The Ultimate Beet Borscht

When I was a kid my grandparents used to make an amazing beet borscht.  If you are the kind of person who thinks beet borscht should basically just be beets and maybe onions or something and only the teensiest smattering of dill, go home now please.  Sometimes at work there is beet borscht and everyone is all "this is just the deadliest beet borscht ever" and I'm like "you guys, no" because you haven't had beet borscht until you've had the kind that uses the whole beet and also ALL THE VEGETABLES.  And no meat, please.  Let the vegetables shine on their own.

My grandma stopped making borscht a few years ago because it is too much work for her to tackle anymore so I've been getting my borscht fix from the Farmers' Market - one of the vendors makes a good one that is pretty close to what I remember eating and loving as a kid.

We got a bag of beets in our latest PayDirt Farms CSA box and Brahm said "we should make borscht" and by "we" he meant "Robyn".  My mom had a couple of different recipes from an old Ukranian cookbook that she said she thought was close to what my grandparents used, but just to try and combine the recipes and use trial and error.

These instructions might sound daunting to some ("sort of combine these two recipes and use trial and error") but I consider myself to be a fairly talented soup-maker so I gave it a shot.  And it WORKED. 

I wasn't totally sure what was going to happen but as soon as I tried the first spoonful out of the stock pot and the familiar flavour I had been missing for so long came back to me, it was possibly the highlight of my week.

Knowing you can create something that you thought might be lost forever is kind of amazing. 

And now, the recipe for the ultimate beet borscht.  Try this and you'll never go back to your wimpy "beets only" borscht.

Please note that quantities are EXTREMELY APPROXIMATE.

1 large onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic, pressed
1/2 head cabbage, shredded
10 cups of weak chicken stock (or 5 cups water, 5 cups regular strength stock)
~15 young (small) beets, including leaves and stems (not optional)

•  Chop the beets, stems, and leaves but keep each section separate
  

3 medium potatoes, cubed
4 carrots, chopped small
~1/2 cup fresh peas
1 lb green or yellow beans, cut into bite sized lengths
1 can navy beans, drained and rinsed (I forgot to include these but good idea for protein)
~1/2 cup of fresh dill, chopped but not too small (or even more if you want but don't skimp on the dill)
~1.5 cups of diced tomatoes (canned is okay)

Heat oil in a large stockpot and add onions and garlic.  Cook for about 3 minutes, add the cabbage and stir until cabbage is starting to get cooked.  Add the water/stock and bring to a boil.  Add beets, turn heat down to medium-high.  After about 5 minutes, add the carrots.  After another 5 minutes, add the beans, peas, potatoes, beet stems, and tomatoes.  When the potatoes are basically done, add the dill and beet leaves.  Cook for a few more minutes until everything you try is cooked through.  Salt and pepper to taste if desired.  This makes about 4-5 litres of soup.

As long as you understand cooking times and stuff, you really can't go wrong.  Use the whole beet and use a ton of dill and dump in every vegetable you can find and you'll have yourself a bowl of amazing beet borscht.  The cooking time of this soup was really quick but the prep (working alone) took a couple hours.  Worth it though!

Perogies

There are lots of little stories I still want to tell and record about our wedding weekend.  It's cliche but honestly, it really was one of the best weekends of my life, if not the best.  But before you roll your eyes at that, what could be better than gathering all the people you love together in one place and getting to spend time with them?  How do you top that?

So anyway, this is the story of how my sister Megan and I went to Folkfest two nights before my wedding.

I generally enjoy going to Saskatoon's Folkfest and eating my way through the various pavilions, although for the past few years my work schedule hasn't left me in town during Folkfest weekend.  But!  This year, my wedding was on Folkfest weekend, and this was possibly going to be my last chance to go to Folkfest for several years until my schedule shifts.  I decided, around 4:00pm on the Thursday before my Saturday wedding, that I was going to Folkfest.

