jacked

i've got a few problems right now. not like, REAL problems, more like 1st world problems (and relatively trivial ones at that).

1) i jacked up my hip doing a bunch of stupid things on the weekend, including but not limited to spending 2 hours on sunday squatted over the garden pulling weeds, raking, and bending over to put handfuls of said weeds and leaves into yard waste bags. so now whenever i put pressure on my right hip i get intense pain. which means that i couldn't go into work today

2) i don't have any casual clothes that fit over my belly. i basically have one white top and one black long sleeve top that are long enough to stretch over, otherwise, everything else becomes a mid-80s, bill s. preston style cut-off crop top that stops just under my boobs

3) i'm insanely behind on the readings for my constitutional law course.

that's about it, i guess. okay, fine...i guess i don't really have problems. the jacked up hip is kind of the worst of it.

this weekend was a nice mix of friends, eating out, eating in, and getting shiz done.

on friday night at joy bistro i forgot to take any photos, but we had a lovely time partaking in their 3 course, $30 prix fixe. to start i had a beef cheek poutine with lovely crisp fries, tender chunks of beef cheek, real cheese curds, and a lightly curried gravy. then i had a GIANT seared scallop with some kind of ravioli on top of a bed of pureed butternut squash with roasted peppers. the dotytron got the beet salad to start which had tender greens, roasted golden beets, shavings of parm, and some anise flavouring. then for his main he got the seared muscovy duck breast which came with grapes in a wine reduction. for dessert i had the cardamom apple cake with dulce de leche sauce and he had a bittersweet chocolate terrine. all for $30! the service and execution were on par with say, the harbord room, but for a fraction of the cost...which is what i mean when i say that i need a restaurant to have an angle before i go there - this whole farm-driven cuisine isn't cutting it for me anymore - especially when there's nothing to distinguish the chefs.

saturday was a bit of a gong show. lots of driving around doing errands. we picked up our cloth diapers and all the accoutrements from diaper-eez in bloor west village. we got this deal they had, where you get 30 diapers of your choosing, 6 covers, a diaper pail, 2 carbon filters, these 2 odor reducers, 2 diaper pail bags, and 2 packs of herbal wipes and they knock 10% off the entire price. it was pretty solid. it depends on what kind of cloth diaper you're going with. because we weren't doing the all-in-ones, which cost upwards of $25/piece, our entire bill worked out to $240 all in...pretty good, considering that disposables cost roughly $40/month, on average, not to mention the landfill costs. we got suckered into buying the organic, unbleached cotton pre-folds, because the ones that are bleached, which are ever-so-charmingly called "CHINESE pre-folds" (emphasis mine) weren't in stock. the idealogues at the store were like, "nobody buys them. they're BLEACHED, you know" and i was like, "i don't care if my kid is crapping in organic or bleached cotton" the price differential per dozen is $6 more for the organic...so dumb. i was a little pissed about being strong armed into the organic decision. also, lady, you've got to know that like, all the baby clothes are made from bleached cotton in CHINA, right? sheesh

then it was off to canadian tire to pick up random sundries, including my brand new beloved CHEST FREEZER! we got a pretty small one - this model:

it's quite modest - not like those 6 foot behemoths that's a mainstay in every suburban basement. i didn't know if i wanted to go there, but it's already made a huge difference. what tipped the scales in favour of going down that road was the knowledge that already, with my double-cooking meals in preparation for the ol' labour daybour we're running out of freezer room and the fact that now our friends R & R at the farm can give us exotica like goose offal and venison and we'll have room to store it. plus all my cookie doughs and other randomness. and we won't have to ration ice anymore. bonus all around.

poor dotytron had to get it into the house all by himself as none of our neighbours were around to give us a hand. thank goodness his wingspan is so mighty. it was like watching him dance with a bear.

on the way to canadian tire i idly suggested that we stop at T&T to see if they had any bbq meat to supplement our planned dinner that night and the dotytron (who loves T&T more than anything) pulled a formula 1, 180 degree tailspin in his eagerness to go. he played it really cool once we got there, though, i gotta hand it to him. my suggestions to pick up chinese bakery goods were met with, "sure...whatever you want" in a forced casual tone that belied the dancing eagerness in his eyes. he seriously, seriously, loves that place more than anything. which is good, because they're doing a promotion right now called "i *heart* T&T" where you're supposed to write a short paragraph and submit it for a draw for an ipad. if they actually read the submissions and it's not a random draw, i'm pretty sure the dotytron has it in the bag.

for dinner i made us okonomiyaki (japanese cabbage pancake thing) which turned out pretty good, but could use some minor tweaking to put it over the top. i should have separated it into two pans - mine turned out kind of thick. and it could have used a touch more salt, but overall, it was pretty delicious. you make 2 sauces to go with it - one is ketchup mixed with worcestire, and the other sauce is mayo (preferably the japanese kewpie mayo) mixed with a bit of cider vinegar. the dotytron over cider vinegared the mayo sauce though, so it was a little thin. we ate this with roasted pork and bbq pork from the T&T bbq counter.

then we headed out for our "date night" - everyone is telling us to go out while we can while it's just the two of us, because you'll never eat in a non-family restaurant again, blah blah blah. i think that's kind of bogus. i mean, we have ready and willing child care available AND i mean, of course we can't bring a baby to canoe, but we can certainly bring a baby to most of the places we like going to nowadays, like the burger's priest or the afghani kebab house or chinese restaurants.

anyway, we started off our night at xococava, which is the dessert place right next to chris macdonald's spanish tapas bar, cava, which we've eaten at before. it's great. xococava is really nice - kind of reminiscent of ferran adria's brother's place in barcelona, cacao sampaka in their adventurous truffles - some mix savoury and sweet, like birch syrup truffles or chorizo truffles. we had the 70% sipping chocolate, which came in a tiny mug and was served body-temperature warm - thick and rich and flavourful, without the astringency and acidity that can accompany really bitter 80% plus chocolate. i had mine with whipped cream - it was delicious and soothing. then we lucked out and got some fresh churros - the dotytron also had a hazelnut biscotti and i picked up a panna cotta to go. it's a small place - just a few seats at a long counter and some tables outside (not suitably for chilly fall evenings) - it's mostly a takeaway place. they're known for their ice creams but it was too cold for that. i'll come back and try them some other time - they do the sicilian thing of serving ice cream scoops in fresh brioche - which i've always wanted to check out.


we followed that up with a screening of "waiting for superman" at the varsity - i'll post a full review tomorrow.

we caught a bit of nuit blanche stuff but it seemed to suck overall and just drew out people who wanted to drink in the streets. i'm actually pro certain elements of nuit blanche: extended bar hours, extended TTC hours, public art, but the art exhibits were by and large pretty lame (the ones we happened to see anyway) and there were too many bro-dawgs just looking for an excuse to carouse and it wasn't my scene.

sunday morning i woke up obscenely early considering we were home at like, 1am and then i stayed up reading until 2:30am - i made 2 pumpkin pies for thanksgiving and a quiche for post-fatburger arrival and some items for dinner at J & S's house. we had brunch with lolls and her bf T at school bakery and cafe in liberty village and then checked out their new digs.

i was exhausted and napped all afternoon, after the aforementioned regrettable decisions to go to town on the garden. then we packed up and went to dinner at J & S's house. it was good! J made us a mexican soup and i made the main course - pork shoulder carnitas (the pork had been braised in orange, milk, oregano, and garlic until it fell apart and then i crisped it up with lard in a cast iron skillet). i brought corn tortillas for serving it with and a roasted tomatillo salsa and chunky lime avocado. J made us a jicama and carrot salad. and for dessert! dessert was an absolutely divine apple fritter that they served with ice cream and caramel sauce. soooo good.


we had an early dinner on account of it being a sunday night, which meant that we had more face time with their kids, who are usually in the process of going to bed by the time we come over for dinner. the result was fun with playdough:


that's the dotytron's mermaid scene (their daughter is really into mermaids) and that's our buddy L's mermaid with the giant bio-engineered hand.

i'm home all day so i'm going to lie down and take it easy with a heating pad and try to get mobile again. i'm also going to do my very level best to get a crapload of constitutional law reading done - wish me luck.



for dinner i made us a cabbage, kolbassa, and chickpea soup with toasted avocado-cheddar melts.

which brings me to my latest obsession -

roll call of awesome:

pita break "one bun" (which we pronounce with a jamaican accent - WHAAAN BHAAAN) multigrain pitas. so freakin' good! i was first exposed to this thin pita bun thing this past summer at the kdubsguelph cottage experience. apparently, it's the newest thing to replace the standard soft bun for burgers or sausages. i'm not exactly sold on that preparation, but i can tell you that i love eating these things for breakfast - they're so thin they get nice and crispy and i could honestly eat this spread with butter and peanut butter and washed down with a cold glass of milk every day. love these things.

fin.




