mostly pictures of the kids, maybe some links, and probably some music.

Tuesday, October 31, 2006

Paving with good intentions.


Everyday I sit down when her majesty is taking her afternoon nap with the intention of posting something on here. And every day her majesty wakes up after just 35 minutes, so at the most I have done a bit of writing or edited some photos, but rarely do I have time to make an entire post. Later in the evening I am too tired or too busy or whatever. Tonight I am feeling ill so I have come up to bed early and thought I would post something up quickly so that I don't feel I am letting blogger down.

- the teenager is here this week - hurrah!
- the baby figured out how to clap yesterday and was going at it gangbusters today.
- she spent a good portion of today saying the word "up" over and over again.
- the teenager and I have watched 3 episodes of Heroes in the last two nights and are sort of hooked.
- everybody at the house is feeling a little ill.
- the baby has decided that 4am is the perfect time for bowel movements, which means by 4.30 she is awake, crying and stinking to high heaven. Most mornings by the time the diaper is changed there is no way she is going back to sleep. So we have been getting up early.
- I am not sure when the teenager has her bowel movements (ah the letting go as they grow up) but she probably doesn't want me talking about them on the internet anyways.
- fed the baby a lot of whole rice, prunes and beans today in an attempt to move the timing of the early morning BM up a bit. There was a minor explosion at about 2.30pm, so perhaps tonight we will be lucky.

Monday, October 23, 2006

Rapidshare Woes

So I think the problems with my first album links were my fault and not Rapidshare's.

I think that I was too hasty blaming Rapidshare for losing my account.

As usual I wrote something without checking it out first.

My account is still there - there is just new version of Rapidshare and I had to sign up to it.

The albums are gone, but that is my own fault because I wasn't logged in as a premium user when I uploaded them.

Anyhow, here are the links to working uploads. Enjoy.

Dan Zanes

Sho, Mo & The Monkey Bunch

Yodellin' Crazy

I have updated the links in the original post as well.

Horror Movies

Lately - in a bid to get a bit of alone time, I have taken to watching movies in bed with the headphones on once N has fallen asleep. For some reason almost all of them have been horror movies. It is all I seem to want to watch. Here is a list of them in more or less the order I have watched them.

Hostel – gory and bleak with the best Achilles tendon slicing since Pet Semetary, but I found the ending disappointing, too upbeat.

House of 1000 Corpses
– everybody warned me it was bad, but I wouldn’t listen.

Devil’s Rejects – marginally better than Hof1000C, but only by a bit. I enjoyed seeing PJ Soles in her cameo though.

Dawn of The Dead – Sarah Polley version – The teenager’s mom got married on the set of this film. There was garbage and body parts and overturned cars and busses all around the building we were in, the kids loved it.

Night of The Living Dead – 1990s version. I was copying it for my nephew and I wanted to make sure it wasn’t too much for him. It has a nice bleak ending.

Silent Hill – This got glowing reviews from the nephew mentioned above. I couldn’t finish it. I just kept trying to guess which parts were straight from the video game and which parts they added in. Not recommended by me.

Bloodsucking Freaks – un-watchable, even with the camp factor of a homicidal little person it is just too bad to watch. I tried twice but gave up.

Haute Tension
– Know here as Switchblade Romance. I loved this one. Scary, tricky (though they cheat a bit), and truly gory. The ending is just soaked in blood. Nasty homophobic subtext to the movie, but I guess I shouldn’t expect stellar social values in a film where women and children are casually murdered, a man is decapitated with a dresser and a concrete saw is put to shocking use.

The Happiness of the Katakuris – not really a horror movie per se, more like some surrealist acid trip, but it has murder, and zombies, clay-mation, musical numbers and weird angel monsters. Plus it is by Takashi Miike, so it counts. Watch this one, it is quite a trip.

The Cavern – a bad bad cave movie from Australia. Camera work was very Blair Witchy, and made me feel like puking.

