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.

Things That Have Made Me Laugh, Lately.

NEW BLOGGING SCHEDULE SAY WHAT WHAT WHAT.

The Big Yam saying, "If you put a bag that says 'popcorn' in the microwave, you get magic."

The Dotytron threatening to take all the gimmicky board books away from the Wonder Twins, (gimmicks are stuff like, lift-the-flaps, really simple, non-narrative driven books) because they're too "indulgent" and "hedonistic" (!)  At one point, he pointed over at Quincess and said, "See!  Look at how gratuitous and hedonistic this is!" - cut to this scene:

Yup. So indulgent.

The Big Yam saying, "Yowza" while watching Jurassic World.  Apparently Jurassic Park franchise movies turn him into a member of Our Gang (you'll remember how he said "Goll-lee" watching the first film.)  When the Jurassic Park theme came on during the new film, ever so faintly, he said, "They have my favorite song!  How did they know it's my favorite song?" 

The Big Yam asking the other kids from the neighbourhood during our camping trip, "DOES ANYONE LIKE JOHN WILLIAMS???"

The Big Yam explaining the birds and the bees to me on the way to the grocery store: "If a woman who is a girl wants to be a mummy, she has to find a boy, tell him her name, and have birth."  [Since I straight-up never refer to mysel as "mummy" I at first he was talking about a preserved human.]

We went camping a couple of weekends ago (more on that later), and Lindsay learned a new skill - climbing out of his crib.  This lead to our return Sunday night's sleep being pretty brutal.  We were up and down all night picking him up, putting him back in the crib and telling him: "It's bedtime.  Lindsay sleeps here." Last night, as I was putting him to bed, I put a few layers of thick blankets on the ground so that if he fell, he wouldn't get hurt.  I checked in on the twins later and walked into the room to find Lindsay lying face down, head turned away from the door, one arm up over his head.  As I opened the door, he said, (without turning his head): "sleep here?"  It was so slovenly it was gold.  I was like, fine, whatever buddy...if you want to sleep on the floor you can until we sort out converting the crib to a toddler bed. 

This video of the kids slow-motion running towards some giant bubbles:

Slo-mo video in your pocket is the best thing to happen to life.  I can't wait to get it when I upgrade my phone in T-minus 8 years.

Camping, camping, camping.  Is it a surprise to anyone that I took to camping like a fiend?  We did a big car camp with our neighbours (five families - 24 people total) to the Warsaw Caves conservation area.  One of the main pros of car camping is that you can be as hedonistic (not in the Quincess quietly reading himself a book sense, in the "you can bring as much s**t as your car can take" sense) as you like.  Space and weight aren't an issue.  So we had blowup mattresses and I brought my cast-iron pan and I bought us a giant, 8 person tent which is about the same size as our living room in Lil' Ugmo, and we ate like kings.

It was a really nice long weekend.  The site was large so we weren't on top of each other, the fire pit was huge.  The good thing about our street crew is that the kids know each other so well that they can all entertain themselves and the adults can chill.  The other good thing is that we're all so used to being around each other's kids that we are all at ease with parenting (read: disciplining) each other's children.  We see each other's kids alot, in a "home from work, bra off" kind of setting, which means that a lot of the social barriers and "fear of imposing" have long gone out the window.  When you're outside after dinner as much as my street is, you rapidly get to the point where people are getting testy with their spouses and screaming at their kids with impunity.  It's easy for me to ask one of my neighbours to take the Big Yam to brush his teeth and not worry that they're going to be put out or worry about not taking his s**t.  We're also all used to monitoring a herd of small children, so whereas some of my friends are still in their "entirely focused on my one child" phase, and adding another kid into the mix would be adding to their plate unduly, with the neighbours it's effortless.

