Frivolous (But At the Same Time Vitally Important) Question

Okay, here goes:

Denim harem jogging pants with high tops, yay or nay?

I think I'm gonna go for it.  We'll see how this shakes down.

I recently splurged on my first grown-up lady powder blush and it has CHANGED. MY. LIFE.  My go-to Benefit Benetint is good, but it kind of dries out my skin, somehow, and sometimes the flush was a little subtle.  I went with Nars blush in Torrid, which is a darker, deeper pink with a little less glittery bits than their all-star product, Orgasm, which is the blush that's supposed to look good on everyone.  It did look good on me, but this deeper tone works better with my darker skin.

I also scored the score of life!

This coat retails for $420 at J. Crew and I nabbed it (in excellent used condition) for $100!  It's such a lady coat.  I love it.  I was on the fence for a bit because I wasn't sure the sandstone colour would suit my skin tone and I was kind of heartset on a grey, but this looks and feels so luxe.  I'm obsessed.  You know I loves me a deal.  Combine a grown-up lady coat with my addiction to the thrill of second hand clothing finds, and this is a big, big score.  It looks so good with my skinnies and runners!  Obsessed.

Dr. Rei gave me a gold, Nars eyeshadow pencil thing and all in all, I've been really feeling myself lately.

I'm very loved up on my network of people at the moment.  Friday was my day off and I had brunch with my new friend, N, who is a brilliant, beautiful, woman of colour doing interesting research and has amazing style to boot.  Then, I had a massage and my RMT went to a book launch and Chester Brown was there and we both had a moment of being all "ewwww, he's so gross!!!" and she made a crack about how, if she ever saw Seth, she'd knock that porkpie hat right off his head and I felt SO GLAD that I know someone who knows/appreciates/can make that joke.  I so want to meet Chester Brown so I can ask him if he knows he's gross.  That's very important to me.  It's really hard to tell from his work.  He's very honest about the the gross things he does and the gross ways he does them, but there's a certain flatness in the delivery and a lack of self-reflection that also makes it seem like he doesn't know he's gross?  Like, if you were gross the way Chester Brown is gross, shouldn't you be contextualizing/feeling guilt/wanting to ameliorate your grossness?

To wit, I recently read his comic, Paying For It which is about a period when he became a client john, during this tumultuous time in his life when he was still technically the significant other of Sook-Yin Lee, and was living with her, but she was pursuing a relationship with this drummer (!) and eventually moved that drummer into their apartment (!) and effectively ceased to be Chester Brown's partner.  But he still lived there for a while.  Anyway, as with The Playboy, I appreciated Brown's honesty, but that doesn't make his dealings with the prostitutes and his editorializing any less gross (he's very superficial when describing the prostitutes).  I get we're all superficial, and he's entitled to that (maybe?), but at the end of the comic there's a big position paper on how he feels prostitution should be legalized, but nothing about his own sexism and grossness and situating that in any critical, self-reflexive, trying-to-be-a-better-person way.  It was just icky.

Related, we started watching this show, The Girlfriend Experience, which is tangentially related to the Steven Soderbergh movie of the same name.  It's shot in Toronto (but isn't set in Toronto) and it features Riley Keough as this law school student who takes a demanding internship and becomes an escort.  It's shot in a very dark, dim, moody, Soderbergh-y way and has that same, voyeuristic, detached tone.  It's not hugely compelling but the episodes are only half an hour and at this point, we're mildly interested.

Last night, as we readied for bed, the Dotytron was reading Paying for It and I was reading my own thing and I suddenly had the thought that guys secretly might want the escort type experience...like they really just want to see themselves pandered to, and have this blank slate woman to reflect themselves back, so I decided to try.  This is not going anywhere sexxxay, don't worry.  I mean, so much of the time I feel like we barely even listen to each other (I mean, we do, but not about mundane shiz).  So I thought it might be a good way to focus and really pay attention to my partner if I adopted the persona of someone who is basically being paid to listen to you.

The character in the Girlfriend Experience always has this blandly interested expression on her face and speaks in a coolly detached, neutral voice (again, very Soderbergh-y) so I affected that and turned over to face the Dotytron, and the exchange went like this,

Me: *Adopts a cool, demur, low tone* "You're reading the Chester Brown?"
Dotytron, reading, "Yeah,"
Me: "What do you think about it?"
Dotytron: "I don't know!"
Me, soldiering on, still with the low voice, "You can tell me anything, you know"
Dotytron: "AGH! WHAT?!!? WILL YOU SHUT UP!?!?"

