Gooby eyes, full hearts, a wrecked butt

That is a basic synopsis of how this extra-long family day weekend went down.

On Valentine's Day, I picked up the Big Yam from daycare and took him on a V-Day treat ride on the bus, subway, and then to Country Style Hungarian Cuisine for dinner with the outlaw mum.  Schnitzel jawns for days, yo.  Peep this:

People complain that the prices at Country Style have gone up.  This is true.  A schnitzel dinner runs you around $17.00 nowadays.  HOWEVER!  That schnitzel is easily a foot across and comes with taters and a vegetable side.  It's a pretty sweet deal, in my books.  

I took Friday off so that I could do my road test for my G license.  Against all odds: I passed!  The examiner was a black dude, and a few years ago my brother, Bruce Wayne imparted this little nugget of know-how: black people love Asians.  ESPECIALLY Asian women.  I passed before even getting on the highway.  The examiner and I basically talked football, travel, and growing up in Markham and as I was getting on the DVP he said, "Just go one exit - as far as I'm concerned you've already passed, so don't even worry about this part."  AMAZING!  He was also a fan of my whole, "the old ball and chain" routine that I do sometimes.  This is a valuable ice-breaking lesson I've learned in my years of social interaction.  Generally, when dealing with people in the service industry, if you want them to come over to your side, it's always effective to play the stereotypical, "my husband is an inept blah blah blah" or "my husband is from Mars and I'm from Venus" thing.  It works like a charm.  So like, when we're checking in at the airport and trying to get seats I do a whole, "...but lord knows HE doesn't know how to pack for a trip, amirite?!?" thing that almost always wins over the desk clerk.  My driving examiner was also a huge fan of our short list of names for the twerps, as our names tend to skew towards the black barbershop variety.

Contrary to what I thought it was going to be, it was the most unstressful testing experience I've ever had.  So I obviously treated myself to a Harvey's hamburger and onion rings.  Why doesn't Harvey's get more love?  They really do make a hamburger a beautiful thing.  I followed that up with a trip to Diana's seafood for oysters and then a trip to Arz, my favorite (only?) Lebanese grocery store for za'atar and labneh and delicious dips like muhammara.  Scarborough rules!  Diana's and Arz are so close to each other and there is so much happiness to be found in between their walls.  I saw gorgeous razor clams at Diana's that I'm going to snag in the future so that the Dotytron and I can relive our Barcelona days.

That night the Dotytron and I had dinner at this new restaurant, Porzia, that was opened by a friend of mine. He was actually the first person I met the day I started at North 44.  It's a cute little resto in Parkdale with warm lighting, a good soundtrack, and a non-hipster-y vibe.  Italian-influenced menu and a killer bartender who made me the best virgin cocktail I've ever had.  Better than what I got at Alinea, and that's saying something.  It was like pear and rosemary and citrus.  Delicious.

 A special from that day - this warm, potato-dough stuffed pizza thing with proscuitto and mortadella served with a fennel & kohlrabi slaw.  

Hamachi crudo.  Ye gods, I love me some crudo, so hard.  I wish we had an all-crudo restaurant in Toronto.  This was served with beets and radishes and lightly dressed, but nothing competed with the flavour of the rich yellowtail.  I literally took a bite and got goosebumps.

A treatsie from the chef.  Cotechino crostini with warm rapini.  I LOVE COTECHINO.  It's a small thing, but the restaurant gets the crostinis PERFECT and that's a good foundation.  The bread is charred but not overly crisped, with a giving chew.  This was warm, rich, and salty with just the right amount of bite from the rapini.

Chicken liver agnolotti with honey mushrooms.  You know who loves chicken livers?  Me and the Dotytron.  What's not to love about a delicate, punched up chicken liver filling encased in perfectly cooked fresh pasta tossed up with a tangle of woodsy honey mushrooms in a light brown butter sauce?  NOTHING, THAT'S WHAT. 

This was another treatsie dish.  Grilled octopus served over semolina with peanuts and apples.  The octopus was perfectly cooked and the flavour combination of the semolina, apples, and peanuts was a revelation.  I'm not sure that the dish was harmonious, in that it seemed to comprise two distinct components, but both those components were individually executed perfectly.

Sweetbreads.  You know who likes sweetbreads?  Me and the Dotytron (probably slightly more me).  With bacon and romesco and sunchokes.  UGH.  I LOVE SWEETBREADS SO DAMNED MUCH.  I would say that the sunchokes were a little under and disrupted the overall textures of the dish, but the sunchokes themselves were delicious - they were raw so they had a nice, woody, earthy taste that you usually lose when you cook them.

Bone marrow and snails.  You know who loves bone marrow?  THIS GUY.  This was sauced with a delicate brown demi-type sauce and the snails were garlicky and the bone marrow was bone-marrow-y and everything was deliciously sopped up with more of those perfect crostinis.  I literally punched the air a million times when this dish came out to the table.  I could make a meal of this dish and this dish alone.

Chocolate hazelnut mousse.  This dish was fine, the plating could use a bit of work, but compared to the heights of the previous dishes, next time I might skip dessert and just double-down on the marrow.

All in the all, the meal (minus the treatsies) was reasonably priced at $125 or something for the two of us with 2 cocktails, and 2 beers for the Dotytron, not including tip.  We were stuffed.

The good eating continued on Saturday with Lolly and SMcKay over for dinner and haircuts.  I made us ribs, stuffed potato skins, 7 layer dip, and a chocolate pudding with Skor bits and whipped cream.  There was a round of haircuts all around AND a viewing of Silver Linings Playbook.  

Then on Sunday, we had our amazing friends H & A come and visit from Cleveland for 24 glorious hours.  I LOVE THOSE GUYS.  They are seriously the best.  They are kindred spirits of the highest order.  I put out this spread: 

Not pictured: the oysters I snagged from Diana's - fat bastards from WA and French Kiss from N.B.

That night we went to Pizzeria Libretto on the Danforth and continued our time-honoured tradition with these guys of ordering at least 1-2 more apps and entrées than there are diners at the table.  We tried to go to Bar Chef to try this Manhattan cocktail that H had heard about, but it was closed, so we went to Ceili Cottage for drinks and then home.  Somewhere in there, my piriformis finally went on strike and I had shooting pains up and down my leg when I transitioned from sitting to standing (or vice versa) and by the end of the night I was basically incapacitated and my leg would give out.  Fun!

The next morning, we went to Lady Marmalade for breakfast.  Ugh.  I love that place so much.  Best breakfasts in town!  So good!  So beyond what I am usually up for making myself, which is the hallmark of a good brunch place.  

Two Cleveland cuties.

