Fun on deck

THE BABY STILL DOESN'T HAVE A NAME.  


I was talking to my friend K yesterday and she made a good point: the longer the baby goes unnamed the harder it is to name it.  I agree!  It's like guys, stop being such hippies, man up, and name your kid!  There's a part-time kid at the Big Yam's daycare who just showed up and has hippie parents who named their girls "Blue" and "Ocean" - I feel like this is what happens when you don't name your kid for a week.  I've only seen her once and it was classic, "parent can't discipline their kid" styles.  She's almost four and still uses a pacifier and isn't used to being told that her every whim isn't okay.  The Dotytron says she's practically feral.  LOL!  


I've kind of changed tacks - I don't think the roomie and L'Armi are going to be incapable of discipline (I hope not).  But man, parents who can't say no to their kids befuddle me.  They're always the ones whose lives are like, hell.  That being said, yesterday Bruce Wayne picked up the Big Yam from daycare and then Nana showed up for a visit and the Boobla lost his s**t.  He was bawling his eyes out and clinging to me and freaking out bigtime.  He basically thought that I was going to go away and leave him with Momma D and Bruce Wayne.  I think as he's starting to become more aware of his surroundings, he's more aware of routine.  When I rolled up, he and Bruce Wayne were having a grand time.  I think it was seeing me that set him off.  If I hadn't have come home he would have just dealt with it.  


Although lately he's started doing this really adorable thing where he plaintively cries out, "Maaamaaa!  Baaabaaa!" if he doesn't see us and I swear, the sound of him saying that in the tone that he says it has opened up a special place in my heart that I didn't even know existed.  


In other Big Yam news, our daycare provider sends me photos during the day of him doing stuff, which is cute, because it's nice to think of him having this whole day without us with his own crew.  I just love the thought of him having his own stuff going on, his own office drama, his own collection of independent experiences, ya know?  I go to work, the Dotytron goes to work, the Big Yam goes to work.  Anyway, J always sends me the photos accompanied by a caption that's written in the first person from the perspective of the Big Yam.  It cracks me up.  "Hi Mommy."  "Mommy. I love sand."  LOL!  


Unrelated:  this is why I love the Go Fug Yourself girls (besides many other reasons, not the least of it being their appreciation for the scandalously sexy glamorous oeuvre of Judith Krantz).  In talking about the decoration on some starlet's dress, they likened it to: "those froofy headbands paranoid parents stick on their baby girls' heads so that strangers don't coo, 'What a handsome boy.'"  I have it out for those things.  I just think they look so constricting on a wee bald baby's head.  And I also think it's weirdly paranoid of parents to care that people think their girl baby is a boy.  Who cares?  Why you gotta make such a big deal about it?


This weekend is gonna be fun!  Tonight we have softball at Withrow Park (so close!) and I've packed us an awesome picnic dinner of egg salad sandwiches and salad and fruit.  Then we can come home and have a slice of the rhubarb custard pie I baked up to cheer up Momma D yesterday (it was her and Poppa D's wedding anniversary and she was bummed).  


Tomorrow we're going to check out more hardwood flooring and then have a fun afternoon of games and pot luck at Lolly's new digs.  


Sunday we're going to Nany's 90th birthday party which is kind of a big deal.  It's being held at a golf course up in the middle of nowhere and it's a 5 hour extravaganza.  I personally think that's a little long for an old person party (or any person party, really).  Old people get tired!  The Dotytron's aunt is putting the party together and is going a little nuts in the process.  There's a colour scheme and we're all supposed to dress in the colour scheme and there was all this drama between me and her about these cupcakes that she wanted me to make that resulted in lots of emails and now I think she's mad at me!  LOL!  It's cray-cray.  


I feel like I totally missed my calling as a general contractor.  I've been meeting with contractors to do some work at Lil' Ugmo and it's been such an ordeal.  I'm playing hardball, wanting them to separate out in the quotes the cost for materials (which are fixed costs and common across the board) and the costs for labour.  Some of them are balking and then treating me like I'm an idiot and don't know what I'm talking about and trying to pull a Holmes-on-Holmes fear-mongering job on me to manipulated me into thinking that what they're doing is terribly complicated and beyond me.  WELL GUESS WHAT, CONTRACTORS?!?  IT'S NOT!  


