Listen to the Rain

sashagee is feeling much better now and has taken to domesticity--to wit, she has acquired a sourdough starter and now is baking every day. Well, baking is a little bit of a misnomer. She certainly has baked several breads, apple bread and banana bread, but a lot of the sourdough starter goes into making flatbreads. She takes the discard, fries it up in a pan in butter and puts Trader Joe's everything bagel seasoning on it, and then we eat it. I put labneh from the Middle Eastern Grocery Store on it, which goes perfectly with the extra sourness of the discard. I'd honestly never thought of sourdough flatbread before, which is a little weird because of course it was the original flatbread.

Tonight begins the holiday of Sukkot, the eight-day end of the High Holy Days where we are told to dwell in a temporary structure. There's a huge variety of laws about how to build this structure--the roof must be made of plants that are disconnected from the ground, and they must be thick enough that the inside is shaded but thin enough that rain can get through, and there must be walls on three sides (but not the fourth side), but none of it applies to me because living in a fourth-floor condo there's no way I can build a kosher one. It's common to put sukkot out on a balcony but that requires a balcony that's open to the sky, since a kosher sukkah may not have a roof over it, and the balcony out back is completely roofed over. As such, tonight we're going to a picnic in Wicker Park where Mishkan is going to have a sukkah set up, so Laila and I can go into the sukkah and perform the ancient ritual of shaking the lulav and the etrog. Last year when we went Laila really charmed a older couple that was there, and I'll bet she'll do the same thing again.

I went to a wedding but haven't had the time to really write about it, so there'll probably be a backdated post showing up in a few days.

I started playing Hollow Knight again as well, and in an hour and a half or so over the last two nights I've beaten the Enraged Guardian and finished off the Crystal Peak and then gone back to the City of Tears, climbed the Watcher's Tower past the guardian knights and found the last of the Dreamers. I think that means I could technically go beat the game, but I still haven't found whatever lets me pass through those black smoke pillars or done any of the DLC stuff. I haven't even beaten the Mantis Lords! I wanted to finish this before October but I guess it is technically a spooky October game so if I finish it in the first week, that'll be good enough.

Alright, it's almost dinner time. We're going to a picnic but for Laila-related reasons we're eating first and only bringing dessert. It'll still be a lovely time.

A couple weeks ago, greyselke texted me out of nowhere after years--the last time I saw her was when I went to Philadelphia in 2015--and said that she and her family were going on a road trip that would lead them through Chicago and were we free to meet up? We were, and so yesterday the planned day arrived.

sashagee and Laila and I arrived just a little late at Yolk in the South Loop and we waited. And we waited, and we waited, and forty-five minutes later greyselke and family arrived--they were staying up in Skokie and had driven into the city and then taken the L but slightly misjudged the time. Fortunately, despite the larger crowds showing up, 9:45 a.m. was still early enough for brunch that they were able to seat us in a few minutes. I sat with Laila on my right and greyselke's elder daughter on my left, and we caught up over salmon on salad (me) and red velvet French toast (greyselke's elder daughter and sashagee). I was a little worried about Laila around new people, but she's still young enough that it's all the same to her--and later on she really took to greyselke's daughters.

After brunch, we walked over to the Field Museum and met one of greyselke's family friends there, a man whose wife runs the Women and Children First bookstore in Andersonville, along with his two-year-old daughter. She was more talkative than Laila but less active--we were chasing Laila all over the place and trying to prevent her from climbing onto the dinosaur exhibits, but the other girl mostly wanted to be carried. Laila was happy to run around while sashagee chased after her and greyselke talked about our lives:

Me: "So, you work for the hashtag deep state?"
greyselke: "Well, they have health care."

until Laila ran back and wanted me to pick her up, then sashagee got a break. But in the end, it was greyselke's daughters that came to the rescue--they, especially the older one, really took to Laila, holding her hands as she walked between them and arranging a nest where they all sat in each other's laps. Even though Laila couldn't talk to them very well, or maybe because she couldn't so she was pure cute. Regardless, they all had a lovely time in the Pleistocene megafauna section until it grew too late and we had to go home to put Laila to bed for her nap, with a promise to meet up again later in Andersonville.