The breakfast poutine: homefries, hollandaise, aged cheddar

Cheddar and spinach waffles with bacon

My croque monsieur with poached eggs and more of their superlative homefries

I can't even tell you the amount of pain I was in at that point.  It was excruciating.  We went home, had naps, the Big Yam came back from his sleepover at Momma D's, which somehow resulted in him pooping everywhere.  Like, this is the report I got from him.  He walks in the door.  Me: "How was your sleepover at Nana's house?" Big Yam: "I got poo in my socks."  I don't even know how such a thing is possible.  

Then we went on a death march to Pacific Mall (on a weekend, during Chinese New Year), which meant we had to park a million miles away, which meant that of COURSE my sciatica was mad aggravated.  In the end, there was nothing for me to do but lie on the couch all night, writhing in pain each time I moved my leg the slightest bit.

I called in sick on Tuesday and because the Big Yam had pinkeye, he stayed home with me, a situation I only countenanced on account of the fact that the Dotytron took a half day off of work so I wouldn't be stuck with the Boobla all day (which would have been impossible, since I couldn't really move) AND because the Roomie came over and was amazing and made me lunch and fed the Yam and ran me a bath and watched him.  I love my Roomie.  She's the best.  

I think I basically have sciatica from my piriformis being compressed around the sciatic nerve.  It's not uncommon, and my piriformis has given me trouble for a while.  It just went on strike.  Think, sharp pain in your glutes that makes you leg give way from under you.  Fun.  Stretching in the morning and night and hot baths and moving around and the heating pad are all working together and I was able to go back to work yesterday.  I'm just making an effort to get up every hour after sitting at my desk and walk around for a bit.  That helps.  My manager also gave me permission to bring in a stability ball to sit on at my desk, so I'm hoping that makes things better too.  I've said it before and I'll say it again: I really need to find time for some regular yoga practice.  

So that was our weekend.  Stomachs and hearts full of food with lovely peeps in our life.  Eyes extruding mad crud.  A butt that went on strike.  All in all: still fun times.

I love this baby so much.  Look at how cute she is.  She's just the cutest little muffin I've ever seen.

Butternut squash and red lentil soup AND tuna melts with the Roomie last week.

On Tuesday, I made myself get up and make a long-simmered bolognese.  It was delicious to the extreme.  My body was glad because making it got me up and moving and my stomach was glad because it tasted like heaven.  I mean, not as good as Ragu's bottled sauce, but close.

Wednesday night we had French onion soup with gruyere crostinis and a big Olive Garden-style salad.  We've been eating this salad all week but it hasn't gotten old (for me).  

Last night we had tagliatelle carbonara.  Which was SOOOOOOO GOOD.  I had been dreaming about it all day and basically inhaled two servings.  Talk about cheap eats!!!  Ugh.  So delicious.

Today is my day off.  Massages, errands, and tonight is ladies' night on the street.  We're going for Ethiopian food.

Fin.

Favorite part of the day

Here's a short little video of one of my favorite parts of the day.  When we all sit around the table and the Big Yam asks us what our favorite part of the day was.  Lately this has involved a confession from him about pushing or hitting one of his daycare peeps.

Another thing I love is that he has a big, stuffed (it's 2 feet tall) Bernard from Where the Wild Things Are toy in his room and he calls it a "wild things are."  As in: "There's my 'wild things are.'"  So cute!!!

He also answers almost everything you say with "yes" except it's his lispy version: "yesth."  So we'll say stuff like, "You're not supposed to hit T.  It hurts him."  "Yesth."  "We're going to eat hamburgers for dinner." "Yesth."  It's so definitive and sure and hilariously non-topical at times.

I've been sitting on a lot of opinions about the ongoing dispute between elementary and secondary school teachers in Ontario represented by the ETFO and the OSSTF respectively, and the province in their labour negotiations.  Since I am paid to be professionally non-political, I am loathe to take to a public forum (albeit one with an teeny tiny readership) like this blurg to express my views.  What I will say is that the tactics employed by the union in this case have shown a marked and deplorable absence of political savvy or acumen.  Also a gross misunderstanding of public opinion and a reliance on a short-term game (if you could even call it a game) that is extremely amateurish.  I also don't know why I expected teachers as a whole to be more rational and critical than the general electorate, but I did, and I'm finding the level of mis-information that is circulating from the government AND union alike appalling.

As an information professional and a proponent of informed choice, it is galling to me that the information most people need to make informed decisions is readily available and yet people are still so easily swayed by rhetoric and ideology.  I can't tell you how many people I spoke to on both sides of the argument who didn't even bother to read the text of the legislation in question (Bill 115) or the Memorandum of Understanding upon which the contracts were to be based.

Like young master T's shirt says:

Ask questions.  All the time.  Find the source.  It's all about the information, Marty!

This is all to say that I think that I really, truly believe I missed my calling as a political strategist.  I'm good at this game, yo.  We'll see what happens if I decide to run for school board trustee in a decade.  This is also to say that I should re-watch Sneakers again (which is true, all the time, erry day)

I can't reiterate enough how good that mattar paneer was.  I've NAILED the recipe.  It's so quick and easy, too.  I also think that sauce would work really nicely as a hybrid chicken tikka/butter chicken sauce with some boneless skinless chicken thighs or some such.

Tonight was pancake Tuesday.  As I said on Twitter, it's so telling to me that the most excessive thing white people could think of to make before giving things up for Lent is like, pancakes...which aren't even that RICH.  Gimme some doughnuts!  Some fried chicken!  Some lasagna!  A freakin' Cinnabon!  Let's DO IT UP, FAT TUESDAY!

All that being said, we ate pancakes for dinner, LOL.  The Dotytron was in charge.  Pancakes and bacon.  We've been in search of the perfect buttermilk pancake and my FB friend posted a slightly adapted Cook's Illustrated recipe today in honor of Mardi Gras that is now our go-to recipe.  I've posted it below.  It's fantastic.  The addition of sour cream is key.  As you might recall, from my sour cream pancake adventure a few weeks back, sour cream makes a nice rich-but-light pancake with a good spring in its step that's still tender.  That last recipe I used was almost entirely sour cream - this recipe veers more towards your standard, classic pancake, with just a bit of sour tang to elevate it.  Highly recommended.  The Dotytron made banana, chocolate chip, and plain ones.

Fin.




