All Of The Lights

For the past 3 years my street has pooled resources and done fireworks in the park for Victoria Day.  This year, the woman who usually grabs them was away, so I did the organizing and volunteered to grab them from the fireworks store.  I can't remember what we spent last year per family, maybe $15?

I went to Kaboom! and it was hands-down one of the best customer service experiences I've ever had. First of all, I walk in, and it's like 3 Asian dudes who must have maxed out at age 22, going to town on a late lunch from Domino's that consisted of a THREE large pieces, a bunch of garlic knot things and wings.  A large pizza per person is SO CLASSY, in my books.  Then, one of those sweet kids agreed to stand outside and keep an eye on the van while the Wonder Twins snoozed so I could shop.  Then, the 22 year old store manager personally walked me around the store and helped me sort out a show.  This guy was an expert.  In the past, I think the woman has just bought those "kits" which are pretty lame - a million roman candles and burning schoolhouses.  SNOOZERS.  This guy made sure my show had a narrative arc with a beginning, middle, and end and I will say, that after witnessing the show on Sunday night, à la carte is the way to go.  I went a *little* bit crazy and spent like, $150, but the kid manager totally threw in a million sparklers and gave me mad deals on what I bought.  It was amazing.

People who complain about paying that much for fireworks are also the kind of people who can't appreciate how awesome it is when a kid manager buys his staff a large pizza each.  I would love to work in that environment.  Talk about morale!

We had such a nice long weekend.  Saw friends every day - the Roomie and baby T, dinner with JJ and S, MHui and her fambam, our friends B & G and their new baby.  So sweet!  We went for walks and ate ice cream and went out for a restaurant dinner, all five of us, which is pretty special.  When it goes off well, it's like, TOP OF THE WORLD, MA!  Eating at a REAL restaurant?  That is a feat, my friends.

JJ & S's kids are super-geniuses.  I was being a goofball and I was asking their 9 year old a series of inane questions: "Do you like to eat meatballs?  Do you like to eat giant meatballs the size of your head?" and he didn't answer me, so I said, "B! What, you're not talking to me?" and he said, "I assumed the question was rhetorical."  LOL!  He's NINE.

I can only hope my kids are that smart.  The Big Yam has been trying to figure out a bunch of stuff lately.  "Where does pee come from?"  "Where's my bladder?"  "What belly did Baba come from?"  "What does a Japanese spider crab eat?"  It's hilarious and amazing watching him process your answers.  You can see the wheels turning as he figures out how to phrase his question, and then again once you've given your answer.  My neighbour turned me onto these Youtube dudes called the "Slo Mo Guys" who basically make things explode and record it in super HD and play it back in slow motion.  Everything in that preceding sentence is the manifestation of the totality of little kid fantasies.  When the Big Yam isn't watching hours of ocean documentaries, he wants to watch this:

Meanwhile, the Quincess continues to be such a quiet, clever little lad.  He's like a classic middle child, which is hilarious, because he's the middle child by four minutes.  You basically show him something once and he'll give you a classic Quincess side-eye and then try to figure it out or start to mimic you.  Meanwhile, Lindsay Lou-Lou is, as the Dotytron said the other night, "kinesthetically smart" and then, in a whisper, "the fake kind of smart."  LOL!  Poor Lindsay Lou-Lou.  I don't want to box them in from the time they are babies though, so I will say that, right now,  Lindsay is physically advanced and is very attuned to his own emotions (read: he's very sensitive).

Now, a photo dump:

My garden, 2 weeks ago, freshly mulched and looking fiiine.  

Lendigan just back from the Grateful Dead concert

Happy, crooked smiling Quincess

11 month shot!  So squirmy!

The Big Yam and the babies and I spent all of a gloriously sunny yesterday picnicking in the park.  They've turned out the splash pad water but yesterday was the first real day it's been warm enough to think about getting wet.  Look at that little munchkin' swagger!

21st century manhood

Minds: blown (they can't figure out 2D pics of people they know)

More from our picnic

Lendigan making a run for it

Chicken Milanese dinner on a bed of roasted grape tomatoes and baby arugula

Cinqo de Mayo posole

Meat-free meal - tagliatelle tossed with wilted radicchio and bagna cauda and topped with a fried egg

Mother's day meal: seared rib eyes, brussels sprouts roasted on the grill, potatoes grilled with red onions

That time I ate 2lbs of macaroni and cheese with crispy thyme breadcrumbs

Meat-free meal: roasted asparagus on garlic toast with a fried egg, hollandaise, and leftover thyme breadcrumbs

Stromboli (basically, pizza dough rolled up with sopressata and provolone and roasted red peppers), served with tomato sauce and arugula salad

Alsatian flammenkuchen - caramelized onion, lardon, and crème frâiche on pizza dough.

