The Ex

Going to the Ex with the Dotytron is no joke - in the sense that it's ALL jokes. That guy's unbridled enthusiasm for the CNE and the accompanying running commentary is the best. Sample snippets: "That's the ride my sister almost died on" "Whoa. Unsponsored mist tents are way generous with the mist." And a million comments of randomness at the International Pavilion which has a million vendors representing various countries/regions selling their "local" wares that were all made in China. The Dotytron loves his International Pavilion, hard. The butter sculptures were very impressive, mostly because there was one of Dobby the house elf:

The sand sculptures were totally insane. This entry, from Japan, was called "Fukushima, after the melt down" (a bit of a downer, IMO):

I'm convinced there must be some kind of binder in the sand - how do they prevent the moisture from evaporating? Check out the blindfold suspended between the figures here:

This one was called "Ghost in the Machine" which made my insides shut down from displaced embarrassment. I also thought it was way too sexy:

The food was kind of meh. The food stalls in the food building are pretty corporate and lack a lot of charm AND execution by craftspeople. They're mostly all staffed by disaffected teenagers with diffident hygiene habits. It's not inspiring stuff. I got snookered by the allure of a "hot waffle sandwich" expecting some kind of Belgian liege waffle all crispy and robust sandwiching a slowly melting vanilla-flecked ice cream. My misgivings started when I saw the bags and bags of no-name bulk "waffle/pancake" mix piled haphazardly in the stand. Regardless, I bought one anyway and it was disappointing. As I ate my sandwich and we made our way to the International Pavilion, the Dotytron turned to me and said, "where's the stroller?" UH-OH. I had left the stroller with the diaper bag (containing my wallet, my Blackberry, and our camera) at the stand!!! I bolted back and luckily it was still there. Holy cats, that was a close call - I can't believe I was so mind-f**ked by the thought of a hot waffle ice cream sandwich that I almost lost a bajillion dollars.

We also had a pretty lacklustre, extremely overpriced funnel cake. Why do people think they can charge $10 for a funnel cake with icing sugar and ice cream? Why??? I was also super-looking forward to eating one of those tornado potato things (see photo below for reference) but they didn't have them! There's also an egregious lack of deep-fried things. The big talk this year was about deep-fried Pepsi - which sounds stupid to me for several reasons: a) it should be Coke; b) deep-frying Pepsi doesn't ADD anything to the soda experience. I've never had a cold, refreshing, pop and thought to myself, "You know what this experience needs? Deep-frying" because very often, I want the pop to CLEANSE the deep-fry from my palate. Deep-fried pop sends mixed messages.

So Bey and the Jigga Man are having a baby. This is one of the least interesting celebrity babies to me - I just can't respect them as a couple because they're always doing boring rich people things like partying in the Hamptons and like, vacationing in Monte Carlo. I just think Monte Carlo (especially on a yacht) is snoozerville old white people fun. Also, I think the Jigga Man is too old to be a first-time father. He was born in NINETY SIXTY NINE, guys. THAT'S OLD. I'm also going to go out there FTR and say that I'm into calling Bey, Bey, but I'm not into Kanye as 'Ye. There. I said it. I also think about important stuff too...but not very often. SHUT UP.

There's been ongoing drama with the City of Toronto and our walkway. Basically, 2 years ago when we moved in we had the City upgrade their end of our water line to increase the water volume going into our house (people generally confuse water pressure with water volume - we have a water volume issue, not a pressure one.) In doing so, they tore up some of our walkway and the sidewalk in front of the house and replaced it with crappy asphalt which was so soft that my kickstand for my bike would make deep divots in it on semi-warm summer days. Last month, they finally came and fixed the sidewalk but forgot to fix the walkway. After as series of back and forth calls, the subcontractors came to fix the walkway. I was sitting outside with the neighbours when it happened and I warned the guy to be careful because we thought there was a wasp's nest under one of our plants, but he was all tough-guy about it and said, "that's no problem," started mucking around in there, and the wasps went ape-s**t and stung the crap out of him. It was kind of hilarious to watch. So then they abandoned ship and left it alone for like, days and days and the neighbours called the City and I started to feel bad that maybe I should get rid of the wasp's nest - but my neighbours were like no, the City pays those guys made luche to take care of stuff like that. The worker had the gall to ask me to borrow our fire extinguisher to use on the nest. I was like, uhhhh no. First of all, a fire extinguisher costs like, $50 and second of all, those are one-time use items, so that would kill it and we'd be screwed. Go buy a can of Raid, you Neanderthals!

