Poppa D

To say that we are still in shock from Poppa D's sudden passing is a gross understatement. I can't even begin to express how bitterly unfair it all is and how sad I've been - for the Dotytron, for the Big Yam, and for Momma D, Ehmdo, Nany, the rest of my extended Dotytron family, and finally, for my own loss.

My bio-dad is a diffident robot at the best of times and an outright bastard at the worst of times and it is a testament to what a kind, gentle man that Poppa D was that the love that he engendered in his children, his wife, and his extended network of family and friends could be so uncomplicated and pure. It is the kind of legacy that we can only ever hope for - to be remembered only positively, without asterisks, codas, or qualifiers.

I'm feeling very angry right now. Angry at the injustice of it all. Angry that he would have been such a great, loving, goofy grandfather and that Master T was robbed of the opportunity to learn and grow at his feet, to be exposed to Poppa D's unending love of music specifically and the arts in general. I'm mad that the Big Yam won't ever be able to hear his Poppa play him a song on the mandolin or remember the unending goofy faces that Poppa D could make. I'm especially angry because Poppa D was so excited to be a grandfather and committed himself wholeheartedly to the role. How, even as my own bio-dad willingly estranges himself from me and my life, Poppa D thrilled to every moment. I can still hear the excitement in his voice ("Did you see that?!!!") and how he boasted to anyone in the immediate vicinity when he saw the Boobla crawl over to a chair and pull himself up to standing the first time.

As a product of Westernized-but-still-fairly-Chinese parents, I have never known the depths of parental acceptance and support that Poppa D was capable of. I never heard an unkind or discouraging word. I'm sure that he looked a little askance at the loudmouth brassy girl with a woeful ignorance of the Beatles' catalogue that his son chose for a partner, but I never saw it. He gave his son the best of himself and I will be forever grateful for it.

There are no words to express our collective grief. There are no words to express how the outpouring of support and love from our families and extended family of friends have eased the heaviness of our hearts and provided succor for our pain. This life we eke out for ourselves is filled with moments that will break you a million times over with their beauty and ugliness and it is only through sharing those moments with the relationships that we build, nurture, and sustain that we can bear it.

With a full heart - RIP, Poppa D. Thank you.

Fin.

Fuck Cancer.

Fin.

One month

One month from today, I will be flashing my I.D. card at security and starting back at work. I have mixed emotions about this. Poppa D is quite ill at the moment and I think there will be a lot of additional upheaval in the months to come, in addition to the regular baggage of starting work and dropping off Master T with Jeannette, his daycare provider. He's been taking small separations in a stride. When we see Jeannette at the drop-in centre she takes him off my hands and he's been fine with it. Another caregiver at the drop-in centre calls him Mr. Independent. He's just so chill. He's fine just sitting and hanging out and he doesn't really notice that I'm not within eyesight unless I happen to pass into his field of vision. I'm sure it'll be different once he realizes that this is his new reality, but all told, he really is a very unclingy baby.

Yesterday, in addition to it being the 10th Anniversary of the First Time Americans Realized That Their Foreign Policies Make The Rest Of The World Hate Them, it was the Big Yam's 11 month birthday. How crazy is that? Super crazy, that's what.

Despite the ongoing stress of Poppa D's sickness, we had a pretty good weekend. Dr. Rei came by on Friday and we feasted on pizza pide:

We also had some serious talks and big laughs at the same time. Big laughs about the weird sexual proclivities of one of my exes, which we call "the thing" and periodically, when we're hanging out, Dr. Rei will remember "the thing" and lose her mind. Big laughs about how any time conversation turns to the gifted program, I will sit an quietly whisper "I'm gifted" until someone notices. Big laughs making up lyrics to Chocolate Rain.

How cute are these two? Especially the Big Yam in his striped jim-jams.

Saturday morning we woke up and I made the family a fat baby with cinnamon apples. We did a bunch of errands and the Dotytron spent some time with his da' at the hospital and then we girded our loins to attend our friend L's pig roast. Ummm...pig roasts are amazing. I'm totally all fired up to invest in the pig roast infrastructure. Basically, they cooked a 50lb pig over a split drum charcoal bbq on a big spit. L's friend bought the whole rig for $400 and rents it out for $100 a pop and it's booked solid every weekend!!! Amazing!!! I'm totally going to do that. I was considering doing a pig roast for T's 1st birthday, but with all the stuff happening with work and Poppa D, I figured we'd hold off until next year. Hopefully we can get our yard fenced in and our deck done and then do it up proper. The rig is going to come in handy for lobster fest and pig roasts and lamb roasts and all the rest. Hooooeeeee...I'm already so pumped for this I can't even talk about it.