French chocolate "silk" pie - basically chocolate mousse in a pie crust - I made a pretzel crust but wasn't happy with it.  Next time, will either use a chocolate sablé crust, or the standard piecrust, parbaked.  The filling is worth making again.  Will post the recipe below.

Based on one of my favorite sandwiches from La Cubana - grilled halibut with an avocado-pineapple salsa and a Greek salad.

Fin.

-------------------------------------------------------------------

French Chocolate Silk Pie

serves 10-12

1 piecrust, parbaked

1 c. heavy cream

8 oz. bittersweet chocolate, chopped

3 eggs

3/4 c. granulated sugar

2 T. water

8 T. unsalted butter, room temperature, cut into roughly tablespoon-sized pieces

- whip the heavy cream until stiff peaks form, set aside in the fridge.

- melt the chocolate, stirring until smooth, set aside

- whisk the eggs, sugar, and water together in a bowl set over a pot of simmering water (double boiler style), and whisk until the mixture feels hot to the touch when you dip a finger in it.  Remove, and beat with a whisk attachment or beaters until thickened and cooled to room temperature.

- beat in the butter, piece by piece, then beat in the melted chocolate.

- fold in the whipped cream.

- pour mixture into your cooled pie shell vehicle of choice, then place plastic wrap directly on the surface and chill for a few hours, or overnight.  

- top with additional whipped cream and serve.

Catching Up

Predictably, this post has taken me two weeks to write.

Two weekends ago, I went to Ladies Night with my neighbourhood ladies on Friday night.  We had Middle Eastern food at Tabule.  It was delicious!  I'm super-into Lebanese style food lately and the renditions there are sooo tasty.  Fresh, vegetable-focused, centred around shareable plates and finger foods.  Love it.

Thanks to an armada of babysitters, we were able to keep up our tradition of going to Hot Docs, which has been going on almost as long as we've been together.  This must be at least our 10th year or something.  Our friend L is one of the programmers and hooked us up, large!  We are so lucky to have her and to have such a ground-breaking, world-renown festival in our city.

On Saturday we saw Return to Homs, which is essentially about the gritty, numbing isolation of armed revolution.  It was a Sundance winner.  It's harrowing.  Constructed mostly of amateur footage, it follows a young Syrian football star, Basset, who becomes a leader in the Free Syrian Army.  What started with him leading crowds singing in the streets as part of the Arab Spring movement, it ends up with him leading an armed resistance to the government crackdown on the city of Homs.  People get shot.  It is grim.  The rebels are cut off from food and supplies.  You see the city become a literal shell of what it was.  I was reminded, nonsensically, of Les Miserables and the youthful fire of the young men who lead that revolution, and their disillusionment in the face of losing so many of their peers and the crushing force of the government.  It's so easy to criticize from our cushy remove in the West the seeming chaos and lack of momentum in the wake of the Arab Spring.  When you are a few generations removed from civil war, it's hard to see how entrenched dictatorships can be, and how disorganized resistance movements are.  I kept thinking that this Basset character is just a kid.  A 22 year old kid who is trying to hold a city, with other 22 year old kids.  At a certain point, it's so obvious that they are so weary from fighting, so tired of being beaten into a corner, out-manned and out-armed.  During a lull in the fighting, Basset is asked if he would consider coaching football, when this is all over.  He dismisses it out of hand, "I can't be a coach.  To coach football, you need an education, a degree..." and the irony of the fact that without an education, without a degree, he's trying to re-draw the world order in Syria is lost on him.  This is not the kind of documentary one enjoys, per se, but it is important, and necessary.  

The next day, on a completely different note, we saw a doc called Beyond Clueless, which purported to be an examination of teen movies in the post-Hughes era (late 90s into the 2000s).  I was like, SOLD!  My first misgivings surfaced when at the start of the screening, the "filmmaker" was introduced.  My first thought was like, "who is this kid?" followed by: "oh no, he's British, this can't be good."  Well folks, it wasn't.  Narrated by Fairuza Balk, the film is a stitched-together montage of fare like Bubble Boy, Cruel Intentions, Mean Girls, and The Craft and features analysis that tells us that teens in films are punished when they try to subvert the status quo, or that teens are disempowered by adults, or that teen sexuality is fraught.