My basic approach is always as follows:  Just about every damned house in Leslieville is exactly the same as ours (more or less).  Ergo, I refuse to believe that our house is a special case.  Ergo, don't try to tell me what can or can't be done by preying on fears of mine that don't exist.  There are people who are SO SCARED of everything and it boggles my mind.  I get that contractors are used to dealing with them and therefore can charge a premium based on their hand-holding of the situation, but I don't need that.  What I really want is a middle ground between the over-charging, gougey super-professional slick dudes, and the alternative, which are uber-cheap Chinamen (I generalize, but a lot of them are) who don't speak much English, make a mess, and flick cigarette butts on your floor.  I don't mind paying a bit more for some rudimentary customer service, but I don't want to them to take the farm.  


The thing is: I LOVE DOING THIS.  I love project managing the job and making a million calls and doing research and then pitting them against each other.  It's kind of the best.  I'm a born project manager and project managing your own home is the most validating work of all.  I think that's going to be my retirement profession.  


Also: everyone has got to sekkle down on their horny for pot lights.  I can't think of harsher, more unflattering lighting than pot lights (well, office fluoros, but that's a given).  Also: shopping for light fixtures is unimaginably fun from a design standpoint - why would you want to take that away?  Lamps 4-life!!!

Rhubarb custard pie.  I cut down the sugar in the recipe A LOT to preserve the tartness of the rhubarb.  It's all bound in a silky, slightly sweet custard in my patented earth-shatteringly flaky pie crust.  So good.  I gotta give some to the neighbs to get it outta my house.

Fin.

She who shall not be named...

AHHHHHHHHHHH!!!  The roomie had her baby!  A girl!  At home (lucky!)  The baby was born on Monday morning.  The roomie is pretty particular about things so she's put a moratorium on visitors...it's probably for the best because I'm starting to get a bit baby-crazy and I'm starting to develop a reputation as a giant baby hog.  Whenever I can get my hands on our neighbour's baby, the Zen Potato, I do and I don't give her up if I don't have to.


Anyway, from L'Armi's announcements on FB, it *seems* like the baby might not have a name yet...which I find weird [edit: textual communication with the roomie confirms the baby has not been named].  The roomie and L'Armi were having a hard time with names from the get-go.  I was talking about with the Dotytron last night and my position is that it's weird when people don't name their baby for days after the baby is born.  I feel like it's a sorting hat type scenario.  Even if you were on the fence about names, it should come to you in the moments (I'll give you a few hours) immediately following the birth.  You should have a sense of the overwhelming rightness of it all.  As I said to the Dotytron last night, if the name doesn't come to you, then you might end up with a Slytherin.


Are you guys tired of hearing about how much I love my street?  We went outside after dinner and EVERYONE was out and freezies were being dispensed and the kids were running amok and then we saw our neighbour striding out with this duct-tape-and-box contraption that he had stuck a home made pinhole camera attached to it that he had rigged up to watch the transit of Venus or whatever it was called.  So we all clustered around and tried to see and it was so cute - kids out in their pajamas after bedtime, everyone running around with sticky hands, the neighbours talking and chatting. It was so cute.  A bunch of the neighbours are all going camping together in late August, too.  We'd totally would have gone, but we're going to be at our friends, B & G's wedding.  I'm sad to miss the camping fun but so pumped to go to the wedding!  I think we're going to get the Dotytron a new suit for the occasion, which he can use for Lolly's wedding in the fall.  The Dotytron gets to go on this canoe/camping trip with B and his high school crew as B's "shower" type thing.

Last night's dinner was solid.  A shrimp po'boy with remoulade sided with slaw, on a super-soft Strickland's butchers bun.  ARGHHHHH.  I would happily eat cornmeal & flour coated fried seafood iterations piled on a bun with remoulade for weeks on end.  It's so good!!!

Tonight's dinner was homemade cheeseburger casserole.  Like Hamburger Helper but homemade.  I would also happily eat sautéed ground beef with onions and garlic on starch (one of my favorite Chinese dishes that I never get to have is "minced beef on rice" which is basically the above served on steamed rice - it's DELICIOUS).  I've posted the recipe below.  You basically sauté up your ground beef with onions and garlic and then add seasonings, broth, ketchup, and cook the macaroni in the mixture and stir in grated cheddar cheese at the end.  It was so, so, good.  I served it with a cucumber, celery, and red pepper salad with a cumin mint dressing.  No surprise: big hit with our little Tamil Tiger, who basically likes to eat either the most cracker-jack mangia cake food, OR the spiciest string hoppers this side of Ceylon.  He kept going, "mmm, mmm, mmm! yum!" all of his own accord. It was pretty high praise.


