Some Notes from The Day That Marks Only One Year Till The 2010 Olympics!

Posted on 2/12/2009 by cheesefairy

Folks, I was wrong. Thanks for your wishes but it is NOT my birthday. It is officially ONE YEAR TILL THE 2010 OLYMPICS! ™ Day and I can suck it.

Now I know how those kids who are born on Christmas feel. First I had to share my birthday with Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin. Now it’s all “ooh where’s the torch? what does it look like?” Really? It’s a torch, people. It’s a big fucking candle. You know, like the one on my BIRTHDAY CAKE.

On the bright side, now that my birthday is canceled, I think I get to stay 35 forever!

(Or do I get to stay 34? I would have turned 35 today, if it had been my birthday. I don’t know. I’m sick. Leave me alone.)

I got the best present ever. I got Saint Aardvark to stay home sick with me. Well, he is sick. As am I. And it takes two sick adults to wrangle our boisterous, healthy children. So we snorfled and eye-watered and whined together.

I got the second best present ever, too. My awesome mother-in-law knit me socks. They are wool, which means I can try to cure my common cold with the following method:

– soak feet in hot water
– soak cotton socks in cold water and put on feet
– put wool socks over cotton socks
– go to bed.

I’ll let you know how it turns out. I actually googled this remedy on purpose because I saw it on tv months ago, on the cable show “Urban Rush.” But I couldn’t remember what order the socks went in and which ones should be cooled or heated. Thank goodness for the Internet!

There is not much more to say about today.

Except here is what I looked like today, 35 years after the exact moment of my birth, which just happens to be the same moment exactly one year before Gordo or the Queen or whatever says, I pronounce these Games OPEN!

It’s our time to shine. I need to shine! Can I get a 2010 makeover or something?

PS: I love all of you people. Thank you for the wishes and greetings and emails and for helping me to focus on consuming my cupcakes. Because of you, there are only three cupcakes left of a possible 16! I am an Olympic Cupcakean!

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Chocolate Season is Officially OPEN

Posted on 2/10/2009 by cheesefairy

Here, let me tell you about the cupcakes I made.

Tomorrow is Saint Aardvark’s birthday, you see, and then it is mine the next day. Understandably we have great need for cupcakes. I was planning to make our usual fabulous white cake with butter cream frosting and excess sprinkles but then I was looking for February’s shortbread recipe and at this site called Pinch My Salt, I found a recipe for Chocolate Stout* Cupcakes.

* That’s Stout as in beer, not as in “…short and…”

I like beer. I like chocolate. I like cupcakes. Away!

Instead of buying Guinness, a beer I am not overmuchly fond of, I chose a

– get ready for this –

Double Chocolate Stout.

And instead of cream cheese frosting like in the recipe I am just going with the same butter cream frosting from the back of the icing sugar bag but with food colouring to make things interesting for Trombone and with some kept aside and made into chocolate frosting because chocolate frosting is the best.

I can tell you that the cupcakes are delicious. I just had a couple of bites of one – as yet unfrosted because that is happening after naptime – and it is moist, light, chocolately. I do not taste the beer but I do taste the richness. Best of all, the recipe only called for half the bottle of beer which means I got to play a thrilling round or eight of “The Baking With Children Drinking Game” which goes like this:

– every time toddler dips snotty fist into sugar and then licks it off and then prepares to dip again, take a drink
– every time baby screams from (UNFAIR, MAN!) confines of playpen, er, YARD, take a drink
– every time toddler asks if it is time to eat cupcakes yet, take a drink
– take two drinks if you are still stirring the batter and he is right there in front of it when he asks this question
– every time toddler takes fistful of cocoa and smears it on baby, take a drink
– while you are pouring batter into cupcake cups, as baby continues to scream his indignation, when toddler, who is still standing right there, asks “what are you doing, mommy?” take a drink.
– you get the idea.

Anyway, if you have stout lying around your house I highly recommend adding it to chocolate cupcakes, the end.

PS: I went with lemon shortbread this month, from the province of PEI website (does the BC government offer us recipes? I don’t think so. “Best place on earth” my left one) and it was quite good. I used the zest of one lemon and would happily have upped it to two if I had had two but I didn’t.

PPS: Wow we are going through a lot of butter.

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Squirrels

Posted on 2/9/2009 by cheesefairy

There is a show on the CBC’s Radio 2, Sunday mornings, called In the Key of Charles. The host, Gregory Charles, picks a theme each week and plays related music while he sings along, does commentary, pauses for breath. It is my kind of show. About 50% of my Sunday mornings I am a) at my parents’ house with the rest of my family (my mom’s radio is where I heard this show for the first time) so surrounded by noise or b) not near a radio. How can I have a favourite Sunday mid-morning radio show that I never listen to? Easy! Once in a blue moon I hear it and I love it and it’s my favourite.

I am specific about the mid-morning part of that equation because our Sunday early-morning radio show of choice has long been the “South Slavs” radio show on Vancouver co-op radio. Your host has this great, gravelly voice and he says “Yesta!” a lot and the music is very accordian-heavy and we love it.

Yesterday I was in the car with Fresco going to Costco to exchange a bathing suit and buy three months’ worth of coffee and I put the CBC on and there was Mr. Charles doing a show about solitude. “No one can do it alone,” he said (or something to that effect) “everyone needs friends.” And then he played a song about working together and getting it done (and no it wasn’t from Bob the Builder OR Thomas the Tank Engine may they both burn in a hell of their own lighting) and just as I was tapping the steering wheel thinking life was good I saw them.