UHHH, DUH.  The kid filmmaker as it turns out, is 23.  Soooo, I'm sure you can guess the level of discourse he's capable of.  It was THE WORST.  He must be so loaded.  To get the rights for all those clips (which make up the WHOLE FILM?)  It was so annoying.  If we had stayed for the Q&A we would have torn him a new one.  You know what's worse than British kids?  ENTITLED BRITISH KIDS (Prince George excepted of course).  

So the docs weren't exactly a home run.  BUT!  The Dotytron and I got to participate in a Dotytron-Lagerfeld tradition, and we got to be together, just the two of us, and eat out.  A win all around.  On Saturday we had lunch at my current obsession, Sud Forno.  From the people who brought you the Terroni empire, this place is as close as I've come in Toronto to an Ital-towns experience.  They serve a variety of sweet things, breads, and flat pizzas and sandwiches, and these stuffed flatbreads which are delicious.   We had the sausage pizza type thing, a salami and arugula one, this cold fried eggplant, ricotta, and tomato sandwich (my favorite thing in the world right now), and their flatbread stuffed with proscuitto and more arugula.  This year has been the year of arugula for me.  I love everything there!

Then I went a little bit crazy and spent like $30 on that box you see up there.  I HAVEN'T HAD A BOMBOLONE IN LIKE, 7 YEARS PEOPLE.  THAT'S A LONG A** TIME.  What the heck was I supposed to do?  NOT overpay for delicious, custard filled doughnuts?  Pah!  I also got zeppole which I love, but I could probably make at home (choux paste stuffed with whipped cream and candied cherries), but my favorite thing was the little whipped-cream topped thing on the far right, 2nd row.  It's a little sponge cake with whipped cream and limoncello.  So tasty.  This is what I love about Ital-towns desserts and baked goods: they really know the value of slathering whipped cream on dough.  That is basically the definition of my wheelhouse.  If you were to draw a picture of my wheelhouse, it would be made of dough and an excess of lightly sweetened whipped cream.  The best was that this old school, OG, Italian lady came in and had the internationally recognized grumpy old lady exchange with the staffer regarding how exorbitant the pricing was and all but spat on her way out the door.  She was like, "are you kidding me with $4 bombolone?" and I was like, deeply embarrassed BUT STILL UNABLE TO RESIST.  

The next day we had brunch at The Saint on Ossington.  It's a really pretty space, all sparkling white subway tile, black bar, brass fixtures.  I'm super into that combo lately.  White and black and grey with warm wood and brass with pops of colour.  I tried floating the idea with the Dotytron of painting our downstairs all white and he put his foot down.  We currently have a deep plum accent wall and he loves it.  I'll have to get this black/white/brass fixation out of the way when we finish the basement (so, like, never, or after I'm already onto something new).  

These are more gold than brass and I find the contrast a little jarring.  Maybe if there was more warm wood in there to act as a bridge between the start white and shiny gold?

Kitchen/bath reno is basically a go.  I've got a to-do list a mile long.  There are toilets and tubs to research, fixtures to be brought back from the States (shouts to my sis and Uncle Rico, who are being amazing about acting as a glorified warehouse for me at the moment), a million details to go over (what height for the beadboard in the bathroom?  How to trim the tile?  How to cap the beadboard?  What kind of robe hooks?).  When I've been telling people our (read: my) plan to do the kitchen/bath and then dig down the basement and do the waterproofing all this year, I'm predictably getting a bit of side-eye and bemused-face about the whole thing.  But listen: a flipped house on our street, 10 down from us, sold for $742,000.  THAT'S THREE QUARTERS OF A MILLION DOLLARS, PEOPLE.  FOR A HOUSE OUR SIZE.  The guys who flipped it were super-nice so I wanted them to do well, but when I walked through (they gave the neighbours an exclusive preview), I just thought it was aight.  I actually didn't like the design at all and the finishing was a little shoddy and they didn't even pick high-end fixtures.  The taps were MOEN, people!  MOEN!  FOR $742,000!!!  It was like what a condo designer thinks is a nice layout.  So not my taste.  I'm fussy.  I'm an oil-rubbed bronze kind of a girl, ya know?  I'm a crystal doorknob kind of a person.  I don't want my house to look builder-new.  Anyway, I'm feeling pretty good about our decision.  Even if you figure that $75K of that is due to the market being "hot", we're still going to cover what we're sinking into our renos and then some.  

