Halloweenies

If loving Halloween is wrong...I never, ever want to be right.

Here is my Halloween goon squad, in all their frippery and finery:

When you go to the trouble of making a bespoke custom tailored jacket for a 2 year old, you better believe that you want to maximize your ROI and re-use it.  The Purple Rain-era Prince costume was just as good the second time around.  You know me and my slavish devotion to all things thematically sound, so I had to make Quincess be 2015-era Prince.  A custom toddler-sized afro wig made from a knit cap and black roving,  a Nehru jacket assist from MHui, and last-minute perfectly matching leggings from my neighbour GT helped me pull it off.  

The Big Yam wanted to be a vampire (zzz).  Could I have bought a cape for $5 from Value Village?  Probably.  Would I ever do that?  Unlikely.  He got a glossy reptile-print black cape with red line and a stand-up collar, because I like to make my life difficult for myself.  

I dropped off the Big Yam at school on Friday in costume - turns out that's not a thing (?!)  I felt kind of foolish for a few seconds before coming to my senses and acknowledging that Halloween is for the children, AND the adults, and if you can't be a goofball when you have kids, then what g-d hope is there for humanity?  People who can't be goofs around their kids make me so sad.

I had a day off on Friday so I spent that day visiting with the Roomie and carving pumpkins and doing last-minute Halloweenie type things.  Saturday was all about final prep and the Dotytron fussing over the $20 worth of dry ice he bought.  You would think that, noted domestic miser that I am, I would have kiboshed the dry ice plans, but when it comes to Halloween...all bets are off.  Really, when you see this:

So worth it, right? 

Trick or treating was fun, but exhausting.  All the kids on my street go together, which means a gaggle of parents follows around kids moving at different speeds, yelling things like, "Remember your manners!" and "Don't run across people's lawns!" from the sidewalk.  I took the twins out to just a few houses on our street and then we dumped  them in the basement to watch a movie.  I went out with the Big Yam and was totally knackered by the end of it.  We had to do a mid-run candy dump back at home, before heading to a street in the 'hood where a local real estate agent pays to close off the street and then pays for a fire eater to do a series of shows.  That street goes ALL OUT.  It is awesome.  There was a house with a giant mechanical spider on the roof that was lit up and moved around.  There was another house where they had rigged up fishing line to make a skull pop out of a pumpkin at the street level.  It was all kinds of awesome.

I went back to form with my pumpkins this year.  The theme was "queens"

Bad girl RiRi

bell hooks

Freddie Mercury

Halloween and Thanksgiving spirit is my favorite kind of spirit.  It's just weirdos being weird and creative!  I love it.  

The next day we had a Dia de los Muertos ceremony at the cemetery for Poppa D.  More correctly, the Dotytron, the Big Yam, Momma D and Emdo did something, while I chased the twins through the cemetery and made sure they didn't desecrate any graves (much).  After that, was a Halloween party my neighbour threw.  It was exhausting!  

Although we did get some cute shots that day:

Lindsay's face in the two family pictures, kills me.  Look at what an innocent little bobbin he looks like!  Nothing like this guy:

 Exhibit A: Bam Bam trying to wrestle something to the ground with sheer force of will

After living with him for 2+ years, I can easily say that Lindsay is the most stubborn and willful of my children, which is kind of saying a lot.  That guy is VERY entitled and self-assured and has been seemingly from birth.

Here's a video of the Quincess conducting.  He LOVES pretend conducting more than even the Big Yam did.  Any time the Big Yam plays piano, Quincess will be quietly conducting in his high chair, transported to another place.  The way he does the little cut at the end!  

Quincess has also been referring to the movie Fantasia as "decoration" which is cute in and of itself, but even cuter when you hear it in his little lisping, Quincess voice.

Two weekends ago we hit the pumpkin patch with our neighbour, which officially means we've hit every item on the fall bucket list.  We ate doughnuts, went through the corn maze, walked on this musical bridge thing, saw a meteor crater (this pumpkin patch had an alien-invasion theme - weirdly), went on a hay ride, picked out our pumpkins, shot corn cobs through these hydraulic gun things...basically all the standard stuff (how weird is it that shooting corn cobs through a hydraulic gun is now de rigeur pumpkin patch fare?):

Starbucks has already brought out their red cups which means I officially want to bring out the barf in my mouth.  