The Descent – a not too bad cave movie. The story is very similar to The Cavern, but the lighting, design, acting, camera work and special effects are light years ahead.

Twisted Sisters
– another un-watchable one. This time a German and English co-production. Crazy sister, nice sister, fireworks going off up some poor guys butt. Give it a pass.

Nightmare on Elm Street – always a goodie. I bought it a couple of years back, but the teenager won’t watch it with me, so I gave up on waiting and watched it myself. Johnny Depp is so young.

I have a bunch more still to go including two more by Miike, both the Saws and the Exorcism of Emily Rose. I will let you know if I find any that are good and scary.

Kitchen SNAFU Part Two.


My infant daughter is a crappy napper. 35 minutes per nap at the most. (Well in the interest of full disclosure, she slept for 90 minutes this afternoon, but that is extremely rare.) So when she goes down for her afternoon nap I have time to visit the powder room, get her lunch and my lunch together (for when she wakes up) and maybe sit down and write her mom an email It is nice to spend time with her, but the lack of alone-getting grownup stuff done-time is occasionally disheartening.

Last Tuesday she went down and rather than follow the usual routine I decided to get a butternut squash and some garlic and onions roasting for soup. As well, I decided to slip the phone headset on and get some phone calling done at the same time. Multi-tasking super-dad in action. The calls were all made, the squash was rubbed with spices and roasting along side the garlic and onion, the lunches were made and I had some time to spare. Go on I says to myself, peel and cut the apple and then fry it with the curry, that way when the roasting is done I can drop it right in the pan, add the stock and set it to simmering. It will be ready as soon as N comes home from work.

So I put a pan on the stove and add some oil. I get an apple out and peel, core and slice it. I turn the pan on high and reach up into the cupboard to get the new curry powder out. The can is taped tightly so I am hunting around for the scissors or a knife. Then I hear it, the baby rolling over. If I can get to her in time, and if I can start patting her back quietly, persistently and soothingly she just might go back to sleep for another 35 minutes, who knows maybe an hour. I rush down the hall and into the room. Pat Pat Pat, she opens her eyes, Pat Pat Pat, the eyes close and the breathing slows, she is going to fall asleep, then the freaking phone that is still in my pocket rings. She bolts upright. All is lost. I angrily hang up on the person (sorry Alan, but ya screwed me man!) and take her in my arms for a cuddle. If she doesn’t get a cuddle when she wakes up – look out, crabby baby. So we are sitting there, turning the ceiling light off and on with the remote when I remember the oil. I remember I turned the oil on high and then never turned it off. We run down the hall to the kitchen expecting clouds of smoke, only to find flames leaping up almost to the ceiling. I put the baby down and grab the fire extinguisher – I am finally going to get to use it! – It is going to make a huge mess of the kitchen! – What am I thinking, the fire is in a pot – I slam the lid on – fire goes out. Thick black smoke is pouring out from under the lid, I go to lift the pot off the burner but it has melted the enamel and it is stuck, I am struggling and pulling and the baby is pulling herself upright on my leg. Eventually the pot and the element come loose together and I put them down carefully on the back of the stove. At this point, just as I am getting the element and pot down the smoke alarm goes off and the baby starts to cry. I pick her up, open the window in the kitchen and then go into the back hall to open the door to the deck. The smoke detector is out here, and it is so loud that it frightens the baby into silence. Back into the kitchen, even though the pan and the element are no longer generating heat there is still fresh smoke coming from the pan. I take the baby to the living room and prop her up against the couch, then I run full speed back the kitchen, grab the pot and take it out the porch. Then I grab the stepladder, climb up to unplug and pull the battery from the smoke detector. I get down from the ladder just in time to stop J from crawling out of the kitchen and throwing herself down the stairs. It is all fine. Fire is out, smoke is clearing, squash is almost roasted and I have already prepared her lunch. Yes, it is all going to be fine.