Where was I?  Oh yes, The Saint.  Food was tasty - the Dotytron ordered the duck egg scramble with duck confit.  His only quibble was that there wasn't enough duck confit.  I ordered the duck egg benny on a cheddar biscuit.  Both come with potatoes lyonnaise, which basically means "potato deliciousness."  I would definitely go back.  The service was nice, they were bumping (we didn't make resos and had to sit at the bar), but they could accommodate kids (saw quite a few families there).  

The rest of my week(s) have been preoccupied with reno business and trying to do some spring cleaning/downsizing/getting rid of baby stuff.  I'm surprisingly unemotional about the baby purging.  I think the fact that in 4 weeks, I'll be bringing in zero money is really helping to motivate me to sell and any lingering pangs watching Bumbos and play mats and such leave the house are attenuated by the cash I'm getting in their stead.  If I have another baby, it won't be for some time, and then I can just re-up all that shiz anyway.  I won't have to buy it because everyone will be in the state of unloading their baby ish.  When you have twin infants, switching over your summer clothes or re-upping the kids' summer inventory or poring over the Ikea kitchen planner for the MILLIONTH TIME will take you weeks of your life to accomplish.  I basically spend my days measuring and writing little notes of measurements and dimensions to myself that I then refer back to, and without any context, then have to re-measure again and again.  FUN.

SMckay came over on Friday and when they Dotytron came home, he became obsessed with trying to sort out a profile to see if he could still get chicks.  This involved him looking through old photo albums to find a TWELVE YEAR OLD photo of himself to use as a profile pic.  This also involved him trying desperately to create his profile with the user name: "URBEINGCATFISHED" which is pretty much the best online dating user name of life.  SO GOOD.  

We also hung with Dr. Rei and Hanbo this weekend and had a hilarious time talking about what 9 out of 10 Serge Tankians would think of anything, as well as how FUBU (for us, by us) Hassidic Jew communities in Montreal are.  There was also an extended, "What the shih tzu" bit that I know means nothing to you all, but I'm recording it here for posterity because that's what this blog is for, and also, because Dr. Rei laughed so hard that she almost had her baby, so it's worth remembering.  

My Mother's Day was pretty boss.  The Dotytron knows what I like, which is to do work, so he made me breakfast and then we went to town trying to get our backyard in order.  It's looking good back there!  I know people probably think we were silly to make such a giant deck, but when we're out there, we love it so, so, so much.  It's like a dock.  It's like having a giant outdoor room.  We moved things around and bought these recycled rubber tiles (Envirotiles) and laid them out on the concrete pad.  We're going to put a kiddie pool and a sandbox there, so we wanted something a little softer on wee kidlet feet than the bare concrete.    I bought a new dining table from IKEA and now we're either going to build a bench out there or have our carpenter do it.  That and a thing to store our recycling/garbage cans and stuff and some plants and we're done.  I can't wait!  

One of the things I asked for was a decent picture of all of us.  The backdrop on this one is horrid, but look at my cute family!!!  Look at how much Quincess' head shape has changed!  

Fin.

Growing Up

Overheard the other day, while the Dotytron was running point on getting the Big Yam set for the day (which involves feeding him a pre-daycare-breakfast breakfast of whatever he's currently fixated on, which right now is PC Organics shredded wheat squares and milk), the Big Yam told the Dotytron, "I don't want my Thomas placemat any more."  The Dotytron inquired whether he still liked Thomas, and the Big Yam replied, "No.  I don't like Thomas any more.  I like all sorts of movies.  Like, like, movies about meatballs." (we had forced him to branch out beyond Frozen on Friday night and we watched Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs together).  He wanted a "lallo" placemat like the ones that the Dotytron and I use.

Guys, if you had told me a year ago (when the Thomas obsession began in earnest) that I would be brought to tears at the notion that I wouldn't have to countenance Thomas' stupid perpetually smiling face and that of all his poncey British friends again, I would have laughed you out of the room.  I hate Thomas (and Friends!)  I think it's the worst programming ever!  I hate the books, the lack of narrative in the episodes, the movies and misadventures brought upon by the trains' lack of judgement.  But the thought of him outgrowing something, made me cry like a baby yesterday.