I texted Brahm and asked him if he wanted to come with me but he had already made plans to play video games or something with his friends, so I convinced Megan to come.  "All I really want is perogies and cabbage rolls" I said.  "Let's just quickly catch the bus, go to Prairieland" (where the Ukrainian pavilion was located) "and come home.  Get on the bus at 5, eat perogies at 6, we'll be home by 7."  Conveniently, one of the pavilions was located just two blocks down from our house so we hopped on the bus, hungry and ready for perogies.

Except... we forgot how freaking long it takes to use the Folkfest bus.  My brilliant idea of "we don't have to worry about parking at Prairieland!" was definitely a bad idea, due to not attending Folkfest for the previous few years and forgetting how slow the bus is.  During our time waiting to get to our destination, we planned out a route of about 6 or 7 pavilions we would patronize that night before eventually getting off the bus near our house.  We transferred at City Hall and HONESTLY 2 hours later, got so hungry that we jumped off the bus at the German pavilion (we still had not made it to Prairieland), scarfed schnitzels, and missed the next bus.  So, we waited for another 15-20 minutes, got on the NEXT bus, and were eating perogies by 8:00pm.  NOT JOKING, a full 3 hours after we got on the bus.

After the perogies, we went to the Greek pavilion (the food there is always to die for), stuffed ourselves some more, and then realized we were totally Folkfested out.  After 3 pavilions.  At 8:30pm.

After another hour on the bus, driving all over the city (and literally past our house) on a hilariously empty bus, we decided enough was enough, hopped off downtown, and walked home. 

Was going to Folkfest two nights before my wedding a waste of time, money, and energy?  Probably, although we did sell our passports on Kijiji the next day.  And it was kind of ridiculous and fun, maybe in a "you had to be there" way, but complaining about the slow bus and eating schnitzel, perogies, and Greek donuts is one of those silly wedding weekend memories I will cherish for a long time.

Our First Tree!

Brahm and I bought our first Christmas tree a couple weeks ago.  We got a real tree, which I haven't had since I lived at my parents' house, and it is awesome.  It makes our apartment smell great and I just like it so much more than an artificial tree.

Buying and setting up the tree sort of just felt like something to do for fun, but eventually I realized that it was actually kind of a special thing - we were starting a tradition together, that we'll eventually pass down to our future kids.  A big deal!

Buying the tree, buying some lights from Costco, and borrowing an old tree skirt and some garland from my parents wasn't the big deal.  But when we sat down with Brahm's mom to pick out all of the ornaments from their Christmas box that belonged to him, we realized how we want to decorate our tree every year.

Nothing against beautiful stylish trees with matching decorations - they are awesome and I bet really fun to decorate, especially if you do a new theme every year.  But we decided that other than lights and garland, everything that goes on our tree forever has to mean something.  It needs to be a gift, something we bought somewhere special, etc. 

It doesn't have a topper yet - it's still a bit of a work in progress.

Moose I got from Norway, guitar was a gift to Brahm's mom from a friend but she gave it to us, and that white puff in the top left corner is an ugly little cotton ball lamb Brahm made in Sunday School when he was 4... so of course I LOVE IT.

The ball in the top corner was given to me by my grandma last Christmas - all of the grandchildren received one of these balls, which were the ornaments my mom and her sisters decorated their tree with every year growing up.

We don't have many ornaments yet which is okay because our tree is small this year.  It will be fun to build our collection together and remember where each ornament came from every year when we decorate our tree.

The Sandwich Place

My sisters and I have always gotten along really well with a group of our cousins who live in Calgary.  We only see each other once or twice a year (sometimes even less, especially as we get older and have separate adult lives) but these trips to Calgary or Disneyland or BC or wherever we met up were always a highlight of our year.

We had many, many cousin "traditions" that evolved and petered out over the years.  To name a few:  making a "parade" of every single toy (including several hundred small army men/McDonald's toys/etc.) in my cousins' basement and then making our parents clean it up, mixing up a terrifying cocktail of as many disgusting kitchen ingredients as we could find and making our dads taste it, walking to 7-11 to buy Slurpees and treats to have while watching Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen's latest lame movie, and playing a game where we pretended to murder each other while jumping on their trampoline.  Some still live on today, like having lunch at Peters Drive-In and wearing our Team Cousin t-shirts at family events.

