Catching up

We’ve had a few blasts of warm weather, and while the projected 27 degrees forecast last weekend was making my doomsday-inclined heart palpitate – seriously the California drought is no joke!  How are people not freaking out about this MORE?!?  WHY IS THERE GRASS AT COACHELLA?!?!!!??? – when I’m given to a more superficial frame of mind (often), my thoughts have turned to spring summer style.

This year Lagerfeld is going in a bit of an unexpected direction.  Well, not really that unexpected, more of a return to the silhouette I favored in my rave days of dressing like a boy on the bottom/pocket square on top.  I recently bought a long-sleeve vintage Vision Street Wear t shirt and that’s forming the foundation of the look I’m going for.  Think Stacy Peralta, think Gleaming the Cube, think long shorts, blocky kicks, So-Cal, 80s.  I love me a long, bulky shorts like you wouldn’t believe, my favorite pair being a pair of Canadian army surplus fatiques that I chopped to a mid-calf length about 15 years ago and have been wearing ever since (moving the button on the waistband incrementally from year to year, of course).  I’m going to intersperse this with my usual Mrs. Roper, muumuu, tent dress routine – a habit I can’t shake.  Except now, bike shorts under the dresses are part of my life because my thighs rub together and that’s just the way s**t goes, sons.

If you still stubbornly read a lot of blogs (and I do), there’s a brand that bloggers of a certain ilk go crazy for, and I just don’t get it.  Ace and Jig.  They make $300 jumpsuits that look like tea-towels you find at the cottage.  I don’t get it.  If the patterns were distinctive, it’d be one thing, but they all kind of look like Turkish linen towels to me.  Y’all know I love me a Mexican Oaxacan embroidered dress/top like the next hippie, but something about the type of fabric pattern on the Ace & Jig stuff just doesn’t turn my crank in the least.  They’re like the worst possible serape blankets you could have, but you’re wearing them.  It’s like a faded cactus, wilting in the sun.  

The Wonder Twins do this odd thing where they trade off weeks of being a giant PITA.  Last week, it was Quincess, who was INCONSOLABLE during dinner every night.  Now this week, he’s been the sweetest little dear, happily eating lots of whatever is put in front of him, while Lindsay Lou Lou is a pill and screams for “Ohk!” [yogurt] and then upends everything on his tray when I don’t give him what he wants.  He also wants everything “whole!” and as soon as he’s done eating yells, “SCHIIIIIIDE?!?” [outside] where he puts on a bike helmet (“hat! Haaaaaaat!!!”) that’s 10 sizes too big and stands on a Radio Flyer 3-wheeled scooter, giving everyone cow-eyes until they opt to ruin their backs by bending over and pushing him around.  Quincess’ preferred outside activity is to push around a little baby carriage and then wait for you to turn your attention elsewhere before running into the road and laughing maniacally.  Meanwhile, the Big Yam is off in his own world playing superheroes and screaming that he’s not ready to ride a bike for a million hours.  It’s a really relaxing vibe we’ve cultivated.

Last weekend we had a visit from SMckay and the Dotytron hosted a bourbon night with his teacher friends.  While he was prepping that, SMckay and I gave the kids freezies and took them to the park, which resulted in this line from the Big Yam: “Come in my face, freezie! Come in my face!”  It was kind of awkward.  This tends to happen when SMckay comes for visits.  The last time, she was supervising the Big Yam’s bath and said something like, “No standing in the tub!” and he said, “Yeah, you do, to wash your butt and your wiener.  What’s a wiener?”  SMckay: “Oh dear.” 

Saturday morning I went with her to see the Basquiat exhibit at the AGO.  I’m glad SMckay gets me to the AGO and my art history roots.  The Basquiat exhibit was kind of amazing.  I went to the Alex Colville one and was intellectually into the exhibit because the exhibit was well curated, but I’m not generally into Colville’s style of work.  Basquiat’s work is something I would hang in my home.  Keith Haring is too cartoony for me, but Basquiat’s work is very visceral, and politically charged, and manages to be so on-the-nose, now, 30 some-odd years later.  The audio commentary was wack.  A lot of Toronto beat poets and academics who were simultaneously over-intellectualizing but also missing some of the obvious points in the works.  Commentary on a  piece that counterbalanced the a Native American with an African American man in shackles focused primarily on the very obvious statement about slavery, while failing to pay attention to the very clear parallel being drawn between the oppression of the two peoples, and how their cultures were effaced by white people.

