Funny Snippets

Yo, can you believe that with a demanding job, 3 kids, and many interests and hobbies, that I don't have much time to blog no more??? CAN YOU???  ANSWER ME!!!

Here are some funny bon mots, one-liners, quips, and happenings from our world, lately.

We figured out a decent plan at the last few Micelli Mondays of summer 2016, which entailed going to a different pool (one with a water slide!), doing ridiculous poses on said slide (to the deadpan bemusement of the teenage lifeguards), swimming, then packing up and ensconcing ourselves at one of the picnic tables by the fenced-in playground, and me engaging in protracted negotiations to convince the good people at Domino's Pizza to deliver our pizza order to the closest park intersection, instead of an actual street address.  At our very last Micelli of the summer, we were finishing up our pizza, watching the kids play barefoot in the playground, when we heard the P.A. system of the pool click on, followed by:

"UHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH....ttention, the pool will be closing in five minutes. Repeat: the pool will be closing in five minutes."

We DIED laughing.  The kid held the "uhhhhhhh" for SO LONG.  The commitment to the gag was pretty advanced.  It's the closest I've ever come to a legit Meatballs moment and it was a glorious way to send off summer.

Related, Dr. Rei reminded me the other day that we were referring to hot dogs as "problematic bae" at the cottage.  WHY ARE WE SO G-D FUNNY?!?

The Big Yam, after I got shouty and told him to pack up his pencil case off the dining room table, "Why are you always telling me what to do? Why can't you help a man who's six."

For a while there, when the twins didn't like what they were hearing from us/any authority figure/each other, they would say, "Don't speak those words!" (picked up from our caregiver).  "I want to watch something" "You can't" "Noooo! Don't speak those words!!!"

Quincess, sitting at the dinner table, being classic daydream believer, "Chickens come from eggs. They come from little eggs. It's vewwwy speshoul."  The way his lisping little voice has this faint Brooklyn edge - the way he rounds and extends the O sounds...kills us.

We were driving and passed by one of those houses that pop up in Toronto and are shaped like a barn.  Me: "I like those barn houses..."
Lindsay: "I want that barn house, too!"
Me: "Do you have money?"
Lindsay: "Uhhhh..." *spreads hands palms out* "No."
Quincess: "I found money!"
Me: "You did?"
Quincess: "Yeah, it was under the couch, it was golden."

For the Big Yam's birthday, he wanted to play Laser Quest with his family (!!!).  So we all posse'd up and went.  I just love my family, so damn much.  It was so funny.  You could hear S-Dawg shouting "DELETED!" each time he hit one of us. Before you go into the game zone proper, there's a holding chamber where they give you the rundown and ask you to recite the pledge.  Uncle Rico apparently knelt (a la Kaepernick) during the pledge...just ridiculous, ridiculous stuff like that.  This is where I come from.

The bird.

The plate.

The people.

The Big Yam on his birthday (!!!)

This past weekend was my mum's annual hospital fundraising gala.  The Dotytron and I don't usually go, but because this was the 20th anniversary, and our CLE fambam was coming up, we did.  What I didn't know, was that there was a Star Wars theme in the VIP room, and so, my night consisted of this:

 Almost the whole fam, plus the CLE contingent

Finally, out of nowhere, Quincess Leia has started busting out representative pictures of people and the Dotytron and I are gobsmacked.  It legit brings us to tears.  We became aware of it on Thanksgiving.  Q was working on a Magnadoodle, which Lindsay ripped out of his hands, resulting in tears, and Q slapping L upside the head.  When we revisited the Magnadoodle later, we saw a picture of a face similar to the one below, and the Dotytron went into high key CSI mode: "WHO DID THIS. WAS IT Q??? NO WAY. JUST TELL ME IF YOU DID IT." Interrogating my niece and nephews...lol!  Finally, CHova was like, "No, it was Q. He slapped Lindsay and then went over and drew it, I saw him."

 I know it doesn't look like much, but you have to understand that the Big Yam is only doing this level of representation, now.

Fin.

Kids Say the Darnedest Things...

Yam and Wonder Twins edition.

I rebelled against regulatory red tape and sent the Big Yam into school on Friday with homemade cupcakes for his birthday.  The line from schools is that you're generally supposed to bring in store bought treats but the idea of bringing in grocery store cupcakes in those little plastic clam shell containers broke me inside, so I said, F**K IT, PREMIER MOM, I'M CELEBRATING THE BIG YAM TURNING FIVE IN STYLE.  I asked the Big Yam how they went over, and he said, (and I quote), "Everyone. Freaked. Out." LOL!

