Charles in charge.

It's very non chill being misrepresented in a professional capacity because, in part, I suspect that guys have the tendency to focus all their aggression on a woman, even if a woman and a man are saying the EXACT SAME THING.  

Am I loud?  Yes.  Am I outspoken?  Yes.  Have I been that way since pretty much birth?  Yes.  Am I confident in my brains and my professional judgment?  Yes.  Do I feel this is something I should apologize for, or curb?  AW HELL NO.  

I've had a very trying time, the past week and a half.  But there have been bright spots.  

Like: Dr. Rei and I hatching a plan for an awesome project together, and by extension, me being continuously nourished and sustained by this beautiful, strong, funny, smart woman's counsel, commiseration, and support.

 Like: we had my mum over for a birthday celebration for her and ate Sukho Thai takeout and I presented her with a coconut bundt cake that she didn't care for.  

Like: we took the kids to the Zoo on Friday.  We had a really fun time and it was all around splendid. At the gorilla enclosure one of the male gorillas, Sadiki, was standing right at the glass and I met his eyes for a solid 30 seconds, and I don't know what happened...but I started welling up.  He just held my gaze and the meaning behind his eyes was so primordial, still, and all-knowing...it triggered the Romantic sublime in me, and I just felt overcome.  It's like that scene in Mulholland Drive where the women are are sitting in the theatre and listening to a woman singing a Spanish (?) version of Roy Orbison's "Crying" and one of the women watching just starts to cry and cry, tears spilling silently down her face.  It was such a deep moment, and after, I felt so calm, and centred.  

The other night we were watching Broad City and I had one of my mortality moments and I felt my blood pressure skyrocket and that panicky, IDON'TWANTTODIEEVER feeling in the pit of my chest, which is usually how it goes when I think about dying.  After staring into the eyes of the gorilla though, I was acutely aware that the feeling I had when he assessed my soul, were I to think about my own mortality and death (which I did, immediately thereafter - Romantic sublime again), would carry over and I would feel peace and that maybe this is what people feel like when they're about to die.  Maybe if the conditions are right, you're not filled with panic and dread, but you tap into the ancient gorilla-gaze that lies dormant in the deepest recesses of your brain and soul.

Carrying on.

Like: we went to Barque for brunch with the kids on Sunday morning and hit the Jamie Bell adventure playground to burn off some kid steam right before.  It was such a nice morning and Barque is so kid friendly.  Like, I knew they were kid friendly because we had gone there when the Big Yam was young, but kid-friendly enough to handle a table of 5 featuring three kids to two adults is like, next level kid friendly.  They have little mini packs of play-doh for each kid!    Anyway, the kid's menu had scrambled eggs or pancakes (and some other stuff that were non-options for my guys).  I ordered pancakes for the Twins, and I asked the Big Yam what he wanted.  "Scrambled eggs."  "Are you sure?  You don't usually like scrambled eggs when I make them at home."  "Scrambled eggs."  "You're sure you don't want pancakes?" "Yes, I want scrambled eggs."  

Scrambled eggs are placed in front of him.  He glances at his brothers' pancake plates and his face crumples in abject dejection and he wails, "Awww...I should've ordered pancakes!" and then he buries his face in the Dotytron's chest and cries, "Now I wish I didn't order scrambled eggs!" and maybe there's something wrong with me, but the crushing realization of his own error in judgment was very hilarious.

Like: Twin A's new deep-throated belly laugh.

Like: Twin A's singing along to his auntie's song in his little wispy voice.

Like: Twin B's standard greeting of "Hell-lo" when you enter the room.  As well as his new thing of saying, "aww" in this funny, aggressive kind of way.  And also saying, "alright" to agree with you.

Like: the Dotytron and I getting a night out for ourselves, midweek, thanks to the babysitting services of one Momma D.  We went to Imanishi Japanese Kitchen, a new Japanese izakaya-type place.  The space is really pretty - kind of serene Japanese-rustic...like we were in a tavern in the Japanese countryside.  I think it's run by ex Kinka (née Guu) dudes.  The food was good, but not great, and while I liked eating izakaya-type food in a quiet, adult space, I thought the execution at Kinka is much better - the fish carpaccios are more inventive and the flavours make more sense at Kinka.  The standout dish at Imanishi was the corn tempura, and everything else was okay, but not as satisfying as the Kinka experience.

This was grilled sting ray fin with a dipping sauce.  This dish was a flop.  It was chewy and lightly charred but the texture was off and the flavour was vaguely funky, but not in a good way.  

You can't go wrong with fried oysters.

I didn't take a picture of every dish, but we got the beef carpaccio, and the whitefish crudo, the aforementioned corn tempura (so lacy and salty and addictive), and perfectly cooked octopus balanced against the crunchy brightness of celery.  

That's a good summary of my bright spots.  Friends, family, and food.  Pretty on-brand, I'd say.

Fin.

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 Scatterbrained Booky

I think I fulfilled my non fiction quota for the next five years by reading this book.  Coates won the National Book Award for this, deservedly so.  This is the most powerful writing I've read in a long time.  Written in the spirit of James Baldwin's The Fire Next Time (which I haven't read), this is a powerful treatise on being black in America, written by one of the foremost writers on the topic today.  The book takes the form of a letter to Coates' teenage son, and it is deeply personal and universal, the writing dense and rich and so intimate, that it automatically posits the reader as an outsider, regardless of your racial identification.  It is a brilliant structural device to tackle these issues.  Coates reflects on his youth growing up in Baltimore, his awakening at Howard University, and how the American state, upheld by "those who think themselves white," brutalizes and systematically destroys black bodies, regardless of class.  Coates realization that not even class can protect black bodies was a sucker punch.  He talks about his classmate, Prince getting shot in a case of mistaken identity.  He talks about how these bodies represent so many hours of investment and love and hope - so many hours spent driving back and forth to soccer practice, supervising sleepovers.  That line just wrecked me.  You'd think this book is hopeless, and yet, somehow, the very act of writing means that it's not.  It's a warning, a parenting memoir, a treatise on race, all rolled up into one.  I can't recommend this enough. 

 went on a bit of a tear for a bit, and my brain was all the better for it.  I can't believe I slept on Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay.  This collection of essays from a self-proclaimed "bad feminist" is everything.  You can see her Ted Talk below.  Gay is a relatable, self-critical, pop-culture-savvy, conflicted feminist, which means that we are kindred spirits.  She is smart, and funny, and while I don't agree with everything she says, I like that she's thinking about these things.  Her essay on being a competitive Scrabble player is quite possibly my favorite in the whole collection.  I love her, I love her Twitter presence, and I can't wait to read her forthcoming book about being fat.

