About Widow

Large Handbag Collector. Obscenely Expensive Shoe & Handbag Lover. Blonde. Redhead. Brunette. Breastfeeder. Pug-fox terrier belly scratcher. Drunken Break Dancer. Bartender of the stars. Semi Conscious Writer. Earth loving. Tori Amos Listening. Loud Mouth. Chef Loving Lady...

My Heart

I am a nervous wreck right now.  Tomorrow I go to work.  Tomorrow I leave my children with a girl named Sam.  She’s a nice girl.  She’s everything I wasn’t in college.  A student.  A cheerleader.  A sorority girl.  She is smart and thoughtful and played with my children as though she’d known them for years.

I’m a mess.  I have cleaned my house from top to bottom today in nervous anticipation of what a college girl will think of my home.  I have hugged, squeezed, and practically made out with my children today.  Each second.  Of every minute.  

I am drinking wine now.  And I am reflecting.  I am making myself  guilty with each sip.  I made a choice when I found out I was having the boy.  And I stuck with it.  I chose to stay home.  I chose to be his mother.  I nurtured him.  I watched him grow.  I influenced him.  I taught him words.  I love you.  Mommy you’re my best friend.  We lived our lives together and created new lives each day.  And then she came along.  My girl, my biggie, my blue eyed love.  The choice was still mine.  I would be with them both.  I would breathe each breath alongside theirs and I would have no regrets.  I would stand by their sides each day, every day.  I never liked working that much anyways.

And then I realized that I was working.  Everyday.  While they were at home.  While they were awake.  The TV became my go to.  And I realized it wasn’t fair.  It wasn’t fair to what I had promised them as their mother with my choice to stay home.  But I couldn’t change it.  The chef needed more and more help and my writing become somewhat of a reality. Something had to change.

I had to physically go to work.

Tomorrow I go to work.  I become a part of my husband’s dream.  And I will cry.  Hell, I am crying right now.  I will cry for him.  I will cry for them.  Shit I will cry for myself.

I am scared shitless and I feel like backing out.  But I can’t.  I made a choice to stay at home with them.  And this will enable me to.  Going to work part time at our family’s restaurant will allow me to devote all of my time (not at work) to my children.  My babies.  My life.  My loves.

The cold black thing in my chest has melted….

Opening a restaurant is no easy feat and it times it seems that it would have just been easier to move to the Keys, open a 10 seater, and relax.  The Greenhouse Tavern started out as a small idea the Chef & I had back when we first moved back from NYC.  Then it grew and grew and grew and soon had become a full fledged corporation with a business plan, investors, and all.  The Chef’s vision was what defined the inception of the tavern however with a larger company and more people , the vision was constantly questioned, criticized, and changed.  This became hard for me to watch.  Actually it still is quite hard for me to watch.  You see I 175,000% trust my husband.  I trust his food.  I trust his knowledge.  I trust the fact that he has opened 4 restaurants in his life (all before the age of 27), one of which he received a 2 star review from The New York Times,  and another that was declared the Best Restaurant of 2008 by Cleveland Magazine. He has received awards, been on long lists, and been a constant figure in the culinary scene.  And his food is incredible.  In short he’s a badass who knows what he is doing when it comes to restaurants.  {By the way I know if he’s reading this he is embarassed as holy hell & definitely wants to kill me.  I love you honey.}

Basically I get emotional.  I know that there are other people involved in this restaurant.  I know people have invested their time and their money to see the Chef’s vision become a realty.  But I’ll be honest.  It wears on me and it wears thin.  There are times when I think how much easier it would have been….could’ve been if we chose another path.  But we didn’t, and I am glad 90% of the time.  And now that in just 3 short weeks I will get to see my husband in a kitchen again doing what he does best and I know seeing that will erase all of the drama, all of the emotional anger & energy, all of the crap that goes into opening an awesome fucking restaurant.

Last night we hung with Mike & Lizzie (& got to check out Mike’s AWESOME Cookbook).   Mike  told a story about his and Lizzie’s trip to the SoBe Food & Wine Festival.  When Mike spoke about their night it was so obvious that his time spent with his wife is still as genuine as it was 5 restaurants ago.  They were hilarious in the story and in telling the story, and I truly saw a vision of the Chef & my future.  Is that weird?   I guess it was just encouraging to see a couple. who had been thru ten times the shit the Chef & I have been through. that still smiled at each other.  

Through all of this I know that eventually the Chef will be successful, his restaurants will thrive, and his career will grow.  I see that in him.  I always have.  I just have to trust that everyone else will as well.  And believe  me people,  I know that my husband needs input.  Any great business person needs input and the Chef surrounds himself with great people for that reason.  The team working on The Greenhouse Tavern is by far the most eclectic, creative, and intelligent group of people I have known to open a restaurant.  They have their shit together and it shows.  Without them there would be no restaurant and I know that and I am thankful for their input the majority of the time.  Every now & then though….

Peace & War Bitches.

 

 

****Seriously kids I totally got a sneak peak at Symon’s new cookbook and I must say that I absolutely love it (also he mentions the Chef a few times which is super cool).  And I ABSOLUTELY do not love cookbooks.  In face I kind of despise them.  Granted I also despise cooking but that’s another story.  Head over to Amazon for the presale of Live to Cook.  

*****Also the widow may not be as consistent as she usually is.  I got hired to write my first magazine piece for next month and my focus has gotta be on that.  Wish me luck cause I am hella nervous.

******The Greenhouse Tavern will serve food in the month of March.  Details on the website.

 

The Drywall is up,

now it’s color time!

