Buffs'n'tings

Last weekend, I went through all three kids' clothes and did my seasonal inventory, which is an extremely boring, but necessary task where I write up a list of their needs for the season (# of t-shirts, # of long-sleeve shirts, sandals, hats, etc.).  Then I go through their drawers and see what they have that will still fit into the next season, what has to be retired, and what has already been bought or is in a hand-me-down bin and cross-reference with that list so that I only buy what I need (I always end up buying a little bit more, but because I have a giant and twins, they all get used eventually).  It is mind-numbing work and I'm really glad I have two Master's degrees and also: guys are useless in this department, although if there are any cis males who DO do this work, then please message me because you should be sent for study at a highly acclaimed research facility on gender equality in the domestic sphere.

ANYWAY, I had already bought the Big Yam this tshirt below, but hadn't opened the package yet:

Cut to - a couple of night's ago, him asking me when we were chilling, "Can you get me a shirt that has a skull and crossbones on it so I can be a pirate?" and me saying, evenly, "OK, we'll see."  

Cut to - last night, me showing it to the Big Yam with much fanfare and him being the MOST jazzed of life.  

Cut to - this morning, 6:15am, me in the kitchen starting the daily routine and the Dotytron eating his breakfast in the living room when the Big Yam comes down the stairs, and announces, "Hi Baba, I already dressed and brushed my teeth" and I was like, "What the - ?!" and he's standing at the bottom of the stairs wearing all his clothes for the day, with that proud/shy expression on his face that slays me dead.  Usually, it is a FIGHT getting him to change out of his jammies (he doesn't like putting on cold clothes), and he waits until the very last possible minute, and there's a series of escalating (in tenor and volume) reminders for him to brush his teeth.  But today!  Today he stood at the bottom of the stairs and was dressed (even his socks!!!) and had brushed his teeth all because he was so pumped to wear a $10 t-shirt with skulls on it, and he broke and simultaneously mended my heart.  He's such a fearful kid and he's generally afraid to do the wrong thing, so it really shows when he's self-conscious.  That mix of shyness and pride that he sees you noticing him doing something is so eternally sweet, I can't handle it.

A couple of weeks ago, I was holding strong and refused to let the kids watch a show on a Saturday morning, because sometimes I like to make my weekends as torturous and masochistic as possible.  They were in the basement being maniacs, and finally I had enough and said, "Fine. You can watch one show before breakfast," and from the basement I heard Twin A screaming, "ONE SHOW!!!" like he was a civil defense siren in a little wisp of a body and it makes me laugh to this day.  

As of today, I'm on vacation for the next week!  Huzzah!  We have some laid back, fun, staycationing times ahead of us and I couldn't be happier about it.

Edit: picking up this post mid-way through my staycation, which so far has been anything BUT laid back and/or fun.

UGH.  My Friday before going on vacation was so stressful.  And I got called into work yesterday to deal with work stuff and it was so not fun and I had heartburn all last night as a result and I had to field work-related calls while at the sugar bush with my kids today and that was also very NOT fun.

Our latest obsession is watching American Crime Story: The People Vs. OJ Simpson which, I know, I was as surprised as anyone that it is THE BEST SHOW ON TELEVISION RIGHT NOW.  And look: I make it a habit of watching the very best curated television.  There were SO MANY strikes against this, coming out of the gate (mixed sports metaphor, say what!): a Ryan Murphy pedigree (I've never liked anything he's done), stunt casting, a story that we already know, from every angle, and that could so easily be played for lurid, grotesque, People magazine-like titillation.

The thing is: it doesn't do any of those things.  It is that perfect mix of staying on the tasteful side of camp and so incredibly entertaining, while framing this ground-breaking case within the paradigm-shifting intellectual/cultural context.  It is because of this that we have reality television.  I went back and checked, Survivor debuted almost 10 years after this trial.  We have the birth of the Kardashians as an entity.  We have racial politics playing out in a very visible way in the courtroom - and by the way, nothing has changed!  We have the 24 hour media cycle elevating ordinary people to the level of celebrity, we have tabloid culture, racial dynamics, feminism...it has everything.  The casting is PERFECT.  Like, the most perfect.  David Schwimmer as Robert Kardashian is everything.  Sarah Paulson is perfection.  John Travolta as Bob Shapiro is the role of a lifetime and he is NAILING IT.

I seriously want to go back to grad school so I can write a million papers about this.  It is so ripe for a densely layered reading.  Anyway, the episode "Marcia, Marcia, Marcia" that focused on Marcia Clark was so real from a feminist, working mom perspective.

This was made very real for me when things blew up at work and I got called in yesterday and was putting out a fire.  I was like, YES MARCIA, I GET YOU.  When I was methodically going through all the kids clothes, I was like, YES MARCIA, THIS WOMAN'S WORK IS HARD STUFF.

We were debriefing about my no good, terrible, very bad day yesterday and the Dotytron made a solid observation about how the amount of training you receive on a job counterintuitively gets less the more professional and important your job is.  It's so true.  He was like, "It's like, when you're a teenager they're like, 'this is how you cut a bagel - no, not that way! - this way - ," and no one trains him on anything to do with being a teacher.  You're just expected to learn on the job.  Which I get in terms of the minutae of how you do your actual job...but I feel like people don't get training on process, or administrative procedures either?  Which is totally weird.  When I was a cashier at Loblaws, I had to go to Loblaws central and I was tested on PLU (produce) codes for like, 2 days, before I stepped foot in the store.