-------------------------------------------------------------
tacos of carnitas roasted with orange and milk
adapted from epicurious, serves 6-8 as a main course with sides

3-4 lbs pork shoulder, cut into big pieces
lard (you could also use oil, but lard is better)
2 t. salt
2 heaping T. minced garlic
1 heaping T. oregano (preferably mexican)
1 orange, washed well
1 c. whole milk
2 c. (approx) water
freshly ground black pepper to taste

- take your pork pieces and brown them on all sides in the hot lard - in a casserole dish (i used my le creuset knock off)
- sprinkle with salt, and add the garlic and oregano to the pan
- cut the orange in half, squeeze the juice over and add the orange halves to the dish
- pour the milk over and enough water to almost cover the pork
- sprinkle in the black pepper
- cover the dish tightly with foil and roast in a 375F oven for about 2-2.5 hours or until the pork is tender and falling apart.
- put the casserole on the stove and put on high heat until all the liquid has evaporated. in a cast-iron skillet or something nonstick, fry batches of the shredded pork in the lard or fat until crispy.
- season again to taste and then serve with warm corn tortillas, salsas, chopped lettuce, diced avocado with lime, pickled onion, etc.

notes: the dish can be made ahead up until the final browning. you could also probably make this in a slow cooker up until that point. the original recipe recommended crisping the pork in the enameled cast iron (le creuset) type of pot, but i found that it wasn't crisping and was just sticking o the bottom. i had much better results frying it in small batches in my well seasoned cast iron skillet.

more book reviews

oh hello, it's me again.

i weighed myself today. scales are NOT my friend right now. but i'm not going to dwell on the negative. instead, here are some grown-up book reviews for you peeps who are tired of the YA focus of the last batch.

"lucy" by laurence gonzales, reads like a more human-centred michael crichton novel. it's about an primatologist who discovers an abandoned girl in the congo named lucy, who turns out to be a human-bonobo hybrid. attempts to integrate lucy are successful before her true genetics comes to light and then she becomes a pawn in a political/religious war - people want to destroy her because she's an abomination and people want to save her because for all intents and purposes, she's mostly human. the novel moves along at a pretty quick clip but ultimately it's unsatisfying - more of a pot-boiler piece of airport fiction than something that really gets into the meat of what it means to be human, etc. it was an entertaining enough read but i didn't love it - good for the cottage, and good for something you could pick up and put down again. there wasn't anything to the writing style that would elevate it above other similar science-thriller type works.

aimee bender's "the particular sadness of lemon cake" is about a young girl who wakes up and realizes one day that she can taste her mother's emotions in her cooking. now, when i say that, i know where your mind goes. you're thinking "like water for chocolate" or "eat drink man woman" or "chocolat" - some kind of magic realist fantasy of love lost, regained, family relationships, etc.

well...this book kind of subverts all those expectations. there's definitely a magic realist element to it and at its core, the book is about family relationships, but bender's treatment of the material is fresh, unsettling, and mysterious. the entire book is suffused with sadness and repression - the repression of a self-absorbed housewife mother, the repression of a taciturn father, a genius brother who becomes more and more remote with each passing year, and the central figure's attempts to repress her ability to taste feelings by seeking refuge in the most generic, mass-produced industrial food available. the writing has that slightly detached quality that's a hallmark of literary-type books.

but i'm not being completely honest here. i'm dancing around a certain issue because to this day, i still find it one of the weirdest things i've ever experienced in a novel. the ending is SOMETHING ELSE. i was shell-shocked by the end. completely gobsmacked by what happens to the point where i had to unburden myself to the dotytron who was completely ignorant of the rest of the plot but could still muster an appropriately "wtf?!?" reaction to my recounting of the closing scenes. the book goes someplace very, very weird and very, very sad, and that's all i can say without giving away the whole thing. i'd be interested to know if any of my readers pick it up, what they think of the way the book closes.

"the imperfectionists" by canadian born, london based author tom rachman, has generated a lot of buzz this past summer as one of the "must-read" books of the summer. it was also recently optioned by brad pitt's production company to be made into a film, which added to the hype that saw this volume of interrelated short stories on many a reputable "best of summer" reading list. the stories follow the various characters (copy editors, executive editors, foreign correspondents) working for an english-language newspaper based in rome, that shares the same dire circumstances as print newspapers everywhere. some of the stories are sad, some are funny, all are little character studies about the motivations and foibles and personal lives of the staff. it was a good, entertaining read, but nothing that lingers with you long after - i really enjoyed it though.

"loving frank" is nancy horan's account of the affair between frank lloyd wright and mamah borthwick - one that saw borthwick abandon her husband and two young children and mired the architect in scandal and all but destroyed his commissions in the united states for a time. this was the most recent selection from my academic book club. the book is really well researched - horan's background is in journalism - and it makes the interior lives of the characters really come to life. frank lloyd wright comes off as a bit of a preening, egotistical a** and borthwick's early feminist struggles are interesting. she starts off in the suffrage movement but her choice to pursue a life of self-fulfillment and love with wright, at the cost of her marriage and her relationship with her children, is really interesting and sparked a lot of discussion amongst the book club ladies.

there was a lot of censure of borthwick's selfishness - at her ability to cause pain to her children by essentially abandoning them for 3 years to flit around europe with wright. i sided with her choice and was in the minority - ultimately, i thought it was more damaging for her to stay locked in this half-life of dutiful wife and depressed mother than for her to self-actualize in some way and emancipate herself from the restrictive mores of american society at the time. this was a thoroughly engaging read - and the situation of the story in real-life events makes it all the more fascinating. i'd recommend it.

"mr. peanut" by adam ross, begins with the line, “when david pepin first dreamed of killing his wife, he didn’t kill her himself. ee dreamed convenient acts of god.” (funny note: when typing that out - i accidentally typed "acts of cod" instead of "acts of god" - i think i might have made a major improvement to the work - someone hire me to be an editor!) this book is the story of 3 marriages, david pepin's marriage, and the marriages of the 2 cops who are brought in to investigate the suspicious death of pepin's wife. it's a bit of a mish-mash of a novel - the three narratives never really come together and there's a strange structural plot device that is hinted at with the author and pepin's fixation with mobius strips and m.c. esher, but ultimately the circuitous looping of the meta-narrative undermines ross' true gift - at detailing the long, hard struggle of marriage - of what happens when 2 people commit to throwing in their lot together for life: the gradual sloughing off of intensity, the endurance, the million little ways that the comfort of the familiar wears away your gratitude - how people start to take things for granted and how your partner can become invisible to you as a person. that's where the true meat of the story are - but i feel the author sacrifices this in favour of this weird murder-mystery thing and spends way too much time dividing the readers attention between all 3 marriages - leaving all but one of them unresolved. i'd still recommend it - it's a good read, but not without its' faults.

we were so good tonight! came home, hung out. went to see our friend bobes play with corin raymond at their weekly at the cameron house. i was making the dotytron crack up with my (semi-false) outrage at having to put money in the musician's tip jar - made all the more galling by the fact that i had already paid for a beer for my partner AND we weren't really in it to see the band, but to meet up with bobes. of course i ponied up in the end, i was only half-joking - i actually don't mind raymond's music - it's kind of like appalachian folk - but the stories are rooted in a canadian prairie context. then we went with bobes to ghandi's rotis for some good indian roti business. based on this article that revealed that the sag paneer roti has almost 1500 calories and over 70 grams of fat, i exercised a modicum of restraint and only ate half of my roti.

when i say "modicum of restrain" i mean a very miniscule modicum - a modicum modicum. during the day my work had a going away party for a colleague and i WENT TO TOWN. two giant pieces of slab cake and so many bite sized treats. i felt awful afterwards, which is the only reason i could exercise that modicum modicum of restraint at ghandi's.

