Parenthood

We were talking with friends recently and the Dotytron said something pretty astute on the topic of parenting.  He was remarking on how it's mind-boggling to him how soon the notion of a double life takes hold in a kid.  The Big Yam just turned two, but he totally leads a double life.  The other day, he started whining when the Dotytron went to pick him up from daycare and J was like, "Master T!" all shocked and surprised and stuff and Dotytron was like, "Um, what. WELCOME TO MY LIFE."  J says the Big Yam never whines at her house.

WHAT MUST THAT BE LIKE?!?

I don't even know.

We've been having major issues with diet and acting up lately.  He's just turned snoopy.  He doesn't want to eat vegetables (but will randomly eat kale chips and sag paneer) and doesn't like to eat anything but meat and carbs.  It's super-frustrating and makes meal times kind of the worst because he starts getting all psycho and throws his plate, placemat and utensils on the floor.  I don't really have any great tips for dealing with this.  We basically just move stuff out of his reach, or tell him that this is what he gets for dinner and that's it, or tell him he can't have the thing he wants (bread or meat) until he has some of the thing he doesn't want.  More often than not, for the past month this has meant that he doesn't eat very much dinner at all and we just treat it really matter-of-factly.  I know the kid's not going to starve.  I'm not going down the path of making two meals or changing our diet to suit his whims.  When he turns into a massive juggalo I turn his high chair around so that we both have a chance to reset and so that I can eat a meal without him being disruptive.

It's a little frustrating but mostly we just try to ignore it.  Last night, he really wanted the biscuit but didn't want the borscht.  So I told him no more biscuit until he had some of the soup.  He pitched his placemat and spoon and then did this monster voice thing.  Then he calmed down and started rooting around in his high chair and somehow found a lump of biscuit that had gotten wedged in there.  He picked it up, examined it and said, "Oh! Little bunny [he was calling the biscuits bunnies for some reason].  This guyyyyy."  We almost died laughing.  Calling the scrap of biscuit "this guy" is so funny.

So yeah, he brings us a lot of happiness.  I know much has been made about the studies that show that people without kids are happier than people with kids (but it's balanced by the fact that people with kids find their lives more rewarding).  I asked the Dotytron a few weeks ago if having the Big Yam in his life made him happier and he gave me the "are you crazy?" look and answered very much in the affirmative.  I don't question my level of happiness with the Big Yam in my life nor do I yearn to go back to my childless state (much).

The other night, I pulled all the pillows off the couch and made a fort/tunnel with blankets and sheets and we made a big mess and acted like idiots and it was profoundly enjoyable.  As was teaching the Big Yam to talk like a robot yesterday.  For every moment of being a psycho there is an equal and opposite moment of being a funny little turd burglar.

I forgot to mention that this weekend will forever go down as the weekend in which my mother in law got mad at me for not liking mincemeat tarts.  We were at her house for a bit and eating these pecan butter tarts she had bought and Momma D was like, "when are you going to learn to make mincemeat tarts?" and I was like, "Uh, I don't like mincemeat."  And she gets all snappy and says, "do you even know what they are? It's beef suet!"  and I'm like, "yeah, but I don't really love dried fruit and I hate raisins" and was given a look of withering incredulousness for my troubles.  I was like, "get one of your own kids to make you mincemeat tarts!" Hahaha, oh outlaw moms.  It's nice to know I'm continuing my streak of striking out with every parental figure I come across.

Tonight I'm going to see Thomas Keller with JJ!  We got the tickets that get us a copy of the Bouchon Bakery cookbook.  I'm excited.

Fin.

Le Petit Prince

I've never laughed harder in my life.  I would say that all-told, I put in about 10-15 hours of work into this costume, between going out and buying the fabric and supplies, cutting and sewing the jacket, applying the trim, and then knitting him the wig-hat and pulling the yarn through to make the "hair."  That's a not-insignificant amount of time.  But when he put on the whole thing...it was worth it for the amount of howling the costume elicited.  I mean really, just LOOK AT HIM:

I'm really dreading the day when he's going to express some opinion as to what he wants to be for Halloween and I won't be able to dictate it based on my whims.  Shouts out to SMckay who either came up outright or who planted the seed and enthusiastically supported the vision.  Thanks to G who lent me a pair of her daughter's black leggings.  He definitely looks more like the David Chappelle version of Prince than the actual Prince, but I feel like this just adds to the general cracked out charm of the costume.

We dressed as members of The Revolution

Our costumes weren't as good as the Big Yam's.  A dearth of Halloween parties this year (my two usual suspects for Halloween parties were both out of commission) meant that I didn't put a tonne of effort in.  So unfortunately, you won't have the opportunity to see the Dotytron in his XL silver Spandex leggings from Forever 21.  Not this year anyway.  They're on standby for next year.

This is one of the only group shots I could get from the Halloween party we went to yesterday at my neighbour's house:

I really really really like my neighbours.  I also consider it a personal affront when a neighbour wants to move off the street.    

The birthday party on Saturday was so sweet.  We didn't know very many people but everyone was so nice and so cute, the time just flew by.  They set up an indoor bouncy castle and the Big Yam was in there at first with the girls (because most of the girls were closer to his age) and then stayed in when the boys went in and I'm telling you, I didn't have the stomach for watching my kid in a bouncy castle.  It's way too Thunderdome for me.  I feel like it's a concussion waiting to happen.  Ha!

