Grateful pig

Daily family/friend/weekend/life love affirmation time. Not in the tempting-the-fates way, more in the "Dear Fates, I truly savour every moment because I realize how lucky I am and how tenuous and fleeting life is and I want you to know I'm filled with gratitude for my countless wonders" way.

What a weekend! It started with dinner with the Friday Night Dinner crew (me, Dr. Rei, Hanbo, the Dotytron, Big Yam, Dr. Rei's broski) at Udupi Palace, a vegetarian Indian place in Little India, around the corner from us. Some things were really exquisite, some were not. The appetizer platter was kind of hit or miss - the breading on some of the fried things was a little dense and lacking in seasoning - I'm not sure if they purposefully underseason so that you can then adjust with the chutneys, but it wasn't all working for me.




The best stuff on the menu were the dosas. We had a potato masala dosa that was spicy and a masala paneer dosa that was INSANELY good - I could eat those all day, every day. I accidentally gave the Big Yam some of the potato dosa without tasting it and it was spicy and he started crying and I felt like a bad, bad, mum.

Then we went up to Markham and spent the weekend with the fam-bam. We ate out, hung out, went swimming with the kids (which almost broke us), and saw a movie. When you're dealing with infants, the optimal adult-to-infant swimming happiness and maneuverability ratio is 2:1. We had 3 adults, 2 babies, and 2 kids (the kids are self sufficient) and it was a slippery octopus, chlorine, showering, family-change room gong show. Not recommended...but still, Little Big Cuz and the Big Yam had so much fun. The Big Yam is a pretty joyful being - one day, I'll take a video of his little "joy-gasms" and post it on here, it makes my insides shut down. Little Big Cuz likes to make eyes at you, smile, can army crawl across the floor, and screams like a woman when his mama isn't in sight, which also makes my insides shut down, but in a slightly different way.




I have an epic video of the two cousins babbling at each other, which is pretty crazy, considering that babies don't generally recognize each other or engage with other babies. Check out the Big Yam's awesome lotus pose up there - would that we were all still so flexible.


My sister and I went to see Bridesmaids while the boys went to see The Hangover Part 2(which they said was horrible, which I don't find surprising in the least, since the original Hangover was a textbook case of a movie that stupid people who laugh at dumb trailers in theatres go buck over.) Bridesmaids was decent, although I'm not a fan of gross-out humour. I'm also not a fan of using fat people to be the vehicles of gross-out humour, which this movie is a little guilty of. I also thought the movie dragged a bit (I can't remember a recent comedy that wasn't a little uneven) and some of the relationships (particularly between best friends Maya Rudolph and Kristen Wiig) strained credulity. That being said, Kristen Wiig is quite funny and winning through a lot of the movie and some of her freakouts are hilarious, as was her impression of a penis in the face.

Obligatory "I love my hood!" interjection. I LOVE MY HOOD! I love it love it love it love it love it. Yesterday we spent the better part of the late afternoon outside on our neighbour's lawn and hung out with some of the bigger kids who were coming back from the splash pad at the bottom of the street. Then my neighbour's mom offered to watch the Big Yam while I got dinner on, which was so nice of her! Then we all went out back and watched the commotion with some baby raccoons in the big tree and bounced around some ideas about renting a bin with the neighbs and doing some demo work. Then after dinner we went outside again for the post-dinner hangs. I don't want anyone to move...I'm so scared that people are going to leave the street and change the dynamic. Everyone on the street refers to the Big Yam as "baby Theo" (as in: "baby Theo is here!" "look at what baby Theo is doing!") and there's always sidewalk chalk and skipping and a million shared tricycles, plastic cars, and balls going on.

This weekend wasn't without it's minor wrinkles. I picked a fight with the Dotytron that was pretty hilarious. On Saturday afternoon he went with Bruce Wayne and Uncle Rico to take Little Ze and Miss E out to see Kung Fu Panda 2. As we were tucking into bed that night, the Dotytron was exhausted but I wasn't read to sleep so I wanted to talk and he was all rolling over and giving me the back so I started making outrageous claims like, "you never spend time with me!!!" and "there are only 2 days on the weekend when you can hang out with the Big Yam, and instead you chose to see Kung Fu Panda" and all sorts of unreasonable, petulant, mis-directed (really, I was just awake and wanted to talk more and missed spending one-on-one time with him and was probably a little pms-y) immaturity. I was also beyond reason and wouldn't let it go, which culminated in this line from the Dotytron: "Look, I can't talk to you when you're like this, I'm going to sleep. It's over. It happened, okay? Kung Fu Panda happened." LOL x a billion. "Kung Fu Panda HAPPENED" should be on a flash card so that it can be thrown up in front of my face the next time (and these kinds of minor moments of insanity are inevitable) this happens.

Last night for dinner I made us a nice, simple, quick supper of roasted Ontario asparagus, topped with roasted garlic oil croutons, and poached eggs. I love this meal. I'll post a photo tomorrow.

Tonight we're having chicken donburi with miso glazed eggplant...provided of course, that I manage to get home from my work bocce tournament (you read that right) in time to actually cook something.

Fin.

This post is going to be kinda girly...

inspired by the fact that I read the published excerpt from Mindy Kaling's upcoming book (available here) yesterday. I freakin' love Mindy Kaling...I think she's so funny and totally owns it and I find her way more easy to relate to than say, Tina Fey, who is the heroine for liberal, smart, professional moms. Mindy Kaling is the heroine for liberal, smart, pop culture obsessed working girls in L.A., and let's face it - even I, the girl who's more of a man (according to my husband), who wears her hair in a pony EVERY. SINGLE. GODDAMNED. DAY., who is way too wicked practical to wear anything but Birkenstocks in the summer, and who couldn't give a fig about 3/4 of the designers available at Opening Ceremony...even I have a little bit of that L.A. girl in me.

Reading Mindy's excerpt lead me to her twitter, which lead me to this new site, Hello Giggles that's run by Zooey Deschanel (whom I'm kinda over...just a little bit - possibly because I saw a photo of her looking HELLA old and I was like, girl, you can't be rocking that twee, tights-and-mary-janes look forever! What happens when you turn FORTY?!?), Sophia Rossi (links to their tumblr pages) and Molly McCaleer. Molly McAleer is new to me, but Sofia Rossi isn't. I mean, how awesomely hilarious she is is new to me, but ever since I've been on Twitter I made a point of following Samantha Ronson (this was when she was deep in the throes of mad lesbian dramas with Lindsay Lohan, and I couldn't resist getting an inside look. WHAT. I'M ONLY HUMAN!!!), and Mindy Kaling and Nicole Ritchie, who were always shouting out their friend Sofifi on Twitter. I feel like if I was anyone in Hollywood I'd probably be Nicole Richie (once she lost all the weight - ie. post drugs/Paris Hilton association.) I identify with her style (maxi dresses & vintage say what!) and she's a mom of two oddly named kids and she's shacked up with a musician (kinda sorta...I wouldn't trade the Dotytron for a pasty-faced Madden bro for all the world) and her version of the L.A., pop culture obsessed, TV watching, regular gal-about-town makes her seem pretty down to earth and like we could be compadres (unlike, say, the L.A. girls of the Hills.)

