Dearlove.ca

I was wandering through Farm Boy the other day picking up some groceries, when I came across the latest miracle food – Organic Batter Blaster.

It’s exactly what it looks like – pancake batter in a can. It was even on sale, so I figured I’d be stupid not to try it out. After all, real pancakes are such a pain to make, what with the whole adding-water-to-the-dry-mix-and-stirring-20-times thing.

I waited until we had a boys-night-in this week to hold the official taste test. While A & K watched things blow up on Mythbusters, I heated up a couple of frying pans and vigourously shook the can as instructed. The first couple of attempts were not pretty. The pancakes were thin and oddly-shaped, following the star pattern on the nozzle. After a few more tries, I got the hang of drawing a little circle with the tip and ended up with some decent-looking pancakes.

I called the boys to the table and they quickly sat down – pancakes are usually a great motivator. K eagerly took a bite and almost immediately burst into tears. “These don’t taste good”, he cried. A pushed his plate away and said “Yeah, dad, I don’t like them either. Can I have a sandwich instead?”

I grabbed a piece of K’s pancake a tried it. The texture was thin, and it definitely had a funny aftertaste. I pulled the plates from the table and set to work making a couple of sandwiches for the boys.

The official Organic Batter Blaster website lists testimonials from customers. Someone identified as “Satisfied Customer” wrote “The flavor was just like homemade which I have never tasted in any powdered mix, organic or otherwise.” They must have a more sophisticated palate than me and the boys – we give it two big thumbs down. (If anyone wants the other half of the can, I’ll gladly mail it to you).

Next week, we review Bacon in a Can.  Actually, just the boys are going to try it – I’m not touching that stuff.

Newspapers, talk radio programs, and online forums are buzzing with stories about the first few days of the H1N1 vaccination rollout in Ottawa. We braved the crowds yesterday at the Vanier clinic (Vanier Richelieu Community Centre, 300 Des Pères Blancs) to get the boys vaccinated. While everyone’s experience may differ, here’s how our afternoon went.

12:00: I check the Ottawa Public Health Twitter feed , which says there are about 40 people in line in Vanier, compared to 500 at the Kanata location. Maybe this won’t be so bad after all.

2:00 pm: B arrives with the boys and gets numbers (693 to 697). The parking lot is already full, and the local side streets are starting to fill up. There must be at least 150 people in line ahead of them.

2:20 pm: I get off the bus and walk up the street to meet them. The line stretches for hundreds of feet. Strollers are everywhere, and several people are wearing masks. Are they sick, or just being extra cautious?

2:30 pm: The line is not moving at all. It leads to a couple of tents, and I picture a M.A.S.H. unit – the boys will like that. Young children are playing makeshift games of catch and tag in the drizzle.

2:47 pm: B waits in line while I head over to the Vanier library with the boys. It’s warm and surprisingly quiet upstairs, and we spend an hour reading books (Freight Train, Alphabet Fruits and Vegetables, I Stink, The House That Drac Built, How Did Dinosaurs Get So Big, etc.)

3:06 pm: The latest Twitter update says the wait time at Vanier is 2 hours. We’ve been there for an hour already, so maybe it will be our turn soon.

4:00 pm. The boys are back outside running around in the field. After two hours, we’ve finally made it to the first tent. The door opens, and it’s crowded and filled with the sounds of cranky toddlers. No needles here – just paperwork. Sigh. (FYI, you can print out the form in advance by clicking here, but really, it’s not as if you’re going to save tons of time).

4:22 pm: B texts me to say it will be at least an hour until she gets to the next tent. Sitting in a confined space with the boys for that long is a recipe for disaster, so I take them back to the library for more reading.

5:10 pm: B moves from the first tent to the second tent, which turns out to be just another place to sit and wait. Every few minutes some numbers get called and a few families move into the building. We’re told it will take about 90 minutes to get from the second tent to the vaccination room.

5:45 pm: Things seem to be moving a little faster than expected, and our number is called. We grab our bags and move into the actual building, where we are directed to another room to sit and wait for our number to be called again. It’s been nearly four hours now.

5:55 pm: A volunteer calls out the number 565. The room erupts in chatter as everyone has a number starting with a 6. The man looks flustered, checks his list, and corrects himself. People are being very patient, but fatigue is starting to set in for both the toddlers and the parents.

6:10 pm: Our number is called, and we move to the next room, which is registration. I entertain the boys while B gives the nurse our paperwork and signs the consent forms.

