Gonna Get There Someday
So busy! Taking advantage of Boston while I still can.
I know I haven't written in forever so I thought I'd check in quickly.We are making our 3,000 mile move to Idaho in just 24 days! We are both SO excited and happy. It will be great to see my parents again on a regular basis (though we will both miss Todd's parents very much, but they will be coming to visit), and to live on the lake, and relax into a slower pace of life.
Lately I have not been baking bread as much but have been experimenting with a lot of Asian food, which is SO much fun. I go to Chinatown often as it is on the same subway line I live on, a few stops past where I work. There is a fabulous grocery store there that is packed to the brim with all kinds of goodies: fresh fish and crab swimming in tanks, varied and cheap produce (stuff regularly runs $.50 - $2.00 less per pound than at the normal grocery store, and you can get all sorts of exotic things), frozen food, walls of noodles and rice, seasonings and canned goods, and even some inexpensive kitchenware. I got a pack of 15 pairs of chopsticks once for a dollar, and it's also where I got my *huge*, double decker steamer for $15 which I use ALL the time and love. Most things are written in Chinese and everyone speaks Mandarin, only occasionally in English, so there's a lot of guessing involved on my part, but it's fun, and only rarely do I pick something out that I genuinely don't like. I do have a friend from work whose parents are from Taiwan and Hong Kong; she doesn't speak Mandarin herself, but she's grown up eating Chinese food, and comes with me sometimes to point me in the right direciton.
One of my new favorite things to make is a kind of miso soup that I made up: Miso (a kind of soybean paste) and water make up the low-calorie, protein-rich broth, to which I add bok choy or spinach, oyster mushrooms or any kind of mushroom if I have them, hardboiled quail eggs, and udon noodles. Very quick and easy to make, delicious and filling, and inexpensive! A good pint of miso is about $4 and lasts *forever*, and makes lots of soup.
Today for lunch I made up some soba noodles (Japanese buckwheat noodles) and ate them with cucumber, bean sprouts, and rice vinegar. The beauty of Asian cuisine is that it's fast, healthy, and a little bit goes a long way!
Anyway. I'm off to continue packing. So close to the homestead dream!!
Oh the possibilities...
A few days ago at work I was chatting with one of my coworkers. We'd been practicing 'latte art' (a tricky, beautiful skill in which you steam milk in a very specific way, and pour it into fresh, well-pulled espresso with an even more specific flick of the wrist, creating intricate patterns on the surface of the drink such as a heart, an apple, a 'rosetta' pattern with many little leaves, and so forth; here are some examples: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAyQGzD6DtM ) and generally geeking out about coffee together when I mentioned how I was torn over trying to decide between continuing to work at Starbucks when we move to Sandpoint or trying to apply to a 'real' coffee shop (there is a very cool one in town there)."Jen, I don't know what to do!" I said in dismay. "I started working at a coffee shop because I have a passion for coffee, real coffee. The beans, the roast, the grind, the brew. The history. The technique. The culture. I didn't know then that Starbucks is more about customer service than coffee, and now that I do, I'm in too deep! I've gotten so many raises and have been here for so long that I'm making way more than I ever could at an indie place, and I'd have to start all over again. Would it really be worth it?"
Jen, who has worked at Starbucks twice as long as I have and understands the hating-the-company-needing-the-pay situation just as well as if not better than I do, nodded sympathetically as I continued my tirade.
"But when Todd starts his teaching job, he'll have the health insurance, and will be making more than he is now," I continued. "Maybe I could afford the pay cut. And it would be so worth it to not feel a little guilty, like I'm fudging the truth, when I call myself a barista when I all I really do here is press buttons. They do their own roasting in that little shop! And it would be so wonderful at last to learn a proper tamp and pull and to talk coffee with people who are really interested, you know? But I'd feel like I'm abandoning the company... I've already put the poor manager at the Sandpoint Starbucks through so much trying to secure my transfer. Ugh! But-"
Jen cut me off. "Sarah, think about this - how much longer are you going to be doing this, anyway? You're not going to work for Starbucks, or any coffee shop, forever, you know!"
I blinked in surprise. "Well, yeah," I admitted. "I guess I just assumed I'd be doing this until I had enough kids to need me at home full-time, and that would be it, I'd never have to worry about a job again. But then, knowing myself, I'd probably go crazy at home without something job-like to do, and it would certainly be helpful to have more than one teacher's salary... there's always that silly little dream Todd and I have talked over, you know, opening our own bakery or something. But it seems so outrageously impossible to do something like that that I never considered it any further than that, a little dream. You need so much money to do something like start a business! And I don't know the first thing about permits or business taxes or - or anything..."