All this is to say that if you read Molls & Sofifi's blogs, they're FREAKIN' hilarious and I will definitely be cribbing some of their material. Sample Molls post:

If you title your YouTube video “Crackhead Crying About How Much He Loves Pizza” and then I click on that video and that’s not exactly what I get, I’m calling the police.

LOL! See? So funnay. Hello Giggles is a pretty cute site filled with fluffy goodness like, "Which Baby-sitter's Club member are you?" It just speaks to my adolescent/teen experience and part of the adult lady I am now.

Anyway, I know like, the Huffington Post Canada launched today, but I'd seriously rather spend time thinking about which Baby-sitter's Club Member I am (probably Kristy) and pretending I'd be the kind of girl to do DIY leopard spot nails. I guess I could be working on my homework or paper that was due in DECEMBER, or reading up on world events but let's face it: I gotta play to my strengths.



Like I said, I recently read Tina Fey's Bossypants, which I thought was kinda meh. I'm not one to go buck for Tina Fey. I can totally appreciate that she's a funny woman who has made great strides and is a feminist out there in network television holding her own in and amongst the guys...but like, she's not the reason I find (found) 30 Rock funny. Tracy Morgan is. I also didn't love her as Sarah Palin, etc...but I know she's pretty funny and it's awesome to see her at the helm of a female centred network television show that's not about forensics or being a real housewife or sister wife or any other kind of wife. I found the book kind of slim on the humour and she's also super-guarded, so you don't get a lot of juice...everything just felt really removed and detached and you never got too close to what makes her tick or her motivations, so it fell kind of flat for me. Not a lot of reflection and I wasn't able to feel like we could be girlfriends, ya know?



I spent most of the Boston trip plowing through Sarah Dessen's latest, What Happened to Goodbye. At this point in my Sarah Dessen career, she and I have a finely-tuned, well-oiled system going. Her books are kind of formulaic but soothing pablum nonetheless. Same old, same old. Tall, slender, pretty teenage girl with minor baggage stumbling through a year "figuring it out" with the help of a slightly left-of-centre guy. I enjoyed this better than Lock and Key and Along for the Ride, but it still ranked below my all-time favorites, This Lullaby and Just Listen.

In other news, since last night I've had these weird stomach pains that feel like moments of random, clenchy discomfort. It happens when I either sit up or lie on my side or change position but will also happen when I'm going about my business. It doesn't hurt enough to make me feel like I can't do stuff, or that I should go to the hospital, but it is weird. If anything, it kinda feels like I have something flipping around and moving in there...which has obviously made me think that I either have worms, or one of those TLC medical-freak-show ailments like a baby growing in my stomach. Strangely, when I consider these possibilities, I'm not scared so much as embarrassed at being a medical oddity.


Last night's dinner was steamed chicken breast, lap cheong, and mushrooms over baby shanghai choy on steamed brown rice, in a sweet soy sauce. LISTEN UP PEOPLE: IT'S SOY SAUCE, NOT SOYA.

Now I gots to go finish mending my mom's dress because she's starting to get antsy about the fact that I've had it for 7 months (she brought it over the first week I was home with new baby Big Yam.) My mom loves treating me like a seamstress. This is kind of galling because I vividly remember a time, like, 7 or 8 years ago, when we ended up at Caffé Demetre on the Danforth with Bruce Wayne and my sister and the Dotytron and she was all in a snit because I had borrowed her sewing machine and she wanted it back "to do some sewing" (I don't think my mom has applied herself to any handiwork since 1974) and I said I wasn't going to return it because I knew she wasn't going to use it and she got all teenaged drama queen about it and pouty and almost ruined our time eating our stupidly named desserts, until I agreed to return it to her and it's been SITTING IN THE EXACT SAME PLACE IN MARKHAM GATHERING DUST EVER SINCE. But it's okay, I'll get over and mend her dress.

Tonight we're doing dinner with our Friday night dinner gang - Dr. Rei, Hanbo, Dr. Rei's little bro, and us. We're going to Udupi Palace (which you might know as "Arupi"). Hopefully my tum tums holds up! Then we're heading up to Markham to spend the weekend with my fam-bam because my sister and outlaw bro are coming up! Wahoooooooooo! I think we're going to see Bridesmaids while the boys go see The Hangover Part 2. I'm REALLY looking forward to X-Men: First Class because I love 2 things: X-Men AND la Fassbender.

Deuces!

Fin.

Of Nigerian Princes...

One of the unintended side benefits of being on maternity leave and home a lot, is that you’re privy to the endless onslaught of telemarketers, scammers, and automated phone spammers that assault your home phone (that is, if you are so charmingly anachronistic as we are to still have a home phone line). Think about THAT the next time you’re chafing at the yoke of capitalism whilst sitting at your office desk! You could be fielding any number of calls from the Toronto Star (or your local newspaper – another anachronism!) the Symphony Orchestra, or your local MPP while trying to go about your daily business. Recently, I’ve been the not-quite-victim of a phone scam that clearly preys on the old and feeble and computer-ignorant.

Phone rings. Call display shows “Private name, private number.” I pick up. A gentleman of East Indian (not to be racist – is that racist?) descent tells me in heavily accented English that his name is Jasper or Reginald and that he’s calling from Microsoft because they’ve been receiving repeated alerts from my computer that I HAVE A VIRUS! Dun dun duuuuuuuuuun. Because, you know, the Microsoft corp has infinite time and energy on their hands to respond to EVERY PERSON who has an error message from running Windows. The first time they called, I just hung up and told the Dotytron that I suspected it was a scam. The second time they called, I started getting aggressive and asked: "What's your business registration number?" and then - click! - they hung up on me, pretty much cementing their scammer status. P.S. I don't even know what a business registration number is, or how official it is. Then I told the ex-roomie about it and she said she had heard about this scam on the CBC - they basically get you to download some kind of shadowing software that allows them to record keystrokes and get your banking info and stuff. EEEEVIL! Anyway, you'd think that after asking for the business registration number and thereby proving that I am no rube, they would delete me from their "n00bs to call" list. But no! On Monday, they called BACK! So this time, I strung them along for a bit. I asked "Jasper" for his employee number, the company's name ("I thought you said you were calling from Microsoft?" "Ma'am, Microsoft licenses us to respond to these error messages for them"), and when I started asking for phone number and address, I got, "Ma'am, why do you need to know this information?" "Uhhhh...YOU CALLED ME!" - click! -

In retrospect, I should have strung them along some more and then totally Matlock'd them (mostly for my own amusement)...I'm more interested to see what they're after, so next time I'll play it up some more, "Oh dear, a TROJAN?!? Hold on, I think I'm going to need my smelling salts..."