I'm home alone tonight - the Dotytron's music night.  I'm hoping the power doesn't go out as I have a long night of curling up with my books ahead of me.  I'm currently alternating between Kristin Cashore's latest, Bitterblue (YA fantasy type stuff), and Joe Sacco's Footnotes in Gaza (a crash course in Israeli-Palestinian history).


Fin.


-----------------------------------------------------------------


Cheeseburger Casserole
serves 4-6, generously


2lbs ground beef
1 large onion, chopped
6 garlic cloves, chopped 
2 T. dijon mustard
1 1/2 c. ketchup (I told you it was kind of trashy!)
4 c. beef broth (approximately, you might have to add more)
1 500g. box of elbow macaroni
2 c. of grated cheddar cheese
salt and pepper to taste


- sauté up the onions and garlic in some olive oil in a large, wide, shallowish pan (I use this Jamie Oliver chicken fryer pan, that's about I dunno...14" across and 3" deep?) 
- add the ground beef and cook until browned over medium-high heat
- stir together the mustard, ketchup and broth, pour into the pan
- stir in the macaroni, bring to a boil, and then cover and lower the heat, stirring occasionally until the macaroni is cooked through.  You might have to add some water if the macaroni absorbs all the liquid before it's cooked.
- when the macaroni is cooked through, turn the heat off, and stir in the cheddar cheese.
- season to taste with salt and pepper (it shouldn't need much in the way of salt with the cheddar and ketchup).
- serve and be ready for mad kid accolades.

Silencio

It's been mad silencio from me lately because I've been a sick, sick dog.  Sore throat, chills, generally not being able to face life.  It's been a no good scene.


And yet!  I have so much to say!  Like, regarding the student protests in Quebec, I have this: IS YOU TWEAKING?!?   Tuition increases at $325 over 5 years was reasonable, $250 over 5 years was a gift.  ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!?  So are you telling me that all those protesting students have never learned the concept of INFLATION?!?  Why shouldn't your tuition ever go up?  Look: I was an idealistic university student once (I'm a slightly less idealistic university student now, technically), but even then, I was pretty rational.  But I get that it's easy to get kids all riled up.  And that they're now probably high from the carnival-esque interstitial/liminal space-ness of it all and the the fact that this generation is converging around a topic IN THE FLESH instead of "liking" something on Facebook.  I get that.  But, I don't think that education is "free."  Nothing is free.  You're just not the one paying for it.  If the choice is education or less healthcare, I will pick education.  As the roomie said, the Canadian government actually made it very easy for her, as someone with very low socio-economic standing, to take out loans, get 2 degrees, and pay back her student debt with a modicum of sacrifice on her part.  The roomie hasn't sacrificed.  Does she own the latest and greatest of everything? No.  But she was able to take trips, she has a car, it's not like it was hand-to-mouth to pay back her student loans.  And, more importantly, she was ACUTELY aware of how much her education was costing her and took it very seriously.  I know, because she stayed behind so many Friday nights in undergrad and wouldn't come to the Trasheteria with us because she wanted to study and make sure she earned the grades to get where she wanted to go.


Is there a problem with the funding model that allows the majority of funding to stream towards specific disciplines (like engineering, etc.)?  Yes.  But at the same time, someone pursuing a doctorate in philosophy doesn't have nearly the same research costs (hiring grad students, transportation costs, access to labs, equipment, etc.) as other disciplines.


I am not unsympathetic.  I believe that Charest was the biggest dummy in all of the land (seriously, who are his advisors?!?) when he passed the bill holding student organizations accountable for the actions of protesting members and otherwise limiting civil democratic liberties.  So dumb!!!


I'm reading Jeannette Winterson's stunning, beautiful memoir, Why be happy when you could be normal? at the moment and she says this (on the subject of voting for Thatcher):


"I did not realise that when money becomes the core value, then education drives towards utility or that the life of the mind will not be counted as a good unless it produces measurable results."


Without the unmeasurable results of the work of my heroes, I wouldn't be where I am today.  I accept that.  But I also accept that secondary school tuition isn't going to be free, ever and that it will likely have to go up. The rate of the increase proposed in Quebec seems well within the realm of reasonable, to me.