One of my favourite traditions, which I'm proud to have invented, was The Sandwich Place.  The Sandwich Place was a soup and sandwich (and veggies and dip) restaurant that we opened once a visit for our parents.  We decided on a few different sandwich combinations and canned soups that were available in the house, wrote up menus, and prepped the kitchen. 

We made our parents go outside and ring the doorbell when they "arrived" and I feel like at one point they even called to make a reservation (haha).  The two cousins delegated to be the servers seated the parents, and when the orders came in we scurried into action in the kitchen, slapping together sandwiches, ladling Ichiban into bowls, and pouring Ranch or Creamy Cucumber into small pools onto plates next to celery sticks that our moms had pre-prepped for us.  Our youngest cousin Kristin was always the "caller" - Fuddruckers-style, she sat at the "pickup" table with a toy megaphone and let each customer know that their order was ready.

My dad mentioned The Sandwich Place during his speech at the wedding, and noted that often the sandwiches were less than appetizing, but they politely ate everything on their plates and gave us rave reviews.  I'm glad, because putting on The Sandwich Place was a total blast.  It went through several iterations, sometimes even having PRINTED (on a computer!) menus, and lived on as a cousin tradition for 5 or 6 years.

I hope someday when my cousins and I all have children of our own, they're as close as we were and start some new cousin traditions.  I know for sure we'll be encouraging them to open their own version of The Sandwich Place.

Space Week

There are some memories I have of elementary school that sometimes make me hope that someday, my future will work out that I'll decide the right path to take is become an elementary school teacher.  Space Week is one of them.

I'm not sure which teacher came up with the idea for Space Week, but I hope they know how many awesome memories it made for so many little kids.  It all started when the whole school was called to the gymnasium for a routine assembly on Monday morning.  This was not unusual, we had assemblies from time to time and certain classes would perform a song with sign language, etc.  However, a couple minutes into this assembly, the lights started flashing and fog started pouring onto the stage.  Coloured lights blinked on and off, and a couple of creatures in tin foil suits stepped onto the stage from the wings.  When the smoke cleared, they announced that they were aliens from another planet and they had kidnapped our principal.

The crowd.  Went.  Wild.

The grade four teacher tried to confront the aliens.  "Wait just a minute!  You can't just barge in here and kidnap our principal!"  He was cut off as one of the aliens shot him with a ray gun.  He collapsed to the floor.

The aliens continued.  They had kidnapped our principal and replaced her with an alien lookalike, who they brought on stage.  This lookalike did look a LOT like our principal, but she wore a tin foil suit and had other various alien features.  She was going to do the job of our principal for a week, and on Friday night, at the wrap-up of Space Week, our principal would be returned to us IF we could find all of the pieces of a secret alien document they had hidden all over the school.  (To sweeten the deal, anyone finding one of the clues would receive a large chocolate bar if they returned it to the alien principal.)  Then, the aliens left, again in a cloud of smoke and blinking lights.

The grade four teacher groggily awoke and everyone filled him in on what had happened.  We kids spent the rest of the week at recess and lunch hour scouring the school for pieces of the alien puzzle, and I remember leading a search party one recess but one of my friends found the clue and not me :(  The alien principal, who looked just like our principal, continued to wear her alien getup ALL WEEK.  Now that is a teacher dedicated to doing something awesome.

One of the best parts of Space Week was the ending.  On Friday night, we all gathered again in the gymnasium with our parents, anxiously awaiting the return of the aliens and our principal.  A couple of teachers and the alien principal waited onstage.  With the same flourish as before, the aliens reappeared.  The teachers presented them with all of the clues that had been found by students over the week, and the aliens pronounced they were satisfied.  We were getting our principal back.

AND THEN OMG

OUR PRINCIPAL CAME ONSTAGE.  She was onstage WITH the alien principal.  All the junior skeptics who all week had insisted that the alien principal was just our principal dressed up, and that the aliens were really grade eight boys dressed up, and that it was just a giant teacher conspiracy were shocked.

