Horrible Boss

If Pea was an employee of mine, she'd be on a serious performance improvement plan relative to her dinner time insubordination.  Every day, she looks me in the eye, ignores my requests, fails to deliver on agreed upon deadlines, and whines whenever she doesn't like the nature of her work.

This weekend, she took the cake.  Yesterday, dinner at Ikea went about as well as dinner at Ikea can be expected to go.  She balked at her tilapia, spat it out on numerous occasions, and made us seem like 'those' parents who don't have any degree of control over their kid.  Rightly so.  Oh, the tears.  So many tears.  None of which flew from Pea's tear ducts.

Tonight, the shenanigans continued with a 75 minute dinnertime performance.  This event included everything from a series of pop song interpretations to complaints over a concerning lack of corn in the pasta.  It's a hard knock life, indeed. 

Sure, she's a good worker.  She's cute, extremely smart and incredibly creative.  So she gets to stay.  But we're keeping a watchful eye on her performance.  

Oh, and any suggestion that her poor performance is a direct result of bad management is nonsense.  It can't possibly have anything to do with me... I eat EXTREMELY well... too well in fact, especially if you ask the scale in my bathroom.

Viewfinding

I like to think of myself as a photographer-in-training.  I have a basic dSLR, a couple of decent lenses (until I broke one of them recently), and ambition.  What I lack is time, skill and the trained eye of a pro.

To help with the latter two, my wife bought me a few photography books for Christmas; namely, The Digital Photography Book series by Scott Kelby.  These are great books.  They're simple, funny, and easy to understand.  There are step-by-step instructions on how to capture great images and ideas on how to think differently when looking through the viewfinder.

I suppose as Pea gets older and more self-sufficient, I will be able to spare more time, cultivate some skill and train myself to capture better images... to see things differently, and to use my camera to its full potential.  Until then, I'll just keep on keepin' on.

Here are a few I managed to capture in The Distellery this Summer, long before I knew the difference between f/stop and aperture.  Most of you will easily spot the overexposures and poor composition.  But I like 'em.

 
Here's where I hope to get, over time - http://advanceafewstepsback.blogspot.com. A few of these are hanging in our house.

With food like this, who needs arteries?

Backgrounder: I'm doing this 30-Day Blog Challenge.  This is blog post #1, covering the "Favourite Comfort Foods and Why" topic.

As a French Canadian, I am genetically predisposed to love many disgusting and unhealthy foods.  One need only look up a recipe for graisse de roti (rough translation: pork fat spread) or cretons (rough translation: ground pork spread) to understand just how bottom of the barrel I'm talking about.  It's truly amazing that anyone in my family makes it beyond 50 years of age.

But, not all of the comfort foods I hold dear involve intense indigestion before lunch (cretons is a breakfast food).  Chief among them is Paté Chinois... you anglos might know it as Shepherd's Pie.

Simple concept, really: loads of mashed potatoes, cream corn, corn niblets and ground beef layered together, topped with pepper and served with ketchup. 

If you add anything else - peas, carrots, beans, etc. - the code of my ancestors compels me to send a large vest-wearing motorcycle enthusiast to your house for a quick chat. 

I'm serious.  A biker.  A French Canadian biker.  To your house.

Seriously.

My paternal grandmother made it better than anyone you'll ever meet.  That's because she added so much love that we just can't replicate the taste.  Awww, I know.  Also, it appears, she added a few spices and extras that she never told anyone about, so yeah, we literally can't replicate the taste.    

My aunt comes a close second... I think she spied on my grandmother during in camera cooking sessions.  My Mom makes a pretty mean Paté too.  But nothing compares to the grandma version.

What makes Paté Chinois so comforting?  Well, if you haven't caught the link to my grandmother yet, no amount of explanation could help.  Let's just say she comes to mind every time I even think of making the dish, and I instantly feel comforted.

By the way, I know you are salivating at the mere mention of cretons, so here's how you make a "health conscious" version (which, as an aside, I believe is technically impossible):

PS - Yes, I also love pea soup, for you stereotypists out there.

Intellectual Property Borrowing

I'm going to borrow an idea from saracasm, who borrowed an idea from Domesticated Momma, who borrowed an idea from some other blogger out there in blogland.  It's called the 30-Day Blog Challenge, and the idea is that every day for 30 days I write about a topic from a pre-defined list. 

