Hey Good Lookin'

 So. The air fryer.

I was still planning on hemming and hawing and second-guessing myself a little more even after the comments on this post convinced me that I probably would get an air fryer at some point. But then my parents were over for Eve's slightly delayed birthday dinner on Sunday since she was home for break, and my dad asked me if I had an air fryer, and then said "dammit" when I didn't, because he had decided they were getting an air fryer and wanted me to tell them which one to get. While I was looking up the comments on the post to read to him and noodling on the internet at the table, it popped up that Best Buy had the Ninja Max XL on sale for a hundred dollars less than regular price. Suddenly my dad was barking "do it!" and I was ordering two air fryers.

I was a bit apprehensive about finding counter space, but then I always am, and then it invariably turns out that I keep a lot of crap on the counter and even though it seems like that crap really has to live on the counter, it actually really doesn't.

I

 set it up and then might have ended up leaving it sitting there until I screwed up my courage to use it, much like my instant pot, a Black Friday impulse buy that lurked balefully on the counter for a year and a half while two separate friends offered to come over and walk me through how to use it before I threw caution to the winds and pressure cooked some Mongolian beef one madcap Friday night. 

Matt was deep in prep for the Valentine's Day Guys Cook night, but he had also made homemade bread crumbs from a rock-hard baguette (he watches chefs on Youtube and then randomly does stuff, it's mostly cool, sometimes alarming). He had been planning to do some kind of chicken schnitzel while Eve was home but it didn't end up happening, so while he was grocery shopping I was making cilantro lime instant pot chicken for Eve to take back (because the instant pot is my bitch now, I've come so far) and had a leftover chicken breast, which I cut into strips and breaded with his bread crumbs and cooked in the air fryer. And whoo-hoo, I was now a person who fried stuff with air. 

This is my small gallery of air fryer stuff: kale chips, Cuban ham and cheese tarts and maple-chili pork belly bites that I made to go with garlic noodles and broccoli last night. For the foreseeable future, expect me to be obnoxiously air-fryer-positive with the zeal of the newly converted. It's so easy! It's so much less scary than the instant pot! You can open it WHILE IT'S GOING. I love roasted vegetables but I hate heating up the oven for a the small amount I make because leftover roasted vegetables are mushy and gross. It's so easy to work at counter-height! It saves my back!

My parents have only made chicken legs so far, but my dad was half rapturous, half pissed off because he thinks they might even be better than barbecued, and he barbecues in every calendar month (and this is northern Canada, we got weather). The little recipe book that came with it has one for mini cheeseburger meatloaves, which will probably make Angus want an air fryer too. 

Will my enthusiasm inevitably wane? Almost certainly. I am comfortable with this, I have spent more money on dumber things (during lockdown I bought a spaetzle maker. A SPAETZLE MAKER.) 

Our dinner party was fabulous. The guys knocked it out of the park. There was lobster bisque, a salmon poke bowl, beef cheek with escargot and jellied mustard, seared wagyu beef with smoked salmon and peach, and Matt made maple pudding, crepes with maple buttercream and candied prosciutto, maple fudge and maple and bacon glazed pecans and then most of us slipped into a sugar coma (is there such a thing as homi-monoglyceride-cide?)

I'm probably missing stuff, because around course three I took a tiny bottle of vodka from the bathroom emergency box and made Collette do a deconstructed vodka tonic with me and after that things were still delicious but less pronouncable (wtf is kohlrabi anyway). 

Even with all the amazing food, the highlight of the night was probably Cody, Collette's mom's bird who worked the room like a tiny feathered lothario and could have gone home with anyone's wife. Or Dave.

Happy Eve Week

 It feels like longer than a week since that last post. 

Saturday I came down in the morning, planning to have breakfast and then get groceries for Eve's week at home. Matt was watching tv and looked up and answered a couple of my questions but then went back to watching tv, moving a little closer. I was running water and dishing out food and I was feeling a little self-conscious about making noise while he was watching tv. So, like a totally normal person, I got mad at him for watching tv and making me feel like I might be disturbing him. He looked understandably confused by this. After I got home from grocery shopping I apologized for being weird and bitchy and getting mad at him for watching tv at me. I said I was feeling oddly nervous, which didn't make sense because the only anomalous event approaching was Eve coming home, which I was totally happy about.

Matt said cautiously that I sometimes have a bit of trouble adequately differentiating myself from Eve and I said "OH, I'm being crazy because half of me is on a train?" and he said "probably, yes".

The week has been great. We went for a family day sunny cold dog-walk. Eve and I went to the mall - the only time I approach anything that could be termed enjoyment involving a mall is when I'm with Eve. We watched the Simpsons. Her friend Jackson came over and we watched Drag Race and ate burned nachos. We went to see Mean Girls. 

