My second Family Day was a little, uh, fraught. For some reason it was incredibly difficult to get both boys fed, dressed and ready to leave, even though we had all morning. Mason made a big breakfast, but the boys wanted cereal. No one wanted to focus long enough to get into day clothes. Andy called to find out if the plan had changed, since I had set up a tobogganing party and there was no snow. I began to regret my decision to leave the house at all. And so on.

But we got out, and we made it to Christie Pits in one piece, even though there was indeed no snow. Things were banging at the community centre, where volunteers were handing out pizza and hot chocolate to the masses of skaters. We didn't bring our skates so we improvised (read: we let Blake amuse himself with the other children sliding, pushing and running on the ice-hills formed by rink snow, and kept Sage near the fire.) For a slow start, it went by fast and Blake was sorry to leave when it was time to return Sage to his mom.

Sage returned, we decided to find a place to eat. I have learned the folly of Putting Off a Meal Until We Get Home – while undoubtedly cheaper, we're more likely to end the day talking to one another if we eat before an hour-long car-ride. Both of our new favourite restaurants being east, we headed over to Leslieville to see if either of them were open. Family Day is such a new holiday that no routines have become settled; businesses are sometimes open and sometimes closed. There are, as yet, no Family Day sales.

We were in luck: even though the resto was not yet open, the Ceili Cottage Dinky Rink was in full swing, with the owner Patrick and his son fooling around with a set of junior curling rocks. When Patrick saw Blake, he told us to stay and throw a rock or seven. So we did.

We stayed for the 75 minutes it took the restaurant to open, warmed equally by the fire, the surprise in the faces of passers by, and by the wonderful sounds of curling rocks skidding and clicking. Blake immediately latched onto the son, who was kind to him despite the difference in their ages (and despite the fact that my son is tremendously shrill and bossy. No, I have NO idea where he gets that from.) We roasted marshmallows, knit, and chatted with Patrick and the other people who dropped by to play. (My olympic mitts still smell like woodsmoke, an excellent addition.)

By the time the food was ready, it was apparent that Blake had found his Family Day niche. We were able to pry him away from the rink to order, to eat, and to sample our dessert; the rest of the time he was allowed to mess around on the ice with the kids and adults who were as captivated as we had been. For a few hours, everyone who came by was in our family, which is a holiday miracle as far as I'm concerned.

Labels: blake, family, food

Things I learned at Hillside Festival yesterday, in reverse chronological order:

