Roll out those...

lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer indeed. Once again, my heart is full to bursting after all the lovely time spent this past weekend.

As it turns out - I'm NOT the worst player on our softball team! Wahoo!!! I caught a pop fly and felt really good about it...but my problem is I have to remember that unlike dodgeball, where a certain degree of showboating is forgivable (or so I like to think), in softball, hooting and hollering when you catch a pop fly isn't the best strategy, because as my teammate said, your opponents "keep running." So I got to check that impulse and instead complete the play. In this case, it was fine, but for future reference, don't ya know. I also took a line drive to the shin and was a total tough guy about it, but it hurt like a mother. I was playing second and the Dotytron, who was on third, was laughing later about how when it happened, he saw the ball smack dead onto the bone of my shin, saw me grimace for a second with an "oh that smarts" expression on my face (somewhat akin to Sideshow Bob's expression getting hit in the face with a rake in the "Cape Feare" episode of the Simpsons), take a deep breath, and then pick up the offending ball resignedly and complete the play. LOL! I'm still laughing about how it must have looked from the outside because it was a bit of a doozy.

I kind of feel sorry for people who don't use fans to cool their house. I find something so soothing about the rhythmic whirring of an oscillating fan. On Friday, the Big Yam was being a bit of a fuss in the afternoon so I took him up to our room and nursed him while I read on my Kindle. Our room gets beautiful light during the day, diffused slightly by our sheer curtains, and with the sound of the fan the only other noise punctuating his contented nursing at my boob, it was perhaps 20 of the most relaxing, perfectly content minutes of my life. Especially when it was punctuated with the Big Yam detaching himself with a breathy sigh and falling asleep looking like this:

That face!!! I love his face in repose. I love his little hand on his stomach all happy and relaxed. I love thinking about what happy dreams he's having, lulled by the sun, a belly full of milk, and the metronomic regularity of the fan.

Friday night I made us a white pizza on homemade pizza dough of ricotta, mozzarella, baby arugala, and proscuitto:

Saturday morning we took my mum and Poh Poh out to lunch at Phoenix. I ordered the ox tongue on fried rice with cream sauce and black pepper sauce:

We also had the spicy ground pork Korean rice bowl:

Saturday I handed over the Big Yam to the Dotytron so I could finish my assignment for school, which I managed to do! And I submitted it 3 days early! Yay! Then we met up with R & R at the Ceili Cottage for cask-conditioned ales and oysters and kettle chips and mac'n'cheese and a whinging, whiny, yelly Big Yam disturbing the dining experiences of an entire patio. Ugh. Some madness compelled me to invite R & R over to our (uncleaned!) house and give them a tour of what $350,000 will buy you in Leslieville (which I think effectively scared them off from ever moving - the piles of dirty laundry are an effective deterrent). On the bike ride home I was frantically shouting instructions to the Dotytron: "Okay, when you get home. Put the Big Yam to bed and then rip the Slanket off the couch!!! Wipe off the coffee table!!! Sweep and vacuum the floor!!!" and then I realized the madness of trying to accomplish any of that (did I mention that R & R were driving from Ceili Cottage?) and said, "You know what? This is stupid. We like these guys. They're just going to have to see us warts and all." So instead we plied them with scotch until (hopefully) the state of lil' ugmo blurred into the edges of a warm, fuzzy, single-malt buzz.

Sunday we hit the newly launched Leslieville Farmer's Market (upwardly mobile urban parent check 1!), after grabbing the Dotytron a coffee from the best coffee shop in town, Voulez-Vous Café (upwardly mobile urban parent check 2!), which was deemed thus by our rabidly coffee obsessed/food snob neighbour. Then we came home, set up our window unit a/c (which works so unbelievably well that I am not even batting an eye at the projected heat wave to come mid-week. Seriously. We closed the door and turned it on for 15 minutes and when we went in, the room was a meat locker), cleaned the house, and took the Big Yam to Withrow Park for some catch and swings.

In case you were wondering if the Big Yam looks ADORABLE in his helmet riding in the Chariot, I'll let you decide for yourself with the following photographic evidence:

The kid loves a good swing more than anything. He's always found the near/far thing hilarious, so whenever you put him in a swing, you get the following reaction:

He's also recently discovered his tongue and is always sticking it out/touching the tip of his tongue to his upper lip which is freaking hilarious (and a precursor to being able to make "l" sounds, methinks?) He's been a bit of a mega fuss lately and he's been gnawing on anything in sight, so I think more teeth are imminent. I'm going to miss the just-the-bottom-two action because it's so freakin' cute...but I suppose I can't relegate my child to a life of gumming food for my personal amusement. Besides, what's cute in childhood is faces-of-meth in adulthood.