From there, I flipped to Rebecca Solnit's Men Explain Things to Me (I told you I was on a tear). Solnit is known for coining the term "mansplaining" which, let's be real gyals, we've ALL experienced.  I've had to call the Dotytron on it, when he does that.  There were times when we'd be talking about smoking (food), and he'd jump in and start talking about the process like he was the one who smoked the meat in our house and I'd have to jump in and shut it down.  Anyway, this series of essays was rage-inducing.  The essay on sexual assault, in particular.  When she talks about how much money the government is willing to expend to combat terrorism but how we do nothing to fix sexual assault but put the burden on women...I was so mad!  Reading Bad Feminist and Men Explain Things to Me back to back lead to many arguments in the Dotytron-Lagerfeld household.  I had my hackles locked in the UP position.

My book club picked Maggie Nelson's The Argonauts as a read, two reads ago.  This is a semi-autobiographical loose collection about Nelson's relationship with trans artist Harry Dodge.  The book opens with him f**king her from behind, bent over something concrete, if I recall.  I'm not familiar with Nelson's work but I know she's popular amongst the intelligentsia.  She's a poet?  Anyway, to me, the book read kind of smugly progressive.  Like, "look how cool I am in how this is so not an issue."  Which, look, I totally get!  I'm on board!  But I she just seems kind of humble-braggy about it?  I don't know how else to put it.  I kind of wanted to know more about Dodge, and his perspective.  There's one point when Dodge makes a statement that he's not "on his way anywhere" in reaction to the term "transitioning."  I only really felt like I was getting at the "real" Nelson when she was talking about being pregnant and giving birth to her child with Dodge - all the affectations and airs seemed to fall away as she gloried in this embodiment, which is at odds, whether conscious or not, with the tone of the rest of the book.  I'm glad I read it, because this is a buzzy, in-the-moment book, but I didn't love it.

So this gets me slightly back on track, even though I have like, thirty more books to review.  

This was your International Women's Day-themed book review compendium.

Fin.

This is a Rant

They see me rantin', I'm ravin'...

Very much not into this ^^^ lately

The Dotytron has some extended family members who are...how do I put this delicately...ummm...RACISTS?!?  They are "old stock" Canadians and lately, I'm like, done with that shiz.  An uncle referred to a musician at a Jamaican resort he didn't care for as a "Rasta piece of crap" (you are surprised that your musician in JAMAICA was [might] have been Rastafarian?!).  That same uncle also believes President Obama is a Muslim, and furthermore, THINKS THERE'S SOMETHING INHERENTLY WRONG ABOUT THAT.  A groomsman at a wedding that I (thankfully) didn't go to, used the N-word IN THE RACIST, NON-REAPPROPRIATING WAY.  An Aunt re-posted a picture of the twin towers with accompanying text to the effect of: "this image is going to offend some people [emphasis mine] that our government is too PC to fight back against but I don't care (blah blah blah insert nationalistic - American! - jingoism here)..." In the run-up to this past federal election, the only people on my Facebook wall who have been posting scare-mongering stuff about how Justin Trudeau is going to run up a giant deficit or op-ed pieces from the Toronto Sun (!), about how stellar Harper's record has been are from his aunts and uncles with accompanying entreaties that we should read their posts and "think before we vote!"  These are people who get their "news" and political information from memes.

I also made the mistake of clicking on the comments from provincial PC leader Patrick Brown's Facebook message wishing Muslims a happy Eid.  It was, as you could imagine, filled with racist vitriol and the linchpin issue for scared white bread old stock everywhere, how you CAN'T SAY MERRY CHRISTMAS ANYMORE AND YOU HAVE TO SAY "HAPPY HOLIDAYS" AND WHAT A TRAVESTY THAT IS AND A HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATION, etc., etc.

At a Dotytron family xmas event a couple of years ago, an aunt mad an off-hand snide remark that someone better watch what they say to me, because "otherwise she'll be posting about you [on social media] with the things she doesn't like" and just the mere memory of that makes me so. damn. mad.  I am filled with a howling, chomping, rage that rises in me and slouches towards Bethlehem to be born.

I'm sorry, am I too smart, critical, and outspoken for you?  What's the role of a good woman in your books?  That I should be making shortbread cookies and planning my wedding and taking my partner's last name and accept mail addressed to "Mr. and Mrs. Dotytron"?  HOW ABOUT YOU TAKE SOME OF MY BRILL OPINIONS and sit down and quietly be spoon fed them the way disenfranchised people are forced to quietly be spoon fed your white privilege since time immemorial?  

These are opinions that family by marriage (only - thank goodness), think it's okay to share PUBLICLY.  So I think to myself...why do I want to be around that?  What do I get out of descending into that intellectual decrepitude?  What must they think of me?  What must they think of my beautiful biracial children?  

You know what this is?  This is white privilege folks.  The kind of myopic, "convenient theories for me" narrative that means that women, women of colour, women who don't fit the box that is convenient for us to be place in by the constructs of the dominant hegemony, have to behave in a certain way, lest we be designated as too "loud" or "opinionated" or "untoward."

BE UNTOWARD.