Laila went to bed late but she woke up early, so when we texted greyselke's family they hadn't arrived yet. We got Laila changed and snacked and walked down to Andersonville, and after a brief pop into Ándale Market for the Carolyn's Krisps cookies that Laila tried and loved at the farmer's market a couple weeks ago, we entered the bookstore and were followed a couple minutes later by greyselke and company! We all hung out in the children's book section and greyselke's daughters read mostly quietly while Laila ran around trying to pull basically all the books off the shelves, and when the store had ten minutes to closing, sashagee picked out a fold-open book for Laila and we bought it and went outside, followed a bit later by greyselke's family friend. His daughter and wife were going home to spend some time together but he came with us to dinner--technically, it was sashagee and I coming with them to dinner--and they followed our suggestion of vegan tacos, especially because it was literally a block away. The only interruption to our meal came when Laila was being rambunctious and I offered to go take her outside so she could run around. greyselke's younger daughter immediately asked if she could come, and I said sure, and then her elder daughter asked if she could come, and, well, the more the merrier, so we all went outside and they ran around and played with gravel near the trees and held Laila's hands as they walked until we were told that the food had come. greyselke's younger daughter didn't originally want to go back, but food drew her in.

I got the vegan chimichanga and it was delicious. greyselke's older daughter got the enchiladas, but she wasn't a big fan of spicy food. Laila got a couple tacos, and a bunch of people got various flavors of horchata. We ate our food, and drank our dranks, and went out to ice cream afterwards and at last had to say goodbye. But we got greyselke's home address so we can at last send her nengajō and hopefully visit her in the future, and she told us if we go to Philadelphia to visit everyone (as we plan to do), to let her know.

Laila got hugs from greyselke's daughters. In the end, they really liked meeting her, and it was lovely to see them all too.

I do not have pictures of all the food like I did for the 2018 Dessert Crawl because we were pushing a baby around.

We did the Fork route and the first stop was right next to check-in--Snowie Shaved Ice. I got the grape and sashagee got tropical, and they gave Laila a free little coconut ice which I'm grateful for. She got it all over herself, of course, but she really liked eating it. We went north, stopping at City Olive for the non-alcoholic whiskey and bread with olive oil (and extra olive oil I bought) and then up to Ora for a spring roll. Here too Laila got a free spring roll, which she ate the entirety of.

We went back to the farmer's market and got our maracons, which sashagee was pretty disappointed with since we only got half of one, not even a whole one, and a free one for Laila again, and then over to Collectivo and this was the first disappointment of the day. It was closed--even though the taste was supposed to run until 8 p.m., they had closed at the normal time. One strike. Going to Elixir for a drink and getting to finish sashagee's drink helped assuage my annoyance. We waited for a bit at Big Jones for the next batch of fried pork-sausage-and-rice balls to be done--I didn't get one, obviously--and then continued onto Jeni's, where we were directed to the front counter and they told us they were out. Tons of people waiting in line for ice cream, you can see on that menu I linked that there were five options, and they said they were out. Strike two.

Again, though, disappointment was followed up with happiness. We got mac and cheese and Lady Gregory's and then crossed the street to Ranalli's, where we told the two women who were standing near the food that we had five places left to go and fifteen minutes to do it. They were both grandmothers, so after a bit of cooing over Laila they gave us to-go plates, told us to put their pizza and the mac and cheese in there, and then added even more pizza for us. We continued on to Penelope's but they had a line twenty people long, so we skipped them and went on to Konak where I used to play board games on Wednesdays with people before the Plague Years. They had a bunch of bar food in the back under heat lamps without even anyone standing around nearby, so we took some spanikopita and fries and put them in our take-out boxes and went on to Boca Local Cantina which was...also out of food. Strike three, though more forgivable since it was almost eight. We got our mini cakes from Nothing Bundt Cakes and went back up to Penelope's, where we had the best food of the night. I admit, I was a little skeptical of how delicious vegan tacos would be, even though at Flaco's Tacos the poblano tacos are by far the tastiest, but those tacos with the matcha horchata were the best thing we had all night. They were amazing and we're definitely going back there to get tacos. Honestly discovering that plus all the cooing over Laila made the tickets worth it.

I'm definitely going to mention what happened if there's any request for a survey, though. And next year we'll start early. 3/13 places out of food is not a good look. And I'm especially annoyed at Jeni's! They "ran out"? Please.

We had a lovely brunch with dinaraua and went to baby Shabbat--which was more like baby playtime since the coordinator was on vacation--but this post isn't about that!

