GELATO ME BABY!

This Thursday's theme is going to be ice cream, in case you hadn't already guessed. I could spell out the reasons for the ice cream theme but really, people, I am too busy mopping my brow and wondering if my hair is "playfully tousled" or just plain limp.

Let me preface my post by saying that I have a very, very long love affair with ice cream of all varieties including full fat, low fat, gelato, granita, fro-yo, ices and sorbet. I once spent three days in Florence and much to my travelling companion's chagrin, insisted on eating nothing but gelato and took to screaming "GELATO ME BABY" every time he asked what I wanted to eat. But let's let bygones be bygones...

Solferino
38 Wellington Street East

My current most favourite place to get ice cream, or rather, gelato, is Solferino, located just on the fringe of the St. Lawrence Market but close enough to still feel like a local, neighbourhood joint.

The gelato on offer is across the board delish but what I love more than anything is that the flavours feel really real. Only moments ago, I had the pineapple gelato and it was a delicate yellow colour and tasted just like crushed, fresh pineapple. I managed to get the gelato scooper dude to give me my current three faves together - blood orange, pineapple and banana. No creepy colours, just amazing, fresh flavours. They also do more "out there flavours" like avacodo, which I have tried but can't say that I will be eating on a regular basis.

Nevertheless, the selection is grand and all the flavours that I have tried so far I would recommend without hesitation and would eat again in a heartbeat including mochaccino, chocolate mint, dulce de leche, belgian chocolate (of course), chocolate orange, cookies and cream, strawberry, blood orange, banana, pineapple and vanilla.

Kid compatability: Baby Girl loves Solferino mainly because every time she goes in, the owners or employees give her little extras on her Belgian Chocolate gelato (is there any flavour other than "brown"), including sprinkles and amazing chocolate chips that she oddly refers to as "cookies". It can at times be a bit crammed and so it's not always possible to get a seat, but fear not, you can nip across the street to Berczy Park and enjoy your gelato sitting around the fountain. If you can ignore the local "colour" and the odd public urinator, it can be downright pleasant.

Other kid friendly pluses include: really clean and spacious bathrooms, sugar-free chocolate and vanilla flavours, the owners and staff are really friendly and helpful and don't mind doling out samples for the kids to try (errrm, did I already mention that there is really only one flavour in Baby Gir's vocab - "brown"),child size portions for $2.95 and the overall cleanliness and spaciousness of the place - it is possible to bring a stroller and not wonder if the other customers are going to lynch you.

So, as a homage to my misspent youth and my trusty travelling companion ...GELATO ME BABY!

Dumb, dumber and just plain stupid

I have been feeling stupid lately and really, I am not being funny, I am concerned that I am becoming a dullard.

It all began when I realized that I felt generally fuzzy. I became seriously suspicious however, when I realized that my reading material had downgraded from bona fide novels to magazines. For the love of God people, I had become incapable of sustaining any serious thought for more than 850 words of information; and not even challenging information at that. Even more embarrasing, it's not like I am reading the Economist, more like Voge or, my current favourite, Conde Nast Traveller (or, as Mr. Lemony Lemonade calls it "Conde Nasty Traveller"). The situation reached Defcon Four when I further downgraded from Vogue to Us and Star which represents a whole new low. Of course, because I couldn't actually bring myself to purchase the bloody things, I am relegated to reading them while waiting in line at the supermarket and even then, I feel like I am doing something really bad, like my high school Physics teacher is going to catch me and realize that I in fact I am a complete idiot, just as she suspected...

So, long preamble aside, the issue is this, when did I become part of what I had always identified as the problem? The problem being a society that is more interested in the train wreck that is Britney Spears than the accomplishments of a nobel laureate or that is more interested in the "Best Beach Bodies of '07" over the human crises that is taking place right now in Darfur, or even, gulp, on your very own doorstep.

I have become increasingly alarmed and despondent at the growing cult of celebrity worship. Part of it is selfish because I am worried that Baby Girl is going to opt to emulate someone like Britney Spears over someone more deserving like oh, say, Maya Angelou, and part of it is born out of an incredulity that somewhere along the way, we have all gone stark raving mad and have collectively decided that good looks and dubious acting or singing ability is far more valuable than dedicating yourself to community service, excellence in the arts or medical research, for example. Never mind the fact that I have developed a maternal concern for the poor celebrities themselves. Just today I was struck by the screaming headline "Rachael Ray caught in bed with another man." The poor woman; if she was really caught, how awful to have to have it splashed across the media with everyone rubber necking over her personal ruination and if it's not true (which I suspect is the case), how awful to have to see that sort of lie about yourself plastered everywhere, never mind the 'splaining to the family and friends.