Thankfully I caught the fire before it melted the microwave or set the cupboards alight. I guess it hadn’t been burning for too long, I was able to clean all the soot and smoke with citrus cleaner and paper towels. When they cooled down it was easy to pull the element and the pot apart. The element is fine – except for a bit of red enamel on it - and the pot is garbage.

The soup was excellent and the little stinker just finished the last of it today mixed with leftover rice.

I wish she could sleep longer.

Art Appreciation with Grandpa Martin.


Martin Ludwig Cohnstaedt would have been 89 years old on October the twelfth. Would have been, because it was his birthday. Unfortunately for everybody who knew him he died in 2001. He was a great man who led a long and complicated life and he is missed by anyone who got a chance to meet him. We were over having dinner at Martin’s house with N’s mom and brother and Morris on Thanksgiving and when I took the baby up to the bedroom for her nap she fell in love with the picture above. The original painting is in colour, but this is a picture of a reproduction we have at our house. What does that have to do with Martin you ask? A lot really. It was his picture from when he was a boy, it hung over Martin and Joy’s bed when N was growing up, and now N’s daughter loves it too. Cool eh? Painted by a starving artist woman back in the 20s for Martin’s family because she needed the money but wouldn’t take a handout, it has been in the family every since. The baby loved it. She talked to it, she pointed at it, she turned and twisted on the bed to keep it in view. I just thought it was cool for her to be connected to her mom, and her grandfather and her great-grandparents all through one painting. I didn’t think it was so cool that she wouldn’t go down for a nap, but we have to sacrifice for art don’t we?

Friday, October 20, 2006

A Tree Fell On Our House




I don’t know about the rest of the world, but Toronto has been rainy, windy, grey and broody for the last week or so. Winnie the Pooh might have described it as blustery, and I don’t think he would have been too far off the mark.

I don’t know about the rest of you, but my house is surrounded on all sides by big old maple trees. Norway Maples to be precise and they are all at least middle aged. (Oh if only they could be Finnish Maples – Finland is way better than Norway.)

Now I don’t know about the rest of you, but I am no math genius. I don’t think you have to be a genius though to know what you get when you add blustery weather to middle aged crappy maples.

Yep about a third of a Norway Maple lost the war against gravity the other evening and landed SMACK right on top of our nicely newly done roof. Sweet.

We called the city first thing in the morning and the limb was gone before noon. The workers left us info in case we wanted to file a damage claim and just the tiniest pile of sawdust. Tax money well spent.

I haven’t been up on the roof yet myself to see if there is any real repairable damage, N doesn’t like me wandering around on roofs or climbing on ladders. I think I will go into the attic and check from the inside.

16.5 Year Old Kid Update


Tall (tallest girl in her Music Theater class!)
Beautiful
90% average in math (but after today’s test who knows).
100% average in physics.
Procrastinating on driving lessons.
Habit most likely to drive dad insane – leaving dirty dishes lying around.
Habit most likely to confuse dad – getting furious at him when he reminds her to take dirty dishes.
(She hated school today – actually the whole damn day so far, and there is still time for it to go further down hill.)

35 Minute Kid Update


Age – 10.5 months.
Average time of nap – 35 minutes. (Chillingly precise)
Number of teeth – 7. (But the drool and whining over the last few days hint at more on way)
Clothing size – 12-18 months.
Favourite Food – Green Peas (frozen, room temp, warm or mushed)
Least Favourite Food – Depends on her mood, but anything can incur her wrath, even G. Peas.
Walking – Took her first real no holding steps today, two of them. She went from leaning against a big blue cushion to my knees. Loves to walk around edges of furniture and behind her red flyer wagon.
Talking – Sit, No, Uh-oh, high there (usually in response to hello and pronounced hi dah) and Da (which mostly means Dog, but can mean anything she really likes)
Favourite Pastime – turning fan and light on and off in bedroom with remote.
Favourite Mode of Emotional Expression – Whining (but to be fair, a crazy, nose wrinkling grin is a very close second.
Favourite Bath Toy – Plug. Plug goes in, plug comes out, etc. etc.
Television Personality Most Like - Homer Simpson. Light goes on, Light goes off. Etc., Etc., Etc.,
Animal Most Like – Raccoon. No matter how many times I refill the recycling, she tips it over and strews it all around again.

