...my butski! it's been hot as hades 'round here lately and it's making for some champion whinging courtesy of k. lagerfeld, esquire. YOU try not whinging when you've become a fat little mouth breathing weirdo.
kdubsguelphtdot cottage was really really nice...there were some pros and cons to the set up. pros: the bathrooms were all really nice, huge fire pit, drinkable well water, big kitchen and giant kitchen table for eating at, lots of activity space. cons: basement (secondary hang out room) smelled dank and was kind of neglected and featured the furnace room and beer fridge of doom, the dock was tiny and rickety and had rotting wood galore, and there was no outdoor table for eating outside. the dock was a bit of a pisser as was the axe murderer vibe in the basement - it just meant that we didn't really want to hang out there all that much.
also, the weather was kind of lame, cloudy and cool most days with only 1 day of consistent sun, and it wasn't that hot. but there's nothing that can be done about that.
but my oh my did we have fun! we camped out at the pearces' dock where my pregnant belly was deemed to be collateral by J, in case the pearces happened to be there and got mad at us for trespassing. we ate like kings: key lime pie, peanut butter cookies, burgers, mac'n'cheese, salads, monkey bread, taco night, so many chips. a few of us went on a trip to visit the dorset fire tower, which in the subsequent re-telling, became the GREATEST ADVENTURE OF ALL TIME. there was a race with a startling upset - one of those true underdog sports stories finishes, recorded for all posterity. we played so many games and had so many cozy chats and basically loved up on one another and rued our eventual return to reality. i'm really hoping that we can make it an annual tradition, to supplement the winter farm vacay.
momma d's family cottage was another time entirely. quiet, relaxing, reflective time on one of the prettiest, most wildlife-rich lakes i've ever been to. it's teeming with life in a way that the other cottages i've been too aren't. we saw so many frogs, and minnows, and crayfish, and a pretty chubby garter snake, hummingbirds galore. i caught like 4 fish just casting off the dock and managed to land the best thing of all (for an avid fisher), a "the one that got away" story. most of the times at healey lake i've never caught anything of note - small little rock and baby small mouth bass about the size of my hand. but casting off the dock on the thursday night, i got something BIG. something big enough to snap my line, make off with my lead, hook, worm AND mangle my bobber (!!!!!) so exciting!
saturday night we had a hootenanny on the dock, recorded by ehmdo. now, if you're a tone death motherf**ker like myself, just try participating in a hootenanny featuring a gifted guitarist/singer (dotytron), a mandolin/songwriter (poppa d), a choir singer (momma d), and a professional singer-songwriter (ehmdo), AND another talented singer (ehmdo's bestie L, who frequently joins her on backup at live shows). you may have heard of a certain evolutionary phenomena known as "flight or fight." well, my friends, my survival instincts kicked in and i desperately clung to the melody with every atom in my being, trying to tease it out from the FOUR PART HARMONY going on in some of the numbers, singing with my hand in front of my mouth to muffle my (limited) contributions. it was kind of terror-inducing. it was also the most over-directed and micromanaged dockside hootenanny that i've ever seen, lol! so many takes! i think there's some good material there and there was definitely something magical about singing under the stars, with an inky black lake still beneath your feet, and a slowly dying fire casting flickering ember shadows on our faces.
then we came back to the stinking, stinking heat. oy vey. tomorrow evening we're going on the last big excursion before the fatburger's appearance, to visit my sis and outlaw bro and family, with dr. rei and hanbo, in geneseo. the real reason for the trip is to go to the new york state fair, which is BLOWING MY MIND at the moment. check out the interactive "food finder" map! check out the categories: "fried" "on a stick" "unique" - i'm going to eat the S**T outta this fair, mark my words. i really want to try a deep fried oreo, fried cheesecake, fried mac'n'cheese and all sorts of other goodies that you don't normally get (because you would die, obvs). i'm also liking all the seafood options, like fried clams, shrimp, crab cakes, and the regional new york specialties. GAH!!! i'm basically spending all my free time poring over the map and trying to commit it to memory and playing sophie's choice about what's actually going to make it down my gaping maw.
last night's dinner was an attempt to recalibrate post-cottage excesses and pre-NYSF excesses. we had pan-seared lamb shoulder chops with a mint chimichurri, white bean & grape tomato salad, and a tomato-cucumber salad:
i have no less than eleven (!!!) book reviews and 2 movie reviews on deck for my peeps.
it's hard to believe that the last weekend of the summer is already here. i'm glad i'm spending it with my favorite people. is it weird how much i love going on vacation with friends? should i only want to go on vacation with my partner?
parallels the waxing of my belly. there's a chill in the air now, evidenced by a few days of humidity free weather that actually had me clawing haphazardly and sleepily for the comforter (!)
i'm staring down the barrel at 11 weeks more (give or take) to go until the fatburger makes his vagine-tearing entrance into the world. ummm, gross.