I'm also obsessed with this seasons of Girls (which I have been watching from day one because I am a good quasi-Millennial, but which really picked up for me in season 5 and now I legit love it), and Broad City, and anything to do with the Duplass brothers.  I LOVE ME SOME DUPLASS BROTHERS.  I want to be the meat in a Duplass brothers sandwich.

They are so smart and funny and they were seminal in the development of "mumblecore" movies and they care.  They executive produced Tangerine, which is about trans women in downtown LA.  Jay Duplass is in Transparent, which is another current favorite show.  Mark Duplass is a good actor and they're just amazing.  We started watching their show Togetherness which makes really astute observations about (heteronormative) relationships at a certain point.  I just love them.

Anyway, where was I?  Oh yeah, work was stressful.  March Break has been semi-fun, and semi-stressful and by Tuesday mid-day I was like, that was the LONGEST day and a quarter of my LIFE.  Yesterday was a write-off, but the Dotytron and I did manage to go out to eat (more on that later).  Today we took the kids to Bruce's Mill Conservation Area to go to their maple syrup festival.  It was actually really fun.

We've had some pretty low key weekends which is good - we're sticking to one day of socializing and keeping Sundays for nature walks and being chill, even if it does result in Twin B complaining, "I don't want to go for nature walks!" on the regular.  Haha.  We had an epic snowball fight at the Brickworks on the last snowy day.  The Dotytron took the Big Yam to a birthday party at Laserquest and was the only adult to participate and came in second place (proudly) (at a 7 year old's birthday party).

I also made the kids these double-sided fall/spring neckwarmers and they've been a big hit.  It was nice to get back to sewing - I've taken a long sewing hiatus over the winter.  My goal is to make Twin B his quilt before he turns three!  Then the one after that is a big quilt (queen sized, minimum), for me.  Then I'll probably start all over again with quilts for the kids as the Big Yam is already outgrowing his crib sized one.

The Thick of It

The heart of winter - we are in it.  The Xmas decorations have come down, our xmas lights hang mournful and unlit in the window, waiting for a warm day when we can take them down.  *Edit: we just flicked the switch last night and turned them back on again!  Huzzah!  Casa Dotytron-Lagerfeld - leaving our Christmas lights on until April, since 2010.  Bits and pieces of our life strewn around the house, in a holding pattern because this renovation is taking a million years (which I guess makes sense when your contractor works a solid, 8 hour work week on your job?!).  It's unremittingly cold outside and the worst kind of winter cold, too - the kind with no snow!  What's the point of winter without snow?

Truthfully, I don't mind.  Our lives have been busy and full.  One might say too busy and full, really.  Weekend visits, hosting, the return of extra curriculars in our lives, made possible by the age of the babies now mitigating prospective babysitter's qualms.  The Dotytron went to a weekly neighbourhood jazz jam last week, I went to a Board meeting on Monday and hit up Quilt Sunday at a Parkdale sewing shop.  We hosted some friends for dinner Sunday, hosted a Friday PA day Micelli Monday session...we are happy, fulfilled.  Did I go to bed at 9pm last night?  Yes.  Was I lured in part because I'm reading a corker of a book?  Yes.  See?  No complaints.

Except for how I was verbally threatened by a psycho on my way home from picking out the basement flooring.  I might have cut a guy off (but I'm not sure?), he leaned on the horn, I gave him the customary gesture one does, he stopped his car in front of mine (in the middle of the road), got out, and started banging on the window the my car and saying all kinds of rude, racist, sexually graphic things.  It was terrifying.  He looked like Bob from Twin Peaks.  He was probably mentally unhinged, definitely had anger management issues.  I took down his license plate and have been meaning to call it into the police non emergency line.  I wish I had pepper spray in my car, I would have sprayed his eyes out.  I don't understand why people (men) think it's okay to say certain things to people (women) in anger.  Like, why go there?  It reminds me of the "appropriate" responses we're constantly trying to inculcate in our children - like, the Big Yam now will (sometimes) say, "I'm SO MAD AT YOU RIGHT NOW!" I totally get that response.  People and strangers can make you mad.  If the guy had said, "You cut me off and I'm SO MAD AT YOUR RIGHT NOW!!!" I would have been like, fair enough, you're entitled to feel how you feel.  The level of detail and sexually charged violent undercurrent is not cool.  The galling thing is he took down MY license plate number (!)

The upside is that we picked out our flooring?  *Weak laugh*  We have decided on a white ash looking laminate.  We went back and forth.  Our architect recommend vinyl flooring.  They have high end vinyl now that looks like wood, comes with an acoustic backing, is virtually indestructible and 100% waterproof.  It's also kind of pricey (the good stuff is, anyway).  It's also plastic, at the end of the day.  The laminate we chose was 1/2 the price of the vinyl, and really, the basement is going to be for our personal use - it's not super high traffic, it's not a rental, we're not a condo building, so it's okay.  The waterproof argument is specious to me.  If my washer malfunctions and floods the basement, sure the floors will be okay, but it's not like I'm not going to have to replace drywall and all the other business, right?