Here's one for the awful parenting notebooks. Monday morning, our last day in Boston, the Dotytron and I are lying in the gloriously fluffy and plush king-sized bed with the Big Yam sitting in front of us, facing the TV, watching something completely age-inappropriate like The X-Files Movie, eating a breakfast of leftover pizza crust from the night before because I had run out of packed baby cereal for him (left out at room temperature overnight), continually turning around and giving us his stupid-cute, "hey guys, what's going on back there?" look, replete with big eyes, mouth hanging quizzically agape, while the Dotytron and I tried to capitalize on the romance of a weekend away by doing some heavy petting. IMPOSSIBLE! Word to the wise: nothing ruins the mood more than your 7 month old kid, gnawing on a nutritionally devoid breakfast more suited to a frat house keg-party morning-after, looking over his shoulder and up at you. Ah well, chalk one down for trying to not live the life of brother and sister eunuchs.

This is Tuesday night's dinner - which the Big Yam is enjoying immensely in leftover form for his lunches/dinner:

Last night I tried a new recipe that I saw on Saveur magazine - shakshuka eggs (eggs poached in a spicy tomato sauce). I'll post the recipe below...it's DELICIOUS! One of those quick and easy meals that comes together in about 30 minutes, is vegetarian and healthy, and can be made with pantry ingredients. I had bought some hot house cherry tomatoes from the Mennonites last week (and spent a pretty penny, let me tell you!) so I turned leftover crisped pita into a fattoush salad (I do love me a bread salad!)



Last night the ex-roomie came over and baby sat the Big Yam while we went to our dodgeball game. We are the luckiest people in the world to have such a wide network (village) of people loving up on our little guy and willing to help us out so that we can continue to lead fulsome lives.


Fin.


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Shakshuka Eggs
serves 4 people, from Saveur Magazine

1/4 c. olive oil
1 yellow onion, finely diced
3 jalepenos, finely diced (I seeded them because I was making this for the Big Yam, but if you leave the seeds in, it will have a nice amount of kick)
lots of minced garlic
1 T. paprika
1 t. cumin
1 28oz can of whole tomatoes
kosher salt & pepper to taste
8 eggs
150 g. of feta (I prefer Bulgarian)
chopped parsley
toasted pita

- in a large (12") deep saucepan, sauté the onion, jalepenos and garlic in the olive oil over medium heat until lightly golden
- add the paprika and cumin and cook out for about 2-3 minutes more
- take the can of tomatoes (don't drain the juices) and crush the tomatoes with your hand, add the crushed tomatoes and the juice from the can to the pan, reduce the heat to medium low, and simmer for about 20 minutes.
- season to taste with salt and pepper
- crack the eggs (I find it easiest to try to position them like the numbers on a clock) into the tomato mixture, and cover the pan. Cook until the egg whites are set and the yolks are still runny (about 5 minutes with the lid on)
- take off the heat, serve topped with crumbled feta, chopped parsley, and with toasted pita for dipping.

B-b-b-back!

My thoughts on the past 4 days can basically be summed up thus:

Family vacations are fun.

...for the most part. I love that we three are a family now - mama bear, baba bear, and baby bear all travelling together and experiencing a new place together and exploring together, being present together. The flip side of this is that you find yourself sprinting through the Island airport because SOMEBODY didn't put in baby bear's full, unwieldy middle name into the booking information and fixing that in the system takes about 45 minutes and then you are the last people to board the plane but OF COURSE you get randomly selected to have your hands wanded by security for mysterious substances unknown (aside: seeing them wand the Boobla's chubby mitt was kind of the cutest, even as we were trying to juggle purse, diaper bag, Big Yam, shoes, stroller, luggage, Dotytron's guitar, knapsack) and then you arrive breathless on the plane with a flustered and unsettled baby who's been up for the past 3 hours only to find your departure delayed by 45 minutes because of "refueling issues" (aside: I kind of hate it when the captain gives too much detail - I don't need to know if we're having refueling issues!! That sounds scary!) Oy.

Travelling with kids is hard. I can see why people go to all inclusive resorts and Disney World. You have to pack a lot of stuff (and keep in mind, we were still on the same continent!) and you have to factor in nap times and feeding times and diaper changing scenarios and pack food and breast milk and eating/crapping/sleeping supplies and you can't eat in the same restaurants you're used to eating in (next time, Menton! Next time, Clio!) No more 30 seat restaurants that don't take reservations, no more 4 hour tasting menus.

That being said - I wouldn't have left the Big Yam at home for anything. It was so relaxing being there as a family away from all the usual day-to-day push and pull - I loved this concentrated time away with them. I can definitely see why parents leave the kids at home to reconnect with their significant others, but I come from a family where vacationing was almost exclusively a FAMILY pursuit - so I don't really get families where the parents always travel separately from their kids. Yes, it gets expensive (once the kid requires their own plane seat) and the logistics are tough, and you can't necessarily go to the same places you used to - but at the same time, I think it's so important for building an understanding of family to be going through the same travel experience together. To be the outsiders together and to navigate through the stresses as a family unit. My favorite night was Sunday, when we gave up on the Freedom Trail (more on that later) in the early afternoon and came back to the hotel and ordered pizza and ate takeout and watched Game of Thrones (in real time!) on the big flat screen tv all smushed together in the king sized bed with the fluffy sheets and giant-a** pillows.

It also helps to have a baby that EVERYONE FALLS IN LOVE WITH. It's kind of uncanny that misanthrope me produced a kid that randomoniums lurve. So many times when we were walking, I'd catch someone looking at the stroller and then smiling and I'd catch their eye and get the residual, Big Yam-adoration afterglow washing over me. The Dotytron observed it a few times too and finally said, "People love their Thelonious Doty." So true! We'd either get that kind of passive exchange or a more direct, outright, "you baby is so cute" action. Now, it could be that those people are just general baby-lovers. I'm NOT a general baby-lover so I don't know. I know that I do find a lot of kids I don't know either completely uninteresting or downright repulsive (especially if they're precocious)...regardless of the roots behind people's Big Yam-goodwill, it certainly helps to soften the rough edges of travel.

Boston is generally a pretty kid-friendly town. There's an awesome aquarium (which we went to, see above), a children's museum (when he's older), a science museum (ditto), and a bunch of good, family-friendly places to eat (Mr. Bartley's Burger Cottage, Jasper White's Summer Shack) that still satisfy my chowhound palates AND allow you to make a mess (Summer Shack serves complimentary baskets of soft rolls and cornbread and we sat the Big Yam down in a high chair and gave him chunks of cornbread to feed himself. 20 minutes later, after noticing that he was BLOWING through the cornbread, I finally turned to the Dotytron and said, "I can't BELIEVE how much cornbread this dude is eating!" and then happened to glance down at the floor which I actually couldn't see because it was COMPLETELY OBSCURED by a dense, cornbread-spit-crumb shag carpet fabricated by Big Yam design corp, and when I apologized profusely to the servers they were beyond gracious about it), and it's walkable and the transit system makes a lot of sense and covers a lot of ground.

