holiday buckfest

has officially begun in earnest.

this weekend was intensity in ten cities. friday was a relatively low key evening, with my definition of low key involving pumping out 96 mini red velvet cupcakes, an angel food cake (which was a total, dense, non-angelic gummy bust - it's okay because i only did it to use up 8 egg whites i had in the fridge) and dinner, which happened to be AMAZING! i had frozen some leftover pork shoulder carnitas (pork shoulder braised in milk and orange and oregano until it falls apart, then you fry up the meat in lard so it gets crispy) from a dinner with J & S & L ages ago (pre-master T). i cut up some potatoes and fried them with the carnitas and made tostadas (i fried corn tortillas until crispy) and then topped it with thinned sour cream, diced avocado, salsa, and shredded iceberg lettuce. they were DELICIOUS:

here are the mini red velvet cupcakes:


saturday was mental. i spent an hour or so power shopping in babies r us and joe for little gifties for friend's kids and then the dotytron picked me up, we cleaned house, had a visit from uncle avi:

then got our shiz together to go to a supper club friendsgiving at our friend's B & G's house. look at this table and the spread - it's straight out of a vermont postcard:


so our hosts made the turkey, gravy, brussels sprouts, and roasted parsnips, as well as a DELICIOUS chestnut breadcrumb stuffing. L & B brought a broccoli salad, P & R made mashed potatoes, and L made little french haricot verts bundles tied up in chives, served with a shallot vinaigrette. i made a sweet potato pecan pie, which to my chagrin, we didn't get a chance to eat, because we had to leave early to catch uncle avi's second set at pero lounge.

this is master T with his buddy baby D. baby D's mom fakes like she's all negligent mom, but in fact, is like, mom superstar. we were talking about smells and somehow lavender came up, and she was like, "oh D loves the smell of lavender, i give him a massage after his daily bath with this lavender lotion and he loves it" and i looked at poor master T and i was like, "awkward."

this is what went down in terms of master T's grooming before we left the house. so, i thought i was kind of being awesome implementing an every 3rd day bath. for some reason, bathing the baby seems like a major ordeal for me and the dotytron, even though it literally takes like 15 minutes. so for some reason we're always putting it off, until i finally decided that every 3 days was a reasonable schedule. my other less lazy-induced rationale is that babies don't need to get bathed all that often, and that i don't want him drying out (i was born with pretty sensitive skin.) ANYWAY, so he was due for a bath on friday night, but somehow the night got away from us and he was being an a**hole about taking the bottle so we ended up skipping it. saturday morning i could see that his head was getting greazy with a capital Z (like, the hairs on his head were all delineated in oily clusters) so i said to the dotytron, "we HAVE to bathe him before we go out tonight!" and then somehow the afternoon/evening got away from us and before we knew it, we were already running late for dinner, and i was wailing, "what are we going to do?!???" and the dotytron comes in and says, "okay. how about we give him a hungarian - i'll soap up a washcloth and we'll wash his head and face and then i'll get another wet washcloth to soak up the soap" and i was like, "done!"

so while baby D's mom is fretting over her parenting skills and giving her baby the full daily spa treatment, me and the dotytron are like, letting our baby fester in his own filth and then, when push comes to shove, FAKE BATHING our baby and just basically giving him a head wash to make him semi-presentable. worst. parents. ever.

the good news is that i spent a bajillion dollars on all kinds of bottles and he seems to have gotten over his rejection. of course he loves the super expensive "tommee tippee" (i know. i didn't come up with the name!) bottle that's like, super high tech and looks insane and takes up all the available cupboard room:

so buck. but at least he loves it more than life itself. so we're over that little hiccup, and i can go out to eat and watch movies and leave him with grandparents. woo!

so we had to leave friendsgiving early to catch uncle avi's show. baby's first jazz gig! it was cute. we caught up with a lot of the dotytron's old crew. also, uncle avi's last tune of the night, he called out, "is thelonious in the house?" and then launched into "blue monk" by theolonious monk, which was really sweet:

of course, we didn't get home until 1am and then we had to get up super early the next morning for dotytron family xmas party in oakville.

i dutifully ordered a nice, white-person fancy outfit for master T for his first dotytron family xmas party and of course, once we get him into it, the dotytron turns to me and says, "you know, if we just button the top button he'll look like a latin gangster" so that's what we did:

i call this look, "blood in, blood out" or vatos locos forever!

dotytron family xmas was buck...so much food! i ate a billion deviled eggs and crock pot meat balls and stuffed myself with shortbread. then we came home and had a massive family nap. and then we decided to take over momma and poppa d's house so we hustled into the car in our pajamas and took over their living room with their big screen tv.

now we're trying to get back to semi-normal life. i'm supposed to be researching my term end paper but instead i've got a cold and am feeling mad logey. the little boobla has picked it up and spend all night miserable and snuffly. we finally woke up at 4am and ran the shower on maximum heat for 20 minutes and let him schvitz in the bathroom to help him decongest. we're getting a humidifier for his room today and some eucalyptus oil that we can drip into the shower to help him clear the passageways some more. yay for hippie parenting! everyone thinks i'm psycho because i'm also making my own diaper wipe solution. i have to say though, so far, he's been spared diaper rash and i think the cloth diaper/homemade wipes combo works!

it is SO NICE to be off with the dotytron!!! i'm so excited already for march break and the summer - it's amazing to have the both of us off with the bambino. anyway, today i'm going to try to get a leg up on my non-thinking to do list (aka baking my family's xmas dessert, working on master T's xmas stocking). this might sound like procrastination to you. to which i say, "change of subject. i don't got to tell you s**t."

fin.

valley of tears

mine, the dotytron's AND master T's.