LMAO.  At that point, I told him what I had been trying to accomplish and we both laughed at what a colossal fail it was.

Not very scientific though.

A narrow house me and Merrick came across on a walk

Black sesame steamed milk!!!

Two babes, now with babes, a little older, a little wiser, a little babe-ier

 I'd be remiss talking about how loved I am on my peeps if I didn't mention as always, the inimitable Dr. Rei.  We went to see Rihanna on Wednesday and had the best time of life.  A long walk, Banh Mi Boys, followed by black sesame steamed milk, then Travis Scott and Riri giving the best show ever - so many medleys and so many hits!  I love her.  She's such an open and real performer.  I love how imperfect she is and how she owns that.  It was such a fun night of dancing and women being amazing.  Love!

We went to visit my sister this weekend and it was filled with the usual: Cracker Barrel, Delmonico's, playing in their backyard, picking up all the goodies, cousin shenanigans:

Little Little Cuz put on these fake glasses and went around claiming he was an "old man." The old man's name?  Timothy, of course.

I bought Twin A a pair of tights because he's obsessed with mine.  Anytime I wear tights, he comes up to me and touches my leg, "These your tights, mama?" and our caregiver told us that he likes to pull his socks up as high as possible.  I got him these and he loved them so much.

These are the perfect high-tops for a short legged person like myself.  Wahhhh - they were too big!!!  They come in men's sizes so I put my considerable research skills to use and tracked down a pair in my size.  Can't wait til these are on my feet! The style is the Vans Sk8-Hi Slim.  Pretty ubiquitous, but the colour is hard to find.  It's a cream colour which is easier to wear than the more readily available bright white.  They're sold out everywhere!

 Good hair. Solar flare. 

Nature is the bomb.

Sister selfies. This is AFTER Twin A barfed on me at Brian's USA Diner. Sorry Brian, we owe you one.

This is a picture of how Twin A sleeps.  He's hardcore into the sleeping with his eyes open in the creepiest way imaginable, tip.

Cousins gonna cuz.

Back at home on Sunday night...Twin B being a maniac.  I was trying to capture him knocking himself on the head like Donkey Kong while making those grunting noises, but then it turned into him doing that disgusting stuff with the food because he's a nutjob.

Snapchat fun.

Last Monday was one of those epic comic working mom days.  Our caregiver was going to be late, so I had planned to stay home an hour to drop off the Big Yam at school, and then meet her back at our place for a twin hand off. Running late, I was upstairs trying to throw on some clothes and brush my teeth when I heard Twin A shout, "HE BARFED!!! LINDSAY BARFED ON THE CARPET!!!" and while, like most witnesses, he was a little unreliable when it came to the details, he got the gist right.  But I had to get the Big Yam to school, so I bundled everyone up, and shoved them all in Eddie VAN Halen, and then listened helplessly as Twin B barfed AGAIN.  Then, because we were late, I had to hustle all three out with me and carry the barfy Twin B in my arms to the office for a late slip, before delivering the Big Yam to his classroom.  At that point, I called it a day and took the rest of the day off so our caregiver wouldn't have to bring the twins with her to pick up the Big Yam from school.

Of course, as I'm learning about Twin B, he needed to barf the sickness out of his system, pass out for a solid, deep 2 hour nap, and then he woke up from said nap and behaved like usual.  It's a very intense, odd, methodology his immune system has, but it's pretty consistent.

Then, that night, bedtime, we hear a thump from our bedroom and then Twin A starts wailing...but that's par for the course, until he ran out and we saw that he had blood streaming down his face and had a small 1.5" cut on his forehead.  So I had to take him to the ER, which was a s**tshow (it is true what they say about ER's being the busiest between 6pm and midnight).  We were triaged and then I think the nurse didn't believe me when I said there were no signs of a concussion or loss of consciousness, because she sent us to the waiting room of the damned.  By the time we got to the WROTD, we had already been in the hospital for 2 hours.  Some people in the WROTD had been there for 3 hours at that point and still hadn't been called.  Finally, because I am nothing if not a good advocate for my own health care, I was like, "the last time we were here we were taken to another area where they do stitches and fractures?  Can I go there?" Which got us fast-tracked to that waiting room, but I had the misfortune of dealing with a doctor bro who told me he was in the middle of switching over with another doctor, who would be there in "5 minutes" and since the freezing agent takes 20 minutes to set in, and new doctor is the one doing the stitches, that I should just wait.  Well, cut to 45 minutes later, and I finally said to bro doc, "Uhh, if the freezing agent takes 20 minutes to set in, can we at least start the process?"  