Eventually of course, a kid whose parent was a teacher at the school explained how it had been done and we learned the truth.  But the planning and effort that all of our teachers put in planning Space Week is still something I remember so fondly and makes me sad that such a thing probably wouldn't fly in a school today (I can just imagine all the calls from parents, livid that they have to explain to their terrified children that aliens aren't real and the principal wasn't actually kidnapped and the aliens aren't coming to get them too blah blah blah) because it might just be my favourite memory of elementary school.

So thank you, Humboldt Public School teachers of the mid-nineties.  I hope Space Week was as much fun for you as it was for us.

Lumosity

Something I've noticed since I stopped being in university is that I've felt a lot dumber.  I mean, I'm still an intelligent person, but my memory has really gone downhill.  I can't remember people's names at first meeting anymore, and in fact a lot of the time I completely forget meeting someone and embarrassingly have to ask who they are again and they're like "you don't remember me?"  I used to be the person who never forgot a face or a name, and it feels wrong to have regressed so much.

I am quite certain the reason for my declining memory is that I just don't exercise it anymore.  All the way from kindergarten until I graduated university I was constantly memorizing and studying - whether it was doing Mad Minute math in grade 2, memorizing a song on the piano in grade 7, learning lines for a play in grade 11, or studying my butt off in university, I have always been actively exercising my mind.

But when I finished school and got a job I didn't really need to actively exercise my mind anymore so I didn't and things started to deteriorate.  I really want to improve my memory but I want to find a way to do it that doesn't feel like a chore.  I also want to find a way to do it that doesn't cost me a ton of money in case I end up not using it.

I thought I'd found the perfect solution with Luminosity.com - you've probably seen the commercials.  I made a free trial account and played a few of the games.  They were great - straight and to the point explanations, simple games that still exercised your memory.  And a year's subscription was only $6.70?  Awesome!  Sign me up!

But then I realized, as I was about to buy, that the $6.70 was a monthly fee rather than a flat yearly fee.  So now I am not sure of what to do.  Should I pay 80 bucks for a year's subscription to Luminosity (the 7 bucks/month is only available if you pay all at once - to pay by the month is 15 bucks/month)?  It seems like the best brain improvement site out there - the free games on other sites are a bit lame and have long intros and just don't seem to be the quality of the few Luminosity games I tried.

But if I pay 80 bucks, I need to make sure I get my 7 bucks/month worth of memory improvement.  I wish you could get a free month instead of only 3 days free because I can't judge in 3 days whether the site actually works and whether it's something I'll feel like I want to stick to.  And 80 bucks is a lot of money that I don't just want to throw away on something.  Plus, I won't be able to use the site at work so I'll only get to use it 2 weeks out of a month.  I sound like I'm making excuses but I'm just trying to figure out what to do.

How else can I improve my memory in a fun way that doesn't have a monthly fee?

This Is My Canada

This is an interactive blog post, because to truly appreciate it I think you're going to have to put yourself in my shoes as I tell the story and try to picture the situation.

When I'm at work I try to walk to my office from the camp building as often as I can but if the weather is bad or I don't feel like walking I'll take the bus.  Sometimes the bus has radio playing while we ride it, but usually it doesn't.  This day though the stars aligned.  I was riding the bus AND the radio was playing.  Strangely, much louder than the usual background tunes.

Just as we pulled out of the parking lot, this song came on the radio:




What I want you to do now, is play the song but don't watch the slideshow.  Just close your eyes and picture being on a bus with a bunch of blue-collar contractor types while this lame song blasts over the speakers.  Imagine the loud proclamations of "What the F---????", "Turn it offffffffff!  Nooooo!", and "FRENCH???" and then finally, imagine these blue-collar contractor types finally accepting their fate and starting to sing along.

Maybe this isn't that funny to you.  Maybe you had to be there.  But for me, it still remains one of the funniest things that has happened to me at work.