but this summer's last gasp is a doozy! another week's vacation, split between a cottage with the kdubsguelph crew and then the more sedate, coronation-street infused, meditative pleasures of the dotytron's family cottage in the muskokas. i'm looking forward to both equally. the hard thing about a pack of friends who live a few hours away is that your time with them is so intermittent - it's going to be so nice to have a sustained chunk of time with these people i love in the restful suspended headspace of the cottage.
the dotytron's family cottage is fantastic too - no distractions - just you and lazy days dangling your legs off the couch reading or lying in the screened in porch drifting in and out of a sun drunk stupor. the cottage is prime time muskoka - craggy canadian shield - and it boggles my mind every time i think that grandpa reid BUILT the darned thing with his own two hands - and boated in all the supplies too. how crazy it must have been to clear the land and wait years and years for running water and electricity. i feel really connected to grandpa's particular brand of gentle stoicism at the cottage - and i've built up so many fond memories of fishing with the dotytron and exploring by canoe and going on rinky dinky "portages" (ie. carrying the canoe 2 feet) and being bored to death watching ken burns' "civil war" documentary on pbs on the old cathode tube tv.
the dotytron has banned me from long swims (did i tell you i swam a good 5 km at the cottage with my family - from an island back to the cottage?) and long canoe rides. he's trying to ban me from biking to work and back too, but so far my resistance movement is winning against his autocratic dictates. the sight of my belly at night, unsheathed and liberally anointed with shea butter in an admittedly vain attempt to forestall the appearance of stretch marks, makes the dotytron go all googly-eyed. he loves looking at it. me, not so much. i would very much like my waistline back, thank you. he's such a baby monster, though. it's cute seeing how unbelievably pumped the dotytron is and how every baby he comes across lately is the recipient of much cooing and even MORE googly eyes.
we had a lovely weekend in geneseo. brought back the crib, the dresser, a new laptop and the pottery barn shelves. little ze's special day was pretty hilarious. most notably because he insisted that a special day with his aunt and uncle doesn't count as a "present" and was trying to hustle us into the rochester science centre's gift store for a real "present" on the way out.
he was also being really funny when we were watching "harry potter & the half-blood prince" on demand. every time dumbledore appeared on screen he would scream "aahhh!" and then we'd have to explain, "dude, that's dumbledore, he's a good guy!" repeatedly.
i had my favoritest wegman's vanilla cake with lemon filling and whipped cream frosting for a birthday cake. we ate at delmonico's, we had a shrimp boil, and otherwise spent lovely time together.
we left my mum with the kids and watched "the other guys" - it was decently funny. WAY better than "dinner with schmucks" which, as you may recall, was horrendous. i actually laughed during this which i consider an achievement. it starts off strong and then starts to peter off near the end, like a lot of comedies - they burn out the concept and then are stuck trying to lamely tie up loose ends.
on tuesday we had a birthday dinner for big d "aka big d's big day" at queen margherita with my aunt mimi (big d's big sister, visiting from hk) and her hubby uncle jacques. i got the pizza of the day (pesto, mushrooms, fior di latte, bacon) and split with the dotytron, who got the diavolo (hot sopressatta, fior di latte, olives, tomato sauce). they've changed up the menu a wee bit since the last few times we've been there. the prix fixe used to be appetizer, pizza, salad and they've swapped the salad for a dessert course (a wise decision). not having dessert was probably too weird for a north american audience.
i went to town when i got home tonight:
- visited my friend G who had her baby (a girl!) after work with K - her little bambino is so cute! such a lady! long fingers, long nails, a full head of hair and a healthy and robust 7lbs. she was just 5 hours into the world when i met her. - went grocery shopping for some last minute things for dinner this week - dropped off my keys and instructions for H and that guy, who will be checking in on our house for us - made deviled eggs and prepped stuff for our "night in new england" dinner tomorrow night with L, J, & S. - made all the components for a banana cream pie (crust, pastry cream, chocolate ganache) that will be coming with us to the cottage, to be either consumed by kdubsguleph or dotytron's family. - made the dinner above, baba ghannouj, fried haloumi, warmed pita, and a tomato-cucumber mint salad
all in about an hour. it was kind of buck. i was losing my mind temporarily.
it all worked out in the end and i got to settle down with my dessert of choice, lately (also pictured above): a banana sundae consisting of sliced bananas, breyer's vanilla ice cream, whipped cream, bourbon toffee sauce, toasted coconut, toasted pecan pieces. so good!
midwife appointment today, then costco, picking up oysters for "a night in new england", blinds to go for blinds for the fatburger's room, and then home before hitting academic book club tonight. ai yi yi!
i have my craft room/office (or corner of it) back! hallelujah! this entire process was not without its tears. i basically had a mental breakdown last night around 10:30pm, this AFTER arguing with the dotytron about setting up the shelves at 8:30pm, after he got home late from teaching private lessons.
