New Beginnings

I don't f**k with resolutions as a general rule, but I do want to write more this year, and this blog is as convenient a place as any to start, right?  24 posts last year??? Pathetic.  I will stay committed to the long form written word until my dying breaths.  You heard it here, first (and by that I mean, not for the first, nor last, time).

Like most of you, I've been busy. Everything has been happening on a maximal level. But I haven't stopped with the inputs and I haven't stopped with the heaving, churning mass of thoughts, reflections, half-cocked analysis, rapidly-to-be-renounced-opinions-made-on-the-fly and the like.  They're here and they need to be committed to the ether, lest in my dotage I forget (somehow!) what a half-formed lump of clay I was.

I'm here. I will write. I will record. It's going to happen.

This is my vow to you, my dear readership of...3? 4? Maaaaybe 5?

I hope this new year brings you fire and resolve and words/actions that will force their way out into the world.

For the record, I spent my NYE with my Dotytron, at an old skool jungle party in the basement of a local pizza place.  It was tiny and the sound wasn't loud and it was only marginally better than blasting tunes at home, but I saw a dude who looked like Anthony Kiedis reinvented as a circus ringleader and I got to yam a pound of wings at 2am and it only took me five minutes to drive home...so all told, it wasn't that bad.  Plus, more importantly, they were very tasteful about the countdown.  I hate me an extended countdown like few things on earth.  I can feel myself getting bored with all the turning and hugging and "Happy New Year"-ing strangers (I only f**k with extended hugging when it's people I know and love) and the public kissing.  I also hate how Auld Lang Syne has to go to such a dark place.

Recently, Dr. Rei had to talk me down from the ledge when I went to an Auld Lang Syne place too quickly.  I hate how f**king sad that song is, mang.  THERE'S NO REASON WHY IT SHOULD BE LIKE THAT.

Anyway, that was me.  Now I'm on "vacation" but our caregiver is away this week and we've been dealing with a rotating round of stomach bugs (just the kids so far, *knocks wood frantically*) so it's a wonder I'm even able to steal these 10 minutes to myself to pound this out.  I DID IT FOR YOU (read: me).  IT'S ALWAYS BEEN FOR YOU (read: me).

Fin.

Winding down 2014

As is seemingly the norm around here, I started drafting this post three weeks ago.  In that time, we've had Christmas, New Year, a Dotyron birthday, a Dotytron inking, a horrible anniversary marked, and now this, the Sunday afternoon before the return to thrumming, frenetic, "normal" life.  The babies are asleep, the Dotytron is napping, the Big Yam is serving out his weekend "quiet time" with relative calm in his room, playing with Lego, and I've taken a break from piecing the back of a quilt to update.

Quiet time and lazy Sundays are the stuff that parents-of-young babies dreams' are made of.  The idea that there will be a guaranteed two hour block of everyone engaged in their own individual, quiet, personal pursuits is the harbor that the Dotytron and I cling to when we're raking a tsunami of Duplo off our carpet for the 15th time in a day.  When every counter in our newly renovated kitchen is covered with last night's dinner tailings because we just weren't up for the last and final wave of cleaning after rousing ourselves from the daily 9pm "trying to find just the right thing to watch on Netflix, giving up, and passing out" ritual, and each child is clamoring for a different morning dairy product (cottage cheese! Yogurt! Smoothie!), the flashes of the Great Promise that is family weekend quiet time is what sustains us.  Two uninterrupted hours to work are a glorious, glorious thing.

Our two week holiday was as usual, about half holiday and half visits, eating, some stress, living.  We actually had our s**t pretty much together this year - so much so that I managed to bang out a quilt top and quilt back this break.  That's not nothing, folks.  We spent Christmas Eve and Christmas day with Momma D and Emdo.  We spent Boxing Day weekend with my family.  We had 4 (FOUR!) meals out (!!!!) and a very low-key NYE.