A transit SNAFU perpetrated by the combined navigationally challenged forces of the Dotytron and myself resulted in one of the best moments of the trip. It was late in the day on Friday after we had taken about a billion transfers to get to our stop only to find that we exited at the wrong end of the subway platform. As we doubled back around, we were flustered but determined to make the best of things and we both said out loud, "It's aight, it's aight" and then this old homeless-y looking guy, turned around, as if he had heard us, and threw a reassuring nod in our direction. It was THE BEST! Like, the timing couldn't have been more perfect for a reassuring, random, assurance in the "don't worry be happy" vein from a probable derelict. Best!

There's a lot of historical stuff in Boston as well, which is, quite frankly, if you travel the way the Dotytron and I do (which is: don't read up on anything about the place you're going to before you go, unless it's food related), the boringest. There's the Freedom Trail which sounds kind of exciting in a Michael Bay movie kind of a way, but is basically a series of ye olde tyme-y brick buildings filled with colonial-era furniture and sometimes a Benjamin Franklin impersonator or two talking about printing presses and how the British suck. Okay fine. To be honest, we have no idea what goes on INSIDE the buildings because we walked the trail for like, 2 seconds and saw 2 buildings of historical renown before deciding that this was the most heinous stuff ever. Sooo snoozy! I think my history-comes-alive hierarchy of preference goes something like, 1) animatronics, 2) movies, 3) people in costumes (not talking), 4) people in costumes (talking), 5) war reenactments (for like, 2 seconds), 6) buildings of historical significance with wordy placards.

We did a LOT of walking and eating and sightseeing and figured out what neighbourhood we would live in if we were to move there (in Cambridge, close to the river). We really loved the town, over all. It's a good mix of city pleasures and neighbourhoods to explore and fun things to do without being too NYC hectic. Heck, I'd move there to have ready access to Flour Bakery and Cafe alone - I could eat there for breakfast every day of the year. The Dotytron loved the fact that Berklee school of music means that every busker you hear is a highly accomplished jazz musician.

Here's a publicly accessible link to my Facebook album of the trip...to save me the trouble of uploading a million shots: Bostonia

The night before we left I made chicken fried steak, mashed potatoes, and a cool cucumber and tomato salad with ranch dressing:

Last night for dinner I made us those potato, egg, and pepper harissa Moroccan sandwiches:

Tonight I'm making a tofu and vegetable chow mein stir fry - to try to counteract the pounds and pounds of seafood I ate all weekend.

Bonus shot of the Big Yam playing in our freshly made bed last night:

Can you believe it's nearly June? Argh!!! Summer is almost over! We're already booking into the third weekend of June at this point...

Fin.

B-b-b-beantown!

Sorry I've been incommunicado lately - scrambling to get a million things done...off to Boston tomorrow morning (although I'm a little nervous about being in Massachusetts when the apocalypse starts on Saturday)...expect a tonne of photos upon my return!

Have a happy long weekend, my faithful (and neglected) readers!

Fin.

Another one bites the dust...

Yes, yes! One more paper handed in - one less monkey on my back! Now I just have to finish ONE MORE RESEARCH PAPER and I will be fully caught up on school! I'm giving myself the week off and tackling it once I get back from Boston, though - so from here on in, I am free!

What a weekend of craziness. Friday we made plans to head out to the kdubs to visit with Tillers & Jen and see their sweet new bébé. I'm kicking myself that we didn't get any photos - she's a perfect little bean with a full head of dark hair in a very monk-ish style. Even though she weighs a full pound more than when the Big Yam was born, I was flabbergasted at how wee she was when I was cradling her tiny little form. It's shocking how quickly you forget that your kid was once that tiny. It's only been 7 months and I can't believe that the Big Yam used to be just that clueless and frail, making tiny little bird sounds and staring into the middle distance with his mouth stupidly agape, smacking his lips absently at the air. And now look at him - sitting up on his own:

He started being able to consistently and reliably sit up last week...no more tottering and lurching to one side, no more squawking with his legs and arms up in the air like an upended beetle. Nope, you can plop him down with a toy and he will stay put...it makes him look so grown up that we're quite taken with the novelty of it. He looks so darned cute! This age is really fun, I have to say. He's becoming more independent and yet he's still not so big that he's been corrupted by the world and still invariably wakes up every morning by my side with a slow fluttering of the eyelids and upon espying me, a gummy, beatific grin that envelops his whole face. I love waking up to that. I love his joyful squirming when you cover his fat cheeks with kisses. I love how he ducks his head down like he's bashful and sleepily rubs his chubby fists against his eyes when we've kept him up past his bedtime. I love it all and I don't ever want it to end.

Aside: there is NOTHING cuter than a baby boy in madras print shorts. I'm obsessed! He's such a cute little gaffer!

I'm so excited to have dear friends like Tillers & Jen embarking on parenthood - I want our kids to grow up never having not known each other. No doubt time and interests and growing autonomy will pull them apart but I want them to be able to look back and say, "So-and-so is my oldest friend." I want to kvetch with them about how wack-a-doo our kids are turning out to be and commiserate with them when our kids turn into pre-teen dorks and we have to deal with the attendant attitude that comes with.

Ahhhh, feeling sentimental after a weekend of good times with good people. Saturday night we had a lobster dinner with our friends S & P who put my hosting abilities to shame. Fresh lobsters from Halifax, a smoked salmon & cream cheese spread with toasted baguette, potato salad, a beet & pear salad, and I provided my rosemary olive loaf and dessert - a blackberry macaroon tart, recipe courtesy of Smitten Kitchen by way of 101 Cookbooks:

The tart is divine - so simple and satisfying. A whole wheat short crust enriched with the toasty warmth of coconut, topped with halved blackberries and dotted with little tufts of chewy, crunchy, golden coconut macaroons...so good! And it would definitely lend itself to cherries and raspberries when they're in season, too. Can't wait to try it out again - the whole thing comes together in minutes.

Thursday night we had a throwback meal of French onion soup with a BLT salad (mixed greens tossed with crisped bacon, hothouse cherry tomatoes from the Mennonites, all dressed in a creamy, tangy, celery-seed-sparked ranch-style dressing):

Academic book club was interesting and engaging, although it did reveal that there are fundamental differences in the parenting styles between the members - it was very illuminating how people's reactions to Chua reflected on how they were raised and how they raised their kids. The next book we're reading is The Hunger Games, which I'm super-pumped about.