I was pretty pooped post party so I stayed home while the Dotytron went out to see A play.  It was a good thing too, because he got to have a night with the boys.  A night of being out til 5am and getting wasted and roaming Chinatown in search of cold tea and almost getting into a fight.  He was a hurting unit yesterday.  I took pity on him so I packed up the Boobla and took him with me erranding - we hit up the Farmer's Market and Canadian Tire where I randomly bought a million LED flash lights.  Which will prove to come in handy when this FRANKENSTORM tears down every tree around and we're without power.  I pride myself on my emergency preparedness preoccupation, but I'm not that big of a prepper, really.  We've never talked about escape routes or whatnot in great detail (although it's on my to-do list).  But I am THRUMMING with excitement at the opportunity to mobilize in preparation for the hurricane.  The book I'm reading right now, The Age of Miracles, is certainly helping to get me in the right frame of mind for apocalypse and food shortages and whatnot (it's about what happens when the earth suddenly starts rotating slower on its axis - leading to days and nights that last for 50 hours or more).  

My friend in Ohio, H is super into emergency preparedness (one more thing that makes us kindred spirits), and he gave us his Bug Out Bag contents list.  This list is a thing of beauty.  Coupled with the Dotytron's reinvigorated love of camping, I see many many hundreds of dollars being spent at Mountain Equipment Co-Op in our future.  UV filters!  Collapsible saws!  Machetes!!  Flints!!

Sunday hangover breakkie - corned beef hash & over-easy eggs.

Sunday dinner: spaghetti and meatballs.  I went balls-out Nonna and made 7lbs of meatball mix.  Half got frozen in 2 separate ziploc bags.  The other half turned into meatballs and cooked off.  Of that, half of those were mixed with sauce and put in the freezer for future sliders/sammies/who knows what, and the remainder got turned into the meal you see above.  

Guys, I started my holiday baking on Sunday.  Sorry, didn't mean to stress you out, but I was looking at the calendar and I started freaking - we're booked up until the weekend of November 24th/25th!  Too crazy.  Anyway, in the past, I've done double batches of cookies and frozen them balled up, so that I just have to make 4 or 5 different kinds and can bake up a mixed box as I need them.  Psychologically, making 100-portion batches of cookie dough can be really intimidating.  So I'm switching it up this year and making one batch of a type on Saturday and Sunday leading up to the holidays.  That way, I get to try a bunch of different recipes and reincorporate old favorites, and then I'm not balling up dough and hating my life for hours because I break it up over a few days.  This tactic will give me more variety.  I'm hoping that this will make the process more fun and less grim/utilitarian/militaristic.  I'll report back.  

I'm mostly freaking because I committed myself (in my head) to making the Big Yam an advent calendar, which means I have to be finished it in a month, if I want to start the activities and treats calendar on December 1st (the whole point of an advent calendar).  I also put out notice to my siblings that I'm NOT doing Christmas presents for them this year.  I'm just not going to do it.  Last year was silly.  There was a gag-gift Yankee swap AND the usual secret Santa and I'm just over the tyranny of buying gifts for grown adults.  I think that the holidays is about CHILDREN and I'm also over getting a pile of crap and more stuff.  I'm not feeling it and I really just want to be able to sit around with my family and the Dotytron's family and talk and be cosy and watch movies and eat cookies.  I'm not into the whole army of presents thing the Dotytron's family does.  It just feels silly now that I'm into my thirties.  And it's so much garbage made so no reason.  Anyway, it's been radio silence from my siblings so I think they're just going to ignore me...but I'm holding firm!  Nothing for anyone but the kiddies!  I don't even know if we're going to get the Big Yam anything other than stuff for his stocking.  Realistically, judging by how thrilled he was by our trip to Canadian Tire, I might just stuff his stocking with like, a pair of slippers, a toque and mitts, and a bunch of Canadian Tire money.  

Dinner tonight was a storm-busting borscht (made with short ribs), with dilled sour cream and cheddar-sage biscuits.

Fin.

Artists

What was supposed to be a week of lions ended up being a week of lambs.  Our dinner plans for this evening cancelled, the host is sick and didn't feel up to making dinner for a dozen people (I don't blame him!)

We skipped dodgeball on Wednesday, I was sick on Tuesday, and missed my FROG meeting on Monday. So it's actually been pretty low-key.

Our friend A is visiting from NYC, so we had him over for dinner last night.  We had shrimp and grits with andouille sausage and okra.  It was KILLER.  We also had a hail-mary assist from a neighbour too.  I forgot to turn the slow cooker on before leaving the house and then sent out a frantic APB to all my neighbours to see who could come into our house and turn it on for us.  Love my neighbours, love my 'hood.

Anyway, through the course of conversation last night A was talking about how his recently released record is akin to his child (in reference to some friends who he'd given a copy to and hadn't given it a listen).  I gotta say, I really really really disagree with this statement.  Obviously, context is everything, A wasn't using it on a one-to-one level the way I've heard it employed elsewhere.  He was just using it as a shorthand to say that the album was really important to him and he wanted his friends to give it a listen.  I get that, I totally do.  But here's the thing: I kind of believe that as an artist, your painting/dance/theatre performance, etc. isn't your child, it's YOUR JOB.  People have children ON TOP of their jobs, not as a replacement for them (for the most part).

I always see all these things on Facebook and on my internet travels that feature pithy little statements about art and the value of art and how artists do it FOR THE LOVE OF IT, blah blah blah as if producing art is more pure or a more difficult path than other career trajectories.  I'm sorry, but I don't buy it.  I'm not saying it's NOT hard.  I'm sure it's very very very hard and challenging and I know there are a lot of jobs out there that aren't as difficult or trying.  BUT IT'S NOT THE ONLY ONE TRUE CHALLENGING JOB.  It just isn't.  Look at my littlest bro and his dentist aspirations.  Look at what the Dotytron does for crissakes.  Look at the expertise you need to do policy research or policy analysis and like, help the province run.  Everyone (for the most part, of people I know and consider peers) has a hard job.  It would be difficult for me to step into the shoes of a lot of people I know and do what they do, the same way it would be difficult for them to do what I do.