Like cottaging, camping is an extreme form of grown-up sleepovers.  Once the kids had FINALLY gone to bed we could sit around the fire and chat.  I mean, it would have been EVEN BETTER with some of my real homies.  Don't get me wrong, I'm relatively unfiltered around the neighbs but it's still gonna be different than hanging with people who've known me for 20 years.  I came home fired up with plans to do it again with our Markham crew, or maybe the Roomie et al.  This inaugural trip was all it took to open the floodgates.  I'm up for a canoe-in site.  I up for driving to Kilarney to see Ontario in all its wild, untamed, pump-up-the-volume glory.

Do I think I'm going to become one of those gear-heads who goes on a epic portages deep into the bush and dehydrates food?  Uh, no.  I don't ever want to be so constrained with having to "pack light" that I don't get to eat deliciousness and I'm eating astronaut pouches for dinner.  Part of the whole fun is setting up camp, and then cooking, because really, what else is there to do?  Food tastes better when you're outside.  We were lucky in that we had no rain...I can imagine that it sucks pretty hard when it rains the whole time, but it's still something you'll remember and that brings a family together.

So yeah, I went away a camping neophyte and came back a Griswold.

Scenes like this certainly helped:

Look, I like nature.  That's a legacy from my deadbeat dad (remember how I have a DAD?!  WHO HAS NEVER MET HIS TWIN GRANDSONS BECAUSE HE'S A GIANT REPRESSED WEIRDO PSYCHO WHO CHOSE HIS WIFE OVER HIS OWN BLOOD?!).  My dad taught me how to fish, and took us cottaging, and took us to cottage resorts when I was a kid.  I have really good memories of those experiences with my sister and Bruce Wayne.  Anyway, I like nature.  I'm a Romantic at heart - I dig my sublime, okay?

We took the kids to Bluffer's beach last Friday.  A little piece of urban paradise, a 15 minute drive from my house, deep in Scarborough.  Fine sand framed by towering rugged cliffs and warm, idyllic lake Ontario water rock-free, and knee high for a good 30 feet out.  We didn't go prepared but you better believe we will next time - set up our umbrella and laze the day away while the kids bank their sand-drenched sun sleep.  I dumped a metric tonne of sand out of water shoes on my way home (solo!  Imagine packing up 3 little ones from the beach, solo - the Dotytron broke off and went to school to set up for the year ahead), and it was one of those drives where I was frantically looking in the rearview mirror and entreating the Wonder Twins to stay with me, please please please, just stay awake and answer my inane questions about what noises animals make, until we get home so that you can serve your full nap in your own beds.

We also went on a hike through the Don Valley on Saturday, post-Evergreen Brickworks Farmers' Market.  All this was in lieu of visiting our friends S & P.  We went to our local farmer's market on Sunday, smoked 3 racks of ribs and had a feast with our friends B & G, and had a Micelli Monday on Saturday, so it was still a full, active weekend, but one where there were lulls during nap time when I could lie on my own couch and read a book and drift in and out of sleep to the sound of cicadas in the trees and the smoke from my neighbour's brush-burning fire drifting in.  It was perfect really.  I can't remember when we've had that kind of weekend in town...not since early July?

That lazy, drifty, frowsy kind of  Sunday is the exact opposite of my day today - when I took the kids to the CNE and there but for the grace of the neighbours who came with me, would probably have ended up buried under the sand sculpture, my face frozen in mid-disciplinarian "that crazy mom" shouting mode.  I made it out, but just barely.  CNE with kids is the perfect example of Einstein's theory of relativity.  TIME SLOWS DOWN THERE, AND THERE'S NO WAY YOU CAN TELL ME DIFFERENT.  I lived about 10 lifetimes today.