This weekend was crazy...but I don't really see that pattern changing for the next foreseeable, oh, 20 years.  Hahahahahaha...*sobs*  Friday night I skipped out on our softball season opener to hang with the roomie and be sick.  We had a nice time.  We ate steak with Greek salad and walked around and hit one of the fun fairs at a school close to Lil' Ugmo.  Uhhhh...school fun fairs are the new warehouse rave.  It's mental!!!  They had a giant bouncy slide, face painting, a bouncy fire truck thing, an obstacle course...and an ice cream truck.  The Big Yam was ONLY interested in the ice cream truck, in so far as he was able to get really close to it and walk around it.  It blew his mind.  There is something indescribably cute about the sense of wonder/joy on a kid's face when they're marveling over something that you thing is rather mundane.  He kept walking up really close to the truck and stopping, and looking at his reflection in the reflective metal bit, and then looking over at me and the roomie with a big, goofy grin on his face, totally in AWE of how close to a truck he got.  It was pretty adorbs.


Saturday was a day spent erranding and cleaning in preparation for having Lolly & T and SMcKay and her FroYo King over for dinner.  I wasn't feeling up to it, to be honest, but I rallied.  We also set up our window unit air conditioners, and not a moment too soon, since it's supposed to be THIRTY SIX DEGREES TODAY.  Lordy.  SMcKay and Lolls brought salad, an appetizer, chips, and roasted asparagus, and I made us prime rib, roasted garlic mashed potatoes, and yorkshire puddings.  I also made us eton mess for dessert.  I loooove eton mess.  I made meringues and then crumbled them and layered them with stewed rhubarb mixed with fresh slices of the first of the Ontario strawberries and whipped cream.  Sooo good.  I can eat that dessert all day.


Sunday we went to T&T during the day and then met up with Dr. Rei who was going to watch the Boobla while we saw Momma D's choir perform with this volunteer orchestra at the Toronto Concert Theatre.  The orchestra was *pretty* good.  In a sign of how unremittingly immature I am, I turned to the Dotytron: "Do my eyes deceive me?  Is that a lady conductor?!  Now I've seen everything!"  But in all honesty, I wasn't a fan of lady conductor's style.  She had this weird limp non-baton hand going that was kind of distracting.  The orchestra is made up of people who are, I'm guessing, semi-pros, but there were a few tuning issues (they played Beethoven's 9th).  After the performance ended, I asked the Dotytron, "What was that high-pitched screaming sound?" and he started laughing and said, "The piccolo was having some issues. It's a hard instrument to control."  LOL!  Something about some poor sod trying to wrestle a piccolo into submission with the result being a piccolo that's overshadowing an orchestra with a train-type whistle/scream is hilarious.


Then we rewarded Dr. Rei for her babysitting services with a trip to Phoenix where we feasted on a Phoenix "greatest hits" meal of: Hainan chicken rice, pork chop sandwich, ox tongue spaghetti with tomato sauce, Malaysian beef brisket curry, and this Korean pork rice bowl thing.  AND we got a black sesame ice cream crepe.  AND Dr. Rei got her indulge her taste for a hot Ovaltine.  It's pretty much the perfect restaurant.  We drove home and chiefed it up with the neighbs for a good long bit.  


I've said it before and I'll say it again: I love love love my 'hood.  We've got a ladies-of-the-street dim sum brunch planned.  We're doing a street sale, a street party, and there's talk of everyone going camping together this summer.  Cutest!!!  


Here are some weekend snaps (mostly food):

This Harajuku Lover's kid's line for Target t-shirt was the find of our trip to Geneseo.  Look how cute it looks!!!  Sweet little Lion of Zion.

Thursday night's dinner was a fig, Cashel blue cheese & bacon lardon tart 

Steak & Greek salad 

 

Yorkshire, prime rib, mashed potatoes, jus, asparagus, and strawberry rhubarb eton mess.

Fin.

Potpourri

This is going to be another random grab-bag of a post.  I'm not quite ready to sit down and tell you all in excruciating detail why I loved The Fault in Our Stars and why you should all read it.  We just watched 50/50 last night (who knew that the theme of my cultural consumption for the week was going to be "cancer"?) so I'll probably review them both at the same time.

Today was my day off.  I had a massage and then grocery shopped and prepped dinner and cleaned the house in preparation for Chinese New Year, which we're not really allowed to observe this year - we're supposed to wait until 1 year after the anniversary of Kung Kung (and also, Poppa D's) passing(s).  We're not supposed to give out lucky money, because that would be like "giving out death."  We're having the Dotytron's family over for dinner on Monday - it's going to be a Chinese food dinner, but it's not going to be "Chinese New Year" dinner, per se, in order to get around the whole Chinese juju aspect.