It was a pretty ideal evening. We didn't think we'd get there in time to even eat the pig (L is notorious for running late) - but the pig was ready for 7:30pm - we got there just after that, ate some pig, visited with peeps, drank some beers that weren't ours, and got home by 9:30pm with our bellies full of pig, and our beers AND our dessert accidentally brought home with us. What what!

Sunday was a damn near perfect day. Ate breakfast, did some reorganizing, labelled a bunch of bins for storage, cleaned and reorganized our vestibule, cleaned up the back deck area, went to the Farmer's Market, took the Big Yam and biked to the Leslie Spit and back, finished quilting my quilt, hung with the neighbours, had the roomie over for dinner, watched an FNL and we were still in bed by 9:30pm. I love those weekends that have that balance of socializing, crossing things off your to-do list, and lots of fun family time.

I made us chicken Milanese for dinner, on top of a salad of arugala tossed with lemon juice, olive oil, and grated parm. Fresh farmer's market corn on the cob on the side.

The Big Yam likes to do this thing with the lid of his silicone storage containers where he holds it in his mouth and he looks like a demented clown. It's pretty hilarious.

We've been listening to this mix that we grabbed off The Rub's page pretty consistently. It's slick. It starts off with some pure early 90s girl group awesomeness, which inspired the Dotytron to ask me, "Who does that 'No Scrubs' song?" "TLC" "...it's a pretty good tune!" DUHHHHH. That is a jam, son! RIP Left-Eye! Then the mix goes into some new stuff and ends with a remix of Prince's 7, which is SOOOO GOOD. Here's a refresher in case you need to remember the original:

The mix has a bit too much Lauryn Hill into Fugees for me, but other than that, it's freakin' amazing. The mix also has Mary J's Real Love, which has inspired me to want to learn how to play it on the piano. HOW AMAZING WOULD THAT BE??? Like, if you could just roll up into any hotel lobby and start banging out Real Love on a baby grand? I feel like my ticket to popularity lies therin.

Fin.

Clear eyes, full heart, can't lose.

Soooooo...you may or may not be aware that for the past month plus, casa Dotytron Lagerfeld has been ALL OVER Friday Night Lights. The show has been getting mad daps from my bible, Entertainment Weekly pretty much since it started, as well as my pop culture early adopter sister (who also hepped me to the Hunger Games) and teen author Sarah Dessen. We were INSTANTLY hooked. One episode in bed and we were hungry for more (Dotytron: "already this show is a million times more interesting than Mad Men") despite initial skepticism about the premise's (football and football culture in small town Texas) appeal to diffident sports watchers like us.

This show is sooooo good! Anchored by Connie Britton and Kyle Chandler's pitch perfect husband and wife relationship as Tami and Eric Taylor, this show is about sports, football, small town America, class, parenting, community, coming-of-age (me watching the opening credits: "It reminds me of Geneseo!" Dotytron: "That's the whole point"). I can't say enough good things about it. It's been criminally neglected by the Emmy's. Tami and Coach have one of the most real, loving, commendable TV relationships I've ever seen and they're given equal prominence. I loves me some Coach Taylor (father figure vacuum filler alert!) The writing (save for an abysmal Season 2 divergence into teen-soap territory that was clearly a misguided attempt by NBC to re-brand and re-market the show to a younger audience), is top notch and the actors really inhabit the characters - they were apparently given a lot of leeway in terms of improvising dialogue as long as they hit major points and the show is shot with a loose improvisational feel that speaks to the fact that the actors didn't rehearse scenes prior to shooting (yes, my fandom has extended to Wikipedia-ing info on the production techniques.)

No one, though, loves it more than the Dotytron. The other day he came up to me and was all like nonchalantly, "So I was looking up East Dillon Lions [one of the teams on the show headed by Coach] gear and I found all this Tim Riggins [the show's requisite troubled-with-a-decent-core brooding bad boy] paraphernalia with his face on it - I think I'm going to get some." LOL! Coach's saying is "clear eyes, full heart, can't lose," and I only recently realized that it was his saying, and not the team's motto. Let me just say that the Dotytron let me have it when he realized that I didn't know. I got a big lecture about how, "NO, YOU IDIOT. IT'S COACH'S SAYING. THAT'S WHY IT'S THE BEST. GOD!" The Dotytron wants to implement something similar for his band program...but it's tough. My suggestion was "tight embouchure, self-whittled reed, can't lose" but it doesn't have quite the same ring.

Coach is the best coach/father/husband EVER. I can't wait until I can tell the Big Yam to "take a knee" whenever I want to impart something serious to him. It's going to be hilarious. Also LOL at my neighbour G who recently posted that Tami has "magic hair" on my Facebook wall when I posted an FNL related status. Tami TOTALLY has magic hair. Look:

TOTAL magic hair. LOL!

Anyway, so our pre-bedtime routine has been to allow ourselves a single, savoured episode of Friday Night Lights. That way we can draw out the experience and make it last. Well, there's that but there's also the fact that we don't have time for more than 45 minutes of TV a day.