so last night, we caught the tail-end of a charlie brown christmas, and we got to this part:

and it TOTALLY MADE ME WELL UP. and i like, am SUPER-DUPER SKEPTICAL OF ANYTHING TO DO WITH HIS LORD, J.C. this is after the dotytron made the comment that "schroeder is the killingest 8 year old jazz pianist of all time" and after we watched the segment with lucy giving schroeder a hard time about not playing jingle bells properly, we came to the conclusion that i am lucy from charlie brown. i basically give everyone a hard time and have no appreciation for sophisticated music.

and then we got to this part:

and i went from welling up to spilling over. this gets me EVERY YEAR. well played, vince guaraldi, well played.

then, i cued up judy garland, in "meet me in st. louis" singing "have yourself a merry little christmas":

and that sweet judy garland vibrato made me and the dotytron start bawling our eyes out. it reminds us of poppa and of the dotytron's grandpa. so i basically brought the whole vibe of the house down. like, bigtime.

THEN master T started on his journey down losing-his-s**t alley...he's started rejecting the bottle. if you google "baby suddenly rejecting the bottle" you end up wanting to tear your hair out, because it looks like there's a million and one solutions and a billion and one testimonials of NOTHING working and the baby just wanting boob. so for the past two nights, he'll take a few gulps of the bottle from the dotytron, and then you can hear it gurgling in his belly, and then he loses his mind and starts freaking out and doesn't want it. but he will take boob. but i didn't want to start down the slippery slope of all boob no bottle, because the bottle is what allows us to go out for extended periods of time and is what what gives me a break.

it's REALLY hard when he's crying himself hoarse though. eventually, after almost two hours, he calmed down enough to take a couple of ounces with me holding him. this involved me and the dotytron practically getting a divorce in the process - it was extremely trying. you get frustrated with the baby and then you either take it out on the baby or each other, and then you feel bad, because it's not the stupid boobla's fault - he's just communicating the only way he knows how, and like i mentioned, when you see him going all mr. tomato head with fury and he's squeezing out tiny drops of tears and his fists are all clenched and he's yelling at you, it simultaneously makes you want to throw him in the trash AND give him the world.

i've had a cold lately, which i might have passed on to him, so he might just be extra needy lately. we're going to try the dotytron giving him a bottle tonight, when he's not so hungry, and leaving the before-bed feeding to me. hopefully it'll go a little smoother. i didn't really believe this before, but my cold, clinical robot-self is learning that breastfeeding is as much about bonding as it is about nourishment.

this is a photo i looked at last night to remind myself why i'm not going to chuck out the boobla:

and here's another blurry photo of him looking cute wearing a onesie that H bought for him:

we had a lovely visit with H yesterday...here's evidence:


last night for dinner, i made us cannelloni. did you know that the powers that be had the good sense to make oven-ready cannelloni? sheer brilliance. on sunday, our friend L sent me home with the leftover spinach-basil-ricotta-mozzarella mixture he used in his lasagne, so i took the ziploc bag it came in and piped it into the noodles, topped the cannelloni with my tomato sauce and laid some strips of proscuitto over top. it was AMAZING. so good. the proscuitto put it over the top, adding the salty savoury hit that the dish needed:



tonight the plan is to defrost some pork carnitas (pork shoulder slow braised in orange and milk, that you shred and then re-crisp in lard) from the freezer and turn that into a carnitas-potato tostada (a tostada, as i understand it, is basically a flat corn tortilla that's fried and then topped with stuff), topped with tomatillo salsa, diced avocado, iceberg lettuce and chopped tomatoes. and eat that in front of the tv, with a relaxed and scotched-up dotytron, who is going to be so pumped to finally be on winter break.

the neighbours this year (the ones we're on speaking/friendly terms with) are getting little packets of which chocolate cranberry orange biscotti. the people we share the wall with, whom we really like, have a mother who comes and does mad stuff for them. she cleans their house, picks up their kid like 3 days a week from daycare so he's not in daycare all day, and does yardwork for them. it's amazing. yesterday morning, the dotytron looked out the window and said, "man, why don't we have a mrs. kim?!" because she was outside shoveling their walkway and sidewalk for them. so lucky. i wish i had free help like that!

i'm going to try to rally the dotytron to do the housecleaning when he gets home tonight, but i think it'll be a tough sell...our house is starting to get a little rugged though, and we have a jam-packed weekend ahead of us.

fin.

what must it be like

to be terrified by your own farts? i can't imagine, but i get a daily glimpse every day when the boobla lets out a toot, pauses, and then promptly loses his s**t:

and on a scary note, it's kind of disturbing how much he looks like my dead beat da' in that photo. not buddies.

working hypothesis after watching "wayne's world" last night - that movie kick-started the whole "that's what she said" rejoinder. true or false?

ugh. when i started this post this morning my head was filled with words - book reviews, my thoughts on the whole wikileaks eebacle, and so on and so forth. now, after a full 12 hour day alone with master T (the dotytron went in early and stayed late in the service of holiday concert servitude) i'm exhausted. it is exhausting staying home with a kid sometimes. i mean, a lot of it is FUN work, and i did manage to bake off a sweet potato pecan pie, the oat cookie for the momofuku crack pie crusts, and a sticky toffee pudding, but still - i hate seeing the little chicken cry but when he does it for hours on end and the only thing that'll stop him is being in your arms and you've got a million knots in your shoulders and lower back pain from just that very thing, then it's really easy to ignore his crying OR get snappy with him.

but then you see the little tear he's squeezed out after wailing and turning into mr. tomato head pooling in the corner of his eye and you hear his hoarse voice from how he's cried his mouth dry and you feel like history's greatest villain. machiavelli ain't got nothing on babies.