basically the night went like this: i came home, made dinner (pictured below), ate, waited for him, he came home, ate, i insisted my room be put back together, he resisted, we fought, he did it anyway, he coaxed me upstairs to see it, and then i started rearranging things and stymied by my belly and my mouth-breathing and how much harder it is to do/lift/perform routine tasks lately, broke into sobs on the floor. it was pretty grim. like, this wasn't a ladylike trickle of tears - these were heaving rivulets and gasping and wailing that started off as sentences but devolved into primordial keening.
i feel like i'm under a bit of stress. too many extra projects at work that are being micromanaged by people who subscribe to bizarre rules like "you should have 1 power point slide for every 45 seconds of speech" and who insist on bi weekly teleconferences about the status of the presentation (i'm presenting at this tech fair thing in the fall) and are having the first "dry run" of the presentation SIX WEEKS before the actual tech fair is happening. in addition to the demands of my regular job and the current development opportunities and extra projects i'm already committed to.
then there's the stress of not having a space of my own and getting ready for the fatburger and coordinating showers and cottage trips and prenatal classes and all the rest and it's weighing me down. i have so much trouble LETTING GO and going with the flow and not micromanaging everything in my own life and i'm such a perfectionist that i take things way too personally. i also made the mistake of watching a birth video on youtube which freaked me the heck out. i'm sure not doing THAT again, thank you very much.
anyway, on to happier things. late tonight we're leaving to geneseo to visit with my sister and pick up the crib and crib mattress and dresser and eat naughty western new york things and take my nephew for his birthday special day (which includes eating at moe's - his favorite restaurant - and going to the rochester science centre and museum).
tonight we had a zucchini, corn, chive, and mascarpone whole wheat pasta for dinner:
last night we had sesame soba noodles (recipe below) with garlic shrimp:
2 "bundles" of soba noodles (the ones i buy come in pre-portioned little bundles)
1 head of broccoli, cut into bite-sized florets
1 orange pepper, small dice
1 cucumber, small dice
3-4 scallions, thinly sliced
3/4 lb of peeled shrimp
4-5 garlic cloves, minced
salt and pepper
spicy sesame garlic sauce
2 T. canola oil
1-3 t. chili flakes
4-5 garlic cloves, finely minced
1/4 c. soy sauce
1 T. sugar
2 T. sesame oil
1 lemon, juiced
- boil water and cook the soba noodles. add the broccoli to the boiling water when the soba are about 1-2 minutes from being done. drain the cooked soba and broccoli and rinse with cold water until cool.
- toss the cold soba and broccoli with the diced pepper, cucumber, and scallions in a large bowl and set aside
make the spicy sesame garlic sauce:
- heat the canola oil with the chili flakes and garlic over low heat, until it starts to sizzle and you can smell the garlic (watch carefully!)
- stir until the garlic is almost golden, then take the pan off the heat and add the soy, the sugar, and sesame oil, stirring to dissolve the sugar
- add the lemon juice, taste for seasoning, and toss this sauce in with the soba noodle mixture
- in the same pan (no point cleaning it!), heat a couple of tablespoons of oil over high heat. add your shrimp and when they've cooked for about 2 minutes and look partially opaque, add the garlic, stirring them around so that the garlic doesn't burn.
- top the soba noodle salad with the cooked shrimp and serve.
supper club was fantastic. seriously, king's park is THE BEST! as soon as i've eaten there i want to go back IMMEDIATELY. we ordered a kilo of the roasted pork and the roasted lamb. the pork blew me away - so juicy and oregano crusted. the lamb was also good but a little bony - it depends on how you feel about gnawing on bones. we had saganaki, pita, tonnes of tzatiki, greek fries (chunky cut fries sprinkled with feta) the village salad (a chunky salad of tomatoes, olives, cucumbers, red onions, and green peppers served with a giant slab of feta), bread, and ate and drank long into the night, for almost 3 hours.
we followed that up with a bike ride to ed's real scoop for the east siders for some ice cream (i was good and got a kiddie cup!) which meant that we passed by this raging jam outside a barbershop on pape where a live reggae band was going BUCK playing "pressure drop":
so freakin' awesome. we almost went without ice cream entirely to join the mob of peeps standing outside and jamming. what's better than a summer night with reggae, a belly full of lamb, good conversation and laughs and the prospect of ice cream on the near horizon? not freakin' much, i'll tell you.
i can't reiterate enough what a good weekend it was - just a reminder that even as summer ticks down to its labour day conclusion there is fun and joy and love to be taken.