I chose Ta-Nehisi Coates' Between the World and Me for the next Book Club I'm hosting.  We had just read (or in my case, hate-read and then dropped 1/10th of the way through), Elena Ferrante's My Brilliant Friend and I was looking at options and I was like, you know what?  I'm tired of reading about white women!  I haven't finished this, but the review is forthcoming.

Last night we finished watching Fruitvale Station, starring the hotness that is Michael B. Jordan. I suggested the film as an accompaniment to the reading for Book Club. After the last few years where the black community has become increasingly visibly radicalized in the face of systemic and visible murder by entrenched racism and the demonization of black masculinity, the film enraged me.  Oscar's story happens all the freakin' time.  We have a confluence of entrenched racism in the United States, lack of class mobility, segregation, disempowerment, a heady gun culture, and the simultaneous fetishization and demonization of black masculinity contributing to black bodies being treated as disposable.

Then you read reports about how something was "disrupted" by Black Lives Matter advocates.  You see news reports that fix the rioting in Ferguson in a fetishisitic gaze while simultaneously moralizing and wagging a finger at our collective entrancement with the activities images of black bodies "acting out."

Why do we hold oppressed people to a higher standard?  Why do we grind people under our heels and then expect them to be "good corporate citizens" or to protest in a way that we deem acceptable and not give in to that rage?

All my life I've been told that I'm too angry, too outspoken, not basic enough for this world.  I was born with a surfeit of confidence and the privilege of an upper-middle class upbringing in a developed nation to back it up, but still, rage is

Can you imagine what it must be like to be black in America?  To be Hispanic in America?  To be First Nations in Canada?  To be Muslim around the Dotytron's extended family (lol!)?  

I just finished reading Roxane Gay's Bad Feminist.  It is a collection of Gay's essays.  This was good stuff, folks.  She talks about how we have to stop lobbying accusations of privilege, how it feels being a feminist but still liking questionable pop music (e.g. "Blurred Lines") in spite of yourself, what it means to be a "bad feminist."  I loved this collection, even if I didn't agree with all her points.  There was an essay about the N-word and I gotta say, as someone who has studied language and writing and meaning,   Surprisingly, my favorite essay is about Gay's entré into the world of competitive Scrabble playing.  She balances the line between anger, indignation, reflexivity, passion...I can't believe I'm only discovering her now, but I'm so glad I did.  It's nice to have a woman of colour be represented in mainstream feminist discourse, especially one as funny, self-aware, critical, and whip smart as Gay.

I saw Straight Outta Compton a few weeks ago with a friend.  Dotytron had gone right when it was released with his Record Club homies.  I saw it after ingesting all the information that circulated in the immediate aftermath of the movie's release about how Dre has a history of beating up women. I don't know much about rap history or about NWA, other than the hits from that era that everyone knows.  It was definitely an entertaining movie and the performances are almost all uniformly good, especially Jason Mitchell as Eazy-E and O'Shea Jackson Jr. as Ice Cube.  In particular, Jackson Jr. is incredible.  It helps that in a film where the actor's likeness to the character they played could be tenuous at best (I'm looking at you, the guy who played Snoop), Jackson Jr. looks EXACTLY like his dad and the mannerisms were perfect.  The guy who plays Dre, Corey Hawkins, got daps but he relies too much on the squinty eyes (admittedly, so does Dr. Dre in real life).  All that aside, there is no denying that the movie is very entertaining.  However, there is no denying that the guys who comes off the worst in the film are a) the guy who is dead (Eazy-E) and b) the guy who is a known psychopath (Suge Knight).  Dre and Cube come off as angels, and as I linked above, we know that is certainly not the case.  It could be because Cube co-wrote the film?  Who knows.  I did like the fact that Eazy-E's widow is one of the executive producers.  The other thing is that the film trades on a LOT of misogynistic depictions of women and quite frankly, I don't have the stomach for that anymore.  The film also glosses over the fact that the fetishization of young black male inner city culture was packaged to a white audience to sell it.  In fact, I think the film does the same thing, and trades on it to sell this film to a mass white audience (the film did remarkable box office).  Once again, you have the Narcos phenomena of the simultaneous glorification of the violence, and misogyny and the vague finger-wagging happening in the sub-sub-subtext.  We glorify the exploits of this disenfranchised black masculinity as a means of selling movie tickets.

Rant over.

Fin.

Identity

I have been mildly stressed lately by the following:
1) How few pie baking days there are in the summer (pie season) in relation to how very many pies I want to bake (and eat), not even considering ones that I would like to make multiple times
2) How many New York Times articles I want to read
3) How meagre my many vacation days seem in light of the fact that I had TWO SUMMERS OF MATERNITY LEAVE (TWO!). Summer babies are the best, guys. If you have the means, I highly recommend it.

So the whole Rachel Dolezal thing burning up the “news.” It’s not really what I would consider to be “news” but it is the current hot button issue for getting the talking heads a’ talkin’.

Let me contextualize my take with this preamble. When Pingy and the Roomie were over, we had a big conversation about transgender issues (kick-started by the big Caitlyn Jenner reveal that had happened the day before the dinner). Pingy had taught a girl who identified as a “cisgender polyromantic woman” and Pingy, bless her patrician heart, was all like, “What does that even mean?!” So we parsed it out (short story – I think poly-romantic means that the person felt they could fall in love with anyone, a distinction that’s made against the body-parts oriented context of identifying as “homosexual” or “bisexual” or “straight.” I was a little bit weirded out that Caitlyn chose to reveal herself in ye classic exploitive, sex bomb fashion and it kind of offended me as a feminist. The Roomie made the point that since she’s now a woman, she could be objectified like women are. Errr…is that progress?

Then I read this: What Makes A Woman, and the author identifies some of the ways that I situate the transgender movement. If, like me, you consider binary gender distinctions a total social construction (and I do), then I feel like the transgender movement is a temporary way station en route to the total negation of social gender constructions. We are moving towards a point when you won’t “feel” like you were born in the “wrong body” in a way that’s related to gender. Maybe you’ll want a penis, that’ll be cool – it will just be like wanting to wear coloured contact lenses. It won’t be about gender. You won’t feel like you’re in the wrong body, because being in any body won’t MEAN anything in particular, insofar as your gender is concerned. Great. We get that. We’re all on board, right?