We chose something that looks like this:

It's a white ash.  I wanted something neutral, light, and airy for the basement.  It's a basement, it doesn't get any natural light (only the bathroom and the bedroom down there will), so I wanted something that would contribute as much as possible to making the room seem expansive.  It has a slight grey wash to it, without being aggressively grey, and the floor doesn't have orange tones, which I like, because those orange tones just remind me of that awful 80s/90s parquet flooring that everyone had.

This is kind of the feel I'm going for, without being quite so stark and overtly Scandinavian/Helmut Newton-y.  About 75% less Helmut Newton.  And Helmet Lang.  LOL!  It's going to be warmed up with brass and warm wood, and big fluffy rug, and colourful throws, and oh yeah, a million kids toys and pieces of lego crunching underfoot.

This week I played a bass clarinet that the Dotytron brought home to practice with and we watched the movie Birdman and last night I went with an old friend to see Miranda July interviewed by Sheila Heti:

The average median age of the audience was about 25 and everyone looked like they had just slouched out of an Urban Outfitters store.  I was in my work clothes - black & white ikat print dress over a black turtleneck, tan belt, forest green (what my friend KD calls my "Masters" green blazer) blazer, and forest green tights, with black boots - I think I looked like I had slouched out of an Anthropologie - so one step up!  Probably more like I slouched off the Modcloth webpage.  Oh well.

Sheila Heti is the editor of that book Women In Clothes which I haven't taken a look at yet, but is all the rage with the McSweeney's set.  She's generally all the rage with the McSweeney's set.  I haven't read any of her work, but I'm thinking of suggesting her novel, How Should A Person Be? for the next next Academic Book Club.  It's described as "...A raw, startling, genre-defying novel of friendship, sex, and love in the new millenium."  It's a mix of memoir and fiction and apparently features graphic, uncomfortable sex scenes.  Like Girls meets The New Yorker.  I think it would be a good hate-read and at least engender a fruitful and spirited discussion.  I suspect the book will infuriate me and I won't find her a good writer, but that's part of the fun, isn't it?  Book club is never good when we read something beautiful and affecting and unimpeachable.  I read a critique about her much-lauded Women In Clothes project that takes the editors to task for featuring mostly white people.  Heti herself sports the misguided baby bangs of Janeane Garofolo circa Reality Bites.  Also, she's not young.  She seems nice - she smiled shyly at me when I passed her at the venue.  She makes for a horrid interviewer though.  Apparently she and Miranda July are quite close friends, but you wouldn't have known that from their interaction.  It was quite stilted and awkward.  Heti's questions didn't really seem to go anywhere and July's answers kind of spun off into nothingness.  I was like, guys, did you not go over this in advance?!?  Come ON.

It's always interesting to hear artists talk about their process and I did enjoy Miranda July's first film, You Me and Everyone We Know.  I also read her first collection of short stories, No One Belongs Here More Than You, when it first came out, but was unmoved by the writing at the time.  That being said, she wasn't a very pithy speaker.  It was all very airy and floaty, words floating above their heads without coming down to ground on anything concrete.  She talked about a performance art piece she does where she auctions off items' belonging to members' of the audience and then gives the accumulated money to the person in the audience who "needs it the most" at that very moment.  I found it an interesting take on the fluidity of capital.  In that vein, I accompanied my friend who got her book signed and so I had Miranda July sign the paper bag that had held my kathi roll dinner and I'm thinking of putting it up on ebay.  The Dotytron and I had a conversation about performativity and capital afterwards which means that the talk wasn't for naught.

Heti and July referenced Tavi Gevinson so I think that's all you need to know about that.  I admire Tavi but I will also say that her performance in the film Enough Said was the worst element about what was otherwise a sweet, naturalistic, grown-up movie.

I'm glad I went.  I like going to things like that.  It is inspiring and gets me thinking, which I need.

Otherwise, I'm knitting a cowl that is the first knitting project that I've worked on in some time that has excited me.  Perfect for winter.  This is the yarn I'm using - the softest, squishiest, delicious yarn in my collection at the moment:

I tried my hand at free motion quilting for the first time using a fancy-fancy machine at the Workroom and I FELL IN LOVE with the process.  I'm going to try tackling it at home with my perfectly serviceable but not as bells-and-whistles-loaded machine.  This quilt is for the Quincess.  It suits his personality, methinks.  

This is a latin-style "porchetta" sandwich and a shrimp po' boy from a sandwich shop (Sully's) that opened up recently in the 'hood.  These were pretty good.  The fries there are tasty.  I would go back but I'm not about to rave about it or insist you travel across town to check it out.  So don't do that, okay?  You can do whatever you want, but don't blame me if it doesn't live up to the hype.  I'm not hyping it up.

A Spanish chorizo, tripe, pork belly and chickpea dish I had in the freezer, served atop polenta with a fried egg and gremolata.  That's good stuff, folks.

Classic weeknight meal - pasta with sausage, chickpeas, and kale and parm.  The babies have been jerks lately and are only eating the pasta.  It's not good.