That's all for now!

Fin.

How I Spend My Time Before Bed

But first: is it racist to put a little baby afro on a toddler?  Asking for a friend.  It's for Halloween, if that makes it any better?  The Dotytron has a theory that as long as you're dressing up as a specific person, it's okay, but you can't dress up as like, a black person (obviously).  I feel like the geisha example is a bit different, because that's a job?  But I also feel like I'm becoming increasingly unmoored from my ability to suss out what is offensive and insensitive from a racial/ethnic standpoint so I might need some help on this. 

I was aiming for a twice-weekly posting schedule...and well, you can see what happened.  The road to hell and all that.  Anyway, onward and upward!

The time has come for me to prove to y'all that I haven't spent the past two years flicking mindlessly through Instagram memes and articles on the New York Times and Salon and Slate and The Atlantic that already support my liberal biases.  Obviously, I've done some [a lot] of that, too, but I also read things.  Quite a few things, actually.  Some of them were actually quite good.  Here are my thoughts on what I've read (remember: I'm a slave to chronology so we're starting from the bottom):

I know, I know.  Old news.  Book is old, the show that the book spawned is like, 3 seasons in now.  I couldn't get into the show, and while I applaud from a distance that the show is unique for being a narrative that's focused almost exclusively on telling women's stories in a creative and nuanced way, the humour of the showrunner, ***, has never been for me.  It's too broad and "zany."  I tend not to go in for "zany."  Except for Broad City, which I (mostly) love because Abby and Ilana are so charming and kooky.  Also, Hannibal Burress' perenially chill and accepting boyfriend character is a treat.   

After season 2 of Broad City I will periodically get a flash of Ilana shouting: "Pegasuuuuuuuuuuuuuus!" and twerking triumphantly in response to Abby's frenzied 11th hour phone call that the guy she's on a date with wants her to peg him.  It's one of my favorite moments from recent television.

Where was I?  Oh yes, OITNB the book is humdrum.  The bland, entitled, milquetoast elements that make up Piper's character on the show (from what I saw of the first three episodes) are even more pronounced in the book.  Piper Kerman doesn't really engage or befriend her fellow incarcerated.  I noted this detachment and was informed by someone in my book club (OBVIOUSLY THIS WAS A BOOK CLUB PICK) that she already had her book deal before she went into the clink.  She writes it very much as if she's a Rolling Stone journalist sent in to do some in-depth investigative reporting.  The only time you really feel for her is when she's been transferred from one prison to another (a less cushy, more 'hardcore' one), en route to release, and she's stuck in this bureaucratic rabbit warren limbo.  Those few weeks is when you really get a sense
of how irrevocably lost some people can get.  If no one is looking out for you, if you have no connections to the outside, the twisted microcosm of prison life can become your entire world, and that is a chilling, sobering thought. 

The summer the babies were born (will I ever stop refering to the Wonder Twins as 'the babies'?) was a weird one, for me, okay?  I read this little brief blob about how the author of the Mists of Avalon (a juggernaut bestseller in its day - its day being the early 80s) was accused of sexually abusing her daughter and I remembered how that super sexy early 80s film version/heavy metal music video version of Arthurian legend, Exaclibur (starring Dame Helen Mirren!) also had some weird sexual stuff and I'm always kind of down for Arthurian legend so I checked it out to see how seedy it is.  The book is a "feminist" take on Arthur, where the women are central and Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table and that crew are all relegated to supporting characters.  It's told primarily form the point of view of Morgaine, who's treated as some weird witchy woman in most other tellings but in this case is depicted as someone caught in the power struggle between the rise of Christianity and defending the ancient, pagan ways of life.  When I write it like that, it seems pretty awesome, but when you read it, it's plodding and boring and clunky.  Like a slightly more historically minded and upscale E.L. James.  I wouldn't recommend it.  I was forcing myself to finish it.  There is some creepy sex stuff - some that is par for the course for Arthurian legend (rape in the form of people tricking each other into having sex disguised as other people) and also pagan ickiness like offering up prepubescent girls to pagan "gods" to ravish.  It's gross.  The 80s were a weird time, man.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Americanah was a book I suggested to Academic Book Club.  It's a book that talks about race in America, using the vehicle of a Nigerian-born woman who spends a good chunk of her adult life in America and starts a blog about what it's like to be a certain type of black woman in America, before returning to Nigeria.  It's a literary, post-colonial work without all the post-colonial, literary headiness.  The tone is approachable and you follow Ifemelu through her journey away from military dictatorship Nigeria, away from her friends and the boy she falls in love with, and then back.  The writing here is intensely evocative - there are some turns of phrases (I can't remember off the top of my head, it's been two years!) that I remember luxuriating in - she is incredibly talented, though I wouldn't say that Adichie is a phenom.  The scenes are good, the overall story not so much, and most of all I found the love story at its core unbelievable - it took me away from the writing.  I would definitely recommend this.

