Goodbye, 2011

You were not a completely disastrous year (there were many positive things about you, like enjoying precious time off on mat leave, getting to know our new daughter, watching our kids grow, going to California twice and buying our "dream" house), but honestly, you really weren't the greatest year, either, and you threw your fair share of s* our (and the world's) way, too. So I'm having somewhat mixed feelings about you, and I'm not very sad to see you go.

Let's revisit last year's resolutions:

• Be there in the moment with my kids and my husband. Pay attention. (Not great. I still need to work on that. It's REALLY important!!!)
• Properly launch the flower business. (Meh. I have business cards and a FB page, now. That's pretty much it).
• Be more patient. I am usually but unfortunately this is directly related to the fifth resolution.(Passing grade, but no more).
• Lose the baby weight. (Yeah I guess, give or take a few pounds).
• Catch up on my sleep. Haha! Good one. I'm so funny! (Nope, quite the opposite).
• Resume my blogging schedule. (Nope).
• By the time my mat leave is up in October, have enough freelancing clients and work so that I can avoid going back to a corporate job, a full-time one at the very least. That's clearly the tough one. (Well, there's some progress but overall fail).

See, not very good year at all. I give myself a D+. :-(

(Here are 2010, and 2009).


As for now...

• Learn to let go better.
• Learn to let go some more.
• Write.
• Be there in the moment with my kids and husband. Pay attention. (!!!)
• Become a better, more zen person.
• Be generally more positive, and not fall back so quickly into my negative "defense" stance.
• Make time to work out, because my quality of life is crazy lessened when I don't, like now.
• Try to finds way to achieve my one main goal and make progress in that long-term thing: work/life balance, having more time with my children.

And a wish, which I wish harder than any other wish I've ever wished for in my life:

That we sell our house in the very near future, so our move into the new one is filled with nothing but happiness, relief, positive vibes, domestic and family bliss, looking ahead of us, moving on, fun "problems" such as buying a new sofa, etc., instead of becoming an official financial, logistical, and very stressful nightmare.


Happy New Year everyone!!! And welcome 2012!!!

What can I say, I like these things

Time Magazine's The Top 10 Everything of 2011.

Will and Kate, Occupy, vegetarism as a food trend, the Arab Spring, that evil, evil song Friday, planking, the Japan tsunami, Steve Jobs, Herman Cain and his defiantly cigarette-smoking buddy, Carla and Beyoncé's bumps, Utoya, DSK, Siri... It's all there.

Merry Christmas!

May your day be merry and bright...

Potatoes in sweets!?!

Potatoes sure have a special place on the Holiday table around here... Not only because they prominently feature in my home region's specialty (tourtière), but surprinsly, in desserts, too. This never occured to me as odd, until now.

But good odd, or maybe, just nostalgically good odd for me.

Like a lot of people do around here during the Holidays, my mother makes fried donuts every year, which we eat dipped in powder sugar. True story: the Christmas I spent in Germany, my mother sent me a care package, which included all kinds of things that reminded me of home. Even a Ziploc bag full of her donuts. And since she (needlessly) feared I could not get my hands on powder sugar there, she also included a bag of the stuff. Yes, you're read that right. My mom once sent me a small plastic bag full of white powder overseas. And it never got opened.

Anyway, her recipe calls for... you've guessed it, potatoes. They apparently give a pleasant chewiness to the fried dough.

My mom's potato donuts

1 cup cold mashed potatoes
1 cup sugar
2 teaspoons melted butter
1 1/2 cup of all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon yeast
1/2 cup of milk
Oil for deep-frying

Add the sugar and butter to the mashed potatoes. Sift the flour with the yeast and mix in slowly, alternating with the milk. Let the dough rest for 30 minutes. Roll out the dough onto a floured surface to about an 3/4 inch thick, cut donut shape with cutter (or alternatively, a glass and a sewing dice). Pour oil into a large pot, heat to 325 F, and carefully fry the donuts a few at a time, until golden brown (which only takes a minute or two)! Take out with a slotted spoon and place on paper towels to drain excess oil.