Then, when new doc finally showed up, she was pushing for the glue for Twin A and I had to say, "Nuh-uh, last time he picked that out the next day," and push for stitches, which Twin A slept through, because my kids are champions at the doctors.  Twin A slept through the stitches, but even better, slept through them injecting a needle full of freezing agent into his forehead.  It was pretty gross.

The upside is, the stitches lasted all of 2 days before he picked those out, too.

Oy.

Fin.

I'm All About

I'm INTO a lot of things, lately, and as it goes when you're a modern day Renaissance woman with too many interests surrounded by inspiring, brilliant people, the things I'm INTO are varied and range from the profound to the frivolous.

1) This exchange between Roxane Gay, Tressie McMillan Cottom, and David Simon on the barring of journalist Tim Tai's from the University of Missouri's student activist tent city.  It happened on Twitter.  It is electrifying reading.  Gay and Simon I knew already, but Tressie McMillan Cottom is new to me and she is everything. Razor sharp, eloquent, invested.  Remember when thinkers would debate each other and it was televised?  I kind of want to go back to that time.  The fact that this happened on Twitter is a sign of the modern era, but imagine what it would have been like to have these three in the same room together?  Without the constraints of Twitter?  I know Twitter is what facilitated this spontaneous conversation, but I want to go back to the time when you could turn on the TV and see Michel Foucault debating Noam Chomsky:

Anyway, David Simon gets served and is STILL AT IT.  Some of McMillan Cottom's responses are the best.  Like this one:

Tressie Mc ‏@tressiemcphd  Nov 17

Tressie Mc Retweeted David Simon

David.

Tressie Mc added,

David Simon @AoDespair

@jondresner @biblioracle @tressiemcphd It means to Mussolini what it does. But a battered wife tied long-term to abusive spouse gets fascism

Insert me doing a million "OHHHHHH, S**T!!!*  motions.  David Simon gets pwned all over the place and comes off looking really grasp-y and petulant and unhinged in the process, when all it would take is a simple acknowledgement of "Yes, I can see how the media can be a tool for mis-representation and oppression."  At one point, Cottom is like, "I can't believe I have to explain this to the guy who wrote THE WIRE." and I'm like, damn right.  Simon is also getting pwned because he doesn't know how to work Twitter properly, but he's so fixated on his ideal, that he's not looking at the actual situation, or acknowledging how contingent that reified ideal is.

2) On a (slightly) less heady note: I'm all about this coat from Madewell.

I bought some shoes from Madewell last spring and they didn't fit so I returned them for store credit.  This fall, after I got my new job, I invested in some pieces and splurged on a coat (a hella splurge, considering the abysmal state of the Canadian dollar) that is a step above my usual fare.  It's sleek, modern, blocky and bulky enough to be proportionally balanced against my skinnies and tights, and elevates my weekend slovenly jeans-based outfits and finishes my more polished weekday work wear.  It's a lady coat and I love it.  I love the high collar, the slightly oversized cut, and the small details (zippers on the sleeves, deep pockets).  Anyway, because I bought it with store credit, I managed to get a few pieces for what felt like much less, even though I was spending money I had already spent.  My next lady coat purchase will be a mid-calf length bulky duster/cocoon type, assuming it doesn't make me look stumpy.

3)

The new John Mulaney special on Netflix, The Comeback Kid.  I first experienced Mulaney as one half of the "Too Much Tuna" duo on Nick Kroll's Kroll Show.  Then a friend mentioned his special New In Town (also on Netflix) and the Dotytron and I watched it and died laughing.  Seriously, nothing has hit us this hard since we stumbled upon Kevin Hart lo' these many years ago.  Something about the humour, the references, the wit...it all really connected.  Mulaney is "coming back" from a disastrous rapidly-cancelled sitcom that was called Mulaney.  I never watched it, but I know that he's funny (Wikipedia tells me he wrote on SNL for 6 years and won Emmys) and I highly recommend his stuff.