last night we went to tacos al asador with the goosetang clan (where they overcharged me by $3!!! this didn't seem to bother anyone else but me - but i'm chinese, and that shiz don't fly, son) and then visited our buddy L who is housesitting for his sis (and our friends) J & S and who is recovering from knee surgery. i'm kind of off tacos al asador. i feel like i've been there too much lately or something. i'm just not feeling it as much. maybe because i'm feeling like i haven't had enough harbord fish'n'chips this summer? or maybe because i'm craving a bacchus or ghandi's roti? i feel like i've been to al asador too much or something.
i know blogs without photos aren't any fun. i WANT to show you all the delicious food/good times we've been eating/having lately, but i don't think that's going to happen before thursday, to be honest.
the fatburger's room is now freshly painted and all we (read: the dotytron) have to do is do a final edging strip of paint and then clean the room again and move the stuff that's going back in there, back in there.
in lieu of life pictures, i thought i'd show you some of the fatburger's room inspirations. the colour palette we're going with is maintaining the pale green "cucumber crush" colour i had originally picked for the room when it was just my office/craft room:
i find it looks smashing with the white trim and my original colour palette for my office was this colour, orange, and white. i feel this colour combination is still gender-neutral enough for a little boy's room (or a girl who likes robots/outer space). i'm keeping a corner of the room for my office/computer set up and for my files and crafts anyway, so i didn't want to have to reinvent the wheel.
this is the crib we're getting, walmart's baby mod parklane:
i love the look of modern cribs, but the standard-bearer for this is the oeuf crib which costs upwards of $1000. this is the oeuf crib:
i mean, i love the clean lines as much as the next person, but to put it in perspective, my mid century teak veneer queen bed frame cost $600. there is NO WAY IN HECK that someone i haven't met yet (that's you, fatburgie) is going to be resting their tookus in something more expensive than what i've got, especially since they're in the crib for 2 years tops and i'm in mine for life. also, the oeuf crib isn't convertible, the walmart one is, and it's been popping up all over on the design blogs.
we got this walmart babymod olivia dresser to go with it and i'm going to convert the top to a changing table by plopping on a changing pad:
i wasn't super-keen on having a dedicated changing table - those things are useless afterwards and even the "changing table" options that aren't like those hospital supply cart things tend to have a shelf stuck behind two doors like a small dresser - not functional.
we're going to have an ikea expedit 2x4 in white set up under the window horizontally, for storing toys and books and whatnot, and with my stuff in the ikea orange kassett boxes:
rather than buy a coordinated crib set, i opted instead to have a custom crib bumper made in free spirit's "robots" line in orange:
and i'm going to match it with white fitted crib sheet and make my own white crib skirt. for the record, my sister thinks i'm crazy to have white bedding, and i acknowledge this and subsequently registered for darker colours, but for the finished nursery photos, i'm going white.
i'm also going to make a simple crib quilt in the coordinating fabric from the line:
pretty cute, eh?
we're putting up pottery barn's collector's shelves in white and these 2 cloud shelves i bought ages ago:
as you can tell, i believe strongly in storage/display opportunities.
my chrome rocker is going to live in the room temporarily and some discrete ikea table lamps and maybe my moo cow lamp if i can get a lamp shade made up for it in time.
i'm going to move the robot print currently in the master bedroom into the room as well as the offshore records print we have, and i bought these two prints (chinese zodiac and toronto street meat) ones for the room:
i'm probably going to get a couple of more prints - one probably from etsy seller modern pop (they're adorable!) and probably this poops scoops one as well (pretty effin' cute, eh?):
i can't decide which one of these etsy, intergalactic mobiles i should go for:
and finally, we were thinking of putting this rug in the room:
but i'm worried that it might be too busy. what do you think? we're also hoping that our R&R acres friends might let us buy one of their fluffy sheepskins from them - i can't think of anything softer or cuddlier for a winter baby than doing your tummy time on a sheepskin.
i'm rounding out the room with some orange and yellow vintage egg baskets i have for rounding up small things (i'm all about corralling small items) and i want to get these ADORABLE giant lego storage boxes (they're stackable!) - how awesome are they?!?
funny story, the dotytron is reading this book that i just finished called "will grayson, will grayson" which is a book with alternating chapters telling the stories of two guys named will grayson, with each chapter written by either john green (one of my favorite YA authors who wrote "an abundance of katherines" and "paper towns") or david levithan (who wrote "nick and norah's infinite playlist"). eventually, the two will graysons meet up with hilarious results. so the dotytron was like, partially through and had obviously missed a key plot point because he thought the alternating chapters were talking about ONE will grayson and so he was asking me if there was some kind of time continuity issue and i was like, uhhh dude, can't you tell that those are TWO different people? i mean, the book kind of makes it easy for you, david levithan's will grayson chapters are all lowercase and the writing style is TOTALLY different. anyway, it's been a bit of a joke in my back pocket that i've been pulling out since then to make fun of how he couldn't figure out the central narrative device of a young adult novel.