So when Rachel Dolezal identifies as “black” but isn’t “black” per se – why can’t we apply the same logic? Being black isn’t a quantifiable thing, it is arbitrary and sloppy language for having more melatonin than (what? What’s our baseline here?) than others. There is no genetic underpinning for race – it’s even more of a social/cultural construct than the concept of gender. Before it came out that she might not be the greatest person (suing Howard for discrimination, possibly making up claims of harassment and discrimination), then if she wanted to identify as black, then why not? What’s the big deal? People accused her of trading on the oppressed while still having the security of her white privilege. Yet, people don’t accuse women, who transition into being men, of trying to hop on the tails of patriarchal privilege. No way. If you did suggest that, then you, like the author of the New York Times article above, is accused of being transphobic. I think there’s a gap in my understanding here that I would like someone who does consider the New York Times article transphobic, to illuminate for me, because as of right now, I’m not getting it. I think it’s because I do so believe in the social construction of race, but this quote from this Washington Post  article gave me pause:

“Race is a social construct. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t real as a lived experience in America, and it wasn’t constructed out of thin air. On this broken foundation, African Americans led, created communities and built a movement that transformed, and strives to further transform, America for the better.” 

I think I do have a tendency to jump forward to the world that exists in my head, and assume that this is the norm (or should be) for everyone. This is a classic problem for me. My mum has told me since I was a kid that I have a problem seeing things from other people’s perspectives. Her working theory is that I was delivered by forceps (I was a breach baby with my umbilical cord wrapped around my neck – which in earlier days would have had me killed for being a witch), and that the forceps crushed the empathy part of my brain. The Dotytron and the Roomie generally endorse this theory. LOL!

Anyway, yes, race is a lived experience with real results, but even knowing that, while I don’t want to avoid questioning and problematizing Rachel Dolezal’s motives and privilege, I’m curious about why, as a theoretical exercise, a white woman choosing to live her experience as a black woman is substantively different than a woman choosing to live her experience as a man. Insert your thoughts here.

[edit: in light of the horrifying, racist, terrorist murders of Cynthia Hurd, 54; Susie Jackson, 87; Ethel Lance, 70; Rev. DePayne Middleton-Doctor, 49; Hon. Rev. Clementa Pinckney, 41; Tywanza Sanders, 26; Rev. Daniel Simmons Sr., 74; Rev. Sharonda Singleton, 45; Myra Thompson, 59; I would like to further underline my solidarity with people who are living the lived experience of race and the very real, deathly implications of it.]

When I read the profiles of the people who were shot, I cried and it makes my heart hurt. I’m also angry. I am enraged by the entrenched, institutionalized racism that infects the world generally and the United States in a particularly acute fashion. I am sickened by the “friends” of the shooter who blithely passed off his racism (the unspoken subtext of the articles reporting their comments is that they themselves share his views, if not the desire to act on them?) and are quoted as saying things like, “He was racist, but I don’t judge.” Probably because you’re a white supremacist bigot yourself.

The other night we watched the documentary After Tiller, which is about the last 4 doctors in the United States who still perform late-term (past 20 weeks) abortions after the murder of Dr. Tiller at his church by a pro-life fanatic. It was admittedly, a sympathetic portrayal of these doctors, feminists all, and the women who seek their assistance. The doctors seemingly didn’t undertake the task lightly and neither did the women – very often there were compelling medical reasons (fetal abnormalities that would grossly impact their child’s quality of life, shortened life expectancies) and social reasons (rape). To see these people put their lives on the line to offer a legally protected right to women was inspiring. To see the lengths that people are willing to go to out of misogynistic ideology was repellant. The film doesn’t really tell you anything you don’t already know or suspect, but it is an important voice in the diminishing conversation for women’s reproductive and bodily rights.

Now on to more mundane matters. Last weekend we celebrated the twins birthday for the fourth or fifth time, with Momma D and Ehmdo and the Dotytron’s Nany (the kids’ Great Nany D). I love me some Great Nany D. She is a treat. She is mostly well of body and very sound of mind and I just GET her. She’s so practical and prosaic and her parenting advice is almost always sound. She’s a very relaxed, non-intensive mother parent who has been through 4 kids and consequently, just gets it, ya know? She doesn’t get fussed if the kids are loud or misbehave and has a generally “eh, so what” attitude about little ones that I love. I picked her up from her place in the west end as she shouldn’t be driving anymore and she kept up a steady stream of companionable, interesting chatter. Aside from some mild racism (the old person kind) and social conservatism she’s the greatest. Momma D made corn on the cob and I gave each baby half an ear. Nany wanted to know if it was buttered. I said, no. Momma D said, “they don’t need butter.” Nany: “Well of course they need butter, it makes it taste better.” I said, “Well, we don’t give them butter on their corn so they get used to eating it without, and then when they’re older and they already like the taste of corn, we can add butter and it will be even better.” Nany stopped, looked me dead in the eye, and said, “That makes no sense.” LOL!!! I about died laughing. So good.

The Big Yam’s best friend at school, F, is like a negative version of the Big Yam. They share similar wide, closed mouthed smiles and eyes that disappear into crescent moon squints. “F has white hair” the Big Yam told me, early on in the school year. He is a white-blonde kid and has a similar bowl cut. It’s a little sad because F goes away to Europe all summer. “F’s going to Plogg, soon” the Big Yam informed us the other night. Need I also mention that F has a million allergies and always speaks with a stuffed up voice?

I spent the bulk of the one beautiful day we had last weekend driving across town to grab Nany and so this weekend I’m trying to make it so that I actually have time to savour my weekend. I want to take the kids to a picnic at the Scarborough bluffs or on the beach, for a long bike ride, for a garden putter. We have plans to eat dinner with MHui and her family and for Father’s Day, I’m fulfilling the Dotytron’s greatest wish and making ourselves scarce for a big chunk of the day.