monday was a bad night of cold and dark and a too-late start on dinner resulting in panzerotto pizza delivery (incidentally, one of the cheapest, widely available delivery options around. $10 minimum? $5 for a totally filling deep-fried pocket of pizza love? hells yes.) last night i made that tagliatelle with sautéed radicchio and bagna cauda dish, topped with a poached egg that i overcooked (boo):



tonight i had a visit from the roomie, which was nice because master T loves to put on a "i'm the best baby ever!" show for friends/family/strangers so he was on his best behaviour while she was here and she gave my arms a rest for a bit while i ate leftover dal and brown rice from last week.

bah. i know i've been boring lately...the words are there, somewhere...i promise more scintillating updates soon.

fin.

the lucky button chronicles continue

first up, allow me to share some of my sister's photos from our weekend in geneseo. don't these two look like they're about to start freestyling?

as my sister put it, my nephew's face says it all in the above photo. lol! he hates babies. i asked him if he gave baby markus a thumbs up or thumbs down and he instantly said, thumbs down. my sis' new car however, got an enthusiastic - and quick! - thumbs up. poor little guy. it must be hard going from being the baby of the family to being the middle child. i grew up the middle child, but i don't think i remember being threatened by the arrival of s-dawg. i just beat the s**t out of him and spent my childhood swanning along, supremely cocky about how smart and capable i was (as you can see, nothing much has changed.)

on friday i finished my latest crafting project, a yarn-wrapped wreath:

modern yarn-wrapped wreaths are burning up the charts on etsy, so in the grand spirit of copying...i copied the idea and executed my own. it's really very easy. because you're wrapping everything onto a styrofoam wreath form, i was worried that there would be sewing, but as it turns out, it's all held together with pins. the hardest and most time consuming part is wrapping the form with the yarn. then all i had to do was dig through my felt stash, cut out varying sizes of circles, overlap them, and then pinch the bottom to make petals and arrange them on the wreath and secure with long, round headed sewing pins. easy! and i guess theoretically i could change the design every year too. i have another, bigger styrofoam wreath form but i think i'm going to put that on hold until next year.

although, after visiting smckay's amazingly gorgeous and huge apartment on friday night with all her cute holiday decorations, it made me want to revisit my no-holiday-tchotchke stance. she has such great taste for all things cute. i think too many visits to white people's houses with questionable xmas house decorations made me wary, so next year i'll be scouring etsy for cute decorative things i can put around the house to make it festive. my plan next year is also to make a homemade felt advent calendar for master T, along with another wreath, and maybe some kind of holiday garland. i absolutely love working with felt. it makes everything look so cute and dear and homespun and best yet: no hemming of raw edges! YAY!

this is wednesday night's lentil curry with the brown rice - it was DELICIOUS!!!:

this is the apple cake i made for smckay's & A3's hannukah/xmas party in guelph. i've made this cake before...it's so dead easy and what i love best about it is - it's all stirred together in a bowl, so i don't have to haul out my mixer for it. because it's made with oil instead of butter (hannukah appropriate!) i don't have to cream anything, so it comes together really quickly - it takes forever to bake, but the end result is tender and filled with bites of soft, cinnamony apples. because i can't leave a good thing well enough alone, i prefer to serve it with a plog of whipped cream and a drizzle of bourbon toffee sauce.

friday was so much fun. i love kdubsguelphtdot crew more than words can say. the only bad thing is that we see each other so infrequently that i'm always left wanting more! we did a secret santa/yankee swap type of exchange, where you get to steal other people's gifts. my contribution this year was kind of a bust. i had committed to buying a pantone mug

and then making a jar of homemade hot cocoa mix, and adding in homemade marshmallows, and homemade cookies. then, a few days prior to the event, we got an email from jsculls warning us to make sure we brought good presents for the yankee swap because she'd just been at a work secret santa where nobody stole anything and everyone got super-lame presents. she ended the email with the line: "and keep your bloody mug with a hot chocolate pack in it!" but by that point i had already committed to the present and i didn't have the time to drag master T around. so let's just say i defo had the worst present under the tree. lol! A3 totally was a sweetheart and came to my rescue and took my gift which was very nice of him.

on saturday the dotytron went and grabbed our tree and dr. rei came over and witnessed the hilarity that is wrestling a tree into the house, giving it a fresh cut, and then straightening it in the CHEAPEST TREE STAND OF ALL TIME. i had wanted dr. rei around for the tree-trimming, but i forgot that you have to let the boughs fall for a full day before you can decorate...the downstairs of the house smells absolutely delicious right now, though, which is the only reason we'll probably never do the fake tree thing - the smell is so fantastic and seasonal. even if you end up cursing your slavish devotion to nostalgia come january, when the tree is nothing but a shell of it's former self and the smell is gone and all that remains is your own post-holiday-pre-work depression and a carpet of brown needles strewn all around.

saturday i also witnessed THE BEST SHOPLIFTING OF ALL TIME! i was at a shoppers and the clerk looked behind me as i was cashing out and said, "sir, sir, could you take that out of your jacket please?" and i turn around and see this sketchy, stringy-haired, middle aged, super-rangy rubby wearing one of those puffy, 80s nylon ski jackets, gaping open, WITH A GIANT TIN OF CHOCOLATE COVERED COOKIES half hanging out of it. when she addressed him, he kind of did this half-skip dodge thing and loped out of the store. it was awesome! he didn't even TRY to hide it! lol!