My work hosted a "kids day" which was an employee engagement initiative spearheaded by my lovely colleague.  I would prefer my employee engagement in the form of a respectful, not-stifling work culture fostered by senior management, but maybe that's not always possible?  Heh.  The Dotytron brought the kids and it was pretty stressful because I have such a low tolerance for unacceptable behaviour and of course the kids were going buck.  Anyway, we ended up at A3 Napoli for dinner - which is a Naples-influenced street food spot brought to you by two of my Toronto favorites: Porchetta and Co and Pizzeria Libretto.  I thought it was going to be a gong show - Yelp said unequivocally "good for kids: NO" and the dining space was all those super-high bar-height tables that always have me inelegantly clambering stools like a bullrider being helped aboard an especially ungainly bull.  However!  We got there and they had two extra-tall high chairs and some colouring and the food was delicious.  We had a pizza, their gran fritto misto (which is a mixed bag of stuff from the fryer, served with pesto, mayo, and marinara).  Our fritto consisted of: fried zucchini (bliss!), fried scallions (like verdant onion rings!), fried meatballs (bogarted by Quincess!), fried arancini (oozing with cheese inside that was more cream than cheese!), calamari (as you would expect!), and frittatini (their version of macaroni and cheese, fried! Think: macaroni carbonara - then fried !!!!!).  We also had their batt, which is half a pizza fritta (touted as for one, but if you're ordering other stuff, totally enough food), which made me go in paroxysms of ecstasy.  Imagine if you will, the most perfectly thin-crisped fried, ungreasy dough edge, giving way to a Naples style pizza chew, the perfect bread-to-filling ratio giving way to the most creamy, unctuous, pure tasting essence of dairy (it's stuffed with buffalo ricotta, provola [I'm assuming provolone?] and cicciola [I had to look it up - pressed cakes of fatty pork.  OH YES].  The service was quick, they had decent beers on tap, and feeding our family of five cost about $60, which all combines to a win for me.

We went to visit my sister a few weekends ago and had a good time, (Dotytron found a bottle of rarer bourbon, we went to an indoor trampoline place, we avoided buying things because of our s**ty dollar, I taught my niece how to style her hair a la 50s rockabilly), and on our last day we hit the local veterans' food truck rodeo fundraiser thingy (they were raffling guns!).  Our crew is mostly pictured above.  As we were walking back to the car, I turned to the Dotytron, who had Quincess in his arms and the Big Yam by his side, "That was fun, do you want me to drive home?" at which point he turned to answer me, and then said, "UMMMM...WHERE'S LINDSAY?!????!!!"  S**t sons, I almost home-aloned my kid, in some village in New York State!  Thankfully the rodeo was tiny and I found the little miscreant standing under an adjacent tent to where we had been eating, shaking an open water bottle and cackling with glee.  I got lucky.  

The other night I made Marc Vetri's pappardelle with corn crema and charred scallions and it was deeeelicious.  Like the best creamed corn you've ever had.  I doubled the corn in the recipe because my kids are cornholios.  I served it with my go-to late summer salad of baby arugula, grilled peaches, and fried haloumi.  

I made Smitten Kitchen's sesame noodles (with Chinese thick wheat noodles) and served it with seared salmon (which my kids gobble up) and smashed cucumbers with tahini dressing.  Honestly, smashed cucumbers are all the rage, but I didn't think the smashing really did anything here, other than add time and effort.  

Back to school means that there's more Scarborough goodness back in my life.  Last week's takeout night was Babu.  Mutton rolls are my life.  

I made Smitten's hazlenut crumb plum tart for our dinner with B & G.  I doubled the hazlenuts because I love toasted hazlenuts, but should have upped the flour accordingly to absorb the extra fat.  My crust edges were crisp but the bottom got soggy from being too buttery (didn't know there was such a thing!).  I also would omit the custard next time and just throw in lightly sweetened plums, and perhaps more of them with a bit of something to bind the juices.  The custard got lost and the plums (I used Italian prune plums) didn't shine through against the toasty nutty strength of the hazlenuts.  I would make this again, but would tinker with it.  Hazlenuts should go in all crisps and crumbs though, as far as I'm concerned.  

Finally, the Big Yam has been OBSESSED with the concept of Taco Tuesday, so I've been trying to make that happen for him because it makes him so happy.  We had a taco salad tonight - lettuce, cabbage, leftover slaw topped with taco beef and black beans, guac, pickled onions, shredded cheddar (this is kind of a key component), sliced olives, sour cream, and salsa with some crunched up tostadas for added texture.  A very satisfying dinner salad.