------------------------------------------------------------------------
Best Buttermilk Pancakes
a Cook's Illustrated adaptation
makes about 16 4" pancakes

2 c. all purpose flour
1 1/2 T. sugar
1/2 t. salt
1 t. baking powder
1/2 t. baking soda
2 c. buttermilk
1/4 c. sour cream or yogurt
3 T. butter, melted

- whisk together dry ingredients in a bowl.  In a separate bowl, whisk together wet ingredients.
- mix wet into dry, stirring just until combined.
- cook on a buttered griddle until browned on one side and bubbly, flip and cook through.
- keep warm in a 200F oven.

Ballers

This was a ballin' weekend of epic proportions.

SNOWMAGEDDON HAPPENED.  In a big, big way.  Between when I woke up at 6 on Friday morning and when I next looked out the window at 7:30am before leaving the house, it was a totally different landscape.  I'm not going to lie, it was hard getting the Big Yam into daycare.  I had the brill idea to tow him in our sled but our sled is one designed for babies and he weighs a metric tonne and it was like pulling a Loony Toons anvil behind me.  It took me half an hour to go a distance that usually takes me 7 minutes.  I left a nasty, nasty message on the Dotytron's celly to the effect of: LET ME HAVE THE CAR FOR ONCE YOU G-D SADIST.  YOU LOOK AFTER CHILDREN, I ACTUALLY HAVE TO DEAL WITH CLIENTS, IT'S WAY MORE IMPORTANT THAT I'M AT WORK ON TIME.

It was the worst. But I came home and something magical had happened: our neighbours who had the good fortune to work from home had shovelled all our sidewalk and walkways for us!  So sweet!  And my other neighbour who drives a sweet Audi SUV (ballers) gave me a ride in their car to go grab the Big Yam (good thing, since it took the Dotytron 2 hours to get home - the snowplows in their infinite wisdom plowed in all the exits on the 401 so he ended up in like, Whitby, before he could get off and turn around).  I love my neighbourhood.  The people on my street are so darned sweet.  This is what makes a community happen.

Our friend R's birthday party was being held on Friday night so against all odds, we managed to traverse the Hoth-like streets and get to Spin, which is that ping pong place that's kind of like a club.  It's also co-owned by Susan Sarandon, aka Ehmdo's boyfriend's Tim Robbins' ex.  MHui and R are ballers so we had a private room and there were DELICIOUS snacks.  Guys, Susan Sarandon is a really good cook!  We had devilled eggs (pictured above), fried chicken and waffles, Philly cheese steak skewers, mini grilled cheese sandwiches, crab cakes, and shrimp'n'grits in little cones. So good.  I made two kinds of cupcakes for the bday boy: vanilla with salted caramel buttercream and chocolate with brown sugar buttercream.

Two people thrilled with overnight babysitting

I didn't think I'd have the mustard to make it through the night, but as soon as I played one round of ping pong I was like, filled with typical competitive, steroid-like juice.  Unfortunately, we had to take the Big Yam to Chinese school the next morning so our overnight babysitting opportunity to sleep in was squandered.  We only had about 5 hours sleep and it was rough getting through Saturday.  

We had lunch at Congee Queen whereupon I ordered about 6 dishes for 2 adults.  It was obscene.  We followed this with dinner at Chung King Garden with our Discerning Coyote friend and JJ and S and their kids.  EPIC PEKING DUCK PARTY.  Then, because S loves cream puffs, we took them to Beard Papa for their inaugural Japanese cream puff experience.  

As an aside, My Fitness Pal insists that a Beard Papa cream puff is only 220 calories.  Uhhh, sure My Fitness Pal, if you say so.  I'm not complaining.  What's the word for when you know something is wrong but you choose to believe it because it suits your delusion?  Whatever, that's what my belief that Beard Papa cream puffs are only 220 calories is.  

Somewhere in there I was so crunked from lack of sleep the night before that I left the house in my pajamas with one of my mom's fur coats thrown over top.  The best line my mum said in relation to my grandma being in a nursing home:  "I have to find her [my Poh Poh] new tops, they [the nursing home] are having trouble laundering her clothes because they're all cashmere."  This is so revealing on so many levels.  ONLY MY MUM WOULD SEND SOMEONE TO A NURSING HOME WITH CASHMERE TOPS.  ONLY MY GRANDMA WOULD HAVE A WARDROBE CONSISTING ENTIRELY OF CASHMERE AND FURS.  LOL!  P.S. I told you all the way back in 2007 that I come from a long, long line of ballin' cashmere lovers.  

This kid needs a haircut like whoa.  So bowl-tastic right now!!!

At the nursing home visiting Poh Poh.  Poh Poh is wearing one of her new, non-cashmere tops.

Sunday we did a big Chinese New Year meal at my mum's house featuring 10 different kinds of preparations of dried and subsequently reconstituted mushrooms (my favorite!  Not being sarcastic!) and a bunch of different fungi.  All the names of the dishes mean something so you have to eat them because of auspiciousness.  We also had goh, which phonetically sounds like "rising higher" so all people who work salaried jobs are supposed to eat it because it means promotions and the like.  My favorite goh is lo bak goh (turnip cake) which some of you have probably had at a Cantonese dim sum place.  The sweet goh are less my thing.  

Then we headed back downtown to finally go home.  The Dotytron was CRAAAANKY.  Only like, 4 people in the world have seen the Dotytron be cranky.  Sometimes he's not even all that mad, but the volume and timbre and matter-of-factness of the delivery make it seem like what he's saying is extra withering.  Like, the last time we went to the cottage with the kdubsguelph crew, SMckay made burgers for dinner and the Dotytron was all like, "YOU ONLY BOUGHT A SMALL JAR OF PICKLES," which for him was just an observation but it makes it sound like a huge criticism.  I would say something like, "are there any more pickles?  No?  It's okay, I don't always eat them on my burger anyway," but the Dotytron is always like, full-steam ahead with the whole, "YOU ONLY BOUGHT A SMALL JAR OF PICKLES," thing.  

In this case, he was full-on cranky because he hadn't had a chance to play guitar all weekend and we were going to Momma D's to shovel her driveway and he knew that meant his night was a write-off.  Sometime between the morning and the evening he had also somehow gotten heart-set on Cinnabon and at first our drive home wasn't going to allow for a Cinnabon stop so he was being extra persnickety.  I convinced him we could do it and the turnaround in his demeanor once I got back in the car with the Cinnabons in hand was like, galling.  

Momma D is kind of notorious for under-ordering pizza.  She eats like a bird, so she thinks two pieces per adult is totally enough.  I thought I would have to do some finagling to get her to order a large instead of a medium, but she was fine with a large...it still meant that the Dotytron and I got 2.5 pieces each.  To give you some perspective, when we order from Pizza Paul's in Geneseo, we order two large pizzas (and the larges are LARGE down there), and 40 wings, for me, the Dotytron, and two kids.  LOL!  And we nearly finish everything, too.  Lucky we had the Cinnabons to chase it down.  I feel like this is a classic white person thing.  Okay, I just checked My Fitness Pal and one Cinnabon is 880 calories, so maybe the reduced pizza serving was okay.  I'm just an inveterate glutton.