After sashagee's parents came and picked up Laila and we finished up with brunch, we hopped on the bus and got home around 2 p.m. We had maybe 20 minutes or so to rest before we had to get out and walk to the bus. Originally, my idea for getting out to Arlington Heights was to go downtown and take the Union Pacific NW line. Then I discovered that there was a Clybourn stop, which would save us from having to take a trip downtown, and then when I put the directions in google again it turned out there was a stop at Jefferson Park, which is even easier to get to, so one quick walk and one late bus which retroactively obviated the need for a quick walk, we were on our way. We got to Jefferson Park with plenty of time, took the outbound platform, or what we thought was the outbound platform. There was no signage up on the platform, and my confusion was justified because multiple other people came up to us and asked us if we were on the to Chicago or from Chicago side. We were on the right side, though, and the train came right on time, we traveled for forty minutes, and then arrived in Arlington Heights.

Downtown Arlington Heights is extremely suburb, with a little district of 100% restaurants right in front of the train station. The streets were all pedestrianized as well, with seating taking up most of the sidewalks and the streets blocked off from cars, so we walked around for a few minutes while we waited for maptekar and her boyfriend to arrive. It turned out they only live ten minutes away so we didn't have to wait very long, and when they arrived we went on another walk around. When we stopped at a map, I looked at the food listings since sashagee was pretty thirsty and I noticed a place called "Mochinut." sashagee has been watching a Youtuber lately called Kimono Mom, a former 舞妓 maiko trainee who now is has a daughter and does Japanese food content on Youtube, and she just recently had a video about mochi donuts! I suggested we go there and everyone agreed, and we walked through a few side streets to find it on the edge of the map. There were no matcha donuts, unfortunately, but there was an ube donut, so sashagee got that and I got the honeydew donut. My donut tasted like a glazed donut, with a nice bit of mochi chewiness, but sashagee's did have some ube sweetness in the frosting. Donuts done, we hopped in the car and drove to Mitsuwa

If you're not familiar, Mitsuwa is an American branch of a Japanese supermarket company. Most of their stores are on the west coast, but there's one here because Chicago has a Japanese consulate, so there is a large group of Japanese natives who only live in America for 2-5 years for their diplomatic postings. There's a Japanese-language newspaper, a school that uses the Japanese curriculum for diplomat and staff children, and Mitsuwa, which has a grocery store but also a bookstore, a food court, a bakery, and a hair salon. They used to have a travel agency--it's the travel agency my parents used when they came to visit us in Japan--but it doesn't seem like they have one there anymore. We have a lot of Asian grocery stores nearby us since Argyle Street (where a lot of Vietnamese people live) is within a couple miles, but there's some items they don't have. Mitsuwa does.

When we first walked in, maptekar pointed out the Kinokuniya Bookstore on the left so that's the first place we went, since sashagee wanted to get some stationary. They grabbed a book off the light novel shelf and asked me what it was and then to read the Japanese title: 地上最強の男：世界へのヘビー級チャンピオン列伝 (chijō saikyō no otoko: sekai e no hebī kyū chanpion retsuden, "The World's Strongest Men: Biographies of World Heavyweight Champions") while I tried not to listen in on the aisle next door. Someone had cornered a poor shop employee and was telling his tale of woe--it sounded like he had had a falling out with his Japanese wife and she had moved back to Japan with the kids, which basically means that he'll never seen them again. Japan has no laws about dual custody and barely any family law, and it's common even for divorced Japanese men to have no contact with their children, much less foreign men--ex-Prime Minister Koizumi Junichiro has no contact with his youngest son since he is divorced. I can see why the guy was talking to a book store employee about it, because the Japanese embassy won't help him and probably doesn't even see it as something that needs help. The kids are with their mother, so what's the problem, they would say. It would be too disruptive for them to change countries again. Time for him to move on.

I looked for a copy of ヨコハマ買い出し紀行 yokohama kaidashi kikō but didn't find it--no surprise, the last volume was published in 2006 so there's no reason they'd have it in stock--and sashagee bought the English volume 2 of My Happy Marriage (the only one they had) and some thank-you cards that said "Thank you berry much" with art of blackberries and vines on them. Then we went over to the grocery store.

As I mentioned, we have a pretty good selection near us, so I was really only looking for things that we couldn't buy locally. We got shiso furikake and yuzu ponzu sauce almost right away, and in the snack aisle sashagee found the rum raisin sandwich cookies that used to come in our Japanese snack box (and for one third the price that website is charging). The real excitement for me, though, came when I came around an aisle and saw that they had Hiroshima momiji manjū! They're the signature snack of Hiroshima Prefecture, maple-leaf shaped pastry with red bean inside, sold everywhere in Hiroshima and in a bewildering variety too. The best ones I've ever had were chocolate-coated and soaked in bourbon, and on Miyajima there are ones with apple or chocolate or custard filling, but even finding them in America is nigh-impossible. I guess you can order them on Amazon if you want to pay $5 per manjū instead of the $4 I paid for eight of them. That's only slightly more of a ripoff than the $30 that Amazon is trying to charge for 高野豆腐 (kōyadōfu, "freeze-dried tofu") but which Mitsuwa was selling for $2.39. sashagee picked up some rice crackers and more cookies, a loaf of shokupan, mitarashi dango and a salmon riceball, and we finally went over to the alcohol section and she seized on a bottle of shiso umeshu. Then we checked out and hit up the food court.