Anyway, our walkway has been torn up for the past week but when we got home last night, they had poured the concrete in our absence and the wasp's seem to be gone. Win-win! So we immediately set out to deface the concrete. Best! It now says: M.L. + I.D. + T.D. 2011 I love vandalizing concrete!

Fin.

Canadian National Exhibition

Squeee! So excited! We're headed to the CNE in the late afternoon - my first time in oh, I don't know, like 27 years or something. I can't wait to stuff myself silly with fair food.

The new routine is going well - we managed to watch an episode of Friday Night Lights while I did yoga AND we were safely ensconced in bed by 10pm. The perfect time to give us a bit of pre-bed reading/debriefing time and get a good night's rest. We're also trying to do a healthier eating routine. To that end, last night I made us a Nicoise salad with a poached egg on top, followed by a blueberry sour cream pie square with a small (for me) dollop of whipped cream:

We spent a good chunk of yesterday afternoon playing in the sprinkler with the neighbours. It was fun times. Also: the Boobla Khan STOOD UP BY HIMSELF (without holding onto anything)!!! He wasn't even thinking about it - just holding a tambourine in one hand he slowly louvered himself with his legs planted far apart and stood for about 10 seconds until I drew everyone's attention to it and then he got all shook one and sat back down again. Such a little star. I don't know how it's possible, but it seems like he's gotten exponentially cuter in the last week or so. We're chalking it down to the fact that he's babbling a lot more and he's getting the concept of jokes and playing peek-a-boo and is just an all-around good times guy.

At the movie on Sunday, SMckay and I also saw a trailer for the upcoming Dreamworks movie, War Horse. About 10 seconds in, SMckay turned to me and said, "I just can't get that excited about a movie about a horse" - which for some reason makes me LOL to no end. If you watch the trailer, you might understand. The horse looks so goddamned dumb. I suspect there might be a lot of horse-specific emotional moments that might not play so well with a non-horse audience.

During Big Yam nap times I've been working on my chevron quilt. Holy cats - talk about a labour of love. It's piecing, trimming, sewing, ironing on repeat times a billion. The mornings have been getting cool in Toronto and we haven't been running the a/c at night - I'm starting to get the knitting urge again, which is nice...I have a long queue of knitted goods to produce.

I will report back with full details of deep-fried goodness.

Fin.

Trial run

We're starting a kind of practice run of real life today - slowly but surely giving ourselves over to the inexorable grip of the Toronto District School Board's demands on the Dotytron's life, a month-long preview of what things are going to be like with one of us at work full time, with me joining in in October. The Dotytron will be going into work almost full days all week - and I'm going to start handing over a dinner or two a week to him - so he can get a taste of what it's going to be like when he's responsible for the daycare pick up run and also responsible for the bulk of dinner preparations.

My work schedule is going to be an approximate 8:45am start until 5:30pm (which includes my extra half hour a day for my compressed work week schedule - the thing I do that allows me every third Friday off). I might cut my lunches back to half an hour, which will let me leave at 5pm and home around 5:30pm. Tuesdays are going to be a rough day - I have class from around 6:30-9:30pm which means that I basically won't see the Boobla all day that day. Wednesday nights we're going to have dodgeball which also means we probably won't be seeing the Boobla that day unless we end up dragging him to games - which is going to be more and more difficult with him getting bigger and bigger. These are definitely the hard choices you have to make as a parent who still wants to lead a full life. One of our neighbours down the street have a daughter entering JK who has NEVER been left with a caregiver - ever. Insane, right?