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Potatoes are also the star ingredient of another sweet that reminds me of my childhood a lot. Contrary to the donuts, I haven't seen or eaten it in years, though. It's gotten out of fashion, which I guess is a little understable, but still sad. I mean, it was good, but it also makes me realize this was the product of a (largely gone) society which didn't really have elaborate means, skills, or fancy tastes... Just like tourtière, it's more of an unrefined thing that people came up with because they "didn't have much and had to make do".

Potato candy

1/2 cold mashed potatoes
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3 cups powder sugar
1/3 cup peanut butter (smooth or crunchy, your choice)

Mix the vanilla with the potatoes. Mix in the sugar, a little at a time with a wooden spoon. Knead the dough a little, until firm but supple, a little like pâte brisée. Place parchment or wax paper onto a work surface, spinkle with a little powder sugar, and roll out the dough. Heat peanut butter into the microwave for a few seconds, then spread over dough.While lifting the paper as a guide, roll the dough onto itself to form a log. Wrap in plastic, and chill in the fridge for an hour. Cut log into slices, which will look like little spirals.

Seriously, the potato/sugar mix seems unlikely, but it works!

Baby steps (literally)

F, 13 months, has been standing on her own for over a week now. And yesterday, while she was standing in the kitchen besides me, she flashed her big smile and cautiously but very deliberately took one tiny little step, then another. Then she fell on her butt. (Another new thing: this morning while I was dressing her she said: "baybé, baybé?!" So I asked her who the baby was and for the first time, she pointed to herself, grinning knowingly and proudly). The path towards walking is not always linear and we don't expect that she'll start doing it tomorrow, but we're getting close now. A few weeks, maybe?

Which brings me to this little theory I have about kids who are going to daycare and first learning how to walk. Did you ever notice how parents always seem to point out that their child first walks on nights or weekends, i.e. when they are with them? Given that they spend much, if not the majority of their time in daycare, wouldn't it be logical that this very important milestone sometimes happen while there, as well? But I've yet to hear anyone say or write on FB: "Yay! The babysitter told me Thomas started walking today!" It's always like: "Wow, I'm so proud of my kid, I just saw him walk for the first time over the weekend, such a precious moment!"

We are no exception: officially, LP started walking at 14 months, on a Tuesday night at home. But did he really???

So here's my two-cent theory: for many of those kids it probably does happen at daycare. But while we usually have excellent communication with the teachers and we always inform each other of progress, hurdles, schedules, etc., the teachers may have an unwritten rule, which is to keep mum to the parents about this. They of course don't do it because they are mean or rude, but out of consideration, to let the parents "have" this such magical, meaningful, symbolic moment to themselves. To prevent stealing their thunder, so to speak.

I don't think that if confronted, they would lie, but maybe when it happens they just spontaneously decide not to let the parents know... Until the next day (or a few days later) when they come back, beaming, with the exciting news.

Do you think I'm nuts for extrapolating that? I sort of can't wait to see if, "by coicidence", F will also start walking at home with us...

Work and...social media

Interesting article in the latest issue of Connection, yes the Costco magazine (cue light blushing due to quoting of a rather embarrassing and dubious source).

Far from stating that employees surfing the Web and checking their Facebook feed are wasting their and their companies' time, it rather remarks that it could be viewed as vital for the employees' team spirit, well-being and sense of belonging.Companies should accept/embrace social networking at work and consider that it can even increase productivity.

According to a 2010 study, employees who spend up to TWENTY PERCENT of their time on the Web show a 12% increase of productivity when compared to non-wired ones. One out of five of their days...! According to some business consulting experts, watching a funny little video on Youtube during a hectic workday can provide a beneficial pause from ongoing projects and stressful deadlines, which in turn allow employees to "achieve overall better concentration." Social media additionally increases autonomy, consistency, as well as creativity. The boss of an engineering firm is also quoted as saying that "as long as employees meet their deadlines, he didn't care how they managed the use of their time." He added that he believed this approach "improved the employees' involvement and loyalty".

The only downsides presented are possible breaches in security, as well as potential confidentiality and company image issues.

My own office policy stipulates that personal Internet use is tolerated as long as it doesn't compromise security and productivity... However, sites like Facebook, Twitter and Youtube are blocked.

Thoughts?

Will you be my Lucy?

