light, but it's been an enormous improvement, nevertheless! And the wainscoting (which I plan to paint white sometime this year)...

2. We forked over way more money than we should've, but in the end we had all of our furniture and belongings out of our storage unit in Maine and back in our lives - hopefully for good.

3. Our Olive turned one. She immediately began walking, and finally, only two months ago, talking. It was a remarkable year watching this child develop and I always lay in bed looking forward to what the next day with her will bring.

4. I ran my third marathon and it was my best yet. I'll never be as fast or as committed a runner as I was in my younger days (committed, not fast), but I was pleased that after a child and weak training I could run 26.2 miles without too much trouble. I'll run my fourth in about five months.

5. Concerts! The live music we attended in a few short months made up for lost time during the years I was living in Maine. The Decemberists, Avett Brothers, Bright Eyes, Cirque du Soleil with Katrina (not quite a concert but in the same vein), Justin Townes Earle (along with Shovels & Rope), My Morning Jacket (with my Pop!), and Gillian Welch & Dave Rawlings made for a super entertaining spring through autumn.

6. Music Together. This program made such an impact on our already musical Olive. It's such a wonderfully warm, safe, and gleeful environment where she so obviously feels welcome. The winter session is about to start up again in mid-January and I'm eagerly waiting to see the strides she'll make this time around.

7. Rob began his stint at the National Aviary at the very beginning of last year. After six months of interning in the hospital there he was hired as a vet tech, a position which lasted six months. He was just renewed for another six months. Between that and interning and working at the zoo as an overnight educator, he's getting a lot of valuable experience that's been inching him up the Zookeepers' Ladder of Success. This arrangement also resulted in Olive spending her Sundays with her cousins, aunt, and uncle, a real treat for Olive and a huge favor for Rob and me.

8. New friends. True friends. The kind of friends who you'll still be friends with even when they move far away, because that's what friends do. Katrina, who was only in my life here in Pittsburgh for barely five months, is the real deal. Some people you have to take however you can get them because to not would be a real shame and an opportunity sorely missed. There are many more but she's the big one and the one who moved, but the one who'll never really get away.

9. A new Cramer family Christmas tradition. It was good. I thought I'd be nostalgic and weepy over not being with my original nuclear family this year, and I don't know if it was my groggy state of mind numbing me, but I wasn't. Not at all. It was wonderful to not feel swept up in the madness that accompanies an otherwise lovely time of year. Staying home, laying low, and reveling in all the gifts that we already have in abundance: this is what I think I can be very content doing at Christmas time.

10. We bought an olive oil stand! As outlandish as this is, it's probably the biggest change that the last year brought and will be an even bigger deal in the new year. It's a whole lot of work (I'm so thankful that Rob not only doesn't mind crunching numbers, he enjoys it. This will help keep me on track and always know where we are financially), but mostly it's fun. That's how any good job should be.

The one blight on 2011, the one thing I'd have gladly done without, was the September 21st (9/21, my own personal 9/11) disbanding of R.E.M., my longtime favorite band. My disappointment was quelled within hours of the news, however, their amicable split nursing my understanding of the decision. So even that wasn't all that bad.

So long, 2011, and thanks for the good times!