I generally can't with a lot of stand-up because I find it can veer into basic bro territory really quickly. This is very much not that.

4)

So old, right?  I know, I know.  How dare I talk about something that was binged-watched two weeks ago?!  The point is, this show is amazing.  It's basically tailor-made for my peer group, amirite?  It has heart, it's sincere, it talks about being a first-generation something with immigrant parents, it has a multi-ethnic cast that isn't token, or special.  They're just people living their lives in an urban setting and it is so sad that this is a thing that's worthy of note.  Like, things have gotten better for people of colour, but Fresh off the Boat and Blackish are all about the playing off of being different from the American "norm" and using that for laughs, which, don't get me wrong, is also moving in the right direction, but the characters of Denise and Dev are just people, and they're not defined by their sexuality or colour status and that is so freaking amazing.  Or, when they are defined by it, it's in the service of talking about racist casting in Hollywood (see the stand-out episode, "Indians on TV").  I want a world in which niche markets aren't the only place for black stories (e.g. Tyler Perry movies).  I want a world where shows like A Different World can exist alongside Fresh off the Boat and a scripted series from Wong Kar Wei or whatever and it's just part of the amazing smorgasbord of television available.  The show is funny and has a killer score with loads of classic hip hop and class Aphex Twin (lol!) and I can't love it more.

5) This podcast: Pop Rocket.  I went on a new podcast tear a while ago looking for new road trip material for me and the Dotytron, for the rare minutes when we're not blasting the Pirates of the Caribbean theme for our young 'uns.  We tried a bunch of different ones, some for a second time: Radio Lab, Love & Radio, All Things Considered, and Pop Rocket.  Now, all we want to do is listen to Pop Rocket.  I would listen to it when I would run, we listened to it in the car on our way down to visit my sister.  Now that we've finished Master of None and the new Mulaney stand-up and we're generally uninspired by TV, we've contemplated just listening to podcasts while we stretch (which is possibly the dorkiest combination of activities, ever).  It is that good.

Here is (are) my problem(s) with Radio Lab and others: 1) NPR voice.  Is there no diversity in the world of podcasts universally beloved by white people?  Do they teach nebbishy voice in public-radio school?  I hate the sound of the voices because they're all such a thing.  Pop Rocket has people who sound like themselves.  That being said, I CANNOT HANDLE John Oliver because I hate his voice and his face.  I also don't like someone screaming at me all the time?  Sorry?!  2) No perspective.  We listened to a Radio Lab episode on Patient Zero and one on the Galapagos, and look - I'm a generally interested person.  I like stuff, okay?  My interests are far-reaching.  HOWEVER, I want you to have a perspective on the stuff.  Don't just report to me, because not all of the topics are fascinating enough in and of themselves.  I need an angle.  FRAME THE ISSUE.  On Radio Lab, they say stuff like, "Wow. That is so weird." "Isn't that crazy?" and it's literally the blandest, most obvious reactions. If YOU are not invested in the topic, how am I supposed to be???

I have more points, but let me tell you about why I love Pop Rocket.  The core people are amazing - Margaret Wapler is a writer - former arts writer for the LA Times.  Oliver Wang is a DJ and academic.  Wynter Mitchell is a digital strategist, who came up with the "Straight Outta..." meme for Straight Outta Compton.  Guy Brannum is a writer and comedian who is currently working on the Mindy Project.  These people KNOW their shiz.  They know so much about popular culture and they have thoughts and ideas and Guy Brannum is a brilliant, smart, interested in all things commentator and I can't love it enough.  It's so good.  Their interests are so wide-ranging and the things they have to say and how they agree or disagree with each other is fantastic.

6) My kids.  I freakin' love my kids!  We had a crazy weekend that was jam-packed.  Friday I had the day off and took the twins to my work where they wreaked havoc and hugged my executive director and then I took them to the ROM where they were claimed to be scared of almost everything but in reality, weren't.  Then that night we got a sitter and the Dotytron and I went to try Brando's Fried Chicken which is a pop-up fried chicken place.  There was nowhere to sit so we took our chicken to go and sat in the car and ate it while listening to Pop Rocket.  We were still hungry and had a million hours to kill so we went and had a second dinner at Porchetta and Co (more fried chicken).  Then we went to my brother's belated birthday celebration which was archery tag (more like archery dodgeball) and it was fun and we got home late and it was life-affirming.