we were taking the subway home last night and i was teasing him about it, pretending to quote him and going, "duhhhh, did will grayson GO BACK IN TIME?!?" and he was getting all defensive and going on a rant the gist of which was, "it's not like you're not stupid too, you're stupid ALL THE TIME" and then i looked over at him and his funny face and had another of those moments where sometimes, it kind of boggles my mind that we've been together for 9 years and that i somehow ended up marrying I__ D___ from HIGH SCHOOL. like, we went to high school together. and weren't friends. and never talked. and he saw me one night two days before the party before we officially met when i was breezing by the table that he happened to be sitting at with some mutual friends and i stopped to say hi and didn't even register his presence (i was going to hear my then boyfriend dj and meet up with the roomie and her then boyfriend). and he thought i was cute and told a mutual friend this (a mutual friend i had spent the summer messing around with) who promptly told me that so-and-so from torontojungle.com (the message board we all posted on) thought i was cute. and he showed up at the party to meet said mutual friend (that i had been messing around with) and caught the last part of my (awful, terrible, amateurish) dj set and then noticed that the place was crawling with people from our high school. and i went to say hi to my high school friend who was working the door who was talking to the dotytron and the dotytron introduced himself and was all like, "hi, i'm I__" and i was like *polite indifference* "uh, yeah, hi whatever" and then it suddenly clicked that he was talking to my high school friend. and then i interrupted them mid conversation and shouted, "I__ D___ FROM HIGH SCHOOL#$!!%^?!?!" and that after a life time of everything BUT electronic dance music he was into jungle and posting on the same message board i'd been on for years. and that his parents had moved downtown from the burbs where we went to high school and he was done school and living with them and OH BY THE WAY DID I MENTION THAT HIS PARENTS NEW HOUSE WAS ON THE SAME STREET AS THE HOUSE THAT I WAS RENTING WITH A BUNCH OF NE'ER-DO-WELL BOYS ONE OF WHOM HAPPENED TO BE MY NOW EX THEN KINDA SORTA BOYFRIEND?!? like, literally, three blocks up the same MOTHERF**KING street in toronto with a population of 2+ million and more neighbourhoods and streets than you can shake a stick at? and somehow, through this most random and serendipitous and meet cute-est of meet cute stories he ended up being the perfect person for me? how does THAT work?
so sometimes this flashes through my head and i was on the ttc with him and all our years together just kind of flashed before my eyes and i started thinking thoughts like, "i'm having a BABY with this guy" and i looked at his dear face and was giving him the googly eyes and i leaned over and kissed his shoulder and said, "i can't believe i ended up with I__ D___ from high school" and you know what his response was?
my entire office at home has been disassembled to make way for our crew of bargain-basement asian contractors (aka randy & his team of jabberwockys - that's a america's best dance crew reference for y'all) to come in and replace two of the walls in spumante's room with drywall. SO MUCH DUST. i can't reiterate how jabberwocky this team is - they all show up wearing vintage tribe called quest t-shirts and one of them was wearing flip flops! lol! the good thing is the quote is less than 1/2 the cost of the lowest quote we got from anyone else. the bad thing is that there's dust EVERYWHERE.
it depends on how relaxed you are with those kinds of things. i'm totally okay with cleaning up after people and doing the sanding and priming ourselves (aka volunteering the dotytron to do it). some people want contractors who give them the white glove treatment with hepa filters and glossy websites - i'm okay with saving money and forgoing that stuff for a pretty decent job where i have to do some of the dirty work.
and boy oh boy is it DIRRRTY. we're talking christina aguilera "it's about time for my arrival" "dirrty featuring redman" dirty. so dusty! it's coming along okay though, and hopefully by tuesday we can clean the top floor of the house and put all my stuff back where it belongs. my desk is being condensed and i'm moving from a desktop to a laptop (probably - we'll see if i can find a cheapie one in the states next weekend) so that the fatburger's room will be a combo office/bambino room. it sucks not having access to my computer and my multitude of MS word lists and stupid MS excel spreadsheets. can you believe that that's all i basically use my computer for?!?
yesterday we had brunch with our friends S & P on their new outdoor set in their HUGE annex backyard - it was so nice! i'm starting to love brunch entertaining more and more. it's great - i mean, we're already up that early in the morning anyway and then it still leaves you the bulk of your day for a post-brunch nap or, in our case, a trip to home depot and a house clean. we also met their new parent friends T & B from ottawa who were very laid back and lovely people. i love meeting friends-of-friends!
it was very low key last night. i made us that warm bacon, lentil, and baby spinach salad with the breaded, pan fried goat's cheese and toasted whole wheat baguette slices and then we watched "kill bill volume 1" and passed out early.
friday night momma & poppa d hosted me for a birthday dinner at their place with ehmdo and a surprise appearance from nany. i was so spoiled. we ate giant steaks and a big green salad and sliced tomatoes with boccaccini and a mennonite cocoa cake with white frosting. simple, homey, mom food in spades.