Which isn't to say that we don't all have days when we need a boost and need some support or just want to complain and b***h about our lot.  I'm just saying it's not like artists have the exclusive right to that line, ya know?

Also, talk to me when you work a full 40 hour work week, EVERY week.  So few artists I know do that.  Same with my grad student friends.  Talk to me when you put in a consistent 8:30-5:30pm EVERY DAY, and then we can talk.  I used to work consistent 60+ hour work weeks.  Then I got my current job and 40 hours felt like a dream, but my 40 hours is still MILES above what my grad student friends pull.  Grad student friends are like, wake up at 9, leisurely coffee drink, read Salon and Gawker, grocery shop...uh, NONE OF THAT COUNTS AS WORK TIME!

Anyway, this is all to say that I find likening your work product to a child is silly.  Not that children are such precious, special, all-consuming tasks, but more like, very often, people are doing their parenting ON TOP of working full time jobs, so the comparison isn't apt, from a time-investment perspective.  *Insert cringey FB meme about how "I work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.  I AM A MOTHER"*  LOL!  Those memes make my insides contract with displaced embarrassment.

My not-so-new-but-has-to-be-reiterated obsession is with the Beckham family and specifically, any photos I see featuring Harper Seven.  I just want Posh and Becks to adopt me.  First of all, that baby is freakin' adorable.  Second of all, I love what good parents Posh and Becks seem to be.  Third of all, I love that despite VB's plussed up fashion sense, she always seems to dress Harper tastefully.  Like, Harper's not always jacked up to the nines the way J-Lo's kids are or like Suri Cruise or Mimi's kids are and a lot of the times Harper is wearing pants and a shirt that are totally normal and suitable for Upper East Side/probably will be sent to boarding school rich kid play.  Not like, the rough and tumble, communal snack play of regular people's kids, but still not approaching the levels of fancy froufrou that rich kids could go.  Fourthly, I want that cape that Harper is wearing up there.

For dinner tonight we had our favorite Afghani takeout from Bamiyan.  So. Good.  

The other night we had freezer tomato basil tart (which the Dotytron over-browned in the oven) alongside a salad of cornmeal-crusted fried green tomatoes, bacon, and greens with a buttermilk-chive dressing.  The salad was so good that I snapped up a bunch more green tomatoes from the CSA to futz around with.

I'm freaking out because we only have 4 more freezer meals left and I'm an emergency preparedness hoarder so only 4 meals seems dangerously low to me.  I'm a headcase.

I have also chosen to embark on the lunacy that is making cake balls.  I'm going to split it up over a few days and hope that this will make the process more bearable.  It was a snap decision that I made when I was trying to think of what I could bring to the kids Halloween party we're going to on Sunday, and to bring into the drop in centre for the annual Halloween potluck next Wednesday.  For some reason, CAKE BALLS seemed logical.  Which is INCREDIBLY stupid, in hindsight.  But, I had already bought the cake mix and the frosting.  As my friend G so sagely suggested - why couldn't I just turn the box cake and frosting into cupcakes?  BECAUSE I'M A PSYCHO, THAT'S WHY.  According to the immutable logic (?) of my me-ness, box cake mix is okay for the purposes of cake balls, but to bring in boxed cake cupcakes to a party as a representation of what I do (even though, at the drop in centre, that table of food is going to be a randomonium smorgasbord of the highest order), is unacceptable.  Because I'm a psycho.  

Here's a pic of the finished product:

Never Again.

We just did a little Big Yam Halloween costume dress rehearsal...and let me tell you - it's pretty awesome.  

Fin.

Home sick

I left work early yesterday sick and stayed home from work today.  Which means I missed the FROG meeting yesterday and I'm feeling guilty.  I want to get more involved in community doings and joining FROG was going to be my entry point.  That crew needs all the help they can get.  They were waiting to meet in person to assign tasks and I was like, "why don't you set up a Google document with the tasks so we can sign ourselves up and get started?" *sound of crickets*  It's basically as bad as some of the teachers in the Dotytron's current school who REFUSE TO USE EMAIL.  Like, don't have accounts, refuse to learn, cannot be contacted that way.  I feel like that's completely unacceptable in this day and age!  Ridiculous.

In between napping on the couch, I've had time to contemplate a few things:

1) I've decided that I want a very dark, deep, matte navy nail polish and it's proving impossible to find.
2) My new fall weekend uniform consists of: boyfriend jeans, New Balance, a t-shirt, thin sweater, or a long-sleeved henley, and a blazer.  I feel like I'm KILLING it in this outfit.
3) The Big Yam reciting a signature SMckay catchphrase:

Last night the Dotytron made us shakshuka eggs for dinner:

I am LOVING our new placemats.  I got them from Modern Twist - they do these silicone placemats that are awesome!  Wipeable, easy to keep clean, great designs.  I got the Kyoto design in lemon, to go with our accent colour.  This design is actually out of print so I had to do some chasing to gather up enough for 8 settings.  Love!!!

Tonight we had freezer chicken tikka masala and eggplant bharta with brown rice and rotis:

This is the Big Yam feeding homemade play dough to Dom:

My friend G hipped me to this 10 minute homemade playdough recipe (available here).  It's AWESOME!  It takes less than 10 minutes...about 30 seconds, really.  I like it because it's less crumbly than regular playdough...it didn't seem to get everywhere, and I like that I'm controlling the ingredients so if the odd piece gets into his mouth, I feel comfortable that it's not going to give him weird horns or anything.