We had my mom and brother and his fiancée over for a Mother’s Day dinner on Saturday and it was fun.  Bruce Wayne’s fiancée got me an awesome mother’s day present in the form of the best dinosaur planter/terrarium ever!  It’s amazing and I love it and love the colour.  That aqua blue/green colour is a favorite of mine and pops up in other things I have:

Mother’s Day was a bit of a gong show.   The original plan had been to keep it low key and chill.  I got an awesome card from the kids (all orchestrated by the state) and the plan had been to go and get dim sum and then to Pacific Mall to get a new iphone case for me.  In my heart of hearts, I should have known that Mother’s Day dimsum would be a gong show, but I quashed those misgivings.  We had gone back and forth on plans to see Momma D on Mother’s Day, and finally called her with our impromptu dim sum plan, planning on being home to put the twins down for their nap so I could work on my quilt and just putter (my favorite thing in the world). 

The plan went horribly, horribly awry.  The first place we went to, had a lineup out the door, and I was #57 for a table (I think they were at 20).  So we packed up and went down the street to some random place, which I think stays in business based solely on taking the overflow from the better place.  There were 4 or 5 groups ahead of me, and so I grabbed a number and told Momma D and the Dotytron to take the kids to a patch of grass by the parking lot while I waited.  Cut to 1 HOUR LATER, to me standing behind the hostessing stand and acting as the hostess, because the restaurant staff were completely inept and were handing out numbers but not managing the restaurant flow.  People were cutting the queue and sitting down at tables as they were being cleared, so as far as the restaurant was concerned, because no one was managing it properly, tables were never available, because it was just a constant flow of unethical people plonking their jerk butts down.  There was no order.  After an hour, with everyone hungry, we left.

Somehow in the process, Lenny had his wrist wrenched and was in pain, so he bawled the whole way back (we called an audible on the whole mission).  There was talk about going to a different dim sum restaurant on the Danforth (a place that does mostly takeout and has maybe 2 tables), but I put my foot down.  Anyone with kids knows that you don’t take hungry, confined kids to a second (sit-down) location.  Poor Dotytron.  Momma D and I are very different in our approaches and I think he felt conflicted by trying to appeal to us both.  I knew though, that if we had gone to the restaurant, it would have been incredibly stressful dealing with a place that in all likelihood has no high chairs or is kid-friendly, when the kids were all on the verge of melting down.  I also know that the bulk of the work managing them would have fallen on me, and while I don’t put stock in Mother’s Day (especially after this one), I do know that I should at least get to decide not to put myself through that.  Instead we went to a park, I got us pizza, and we hung out and watched the kids and it was lovely.

This week has been a monster.  My blood pressure has been skyrocketing at work and I’m feeling kind of tender and sore about it.  I’m looking forward to that extra day.  We have a fun one planned, too – movie night tonight at home, visits with Tillers and Jen tomorrow and their lovely kids, dinner at Momma D’s house (do-over!), fireworks in the park with the neighbours on Sunday, and hopefully a walk at the Scarborough bluffs with Dr. Rei and family.

 [edit: As it now takes me three weeks to write a single post, I’m including the post-Victoria Day weekend wrap-up in this one]

Our long weekend was extremely fun, but also filled with back-breaking BS labour that you have to do when you have a house – ie. sanding and sealing our deck.  That being said, it looks SO DARN GOOD and even though all I wanted was to throw money at the problem, in the end, it only took us about 4-6 hours?  We went with a clear sealant and I’ve never been happier.  The Dotytron was trying to convince me that we have to get a colour on the cedar because otherwise, it’s going to discolour, and that’s what we did 3 years ago, but I’m so glad we went clear – it looks so hype:

Visits with Tillers and Jen were so nice – we went to the park, they brought amazing homemade bread and burrata (!) and I tried to make friends with salad (despite Dotytron’s vocal objections).  The guys went to a new craft brewery in the ‘hood and then we filled up a bucket and let the kids go to town while the young-young ‘uns napped the afternoon away. 

Our planned fireworks on Sunday were a bust.  This was our fourth go-around organizing street fireworks and this is the first year we’ve ever been hassled by the cops.  I think it’s because we’re such a finely tuned machine.  Watermelon slices, blankets, popcorn for the kids, a bucket of sand, about 25 people – we were conspicuous and we got the attention of bike cops who told us we had to shut it down.  We were allowed to set off one more and then had to pack it up.  I was saying that the Dotytron should have lit them all off at once and shouted, “BLACK LIVES MATTER!” which would have been so funny!  Just imagine?  A white guy in Leslieville, holding his fist up and shouting “black lives matter” in response to being told to not light fireworks?!  So good. 