saturday night was a blissful night spent AT HOME with nothing to do but watch movies and cuddle master T and eat cookies. it was amazing. we had jerk oxtail, with coconut rice'n'peas and sautéed swiss chard and nutella brownies with ice cream:

sunday was an epic day. we slept in, woke up, trimmed the tree and i made us a chorizo, potato, and roasted red pepper frittata:

then we went to momma and poppa d's house so they could visit with master T and we could help them put together an entertainment unit. then we went to J & S's house for a quick visit to drop off and receive xmas cookies. finally, we ended the night at J's bro L's house for an amazing dinner of caesar salad, lasagne with HOMEMADE PASTA and apple pie with ice cream. i was a colossal pig and ate 2 servings of everything, even though i swear the lasagne was like, 6" thick. poor master T kept conking out and waking up in a new house. he was surprisingly cool with it though.

i just keep thinking of how full of love and great relationships our lives are and how lucky we are for it *knocks on wood x 100000000000000000000000000* i'm so looking forward to the two weeks after this one. the dotytron will be on xmas break and the time will be filled with family and friend visits galore.

i mean, i have to write a 20 page research paper somewhere in there...but i'm pushing that to the back of my mind at the moment.

fin.

it's a tough slog

to all the people who said that doing my masters while on mat leave was crazy - yous was right. it's too hard carving out the time, when you've got master T in his 4 states: crying because of upset tummy, crying because he's hungry, crying because he's over tired, the 15 minutes of grace you get of not crying after having spent an hour addressing one of the other three states of being.

but then...but then...in those 15 minutes, you get stuff like this:

and even though the pictures are blurry as all get-out...those 15 minutes of prime time T make it all worth while. things of note in the above photos:

- i love his chubbo, super-distended belly and how cinched it gets by his diapers
- i love his smile, which is now frequently accompanied by a version of cooing. i call it a version of cooing because it's more like baby raptor squawking.
- i love how the second photo is pure, "yesssss!" accompanied by a fist pump.

we've been avoiding doing any reading on 1 month and 2 month milestones, because a half-hearted venture into the fear-mongering annals of "what to expect the first year" made us feel really bad for poor, el chupido, master T. they're saying that he should be able to hold up his head at a 45 degree angle, focus on a small object like a raisin (!!!) and smile in response to us smiling, among other things. when we read through the list of "should be able to, might be able to, may possibly be able to" the dotytron and i turned to each other, tugged on our imaginary collars, whispered "awkward" and then tucked the book away, never to be looked at again. lol! look, i love my wall-eyed dummy of a kid. as the dotytron said, "it doesn't matter, look how cute he is!" to which i replied, "yeah, but there's a statute of limitations on how far that will carry him!" in summation: it's best not to think about it.

so, guess who was a crying mess on sunday night at the thought of the boobla going to sleep in his crib? ME, OF COURSE. blah. because i'm a big softie. because i'm all too aware that the moments are flying by and i want to revel in each and every one of them. because i love waking up and turning my head and seeing his sleeping, open-mouthed little face next to mine. but i've been semi-strong. he's gone to sleep in his crib for the past 3 nights and stayed there for the most part. last night i brought him in with us only because he didn't get up to feed until about 5am and i groggily justified it to myself as okay because it's so close to our waking time.

we just picked up a new set of $20 target flannel sheets that are THE BOMB...so soft and smushy and warm and cozy. oh man, target in canada better be as good as target US, otherwise, what's the point?

i did a very half-assed job on tonight's presentation yesterday. i'm forgoing the powerpoint presentation, even though one of my classmates, when i mused about just doing an oral presentation, turned to me and asked, "how would you do a presentation without power point?" in all seriousness. it's only worth 10% of my mark, so i think i'll do okay. i'm pulling a mid-80s average in the course already. then, in a bid for thrifty-studentness, i'm basically just slapping some headings onto my presentation, reducing the font size to a more reasonable 12pt (i like a large font for presentations) and then submitting that as my research paper proposal. ta-da! then all i have to do is the actual research paper - 20 pages, no biggie, right? *weak laughter*

this is what we've been eating lately. monday night i opted out of making the lentil curry in favour of freezer soup with my new favorite sandwich: grilled aged cheddar (NOT made on the panini press), white onion, and hot pepper jelly. last night i made a big batch of chicken noodle soup for the dotytron who has been whinging about coming down with a cold lately. we ate it with warm, crusty, olive chipotle bread from fred's breads:


tonight is the lentil curry with steamed brown rice.

okay...i have to do a billion NON PRESENTATION RELATED THINGS (thanks, mum for making me edit your paper!) before class tonight.

fin

*sound of trumpets*

THIS IS MY 1000TH POST! what the eff?!? that's 1000 ruminations, revelations, reflections, and general wind-baggery. what started as a begrudging, mocking fulfillment of an assignment for library school that i regarded with a high degree of disdain has produced this...this...well, i don't know what this is. but i know some people read it (some actual, non troll bot flesh-people at that!) and for that i'm grateful. although truth be told, this regular outlet for my opinions and observations, and archive for the general chicanery that is my life, has come to be pretty valuable and i'd probably continue even if my readership was non-existent (right now it's a hair above non existent).

you'd think i'd try to make this 1000th post count with some kind of introspective talk about how blogging has dragged me up from the doldrums and provided a guiding light in my darkest hours. but no. you'd think i'd maybe have a super-fantastic giveaway with which to reward my loyal readers. but no. this blog gets zero sponsors (i'm not gonna lie: i'm a little surprised about that.)

nope. you're going to get more of the same. the usual mixed bag of what i did on the weekend/random ephemera that usual heralds a monday round-up post in these here parts.