One Day was pretty terrible. I'm certainly glad that Dr. Rei and I didn't have to pay for it. Anne Hathaway's British accent is as flighty and indecisive as her character - sometimes it's kind of there, sometimes it devolves into a Irish brogue, and sometimes it just disappears into the ether. I'm not sure why they opted to cast her in the film when any number of accomplished British actresses would have sufficed. Jim Sturgess is okay as Dexter Mayhew - a little slight for how I envisioned the character and the aging they do at the end to ease him into his 40s is kind of egregious - crow's feet that stayed as deeply furrowed when his face is still as when he smiles. I think that knowing the book might do you a disservice, but even as a film it falls flat - there is zero chemistry between the two leads, their motivations are opaque, their "love" a complete mystery and the film looks pretty cheaply made. The dialogue is stilted and the delivery wooden. Don't see it!

By contrast, The Help is a literary adaptation done well - ingratiating to those who haven't read the book while faithfully (enough) adhering to the spirit of the inspiration material to please those die-hard mum-lit devotees who've helped to make this book a fixture on the New York Times bestseller list. This is mum-lit to the max - a serious subject (race relations in Jackson, Mississippi during the Jim Crow years) treated with respectful gravity that never gets too serious (a black man is shot, but the event is given a properly sombre-yet-blithe glossing), an all-female cast, and a deliciously b****y villain played with just the right amount of scenery chewing over-the-top-ness by Bryce Dallas Howard. How can you go wrong? Throw in the message of the white woman helping the black maids find their voice and you've got an all-around winner. I found this film fairly entertaining, carried mostly by the winning performance of Octavia Spencer as sass-mouthed Minny and Viola Davis as a steely, resigned, and mature Abileen. I didn't quite believe Emma Stone as Skeeter Phelan, but she disappeared enough into the role that it wasn't glaringly obvious that we had "it-girl hottie" Emma Stone on our hands. Jessica Chastain is winning as a white trash woman faced with the cliquey hatefulness of the Junior League biddies. I would definitely see this - maybe not in the theatres but it's a good one to watch on a lazy Sunday afternoon with your mum.

We got a preview trailer for Like Crazy, which has been generating mad buzz since winning big at Sundance last year. Anton Yelchin and Felicity Jones play long-distance young lovers. I teared up watching the preview and can't wait to see it in the theatres.

Fin.

Where have I been?

Photo of the Boobla Khan taking by Ehdmo at R & R Acres

Well, the big storm on Wednesday blew our modem so I've been without internet. During that time, we were also playing host to Miss Ramona until Friday. Our car died AGAIN on Thursday, in the EXACT SAME FASHION, this time it totally died on us closer to home, though. It turns out that our battery was faulty, which destroyed our brand-new alternator. Luckily, the alternator is under warranty so we got that replaced for free and just have to pay for the battery and the labour.

On Friday evening we met up with R & R and introduced them to both Burger's Priest and Settlers of Cattan and probably thereby raised our nerd/freak flag too early into the friendship, ruining it forever.

Saturday was a rare day without social obligations. We walked around our hood and I bought a new dress for work, courtesy of one of my favorite Canadian lines, the stupidly named Pink Martini. I bought the "Picnic Dress" in black, which comes with a pretty cute belt that I can use for other dresses. I think this will look nice with either a close-cut cardigan, or a shrunken black blazer with tights and t-strap chunky heels.

We had the roomie over for dinner yesterday. We're her go-to place when L'Armi goes out of town and she's on call. It's pretty cute. I made this crustless eggplant quiche of grilled eggplant layered with ricotta pureed with eggs and basil and shredded mozzarella. We also had caesar salad and blueberry sour cream pie squares with whipped cream.

On Thursday I had Miss Ramona help make chicken fingers (the food she requested as part of her "Special Day" birthday coupon festivities. I also made corn on the cob and a green bean, tomato, and potato salad with mustard vinaigrette. She like the chicken fingers but wasn't too keen on eating corn on the cob or potatoes and green beans.