I recently went to a very interesting breakfast with local bloggers (if you read French, check out these super cool fahion chicks: Audrée and Julia -who sells her jewelery at Anthropologie!- and this dude (Patrick) too!), in relation to a little something that has been stirring around these parts (I will soon come back to it, promise). I was obviously the imposter in the group, among these people who have PR and who matter and are involved in great projects and have big readerships and such. I was sitting next to Claudia, this beautiful, warm, articulate, smart, semi-famous woman who's writing books and articles in real papers and is sometimes seen/heard on TV/radio, and she impressed me probably more than all of the others...

And after all I was thinking was, why didn't I follow this path, too? Montreal's milieu is relatively small, and it's not so hard to make your mark... I had everything going for me: I studied in the right place (same program, same university as her), and mingled with the right people who had the connections and the means (among other things, I was friends with her, who got her memoir/master's thesis published and instantly became a cultural landmark (the book even became a successful  movie). There was also her, who was a good friend of Claudia by the way (she presented a very touching hommage at her funeral)). Without thinking that I am the-most-fantastic-writer-there-ever-was, I still  believe that I have some talent, clearly not a genius-level one but still a little bit of one that maybe could have taken me somewhere other than a prefab desk... My personality and presentation aren't so bad, and sometimes, I even have things to say (a minority of which I think is turning out to be somewhat relevant).

It isn't about jealousy or envy (I'm pretty satisfied with my life and don't think I'm a failure either), or entitlement... It isn't about fame, or a constant and bigger-than-average craving for validation/recognition (altough like everyone else I do think that having it is nice once in a while)... It's more about self-achievement really, about being brave enough to talk the talk, to decide that you will do what you really love and just make your life around it. About putting all the effort necessary to make this happen. About putting yourself out there.

It was just one of these realizations that suddenly hit you: I am a chronic underachiever. I owed it to myself to try harder, to push harder, to at least do something. I didn't. In three and a half years I'll be officially middle-aged, and I didn't. Instead, I bemoaned, hid, avoided, sulked, felt sorry for my a*s, sabotaged myself a few times and generally showed a pathetic lack of drive. I mean, even the blog is a manifesto of that: there are several different reasons that led me to write in English (it was the language of the communities I was part of, I wanted to see if I could and test my second-language ability, etc.), but there is also maybe 10% that is pure avoidance: by writing in a different language, I didn't even expose myself to that milieu that both fascinated and terrified me.

So. I pinpointed that the reason for me earning a living writing user guides and online help files instead of novels (short stories, essays, articles, whatever, stuff that people actually want to read) is pretty much the same reason why the current house-on-the-market-dragging-on-forever situation is turning into one of the most difficult periods of my life: I deal so f badly with rejection. I much prefer to wrap myself in negativity and self-loathing than to actually dare (hoping, doing).

That's all.

App du jour

This year, LP is "in the spirit of Christmas" times 100. We wrote a letter to Santa last week (in which he sweetly asked for a present for his sister, because she's not big enough to talk yet), and over the weekend, my mother Santa sent him a personalized video in which the Père Noël confirmed that he received his letter. "That's strange though", LP remarked. "A toy airplane is not what I asked Santa in my letter at all, it's rather what I asked grandma..."

Apart from our lovely little Nutcracker tradition (LP can now even often be heard whistling the Sugar Plum Fairy dance) we are also very big on A Charlie Brown Christmas nowadays. M found us a wonderful interactive app for the ipad, and you know how much I identify with love Charlie Brown right?

This is by far my favorite way of using the device, for books, magazines and such little animations, because it adds such a level of richness in the layout, such a fun layer of interactivity, etc. Graphic designers usually go above an beyond for these apps, and it truly makes me fall in love with reading electronically again.

The app narrates the story over little scenes from the movie, while incorporating the music and adding lots of little fun extras. LP can decorate the Christmas tree that will be revealed at the end, can help Snoopy decorate his doghouse for the Lights and Display contest, and can do all kinds of little tricks like turning lights on and off, etc. His favorite part, though, is playing the famous Linus and Lucy song on a little pop-up piano, and then watching the kids dance.

LP doesn't really understand why Charlie is so sad, but he enjoys Lucy, Linus, Sally, Snoopy and the others tremendously. The other day at the store, he even became entranced when he spotted something on a shelf, his whole face lighting up. It was a replica of the sad little tree Charlie picks up at the lot, the one that "needs him". We all had a laugh and then we bought it for him. It made him happier that I had ever seen him. Charlie, Christmas is not religious for us, so we have to find its meaning elsewhere... But I think that really, *this* is what Christmas is all about.