Today is more drop-in centre fun times with the Boobla and then hanging with Dr. Rei and Hanbo. The drop-in centre has been hilarious now that the Boobla is older. They were only closed for the summer break but there's been a HUGE leap in the Big Yam's ability to engage and explore the world now that he's so much more mobile and with it. I wasn't looking forward to getting stuck in mom gossip world (I usually spend my time chatting with newcomers to Canada, because I find them nicer and less gossipy) but I'm doing it for the Big Yam and I can tell he's enjoying it. He's super-into tambourines and shakers and drums right now, so yesterday he crawled up to one of those shakers that's shaped like an egg and was starting to shake it and bop around. A slightly older (walking-age) kid came up and grabbed ALL the eggs and it was hilarious to watch the Big Yam's reaction. It's the first time that he's ever had something taken from him by a stranger or a peer. He was kind of struck dumb for a second and then he SCREAMED. He crawled over and tried to grab it and when the kid walked away again he screamed again. It was super cute and funny.

Tonight is FNTON (Friday Night Take Out Night). Not sure what the rest of the crew will want to eat. I'd like to go for pide, which are Turkish pizzas, from our local, Pizza Pide.

Fin.

Step by step style

Step 1: read fashion blogs of regular people (somehow usually Mormons?) with good style on a budget (as opposed to say, fashion blogs for people who worship at the altar of Hedi Slimane)

Step 2: listen carefully when fashion blogger X tells you that a great way to be thrifty and fashionable is to shop in the boys section of your local thrift store and get a boy's blazer there for the perfect shrunken look

Step 3: dutifully go out to Value Village and buy a boy's black blazer for $6.99

Step 4: try on the (itchy, heavily synthetic) blazer at home.

Step 5: realize you look like a new immigrant boy on their way to a classmate's bar mitzvah.

Looking good isn't easy, folks.

Tuesday's whole wheat farfalle with spinach, mushrooms, and gorgonzola cheese

Tonight's dinner of shrimp baked in a garlicky tomato sauce with feta, served with roasted garlic oil croutons and string yellow and purple beans tossed in lemon juice and a bit of butter.

I've been on a tear lately, buying stuff for me, the Dotytron and the Big Yam for back to work/daycare. New shoes, sweaters, baby gates, sleepers - basically digging us ever-deeper into debt. The Big Yam is wearing size 18 month stuff now, without blinking an eye.

Fin.

And we're back...

New school year, new routines, new season - the changeover all happened this weekend and we are in the thick of it now. The to-do list is long, the early mornings and nights are dark, the urge to hibernate is strong. It's going to be hard manning the fort on my own all day. I've gotten used to having that extra set of hands around to relieve me, but I'm resolving to cherish each and every moment of this last month of maternity leave and to make it count.

In 5 days the Boobla will be 11 months old. ELEVEN. MONTHS. OLD. He's been around for almost a full year! How did that happen? Where did the time go? Last night, ensconced in bed at the obscenely early hour of 9pm, there was much weepiness and tearing up and irrational wailing on my part at the prospect of being separated from the little big yam. The standard-issue, clichéd mom-issues of: "what if he loves J [his caregiver] more than me?" "what if he forgets that I'm his mama?" "why didn't I appreciate this year and savour every minute more?" "why did I take this past year for granted?" and other self-flagellating recriminations of the maternal sort. I know it gets easier. I know that there's a part of me that is actually looking forward to resuming the ranks of the full-incomed and professionally attired. For all my excitement about having uninterrupted time to use parts of my brain that have been gathering dust these past 12 months and for all my tough-guy bluster about how I'm looking forward to being an adult again...I know I'm going to be sad and it's going to be hard for the two of us.

Last night we were all eating dinner and the Dotytron kept scolding the Big Yam about not rubbing his eyes when his hands were dirty with food. The Dotytron got increasingly more stern and forceful moving the Boobla's fist away from his eye. After the last exchange, the little Boobla, started moving his fist towards his eye, and then stopped midway, looking at the Dotytron with a slightly scared, watchful expression on his face, all wide-eyed and mouth agape. The Dotytron turned to me and we both went, "awwwww" - it was painfully cute and heartbreaking at the same time. Just seeing it again in my mind's eye is enough to make my insides shut down. The Dotytron felt THE GUILTIEST! He couldn't even finish his dinner sitting next to the Boobla and made me switch seats with him, because every time the Boobla wanted to rub his eye he would stop himself and give the Dotytron that same look. What a good little kidlet! Seriously, it makes me want to cry. I don't think I've felt that mix of sad/cute so acutely before.