Camp Leslieville was a bit of a tough sell. It's that classic parent line - there's the things you want your kids (or your sister's kids) to be into and then there's the stuff that they're into - in my niece's case, that's mostly watching TV and vegging out. She LOVES her vegging out hard. It's hard to get her excited about stuff. She did seem to have a fun time playing with the neighbour's kids and that was pretty cute. But our trip to the Science Centre was a bit of a fail. Ah well - she was also missing her parents which could have influenced things. At one point, she pulled out this ANCIENT photo of my outlaw bro and my sis (from like, 2000 or something) that she was carrying around in this mini backpack, took a look at it, and said, "I miss them." It was pretty hilarious.

Today was brunch with K & J and the girls from work at K & J's gorgeously reno'd house. Then SMckay is coming over for dinner and a viewing of The Help. Full review to follow!

Fin.

Mad max

Photos from the last few days...

Fried zucchini spaghetti, recipe inspiration courtesy of Gwyneth Paltrow's stupid cookbook that was probably (definitely) ghost written by Mario Batali

Grilled radicchio salad with toasted breadcrumbs, egg, and anchovy vinaigrette

My life's goal, realized

Outtakes from yesterday spent with Poh Poh and Miss Ramona at our house. We went out after dinner and all the kids were out riding their bikes - it looked simultaneously like Mad Max, a motorcross practice session, and as if the Dotytron had 5 kids because of the high proportion of Asian-Caucasian pairings and their kids on our street. So cute!!!

LOVE LOVE LOVE my hood!

At the Science Centre today with the family - exhausting but fun.

I'm lazing out and ordering pizza tonight because the Science Centre took so much out of us. It's been decreed that we're all going to bed at 8.

Fin.

A career in the arts...

The woman half of R & R is an old friend of Momma D's going back to their OCAD days. R's daughter, P is deciding between attending Concordia or OCAD for a fine arts degree. Thinking about this and the tendency for kids to ape the careers of modeled by their parents (not necessarily restricted to the arts - lawyers beget lawyers, etc.) and also how artistic/creative talent is as much nurtured as natured, the Dotytron and I got into a big discussion about parenting.

I'm going to come right out and say it - I absolutely, 100% DO NOT want my child to have a career in the arts (traditional, fine arts.) No being a musician, a painter, a writer, none of that, please. My concern is that because the Dotytron comes from a self-identified "musical family" and because the Dotytron himself is so talented musically, that already people are looking for those cues in the Big Yam. I can't tell you the number of times I've heard people say "Oh! Look at him playing his tambourine/dancing/wanting to touch the guitar - he's going to a musician just like his dad/nana/poppa/auntie." They're looking for those markers and commenting on them and the conversation with the Dotytron started with me saying that we have to be very conscious of the insidiousness of that kind of representational language and attempt to balance it by commenting more frequently and strongly on other aspects/elements, that we ourselves are admittedly weaker in. In the same way that gender constructions start in utero, with little girl babies being told how pretty, cute, precious they are, rather than how strong, creative, and adventurous, the same is done from a very young age when people have preconceived notions of what a child can be.

This isn't to denigrate a career in the arts. Ehmdo has two successful classically creative careers and is spectacularly talented at both. I'm also recognizing that you can be creative in many, many, many fields - and that a child who is positioned to excel will by necessity draw on their creative skills in many non-classically creative fields - as lawyers, engineers, surgeons, investment bankers, etc.

My main point is that the allure of a highly romanticized, bohemian, fine arts-based life style is never as compelling as during the critical point in a kid's life when they have to apply themselves at less "fun" and "cool" disciplines in order to make sure that doors remain open in the future - stuff like physics and calculus. NO ONE thinks those things are cool! And yet, given our respective weaknesses in the hard sciences and maths, I think it's really important that we strive to overcome our lack of facility in those areas and make those subject areas as fun and engaging as possible. Physics is totally fun and engaging! I'm sure that now, I'd probably think the same thing of calculus and algebra.