Friday morning I made French toast for myself and the Big Yam (it was a big hit) for breakfast with blackberry rhubarb compote. I'm rhubarb crazy at the moment and am desperate to throw it into anything I can find:

Saturday morning we had croque hermaphrodites:

On Sunday we met up with S & A at the Bloordale Pantry which is previously uninhabitable neighbourhood of Bloor/Landsdowne. The fact that the presence of this restaurant is one of the first harbingers of oncoming gentrification means that you can go for brunch at 11am on a Sunday and STILL GET A TABLE FOR FIVE (!!!!!!!!!) This is UNHEARD of in our neighbourhood. The menu is quite good - nice and varied with something for everyone. I ordered this pancake dish consisting of pancakes stuffed with cheddar and bacon and served alongside onion potato hash and 2 perfectly sunny sunny side up eggs:

Then we went over to S & A's house to take a look at their kitchen reno - which was totally inspiring for me. It only took a month!!! That's incredible!!! I've heard a lot of horror stories so that was very heartening, even if everything in their house, top to bottom, is covered in a thin film of dust.

I had a serious case of 'itis all Sunday because of white people. By that I mean, white people not eating the lobster tomalley in their lobsters on Saturday night meant that I had FOUR LOBSTERS' worth of tomalley myself - it's quite rich and my gut was hurting. So Sunday I bowed out of making dinner and instead applied myself to making a blackberry rhubarb bread pudding that I ate late at night, after fasting all day (my stuffed pancakes aside) and served with bourbon toffee sauce and ice cream:

I also had a visit from Xtina with her new baby, H - who is the spitting image of his father, Buns:

What a little Aryan prince.

I baked off 3 loaves of onion bread variations. 1 GIANT (2lb!) roasted garlic, caramelized onion loaf, 1 smaller version of the same, and 1 caramelized onion and parmesan bread. They are now nicely wrapped and ready for the freezer. The dough begins with a sponge that's based on my sourdough starter, but the final bread also gets a boost from commercial yeast as well:

Tonight for dinner I made us a spicy salmon brown rice bowl - to kick start our healthy eating/getting back into shape movement:

Now it's yoga & Game of Thrones time.

Yay!

Fin.

Summer is a comin' in...

Busy few days around these parts...I've been working doggedly on my research paper (for a change) and expect to have it in the bag by the end of this weekend. Also, the days have been absolutely gorgeous so we've been spending a lot of time outside, going for long walks, working on the garden and visiting with friends.

The roomie came over for dinner on Monday when I had made whole wheat fusilli with canned Italian tuna, chilies, pine nuts and lemon - this dish is muy fantastico...I'll post the recipe at the end - easily made with pantry ingredients, cheap, fresh-tasting, and for those on the Baby Led Weaning tip - perfect for bambinos. He ate this right along with us and loved it - even with the little bits of chilies. Good thing he's not allergic to pine nuts. The recipe also has capers in it so it's basically the most flavourful thing he's eaten in LIFE.

Tuesday night I made that lentil and spinach salad with fried goat's cheese and toasted baguette, that's one of my favorite meal-salads:

I've been going running lately fairly regularly and we've been trying to eat healthfully and refrain from desserts as much as possible - we made an exception yesterday to have cupcakes when my friend M (from the Canoe days) came to visit. Look at this adorable photo of her and the Big Yam - doesn't he look so cute and stylish in his madras shorts and his white little cap (which is already too small for his giant noggin)?:


I'm the worst host ever. I basically made M watch as I planted stuff in my garden and reorganized our front vestibule/enclosed porch area. But oh! If you could see how nice our vestibule looks now! So tidy and neat and everything in bins and up off the floor, organized by use and with plenty of space for the bike trailer I just ordered. After doing a long and hard comparison I ended up going with the Chariot Cougar 2 in orange - they're really the best trailers on the market - made in Canada, retain their value well, safe, lots of bells and whistles, and collapsible. So I might not be getting a new bike this summer, but the Big Yam will definitely be riding in style!

I also bought the stroller and the biking attachments. The most annoying thing about the Chariot line is that you only purchase a chassis and then have to buy the separate attachments for converting it into a jogger/stroller/biking/skiing (!) vehicle on top.

For dinner I made us another BLW-friendly meal of spicy beef udon with kimchi. The Big Yam ate everything minus the kimchi in his portion, but he had a grand ol' time sucking back udon noodles and gnawing on enoki mushrooms and tofu:

Tonight is academic book club - we're discussing Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother and I expect the conversation to be ripping. For dinner I'm making us French onion soup with either BLT sandwich or a BLT salad (probably salad, to keep up with the healthful eating).

I'm also over-the-moon that my dear friends Tillers & Jenny Calendar had their sweet daughter in the wee hours of Monday morning!!! She looks absolutely precious and I can't wait to go and snuggle a newborn babe. The little lady and the Big Yam are going to be as thick as thieves. So many babies!!! Xtina & Buns had their son over the Easter weekend so the Big Yam is going to have a whole posse of young padawans to mind-meld with.

Gotta go back to grinding it out.

Fin.

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Pasta with Tuna, Pine Nuts, Lemon

serves 4-6 people with a salad

1 box of whole wheat fusilli (or you can use orecchiete, but not penne! you want nooks and crannies for the sauce to stick to)

2-3 cans of Italian tuna packed in oil

1/4 c. olive oil

1-3 t. chili flakes (or to taste)

zest of 1 lemon

2 T. capers, coarsely chopped

1/4 c. pine nuts

1 red onion, small dice

2-3 cloves of garlic, minced

chopped parsley for garnish

- boil the pasta until al dente, reserve 1/2 c. of pasta cooking water

- in a wide pan, toast the pine nuts until golden brown, stirring frequently, remove from heat

- heat the olive oil and sweat the onions and garlic until fragrant, add the chili flakes and cook until the chili flakes start to colour and become fragrant

- add the tuna, the oil from the tuna cans, the capers, the lemon zest and pine nuts, and heat through, trying not to break up the tuna too much

- add the pasta, reserved pasta cooking water, and parsley and toss to combine, season to taste with salt and pepper (shouldn't need very much salt as the tuna and capers are plenty salty).

- serve hot, warm, or cold.

Mater Familias

My first mother's day! Truth be told, I don't really care about it - it has been nice to use it as an excuse to have Sunday breakkie made for me for a change, and the Dotytron is being really nice about indulging my whims and tidying the basement and telling me that I can go to Canadian Tire and buy more clear Rubbermaid bins for labelling and organizing and cataloguing stuff (aka my FAVORITEST THING IN THE WORLD!) He's also been really nice and let me do some minor furniture arranging/vacuuming/cleaning and he said he was going to clean the bathroom. AND he got me a Kindle - so he's been super-dee-duper nice to me. At the end of the day, the Kindle is just bonus - I'd be over-the-moon if he just did the other stuff (ie. let me make his precious Sunday NOT FUN by demanding that we do a billion house projects/chores/boring organizational things.) I shacked up with a really good guy. So for Father's Day, I'm going to reciprocate by letting him spend a day of leisure without putting anything on our agenda. It's a fair trade.