Here's the list:

1. Current Relationship
2. Where would I like to be in 10 years
3. Top 5 Pet Peeves
4. Views on Religion
5. Favourite Comfort Foods & Why
6. Zodiac Sign and Does It Fit?
7. Favourite Childhood Toys
8. A moment you felt most satisfied in your life.
9. If you would have any job in the world what would it be?
10. Your guilty pleasures
11. Put your Ipod on shuffle and write first 10 songs that pop up
12. Bullet your whole day
13. Somewhere you would like to move/visit
14. Earliest Memory
15. Write 15 interesting facts about yourself
16. Your views on mainstream music
17. Your highs and lows this last year
18. A book you could read over and over and never get sick of
19. Your biggest regret in life
20. How important you think education is
21. One of your favourite TV Shows
22. How have you changed the past 2 years
23. Post 3 pics of famous people you find attractive
24. Your favourite Movie & What its about
25. Someone who fascinates you and why
26. If you had $1,000,000 to spend how would you spend it?
27. A problem you have or have had in the past.
28. Something that you miss
29. List 10 people dead or alive you would invite to dinner , include the menu.
30. Goals for the next 30 days!

A few guarantees up front: (1) it won't happen in 30 days, (2) it won't happen sequentially, (3) it won't be without random interruptions, and (4) it's unlikely that I will cover all 30 topics.

Essentially, this will be nothing more than a tool I will bastardize use to help focus my thinking and writing. 

I suppose, for those of you who also read sarahcasm's blog (and you should), you can compare our answers and then, in turn, start your own blog dedicated to comparing the two of us.  If that is your intent, I am at once honoured by your flattery and deeply creeped out.

So, I'll start when I start. 

By the way, there's a logo that seems to go along with this challenge, but it's a little dainty for my liking, so I am going to omit it from my post.  Trust me, it's for the best.

What's that you say?  You demand a picture with every blog post?  No matter how dainty?  Ok, ok, here it is.

What did I tell you?  Dainty, right?  Rule #1 - always listen to me when I warn you of excessive daintiness.

WWYBP, 2.0

Pea, running for cover?

Yeah, it's been a while.  Whatever.  I've been busy and I've been lazy and I've neglected blogging.  As Pea would say, "shocking behaviour."  I'm sure your lives have been on standby since I last posted nearly a year ago.  How you all carried on, I will never understand.

So, I'm starting over.  Let's call it what.will.you.be,Pea 2.0.  

When you start over, you usually do something a little different, right?  So, to start, I'm abandoning the "I hope Pea never..." schtick to start each post.  In the extensive market research I have been conducting over the past 10 months, it turns out most of you were skipping over that paragraph anyway, and you'd be surprised by how long it took me to create that one line.

Also, "the Pod" will henceforth be known as "my wife."  Turns out "the Pod" wasn't the endearing term I believed it to be.

Pea, though, remains Pea.  

Ok, now, what to tackle first?  Wait for it... wait for it... farts.  That's right, I waited over 10 months, stored up all kinds of experiences and good times, and I am choosing to start with farts.

One day, not too long ago, Pea came home from school with a new reaction to farts and fart perpetrators.  She applies her reaction equally to her own farts as she does to mine, and really, to any noise that sounds remotely like a fart.  

Here's how things typically go down.  In this example, Pea is the farter, and I am the long-suffering but necessary smeller:

Pea: [FARTS, GIGGLES] (She gets the giggling from me... actually, she gets the farting from me too.)
Me: Oh, what do you say? (Correct answer: excuse me.)
Pea: RUN FOR COVER!  I FARTED!

Then she proceeds to run from the room at top speed, laughing her ass off, which usually leads to more farts, and in turn, more laughter.  Usually, it's funnier than the bridal shop scene from Bridesmaids.  The only exception would be the odd time she thinks she hears one of us fart at the grocery store or in the mall. Then, not so much.

This scenario is funny enough when it plays itself out in our house.  But, let's not forget that she picked this little golden nugget up at school... which means that, on any given day, Pea's teacher has to deal with roughly a dozen instances of 30 children running around a classroom, frantically "looking for cover" from a fart or fart-like noise.

I think we can all agree that that's what makes teaching so rewarding.

There you have it.  what.will.you.be,Pea 2.0.  Same old nonsense, 100% more fart references.

You're welcome.