Last night I got our lives back on track and we had brown rice with muttar paneer and red lentil dhal w/ yogurt & lime.  This entire meal is still less calories than a Cinnabon.  Heh.  

Fin.

So much junk

I had an extra ultrasound today to check for the growth of the twerps.  The good news is: they are both still in there and one hasn't eaten the other and they're not doing anything super-weird yet (as far as we can tell).

I asked the ultrasound technician if she would mind telling me the sex and she said that at 15 weeks it's a little early and you can't be sure.  I was lying on the table and she said, "I know the sex of one of them" and by that I knew that she meant they were boys.   With boys there's something to see, whereas with girls they're always less sure because you're dealing with the absence of junk.

So I'm having boys.  It was like that Homer Simpson, "and WHAT A BOY!" type moments.

This pregnancy becomes more Phil Collins, Against All Odds by the moment.  Twins not by IVF - statistically lower.  Asians having twins: statistically lower.  Identical twins: statistically lower.  Identical male twins: statistically lower.

I am happy that they are not being super-weird in there but the Dotytron and I did feel a moment of disappointment that we won't get the opportunity to raise girls and that in about 10-14 years we're going to be eaten out of house and home.  SO MUCH MILK AND PIZZA POCKETS (or their future-equivalent).  Then I instantly felt guilty.  It's not the twerps' fault that they're boys.  They're just doing them, and here I am feeling a twinge of disappointment about their junk.  WORST!

What does sex mean anyway?  One of them (or both of them) could be super femme-y.  Really, what does being a boy or a girl ultimately matter?  I don't feel like I'm going to be gender-outnumbered.  I do want to raise them to be feminists.  But I would want to raise any and all of my progeny to be feminists, so no difference there.  I just want them to be in my life forever and ever and for some reason, I feel that daughters stay closer to their families than sons.  That probably says more about my own unfounded gender-biases than any actual lived reality.  What will be, will be.  I also thought that having girls would make the Big Yam still feel special, but he's going to be going through his own shiz anyway, regardless of the twerps' sex, so I think that's just me projecting a possible best-case scenario.

Any way you cut it, I'm carrying around mad junk in my trunk.

Tonight for dinner I made us spicy beef & kimchi udon.  Which was DELICIOUS, and precisely what you want to eat when peeps are all up in your grill about a coming snowmageddon.

Fin.

I am the meanest

I am easily the meanest parent by far in my Academic Book Club (the Dotytron too, by extension).  Last night we talked about allowances and one of our member's issues with telling her 9 year old that just because so-and-so has an iPod touch it doesn't mean that she'll be getting her own.

You know what I tell the Big Yam when he says that something is "mine" (as in his)?  I say to him, "Nothing in this house is yours.  It's MINE.  You don't own anything.  You didn't earn it."  LOL!

Then we got onto the subject of chores and I was saying that the Big Yam's job since he's been just under two or so is to feed the cats in the morning and at night (and to set the table).  Book Club was impressed and one of the members says, "Maybe I'll try that with my daughter.  Give her a sense that making an effort to help out around the house counts."  And I was all, "Uhhh, HOLD THE FARM.  Making an effort DOESN'T COUNT.  The job has to be done right," and I told them about how when the Big Yam spills the cat food on the floor (which he did for a few days on purpose because he liked the sound or mess or something), I made him pick up each and every piece and put it back in the bin.  

In the Dotytron-Lagerfeld house, making a superficial effort ISN'T ENOUGH.  We are firm believers that kids have to be enticed (read: forced) to do things that they dislike, or that are hard, or that are unpleasant, and they do them to a certain standard because eventually, they push through and discover that doing so is intrinsically rewarding.  The Dotytron's entire job is based around dealing with kids who have been told their whole lives that lip-service "effort" and "trying" is enough.  Then these parents send their kids to schools and leave teachers to deal with their messes.  That's not okay.  Not in our books.

In my house growing up, we never had our own money.  There was no allowance, no money for chores.  You did your tasks (and please note, the kids in my family did A LOT - like, when we went on family trips, my mum and Big D would NEVER, EVER, EVER carry their own luggage...my mum bore 4 children so she would have 4 bellhops.  Heck, when I was a kid, my mum would make us carry her purse because even doing that was too taxing for her) because that's just how it was.  Everyone had a role in making sure the family functioned and the parents' role was to earn money and put a roof over our heads and food in our bellies and the kids' role was basically to do whatever your parents told you to do.  If I had even asked for an allowance my mum and Big D would have 1) yelled at me; then 2)  asked me why I thought I needed my own money when they provided everything I needed/required and if I wanted more, all I had to do was ask (with the knowledge that I would more often than not get turned down).  

The idea of my kid coming home and whining about "So-and-so has an iPod touch and why can't I have one wahwahwah" is appalling to me.  I'd be like, GO LIVE WITH SO-AND-SO'S PARENTS THEN, YOU INGRATE.  Exceptionalism is a combination of innate personality and also being pushed.  You don't get to become a driven, motivated individual by getting iPod touches and whatever the heck crap else you decide in your pea-brained head you want.  

Then my friend C asked about whether the other book club members eat together consistently as a family.  JJ and I were the only ones who said yes.  Everyone else was in the trap of cooking separate meals of what the kids would like to eat and then eating another meal themselves of what they wanted.  I just...don't have the time or inclination to do that.  We always ate together as a family growing up and I really believe in family meal time as an important focal point for the day - especially with today's families, when you're all careening off in different directions for 10+ hours every day - I think it's vital to forge those connections and centre yourselves around the table.  Dinner is the meal I look forward to all day, so the idea of eating whatever bland food my kid might want is not for me (in my case, the "bland" food would be super-spicy Indian food, but that's neither here nor there).  Also, by the end of the day, I'm lucky if I have enough gas to get through dinner, clean-up, a bit of play, stories, bed, and gearing up to do it all over again (to say nothing for an hour for my own pursuits), so the logistics of making two meals is simply not in the cards.

Part of the reason I subscribe to Baby-Led Weaning is because of this idea that's central to it - you have to take a macro, long-range view of what your kid is eating and trust that they self-regulate. So yes, the Big Yam wasn't a super-fan of the clam linguine, but over the course of two weeks, he's getting the protein, carbs, vegetables, and essential vitamins and minerals that he needs.  Especially given the varied menus that I construct, if the Boobla has bits and pieces, the long-range view is that he's getting what he needs.