Uhhh...that's it for me.  I'm off to bed again.

Fin.

Momofuku Noodle Bar / Is You Tweaking?

This is a summary of my post-work/weekend activities for the upcoming week:

Monday - meeting with the Friends of Greenwood Park (FROG) to plan the upcoming Fall Festival
Tuesday - rehearsal for Lolly's wedding
Wednesday - dodgeball (but we will likely skip)
Thursday - our friend A is visiting from NYC and coming over for dinner and hangs
Friday - dinner at B & G's house, their thank you for all the peeps who helped with their wedding
Saturday - Mandarin school and then a birthday party in Whitby and then one of us (only the Dotytron, probably) going to see A's show at the Rex
Sunday - hosting the Dotytron's former colleague K and her partner G for brunch followed by an afternoon Halloween party at a neighbour's house

FML FML FML FML FML FML FML FML FML FML.

The Dotytron added the brunch in yesterday and I was like, this is NOT a good idea but he heeded me not.  He says he's going to do all the work.  OMG - I'm SO TIRED just looking at that schedule of events!

This weekend was jam-packed but fun.

Friday night we went to Lolly's colleague's house and she bought us dinner and we listened to the Dotytron and her colleague run through the wedding music.  Lolly's colleague's wife also proceeded to TERRIFY the Big Yam with a series of activities/toys that I think she thought were going to be kid-friendly but really just ended up reducing him to tears (this included: a monkey mask, a toy rat that looked like Nicodemus from The Secrets of Nimh, and a wizard puppet).

Saturday I stayed home and prepped the house while the Dotytron took on Mandarin school duty with the Big Yam.  Who ran into the ping pong table and cut his lip and bled all over the place.  Running into the ping pong table at Chinese school is beyond perfect.  The only thing better would have been if he had tripped over a panda.

Then SMckay came over and I got to witness her and the the Dotytron doing individual fake slow-dancing in my living room as they figured out the tempo of a song.  I love that girl.  She is such a good friend and so positive and funny and warm.  

My youngest bro came over for dinner with his new girlfriend and told us tales from dental school which scared us STRAIGHT.  If you don't brush your teeth every 12 hours there's an impenetrable wall of bacteria that gets built up on your teeth.  And the school is INTENSE.  It's like four years of 12 classes each term or some craziness.  And he went through hell to get there.  But once you're in, they give you lots of chances - you can re-take exams and tests twice or something.  He told us his professor said the following, in response to some of the student's qualms about the heavy workload, "Do you know what they call the person with the worst grades in dental school?  Doctor."  BA-DUM, CHING!

 Saturday breakfast: English bacon, avocado, tomato, and egg sandwich (totally off the record)

I made us honey glazed ribs (that were marinated in a hoisin-sriracha-honey-ginger sauce), baked squash, brussels sprouts, and potatoes with sour cream and chives.  Pumpkin pie with whipped cream for dessert.

I also whipped up the Big Yam's Halloween costume which is looking more and more hilarious by the second.  I basically sewed up a nehru jacket, guys.  No big deal.  It was my first time sewing something from a pattern and it was pretty doable!  I think all-told with the cutting and sewing, it took me about 3 hours to do?  That's not too shabby!

Sunday morning the Dotytron whipped up a batch of his signature waffles and we ate that with sausage from our CSA.

Then we did backyard-y type chores at our house and at Momma D's house.

Then we met our friends MHui and her hubby for dinner at the Momofuku Noodle Bar.  We ordered almost the whole menu (I think we skipped 3 items) and the bill came to $148 (including tax, without tip).  Overall, I'd say the food was good, but not great (individual comments will follow the pictures of the dishes below).  I think David Chang is suffering from being over-hyped (not his fault) and that the concept has to be situated in a particular time and place.  When we first went to Momofuku Noodle bar, 8 or 9 years ago, ramen restaurants weren't as ubiquitous as they are now.  This was a time pre-Ippudo, in NYC.  No one was really taking Asian foods and making them with Berkshire pork or serving it in a no-reservations place in the East Village.  No one was doing updated, re-imagined Asian street food and serving it up all low-key styles.  At the time, what Chang was doing was revolutionary.

The problem is that this is TORONTO.  We have Banh Mi Boys (who are admittedly, in the debt of Chang for blazing a trail for them to follow), we have amazing regional Chinese, Japanese, all kinds of Asian cuisine, a billion ramen joints on every block.  So for Momofuku to touch down now, so long after the seismic shift, there's no way it's not going to feel like a bit anti-climactic.  The food was good, the service was poor (diffident, bordering on rude), but I'm not in a rush to go back.  It was aight, but at that price, and with that limited selection, (wait for it) (you know where I'm going to go with this)...I'd rather go to Guu.

 Momofuku rice cakes.  These were fat, dense, rice-flour gnocchi-like dumplings, which were very chewy.  The sauce coating them was nice, sweet and mildly spicy, but the sauce didn't penetrate the "cake" and so you got a thin coating of flavour and then a rubbery, bland rice flavour underneath.

 The famous bao.  Rice flour bread around pork belly with cucumber and hoisin.  Delicious.

 Chicken wings: lightly smoked, meaty, very tasty, in another sweet-spicy sauce.

 Chicken and egg - sticky rice with more thinly sliced pickled cucumber, crisp-skinned roasted chicken and the famous Momofuku soft-poached egg.

 A cold vegetarian rice noodle dish.

 Chilled spicy noodles with crispy-sugared cashews, pork sausage, baby spinach, with a spicy sauce that you tossed together with the noodles.  This was probably my favorite dish.