On Sunday we went on an epic mission to pick up batting from Fabricland. Never, ever, EVER take the Dotytron with you when you're engaging in a hobby, because he INSTANTLY decides that he's an authority and will take the first piece of advice offered by a clerk at a quilt store (for example) and then treat it as gospel. He was super-adamant that I get 80% cotton, 20% polyester batting and it was annoying-slash-hilarious. The part of Scarborough we were in we dubbed "Little America" because it's an enclave that's all big box stores with a high concentration of US-based ones: a super-giant Wal-Marts, a Lowe's, a Marshall's, Five Guys etc. We went into Marshall's and the Dotytron disappeared for 5 minutes and then came up to me wearing a ridiculous jacket that I didn't notice he had donned until after 3 minutes of conversing. When I finally did notice it, I was doubled over laughing. He thought I was trying to out-straight-face him but it's really because I take his presence for granted. LOL! The Dotytron is THE WORST-slash-the-best person to go to these kinds of stores with. The worst because he's the most impulse-driven shopper I've ever met. It's probably because he NEVER goes shopping or because he always insists that he ABSOLUTELY HAS TO HAVE the most random shiz. Like those salt lamps or a spinning glass orb that emits smoke, or kettle bells:

He's the best because you lose your mind laughing shopping with him.

Shirt c/o Auntie Lolls, shorts c/o Auntie SMckay

Last night for dinner I made us bi bim bap rice with spinach, carrots, zucchini, mushrooms, and bean sprouts (topped with a fried egg, of course) and we grilled up some kalbi (marinated short ribs) that our neighbour's mom gave to us. It was a delicious meal - the kalbi were SO FREAKIN' GOOD! Our neighbour 3 doors down came outside while we were grilling because she could smell the kalbi from her house.

Today we're doing some errands and having pasta with spinach, mushrooms, gorgonzola and fontina for dinner with a salad made of stuff from our CSA.

Fin.

All of the lights

Life insists on going on, seemingly without regard for what I want. Young Master T has his own internal rhythms and expectations that have to be met and so I have to step up to the plate and make sure that his days are full with stimulating new experiences, reassuring old ones, belly laughs, tickles, and big love.

I have a joy-filled kid so far and for that I'm very, very grateful. Yes, he's not so into waving bye-bye or listening when we issue short instructions, but I'm more proud of the fact that the little guy loves dancing. More specifically, he does the dutty wine - the boy's got moooooves. Lots of slow, bass-driven, winding in the lower half region. He doesn't so much dance as groove. It's pretty adorable - the best is that sometimes you'll put a tune, he'll look at you for a couple of seconds, find the rhythm, and then start getting down and it's so endearing.

So is watching the little nut at the wading pool:

For Friday Night Takeout/Eat Out night we went to Paul and Sandy's Real Barbecue out in Etobicoke. It's been getting good reviews from various barbecue aficionados and the positive buzz is well earned. It's a small little joint - with a lone man (obviously Paul) manning the open kitchen and Sandy and some other local yokels doing front of the house. Maybe 20 or so seats in all. They start you off with a complimentary basket of warm, toasted garlic bread drenched in garlic butter:

We were starving so we ordered some fried zucchini sticks (which was totally overkill) - these were delicious and we polished them off (and burned the roofs of our mouths in the process) in about 5 seconds:

For our mains we opted to split the sample platter for 2, which comes with 2 sides (we picked baked beans and potato salad and got an additional side of coleslaw - again in our ignorance, contributing to the gluttony and our eventual acquiescence to the inevitability of leftovers). The red skin potato salad is cool and creamy, and the sample platter is divine. You get a full rack of baby back ribs, brisket, pulled pork, smoked chicken, and smoked meatloaf. Alongside are the house made bbq sauces, one spicy, one not. The brisket and the ribs were perfect - the brisket was so moist and juicy, capped with the thinnest, sheerest layer of melting fat. The ribs were held together by a dark, lacquered barque that yielded at the gentlest pull of your teeth into smoke-ringed, pink shards of tender meat. The pulled pork was so-so, but the meatloaf was divine - oniony ground beef infused with smoky flavour. Normally I'm not a fan of smoked chicken but the spice rub on the skin gave it a savoury crust and Paul is experienced enough that the white meat was supple instead of dry. We can't wait to go back. Dinner for 2 with 1 beer and 1 pop came out to $60, including tax and tip:

Boobla Khan ate generously from our plates - downing brisket, chicken, pork, and lots of baked beans. In the car ride home he experienced his first-ever dance with the 'itis and got right fartsacked:

Poor little Boobla.

Yesterday we did some errands - I worked on my quilt (more on that later) and we took dinner over to Momma and Poppa D's house and had a visit with Ehmdo at the same time. I made a green salad with roasted beets and chevre croutons, polenta lasagna (inspired by a fantastic dish Lolly made at the cottage), and chocolate chip cookie ice cream sandwiches with vanilla ice cream from Ed's Real Scoop. Pretty tasty, all told:

This morning for Sunday breakkie I made us a fat baby and garlic pork breakfast sausages from the Mennonites:

This afternoon we're headed up to Markham to hang with my mom, Poh Poh and my brothers - looking forward to some Chinese eats.