we dropped bobes off so that he could set up for his second set and then were home by 10:15pm. a very civilized evening. we got to get out, hear some music, eat some food, see a friend, and still be home by bedtime. there's hope for us yet!

tomorrow we're having dinner with the dotytron's family for poppa d's birthday at joy bistro. i've been poring over the menu in anticipation - full review to come.

fin.

in the chute

notes from the midwife appointment yesterday: the fatburger is being a smart little parker and is already head down and in position. generally, if they're head down at 34 weeks it's unlikely that he would be a jerky boy and then flip around and go breach in the last little bit. he's also not posterior, so far (posterior birth, also known as "back labour" is where the baby is head down but the back of his head is against your spine - ie. he's facing up towards your belly button - a lot of women find this creates a lot of intense lower back pain during labour and a longer labour as the baby's head has to twist and turn and get into the proper position).

my blood pressure is nice and normal and most importantly, my iron counts are really really really good. it's probably why i have so much energy. normal range for women is 120-160. i'm at 122, which is really good considering the iron depletion that happens during pregnancy - my midwife said my iron counts are better than hers.

at the visit my midwife (who is actually this new 4th year student we just met last visit who will be accompanying my primary midwife and who starts off the appointments now) was asking me about the GBS testing. she asked me if i knew what it was. and since my friends G and M had prepared me, i said, "yes, that's the double-dip" and she gives me this quizzical look and goes, "double dip?" and i said, "yeah, it's when i have stick a swab in my butt and in my vagine to test for strep b" and she was like, "ummmm...you don't have to stick it IN your anus [HATE that word!] - we ask that you swab around your vagina, the perineum, and the anus" and then she asked me if i knew what the group b strep was, and i go, "yeah, it's something that some women have in their bodies but it can sometimes be in the birth canal and then the baby eats it on the way out and can get really sick" and she gave me ANOTHER look and slowly repeated, "the baby eats it on the way out. hmmmm. well..." and then proceeded to explain the actual clinical stuff, which i kind of tuned out because i figure that my paraphrasing means that i get the gist.

only 30% of women have the GBS. they're asymptomatic and it causes no big deal. but because babies are all sterile and stuff, of the 30% of women who do have it, 1% actually pass it on to their babies during the birth (when the baby eats it on the way out), but of that 1% of babies who get it, they get REALLY sick, so if you test positive the canadian government makes you get antibiotics.

anyway, my next visit will consist of the double dip, in two weeks. and then after that it's a visit every week, one of which will consist of my midwives coming by the house and doing the home birth tour. e-freakin'-gads

in exciting grad school news, i've been tussling with the program director of my program. i found out that attendance is mandatory. and when i was like, "what are they going to do, not let you graduate?" i found out that the answer is YES. they will either withhold your degree or make you MAKE UP THAT CLASS the next time it's offered...IN A YEAR. totally stupid, right? so they've been making us sign in to class and on the saturday intensives, you have to sign in AND sign out.

on saturday, i left early because of K's wedding. i had notified the profs in the summer about this. when i showed up and informed the prof again that i would have to leave early, i found out that YOU HAVE TO ASK THE PROGRAM DIRECTOR'S PERMISSION to miss or leave a class early. like, seriously?!? there was a woman in my class who had her hair all done up to go to a wedding and she was complaining about how the program director gave her the gears for it. another person had to leave for her mom's 60th birthday and was again given a hard time. it's ridiculous. don't you think the PROGRAM DIRECTOR would have better things to do than say, "yes, you can go to a wedding, you're allowed to be in that family photo, you can be sick" ?!? it's absolutely the dumbest thing i've ever heard.

people in BOTH cohorts are naturally pretty displeased with the policy, so on monday, i emailed the program director and told him that i wasn't aware that i needed him to sign off on my early departure on saturday and was thus requesting retroactive approval and that i had noticed a lot of dissatisfaction with the mandatory attendance policy and if there was any way we could start a dialogue about it.

well! the response that i got was patronizing to say the least. he found it "very troubling" that i left class early and stated that class absences weren't fair to the other students (how does attending life events turn into an equity issue?) and that the mandatory attendance policy was made explicit in the application process, the website for the program, and at the orientation session and in writing.

so **i** fired back an email to him in response, first cutting and pasting an email he had sent me in the early summer when i was aware of being preggos and was weighing my options where the program director stated that he "firmly believes in reasonable accommodations" and i highlighted that phrase to him. then i stated that i had thoroughly checked the program website AND the supplementary AND general graduate admissions forms and found NO mention of the mandatory attendance policy. i also suggested that he might want to highlight this in the future for potential students weighing the york program against other, similar programs (like those offered at u of t and queens) where they are much more amenable to the exigencies of professional/personal requirements (they are, too - i called both faculties and checked - this is the kind of thoroughness i employ when being a s**t disturber).

i ended with a paragraph on how i was merely trying to initiate a dialogue with the program and got all lofty and moral-majority by saying that it was for the good of the program and future students and finished with a snarky, "with all due respect"

...it's been radio silence ever since from the program director. i'm pretty sure he's frantically flipping through the books to see how he can get me kicked out or not reinstate me or grant me extensions. but, my dear friends, this is york university. a place where they have transgendered bathrooms. they mess with me, i'm going to cry discrimination so loud and so fast and be on the horn to the dean of graduate studies and anyone who'll listen. as my friend S said, you have to use york's liberal craziness against them, and that i will do.

yesterday was a crazy 12 hour day. left the house at 7:30am and didn't get home until 7:30pm. i was scheduled to cover the closing shift at work and then had to stop and grab our CSA on the way home. i was zonked.

this helped, though. for dinner i made a shrimp boil - with jalepeno smoked sausages and CSA corn, and CSA potatoes, old bay, and jumbo shrimp:

as the dotytron said (he also had a 12 hour day), an omnipresent feed bag of shrimp boil would go a long way to making most of one's day-to-day trials more bearable.

tonight i have class (ugh) so i packed a cabbage roll and some CSA beets that i peeled and boiled last night and then tossed with vinegar, sour cream, and dill:

i'm starting to feel a *little* anxiety about how much i have on my plate right now and how much worse it's going to get, but i'm trying to just keep my head down and maximize every minute. wish me luck, kiddos.

fin.

fall blahs

i know. what the crap am i on about? i LOVE fall. but when i woke up this morning it was so grey and dark and misty and cold and the bed was so smushy and soft and warm and accommodating that it was difficult to shake the fog off and gird up the loins for another day in the trenches.

it was a humdinger of a weekend, too. friday was insane. up at the usual time, squeezing in grocery shopping, then a massage, and then home to bake a pineapple upside down cake, and then meeting my friend H at the clothing show, and then home just in time to grab the cake, whip some cream, and head to S & A's house for dinner (the most delicious sag paneer, grilled yoghurt-marinated chicken thighs, and rice ever!), and then from dinner to the lula lounge for an old skool jungle party. so epic! i can't believe i managed it.

being preggos at the club was mostly worth it - the first dj was playing all this steppy kind of source direct photek stuff which was putting the crowd to sleep, to be honest. the next dj stepped it up a bit with some ragga tunes, and then we left before seeing c64 & frankie gunns spin. it was a blast from the past though. mad o-g crew inside the ride, most of whom were gobsmacked at my present state - high school peeps, old promoters, the usual scene - it was fun to be out and about. if i wasn't so knackered we would've stayed past 1 but were were both dead tired and sleep had never seemed so good. don't worry, old skool jungle, i'll be back in your loving embrace in no time, and i'll leave the ball and chain at home! the dotytron was super-paro about me being there, making sure that i tell him if the fatburger started freaking out and not wanting me to put my glass of water down IN CASE I GOT ROOFIED. lol!

friday was made all the worse by the fact that i had to wake up a 8:30am after getting home at around 2am, to truck my butt the 1.5 hours to york campus for school. then i had to leave school 3 hours early to truck back downtown to get to K's wedding, hauling my laptop and all my life's possessions in my jansport lumberjack plaid knapsack and then doing a quick change like superman in the bathroom of the royal conservatory (which, incidentally, is a lovely place for a wedding). the dress i had elected to wear turned out to be slightly scandalously short when stretched over the belly. whoops. preggos skank at the wedding much?

the wedding was absolutely lovely and sweet and beautiful. K looked gorgeous and her mum was a freakin' hoot. the food, catered by daniel et daniel was so freakin' good i tottered out of there stuffed...and the speeches from the bride and groom were so sweet. i really admire people who are able to realize when a moment requires sincerity and can make a speech for their loved one that doesn't involve taking the piss and being an a**hole. i've yet to perfect that art.