 

It was exacerbated by an incident I witnessed while with the Wonder Twins at the drop-in centre yesterday.  One of the drop-ins on our circuit is housed in the school where the Big Yam will be starting JK.  I saw two junior kindies, or possibly full kindie kids (white, with that obnoxious bowl cut/Dorothy Hamill hair that some moms love to do with their sons when they have full heads of hair), making fun of this little Indian kid in their class who was sucking on a plastic toothpick.  The boys were like, "Ew! We don't do that!  That's a GIRL thing."  "We do BOY stuff.  Like, like Spiderman!" Thankfully, the little Indian kid was oblivious (which made him SO. MUCH. CUTER), but it took considerable will power to not lay into those little s**ts.  I recognized one of the kids from the Big Yam's ballet class (the boy shows up to ballet in a full Superman bodysuit with the fake muscles) and the past two lessons the Big Yam hasn't wanted to wear his tutu in ballet class and I immediately thought that it might be because that little a-hole said something to him, the very thought of it put me into a murderous rage.

I was so mad/sad at what I witnessed that when the Dotytron came home, I was in sad/angry tears.  People are the worst!  Like, it's no secret that I'm a general misanthrope.  Love humanity, tend to hate individual humans, unless I know you and deign to like you, in which case, you're golden forever.  The idea of the Big Yam being bullied or being made to feel like his interests aren't cool, or being shunned for stupid gender conforming stuff makes me just want to scoop him up and home school him.  As the Dotytron correctly identified, I just don't want him to have his innocence stripped from him.  I think the think that makes those "awkward tween/teen years" so awkward and repellent (to me) is the inbetween-ness of it all.  Not a girl, not yet a woman, etc.  Not innocent, but not an adult.  I guess, in the long run, it's better that the Big Yam be bullied than be the bullier.  But at least if he's the bully, I can do something about it (harangue him into submission).  It's hard to take away the sting of being made fun of as a kid.  Kids are vicious.  I just want to protect him from that, and from the stupidity of their parents' poor decisions.

Last week I went to the Science Centre with the kids with my neighbour and her kids.  We ate in the food court area and I sat across from this like, 8 year old Indian kid, who was clearly pretty fresh-off-the-boat.  He was the CUTEST.  Super-chubby, wearing classic FOB gear, mangled teeth, super-articulate.  We chatted about his lunch (egg curry!) and he was so sweet and kind and oblivious.  Nerdy FOBs are the best kids in the world.  I wish I could turn my kids into nerdy FOBs but you can't recreate that fresh-off-the-boat naiveté in North American-ized, urban kids.

The Big Yam is so oblivious to so many things.  Tonight (this post has been composed over 3 days), as we were coming in from playing outside, I told him to say goodnight to his friends.  "GOODNIGHT!" he shouted, and then just before the screen door slammed shut, "AND GOODNIGHT, WORLD!"  LOL!  So good.  An unprompted "goodnight, world!" with gusto is just about the best thing ever.  I can't do anything about it, but I want to protect him from butting up against people's expectations.  I want him to be able to wear a tutu and it not to be a big deal.  I want him to get into Harry Potter and want to dress up as Professor McGonagall or as Hermione for Halloween and for no one to bat an eye.  I came up with a pretty solid family Halloween costume which hits all the marks - something we're into, not fantastically labour intensive, intrinsically funny, and we were telling Momma D at dinner the other night and she was a little put out by the fact that it would require the Quincess to dress up as a woman.  But here's the thing, if the Quincess was a girl and wanted to dress up as Harry Potter, NO ONE WOULD BAT AN EYE.  It's only when guys want to wear girl stuff that people get all side-eye about it.  ON HALLOWEEN!  A NIGHT WHEN YOU'RE GIVEN LICENSE TO PLAY WITH IDENTITY!  THAT'S THE WHOLE POINT OF THE NIGHT.

Using "devil's night" as a segue, allow me to share a video of the Quincess' particular style of getting around:

He is SO FAST like this.  It's so funny, especially when he's all excited as above and basically skittering around like a deranged inchworm, in and out of rooms and your line of sight.  The video above is also notable because you'll see at the 20 second mark, when Quincess makes his way over to Lindsay Lou-Lou and Lindsay does one of his classic, overly dramatic, super-sensitive wailing jags.  It's also funny when the Quincess comes up against a flooring that provides resistance (like thick carpeting), and he can't leverage the helmet-on-hardwood mechanics.  He plants his feet and does a bridge that would make a moksha yogi envious, in his attempt to slide.  