I'm telling you, man, I'm not buying a single thing for my kids ever again.  Especially not around the holidays.  It's insane!  Every year, we talk about "scaling back" and every year, present opening takes a minimum of 2 hours and by the end of it we're all pasty and clammy and shell-shocked from the whole ordeal.  The Big Yam has been consistently asking for a "skeleton" from Santa since about the end of Halloween (I think he got his holidays confused) and opened his present from Santa on Christmas Day and was such a giant nerd about how into it he was:

I love my nerdbomber kid, so much.  
Post present opening remark: "How did Santa know I like dead things?"

Pre-hairtcut photo shoot for grandparental units

Quincess Leia "cheese face"

Cousins shot - Lenny doing his "cheese" face like whoa

Lenny "cheese" face in detail

Classic Quincess - such a little daydream believer

The one year anniversary of Cousin Al's death happened over the break.  This coincided with Pixar's Up joining the regular rotation in our household which means that the Dotytron and I have had to sit through the opening montage which contains all of human life and love in one dialogue-less sucker punch to the gut (and tear ducts).  Lots of crying ensues.  Lots of tears shed into the Big Yam's head as we pull him into a wriggling, confused embrace and use him as a human handkerchief to sop up our tears.  We've found some solace recently when I showed Guillermo del Toro's new animated film, The Book of Life, which talks about the tradition of the Day of the Dead in Mexico, and how those departed loved ones of ours live a glorious, joy filled existence in the Land of the Remembered, so long as you continue to honour them and keep their memory alive.  I've said it before, but it is such a beautiful way of constructing a cosmology and taking back at least a little agency from the grip of sadness in the wake of a loved one's death.  It also mitigates the anger, too - at the capriciousness of fates, at the inevitability of our own mortality.

We celebrated the Dotytron's birthday with a Louis CK style "bang bang" (two different meals at two different restaurants).  We started at Kintori Yakitori with the seafood selection sampler and the yaktori (chicken) sampler, and added some grilled tongue and chicken knee cartilage, fried.  This place is owned and operated by the Guu crew and I dunno, man, those places just SPEAK to me.  There's something about it all - the vibe, the music, the hot Japanese cooks, the fact that the Asian to non-Asian ratio is about 80:1 - these are my people.  We hopped downstairs and hit up some shio ramen at Kinton Ramen after.  Technically, I know that it's not a true "bang bang" - I don't think it would fulfill the requirements - the meals aren't different enough and aren't like, "full" meals, but I did finish my entire bowl of ramen down to the last drop, as I decided that I wanted to join the "Kinton Bowler" club which requires you to eat insane amounts of ramen to get some throwaway prizes (30 bowls gets you a Kinton towel though!)

Other things that happened:

We left the babies with our caregiver and snuck off and ate a delicious medianoche-filled lunch at La Cubana one day.  I really like that place, teensy tiny tables, delicious habanero honey fried calamari and all.  I really hope that the normalization of Cuban-American relations doesn't change the cuisine.

I went to the AGO with the Big Yam and my friend Montreal I to check the Alex Colville exhibit.  The Big Yam was not a fan.  I was, but unfortunately, if you pay for a special exhibit, bringing a person the Big Yam's age to the AGO is not your friend.  You are working at cross-purposes.  He found the exhibit "boring," the paintings with the animals "scary," and I got a lot of "I want to go home."  He wanted to run around in the Henry Moore sculpture gallery, which is what we ended up doing.  

Mid-haircut, I had to tour a new electrician around our basement wearing this amazeballs shirt that Momma D got me for Xmas.  It would be an XL on Rita McNeil.  It is hilarious.  Oh, did I mention that half my hair was straightened and clipped up (only half?!)  

I hung out with this little bobblehead.  HOW CUTE IS THIS BABY?!?  Short answer: the cutest. 

We had the Roomie, and Montreal I, and L'Armi over one night and we were all in the kitchen cleaning up from dinner when L'Armi called disinterestedly from the living room, "Uh, we have a bit of a situation here."  So we all walked over and saw that the Quincess had smeared about half a tub of Vaseline over half his face.