sunday we headed up to markham to hang out with my sis and outlaw bro and the kids - it's the last time we'll be seeing them before my sis and i pop. they won't be coming up for thanksgiving because of the nearness of our respective due dates. we went to this place on main street unionville, the old country inn [note: for those who click the link - i have no idea where that statue of beethoven (?) is, but my mission next time is to find it for sure] for german food (i had krainer wurst and the dotytron had schnitzel). then we trucked the kids to glow in the dark mini-putt which is really a euphemism for ill-behaved children and instant migraines in a venue that smells like the ball room at charles e. cheese, aka like dirty kid sock feet.

after that, we went home to my mum & big d's place and k.o'd and said our goodbyes. my sweet sis started crying when we left and then it got ME started crying and then i basically cried all the way home in the car. my sis was sad because she won't be able to be here for me when i pop and i was sad that i wouldn't have my sis with me when i pop. i hadn't really thought about who i would want to have around for labour support until i went to the homebirth info night and heard about people who had their friends and mums around. i had kind of always envisioned it just being me and the dotytron, but then i realized it might be nice to have someone else there to give support or to give the dotytron a break. but when i thought about it, my options are kind of limited. i mean, my mum would be of absolutely no help as labour support - if anything she'd be the opposite of helpful. i think it's a lot to ask of any friend, even your bestie, to be massaging you constantly and to bear your grunting and cussing all naked and oozy and (potentially) pukey and (potentially) poo-y. but if i was to have someone else there, my sister would definitely top the list.

the dotytron and i were there just minutes after she gave birth to my niece and one of the things that got me motivated to get the heck out of the restaurant industry was not being able to be with her when she had to have an emergency c-section with my nephew - having to wait until there was a lull in service until i could sneak off and call her and make sure everything was okay. i didn't want to have that life anymore because i knew i would NEVER have been able to forgive myself if what usually happens with prolapsed cord babies had happened to little ze and my sister and i wasn't there for her, or had to find out well after the fact.

i love my sister because she wants to be there for me. because she is one of the most selfless, loving, kind, smart, and funny people i know. because she's so upset that she won't be able to meet the little fatburger right away that she'll start to cry and then make me cry. because i know i could ask her anything and she would do it and more importantly, because i know i've let her down before but she has an unfathomable (to me) capacity for giving and love.

after the big boo-hoo fest we arrived back at lil' ugmo and basically finished setting up spumante bambino's part of the room, which is also probably adding to my general level of blah. i'm freaked out, guys. i don't know what i'm doing or what's coming down the pipeline or how i'm going to handle it and how our lives are going to change and whether i'm going to be the same person when i come out the other end. there are just too many unknowns and i feel really unprepared and seeing the room basically set up feels both jinxy AND stressful because there is going to be someone pretty needy occupying that room and something's going to have to give and i'm afraid that it's going to be some essential part of me that's going to make me not me anymore, or make me and the dotytron not us anymore. there's this weird mix of anticipation and trepidation in the air and it's not helped by the dark mornings and darkening evenings and increased time spent indoors.

i wish things weren't so busy right now. i wish i could carve out a bit more time to enjoy and luxuriate in having a household of 2 - i wish lesson planning and grad school readings and life wasn't getting in the way as much. hmmmmm...as i write this, i'm thinking that maybe i should take a bigger chunk of time off before my due date.

last night i whipped up a frugal/CSA busting meal of swiss chard, genoa salami and pesto bowtie pasta. the fancy pasta was given to me as a birthday present from my colleague T.

tonight i made us roasted tomato soup with a hot artichoke dip for dipping bagel chips and leftover cracker-y things from our shower in. i also made a big batch of tomato sauce. i'm trying to double up on meals and freeze things for later - the roomie jokingly said that her shower gift for me would be use of her freezer for all the meals i'm putting away and that's actually THE BEST GIFT IDEA EVER. i'm going to need it.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

creamy hot artichoke dip

not sure how many this serves - maybe 6-8 as a appetizer dip? it makes enough to fill a 9" pie plate - adapted from bon appetit

1 8 oz. package cream cheese
2 1/2 T. sour cream
2 T. mayonnaise
squeeze of fresh lemon juice
1 T. prepared mustard
1 clove of garlic minced (approx)
1 t. worcestershire sauce
1 t. hot sauce

1 c. grated mozzarella cheese

- using a mixer or the food processor, blend together the first 8 ingredients, then fold in (or pulse) the artichokes and mozzarella cheese
- transfer to a suitably sized baking dish
- bake in a preheated 400F oven until dip is bubbling and brown on top.
- serve hot

note: the original recipe called for green onions and minced seeded jalepeno to be folded in - i didn't have those things and didn't do it and it still tasted fine. obviously, this recipe has a lot of flexibility. you could also add canned crab for a hot crab and artichoke dip or a package of thawed, drained, and chopped frozen spinach for a hot spinach and artichoke dip. you could also add asiago cheese or grated parm as well.


fin.

day off today

grocery shopping. massage. bake a pineapple upside down cake. meet a friend and visit H at the clothing show. dinner with S & A. old skool jungle party at the lula lounge.

WHAT THE BLOOD.

fin.

books a' plenty

this is going to be one helluva book round up. in the last two months i've read no less than 11 books and i've been slacking on the reviewing department - so if your book club is looking for suggestions or you want some ideas about what to read next - here you go.

patrick ness is an american author, who wrote "the crash of hennington" (which i haven't read) and "topics about which i know nothing" (which i have read). "topics" was really, really funny. a collection of witty, erudite, and perceptive short stories with a quirky, droll sense of humour - this makes "the knife of never letting go" all the more surprising - it was a radical departure in genre, tone, and execution than my previous experience with ness' work.

i found the suggestion for this book via the blog of a YA author i like. it's a YA title about a distant world where people can constantly hear the thoughts of all living things - this stream of sensory input is called "noise." young todd is on the cusp of his 13th birthday, whereupon he will become a man, according to the rules of the town he lives in, prentisstown. there are no women in prentisstown and there haven't been any since the plague that brought the noise to humans - caused by the native race of the planet the humans settled, who are known as spackle. one day, todd stumbles across a lost girl who not only does NOT transmit noise, but can hear todd's thoughts. todd and the girl subsequently find out that prentisstown has a horrible, dark secret at its' core and that they're in great danger and go on the run.

i read a little further about the book and discovered that the idea of noise was inspired by the information-heavy world we live in. the book is tight, compelling and creates an unbearable tension - to the point where i'd be reading and have to put the book down and the dotytron would give me heck for raising my blood pressure and "freaking out the baby." it's a gripping, gripping read. i couldn't put it down and immediately put a hold on the next title in the series.

"the ask in the answer" is the second title in what's become known as the "chaos walking" trilogy - the third book, "monsters of men" has just been realized in the uk and the states and should be making its way into my hot little hands soon. this book picks up immediately where "knife" left off - todd and the girl have been separated and are each being used as tools to court a war. i can't tell you too much, but i can say that you should pick it up right away and read the whole series.


i followed this up with a few more YA books (i went on a bit of a tear there, following suggestions from YA bloggers). "first light" is by rebecca stead - i've reviewed her second title, "when you reach me" already. "first light" is very similar in tone - that kind of mostly realist but slightly fantastical madeleine l'engle type of feel. it's about a boy who goes to greenland with his family (his father researches glaciers and global warming) and suddenly develops awful headaches and sees visions. concurrently, a girl named thea lives deep within the ice beneath greenland and has never seen the sun - her people were chased down below generations ago by intolerance and ignorance. this is a well crafted story, but it lacked the sadness and mystery of "when you reach me" - i'm still interested in stead as a writer to see where she's going to go next, as she's gotten better with each novel.

"beautiful creatures" is like a southern gothic "twilight" - but much better written and with better developed characters. it's kind of soapy, but overall the mood and world are much more extensively fleshed out and it's creepier. it reverses the twilight model - in this case, you have a human boy who is inexplicably drawn to a witch (or caster, according to the mythology of this series) girl only to find that the town they live in and their story stretches back over generations of thwarted love. if i was going to recommend something to a pre-teen girl, it would be this series - the writing is just that much more accomplished and i loved the southern gothic setting - all crumbling antebellum mansions and trees dripping with spanish moss. this was decent, but not the best.