The ramen.  Somewhat anti-climatic.  The broth was very mild, but not too salty, which is nice.  The noodles were overcooked.  The egg runny - I doubt they make the fish cake in-house.  Good but not great.  I like it less than Kinton's.  

I will say that this was the PERFECT Sunday night night out.  We left the house around 4pm, finished dinner by 6pm, stopped by Baker Bots for ice cream sandwich desserts and we were home by 8pm, in time to put the Big Yam to bed and watch a few episodes of Sons of Anarchy.  SO GOOD!  That's exactly what I want out of a Sunday evening, nowadays.

This is the Big Yam's new favorite show that he gets to watch at J's.  It's called "My Big Big Friend."  I've never watched an episode, but the Big Yam started singing the theme and now it's in my head all the time.  I discovered that it's actually from Brazil, so the new rule is, if we let him watch an episode, it's got to be in Portuguese.  Ha!  Are there no ends to my diabolical attempts to ruin his childhood?  

Fin.

Bleach bath

Last night I had a date to go see this documentary, Marina Abramovic: The Artist is Present.  I am lucky enough to live very very close to an uber-indie theatre that specializes in shlock, horror, indie cinema.  It's great.  They took over an old, underused Indian theatre in the hood and started showing great documentaries and other features that are cult, fringe, and mostly of interest to a cinephile market.  This would have been the first time for me to visit the theatre.  My friend S and I show up, and we're told that unfortunately, the copy of the movie the theatre has is all scratched up.  But their newly opened sister theatre, at Bloor and Christie, is going to show the doc in 30 minutes and we have enough time to make it there.

I was a little skeptical because the only theatre I know of in the Bloor and Christie area shows porn.  It's the Metro (pictured below).  The dude we spoke to at the Projection Booth East (my location) was like, "We're still fine-tuning the details - the sound and picture aren't quite where I want it" at the Metro, but I was like, okay, we might as well go.  I assumed that they weren't still showing porn and the theatre was in transition.

I was wrong.  ICKY ICKY ICKY!!!  The place was like something out of David Lynch.  You walked in, there was a fat, stinky guy sitting in a CAGED booth who was the projectionist (I think).  He told us that the theatre was being "cleaned" and to wait.  We waited and finally he told us we could go into the theatre (the person allegedly cleaning the theatre never came out).  Inside was huge, with plastic seats (original - they hadn't changed them!!!), smelling of second hand smoke, basement, and other grossness.  The place was eerily lit with gaudy gilt chandeliers and blue lighting, interspersed with random flashes from a strobe light.  I was VERY uncomfortable.  The whole movie I basically sat stiff on the edge of my seat, clenching all my extremities in towards my torso and trying to avoid touching anything.

The documentary itself though, was extraordinary.  Mainly because Abramovic herself is so interesting and compelling.  She calls herself the "Grandmother of Performance Art" and her body of work is extraordinary.  To go with a major retrospective of her work at the MOMA in 2010, called The Artist is Present, she came up with a performance piece.  For the duration of the retrospective, from the time the Museum opened til it closed, she would sit in a chair and be present.  Museum goers could sit in a chair opposite her.  In between participants, she closes her eyes and lowers them, essentially "re-setting" the piece.  The she lifts her head and gazes at the participant.  For like, 12 hours a day, 6 days a week, for 3 months.  Just sitting.  It is a phenomenally complicated, challenging, thought-provoking piece that calls into question so many elements.  

The idea of the artist being present is so conceptually deep.  The participant is at once caught in "the gaze" of the artist (which never happens) in a reversal of traditional engagement with art.  At the same time, the museum goer is an active participant in the piece, so not just a passive receiver of the gaze - they are also gazing in turn.  The question becomes: who is the artist?  It also challenges the idea of museums at places where art "happens" and the codification of behaviours of artistic reception and meaning-making.  By asking the museum-goer to be such an active (and yet passive) participant, the entire system and structure of art is called into question.  What goes through the heads of the participants?  How conscious must they be of the arrangement of their own features, of how they are to mediate their experience, of the work and artifice and conditioning that goes into being a "person in a museum looking at a piece of art?"  I could go on and on.  

The documentary focuses on this piece and the months leading up to the staging of the retrospective (Abramovic hired some 30 odd up and coming artists to stand in for her in re-creating 5 famous performance art pieces from her past).  There is a reconnection with Abramovic's partner, the performance artist Ulay - they have long since separated.  Ulay goes to MOMA and Abramovic breaks down and reaches across the table to hold his hands.  Everything is so calculated with her - that moment rang false.  As S said, she's a total ham.  That's one of the threads drawn from the documentary - how to separate Abramovic as a person from Abramovic the performer (if such a thing is possible - which it doesn't seem to be).  I loved this film and I loved the piece.  It was inspiring and invigorating.

I will say this for watching it in an adult movie theatre - I could totally relate.  The stiffness in my body from trying to minimize touching ANYTHING definitely gave me an inkling (however small - the doc is only 90 minutes long and Abramovic did the the piece for a total of almost 800 hours) of her strength and forbearance.  It was also so interesting to watch the reactions of the participants.  The emotions in their faces, their reactions.  It was great.  Highly recommended.

Wednesday night's dinner: the Irie Pumpkin Stew (made with Kabocha squash this time, and scotch bonnets), served with coconut brown rice and beet greens.

Last night's dinner: whole wheat penne with kale and Italian sausage in a pesto cream sauce.

Tonight we're going to Lolly's colleague's house to preview the tunes for her wedding.  I had the day off today, but I was busy.  Grocery shopping, kept the Big Yam home for a bit, etc.