The muumuu and America's Next Top Model posing beside me so smyze-ing his heart out.

Here’s what we’ve been eating lately:

Moco loco for dinner!  Spam, fried eggs, gravy on rice!

Lamb rogan josh and muttar paneer

I am going to talk about this dinner at length because it was so delicious and because it came to me in a dream and I executed it and it was “the stuff that dreams are made of” (when you read that line you actually have to sing it out loud in your best Carly Simon voice, which I know you have in your back pocket, at the ready, just in case. THAT IS VERY WISE OF YOU). 

Here’s the thing about Cobb salad: it’s like, fake salad. Minus the blue cheese, which I’ve become less enamored of as I get older (being less tolerant of strong blue cheeses and having to wear bike shorts under my skirts are two of the harbingers of old age that I’m the most bummed about), it’s basically like a breakfast sandwich, minus the bun. What’s NOT to like about bacon, chopped hard boiled egg, avocado, and tomatoes and chicken? Sauced in a creamy, mayo-based dressing (or in my case, a buttermilk dill dressing) and with some chopped romaine to avoid a talking-to from My Fitness Pal, you’re good to go. Here’s where my dream came in, though. In my dream, I had replaced the standard cubes of cold, chicken breast in the classic Cobb salad with buffalo fried chicken. *Pulls record back on turntable*. 

Yes. Genius! I took boneless, skinless chicken thighs, the existence of which, in quantity, is but one of many reasons why I will never give up my Costco membership (seriously, like, 5lbs of boneless, skinless chicken thighs for $20?! Get outta here!), soaked them in a buttermilk brine, tossed them in some seasoned flour jacked up with some cornstarch and a bit of baking powder, and then fried them in lard. Once they were crisp I took them out, let them drain on paper towel, and then dragged each one through a mix of equal parts butter and Frank’s Red Hot (which, spoiler alert: IS BUFFALO SAUCE. You don’t have to buy it pre-made!), before arranging them lovingly on the salad. The resulting dinner salad was spicy, cool, crunchy, substantive, and each bite was different, which is generally one of my salad prerequisites. I will definitely put this on the rotation again (which means we’re lucky if I get to it before summer is up).

Strawberry shortcake made with Claudia Fleming's genius shortcake recipe.  It is so good, guys.  The perfect sweet biscuit.  Crisp edged and so, short, almost like a shortbread crossed with a biscuit.  Sturdy enough to soak up copious macerated strawberry juices and absolutely lugubrious with softly whipped cream.  

Shrimp and tofu pad thai

Ottolenghi's cauliflower cake is delicious.  It's also Quincess' platonic ideal of a vehicle for vegetable consumption.  That kid loves a quiche/cake/vegetable patty/fritter like no one else.

Fin.

Intensive Mothering

I’ve had a lot of thoughts this past winter (long, cold, insular winters are conducive to thoughts) on the topic of intensive mothering (long, cold, insular winters when one has three young children and is project managing a renovation and starting a new job are particularly conducive to thoughts on intensive mothering).  This concept has been kicking around since 1996, when academic Sharon Hays wrote about it in her book,  “The Cultural Contradictions of Motherhood” (accompanied by this amazingly dated picture):

What is intensive mothering?  Here is a description pulled from the abstract to Hays’ paper: “an ideology that holds the individual mother primarily responsible for child rearing and dictates that the process is to be child-centered, expert-guided, emotionally absorbing, labor-intensive, and financially expensive” (emphasis mine).  

Now, almost 20 years later, as my Facebook feed explodes with discussions about vaccines (populated mostly with commentary from women, natch), and as I see the endless stream of weird questions on this “Ladies with Babies” forum on Facebook filled with my cohort (mostly women in their 30s, educated, living in downtown Toronto, newish parents) – “Question: when to give my daughter eggs?”  “Felix has a weird speckled rash and mostly runny, green poos that resemble a verdant forest on a Bon Iver album cover - thoughts?”, and after my ill-fated experience on the parent council at the Big Yam’s school, it is evident that intensive mothering is still a pernicious and pervasive ideology - one that is contributing to gendered labour inequities in the domestic sphere and hindering women’s progression in the workforce.

I think we all know intensive mothers.  As progressive as I am, it is impossible for me not to fall into a certain trap when it comes to household domestic division of labour.    Part of the problem is me – being an insane micro-manager and type A.  I know of a few other relationships where the male counterparts in the couple fulfill the role of making sure that everyone is fed, clothed, and happy, but in the intensive mothering sense – which means enrolled in programs, eating organic food, dressed in the proper pediatric-approved shoes - that work still falls to the women.  In the vast majority of my experiences and observations though, even if the guys do the laundry and the cooking, the thinking about the kids is disproportionately borne by the “mothers.” 

In my own house, this manifests thus: the Dotytron is responsible for packing the Big Yam’s school lunch, but I still take a second look to make sure the Big Yam gets vegetables AND fruit, and I’m the one who manages the grocery list and notes which mini yogurts the Big Yam prefers.  I don’t think the Dotytron has ever, in his going on five years as a parent, ever bought our children a stitch of clothing, or expended a nanosecond of time thinking about what season we’re going into and what the kids have to have in their wardrobes to be sartorially prepared.   The Dotytron has never scheduled a doctor’s appointment or a specialist’s appointment for our kids.  Jobs that he does do, have been assigned to him, by me.  Yes, he does the cooking at the end of the day, but it’s from a recipe that I’ve laid out for him, with ingredients that I prepped (by waking up at 5:30am, most days), and from a weekly menu plan that I devised, with groceries that I planned for and stocked. 