today is another day of housecleaning followed by a supper club meeting at king park for rotisseried lamb by the pound with onion rings and chunky greek salad. can't wait. my friend P is visiting in town from egypt so we're hoping to squeeze in a visit with him as well.
so while my life is in flux it's also being filled with good food, good friends, and good times. that's a pretty fair balance, methinks.
it is unbelievably difficult to articulate one's feelings about the passing of a loved one. all the platitudes we turn to, when spread out before us to choose from, fall so woefully short that their rough, blocky, shadowy forms only point to our inadequacies elucidating the sharper lines that demarcate the limits of human emotion. love? love is easy. there is so much written about love, too much written about love, really. the simple elegance of "i love you" brings rushing forward the millennia of countless touches, whispered endearments, nights spent gazing adoringly at a face in repose lying next to you that we've amassed as a species. "i'm sorry" doesn't do the same thing - there's a gaping morass of personal feeling there that is inaccessible with words.
we spent the bulk of the friday before we left for the cottage with poppa in the hospital. i'm so glad we had that time. the family needed a break - a chance to go home and shower and try to sleep. we were able to keep nany company, to touch poppa's hand, and whisper our goodbyes in his ear before we left. they say that hearing is one of the last senses to go and i will always remember that when i leaned over the bed and told poppa about how much i loved him and how his great grandson couldn't wait to meet him, he responded...and i knew he heard me and that was at once one of the most beautiful things and one of the hardest things i've ever experienced.
i'm glad we got to say goodbye. i'm glad he wasn't in pain and that his transition wasn't too long. i'm glad that the dotytron and i found out about his passing at the cottage where we could cry and hold each other and look out at the serenity of a still lake and feel at peace with the mournful cry of a loon as the articulation of our grief. i'm glad that i got to spend the week away from the city and with my family and have my sad moments cut through with the oblivious, blundering, silly joy of my niece and nephew.
poppa's generation is a marvel and a testament to us all. 2 world wars, 1 depression, and his list of accomplishments, organizations, and charity commitments filled his obituary to the brim and there were still things left out. the saying was that if there were more than 3 people meeting in toronto, poppa was one of them. we should all be so lucky to leave such a legacy - of tireless, selfless giving to the city of toronto, of a relationship that spanned over 70 years, of a family that feels the loss of a patriarch keenly.
he will be missed but i take comfort in knowing that he's somewhere in the great beyond sipping scotch and playing rounds of golf with the other dotys that have come before him - like ferris doty (yes, there was a ferris doty - how awesome is that?) i've never known someone who so embodied the family name before - he was so proud to be a doty. there are photos of poppa wearing a "mayflower 1620" sweatshirt and hat and he signed the dotytron up for the edward doty society (edward doty was a ne'er do well troublemaker who came over on the mayflower) - one day we came home and there was a certificate and now we get pilgrim edward doty society newsletters. it's so sweet and funny. there's even a doty family crest.
so our charge now is to be the very best that we can be as a testament to his influence. to give of ourselves and be fiercely proud and loving and protective of our family. to raise the next generation of dotys with a sense of respect and the knowledge of hard work and joy and forgiveness. to make sure that the little fatburger knows the legacy of his surname and to make sure he strives to live up to it. to instill in him the knowledge that he will always have a family to draw strength from and that it is his responsibility to make sure he is worthy of such a gift.
our friends H & A were in town from cleveland and stayed with us last night. we were the last stop before they headed back to the cleve on their whirlwind vacation to new england. it's always so good to see them. they're exactly like us! two total nerds who love food and eating and most of the same things we like. the best! we took them to this place, hanoi 3 seasons which does quasi-upscale vietnamese food. H is my mum's old friend J's son, and he owns a few japanese restaurants in cleveland and he's a total foodie - his first pick is always asian food, too. we followed that up with ice cream at ed's real scoop. so good.
as my belly gets bigger (seriously guys, i'm a whale of a tale right now) i'm realizing i can actually eat less than i would normally. when i get full i get REALLY full - like it feels like my stomach is a super-taut drum skin stretched way too tight. it's very uncomfortable.
i did a wack load of grocery shopping and stocked up on fruits and veggies and planned super-healthy meals for this week but i'm being hijacked at every turn. my cottage diet of cheetos and lipton's noodle and sauce and dessert every night in anticipation of a gestational diabetes diagnosis that thankfully never came has come to an end, thankfully. eating super-rich, super-meat-heavy meals takes a lot out of you. eggs and bacon and sausage and weekend brunch type breakfasts every day get a little wearing. i'm craving salads and freshness and a resumption of my life cereal with raspberries for breakkie and fruit for a treat with saugeen country yoghurt.