Anyway, they were all APPALLED when I told them that one of the things we do when the Big Yam is misbehaving at the dinner table (throwing food on the floor, being disruptive, screaming about being done when we're not done eating) is turn his high chair around and basically, disallow him from being part of the table.  They were shocked and basically thought I was a monster.  But here's my rationale: I think that participating in the dinner table (with the dinner table as a microcosm for society as a whole) is a privilege that requires you as an individual to accept the rules of behavior that are part of your social contract with the other members of your family/dining companions.  Failure to exhibit acceptable behavior  and respect for your dining companions means that you get taken out of the situation until such time as you're ready and able to resume upholding your end of the contract in good faith.  The Dotytron is such a fan of the practice that he thinks we should continue it into like, adulthood.  Can you imagine a teenager with his back to the table, being all like, "I can HEAR YOU RIGHT NOW"?  It's pretty funny.

So my friend JJ was like, the way that we do things might work for us, but it won't work for everyone, because some kids will starve themselves to death.  And in my head (and this is how I'm a horrible person), I was like, well, if the kid doesn't even have that most basic of survival instincts, don't they kinda deserve to die?  It's like this Louis CK bit that another lady was talking about last night; she went to see him do stand-up and he apparently said this thing about how, have you ever considered that kids with peanut allergies are meant to die from exposure to peanuts?  Hahahaha.  So dark.  

I dunno.  I just finished reading a book about kids living in slums in Mumbai who sometimes have to eat frogs and rats fished out of the sewage lake on their slums.  If those kids can eat that, then a middle class kid in the developed world can stomach something other than plain pasta, methinks.

Here's the thing they don't see though: when it is time for play, or fun, the Dotytron and I go WHOLE HOG.  Like, we ramp up the fun in direct proportion to how hard we come down.  This is one of the discipline-y things the Dotytron learned in this book he read a couple of years back on classroom management.  The idea being that you basically don't want it to be a carrot or stick situation.  You want to get to the point where the kid governs him/herself (shades of Foucault!) out of the desire to continue to be able to do fun/awesome/happy things.  The disciplinary mechanism should fade into the background.  It's not overly censorious - you try not to react (like, don't get into a screaming match, don't raise your voice).  Instead, it's more like you're so bored by the kid's disobedience/acting out that you present this impassive, stony, façade while simultaneously and immediately ceasing the fun thing you had been doing.  Few things rattle kids like impassivity.  We also try to treat the Yam like a sentient, rationale being with agency and we appeal to his reasonableness.  We do this by, for example, telling him that he has to stay sleeping in his own crib all night and that we are here, and we would never let anything happen to him, and that we love him.  We also do that couples-therapy thing where we acknowledge his emotions at that moment, "I know you're mad/angry right now" "I know you want to do XYZ right now and you're frustrated because you can't" but still explain why the way he's expressing those emotions aren't appropriate.  

That's really just a long way of saying that me and the Dotytron are hella fun.  I make myself look like a giant goon by chasing the Big Yam around doing monster-face or pretending to be an alligator with my arms as big snapping jaws running around after him in the summer.  The Dotytron jams with him all the time or will spend sooo long at the play kitchen engaging in imaginary play or building trains.  The other night, we made this giant fort in our living room and the Big Yam's face when he went in...I wish I had a picture...he was beaming with this pure, open-mouthed smile of joy while we turned off all the lights and read stories by flashlight and told secrets.  

So yeah, I'm pretty mean.  But I can be pretty fun sometimes, too.  

This is a Yam-heavy post, y'all.  You've been warned.  Here are some things that happened on the weekend:

Offering Elmo a hot dog

Still Life With Hot Dog

These two run the worst kitchen in town.  You don't get anything you ask for, food falls on the floor and that walk-in is a s**tshow.

Trying to break into Bert & Ernie's apartment building.  Smallest, most persistent J-Hos ever.

This is what the fashion magazines would call "a look."  Crown, fuzzy jammies, and matching yellow high heels.

The Big Yam reading the Very Hungry Caterpillar.  Sorry our house is the most low-lit ever.  That look he gives at the 35 second mark after running through that epic list of foods is classic Yam.

The roomie came over for dinner tonight and brought a lasagne she had made.  YESSSSSSS...MADE-BY-OTHERS-LASAGNE!!!  We had it with a caesar salad and leftover peanut butter cookies and chocolate chip blondies JJ brought to book club.

Fin.

My under-used skill

- I excel at making obscure, Vanity Fair-themed jokes (the magazine, not the Thackeray novel).  There isn't a Dominic Dunne or Gore Vidal bon mot I won't drop!

The Dotytron and I had an epic conversation (after our CD of tunes from Les Misérables, West Side Story, and Wicked had cycled through) on the drive down to visit my sis about our end-of-life wishes, based on me reading that Get Your Shit Together website's recommendations.  Just talking about what constitutes life, or a quality of life, or consciousness and at what point the other person should make the decision to pull the plug.  It is probably a sign of my inherent selfishness (and issues with mortality) that I insisted that if I was in a persistent vegetative state that I be kept alive for one year to see if I come out of it.  The Dotytron is way more selfless - he's concerned about the impact on his loved ones - like what a burden it would be for me to have to visit him all the time and have him be a husk of a person.  I don't know though - the Chinese way is to approach things with the sense that becoming a burden on your loved ones is kind of expected and that your loved ones should like, grovel for the opportunity to wait on you hand and foot and inconvenience themselves for you.  I'm just living up to my culture, man.  Then the Dotytron veered into "2nd partner" territory, as in: it would be weird for him and his future replacement-Lagerfeld to have me in their house, hooked up to breathing tubes and whatnot and I was all like, why would you want to be with someone who wasn't okay with you caring for the husk of your first partner?  It would be SO LIKE the Dotytron to end up with someone who was all stereotypical evil stepmother/2nd wife syndrome.

His high school girlfriend (who was in my art classes all through high school) made herself a homemade Tori Amos t-shirt that was plain white with the words, "what's so amazing about really deep thoughts?" hand written across the front.

CASE CLOSED.

Speaking of Tori Amos, I'm hosting Academic Book Club tonight.  There has been a feverish amount of tidying going on at Lil' Ugmo.  The Tori Amos segue is apt because one of the book club members, my dear strident feminist out-of-touch-with-popular-culture friend J, talked about going to a Tori Amos concert (like, recently!  In 2012!!!) at a meeting and I was all slack-jawed and gaped at her like she was a centaur or something.  Like, I can't believe reasonable people would go to a Tori Amos concert to watch an old lady with brittle hair thrash around and hump a piano bench.  But to each their own!