Pyjamafoss

On the second-last day of our Iceland trip, Brahm and I finished our loop of the country.  We decided to check out the Blue Lagoon before heading back to our hotel in Reykjavik, so we went and floated around for a while, put mud on our faces, watched people eating popsicles in the pool and made a list of the grossest foods to possibly find floating around in a pool (I believe the winner was scrambled eggs), and then drove back to Reykjavik for our last night in Iceland.  I should mention that before arriving at the Blue Lagoon our swimming gear had been stored in our suitcases, and after digging my stuff out of my suitcase, I left it unzipped for easy re-packing after swimming.

   

 (The Blue Lagoon.  That cage-like thing is a bar in the pool where you can buy drinks and popsicles.  In the top picture I have some moisturizing mud on my face that they have buckets of sitting around the pool.  The amount you take a handful of and put on your face in the pool costs like 50 bucks in the gift shop.)

As we neared our hotel, we realized we did not know where we should park our rental car - the hotel had no parking lot, and there was no parking allowed on the street in front of the hotel.  We had a lot of stuff to unpack from the car as it needed to be returned to the rental place the next day, so we decided that we'd quickly unload in front of the hotel and I would take everything in and check in while Brahm went roaming downtown Reykjavik for a parking spot.

This part of the story is fuzzy, but I'm going to say it's true because it makes things funnier, but in front of our hotel where we stopped was a definite no parking zone and probably a no stopping zone as well.  We started rapidly unloading bags and suitcases onto the sidewalk so we wouldn't get a parking ticket.  Suddenly I heard Brahm cry out "ROBYN!"  I looked back, and the suitcase I had left unzipped in the trunk was spilled out all over the street.

The only thing I could do at this point was start laughing, but Brahm was not amused.  As he grabbed up my underwear off the road (and I watched and laughed and laughed), a bag of candy that he'd stuffed into his jacket pocket opened up and chocolate caramels rolled every which way, into the mix of pyjamas and toiletries.

 

(The very busy street where pyjamafoss occurred.)

We eventually got everything cleaned up with no trouble or parking ticket and looking back almost 8 months later (WTF?????  How was it that long ago!!) it is a story we reminisce about as one of our funniest moments of the trip.  That night Brahm created an Icelandic word for the incident: "pyjamafoss" meaning "a pyjama volcano" except "foss" actually means "waterfall" so it's not even that correct but whatever.  We now have many regrets about not taking a picture of pyjamafoss as it occurred but at the time we were trying not to look like idiot tourists. 

The lesson we can all learn from this story:  if you are already looking like an idiot tourist, you might as well risk looking more idiot touristy and take a picture.

Ski Pants

Regular blogging will return Monday!  I hope you have enjoyed this week's Christmas pictures from my past and present.

There's just something so adorable about little kids wearing their ski pants and Sorels everywhere they go!

Merry Christmas!

Jeans Wedding

On the note of sweatpants and wedding dresses, I recently remembered that when I was a sweatpants-wearing kid, I somehow got the idea into my head that I was going to have a "jeans wedding."  Meaning, everyone (including me) would wear jeans.  And knowing my fashion sense at the time, probably denim shirts to match.

Please try to picture this without throwing up in your mouth.  I am all for getting married in what you feel comfortable in but maybe I would draw the line at jeans with a matching denim shirt.

I guess there would be a lot of something blues anyway.

Sweatpants

My sister told me about an assignment she recently gave her grade 8 students, to write about how they think the next year is going to be different.  One of the answers was "I will age, maybe start wearing jeans" because apparently this student just realized that she only wears sweats.

It made me recall my own relationship with sweatpants in elementary school.  I think there comes a time for everyone where mayyyybe wearing sweats out in public isn't the most appropriate thing to do for everyday clothes (I don't care if you want to do a lazy ice cream run to the store or whatever, but wearing sweats as your normal pants is weird). 

As a determinedly unfashionable 12 year old, the jeans vs. sweats idea never really crossed my mind.  I did not want to wear shirts that could be thought of as "tight" so I wore at least size medium unisex printed t-shirts (usually souvenir), and jeans or sweats.  They were interchangeable as far as I was concerned, until the one day in grade 6 where one of my best friends took me aside and said "Robyn, I'm only saying this because I'm your friend, but I really hate those pants."  I was wearing gross baggy black sweats.