"will grayson, will grayson" is a curious little novel. it's co-written by john green (one of my favorites!) and david levithan. the story is told in alternating chapters, with each author telling the story of a teenaged boy named will grayson whose stories start separately and then eventually coalesce around one fantastically huge, queer queen nicknamed tiny. it's a hard book to sum up in words, but there's a lot to commend it. namely, the matter of fact depiction of high school life and the fact that tiny is neither marginalized or fetishized but just allowed to be a really rich, nuanced character with the same high school issues as either of the will graysons. i definitely favored the john green chapters over the david levithan ones, but both managed to be pretty funny and speak with an honesty to the contemporary urban high school experience.

tired of the YA? i also read grown-up books, too. technically, we didn't read alan bradley's "the sweetness at the bottom of the pie" - we listened to it on cd during our countless drives to geneseo, to R&R acres, to cottages and back this summer. i can tell you that the audiobook version is simply brilliant, because the reader is absolutely fantastic. it's a mystery novel, but if i tell you that and then you don't read it because you have an aversion to "genre" fiction then you're cheating yourself out of one of the most pleasurable reading experiences and one of the most endearingly precocious young heroine sleuths ever to grace the printed page. flavia de luce is almost 11 and lives with her eccentric family (a philatelist father and 2 sisters - one vain and peckish, the other mooning and bluestocking-y) in a crumbling mansion named buckshaw in england in the post-war period (1950). flavia is obsessed with chemistry, is far brilliant beyond her years and possesses a keen perspicacity an edward gorey obsession with the macabre and a matter-of-fact precociousness that had me and the dotytron laughing out loud.

it's all veddy veddy british - the language is exquisite in this novel - turns of phrases and sentences and descriptions that are as rich and plummy as a treacly pudd. a long-lost acquaintance of flavia's father turns up dead in their garden and with that, flavia is on the case. you simply have to read it - it's delicious. i'm so glad it's a series - i've ordered the next title, "the weed that strings the hangman's bag" and can't wait for it to arrive.

david nicholls' is another british author, whose "one day" was touted by many, many sources (NPR, new york times, entertainment weekly, etc.) as "the book of the summer" it follows 2 people, emma and dexter, on the same day every year for twenty years as they fall in and out of friendship, love, middle age, careers and the rest. my sister read it too. to be honest, we didn't know what all the fuss was about. it's a light enough summer read but i didn't really like either of the characters and the ending is a bit of a cop-out. the concept is interesting but that's about all there is to it, in the end. they're making a movie out of it, with anne hathaway and jim sturgess. anyway, i'd be interested to know what other people think - i thought the acclaim was rather overblown for this book.

"commencement" was for the august meeting of my academic book club. courtney sullivan went to an all-girls college (smith) and now writes for elle or something like that. the book was touted as being similar to curtis sittenfeld's "prep" (which i reviewed here) a kind of boarding school bildungsroman type thing. i'm here to tell you that those people who said such things were DEAD WRONG. it tells the story of four women who become friends attending an all girl's college. the chapters are told from each of the women's perspectives as they meet during frosh and then grow up and out of their university selves and forge careers and go on to the rest of life's milestones. the women are less characters than cariactures - you have bree the southern princess, sally, the practical one, april the radical feminist, and the other one i can't even remember. the writing is TERRIBLE - the story kind of slumps along before ending on this stupid, soap opera, ripped-from-the-headlines implausible event. the characters are by and large unlikeable and lack any dimension and most galling of all, sullivan seems to want to insert this dialogue about contemporary american feminism but doesn't have a clue in hell how to go about it. so you have this weird judy blume-esque (which is an insult to judy blume) story of female friendship grafted onto a high school lilith fair understanding of the strands of contemporary feminist discourses and neither tack is done very well. it's terrible, terrible stuff.

phew, that's enough out of me on a rainy wednesday morning. i have 4 more titles to review and then i'll be mostly caught up.

tonight is night class. my deadbeat da' is taking me out for indian buffet lunch - i'm treating that as my dinner, but i also packed fruit and some leftover minestrone in case all that butter chicken and chat papri isn't enough to tide me over until 10pm - ugh.

fin.

34C

that's my current bra size. A THIRTY FOUR C. so in the space of less than a year, i've gone from wearing nothing but american apparel cotton bras (which are basically one level down from training bras) convinced that i'm barely an a-cup, to the realization, courtesy of team kdubsguelph crew ladies, that i'm actually a 34B and that my boobs didn't have to be wall-eyed all this time and that i didn't have to live in fear of a cold day at the office making me look extremely unprofessional in a thin sweater, to being a 34C. it boggles my mind - they still look so wee. and i'm used to a C cup seeming like ginormous globulus enforcers or something. but i guess i'm not as flat-chested as i thought i was.

this weekend was a non-stop orgy of family and friends fatburger lovin'. friday i went buck and did a billion things and subsequently exhausted myself - but really, would i have had it any other way? no. then the outlaw bro and my sis showed up and we took them for rico's long-delayed birthday dinner of oysters and beers and other irish pub food at the ceili cottage. i think we totally won him over - he was loving the cask-conditioned ale and the bangers'n'mash, mac'n'cheese, and the soup of the day (eggplant and roasted garlic).

saturday morning was the ladies-only family shower - consisting of mostly the dotyron's aunts from momma and poppa d's sides of the family. my mum showed up wearing the most RIDICULOUS beyoncé heels and this flashy purple dress and a giant black patent prada bag and somehow managing to pull it off. instead of looking age-inappropriate, she just looked kind of fabulous. her shoes kind of looked like this:

that's my mum, alright. it was a brunch affair - i made my sis' ham and veggie strata, a caramelised onion-bacon-cheddar quiche, a spinach-mushroom-blue cheese quiche, a mixed green salad, a fruit salad, and my sis made a delicious sour cream coffee cake. we also had plain, chocolate, and almond croissants from bonjour brioche as well as a gorgeous lemon poppyseed cake from this place in leslieville called (stupidly) lpk's culinary groove:






nany gave us a bunch of knitted sweaters with matching caps - in graduated sizes as well as these two knitted dolls. i'm pretty sure the one on the right is supposed to be me. evidence in favour: the swarthy complexion, the slanty eyes, the angry eyebrows/side swept bangs. lol! amazing! everyone was insanely generous and i pretty much never have to buy the fatburger a single piece of clothing for the first year. we're just crossing our fingers that the ultrasound tech didn't make a mistake and that spumante is actually a boy.

for dinner that night my mum used her xmas gift certificate the kids gave her and took me and my sis out to the harbord room. it was okay. they're big on the "local" thing and i'm getting kind of tired of it, to be honest. like, i'm okay with the politics behind it, but i'm not okay with a restaurant not really having an angle - it's like, here's your meat, starch, vegetables, all simply prepared, minimal saucing. boring! i can do that...sheesh.

we started off with their charcuterie board, which featured soppresata and capicollo from pingue. a house made pig's head terrine, a deep fried poached egg (that they were inordinately chuffed about - dude, i've done that), and a chicken liver terrine that was a little lacking in liver-y flavour.

we also had the merguez sausage with polenta. this was another okay dish - nothing that knocked my socks off. the sausage was tasty (but i don't think it's made in-house) and sat on a bed of nice, soft polenta strewn with an eggplant mixture. the thing that ruined this dish for me was the crumbling of feta on top. the feta was far too sharp and gamy for the relatively restrained nature of the dish.

we also shared the braised rabbit pappardelle, which tasted like chinese food, strangely. like some brothy, braised chinese pork dish with egg noodles - i wasn't feeling this dish. the pappardelle was lovely - very chewy and al dente, but the rabbit and shitake mushrooms never coalesced into a worthy sauce companion for the noodles.

for our mains - sorry, from the "large plates" section of the menu, we had the milk fed veal chop (delicious) served with mustard mashed potatoes (a little gummy) and sautéed spinach with raisins (ho hum)

we also split the halibut with chorizo and chickpeas. the halibut had been aggressively over-cooked...it flaked off in big, dry chunks and the dish lacked panache. the chorizo and chickpeas tasted like you would expect them to taste, but overall, it was a fairly uninspired showing.