Our household accounts for about 1 million of those 6 million views.

My kids are obsessed with orchestral, instrumental music.  Like, OBSESSED.  The Studio Ghibli anniversary concert is back in heavy rotation, and Quincess has taken to pretending to conduct and he mimics Joe Hisaishi's hand motions and it's freakin' adorable.  Other scores in rotation are the theme from How to Train Your Dragon (which seriously makes me cry when the French horns kick in. Every single time), Peter and the Wolf, and Pirates of the Caribbean.  So. Much. Pirates of the Caribbean.  Whenever we hop in Eddie Van Halen the request comes for Pirates of the Caribbean.  To the point where, last weekend, after we had finished one round of the theme, out of nowhere, Quincess said, "I love Pirates of the Caribbean. I love it."  in his cute little lisping Quincess voice and it was so sweet and pure.  That is his first ever unprompted "I love ___" and it was triggered by a Klaus Badelt score?!  My kids are weirdos.

Not in situ, but still cute nonetheless

Lindsay is very good at showing when he's unimpressed with something (which happens a lot, because he is unimpressed when he doesn't get his own way, and about 98.78% of his life is lived in the pursuit of requesting his own way).  He scowls, his brows lower, he purses his lips and then he talks in a growly, stubborn voice.  The other night, at dinner, as he was getting choosy over which green beans we were putting on his plate, we heard this from him: "No want that one bean. Want this one bean. ALL DAY." In his scowling, pouty, low voice.   LOL!  We died laughing.

Thanksgiving, man.  What's better?  Nothing.  We spent the weekend with family, eating good food, going on nature hikes, thinking about how the two best people in the world (Dr. Rei and Hanbo) got hitched, thinking about how my Big Yam is now five (!!!!!), celebrating his birthday, and getting lit on the good vibes.  It was a good time, though a bit of a whirlwind.

I measured the Big Yam against his closet door frame and the kid has grown about 10cm (close to 4") in a year.  UMMM...IS THAT LEVEL OF GROWTH SUSTAINABLE?!?  He's only FIVE?!??!!!  Is he Andre the Giant?

 On the first of two nature hikes we undertook.  Our attempt to get a decent family photo thwarted by: my crazy hair, my crazy smile, my crazy outfit, the Big Yam's inveterate goofiness, the impossibility of getting all the kids looking in the direction of a camera at the same time without (and oftentimes with) serious coercion

 This 2 photo series cracks me up.  Quincess' mouth is stuffed with one of the Belgian waffles that are a Farmer's Market staple for us

This seriously might be as good as the Xmas card this year gets, folks.

 Love this pic of my sibs and all our SOs

 The Thanksgiving table!  Featuring 15 people all crammed around in my mouse house

 My bird

The plate: my bird, my sausage-sage stuffing, my gravy, Manda's mashed potatoes, my sis' green bean casserole (to die for) and squash puree

One of two desserts: pumpkin pie with salted caramel and whipped cream

The Big Yam's smile!

The Big Yam's birthday cake - chocolate cake with chocolate frosting and salted caramel buttercream

Even though we pooched the picture day outfit, the Big Yam saved us with this hilariousness.  Ummm...why does he look like a 23 year old?!?

 An enchilada casserole that I froze over a year (!) ago, brought out for Taco Tuesday.  It was good.

I used leftover turkey (the sinewy dark meat parts from the drumstick and the firm parts from the wing) in this turkey and wild rice soup.  I served it with my go-to cheddar sage biscuits (I omit the bacon).  The soup turned out very thick and required a lot of thinning with extra broth/water/cream.  Next time, I'd keep the flour portion at 1/4 cup instead of 1/2 cup.  It tasted like the best parts of Thanksgiving dinner, reimagined.

This was my first week at the new job.  I love having a private office (!) and the work is interesting, although because I worked right up until last Friday, my head is in two places...this weekend will be a nice chance for me to decompress and get myself back into the headspace.

Fin.

Giving Thanks

First, let's get the money shot out of the way:

Isn't she a beauty?  I got a 20lb bird and it still isn't big enough!  NO BIRD WILL EVER BE BIG ENOUGH!  I obviously need a larger roasting pan.  I want one of those large, short, squarish ones.  The one I have is fine for most roasts and things, but when it comes to feeding my family, where only an 8 rib prime rib will do, and a 20lb bird is the bare minimum you would consider, I need something much, much larger.  