Scarborough bluffs mission was also a bust, but a hilarious one, in the grand tradition of M-R-I-H shenanigans.  At first, we were going to skip the bluffs because Dr. Rei and Dotytron were obviously in the mood to do nothing but sit around and talk about 90s hip hop for eternity.  Then, we opted to go to the beach as an alternative, but it was BUCK (obviously), so we ended up heading to the bluffs anyway.  As we passed a long line of cars snaking seemingly parked bumper-to-bumper on their way OUT of the bluffs, the Dotytron went into doomsday apocalyptica mode (which is the worst Dotytron mode of life) and was all like, “We’re idiots! We should abort!  Each car we’re passing is an hour of our life! Why did we do this?  This is so dumb, etc., etc.,”  We got to the bottom, couldn’t find parking, and realized we should turn tail and head back up, so we did, only to have Hanbo entreating Dr. Rei to at very least, Google a picture of the bluffs to show him, and the Dotytron was still going strong in doomsday mode and was (seriously) trying to convince me that I should call the police, tell them that a thousand people were stuck at the bluffs and needed their help to direct traffic and get out.  LOL!  It was epic.  In the end, it was fine, the line of cars moved relatively quickly and it didn’t break bad like we had thought it might. 

We ate Chino Loco’s at home.  The Big Yam, who had been angling for a brownie all day, couldn’t stomach his dinner and so was all angst-ridden about forfeiting his right to a brownie dessert.  He’s a forward thinking chap, though, and asked what we were eating for dinner on Tuesday.  I said that it was going to be rice and a sauce, similar to the deconstructed burrito he was turning his nose up at.  “AGAIN?!?!!!?” he cried, “COME ON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” which was such a pure expression of supreme disappointment and dismay that the whole table broke down laughing.  “AGAIN?!??? COME ON!!!!!” will never not be funny.  Lately, in the same vein, he’s started shouting, “DARN IT!!!” when he’s frustrated, which is equally hilarious.

Meanwhile, these two little monkeys are routinely flouting doctor’s orders and engaging in mad bed jumping pre/post-nap:

I find this video simultaneously revolting AND compelling

We got a piano!  Best decision we've ever made, best addition to the house (including our children, j/k j/k j/k).  That's Linsday in his shirt from the Apollo Theatre that Momma D bought for him.  Our piano is a Heintzman from the 1930s that we bought for $250.  It's a beautiful piece and I love the way it looks.  It needs a tuning but needs to acclimate to our house first.  The cost of moving was as much as the piano.  

Droopy drawers

"WHOLE!!!" is this guy's eating rallying cry - which basically means that he wanted to eat a pork chop on the bone.

I made Smitten Kitchen's baked chickpeas for dinner a couple of weeks ago, and have since made it a few more times.  It makes the perfect work lunch.  Middle Eastern spiced chickpeas, served with dollops of yogurt tahini dressing, labneh (always labneh), and the classic Middle Eastern tomato-cucumber-red onion-mint-parsley salad, dressed with lemon juice, and mixed with crunchy pita chips - Smitten recommends homemade, but I used Stacy's naked pita chips, which are perfection.  It's like Middle Eastern nachos.  I will say that I think it's not necessary to bake them - I simmered subsequent batches on the stove with the lid ajar until almost all the liquid was evaporated and it worked out just fine.  This is the platonic ideal of summer food.  I love this dish so much.  

Fin.

Catching Up

Predictably, this post has taken me two weeks to write.

Two weekends ago, I went to Ladies Night with my neighbourhood ladies on Friday night.  We had Middle Eastern food at Tabule.  It was delicious!  I'm super-into Lebanese style food lately and the renditions there are sooo tasty.  Fresh, vegetable-focused, centred around shareable plates and finger foods.  Love it.

Thanks to an armada of babysitters, we were able to keep up our tradition of going to Hot Docs, which has been going on almost as long as we've been together.  This must be at least our 10th year or something.  Our friend L is one of the programmers and hooked us up, large!  We are so lucky to have her and to have such a ground-breaking, world-renown festival in our city.

On Saturday we saw Return to Homs, which is essentially about the gritty, numbing isolation of armed revolution.  It was a Sundance winner.  It's harrowing.  Constructed mostly of amateur footage, it follows a young Syrian football star, Basset, who becomes a leader in the Free Syrian Army.  What started with him leading crowds singing in the streets as part of the Arab Spring movement, it ends up with him leading an armed resistance to the government crackdown on the city of Homs.  People get shot.  It is grim.  The rebels are cut off from food and supplies.  You see the city become a literal shell of what it was.  I was reminded, nonsensically, of Les Miserables and the youthful fire of the young men who lead that revolution, and their disillusionment in the face of losing so many of their peers and the crushing force of the government.  It's so easy to criticize from our cushy remove in the West the seeming chaos and lack of momentum in the wake of the Arab Spring.  When you are a few generations removed from civil war, it's hard to see how entrenched dictatorships can be, and how disorganized resistance movements are.  I kept thinking that this Basset character is just a kid.  A 22 year old kid who is trying to hold a city, with other 22 year old kids.  At a certain point, it's so obvious that they are so weary from fighting, so tired of being beaten into a corner, out-manned and out-armed.  During a lull in the fighting, Basset is asked if he would consider coaching football, when this is all over.  He dismisses it out of hand, "I can't be a coach.  To coach football, you need an education, a degree..." and the irony of the fact that without an education, without a degree, he's trying to re-draw the world order in Syria is lost on him.  This is not the kind of documentary one enjoys, per se, but it is important, and necessary.  