See?  Look at how much attitude I get during a single dinner!  By the way, that "Waof?" Lindsey says while pointing upstairs is his way of asking for a bath.  Lately, he's been pretty good about saying "puh" and then pointing upstairs at the bathroom AFTER he's already done the deed.  We are so close to a breakthrough, but it eludes us yet.

Busy weekend ahead.  Heavy agenda ahead of eating burgers and fries and chocolate pudding with salted caramel, chocolate crumbs, and whipped cream, and watching movies with the boys, tonight.  Saturday is the Big Yam's day of activities: Chinese school, then ballet, then hip hop.  Meanwhile, the twins have inexplicably been invited to a birthday party (!)  Sunday is family chill time and then Super Bowl which for us means eating ribs and nachos and baked potato skins.  All in all, forecast is calling for a pretty cozy weekend in.

Fin.

Too Many Interests...Too Little Time

Squeezing out a little bit of time to update this dusty corner of ye olde interwebs, in between weighing in on, among other things: Jian Ghomeshi, the municipal election here in Toronto, and Cyrus Beene's hair situation on Scandal.  I wish I had more time to spend here, because I HAVE ALL THE THOUGHTS AND ALL THE FEELINGS.  I haven't even had a chance to record for posterity how I feel about the whole, "Hello Kitty is not a cat" Sanrio bombshell.  WHAT HAS MY LIFE BECOME?!

Guys, I am STRETCHED.  I wake up at 5:30am so I can put a proper breakfast out for my goon squad and have a proper dinner to come home to.  I want to knit, and see movies, and catch-up on the news, and have time to read, and work on crafts, and think about FREAKIN' XMAS (which I hate with the fieriness of a million suns), and make quilts, and keep a clean house, and figure out all the stupid renovation stuff, and see my friends, and make sure the Big Yam sees HIS friends, and make sure that the babies see enough of my face full-on (as in, I'm looking at them and they're not just getting the weird side-angle of my face with the computer screen/my phone casting its pall on my complexion), that they don't imprint on our caregiver or, the cats.  I fall asleep at 10pm and it is the exhausted sleep of the damned, filled with mundane dreams where I "escape" to such flights of subconscious as, "my family is coming over for dinner and my brother brings nothing to contribute" or "the basement underpin has started and the shared driveway has a giant pile of dirt in it" (real, actual dreams I've had lately.  I'm the worst).  This basically says to me that I'm not nurturing my interior life enough.

First things first: the whole Jian thing.  I am SHOCKED at how many defenders he has/had!  In the grand tradition of me being right about stuff without knowing anything detailed about them and going only on my superficial assumptions (which I could teach a graduate-level course in, quite frankly), I WAS SO RIGHT ABOUT JIAN.  I've thought he was so gross from even BEFORE Dr. Rei hipped me to the XO Jane "blind" item.  Then, while on maternity leave and driving the babies around to their various medical appointments, I actually heard his show.  HE'S NOT THAT GOOD, GUYS.  After an event of particular cultural import, he would always do these little op-ed monologue "essays" over washy, synth pads and his thoughts were SO BANAL.  SO TRITE.  Like, more banal than Stuart McLean (aka Garrison Keillor for all my American readers).  Did you ever think such a thing was possible?  To my mind, Jian became famous because of the Billy Bob Thornton thing, and really, that's basically becoming famous and well-known because you were on the receiving end of a notable jerk being a notable jerk.  La-di-dah.

Anyway, there's nothing about Jian that doesn't scream "I'm a gross pig."  The hair!  The look!  The general douchebaggy way he presents himself (I totally feel like Jian is a douchebag, which refutes the contention of this widely-circulated article, that "douchebag" always refers to a white person.  Tiger Woods?  Total douchebag).   Even if, as the Dotytron contends, I consider "Eeks. Totes diff vibes from yest" an indictable offense and would support locking someone behind bars for that alone, I think the way he's handled this whole thing shows that painting him with broad "disgusting pig-dog" strokes wasn't off base in the least.  Let's also talk about the PR firm he hired, Navigator.  They took him as a client, they must have signed off on that sad, pathetic, and TMI Facebook post Jian wrote, and then, when more and more women started coming forward, they dropped him.  Way to do your due diligence, you idiots.  I should charge them as a consultant to sit in a room when they're entertaining new clients so they don't have to be in the position of taking on and then subsequently dropping sick f**kwads.  HOW DID YOU NOT KNOW, NAVIGATOR?!?

I sometimes wish I could just apply for jobs with a CV that states all the times I was right about stuff ahead of the curve.  Granted, most of the times it has to do with pop culture, but still!  That's got to count for something, somewhere, right?

We need a palate cleanser after the unpleasantness of talking about Jian.  This photo has been making my heart sing, lately:

I love everyone's face in this photo - from the Big Yam's cheesy smile to Lenny's wide-faced muppet-mouthed grin.  

The above photo was taken on a Don Valley nature walk we did to take in the fall colours.  It was one of those perfect Sundays that happens about twice a year for us - a leisurely, laid back Sunday where we had an attainable amount of household chores on the docket, but we got to go out and do something outside that was enjoyable for all members of the family, and still had enough time left that I got to lie on the couch under a blanket and read for a good chunk of the afternoon and tuck into a giant bowl of spaghetti and meatballs for dinner.  Like seriously, could you imagine a more perfect fall Sunday?  I need more of those in my life, to center me and make me a reasonable person again.