I've been working real hard on my quilt top and quilt back for the last week and finished both yesterday. The front probably took me about a month, off and on - the chevron pattern requires a lot of minute cutting and trimming and sewing. Quilting is fussy work! Way fussier than knitting, which is fairly straightforward - you make a mistake, it's easy to fix and the proportions of the things you're wrestling with are small. Quilting is taking small things, making them bigger, attaching them to other things, trimming that, and piecing things together bit by bit. The quilt back came together a lot easier, but that's because I was kind of winging it. I feel more confident know with being able to wing something - the math involved in quilting damn near kills me, though:

I accidentally attached the last row of blue zig zags upside down. I've since fixed it. Now all I have to do is get batting, make the quilt sandwich, quilt the monster, make binding, and sew it on! Le sigh.

Fin.

A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall

This life is a terrible, terrible slog sometimes. We've had some bad news around these parts. I'm not ready to talk about it, but I might take a little hiatus from ye olde blog while we regroup.

Then again, I may not. I find it cathartic writing, even if it's just recapping the mundane details of my day. It adds a regularity and rhythm to my life. The motivation to record what I've done, who I've seen, (what I've eaten), is a way for me to stand up to entropy. To forever imprint the fact that I happened, this happened into the ether of the internet. I like collecting my thoughts and reflecting on things and the ability to potentially be more eloquent than I ever am in the moment.

So I may or may not. It depends on what life demands of me.

The Dotytron took today off. I've already taken the Boobla Khan to the park where he sat in the wading pool and swung on the swings and had his lunch alfresco. We're headed out to Etobicoke to visit with Nany and to eat BBQ at Paul and Sandy's for dinner (we've re-implemented Friday Night Take Out Night now that summer vacation is over). We're hoping to get back in time to hang with Dr. Rei and Hanbo and Dr. Rei's bro while they're in the east end on their own Burger's Priest mission.

Wednesday night's dinner was a grilled steak caesar salad with a caprese salad

Last night's dinner was a corn, bacon & scallion sauté, with blanched green beans tossed in mustard vinaigrette and a maple-mustard glazed salmon fillet

Fin.

The Ex

Going to the Ex with the Dotytron is no joke - in the sense that it's ALL jokes. That guy's unbridled enthusiasm for the CNE and the accompanying running commentary is the best. Sample snippets: "That's the ride my sister almost died on" "Whoa. Unsponsored mist tents are way generous with the mist." And a million comments of randomness at the International Pavilion which has a million vendors representing various countries/regions selling their "local" wares that were all made in China. The Dotytron loves his International Pavilion, hard. The butter sculptures were very impressive, mostly because there was one of Dobby the house elf:

The sand sculptures were totally insane. This entry, from Japan, was called "Fukushima, after the melt down" (a bit of a downer, IMO):

I'm convinced there must be some kind of binder in the sand - how do they prevent the moisture from evaporating? Check out the blindfold suspended between the figures here:

This one was called "Ghost in the Machine" which made my insides shut down from displaced embarrassment. I also thought it was way too sexy:

The food was kind of meh. The food stalls in the food building are pretty corporate and lack a lot of charm AND execution by craftspeople. They're mostly all staffed by disaffected teenagers with diffident hygiene habits. It's not inspiring stuff. I got snookered by the allure of a "hot waffle sandwich" expecting some kind of Belgian liege waffle all crispy and robust sandwiching a slowly melting vanilla-flecked ice cream. My misgivings started when I saw the bags and bags of no-name bulk "waffle/pancake" mix piled haphazardly in the stand. Regardless, I bought one anyway and it was disappointing. As I ate my sandwich and we made our way to the International Pavilion, the Dotytron turned to me and said, "where's the stroller?" UH-OH. I had left the stroller with the diaper bag (containing my wallet, my Blackberry, and our camera) at the stand!!! I bolted back and luckily it was still there. Holy cats, that was a close call - I can't believe I was so mind-f**ked by the thought of a hot waffle ice cream sandwich that I almost lost a bajillion dollars.

We also had a pretty lacklustre, extremely overpriced funnel cake. Why do people think they can charge $10 for a funnel cake with icing sugar and ice cream? Why??? I was also super-looking forward to eating one of those tornado potato things (see photo below for reference) but they didn't have them! There's also an egregious lack of deep-fried things. The big talk this year was about deep-fried Pepsi - which sounds stupid to me for several reasons: a) it should be Coke; b) deep-frying Pepsi doesn't ADD anything to the soda experience. I've never had a cold, refreshing, pop and thought to myself, "You know what this experience needs? Deep-frying" because very often, I want the pop to CLEANSE the deep-fry from my palate. Deep-fried pop sends mixed messages.