He made me "Eggs Do-Do" - the maiden voyage for this recipe. It's basically eggs on bacon on toast with cheese, topped with a tomato-oregano sauce - almost like breakfast pizza toast? It was really good and he spent a long time thinking/executing it and it turned out really delicious:

Yesterday we met with our caregiver. The Dotytron came up with her nickname. We were outside talking to the neighbours and enjoying a street pizza party and as we were walking back to the house to get ready to meet the daycare lady, he turned to me and said (all put out because he hates doing stuff on the weekend): "So, how long is this meeting with the ho-bag supposed to last?" LOL! Anyway, we met with the Ho-Bag, who I've gotten to know through the drop-in centre, but it was the Dotytron's first time - we both really liked her after talking to her more in-depth. She's from Chile and has 2 kids of her own, who are like, 12 and 10 or something. We met in her house and met her husband as well. She used to do non-home daycare and has a university degree in Chile in early childhood education. The thing we really liked about her is that she seems really experienced and the home daycare experience means that she's willing to accommodate you to a certain extend. She's very relaxed and calm and any questions we had her general response was "we'll work together to find a solution."

Her hours were a little worrisome at first. She works from 8-5 which I understand, is already a long day for her, and then she has to transform her house from daycare to her own home, and cook and do her own home/life stuff, but I was worried how we'd swing it. I think the Dotytron is going to do pick-up and I'll do drop off. She's also amazing because she doesn't do late penalties - unlike a lot of other daycares where it's like, a $1 a minute or something. She's very understanding that most of the time you'll be there around 8 (give or take 10 minutes) and pick up at 5 (give or take 10 minutes), but that if there's a storm, or rush hour, or something, she gets that these things happen and is accommodating and doesn't penalize you - as long as you don't make a habit out of it. I also think that while an earlier drop off and a later pickup might be nice - that's a really long day for the Big Yam to be with someone else. So if that means we have to re-jig our work schedules a bit to minimize his time in care - I'm okay with that.

The Ho-Bag was also willing to continue with cloth diapers and if we want special food, we can bring that, but otherwise she makes a healthy breakfast and lunch and takes the kids out every day. She was also willing to support our early potty training initiatives (which have been a complete failure this past week as he keeps s***ting his pants while he sleeps!) which is nice. Her rates are also really reasonable - $55/day up until 18 months and then it drops down to $50 day. She works for 2 weeks and we pay her for those 2 weeks after she's worked them. She get paid for all statutory holidays, but we can take 2 weeks vacation without paying her and she takes 2 weeks vacation where she doesn't expect to be paid, so I guess it works out to about a month off all year we don't pay. Anything about 2 weeks she expects to be paid, which is fair - it's her livelihood too. Anyway, I'm feeling really good that *knock on wood* we've got things really established and we can rest easy that the Big Yam will be in good hands.

We went to see a documentary yesterday, called The Pirate Tapes about this guy from Toronto who goes and tries to infiltrate a Somali pirate ship. It's CRAZY. The doc is really slick (funded by HBO) with a hip soundtrack (which I found a little intrusive sometimes - the music is turned up too loud in the mix) and talks about how the genesis of Somali pirating is that international fishing boats were coming in and robbing Somali villages of their livelihood by fishing the crap out of their waters. Then, international companies were also dumping illegal sewage/toxic waste in Somali waters. So the pirating was initially an attempt to fight back against the illegal practices of European and North American companies. However, as aid workers who were interviewed in the film stated, the original "Robin Hood" impetus for pirating was quickly transformed into straight greed - as they said, if pirates were really politically motivated, you would see some of that money being fed into the Somali economic system and into the villages - but you don't. There was also an allegation made that there is external funding of these pirates and that North American investors actually invest into these pirating raids. The footage was really fascinating, although I did fall asleep during some of the middle bit.

Some of the factual allegations in the film were kind of tenuous (in the Michael Moore fashion) and I also thought that the ending was rushed and that important facts/events weren't being investigated fully (the infiltrator is captured by Somali police and held and detained without contact with the outside world and then suddenly is released) and there was more there than was being revealed. This Toronto Star article alleges that there was a disagreement between the filmmakers and the subject but when pressed during the Q & A, they kind of glossed over any tension and said that everything was fine.

I will say that footage from the Somali hospitals where children were being brought in, with mysterious ailments (some of them horrific, like a small boy where half the skin on his face had loosened so that he looked like a human version of the Batman character Two Face), probably caused by exposure to toxic waste, and who all died by the time the filmmakers returned, was heartbreaking to watch. At one point the camera focuses in on a little boy, so malnourished his neck is so frail and thin and his eyes so big, who has cancer, and the little boy stares at the camera and in my head I was flashing to the Big Yam's cherubic face and rolls of skin and I just thought how lucky he is and how lucky we are to live where we live. We talked a bit about adopting and whether we would want to do that for #2 or #3. I'm willing to and I think the Dotytron is willing to as well. That all sounds altruistic, until I share with you this snippet of our conversation:

Dotytron: "But I think I would want a baby"

Me: "But that's bad! EVERYONE wants a baby and the older kids need homes too! It's like how everyone wants kittens!"

Him: "Okay, well then, how old would you go? I think I would take up to a 2 year old"

Me: "I'd go up to 5"

Him: "REALLY?" $$%!!&???!

Me: "I mean, only if it's a black kid"

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! LOL! I am a horrible, horrible person. So horrible in fact, that when we were sitting in the theatre before the doc started and a woman a few aisle overs fumbled her bag of popcorn and spilled about a third of it into the aisle, I started laughing my butt off. Silently, mind you, but uncontrollably. As I broke into laughter, I turned to see the Dotytron looking at me with a patient-but-loving-incredulous-but-ashamed expression and just silently shaking his head at me. Which only made me laugh harder as I got caught in this meta-feedback loop of: woman dropping popcorn = funny : me laughing at that and finding it so funny = funnier : the Dotytron finding himself married to someone who has such a lowbrow sense of humour = funnier still : the fact that I fancy myself so intellectual but at the end of the day finding people falling/spilling popcorn/rude fart-bodily fluid jokes/Gallagher smashing stuff beyond hilarious = funniest of all.

What is wrong with me, indeed?

We ended up scalping our other tickets and sneaking into Guu Saka Bar for an impromptu dinner. We got there at 6:20 and only had to wait like, 10 minutes to be seated. I think things get really bumping there around 6:30 and it was a nice day, so I think people were thinking patio and didn't want to eat early. Being a party of 2 helps as well.

Picked up the Big Yam from Momma and Poppa D's house to find that he'd been an insufferable, screaming-his-head-off prig most of the night. Yikes. He's starting to get all stranger-danger and when we walked through the door was crying his head off but as soon as he saw us, was all giggle-Gerber baby 2000. Super annoying!

It's a beautiful day out today so I think we're going to skip the afternoon doc and walk around instead. The Dotytron's sis was supposed to babysit for us, so maybe we'll spend the afternoon walking around with her.

Happy Mother's Day everyone!

Fin.

Squeee!