Fin.

NEVER...

...take a baby/toddler to a wedding.

I know you were thinking that I was going to end that with..."fall in love" *cue Whitney Houston's I Will Always Love You* but no.  Never fall in love is TOTALLY a rule for bodyguards, don't get me wrong, I'm not asking you to take that proscription lightly.  But for any parents and prospective parents out there, even if your baby/toddler is invited to the wedding, don't take them.  Seriously.  It's the worst.  It just ruins your time.  They're not having fun, because there aren't any other kids there and it's a late night, and you don't have any fun, because you're worried about them or trying to eat roast beef one handed with a giant 30 pound sack of potatoes out cold over your shoulder.  It's a giant fun-suck.

We went to the Dotytron's uncle's wedding last night.  In Ancaster.  ON A SUNDAY NIGHT.  I don't know what I was expecting - I figured a Sunday night wedding would be a quickie civil ceremony followed by a quick dinner - I figured I'd be home by 9:30-10, at the latest.  I didn't factor on a hour plus long cocktail reception and a 45 minute ceremony and the full slate of speeches.  I just didn't.  It's my fault.  We also made the monumentally horrible decision to carpool with Momma D...so we couldn't leave.  NEVER EVER EVER NOT TAKE YOUR OWN CAR, PEOPLE!  Be you not so foolish as I-and-I (we)!  All we wanted was to be able to hop in the car, grab some McDonald's and head home.  But we were trapped!  The poor little Bubba was a good sport, he really was.  He didn't cry or complain, but he got really tired and overwhelmed by a million old white people.  I don't blame him, really.  Also the Ancaster Old Mill, while a gorgeous spot for a wedding, is weirdly committed to stupid details like NOT HAVING PROPER HIGH CHAIRS.  Instead, what they have is these weird wooden things with this cloth crotch-strap that you tie around your kid.  Even CRACKER BARREL, which is FULLY committed to being period-correct, has a decent (wooden) high chair that you can strap your kid into.

Anyway, that's my advice for you.  You want to drink and have a good time and not have your genuine happiness for the couple getting hitched to be marred by your own seething resentment at your own stupidity for not seeing clearly how your evening would go down with a toddler in tow.

The pluses: the Dotytron's new suit looks banging.  We got him a new charcoal suit and tie and it's a much more modern cut than he's used to.  He's spent the ENTIRE time since picking up the suit complaining about how he "hates his new suit" and how the pants are "skin tight" but when he put the suit on, he looked like a stone fox.  You don't put someone who is 6'4" and naturally slender in a boxy suit.

I wore this vintage, dusty rose dress I bought years ago.  It's really quite flattering and I wore my platform Seychelles and looked pretty hotsy if I do say so myself.  That's me and the Big Yam up there - the Big Yam already looked a little peaked.

It didn't help that the wedding followed the Big Yam's birthday lunch - AYCE Indian food.  My family came and Dr. Rei and Hanbo and Momma D and Ehmdo.  It was fun!  Big D came and it was the best.  He totally turns it on when he's out and it's so cute.  I love it when Big D turns it on.  It's the BEST.  You're always like, "uhh, who IS that guy!?!" cracking jokes and yukking it up and pestering my brother on cell phone plan details.  

It didn't help that the night before, I was up til midnight putting together the Big Yam's play kitchen.  Imagine putting together an Ikea fridge, stove, counter, oven, microwave, cabinets, sink and phone...BUT MINI:

There is only one word for it: hell.  It took me just over 2 hours and I almost stripped a few screws AND all the skin off my thumb in the process.

It didn't help that we had spent that afternoon at my friend P's Annual Competition Backyard BBQ, which raises funds for Common Ground Co-Operative.  P is a maniac.  He turns his backyard (which is giant) into a hay-strewn, tent-bedecked mini Toronto Underground Market.  AND he enters like 3 different categories and cooks up a brisket that is tasty enough to make you cry tears of joy.  He is an inspiration to us all.  

TOO MANY THINGS this past weekend!  TOO MANY THINGS.  

In other news, today I found out that the job interview I had been preparing for, for the past two weeks, has been cancelled and they decided to not post the position after all.  This was of course, EXTREMELY DEMORALIZING.  I was primed!  I was ready!  I really really really wanted the opportunity to do this job!      At the very least, I really really really wanted the opportunity to INTERVIEW for this job!  

On Friday night we had burgers & sweet potato fries.  

I love me a good old fashioned homemade burger.

Saturday's post Mandarin school homemade sausage and egg McMuffins.

On Saturday night we had that Thai coconut curry soup with rice noodles.

Last night we had grilled cheese sandwiches with freezer minestrone/wedding soup reheated together.  Then I chased that with a billion pounds of wedding-favour shortbread and the Big Yam's portion of prime rib (which was HUGE) from the wedding.  THIS IS OFF THE RECORD, MY FITNESS PAL!  Snitches get stitches!  I'm clearly stress eating my face off.

Tonight we had "sorry they decided to cancel the interview" takeout fried chicken and butter tarts and a million shortbread cookies.  THIS IS OFF THE RECORD, MY FITNESS PAL!

Fin.

In praise of FLOR

We agonized over whether or not to cover up our beautiful new bamboo floors with a rug in the living room. It was a tough decision but all it took was one look at a teensy tiny baby scratch from one of the Big Yam's toys (really, it might have just been a hair or a large speck of dust - but who knows?) for the Dotytron to be firmly TEAM RUG.  So I looked and looked and pinned and dog-eared and we couldn't find anything that was quite right.  Either the size wasn't right or it was too plush or too light or really, just too expensive (that happens a lot with rugs, you'll find).