The Dotytron was countering that of course we would stress excellence in general - the same way that we would expect excellence in athletics, music, math, etc. I disagree though - I could care less if my kid comes home with a bad grade in gym. If my kid comes home with a bad grade in one of the core subjects, there will be heck to pay, mark my words.

The point of the matter is that I feel like people have a tendency to unconsciously map out a child's future and narrow the field of possibilities by projecting attributes and characteristics pretty much from birth. You really have to work hard to counteract those enculturating forces.

The other point of the matter is that if my kid does choose that career, I want them to do it AFTER getting a University degree and AFTER having interviewed at least 10 people working in the field that they want to enter, so that they get an idea of the kinds of trials, tribulations, and (probable) poverty that accompany the lifestyle.

Guh. I'm such a hard a** parent. Just call me the dream killah.

Fin.

La Ferme

The Big Yam's first time at the farm was a raging success, if you measure success by the happiness of a baby going to town on a T-bone steak:

The kid loves his red meat. Apparently T-bones make great teethers. By the end of that whole ordeal he was so covered in an insulating coating of beef tallow that water was beading up on his skin. I love R & R Acres - it's so relaxing - sleeping in the bunkie, taking naps, tooting around antiquing little wee towns, eating copious amounts of red meat, visiting with our hosts:

Shooting guns:

That's me with a .22 calibre rifle. I also shot a .22 handgun, a .45 rifle and a shotgun. I know guns are bad, blah blah blah...but I really do love shooting. I love the accuracy involved in it, I love the little adrenaline rush of feeling like you're doing something bad, and I love steeling myself for the kick. Pumping a shotgun makes you feel badass. I know there's something intrinsically wrong in our culture that it romanticizes the authoritative click of a pumped shotgun, but I can't help it - it makes you feel like you could actually take on an army of zombies and win. I'd like to get my gun license and then my hunting license in the next little while so that I can join in on the duck hunt. I feel like duck are a good hunting starting point - it'd be hard for me to look a deer in the eye after I shot it - as much as I love venison, it wouldn't be easy.

Over the years they've kind of wound down the number of livestock on the farm - the upkeep is just too much. Right now they have sheep, some turkeys, chickens, and some Muscovy ducks. I thought that this male turkey looked a lot like Little Big Cuz:

Here's a photo of nephew M for reference:

Am I crazy? Something about the big, gentle, wiser-than-their-years expression in their eyes and their little barrel chests.

Our goody bag from the Farm included a bag of frozen venison hearts, tongues, and assorted duck and Canada goose offal (gizzards, more hearts and the like). I'm excited to see what I can do with it. I love eating tongue - it's so tender and flavourful, although my tongue experiences thus far have been limited to ox tongue and duck tongues. Luckily, I have my 1962 edition of the Joy of Cooking to help me through it. Gotta love the Joy of Cooking - they'll probably advocate that I nap the tongue in some weird, retro-French master sauce, but at least it'll give me some tips on how best to prep the organs. We also got some pepperettes and a summer sausage made from random meat from R's hunting spoils - the summer sausage has beef, duck, Canada goose, venison and other random goodies in it and it's DELICIOUS.

Some food roundup -

Dinner with P before we left for the farm - corn sauté, pan-seared cured pork chops, green salad

Dessert for P - peach-blueberry crisp with whipped cream

Farm food: T-bone steaks (local, Walkerton meat), green salad, broccoli slaw

Farm breakfast: bacon, eggs, homefries

Blueberry sour cream pie

Today is a laundry, back-to-reality day as we ready ourselves for the arrival of Miss Ramona, who will be spending 3 days with us at Camp Leslieville. My mum is also having us take care of my Poh Poh all day tomorrow - which should be interesting - it kind of limits what we can do but I figure we'll stick around the neighbourhood and go for bike rides or swimming or something. Additionally, Dr. Rei is coming over this afternoon for some fun time.

Here is a bonus video of the Dotytron's turkey intimidation tactics. I find this HILARIOUS - there was one female turkey in particular who was quite bold and kept freaking out Ehmdo by chasing us and the Dotytron would do his weird technique and had me howling:

Fin.