I was DEVASTATED.  How could she say something like that?  How did she have the right to criticize my amazing, march-to-my-own drum fashion sense?  I dressed like Kristy from The Baby-Sitters Club, no one ever told Kristy that they hated her sweats!

I believe I actually stayed home from school crying that afternoon, while my mom tried to nicely tell me that maybe I shouldn't wear sweats to school anymore.  I don't really know how the whole thing got resolved, but I believe one day soon after the sweatpants fiasco I wore a different pair of sweats to school - ones I had personally sewn myself (you can imagine how incredibly fashionable a pair of sweats that a grade 6 girl made in sewing class would have been), and I suddenly felt very self-conscious in them.  I finally saw them for what they were:  schlubby, oversized, too-casual-for-school clothes.  I'm not sure if it had anything to do with my friend's frank confession or if I would have come to the conclusion on my own, but after that day I stopped being the girl who wore sweatpants to school.

I still dressed like Kristy for a few more years though until I realized that oversized souvenir t-shirts were the torso equivalent of sweatpants.

You're welcome, internet.  Yes, this is actually me in grade 5, and not wearing a Halloween costume.

Spoons and Forks... and Shoes?

Further evidence of my childhood desire to put random objects in strange places:

Filling my aunt's shoe with cutlery??

Another one for my grandpa

I wanted to share a few more pictures of memories with my grandpa - lots were already described in my last post.

Covered in leaves, on the tree swing he made for me.

Looking for crayfish.

Most likely eating some fresh peas from the garden - possibly where I inherited my passion for growing things.  My mom said that my grandpa was always so proud of his tomatoes.

Holding a bunny at the Forestry Farm, not supposed to be in there...

Yes, he let a baby drool all over a whole watermelon.  There's another picture that I couldn't find of my grandma in the corner looking less than impressed.

Climbing me up into the crabapple tree.

Big snow people.

What a fun grandpa!

Pails and Shovels

My grandma mentioned that it will be 20 years ago this weekend that my grandpa passed away.  He was a super fun grandpa and I'm lucky that my memory of a lot of great times with him is still relatively clear. 

I was the first grandchild and he definitely spoiled me rotten, but more than that we did the coolest stuff together.  We'd go out on the river in a dinghy and catch crayfish, which I would take home as pets until seagulls came and ate them out of my paddling pool.  We'd build giant snowpeople and dress them in old clothes.  One time we went fishing at Waskesiu and he dropped his favourite fishing rod in the lake, and then about an hour later he caught the rod back.  He'd rake up all the leaves in his yard for me to jump in and mess up.  We'd go to the Forestry Farm and he'd always lift me over the fence into the pen with all the bunnies and chickens, even though people weren't actually allowed to go in there.  Even though I was very little, he'd always lift me up into trees and set me down on a branch so I could feel like I'd climbed a tree.

I've got pictures of all of these memories and then some, including this set I stumbled upon again today.  I have no idea how this came to be, but for whatever reason one day my grandpa and I decided to hang all of my pails and shovels out on the clothesline.

I don't know why we did it, but it looks fun. 

DO NOT ROB

When I was about 4 or 5, there was a break-in/robbery near my grandparents' house.  Since I spent a lot of time there and they had lots of fun toys for me to play with, my first worry was that what if the robber came to their house and stole all my stuff?  How to prevent this?

What if there was a way to communicate to the robber that there were certain things that were off-limits, for example, my posters on the wall, my bed, etc.  Take the fridge, take the TV, I don't care, but leave my stuff alone thank you!

I was a pretty smart kid for my age and my parents had taught me to read signs that said "Do not enter" so I wouldn't go in those places, so I knew how to spell "do not."  Luckily, my name is Robyn and although I didn't know how to spell the word "steal" I figured that a robber robs, so "rob" must mean the same as "steal" and "rob" is probably spelled like the first half of my name... "DO NOT ROB" was born.