This past weekend was the antithesis of that halcyon one.  Here's something no one tells you about Halloween before you become a parent: IT IS THE LONGEST DAY OF YOUR LIFE.  I always take Halloween off from work to mitigate how much of a frenzied dash it is when kids are knocking on your door and you're trying to get the pumpkin carved/lit/out and finishing up dinner and bundling up your kids (because inevitably, Halloween is on the rainiest, coldest day in a week otherwise filled with temperate, sun-filled fall days) for the trek.  

It's always worth it, in the end.  For this:

and this:

This year everyone asked me what I did about limiting the Big Yam's candy consumption and if I had ever heard about the "Switch Witch" which is yet another new newfangled parenting thing n00b parents do because they can't tell their kids no?  The Switch Witch comes and takes all your Halloween candy in the night and leaves a book or something instead.  I've found we don't have to do anything that requires me to go out and get ANOTHER thing in addition to all the regular Halloween crap.  I made him sort his candy (what you see above) and then because he's 4, I told him he could have 4 pieces of his choosing.  He was fine with that.  He's basically forgotten all about it and I've just been using the Halloween candy as an incentive for him to do his "homework" after school.  I am very, very luck though, that the Big Yam is such a sweet, agreeable little guy.  He's so amenable.  I was able to do drop-off on Friday and ran into another parent who told me that the Big Yam sat with her when she chaperoned the field trip and she wanted to tell me what a good, smart, sweet little boy he is.  Apparently he spent the entire bus ride talking and telling them all kinds of facts and describing/explaining stuff and she kept reiterating how intelligent and well behaved and pleasant he was to be around.  

That kind of unsolicited feedback is the stuff of dreams.  I told the Dotytron and we both teared up.  I felt so proud of the Big Yam for representing himself so well and making us look good.  I don't know what role, if any, we played in how he's developed.  I know we set high expectations and we're very strict, but who knows if that works?  I can tell you that already, Lenny and the Quincess are completely different in their general approach to life.  Lenny is an Evil Knievel, daredevil, classic baby type of baby.  He climbs things, he gets into stuff, he puts food in his mouth.  He's like your textbook baby.  The Quincess is a sweet-faced, observant, cerebral, very funny baby.  I always say that Lenny is baby-funny, but the Quincess is legit, regular person funny.  He has a very wry sense of humour, and I'm continually flabbergasted by the fact that I can ascertain that and he is ONLY SIXTEEN MONTHS OLD.  

The babies have a lot of words right now, relative to their age (based on the feedback I got from their neo-natal follow up appointment).  To date, this is their tally:

- ball (their first word)
- baba
- book
- this
- that
- mama
- dung-dung (Cantonese for light)
- hot
- "moo"
- "woof"
- "down"
- "naai naai" (Cantonese for milk, but Lenny uses it generally for food)
- nana (banana)
- bot (robot)
- "poh poh" (Cantonese for "pick me up")
- elephant sound
- monkey sound
- lion sound
- "brown bear" (we're pretty sure Quincess says it, and he also reads "Brown Bear" to himself with this funny little cadence that I have to make a point of catching on video
- more/please (sign language)
- all done (sign language)

The rest of the weekend was a blur of social engagements.  We had a neighbour Halloween party on Saturday, then saw Dr. Rei and Hanbo and Big Al for dinner that night, then on Sunday we had Friendsgiving.  This all took place under the wider of umbrella of me stressing to the point of a huge eczema flare up (on my face!  OF COURSE!) about the underpinning, which is supposed to start imminently, at which point, our family of 5 will be without laundry for the duration.

Enough of my whinging on that front!  Let's see some basement renovation/finishing mood boards, shall we?  

The colour palette is light neutrals.  White, brass, grey, with blue and orange accents.  Because it's a basement, and doesn't get a lot (any) natural light, I want it to feel as airy as possible.  

  

Definitely some kind of light to medium-toned, possibly variegated laminate flooring.  A graphic, patterend rug, definitely the George Nelson bubble lamp and some brass sconces like this:

This Ikea sectional:

I found a company online that does special legs for Ikea furniture, which is a brilliant idea.  They're called Prettypegs.  We will probably need a round coffee table to offset the blocky, rectangular proportions of the main room.  I love the Ikea fauxdenza hack I've seen everywhere, and we will likely do that as a TV/entertainment centre:

We want to nest our speakers inside the credenza, so I think we'd try to get two cabinet doors with a glass inset, and then replace the glass with aluminum decorative radiator grills, spray-painted white, to allow the sound through, but still protect the speakers from Lenny's tweeter-poking fingers.  There are also plans afoot to upgrade to a king sized bed, since it's a tight fit at the moment when everyone is piled in.  

My top secret crafting project is finally out of the bag.  I made Big Al a quilt:

The back is flannel with a Bay stripe offset down the length because as is the trend when I quilt, the technical aspects of the math almost broke me, and I didn't calculate the right length/width of the batting.  I based the design off something I saw online.  The stripes are made up of 2.5" blocks made up of alternating horizontal and vertical strips of fabric.  Again, the math almost killed me and all the blue blocks and the yellow blocks were about 1/2" too small, so I had to cut a million little 1/2" pieces and sew them on when I thought I was onto the piecing stage.  I love the striped border of the binding (not my idea, again ripped off of the one I saw online) and this is my biggest quilt to date.  I did a big chunk of it when we were at my ED's cottage this summer.  It was overall a very pleasurable experience making it and I can't wait for Big Al to be big enough so that I can tell him about it, or that I can read him stories with it tucked up around our legs.  