If anyone is intested, you can find the app here. I highly recommend it!

Let's buy a book!

Today is a really big day for my friend Meg: it's the official buy-in day for her new book A Practical Wedding!

Go see her post and order her book online! I did. (Not just because I'm quoted in it, OK? Because it's good! But I did get copies for my parents, whom I'm hoping will like the fact that their daughter's name is in a real book somewhere, even if she never ended up writing one of her own.)

The link for the Canadian Amazon website is here, by the way.

Congrats again, Meg!

Have you seen it?

The "I love you baby" homebirth photo that's in the running for the National Geographic Picture of the year contest?

If you haven't, then you can do so here. (Consider yourself warned, this is NSFW!). (The link is to a Babble article talking about it by the way. The numerous comments (on FB, at least), were very entertaining, from the "Ewwww" to the "Girll canot be preggos, she too skinny!")

What do you think? I *do* agree that birth is beautiful and natural, the moment captured is striking, births don't always have to take place at an hospital, etc. I personally certainly wouldn't want photos like that to be public or much less go viral, but to each their own.

But there's something that irks me just the tiniest bit about it all. I can't quite put my finger on it. How crazy stylized and even staged it looks. Black and white, lighting that looks like it was endlessly studied, female body with perfectly pleasing proportions, perfectly empowering (as opposed to humble or vulnerable) position taken from a perfectly flattering angle, full-on flawless makeup, not a hair out of place, not a drop of sweat, no blood or messiness or fluid whatsoever to be seen...

Do births also have to be friggin' photoshoots now???

The surprise

I received the book at the office on Monday. I had planned to show it to the kids that night, but then LP threw a stupid, completely out-of-the-blue tantrum in the boulangerie so we had a discussion in which we repeated again that these were becoming unaceptable. That we were so tired of them. That he would start school soon and that doing these in school would put him in a lot of trouble he really didn't want to be in. That there were consequences to this, including no TV for a week (which, let's face, always makes us spend a better week anyway), and no surprise for now. If he wanted the little Christmas surprise he was supposed to receive, he would have to behave irreproachably until Thursday night. (That night, after I put him to bed, he called me into his bedroom again. "Mamaaaan"..."Quoi mon loup?" "I want to talk to you". He was looking very serious. I sat on his bed. "There won't be any tantrums anymore. I'm done with them." His tone was different. He meant it. Somehow, he had understood something from our little talk earlier. And of course I didn't expect them to disappear completely just like that, but this was good. I covered him with kisses.)

Thursday night came. He had done really well for three days, including at daycare. After dinner, I pulled out the book.

Immediately, I could see that he was a little disappointed. "But... It's for girls...," he said. The fact is I hadn't really bought this just for him, but for the both of them. So we could start a little holiday tradition of our own, reading the book during this season while listening to the wonderful music... And I will always remember seeing The Nutcracker ballet for the first time years and years ago, sitting next to a primp mom and her two young boys, who stayed quiet and watched with fascination.

He was still willing to give this a go. At storytime we three lied on his bed and opened the book. I found the soundtrack adapted for kids on the ipad, and played it. I started to tell them the story, not reading the book so much (it's in English) but marveling at the wonderful pop-up vignettes, pointing at details and talking about Clara and her brother Fritz and the Mouse King and the Sugar Plum Fairy and such.

After five minutes F was picked up by her father and put to bed (she's in that very high maintenance "I have SO MUCH to explore and YOU WON'T make me stay in place for even a second!" phase that precedes walking, anyway). I stayed with LP and we continued being whisked away to the wintry Christmas Woods, being wowed by the Chinese dancers bringing tea, being amazed by the Candy Palace in Confiturembourg. LP was completely invested, attached to the characters, transported by the music, his eyes and his mouth wide open.

And right there and then, it felt like I had reached one of these too-rare moments of complete parental enlightement, introducing my son to Tchaikovsky and to the Russian culture I have always been so drawn to, feeling a connection had truly been made. Lying next to his warm little body, watching him take the music and the magic in, felt perhaps closer than I had ever been to touching the sublime.