Fin.

Deoxyribonucleic Acid

As a birthday present to the twins, and to ourselves, we went out and bought a DNA test for the Wonder Twins.  Almost everyone who met them didn’t believe that they were “identical” twins (in twin talk, the technical term we were given for our guys was “monochorionic [subset of monozygotic – one egg – means they share a placenta] diamniotic [each in their own amniotic sac]).  They came out looking very, very different (refresher below), with Lindsay always kind of looking like a party turtle and the Quincess always looking like a sweet, introspective little elven scholar.   So we threw down for a DNA test, swabbed their cheeks, mailed it off, and the results are: 1,678,126,819:1 that they are identical twins, and the probability that they are monozygotic came back at 99.999999%.

CRAZY.  That means if one of them committed a crime they could pin it on the other one.   AND NO ONE WOULD BE THE WISER. 

 Pensive, and tired at their brother's spring concert, where the music teacher likes to do the annoying thing of using the kindergarten kids as pawns to keep the parents there for the whole show.  It's the worst.

The other night, in bed the Dotytron asked me which one of our kids was the least like us.  Whenever we do this exercise, we always think about our answer, then simultaneously blurt it out on the count of 3.  For some reason, this practice has facilitated decision-making in our household for years and years.  When you’ve been together as long as the Dotytron and I have, and your pheromones are all mixed up, funny things happen where you start singing a song out loud at random and the other person had just been singing the previous line, IN THEIR HEAD.  It’s probably a mix of biology and culture – we’re moving in the same milieu and that has to have an affect the way our synapses fire and the degree of overlap in our frames of reference.  Anyway, on the count of 3, we both blurted, “Lindsay.” 

Afterwards, I felt SO BAD.  This DNA testing exercise taught me that biology and genetics are just one part of the equation.  Maybe they would have looked identical if Lindsay hadn’t been fatter or if Lindsay hadn’t been sitting on Quincess in my womb or if Quincess didn’t have the stiff neck (torticollis) and the head flattening and the small ear.  There were so many environmental factors that changed the way their shared DNA expressed themselves in physical traits, why wouldn’t it be the same for other traits?  Like their personalities?  From the day they were born we’ve been boxing them into little categories – Quincess is the quiet, cerebral one, Lindsay is the boisterous, kinetic one, and if you’re painting with a spray gun then yeah, maybe that’s all true, but then you create this world of comments and expectations and immerse them in it and maybe they start to become what you say they are, not because they were like that intrinsically, but in the same way those Japanese cube watermelons grow into the box they were put into.

I don’t want to do that to my kids.  But is it inevitable?  In the same way that living, loving, and being with the Dotytron for almost 15 years has made us into this freaky mind-melding machine?  Maybe that’s just what it means to be in a unit – regardless of the relationship.  You start a new office, you take on some of the attributes of the work culture there.  You’re in a marriage, you start to absorb the other person.  You make a family, and the electrons that are moving around each person’s atomic core, their intrinsic, unchanging and unchangeable selves get swapped with everyone else’s electrons and that’s what holds the structure of your family in place – these atomic bonds (grade 11 chemistry is really reaching here, it’s been a while).  Maybe that’s what happens.  Maybe that’s inevitable.  Maybe.  I just want my kids to be able to grow into whatever shaped watermelon they want to (within reason). 

An early birthday celebration for the Wonder Twins

Family bonds came to the fore this past weekend.  We went down to Geneseo and my mom came down and so did my brother, Bruce Wayne.  It had been a while since we’d all been there at the same time and it was so fun.  We were only missing Big D and my littlest brother.  I love my family. 

 

My mum. "STEEEEEE-RIKE!"

The idea was to spend the weekend in Geneseo betting on ponies at the Belmont Stakes (which we did last year on the babies’ birthday, and won 10-1 odds on our winning bet) and hopefully pad their RESPs like we did last year.  Well, last year we bet against the favoured horse and we did the same this year, although we shouldn’t have, given that the odds were favoring American Pharoah 3:2.  Anyway, we tried to get all fancy this year and ended up losing so we’re going to regroup, and next year, just place a simple bet on the horses who have names that we like. 