So Bey and the Jigga Man are having a baby. This is one of the least interesting celebrity babies to me - I just can't respect them as a couple because they're always doing boring rich people things like partying in the Hamptons and like, vacationing in Monte Carlo. I just think Monte Carlo (especially on a yacht) is snoozerville old white people fun. Also, I think the Jigga Man is too old to be a first-time father. He was born in NINETY SIXTY NINE, guys. THAT'S OLD. I'm also going to go out there FTR and say that I'm into calling Bey, Bey, but I'm not into Kanye as 'Ye. There. I said it. I also think about important stuff too...but not very often. SHUT UP.

There's been ongoing drama with the City of Toronto and our walkway. Basically, 2 years ago when we moved in we had the City upgrade their end of our water line to increase the water volume going into our house (people generally confuse water pressure with water volume - we have a water volume issue, not a pressure one.) In doing so, they tore up some of our walkway and the sidewalk in front of the house and replaced it with crappy asphalt which was so soft that my kickstand for my bike would make deep divots in it on semi-warm summer days. Last month, they finally came and fixed the sidewalk but forgot to fix the walkway. After as series of back and forth calls, the subcontractors came to fix the walkway. I was sitting outside with the neighbours when it happened and I warned the guy to be careful because we thought there was a wasp's nest under one of our plants, but he was all tough-guy about it and said, "that's no problem," started mucking around in there, and the wasps went ape-s**t and stung the crap out of him. It was kind of hilarious to watch. So then they abandoned ship and left it alone for like, days and days and the neighbours called the City and I started to feel bad that maybe I should get rid of the wasp's nest - but my neighbours were like no, the City pays those guys made luche to take care of stuff like that. The worker had the gall to ask me to borrow our fire extinguisher to use on the nest. I was like, uhhhh no. First of all, a fire extinguisher costs like, $50 and second of all, those are one-time use items, so that would kill it and we'd be screwed. Go buy a can of Raid, you Neanderthals!

Anyway, our walkway has been torn up for the past week but when we got home last night, they had poured the concrete in our absence and the wasp's seem to be gone. Win-win! So we immediately set out to deface the concrete. Best! It now says: M.L. + I.D. + T.D. 2011 I love vandalizing concrete!

Fin.

Canadian National Exhibition

Squeee! So excited! We're headed to the CNE in the late afternoon - my first time in oh, I don't know, like 27 years or something. I can't wait to stuff myself silly with fair food.

The new routine is going well - we managed to watch an episode of Friday Night Lights while I did yoga AND we were safely ensconced in bed by 10pm. The perfect time to give us a bit of pre-bed reading/debriefing time and get a good night's rest. We're also trying to do a healthier eating routine. To that end, last night I made us a Nicoise salad with a poached egg on top, followed by a blueberry sour cream pie square with a small (for me) dollop of whipped cream:

We spent a good chunk of yesterday afternoon playing in the sprinkler with the neighbours. It was fun times. Also: the Boobla Khan STOOD UP BY HIMSELF (without holding onto anything)!!! He wasn't even thinking about it - just holding a tambourine in one hand he slowly louvered himself with his legs planted far apart and stood for about 10 seconds until I drew everyone's attention to it and then he got all shook one and sat back down again. Such a little star. I don't know how it's possible, but it seems like he's gotten exponentially cuter in the last week or so. We're chalking it down to the fact that he's babbling a lot more and he's getting the concept of jokes and playing peek-a-boo and is just an all-around good times guy.

At the movie on Sunday, SMckay and I also saw a trailer for the upcoming Dreamworks movie, War Horse. About 10 seconds in, SMckay turned to me and said, "I just can't get that excited about a movie about a horse" - which for some reason makes me LOL to no end. If you watch the trailer, you might understand. The horse looks so goddamned dumb. I suspect there might be a lot of horse-specific emotional moments that might not play so well with a non-horse audience.

During Big Yam nap times I've been working on my chevron quilt. Holy cats - talk about a labour of love. It's piecing, trimming, sewing, ironing on repeat times a billion. The mornings have been getting cool in Toronto and we haven't been running the a/c at night - I'm starting to get the knitting urge again, which is nice...I have a long queue of knitted goods to produce.

I will report back with full details of deep-fried goodness.

Fin.

Trial run

We're starting a kind of practice run of real life today - slowly but surely giving ourselves over to the inexorable grip of the Toronto District School Board's demands on the Dotytron's life, a month-long preview of what things are going to be like with one of us at work full time, with me joining in in October. The Dotytron will be going into work almost full days all week - and I'm going to start handing over a dinner or two a week to him - so he can get a taste of what it's going to be like when he's responsible for the daycare pick up run and also responsible for the bulk of dinner preparations.