The next day, on a completely different note, we saw a doc called Beyond Clueless, which purported to be an examination of teen movies in the post-Hughes era (late 90s into the 2000s).  I was like, SOLD!  My first misgivings surfaced when at the start of the screening, the "filmmaker" was introduced.  My first thought was like, "who is this kid?" followed by: "oh no, he's British, this can't be good."  Well folks, it wasn't.  Narrated by Fairuza Balk, the film is a stitched-together montage of fare like Bubble Boy, Cruel Intentions, Mean Girls, and The Craft and features analysis that tells us that teens in films are punished when they try to subvert the status quo, or that teens are disempowered by adults, or that teen sexuality is fraught.

UHHH, DUH.  The kid filmmaker as it turns out, is 23.  Soooo, I'm sure you can guess the level of discourse he's capable of.  It was THE WORST.  He must be so loaded.  To get the rights for all those clips (which make up the WHOLE FILM?)  It was so annoying.  If we had stayed for the Q&A we would have torn him a new one.  You know what's worse than British kids?  ENTITLED BRITISH KIDS (Prince George excepted of course).  

So the docs weren't exactly a home run.  BUT!  The Dotytron and I got to participate in a Dotytron-Lagerfeld tradition, and we got to be together, just the two of us, and eat out.  A win all around.  On Saturday we had lunch at my current obsession, Sud Forno.  From the people who brought you the Terroni empire, this place is as close as I've come in Toronto to an Ital-towns experience.  They serve a variety of sweet things, breads, and flat pizzas and sandwiches, and these stuffed flatbreads which are delicious.   We had the sausage pizza type thing, a salami and arugula one, this cold fried eggplant, ricotta, and tomato sandwich (my favorite thing in the world right now), and their flatbread stuffed with proscuitto and more arugula.  This year has been the year of arugula for me.  I love everything there!

Then I went a little bit crazy and spent like $30 on that box you see up there.  I HAVEN'T HAD A BOMBOLONE IN LIKE, 7 YEARS PEOPLE.  THAT'S A LONG A** TIME.  What the heck was I supposed to do?  NOT overpay for delicious, custard filled doughnuts?  Pah!  I also got zeppole which I love, but I could probably make at home (choux paste stuffed with whipped cream and candied cherries), but my favorite thing was the little whipped-cream topped thing on the far right, 2nd row.  It's a little sponge cake with whipped cream and limoncello.  So tasty.  This is what I love about Ital-towns desserts and baked goods: they really know the value of slathering whipped cream on dough.  That is basically the definition of my wheelhouse.  If you were to draw a picture of my wheelhouse, it would be made of dough and an excess of lightly sweetened whipped cream.  The best was that this old school, OG, Italian lady came in and had the internationally recognized grumpy old lady exchange with the staffer regarding how exorbitant the pricing was and all but spat on her way out the door.  She was like, "are you kidding me with $4 bombolone?" and I was like, deeply embarrassed BUT STILL UNABLE TO RESIST.  

The next day we had brunch at The Saint on Ossington.  It's a really pretty space, all sparkling white subway tile, black bar, brass fixtures.  I'm super into that combo lately.  White and black and grey with warm wood and brass with pops of colour.  I tried floating the idea with the Dotytron of painting our downstairs all white and he put his foot down.  We currently have a deep plum accent wall and he loves it.  I'll have to get this black/white/brass fixation out of the way when we finish the basement (so, like, never, or after I'm already onto something new).  

These are more gold than brass and I find the contrast a little jarring.  Maybe if there was more warm wood in there to act as a bridge between the start white and shiny gold?