Here's what our dinners have been like, lately:

Teriyaki salmon, with steamed brown rice and breaded zucchini "fries" I made using this recipe as a base (pretty standard, flour, egg wash, panko/parmesan crust, baked on a rack in the oven.  My notes: DON'T FORGET TO SPRAY/OIL THE RACK!  Otherwise, you end up with the crust sticking to the rack and not in your belly.  Sadface).  I feel like teriyaki salmon is SUCH a mom dish, in the "Good Housekeeping" sense of the word mom.  

Salted caramel swirl pumpkin cheesecake bars.  I based these on this recipe, but made quite a few changes (recipe below).  The best part of these bars was the crust, which was all chewy and caramely from the brown sugar.

The aforementioned spaghetti and meatballs

I made a lentil soup but followed Serious Eats' suggestion and added some gremolata, which elevated the dish considerably.  We had this with cheddar-apple melted toasts on Tiller's bread.

I can (and did) eat an ungodly amount of this shepherd's pie that night.  Alongside roasted cauliflower - cauliflower, cut into thick steaks, tossed with oil and za'atar and salt and pepper and roasted at high heat until it's covered in crisp edges.

Kale and kimchi fried rice topped with fried eggs.  Eaten at 8pm, while I was frantically making salted browned butter rice krispie ghosts to take to the Big Yam's classroom Halloween party.  I also made (assembled) a dip for the drop-in centre Halloween party and honestly guys, next year, tell me to save myself the trouble.  NO ONE CARES.  NO ONE.  

Last week I hung out with Dr. Rei and we went to The Federal.  It's a cute, cozy, tiny little brunch spot.  I had a breakfast sandwich there that immediately consumed me.  It featured: scrambled eggs, bacon, mayo, cheddar cheese, and the kicker, sliced pickle, on an English muffin. It's like a breakfast Big Mac.  Amazing.  I recreated it on the weekend, and made a roasted garlic mayo and it was divine.

New chocolate babka rolled out!  I used Smitten's revamped recipe and did find it relatively easy to execute and more restrained, without any diminished flavour/indulgence returns.  Y'all know I loves me some chocolate babka.  I'm going to make more this weekend.  The only tweak I did was to add some chopped chocolate to the melted chocolate smear.  Mine might actually be *too* chocolatey, but honestly, I haven't been mad at it when I eat my obligatory slice in front of the TV before bed.

Last night's dinner was arroz con pollo with a wackload of steamed green beans.

Fin.


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Salted Caramel Swirl Pumpkin Cheesecake Bars
makes 12 bars

Crust:

1/2 c. unsalted butter, melted
2 c. graham cracker crumbs
1/2 c. brown sugar
1 T cornstarch
pinch salt

Filling

2  egg
12 ounces cream cheese, at room temperature
1/2 c. granulated sugar
1 c. pumpkin puree
2 1/2 t. pumpkin pie spice (I just do my own version with 3 parts cinnamon to 2 parts ginger and 1 part clove, allspice, nutmeg)
2 T. flour
1/4 c. salted caramel sauce

- mix all the crust ingredients together and press onto the bottom of a 9" square baking pan (bottom lined with parchment, helps)
- bake in a preheated 350F oven for about 10 minutes.  Take the pan out and leave the oven on.
- beat all the filling ingredients together (minus the salted caramel sauce) until smooth.  Pour into the pan and drop the salted caramel sauce on top of the filling and swirl with a knife.  Bake for about 30-40 minutes or until the filling is set with just a slight wobbliness in the very middle.  A knife inserted into the centre should come out dry and not wet and streaky.  Let cool in the fridge, slice into bars and serve.

Brown paper packages

...tied up with string.

For the few presents we bought this year, because I'm an obsessive freak who likes my presents to be as art-directed as other elements of my life (read: all wrapped in a uniform fashion, simply), I decided to fill my urban-crafter destiny and go with baker's twine (what took me so long?) and brown kraft paper:

Ta-da!  They look pretty hype, don't you think?  The lettering was done with one of the spoils from working at the Public Library oh so many years ago - an office self-inking stamp.  It's the kind with five lines, and a little case of teeny-tiny letters and punctuation that you push into the ridged lines to make whatever message you choose, using a pair of plastic tweezers developed for precisely that purpose.  I've had the stamp for years and years, on the assumption that such a thing was going to come in handy someday, and lo, did it ever.   Is it fussy?  Yes, but LOOK AT HOW HYPE THEY LOOK!  Just look!!!  Ugh...I couldn't even deal with how pretty the packages were.  I could have personalized each one, but since we bought so few, it's easy for me to tell which package belongs to who.