A Fun Visit with Friends

Ben and Rob's visit was enjoyable - particularly for a little girl. I've never seen her so taken with anyone, and she was doubly thrilled by the two newcomers (Ben she remembered, but Rob, with his dark, Lebanese complexion, was exotic and mesmerizing). I plucked her from her crib after they arrived and she stood in the doorway, delightedly taking in the gentlemen callers. She was lit up with their presence the entire time, staying up many hours later than normal to entertain her company, giddily bouncing on their beds and proudly saying their monosyllabic names. The five of us made our requisite trip to Nicky's Thai Kitchen and got all sorts of scrumptious curries and soups, and steamed vegetables and brown rice for Buggy. She ate a meager amount of these and only professed her desire for the rice once I'd thrown it in with my spicy meal. She thought it was oatmeal and couldn't understand why I wouldn't allow her to eat it (we did let her have some leftovers, however, in tiny, cautious doses just to get her acclimated to a little bit of heat). We had a failed attempt at a Razzy Fresh run on Tuesday night but the two locations that we tried were inexplicably closed. This was a major disappointment and hope that it was only because of the holiday week (perhaps they were figuring that, with their target audience of college students mostly away on break, it wasn't worth the effort). Another glitch has been my missing camera battery. It's always something with cameras and me. I'd left it to charge and my feeling is that Olive found it and made off with it, so it could be anywhere. I'm making due by using Rob's iPhone and our video camera, for which I finally got a working charger. It works wonderfully for taking video but its still shots in dimly lit rooms (like most cameras) leave much to be desired. This is why documentation from this week was blurry at best.

Today marked my first day working at the market as owner/operator. It wasn't much different from any other day, except this time I was calculating costs of rent, insurance, and other overhead. The cool part was being able to select some bottles that my dad requested as a gift for his friend Rob, and just mark them on my inventory sheet as having been taken, without having to pay for them - they're already mine. I had a far more successful day than I was anticipating, being open on an odd Thursday, a day we're not normally open, the first day open after the Christmas Binge, and it was exceptionally cold, a factor that can sometimes keep customers from coming in the door. Hopefully tomorrow will be extra busy with people coming in to gather goodies for their New Years festivities.

I arrived home this evening to Rob and Olive on the couch watching animal videos on his phone. He's been showing her cat footage on a somewhat regular basis for a while now and she realized today that she could request other animal "shows": "Iwanna see tapir", "Iwanna see owl", so he'd find a good video of whichever animal struck her fancy. Oh, that little girl is wonderful.

In Business

Yesterday I spoke too soon and rode out the remainder of the day with some residual flu nausea. Hardly any food for two days but now, with a pot of oatmeal and blueberries in my stomach, I'm back in the saddle. I'm busy doing multiple loads of laundry and preparing the house for some Maryland guests: Ben and his boyfriend, also named Rob (and shares my birthday), whom we've never met, so I'm very excited. There's so much more to be done this week, namely preparing for my first weekend as owner of Olio Fresca. I need to get myself to the bank to open an account, having decided to remain at the same bank for convenience, the fact that they're open on Saturdays, and I'd like to keep my business earnings separate from our family account just so things stay nice and neat. Then I need to link that account to the Square, the little smart phone attachment we've been using to accept credit card payments. It's really handy, but useless if the funds are being transferred into a nonexistent account. The business itself, all of the equipment that comprises the stand, has been paid for, just not the product, so I'm not by any means out of the hole. It'll be a few months, I imagine, before I start to make anything resembling a profit, but I'm looking forward to it. To make matters more exciting, I'll be toting Buggy in to work with me on Thursday and Friday since Rob had to pick up some more days at the aviary with much of the hospital staff being on vacation. Let's hope her demeanor, being cooped up in a Pack 'n Play without a proper nap, is such that people will be encouraged to buy and not the other way around.

Also, today is a special day because it's my father's birthday. He's the most wonderful man, and thankfully modeled to his kids what a good husband and father was, so my sister and I chose our husbands accordingly. He's kind, loving, patient, and calm, and never misses and opportunity to let his family know how much we mean to him. I'm sorry I'm not getting to spend the day with him, as I did for so many years, making the five-hour drive to my grandmother's house in North Carolina, happily singing along to the classic rock stations we'd tune into along the way, playing our game of naming the artist. I miss that today. What a terrific guy. I love you, Pop!