Helpful Consumer Tip #1

If you want your inexpensive V-Tech 5.8 ghz phone system to keep working, don't let someone who is just over 10 months old use it as a playtoy.

Consumer Alert #1

Honour Jemima Heptinstall Cohnstaedt would like everyone to know that she thinks that "Junior Sprouts Organic Strained Lentils and Veggies" tastes like caca and needs to be horked out promptly. The ingredients list sounded good, but after her opinion was made so obvious I had to try it myself. Imagine soaking old cardboard and styrofoam in vegetable water for about a week and then grinding it up into a fine paste. That gives you an idea what "Junior Sprouts Organic Strained Lentils and Veggies" tastes like to grownup tastebuds.

Consumer Alert #2

Rapidshare seems to have had a minor stroke and erased not only my account, but my uploads as well. I have an email in with their webmaster and techsupport and as soon as it is figured out I will re-upload the 3 albums below. I have never had a problem with them before, so hopefully this will be easily rectified.

Friday, October 13, 2006

Sitting with Uncle Rob


This is at Thanksgiving dinner at Grandma's house. They seemed to like each other.

More Thanks!


When making my thanks posting there were two sets of friends I forgot. Who have helped, probably more than they know.

Rye and Jasmyn and June - donated tons of clothes that are just now the right size. She has been wearing the shirts and the hoodies all week. They are a bit oversized still, but absolutely great for the cooling fall weather.

Xander, Anuta and the boys - donated the single most useful piece of equipment so far. The video baby monitor. They weren't using it (after 3 kids in quick succesion i think you get a tad blase), so they loaned it and it made it possible for us to feel ok about J crying things out, and learning to sleep on her own. Our renewed romantic life is all down to having evenings alone and that is all down to having J sleep in her own bed and that is all down to X and A's video monitor.

So thanks again to everyone who has helped helped helped. Couldn't be having such a fun easy time without all of you.

Thursday, October 12, 2006

Music Music Music

We were visiting with our friends Fiona and Isabelle yesterday at the local community centre’s Indoor Playground. After all the toys were put away there was time for a singing circle. We sang Sleep Little Bunnies, The Hokey Pokey and If You’re Happy and You Know It. It was great to watch all the kids and the nannies who knew all the words and actions. Sleep Little Bunnies is VERY cute. It was way too much for J. though. She didn’t like all that communal singing action at all. She just clung on and whimpered. A clear sign that we need to get into some sort of music class I suppose. It isn’t that we don’t listen to music or sing. Hells no! We sing all the time (You think that between when the teenager was a baby and now that someone would have banned Baby Beluga – but no) and we listen to 3 cds over and over again. As a matter of fact, we love them so much we decided to share them with you. They are kids albums sure, but not really.

Yodellin Crazy was A#1 Pop Music in its day, yodeling just really appeals to my daughter, it appeals to both my daughters actually. It is mostly public domain stuff, not licensed, so download it and listen to it over and over without feeling guilty.


powered by ODEO


Download Yodellin’ Crazy


Sho, Mo & The Monkey Bunch are a local Toronto crew and they rock. Listen to the sample and if you like what you hear download the album. But remember, these are local musician, not mega-stars. So if you like it, go to their web site and buy it. Like I said, it is a kids album, but the tunes are so catchy and there are so many neat references and musical jokes that anyone can listen and love it. Track two seems to be a love it or hate it number. J and I are in the Love It camp. www.themonkeybunch.com


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Download Sho, Mo and The Monkey Bunch