the weekend in geneseo was a blast. buffalo was hit with about 2 feet of snow and our usual exit onto the interstate was closed as a result...so all of thursday was spent with me feverishly refreshing the new york state thruway website, to see if they had cleared the snow and if our exit was open. no dice. so i had to find an alternate route. this was somewhat high stress, made all the more so because of the fact that our printer was refusing to print the entirety of the google map showing the alternate route. so i had to resort to the hand drawn map. it was a little fraught. it was our first long drive with the boobla and the conditions, while not dire, were less than ideal, and the only thing we had to guide us was my hand-drawn map. well, i have to say, i really earned my spot as chief ensign navigator on thursday night. hand-drawn map was THE BOMB and we totally rocked the alternate route AND managed to drive through amherst, which is the nicest, prettiest, cutest, most old-timey part of buffalo you've ever done seen. as the dotytron said, driving around and looking at all the beautiful, old houses dolled up for the holidays, "i'm getting a christmas boner right now." i can't even describe how beautiful it was. every house was bedecked with wreathes, with twinkling candles centered in every window, and swags of lights softly illuminating the snow-hushed night. so pretty.

little big cuz turned out to be little little cuz. he's lost a lot of weight - but he is very cute and has a baby pterodactyl voice that's kind of hoarse and raspy and charming. i kind of think he looks like a teenager already...he's got a mild case of the baby acne and that with his general oversized features makes him look like he's going through adolescent awkwardness.> he's also SO PALE compared to the boobla. it's insane. i'm always thinking that the boobla is looking more and more like a white baby and then you do a side by side and it's shocking how asian the boobla looks:

and how GINORMOUS he is by comparison...he's only 1 month older!!! i'm sure the size differential will plane out eventually, but master T looks like a 1 year old compared to little big cuz's scrawniness. so now master T for the time being is known as big big cuz...but something tells me it won't last for long.

here's another shot of little big cuz - sdawg dubbed him kreacher:

and here's a shot of the cousins holding each other in various permutations:



the last one was from our failed attempt to round up all the kids in their xmas gear for a group photo. photographing groups of children means that you have to accept that one or all of them will be in tears or looking cray-cray. it's too hard to wrangle them otherwise!

i also completed a new chapeau for the little boobla - it's called the "aviatrix" hat and it serves the double purpose of highlighting his chubbo cheeks AND making him look hilarious:

i bequeathed the old gnome hat to little big cuz and knit a new gnome hat for the boobla, to accommodate his rapidly expanding noggin.

finally, this is a pretty hilarious series from brian's usa diner:



it's pretty reflective of a person's journey at brian's. first you're like, "what's the big deal about this place anyway? why are people lined up?" and then you see the portions and you're like, "i get 2 eggs, toast, 2 kinds of meat, and 2 GIANT pancakes for $5.99?!?" and then you eat the food and you're like, "this place effin' rocks!"

it was a lovely weekend, but way too short...although i'm glad to be back in my hometown...where i can recalibrate my insides with some healthy (or healthier) eating.

i'm supposed to be doing a 15 minute research paper presentation on wednesday, with my powerpoint slide deck due in by tomorrow. gulp.

tonight for dinner i'm making us a lentil curry with apples and raisins, with steamed brown rice and maybe some chard mixed in.

fin.

*squeal*

i'm counting down the hours until we get to hit the road to geneseo! can't wait to squish a two week old baby and for the cousins to meet!!!

by popular demand (aka, smckay), here is the newest photo of master T that's storming the cuteness charts:



hope everyone's weekend is fabulous!

fin.

scandalousness!

so i've told you before about how much we love reading "governing ourselves" aka the blue pages aka us magazine for teachers aka the section where the ontario federation of teachers publishes the disciplinary hearings and investigations into their members. we got the latest issues yesterday and it was rife with hilarious examples of teachers on the edge exercising bad judgement.

par example:

- one teacher was "admonished" (their terminology) for writing a poem to a female staff member where he used the words "juicy" and "orgasmic" for letters in her name. (me, howling with laughter: "you realize that that means that the poem was an ACROSTIC?!?)
- another teacher who was "reprimanded" for, among other things, writing comments such as "you suck" "you're lousy" and "you're a reject" on work submitted by ELEMENTARY STUDENTS (!!!!!)
- a teacher who was also "reprimanded" for referring to a colleague as a slut, which he "finger spelled".

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! do you know how long it would take to finger spell the word slut?!?? can you imagine the poor woman, standing there, waiting for him to finish the word, all the while knowing full well what the word was? too too funny. and also sad. they make teachers jump through hoops to get board jobs, and this is who they let in.

my weekend was really fun. dinner with new friends R & R on friday was super hilarious and a fantastic first-time-meeting-up hang. we're slowly building a cadre of crew in york region, which is nice. saturday was a whirlwind of errands before we got together at the roomie's for dinner with our beloved pingy. sunday was an all day recording extravaganza of recording with the dotytron family, which ended in outlaw sis ehmdo laughing so hard she spit out a mouthful of tea on the dining room table. it also resulted in the usual hilarious from momma d, including the assertion that she and poppa d might have been the first people to EVER WALK DOWN THE AISLE TO PACHELBEL'S CANON IN D. lol!!!!!!!!! that statement is typical momma d.

on sunday night we ordered indian food from amaya express. so good! dinner for 4, which could easily feed 6 with leftovers, costs $80 something, delivered. you get the chef's choice appetizers (delicious pakoras with a mint chutney, tamarind sauce, and mango chutney for dipping), the choice of FOUR meat dishes, and the choice of 2 vegetables, 2 basmati rice AND naan. everything was so flavourful and each curry was distinct. the vegetables were fresh tasting and there were some dishes you don't usually see, such as a sweet and sour eggplant and a lime lamb dish. i would definitely order from them again.