Long story short: kids are the worst.  Don't give your kid a Dorothy Hamill bowl cut, and let your kids be kids as long as possible.

Fin.

David Attenborough, Junior

The Big Yam has lately been obsessed with watching episodes of that old BBC Series, Blue Planet on Netflix.  It's his go-to, and we're willing to indulge him (during his allotted TV/iPad time, of course - i.e., only on weekends) because the worst thing that happens is he's learning a s**t tonne about rando ocean creatures.  As in the video below, where he recites a little lecture on the migration habits of Atlantic lobsters, which he has pulled word for word from the series.  He's also watched so much of it, that he's picked up little David Attenborough-isms, which you can hear in the way he says stuff like "Atlantic lobster" in a stuffy, Brit voice.

"The increasing warmth is the cue for an Atlantic lobster to start on a long journey.  She spent the winter 250 meters down, far beyond the reach of the storms.  But, it was cold down there, and now she needs to find warmer water, so she's marching towards the shallows.  They however, are 150 kilometres away.  After a month of walking, she finally arrives at her favorite sandbank."  

Other choice Blue Planet-derived Big Yam funnies: he's been going around talking about how "blue whales don't have butts!" "crabs don't have butts!" but his most consistent assertion in his treatise on the existence of butt-less sea creatures has been "lobsters don't have butts!"  Cue to the other night, when he was nattering on about lobsters not having butts, lets out a GIANT fart, gives some side-eye, smirks, and says, "I guess lobsters DO have butts."  

We're a little unsure how to mediate his absorption of the amoral vicissitudes of underwater life.  He's watching a lot of carnal violence and coitus (shrimp and coral coitus, but still) and we're not sure whether it should be addressed.  Last night, he was watching a segment where an orca is shown in stunning slow-motion detail, eating a grey whale baby (technically known as a "calf" - we are ALL LEARNING THINGS).    In a direct parroting of David Attenborough's narration (though far removed from DA's sombre tone), the Big Yam said, "The killer whale has gotten its prize!" The Dotytron tried to insert some empathy for the plight of the grey whale baby, "Yes, but the killer whale is eating the grey whale calf.  It's dead now." The Big Yam: "The grey whale did not get its prize."  LOL.

Low key times at Casa Dotytron & Lagerfeld high this weekend.  Our friend A is visiting from NYC so the Dotytron went to his show on Friday night, chilled with him again on Saturday, and then we had our friends B & G over on Saturday night for dinner.  Sunday I took the Big Yam with me out and about while the Dotytron treated Momma D to her birthday present  - which was a special breakfast with the babies followed by watching a week's worth of Coronation Street with her.  The Big Yam and I had a pretty fun day - we helped do the Earth Day clean-up at our local park, we went to swimming lessons (where he was a giant pill and I had to be stern with him while all the other kids in the change room averted their eyes and cowered in fear), then we rode the rails (streetcar and subway) to do some errands downtown.  

The wind rustling in the background and the eerie creak of the swings, in addition to the babies (save for the Quincess' last-minute animation) disaffected demeanour is so funny to me.  It's like a Terrence Malick film.

The Quincess is a mischievous little Bonobo monkey.  Periodically, when we leave the Wonder Twins to do their baby scrum on the floor and run wild while we're in the kitchen cooking or something, we'll hear Lindsay unleash a very girlish, high-pitched wail/scream, which generally means that the Quincess has back-arched his way over to Lindsay and ripped the toy he was playing with out of his hands.  It's so funny because Lindsay is so much bigger than Quincess, but somehow, Quincess is surprisingly strong and Lindsay's always getting owned.  Lindsay also has a very classic "dismayed" face, that's kind of like classic exaggerated clown, which makes his anguish all the more laughable.  Then Quincess will give us a very bland, serious, look and basically, the long and short of it is: I could watch the Wonder Twins show all day.

I've all but finalized the haggling for the appliances for the kitchen and have almost finished winnowing down the haggling for the bathroom/kitchen fixtures.  I realize I'm not being very strategic about the process.  I'm not viewing Lil' Ugmo with the jaundiced eye of someone who only sees their house as an asset.  I doubt that future potential buyers would care as much about a 36" Wolf range, but I've lived SO LONG without a proper gas stove and I am not planning on moving in the next, say, 10 years, so I'm going to TREAT MYSELF.  My hot dog and KD game (which is going to be most of what Friday Night Takeout Night will consist of come 3-kids-in-childcare times in September) is going to be NEXT LEVEL.  