Sick Christmas Eve

I wish I could say I was using sick in the cool sense, but I was stricken down with the flu. I felt it coming on during the night and woke yesterday feeling mighty unpleasant. I showered, hoping that would put a spring in my step, to no avail. It was my last day as an employee at Olio Fresca and was looking forward to spending it with my wonderful bosses. Rob was encouraging me to stay home but I went in, feeling like if I powered through the queasy, achy feeling would disappear. During our first sale of the day I realized I'd left both the smart phone with the Square (the device with which we swipe credit cards) and the keys to one of the bank bags at home, so off I went, retrieved the items, and zipped back down to the market. I was visibly ill so Larry and Kim sent me back home. Olive was a little out of sorts herself, and I found her draped over Rob's arm, fast asleep in our bed. I climbed in and slipped into a sleep much longer than what it felt like and woke when Olive did. She lolled about sweetly but was very needy. Rob took her out of the room so I could get more rest and I slept for another four hours. I was thankful that my symptoms didn't include vomiting, but I'd only consumed a few grapes over the course of the day. I'd been a bit sad that we'd decided not to travel south to my parents' for Christmas this year - my first away from them - but I was glad to just be home in my state. Rob and I wound down the evening watching the eighth and final installment of The Beatles Anthology, a documentary we'd been watching most evenings. I've also been reading Wonderful Tonight: George Harrison, Eric Clapton, and Me, the autobiography of Pattie Boyd, the absolutely darling model who was married to both musicians, making them "husbands-in-law", as the two friends put it. By the time I was ready for bed I was feeling the sickness wearing off and woke up at nine o'clock this morning refreshed, rested, hungry, and completely well. Though I miss my family today, I'm feeling thankful for the exceptional quiet and calm in our house, my loving husband, and daughter who takes after him more and more with her loving sweetness.

The Baby Swiss Walk, Roulette, and Qanina!

The last week was pretty jam-packed. I'll start with the walk we took last week when Rob opted to take the day off from his internship at the zoo (such a treat since he and I so rarely have a coinciding day off). The weather was sunny so a walk was in order. Since time was a factor (I had to be at the Khoreys' later), we went only to the unofficial dog park near the end of our street rather than our usual walk to the main park. En route we found a 3 lb wheel of baby Swiss cheese, all wrapped up with a bow and everything. What a score! We scooped it up and kept going. There's an opening to the woods at the base of the hill and we proceeded to try out the trail which wound around the back of the King Estate, the $2,100,000 8-bedroom manor that's been on the market - and wallpapered in Bradbury & Bradbury, the company my great friend Bruce established years ago! I think we'll buy it when my olive oil ship comes in. The trail was wonderful - hilly, mysterious, and hardly a building in sight. A creepy-looking trestle bridge, which I loved, loomed off to the side. It's a really magical place. This is one of the hundreds of things I love about where we live. Of all the cities I've called home, Pittsburgh is filled with the most wonderfully wooded areas; the marriage of the forests and urban setting suits our family quite well, I think. This is definitely a place where we'll return often now that we know it's there.

Thursday night was the holiday party at the National Aviary. Nina kept Olive for us since drinking and gambling were going to be involved - no place for a babe. Rob and I were really just going for the food which was rumored to be quite good. We have no interest in alcohol and really none in gambling, but since door prizes, which included four Kindles that struck Rob's fancy, were to be awarded at the end of the event, we decided to sit in on some Roulette to earn chips to be traded for raffle tickets. Five minutes in I was itching to go back to our table and stuff my face with more of that incredible sweet potato-sage-and-walnut salad, but decided to buck up and be a sport for Rob's sake; my sweet had it bad for those Kindles. And wouldn't you know it? I hit some sort of stride and started cleaning up. Bigtime case of beginner's luck (but isn't Roulette about just that?). I won nearly every time, my red plastic cup nearly overflowing with chips (Rob ran out, but we more than broke even between the two of us). Unfortunately we did not go home with any of the Kindles but I won a sketchbook and a really rad box of Pittsburgh trivia cards and Rob got two tickets to a tour of one of the local furnaces (and an Orange Crush t-shirt that he'll give to Zoe. I almost was into it for the R.E.M. reference, but then thought better of it. Plus, she's really into men's t-shirts that are many sizes too large for her. I am not). Luckily we both are really into learning more about the history of where we live so we still came out on top...aside from my newfound gambling problem.