I set to work with a black marker writing this warning on everything in my little room that I didn't want robbed.  I don't really remember what I wrote it on that day but since the slogan remained on many items for quite a few years, I recall seeing it on some posters, a bedside table, possibly a lamp, a desk, and somehow I think I got it on the bed frame too.

Eventually my parents and/or grandparents discovered what I did and I got in trouble but hey, it was worth it because my stuff never got robbed.  In fact, that house never got broken into - they probably saw the signs through the window or something and realized this was not a house to mess with.

I always knew that the above-mentioned bedside table was the one that's still in my room now but I could never find the inscription.  Today I decided to look really hard and discovered a very faint "DO NOT ROB" on the bottom shelf area.  It has either been painted over or has faded, but it's somewhat visible.  Here's a picture I took with some heavy editing to try and bring out the writing as much as possible:

DO NOT ROB:  a foolproof way to make sure robbers don't take your stuff.

Dress Shopping

On Saturday I will be undertaking one of those wedding rites of passage that most brides have to go through: wedding dress shopping.  I only have one appointment at a store I know has a line of dresses I like, and it's definitely not going to be an all-day ordeal.  I booked the appointment later in the day 2 hours before the store closes so my sister could come but now I'm thinking that was an accidentally good strategic move...

...flash back to 2003, high school graduation was looming.  Most of the girls in my class had started shopping or bought their grad dresses before the school year even started.  Around February or March, I decided it was time to start looking so I went to Bryan's at Midtown Plaza with my mom.  The second dress I tried on was great - not poofy, strapless (but stayed up), black lace over beige.  It definitely wasn't anything I'd imagined myself in but it was pretty much perfect.  However, figuring if I liked the second dress I tried on this much, there must be something even better out there.

I ended up spending the entire weekend trying on pretty much every dress in my size in Bryan's, going to a few wedding stores and trying on excessively expensive prom dresses, and then back to Bryan's again to try on all the dresses again.  I hated it and just kept getting more and more discouraged.  I remember the breaking point being when I tried on this clingy, flowy dress that looked great on another girl but just horrible on me.  I am super tiny but I don't have an especially flat stomach, and that dress really... accentuated that feature.  I think I started crying at some point because for whatever reason, the black lace dress had been forgotten in it all.

In the end, I settled for some sparkly backless white dress that wasn't really my style... and started having  regrets as I got into my parents' van to leave the mall.  My mom decided to run back to the store and get the black dress too so I could make a decision at home, which I'm so glad for because the unanimous family decision at home was the black dress by far and if she hadn't grabbed it that day, I might have had to settle for the sparkly white dress because...

There'd been some drama at school because a relatively popular girl in my class had bought the same dress as another girl in the class, a few hours after.  When this came to light, because grad dress news travels fast between high school girls, the popular girl had to take back her dress and buy a new one.  The new one she bought turned out to be the same black lace dress I bought.

DRAMA.  Thankfully she took it in stride and once again returned the dress (she'd bought it a day after I bought mine so I had first dibs), but she did try it on for a few of her friends one evening who then all came to me and said "OH that dress you got looks SOOOOO good on her" and on grad day "I love your dress Robyn, it looked so good on J--- when she tried it on" thanks guys, much appreciated.  Oh well.  Never have to see you jerks again after today.

So anyway, I am hoping that with the removal of high school girls from the equation and a goal to NOT let things get out of hand like they did in 2003 will make wedding dress shopping less painful than the last time I shopped for a significant dress.

Me on graduation day in the dress that caused so much controversy and drama.  It has since been altered to be appropriate to wear at weddings etc. - multifunctional, hooray!

How Sarah Learned to Make a Fire

This post is dedicated to Sarah.  Sarah and I worked together one summer and she has been a faithful blog reader since the beginning so I think she deserves a dedication post.  Why, because this blog appreciates its fans.  If you are a fan and want a dedication post similar to this one let me know.

Sarah grew up in Ottawa and I grew up in Saskatchewan, but I did not realize how different those two growing ups were until I met her.  We were at a staff retreat, sitting by an empty fire pit, while the rest of the staff went on a hike, when I learned that Sarah had never made a fire before.  "What do you do when you go camping?" I asked.  "HAHA camping??????" she replied.  Oh.  I see.