Two squirrels, darting out into the road from between parked cars. The car ahead of me slowed and swerved a little and the squirrels ran back to the sidewalk, then darted back out again. The road is a traffic-heavy one and we were proceeding downhill at a good clip so it wasn’t until I was almost past that I realized what they were doing. A third squirrel lay dead just in the path of traffic. The other two were freaking out, losing their little minds, running in and out of traffic the way you advance and balk when every inch of you needs you to do one thing but common sense keeps yanking you back.

“Oh,” I said. “The poor little bastard.” And kept going.

I know; squirrels. Not people. But if they’re just rats with tails, why hadn’t they run back to the yard and left their buddy behind? Part of me couldn’t help thinking about war. Another part just hates seeing dead things on the road. A third part of me thought, “Wow that’s creepy that the dude on the radio was talking about friendship and solitude just then. We do all need friends, if only to drag our dead asses off the road.”

On the way home I was going the opposite way on the same route and I had already forgotten about the squirrels. For some reason I glanced across the two lanes of traffic just at that spot. There were, by then, two dead squirrels in the road. I didn’t know what to make of that.

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Shouting Baby Has Broken Shouter

Posted on 2/8/2009 by cheesefairy

We have a particular strain of common cold at our house, one characterized by a bad ass cough; not “the hack” from last year, which was a dry, irritating cough, but a real thick, hearty soup of a cough. A beef stew of a cough, if you will.

I feel for the wee duffers, I really do. They are ridden with snot that we keep trying to swipe away and at random intervals their lungs seize and they are wracked with coughing fits and their eyes are watering and they can’t drink hot tea or take cold medicine so they just have to suffer. I know they are not dangerously sick because between the attacks of snot and stew and general pathetic-osity they are quite willing to play, shout, frolic and ask questions. However, because of the throat issues, the shouting in question, it is so very, very…

…muted. Our house has not been this quiet in months.

Yesterday afternoon Fresco had no voice at all. The injustice of it! Quiet as the day he was born! Whenever he opened his mouth to say anything, this hoarse, rasping noise came out, like he had spent the previous day at an outdoor rock concert shouting “HELL YEAH, FREEBIRD!” and smoking unfiltered cigarettes.

Of course it is sad when one’s children are sick. But 1) they are sick so much I don’t so much bother misting up anymore and 2) it is just plain funny when this particular child opens his mouth and nothing comes out. Don’t anyone fret; as of this evening he is clawing his way back up to Shout Force 2000 and that is its own relief. After this many months, we are learning to embrace his boisterous ways and anything different does mean he is not himself. We miss him when he’s not himself.

And of course, as soon as the kids are better we too will succumb. So we laugh while we can.

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Friday Is Good

Posted on 2/6/2009 by cheesefairy

Grace under pressure, I think that’s what I’ve got some form of. When the day is just dumb and boring and endless and we are all getting on each other’s nerves, I can be as cantankerous as the rest of them. But when there is Actual Badness going on, I can keep it together and be pleasant for much longer.

I mean it won’t stop me from complaining.

Our Actual Badness at the moment is simultaneous head colds, day 2 for both kids. Endless snot and a pair of that kind of cough that clears a room.

…yesterday I had pink eye

(does anyone want to come over? I didn’t think so!)

but the eye drops have taken care of it in a hurry.

I got up at 5 am today and SA went to work at 5:30 so as of starting writing this I had been on shift for 9 hours already (3 more hours to go!) and this is my first break. Yet I am keeping it both positive and real and I think it is because of three things: (isn’t it always?)

1. Returning from our walk this morning, I remarked upon a gigantic moving van backed up into the cul de sac we call home. The driver / loader guy asked me if I wanted to come on board. I said sure. Maybe he meant it in a dirty way but I was more, hell yes, let me get the kids inside the house and I will do a different job moving furniture for a while. After all, is a change not as good as a rest? Then he said, we’re going all the way to Newfoundland!

Imagine that for a moment. You just hop in a big truck and move to Newfoundland. As far from here as you can get.

OK, I said. I’ll be back in five minutes. The man laughed at me. Why did he laugh at me?

Trombone said, Mommy what is Newfoundland?

I said, it’s on the other side of the country.

Trombone said, That is a long way.

I said, yes.

Is it farther than Mexico?

Yes.

Can we go there?

Someday.

I spent the next half hour fantasizing about moving to Newfoundland. I had a really great little house on the edge of a cliff and a big dog named Danger Beagle who was not actually a beagle.

2. I made kickass lasagna last night and am eating the heck out of it today.

3. Yo Gabba Gabba.

I have not written about this children’s TV show before. I suspect it is a divisive one; that there are folks who hate hate hate it and then folks like me. There’s this guy, DJ Lance Rock? And he wears orange. And he has a ghetto blaster full of weird friends. And he puts them down in this diorama and then they come alive and they dance to the worst / best dj remix style songs. I find it impossible to resist. Also, it does a lot of my parenting for me. This one episode we have on our PVR that Trombone has watched every morning for a week, it teaches greetings and manners. There are these little bouncy balls with smiley faces and when they bump up against each other, they say excuse me. But the thing that really endeared me to this show months ago was the Party in My Tummy song. See the vegetables actually cry because they don’t get eaten! Brilliant! So Happy Friday to you.

(Oh and 4. I have a new alter alter alter ego thanks to a captcha. Justice McMullen. It makes me smile.)

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