for dessert, we had the doughnut filled with lime curd and served with tapioca. this was very, very nice. the doughnut could have been a touch more tender (it was hard to cut into it) but the lime curd was rich and light at the same time and i have a colossal soft spot for tapioca pudd in all its forms.

we also shared the chocolate tart with peanut butter mousse which tasted like moon cake - the combo of the peanut butter & chocolate created a pastiness reminiscent of lotus paste - again, the unexpected chinese-ness of it was a little unexpected and disconcerting.

overall, i'm not sure that we'd go back. the menu and execution lacked cohesion - there was no clear vision from the chef and the actual dishes were inconsistent - nothing ever transcended the sum of its parts. for 3 medium sized plates, the 2 large ones and the 2 desserts (plenty of food for 3 people - 2 of whom are preggos), and no booze the total came out to $140 or so.

i then spent the rest of the evening churning out vellum mobiles for the friend's shower on sunday. because i'm CRAZY. i stole the idea for the vellum mobiles from jordan ferney's blog, oh happy day. there were a not insignificant amount of work, but in the end, they went a long way to gussying up the bain co-op community centre:

we had red pepper hummous dip (costco), green pea & pecorino dip (homemade), roasted garlic eggplant dip (homemade), chips (costco), flatbreads & bagel chips (costco), samosas (sultan of samosas), toni's goat cheese baguettes (toni), deviled eggs (homemade), tomato, artichoke, salami & olive skewers w/ balsamic vinaigrette (homemade), mini devil's food cupcakes with brown sugar buttercream (homemade), red velvet cupcakes with cream cheese frosting (homemade), blueberry crumb bars (homemade), banana-walnut bars (homemade), vegan cupcakes (made by H and that guy), and dominion slab cake (dominion). it was quite the spread and we all collectively made a significant dent in the food.

our friends were overwhelmingly generous and kind-hearted and it made us feel so good about the extended network of aunties and uncles that are going to be loving up on the fatburger. it was really a lovely time overall - it's always hard mixing your various groupings of friends and making sure you get time to talk to everyone in equal measure - but i think (hope) that people had fun.

yesterday was a crazy day. at work, then my conference presentation (FINALLY OVER WITH) and then homebirth information night. homebirth info night resulted in me being the jerk in the class who's obviously texting. i r bored cat. i left the house at 7:30am yesterday and then didn't come home until 10pm. we stayed out after to get some dinner in me at a congee restaurant. i haven't really given any thought to who i want at the birth. i guess i always kind of figured that it'd just be me and the dotytron and my midwives. if my sister could travel, i know i'd want her there as well...i'm not sure who else i would want to burden with seeing me naked and rubbing my feet and massaging my back and listening to me curse and grunt and moan and poo myself. that's a tall order and a lot to ask of anyone.

at homebirth info night they bring in two women to talk about their stories - one who planned a homebirth and then had to be transferred to hospital and another one who's homebirth went well. one of the speakers brought her kid with her - the kid is crawling, so like, 6 months or so. is it weird that i'm going to have a child but am simultaneously disgusted/repulsed by most other children not related to me by blood or friendship? this kid was a snotty mess and everyone was cooing and picking him up and doting on him and i was inwardly praying (while feigning an interest in my cell phone so that i wouldn't make eye contact with him) that he wouldn't come up to me so i wouldn't have to publicly look like an a**hole for wincing when he got slobber on me. i'm not good with sticky or gritty. i'm a little worried about it, to be honest.


tonight for dinner we had CSA minestrone - chock full of kale, zucchini, carrots, pancetta, onions, garlic, tomatoes and various shelling beans. alongside we had paninis of crispy pancetta, figs, and fresh mozzarella.

i also went a little buck and prepped cabbage rolls with tomato sauce. the cabbage rolls are stuffed with beef and brown rice...i haven't tasted one yet but i'm cautiously optimistic. i'm on a huge stocking-up-the-freezer kick. right now, the best gift anyone could give me would be use of their freezer for all the meals/soups/etc. that i'm trying to stock up on for when i won't have time to think straight - let alone contemplate making dinner.

fin.

guys, i sound like an ungrateful jerk

griping about my stupid registry.

i'm sorry.

i came into work today super-pumped to be wearing my lady-boots from last year only to find that they're so tight they not only gave me a blister but ALSO aggressively drilled a hole through my favorite pair of grey cotton tights in the process. and the blister hurts so much that i can't wear any of my work flats in the boots' stead.

so now i have to get the dotytron to meet me at work with the box of work shoes that i had put in the car and which he, in his infinite oblivious wisdom, has neglected to take out of the car (despite my repeated exhortations to do so) for the past week, so that i can retrieve my birkenstock clogs out of there and limp my way to book club.

the hurty-ness of the blister coupled with my latent fear that these lady-boots that i only bought LAST WINTER might never fit again because my feet might be fulfilling their pregnancy imperative and turning into canoe paddles has made me a right grump.

gifts are gifts and i'm a lucky button to have so many people in my life who want to show their love to the fatburger. and that means that i'm ever so grateful for the generosity of spirit exhibited by those near and dear to my heart.

fin.

oh, it's ON

things are ramping up at an exponential rate around here. bucktown! i heaved my way to class last night, my weekly wednesday night date from now until i pop. the walk wasn't that bad, only about 20 minutes, made more difficult by the fact that the fatburger is doing some kind of crazy calisthenics in there. i never find it that weird when i'm lying down or sitting still, but when you're moving and you're having an alien punching and flipping around inside your gut, it's an unsettling feeling. plus, as spumante bambino gets bigger, the motions are more and more aggressive and forceful.

the class is more intense than i thought it was going to be. assignments consist of: 1 article review, a peer review of a classmate's article review, participation (including the - ugh - *mandatory* attendance), a midterm, a research paper proposal, and then the final research paper. the prof seems stupidly intense given the length of the assignments. for example, the research paper is only supposed to be 20 pages long (double spaced), but he wants there to be a table of contents?!? how many points can you make in 20 pages?!? and he wants us to outline our methodology in the research paper proposal, but we're not taking a research methods class until NEXT term. i hate getting graded on research paper proposals. i know, i know...it's par for the course, but i write my papers the night before (maybe 3 nights, if i'm particularly inspired/on top of my game), so i hate having to reverse engineer the steaming pile of b.s. that inevitably constitutes my proposal.

the most annoying thing is that the prof stipulates that no more than 75% of our sources for the paper can come from online sources. so i asked, "do you mean online as in, government white papers and annual reports, or do you mean online as in, accessible through online journal databases?" and he's like, "we want you using the york libraries and using BOOKS." at which point i'm pretty sure the sound of my jaw dropping open was audible over the blasting a/c in the cavernous room. in case my shock and disbelief wasn't apparent enough, i felt compelled to follow up with, "are you serious?"

here's the thing: you don't make a program geared towards people who have full time jobs and then MAKE THEM GO TO YORK CAMPUS to get their stupid books. not only that, i have to go make a special trip to york campus just to GET MY STUPID LIBRARY CARD. and OF COURSE the "yu card" office isn't open on saturdays, the day i'm already there. OF COURSE THEY'RE NOT.

on tuesday night we had the roomie over for dinner. we haven't seen her in over a month! it was a lovely catch-up, even if she is terrified that she'll be on call the weekend that i go into labour and then will have to somehow be present at the birth in some kind of medical capacity. i haven't thought about ANY of that stuff, to be honest. what i want, what my expectations are, who i want to be there, how committed i am to a home or hospital birth or what levels of interventions i'm expecting. really, i don't care about that stuff. at the end of the day, i want to come out healthy and have a healthy bambino. the rest is just whatever to me. i feel like if you put too much into your "birth plan" then you're just setting yourself up for disappointment and self-recriminations over a situation that you have very little control over. what will be, will be. i want a home birth but if the pain gets too unmanageable, of course i'll opt for an epidural. it's not an ideology for me, it's a preference. we have access to pain medication for a reason - i would never consider having a leg amputated *knock on wood* without being knocked out, just to be a tough guy. at the end of the day, i just want to be okay and i want the little one to be okay and i'll be totally happy with that.

i'm not sure how we're going to manage visitors after. everything i've read has said that as a new, exhausted parent, you really have to harness visitors to get them to get shiz done for you. momma d has offered to take time off to help, but i feel like i can't be like, "momma d, please do the dishes and do the grocery shopping for me, thanks" but that's kind of the stuff that you want and need the extra hands for. i'm going to try really really really hard to wrangle my martyr, "i can do it all!" impulses and ask for that kind of nitty gritty help for those first few weeks - get people to bring meals and clean up the house and do that kind of stuff. try not to go crazy cleaning the house FOR visitors, etc.