Kitchen/bath reno is basically a go.  I've got a to-do list a mile long.  There are toilets and tubs to research, fixtures to be brought back from the States (shouts to my sis and Uncle Rico, who are being amazing about acting as a glorified warehouse for me at the moment), a million details to go over (what height for the beadboard in the bathroom?  How to trim the tile?  How to cap the beadboard?  What kind of robe hooks?).  When I've been telling people our (read: my) plan to do the kitchen/bath and then dig down the basement and do the waterproofing all this year, I'm predictably getting a bit of side-eye and bemused-face about the whole thing.  But listen: a flipped house on our street, 10 down from us, sold for $742,000.  THAT'S THREE QUARTERS OF A MILLION DOLLARS, PEOPLE.  FOR A HOUSE OUR SIZE.  The guys who flipped it were super-nice so I wanted them to do well, but when I walked through (they gave the neighbours an exclusive preview), I just thought it was aight.  I actually didn't like the design at all and the finishing was a little shoddy and they didn't even pick high-end fixtures.  The taps were MOEN, people!  MOEN!  FOR $742,000!!!  It was like what a condo designer thinks is a nice layout.  So not my taste.  I'm fussy.  I'm an oil-rubbed bronze kind of a girl, ya know?  I'm a crystal doorknob kind of a person.  I don't want my house to look builder-new.  Anyway, I'm feeling pretty good about our decision.  Even if you figure that $75K of that is due to the market being "hot", we're still going to cover what we're sinking into our renos and then some.  

Where was I?  Oh yes, The Saint.  Food was tasty - the Dotytron ordered the duck egg scramble with duck confit.  His only quibble was that there wasn't enough duck confit.  I ordered the duck egg benny on a cheddar biscuit.  Both come with potatoes lyonnaise, which basically means "potato deliciousness."  I would definitely go back.  The service was nice, they were bumping (we didn't make resos and had to sit at the bar), but they could accommodate kids (saw quite a few families there).  

The rest of my week(s) have been preoccupied with reno business and trying to do some spring cleaning/downsizing/getting rid of baby stuff.  I'm surprisingly unemotional about the baby purging.  I think the fact that in 4 weeks, I'll be bringing in zero money is really helping to motivate me to sell and any lingering pangs watching Bumbos and play mats and such leave the house are attenuated by the cash I'm getting in their stead.  If I have another baby, it won't be for some time, and then I can just re-up all that shiz anyway.  I won't have to buy it because everyone will be in the state of unloading their baby ish.  When you have twin infants, switching over your summer clothes or re-upping the kids' summer inventory or poring over the Ikea kitchen planner for the MILLIONTH TIME will take you weeks of your life to accomplish.  I basically spend my days measuring and writing little notes of measurements and dimensions to myself that I then refer back to, and without any context, then have to re-measure again and again.  FUN.

SMckay came over on Friday and when they Dotytron came home, he became obsessed with trying to sort out a profile to see if he could still get chicks.  This involved him looking through old photo albums to find a TWELVE YEAR OLD photo of himself to use as a profile pic.  This also involved him trying desperately to create his profile with the user name: "URBEINGCATFISHED" which is pretty much the best online dating user name of life.  SO GOOD.  

We also hung with Dr. Rei and Hanbo this weekend and had a hilarious time talking about what 9 out of 10 Serge Tankians would think of anything, as well as how FUBU (for us, by us) Hassidic Jew communities in Montreal are.  There was also an extended, "What the shih tzu" bit that I know means nothing to you all, but I'm recording it here for posterity because that's what this blog is for, and also, because Dr. Rei laughed so hard that she almost had her baby, so it's worth remembering.  

My Mother's Day was pretty boss.  The Dotytron knows what I like, which is to do work, so he made me breakfast and then we went to town trying to get our backyard in order.  It's looking good back there!  I know people probably think we were silly to make such a giant deck, but when we're out there, we love it so, so, so much.  It's like a dock.  It's like having a giant outdoor room.  We moved things around and bought these recycled rubber tiles (Envirotiles) and laid them out on the concrete pad.  We're going to put a kiddie pool and a sandbox there, so we wanted something a little softer on wee kidlet feet than the bare concrete.    I bought a new dining table from IKEA and now we're either going to build a bench out there or have our carpenter do it.  That and a thing to store our recycling/garbage cans and stuff and some plants and we're done.  I can't wait!  

One of the things I asked for was a decent picture of all of us.  The backdrop on this one is horrid, but look at my cute family!!!  Look at how much Quincess' head shape has changed!  

Fin.

Ups and Downs

Oof, so many ups and downs this weekend - Mother's Day weekend no less.  I was by turns an impatient mom, a guilty mom, a yelly mom, a stressed-out mom, a spoiled mom, and a mom who needed "mothering" from my partner.

That car that we thought we had bought?  Well, we didn't get it.  Through no fault of our own.  We signed the worksheet the dealership provides you with and paid a $1000 deposit to hold the car.  The next working day, we made arrangements to send it to our mechanic.  Our mechanic thought the car was in dece shape, but was like, "Did you know it came with winter tires?" And I had remembered that this was something that we had discussed with the salesperson, but that had fallen by the wayside through the course of negotiations.   Our mechanic was like, "I don't know what kind of deal you've worked out with them, but you should really make sure the car comes with all seasons."  So I emailed the salesperson and said that our mechanic had "concerns" (without elaborating on what those concerns were) and outlined 3 options:

1) We walk away from the deal and our deposit is returned
2) They sell us the car with a slightly lower price, throw in the all seasons, and we take this $2000 extended warranty (keep in mind: the extended warranty is gravy money for the dealership!)
3) They sell us the car with an even more reduced price, we buy our own all seasons, and we take the extended warranty.