I made this malted buttercream chocolate stump (it's supposed to be a buche de noel turned on its' side - or what Dr. Rei calls a "log of yule") courtesy of the Baked team.  Recipe is here.  Overall, the recipe was a bit fussy and indulgent (17 eggs!) for a decent yield.  You make a genoise and spread the buttercream on and roll it up.  I don't think I would make it in that form again.  Or maybe cut the recipe in half?  I always find genoise cakes kind of dry.  

My 2014 Xmas cookie plate (left to right, top to bottom): Tartine's salted chocolate rye cookies, classic chocolate chip, chocolate oatmeal, Smitten's buckeyes, Martha Stewart's gingerbread, malted chocolate chip, maple brown sugar, gingersnaps, Dutch vanilla almond sugar cookies.  I would re-do the Tartine ones.  The buckeyes are now standard, the gingerbread recipe produces a nice, cakey, soft gingerbread so that's our go-to now as well, as are the malted milk chocolate.  My gingersnaps always over-baked and got too crisp this year.  The Dutch sugar cookies were a bit bland and disappointing (I was supposed to be able to pipe the batter but it almost made two piping bags explode!), and the maple brown sugar ones were also too sweet.  

Our New Year's eve saw me lining up at Diana's seafood on the BUSIEST SEAFOOD DAY OF THE YEAR like a total idiot for oysters.  We also made some fresh pasta and then the Dotytron went out briefly for drinks with his friends while I snuggled in with the Big Yam and contentedly fell asleep at 9pm.  Good times.

Sunday supper was a return to normalcy (read: not cookies for dinner).  A bastardized Hungarian goulash (according to Tillers, my choice to omit the caraway is sacrilege), whole wheat spaetzle, and braised cabbage.  

I'm nearly finished a quilt!  Fastest turnaround time, ever.  Details to come, but suffice to say that on Sunday night, while the Dotytron and I puzzled through the amorphous and entirely implausible motivations of the sadistic multinational corporation pulling the strings in the Maze Runner movie, I enlisted his help with basting.  Which I will never do again as almost all his pins were stuck to the carpet and we had to re-do them anyway.  But also, look at my handsome progressive partner in his Zubaz!

Fin.

Happy New Year!

Was Christmas only a week ago?  It feels like ages.  We've had a humdinger of a holiday so far, and what's best - there's still 4 work-free days to go!  

There was a lot of upheaval leading up to Christmas - the Dotytron's sister's pet cat was in and out of emergency and we didn't know if she was going to come to the farm or not and there was a lot of re-jigging and constantly changing plans to make sure that we'd get to spend time with her over the holiday.  It all worked out in the end, and we made it to the farm, a day later, but still, enough for us to revel in the stillness and beauty of rural Ontario (despite the presence of 3 dogs, turkeys, a couple of sheep, and a murderous rooster).  

The Boobla on Christmas morning, after opening his present from us - the classic Fisher Price Popcorn Popper, which he loves.  He's also wearing the hat I knit for him.

Scenes from the Farm.  Farmer R got the Big Yam this camo fleece suit for his birthday, and he was wearing it at the farm.  That's him and Farmer R doing man stuff in the family room.  So cute!  I love that photo.

3 turkeys in a barn.  This is shortly before I almost got beat up by a rooster.  The Big Yam was standing up, just surveying the scene and this vicious, bullying rooster just up and charged at him.  The  Big Yam freaked out, started crying, the Dotytron picked him up, and I ran at the rooster, who retreated for about 2 seconds and then came at me.  I ran away with my arms in the air, screaming.  That guy was tough.

We came home to a Christmas miracle: snow!!!  So we unpacked the car and promptly borrowed our neighbour's sled for some Big Yam sledding.  So grateful that we have an awesome hill AT THE BOTTOM OF OUR STREET.  Yay Lil' Ugmo!