Thanksgiving has taken on a whole new dimension in the last five years.  As you've been hearing me trumpet for the past 8 years (!) of this little space, it was already my favorite holiday.  Then, my beautiful, dearest, sweetest BFF married the dearest, sweetest, kindest guy on Thanksgiving weekend and I will remember always being there, so incredibly happy for those two, sing-shouting Africa by Toto at the top of my lungs and the Dotytron giving his best go at dancing with all the Iranian biddies.  Then, a year later, the Big Yam was born, and every year since then his birthday has fallen around Thanksgiving and I am so thankful to have his little butt in my life.  Parenting is a weird thing.  If the mirror that being in a long-term relationship reflects back at you is one of those department store dressing room types (detailed and unflattering enough to show all the bumps and ridges in your bod, but not poorly lit enough so that you can still emerge with a small shred of self-possession and ego intact), then the self you find in the mirror of parenting is one of those illuminated, magnifying mirrors on cosmetic counters.  Every flaw, every pore, every spot, every wrinkle, every errant hair blown up and exposed with the harshest, most flattening light.  I am tested and made better by him every day, even as I enact the patented, Karl Lagerfeld School of Dog-Training/Spirit Breaking style of discipline and coercement that makes up the foundation of my parenting praxis.  

I took last Thursday off from work to take him out on a special day.  Our only goal was to take every kind of TTC imaginable and take a Go Train and end up at Dr. Rei's house to visit her and baby A.  We took the Go Train to Long Branch (which is somehow still considered part of Toronto?!  How does that work) and then promptly turned around and headed right back.  He was THRILLED:  

Just so, so, so happy, the entire time.  He was pretty sweet at Dr. Rei's house and most of the weekend.  He remembered his manners, wanted to kiss baby A a bunch of times, and was just so kind, and loving, and curious, and the perfect amount of impish, that it was truly a pleasure hanging with him.  

Last year I started the tradition of asking him 20 questions on his birthday.  Here are last year's answers:

1. What is your favorite color?  Blue like my Thomas pajamas
2. What is your favorite toy?  My double decker bus (He made me rephrase the question as: “What’s your favorite vehicle?”
3. What is your favorite thing to eat? Sausage (as he was eating sausage for breakfast)
4. What is your favorite movie? Thomas movie
5. What is your favorite outfit to wear?  Blue shoes
6. What are your favorite animals? Who’s a farmer?The animals in Farmer’s Rick barn and a rooster came and I start to cry.
7. What does Mama do for work? Hmmm...
8. What does Baba do for work? I don’t know
9. What is your favorite book?  I don’t know either.  My favorite book is...play some trains and helicopters and trains and truck
10. What is your favorite thing to do outside? Play Choo Choo
11. Who is your best friend? Mama / Tristan
12. What do you want to be when you grow up?  Here - I want to get beer
13. What's your favorite game to play?  Thomas
14. What's your favorite thing to do with Mama? Nothing.
15. What's your favorite thing to do with Baba?  Play
16. What's your favorite special treat?  chocolate
17. If you could go anywhere, where would you want to go?  Poh Poh (Poh Poh’s house)
18. What makes you happy?  ...
19. What makes you sad?  ...
20. What makes you scared? ...  

And this year's:

1. What is your favorite color?  Blue
2. What is your favorite toy?  The Dragons - the dragon book with the dragon pieces
3. What is your favorite thing to eat? hot dogs and macaroni and pizza
4. What is your favorite movie? The Incredibles
5. What is your favorite outfit to wear?  The cape shirt
6. What are your favorite animals? Elephants
7. What does Mama do for work? You...brush your teeth
8. What does Baba do for work? He...he...he plays music
9. What is your favorite book?  The Incredibles Book
10. What is your favorite thing to do outside? Ride my bike
11. Who is your best friend? Chloe & Indi & Meredith
12. What do you want to be when you grow up?  Ummm...a superhero
13. What's your favorite game to play?  Tag
14. What's your favorite thing to do with Mama? Go to Auntie Rei’s house on a...on a...go on a Go train
15. What's your favorite thing to do with Baba?  Have a walk
16. What's your favorite special treat?  chocolate
17. If you could go anywhere, where would you want to go?  To the CNE
18. What makes you happy?  When you don’t listen
19. What makes you sad?  When you say I can’t
20. What makes you scared?  Um...when it’s dark in caves.

