sad halloween

halloween was a total bust this year. well, not completely, but i totally dropped the ball to the point where i felt like a bit of a failure in the halloween spirit department. no signature pumpkins (and this year's contenders were going to be AWESOME - i'd spill the beans but i'm going to recycle the idea for next year, so you'll just have to wait with baited breath), no costumes for me and the dotytron, no costume for the boobla khan, pretty crappy cut-out decorations...ugh. i was definitely not in full form. i mean, i have a good excuse, but i still feel like i could've gotten my shiz together a bit more and pulled something together.

friday night we laid low. it was a bitterly cold day so the dotytron came home right after school and we snuggled in flannel jammies and ate big bowls of beef stew with roasted garlic mashed potatoes:
saturday morning i made us homemade sausage'n'egg mcmuffins with whole wheat thomas english muffins which are CRAP to eat on their own. it's like they're shockingly bad, considering how amazingly wonderful and the pinnacle of english muffin-ness the non-whole wheat thomas english muffins are. anyway, i lightly toasted 'em and sandwiched them with bob evans sausage, and over-easy egg, and grated cheddar cheese. muy bueno:

then we set up the stroller and walked down to queen street and the dotytron got a coffee from one of the ten bajillion gourmet coffee places in leslieville and we promenaded and basically assumed the mantle of the leslieville yuppie stroller brigade. yikes.

we came home and the dotytron convinced me to order popeye's fried chicken because he feels that since i entered the second trimester, i've been way less binge-y with my eating than in the entire course of our relationship and he's apparently really missed eating crappy takeout. so i indulged the poor boy. this involved the usual (3 piece, dark meat, spicy meal deal with mashed po' and cajun gravy) and then i went all FUBAR and ordered the MARDI GRAS CHEESECAKE. you know, cuz popeye's is known for their DESSERTS. oy x a billion.

sunday we had brunch with my family at joy bistro which was hilarious because big d was in fine form and was being adorably big d. this involved telling my mom to shut up and stop interrupting and making cracks about me and my stepmother and then directing a billion questions a minute about cell phone plans at s-dawg. it also involved this awesome exchange, the impetus for which was big d requesting the name of our plumber:

s-dawg: "didn't we have a plumber? what happened to that guy - i forget his name, he was black, and he used to call me steven"
big d: "oh i know who you're talking about. he wasn't black and he wasn't a plumber"

lol!!!

we came home, had a visit with S & A and then dr. rei came over and the dotytron shaved and turned into baby dotytron for movember and we had classic m-r-i times at our place high. it was hilarious. we talked about a billion different things, ranging from the serious to the trifling. a big discussion concerned where we were going to order in for dinner. we floated the idea of the burger's priest, which i've talked about before. i had thought the name was just being cheeky, but when i checked out the website to look up the menu, i found out that the religious angle was way more jesus-fish-y than i had previously assumed, complete with links to christian sermons and quotes from numbers under the tab "the gospel." so then dr. rei and i got all skeeved out at the politicizing of our burger ordering and it became a question of whether or not they were also against the gays or not and if we should order from them and the dotytron went all hilarious and called us out on the arbitrary insertion of anti-religious bias into our burger ordering which culminated in the line, "i can guarantee you that the burger's priest guy doesn't have the money OR THE POLITICAL CONNECTIONS [to actualize any kind of christian agenda]" lol! it was the most impassioned defense of a good burger couched in a critique of the arbitrary and provisional nature of the intersection between capitalism, consumerism and politics that i've ever heard.

there was also some hilarity around giving out halloween candy because in the year that our costco overflow from last year has been sitting around the house, somehow someone (probably me, because, as the dotytron accused, "you don't respect candy because you don't even LIKE candy") threw some candy canes in the bin and dr. rei mistakenly uploaded a candy cane on a neighbour kid and i was kind of embarrassed about it. then, we had a band of total chinese immigrant kids show up at our door (the kind where some of them aren't even in costume because they don't get the holiday at all, and where one of the kids politely thanked me with a: "sank you!" - so cute!) and one of the kids studied the bin, and then actually said, "hmmm...candy cane" and CHOSE a candy cane. it was hilarious.

my mum is really the best. she may not be "nurturing" in the typical white mom way, but she's not a white mom, and she can deliver where it counts (ie. if you want a threatening lawyer-y cease-and-desist letter written on your behalf). in this case, she went to pac mall and bought us beard papa cream puffs, which i'd only heard about recently from my friend mhui. they are AMAZING. assuming you like really rich pastry cream (yes!), delicate choux paste profiteroles (yes!) and OVERSIZED, OVERSTUFFED portions of both of the above (yes yes, a thousand times, yes!) so good. so creamy. apparently there are locations where you can get the cream puffs warm and the pac mall location was mobbed - super long line ups. so worth it. why are the japanese the best at oh, i don't know, EVERYTHING?!??!

tonight for dinner i made us matzoh ball soup with lots of root veggies, dill, tender chunks of chicken, and dilled matzoh balls:

we had the dessert we were supposed to have yesterday, a pear franginpane tarte tatin with an oatmeal crust, warmed in the oven and served with a dollop of whipped cream:

in other news - do you think they could've swapped babies on us? look at this kid - he's so his own person. he doesn't really look like me OR the dotytron:

what are the chances that don rickles was having a baby the exact same night as us, at the exact same hospital? i'll let you decide:




fin.