Much of the food court was closed since it was almost the end of the day, but we slipped in just under the wire. sashagee, maptekar, and I went to a stall called Tokyo Shokudo that had a lot of standard-style Japanese food. I was drawn to the curry and I talked maptekar into getting some too, but her boyfriend really wanted ramen and managed to get into Ramen Santōka as the very last order. By the time we sat down every stall in the food court had shut down and most of the people had emptied out, so right after we ate, we left and went back to the downtown near the train station.

It wasn't quite time for our train yet and maptekar suggested getting a drink, but what we settled on was ice cream. We went to Kilwin's originally but while we were looking, the others all decided they'd rather get froyo, so w went to the other dessert place, which I just learned in looking it up is a local place called Berry Yo. They had the little sweetened mochi bits, which was all I really wanted. Then we went to the train station to wait for the train and...it never showed. Ten minutes after it was supposed to arrive, they made an announcement that the next train was coming in 57 minutes. Five minutes later, maptekar offered to drive us home, and we took her up on her offer. They told us about their upcoming housewarming and we said we'd keep inviting them to Shabbat brunches, we went back to her boyfriend's house, changed cars, and she drove us home, ending the saga.

We'll be back. There were too many things there we just can't easily get anywhere else not to, and it was actually easier to get to than I expected. Other than the train snafu at the end, which we couldn't have predicted, and there's also a bus that's supposed to go right by Mitsuwa from Jefferson Park as well if we wanted to take that. We just need to figure out the schedules.

( food pictures! )

Saturday morning was baby Shabbat, where Laila was once again the most active child there. She didn't try to steal any food this time, fortunately, but she constantly wandered around, touched the guitar of the person leading the songs, and sat in the laps of a couple other mothers. The most hilarious part was when she grabbed me and wanted to go wander the halls outside, and as soon she heard the Motzi start and I said, "Laila, listen, it's challah time" she immediately turned and ran back into the room. She knows what she wants and what she wants is food.

She was very angry at Shabbat brunch since it took us a while to order food, but when it came she was perfectly happy. And thosesocks, maptekar, and worldbshiny all came! dinaraua was set to come but caught the plague at the last moment, but hopefully she can make the next one. And I have something to order for the next time, since thosesocks and worldbshiny both ordered the Florentino and it looked absolutely delicious. The people complaining about avocado toast have no idea what they're missing.

After Laila's nap and dinner I said goodbye to sashagee and Laila--Laila usually cries when I leave but this time she was watching Sesame Street and just said "bye bye" nonchalantly--and walked out to take the bus and train combo out to the Embassy Suites Rosemont O'Hare to attend a party. I don't have much to say about the party other than it was a ton of fun, but it was. Everyone said hi when I came in, people told me I looked amazing, I sat next to gracielizabeth for a while, I talked to staina.x about parenting, spacedragon gave me some squid snacks which I sadly had to decline, gmarchan gave me some discontinued Hakushuu whiskey which I absolutely did not decline. I stayed for three hours before the party finally ended and most people went out to the rave, but I didn't have a badge so I texted another group of friends. That led to talking to redpikachu for a few minues before she had to run off and timothy.beier for about half an hour while he caught me up on his life. I even got to see mabown, unlike 2019!

I wrote before that my days of going to ACEN might be behind me, but that might not be true. I told sashagee that the Anime Chicago people were asking me when I was going to bring her to more events, and she watches literally ten times (maybe twenty times) as much anime as I do so she is far more qualified to have anime discussions than I am. Back at ACEN 2019 I went to all the panels about translation and data analysis and tea ceremony and nothing about anime, and that's fine. There are people who go to ACEN and spend the whole weekend playing tabletop games!