the gestational diabetes test is a bit of a mind-f**k. you fast overnight and then they take your fasting blood and make you drink this super sugary drink and then test your blood 1 hour and then 2 hours after to see how your body is processing the sugar. the drink was totally over-hyped by people i talked to. ladies were like, "i felt like vomiting, it was so sweet" etc., etc., but it's really a small amount of liquid (way less than 500ml) and they serve it to you chilled and it's carbonated. it tastes like orange fanta - i'd say it's even less sweet than orange crush at the end of the day.
i got my results back and i'm in the clear. which is nice. it doesn't mean i'm going to let up on my pre-cottage eating habits - i'm still cutting out juice and drinking big glasses of milk instead and avoiding white foods but it's nice knowing that ed's real scoop is still a viable post-dinner constitutional destination for the remainder of the summer.
the problem is: this week is mental! last night we went out for food (yummy, healthy, clean-tasting vietnamese food, but still). today for lunch we took my colleague G out for a swiss chalet group lunch as it's her last week of work before mat leave. friday night momma and poppa d are hosting us for a belated birthday dinner. friday lunch dr. rei is INSISTING on taking me out for a pusateri's meal. saturday we're having brunch at our friends' S & P's place and sunday night is our supper club.
how am i supposed to combat those forces!?! i'm definitely hitting up the lane swim tonight and since i ate a 1/4 chicken dinner with a heap of fries i'm going to eat fruit and nuts and yoghurt for "dinner" tonight and try to avoid eating two giant meals in a day. this means that upon the dotytron's return home he'll turn to me and ask "what's for dinner" and i'll explain that i'm not making dinner tonight and why and then his FIRST DEFAULT INSTINCT will be to get takeout instead of taking the TONNES OF TONNES OF RAW MATERIALS IN OUR FRIDGE AND TURNING THEM INTO A MEAL FOR HIMSELF. that's his signature move. then i yell at him (that's MY signature move) and then he'll sulkily make himself like, the worst meal ever (like peanut butter on bread with cottage cheese) and eat that.
have i told you already (forgive me, but i write here ALOT and sometimes i plumb forget if i've regaled your with stories before, mmmkay?) about how i've been having mad anxiety about what little time will be available to me in the weeks after the fatburger is born and how i'm worried that he's going to be colicky and that i'll be up all night and not getting enough sleep but STILL wanting with every fiber of my type A being to maintain the same standards of living that i prided myself in prior to ejecting a little squirming babe and that i'm expecting the dotytron to pick up the slack on house cleaning and meal cooking? and that to that end i've been quizzing him on how to make food because pretty much ever since i stopped being a cook and started being a librarian, i've been doing the cooking because 8-5 jobs are conducive to you living our your passions like that. so i've been doing stuff like ambushing him with: "TELL ME STEP BY STEP HOW YOU MAKE PASTA CARBONARA" and then screaming my head off when he doesn't do things in the right sequence or neglects to TELL me that he's going to reserve some of the pasta cooking water to loosen a gummy tacky sauce?
speaking of that, i actually haven't given him the treatment in a while. i should. i think it's important for our child to see that both parents share in domestic duties and that it's not like the mum is the ONLY one responsible for putting out salsa in little serving dishes and shaking the tortilla chips into bowls and the pops is the ONLY one responsible for doing anything related to the grill and leaning on hamburgers with a bbq spatula and squeezing out all the juice *shudders* in our house though, the pops IS the only one responsible for un-chonging the toilet because as we all know, poo (and chinotto) is my nemesis.
easing back into the regular rhythm of life, slowly but surely.
i thought i'd resume blogging with some film reviews and do a major catch-up later this week when i've had time to sort through my thoughts and feelings a bit more to be able to do them justice.
on saturday night my family saw "dinner for schmucks" - it was TERRIBLE. long, boring, and very, very unfunny. the problem with the film (other than that it's SUPPOSED to be a comedy and isn't by a long shot) is that the farcical elements aren't really dumb ENOUGH and are anchored by this very "serious", non-farcical storyline around paul rudd's character and his gf - it turns into this increasingly implausible comedy of errors regarding their relationship, but the serious turn takes you out of the comedy, and both narratives end up suffering. unlike movies like "airplane!" or "naked gun" or "major league" which are out-and-out slapstick, stupidly funny farces, this one was always stumbling with these serious interludes and a pretty bad case of mis-casting. paul rudd wasn't allowed to be funny, and i'm pretty tired of zach galifianakis' schtick, which i don't find very amusing, generally. steve carrell's lovable idiot wasn't a fully-fleshed out character so the audience's credulity is stretched without the pay-off of the big laughs that you get in some of the other comedies mentioned above. the short of it is: DON'T GO.
the dotytron and i saw "inception" on sunday night. overall, i think the mixed reviews are deserved. people have been so hopped up in anticipation of this film, which is admittedly good, but is also standing uncontested in what has been a very lacklustre 2010 for movies so far. i think critics and audiences were really hungry for SOMETHING decent at the cineplex, and christopher nolan has that kind of "thinking man's blockbuster" appeal that provides succor to people numbed out by the summer blockbuster afterbirth that the writer's strike spawned.