We also celebrated the Wonder Twins’ actual birthday down there, and ate a lot, and hung out a lot, and I picked up the best muumuu of life that I bought off of Etsy that has upped my happiness quotient by about a million.  This mission also included us delivering our queen size memory foam mattress to my sister, which was no small feat and involved me going into beast mode, wrestling the mattress out of our bedroom at home, down the stairs to the main floor, and then holding  it in place in the most ungainly fashion while we wrapped it in duct tape.  Then we smushed it into the trunk of the van.  It was pretty impressive, if I do say so myself.  Never underestimate what I’m capable of in beast mode.

Brothers in batik

The Wonder Twins at 2.  SO MANY WORDS.  Lindsay picks up a new word or five a day, seemingly.  He loves our neighbour, Grace and her daughter, Evelyn, whom he calls Ev’lee in the sweetest voice.  When he goes outside he asks, “Gayce?” and then when he sees her he goes running over with his bow-legged leprechaun run and gives her a giant hug.  It’s pretty sweet.  We hear a lot of “self!” and he’s very independent and wants to try doing new things and loves pretending to skip and jump rope.  He finds Quincess pretty funny.

 

Quincess Harry Potter

Quincess isn’t picking up words as rapidly as Lindsay (or he might be, but doesn’t like saying them aloud), but he is full of jokes, one of which consists of saying: “hot dooooooog” whenever I ask aloud what we should eat for dinner and then cracking up.  He’s a scrawny little muscleman and loves to hang off of things and be a pretend gymnast.  He generally practices safety and asks for “hand” when he goes down the stairs.  His little voice is the so sweet and dear and when he does something funny he has a way of darting his eyes from side to side rapidly to gauge the audience reaction that’s so funny.  He’s a little imp in every respect. 

The two are starting to become more aware of each other and it’s the most heart-warming thing listening to them giggle and chatter and screech when they’re about to go down for a nap/bed.  In the pic above, you can see how charmed Lindsay is by Quincess and vice versa.  Lindsay does bully Quincess a bit but Quincess gives back what he gets almost as often.   Quincess loves eating sweets and basically smashes cake into his face as fast as he can, whereas Lindsay shows great enthusiasm for cake, shouting, “CAEK!?!!?!  CAEK!!!” whenever he sees one, but being highly tentative and not very interested in eating it.

At this age, they’re both better eaters than the Big Yam was, probably because their diet is strictly controlled by me.  They love rice and pasta of all varieties. 

This summer, barely started as it is, has been a good one so far.  We went with our neighbours to Doors Open Toronto and checked out a subway repair yard and best of all, the RC Harris Water Filtration plant, which is a beautiful art deco building that was featured prominently in Michael Ondaatje’s In the Skin of the Lion.  Public infrastructure should always be so beautiful. 

Neighbours and buds since birth

 We took JJ and S’s kids out with the Big Yam for a night out to give their parents a break.  We got tickets to a U of T astronomy “planetarium” talk and ate a dinner of hot dogs and French fries and then got ice cream from Sweet Olenka’s in Kensington market.  Just look at this adorable crew:  

We’ve been outside playing almost every night the weather permits.  The kids are knocking on each other’s door, lollipops and freezies are distributed, whatever the reigning street craze (currently jumping rope and double dutch) has to be explored with parents AND kids joining in.  Last night we got most of the kids going in some whiffle ball and because I find making giant bubbles one of the most relaxing experiences (it’s my version of tai chi), we had that going as well:

We are going on a long weekend camping trip with our neighbours.  I know, I know.  It sounds like hell, but I think the kids will enjoy it so much it’s hard to say no.  Plus, it’s a good chance for us to practice camping and try it on for size in a low stakes way before we invest in full-on portage-style outdoorsing. 