On the way to Baby Shabbat we had seen that the Renegade Art Fair was taking place on Clark Street through Sunday, so Sunday after breakfast we got Laila clothed and walked a couple blocks to it. I got some more bar soap, some hot sauce--it was the Bravado Aka Miso Ghost Reaper, which led to a disaster later when I put it on my stir fry and despite my best efforts Laila took a liiiiiiiiiiiiiittle piece of broccoli off the table and put it in her mouth and immediately started wailing--and this:


They're hand-painted! The owner (co-owner?) spent some time as a pastry chef and also lived in Kyōto, and while when I first saw it I was really hoping that they were wagashi I soon came to my senses--wagashi are far too fragile to be worth the risk making for sale in most of America. They're truffles and they're delicious. We had the pandan one yesterday after lunch and hopefully we'll have another one today, and sashagee was thinking this would be good presents for my parents. My mother is not as big a chocolate fan as my father, but these are strongly flavored and I think she'd like them. Especially lychee rose, pineapple cookie, or yuzu.

sashagee wasn't feeling well on Tuesday, so she didn't go to the grocery store like she usually does. That means that my scavenged lunch, made of leftovers on Tuesday, didn't exist at all on Wednesday. We still had a few leftovers but I wanted to save them for sashagee and Laila, so I went to work with the idea that I'd find a restaurant nearby and go there. My first thought was go down and get avocado toast from the coffee bar in the building lobby, but the more I thought about it the less interested I was in that, so I looked online and found a restaurant nearby called Ēma (from אמא, "mother") and another restaurant called Aba (from אבא, "father"). Aba was only open for dinner but Ēma had a nice-looking falafel sandwich that I set my eyes on. Halfway there, though, I walked by the corner where the old Imperial Lamian dim sum place was before the Plague Years doomed it, and saw that it had been replaced by a ramen shop called Kyuramen 九湯ラーメン. I took a moment to deliberate, and then went inside.

There's only so many choices for me at a ramen restaurant, and here there were two. I got the chicken ramen:


The noodles were great and the broth was okay, which is my usual experience with Chicago ramen. Yesterday, though, I realized that it's probably because I usually get non-standard ramen. Ramen broth normally has pig bones and all kinds of stuff in it, and for obvious reasons I'm not going to eat that. When they make veggie or chicken ramen, I imagine they don't put in all the effort to make sure a broth that's as rich and tasty is included, especially when it's obviously that pork ramen is the showcase (as it is here) and other ramen is offered merely as a concession to people like me. All of that said, the chicken in the ramen was also good, very fatty as it should be and sliced like the chāshū is. Not bad.

I'm still a little leery though. They were advertising omurice, which I made at a party for people before the Plague Years, for twenty American dollars. This is a food that is made of 1) egg 2) rice and 3) sauce. There are instructions in that post I linked. Charging more for it than an omelet is straight-up thievery.

That said, when I looked up an article on Kyuramen I found this quote:

Lin has significant ambitions for the company and told reporters in 2020 that he hopes it will become the “Starbucks of ramen in the U.S.”

So, be warned.

The matcha pudding I got to-go and ate later was pretty good, though.

Re: the listening entry in my last post, I was listening to their episodes on Dracula and they brought up a point I hadn't thought about, relating to the very beginning of the book. We know that the coachman that comes to pick up Harker is Dracula in disguise, and that Dracula lives alone in his castle except for his vampire brides. He carries in Harker's luggage himself as well. And soon after arriving, he offers Harker dinner:

The light and warmth and the Count’s courteous welcome seemed to have dissipated all my doubts and fears. Having then reached my normal state, I discovered that I was half famished with hunger; so making a hasty toilet, I went into the other room.

I found supper already laid out. My host, who stood on one side of the great fireplace, leaning against the stonework, made a graceful wave of his hand to the table, and said:—

“I pray you, be seated and sup how you please. You will, I trust, excuse me that I do not join you; but I have dined already, and I do not sup.”

[…]

The Count himself came forward and took off the cover of a dish, and I fell to at once on an excellent roast chicken. This, with some cheese and a salad and a bottle of old Tokay, of which I had two glasses, was my supper. During the time I was eating it the Count asked me many questions as to my journey, and I told him by degrees all I had experienced.
-Bram Stoker, Dracula

So, with no servants, who cooked the chicken?

…

Dracula cooked the chicken.

Back at the office now after a week off (and working from home yesterday). It's honestly been very rough, since sashagee hurt her back on Monday and couldn't do much looking after Laila, or really much anything, at all, so she spent most of the week icing and heating her back and taking naps while I did the work of the home, cleaning up after Laila, taking her to the park during the sudden burst of warm weather--it had been below freezing but climbed back up to 12° during the day--until she was feeling better. On Wednesday my parents came over in the morning and we all went to the zoo on probably one of the last good weather days this year to go. Laila was more interested than the last time she went because the weather was warmer and so the animals were active, but she really got into watching the seals. One of them came right up to the glass and they were nose to nose for a bit, but the seal sadly swam away before my father could get a picture.