Christmas with my family was a hoot.  This is the only decent photo we got with all the cousins.

Because my family believes in age-appropriate play.  This is how we treat the younger generation.  We followed this up by playing Cards Against Humanity with the kids present.  Then we all took turns timing each other in how long it took for us to put together a Melissa and Doug puzzle, marketed for children aged 3.  EVERYONE was timed, down to the youngest kids up to my brother's girlfriends.  It was awesome, and very typical my family.

My sister got the Big Yam this t-shirt, which is obviously the best t-shirt of all time.

On our way back home, we stopped at Phoenix for breakfast.  This is a sign of how far the Dotytron has come in his Chinese appreciation.  He was ALL OVER the weird, HK-style cafe offerings.  So stoked about getting chicken teriyaki with fried eggs and condensed milk toast.  I had the spicy satay macaroni soup. It's surprisingly comforting.

This is the quilt I made for the roomie's baby T.  Finished just in the nick of time!  The pattern is a simple one that I made up, making use of colorful scraps I had on hand in my stash.  

This adorable baby is the adorablest.  But she looks tired because she isn't sleep-trained.  LOL!  The roomie is always like, "T just went down for a 20 minute nap" and the Dotytron was like, "That's not a nap.  She's just spreading out her night's sleep over the course of an entire day."  I keep threatening that we're going to kidnap her for 3 nights and return her to the Roomie and L'Armi sleep-trained but the Roomie won't hear of it.

We spent New Year's Eve with our Magnetewan cottage crew - minus Pingy.  We had finger foods and talked about the Idle No More movement and Indigenous rights in Canada.  We also talked about the arts and it was precisely the kind of conversations that I love.  I've known Montréal I and the Roomie since university and feel so grateful that we found each other.  So many nights spent talking deep into the night.  So many more of such nights in our future.  Feeling lucky to have them.  Our New Year's breakfast with them was: nduja scrambled eggs, bacon, the Dotytron's waffles, and rye toast.

Last night's dinner.  I've been craving red meat like mad lately.  

We sent the Big Yam into daycare today.  The Dotyron and I are going to see a movie at our local with some free vouchers we got from a botched Dark Knight Rises screening in the summer.  

Saw a bunch of movies over the break...will review tomorrow.

Fin.

Ringing in 2012

We spent about 5 days in Geneseo, hanging with my sis and Uncle Rico and the kids.  It was an absolutely lovely, relaxing time of eating delicious, vegetable-free, fatty foods, watching a tonne of movies, reading, knitting, and watching my niece and nephews be goons.  A few funny things happened.

One day, I saw this felt toy that I had gotten for my niece 3 Christmases ago, sitting in a corner, all forlorn.  I was harping on her about it, so Little Ze said that he would make a scene using the felt and then I would take a picture of it to preserve for all eternity.  Then, Miss Ramona said she wanted to do one too, so I came up with a plan that we would all vote on which scene we liked best (secret ballot).  Here is #1:

And #2:

To reiterate, I, a grown woman of 32 years, decided it would be a good idea to rank and judge two siblings "art works" through secret ballot.  This basically flies in the face of ALL contemporary educational research with its emphasis on differentiated learning, child self-esteem, etc.  


Needless to say, it was a disaster.  Everyone voted for #1 (Little Ze's) and when I realized that it might be 5-1 in favour of #1, I changed my vote (I was the one reading out the results) to #2 at the last minute so it wouldn't be such a wash.  Miss Ramona was NOT PLEASED.  To say the least.  She actually kind of lost her shiz.  There was much crying and moaning and angry accusations that, "LITTLE ZE'S ISN'T EVEN STRAIGHT!" and when we tried to console her by saying that it was all a subjective opinion, that two people voted for her, she let out a wail, "BUT ONE OF THEM WAS MEEEEEEEEE!"  LOL!!!  We all died laughing (secretly).  It was kind of the best.  It didn't help that I tried to introduce an "artist's statement" section and Little Ze's "explanation" was the most rambling, convoluted thing since like, Hegel.