I picked up the Big Yam from daycare early and we're hanging out.  I'm hoping we get a lot of snow soon because I want to take him sledding again.   I can't believe he's like, a semi-sentient being.  He has a favorite book.  It's a pretty hackneyed selection from his library, in my opinion, but he loves it.  When I say the word "story" he walks over on his cabbage roll feet and grabs it and then crawls all over me or the Dotytron trying to get into his "story" position.  I can't believe he's showing a preference for a cultural artifact.  It's kind of blowing my mind.  BTW, his favorite story of the moment is I Love You Through and Through.  On Tuesday night, when I got home from class, I asked the Dotytron for a debrief.  "Oh he was fine," he filled me in, "we were cracking up during dinner."  The idea of the two of them cracking each other up is so cute and mind-blowing at the same time.  Like, the fact that the Boobla is starting to have a sense of humour?!?  And he started off as a cell in my lady parts?!?  WTF?!?

So yeah, I'm guilty of being able to have my mind blown by the miracle of life.  That doesn't mean that I don't find Jay-Z going buck over Blue Ivy to be super-annoying.  He wrote this ghey song for her, featuring her, called Glory, and it's seriously the weakest, lamest, most hackneyed attempt at expressing the wonders of creation, like, ever.  I get it, I do.  But that doesn't mean that Beyoncé is like, special in any way for being able to squirt out a brat.  It also doesn't mean that you get to "dear diary" a rap tune.  Also in Jigga Man annoying news: he's said he's not going to use the word "b***h" anymore on account of his baby girl.  FRAB!  So weak!  I'm sure pro-lifers and pro-choicers are interested in knowing at precisely what point in Blue's gestation did she become a "girl" enough for him to lay off calling people b***hes?  As my FB friend said, why not swear off on account of his wife, mom, or any of the other remarkable women in his life?  It's just so...typical Jigga.  Thinking that he's so G-D special or something that anyone CARES that you've been "reformed."  Double FRAB.

In other news, we received our first gift subscription (from the Dotytron's Uncle Mert) issue of Reader's Digest this week.  I haven't cracked it open yet.  Am I wrong in thinking that Reader's Digest is a magazine with religious undertones?  Am I making this up?  I feel like I always see headlines like, "The Christian side of Islam" out of the corner of my eye at the grocery check out.  

Finally, to round out the "am I right or am I right?" observational stand-up comedy stylings of this post, it kind of infuriates me when I see recipes for "lightened up fettucini alfredo" in my food blogs.  I feel like if you want fettucini alfredo, you should just eat the G-D fettucini alfredo!  Lightening it up is like, the worst.  It does a disservice to the dish and to you, cuz you're not even going to get what you want.  It's just like, why you guys gotta lighten everything up?  Just let it BE!  If you want a chocolate chip cookie, eat it.  But if you're a chunky wunky who can't handle chocolate chip cookies with butter, rather than trying to "lighten up" a million 1000 calorie meals, just EAT SOMETHING ELSE THAT'S HEALTHY AND ALREADY DELICIOUS.  Lightened up fettucini alfredo isn't going to help you.  

That's actually a good segue into the non-cancer book I read recently.  Born Round is a memoir by Frank Bruni, former restaurant reviewer for the New York Times.  It chronicles his unlikely journey from the over-fed, well-loved, son of an Italian-American family (with the stereotypical, Italian Nonna, always pushing food on him), to the restaurant reviewing post at the Times, an unlikely position for someone who battled an eating-disorder and an unhealthy relationship with food and his own body, for much of his life.  Bruni is an excellent writer - funny, observant, capable of bringing his beloved mother and his nonna to life, all the while peppering the recollections with the kinds of salivation-inducing descriptions of food that only a true-blue eater can conjure.  Bruni is someone who loves food, who loves eating, who loves the whole gamut of tastes, textures, and memories that food can evoke.  He can rhapsodize equally over his Nonna's frits (fried dough, either dragged through sugar, or stuffed with mozzarella and tomato sauce) as his first experience eating cold sesame noodles.  Amidst all the eating, Born Round documents Bruni's struggle with his weight, his unhealthy tendency to gorge and overeat, and his failed attempts at achieving slenderness (and peace with himself) through shortcuts like occasional flirtations with bulimia, laxatives, and fad diets.  He also documents his journey through the world of journalism, which in itself is kind of fascinating - how he went from the Detroit Free Press to the Times, moving from section to section - covering Washington D.C. with no political reporting experience, then becoming the Rome correspondent, before finally landing as the Chief Restaurant Critic.  