The bar for fathers is deplorably low.  I’m reminded of this as I read through the proofs of my friend JJ’s forthcoming book on the topic of food and femininity.  In the introduction, she states: "We demonstrate how the organic child ideal is informed by neoliberal notions of individual responsibility, positioning mothers as personally responsible for shielding their children from the risks of the industrial food system. At the same time, we argue that critics must not dismiss food-focused mothers as neoliberal dupes. Maternal discourse is constituted through neoliberal logics, but is embodied and enacted through food traditions that have deep roots within feminine and maternal identities." 

Women are responsible.  Do you ever hear of people judging and shaming middle and upper-middle class dads for feeding their kids Gerber baby food (the horror?!)? No.  Women are the ones who are guilted and shamed.  Just like when I’m at a family event with the kids and older women feel the need to tell me what I should be doing or how I should be raising my kids and what I’m doing wrong.  It’s all on the mom, man.  It really is.  When it comes to “voting with your dollar” on the world you want your kids to inherit, it’s women making those consumer decisions. 

It’s a lot of pressure being responsible for waging war on capitalism and the industrial complex on your own.  I would LOVE to be a dad – where you get daps for carrying a diaper bag and being able to put your kids to bed.  That would be awesome.  If that’s all I had to do when I was home, and I didn’t have to spend any time negotiating “work-life balance” and making sure that I had a handle on 4 people’s lives (5, if you include the Dotytron), then I would be freaking Executive Director by now. 

I love my partner, but sometimes he has to be reminded that I don’t exist to facilitate his life, which it can sometimes feel like.  The pressures put on mothers and working mothers is indeed internalized externalized pressure – we are complicit in an ideology that serves to subjugate us.  I could easily just not care.  But, I do care and the general tenets of intensive parenting are valid. On the nights when I’m not home and the Dotytron has to pick up the Big Yam from his karate class (as an aside – the first time we watched him at karate class was worth the price of the class alone.  It is ridiculously adorable how uncoordinated our eldest is), the Dotytron’s default dinner is a walk-in special (large pepperoni pizza).  I don’t want my kids to eat pepperoni pizza and Habitant pea soup (which is what the Dotytron assures me would happen if I ever actually made good on my threat to give up on the menu planning and food prep) every night!  That’s gross!  What JJ’s research shows is that even when men are the “foodies” in a relationship, it tends to be reserved for the “special” cooking.  The entertaining, fussy kind.  The everyday cooking and the thinking about nutrition and the like fall on women, more often than not.   

I don’t have any easy solution for this problem, but I know that I grew up in a house where my mother was a working mother who categorically did NOT practice intensive mothering.  She was largely absent and preoccupied with running her own law firm.  My stepdad, Big D, did all the grocery shopping and laundry and dotes on my mum.  Cooking was largely hived off to the nannies my mum hired to look after us.  I’ve never talked to my mum about it, but I don’t think she’s ever felt an iota of guilt (I’m so sure of this, that it’s why I’ve never talked to her about it - there just isn't a need to confirm what I already know).  There are models in my life for an unabashedly career focused mother.  I don’t necessarily want to be the mum my mother was, but I don’t think I have to shoulder the burden of the pressures of modern mothering myself.  It’s nice to be able to give a form and language to the oppression of intensive mothering – to be able to name that which I am casting off. 

It is difficult to be a socially conscious, environmentally driven, health-minded and reflexive person in society.  It is extra hard when you’re doing all that, working, and trying to be and create that culture for your children.  It’s exceptionally hard when you do all that, and you’re the kind of exacting, psycho, obsessive perfectionist like me.  I don’t make it easy for myself, but I can choose to say no.  I can choose to not let the state off the hook for collective social action.  I can choose to ask for and be gracious in the face of help.  I can choose not to do it alone.  I’m not sure if the model to aspire to is intensive parenting instead of mothering, but I know that I don`t have to die on the sword of social consciousness on the battleground of my children.

Diversion – how was your weekend?  I had a fantastic weekend, starting Thursday night with a lovely dinner in advance of Dr. Rei’s birthday at Sukho Thai.  This resulted in the following hilarious exchange when we some Chinese guava candies were presented with our bill –

Me: “You should try one, they’re good, Benoit in my office has a bowl at his desk.”

Dr: “Who?”

Me: “Benoit”

Dr: “Did you say, Benoit???”

Me: “Yes”

Dr: “Wow.  Benoit, huh, hmm”

Me “…”

Dr: “Benoit… “

LOL!  She was clearly very impressed with Benoit, based solely on his name, the way Jordan Peele’s character is so taken with a Continental breakfast offered at his hotel, because of its Continental-ness:

Then I had book club at my friend Judith’s gorgeous, detached, GIANT house close to Dufferin Grove park.  A house on the corner of my street recently listed in the $900s.  It had previously sold 2-3 years ago for $640-$700.  The house is the same size as mine, but detached, and a corner lot with two parking spots.  However, it is next to a rooming house and the back side is subsidized housing.  It also faces a main street.  The Dotytron has been very quick to quash  my dreams of capitalizing on my unseemly willingness to invite chaos into our lives with big renovations and real estate speculation, so I don't think it's in the cards for us, given that I refuse to pay a million dollars FOR MY OWN HOUSE.  Basically, if I'm buying a million dollar house, it's going to be for something that is not a detached version of what I'm living in.  I definitely would want a significant space upgrade.  Dotytron is insisting that Lil' Ugmo is the house they're going to wheel him out of when he's 99, so it is what it is.  No real-life Monopoly for me. 

J's house was so gorgeous though.  It is giant, close to Dufferin Grove park, old and untouched but liveable.  There are so many delicious details about it (servants stairs - which are not savory from a supporting-slavery ethical standpoint, but are a lovely architectural detail in a house), stained glass, dark beams on the ceilings. 

Anyway, Thursday was a good night.  Friday I came home to a Micelli Monday in full swing with Lolls and SMckay and baby Sheaslounge and my gaggle of adorable goofs and it was so nice.  I love coming home to a full house.  We made a delicious dinner and then hung out and it was delightful.