6:15 pm: We’ve made it to the final line, which snakes around the corner. The vending machine beside us is almost completely empty, giving rise to cries of “I’m hungry” from the boys.

6:35 pm: We’re finally around the corner and we can see the vaccination room. There are stairs leading down, which presents some problems for the dozens of strollers around us. I count ten nurses administering the vaccine.

6:45 pm: We’re in the room and standing in the final line. A young girl around six years old is cowering under a chair and screaming while her mother tries to coax her out – it’s a battle of wills that will rage for the next 20 minutes. Other toddlers are crying at the sight of the needle. Welcome to hell.

7:00 pm: After five hours, A is sitting in the chair to get his needle. The nurse turns to me and says “he’ll have to come back in three weeks for the booster shot”. Fantastic.

7:11 pm: It’s K’s turn for the needle. He goes from happy to slightly-frantic crying in seconds. He clutches his stuffed animal and buries his face in B’s shoulder. Five minutes later he’s fine.

7:22 pm: Five hours and 22 minutes after we first stood in line, we head back to the car. I was expecting a parking ticket, which would have been a perfect end to the day.

Obviously it is far from a perfect system – airports seem efficient and civilized in comparison. There’s already a lot of finger-pointing and second-guessing, and I’m not going to add my voice to the chorus. Hopefully they’ll identify issues and make improvements to the process in the coming days.

If you have children and are going to one of the clinics, here are a few tips:

• If you can manage it, both parents should go. One can wait in line while the other entertains the kids. Even the most angelic children will have difficulty with the wait time.

• Take lots of snacks and water – you’re going to be there for a while, and it give the kids something to do for at least a few minutes.

• Take the Twitter updates with a grain of salt – we were told two hours, and we ended up waiting nearly three times that long.

For more information on the City of Ottawa’s H1N1 vaccination clinics, including addresses and hours, click here.

We headed down to Pefferlaw a couple of weeks ago to spend Thanksgiving with Nana Sue and Grandpa Doug. We got off to a rough start – in the first hour, we covered 4.6 km due to multiple washroom breaks and a wonky laptop. After that, it was smooth sailing, and the boys had a great time.

Doug has an archery shop in the basement, and we spent a fair amount of time practicing down there. A really enjoyed trying to pop the balloons. I had forgotten what a fun sport it is – I wonder where my old bow ended up.

Nana Sue arranged for pony rides for the boys on Sunday afternoon. It took a while to convince K to get on the pony, but eventually he wanted to get on and we enjoyed a nice walk through the trail at Eaglewood.

K, perched atop his mighty steed, has the equestrian rider’s fierce look of determination.

I really wasn’t into driving home along Highway 7, so we took the scenic route through Bancroft instead. If you have a bit of time to kill, I highly recommend it – with the leaves changing, it was an amazing drive. It’s pretty straightforward – just take Highway 48 to 12, back to 48, to 35, to 503, to 118, to 28, to 41, to 17, to 417.

Bonus Question

Are these boys:
a) Feeding birds at Jack Pine Trail?
b) The greatest panhandlers Ottawa has ever seen?

Guitar is hard.

I say this on the basis of two lessons and about 10 days of actual practice time. Some may say it’s too early to make such a sweeping statement, but as I massage my sore forearm and stretch the cramped fingers on my left hand, it’s become clear that the real thing is much harder than the video game.

Since I left the orchestra world for festivals, I’ve been listening to a lot of guitar-playing singer-songwriters. I’m taken with the purity and intimacy of a solo performer, guitar in hand, sharing stories and secrets with audiences that range from a dozen to the thousands. So, after the festival wrapped up last spring, I bought myself a nice Norman B-50 guitar and began dreaming of finger-picking and hammer-ons.

After months of procrastination, I finally signed up for lessons. So every Tuesday night, I head off to the Ottawa Folklore Centre, and rub shoulders with kids 1/3rd my age as we wait for our lessons to start.

I’m currently struggling with Let It Be. It seems dead simple – just a handful of easy chords – C G Am F Fmaj7. When I try playing it, though, my fingers become swollen sausages. Some strings don’t sound, while the ones that do buzz and twang. Fingers search in vain for the right string, and compete for space with their neighbours on a crowded fret board.