Dan Zanes – Catch That Train! I had never heard of this guy, but he must be pretty popular. He has a show on the Disney channel, and a whack of Cds and DVDs. Sure this is a kids album, but it is wicked great. It pulls together all sorts of and kinds of music, with tons of guests (Nick Cave on a kids album!) It reminds me of one of Woody Guthrie’s kid’s albums, if Woody could sing in key and wasn’t playing solo. If you like it, buy it. You can get this one at any Starbucks or probably from his website. www.danzanes.com


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Download Catch That Train


Now these albums are all posted to Rapidshare. If you don’t know what rapidshare is, just click on one of the link and you can figure it out. If you don’t have a premium account you can download one file an hour or so. Just follow the instructions and you will muddle through. I have also posted samples from each album so you can give a listen to decide if you want to take the time to download. I ripped them all at 160 in iTunes and then zipped them using stuffit. They should play fine on any computer.

Tuesday, October 10, 2006

Comments Comments Comments


I thought I had Comments turned on so that anyone could leave them. Turns out I was wrong. So I have changed the set up and now anyone reading can leave a comment, they just have to type in a verification word. You don't have to leave comments, but you can if you want. What I like to do at other blogs is only partially read a posting and then leave a startled/annoyed/aggressive comment, then finish reading the post and then have to leave an apology comment. I can't tell you how many times I have done that. People are so forgiving.

Pies and Pumpkins

Our Front Door Organics Fresh Box had a pie pumpkin in it this week. I love pumpkin. I like it in curry, I like it steamed, I like it in bread and cake, but most of all I like it in pies. So I decided that my contribution to thanksgiving dinner this year would be pies. A vegan tourtierre, a pumpkin pie and a pumpkin cheesecake. I had baked the tourtierre some months back and only had to defrost it, for the pumpkin parts I had to go online and do some searching. I have never made a non-vegan pumpkin pie, and cheesecakes are still very new to me. I found two nice sounding recipes and other than screwing up on reducing the cheesecake (twice as much sugar as called for - but no one has complained), and the pumpkin pie being a liquid when I poured it into the shell (the vegan ones are always pudding like) they both turned out A#1! I love them, the missus loves em, and the baby likes the filling in the pumpkin pie a lot. I am going to attach all 3 recipies to this. I am not sure how that will go, perhaps I will just include them in this post rather than attach them. I have to go to the apple store right now and I don't have time to find some place to host my dorky little text file. So here are the recipes.

Tourtiere (Québec)

Ingredients
2 cups TVP
1 1/2 cups veggie stock
3 T margarine
2 cups each chopped onion and mushrooms
2 cups fine soft breadcrumbs
1 T pepper
1/2 T each salt, thyme, savory
1/4 T ginger
pinch cloves, nutmeg
3/4 cup beer or stock
pastry for two 10-inch pies, tops and bottoms

Preparation
In a LARGE frying pan (I use an electric one cause they're really big), melt the marg. and saute the onions and mushrooms. Cook over medium heat until consistency of a coarse puree.
Stir in bread crumbs.

By now, the TVP should have soaked up all the moisture and expanded to about 3 cups.
Add to the frying pan, and stir well to distribute.
Add seasonings, and cook about 5 minutes more.
Adjust seasonings to taste.

Add the Beer. Cook until the liquid has evaporated but the mixture is still moist.

Cool completely. Spoon into pastry-lined pie plates, cover with top crust, seal, crimp, and vent.

Bake at 450 for 15 minutes, then at 375 for an additional 30 to 40 minutes.

The pies can be frozen, unbaked, for up to a month.
Do not de-frost before baking.
I have had this recipe for years, I usually double it to have extra for freezing. I have left them frozen, well sealed, for up to a year and they have been fine. I am not sure who created the recipe originally, I got it from a veggie mailing list. I usually end up using double the beer called for, the TVP really soaks it up.


Southern Pumpkin Pie
A delicious pumpkin pie, spiced with ginger and cinnamon.