this is a good movie, but not great. conceptually, it is interesting, my major complaint is that it's not interesting ENOUGH. i personally didn't find it as complicated as so many people have been claiming, it's not that crazy a mind f**k - it's basically just a few layers of the same thing. i agree with critics who found that ellen page's clunky expository dialogue to be a bit laboured and forced, she might as well have broken the fourth wall and addressed the audience directly. my principal issues with the film is the failure of the imagination - these are the most mundane, plodding "dreams" that i've ever encountered. as we left the theatre, the dotytron wondered aloud what slavoj zizek would think (he's a theorist that writes on film and does a lot with psychoanalytic stuff - his comments on "the children of men" dvd extras are quite prescient in my opinion) about "inception" and i guessed that he wouldn't have much to say at all - the subconscious is so banal, so dreary, so mechanical in "inception."
i found it a little too easy for cobb's team to plant the idea, playing on the very linear psychology of cillian murphy's character. i thought that the character named "mal" would have been a LOT more malevolent and that the big reveal of her motivations and her role in cobb's life ended up being quite reductive and unnuanced. people weren't tortured ENOUGH given the set-up of the film. when i think back to movies like "jacob's ladder" or "being john malkovich" i feel like the depiction of the subconscious there and the tricks the mind can play on you spoke more to the untold mysteries of our deepest, darkest, psychological depths. the world created by cobb and mal in their "limbo" was terrible! really? you spend a lifetime with your love in a world of your own making and what you come up with is a generic midwestern u.s. metropolis with some childhood relics thrown in?!? c'mon!
if you think back to your own dreams and how fantastical and nonsensical they can be, it makes the dreamscapes depicted by nolan to be quite utilitarian which is at odds with the way the film labours to set up this top-notch caper-y team of experts. ariadne's (again, the portentous naming of the characters belies their relatively nondescript personalities) set designs never approach the fantastical mystery hinted at with the mc escher staircase or the maze which she teases the audience with only to swap out a nondescript hotel and james bond stock alps bunker. the movie lacked an emotional depth and creativity, once you get beyond the initial concept.
i can't say that i wasn't engrossed - the film kept me captivated, i just think that nolan is ultimately more mathematical, puzzle-brain guy as opposed to creative guy - there was a lot more opportunity for dazzle in that film and it was under-realized.
we saw some abysmal trailers. the new ben affleck boston-ode "the town" was SPOILED by a trailer that gave away far, far too much. why would you do that?!? dear hollywood: GIVE THE AUDIENCE SOME CREDIT!
the new david fincher movie looks kind of boring, imo. guess who doesn't care about the rise of mark zuckerberg and the creation of facebook? THIS GUY *points thumbs at self* i'll probably see it because it's ALREADY generating oscar buzz but i don't have high hopes. the trailer gives it all away and tries to make it seem all serious-o and like, HEAVY when it's really about a bunch of privileged harvard barbershop quartet dudes (for some reason, i'm CONVINCED that all guys do in harvard is join weird barbershop quartets and do other stupidly east coast male-bonding things like that) making a website. i mean, it's cool that facebook is so widely used and whatnot and blah blah blah social networking blah blah, but like, toothbrushes and toilet paper are also equally as ubiquitous and i don't really need to see a super dramatic movie made about the inventors of those two items. also: children's choir, much?!???!!! so so so lame! pop music use of children's choirs takes all the intrinsic heart-warming qualities of children's choirs and decimates them.
this trailer is also balls. i haven't seen the original "wall street" (film club?!???!!) but this one looks awful, just awful, and so antiquated. i'm not really a fan of carey mulligan - she seems a little droopy dog - i call it over-steamed dumpling face. and the story and everything just looks so dullsville. the theatrical trailer we saw had the rolling stones' "sympathy for the devil" playing over it and that STILL wasn't enough to make you want to see it.
we're intrigued by "tron: legacy" if only because we think that seeing it in imax 3D will be like watching a really long daft punk video with excellent sound and 9 years with the dotytron has taught me nothing if not appreciating dynamic range and sound engineering as an element of the film going experience. one of the best moments in "inception" was that i could see the dotytron staying for the credits and i knew it was because he wanted to find out who had scored the film. i guess hans zimmer and he disagreed (the low brass was a bit of a decoy and kind of un-zimmer-esque, overall) but i was right! i love being right!
the next day i failed to correctly identify john coltrane in some video footage.
my name is karl lagerfeld. i'm a lucky button, buckshot shorty, and an industrious pig. i write about food, popular culture, film, books, politics, theory, and the ephemera of my life. a can of chinotto once ruined my night. the rest, as they say, is history.
i have no less than eleven (!!!) book reviews and 2 movie reviews on deck for my peeps.