Oh gosh, it's a gorgeous spring day out there and I've been listening to dancehall and feel virtuous because I went for a run (to mitigate the copious amounts of food I ate last night - more to be revealed!) and I am in love with the world!

Let's get rid of some outstanding business - this was Thursday night's dinner - the asparagus tartine with proscuitto, poached eggs, and shaved parm on top:

Last night we dropped off the Big Yam at Dr. Rei and Hanbo's for some babysitting while we went to see a documentary and apparently he gave them a REALLY hard time - which is making me stew with guilt. I feel so bad already imposing on people's generosity of spirit and then when he acts like a jerk it makes it even worse! I have to keep repeating my: "it takes a village" mantra silently in my head and know that when the time comes, the Dotytron and I will reciprocate like crazy (as if you could keep my grubby mitts away from baby Barksdale! I'm going to steal that baby!) The only thing that ended up calming him down was a ridiculous three person effort (Bwong showed up too!) where they ran the faucet, someone held him, and someone did a dance with his Sophie the giraffe. LOL!

We saw a documentary called Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo which is a lyrical piece in the "new filmmaking" tradition (according to the introductory preamble from one of the Hot Docs programmers) which talks about Japan's fixation with insects. Unlike us, in the Western world, who mostly fear and revile these tiny denizens of planet earth, it seems like in Japan, as part of the continuation of the Shinto and Buddhist beliefs and because of the tenuous nature of the environment (the statistic quoted in the film that Japan is 1/400th of the world's land mass but is home to 10% of the natural disasters elicited a respectful, almost awkward held breath amongst the screening audience - the film was made in 2009), that Japan has a long-held culturally ingrained relationship with nature that respects the circularity and interconnectedness of all things (the universe in an ant, bonsai, Zen gardens, etc.) so that they can see the entire beauty of the world in something minute. The problem with the film was that the "new filmmaking" apparently means the film goes on for 45 minutes longer than it has to, and that the director ignores several places where ending the film on a firm note of resolution would have been appropriate and sound. It also means that the filmmaker likes to bludgeon you over the head with images from people crossing Shibuya in Tokyo so that you know that people are like bugs!!!

This is what we ordered from Banjara Indian Cuisine in Christie Pitts. From left to right: bhendi masala (fried okra), andra chicken fry, butter chicken, dhal makhani, lamb vindaloo, and muttar paneer, onion bhajia. We also got parathas and naan and Dr. Rei made a million cups of rice and also yelled at Hanbo for rinsing the brown rice instead of white. The food here is really good - some of the dishes taste a little bit same-y (like the base for the butter chicken, muttar paneer, and dhal makhani), but the portions are pretty generous and they load it up with chunks of meat/cheese:

I made us pavlovas with rhubarb-blackberry compote for dessert:

Doesn't it look delicious? I nailed the meringue - crisp on the outside, chewy-marshmallowy-fluffy on the inside...so good.

Fin.

Ch-ch-ch-changes

...turn and face the strange, indeed! The Dotytron has accepted a new job as the band leader for a middle school (grades 7 & 8)! This school sounds like it has a lot more going for it in the music department - they have regular band AND a strings-only band and there's a separate parent council for music and they do a pretty good job fundraising. So this is a good step in the direction of the Dotytron's eventual goal of teaching high school music - the students will know what's what, the parents will be more demanding, etc.

The bad part is: it's still only a 0.5! This is why the TDSB is messed up. At this stage in the hiring process, the Dotytron CANNOT apply for another 0.5 to make a full-time gig. He can only QUIT his current 0.5 and go pick up a new one. So dumb. Which means that even though he LOVES the school that he's currently employed at and loves the admin and loves the ghetto Scarberian kids he teaches (new school is still in Scarborough, but a slightly better part, where when you show the kids an instrument or try to discipline them they're not like: *blank stare* "wha gwaaan?"), he can't pick up this new 0.5 to make a full day of teaching. So the only thing he can do is wait and see if he can apply (in the third round of postings) for his current job, which will be posted for the 2nd round, and if it doesn't get filled, apply and make up a full day that way. So arcane!!! Also, there's a weird seniority thing where a teacher who has been working X number of years has access to a SECRET round of postings and can just cherry pick their job without having to interview at all. Random! Right now, there's still some flexibility with his new job in terms of scheduling, so we're going to look at where the majority of postings want a half time person (either in the morning or afternoon) and decide his schedule based on that and we're crossing our fingers that his current school won't find someone suitable and will hire him back on a half-time basis and then he can FINALLY be working full time (albeit at 2 different schools, which will be stressful).

A random assortment of funny stories from our life:

1) The Dotytron was feeding the Big Yam the other day and picked him up out of the high chair to clean him up. "Ugh dude, your legs are all filthy!" Turning to me, noticing that I had a washcloth in my hand, the Dotytron says, "Can you do me a favor and whack this guy off for me?" *long beat* LOL! He meant scrape down the Boobla's legs with the washcloth - but hilariously inappropriate nonetheless.

2) Our dodgeball game got cancelled last night so we had a free night. The Dotytron went upstairs to practice his guitar and I was downstairs doing some computer work. After 2 hours of separateness, he comes downstairs and sees me sitting at my laptop. "What are you doing?" Me: "Looking at this picture of Bill Gates" *turns laptop around*

Dotytron: "WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?!?"

3) Some of you may know that I've been actively campaigning for an e-reader for like, a whole year. I read A LOT. And it's nice to have a billion books on one thing that's small and portable for travel and whatnot. Anyway, I'd dropped mad hints (ie. overt statements) that I wanted an e-reader at Christmas to no avail. So I've been jokingly dropping mad hints about wanting one for Mother's Day on the Dotytron's Facebook wall. Then today I turned to him and said, "Don't buy me an e-reader, it probably makes more sense for us to buy each other a tablet at Christmas and then get an e-reader app for it" to which he looked me straight in the eye and said, "Okay. But what if I already got you an e-reader?" AWWWWWW! What a cute little muffin! He said it's from him and the Big Yam. I was like, "what money did you use?" "The only money I have right now: credit" LOL! So it looks like I'm getting a Kindle! Wahoo! I was torn at the last minute because I thought a Kobo might be better (it takes the epub format instead of Kindle's proprietary .azw) - but if we end up going with my tablet plan, we can always get a Kobo app for that and cover all our bases. I married a very sweet giraffe-with-the-head-of-the-squirrel-that-looks-like-Abraham-Lincoln-from-the-Simpson's indeed. Although now I've shot myself in the food because I don't know what to get him!

Last night's beef burrito bowl was deeelicious. Brown rice & black beans cooked in a guajillo chile-tomato sauce flavoured with cumin and coriander and Mexican oregano, topped with sliced sirloin steak and a tomato-scallion-avocado-lime salsa with sour cream dabbed on top. I'm loving my rice bowls lately.