Thursday we woke up and took the train out for two days at the grandparents' houses, Thursday at sashagee's parents and Friday at mine. I'm used to a standard turkey dinner at my parents' house, so Thanksgiving dinner was exotic--veggie lasagna and...well, that's mostly it. They also made ham (which I don't eat) and scalloped potatoes (which I don't care for), but fortunately lunch was the real star of the day. Whereas dinner was a bit simple, lunch had a vegetable platter, a cheese platter, smoked salmon, olives and an olive tapenade, grapes, and some pork product I don't recognize. A lot of it was left over from lunch, so I took olive tapenade and veggies with my lasagna and filled out my dinner with that. The best part for Laila other than seeing her family, though, was when bubble wrap was taped to the floor:

Friday we went to my parents' house for a more traditional Thanksgiving dinner with turkey, mashed potatoes, pie, stuffing, and all the stuff I've eaten every year for literally forty years. Hey, if it works, why change it?

Saturday after Shabbat ended we met worldbshiny for frozen custard at Lickity Split, since it is the most wonderful time of the year--maple custard season. I got maple custard with crushed waffle cones and butterscotch and held Laila on my lap while worldbshiny and sashagee chatted, and this outing revealed that the time of us being able to just blithely bring Laila along to friends' events is slowly but inexorably marching toward its end--Laila used to be fine just hanging out on our laps, but now that's boring. When I was done with my custard Laila lost all the patience her little baby body could hold and started demanding to be let down, so I didn't really get to participate in most of the conversation because I was holding Laila's hands while she was marching around. I didn't mind because Laila is the cutest baby in the world, but also it would have been nice to talk to worldbshiny more!

Going back to the office this week made me understand why so many parents are happy that the school year starts up again. I loved spending all that time with Laila but by necessity, all my time was time spent with Laila. Later in the week when sashagee was feeling a little better I could redirect Laila if I had to do some dishes or clean a bit, but otherwise if I wanted to even go to the bathroom I had to put Laila in her crib because otherwise she'd wander off and get into things. This is, of course, why modern life for parents is so exhausting and alienating, because there's never a dull moment when there's a curious baby who wants to get into anything. sashagee spent some time volunteering at a hospital in Ghana and told me that the women in the nearby villages had rotating care systems, where all the children would be watched by one person while the others worked or did chores and they'd switch off who looked after the children. The only thing similar we have is that both sets of grandparents live nearby, and they're generously willing to drive into the city to watch Laila when we ask. But it's no substitute for a community, and we have a society that's specifically built around destroying social bonds.

We still had Thanksgiving together with both families, though, so some traditions survive.

It's back after a long hiatus! At least for this week

sashagee and Laila are out in the suburbs right now, so that Laila's grandparents and great-grandmother can see her, so when I got back from this office it was just me. And since I was just going to the farmer's market by myself, I decided to try to assemble an old-style farmer's market dinner. I haven't posted one in a while because we kind of fell into a pattern of always eating Peking Order on weeks when she was there and getting some other prepared food on off weeks--sashagee's illness has meant that she very rarely felt well enough to actually cook, or sometimes even come to the farmer's market. Now that I'm back in the office on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, though, and she's feeling better, she'll be the main one to be going to the farmer's market if we want to get things before they're all sold out. I'll have to meet her there.

Speaking of being back in the office, it's been okay! The office is even more empty than before, which makes me wonder exactly how things are going to go--my division is only in on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, and quite a few people are permanent work from home. The entire member services division is now work from home, which is a quarter of the floor. We paid for the naming rights on the building, and I expect that the upper management are going to want to keep going into the office as often as they can, but the rest of us? I don't know. Two days in/three days out is my preferred schedule, so I'm happy that's what we settled on--it lets me spend most of my time with my family while also giving me a couple days to go downtown and really buckle down and get work done. Today I went for a walk on the riverwalk and found that the overpriced gelato place I thought had closed forever was still open! The gelateo was still overpriced, but it was definitely delicious.