We did some cooking one night - we had what we called "white trash" tapas the day after New Year's Eve - shrimp cocktail, wieners rolled in Pillsbury Crescent Rolls, artichoke dip, Mexican dip, baked brie with apricot preserves in puff pastry - it was one of my favorite kinds of meals:

There were also lots of opportunities to watch these two homeboys hang out - it's pretty cute.  Little Big Cuz wanted nothing to do with the Big Yam but the Big Yam kept going in for kisses (he does this slow, open-mouthed approach) and was continually rebuffed.  The Big Yam is also a pretty empathetic cat.  At one point, during dinner, my sis was offering Little Big Cuz some ice cream and LBC was shaking his head and holding out his hand (implying he didn't want any), and when my sister moved my spoon in towards LBC again, the Big Yam, sitting beside him in a booster chair, started shaking his head, "no!" It was really cute.

I will say that my colon is glad to be back home, though.

Fin.

resignation, resolutions

post-holiday doldrums accompanying the resumption of normal life? present! there's nothing worse than going back to "work" after the frenzied whirl and bustle of the holidays. i always think the best time to have a vacation would be for the two weeks AFTER new year's. that way, you could always plead work as a way of getting out of holiday obligations and you get that extra time to decompress. christmas and new year's are way too buck inevitably to offer much of a respite. you really only get a day or two before you're feeling the winter blues at the prospect of returning back to the grind.

i am welcoming the return to some semblance of a normal routine. my resolutions for 2011 involve:

- being better at engaging my child
- spending less time dicking around on the internet (direct correlation to the resolution above)
- incorporating daily doses of school into my schedule instead of slacking
- daily walks with the boobla
- more local, seasonal veggies in our diet
- finding a balance between socializing and home time
- getting a new pair of glasses
- printing and putting the worthwhile 2009/2010 photos into albums

i'm not going to bother recounting what i've been up to for the past two weeks, suffice to say that our holiday was very very busy and filled with lots of adoration of this little guy, who made out like a bandit in the xmas prezzie department:

that's him in one of the multiple sweaters that great nany knit for him. so cute! she also crocheted him the most amazing blanket and pillow set that we're going to cherish forever and ever:

there's nothing better than homemade knitted baby gifts. no question.

we've been dealing with a bit of a fussbudget lately around here. he's been having super bad toots that scare the bejeezus out of him and consequently result in a lot of tears and wanting to be carried to settle his stomach. this all means that we've been baby-wearing like whoa. i'm pretty sure i've found my favorite baby carrying device. it's called a cross weave wrap, with the most popular and widely available one made by the german company, storchenwiege. they're not cheap. but apparently they retain their value well and you can sell them often for more than you bought them for, as people like used ones. we borrowed ours from the dotytron's hippie friend. this wrap is pure hippie. his friend is pure mama dread and the smell of patchouli impregnated in the wrap is only now starting to fade. out of all my baby-wearing devices (and i have 4 now), it's tops on ergonomics and versatility. but there's a pretty steep learning curve and it's not for the faint of heart, especially if you want to do the back carrying, which is the most useful carry of all. in a lot of wraps, you can't put newborns and babies on your back because of the lack of neck support...with the storch, it's totally possible and is the chief selling point. wearing a baby on your back is a million times more comfortable than doing a front carry AND it allows you to do things like cook, eat, clean without having a 14lb turkey hanging off your front and throwing your balance off (not to mention the inherent danger of frying bacon and having a forward facing baby as a grease splash guard.)