1. You can get your car out of a swamp if you have 6 strangers to help you push. Also, someone needs to have figured out a route before you gun it out of the muddy parking lot. Thank heaven we received all of those particular blessings.
2. It's important to remember where you park. Or you'll end up taking the shuttle bus to the farthest overflow of overflow parking, ask kind strangers to drive you around, and then have to walk back to the other parking lots in the pitch dark, holding hands with your sweetie. At least we kept moving and our soaked cotton clothes were warm with body heat. We then hitched a ride in the back of a cop car, talked to the parking supervisor, walked around another parking lot, watched other people try to get their cars out of the mud, thought about going to Guelph for the night and coming back in the morning, and finally took the advice of a stranger to look in the next parking lot. There was the car, remarkably dry, looking like an oasis of sanity. Then, of course, we got stuck in the mud.
3. Owen Pallett is the bravest man in Canadian music. Those stupid lionizing house ads for Kim Mitchell on Q107 can just shut the fuck up, 'cause I saw the coolest, ballsiest guy last night in the middle of a truly frightening rainstorm. Forget the soi-dit "rock gods"; I saw skinny little Owen play down a thunderstorm, begging the sound crew for another minute to finish the song. The lightning crashed and he played louder. It rained harder and he went faster. All you could do was whoop and laugh and clap along as he raced against a short in the sound equipment. As soon as the song was over, the stage went dark and everyone in the audience started chanting his name and shaking their umbrellas in the air in celebration. It was the most awe-inspiring thing I've ever seen. There's a video of it here and despite the sketchy sound quality, hearing it again gives me full-body goosebumps; we were all the way across the field and it was just as electrifying as if we were in front of the stage. The title of this entry is the chorus of that song, a glorious sung defiance against the elements.
4. Patrick Watson is very cool, and I wish we had made it into his record release this year. (We were just going to see Laura Barrett open for him, and naively thought we could get a ticket at the door. Ha!) His band played the clouds away, which Final Fantasy called back immediately (see above).
5. Great Lake Swimmers are dull, and their shortlisting for this year's Polaris (ahead of Timber Timbre and Charles Spearin, I might add) is a crime against good sense. This follow up to Issa (see below) bored me to the point of crankiness and made me want to go home.
6. Jane Siberry appears to have completely lost her mind. Issa-what? Don't clap (or "let it leak") and I won't have to take a vitamin tomorrow? Not to worry; I wasn't planning to clap anyway.
7. Every time you see Gentleman Reg, you'll like the band more. Even if it's the third time in a week and a half (and the second time that weekend. Lately I see Reg more often than I see my parents). Also, you will have an awesome time singing, dancing and clapping along to "The Boyfriend Song" next to your boyfriend, who is doing the same thing, even more enthusiastically. When we put the album on this morning, we clapped along through sheer habit.
8. Watching a David Francey show is even better when you're huddled under the stage roof to get away from the rain and you find yourself beside his wife, who asks you to help her read the symbols on her camera. And it's pretty good to begin with.
9. Don't underestimate how much rain you'll get based on the festival's location. I've always thought that nothing could be as wet as StanFest, which joins other such famous generalizations as "it couldn't possibly be sunny enough at StanFest to need sunblock" but fortunately was not followed by a second degree sunburn. And I was trying, a bit. In deference to the previous day's wetting I wore a black hoodie, blue jeans, lace-up leather boots & a Tilley instead of a fancy jean jacket, black dress, thigh-high stockings & vespa boots. But that shit does not cut it in a torrential, all-day soaking. In fact, I probably made it worse for myself as my jeans and hoodie got sopping wet within an hour and never dried, meaning that I was uncomfortably cold and wet for most of the afternoon. At least my stupid impractical stockings are nylon and dry in a snap. The all-day wetness let to a sub-realization, which is always pre-wash your clothes before wearing them in the rain, as my new Amy Millan hoodie leaked black fuzz over my arms and black dye onto my pretty orange tank top, giving me the unlaundered gorilla look I so crave.

   

10. Do not become so excited by the lightning show that you stop caring how wet you're getting. If you do not have a change of clothes, you will be cold and wet all day. Stupid me wore all cotton, despite knowing the value of a good wool garment in a soak. I was worried about the camera; I should have been worried about the loss of body heat and the state of the knitting book I dragged through two days of rain. Knitting Vintage Baby Clothes will never be the same.
11. If you're knitting, you'll meet knitters. I didn't exactly learn this at Hillside, but it was proven there once again. My in-progress beret inspired the girl behind us to pull out her sock. We even met people who used to run an online knitting magazine called Spun. Of course, we were mostly chatting about going to festivals with young kids, and taking breaks from the conversation to dance to Gentleman Reg, but there was some yarn talk in there.
12. Drummers get everywhere. The Afrobeat session on the main stage included the drummer from The Happiness Project, who is also the leader of Samba Punk Sound System, the drumming ensemble at the Brampton Indie Arts Festival with whom I danced out my lungs last year.
13. Toting in a bottle of wine with the makings of a charcuterie & fromagerie plate is completely unnecessary. Delicious, but unnecessary. Apparently, they sell food at folk festivals now. It is, however, both important and fun to get your Hillside beer mugs & wine glasses as early as possible so that you're set for the rest of the day. Draft beer in the mud! I love it! Also, the ice cream there is better than most restaurants, and needs to be carefully planned to maximize the number of cones eaten in a day.
14. Listen to CBC on the way in to get amped about the place you're going. Stuart McLean has many interesting things to say about Hillside, including the fact that Jason Collett can fit into a tent. Diagonally, one assumes.