The bitter sting of discrimination

I spent all yesterday in Elmira with Lolly et al. doing some wedding dress shopping at this bridal boutique in the middle of farm country. It was a fun outing, but I was also the recipient of a VERY frosty reception from some old skool Mennonites at the quilting store in town (and by "town," I mean the one commercial strip for miles.) The women in the store were kind of gawking and shying away from me and SMckay and the proprietor lady was quite curt and dour and refused all my effusive compliments on her store. I was like, WTF ladies - DON'T BE SO UNCHRISTIAN! So SMckay may or may not have nearly knocked over a display of religious greeting cards - no need to be such dicks about it. So I might have not been dressed appropriately for my age in a too-short H&M babydoll and a fierce side French braid that snaked around my head - them Mennonite b***hes shouldn't be so jelly of my acres of tanned, brown, not-so-toned skin. It's just flesh! Relax gurlz!

Tuesday night's outing with Dr. Rei and Montréal I and the roomie was fun - we had dinner at Gourmet Burger Co. and then went to our movie. I also picked up some new pants for work - high waisted trouser cut jeans (sshhhh...don't tell HR!) in an intense blue-black:

I really want to sharpen up my work wardrobe. I've been coasting since graduating from school and I want to get serious about my work style - since that's where I spend the majority of my time anyway. For the fall, I'm thinking sweater dresses with boots and a crisp white dress shirt underneath. Sleeveless, 60s looking dresses in black and grey with a brightly coloured turtleneck, tights, and open toed sandals with a chunky heel. Trouser cut pants with a tucked in shirt, a colourful cardigan and a contrasting skinny belt. Some new flats and a new purse that says grown-up.

Crazy, Stupid, Love was aight. I don't think it's deserving of the critical praise being heaped on it. It's being touted as a mature love story but it's not that mature. The story centres around Cal Weaver, who is 20-odd-years into a marriage with Julianne Moore's character and has gotten depressingly complacent - to the point where his wife has an affair and wants a divorce. Broken and lost, he ends up frequenting a bar where a slick lothario in the extremely-easy-on-the-eyes form of Ryan Gosling takes him under his wing for lessons in how to mack the ladies and get his groove back. There's also Emma Stone as Hannah - a lawyer who is awkward in all things relationship and who catches the eye of Ryan Gosling. An unnecessary subplot involves Cal's babysitter's immature lust for Cal and Cal's son's unrequited love for the babysitter. The interwoven plot reaches at times with the tidiness of the interrelationships and some stories are more compelling than others. The tone breaks between farce and more tender, realistic moments and I found the shifts for cheap laughs jarring. Overall, it was okay, but definitely felt over-long at certain moments and didn't deliver on the laughs.

We saw the movie in the Varsity VIP room which costs more (the timing was better for our respective schedules) and which has stupid benefits like: bigger seats, seats set up in pairs with crappy cheap plastic side tables separating the groups, and someone taking your order and delivering your snacks to you. For like, $20 a ticket on a regular night. LAME! They also only show 2 movie previews which is the

Tonight I'm going with Dr. Rei to the premiere of One Day which is based on a fairly meh novel by David Nicholls featuring 2 intensely irritating and unlikable protagonists that got an undeserved amount of good reviews/press and which my academic Book Club has chosen as their next title, alongside John Updike's Couples (the theme is monogamous pairings, apparently) which I haven't picked up from the bibliotheque yet but which I anticipate will be mad borzorz. We shall see what the night brings. This is after my friend P who is in town from Egypt comes over for the earliest dinner of all time, which makes him extremely accommodating considering I had originally totally bumped him to go to this movie with Dr. Rei until I realized that I COULD HAVE IT ALL by eating dinner at 4pm. Yay!

Tomorrow we're headed off for our last road trip of the summer - to R & R Acres. Big Yam at the Farm (the other farm - like, the real working farm, and not Lolls' farm)! Ehmdo is coming too! Fun!