anyway, for dinner with the roomie i made a coconut yellow split pea dhal with chopped spinach, fried paneer, brown rice, and she brought purchased saag and naan:

from the looks of the sorry state of our registry, it looks like dr. rei is going to be spending most of the time at the shower packing up food and snatching it out of people's mouths. lol! i really don't care if friends go off-list, cuz our friends know us, but i just don't get w.p.'s - THEY CAME UP WITH THE REGISTRY. it wasn't ***my*** people who did it. and then they up and decide that registries are too "impersonal" so then instead of doing the practical chinese thing (cash), or the practical w.p. thing they devised (buying stuff you registered for), they go off-list and then leave you with a bunch of crap. it's a very, very strange phenomena to me.

so last night i ended up eating leftovers at work and tonight i'm doing the same. my academic book club is meeting at frank at the AGO - it's pretty fitting. we read "loving frank" which is a fictionalized historical account of frank lloyd wright's relationship with a married woman. and even though the frank of AGO fame is gehry, not wright, and there's no relationship between them, it's still apt that the resto is named after an architect. it's our first out-of-someone's home meeting - i'm just going to get dessert or something off their small plates menu, seeing as how i'll be eating indian food at work, killing time trying to catch up on readings and working on my assignment before heading over there.

i took the day off tomorrow to do shower prep and get things in order - i've got to make 2 batches of mini cupcakes, a strata, a fruit salad, balsamic vinaigrette, 2 dips, deviled eggs, salami/bocconcini/tomato skewers, and do some final running around picking up last minute supplies and make these vellum mobiles. some of the work will be spread out on saturday after the ladies-only family shower brunch my sis and momma d are hosting in the morning.

phew! so much work to do!

fin.

catching up

so i've been m.i.a. for the last little bit. here's a capsule review of what i've been up to.

- york orientation was THE BIGGEST BUST OF ALL TIME. seriously. i had to sit through introductions of the professors and then the graduate research coordinator for my program gave a 30 minute speech about how "research is valuable" (who is saying it ISN'T?) and how you can find all sorts of wonderful ideas for research projects from reading the newspaper. i walked out after 20 minutes and was so pissed at them for wasting my time that i made the dotytron pick me up at the subway station and ferry me to dairy queen where i took out my frustrations on a oreo brownie explosion, a hot dog, and an order of onion rings.

- friday i had planned on cooking a duck to make space in our freezer and then managed to turn the whole enterprise into a rosh hashanah dinner party with our buds B, G, S, & P where we had noodle kugel (basically, an egg noodle casserole with cottage cheese, sour cream, poppy seeds, etc.), ginger-maple carrots, cucumber-dill vinegar salad:

the duck was really tasty.

i topped it all off with a pillowy, tall, fluffy, apple cake that i served with bourbon toffee sauce and whipped cream. delicious.

- saturday morning we had our first private prenatal class. we basically whittled down the entire curriculum to: labour (what IS it?), relaxation techniques, and breast feeding, meaning we got the whole thing done over 4.5 hours on saturday and sunday morning. guys, labour is kind of crazy. also, there are NO VIDEOS of labour (maybe the one i posted from the "pacing the panic room blog") that don't feature people who are giant dorklingers/possible LARPers. it's like they're diametrically opposed or something. i don't know if my immediate, gross-out visceral reaction is because of the fact that you're pushing a baby out of something the size of a quarter, or if the videos all feature people i don't want to be associated with or have anything in common with AT ALL, even the universal experience of bringing life into the world.

- we followed this up with the interment of poppa's ashes at a cemetery in oakville, where there are other dotys buried, like pharris doty (awesome name, pharris, good job). i know, prenatal class followed by ashes burial is all very:

like, the first minute of it, anyhow. i don't know WHY i wasn't expecting it to be an emotional experience...i guess i kind of thought that i'd had my crying over and done with? but then poppa d had to go and get an IRISH PIPER to play and it was the most winsome, mournful soundtrack ever (think: deck of the titanic), and i was totally blindsided by the fact that there were OLD PEOPLE from the royal canadian legion there who were SO OLD that i basically started bawling as soon as i saw them come marching up in their uniforms. they were adorable. like, hard-of-hearing, frail, adorable.

i've been looking for an outlet for some kind of volunteer work and more and more i'm coming to the realization that i should really work with old people - i'm not really sure in what capacity, or how, but i think that's where my heart lies. watch this space here for updates.

- we were SUPPOSED to spend saturday night at our friend L's housewarming/birthday party but we had a late lunch with the dotytron's family after the interment (not to be confused, by the way, with INTERNMENT, which is what we do to japanese people in the united states and canada during WWII), and it had been an emotionally draining morning so i sent along some fig frangipane bars with our friends B & G and we tendered our regrets, instead opting to try to put up the shelving in the fatburger's room and pass out at 9pm after watching 1/8th of a streaming version of "the expendables" on our tv via my laptop. streaming tv/movies technology really hasn't progressed to the point where it can satisfy my desire of size and clarity. i mean, when you blow it up so that you're watching it on your tv (and keep in mind, our tv is modest by most people's standards), you're basically looking at things the way like, robocop sees them (best case scenario, maybe the way cyberdyne systems model 101 - that's, the terminator to you - sees things).

- sunday we ate challah french toast and bacon and nectarines, bananas, and wild blueberries for breakfast:

- we followed that up with our second prenatal class whereupon i received failing marks for stating that i deal with stress/tension by yelling expletives at my partner. overall, it was pretty informative, but i am glad we skipped all the n00b icebreaker stuff from the group classes. some of the relaxation/massage techniques will probably come in handy and our instructor brought over an epidural kit so i could see the size of the needle as well as a vacuum and this portable pelvis thing with a life-size baby so you could see all the crazy behind-the-scenes stuff that goes into getting the little succubus out of you.

- then it was more errands and futzing and napping (i've been so so so tired lately) and prepping for the shower and then for dinner i raided our CSA produce and fridge leftovers and made us pan-seared steaks with chimichurri, boiled purple potatoes tossed with butter and salt, corn pudding, and sautéed mushrooms:

- speaking of shower prep, i kind of missed this whole process because we didn't register when we got hitched...but why do people go off-list and then ask me what i need for the fatburger? i don't get it. like, either you don't register at all and accept what people get you, which is totally fine, but do people think that you set up a registry as a joke? like, that there's big, fat, quotation marks around the items there? "playmat" "bassinet sheets" "bathtub"??? i dunno. when people get married and shiz i either go cash money or i get something off the registry. i don't presume to know better. and i get it, i really do. buying baby clothes and stuff is super fun and super cute and i know you probably know baby x, y, z that loved items a, b, c, but at the same time, we REALLY NEED those crib sheets and the washcloths and stuff. and it's not like we did the cray-cray thing i've seen on some wedding registries where people register for like, a $200 salt shaker. i felt i was really reasonable. like you can get us the binkies AND the outfit of your choosing and not spend more than $25. and realistically, kids don't NEED that many clothes! that's why we specified on the invites sizes greater than 6 months. like, if the kid has 15 onesies for 0-3 months, that means they're going to wear each thing a maximum of 6 times. it's insane. ultimately, i don't care if we have to buy the stuff ourselves, but i've been asked a few times if we really want the stuff on the registry, and i'm like, YES! don't you know me?!? don't you know the stock i put into list-making and researching? i think having a baby is the one time when you ACTUALLY NEED STUFF...forget getting married...especially with couples living together for years and years. anyway, the point is: i don't know who goes about making sarcastic or joke registries, but i don't get it. or at the very least, don't ask me what i want, because i've already provided you with the list!

- today we went with dr. rei to pick up food and stuff for the shower from costco. dr. rei has hilariously threatened to start packing up food and snatching hors d'oeuvres out of people's hands if she deems the gift table not up to snuff. i love that little llama - she's always looking out for me and her heart is so big. one of her biggest anxieties is having me inviting random people over for dinner and "giving all my love away" on people who don't deserve it (aka, anyone but her). i couldn't ask for a more loyal, trustworthy, and decent friend.