You know how much I love me the Daughter of Smoke and Bone YA trilogy.  Well, for all of you who have been disappointed by how YA trilogies tend to s**t the bed on the last one, when authors seemingly write themselves into holes they can't climb out of (see: Alie Condie's Matched, Hunger Games, Divergent, The Wolves of Mercy Falls, Delirium), then it was SO NICE to see that my girl Laini Taylor DID NOT DISAPPOINT.  I was scared, coming out of Days of Blood and Starlight about how she was going to wrap all this stuff up!  HOW WAS SHE GOING TO DO IT?  And then then third book opens with an ENTIRELY NEW CHARACTER?!  I should have had faith.  She nails it.  It is deeply satisfying and has closure and everything has its place and its moving and perfect and maintains humour and consistency.  I loved this series and will forevermore.

I know, I know, my reading habits are ALL OVER THE PLACE.  So then I read a memoir-ish thing by Judy Greer?  Character actor?  She played Kitty Sanchez in Arrested Development, and also has been in a million other things.  The memoir was very readable though it doesn't stay with you in any way but her voice is okay as an author and she has some decent stories...I feel like Anna Kendrick's recently-announced book of essays might be similar (I feel like Judy Greer is Anna Kendrick further down the line of her career?)  It was good cottage with newborn premature twins reading.  So there's that.

OKAY.  I said I would do this five at a time and so I've hit my limit.

We were supposed to go out of town this weekend but we've been out of town like, every weekend for the past MONTH, so even though it meant we wouldn't be able to visit our friends S & P in their gorgeous house in Port Stanley, it made sense for us to be at home and get our bearings, especially after a weekend spent camping (!) for the first time (!).  More on that, later.

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.

C'est L'Halloween!

Finally able to catch a breath around here to post.  The good news: everything is all lined up so that Halloween can happen.  Phew!  I've planned an easy dinner (read: Kraft Dinner and hot dogs), the costumes are done, the pumpkins are carved, and everything is pretty much in place.  Let's cross our fingers.

Pic heavy post today - clearing out the back catalogue for those interested (all 3 of you).  

This selfie took about 20 million tries and in the end, I missed getting Prof. Gantok in the photo.  This photo is notable for a few things: the fact that the Great Gazoo looks nothing like himself, how amazing my hair looks, and little baby moobs

This is me, Dr. Rei, and the Great Gazoo, all wearing the same uniform.  This is after Dr. Rei rallied from being the grumpiest mcgoo you've ever done seen.  

Then this happened.  Prof. Gantok's favorite thing is to show you the whites at the top of his eyes.  When I took art in high school, one of the things we learned in portraiture was to not do the kid-drawing thing where you draw a person's eye and show the whole, round iris in it.  Most people's eyelids cover the iris so you only see 2/3 of the round.  Major exception: Prof. Gantok.  

Selfie with 3!

I kinda phoned in this year's pumpkins.  This is a Totoro one.  I free handed it.  

This is the ghost from Spirited Away.  See? Totally phoned it in.  The Dotytron last week said to me, rather delicately, "Umm, maybe this year you don't want to go so buck with the pumpkin carving?" and every fibre in my being recoiled at the thought that I might have the two-triangle-eyes-and-snaggly-tooth-mouth standard issue pumpkin.  This is a happy medium.  I banged these two out in about an hour.

