Four things about my weekend

1. Yesterday morning it was my turn to sleep in, so after nursing Shira at 5:40 I returned to bed and let Matt monitor the morning chaos. It was heaven. But even better was when Matt woke me up at 8:15 with my coffee, toast, and the computer in hand. Here, he said, I thought you might enjoy some breakfast and computer time without the children. That's right, he sneaked past The Children on his way upstairs, so not only did I get breakfast in bed, but I go breakfast in bed by myself. It was not Mother's Day or my birthday. I'm sorry, you can't have him. He's all mine.

2. After killing my body with a hot yoga class later in the day, Matt sent me upstairs for a nap. Enough said. No seriously, I slept in and had a nap.

3. This morning, with the help of my good friend Kaylie, I crossed yet another thing off my Life List. It's a small thing, but I've wanted to pick my own apples for years. I have such romantic notions of fall and the idea of picking my own apples sparked big dreams of making pies and applesauce. I have to tell you: picking our own apples was everything I dreamed it would be. Me and the girls met Kaylie at a local orchard between Cambridge and Toronto, grabbed a cart, and spent the next hour getting lost in the apple trees. The sun was brilliant and the apples numbered in the thousands, though we held ourselves back and picked only a bushel each (the internet tell me that a bushel equals around 42 pounds of apples!).

Now I have plans to make a few pies and a lot of applesauce. I will use the the recipe and canning instructions from Simple Bites (it never lets me down), and for the pie crust, I'll use Martha Stewart's recipe for pate brisee . It's been years since I made pie crust from scratch and I haven't tried Martha's recipe before, but some of of the people I trust most follow Martha's instructions on this, so I feel confident that it's the way to go--see here and here for some other pie crust inspiration. I'll return with some evidence of my apples later this week.

4. Alyce wore her princess gown while she picked apples. Of course she did.

How was your weekend? Did anyone attend an apple festival? The last time I attended one I was pregnant with Alyce. I can't even begin to comprehend how fast the time goes.

Are you all preparing for the weekend? I expect it will be beautiful (thank you, fall), and I'm celebrating with some apple picking on Sunday (and knocking something off my list at that). For this afternoon it's just me and Shira cleaning house. I've kicked Matt and Alyce out to the library and park so that I could wash the floors and bathrooms. I've got Shira set up in her high chair colouring while I scrub. Cleaning the floors makes me happy. The bathrooms? Not so much, but it needs to be done (especially when one's mum is coming over to baby-sit this weekend).

A few interesting things from the week:

A cookbook club. Mine is already in the works, thanks to some good friends who like to eat as much as I do.

A birthday celebration fit for a cat. Trust me, this is worth the crazy.

I'm still waiting (impatiently) for my copy of Design Sponge at Home.

Another blanket I would like to knit.

The zucchini bread I just made (it's still in the oven), though not for the first time. This one's a keeper.


Hope you have a delightful fall weekend! And for those of you on Canada's East coast, I hope the storm is kind to you.

Take that, list

So I did it. I finally got that root canal. Most importantly, I can now finally cross another thing off of my list. Doesn't it feel so good to cross something off a list? Say it with me now. So good.

As I mentioned earlier this week, root canals are life list material for me. I've spent so much of my life feeling terrible about how bad my teeth are, as though I'd done something wrong to have such horrible teeth. I didn't like how they looked (I have small teeth), and most importantly, I didn't like how my dentist looked at me when he told me that I had another cavity. It didn't matter how much I brushed my teeth, or how often I visited the dentist, I always had cavities. When I sit down for a minute and put my reality hat on, I realize that having cavities doesn't make me a bad person. But I haven't always felt that way. As a child I used to cry after visiting the dentist, filled with shame that I had to get more fillings.


Very little has changed as I've grown-up, except that my mum isn't the one scheduling my appointments anymore, which means I can put them off as long as possible. Why would I willingly go sit in the torture Chair of Shame? You say my teeth will only get worse and that it will cause me more pain and cost me more money? Speaking of money, growing into adulthood with very irregular dental insurance added a whole new dimension of shame I felt at the dentist. No longer was it enough to embarrass myself with bad teeth, but now I needed to go two thousand dollars into debt to do it! Nonsense, I say. I will respectfully decline the opportunity to feel shamed in a dentist chair yet again. And that nagging pain? It will be fine. Pass the Tylenol.

But eventually I realize that I'm being ridiculous, I scrape up my courage, and I get the work done. I am always glad when I do, and I always wonder why it took me so long. I have been warned about this root canal for about four years. Four years of dread, four years of intermittent pain, one week of excruciating pain, and I finally did it. I feel a tiny bit more grown-up now, in the good way.

By the way, it didn't hurt too much at all.