Last week we had our friend Pingy in town and so we got to have dinner with her and the Roomie and the Roomie’s new baby twice in a week.  There were long, long group therapy sessions about intensive mothering and domestic distribution of labour and how the Roomie and I are controlling freaks (what L’Armi calls “faux easygoing”) when it comes to anything in the domestic sphere and division of labour. 

This past spring was often…tense between me and the Dotytron.  The Dotytron thinks that I finally reached my breaking point or the point at which the amount of things on my plate finally overwhelmed my superhuman coping/organizational/project management capacity.  A Master’s degree on mat leave?  No problem.  Massive kitchen and bathroom reno with 3 kids?  I got this.  Massive reno, 3 kids, financial constraints, and a new, challenging job?  THAT DOES IT.  I had nothing left in me to give, no more softness or patience and it showed.  I didn’t want to have conversations – I was in full military delegation mode and my expectations were high and tolerance for deviation from my expectations nonexistent. 

Anyway, now that the renos are mostly done, we’ve bought a replacement Captain Save-A-Ho (who is LITERALLY a replacement Captain – we bought the same car, but like, 5 years younger [still minimum 8 years old though] and a manual version), and summer and its languid promise of beach days, cottage vacays, and Micelli Mondays, I’m much more relaxed (or, as relaxed as I get) with only two major stressors on my plate (new job – to be discussed in the future, and the kids…always the kids).

While visiting my sister I was my niece’s “running buddy” on a 5km race she did.  I had fully intended on getting some practice runs in beforehand, but it didn’t happen.  I’m proud to say that I finished the 5km (letting my niece set the pace) and didn’t feel the need to stop, or walk, and could have gone faster and made better time (but I’m not a jerk – this was about my niece, not me) after almost a full year of no running.  My working theory is that I because I generally handle stress well, my body is pretty conditioned to be in flight or fight mode so my ticker is either in a) good shape or b) in brutal shape from unnecessary wear.  I’m proud of my niece for finishing a 5km (something I didn’t do until I was in my early 30s) and it inspired me to get my butt in gear and start running again, if only so that I can justify to My Fitness Pal all the pies I plan on making/eating this summer.

I’ve been slacking on the food pics lately.  Don’t think this means I will EVER STOP POSTING FOOD PICS.  I’ve been food pic strong for forever!  OG food pic proponent! 

Seized soft shell crab season by the..shell?  These are fried, and put on olive oil toast with old bay mayonnaise, lettuce, tomato, bacon, and sliced tomatoes with boursin and Hawaiian black pepper

Roasted asparagus, proscuito, poached eggs and hollandaise toast

Black bean burgers with red pepper feta dip

We made ravioli one night - ricotta pea in a pancetta sauce - time consuming and semi-worth it

Papardelle with scape pesto, a fried egg, and pine nuts.  

One of my favorite Hawaiian meals: moco loco.  Spam, on white rice, topped with a fried egg and canned gravy.  Delicious.

Me, and my muumuu, and my favorite wiener dog smyzeing his eyes out

Fin.

Never Sorry

I went to see Ai Weiwei last weekend with some of the ladies on my street.  We had watched the documentary, Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry a while back and he's the current international darling of the contemporary art world.

To be honest, I wasn't a fan of the documentary - I thought it was weirdly fawning and it certainly didn't make you like Ai Weiwei.  He's a big cheater!  His real wife shows up for like, 2 minutes, or just long enough to basically say that they have a strong relationship (but in a weird way - this is before the revelation that he has a child with another woman comes out, so at the time as the viewer you're like, "well, that's a weird way of putting it, but okay, I guess?") and then you find out that he has a kid with another woman.  Ai Weiwei comes across like a bit of a breakcore child - like, someone who is kind of bratty and childish and ego-driven.  I get what he's doing and that China's government is corrupt, blah blah blah.  From the documentary, I thought the cleverest thing he was doing was "hiding in plain sight" as an artist - like using the tools of social media to effectively make himself so visible that he is beyond the reach of the Chinese authorities.  The film doesn't focus too much on his body of work and so I went into the exhibit not expecting much.