I think some of the questions will have to change with time (like, eventually he'll figure out what I do for a living, besides brushing my teeth in preparation for work).  But he's becoming such a capable, responsible, sentient little person.  We bought a small jar of that soy-butter fake peanut butter stuff which is what he gets for school.  This morning he asked the Dotytron if he could have "some of the large parcel of peanut butter" (our regular peanut butter is in a Costco-sized jar).  I love that I co-created a 4 year old who uses the word "parcel"!  He also generally has his shiz together.  When the Dotytron was stressing about his readiness to start JK, he polled the other teachers in his school and they were like, "Does he eat his lunch? Does he bring back his lunch containers?  Yes?  He's golden!"  He puts away his dishes in the dishwasher, wipes up his place mat, is fairly responsible for feeding the cats and will get himself dressed and brush his teeth.  We are now working on bed-making and laundry sorting.

We continued the celebration on the actual day of his birthday by having dinner with Momma D, where he was thoroughly spoiled with very thoughtful, considerate, enriching gifts.  He continued to impress me by giving unprompted thank yous for every compliment, every birthday wish.  We decamped to Momma D's house all day because our basement, which was sold as "finished" but was actually a "little shop of horrors," was being demo'd and stripped down to the concrete.  

Pro tip: when you are hosting the next day and your basement doesn't have a door and is essentially open to the rest of the space, it might not be a good idea to do your demo the day before.  The "finish" was actually keeping a lock down on this unholy, dank, disgusting smell that I've only encountered in long-occupied, seldom-aired Hong Kong apartments occupied by people with questionable hygiene.  A tumid funk, if you will, that then INFECTED OUR WHOLE HOUSE.  It was kind of stressful.

We gave the place a proper cleaning and aired out the main floor and ran the exhaust and thankfully, by the time the bird was in the oven, the smell of Thanksgiving had triumphed over unwashed neglect.  IT WAS A THANKSGIVING MIRACLE!  

The visit with my sister and her family and my littlest bro was awesome.  I LOVED cooking Thanksgiving dinner in my new kitchen.  It was so effortless!  It was so painless!  It was so easy to clean up!  It made me excited for the arrival of the basement, when we'll have a whole other space where we could throw the kids down there and spread out some more.  

A shot from the Brickworks last Saturday.  We are planning on being giant nerds this weekend and going for a walk in the Don Valley and taking in the fall colours.

On our visit with Dr. Rei, we stopped by a new patisserie, The Tempered Room, in Parkdale.  I got a selection of pastries, and had a snacky, brioche type thing there.  The brioche was good, the pastries were kind of the grossest.  Clockwise from the top left we have: pumpkin tart, pomme caramel, and an eclair with nutella.  First of all: they were hella expensive, which I can accept, if the flavours are out of this world.  They were very, very small.  The nutella banana eclair was the best of the lot, but the other two were too fussy.  Each one had a flavour element that was put there I think to be progressive, but just ended up not marrying well with the overall flavour profile.  Like, the pumpkin tart had a truffled cream that was so overwhelmingly truffle (and keep in mind, I'm not a person who goes banana for truffle flavour), that it veered into a savoury dish, and one with a paste-y, almost mealy texture.  The apple thing was very pretty, but the classic combination of apple and caramel was totally thrown off by the black and white sesame seeds, which added an almost acrid, coffee-like bitterness to the dish.  I LOVE toasted sesame seed flavours, but I think that warm, roasted taste is best offset with classic, mild flavours (cream, vanilla).  The acidity of the apple didn't match well.  I wouldn't necessarily go back to that place.  

My pumpkin pie, which I've realized needs some tweaking.  It was considerably elevated by a drizzle of salted caramel sauce.

We've been eating well this week - Tuesday had my ex-bf over for dinner and had matzoh ball soup and these spinach-artichoke melts.  Wednesday we had this kale, squash, and bacon risotto.  Last night was my irie pumpkin stew with Jamaican-style rice'n'peas.

Tonight, I had the infinite wisdom to prep a pan of homemade nanaimo bars and am stupid excited for Swiss Chalet delivery.  It's the little things, folks.

Fin.

Fall Love

I'm typing this on relatively lazy Sunday - finally having some time to do a bit of catch-up after a busy week filled with a bunch of nothing activities.  Something about maternity leave - the days (can) feel like they're 83 hours long (especially when you have stereophonic baby wailing) and yet, I never have enough time.  I have costumes to sew and little wee hats to knit and frequently find myself zonked by around 9pm, without fail.  It's too much for me to even make a phone call and catch up with friends most nights.

This morning though - we've got the furnace on (I finally caved), we have the flannel sheets on the bed and the big comforter out, slippers are on our feet, and I've got a 4-hour spaghetti sauce started on the stove.  Autumn has arrived at Casa Dotytron-Lagerfeld and I couldn't be happier about it.  I'm ready.  Ready to wind down, unplug, curl up, hibernate.  Ready for weekends to consist of less activities, big dinners with family and friends, movie nights.  