on monday dr. rei came over for a big walk and then leftover indian food and a screening of "eat pray love" which was GARBAGE. zomg it was insufferable...i don't really understand how people could have enjoyed the book (my sis, whose taste i trust implicitly, loathed it). first of all, the movie is boring. second of all, that woman doesn't have problems. what she does have is a huge ego and a bad case of whinging. ohhhh, i'm SO SORRY you have no more zest for life. boo hoo. i'm so sorry that you got to take a year off to "find yourself" travelling to italy, india and mothereffin' BALI. crikey. it was terrible, terrible, insulting dreck.

this was much better. a semi-realistic portrait of marriage. i'm the annette bening character - the high achieving, work obsessed, wrangy person the in marriage (hey, we all have a role to play). i wasn't happy that one of the lesbians ends up having a sexual relationship with mark ruffalo's rakish, rangy, cool-dad character (although, who could resist mark ruffalo's scruffy charms?) it definitely detracts from the legitimacy of the lesbian relationship - i mean, i'm all for a spectrum of of human sexual preference, but at the same time, functional lesbian relationships in film (portrayed by big deal hollywood actresses, no less) are somewhat rare, so it's unfortunate that as the dotytron said, "all lesbians want is a deep d**king" (he was joking!) i thought the strength of the movie was in the natural performances from the kids and in showing how marriage is a long, long, slog - filled with many moments, some tender, some contented, some where you're just passively there because that's where you've been for a time. the performances were all really dialed in, especially from the two actors playing the kids and there were some quietly funny moments. i'd recommend it.

today is a day of research for my paper, feeding the chicken boo, heading out to open up an RESP for him, finishing my secret santa shopping, and going to class. it's REALLY about just counting down the hours until we leave for geneseo tomorrow night to spend the weekend with my sis & family and s-dawg and his gf. so excited! i can't believe i haven't seen my sis and rico and my niece and nephews (!) in TWO MONTHS! that's the longest stretch evers! can't freakin' wait to hang out with those guys in one of my favorite places in the world and for master T to meet little big cuz.

fin.

a full fledged graduate

of the midwifery pre/post natal program! master T had his last midwife visit yesterday - he's still chubbing out largecore. he's now at 9lb 11oz, and he's only gestationally 2 weeks post-partum. that means if i had been term, i would've given birth to a 9lb porker. so thankful that the smart little chicken opted to spare my vagine that indignity.

this weekend is going to be mega-fun, but again, mega-busy which means that i'm probably going to mega-not-write my stupid constitutional law assignment. haha. at least i have a valid excuse. it really IS hard to get stuff done in between the all you can eat buffet that master T has made of my nippular region.

tonight we're doing AYCE japanese in markham with lolly (if she's not sick), her bf T, and R & R. then sleeping over in markham so that my mum can visit with master T. then tomorrow after the dotytron's done teaching his lesson, it's a day of errand running, which will hopefully end in me successfully convincing the dotytron to brave the war zone that is the pacific mall parking lot so that i can procure some beard papa cream puffs, then a faux american thanksgiving dinner at the roomie's place because our friend pingy is in town. sunday the dotys are descending en masse to our abode to record some tunes for the xmas cd. this year's cd is gonna be pretty sweet (i mean, in the saccharine, gentle way, not the skater dude "sweet!" way).

last night's dinner was pretty boss. first we met with a guy about a deck. i'm not sure if i've told you about the parking issues with our neighbour we share the driveway with, but suffice to say that confrontations have ensued that have front-loaded fencing in our yard and re-doing the deck to the top of our lil 'ugmo makeover list. there's also the fact that we can probably budget a deck this year, but we can't budget a kitchen (especially after i was laughed out of the bank for asking for an increase on my line of credit). i also felt the lack of a nice bbqing, eating al fresco space last summer quite keenly. also, we want a bit of space for a certain someone to totter around on chubby legs on, and hopefully a spot for a kiddie pool (as you may or may not know, my dream in life is to bbq on a hot summer's day with my feet in a kiddie pool) or a sandbox. we spent all last summer eating out on our front stoop, which was nice, because we got to really know our neighbours, but i want a space to host people outdoors again. we're going to meet with 4 different deck/fence people over all. we've gotten one low quote and one high one from the dude last night. but the dude last night said he can work within our budget.

i also scammed his price list from him. lol! basically, the company last night, hickory dickory decks has a detailed price list so decking is quoted at X per square foot (depending on material and finishes) and fencing is per linear foot. so he was looking at a price sheet and i just blurted out, "can i have that?" and he was all like, "uhhhhh..." and i reach across the table and took it from him and was like, "thanks!" lol! it's handy to have because it gives us a benchmark to go with for any other contractors...plus we can do a lot of fiddling with the numbers. is it weird that i get all flush and heady when i get free stuff? EVEN IF THE FREE THING CONSISTS OF A SCAMMED PRICING LIST FROM A DECK CONTRACTOR?!? it's like a weird high for me. i don't care what it is, if there's an element of schiesty-ness and free involved, i totally get a gambler's high.

oh yeah, last night's dinner. here's a picture:

i know it looks like a dangler with some shriveled testies...but it was tasty! and pretty quick. it's braised sausages with caramelized onions, grapes, and balsamic, served over a plain risotto. i can post the recipe below.

i should take advantage of master T's slumber to read some articles.

i bid you, adieu.

fin.


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

braised sausages with caramelized onions & grapes

serves 2

4 italian sausages
1 red onion, sliced
some minced garlic
1 c. of white wine
1/4 c. balsamic
1 c. of red, seedless grapes
salt and pepper to taste

- sear the sausages in some olive oil and set aside.
- throw the onions in the pan and caramelize over pretty high heat to get them nice and brown and develop a nice fond on the bottom of the pan. i pretty much forgot about my onions so they were dark, bordering on burned, before i stirred them, and it ended up working in my favor.
- turn the heat lower, add the garlic and the sausages back in, and add the white wine to deglaze, scraping up the fond on the bottom of the pan as best you can.
- add the balsamic, some salt and pepper, and the grapes, put a lid on the pan and turn the heat low for about 10 minutes
- when you're ready to serve, turn the heat back up to high, and take the lid off the pan to let the sauce/juices reduce a bit
- serve over risotto.