The Greenhouse Tavern is becoming a restaurant more and more everyday and I must say that I am super freakin’ excited!  The Chef has been involved on the design and structure since day one and more recently I am getting to help out on the final finishes.  Very cool stuff.  I am so proud of the Chef especially now that I see what he does and what he works through every single day.  It is so crazy the amount of decisions he needs to make on a moment’s notice.   I could never do it.  I would lose my shit and start punching people.  But he does it with class and respect.  He rocks.

The kitchen is finished and the walk-in has been installed and every time I head down the cellar stairs I envision the Chef cookin’ it up in HIS very own kitchen.  No strings attached.  No walls to break down.  No bullshit to deal with.  Just him and his knife.  The day can’t come soon enough.

 

Ed & Jonathon Believe in Green

About a month ago I had a free moment to peruse the interwebs.  I found myself at a website called Change Happens in Degrees.  I started to check it out when something on the site caught my eye.  Everyone’s favorite environmentalist Ed Begley Jr. was coming to Cleveland.  If you don’t know who Ed is, you should head over to Planet Green and check out his show Living With Ed.  It is a great take on how to be green simply, effectively, and humorously.  I dig it.

Anyways.

Ed was collaborating with CHID and going on a bike tour through the Midwest promoting the green lifestyle, energy efficiency, and talking with local governments, business, and citizens.  There was also a contest.  The contest was to write an essay about how your family saves energy.  If your essay was picked,  Ed would have Thanksgiving dinner at your house.  I decided right then to enter although I had absolutely no desire to win.  The Widow family & the Chef family are a bit crazy and the holidays tend to bring out the insanity.  So having a TV crew and a celebrity at Thanksgiving dinner did not seem so opportune.

I did however think that even if I lost (fingers crossed) I could mention the new restaurant.  I could even invite them in for a tour.  And that is precisely what I did.

About a week before T-Give the producers contacted me by email and said that they would love to do a meet & greet with the Change Happens crew, Ed Begley Jr., and the Greenhouse Tavern Team.  Schwing!

Thanksgiving morning we bundled up (it was cold as all hell) dropped Biggie Smalls off at the g-parents, and headed downtown with Catcher in tow.    Ed & friends arrived and we took them on a tour of the space.  The restaurant is still in construction big time but we were able to go all the way up to the roof and film. 

I am not sure if we will end up on his show.  They filmed a lot and the Chef and the entire team really pulled off a good time.  Plus it was so great to meet someone who is so in tune with what we are trying to do.  We have really been blessed with the experiences that we have been having while opening the Chef’s restaurant. It is a stressful ride and sometimes it is tough to see a finish line but the experience like the one we had with Ed on Thanksgiving backups all of the hard work, money, & time that everyone has invested.  Go green!

This morning in much anticipation I went out to my garage in search of holiday decorations.  Today is our annual holiday family fun day which includes a trip to the valley to cut our tree down, hanging of the lights, cookie making, and an eggnog (& whisky for the big kids) tasting to finish off the day  We are a bit late this year due to the Chef’s lack of days off but I let Catcher play hooky today and Biggie is back to her old smiling crazy pants self.  Good to go.

Or so I thought,

Back to the garage…

I stepped into my super messy cluttered garage this morning to find myself face to face with this guy:

and then after further investigation I found this guy:

Ummmmm.  Really Chef?  Really?

Found items for The Greenhouse Tavern

Our garage had become the collecting ground for found items for the new restaurant.  We have some pretty badass antique furnituyre, some floor stuff, a really coool mantle that I found at a garage sale…but we also have a rule.  No scratch that.  I have a rule.  Wait for it.  Wait for it.

NO DEAD ANIMALS ALLOWED IN THE GREENHOUSE TAVERN.

That’s it.  That’s my only rule.  The Chef can do anything else he wants.  He can serve brain, he can make chicken feet, I don’t give a damn.  

But taxidermy freaks me out.  Big time.  Not to mention birds, stuffed birds.  Oh shit.

And after all of this, I have yet to find the Christmas lights…

 

Life in the burbs’, widow stye

So we live in a burb.  A burb that is far away from downtown.  A burb where women wear white jeans and are condescending bitches when I tell them my son’s name.  A burb where I grew up.  Where I went to high school.  Where I met the Chef.  

And we are over it.  I am over it.

 The driving, the lack of friends, the lack of culture, the lack of city.  I am sick of driving by a CVS and then watching a Walgreens get built across the street.  We need to move.

But in this clusterfuck of an economy  there is not a chance in hell that we could sell our house or buy a new one.  So what do we do?  The new restaurant opens in 2 months and the Chef will start all over with 20 hour work days.  I will be working there part time as well which means a 40 minute drive downtown twice a day five days a week.  Not so appealing for this lady.  Prius or no Prius.

So we came up with a plan.  The Chef and I sat down and actually talked about our lack of options.  This is what we came up with:

We finish fixing up our house.  Finish the floors, the cabinets.  We put our house up for rent or for rent to own.  Obviously we consult a lawyer and get an airtight contract drafted for this.  If we find renters we begin to look for a house downtown for us to rent.  We are just not sure where.

We have thought about Ohio City, Tremont, & Cleveland Heights.  I am a fan of the heights although we would have to keep both cars.  Ohio City & Tremont are great ’hoods but I am concerned about the safety factor.  I just know that my kids and I would love to see the Chef able to come home midday to say hi to us. To hang with us for an hour.  And lord knows he is absolutely unable to do that if we continue to live in the burbs.  

Any ideas or experiences with neighborhoods in the CLE you would like to share would be more than appreciated!

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