She's worn the same dress to the last two Arts and Science formals and she wanted to look for something new that was less traditionally formal. We found a fun pink skirt in the first store, and then floundered a little looking for the right top, but I think the end result is going to be really fun. This is the outfit - I will post a pic when she actually wears it for the formal. 

She mentioned that she wanted a couple of tops for bar-hopping, because she doesn't really have a lot of going-out tops and she's finally in a bit of a going-out era. We marched into Garage and said we were there to try on every slutty shirt they had. It was hilariously fun - one looked very pretty from the front, and from the back? NAKED. One was almost naked all over, and looked great but she knew she'd never actually wear it. She found a gorgeous black tank with wide straps, a square neck and gathered sides, and an adorable pink short-sleeved crop top - she's loved pink forever but it's suddenly around in clothing this season. 

Saturday night Matt and I started watching The Maestro, one of the four last Best Picture contenders I need to watch. I read an article that began "Bradley Cooper really wants an Oscar", which I tend to think whenever someone stars in a biopic, and oh boy, was this ever not an exception. I liked what we watched, but halfway through I started falling asleep (this is not usual for me, but I think my overidentifying with Eve's train journey wore me out - it was nothing to do with the movie, I'm looking forward to finishing it). 

Work was crap today. The challenging class is still much improved, but, strangely, my first two classes who are usually great bucked the trend. The second teacher often sends students individually or in groups to get books so it doesn't turn into a socializing period. The first teacher said he might do the same. Generally this means they send students during the class's library period, which is 20-25 minutes long. Somehow today students came for an hour and twenty minutes. And they were loud and destroyed the shelves. And I think some of them came back more than once.

I was as baffled as I was angry. By the time I finished classes at recess I was so worn out and on edge I slapped a sign on the door saying the library was closed - often I let students come in and read or work quietly - just so I could hear myself think for ten minutes. Then I texted the other librarian to help gauge whether I was over-reacting (she didn't think I was). Then I emailed the teachers and asked if they would consider only sending students during their actual library time, which seemed like an obvious thing, but here we are. Actually I don't really mean that to sound as bitchy as it does, they are good teachers and teaching is really freaking hard, and I hope and assume today was just a one-off.

On the way home I had to stop and pick up contact lenses, and my head was pounding and I was exhausted and I almost didn't stop to get the mail, but I did, and you guys.

Suzanne sent me a Valentine. 

I don’t think Idris Elba stuffed in an envelope would have lifted my spirits more comprehensively.

In conclusion, please enjoy this random collection of pics of Eve being home, weird chemistry stuff left by my workspace, her adorable laptop stickers, and the blurry dark selfies we ended up with after forgetting to take them when we were anywhere aesthetically pleasing and well lit.

Also, I got an air fryer. 

Five For Friday: Oscars Edition

 I am having a weird week in a weird month in a (typically, so is it even weird) winter, and I sat here literally unable to figure out or remember how to begin a blog post, so thank fuck I remembered it's Friday and I can just do FFF. It has gotten cold and snowy again after a couple of weeks of mild grayness, and I like this more, although I don't volunteer that widely. Except I guess I just did. Oops. Weird. 

1. I decided a couple of weeks ago to try to watch all the Best Picture nominees for the Oscars. The main reason is so I could make a list and cross things off the list and feel list-accomplished for doing nothing but watching movies, because low-stakes validation is helpful right now. 

There are ten movies up for Best Picture. That is too many, in my opinion. I thought five was a good number. Also, what the heck, precisely, is 'best picture' supposed to mean? Okay, I googled desultorily and I am not interested in going down that road too far. 

Here are the ones I have watched, alone or with others, and my opinions, which I do not expect anyone to share:

-Barbie: Saw in the theatre with Eve and her friend Jackson and my friend (Eve's other friend's mom who is now my friend) Jody. Liked it a lot. The aesthetic, Margot Robbie's and Ryan Gosling's and America Ferrera's performances, the satirizing of the patriarchy. I love Greta Gerwig as a director.

- Oppenheimer: I missed the chance to do a Barbenheimer experience when they were both out. My  husband is an engineer with a degree in Engineering Physics, so it was an obvious choice for us to watch, but the timing didn't work out. He rented it one morning while I was still asleep and he was about to leave the country yet again, and told me there were a couple days left in the rental for me to watch it. Which I did, but in shifts, because it is long and I was having attention span issues. 

I liked it. It didn't blow me away. It seemed like a very obvious "Best Picture" sort of movie in a Hollywood way. Cillian Murphy was compelling. My husband was disappointed that it didn't go more into the physics. He said "it was more just about...." and I said "...Oppenheimer?" and he said "shut up". I understood what he wanted, but I would have thought it was unlikely in this type of movie. Favourite line: "you're not just self-important, you're actually important". 