*this would also be good served over mashed potatoes, egg noodles, anything to soak up the vaguely sweet/sour (agrodolce!) sauce. this dish can also be multiplied to feed as many as you need

weirdest and yet most topical dream ever

so last night i had a dream that the dotytron and i were in new delhi staying with these friends of big d's sister. i don't remember much about the place we were staying, except that my dream state must have conflated it with our friend pingy's actual apartment in brooklyn where we stayed in the spring (in the real-deal flesh world, not in dream world). there was one room with soaring ceilings (in dream world) and suspended at various levels on fishing line were these 3 dimensional, wooden owl cutouts that were quite beautiful.

another room had 360 degree views and was built suspended over a cliff overlooking the new delhi landscape (i know new delhi is a city - i've never been there, but in my dream world, the room looked out over mountains that panorama'd into forests). in this room was a toilet. next to the toilet was this thing stuck into the ground that looked like the end of a trumpet (the end the sound comes out of). the long and short of the dream was: i chonged the toilet. lol!!! and evidence of said chonging was made apparent to my own, growing, dream world horror, when water slowly started spilling out of the trumpet thing in the carpet, and seeping across the floor. imagine how embarrassed i was!!! to chong the toilet of hosts that were practically strangers to me! and ruin their carpet!!!

then the dream featured angelina jolie and brad pitt somehow. then i woke up.

the reason this dream is hilarious and topical is because i'm notorious for chonging our home toilet. and then making the dotytron plunger it. and in exchange, in payment for me not having to deal with the disgustingness that is touching the plunger, we struck a deal where each time he performed the service, i would buy him a jar of artisanal honey. we recently changed the deal to make it that each time he had to unclog the toilet, i would pay him $10 towards his gujin (that obscure chinese instrument he covets).

that was probably TMI, but if you're reading this, then you know me, and if you know me, you know that there's nothing i won't blab (over share) about.

ANYWAY. in other random ephemera, on sunday, we were doing our grocery shopping at the big carrot, and the dotytron picked up a new shower scrubby...you know, one of the ones that look like this:

these things have been around for at least like, 15 years, so i technically didn't even have to post that picture, but whatevs.

we're checking out, and the cashier, takes the scrubby, scans it, and then says, "oh! this is one of those things for exfoliating, right?" *mimes exfoliating his face with the scrubby* we're like, "uh, yeah" (thinking to ourselves, "where the crap has this guy been that he doesn't know what a shower scrubby is/does?") then he CONTINUES to mime scrubbing at his face (and the scrubby is practically rubbing up against his sallow, gaunt cheek) and says, "they're supposed to be really good at getting rid of dead skin" and we're like, "uhhh, yeah" and then, STILL MIMING, he goes, "i bet they REALLY do a good job!" and finally stops and we finish the transaction and grab our stuff and leave. as soon as we were out of earshot i turned to the dotytron and said, "i could have used about 150% less of that guy rubbing his junk with the shower scrubby" and the dotytron started like, dry-heaving. it was so gross (and yet, funny, considering how traumatized the dotytron was at the defiling of his shower scrubby.)

on monday for dinner i made us a tater tot turkey casserole, which is as DELICIOUS and trashy as the name implies. cream of mushroom soup mix, defrosted thanksgiving turkey chunks, mayo, onions, mushrooms, celery, all topped with tater tots that i coaxed into oven-baked crispiness by tossing with oil, salt and pepper before strewing on the casserole. it was hella good:

 

tuesday night was an off day - and by "off" i mean "wendy's" - i had a double bacon mushroom melt combo AND a spicy chicken sandwich. oy.

here's a shot of the banana walnut upside down cake:

 

tonight i did some more freezer busting (i need that space for xmas cookies, yo!) and reheated up a fig, arugala and gorgonzola quiche i had tucked away. with it i made a baby spinach salad with toasted pecans and a warm bacon-mustard vinaigrette:

 

on tuesday we tried putting the boobla khan in his crib to sleep. he's been napping in there periodically as i've moved my base camp back upstairs after being ensconced like jabba the hut on the living room couch for the past month. last night was the first night he started the night's sleep in the crib. but then i got all sadface about it. about him growing up. about how your days when your little baby can sleep in bed with you and you can fall asleep with the sound of their sweet breathing in your ear are limited. how he's not going to be so soft and cute and squishable forever. so as soon as he woke up for his middle of the night feeding, i hustled him back into our room and our bed. i'm a total co-sleeper! what happened to my ideals? but i defy you not to smuggle this cargo into your bed either:



here's a bonus shot of master T, featuring cute little baby toes:

buh. my defenses are useless against that level of artillery.

fin.

unbelievable

uhhh...master T slept for SEVEN HOURS STRAIGHT last night. we were trying to get him back on track after a few late nights scrambled his brains again a bit, so we were waking him up to feed him every 3 hours on the hour. after dinner last night, he basically wanted to feed every hour, so i indulged him with boob. he took his daily bottle 9pm, crushed almost 5 oz of boob juice and then crashed from 11pm to 6am.

this morning when he started stirring i nudged the dotytron to change his diaper and he woke up, checked his cell phone, and was all like, "is this right? did the power go out? it's SIX AM!!!" what a smart little boobla khan.