Anyway, I'm putting out a spread consisting of red wine, sparkling, flat, grapes, clementines, a green pea and pecorino dip, a goat's gouda (my current favorite cheese - it reminds me of the young pecorinos you get everywhere in Florence), an old Dutch beemster that is so loaded with those Parmesano Reggiano crystalline umami-bombs that I salivate just looking at it, and Le Riopelle, a triple cream cow's milk cheese from Quebec; some gluten free crackers, some bread, some baby carrots, and I made bittersweet chocolate budinos with salted caramel and chocolate crumbs, along with gluten free peanut butter cookies.  I have a hosting reputation to uphold and since this is likely the last time I'll be up for hosting book club until, say, 2020, then I want to go out in a blaze of glory.  Call me young gun.

Sometime between posting that post on Monday and today, my stomach/metabolism has waged an all-out war on my protestations of "not being that hungry."  I'm getting hunger headaches every 2 hours.  At first, I thought it was just a return-to-desk-job-after-a-weekend-in-Geneseo headache but then I realized that it went away when I ate.  So even though I don't feel hungry, my body is HUNGRY.  Like, this is me:

I can't tell you how much it amuses me endlessly the degree to which and the sincerity with which Dr. Rei can rhapsodise about this song - her "favorite duet of all time"

By the way, I countered that by saying that one of my favorite duets might be "Islands in the Stream."  

Anyway, even the "not feeling hungry" seems to be going away and today I was hungry and thirsty ALL THE TIME.  Even though I regularly drink TWO LITRES OF WATER A DAY.  But my blood volume is supposed to increase by 100%.  What the f**k are those two little twerps doing to me?  It's super-hard to satisfy hunger healthfully.  Like, I don't know how marathon runners or professional athletes do it.  My colleagues at work today were talking about cholesterol and I got all freaked out and I changed my McDonald's order from my big mac combo/filet-o-fish chaser to a filet-o-fish combo/filet-o-fish chaser.  This is after I spent about half an hour figuring out which McDonald's versus Popeye's combo variation was less likely to kill me.  I swear, I would learn advanced Excel just to build a model that would allow me to figure this kind of stuff out (2 pieces or 3? Biscuit or mashed potatoes? Eat half the biscuit and get an extra piece of chicken? Diet soda?!?!)  Maybe I should build an app for this.  I could call it "Hungry Pigs."  

This stupid multiples book I was reading (last one! I'm through!) had all these lamewad recipes at the back for "mini meatloaves" and fish burgers made with tinned salmon (barf).  My forays into Roseanne territory aside, I really do feel like the meals we cook at home are generally healthy and balanced.  Surely I'm killing it on variety alone?  I made myself an egg white and spinach and cheese omelet the other morning for breakfast.  It was very virtuous but the flavour and satisfaction derived from eating it was inversely related to the degree of virtue.  Egg whites are the grossest.  I mean, I like me a Swiss meringue buttercream and a lemon meringue pie and an île flottante, hard.  But ALL of those dishes find a way to cleverly sneak in some yolk goodness.  Last night we had clam linguine with a tonne of garlic and some baby heirloom hothouse tomatoes thrown in and it was DELICIOUS.  I love me a linguine alle vongole so hard.   

The bottom line is: don't be surprised if this little space devolves into me talking about what I want to eat (more than usual).

The Big Yam has reached a fun, fun, fun milestone: reading stories out loud to himself.  I feel like it's a G-D miracle.  He carries around The Very Hungry Caterpillar and reads out loud and counts out the foods and it's THE BEST!  He's always pestering me in the mornings and the both of us at night to read stories and trying to get more stories out of us and it's really, really hard to say no and stick to a firm bedtime.  How can I say no to a nascent love of reading?  

The Dotytron had an assignment for his grade 6 students who are on the cusp of actually getting to play their band instruments.  He's been gradually working up to it.  The lead-up assignment was for them to research their instrument and to report back on stuff like: how to make a good tone, how your mouth should be, notable players of that instrument, etc.  He had one person come back and report on the flute.  The notable flutist was...

Alyssa Milano.

LOL!!!  Kids rule.  The kid also noted that "Alyssa Milano also plays the piano."  

As an aside: I was reading up on Syria today.  Ugh.  Not good.

I'm trying not to let on too much, but having two twerps is freaking me out.  I just feel like it increases the odds that something bad is going to happen...like the very fact that there's two twerps is tempting the fates.  I know there's nothing I can do about it and it's one of those "come what may" scenarios but I just have this low-grade nervousness.  It's partially hypochondria and partially being a worrier and partially having lived with a midwife for 4 years and partially reading too much about odds and statistics and having a shaky grasp of grade 11 finite math (which I somehow got an A in by the skin of my teeth, with the weird side effect of retaining nothing from that class.  I blame this on Dr. B, our teacher, who was so old and doddering he smelled like he was rotting from the inside out).  

Fin.

  

A Funny Thing Happened

Part 2

...at the ultrasound clinic at Mt. Sinai.

But before we get to that stage, there is the stage where I find out that I am with child.  As SMckay rightly accuses me, I always think I'm preggos.  I take pregnancy tests like they cost nothing (they don't).  You know what's super-profesh?  Taking a pregnancy test at work!

I was semi-convinced (not for the first time, for literally the 10th time) that I was with child and went with Dr. Rei at lunch and bought a not-cheap test and then took it at work because I'm a first-rate spoiler and have to know everything, all the time.  It seemed to show that I was preggos.  So I brought it home with me and grabbed the mail, and was trying to be all funny, and said to the Dotytron (who was dancing with the Big Yam to Eric Dolphy in his studio), as I was rifling through the mail, "We got this weird delivery notice..." AND THEN WHA-BLAM, super-profesh pregnancy test in yo' hand!

But the line was super faint so we were happy and then immediately, WTF WHY DID WE EVEN WANT THIS - THIS IS THE WORST and were second guessing the results.  So I took two more dollar store ones which showed progressively fainter results but all in the "you're with child" direction.  We put the tests on our dresser and decided to never speak of it again.

A week after, I got hand foot and mouth, so I called the Roomie and had to prematurely spill the beans because I wanted to know what I could take for an analgesic and what I couldn't.  And of course I called the midwife clinic because I wanted to make sure I got in...but then we didn't tell anyone for a bit because we were semi-convincing ourselves that if we didn't talk about, then s**t wouldn't get real.