So I decided to teach Sarah how to make a fire.  It was going to be the perfect fire.  We set to work making the "teepee" - a cone-shape of thin logs around a pile of kindling.  It was the perfect teepee.  Now, to light it...

At which point we discovered we had no matches.  We scoured the retreat centre kitchen for a BBQ lighter, anything that might start a fire.  Nothing.  Now what?  We had stayed behind on the hike with the intention that when the rest of the staff returned, there would be a blazing inferno, ready for s'mores and hot dogs.  We couldn't disappoint.

One of us, possibly Jen, another co-worker who had stayed back from the hike, had a brainwave.  The cigarette lighters in the vehicles we brought!  Perfect.  Except, it was 2009, and all of our vehicles were brand-new rental vans, and in 2009 I guess they don't make cigarette lighters in vehicles anymore, probably because kids might burn themselves or something, stupid kids.  So anyway those stupid kids ruined that idea.

After more deliberation and half-heartedly trying to rub sticks together (who can actually do that, I am pretty sure it's an urban legend) someone realized that we had access to a couple of gas-powered barbeques.  If only there was some way to get the fire from the BBQ over to our perfect teepee...

This problem was solved with a turkey roaster.

I'll explain, if you can't connect those dots.  I probably shouldn't be advertising that we did this since it is somewhat stupid and dangerous but hey, we needed to get that fire started.  We were being resourceful.

We put a bunch of kindling in the turkey roaster and put a stick into the BBQ to light the end on fire.  Then we started a small fire in the roaster, carried it over to the fire pit, and used it to start our real fire.  At which point, the logs fell over and our perfect teepee was just a pile of logs and kindling, but it worked!  The staff did indeed return to an awesome campfire and Sarah has since put her fire-making skills to good use, and even gone camping last I heard.  And that is the story of how Sarah learned to start a fire, the dangerous and dumb way.

 Jen with the beginning of the fire - the fallen teepee and the smoldering roaster fire.

 Sarah, Jen and me with our amazing fire.

How to Eat Fried Worms

One of the first "chapter books" we read as a novel study in elementary school was How to Eat Fried Worms by Thomas Rockwell.  It's a book about a kid who must eat 15 worms in 15 days to win a bet for 50 bucks.  I quite enjoyed the book in grade 3 but didn't really think much about it ever again until 2006 when I saw a movie of the book was being made.  I never saw the movie and I don't think it did too well at the box office (I don't know if it's still a common grade 3 novel study) but recently I saw it being advertised to be shown on Family Channel (yes I sometimes watch Family Channel...) and watched it... alone on Friday night... but that's beside the point...

Anyway I have to say, I really enjoyed it.  I know it's a kids' movie, targeted at elementary school boys, but it made me happy.  They changed it quite a bit from the book as far as I can remember (10 worms in one day, made it a bit more about overcoming bullying I think), but I really liked it because it was one of those movies that made me remember how much fun it was to be that age.  No weekend commitments, just running around the neighbourhood with your friends getting into trouble.

It was just a sweet, 100% wholesome and kid-appropriate, feel-good movie that I don't think there are too many of these days.  I like movies like that.  When I was a kid, the actual target age for watching these types of movies, other kids made fun of me for not watching "grownup" movies so I was embarrassed to admit what my favourite movies were.  Funny how 15 or so years later there are less people in my life who would make fun of me for watching kids' movies!

Kid with Camera

When I was probably 6 or 7, my grandma gave me her camera which had 4 empty spots left on the roll of film and told me I could use it up.  Here are 3 of those pictures (the other is of my youngest sister swimming in a plastic Rubbermaid in the yard with no clothes on - don't think she would appreciate that one showing up here).

My grandma's backyard - why is it when you give a kid a camera, all they want to take are "scenic" pictures of stupid things like yards?

And a family picture on the front step.  I love it.  I'm so glad I cut off my parents' heads and that you can see my shadow at the bottom.