yay day off!

so the month of december is going to be buck. we (the royal we) knew that. is it ever anything but? this week has been/will be insane. i entertained twice already! S came over on wednesday night for dinner and a visit. i had planned on making a cream of cauliflower soup with paninis, came home, walked up to the fridge, pulled out the head of cauliflower ... only to discover that it was ROTTEN TO THE CORE. gross! i was mortified. i also didn't have a backup plan, so i was floundering and then S swept in and made a quickie indian "kraft dinner" - a bean and potato curry that we had with steamed white rice, a dollop of my ridiculously expensive and ever-so-dear sheep's milk yoghurt (which is AMAZING with curry), and a squeeze of lemon juice.

as i told her later, it's a measure of how comfortable i am with her that i only lost 4 hours of sleep stewing over my bad hostessing that night. i've been flagellating myself over it ever since. it's just SO NOT ME. it was a very hearty vegetarian meal though, and i was grateful. thank goodness i had tonnes of extra mini-cupcakes to offer. S said it was indian karma because i refused to let her bring anything. lol!

we also marveled at the strange and unsettling sight of the two ugly jonas brothers (round-face jonas and flat-iron jonas) introducing cute jonas (that's nick jonas to the most of us) who then sang a song BY HIMSELF. we were totally weirded out. this was during the grammy nominations live concert. luckily, S fired off an email to her 14 year old sister who set us straight, stat.

that night we also had an unexpected drop-by from the dotytron's sis and her friend. full house!

here are some shots of the open house:




p.s. that's only a fraction of the food. T goes NUTS! i made only a fraction of the food (aren't my mini-cupcakes [top photo] cute?) i was telling people that when i used to work in professional catering, we would NEVER make this staggering variety of items...because it MAKES NO SENSE (but tastes so good). i was working the night shift on tuesday night and stayed til 10pm and basically ate a dinner of cookies and punch. l'chaim!


last night we fired off the rest of our xmas cards and i started cutting out the pattern for my quilted tree skirt. yes, you read that right. today involves: getting up, baking off cookies for my massage therapist, a massage, baking smckay's b-day cake for tonight, frosting said cake, making a charlotte a la russe for tomorrow's russian dr. zhivago fest, making a batch of fake english almond toffee, making drapes for the dotytron's room, making my quilted tree skirt, making my felt wreath, and hopefully doing some knitting and making my festive garland. also making time to do a small round of grocery shopping and re-upping on xmas cards because we RAN OUT. holy cats!

this weekend is gangbusters. tonight i'm going to smckay's b-day jam in guelph. then tomorrow morning i'm meeting my mum for breakkie and then we're going to this t-fal warehouse sale. then i'm coming home and hosting dr. rei, hanbo, and architect L for dinner (russian-themed). then we may or may not watch dr. zhivago. there's also our friend O's 30th birthday party. AND we were invited to another holiday mixer at another friend's house that we have to bail on. sunday morning we're going to see my friend C's adopted baby (incidentally, the people hosting live in dr. rei and hanbo's building! which obviously means that an early morning nicky nicky nine doorsing is in order) then we have to get our xmas lights, our tree lights, tree stand, and tree and set that up. then we rest.

phew!

which basically means that i have to get cracking NOW.


p.s. last night we watched "autism: the musical" a documentary about a program run by a woman in california - she takes autistic kids (her own son is severely autistic) for 20 weeks and produces a variety show, with songs and skits. it's crazy. it was really moving to see the effect that having an autistic child can have on the family dynamics and a marriage. a lot of marriages didn't seem to survive. the kids ran across the whole spectrum. there was one kid that i kept insisting was just eccentric but that the dotytron claimed didn't have the cognitive abilities to be able to function autonomously. the other kids though you could totally tell had some kind of disorder. did you know that stills' (of crosby, stills and nash) son has aspbergers? he's in the documentary. the rest of the night consisted of me trying to make the case that some people we know were autism spectrum and getting the dotytron to agree with me. one of my principal arguments for this one dude was because "he doesn't know when he's boring people" lol!

the rest of the night was spent reading the "blue pages" out of the ontario teacher's magazine, or as the dotytron calls it, "us magazine for teachers" - it basically lists all the charges or people who've been put up for disciplinary action and what the outcome was. it was HILARIOUS. one of the teachers was charged for repeatedly (over a 10 year span) touching the buttocks of colleagues, which he blamed on his "poor eyesight" LOL!!!!!!!

fin.