In the meantime, imma leave you with this video of the Big Yam eating a piece of corn on the cob which is kind of hilarious, mostly because he does this awesome thing where he holds it in his mouth and then blows around it (the sound of him blowing is most obvious at the 1:18 mark):

Doubtful I'll have time to post before I head out - but when I come back, regular posting will resumeth!

Fin.

Unexplained phenomena

There was a photo from before I left for my vacation at the bottom of a post that I didn't describe and some of you astute readers might have finished reading that particularly scintillating (it wasn't) entry and gotten to the end and been like, "WTF?" This is the photo in question:

This was a gift to the Big Yam from his Great Nany. It's an obviously handmade, quite tall figure made out of the itchiest, most unsoft, most toxic-seeming foam this side of a Chinese infant formula manufacturing facility. She said she saw it in a store and wanted to get it for the Big Yam. We suspect it was an item used for display purposes, as it's not even finished. The top of his head is open so that you can see into it and there's a cheap ribbon looped through to hang him from something. It is simultaneously creepy, unsafe, and odd and we don't know what the crap to do with it in our house. I don't really want the Big Yam playing with it - it's really shoddily put together with like, wood glue. When I called Great Nany about another unrelated matter, she wondered if it was "Bud Lightyear" - oy. Right now he's been relegated to a dark corner of the basement. Any ideas?

Real life has been pretty good to us so far. I've been taking over mornings so that the Dotytron can do lesson planning and all the other borz0rz stuff that teachers have to do during their time off so that their lives aren't hell. LAME!

But we've been having fun hanging with the roomie and Montréal I, going to parks and for walks and just chilling.

Yesterday I attempted to get our lives back on track and made us whole wheat blueberry pancakes for breakfast. The key to a good pancake (IMO) is making sure you have enough fat in the pan so that you get that crispy ring around the outside (see above). That crispy ring MAKES a pancake, IMO.

Last night Montréal I made us a fish soup for dinner. I was admittedly skeptical. When we lived with her in university I wasn't prepared for her Russian peasant eating habits and would look askance at her dinners of smoked oysters on buttered crackers. Really, it was I who had the growing up to do, as I'm now the person happily scarfing pickled herring on buttered rye bread like I grew up on a gulag in the the Siberian Steppes. The fish soup was very simple - water, carrots, celery, potatoes, dill, salmon, and scallops, shrimp, and squid poached in a lemony marinade tossed in at the last second. I made us a salad of broiled figs stuffed with gorgonzola and wrapped in pancetta on arugala dressed with olive oil and balsamic.

I also made us Mona's Mother's Mother's favorite cookie recipe, which got bumped to the top of the baking queue when our friend N won a family oatmeal cookie baking contest with the recipe. As you well know, I loooooooove winning cooking/baking contests!

Finally, here is a photo of a giant slug that appeared on our back deck, with the Dotytron's hand for reference. HOW CRAZY IS THAT?!??? Giant slugs are GIANT!!! We saw oodles of nature while at the cottage(s) which I get big thrills from. We saw: a muskrat, baby loons, regular sized loons, a doe, a buck (I've never seen a male deer in the wild and this one was super up close), and wild turkeys. That's a pretty impressive tally.

Tonight I'm being reunited with my dove, Dr. Rei and we're going to dinner and seeing Crazy, Stupid, Love with Montréal I and the roomie.

Fin.

Back to life

...back to reality. Taking a look at this year's blogging tally, I noticed that we're three quarters of the way through the year and I've only logged around 80-some-odd posts! What the hell? Who knew that caring for a squalling babe-now-almost-toddler would occupado so much of my writing time? (Answer: everyone.)

We got back from 2 weeks of cottaging bliss on Saturday. The idea of resuming real life was filling me with dread. I could get used to a life of rich, egg-heavy breakfasts, watching the Big Yam splash around in lake water, al fresco dinners, long nap-laden afternoons, and board games. These past 2 weeks were made all the more dear because of my acute awareness that our idyllic, carefree summer of fun has a half life. Several portentous end dates are looming - the end of the Dotytron's summer vacation, the end date on my maternity leave, the time until the Big Yam turns one (which is happy and sad in the most clichéd, time-worn manner imaginable.) I have to keep reminding myself to be conscious of how lucky I am and not to waste away the remaining days by being morose. I made the Dotytron promise in the car ride home on Saturday that when we got home, we'd unpack first (I'm not so crazy about prolonging vacation time that my OCD impulses to unpack and have the house in order don't win out), but that we wouldn't turn on any computers or check into the information superhighway. It made it easier, somehow.