We have a little mat at the front door that's made up with two oatmeal coloured FLOR carpet tiles that I bought on a whim at CB2 but generally, a whole 16 square FLOR rug costs as much, if not more, than a rug that you don't have to put together yourself.  Then I saw that they were having a sale.  So we snapped up 16 of the Petal Pusher design in Poppy:

The pattern is kinda cray, but I like the pops of color and the yellow picks up on our accent colour.  I didn't want anything particularly neutral because of cat  vomit and general living concerns (read: having to listen to the Dotytron talk about stains and how we need to buy a special carpet cleaner solvent blah blah blah).  I also like the fact that it was a cheap investment and that if something goes wrong with one tile, you can just swap it out.  It's a bit loud, but you can't see it unless you're sitting in the room, so it's not terribly distracting, plus, I think it gives us a good base now for this teak mid-century coffee table we got for a song but don't generally put out because it's too big.  The block of colour from the teak will break up the colour.  Most importantly, it's a soft, sustainable, ecologically sound surface for our butts and for the Big Yam to play on.  

Here's the thing with FLOR carpet tiles, though.  FLOR is always like, "we can't guarantee that the pattern will line up" (the tiles have a rubber backing that makes them non-stick so basically you just stick them to each other with what amounts to glorified round address labels)...but I'm like, "Uhhh...why not?"  Seriously!  We would have a perfectly lovely looking carpet if they had just sent us 2 more of one variation of the pattern instead of the one they did send.  How hard would that be to execute?  Not very.  It does make for some visual interest but at the same time I'm like, this makes no G-D sense.  There's no good reason other than laziness!!!

Overall, I'm very happy with the carpet.  It's already made floor chilling way more enjoyable.  

A Very Bubby Birthday

In case you're keeping count, this is the second celebration of the Bubby's birthday.  I took the day off yesterday to spend time with him.  I kept it pretty low-concept.  We went for a walk, did some grocery shopping, he got to put stuff in the cart, we hung out with the Roomie and T, then we baked his cake, and his Nana, Auntie Ehmdo, and R from R&R Acres, and Nana's sister came over and we had dinner and opened presents and ate cake.

It was just the right amount of fun!

People got him the perfect gifts too.  A good mix of books and the kind of small-ish educational, wooden items that I encourage.  Momma D got him a play kitchen that we still have to set up, but it wasn't mountains of plastic, noise-making eyesores, which my sanity and sense of aesthetics definitely appreciates!

Auntie Tiff et Family got him a puzzle and this wooden fruit chopping set that he LOVES.

The Most Hilarious/Awesome present award goes to Auntie Ehmdo, who gave him a personalized pillow with Instagram photos from his life on it.  SO GOOD.  

No shots of his birthday dinner or cake.  I kept is simple.  He likes meat and cake (real, and stuff he mistakes for cake), so I seared flank steaks and served them with smashed CSA potatoes with a bacon-chive sour cream, sautéed mushrooms, and roasted beets.  For his cake we had a very simple banana cake barely frosted with a thin layer of cream cheese frosting.  He's going to be getting more cake at his birthday lunch on Sunday (we're having AYCE Indian buffet in recognition of his most favourite of cuisines), so I wanted to keep this one basic.  We're also going to a wedding Sunday night which will mean MORE cake.  So he's definitely covered in the sweets department for the forseeable future.  

I can't believe he's two!  He really is a swell kid.  I don't know what else to say.  He brings us a lot of happiness.  

This is the little guy all tuckered out in his bed with his two buddies: Dom (the bear) and Tabby (the baby doll - he named her after the Roomie's baby).  We named the bear Dominik in reference to a certain happy hardcore DJ from Toronto.  Dom (the bear) makes a squeaky noise and he also has a touch of the crazy E'd out eyes, and we used to prop a shaker in his arm and then bounce him up and down so he was totally raved out.  The Big Yam shortened it to Dom on his own.  

Fin.

Best & Wurst

Blargh.  Under a lot of stress right now.  I'm feeling a lot of transposed stress from what my Outlaw Bro and Sis are going through right now - in the thick of the campaign with less than a month to go.  I just wish I could do more to help them out and it's killing me watching them have to slog through the muck and mire.

My sister and I are also polar opposites in a lot of respects.  When it comes to stuff like organization or tidiness we're like two positively charged ions.  She hasn't converted to the gospel of organization or being a type A micromanager the way I have.  BUT DON'T YOU SEE HOW MUCH EASIER IT MAKES YOUR LIFE?!??!!!  She says, to everyone else in the whole world.

This weekend was jam-packed.  It started with EPIC ARMAGEDDON between me and the Dotytron that was forged in the flames of: travelling, long-weekend traffic, the Dotytron being responsible for packing the car, and a failure to return cell phone calls.  Any one of those things will turn me into a mad dog on a good day.  Combine them all?!  It was the worst and I basically turned into this guy:

Note: I've actually never seen Yellow Submarine because I only semi-care about the Beatles.  

The point is: it got uuugggglllly.  Then in classic me armageddon-quickly-flaming-out-to-a-bed-of-cold-coals fashion, I was like, "I'm done with being an a**hole! Let's start over!"  Hahaha.  I'm a jerk of the highest order.  Anyway, we ended up at WVRST for dinner and a combination of sausages, duck-fat fried fries and a substantial list of interesting beers went a long way to tempering the Dotytron's ire.  