This is my new signature wrapping style.  It's pretty cost-effective too.  I almost invested in a 1000ft roll of commercial brown kraft paper before my friend G hepped me to the fact that Canada Post sells them for $3 a roll.  Perfect!  And the baker's twine, while expensive, comes in a GIANT roll.  Like, epically long.  Long enough that paying $14 for one roll in a delicious aqua is a difficult decision to make when there are so many delicious colours of baker's twine and you can't justify spending another $14 on another roll just so you have variety.

In other news...I don't have much in other news.  I am working at night on my last Christmas craft and then baking off the last of the cookies for gifting and then I am done.  DONE DONE DONE!  And even though we didn't buy many gifts this year, December STILL came and kicked our accounts in the nuts.  Having to pay $400 yesterday for the Captain's misfiring engine was a bit of a pisser, too.

But!  But I am tremendously excited that as of tomorrow afternoon, once I'm finished pigging out at the Annual Hart House Holiday Buffet Lunch (which is the closest I get to eating in the Hogwart's mess hall), I don't have to come in to work for a glorious, glorious SEVENTEEN days (including weekends).  BLISS!!!

I am so excited for this I can't even tell you.  I want to take the Big Yam to the zoo (even though I'm ethically opposed to the zoo, I feel like it's okay for the stuff I think he'd get a kick out of  - like the giant snakes and things) and to sleep in and eat lazy breakfasts and drop him off at daycare so we can watch an afternoon Oscar contender movie and see friends and hopefully meet R & R's new baby and spend QT with our respective families and eat lots of good food and see Ping and Montréal I and and and...!

Tonight for dinner we had leftover brisket paninis with horseradish mayonnaise and cheddar cheese.  Alongside leftover brussels sprouts & carrot casserole.  So yum!  I was looking forward to this alllll day:

Here are some photos of Daughter of Smoke & Bone author Laini Taylor's house in Portland:

I love it!  She's pretty "Portland"-y.  Her daughter is named Clementine and she has fluorescent pink hair. Like me, she can't resist a Shiny Brite ornament. Her home is filled with all manner of quirky cute knickknacks and tchotchkes which are set off beautifully with by the stark white walls.  Looking at how all her collections can pop against that white background is making me regret (slightly) painting the grape wall in the Lil' Ugmo.  White really does allow things to pop!  But I do love the calming effect of the purple in Lil' Ugmo...so it will stay as-is (it better! After what we paid the painter!)  I don't know that an all-white space is for me, but I do appreciate it, especially when people do it up as Liani does and use it as a backdrop for crazy, colorful and bright.  I'm not a fan of stark, minimalist, white and wood Swedish style interiors.  They're calming, but have no personality, to me.

Tomorrow I will hopefully have time to unleash a slew of pop culture reviews on you.

A demain.

Fin.

Bad news cycle.

Catching up on the news post-weekend is depressing stuff. Anne Hathaway survived on dried oatmeal cakes to lose 25 lbs for Les Misérables? Worst.  Petraeus carrying on an affair like a n00b?  So dumb.  The fiscal cliff? Depressing.  The on-going miasma of misinformation surrounding teacher negotiations in Ontario? Grim.    The spate of sexual assaults in the GTA? Appalling.

I got into a Twitter convo with L'Armi about the Petraeus thing.  He's all like, "who cares if he had an affair?" and I'm like, yeah, I get that.  I certainly never care who is panking who and when.  That's private business, yo.  What I do have problems with are people who carry a great deal of responsibility acting like n00bs.  In this case, they were both giant dum-dums about it.  It's like Adam Giambrone with the affair that cost him his mayoral candidacy.

Dr. Rei and Hanbo hangs last night meant that we had several depressing conversations about microfinance, charity work, the province, cronyism, and how to solve everything, punctuated by interruptions from the Big Yam screaming and doing the thing he does when people come over, which is to run from couch to couch and slam himself face down, while yelling, "HUPPAH!" (or something like it.)  We had dinner courtesy of the Burger's Priest and it was a nice end to what had been a little bit of a trying day with a sick Big Yam.  There was lots of whining and indecisiveness and clinging to my pants' legs (I hate hate hate the feel of hands tugging on my pants' legs!) resulting in me finally throwing up my hands and deciding that 2 episodes of My Big Big Friend is what the doctor ordered, followed by a long, cozy couch nap for the two of us.  I did manage to get a few things done - laundry (I'm engaged in the fruitless and self-defeating pursuit of a house of empty hampers), fig pinwheel cookies, Mona's Mother's Mother's Favorite cookies, some knitting, a curried acorn squash soup for tomorrow and...

...a completed Advent Calendar!  Here it is, after the first of what will probably be many, many trips to the iron, hanging on our downstairs bannister.  Ta-da!  In my folly, I opted for linen, so it has beautiful drape but will wrinkle if you look at it funny.  I stencilled the numbers on the pockets with a Marta Stewart-by-way-of-Michael's typewriter stencil kit and black acrylic paint, and then sewed the pockets and the velcro straps with red thread.  It wasn't the hardest project, but not the easiest, especially since I was doing everything off an Excel spreadsheet-for-graph-paper and crayon-on-sketchpad schematic.  But it's done and it's ready to go for December 1st and I am happy about it.  It will have pride of place alongside my other holiday crafts like the GIANT QUILTED TREE SKIRT OF DOOM.