INGREDIENTS:

* 1 1/4 cups pumpkin puree, canned or fresh
* 3/4 cup sugar
* 1/2 teaspoon salt
* 1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
* 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
* 1 teaspoon all-purpose flour
* 2 eggs, lightly beaten
* 1 cup evaporated milk, undiluted
* 2 tablespoons water
* 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
* 1 unbaked pastry shell (9-inch)

PREPARATION:
Combine pumpkin, sugar, salt, spices, and flour in a medium mixing bowl. Add eggs; mix well. Add evaporated milk, water, and vanilla; mix well. Pour into pastry-lined pie pan. Bake at 400° for 15 minutes; reduce heat to 350° and bake about 35 minutes longer, or until center is set.
I doubled the spices in this one, and added clove and nutmeg as well (same amounts as ginger.) I googled this, can't remember which site it was from - sorry. I was freaked out by how liquid this was. Do not over fill your crust (i had a wee spill.)


Pumpkin Cheesecake I
SUBMITTED BY: J M Thomas

"I'm glad my mother gave me this recipe. I think it's better than regular pumpkin pie, because it doesn't have a really strong pumpkin taste."
Original recipe yield: 16 servings
PREP TIME 20 Min
COOK TIME 50 Min
READY IN 1 Hr 10 Min

* 2 (8 ounce) packages cream cheese
* 3/4 cup white sugar
* 1 (15 ounce) can pumpkin puree
* 1 1/4 teaspoons ground cinnamon
* 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
* 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
* 2 eggs
* 1/4 teaspoon salt
* 2 prepared 8 inch pastry shells

DIRECTIONS

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).
2. Beat together the cream cheese and the sugar, add the pumpkin and the spices. Beat in eggs one at a time. Add salt. Beat until creamy. Pour the batter evenly into the two pastry shells.
3. Bake at 350 degrees F (175 degrees C) for 50 minutes or until the knife inserted in the center comes out clean. Let cool then top with whipped topping, if desired.

I cut the ingredients for this one in half so I would just have one cake. Worked fine. I only had a chocolate graham crust and I am not crazy about the combo of chocolate and pumpkin, next time I will try just plain graham crust. This recipe came from allrecipes.com

I am a dorkus!


I am a dorkus.

You might even go so far as to say a dorkus malorkus. Why? Well let me tell you.

At the age of 41 years I put an egg in the microwave to cook it! Can you imagine the lack of thought that went into that?

I know enough not to put eggs in the microwave. I saw the Mythbusters microwave edition, I saw the burns on my sister’s face after she “fried” an egg in the microwave. I have heard any number of apocryphal tales, and yet just the other week I put an egg in the microwave to cook.

In my defense, (and I will take any I can get,) the egg was already hard-boiled and I just wanted to cook it for a little bit longer. In my defense, I was a vegan for 15 years and am not totally wise in the way of eggs. In my defense, it was for the baby and not for me.

Look – it is bad enough that I am not a vegan any more, and that I am letting the baby eat eggs at her precious age. It is a sure sign of how much I have “matured”/”sold out” that I would be letting eggs get cooked in my kitchen. What if the vegan police find out? Maybe my mind was so clouded by the ageing/maturing/selling out process that I didn’t even stop to consider the high ass factor in what I was doing.

Anyhow – I had these eggs that were barely hard boiled (what do I know for boiling eggs), and her majesty would not eat them. So I thought well maybe if they were a bit harder, surely if I pop one into a container of water and put it in for 3 minutes it will firm right up. The water will absorb most of the microwaves, and it isn’t like eggs explode when you boil them. (See I was sort of thinking). Well at about 2 min 48 sec., there was an all-mighty BOOM, the door of the microwave flew open and a boiling mist of water and egg proceeded to coat nearly the entire kitchen. The odour was hellish, burnt sulfur, the consistency was crumbly and sticky all at the same time. I was so embarrassed. I opened all the windows, put on the fan and used up nearly two rolls of paper towel and lots of citrus cleaning fluid trying to set things right.