On Friday we were delighted to have our dear friend Katrina in for a visit. She's been in Boston since August, in her first semester of grad school at Tufts. How we've missed her. She joined us for quiche (made with broccoli, shiitakes, sun-dried tomatoes, artichoke hearts, and - what else? - the baby Swiss), butternut squash and pear soup, and several rounds of Bananagrams. Olive Christened her "Kanina", the spelling of which we changed to "Qanina" during the game while discussing q-without-u words. It's so nice to have old friends back, even for a short while. It felt like she'd never left. So all in all a pretty grand week!

My beautiful blue-eyed child

Always fascinated by a grate or manhole cover

A papa and his Buggy, the most precious things in my life

Rear view of the King Estate

Olive and Qanina, happily reunited

Berry, Buggy, Buck, Mills, Me

When two separate aspects of your life collide the results can be either disastrous or delightful. Today I enjoyed the latter.

While I was at work today I received a message that Buggy had been captivated by a little cd-sized book I'd picked up at a Tower Records in London (the only thing I saw fit to purchase while I was there, believe it or not). The little paperback mostly filled with text, so not a lot of imagery to hold her attention, which was the part that baffled Rob the most. She plucked it from the bookshelf and went to town, obviously drawn to some part of the book. After I got home I sat her down with a larger paperback biography filled with photographs (and a card in it from Gi-Gi with twenty dollars in it, to boot!), pointing out the members and saying their names. Shortly she was repeating most of their names - Michael Stipe, Peter Buck, and Bill Berry (this one was probably easiest as it sounds so much like blueberry. She also will point to him and say his name without any hints; it has to be the eyebrows). We're still working on Mike Mills, but I know she'll get there soon since she calls her uncle by that name, as well as her sock monkey, Monkey Mike (named for my late, great friend, Mike Snyder, a guy who loved a good sock monkey). For whatever reason she has a real interest in my favorite band, whether she knows that or not. This is one of the many things that makes raising a child so amazing. I'm feeling inspired to write and illustrate a children's book about R.E.M.. Mom, you can hold me to this task. There may or may not be a market for this sort of thing, but it would probably be the most enjoyable project I could ever do, and I have a feeling I know just the girl who'd want to read it.

Christmas Time

This time of year, by nature, is especially busy. I don't feel like I'm doing much to further that, but I'm barely finding time to update the blog. Though I love this time of year, I really don't do any decorating of my own, but I love when lights around the city start going up, and maybe I inherited this from my dad, but I adore the sound of Christmas carols, even when they're played prematurely in November. We're not particularly big on gifts, for economical reasons as well as the fact that I don't love that Christmas has become such a secular holiday. Rob reminds me of this when I mention how odd it would be if I got Hannukah presents, lit a menorah, and got all dreidel-happy this time of year, especially since I do not embrace the Jewish faith. Since the true meaning of Christmas seems to be all but lost on much of the mainstream - shunned or ridiculed, even - I prefer to keep our Christmases light on the frills and our budget uncompromised so that Olive can avoid being caught up in the "All I Want for Christmas" mentality that turns so many children into, well, you know. She may resent us for it one day, but she's still happily unaware of her entitlement (ha!).

There are paintings being done and more yet to finish and do, most of which are not Christmas gifts. Like this one I did for my friend Bryan, who will be embarking on Valentine's Day for a transatlantic row.

This will be auctioned off for a fundraiser for his trip to benefit veterans. Over the last four years I've become Bryan's personal artist, a role which I'm proud to fill. I've decided, too, to do some little paintings to put up in my stand - some little marketable pieces to help promote my art. For now I'm going to make them relevant to the business - olive grove landscapes mostly, then get some feedback from customers to see what other subjects might be an easy sales.