( Food pictures! )

Slow rest of the week, hopefully. I started reading an actual book on the train to work--Andrzej Sapkowski's The Last Wish--something I've sadly been neglecting for most of the pandemic. The beginning was really good, to the point that I'm probably going to finish it within the week. I used to read eighty books a year before the Plague Years! I don't think I'll get back to that again until I'm retired, what with a daughter to look after and sixty-percent-fewer train rides during the week, but maybe I can do half that. We can hope.

I'm forty years old now as of last Saturday! I'm an old man, finally matching the 👴🏻 emoji that sashagee uses in her phone for me. Except not really, because I'm still in great health and people I meet all assume I'm ten years younger than I am, so I'm doing pretty well for myself. I own a home and I have a baby, so I'm hitting my so-called milestones. And I still have all my hair.

I'm not sure I'm going to have a mid-life crisis, but sashagee says Laila was my mid-life crisis, which is as good an argument as any.

On Saturday, my parents came into town to see us--they were originally going to come the previous weekend but sashagee wasn't feeling well--and give me my presents, which were mostly extremely-dark chocolate. sashagee got me a neon Kirby sign , which we can put up in the kitchen area of our future home. And then we went out to eat at a local restaurant called Gadabout, which used to be a wine, cheese, and bakery specialty shop, and before that used to be an organic grocery store. I give them props for the server knowing exactly what was involved when she asked about dietary restrictions and I said I kept kosher--she told me up front they couldn't accommodate that but they'd keep the meat and milk separate--and anti-props for naming the shakshuka "baked eggs." But when it came all was forgiven:


The potatoes were delicious too, with toasted shallots and a bit of some kind of creme on them.

My parents stayed until Laila's second nap, delayed due to the restaurant trip, and then they went home, but not before telling me that they had put a considerable amount of money into Laila's college fund. More than some people's entire college costs (but not enough to cover a single year at Penn >). They don't expect to live long enough to see Laila go to college, or if they have, they don't expect to have all their faculties. But they want to make sure that Laila can go anywhere she wants. As a high school student, my father got into Stanford but could not afford to go and so went to USCD. He's determined that no one in his family will have to make the same decision.

The rest of the day we took it easy so that sashagee could rest.

On Sunday, her parents came to visit and we got food from the exact same restaurant, and I ordered the exact same thing since it was so delicious the previous time. sashagee got a chia pudding and a chai cinnamon roll since the French toast she had ordered the last time wasn't really that great, even though she had thought she would love the horchata-based sauce it had. We didn't go anywhere or do anything exciting, just ate and talked and let Laila crawl around while sashagee's mother held her and her father played with her, and at her second nap they left to go home--fortunately against the Air and Water Show traffic. This time, though, we did not rest the rest of the day since we had another scheduled event--ribfest!

I was a little bit worried when I first arrived and saw all the pork, pork ribs, bacon, even bacon-infused whiskey, but while waiting in line for a spot that had a brisket sandwich I noticed the rabbi was also in attendance, which made me feel better. When we arrived, we met up with some people from the Anime Club who were nearby--we had missed a house party the previous day due to the aforementioned resting--but pretty quickly got separated from them sashagee picked a particular booth with an extremely long line. According to spacedragon, this year was the first time back after the Plague Years, and the vendor situation was weird. Only six stalls seemed to be even serving ribs and at least one of them was out by 6 p.m. We talked to a couple in line ahead of us after Laila grabbed the man's shirt, and they said they were originally in a different line until the booth announced that no ribs would even be ready until 6:30 p.m.

The brisket was okay. Not worth the hour we waited for it. Laila liked it thought! And the ribs--if she wants to keep kosher it'll be her decision, and we're prepared for "But abba doesn't eat lots of food!" with explaining to her all the rules I follow and asking her if she wants to follow them too. We'll see where that leads.

All in all, a good birthday weekend spent with family.

A few years ago, lisekatevans, worldbshiny, meowtima, and I were out at a restaurant--Margie's Candies, I think--and over conversation I mentioned that I was always confused by the name praline for food since it sounded to me like it was referring to some kind of fish. lisekatevans thought it was hilarious and talked about "saltwater pralines" and "freshwater pralines," and when we said we should do this dinner thing again, we named our group chat "Saltwater Pralines" and met up at least once every month-to-month-and-a-half for dinner until the Plague Years began and ruined all meetups.

I looked through my archives to try to find if I'd written about it, but surprisingly I can't find anything.

Anyway, sometime in late 2019 we went to a tiki bar called Three Dots and a Dash and had a lovely time, and it was suggested that we get back together there on Talk Like a Pirate Day, in September 2020, to buy the $350 Port Royale, a giant pirate ship filled with rum, and drink it all. Well, you know what happened in 2020, and in 2021 (plus Laila), but now that meowtima has accepted a new job and is moving away from our fair city, we didn't have any more time to wait until September 2019, so yesterday we assembled once again.