Pretty much the only thing left on my fall checklist is a hike through the Don Valley to take in the colours.  I also have a semi-harebrained scheme that I'm going to build some kind of garbage/recycling shed but we'll see whether that actually happens.  

99 Luftballoons ended up being a lot less majestic than I had envisioned - but the Big Yam was still thrilled:

Family Thanksgiving weekend involved three (!) days of turkey, one jacked-up looking Thomas cake (I made Smitten Kitchens apple pie spice cake with cream cheese frosting - it was a fail.  I wouldn't do it again), a viewing of the newest production of Les Misérables, dim sum, and a visit to the pumpkin patch/farm on Monday, that was the stereotypical pumpkin patch experience: corn maze, giant tricycle rides, an obstacle course, feeding goats, etc.

Les Misérables was great.  Nothing, I repeat, NOTHING, can ever come close to Colm Wilkinson's genius and embodiment of Jean Valjean, but the current one is really good.  The revised staging is really great - the sets are used to great effect and they do some evocative things with screens and lighting - you can see the smoke moving in the factory chimneys and the wind moving the trees.  Our Eponine is top-notch - a crystal-clear pop voice that nails her big song.  Fantine is a bit weird, and they changed the pacing to speed things up a bit.  Overall, it was a really fun night.

Some pumpkin patch/farm shots:

Cousins!

Squinty pumpkin selection

Last night we had friends over for a film club - we watched Dog Day Afternoon.  Ummm...Sidney Lumet is a freakin' genius.  You CANNOT replicate how amazing 70s American film was.  First of all: shooting on film gives the film, which is already beautiful, an extra warm luminosity.  The daytime sequences glow.  The story is almost too unbelievable to be true.  Al Pacino's character holds up a bank to pay for sex reassignment surgery for Leon, his "wife."  The film rides this incredible line between humour and drama.  It's not a dark comedy.  Instead the film walks this balancing line between being legitimately funny and tense.  They don't make movies like this any more.  It's so anti-establishment.  It thrums with counter-culture zeitgeist.  It also makes you understand how film critics long for the heydey of 70s American cinema.

These two are in cahoots in a big way.

Prof. Gantok's other doppelganger - Boh from Spirited Away

We also had Dr. Rei and Uncle Hanbo over for brunch today.  We had croissant sandwiches with bacon and leek scrambled eggs and they made a pear-blue cheese spinach salad.  We also had monkey bread and then went on a long walk to check out the Leslieville Flea and be surrounded by hipsters over-paying for mason jars and other novelty goods.  It was so much fun:

This pear tart is SO EASY!  You can whip it up anywhere and with almost any fruit.  We first had it at JJ's house for Oktoberfest.  It uses just a few ingredients: butter, oil, sugar, flour, and the end result is fantastic.  Easily made dairy-free too!  I'll post the recipe below.

Leftover turkey and stuffing turned into one of my all-time favorite meals: a hot turkey sandwich with canned gravy.

Fin.

---------------------------------------------------------------------
Easy Pear Tart
serves 8
not adapted in the slightest, from Food52

1 1/2 c. plus 2 T. all purpose flour
3/4 t. salt
3/4 c. plus 1 t. sugar
1/4 c. mild oil (vegetable or canola)
1/4 c. olive oil
2 T. whole milk
2 T. cold unsalted butter
3 bartlett pears (but can also be made with 3-5 peaches, or any similar sized fruit)

- in a bowl, mix together the 1 1/2 c. flour, 1/2 t. of the salt salt, and 1 t. of sugar with a fork.  In a separate measuring cup/bowl, stir together the oils (note: I didn't have enough olive oil so used all canola and it was fine), the milk, and maybe a 1/2 t. of almond extract if you have it (I didn't and it was fine).  Stir the liquids into the dry ingredients and combine until everything is evenly mixed.
- dump this mixture into a 9" diameter tart pan with a removable bottom and press the mixture on the bottom and slightly up the sides of the pan
- in a separate bowl, mix together 3/4 c. of sugar, 2 T. of the flour, and 1/4 t. of salt.  Using your hands, pinch the butter into this mixture until all the butter is in small-ish pieces (as if you're making a crumb/crisp topping).
- slice the fruit of your choosing into 1/2" slice and then arrange on the crust.  Sprinkle with the butter-sugar-flour mixture and bake in a preheated 425F oven for about 35-45 minutes or until golden brown and the top is shiny and bubbly.