My work schedule is going to be an approximate 8:45am start until 5:30pm (which includes my extra half hour a day for my compressed work week schedule - the thing I do that allows me every third Friday off). I might cut my lunches back to half an hour, which will let me leave at 5pm and home around 5:30pm. Tuesdays are going to be a rough day - I have class from around 6:30-9:30pm which means that I basically won't see the Boobla all day that day. Wednesday nights we're going to have dodgeball which also means we probably won't be seeing the Boobla that day unless we end up dragging him to games - which is going to be more and more difficult with him getting bigger and bigger. These are definitely the hard choices you have to make as a parent who still wants to lead a full life. One of our neighbours down the street have a daughter entering JK who has NEVER been left with a caregiver - ever. Insane, right?

One Day was pretty terrible. I'm certainly glad that Dr. Rei and I didn't have to pay for it. Anne Hathaway's British accent is as flighty and indecisive as her character - sometimes it's kind of there, sometimes it devolves into a Irish brogue, and sometimes it just disappears into the ether. I'm not sure why they opted to cast her in the film when any number of accomplished British actresses would have sufficed. Jim Sturgess is okay as Dexter Mayhew - a little slight for how I envisioned the character and the aging they do at the end to ease him into his 40s is kind of egregious - crow's feet that stayed as deeply furrowed when his face is still as when he smiles. I think that knowing the book might do you a disservice, but even as a film it falls flat - there is zero chemistry between the two leads, their motivations are opaque, their "love" a complete mystery and the film looks pretty cheaply made. The dialogue is stilted and the delivery wooden. Don't see it!

By contrast, The Help is a literary adaptation done well - ingratiating to those who haven't read the book while faithfully (enough) adhering to the spirit of the inspiration material to please those die-hard mum-lit devotees who've helped to make this book a fixture on the New York Times bestseller list. This is mum-lit to the max - a serious subject (race relations in Jackson, Mississippi during the Jim Crow years) treated with respectful gravity that never gets too serious (a black man is shot, but the event is given a properly sombre-yet-blithe glossing), an all-female cast, and a deliciously b****y villain played with just the right amount of scenery chewing over-the-top-ness by Bryce Dallas Howard. How can you go wrong? Throw in the message of the white woman helping the black maids find their voice and you've got an all-around winner. I found this film fairly entertaining, carried mostly by the winning performance of Octavia Spencer as sass-mouthed Minny and Viola Davis as a steely, resigned, and mature Abileen. I didn't quite believe Emma Stone as Skeeter Phelan, but she disappeared enough into the role that it wasn't glaringly obvious that we had "it-girl hottie" Emma Stone on our hands. Jessica Chastain is winning as a white trash woman faced with the cliquey hatefulness of the Junior League biddies. I would definitely see this - maybe not in the theatres but it's a good one to watch on a lazy Sunday afternoon with your mum.

We got a preview trailer for Like Crazy, which has been generating mad buzz since winning big at Sundance last year. Anton Yelchin and Felicity Jones play long-distance young lovers. I teared up watching the preview and can't wait to see it in the theatres.

Fin.

Where have I been?

Photo of the Boobla Khan taking by Ehdmo at R & R Acres

Well, the big storm on Wednesday blew our modem so I've been without internet. During that time, we were also playing host to Miss Ramona until Friday. Our car died AGAIN on Thursday, in the EXACT SAME FASHION, this time it totally died on us closer to home, though. It turns out that our battery was faulty, which destroyed our brand-new alternator. Luckily, the alternator is under warranty so we got that replaced for free and just have to pay for the battery and the labour.

On Friday evening we met up with R & R and introduced them to both Burger's Priest and Settlers of Cattan and probably thereby raised our nerd/freak flag too early into the friendship, ruining it forever.

Saturday was a rare day without social obligations. We walked around our hood and I bought a new dress for work, courtesy of one of my favorite Canadian lines, the stupidly named Pink Martini. I bought the "Picnic Dress" in black, which comes with a pretty cute belt that I can use for other dresses. I think this will look nice with either a close-cut cardigan, or a shrunken black blazer with tights and t-strap chunky heels.

We had the roomie over for dinner yesterday. We're her go-to place when L'Armi goes out of town and she's on call. It's pretty cute. I made this crustless eggplant quiche of grilled eggplant layered with ricotta pureed with eggs and basil and shredded mozzarella. We also had caesar salad and blueberry sour cream pie squares with whipped cream.

On Thursday I had Miss Ramona help make chicken fingers (the food she requested as part of her "Special Day" birthday coupon festivities. I also made corn on the cob and a green bean, tomato, and potato salad with mustard vinaigrette. She like the chicken fingers but wasn't too keen on eating corn on the cob or potatoes and green beans.