The next day we were hosting Friendsgiving, which is 15 adults and 6 kids in our little mouse house.  It was such a fun night.  We provided turkey and stuffing and I made pies and other people brought more deliciousness and there was a signature cocktail and we talked and laughed and I marveled at being around the table with this group of people, the core group of which have known each other for over 20 years.  It is incredible and heartening and I love my beautiful, diverse, talented, funny, accomplished friends with all my heart.  I love them.  That was another late night.

Sunday was about running a million loads of dishes and then going out to dinner with our friend A and his wife C who were in town from NYC and seeing A's gig, which meant the third night in a row that I didn't get to put my kids down to bed and I felt it keenly.  I'm craving it.  I love these little nuggets.

Language acquisition for the twins is proceeding at an epic clip and I feel like Lindsay is losing his fat toddler belly and it pains me.  Just this morning, I came down from getting dressed and he was in his high chair and he said to me, "Hi, mama.  I'm awake now," and I died.  DIED. DEAD. GONE.  He sleeps on the floor on a pile of blankets in their shared room even though we have a perfectly good crib mattress two feet away.  Quincess is still in his crib and he goes down with an arm around a mouse, a moose, and insists on his clutching a book which means that his arms are full.

The Big Yam is a sweet little nut and I love his butt so hard.  The other day, he had wandered off and when the Dotytron went to find him, he discovered that the Big Yam had found the iPad, closed our door, and was illicitly watching Team Umi Zoomi.  This is the first time we've caught him doing something overtly sneaky and the Dotytron impressed upon him how serious an infraction it is and told him he was supposed to come down and tell me what happened.  After 10 minutes, I went up to find him, and he was sitting on the corner of our bed in the dark.  READ THAT SENTENCE AGAIN AND TRY NOT TO HAVE YOUR HEART BREAK INTO A MILLION PIECES.  I pretended I didn't know what had happened and was like, "Hey buddy, it's dinner time, whatcha doing?" and at first he said, "Nothing," but he stayed where he was.  I asked some gently probing questions, "Is there something you want to tell me?" and after a few nos, he broke down and started bawling.  Like, those great, hiccuping, gasping sobs because he felt so bad.  Genuine kid tears from sadness (as opposed to kid tears from frustration at not getting something, or tears from being a flop when your sibling taps you) will end you.

The other day I came home and the Big Yam was on the couch, looking miserable - he was upset because he couldn't get his piano piece down (!!!!!).  I mean, c'mon!!!  I did what any self-respecting parent would do, and I put on an OG-Sesame Street video with Don Music:

I'm also into the following meals we've had lately:

Pulled pork sandwiches, made with pork shoulder braised in the slow cooker with apple cider, brown sugar, a bit of soy, and some bourbon.  Served on pretzel buns with a bit of my homemade chipotle barbecue sauce, with mashed sweet potatoes and a brussels sprouts and apple slaw.

Freezer rice, minced ginger, garlic, a jar of chopped kimchi, frozen peas, soy, rice wine, sesame oil, a bit of sugar, and shrimp. Topped with a fried egg.  That night I was convinced I had norovirus because I felt like I was going to barf on the streetcar - after punishing a bowl and a half of this stuff, realized that I was just hungry.

Freezer eggplant orzo with mozzarella which the kids hated, but which I loved because it was Thursday hell night.

Soup + bread is one of my meal templates.  My kids loved orange/red pureed soups so this was a roasted tomato soup pulled from the freezer with leftover pulled pork, sliced apple, and aged cheddar grilled cheese sandwiches.  HUGE.

Loblaws sells T&T's coconut bread in a loaf and they'll slice it on site for you.  I turned it into French toast and won the hearts of my goon squad for all eternity.

Biscuits from the Ovenly cookbook.  Recipe copied below.  These have honey in the mix and are brushed with a warm butter-honey mixture (supposed to be hot honey, but I didn't have it, but just imagine!) and then baked a bit more.  These were insanely, insanely delicious.

Great Nany Doty's pasta with rosé sauce, and a salad of roasted buttercup squash on a bed of spinach with a lemon tahini dressing and toasted pine nuts.