- for dinner i made us paninis of grilled eggplant, heirloom tomato, genoa salami, and scallion mayonnaise on ace focaccia, with leftover corn pudding:

now i'm going to try very very hard to stay up past 9pm whilst simultaneously doing kegels AND practicing my relaxation breathing. i look like i've swallowed a basketball lately. it's crazy.

wish me luck!

fin.

grad school

every time i remember that i'm starting another grad degree i'm kind of like: "wtf?" like, it somehow manages to catch me off guard more than the fact that if all goes according to plan i'm going to be welcoming the New Kid on the Block in a short little while.

seriously guys, double yew tee eff.

tonight is orientation. which is MANDATORY. as is CLASS ATTENDANCE. we've had no less than THREE emails from his royal highness the program director himself stating in no uncertain terms that attendance is compulsory. i'm like, "excuse me?" this is grad school, not kindergarten. i'm paying YOU. it's up to ME if i want to show or not.

this just leads me to believe that they have an inferiority complex about being fake grad school for working stiffs and have had attendance problems in the past because they're dealing with people WHO ALSO HAVE FULL TIME JOBS and don't have the time or patience to sit through silly lectures on "constitutional law" that are verbatim re-presenations of power point slides being projected directly behind the speaker.

i can't decide how much of a jerk i'm going to be at orientation tonight. i want to raise the issue that it's ridiculous to make class attendance mandatory at a graduate level as we're ALL responsible for our own education and this is a program geared towards working professionals so how can they possibly expect perfect attendance? in consultation with my friend K, i think the tactic i'm going to take is to broach the issue by asking what are the repercussions of you don't attend every class? like, is it i don't get my degree bad? or you just REALLY REALLY REALLY PRETTY PLEASE I'M BEGGING YOU want me to be there and are using scare tactics to make that happen?

DID I MENTION THE ORIENTATION IS BEING HELD ON CAMPUS AT YORK? which happens to be IN THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERESVILLE?!? also, york university is totally sexual assault alley. the dotytron gave me a fox 40 whistle and a matching lanyard so that i can whistle the crap out of anyone who even looks at me funny. it's actually kind of sickening. like, york is super-lefty and cray-cray enough to have a TRANSGENDERED bathroom option but they can't make their campus safe from r-ing?

as you can see, i'm totally going into this with the right attitude. stuff is kind of bats**t insane at work right now - i have a billion projects on the go and barely enough time to get through it all. this rinky dinky degree is literally the last thing on my mind.

this is how i feel about mandatory orientation sessions:

zomg! how cute is that kid?!? "mi nah gi har nuh more milk fi put inna di cornflakes"

fin.

chronicles of a young urbanite

...with massive impending parenthood anxieties.

tonight after work i fulfilled my young progressive urbanite imperative and picked up my first shipment from my CSA (that's community shared agriculture for all you in the great unenlightened unwashed). inspired by dr. rei's friend K, we signed up for kawartha ecological growers small box. it costs $25/week and runs from june to november. we're hopping on in the latter half of the summer share season.

there are a few things i like about this particular operation:

1) the pick up is a 10 minute walk from lil' ugmo
2) you get $15 in "fixed" items - this means that they tell you how much of whatever you're getting, but you still get to go and pick out the potatoes, onions, spinach etc. that you want. this week's small box consisted of: 6 ears of corn, 1 bunch of spinach, 1 head of boston lettuce, 1 qt. of onions, 1 squash, and your choice of peppers, zucchini, or cucumber.
3) you get $10 in "flexible" money to be spent as you like on whatever extra items you like - the balance or deficit from this money can be carried over from week to week. so for example, this week we spent $8 on potatoes, beets, and green zebra heirloom tomatoes, so we'll have $12 for next week.

it'll be an interesting experiment for me to cede menu planning control to the vagaries of the farmers each week, but any type A anxieties are ameliorated by the fact that they send out an email of what you can expect a few days prior - which still gives me plenty of room to plan. i'll still be shopping at our local veggie store, but this is a nice alternative for basics and it'll stretch my "iron chef" cooking-on-the-spot creativities.

so the progressive young urbanite checklist stands at:
- CSA: check
- designer stroller: check
- mid century modern fixation: check
- loudly extolling virtues of "community": check

i'm basically one mommy group latte and one jogging stroller away from being a rather unpleasant person (well, unpleasant to me, at any rate.)

this is what i made with our spoils:

heirloom tomato-basil tart, sautéed beet greens w/ garlic, corn on the cob

so last night, after watching a long-marinating episode of "treme" (we JUST watched episode 3 last night!), i suddenly had a panic attack. well, let's be real here - i had a minor psychological crisis - there were none of the accompanying physiological symptoms of a true panic attack. for some reason, watching david simon-produced stuff can set me on a downward spiral - it happened all the time with "the wire" - too verité, i guess. too much on how awful people can be. too real, exposing the bone beneath the flayed, imperfect, bruised flesh of people at our most avaricious and ignorant.

anyway, as the episode neared it's conclusion and i contemplated the alien watermelon form of my belly (spumante bambino was doing somersaults), i suddenly turned to the dotytron and said, "dude. there's going to be another person here. soon." and the dotytron, ever unflappable, ever optimistic, said, "i know!" seeing that he had missed the subtext of raw, naked, white-knuckled fear, i had to press on, "WHAT WERE WE THINKING?!?!" "i don't know anything about being a parent!" "this person is going to be with us FOR LIFE!" "what if i'm really bad at this?"

you can probably fill in the rest. it was a serious case of buyer's remorse. it's all too easy to go along, with the little incubating consciousness growing inside you as an abstraction, even as you watch its movements making a quivering 50s jello mould of your abdomen, blissfully ignorant of the fact that this THING is going to come out and be sentient and IMPACT EVERY PART OF YOUR LIFE.

i'm feeling faint just thinking about it. thinking about all the ways i can screw this up. thinking about how much is beyond my control, when heretofore i've practically made an entire ontological philosophy out of the unerring belief - nay, CELLULAR KNOWLEDGE! - that the sheer intractable force of my will is enough to force things to fit my orderly schema.

example of why i think i'm going to be a bad parent: this past weekend, at the new york state fair, i was the recipient of a sound dressing-down by a deep fried funnel cake vendor when she overheard me telling miss ramona, in no uncertain terms, and with a fair degree of volume, "DON'T YOU TOUCH ME WITH YOUR STICKY HANDS" as i simultaneously LEAPT AWAY from her cotton-candy clasp. "oh well now, that is just MEAN" said the fryer, disappearing to produce a wet paper towel with which miss ramona could clean her offending fingers. espying that i was clearly expecting some future-sticky-fingered progeny of my own, fryer lady chastised me further, telling me that one day, my own kid would be grown and would want nothing to do with me, and i would be beset with nostalgia and regret for those times when she/he had reached out to me with high-fructose corn syrup digits.

see? you might as well have CAS on speed dial. i'm BAD at this. i don't LIKE sticky fingers. or sand. or much dirt. at the strong museum of play this last time a little flaxen haired tyke stood before me while i was sitting on a bench holding court with my sister and ostensibly keeping a (very) lazy eye on my niece and nephew, and interrupted me with the accusation, "you couldn't catch me!" to which i gave her a withering look of disdain and replied, "i wasn't PLAYING" and then picked up right where i had left off in the conversation (probably gossiping). i can't feign interest!

i'm so glad i have the dotytron to balance things out. me? i'll make sure that the kid has a wonderfully designed space with tonnes of storage, the best packed lunches, a well-packed diaper bag, and the mouthiest, most loyal coach that has ever been kicked off the field. the dotytron will take care of the soft, nurturing, soul-enhancing stuff. it's a good division of labour, i think. we have the bases covered (i hope. i pray.)

target was having a baby sale the day we left. so i went and bought a breast pump, because it was $150 cheaper than the one i had registered for. we debated whether or not to just buy it right then and there or play russian roulette and see if anyone sprang for it on our registry, finally deciding that saving ourselves and our friends and family $150 was a pretty good thing. as i pulled it off the shelf, having pulled the trigger, the dotytron turned to me and said, "you better pump the s**t outta that thing" - lol! carting the box out of target and looking at all the features and realizing i didn't know sweet f**k-all about pumping much of anything outside of bicycle tires and being all about equity, i told the dotytron that we were going to test it out on him first. he wasn't too keen, mostly because he thinks he's going to have to shave his chest and that the only result will be hilarity for me and a purple nurple for him.

fin.