I will say it has been nice to sit and stew over a kitchen/bath remodel for the almost-five-years we've been living here.  My tastes have changed over that time frame and I've lived in the house and have a better vision of what I want Lil' Ugmo's best self to be.  A friend was curious about what the original bathroom sink was going to be.  For those of you with the coin to spend, I would encourage you to get the Duravit Vero:

My preciousssssss.

With some brass fixtures like this picture?  GET OUTTA HERE.

So beautiful.  Yeah, I get it.  It's a f**king sink.  But like the our Paleolithic ancestors in the caves of Lascaux, I believe that your home should be beautiful.  A space that reflects you.  Listen, we are all stardust, so why not make our brief time in the corporeal realm one in which we spit our Sensodyne toothpaste into a beautiful wall-mounted sink with brass fixtures?  

Speaking of being stardust, You Are Stardust is a recent picture book that we borrowed from the library, one that I consider worth owning.  Canadian made, beautifully illustrated with wonderfully tactile DIORAMAS, this book talks about how we are all connected by our stardust ancestry.  It's beautiful, poetic, and inspires the reader to situate themselves on a continuum that encompasses dinosaurs, pollen, our oceanic roots, and our future in the stars.  The cadence of the text is thought provoking, informative, and rhythmically comforting.  I highly recommend.  

Last night I took Dr. Rei out for her birthday.  My friend B's restaurant, Porzia, does a Monday $33 prix fixe that is pretty good value and a whole heap of food.  You each get an appetizer, then you share a pasta, and you each get a main.  Half priced bottles of wine, too, although we didn't avail ourselves of that.  We also went a bit buck and ordered an extra vegetable dish, and a hamachi crudo (as I've said before, and I'll undoubtedly say again, I love me a crudo).  It was A LOT of food.  But it was delicious.  My friend B is, as Dr. Rei so eloquently put it, a bit of a babe show:

He's always been super-nice, decent, and has good taste in 'chunes.  Nuff said.  Hard to find in the cooking world, which runs thick with weirdos, pumped up machismo, and small minds (more often than not, that dizzying cocktail in one person).  Also, total babeshow.  So is his wife.  

I didn't take any photos (for once), because I was too busy catching up with one of my favorite people in the world.

Fin.

Mood Boards

I've been running around like mad lately trying to price out a potential kitchen/bathroom renovation.  It is a LOT of work.  I've found a contractor who gave us a good price on labour and rough materials, which means I've got to source all the special stuff - fixtures, tile, appliances, lighting, kitchen cabinets, etc.  First up - let's see some mood boards, shall we?

I used to think I wanted shaker style cabinets with contemporary, long pulls.  White cabinets, grey floor, grey counter.  Something like this:

As I sat on this, and as I realized that Ikea is probably my best option in terms of price point for cabinets and that I wasn't super into their version of the shaker style (I like a narrow, very clean profile), I started finding myself veering towards flat front cabinets with contemporary tab edge pulls (like in the last two photos).  I'm thinking white cabinets with a slight gloss (Ikea's Applad fronts), light grey tile floor, and a white/pale marble influenced counter with maybe flecks of grey, likely in a caesarstone/silestone composite quartz.  Some open shelving, in medium-warm toned natural wood stain, as in the middle photo.  With all that neutral up in that piece, I've been heart set for a long time on a colorful, graphic backsplash.  Originally, I wanted to carry through the grey-acid yellow-white thing we have going on in the main floor of the house, but then I saw this tile and fell in love:

This tile probably costs a billion dollars a square foot and is obviously out of my reach.  I did find a rectangular tile with a raised prism pattern in a shade of blue/teal that I very much liked.  I think with the rectangular floor tile, the white expanse of the cabinets and all, it's going to look very stark and the raised dimensions of the tile will add some nice texture (I hope).  