We came home on a hot, sunny, brassy day that highlighted the garden overgrown with weeds, the stuffiness of a house left vacant a little too long, and the drudgery of unpacking a car full of inflatable water toys and pool noodles. By refusing to check into Facebook-land and just being together as a family and easing gently and tentatively into our neighbourhood and the summer edition of our routine, it made the slow shift from vacation mode into summer-quasi-real-life mode not as shocking. Prevented us from getting the post-vacation bends.

It would be impossible to sum up the past few weeks - I took about 400 photos (albeit most of them the blurriest), but here are some of my favorites:

Bruce Wayne actually cooked something!

Little Big Cuz has the cutest, knowing little smile. I love that guy's face.

The last photo is of a 2000 piece puzzle depicting a work by the artist Britto (whom I've never heard of prior to embarking on Puzzlegate 2011.) We bought this puzzle because JSculls was hankering for a challenge. I believe we bought it 4 days into our 7 day stay. It was epic-times at frustration high, resulting in 4 of us staying up until almost 2am on Friday night/Saturday morning, trying to get this b***h done. It was insane. And at the end of it, you're left with this ugly piece of crap! Puzzlegate was an emotional roller coaster of the highest order - the lows were crushing, the highs not very high at all, when it comes down to it.

I thought family cottage time was good - but there were some simmering family dramas that marred things a bit. I don't know if it's just a byproduct of the fact that my bros tend to get along a little better with each other or that my sister and I are closer, but I thought Bruce Wayne and CHova were acting up a bit. The timbre of the board games times can get a little mean spirited and nasty and I'm not a fan of that - especially when I'm on vacation. That being said, I still didn't want that time to end.

Kdubsguelph cottage was fantastic - absolutely no complaints there. It's so nice to be with a big crew of people I love. It's a rarer experience for me to have a crew. I didn't keep many friends from high school or university (where most crews are born and fostered) and so the experience of having a big group of the same people always is the best. It's so comforting. I have smaller, more atomized crews that come together when I host big dinners, but the level of intimacy of kdubsguelph times is hard to replicate. Although I doubt my experience is that singular - I think the the older you get, the more your crews get dispersed and the harder it is to have that strong group bond.

I had a lot of opportunity to play and practice on the ukulele. The Dotytron taught me a blues form and then had me learn to improvise. The next day, after doing some noodling, I turned to the Dotytron while brushing our teeth and asked, "Is my blues playing derivative?" At which point, he practically did a spit-take of toothpaste and put me in my place (the general gist being that having JUST LEARNED to play, I'm not at the point where I could even be derivative.) LOL! This also resulted in me saying that "Look, B.B. King wasn't born in a day" - I'm not even sure where I was going with that.

Certain things contributed to making real life better. I'm going to itemize them:

1) I love my neighbourhood. We had takeout dinner from Amaya on Saturday night and then burritos from Chino Loco's last night and we went on long walks both days and I realized that I love my home.

2) A house at the bottom of the street is listed at $749,000

3) Our friend from Montréal is visiting! Her other visits didn't mesh well with our schedules so this is her first time meeting the Big Yam. We went to visit her in Montréal pre-pregnancy, when we were contemplating pulling the goalie, and then this is the first time since then. So even as I say that I don't have much crew, the roomie and Montréal I are totally crew. A small crew, but the kind of crew where we pick up after a year and a half with no awkward chit-chat, no catching up, instantly into the easy, effortless rapport and deep conversations that make you feel like you're home. Like people know you and accept you and you can just be.

We're spending the day with Montréal I and the roomie and L'armi again today and probably tomorrow.

Fin.