Up until three weeks ago, I've just been doing my thing.  A little more tired than normal at night, but otherwise, asymptomatic (which is what happened last time).  Then I convinced myself that I was having a molar pregnancy (which is when it's not a little twerp in there, but an abnormal mass of cells), so when I saw my midwife for my first visit, I was telling her my hypochondriac fears and she was like, "well, are you feeling sick?" (well, technically, first she was like, "where did you even hear about such things?") and I said no, and she said, "Usually, when people are reporting that they're feeling really sick, we either think twins, or we think molar, so I can reasonably assure you that you're having a healthy, single, baby."

LIES!  ALL LIES!

Anyway, cut to me, lying on the ultrasound table, as our stern, unfriendly, taciturn ultrasound tech was looking at the screen.  She was super-straight-faced the whole time, which wasn't reassuring.  Then she asked me if this was my first ultrasound.  Yes.  Then if there was a history of multiples in my family.  Uhh...no.  What?  Then, "How would you feel if I told you there were twins?" Dotytron: "Are you serious?" Me: *burst into tears*  Ultrasound tech: *pause* "Congratulations"

I basically lay on the table and cried, interspersed with hysterical laughter and me saying, "Oh my god.  I can't even.  I can't EVEN..." on repeat.  The ultrasound tech went back to her taciturn, not reassuring ways. I was like, are they even okay in there?  According to the Dotytron, the two twerps were bouncing around like two Mexican jumping beans on an 80s water bed and seemed to be fine.

Thoughts running through my head:

- OH MY GOD. WE NEED A MINIVAN.  LIKE NOW.  WE HAVE NO MONEY.
- OH MY GOD.  WE ARE GOING TO HAVE TO PAY FOR TWO KIDS IN DAYCARE AT THE SAME TIME.  WE HAVE NO MONEY.
- OH MY GOD. REMEMBER THAT STEPHEN KING BOOK (this one) WHERE THE GUY WAS COMMITTING MURDERS WHILE HE WAS BLACKED OUT AND IT TURNED OUT IT WAS HIS PSYCHOTIC TWIN WHO HE HAD ABSORBED IN UTERO CONTROLLING HIM WITHOUT HIM KNOWING? WHAT IF THAT HAPPENS TO ME?  SUB-CONCERN: WE HAVE NO MONEY.

LOL!  Then we called the Roomie, after much back and forth, because the thought of multiples generally makes her want to barf, for a few reasons: 1) the Roomie is generally scared of child-rearing and considers one child a daunting task.  2) the Roomie is freaked out by premature babies and multiples tend to be preemies.  She used to get this neo-natal intensive care for medical health practitioners newsletter delivered to the house that we called "jellybean quarterly" because every cover had like one of those naked mole rat preemies on the cover and we were all thoroughly grossed out by it.

I was also crying because I was sad for the Big Yam and I was sad because I knew this meant a hospital birth and that I might not be able to have midwifery care any more.

As my ladies, Mhui and G at work have reassured me, that second-child sadness for your first kid is normal and would happen even if there weren't two little twerps in there.  But one of them said something wise - your first kid is the only one of your children who will have had the benefit of both parents' undivided attention and that's pretty special.

Anyway, now that we've processed things we're in full on PROJECT MODE and are trying to mobilize and get things in order so that we can decommission the Dotytron's studio and move it into the basement and then move the Big Yam into that room and get another crib for the nursery.  We're also trying to beg and borrow whatever we can in terms of peripheral stuff and I've started keeping an eye on Kijiji for dual strollers and whatnot.

The good thing is, the things that we did invest in for the Big Yam hold their value well and are very sellable.  Like our Uppa Baby is going for $400 on Kijiji.  I'm also a psycho who likes to be extra prepared for everything so we've had back-ups of a bunch of stuff (bottles, cloth diapers, swaddles, receiving blankets, etc.) that will easily cover us for two.  I was contemplating selling our crib and then getting 2 mini-cribs for a smaller overall room footprint, but then when we thought about it and realized that the next step up would be a bunk bed, and that babies outgrow mini-cribs faster (especially when you tend to have giant babies), we realized a regular sized crib would hold us over until we felt comfortable putting a toddler/kid in the top bunk.

Basically, the only immediate concern now is affording a minivan, somehow, somewhere.

Down the line it's going to be child care, somehow, somewhere.

According to the radiologist, we've got monochorionic diamniotic twins which means they share a placenta but each have their own amniotic sac (which is good, because if they were all in one sac they could get tangled up).  This means they are most likely identical twins.  This kind have nothing to do with heredity or family history of multiples...it's a fluke of nature.  The risks are greater with multiples and because they share a placenta, there's a risk of them developing Twin to Twin Transfusion Syndrome (TTTS) where one twin hogs all the blood from the donor twin and the donor twin is small and sickly and doesn't develop normally and the recipient twin has stress on its heart because of the all the extra stuff it's grabbing (it's like the movie Twins).

I'm kind of freaked out by that and the prospect of going early.  I'm also freaked out because I'm supposed to be eating an extra 600 calories a day and I'm not anywhere close to that (I'm using my Fitness Pal to track my consumption) and I'm not like, super-sized hungry or anything...I'm just kind of normal hungry, even if I am craving fettuccine alfredo like mad.

The good news is: my midwife said she wasn't going to send me away.  I had a big spiel all ready to go with her to convince her to keep me (chief amongst my points was that, as she knows, I'm really really really good at giving birth and being pregnant - if my experience with the Big Yam is anything to go by) but she said that she would consult with an OB and send me to this multiples clinic at Sunnybrook but that she would still be the main person coordinating my care and will probably be the one delivering the babies if everything is a-okay down there and I don't need a c-section (with the OB in the room, of course).  Yay!  I love my midwife.  She rules.  I'm under the care of the multiples clinic from 20-32 weeks because they're a level III (or something) hospital and they're equipped to handle jellybean quarterlies.  After that, I revert back to my OB and midwife combo at the hospital closest to us.

As you all know, I find reading about pregnancy and most parenting-related things monumentally boring, but because I'm being swayed by the "multiples are a special case!" malarkey and so I read some books but they're the most fear-mongery things in all of Mordor and so I'm going to stay away from that for the time being.  It's just stressing me out that I'm supposed to be gaining a lb a week and that by 20 weeks I should have gained 25 lbs and that my uterus is the same size as a woman, having a single baby, but if that woman is EIGHT WEEKS AHEAD.  I also don't want to have jellybean quarterly so I don't know what to think.  I'm just doggedly eating small meals and doing my thing and hoping for the best.

So yeah, THAT HAPPENED.

We spent the weekend with my sis and her family.  The Big Yam's face when he's surrounded by his cousins is beyond cute.  He just beams with a big, open-mouthed smile.  He knows he's surrounded by his own peeps.  I'll throw up some photos tomorrow.