The bathroom I'm basically ripping off my massage therapist's bathroom.  LOL.  I hope she doesn't mind!  Very basic - subway tile alcove bath, modern fixtures, a sink/console combination (no vanity), white open shelving and baskets for storing our unsightlies, wide wainscotting, marble hex tile floor:

That's actually the sink/console I'm eyeing

Running around to a million stores has been educational for me, in the sense that it has underscored how weirdly reluctant people are to HAGGLE.  1st rule of being a Lagerfeld is: PAYING RETAIL IS FOR SUCKERS.  Don't do it!  What the f**k are you paying these f**ks for?  To call up the manufacturer and place an order for you and then charge you a mark-up to make that phone call?  Gimme a break.

As an example, I have a small job I wanted done in our enclosed porch.  Basically, we have framing separating us from our neighbour's enclosed porch, and tacked onto the framing is basically like, cardboard, so you can't screw in any coat hooks that can take any weight.  The job is simple, rip out the old stuff, throw up some drywall, some beadboard, and a shelf, over an area that's about 12'x5'.  The job is so small that most of my contractors don't want to do it, so I found the name of some dude on a local community recommendation site and checked his work online.  I have him by, and he looks at the job, showing up with a business card with PAPYRUS font and reeking of butts (basically, he doesn't give you the white-glove customer service experience).  He comes back and quotes me $900.  NINE HUNDRED DOLLARS.  I was like, um, no.  I told him straight up that was more than double what I was willing to spend on labour and I ask him what his hourly rate is.  He writes back that he had included a bunch of time for "staining and finishing" (even though I had shown him pictures of what I wanted and it was white!  I had also specified paint-grade poplar!).  He tells me that his hourly is $50/hour (still high) so I said I'd pay him his hourly to a maximum of $350.  He INSTANTLY writes back "done. I can start on Friday."  !!!!!  LOL!  I felt a little bad about Carpenter Jim being such a sadsack and asked the Dotytron if he thought it was okay that I was lowballing to that extent.  The Dotytron was like, Carpenter Jim brought this on himself.  The sad thing is: some people will actually pay the $900!

Emboldened by my successful recent negotiations.I am officially the scourge of retailers.  Look, if an appliance store takes a mark-up of say, 20% ON EACH ITEM purely for the service of liaising with the manufacturer, then they can get that 20% on ONE item from me, not all.  Further, I'm of the belief that they should be okay getting a tighter profit margin on me, because so many rubes are willing to walk in and take the initial quote.  

The question of the hour now, is whether I can justify getting a 36" gas range.  I'm old school - I want a range that's as close to a commercial one as possible - which means: no fancy self-cleaning, no fancy dual-fuel, just gas on gas.  No computer to break down, no "multiple oven modes."  On, off, simmer, high.  No griddles!  No grills!  No wok functions!

TIME WILL TELL 

In typical me fashion this post has taken me a solid week to put together.  Thus far, our long weekend has been splendid.  Our friends H & A were visiting from Cleveland and stayed with us.  It's been so nice - like a proper do-over of our squandered March Break.  We ate, we played Pandemic (and won!), we hung out, the boys drank bourbon, my street had our annual Easter Egg Hunt, we went for dinner at Playa Cabana Barrio Coreano:

How cute is my street?  

On Saturday night, the Big Yam came downstairs, and asked me, "Mama, where does the Easter Bunny live?" trailed by the Dotytron giving us the "What was I supposed to say?!?" face and shrugged shoulders.  Parenting Tip: try to anticipate these kinds of questions so that your story checks out and it's consistent.  We said Easter Island.  We don't have a house where the Easter Bunny comes and gives out mad stuff.  I saw one of the Dotytron's cousins had this giant set-up for their kids with Easter baskets and matching mom-and-daughter Hunter rain boots (!) and a strider bike from the Easter Bunny.  WHAT. THE. F**K.  Are you f**king kidding me?  NOT A THING.  I love that the Big Yam has no concept of want.  He got owned at the hunt and came back with the fewest eggs and then asked to open one, ate a chocolate, and then promptly forgot about them in favour of watching BBC's Blue Planet on the iPad, which is his new obsession.  

Belated 10 month Wonder Twin growth pic

Looks who's doing THIS now?!? Lindsay Lou-Lou basically learned to crawl about two weeks ago, and then promptly started doing what you see up there, all the time.  Quincess continues to do his backwards inchworm/sliding on the back of his head technique.  He's really fast at it, so I'm beginning to lose hope that he'll ever learn to crawl properly.  He turns and pivots and kicks off from a stationary object when he needs extra leverage.  He'll stop and check to make sure he's going in the right direction and then continue on his way.  It's hilarious, but also not physiotherapist approved.

Says you.

Fin.