I was floored.  

The work is extraordinary.  It is evocative, accessible, and beautiful.  I get why he's such a successful contemporary artist.  There's nothing esoteric in the work - it's very easy to "read" and what it has to say about history, about the Cultural Revolution, about China, about unity, about nationhood, is incredible.  He has a piece where tonnes and tonnes of twisted rebar pulled from the aftermath of a devastating Shenzhen earthquake (where he alleges shoddy construction is responsible for the deaths of upwards of 5000 school children) was meticulously and laboriously straightened and then turned into an undulating sculpture.  He rescued old wood and uses Chinese techniques of wood joining to produce pieces that are modern, tactile, aesthetically pleasing, and speak to the effects of Mao's cultural revolution.

Moon chests - you can see all the phases of the moon as you walk between them.  One of my favorite pieces in the exhibit.

I loved it.  So maybe he is an enfant terrible (my mum called him "sensationalist") - the point is...he makes good art.  All that being said, you know what the documentary I want to see is?  I want to see something where they take apart the relationship between an artist's "helpers" and the artist.  Like, who REALLY comes up with the ideas?  I get that Ai Weiwei is obviously not going to physically put together all the work, but I have a sneaking suspicion that all the ideas don't come from him.  Like, I think that up and coming artists apprentice under him and probably shape pieces and are willing to forgo their name on the piece in exchange for access to some of Ai's connections.  It has to be that way, it's just not made explicit.  So, I bet you Ai is like, "I want to make something out of this old wood" but does he have a say in what the piece actually looks like in the end?  Do they show him iterations and he's like, "yes, yes, more like that, no, no, go to hell, dear god, no!"?  I'd love to see something that peels back the layers on that - I think it would be fascinating.

On the wall of the gift shop.  Super tacky, AGO!  C'mon!  Also: the gift shop is filled with terrible, Orientalist bullroar.  Not impressed.

After the exhibit the ladies and I went to Kinton Ramen.  It was good.  Not as good as my beloved Sansotei, though (what could be?)  I still have to try Santouka and then I will feel like my Toronto ramen comparative analysis will be complete.

Okay guys, yesterday, halmeoni (Korean grandma) came over and CLEANED MY FLOORS BY HAND. I have never felt happier/more guilty in my life.  She is AMAZING.  She came over and cleaned my kitchen, cleaned the kitchen floors, cleaned our hardwood, washed down our stairs, and went to town on our enclosed porch and everything is sparkling and I don't know what to do with myself!  She was like, "I'm not going to tidy, just dust" and I was like, practically prostrating myself before her, saying, "HALMEONI CAN DO WHATEVER HALMEONI WANTS!"  I don't know how I'm going to repay her.  My neighbour had told me that she likes folding laundry, so I had some baskets of laundry and tentatively suggested when she arrived that she might want to do that.  But halmeoni kind of looked at them sideways and never mentioned it and so I was like, "Halmeoni can do whatever halmeoni wants!"  LOL.  I want to repay her somehow, even though she has explicitly said that if I ever try to give her money she'll stop coming over.  I know she goes to church so maybe I can make a donation to her church?  Help me think of something, people!

I live on the best street.  My neighbour won tickets to a Thomas movie screening and said that her husband would take their daughter, and she'd give the extra set of tickets to the Dotytron and the Big Yam.  I was like, "Are you sure there aren't other Thomas-obsessed people in your life you could give the tickets to?" and she was like, "I think the Big Yam has earned this."  LOL!  Being obsessed with Thomas is his defining characteristic (and Totoro).  So they went to the theatre down town on Saturday morning.  I thought it was just a movie, but OH NO.  THOMAS WAS THERE. SO WAS SIR TOPHAM HAT.  They got crowns and there were all these train tables set up for the kids to play with and it was being filmed by Mattel apparently and they came home with swag bags with the DVD for the movie, a picture book, a train, a crown, and Thomas toothpaste (also: a "Thomas and Friends Yearbook" that was basically a Thomas the Bay Christmas catalog of Thomas gear that I promptly hid in the recycling bin).  It was so mint!  His first movie-going experience really set the bar high.