Here is a shot of my chocolate babka.  As you know, I am a dyed-in-the-wool believer in the culinary and restorative wisdom of Jewish grandmothers, and I'm considering adding chocolate babka, toasted and buttered with salted butter, to my arsenal of sickness or sucky baby fighters.  Let me tell you: there is no better snack in the world than toasted, buttered, babka.  Sweet, rich, tender dough folded around layers of bittersweet chocolate.  This recipe has been my go-to, but I'm dying to have a crack at this one.  A freezer full of babka is good insurance, I think, for most if not all of life's ills.

On Saturday we went to R & R's baby shower, which was held at the Mandarin.  Smartest move, ever.  Best shower location, ever.  I haven't been to a Mandarin in about 20 years.  It's like I never left.  So, so good!!!  I had the misfortune to sit next to a female body builder.  I'll let you guess whose plate belongs to who up there.  

Sunday night we had our 11 year (!!!!!) anniversary dinner at Guu Saka bar and brought along my sis and outlaw bro for the ride (outlaw bro has never been to Guu).  For the record: I had made us reservations at Woodlot, less you accuse me of never wanting to eat at a non-Guu establishment.  

 Friday night's dinner - latkes, panko-breaded chicken thighs with sweet chili dipping sauce, and sauteed sprouts.

Tonight for dinner we had spaghetti with a spicy shrimp scampi sauce and a salad of baby dancine lettuce, radicchio, and roasted beets tossed with buttermilk chive dressing jumped up with fresh grated horseradish.

I spent about 2 hours tonight putting up that shelf up there and my $10 junk store mirror.  THAT MIRROR ONLY COST TEN DOLLARS, Y'ALL (that was a Tami Taylor "y'all" in case you were wondering).  BEST!  I'm sooo happy and all the mucking around with drills and masonry bits and anchors and Tapscon screws was worth it.  I'm not 100% happy with the vignette but that will be a work in progress.  In the meantime: landing strip happiness!!!

I have been reading up a storm lately.  Rebel Angels is the follow up to Libba Bray's New York Times' Bestselling, A Great and Terrible Beauty, which I read ages ago.  At the time, I found it a good enough read but wasn't compelled to follow through.  I'm still on the fence about it.  I like it enough and it is deliciously creepy with it's Victorian setting and covens of witches and the like, but I'm not completely on board with the protagonist and her coterie of friends.  I think that's my problem though.  It's almost like I want the protagonist to smarten up and make the same decisions I would, but that's impossible and unrealistic and while it might be personally validating, doesn't necessarily make for good fiction.  I recommended it heartily to Dr. Rei because she loves 3 things that are well represented in this series: boarding schools, Victorian-era England, and magic/witches.  We'll see how she reports back.

Next up was The Age of Miracles.  This novel has been getting good buzz and good reviews.  It's told from the perspective of a 12 year old girl living in California with her parents.  One day, scientists start to notice that the world is spinning slower on its axis, making days and nights longer and longer.  The book chronicles the first year or so after the "slowing" and the impact this has on the girl, her parents, her community, and the world at large.  The voice of the narrator is perfect - talk about food shortages and the sleep deprivation and blistering UV sun from 72 hour "days" is told with the particularly flat, matter-of-fact, incapable-of-understanding-the-magnitude detachment of a 12 year old.  What is also good about this book is how it shows how rather than dissolving into instant chaos and looting and rioting, the world continues on - there are  boys to crush after and bus stop indignities to endure, yet.  There are the fractures in her parents marriage that either existed before unseen or were brought about by the slowing.  There are the social and economic effects on countries and cities that happen slowly.  And there is the great unknown of the future - the questions that are always with us but are usually kept at bay by our blissful ignorance of the tenuousness of it all, our faith that tomorrow will be like today.  Again, I didn't love this, but being the doomsday prepper/apocalypse obsessed nutjob that I am, it did give me SOMETHING NEW TO WORRY ABOUT.  I contemplated tweeting Neil deGrasse Tyson to find out how likely a similar scenario would be in real life.  I still might.  Again, the detached voice of the narrator made it difficult to feel connected to the text and to her. I'm starting to realize that I like idealized teen narrators.  I want you to be exceptional!!!  

I most recently finished Nell Freudenberger's The Newlyweds.  Another much-lauded recent hardcover.  From Bangladesh, Amina and her doting, complicated parents pin their hopes for their future on the marriage she has arranged with George in Rochester, who she meets on an online dating site geared towards east Asians and their North American suitors.  This is a sweet, quiet little story about two people moving across nations to be together and carrying with them the baggage, desires, and secrets of two people moving across the world to be together.  The title is so deliciously deliberate.  Who are we when we choose to marry another? Is the leap of faith between two high school sweethearts really any different than an online marriage between a Deshi Muslim woman and her engineer husband-to-be?  The writing is top notch - it is evocative without being showy, plain and still but revealing and imminently readable.  I loved the tone that Freudenberger struck and her astute eye for the details - both in Rochester (and how thrilling it was to hear reference to places in the Rochester area that I knew and had even stepped foot in!) and in Bangladesh.  At it's heart, this is a love story, though an unexpected one.  It's also about faith and hope and the disconnection between the developed and developing worlds, who are at once so very far apart and not so different after all.  I quite liked this novel and would recommend it.

Fin.