The salesperson called me incensed and said that his manager wanted to see our mechanic's mechanical report.  I said that our mechanic was under no obligation to give it to him.  He then said that we had signed a "contract," the mechanical inspection was NOT grounds to renegotiate the price (which he had said in our face to face), and that our choices were that they either keep the deposit, or we take the car and pay the original negotiated price.  I was all flustered, so I said, "There is no way what we signed was a "contract" - can you send it to my lawyer."  And he got all pissy and told me to "talk to your husband" and then call him back.

So I get all nervous that we're actually ON THE HOOK for this stinking vehicle (which was fine, really, but still, now it was about the principle of the matter) and start Googling and then I find the site for OMVIC - the Ontario Motor Vehicle Industry Council.  Their mandate is: "to maintain a fair, safe and informed marketplace by protecting the rights of consumers, enhancing industry professionalism and ensuring fair, honest, and open competition for registered motor vehicle dealers."  They're kind of like a WSIB for registered dealers and do some buyer-beware stuff for people who choose to do private sales.  So, registered dealers pay OMVIC a fee to be listed as a registered dealer and in return agree to maintain a code of ethics and standards.  You can file complaints with them, etc.  So I call them and explain the situation and the person I spoke to is like, "There's no cooling off period for car sales in Ontario.  But if you didn't sign a bill of sale, then you are entitled to your deposit back."

Now I'm REALLY MAD and I'm getting all Silverman on them. Here's the thing: I did my due diligence - how many poor rubes would be suckered into accepting either a loss of $1000 or a car they weren't completely happy with???  LOTS, I bet.  So I call back the salesperson and tell him that I spoke to OMVIC and that now my real issue is the fact that he wilfully misrepresented what we had signed and said it was a contract when it was in no way legally binding and that according to the LAW they had to return our deposit.  And he gets even MORE RUDE and says, "you want to talk about lawyers, we have lawyers here too, you know!" and also, "I told you that the mechanical inspection is not grounds for renegotiation!"  And I was like, "First of all, that's your PREFERENCE (that the mechanical inspection is not grounds for renegotiation)" and also, "that doesn't change the fact that you are in contravention of the legislation and regulations governing the practice and behavior of registered dealers in Ontario" and tore a strip out of him.  I swear, I nearly went into labour I was so blood-boilingly mad.  Now it's about the principle of the matter!  I told him that our options still stand and to give me a response by end of day.  He opted not to renegotiate, so we didn't have the car.

It was a pisser because we thought we were done, but then I realized I didn't WANT to do business with such a shadesball.  On Saturday we drove to this other Honda dealership in Scarborough - it was HUGE!  The buying experience was much nicer - our salesperson was much more transparent, was very calm, no attempt to upsell us, they have a shuttle service if you drop off your car for servicing, a tuck shop, etc.  Unfortunately, we were too far away from the price. But we did come away learning what a proper worksheet is supposed to look like.  No surprises there.  Then we went to a Toyota dealership but the model of the Sienna we saw is basically a hunk of junk - no features.  Then I sent the Dotytron to check out this one model that had just come into a dealership close to us...we came close to making the deal but then they wanted $600 more and I put my foot down just as the Dotytron was about to sign the papers.  It was stressful and I'm sure pregnancy hormones had a lot to do with me balking.  The Big Yam was frustrated with us being in car mode all day and was whining and crying like a mother effer, the guy we had coming over to quote us on a deck was 2 hours late, I was trying to make a decision about a car over the phone with the Dotytron and trying to get dinner on the table and the dinner wasn't working out - it resulted in a lot of yelling and the Dotytron coming home being super-frustrated and angry at all the wasted time.  It was a bad scene.

Then that night I felt so guilty about being so short with the Big Yam that I spent a good hour sobbing in a giant t-shirt on the couch about how "he's gonna hate me!" and what a bad mum I was.  It was rough.  Everyone has those days.  Everyone.  But when you're having one of "those days" as a parent, it's doubly bad because you feel guilty for messing up one of your only free days (a weekend!) with someone who doesn't get why you're stressed out and tense and is feeding off your energy and reacting and wanting attention that you can't give them.  It was bad and I felt like a terrible parent.  I just felt so guilty for wasting a day.

There's nothing you can do though.  You can't quit this job, so you have your fat, pregnant, hormonal, guilt-ridden cry, eat a billion slices of the cheesecake tart pictured above, fall asleep in a weepy mess watching Veronica Mars on DVD, and then dust yourself off and try again the next day.