-Killers of the Flower Moon: watched alone on Netflix, again in shifts, more because I found it too upsetting to watch all at once. I thought it was really, really good. Personally I think Leonardo DiCaprio should have been nominated over Robert De Niro for Best Supporting Actor - Collette (HI COLLETTE) said he was too old to be convincing in that role, which may be but I am crap at judging people's ages, and his mannerisms and way of talking and his way of bearing himself seemed to embody the character perfectly and were utterly convincing to me. Lily Gladstone was fantastic. 

-Past Lives: rented while Matt was away for three weeks in January and watched alone. I loved it - I think it's my favourite so far, by a tiny margin. I love the way it concentrates on moments and lets silences stretch out. All the actors were phenomenal, and I could watch Greta Lee - her expressions, her hair swinging, the way her demeanour seems to change subtly depending on whether she's speaking English or Korean. It's a bit like a more cerebral, Korean Sliding Doors. The characters are allowed to show vulnerability in a way that almost challenges belief. I also loved the blithe use of "12 years pass" twice. 

-Anatomy of a Fall: I rented this at the same time but didn't watch it while Matt was away. We planned to watch it one Saturday night when he got home but I had a migraine, so we watched it with our dinner from Take Another Bite on Valentine's Day (which was amazing). 

It was long. It was really, really long. And French. And maybe not the best choice for Valentine's Day. Matt said "it's kind of like Kramer vs. Kramer if one Kramer is dead". We were doing the dinner in courses, which was kind of good because we would pause the movie and chat a little and take a break, because two and a half hours of people demonstrating intense anguish is a lot. But my humorous puerile whining aside, it's very well done as a character study and I can see why Sandra Huller (sorry, can't figure out how to do an umlaut) was nominated - the actor who played the son was fantastic as well. Also, if it's at all accurate, French courtroom procedures are very different from, well, from what I know of American court procedures from American tv, so who the hell knows. But there was a lot of unchallenged speculation. 

-The Holdovers: watched with Collette last night. We were going to see it in the theatre but by the time we coordinated a time it was only playing late, so I bought it on Apple TV, which was cheaper than both of us buying a ticket anyway. It was excellent. Paul Giamatti is the perfect embodiment of the set-in-his-ways, socially awkward, erudite boarding school teacher, not really fitting in with his colleagues and lamenting the "vulgar, rancid Philistines" he has to teach. Dominic Sessa also really tears it up - bold, angry, vulnerable - and Da'Vine Joy Randolph? WOW. I had a sense of how the movie would play out, but the details were magnificent. It was the only one that made me cry. 

We're going to watch American Fiction (which is based on a book by Percival Everett, whose book The Trees was insanely good) next week. Then I have Poor Things by Yorgos Lanthimos (loved The Killing of a Sacred Deer, from what I've heard of this one I am interested and a little grossed out already), The Zone of Interest, and The Maestro. 

2. From The Holdovers I learned that I have been mentally pronouncing Anaxagoras with the emphasis on the wrong syllable. Wait, no, I just looked it up and according to what I found, Paul Hunham actually pronounced it wrong. Huh. 

3. Last Monday a student walked up to the desk and barked out "Minecraft books", which is a thing I tend to gently correct. I said "you mean 'can you please help me find the Minecraft books?'", but I guess he didn't hear the 'you mean' part, and he said "I don't know where they are, that's why I asked you." Which was funny. 

4. Eve comes home tomorrow for the week and I cannot WAIT to squish her. She has a semester that is way heavier on reading and writing than her usual science-heavy fare, and it's been fun having her bounce ideas off me and doing some editing of her papers. I have never done that Google Docs thing where I can suggest edits and she can incorporate them in real time and it's like a different version of FaceTime that is really fun. Also, she had to write a reflection on the book Cassandra by Christa Wolf, and the first line was "Before I started this book I asked my mom what she knew about Cassandra because she reads everything and knows everything about books", which was, obviously, not true, but still nice to read. I'm so lucky I got the kids I did. 

Picture of Eve from Valentine's Day Facebook memories

5. I have been resolute that I would not get an air fryer, but should I get an air fryer? 

Black Cats and Horseshoes and Birthdays

 Predictably, now that I've finished the book review posts, I am feeling a magnificent disinclination to blog. Or rather, I think "I should blog" and then think "but about what?" How do I begin, if not by cutting and pasting book titles and plot rundowns and looking up quotes in my book notes? 

January is always a slog for me. I almost invariably have a headache for most of the month - a few things have been investigated, but it seems to come down to some weird combination of atmospheric pressure and my body chemistry being, well, weird. I still had a headache at the very beginning of February, but then it stopped for a few days, and now it's intermittent, which is an improvement. My mental health plummets no matter what I do to shore it up (to be clear, what I do is not all that heroic - drink lots of water, get a bit more sleep than usual, try to move a little more but fail often because just getting to and from work is exhausting). 