I took the babies to lunch at my neighbour's house yesterday.  Three of us have overlapping maternity leaves so we're going to try to do a weekly thing.  This week was kind of buckshot.  It has been visits every day so I think I need to dial back the maternity leave socializing.  It's just too hard to stay on top of life stuff if I go out every day.  On Tuesday I went on a 3 hour walk and it broke me.  I try to keep the Great Gazoo off the back of his head, so when I walk, I tend to wear him and push Prof. Gantok in the stroller.  I definitely gave myself some epic shin splints and back spasms after doing the death march.  I'm going to limit myself in the future.

Then, the funnest thing ever - SMckay came over to cut my hair and for a sleepover!  I love friend sleepovers!  I miss having a roomie.  I'm just meant to live with other people.  I like it so much.

Yesterday I kept the Big Yam at home with me.  We went to an indoor trampoline fantasy land that holds toddler-only times.  Ummm...BEST EIGHT DOLLARS OF MY LIFE.  It was amazing.  They have 4 or 5 different areas where the floors and sides are trampolines and the kids go buck.  The only reason I have time to blog today is because I got myself some guaranteed nap time out of it.  It was so cute.  I can't even tell you how much fun the Big Yam had.  It was all I could do not to join him - but to avoid the "popcorn effect" (their words...is that universal trampoline terminology?) they group people on the tramps by size, so only littles are allowed.  Parents and grown-ups have to stand on the walkways between the trampolines.

The babies wearing their Werner Herzog and Frank Zappa onesies.  So scary!  

We have hit a wondrous, wondrous milestone with the Wonder Twins - we have smiles!  And cooing!  Prof. Gantok especially, will happily lie on the back and squawk and air punch and spin his arms like a little spastic automaton after a feed.  The Great Gazoo likes to be held upright and mimics sticking out his tongue when you do it, often followed by a big, gappy, open mouthed smile that totally transforms his face.  Love it.  Love this age!

All three of my kids have killer, resolve-buckling pouts.  The roomie was holding The Great Gazoo one time and he was just lying in her arms, his lower lip protruding and she was like, "WHAT IS THAT FACE?!?"  Haha - if she was his mama there isn't anything he wouldn't get with that pout. Luckily, I'm made of stronger stuff.  She has tofu construction!

This week has been horrible for cooking, but here's what we've been eating, lately:

Breaded, pan-fried cod, homemade tartar sauce, kale salad

A Russian feast, courtesy of a Yummy Market run - perogies, salad Olivier (basically, a mayo-based potato salad with chunks of bologna), pickled herring on buttered rye, pickles, dilled beet salad, and Dotytron's special beer braised sausages with sauerkraut

I made a bourbon peach jam and have been obsessed with it slathered on everything.  I put a vanilla bean in and the bourbon gives the jam full-bodied floral, honeyed notes.  This is a farm breakfast of biscuits, jam, and hard boiled eggs.

Nicoise salad with seared salmon - loaded with vegetables from the CSA

The Big Yam is a big salmon fan, so we eat it alot for our seafood meals - salmon burgers with more tartar sauce

Grilled barbecue rubbed chicken, with my favorite grilled peach, halloumi, and baby arugula salad

This past Tuesday I made soupe au pistou, which is like French minestrone.  A pistou is a lighter take on pesto - pounded basil leaves with olive oil, garlic, and parmesan, but without nuts.  It really elevates the whole soup, which is loaded with vegetables and beans and zucchini.  To go along with it, I made us paninis with mortadella and robiola cheese, apparently a pretty classic combination.  Robiola is a soft cheese made with goat, sheep, and cow's milk.  Like a funky barnyard brie.  Combined with mortadella it is DIVINE.  I couldn't believe how long I've been living without this combination in my life.

When you look back, it appears as though I've been eating healthy, but what's not pictured is the 12 cookies I'm closing each night with.

Fin.