Having considered all of this over the past week, I have given myself a stern talking to and won't be reading anything that increases my alarming stupidification. Besides, the endless episodes of Dora the Explorer have dulled my senses more than I care to admit or possibly, my dull senses could be as a result of the fact that I am consumed with Baby Girl's baffling inability to potty train herself. From now on, I am committed to feeding my brain with wholesome information in an effort to prevent it from shirking like an unwatered plant until it resembles a raisin and rattles when I bounce.

so long, farewell...

My baby brother is, as we speak, hurtling over the pole on his way to Thailand to discover just how exhiliarating it can be to find yourself as far away from where you were born as one can possibly get without joining the space program. Now of course, the mother in me is concerned that he will be kidnapped by a gang of Transvestite Thai boxers or, far more likely, unwittingly become enmeshed in an illegal, underground cock fighting ring only to be arrested in a sting operation or even more likely, getting thrown in a Thai jail for unwittingly desecrating a local sacred site. He's seen Midnight Express, so I am confident that he is well rehearsed on the perils of becoming a heroin drug mule, so I have ruled that one out.

That being said, I am sure that everything will be fine and that he will have an amazing time and of course, I am green with envy.

Baby girl will miss him very much and it makes me sad because I know that when he comes back, if he comes back, she will be totally different, older, wiser, able to drink from a cup on her own, possibly potty trained. We saw an airplane fly over and I told her that baby brother was on a plane right now going far, far away for a long time, she promptly said that she missed him and then asked if we could run down the hill again.

The whole thing makes me sentimental, recalling baby brother as a baby, toddler and adolescent and now he's all grown up and doing grown-up things like going off to Thailand. However, let me put it on the record right here an now; he is officially banned from coming back, like so many do, with a fiancee or god forbid, a wife because I just couldn't handle it and I would be forced to run her off with some diabolical plan that I will be forced to hatch from my secret, underground, evil lair.

I know that he had to leave and that he will be better for it, but I agree with Baby Girl...I miss him already.

A woman of modest needs

I believe that I have finally lost my mind, although a good indication that one hasn't quite lost one's mind is that one is aware of said mind losing. That being said, this evening I saw an advertisement for a washing machine that washes 16 PAIRS OF JEANS AT THE SAME TIME. And yes, such a feat of modern engineering is indeed worthy of ALL CAPS. The advertisement showed jeans sort of swirling in an ocean all sunny and blue and happy. In spite of myself, I felt warm and fuzzy all over because nothing makes me quite so happy as clean laundry.

Now, it behooves me to say that this in no way is to be interpreted to suggest that I enjoy the actual act of doing laundry because laundry goes right under cleaning toilets and dealing in any way with garbage as "things that I will never, ever do, never not even if I was the last person left on earth and I was on my last clean pair of underwear." So, really, I was fantasizing about the 16 jean washing machine on behalf of Mr. Lemony Lemonade as I have deluded myself into believing that Mr. Lemony Lemonade really enjoys doing laundry when the real truth is that I am a big, fat, awful, horrible, lazy person who was poorly raised - so really, let's be honest, it is my parents' fault that I don't do toilets, garbage or laundry because all of these things are basic life skills that they were obliged to ingrain in me before I was able to decide for myself that they are detestable tasks.

Neverthelss,while watching the commercial, it all came very clear to me; it's not that I don't like doing laundry, I just haven't had the right equipment. Who wants to do laundy in a bog standard, white, top loading machine that washes maybe, on a good day, 3 pairs of jeans when you could be doing laundry in a sleek, front loading washing machine that washes 16 PAIRS OF JEANS AT ONE TIME. I do believe, I really, really do believe that I would do laundry in such a special and awesome washing machine. Never mind the obvious advantages of such a machine including the fact that if it washes 16 regular person pairs of jeans, it obviously could wash at least 150 pairs of toddler jeans, which would mean that laundry would only have to be done once every two or three months.