I forget where I was going with this - I swear I think I was going somewhere other than Whine City, Population: Me (quick, somebody tell me to take Highway 52 to Copetown). Oh, maybe I kind of remember. So it was the first week of February and things were looking up a little and I had done some cleaning and organizing and cooking in addition to working and then reading and stuffing an assload of carbs in my face. And then yesterday SUCKED. I woke up with a weird headache at the back of my head. So many kids were annoying ("I'm looking for that book with a bug on the front". "Sorry, I don't know what you mean, do you know that title?" "What's a title?") My two grade six classes in the afternoon who are usually lovely had a sub instead of the teacher that I love. The substitute looked about seventeen and was wearing track pants and a white t-shirt with sneakers - I thought he was a high school co-op student. It would have been funny if he then turned out to be surprisingly competent, but this was not the case. In the first slot, he held court before a group of adoring sixth-grade girls while the rest of the class did cartwheels and screamed their heads off. In the second slot the kids were basically okay, but this was probably not due to his behaviour, which consisted of sitting at a table with one other kid and looking at Guinness World Record Books. 

It seemed like every road I tried to drive on was blocked by someone driving weirdly. Lucy, who hadn't peed on the stairs once in Matt's long absence, peed on the stairs. I finished a puzzle and there were two pieces missing (actually that one didn't bother me as much as I would have thought, especially since it was a regift and not a purchase).

I was pretty cranky at work, until one boy asked me how my day was going and then said he hoped the rest of it was good and I got over myself a little. By the time I went to bed it was seeming fairly amusing, but I hoped today would be better.

It was almost freakishly better.

I was getting ready for work, wherein I start stacking all the things I need at the top of the two stairs down to the entrance. My purse, my bag with the seat cushion that saves my back, my fan, my water bottle and my lunch bag, another water bottle for my longer commute on Thursdays, and the bag with my boots to change into at school. Today there was also a table fan that I needed to leave in the mailbox for someone from the Freecycle group to pick up. So there was a lot going on, and I tipped over my water cup, which had a lid, but the lid had a hole, and a fair bit spilled. But it spilled in the one direction where it got absolutely nothing wet, and there was a towel right there that I was about to throw downstairs for the laundry.

I got a really good parking spot at work. The first two classes are grade sixes and come in groups, and they were all happy and chatty and asked me questions and thanked me for every answer. Then my challenging class showed up. They've had a new teacher, starting last week. 

You guys. I don't know what the hell she did, but holy shit, it was a one hundred and eighty degree difference. They lined up quietly. They came in and I congratulated them on that and handed out their cards. They got their books and sat at tables and read or drew bookmarks. I had cordial interactions with many of the boys who could not have been more jerkish a few weeks ago. I'm trying really hard not to think that other teacher was bad. Maybe they just didn't click with her. Maybe all the good will evaporate and it will be back to crappy normal next week. It was a really nice change anyway.

My last class was awesome - we read a book about a dog who does ballet. 

After work I went to the grocery store to pick up a few things. I walked in and tried to pull out a cart, already bracing myself because at this store you have to pull a cart out by its front, not its handle, and they almost always refuse to separate from the one behind. There was a woman getting a cart from the next row, and without missing a beat she reached over and held onto the cart behind mine so I could pull mine out smoothly. I thanked her profusely after I picked up my jaw from her insanely well-timed act of thoughtfulness. 

ANYway, in the midst of all this, my youngest child turned TWENTY-ONE, *stacks my dusty bones on ice floe preparatory to being shoved off into oblivion*. After her hellish week of being sick she had a hellish week of catching up on all the stuff she had to do less of while being sick, culminating in an organic chemistry mid-term at SEVEN O'CLOCK on a Friday evening, which seems like a wholly dickish time to plan an organic chemistry mid-term. And then she went out drinking AFTER IT (this is not unusual for most university students but is somewhat for my early-bedtime loving homebody). They went to a speakeasy with a door behind a bookcase that you needed a passcode for, just in case you weren't already feeling like your life could be way cooler than it is. 

If that wasn't trippy enough, she went out AGAIN on Saturday, although she had to chug a mini-Coke to stay up until they went out at eight-thirty. 

When she lived here, we would always take a picture of her the night before her birthday, on her last night of being the age she was. Now she has to send me one, sometimes with bonus housemates.

On her actual birthday yesterday I ordered fancy cinnamon buns for the house instead of a cake. 

She's home for reading week week after next, when we can do the family celebration. My Facebook memories yesterday were a parade of birthday posts.

Now that she can legally drink in the United States (which she celebrated by drinking fake-illegally), perhaps I will raise a glass in Canada. Or maybe not - my head kind of hurts again, maybe I'll just go to bed. But look, I blogged and didn't talk about books! Much!