The next day was much better.

We had eggs benedict for breakfast and then the Dotytron "treated" me with a morning doing what I like best: checking stuff off the to-do list and doing chores - in this case, it was all about satisfying my nesting impulses and getting the Big Yam's big boy room in order (putting up shelves, putting my FLOR carpet tile design together, tidying, etc.)  It's looking pretty hyphy in there!  I kind of want to swap rooms with him.  Our room is pretty nice too, but his room is amazing right now.  We're missing a light fixture, some accessories, and a print or two, but other than that, it's pretty much done.  I'm in love with it.  The color palette and everything is very Scandinavian modern.  It gets beautiful light and is airy and cozy at the same time.  Also,  I just want to take a minute and big up the $20 roller shades I got from Sears (custom cut to order, yo!)  They're slick!  AND ONLY TWENTY DOLLARS.  I can taste the savings!!!

Then we went to T & T and spent way too much on random stuff.  T&T is like our Shopper's Drug Mart or Costco - no matter what, there's no way we get out of there without spending at least $60, when all we went in for was like, some shrimp.  It's impossible.  For the record: Shopper's Drug Mart and Costco are also our Shopper's Drug Mart and Costco.

Then we came home and the Big Yam napped and I napped a bit and we had some down time watching TV and then the Dotytron made me my big Mother's Day dinner.  Basically, for the entire pregnancy, I've been craving fettucine alfredo.  Like mad.  Years ago, the Dotytron bought me one of those hand-crank pasta making machines that I was an ingrate and never used.  So he vowed to make me fettucine alfredo with HOMEMADE pasta for Mother's Day.  It was a running joke all week.  We even have high-end Italian imported tagliatelle that I was trying to push him on but he was insistent.

He and the Big Yam made the pasta dough and kneaded it.  There was an unfortunate incident where a breach in the well of flour resulted in egg on the floor and the Dotytron was a total neurotic stressball the whole time making dinner and was super into setting the timer to make sure the dough was kneaded for exactly 3 minutes, but this was the end result:

!!!!!

It was basically the cutest thing ever.  Most importantly, it tasted delicious, and I believe this will herald a whole new chapter in homemade raviolis and pastas at Casa Dotytron-Lagerfeld.  It was the best Mother's Day, ever.  The Dotytron done mothered me good.

He has requested for Father's Day that he be left alone.  LOL!  I can do that.  His Father's Day is basically going to consist of eating Asian food (dim sum, Congee Queen) and us staying out of his hair for a good chunk of the day.  

I can't believe I forgot to post a photo of this meal above.  I made us braised shortribs in an Asian influenced sauce of beer, garlic, ginger, and rice vinegar.  It was finished with some hoisin and we had it with soft polenta and it was sooooo freakin' good.

I've posted that cheesecake tart recipe below because it is so delicious.  I've been craving something akin to that Jell-O cheesecake mix thing - like what you used to be able to get at old style cafeteria-type restaurants, usually covered in a goopy blueberry sauce.  This was PERFECT.  So tasty.  We've basically eaten a whole tart in 2-slice-each increments in 3 days.

Fin.

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Cheesecake Tart

makes one 9" tart, courtesy of Martha Stewart

Crust:

3 1/2 oz. graham crackers (about 6 - 2.5" x 5" each)

1/3 c. whole blanched almonds

1/4 c. sugar (I might reduce this next time to 2 T)

4 T. unsalted butter, melted

pinch of salt

Filling:

2 8ounce packages of cream cheese

1/2 c. sugar

1/2 c. sour cream

1 large egg

pinch of salt

- preheat oven to 350F

- in a food processor, process almonds, sugar, and graham crackers until finely ground.  Add melted butter and process until moist clumps form.

- press the crust on the bottom and up the sides of a 9" tart pan with a removable bottom.  Set aside to chill in the refrigerator.

- rinse out the food processor bowl and process the cream cheese, sour cream, sugar, and egg until smooth. Pour into crust.

- bake for about 25-35 minutes or until the filling is just set.  Transfer to a rack and cool completely before storing in the fridge.  Unmold from pan before serving.

I served this with a mixed berry compote that I threw together - some berries, a bit of sugar, some lemon juice, cooked together until bubbling and then some raw berries folded in off the heat.

Mothering Day

Ugh. What a bad way to end off a weekend.  The Big Yam was sick with a high fever and yesterday, on Mother's Day, I basically acted like a jerk to him and was in a horrible mood that resulted in tears and shouting (both him and me) and a flummoxed Dotytron.  I just wasn't INTO it, you know?  I didn't want to hang with my mum (sorry mum, nothing personal) and when we went to have dim sum the Big Yam started acting up and I was being judged by another stranger mom there and I was embarrassed and frustrated and angry.