here's a photo of the dotyron "carrying my inca child" (which is what he calls wearing the boobla in the wrap):

i can't believe what a mama dread i'm turning into. i mean, i've always had hippie tendencies, but the wrap makes those tendencies visible to the naked eye. the reason why i like it better than the moby wrap or wraps similar to the moby, is that the storch doesn't have stretch. when you fit a baby into the moby, 15 minutes later, you find that the stretch in the cotton allows the baby to sink down, down, down, until before you know it, he's hanging at your knees, and that is a recipe for back disaster. the aforementioned ability to carry even newborns on the back is an additional point in the storch's favour, as is the fact that when the boobla is asleep, there's no maneuvering to get him out. i just crouch with my back towards the bed and tilt back while untying the wrap and depositing him on his back onto the sleeping surface. 9 times out of 10 he's still sound asleep. so yeah. this + cloth diapers + homemade baby wipes + plans for elimination communication (aka early potty training) + baby led weaning = mama dread is in the house!

last night for dinner we took leftover christmas prime rib and served it on top of fred's bread's chipotle olive bread (lightly toasted) topped with a welsh rarebit (think, cheesy, beer-y, mustard-y sauce) and ate that with sliced salted tomatoes and quick dill-cucumber salad:

my friend P is visiting from egypt so if he stays for dinner tonight it'll be macaroni & cheese with toasted garlic breadcrumbs and salad, and if he doesn't, we'll be having spicy grain soup with bread and butter.

saw a few movies over the break...not as many as i'd like to (i've been waiting for "blue valentine" to come to theatres for SO LONG!) but here are my reviews:
i'm one of the few people out there that didn't unequivocally love "black swan." my principal complaint was that it required a bit more directorial restraint. i agree with david denby's review that the film insists on bludgeoning you over the head with cheap, thriller tricks and consequently tips over into the lurid and schlocky. the story is rife with meta-symbolism and duality - th story of swan lake itself, natalie portman's nina's psychological doubling, the virgin/whore dialectic, mila kunis's character, the stage mother played with brittle mania by barbara hershey that present a high-minded take on the visceral, bodily and mental masochism of the ballet world specifically and of artistic creation generally. however! aronofsky doesn't know well enough to leave symbols alone and thus likes to over-play his hand, troweling on the message so thickly the film slips over the edge of good taste and true brilliance, in my opinion. which isn't to say that i disliked it - there are beautiful scenes (in particular, the whirling, tight dance sequences provided a wonderful stage-eye view of what it's like from a performer's point of view) but the overall effect is like some kind of baroque soap opera - helped along by some over-the-top performances (winona ryder's aging ballerina being the worst.) i love mila kunis but i don't think she deserves a best supporting actress nomination - barbara hershey does a much better job and kunis' role is under-written.

"the town" is a decent genre film that's undone by the poor story. overwhelmingly great performances from all the leads and the directing keeps things going at a satisfying clip, but there are some wasted characters (jon hamm's FBI agent, blake lively's floozy oxy addict) and the movie ultimately fell apart for me with the implausibility of the central romance between rebecca hall's unwitting bank manager hostage and ben affleck's trying-to-reform boston bank robbing neer do well. when a guy from the wrong side of the tracks is looking for redemption, then the gal providing the catalyst has gotta make it seem WORTH IT. hall's character is kind of flat and stupid and lame and that was a major issue for me. the movie is definitely entertaining and worth a rental fee but i'd give it an okay vote.

"easy A" is trying to be a john hughes sexy, funny teen film but falls WAY off the mark. what it's missing: heart, endearing characters, believability, a story. that's a lot of stuff to be missing from a teen film, folks. not even a believable villain! no message!!! ugh. i wanted to like it - the dialogue has a snappy feel and i liked patricia clarkson and stanley tucci as the parents of emma stone's olive, but at the end you're just, meh. emma stone is gorgeous and did give a breakout performance - the problem is: it's kind of hard to believe that a girl that gorgeous, funny, and smart-alecky would be a friendless, virginal loser.

tomorrow will be a book review omnibus post - i'm using entertainment weekly's "best fiction of 2010" as my guide, but i can't keep up. i've got 3 out of the 10 top picks from the library but have to return them as i can't read them fast enough.

finally: did anyone notice that i gave birth to alfred hitchcock?



definite winner in the best cheeks of 2010 category.

fin.