It's Business Time

This morning I attended a small business workshop put on the the Pittsburgh chapter of SCORE. I was treated to four hours in an underheated (a clever ploy to keep us alert and awake, perhaps) classroom in the downtown YMCA, listening to presentations by gentlemen who are seasoned experts in the fields of marketing, litigation, taxes, and business planning. If I thought I'd be spending my Saturday morning doing such a thing about a month ago I would've scoffed at such a notion; right-brainers like myself have no business learning about cash flow Excel spreadsheets or debating whether or not to become an LLC - or do they? The fact is, these are the things I'd prefer to not think about, but I knew that it would be in my best interest to get as much coaching on the minutiae of running a small business as possible. Just a few weeks ago my boss-buddy, Larry, approached me with the idea of turning over his business to me. He wanted to scale down and be strictly an olive oil wholesaler. On the day he asked me I all but declined, but over the next couple of days the wheels began spinning in my head. I talked to Rob (who reminded me that our last name literally means "shopkeeper), he ran numbers: there seems to be little risk. Initially I thought of opening a storefront, something in which my customers have expressed interest for well over a year in supporting. I registered for the workshop, which was every bit as informative and comprehensive as the website promised, developed a Facebook page for the business, and am slowly scouting spaces for the eventual shop. In the meantime, however, I'll be able to transition into owning and running the business that I've been managing for the better part of a year while remaining in the familiar space at the Public Market. I'll ride out the winter there (which will be a struggle itself if last year was any indication), or longer if need be, until I'm ready and the ideal space is available. It's so interesting to me how, what began as a job I took in desperation when I wasn't finding work even as a telemarketer (though I knew when I first read the ad on Craigslist then went and met Larry and Kim, both of whom are now more like family than employers, that I'd be happy working there, at least for the short-term) grew into something I sort of adopted as my own and has suddenly ballooned into me owning a company. My ownership will go into effect December 26th, my Pop's birthday. When the store comes to fruition I will need a name; for the sake of ease and continuity at the market I'll keep the same name, Olio Fresca. The right name hasn't hit me yet, though I'm worried about using the word "Olive" for obvious reasons. Any thoughts?

From the Mouth of a Goon

Inspired by my sister's growing list of things that that sweetiedoll Iris (my youngest niece and Olive's favored playmate) is saying lately, I'm going to compile my own for Olive to date (she was a late bloomer as far as talking goes, so these things are big news to us still):

I'us (Iris)

Ahguh (Abigail)

Djack (Jack)

Kell

Mimi

Pop Pop

moose

mouse

horse

house

deer

b'fy (butterfly)

boot

shoe

sock

dog

jeans

coat

juice

apple

nurse

owl

stick

waddie (water)

mole

Pappa/Pappas

Mamma/Mammas (she'll sometimes pluralize these for reasons unknown. It's adorable and makes her name for Rob sound Greek)

Neen (what I call Nina)

Ayux (Alex)

Noh (Noah)

Doug

Cheeyos

beebee (baby)

pie

potato

pamamas (pajamas)

soup

cackie (cracker)

ohmeah (oatmeal)

Tistie (Thirstie - her diaper cover)

yeaf (leaf)

book

fox

piggie

ki'i (kiwi)

cwock (clock)

yogi (yogurt)

nucky (monkey)

'innow (window)

Buggy

Ahma come up (signifying her desire to climb up onto the couch or bed to be with us)

Come on

Bye-bye (to Papa, Mamma, shoes, 'arry, Kim, etc.)

Nuh-night

And my favorite word of all was inspired by Richard Scarry: the green-suited pig who is forever chasing his wind-swept hat, Mr. Frumble. To Olive he is simply a garbled Fhrummew. She can't be bothered with proper titles.