We watched the Amy Schumer Friday Night Lights spoof on football rape and about died laughing.  It is incisive, and funny, and cogent:

Saturday was our usual errand morning - dropping off the Big Yam at Chinese School. Two weekends ago he had a recital that we missed because we had no idea and had made other plans (we are the worst).  We felt EXTRA bad when I found out from my neighbour that during the Big Yam's class, a kid PROJECTILE VOMITED on the very last note of the song.  It was classic!  BEST POSSIBLE KID RECITAL OUTCOME!  I saw the video - the kids went screaming off in every direction.  It was chaos.

While the Big Yam is at Chinese school we do the grocery shopping and take the babies to a park where they give us multiple heart attacks.  Quincess Leia is pretty good, Lindsay is fearless.  I caught him mid-step about to go down the fireman pole, completely oblivious, just in the knick of time.  He has no self preservation instincts.  This makes both babies considerably more sure-footed than the Big Yam (who gives a hard no to anything remotely dangerous - see exhibit A, this photo from his first real roller coaster at Disney), but it also makes for a non-relaxing time at the playground:

Side eye to the MAX.
 

Quincess has been so sweet and loving lately, it's the best.  He throws his arms behind him when he runs and frequently runs into a room, arms behind him, gives us a signature Quincess crinkle cut eyes (his expressions are all about his ability to manipulate and scrunch his eyes suggestively) look of mischief, and then turns on his heels and runs out.  He is the sweetest little thing.  I was standing in the kitchen the other day and he came up and flung his little arms around my legs and gave me a knee-height full body hug, and then ran away with his arms behind him.  He's definitely a mama's boy, which is nice, since as far as Lindsay is concerned, the Dotytron is both baba AND mama (he uses both interchangeably to ask for the Dotytron, inquire about his whereabouts, request cuddles).  He's a baba's boy like you wouldn't believe.

Ever since Momma D's birthday party, Joni's "Big Yellow Taxi" has been on heavy rotation.  Lindsay's sweet little voice is the best thing.

This is my 4th baby.  He is the sweetest little goofball.  Look at him!  Those eyebrows!?  That round little noggin.  He kills me.

 The Big Yam is so funny and also filled with sweetness.  He went to a friend's house the other day and his friend's mom relayed this exchange to me:

Big Yam, upon walking into their house, "Whoa. This house is really small. Hey, we have two cats too! Except one is dead."

Mom: "Oh no! What happened?"

Big Yam: "Um. He just went to the vet and died."

LOL!!!

He has this hilarious friend at school, Frank, and the two of them just constantly make up ridiculous in-jokes and weird sayings.  The newest consists of running around singing, "Have a jolly, jolly Christmas!" and then claiming, "Me and Frank made up that song."  Also, there's this:

I'm not sure when "Mama Mia" gets employed and under what context, but as a "bit" it's so random, I love it.

We did an escape room with some of our high school buds on Saturday and then had dinner with them after.  I can't believe it's been TWENTY YEARS since high school.  I was looking around the table at dinner and was kind of floored.  So much history there!  So many experiences.  I still don't feel a day older than I was then.  I don't feel like I'm coming up on forty (!!!) at all.

Good friends, good times.  Sunday was a visit my Poh Poh, Yummy Market, dinner with my mom day.

This weekend is another good one - dinner and a movie with JJ, the Discerning Coyote, et al tomorrow night, then a friend's birthday party on Saturday, then friends over on Sunday for dinner and more hangs involving cute kids and people I've known forever (girls from my cooking days).

Fin.

Pro Tips

#1 It undermines your ability to complain about how busy you are, when you willingly take on joining Parent Council at your kid's school (despite the fact that forced to give a Gladiator review of the school's performance thus far, it would get a resounding thumbs-down), and you sign up for the fundraising committee for a local community service provider.

#2 Deciding to be a general contractor for the finishing of your basement reno ALSO undermines your ability to complain about how busy you are (BUT I LOVE DOING THIS SO G-D MUCH!)  Why couldn't I just be a GC?!

#3 When you're doing a massive job, like underpinning your basement, it makes the job infinitely better when you hire amazing contractors to do the job and they have the good sense to hire a team of 20-25 year old hunks to do the work.

Further to Pro Tip #3, guys, this team is SO HOT.  They are tall (at least 6'2").  They are tattoo'd and hunky (think slightly scruffier Abercrombie models) and polite and respectful.  I can't recommend our underpinners enough.  I wish I could hire them AGAIN, and that's saying something, because generally we burn through a trade (like, to the point of me withholding a significant percentage of cash, no longer on speaking terms, salt-the-earth style of burning through) with each reno.  The main dudes are cautious, respectful, very conscientious and they don't pass on extra costs to us.  The team is a bunch of sweethearts - they come in every morning, prep the area, say good morning to everyone, remember the kids' names - I'm so impressed so far.

They are also BLOWING through the job.  They started November 11th, and by Friday, my basement looked like this:

The electrical panel on the top left of this photo (next to the conveyor belt they use to get the dirt out of the house and into the bin), used to be at my HEAD HEIGHT.  And now I can't even reach it.  Unbelievable.

The white pipe is our drain, being supported by strapping.

The job is done in stages.  You can see the spray-painted areas of the wall marked 1, 2, and 3 in the pictures above.  They dig out all the section 1s, then pour, then start on the section 2s, and so on, so that your house is never at any point more than 1/3 unsupported.  They let the concrete cure for the full 48 hours.  Then they start the next stage.  They will likely be done by the first week of December. WHAAAAAAT.

Then I've got to figure out a way to get my furnace reconnected (it's supported right now, but the last thing they'll do is hang the furnace while they dig underneath it and pour the slab) and my laundry reconnected.  A WHOLE NEW FLOOR OF THE HOUSE, GUYS!

This job hasn't been without its headaches.  THE JOYS OF LIVING IN A SEMI, PEOPLE!


