Adam Oster, Novelist

So, while I had been incredibly excited to make a return to writing regularly once school was done, it’s turned out so far that I’ve done nearly zero writing, outside of in this space here and some marketing materials for the new bakery. I’d love to get mad at my wife for making my post-school period full of extra things to do that I hadn’t planned on doing, but, well, I can’t. Not really. Because, well, I kinda forced her to do this.

You see, when we decided to move back to town from the farm, I realized we would get a nice little bit of extra cash (thanks to the ridiculousness of the housing market). And I also knew that she needed a creative outlet. And I also knew that she had long wanted a retail space to flex her culinary muscles. So, I stupidly told her that she would have 2-3 years to get that space and do the thing, or else I would get to use that extra cash for something absolutely stupid, like a pool. I should note, we live almost directly across the street from the municipal pool, so having a pool in our yard, while nice, is really, in many ways, a waste of money.

Now, I didn’t think about how 2-3 years would directly correlate with the moment I would finish school. In fact, it was a rather arbitrary time frame I put into place. I also didn’t actually think she would manage to follow through timely, and I fully expected to have to take a bit more direct action to make it happen…after I finished school.

But here I am, freshly done with my schooling, and in the midst of a raging stress party of trying to prepare for the first days of owning a bakery and making sure that our employees and customers don’t see the issues that come with trying to transition from one owner to the next. And, of course, most of that activity of transition can’t happen until after we actually manage to get the keys and whatnot from the previous owners, so, I’m sitting here trying to prep all the things I need to prep so that once we have all the pieces in our hands, I can quickly do the things necessary to transition everything over.

While my wife does the much more important stuff like planning menus and figuring out insurance and whatever other crazy actual important things need doing.

This isn’t me complaining, just noting. Because I actually like these little bits. Sure, I’d be much happier if I were to be able to sit back and enjoy some writing time, but, I guess I should be happy knowing that this summer, I’ll have the perfect place to sit outside on our little café patio and drink all the coffees while I write in between waiting for the next thing to need to be done.

Things could be a lot worse.

Besides, I’m still really excited for my wife to finally have her space. Sure, there are plenty of uncertainties at this point, but in general, I foresee a solid transition of ownership, and plenty of opportunities to do some cool stuff. And I’ll be the guy sitting there as the head cheerleader (maybe that should be my official title?), making sure that I can fill in any of the gaps in needs as necessary.

But all of that is really overlooking the entirely huge point that as of the time that this thing hits the site, we will officially be open for business. That’s right, folks. My wife is sitting in the kitchen with our staff right now trying to figure out whether we have enough or too much food to feed all of you. Which means, you need to get out there and get as many pastries and coffees as you can to show your support and to make them all have to work just that little bit harder. You might even get to see me! I’m not sure if that’s a selling point or not…

So, come on down. Check out the site for details on how to find us. TheNostalgicBean.com