Sunday was a perfect day. It was the first day in a loooooooooooong time (maybe all year) when we could set our own schedule, do things on our own time, where we didn't have school/work-related stuff that we HAD to do occupying our time. And it was STILL productive! (C'mon, you didn't really think there could be a perfect day without SOME productivity, do you?) We still cleaned the house and got dinner ready and set up the a/c - but it was our choice when/how these things were accomplished. And it was interspersed with big stretches of being together and enjoying ourselves and leisure. The perfect balance, seriously. I don't really get how people who DON'T have work they bring home or who AREN'T doing a Master's degree on their maternity leave have any excuses not to get shiz done.

We had Lolly over for dinner and I made us a mezes meal of: fattoush salad, baba ghanouj, fried haloumi, charmoula-spiced beef strips, warmed pitas, and purchased crab, asiago & wasabi dip from Leslieville Cheese Market. Delicious!

For dessert I made us a coconut-lime semifreddo, which was easy and delicious (I'll post the recipe at the end). So good! My only quibble is that I found it a little too sweet, so I might reduce the condensed milk by half. I'll reproduce the recipe as I found it - since I haven't tried reducing the condensed milk and can't vouch for how that might affect the texture - it was cool, creamy, spiked with lime's brightness with chewy bites of toasted coconut for texture. Soooo good:

Today the plan is to take the Big Yam to the drop-in centre, get some school work done, and make us a tasty dinner. I went for a run this morning and I'm going to follow it up with yoga in the afternoon and maybe some catch tonight in the dusk. The Dotytron and I have a new plan to keep us on track, fitness wise...we're fake boot camping. We're basically going to put the money we would have spent on boot camp in a pot and just make sure we work out for the same amount of time (3 hours/week) pushing ourselves but doing our own activities (ie. I'm not into circuit training, so I'm going to do a mix of cardio and yoga), and if we keep it up all summer we're going to spend that money on something we want. We'll see how this goes!

Fin.

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Coconut Lime Semifreddo

adapted from Martha Stewart's Everyday Food Magazine

serves around 8-10

1 can of coconut milk

1 can of condensed milk

zest of 2 limes

1/2 t. salt

1 1/2 c. of cold whipping cream

1 c. of unsweetened, shredded coconut

- line a loaf pan with plastic wrap, making sure there is overhang on all sides

- toast the coconut in a 375F degree oven for 10 minutes, or until evenly golden brown, stirring every 3 minutes or so to make sure it toasts evenly

- heat the coconut milk and condensed milk in a pot over medium heat until it comes to a boil, reduce the heat and simmer for about 10 minutes or until thickened

- remove the milk mixture, stir in the lime zest, and about 1/2 c. of the toasted coconut, and set aside until cool and no longer warm to the touch (you can stick it in the fridge)

- whip the whipping cream until stiff peaks form, and then fold in the cooled coconut mixture until pretty evenly mixed

- pour the mixture into the prepared loaf pan, sprinkle the top with the remaining 1/2 c. of toasted coconut and wrap the top with plastic wrap.

- freeze for 6 hours or overnight until firm.

- before serving, take it out to room temperature for 20 minutes, unmold onto a platter, slice and serve

GAME DAY

i've got my game face on like whoa. i'm in it to win it. i'm...the contender? (i'm running out of sports metaphors).

today i'm participating in an indoor olympics. i'm in the biathlon, which involves navigating a course in GIANT snowshoes that date back to the height of the hudson's bay company - seriously, they're done up with gamy leather that left a residue on my hands and they're almost the same height as me; and stopping periodically to shoot at targets with nerf semi-automatic dart guns. i did a practice run yesterday - i almost threw up. the thing with GIANT snowshoes (the kind of snowshoes that people generally have hanging on the wall of their cottages as canadiana decor) is that you can't run in them. so on an indoor hard, carpeted surface, to get some speed, i was doing some kind of crazy kick-step/marching combination that basically set my gluts and thighs a-burning. i was sweating like a mofo. i wonder if my commitment to winning at all costs, even if it means debasing myself and showing up at the finish line a sweaty, barfy, muscle-cramped mess, makes me management material? i can only hope!