At the end of this though, I will have an 8'2" basement.  EEEKS!!!  When the Dotytron and I stand down there now, it's amazing how spacious it feels.  It's not a tonne of space, granted, not by normal, non-downtown dwellers standards.  We are going to try to maximize it too, by getting an office/bedroom, a laundry/bathroom and a living room (in addition to the furnace room) under there, but still!  A WHOLE OTHER USABLE FLOOR OF THE HOUSE?  Nothing to sneeze at, basement haters (i.e. all those people who told us that it wasn't worth it).

My reaction to the Underpinners team of hotties put me in mind of that Hollaback video that made the rounds on the internet in late October.

I watched the video, but then questioned myself as a feminist.  While the majority of the exchanges were gross and would definitely make me feel uncomfortable (hate being told to "smile" like a trained dog), some of them seemed benign (to me), which is what sent me spiralling.  When is it okay to say hi to a stranger?  Is there any context?  Commentary on the video seemed to indicate no.  That a woman has the inherent right to walk around without being encroached upon by men who only see her as an object.  I get that, I do.  But then, how are you supposed to meet people?  Is it okay in a bar/club setting?  When I see someone that I find "interesting" and approach them in a public space, am I similarly objectifying them?  It was really hard for me to wrap my head around.  Saying hi isn't okay?  I was confused by that as a general mode of practice.  That being said, there is a house around the corner from us, on the main street, that's clearly a rooming house and the dudes there (who don't work and when the weather is nice seemingly sit outside drinking all day) have verbally harassed my nanny, the neighbour's nanny, and when I walk by them, they don't dare say anything, but you can feel the predatory colour to their gaze.  It was gross and discomfiting and enraged me before I knew they said stuff to our nanny, and now that I know, if they so much as do it again, I'm going to tear a strip off of them.

This leads me to another issue that had me very confused in the month of October.  The hashtag #rapedneverreported started appearing, as a (very positive) offshoot of the Jian Ghomeshi thing.  Someone I know was sharing her story on Twitter and as part of that conversation, she tweeted that a thing we could do is to model consensual behaviour when we tickle our kids.  The whole POINT of tickling is that the kid is laughing and saying no!  I was so conflicted about that!  I brought it up at Academic Book Club and they reminded me of that experience most of us have had, where we've been tickled by a weird uncle until we almost barfed.  THAT'S the kind of tickling we're supposed to stay away from.  The tickling "game" where the kid is obviously enjoying it is okay (I think.)  Just trying to avoid irrevocably contributing to rape culture, thanks!  UGH.  I know I sometimes purposefully push past the line of the Big Yam's comfort zone for the sake of my own sadistic pleasure.  Not with tickling, but sometimes I'll be fake-scary and then verge into real scary and I can tell that he's wavering and I'll put it justthatlittlebit past the point where he's okay and into starting to feel real fear.  I'm a monster.

We've had ourselves some proper good weekends.  We were in our favorite USA small town last weekend, eating copious amounts of food and lying around until we atrophied and lining up the cousins on a couch for cute photos like this:

The weekend before was a doozy - my mum came over and was being super-cute with the babies and SMckay was over and I had my eyelashes filled (oh, I didn't mention that I'm an eyelash extension ADDICT?!  Cuz I am), and we went with my mum to T&T and I made dinner and then SMckay took the Big Yam out for his birthday present excursion (a TTC ride and hot dogs) and then my mum went home and SMckay and I went to see Gone Girl while the Dotytron hosted record club.

The following day involved some weird March Break trip investigation that suddenly through Disneyworld into the mix (?!) and then dinner at our friend's JJ & S's house.  Busy!  But I love all the people I saw so it's a good kind of busy.  The kind of busy that means you never get around to raking leaves or tarping up the outdoor furniture and then all of a sudden you have to do it when it's premature polar vortex winter and there's snow and then the job is a million times worse.  That kind of busy.  That's what's on our agenda this weekend.  Tarping and raking and bagging, etc., etc.

There was also a 13 (!!!!!) year anniversary dinner at Bar Isabel for me and the Dotytron.  He did the math: apparently when we're 43 we will have been together longer than we were apart.  There's nothing to say about that, other than the obvious: I like the guy.

We were advised to order 5 dishes but ended up closer to 10.  Even at that, this left us satisfied, but not hating ourselves.  If we wanted to hate ourselves we could have ordered 5 more plates of the croquettas alone.  My pics are dark but I'm an Asian girl so will take pics of my food until I die, bae:

Raw bay scallop with honey crisp apple, cucumber and dill.  I  enjoyed eating this dish (because I love raw scallops like nothing else) and understood the textural inclusion of the apple and cucumber, but the cucumber fell flat for me.  The watery vague bitterness of the rind didn't match with the cool, crisp sweetness of the other elements.  Also, the cucumber wasn't chilled enough, which I think was a problem with the palatability.

Pintxos!  Who doesn't love pintxos?  Not me!  On the left we have bacalao (salt cod spread), a pickled egg and a little wee sausage and on the right we have sobrassada, shaved foie (must have been frozen and shaved) and honey.  I would have taken about 10 more each of these two bites.  SO GOOD.  So balanced between smooth, rich, sweet, briny.  

These croquettas ruined my life.  All I want is more of them in my mouth all the time.  Gooey and molted on the inside with a sobrassada spiked mayo for dipping.  

Obligatory bone marrow with salsa verde.  Why don't I just make bone marrow all the time?  Good Q.  I should do that and sweetbreads and foie more.  YOLO.

Patatas bravas is something I really miss having.  Those Spaniards (Catalans?) are really good at getting a chunk of potato blisteringly crisp on the outside, only to have your teeth then meet a puffball explosion of fluffy starchy innards.  We got the supreme version, which came with boquerones, blood sausage, slices of jalepeno, and some other stuff.  On the left you have crispy fried sweetbreads served with tuna.  

I have parent council stories to regale you with, but those are tales for another day.  In the meantime, here's a photo of Lenny as an environmental activist, and the Quincess as a tiny, shrunken, old man:

Fin.