I went for my first real run today - ran (the word is used loosely) for just under 3km and didn't stop to walk once. It's the new me! So breakfast this morning was healthytimes - a bowl of steel cut oatmeal with a blackberry and rhubarb compote:

Tonight I'm going to this resident information session for the park at the end of my street. There are some plans to revamp the skating rink and modernize the space that I'm soooo happy about. Right now, we have a hockey rink with boards and an open free skate rink that's roughly the same size right next to it. They're going to cover over the hockey rink (first covered outdoor rink in Toronto!) and scrap the free skate rink, instead turning the free skate area into a figure 8 skate path with trees and other greenery planted around it. They're also updating the change rooms - putting in a community use room, a family change room, and shrinking down the male and female change rooms a bit (right now they're ginormous and kind of gross). YAY! So pleased that this park is right at the bottom of our street and is getting so much love!

For dinner I'm making us asparagus and proscuitto tartines (French open-faced sandwiches of stuff on bread) topped with a poached egg and shaved parm. With a side salad.

Fin.

Students in my program

...are idiots. Control freak idiots who like to look a gift horse in the mouth. To wit: last night was the first class in my Public Sector Finance and Accounting course. I think it will be pretty interesting, if only because it will hopefully arm me with the tools to figure out HOW THE NDP PROPOSED TO PAY FOR ANY OF THE PROMISES IN THEIR PARTY PLATFORM! Don't get me wrong, I voted NDP (even if I told the nosey parker kids on my street that who I vote for was none of their business), but I found the general lack of critical discourse during this election discouraging. I heard tidbits like, "My whole family votes Conservative and I want to tell them why it's wrong, but I don't know why" - QUE?!? You don't have to look very hard to find plentiful information on why the Conservative Party is kind of the worst, but I would rather an informed vote (even if it's a vote for a party I don't support) than an uninformed adherence to dogma any day. Scary.

I feel like the Liberals and the NDP pushed their luck. Guess what? 99% of people DON'T CARE if the government is found in contempt of Parliament because Parliamentary protocol and Constitutional conventions don't mean jack shiz to your average Joe! Also, the hyper-capitalist state in which we find ourselves is not conducive to people being able to rationalize away their fear of increased taxes. I blame Apple and the clever way they disguise rampant consumerism. Of course people are going to vote Conservative because they believe the story (however erroneously) that the Conservatives are going to put more money in their pockets at the end of the day so that they can do what? BUY MORE STUFF THEY DON'T NEED! People just want increased disposable income so that they can continue to go away on expensive vacations and buy loads of crap and they are willing to sacrifice the gradual erosion of reproductive rights, government transparency, and social programs they think (however erroneously) they don't use/need. It's sickening. This coming from someone who spent a good chunk of yesterday working on an Excel spreadsheet to do some economic forecasting in the Dotytron Lagerfeld household for next year, on the assumption of full time salaries for us both, that resulted in a monthly spending money allowance for myself of $250 (the Dotytron got $270.) LOL!

That amount DOESN'T include such essential money-eaters like: clothes for me, clothes for the Big Yam, diapers, home renos etc. Ah well, we've been making do with a lot less this year so far and we've been doing okay.

Anyway, back to the original story - the prof for the course had set up the marks so that we have 3 small in-class assignments and 1 final 20 page term research paper, that's to be done in a TEAM. When you tell me that, my internal monologue/calculations go something likes this: "15-20 pages / 4 people per team = 3-5 pages per person : 3-4 hours of work MAXIMUM!" That to me, is a pretty good cost-benefit analysis especially once you factor in that this is a SUMMER COURSE. WHO WANTS TO DO WORK DURING THE SUMMER?!? Well, apparently these chuckleheads do. No sooner had the prof outlined the expectations then hands shot up with people worrying that the work distribution wouldn't be equitable and they were concerned about how to manage working collaboratively and blah blah blah. I was like, "GUESS WHAT? WORKING IN THE PUBLIC SECTOR MEANS THAT 99% OF THE TIME YOU HAVE TO PRODUCE REPORTS/BUDGETS/SUMMARIES/BRIEFINGS AS PART OF A GROUP!" "P.S. DON'T YOU REALIZE THIS IS WAY LESS WORK, YOU IDIOTS?!?"

Finally it was decided that they would make the group work optional. So I got myself a group of people who are pretty blandsville and have NO concept of thinking creatively/critically. So it's going to be tough. They're kind of dummies who probably write the most boring papers of all time (case in point, out of the long list of potential topics - they wanted to research either public sector pensions or Ontario toll highways. *shoots a bowl of pudding*

There's a presentation component to this group paper, that was originally slated to be 15-20 minutes long per group. Then the class was in a tizzy because it turns out that our last class is actually a half class, followed by a cohort wide bbq up on York campus ("cohort wide bbq on York campus" is actually an anagram for "Lagerfeld dipsetting while shouting 'DEUCES!') so then the class of idiots is freaking out going, "but there won't be time for us to present wah wah wah!" and I'm like, "why don't we do an information sharing session, where each group informally talks about their research and findings for like, 5 minutes each?" and the prof liked my idea but you could tell the class was skeptical. I'm like, guys, you are way too committed to your boring, uninteresting, Power Point presentations on your boring, uninteresting, unoriginal research topics. SHEESH.

The Hollywood Complex was also a really good documentary. The premise is that every year, during the 12 or 16 weeks when television studios are shooting pilots ("pilot season"), hundreds of kids come from all across the U.S. and stay at the Oakwood short term apartments to try to audition and get cast. The Oakwood has established itself as a home-base for these displaced families (often supported by a parent at home, while another parent - usually the mother - uproots her life and accompanies the children), with classes and workshops on how to cry on cue, or meetings with Dakota Fanning's agent, etc. The film followed a few kids staying at the Oakwood during 1 pilot season and it was that perfect mix of funny, illuminating, and sad - some of these kids just had no chance in hell and it was kind of weirdly fascinating/abhorrent to watch (in the same way watching exposés on child pageant queens are). It's considered a miracle if you get a call back and like winning the lottery if you actually get a job - none of the kids did. You also saw one little girl who with her mom, is an Oakwood anomaly in that they live there year-round and have for the past 3 years been supported by a father in Missouri. It was heart-breaking when they would get rejection after rejection and finally the mom said, "what am I supposed to do? I'm going to stay because it's still better than taking her back to that 1 stoplight town in Missouri," - the American dream in all its perverse, celluloid glory in action.

Last night for dinner I made us eggplant bharta, green beans thoren and brown rice. Leftover brown rice is getting recycled tonight into a steak burrito bowl (I'm all about my rice bowls lately).

Here's a shot of Monday's black bean and spelt burgers (on our favorite bread product, Pita Break One Buns) and Baked brownie sundae (toffee bourbon sauce, vanilla ice cream) that we had while watching HBO's Game of Thrones.

Bonus photo of the Big Yam BLW himself some green beans. BLW is a messy, messy process that tries my anal-retentive cleanly soul.

Dodgeball tonight!

Fin.