Behold!  The Totoro costume!  Made possible by this amazing tutorial from the blog You and Mie.  I totally winged (wung?) it - the sleeves ended up a little short, but overall, I'm happy with it.  There's a (poorly sewn) zipper up the back and everything!!!  It's pretty warm and cozy and the Dotytron wants his own.  

These guys dressed as soot sprites...except it looks like the Great Gazoo has white boobs.  LOL!  Thank you, Fabricland for the cheap fun fur!  I was actually going to make these into more permanent costumes, but when we ended up not going to a Halloween party on the weekend, I decided to make my life easier and just safety pin the soot sprite fronts to their onesies.  The Great Gazoo's expression here is so Dotytron.  See:

 A lot of times, after a feed, when they're all full and happy, I look at the Wonder Twins on the nursing pillow and they're giving me these faces:

That face!!!  The Great Gazoo has such a sweet, shy, pleased looking smile - he curls his top lip under and it stretches his mouth so wide.

Prof. Gantok on the other hand has the stereotypical, jolly, cherubic thing going on.  Big, wide-open mouthed yappy smiles.

This is one of my baby sleep secret techniques: babies like to feel like they're all snug and secure.  To recreate that feeling, I weigh them down with a pillow, so they feel the force of gravity acting upon them.

Last week was kind of crazy.  I had Academic Book Club on Thursday, where the ladies were all in a twitter about their kids using drugs.  Apparently, high school kids start using ecstasy really early.  There's a big bias though, in that these women are fine with teenagers drinking.  I think I might do a little PSA next book club and disavow them of some of their misconceptions.  For instance, DRINKING IS THE WORST!  You know what happens when you're on E?  You love listening to music and you want to give people hugs.  You don't want to leave, you don't want to get into a car and drive, it's not a depressant (it's the exact opposite), it doesn't make you want to fight, or particularly sexual.  I'm obviously not advocating wide-spread ecstasy use amongst teenagers, but I find the bias in favour of alcohol really misinformed and weird.

On Friday I took all three of the kids after the Big Yam's sports class to try the Hey Meatball location that opened up in Leslieville.  I was just proud to have made it out, first and foremost.  I wasn't a big fan of the actual meatballs at the place.  For one thing: they do single-protein meatballs.  So you have to choose whether you want a pork, beef, chicken, or vegan (!) meatball.  Ummm, THAT MAKES NO GODDAMNED SENSE.  That's weaksauce to the max!!!  No self-respecting meatballery should be doing single protein meatballs as their base product.  I had the "Rodfather" sandwich, which is 3 meatballs (in my case, pork) with tomato sauce, basil pesto, and parmesan on a ciabatta bun.  It was good, but it was just as good as that combination of things generally is.  It didn't EXCITE me or make me think: "this is the definitive iteration of this meal," which is a bit of a problem when you're building a shop around one item.  That item should be knock-it-out-of-the-ballpark good, don't you think?  The salad was tasty.  But you don't make friends with salad:

Then on Friday night, I left the Dotytron to watch the Big Yam, our neighbour's daughter, and the Great Gazoo so I could do ladies night with the neighbour ladies.  We went to the Real Jerk and I had a plate of pretty good-but-bony oxtail, fried chicken, delicious rice, and a meagre helping of tasty coleslaw:

Other things we've been eating lately:

Mortadella & robiola panini and cream of cauliflower soup

Spaghetti and meatballs.  I could eat this all day, every day.

That bacon, lentil, baby spinach salad thing with fried goat's cheese that we do

A CSA-busting meal of chicken thighs, mashed root vegetables, sautéed cabbage, and buttered carrots.

Tagliatelle with bolognese sauce that I had in the freezer.  Alongside a tasty salad of escarole, sliced raw pear, almonds (should be hazelnuts), pickled red onion, and a sharp dijon vinaigrette.

I know this post was the boringest!!!  I'm so sorry...I have a slew of book/television/movie reviews for you shortly - and maybe an anecdote or two?

Fin.