I really enjoyed reading this book.  Bruni is a likeable person, and his writing is open and honest, drawing you in.  I don't usually love all memoirs, but either because the subject matter was near and dear to my heart, or through the strength of the writing and story alone, I really liked this.

On Wednesday night, we had whole wheat farfalle with broccoli pesto.  An oldie but a (healthy), goodie.  

Last night we had the roomie over for leftovers and bean salad (made by her - delicious).  Feeling bad about serving a guest (insofar as the roomie constitutes a guest in our home) leftovers, I whipped up a batch of the Milk bar chocolate-chocolate cookies.  The above video shows the Big Yam in action whenever the mixer gets whipped out.  He loves it more than anything.

Tonight we had shrimp and cheddar grits.  The grits were made in the slow cooker - simmered all day in a mixture of milk and water, with a touch of cream.  They were sooooo creamy and delicious.  

Fin.

oh, it's ON

things are ramping up at an exponential rate around here. bucktown! i heaved my way to class last night, my weekly wednesday night date from now until i pop. the walk wasn't that bad, only about 20 minutes, made more difficult by the fact that the fatburger is doing some kind of crazy calisthenics in there. i never find it that weird when i'm lying down or sitting still, but when you're moving and you're having an alien punching and flipping around inside your gut, it's an unsettling feeling. plus, as spumante bambino gets bigger, the motions are more and more aggressive and forceful.

the class is more intense than i thought it was going to be. assignments consist of: 1 article review, a peer review of a classmate's article review, participation (including the - ugh - *mandatory* attendance), a midterm, a research paper proposal, and then the final research paper. the prof seems stupidly intense given the length of the assignments. for example, the research paper is only supposed to be 20 pages long (double spaced), but he wants there to be a table of contents?!? how many points can you make in 20 pages?!? and he wants us to outline our methodology in the research paper proposal, but we're not taking a research methods class until NEXT term. i hate getting graded on research paper proposals. i know, i know...it's par for the course, but i write my papers the night before (maybe 3 nights, if i'm particularly inspired/on top of my game), so i hate having to reverse engineer the steaming pile of b.s. that inevitably constitutes my proposal.

the most annoying thing is that the prof stipulates that no more than 75% of our sources for the paper can come from online sources. so i asked, "do you mean online as in, government white papers and annual reports, or do you mean online as in, accessible through online journal databases?" and he's like, "we want you using the york libraries and using BOOKS." at which point i'm pretty sure the sound of my jaw dropping open was audible over the blasting a/c in the cavernous room. in case my shock and disbelief wasn't apparent enough, i felt compelled to follow up with, "are you serious?"

here's the thing: you don't make a program geared towards people who have full time jobs and then MAKE THEM GO TO YORK CAMPUS to get their stupid books. not only that, i have to go make a special trip to york campus just to GET MY STUPID LIBRARY CARD. and OF COURSE the "yu card" office isn't open on saturdays, the day i'm already there. OF COURSE THEY'RE NOT.

on tuesday night we had the roomie over for dinner. we haven't seen her in over a month! it was a lovely catch-up, even if she is terrified that she'll be on call the weekend that i go into labour and then will have to somehow be present at the birth in some kind of medical capacity. i haven't thought about ANY of that stuff, to be honest. what i want, what my expectations are, who i want to be there, how committed i am to a home or hospital birth or what levels of interventions i'm expecting. really, i don't care about that stuff. at the end of the day, i want to come out healthy and have a healthy bambino. the rest is just whatever to me. i feel like if you put too much into your "birth plan" then you're just setting yourself up for disappointment and self-recriminations over a situation that you have very little control over. what will be, will be. i want a home birth but if the pain gets too unmanageable, of course i'll opt for an epidural. it's not an ideology for me, it's a preference. we have access to pain medication for a reason - i would never consider having a leg amputated *knock on wood* without being knocked out, just to be a tough guy. at the end of the day, i just want to be okay and i want the little one to be okay and i'll be totally happy with that.

i'm not sure how we're going to manage visitors after. everything i've read has said that as a new, exhausted parent, you really have to harness visitors to get them to get shiz done for you. momma d has offered to take time off to help, but i feel like i can't be like, "momma d, please do the dishes and do the grocery shopping for me, thanks" but that's kind of the stuff that you want and need the extra hands for. i'm going to try really really really hard to wrangle my martyr, "i can do it all!" impulses and ask for that kind of nitty gritty help for those first few weeks - get people to bring meals and clean up the house and do that kind of stuff. try not to go crazy cleaning the house FOR visitors, etc.