While progress is painfully slow, it does feel good to actually be learning something. My student days are long behind me, while parenthood and an orchestra job conspired to claim whatever free time was available in recent years. My low tolerance for learning curves also kept me from any kind of sustained personal development.

In any case, I think it will be months before I can play through basic chord progressions with anything resembling a pleasing sound. I’m pretty sure my public debut will take place this summer, perhaps around a campfire somewhere. If you’re unlucky enough to be there, I promise not to inflict any Indigo Girls on you – it’s the least I can do.

The world is a busy place, and nobody has enough time to catch every viral video.  Thankfully, someone has kindly put together a compilation of the 100 top YouTube videos.  There are a couple of notable absences (Chocolate Rain?  Grape Stomping Lady?), but overall, it’s well worth the 3′24″ you’ll spend watching.

When I was a kid in elementary school, the start of Fall meant only one thing – it was time for chestnut fights. 

For the uninitiated, chestnut fights (or conkers, as some people call them), are vicious one-on-one competitions involving chestnuts on strings.  Competitors take turns trying to break the opponent’s chestnut.  While the official game requires the chestnut being struck to hang freely in the air while the other person whacks it with their chestnut, our regional variation called for the chestnut to lie on a cushion of sand.  

It is difficult to express the passion my friends and I had for this game.  Every recess and lunch hour in late September and October was spent playing chestnuts.  When we weren’t at school, my brother and I would set off in search of chestnuts, and then painstakingly put holes through them with a large nail before threading them on an old shoe lace.  Once strung with about a dozen chestnuts, we were ready to do battle.

We knew the location of every chestnut tree in Hespeler – the one down by the tennis courts, the one around the corner from the church, the one by Sunnyview dairy bar.  We’d usually meet up with a few kids, and we’d take turns throwing sticks up into the tree to knock the chestnuts down.  Sometimes guys would show up with huge horse chestnuts, and they would refuse to reveal the tree’s location in order to protect their secret source.

The schoolyard was rife with tales about how to make the strongest chestnut.  Some kids soaked them in vinegar to make them bouncy.  Others took the opposite approach, baking them in the oven to make them hard.  I used to wrap them in socks and then place them in a box in the dark recesses of my closet.  After a few months they’d shrivel up and become indestructible little nuggets. Some called it cheating – I called it science.

I’ve spoken to a lot of people over the years, and I’m surprised how few of them have encountered the game.  I haven’t seen anyone at A & K’s school playing chestnuts, so perhaps the game’s appeal was limited to our little pocket in Cambridge.  

Last night after school, I took A & K to a chestnut tree in our neigbourhood.  Just like I had 30 years ago, I stepped on the spiky husks to crack them open and plucked out the fresh nuts.  The boys eagerly filled their pockets, and later this week we’ll put holes in them and string ‘em up.  I’ll teach them the basics of chestnut fights, and perhaps a new autumn tradition will begin in Manor Park.

ps If you’re a fan of chestnut fights, check out the official World Conker Championships.  This year’s event takes place in two weeks in Northamptonshire, UK.

Lest you think I was joking about making this an “all rims, all the time” site, just take a quick look at the numbers over the past 30 days.

Number of unique visits to You Don’t Mess With Texas (rims stolen from car):  210

Number of visits to Adult Content: 52

Number of visits to Back To Reality (summer vacation photos):  1

Majority rules.

Some thoughts as we begin the third week of school…

1. I have developed a new appreciation for Costco. After watching the two boys go through a loaf of bread in 36 hours, I have a better understanding of why people fill their carts with 3-packs of bread and 12 litres of milk. God help us when they get to be teenagers.

2. Packing two lunches every day is challenging, especially when K only eats one fruit – bananas. After four days of bananas in a row, I think we might have turned him off that one as well. A wants me to pack sushi and samosas – I can sense his disappointment when he opens his lunch and finds yet another jam sandwich.

3. K has had a sinus infection for the last couple of weeks, which has turned his nose into a crusty, bloody mess. Something also bit him on the eye, which caused it to darken and swell up. I was tempted to black out one of his front teeth to make him even more menacing on his first full day of school yesterday. You only get one chance to make a first impression as the toughest kid in Junior Kindergarten.

4. The biggest threat to the environment today is paper use by children. Every day they bring home backpacks full of exercise sheets, colouring pages, doodles, memos, and permission forms. At this rate, there won’t be a tree left standing in this country by 2014. 

5. It’s not impetigo. Yes, I’m sure.