Labels: festivals, food, music, outfits, outings

I had a big party called Accordionstock '08 on Saturday, and if you missed it, you're probably the reason why we had 5 1/2 quarts of vegetarian chili left over.

It was small in numbers but extremely satisfying. A small coterie of faithful knitters were the first to arrive (as always), followed by the writers, a bellydancer with small daughter (K82*), and two knitters with their families. The five under 5's set about making a glorious mess, which is exactly what the party was for, and at any one time you could find some drawing, some playing with toys, some running in the yard, and some eating. Simon was caught eating crayons, so I offered him baker's chocolate instead. You can tell that he's a second kid: Blake's first birthday cake was made with organic cane sugar to reduce the refined sugar intake and four years later I'm giving other people's kids squares of ingredients. It'll be my fault if he starts hanging out around baking supply stores.

The presence of little eaters meant that we put hot dogs on the menu (the only thing we served that wasn't handmade). Once Blake and K82 had their dogs, they celebrated by spinning in circles, mouths full. The childfree adults, burgers in hand, soon came to a decision. "I want a hotdog." "What?"

They ate the remaining three in short order, and I'm pretty sure if we'd grilled the pack, they'd have eaten them all. I still can't get over it - all this time I've been searching for the perfect party food, and it was right under my nose, swathed in the mists of childhood and a white bread bun.

Yesterday we were able to visit with Mason's son Sage for approximately 5 minutes before he was ushered home to his nap. It was an interesting moment: last time I was asked to come out with Sage, Mason and his family, there was a lot of anxiety about running into Sage's mom. It was so upsetting that we decided on transparency for the next visit; I'm not sneaking around and I refuse to behave as if I'm doing something wrong (or have others behave as if I don't really belong). Sage's mom was told about my invitation, which was a good thing. Not so good was that my arrival at the coffeeshop coincided exactly with hers, so there was some awkward conversation on the sidewalk. Still, it was better than the alternative. A craven part of me thought about hiding in a store before they noticed Blake & I, but we didn't. I didn't touch Sage in front of her, though. That's just pushing it.

One of the most interesting things about the past summer is that I've been forced into much more compassion than I would have otherwise. I'm not just "the girl who was left," I'm also "the replacement" and I'm dating "the boy who left." It's so much harder to judge the Boy and Sage's mom when I'm an analogue of one and dating the counterpart of another.

* Blake was pretty jazzed that K8rs was coming over, and he insisted on sitting outside the door to wait for the family to arrive. Souzan showed up soon with her K8, and took it upon herself to introduce them.

"You must be Blake. What are you waiting for?"

"K8," he replied simply.

"I'm K8!" Souzan's daughter replied eagerly, delighted to be anticipated in a strange place.

"No," said Blake with finality. I haven't heard of such coldness since the infamous "Space Island" conversation.

Labels: blake, food, friends, mason

The not-writing continues. I spent the weekend at the Ottawa Folk Festival, having my mind blown until I could only grumble that everything was too good. Could Mason be any happier with Broken Social Scene? Why did the Sadies have to pummel us with loud, flawless death country? How can I ever listen to “House of the Rising Sun” after Odetta showed us all how it was done? And thank heaven Rufus Wainwright is merely a competent piano player, because being beautiful, charming, smart and singing like an angel is enough for one human being.

And those were just the high points, the moments at which my eyes rolled back into my head and the line between too much and can’t stop were blurred. The Carolina Chocolate Drops charmed me with their string band-y goodness that kept us banging out time even when we were listening to a CD rather than a live performance. Spiral Beach are way too cool and talented – they make me feel very, very old and their audience of 12-year-olds giving me cut-eye didn’t help. Tao Rodriguez-Seger (Pete’s grandson) was great on stage and also when he was the anonymous guy playing banjo by himself in a patch of shade – utterly charming.