anyway, for dinner with the roomie i made a coconut yellow split pea dhal with chopped spinach, fried paneer, brown rice, and she brought purchased saag and naan:

from the looks of the sorry state of our registry, it looks like dr. rei is going to be spending most of the time at the shower packing up food and snatching it out of people's mouths. lol! i really don't care if friends go off-list, cuz our friends know us, but i just don't get w.p.'s - THEY CAME UP WITH THE REGISTRY. it wasn't ***my*** people who did it. and then they up and decide that registries are too "impersonal" so then instead of doing the practical chinese thing (cash), or the practical w.p. thing they devised (buying stuff you registered for), they go off-list and then leave you with a bunch of crap. it's a very, very strange phenomena to me.

so last night i ended up eating leftovers at work and tonight i'm doing the same. my academic book club is meeting at frank at the AGO - it's pretty fitting. we read "loving frank" which is a fictionalized historical account of frank lloyd wright's relationship with a married woman. and even though the frank of AGO fame is gehry, not wright, and there's no relationship between them, it's still apt that the resto is named after an architect. it's our first out-of-someone's home meeting - i'm just going to get dessert or something off their small plates menu, seeing as how i'll be eating indian food at work, killing time trying to catch up on readings and working on my assignment before heading over there.

i took the day off tomorrow to do shower prep and get things in order - i've got to make 2 batches of mini cupcakes, a strata, a fruit salad, balsamic vinaigrette, 2 dips, deviled eggs, salami/bocconcini/tomato skewers, and do some final running around picking up last minute supplies and make these vellum mobiles. some of the work will be spread out on saturday after the ladies-only family shower brunch my sis and momma d are hosting in the morning.

phew! so much work to do!

fin.

home alone

have i ever mentioned how much i hate being home alone? i get super-freaked out and scared really easy. technically, i get super-freaked out and scared really easy even when i'm not home alone. like on saturday i was vacuuming and the dotytron came upstairs to where i was and called out "beebs!" like 5 times, and i heard him, backed out from under the bed, took a look at him, and STILL screamed my head off for like, a minute. it's truly bizarre.

our sunday night dinner was a bit of an s**t show. we got mexican fries from great burger kitchen AND burrito's from chino loco's. they skimped us on the cheese on the mexican fries...i find great burger kitchen super inconsistent so i'm not sure that i'm going to continue to frequent them. at the very least, we're on a time out for the moment:




last night the roomie came over to keep me company while l'army was playing ball hockey. have i said already how much i love the roomie? and how good she is at her job? now that i'm exposed more fully as a client to the midwifery practice, seeing how the roomie acts in her profession, how patient she is, how knowledgeable and reassuring she is with me and my inane questions that i don't really want to bother my proper midwife with (the questions fall more into the "irrational worries you talk out with a friend" territory, as opposed to "clinically warranted" territory) it's just so lovely. i'm so lucky! because i have a friend who is QUALIFIED to reassure my irrational worries from a clinical perspective. it's the best case scenario. i really feel like it's deepened our friendship and i say as much to anyone i talk to. having known the roomie since the 2nd year of her undergrad and all this time knowing that she's wanted to be a midwife, and living with her through her last years of midwifery school and her first years of practicing, it's been so gratifying to see someone so well suited to their profession and giving so much of themselves to their work and the community. and that's NOT just the hormones talking!

i'm still barely bumping out - it kind of looks more like a post AYCE-meal food baby, so i've been worried about that. so she helped me learn how to feel where my uterus is and it's in the right place. then she used her doppler so that i could listen to the fatburger's heartbeat again. so aces! i was at dinner with another preggos who was at five months a few months ago, and she was all like, "i think i want to buy a doppler, just so i can check in on the bambino sometimes" and in my head, i was like, "wow white lady, you crazy" but i TOTALLY GET IT. well, the irrational part of me, which constitutes about 21% right now, totally gets it. i wasn't going to do it, but the roomie had it right there in her car and it was easy, so we did it - which was super nice of her just to make my stupid hypochrondriac worrying butt feel better. this time, in addition to the heartbeat, the roomie pointed out these fast swish sounds, which she said was the fatburger kicking to get away from the doppler, apparently they're not super-into it and they tend to swirl away from it and hide - which leads me to think they have sensitivity to super-high pitched sounds? like they can pick up that frequency? kind of weird, right?