Jen shook her head. "You're over-thinking it. Start small. Don't think in brick-and-mortar terms, first of all; you don't open a whole bakery and wait for customers, you need the customers first, and maybe a bakery follows. People are doing things on the web these days - start a website. Get yourself known. Sell two loaves at a farmer's market. You don't need to start a national chain. This IS possible."
I was quiet for a moment as these new ideas tumbled through my mind. She was right - it is certainly a realistic idea for someone to go to a farmer's market and sell bread; after all, there are bakers showing up weekly at thousands of markets across the country, right? And the only start-up cost is maybe ten bucks for a couple bags of good flour, three for a pound of good yeast, both of which are readily available to me. My family's beach house that Todd and I are moving to used to be a restaurant, and has a commercial-sized kitchen with three giant ovens, walk-in refrigerator, massive chopping-block counters with plenty of work space. The inland northwest has a farmer's market for every little town, and there is no shortage of customers in search of good bread. I truly have a passion for coffee, but a lifelong career as a barista, while fun and exciting, isn't something I necessarily want, and doesn't fit in at all with my plans for having a farm and a nice big herd of children to stay at home with, both of which are seriously full-time occupations. Baking bread, on the other hand, fits the latter two life situations like a glove, and comes with its own set of wonderful, very genuine rewards.
I ruminated on the idea a few more days and discussed it with Todd. He was encouraging, and we both began to get a little excited. It really is a perfect job: I love bread even more than I love coffee, and being self-employed would allow me to keep my kids with me (I could even see them running around at a farmer's market with other vendor's kids, having a grand time!), so I could still be a stay at home mom like I've always wanted to be. Who knows - if the Lord were feeling so inclined, maybe it really could turn into a bricks-and-mortar bakery someday (that idea still scares the pants off me, but whatever happens in the future happens, and I'm not going to get worked up about it yet), or maybe I could start a home-delivery baking service and make rounds to my customers' houses, or something. Maybe I could eventually throw in some eggs and produce from our future garden/farm. The possibilities grow every time I think about it!
Bringing myself back to the present, I'm currently trying to take stock of my options and come up with a very, very basic game plan, a way to test the waters a little bit. I looked up farmer's markets permits in Idaho, and for items like bread they are not difficult to obtain at all. I wouldn't be able to start selling bread at market until next summer, so in the mean time perhaps I really could start a little website, just introducing myself and my craft. Perhaps I could put up some articles on baking and yogurt-making, a few recipes, photos, stuff like that. I don't care about making money from the website at this point, I just want to put something out there and see what happens.
Who knows what will happen. I don't know if anything will, but it is kind of exhilerating to think that what I originally pawned off as a pipe-dream could actually be a very real, very workable possibility in the future! If the Lord has something else in mind, cool beans, I'm game for it. But if this dream is a door that He is opening, I'm super excited for the opportunity!
Thanks for bearing with me here, I know this was a long post. But I wanted to get some of these thoughts down in word form, and share them with you!
Changes
I must say, I've always loved the feeling of being on the cusp, of those few months of biding time before your life changes in a major way. This is definitely one of those times!First of all: God is great! I don't understand how I even remotely deserve all that I have right now, but I certainly am SO thankful. Aah. I'm something of a baby Christian right now; I don't know very much, just that I know that I need Jesus in my life, and this understanding is a pretty recent development. I've been trying to find a church to go to, but it's hard; besides the fact that I usually work Sunday mornings, all of the churches around here take place in giant, 18th- and 19th-century buildings filled with intimidating organs and robed choirs with lots of pomp and circumstance, which is intimidating and makes me feel uncomfortable. I know I shouldn't be picky - church is church, I guess? - , but I want to learn about the Bible and what it means to be a Christian, and I so far haven't learned much of anything from the types of churches I've found so far. Just standing and sitting and a few Bible readings whenever the congregation isn't politely listening to the singing of the choir. I know when we move to Idaho I'll be able to go to my parents' church, where they have bible studies available and such, but I don't want to postpone getting to know God until August! :-( Who knows, maybe I'll still find something here, or an online bible study or something. Does anyone know of some kind of internet bible study for new Christians (or, as is more my case, people who were raised Christians, left the church when they left their parents, and then realized they never truly knew anything about Christianity to begin with and really, really want to now)? But regardless of my struggles to find other Christians I can talk to, I am so happy just to have finally found what I have been missing all my life.