We were there to see Broken Social Scene, a band I don’t know all that well. It’s a tribute to their playing (and Mason’s ecstatic reactions) that I walked away a fan. The same can be said of every other act – either I knew them only by reputation or not at all, and I was converted again and again. Every night we went to sleep in our cold tent amazed that we’d survived another day of beauty. (Especially the first night, when we found out the hard way that this was merely a suggested accommodation and no shuttles or even local buses would run us to the camp grounds. For one used to going to sleep within earshot of the main stage a la Stanfest, this was a tough lesson to get at midnight.)

When we weren’t flopped out in shade patches, dancing or clapping along, we explored a tiny bit of Ottawa’s By Ward Market. I grew addicted to the Montreal style bagels, and the both of us to French pastries so easily available. The food on site wasn’t bad either; there was one booth run by the vegetarian Green Door that was our most frequent stop and each day we would try to hold off buying the dal as long as we could, and then fail and console ourselves with vegan chocolate pecan brownies. Mason is deeply suspicious of vegetarian food (he’s a 100-mile diet kind of guy) and his allegiance to the booth made the sneaky part of me happy.

It was a glorious weekend. I’m sorry you missed it.

Labels: festivals, food, music

Dear Mason,

I used to think your partner was affected when she turned up her nose at the Green Room food the night we met. Now, after only three months of your company, I am similarly effected by the prospect of the railway wine my parents insist on purchasing to accompany on our cold salmon. I can’t help but think back to Summerlicious a few weeks ago, and how we doubled our prix fixé bill with 6 glasses of wine. Or the staggering size of our wine bar bill, despite being spoiled with free off-menu treats from Tobey. I had thought that after I realized the size of my credit card bill and returned to fiscal responsibility, I would also return to the plonk of yesteryear. Instead, I find I’d rather drink the tap water I perennially tote along in 1L bottles than insult my palate with a wine I’d’ve thought “interesting” and “adult” last Easter. God help me, I even disliked the house draught at Saltlik, pining as I was for some Mill Street Wit with a slice of orange. You’re turning me into a snob. I kind of love it.

Maybe it has something to do with our bourgeois accoms, but I’ve really enjoyed the train today. The luxury of our pace, the exclusive sights, the tidbits of history and politics with which our attendant regales us seem more than civilized. Once again I discover that you don’t have to scratch deep below the surface to find my luxury-loving streak. (See: my reaction to Sunday brunch at the Hotel Macdonald following Preacher & Martha’s wedding, a morning that seriously damaged my ability to eat normal sausages.) Even my hat, a sturdy Tilley, fits into this love of the good life. Ah me, but I delight in being waited upon.

Or maybe I'm just charmed because I get to use the word ‘fishnets’ in a non-hosiery context for the first time in a decade.

Labels: food, vacation

I got Blake back today! We spent the day in typical fashion: baking, eating, napping (him), internet surfing (me), watering our weedy garden, weeding ineffectively and going to swim lessons. This year Blake’s in a tiny class – so tiny, in fact, that he was the only one there. Today was my first lesson, so I don’t know if that will hold, but for today he got a private lesson and he really shone. I couldn’t believe that the same kid who was clinging to my neck for dear life a week ago was kicking and floating on his back with the help of a foam dumbbell. The instructor didn’t even have to touch him. I was so proud.

Tomorrow: digging in the dirt and more baking. I’m trying out the recipes in Deceptively Delicious and something has gone wrong both times. I’m determined to make this work, and I’m determined to produce a banana bread that doesn’t suck. This is not a book that forgives my careless cookery in the way that the Loony Spoons people so often do. I need to bring my game up.

Labels: blake, food