Note to self: though I have been guilty of this in the past, I will absolutely try my best from here on in to refrain from judging the practices of other parents I know.  Well, actually, I tend not to judge my friends or acquaintances, I judge strangers.  But it behooves me to remember that when I see a kid having a meltdown, it's a "there but for the grace of some higher power, go I" moment and I'm only seeing a very small portion of that person's day.  Who knows what's going on in their lives?  They could have a feverish bambino who is just tired of sitting in a high chair (as was the case for me.)


And then we had dinner at Momma D's house, made by Ehmdo, and it was lovely and all, but at the end of it - I just wanted to have a day with MY family.  I wanted the Dotytron to have a chance to make me breakfast and for us to have a leisurely morning of hanging out and tooling around, instead of trucking ourselves from this place to that place and feeling like my precious, precious Sunday was galloping away from me when I was already over-tired from snuggling with the Big Yam when he woke up at 1am feverish and miserable.


So basically I feel guilty because a) I was a jerk to my kid when he was sick and basically just needed me to be nice to him instead of being a dragon mama; and b) I should be grateful that I have my mum and the Dotytron's mum around still to be with instead of being selfish and resenting the lack of just Lagerfeld-Dotytron family time.    


I'm a horrible person.

 

We had a nice Saturday, though.  Saturday was really, really lovely actually, veering very close to an almost-perfect day.  We slept in a bit and then loaded everyone up and took a nice, long walk around the neighbourhood, checking out the heaps and heaps of yard sales that were happening.  We stopped at Hastings Snack Bar (since 1963!) which is a lunch counter from a by-gone era.  Worn vinyl-topped stools, chipped Formica counter, two toasters that were old enough to be fire hazards but not so old to be charmingly retro, one lone patron lazily paging through the Toronto Sun and an old (!) Chinese (!) man frying up the orders.  I got us a bacon'n'egg sandwich - priced at $3.50, thinking it was a safe bet.  Imagine my complete pleasure when I opened up the wax paper and saw that it's a DOUBLE DECKER!  Really basic: just white Wonderbread toast, a mess of hormone-and-nitrite-laden crispy bacon, over easy egg - but so, so satisfying.  Then we chased these with almond croissants from JPChallet, which I love, because the almond flavour is really subtle and natural.  They also leave the skins on the almonds when they make their almond paste for the filling, which gives everything a really nice, nutty flavour.


It was such a lovely way to spend the morning!  No big agenda - just walking and strolling and poking around other people's junk looking for treasure.  I made out a like a bandit - a big bag of duplo for $1.50 and a big box of assorted milk glass (including a Hoosier bud vase!) for $10.00.

The Big Yam and his buddy, the Norseman, watching us play softball.

Then we had softball practice and I experienced the particular pleasure once again of feeling the resounding crack of aluminum bat against softball (I have no idea what softballs are made of).  We then had Dr. Rei and Hanbo over for tacos (tongue tacos and chorizo & potato tacos) and Settlers.  I also made tres leches cake.  Settlers was boss (because I won).

I'm going to get over my guilt by being a better parent this week.  That's my goal.


I read this awful blog post from this mum who had her baby girl die from this rare liver disease which had me crying at my desk last week.  The thing the mum kept saying was how this made her realize how those little things (dishes piling up in the sink, a cranky toddler) just don't matter and how she wishes she had rejoiced in those moments more.  I think it's the nature of life to be caught up in small things because we can't conceptualize the big picture, but there is a point to what she was saying.  So while I continue to find it hard to navigate my sense of mortality (everyone's) with balancing life and being a good, productive person (ie. the logical extension of the reality-of-the-finite-nature-of-life is that you never discipline your kids? Or you never clean?), I think it's worthwhile for me to get some perspective on my insane drive to accomplish tasks.  I need to sit more and luxuriate in my time with my kid.  I need to realize he's not going to want to be carried by me forever (or even for much longer) and that I should take a moment to appreciate each and every second of his arms wrapped tight around my neck and the weight of his head on my shoulder.


So that's what I'm going to do.  I'll report back in a year.


For those of you who weren't aware, Maurice Sendak passed away last week.  Here is a quote of his on death:


“I have nothing now but praise for my life. I’m not unhappy. I cry a lot because I miss people. They die and I can’t stop them. They leave me and I love them more. … What I dread is the isolation. … There are so many beautiful things in the world which I will have to leave when I die, but I’m ready, I’m ready, I’m ready.”


Fin.

Mater Familias

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Me: "I'd go up to 5"

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

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

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

What is wrong with me, indeed?

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

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

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

Happy Mother's Day everyone!

Fin.