Having mulled the whole thing over for a total of 1.5 minutes, I am officially putting a washing machine that washes sixteen pairs of jeans on my Christmas List...right after a chauffer driven Prius and a really deep, spa bathtub. In fact, buying me a washing machine that washes 16 PAIRS OF JEANS for Christmas would be a very good way for my delinquent parents to make amends for producing such a deficient and feckless daughter.

the idiot box

Baby Girl and I went out for a lovely breakfast a deux given that Mr. Lemony Lemonade was busy studying for his CFA. We went to my favourite local place which is small and awkward but I really love the food, so I couldn't resist. The place, as usual, was filled with local parents, many of whom reflect the neighbourhood's hippy vibe - children in natural fibres with home knit cardigans and toys that sybolise their parents' eschewing of corporate America; no Fisher Price here, only locally made, "imagination" toys allowed. They probably run their homes on re-purposed household waste, eat exclusively vegetarian organic, call their spouses their "partner" and ride bicycles made from re-claimed parts.

Within minutes of being there, Baby Girl was all over the place, knocking over chairs, attempting to make a break for the door and generally causing complete and utter chaos. To avoid my head exploding, I opted to open up the dvd, a.k.a. the babysitter, and pressed play. The effect was immediate calm and Baby Girl settled down to her favourite episode of Blues Clues. You would have thought, however, that I had offered her a crack pipe as a hush fell over all the tables of hippy parents and their children, no doubt, the chirpy music of the dvd interrupted their family discussions about how best to solve the world water shortage. The disapproval hung in the air like a stinky fart and I assumed that they were all wondering if they should be calling Child Services to report me as an ufit Mother.

The tables are so close together in this particular restaurant that it was fairly easy to hear the conversations around us and nearby a family with two young children and a rather incongruous set of grandparents, not being in the least hippyesque, was having breakfast. The mom, in particular, seemed rather judgmental and scowered at me over the shoulder of her rather dirty, unkempt husband's shoulder. You would have thought that she was looking at a serial killer. The grandmother made a comment to the angry, hippy mom about what a good idea the dvd was and the hippy mom quickly launched into a tirade about the ills of tv and preferring one on one, human interaction with her children instead of the passive, mind numbing effect of television. As I mused how dull and empty a life without tv would be and wondering if the hippy mom was so grumpy because her husband was clearly hygenically challenged, Baby Girl turned to me and said, "Mommy, I want to count the sugar....uno, dos, tres, quatro, cinqo, seis....Mommy, do you know that in China they say 'ni hao' and in France they say 'bon jour'?". So, not being in the least vindictive, I tried to be only minorly smug as I congratulated the Little Princess on her obvious genius.

Put that in your pipe and smoke it interactive, hippy mom!

if loving the killers is wrong, i don't want to be right...

So, i went to a rock 'n roll concert last night at the ACC. In an effort to recall that we are normal, social human beings and not merely conduits for Baby Girl's 24-7 amusement, we bought tickets to see the Killers. I was truly concerned that Mr. Lemony Lemonade and I were going to be the only people old enough to remember Wham!, the first season of the Simpsons and quote Seinfeld ad nauseum. But, as it turns out, we weren't; and that even excludes the parents chaperoning the tweens. I digress - prior to last night, I am not certain that I have ever seen so many under 40's in one place at one time. Living and working right downtown means that I am constantly surrounded by people who are gainfully employed, wear suits and drink cocktails. That being said, I was pleased to learn that Snoreonto has its fair share of what I like to call "mean girls"; the ones that wear capri combat trousers, have perfect, anal retentive hairstyles, strangely small purses and a penchant for travelling in gangs. We sat behind an entire row of them and they had really interesting, self concious yet well practiced 'concert dancing moves'. In their midst was "the guy" who does a lot of fist pumping, finger-in-mouth-overly-loud-whistling and knew every word to every song and felt the need to make cell phone calls, sing into the phone and then hold it aloft, presumably so that the listener could partake in the rock n' roll concert. I am convinced that his name is Matt because I knew guys like him in college and they were always named Matt.

In all, I thought that the ACC as a venue blew - the acoustics were bad so that the concert ultimately reminded me of a high school dance. And of course, what review would be complete without complaining about the cost of the drink. I realize that it's beyond cliche to do this, but I have to point out that "a medium" Canadian is $9.95 each. So, as I am standing there wondering how they get away with this kind of outrageous thievery, I come to and realize that I am partaking, enabling the monopolistic, capitalist highway robbery that is occurring right under our noses, so I refused to buy a beer, although Mr. Lemony Lemonade bought two, but I was really scowly...that'll show them.