The concept is similar to that place in Cleveland that we LOVE, Happy Dog.  You order either a basic ($6) or gourmet (think kangaroo and duck - $9) sausage either on a bun or served currywurst style with a curried ketchup dipping sauce, you add on your choice of 2 of 4 toppings, decide if you want fries and with your fries you get a choice of 2 of many dipping sauces.  The Dotytron had the boerewors and an oktoberfest sausage, I had a brat and their calabrese.  The duck fat fries were really good - salty and crispy and improbably soft on the inside...though not necessarily worth the extra money...given that you're dunking the fries in sauce anyway.  The sausages were all uniformly good - except the Dotytron didn't like his boerewors.    The toppings are kind of uninspired - onions, under-cooked peppers, sauerkraut and hot peppers don't really add to the taste experience much.  Overall, this is a good place to go with a group of people, since splitting the bill is easy and they're all big long communal tables.  It would actually be a pretty good place to bring kids, if they weren't being such giant King West jerks about it (i.e. it's super loud in there and they turn down the lights at like, 7pm and it's full of King West bros).  The beers were expensive but the list is interesting (according to my dining companion).  I liked it but I'm not in a hurry to go back.  It's a good, quick, decently priced option though.

Saturday morning we did a 5km run (me and the Dotytron) and the rest of the family did a walk in support of this organization that helps victims of domestic abuse.  It was my first official 5km (like, I got a number and everything!) and I haven't been running in forever.  I'm not exactly sure of my overall time, BECAUSE I MISSED THE TURN TO THE FINISH POINT AND OVERRAN.  Also, trying to stay with the Dotytron slowed me down.  I was ahead of the Dotytron and he finished around 29 minutes, so I'm saying my time was 29 minutes.  I'm pretty proud of myself!  Mostly for beating the Dotytron and for not having practised at all.  As the Dotytron said, "I'm proud of you, and you're proud of you, but you're not as proud of me as I am of you, so basically, you're DOUBLY proud of yourself, but I get the shaft."  LOL!  So true!  Haha.

The rest of the day was pretty low-key.  The Dotytron and I stayed and watched the babies while the rest of the family was out stumping/doing family stuff.

This happened.  I cannot describe to you how thoroughly DISGUSTED Little Big Cuz looked when the Big Yam hopped on this little car buck-naked.  Little Big Cuz kept giving me the look like, "Uhhh...can you do something about this?" and was definitely not okay with how okay the Big Yam is with being naked.

The Big Yam LOVES his cousins.  Loves them!  It's so cute.  He's so blasé about other kids normally but he was just beaming being around them and spent time actually playing WITH Little Big Cuz instead of playing individually alongside him.  It was cute.  When the two woke up from their nap, I offered them a snack and Little Big Cuz (LBC) started chirping "snack! snack!" and led me to the snack counter at my sister's which is an impressive mountain of every name brand snack you could possible want or desire.  As we all know, I'm super-mean about sugar/salt consumption so I grabbed the healthiest option (graham crackers, which to me are the cookie equivalent of Proustian madeleines) and doled them out.  The Big Yam, who is routinely denied sweets was in the throes of ecstasy.  LBC?  Not so much.  He held the cracker in a limp, disdaining wrist and gave me the most, "b***h, PLEASE." look and then ground the cracker to crumbs on my sister's couch.  Crumbs that the Big Yam then spent 10 minutes LICKING UP.  Those two!

Sunday morning we went to an AYCE breakfast at a Veteran's Hall.  Ummmm...these oldies are NOT kidding around!  Scrambled eggs, sausage links, toast, home fries, pancakes, french toast, biscuits, sausage gravy, orange juice.  ALL YOU CAN EAT.  FOR FIVE DOLLARS A PERSON.  Like banh mi, this breakfast operates outside the laws of macro and microeconomics.  I ended up donating more because a) they're old people and b) that was one of the finest sausage gravies I've ever had in my LIFE.  So good!

Then we went to this place Stokoe Farms, which is a pumpkin patch, petting zoo type thing.  The Big Yam had his mind blown going on a tractor ride.  We launched pumpkins and climbed a giant mountain of hay bales and launched mini pumpkins at a broken down van in a field (BEST!).  There was also some ziplinining happening - check out the Dotytron's form:

In a corn maze.  What I learned: my upper limit for a corn maze participation is about 10 seconds.  Then I need to get OUT, like yesterday.

For dinner we got dinner from the hilariously named Questa Lasagna, which actually does a really, really good lasagna.  Think: heavy on the mozzarella top layer so you get a 1 cm thick gooey, burnished layer of cheese with some crispy edge bits.  Good stuff.  We also did a cake and did an early birthday celebration for the Big Yam.

Monday we headed home in the afternoon.  We took the route that takes us along side roads and through these cute towns.  We stopped at the Pok-A-Dot, which is the cutest thing I've ever seen:

The Pok-A-Dot is known for their beef on weck, which is a Western New York thing - shaved sliced roast beef served on a salt bun with optional horseradish.  The bun is what makes this dish truly special - it's flecked with caraway, which I don't usually like as a flavouring, but I think the top of the bun is brushed with salt water, so you get a nice salty kick before biting through the yielding bun into the relatively moist, unseasoned meat below.  Good stuff.

That was my weekend!  

Last night we had the Roomie and T over for dinner.  We had cheddar broccoli soup and grilled fresh mozzarella, onion, and tomato jam sammies for dinner.

LOOK AT THAT BABY!  The cutest!!!

Last week's dinner of steamed brown rice w/ Chinese sausage & Chinese stir-fry greens from my CSA, with braised pork belly 

Tonight's dinner of baked eggplant parmesan on my new Modern Twist Kyoto placemats!

I was really mad on Friday before leaving town and what turned me around was opening the trunk of the car and seeing this craft the Big Yam had made at daycare.  So freakin' cute.

Fin.