Second of all, and speaking of God: So, we'd decided to move to Idaho regardless of what jobs were available, on faith that we'd get by, somehow. Todd floated some applications to some of the public schools in the area, knowing full well that they weren't hiring and his chances of finding a job were slim to none (he graduated last year in Music Education, and wants to be a band teacher), but thinking it couldn't hurt. A couple of weeks after we returned to Boston after visiting my parents in February, I got an email from a friend of my old choir teacher, mentioning that the charter school there in Sandpoint was considering changing things up a bit next year: in addition to adding a ninth and tenth grade (they are a middle school right now), their current band teacher, who is actually a social studies teacher, was playing with the idea of going back to teaching social studies instead of band, but of course that was problematic because they would then not have a band teacher. The sender of this email told me that of course this was all just discussion and nothing solid at this point, but perhaps Todd should send an introductory email to the principal, just in case.
Many phone conversations, reference-checkings, and hopes later, the school decided to offer Todd the job!!! They are going to write his contract in May once they get their budget squared away for next year, and he will start work August 17. AUGUST 17!!!! He's going to be a REAL BAND TEACHER!!! We are just SOOO excited. Ack. Everything about the move is falling so perfectly into place, and our dream of Todd teaching for real is actually coming true (and at a time when teaching positions in the arts aren't exactly growing on trees!).
Third of all: As I said above, everything is falling into place. In addition to Todd having secured a job, my own job is going to transfer, which is a real blessing. I've been on the phone with the managers of the Sandpoint Starbucks and they are excited to have me on board and more than willing to make a place for me in their stores. This is great because I've worked hard to be at the position I'm at in the company and don't want to lose my benefits and stock and all the raises I've received over the years. So we will have work. We also have a place to live! My extended family and I all own shares in a beach house that we have on the lake there, which includes on the property a building that used to be a motel, which we now keep as rooms for when we have guests in town to stay or if one of us needs a temporary place to live while we are moving or something. Todd and I get to stay there virtually rent-free (just utilities and the like) for as long as we like!! We don't want to stay out there very long because it is far away from town and because we don't want to wear out our welcome at all, but we are going to take advantage of staying there for a few months so that we can buy a car and pay it off entirely, since we won't be paying any rent and will have tons of extra money therefore. We also want to knock off as much of Todd's student loans as we can, which is the only debt we have right now, so that we can be as close to debt-free as possible. I can't believe how lucky we are to have this opportunity to start our lives out financially on track. We have NO desire to be wealthy, but there is nothing good about being in debt, and to pay that off while we are still in our early twenties would be so, so wonderful, and having this place to stay really helps us out with that.
With finances and jobs set, this paves the way for starting a family sometime in the next year!! Todd and I love being our own little family and are having a great time together as a couple, but every time we see a baby we just look at each other and melt. We've started buying one or two cloth diapers a month so that we can hopefully build up a nice collection of them and be prepared by the time there's someone around to use them (cloth diapers are crazy expensive if you buy forty of them at once!!), and when the public library has its book sale every two months, I pick up as many children's books as I can, as I can get them two for a dollar there instead of $15 for a single brand new one at a book store (and they are in very good shape). We talk names. We dream about the hikes and trail rides we'll take with our future brood, and the chores we'll assign them on our future farm. :-) My mother has pledged her babysitting services. Todd will sometimes do this thing where he pretends he is cradling a baby in his arms and make faces and cooing noises at it, which I cannot handle because it is SO cute. I know I sound completely ridiculous going on and on like this, but we want soooo badly to be someone's mom and dad! And we are VERY excited about the fact that circumstances are turning out to be so conducive to that. God seems to know what he is doing. :-)
So. We have jobs, a place to live, a support network. We are going to buy plane tickets as soon as we get our tax refund. We have a plan. We have each other. I am SO EXCITED. Boston has been a fantastic chapter in my life, but it is coming to a close now, and I am certainly okay with that. The next one is looking even better!
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So busy! Taking advantage of Boston while I still can.A busy kitchen! (or, 'In Which I Geek Out About Bread')
Oh the possibilities...
Changes
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