our friend A gave us this book that his sister swore by, which the dotytron has been half-a**edly flipping through, which basically said that if you followed her program, your kid would be sleeping 12 hours. it comes down to stuffing them full of boob juice right before bed...which is kind of what we did, based on what master T was requesting, and it totally worked! it was a combination of that advice and our midwives advice, who basically said that we should feed him as much as he wants up until 10pm and then hopefully, he'll conk out.

this weekend was ram-jammed but so much fun. thursday night my friend H bailed on us for the leslieville wanderlust, so i strapped on master T and we went on our own little jaunt, which SOMEHOW resulted in us ending up at bobbette and belle. they were giving out free hot chocolate with homemade marshmallows and i ended up buying some cupcakes. these are the best purchased cupcakes ever. soft, moist, tender cake topped with the airiest buttercream. so good! from the bottom left we have: vanilla cake with raspberry buttercream, vanilla cupcake with espresso buttercream, and their chocolate cupcake with gianduja buttercream. ho boy, imma gonna get chub chub with them around the corner from us:

on friday night, our friends S and P hosted us and our buddies B & G for a polish dinner at their house. S is polish and won't be going home for xmas this year, so she worked out her homesickness by preparing us a multi-course polish extravaganza. we started with this kind of polish charcuterie board, consisting of fried polish sausage, a pepperoni type stick, a rolled pork belly cold cut, pork pate, and a raw pork tenderloin that's been smoked. i also had my first pickled herring experience. i don't know why i ever avoided it. it was SO good! almost like gravlax - S says sometimes it can get pretty funky and fermented, but this was clean and light and was served with lightly pickled white onions. you're supposed to spread rye bread really thick with butter, top it with the herring and onions and do a shot of vodka. if you say so, poland!

then we had these little dumplings stuffed with sauerkraut and mushrooms, that translated means "ears" - fried in butter with lots of browned, crispy onions:

cucumbers with dill, a grated beet salad, roasted green beans, salted sliced tomatoes with green onions:

finally, our main course, with sauerkraut with bacon, brisket, and pork sausage:

this dish was insane. you hardboil eggs and then take them out of the shell, chop them up with parsley and dill and put them BACK into the shell and top them with breadcrumbs and bake it. SO CRAZY!!!

there was also ANOTHER dish that i didn't take a picture of, a soup course that was a white borscht, based on a sour dough starter, with chopped egg and more pork sausage.

finally, an apple cheesecake. HOLY CRAP, RIGHT? i mean, i cook for people, but this was INSANE! it was a really fun night. we hung out there until about midnight (thus, scrambling our son's brains), but it was so worth it. i think we're going to join their softball team in the summer, and P gave us all "poopsicle" baseball hats, based on this business he had selling poopsicles out of a poopsicle cart he dragged across canada. poopsicles are chocolate covered frozen bananas (his idea predates arrested development). the whole night master T was so good. he snoozed away, did a little whiny cry for like, 1 second when he woke up to let me know he was hungry, and then let himself be carried by everyone, passed around like a football.

saturday we went to the dotytron's cousins weddings, which was crawling with dotys of all stripes and persuasions. here is the boobla with nany (now great-nany):

so cute!!! i swear, this guy loves making us look good when we leave the house. throughout the ceremony, and for most of the 8 hours we were there, he was sleeping. he woke up, did another little mewling cry and then snoozed away as he was passed from arm to arm. he saves all his long crying jags for us at home...but it's like he's got a sixth sense - when we're out, he sleeps and makes us look like we're amazing parents.

sunday we met up with dr. rei, hanbo, and bwonger for some "harry potter and the deathly hallows" part 1 action. there's not much to say. most everyone i know has read the books so you can't talk about the plot. i can say that they made really smart decisions in what to include in the movie and what not to, in terms of what makes a gripping film. i was a little worried, because i found the first half of the 7th installment of the book to be a bit of a slog, the second half is where things REALLY pick up, but the film totally delivers. there are some brilliant, beautiful scenes and the tone is DARK. yates renders everything in inky, moody blacks and bleak, wintery greys.

i was actually surprised that some idiot parents took their young, young kids to see the movies. the books and movies mature at the rate that harry does as a character. so if you started when you were 11 and read one a year, by the time you were 18 you'd be equipped to handle what happens. i wouldn't take a 5 year old to see the deathly hallows - the thing is rife with death, blood, despair, nazi overtones, decay. there are some pretty graphic, violent scenes that would've scared the crap out of young me.

all the performances are fantastic. ron weasley really shines in this one - he provides a lot of the levity and humour and there's a lovely, lovely scene with harry and hermione without any dialogue that underscores how far the three of them have come as friends. it was fantastic. i can't wait to see the last one, but in the meantime, i can re-read the books and get lost in that world again (and refresh the holes in my memory of what happens).

the dotytron always laughs at me because every now and then, i'll pick up the last book and read the "king's cross" chapter and just bawl my eyes out. but i'll probably start from the beginning and read it through. the dotytron has been starting from the beginning and i got into the habit of reading out loud to master T from "harry potter and the philosopher's stone" during the middle of the night feeding. i think he likes it.

while we were at the movie, the boobla was being watched by momma and poppa d so after the movie we trooped over there for a staycation. i love hanging out there. same way i love hanging out at my parents' place in markham. now that we have a baby, we're so coddled and spoiled! so last night momma d made us a delicious pot roast dinner - i had 2 helpings, it was so good:

today i'm getting cracking at school. for dinner i'm making a tater tot turkey casserole with chunks of leftover thanksgiving turkey, sliced mushrooms and celery all bound up with cream of mushroom soup and topped with tater tots. we'll have a salad to offset the betty crocker-ness of what i just typed out up there.

for dessert, i made that banana walnut upside down cake for my contribution to last night's dinner, so we'll have the last of that with a scoop of ice cream.

fin.