i took the leftover white anchovy and chili pasta and reheated it in a pan and then topped it with a poached egg and some of the extra breadcrumb mixture. it was delicious! we ate it with caesar salad.

we've started eating dinner on the front stoop, so we get some outside action and can avoid the terrors of the back deck. so the roomie got a taste of my street in full-on sesame street mode. it's rare that i come home and people aren't hanging out outside, catching up, all up in each other's business. the across the street guy we're obsessed with, R, apparently has a hot tub, a trampoline, and a hammock in their backyard which all the kids love hanging out in - in his words, "it's like the 'price is right' back there" lol! he just finished writing his last CFA exam, he says if he passes he's going to treat himself to a sound system. lol! he also told us this while wearing 3D glasses as shades, and a kid's beaded necklace. double lol! on thursdays and fridays it's not unusual to see a blanket spread out on one of the lawns and everyone congregated there, sitting on the blanket and chiefing it up. it's kind of the best. i hope no one ever moves.

tonight i'm going to eat that leftover flank steak with the black beans and rice and chimichurri, while i get busy prepping the last things for the book club meeting tomorrow.

i'm putting out a spread consisting of a spanish goat's cheese, a triple cream called tuxedo from france, which features a chalky interior, some mortadella, some hard-cured cacciatore, olives, cherries, sliced radishes, roasted garlic eggplant dip, smoky red pepper feta dip, these spicy crispy flatbreads i love, some crostinis, and raspberry brown butter bars. i bought a rosé and a white wine and we have the stuff to make gin and tonics and negronis. i'm also making a strawberry lemonade with mint syrup.

i know i'm probably going crazy and totally over-killing it. but a good portion of the above is going to make up my dinner tomorrow, so i'm personally excited to eat the spread!

fin.

quickie non-chicago related interlude

ANTHROPOLOGIE IS COMING TO TORONTO!

yesssssssssssssssssss! (mimicking the dotytron's reaction to the REACTABLE) i LOVE LOVE LOVE anthropologie! i've completely given up on everything but undies at urban outfitters. for the most part it's too lindsay lohan/nylon magazine-y and young tart for me. plus the quality of most of the stuff is crap. occasionally you find something cool on the sale rack, but otherwise it's too "wearing glasses frames without the lenses" for me. i can't do that. it's not me. free people (the other line in the same family) is a little too boho for me. too portland not enough so-cal.

anthropologie is JUST right for where i'm at now (aka gearing up for summer, when i want to look my most nicole richie-est) - i love most of the stuff there. some of it gets a little too retro-y, 50s throwback and some of it gets a little too crafty/piece-y/applicquéd in the free people vein, but most of it is perfect. that oh-so-lagerfeld mix of tailored, boho, and sunny california hippie, that i love love love.

problem is, stuff gets mad 'spensive. it's kind of a grown up lady version of urban and is priced accordingly. that's why i'm only going to ever hit the sales rack. sometimes you get mad deals! in chicago i literally had 23 items to try on from the sales rack. it was so plentiful! i got an anna sui smock-eyelet top, regularly priced at $158, for $29.99!!! (USD, but still!) what a scoop! they carry a lot of lines that i like, like anna sui and ella moss.

they also have cute housewares too! some shabby chic type drawer pulls and gorgeous latte bowls that would make fantastic sunny little accent pieces in any kitchen.

plus, the store is going to be on the east side of town! in a new mall called the "shops at don mills" which is at don mills and york mills which is pon the east side flex.

in other non-chicago related news...it's the end of an era. the roomie has started looking for apartments for her and l'army. she's probably moving out in june or july. yikes. we don't know whether to replace her or not. a new roomie would have to be extremely compliant, have enough stuff for their room and only their room, be okay with submitting to the meal plan and not filling my fridge with random non-meal plan oriented foods, and not have people over all the time (ie. either be content hanging out with me and the dotytron or go outside to hang with their friends.) also must be okay with cleaning the bathroom and never be weird about money. see? it's a tough call. the roomie was perfect. le sigh. i guess i can go back to the heteronormative couple-centric living that the dotytron and i experienced before...it's just nice having a friend around all the time, especially because i get scared being home alone. hopefully she'll find a place nearby. there was a PERFECT place (ie. we could see each other from the front porch) but i think the rental market is crazy right now and it was only on craigslist for 2 seconds.

anyway, if any of you know someone who fits the description above, let me know!

fin.