Camp Leslieville was a bit of a tough sell. It's that classic parent line - there's the things you want your kids (or your sister's kids) to be into and then there's the stuff that they're into - in my niece's case, that's mostly watching TV and vegging out. She LOVES her vegging out hard. It's hard to get her excited about stuff. She did seem to have a fun time playing with the neighbour's kids and that was pretty cute. But our trip to the Science Centre was a bit of a fail. Ah well - she was also missing her parents which could have influenced things. At one point, she pulled out this ANCIENT photo of my outlaw bro and my sis (from like, 2000 or something) that she was carrying around in this mini backpack, took a look at it, and said, "I miss them." It was pretty hilarious.

Today was brunch with K & J and the girls from work at K & J's gorgeously reno'd house. Then SMckay is coming over for dinner and a viewing of The Help. Full review to follow!

Fin.

Mad max

Photos from the last few days...

Fried zucchini spaghetti, recipe inspiration courtesy of Gwyneth Paltrow's stupid cookbook that was probably (definitely) ghost written by Mario Batali

Grilled radicchio salad with toasted breadcrumbs, egg, and anchovy vinaigrette

My life's goal, realized

Outtakes from yesterday spent with Poh Poh and Miss Ramona at our house. We went out after dinner and all the kids were out riding their bikes - it looked simultaneously like Mad Max, a motorcross practice session, and as if the Dotytron had 5 kids because of the high proportion of Asian-Caucasian pairings and their kids on our street. So cute!!!

LOVE LOVE LOVE my hood!

At the Science Centre today with the family - exhausting but fun.

I'm lazing out and ordering pizza tonight because the Science Centre took so much out of us. It's been decreed that we're all going to bed at 8.

Fin.

A career in the arts...

The woman half of R & R is an old friend of Momma D's going back to their OCAD days. R's daughter, P is deciding between attending Concordia or OCAD for a fine arts degree. Thinking about this and the tendency for kids to ape the careers of modeled by their parents (not necessarily restricted to the arts - lawyers beget lawyers, etc.) and also how artistic/creative talent is as much nurtured as natured, the Dotytron and I got into a big discussion about parenting.

I'm going to come right out and say it - I absolutely, 100% DO NOT want my child to have a career in the arts (traditional, fine arts.) No being a musician, a painter, a writer, none of that, please. My concern is that because the Dotytron comes from a self-identified "musical family" and because the Dotytron himself is so talented musically, that already people are looking for those cues in the Big Yam. I can't tell you the number of times I've heard people say "Oh! Look at him playing his tambourine/dancing/wanting to touch the guitar - he's going to a musician just like his dad/nana/poppa/auntie." They're looking for those markers and commenting on them and the conversation with the Dotytron started with me saying that we have to be very conscious of the insidiousness of that kind of representational language and attempt to balance it by commenting more frequently and strongly on other aspects/elements, that we ourselves are admittedly weaker in. In the same way that gender constructions start in utero, with little girl babies being told how pretty, cute, precious they are, rather than how strong, creative, and adventurous, the same is done from a very young age when people have preconceived notions of what a child can be.

This isn't to denigrate a career in the arts. Ehmdo has two successful classically creative careers and is spectacularly talented at both. I'm also recognizing that you can be creative in many, many, many fields - and that a child who is positioned to excel will by necessity draw on their creative skills in many non-classically creative fields - as lawyers, engineers, surgeons, investment bankers, etc.

My main point is that the allure of a highly romanticized, bohemian, fine arts-based life style is never as compelling as during the critical point in a kid's life when they have to apply themselves at less "fun" and "cool" disciplines in order to make sure that doors remain open in the future - stuff like physics and calculus. NO ONE thinks those things are cool! And yet, given our respective weaknesses in the hard sciences and maths, I think it's really important that we strive to overcome our lack of facility in those areas and make those subject areas as fun and engaging as possible. Physics is totally fun and engaging! I'm sure that now, I'd probably think the same thing of calculus and algebra.

The Dotytron was countering that of course we would stress excellence in general - the same way that we would expect excellence in athletics, music, math, etc. I disagree though - I could care less if my kid comes home with a bad grade in gym. If my kid comes home with a bad grade in one of the core subjects, there will be heck to pay, mark my words.

The point of the matter is that I feel like people have a tendency to unconsciously map out a child's future and narrow the field of possibilities by projecting attributes and characteristics pretty much from birth. You really have to work hard to counteract those enculturating forces.

The other point of the matter is that if my kid does choose that career, I want them to do it AFTER getting a University degree and AFTER having interviewed at least 10 people working in the field that they want to enter, so that they get an idea of the kinds of trials, tribulations, and (probable) poverty that accompany the lifestyle.

Guh. I'm such a hard a** parent. Just call me the dream killah.

Fin.