Smitten's cheddar broccoli soup (which is so much better than my usual recipe), with feta-basil-scallion muffins from the Ovenly cookbook.  These muffins were another huge hit.  Definitely work making a double batch and then freezing the rest...if I had an inch of extra space in my freezer.  Which I don't...because I'm a psycho prepper.  I'll post the recipe for the muffins tomorrow.

Annual fall risotto - kale, roasted squash, and bacon with sumac roasted heirloom carrots.

We recently did a Yummy Market run, which means part of the reason I'm out of freezer space is because it's stuffed with pierogies.  I always serve them with caramelized onions (pierogies are parboiled and then roasted in the oven with the onions), and the fullest fattest sour cream I can find (Pinehedge Organize 18% for the win!).  My local butcher who is a 3rd generation, anti-hipster type, makes very weird, very soft, very onion-y German sausages which are strangely delicious even thought they have no right to be, and the combo of the 'rogies and the sausage made for a killer meal.

Friendsgiving turkey - a full 20lbs.  I did the turkey flip thing this time around because I find the air circulation is never good enough to get that full expanse of juicy thigh meat skin properly browned.  It worked really well overall, but the flipping process was a mite precarious/fraught.

Smitten's baked ziti, which is basically like my skillet lasagne/regular lasagne/every pasta bake but I made it with Barilla's super skinny penne rigate noodles which made for a high proportion of crusty edges.  I am not the kind of parent who is above telling my kids that they "won't like" the layer of bronzed, chewy cheese on top and denuding their portions of it accordingly.

Listen, Smitten Kitchen's Deb Perelman is a freakin' culinary, home cooking saint, and she is justifiably beloved in the food blogging world.  She just KNOWS WHAT REGULAR PEOPLE WANT TO EAT AND HOW THEY WANT IT TO TASTE.  Which is why her recipes are featured so heavily.  She's good for some inspiration and for dialing in exactly what you want.  I made her pecan pie for Friendsgiving and people: IT IS SINE NON QUA.  Go out and make this right away.  Her recipe comes down to two parts: toasting the nuts (why didn't I do this before?!  AM I NEW?!?) and replacing the cloying, gummy corn syrup with golden syrup.  If you've ever tasted golden syrup (and this was my first time) it has a roasted, toasted, barley-ish depth to it that highlights the nuts, whereas the corn syrup just kinds of drowns the nuts in sweetness.  The texture of this pie was divine - mostly nuts mixed evenly with this round, caramely filling.  So often when you get pecan pie, it's a thin layer of pecans sitting atop an inch of goo.  This was so good.  

Still trying to get back into the regular swing of blogging.  BUT IT'S ALMOST XMAS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

OH GAWWWWWWWD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Fin.

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Biscuits with Honey and Thyme

Adapted a bit from the Ovenly cookbook.

Makes 12-14 very sturdy, substantial biscuits

18 T. unsalted butter

5 c. all purpose flour

2 T. sugar

2 T. baking powder

1 T. salt

1 t. chopped fresh thyme (I didn't have any, so I omitted)

5 T. hot honey (I just used regular honey)

2 c. cold buttermilk

- Standard biscuit procedure.  Mix dry ingredients together in a big bowl.  Cut 15 T. of the butter into dry ingredients until the butter is in small, pea-sized pieces.  Mix 3 T. of the honey into 1 3/4 c. of the buttermilk (reserve the 1/4 c. in case you need it if the dough is dry) and stir into the dry ingredients until the dry is incorporated.  

- Turn the dough onto a flour surface and pat it gently into a 1/2" thick rectangle (approximately 12" x 6").  Fold dough into thirds (like a letter) and then pat it down again so it's 3/4" thick throughout.  T

- The recipe says to cut the dough into 8 rectangles, but that's insane.  I made 12 and they were hefty...you could probably get away with 14.

- Put the biscuits on a greased baking tray and bake in a preheated 400F oven for 18 minutes.  Remove from oven.

- Mix together remaining 2 T. of honey with 1 t. chopped fresh thyme (if using) with the remaining 3 T. of butter (melted).  Brush over the tops of the biscuits and reduce oven temperature to 350F.  Bake the biscuits for an additional 10 minutes more until they are a burnished, deep golden brown.

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.