N. came home just as I finished and could tell something was going on, but I wouldn’t share. I still haven’t. I told the teenager, but she just seemed to see it as proof of my senility. The only reason I am coming out with the story now is that we had dinner at the mother-in-law’s place last night and N’s brother admitted to doing almost the exactly same thing. He had the foresight to peel the thing first, but the result was the same.

I think I will just not give the baby any more eggs and that will help me avoid any more egg-based disasters. I don’t even like the taste of eggs.

Wednesday, October 04, 2006

She eats leaves...


because they taste so good.

Beautiful Kid - No Money Down!


How do you make such a beautiful baby with almost no money down? With the help of friends and family, that is how. We have made it to the ten month mark (Oct 4th), and hardly had to buy any clothes, furniture or toys. Really! In the picture above, the floor tiles are from my sister, the music table from F & G, the clothing is a conglomeration of serveral people and the books are from J.T. The only thing we bought in this picture is the diaper wrap and you can't even see that. Sure we bought her fancy carrier, and the stroller (but not without a donation from my Mom and Dad), and the diaper bag, but otherwise it is like we are living in the most perfect Value Village made just for us. So this is a big shout out, props, an enourmous thank-you to thems what have made it possible.

Family wise – Joy and Morris, Mike and Jackie, Karena and Justin, Craig and Nancy. Special thanks go to big sister Morag, for baby sitting and just being the cool one.

Friendship Land – First and formost the thanks must go Fiona and Garber and to Jennifer T. Really these two families have made clothing our daughter a pain free, cost free, stylish treat. Not only clothes though, toys and furniture and dishes. Not just baby stuff - no no, these kind kind people provided maternity clothing as well. Yes, they rock.

Now I am aware of the concept of Karma, so when any of my friends procreate I will do my best to pass these goods and this goodwill forward.

Thanks for making these incredible 10 months even better everybody.

PS if i have missed anybody, many apologies. The lack of sleep wrecks havoc on the memory.



Monday, October 02, 2006

Learning to eat by herself



She is loving, green peas, green beans, chick peas, papaya, mango and kiwi. The dog is loving every dropped morsel.

Mushrooms In The City






So this whole thing started about two and a half weeks ago. I was walking in the off-leash area with the baby and the dog and there were all sorts of beautiful mushrooms along the path. Big and Small, Edible and Poisonous. Weird and Plain. I planned to take some pictures of them and post them, but then the park went under construction and the only way in is too far to get to, get pictured and swung and get back before nap time. So I took a bunch of pictures of 'shrooms around the 'hood, and a bunch at the cottage. Sadly my mushroom books are in storage so I can't identify most of these. The most edible of the bunch, the giant puffballs, I was so excited about that I ate before I took a picture of them. They were very tasty. Tried them battered and plain. Liked them both ways. N was worried about me eating mushrooms I picked and refused to eat hers until 3 days later just to make sure I didn't die. So with her spirit of caution in mind here is my disclaimer - picking and eating mushrooms is VERY dangerous. It should not be attempted unless you REALLY know what you are doing. Now that's out of the way, has anyone noticed what a glourious mushroom season this is? Wicked! The little teeny tiny orange ones in the top picture were growing in the wood chips in the holes in the climber in the park. They were very tiny, but they weren't a slime mold or anything like that, they were itty bitty individual fungus fruiting bodies. I like fungus.

Mushrooms At The Cottage










Choking on a green bean!

Loves the green beans, sometimes gets a little greedy.

Sunday, October 01, 2006

Before




Last weekend we were up at the cottage for to do some work.

You know, painting the outhouse, cutting down trees, pulling the docks out.

It was a good time, even if it did rain for most of it. We got a new wood shed built, the bathroom floor re-tiled. Oh yeah, it was a productive time.

Happy Birthday Dad!


It is my Father's Birthday. (That is him on the left.)

My dad is great. He makes all our lives better.

So, Happy Birthday Dad!