Tonight for dinner we had this baked orzo eggplant casserole-type thing with caesar salad on the side, by way of the Ottolenghi cookbook.

Fin.

A funny thing happened...

Part 1

Two nights ago -

Me: "Ummm, we really haven't had a chance to sit down and talk about the Lance Armstrong doping admission to Oprah.  We should make some time for that."
Dotytron, not missing a beat: "Yeah, you're right, we'll have to try to get to that tonight."

LOL!  Reason #24601 why the Dotytron is the best: ability to roll with the punches.  Reason #24602 is the fact that we both know nearly all the words to Matthew Sweet's 90s classic, Sick of Myself.

I negative care about the Lance Armstrong thing.  One: because those bracelets were the worst.  Two: because I can't believe people are trying to recuperate his image after he was a cheating, weasel of a lying-face.  Three: I can't take anyone who dated Sheryl Crow seriously.

I've put the recipe for that chicken & kale casserole down below there, because it's delicious and because the Martha Stewart recipe that is the most Google-able calls for a whopping 48 OUNCES of ricotta, which to me is insane, because that's like, 3lbs.  The best thing about this casserole was the lemon zest in the mixture.  Revelation!  A little bit of citrus zest does wonders to elevate the starchy richness of a carb-laden casserole.  This might be a de rigeur step from now on.

We are battling the cold one casserole at a time.

Fin.


-------------------------------------------------------------------
Chicken & Kale Casserole
Serves 6-8 generously

1 pkg. whole wheat macaroni/penne/farfalle (375g)
2 T. unsalted butter
1 whole onion, chopped
minced garlic to taste
2 bunches kale, sliced thin or chopped into small pieces
3 cups cooked chopped chicken (I used turkey because that's what I had frozen)
2 containers ricotta cheese (I used the Silani Extra Smooth, 6% - which comes in smaller containers than the 454g ones you commonly see...but feel free to use 2 of the 454g containers.  More ricotta isn't a bad thing per se, but 3lbs is getting a little excessive, IMO).
zest of 2 lemons
3/4 c. grated parmesan
1 1/2 c. panko breadcrumbs
3 T. olive oil
salt and pepper to taste

- cook the pasta as per package directions and then drain
- meanwhile, in a large skillet or dutch oven, heat the butter and sauté the onion and garlic until translucent.  Add the kale and cook until wilted
- add the chicken, and then turn the heat off.  Stir the pasta, the lemon zest, the ricotta, and 1/2 c. of the grated parm into the kale mixture and toss well to combine
- pour into a 9 x 13 casserole dish (or 2 8x8 baking dishes)
- mix the panko with the olive oil and the remaining 1/4 c. of parmesan cheese until the panko crumbs are thoroughly moistened.  Spread this mixture on top of the casseroles
- bake the casserole, covered with foil, for about 45 minutes at 350F-375F and then remove the foil.  Bake an additiona 15-20 minutes or until the panko topping is nice and browned.

In which I face the obvious truth:

...I eat too many eggs.

I'm still using My Fitness Pal to track my caloric consumption because in case it's not blindingly apparent: I love documenting my life.  It dovetails neatly with my innate OCD/list-making nit-pickiness.  My Fitness Pal's daily summaries are NOT kind to yours truly.  I am consistently getting too much sugar, cholesterol, fat, and sodium, and not enough of the good stuff: calcium, dietary fibre, and iron.

It's f**king demoralizing, guys.  I can't even handle it.  WHAT THE HELL AM I SUPPOSED TO DO?!?  You're supposed to balance your carbohydrate intake with protein, so I eat cheese and eggs in the morning and what does that get me?  Buckets of extra cholesterol.  But you can't eat nuts, because they're too fatty!  There's only so much Greek yoghurt a person can have, and quite frankly, it doesn't fill me up the way an egg does.  Also, the good Greek yoghurt (and by that I mean the Liberté 0% vanilla) has sugar and is too rich for my blood (in cost, not calories).  I don't want to eat endless boneless, skinless chicken breasts.  That life seems like a shadow existence to me.

I just can't even.  HOW MUCH BABY ARUGULA DO I HAVE TO EAT TO GET ENOUGH DIETARY FIBRE THAT'S NOT FROM GRAINS?!?  Edit: I just re-checked my stats and my dietary fibre is all good.  Phew.

If anyone has any good ideas, then please do impart them here.  It doesn't help that every search of "good sources of proteins" lists eggs in the top 10.  And don't even MENTION quinoa.  Quinoa is not an enjoyable food.  It is penance food.  Don't get me wrong, I will eat quinoa (usually with eggs), but I'm not as stoked to eat quinoa as I am to go to town on a million deviled eggs.  It's just not the same.  Furthermore, now we're hearing all these reports that bougies are making quinoa unaffordable for the Peruvian farmers who produce it.  I actually think that's a good thing though, since increased costs for quinoa means that those Peruvian farmers would (presumably) be seeing increases to their standards of living.

Related to yesterday's post (which I've been told was hella depressing - apologies), here is an awesome site that I stumbled upon that will help you get your s**t together.  It was started by a woman whose husband was killed unexpectedly.  Get Your S**t Together  It provides a handy checklist that will help you decide how much life insurance to get, and also, to make things convenient and easy for the executor of your will and whoever has Power of Attorney.  We've (or rather, I) have done a lot of that already, but it's a good idea to have copies of your life insurance, passwords for banking, credit card info, etc. all in one place.  Smart stuff.  I remember when Poppa D passed away we had a hard time logging onto the wifi in their house because he was the only one who knew the password.  Things like that are small, but do make a difference (in addition to like, you know, not having to worry that you're going to lose the house and can pay for your children's education).

Last night was the funnest.   I went to the Eaton Centre with Dr. Rei to do some residual Xmas exchanging but we had dinner at Sansotei Ramen first.  Nothing dispels a snowy, blustery, wintery day like a big, steaming bowl of tonkotsu ramen & karaage.

I wish I could have shown you guys my tuna noodle casserole dinner last night.  It was a thing of beauty.  I accidentally deleted it.  More galling, I accidentally deleted this video of the Big Yam laboriously setting up his refrigerator magnet gears in one big, long, epic row, and turning the dial, only to find that the gears were stuck.  He doesn't get the mechanics of it quite yet.  It was so funny, only because of how long it took him to set it up and how thwarted he was.  Kid thwarting is hilarious (to mean adults).  The other day, he kind of bailed putting on his slippers and did that classic "Oooof" thing that you do when you trip or fall, and then followed it up with the quickest, "I'm okay!" We died laughing.

Fin.