also, i'm on the team that was charged with reconfiguring our mission statement t-shirt and entering into a fashion show. based on my hunch that most people were going to do women's wear - we went formal men's wear. we turned the shirt into a formal vest, a cummerbund with the mission statement on it, a pocket square, a band around the top hat, a bow tie, and roses that our model is going to pass out to the judges. it's pretty awesome. we totally went the seamstress route. bespoke tailoring and all. our model is wearing a black suit and wearing white gloves and carrying a black cane. it's going to be pretty boss.

so, the dotytron has fridays set aside for his supply teaching day...which means that since january, when his schedule got shifted around and fridays became THE DAY, we've been on tenterhooks every thursday waiting for his cell phone to ring to see if he has work that day. it's AGONIZING. because they call anytime after around 7pm-10pm and then he has to get up at like, 5am in case they call at 6am to have him into work at a school that's an hour's drive away...he has to be able to get there by 8am or so. so, sometimes they don't call until super-late or super-early and it's super-annoying. we're always freaking out the night before when they DON'T call because we're trying to get a sense of what our financial situation is going to be next year.

last night they didn't call. somewhat predictably, i go into worry mode: "what are we going to do next year?" "what if we don't have any money?" which resulted in the both of us tossing and turning with stress. after a not-very-restful evening, the alarm went off at 5:30am and we hit snooze every ten minutes until he finally got a call at like, 6:45am. it was crazy. so he says to me, "look, you've got to relax about stressing about the supply list - i didn't get any sleep last night." to which i replied, "you?!!? i've got to compete today!" i was given a look of withering disdain and a "oh, shut the f**k up" in response! lol!

edit: home from work

so our team took second place in the biathlon. i didn't start to clean up on my shooting skills until the last two targets - each missed shot added 10 seconds to my time. so i got a silver medal. we were ROBBED on the t-shirt contest. ROBBED! they awarded it to someone who dressed up a guy in a wig and had some outlandishly bedazzled number. ours was so classy! seriously, it looked like mr. monopoly was up on stage - like he was in a totally different contest! lol! everyone said we should have won, but in the end, as has been true since grade school assemblies first began - the team that puts a guy in girls clothes will always win. people invariably find it funny. our workmanship was INSANE - the tailoring! the fit! it was savile row quality stuff...i only wish you, my faithful readers, could have seen it.

tonight we're taking lolls out for AYCE sushi in markham as a belated birthday/thank you for hosting us at the farm hang. i think dr. rei and hanbo are coming, too - haven't seen those guys in forevers (well, i see dr. rei at least 2 a week at lunch, but hanbo has been swallowed alive by mba school and we never see them after dark anymore)

in other news...i think i'm going to apply for york's masters of public policy administration and law. it's offered as a 2-year executive style masters, which means that i can continue to work full-time while completing it. i'm constantly concerned about the potential future obsolescence of my field and i sometimes feel stymied by the fact that in certain scenarios, librarians aren't permitted to do any in-depth analysis and have to hand over their work to research officers who can, because they've either got a public policy masters, and mba, or a phd in an area of subject specialty. i think this also positions me so that i can be a policy advisor or analyst if i chose to be. plus, i mean, another degree can't like, hurt me, right? kind of crazy, i know. also, the application form is due by march 1st. aieeeeeee!!! we'll see if i get accepted...they make it out like it's crazygonuts competitive. but...it's also york. ha!

finally, in other news: my sister is the best. she's such a faithful blog reader and commenter...and she'll save stuff up to tell me when we're face to face or the next time we talk in person. for instance, she wanted to remind me that my first exposure to helen mirren was actually when i was a wee pup and we were in hong kong. for some reason, "excalibur" was always on tv in hong kong when i was like, 9 or 10. helen mirren plays morgana.

for those who don't know, "excalibur" is like, the raciest depiction of arthurian legend in mainstream culture. seriously, seriously racy. like, it was my first exposure to incest (morgause and arthur totally do it) and it was also boob city - basically the movie (which apparently is heavily based on malory's "le morte d'arthur") is like boobs and greensleeves and j.w. waterhouse - all glittering swords and lush forests. peep that movie poster!!! 80s movie posters were THE BOMB.



edit: ZOMG, minutes after pushing "publish post" i watched the trailer on youtube and this movie is THE BOMB. seriously!!! check it out!!! if this doesn't have dr. rei's name all over it, i don't know WHAT does. lol!



fin.