After walking down the pedestrianized Clark Street, filled with pop-out tables set up on the street, and turned two corners to enter the alleyway leading down to to the bar. When I got to the table, it was dominated by a giant bowl in the middle with five straws poked into it, so I took a few sips and ordered an Old Fashioned, the signature drink of Chicago. But at a tiki bar, well:


Those are peanut-dusted banana chips in the background. I had a papaya salad and spring rolls to go with them.

The giant drink ran out shortly after I arrived, so we decided to order another one. We briefly discussed getting the pirate ship, but it was instead decided to unleash the kraken--the "Shotstapus," with five shots of 151 demerara rum mixed with fijian rum and fruit juice. Shot is a misnomer since each glass was maybe 2.5 shot's worth of drink and we all sipped them because we didn't want to die, but honestly they were better for sipping anyway. The point of a shot is to get drunk faster and at this point it was only 8:30 p.m., so we sipped our drinks, sipped our shots, talked about Pittsburgh, I talked about Laila, worldbshiny talked about her job, and we had a lovely time. At the end of the night, the discussion turned to dessert, and meowtima cast the (weighted) deciding vote for Portillo's so that was our next destination. Most people got milkshakes but I just got fries, since I didn't really want to overload my stomach. At this point it was only 9 p.m., and lisekatevans suggested we go to a place she knew called the Drifter. We walked a few blocks, leaving the heavily-populated Clark Street area and walking through a couple empty streets, before we found a place called the Green Door Tavern. lisekatevans led us through the bar, down the back stairs to the restrooms, and opened a hidden panel in the wall to lead us into the Drifter, a genuine speakeasy still in operation today.

The menu is printed on Tarot cards:


That was the drink I got, and I sat and drank it in the dim light while the bar slowly filled up, the waitress snuck behind me to open the curtains, and a burlesque performer came out and began her act. I have no comment on it, since my back was to her, other than that the music drowned out her singing, which was a shame since it was "Ain't That a Kick in the Head" which sticks in my memory thanks to playing Fallout: New Vegas.

When she was done, the waitress closed the curtain--manually--and at that point it was about 10:30 p.m., so we closed our tab, walked up to the L, and went home. I don't know if this will happen again, since even though I know meowtima will come back to visit we'll all have to have free schedules during that time, but I'm glad we can end the Saltwater Pralines on a bang.

A lot has happened in the last month.

I've already written a lot about Laila's visits to the hospital, so I won't repeat any of that here. But I have some good news after her visit today to the pediatrician for her nine-month checkup (which is why I waited until today to post this)! There was a lot list of questions that sashagee had to answer, about various things that Laila is or is not doing. Is she playing peek-a-boo with us and reacting appropriately to our actions (no, because we haven't really played it with her...), is she trying to pick up things with one hand (yes), is she responding to us using her name to address her (yes), is she transferring things from one hand to the other (sashagee wasn't quite sure, but the doctor gave Laila something to play with and she took it with one hand and transferred it to the other, so that answered that). In the end, the doctor said that Laila was meeting her milestones and even ahead on some of them. We're not out of the woods yet, but we have a lot of reasons to be hopeful!

Ending the long period of almost, almost, Laila finally has teeth! Two front teeth are poking through on her bottom gum, and there are two on either side that are slowly working their way out as well. She's progressed onto real food like cut-up strawberries and bananas and cheerios and bits of pita, though her primary food still comes from baby food. She's even helping to feed herself--it's not easy for her to pick things up and a lot of food still slips from her fingers onto her chair, but she's trying.

And most importantly, she's halfway to crawling! She's kind of wiggling along the ground, like the worm breakdancing move, but it gets her to where she wants to go. Of course, that means that nowhere is safe and now we have to keep an extremely close eye on her because if we turn our backs for too long she'll be somewhere completely different. We definitely need a gate for the internal stairway or she'll take a tumble.

This month's photo is a bit of a surprise to me. I was holding Laila while I made my morning matcha and she kept grabbing for the bowl, and against sashagee's better judgement, I let her try it. Not too much--we certainly don't need a caffeinated baby on our hands--but just a couple sips. I expected her to hate it, since matcha is so bitter and babies and children are evolutionarily conditioned to dislike bitter things, probably to avoid poison.


She thought it was delicious and kept wanting more.

Laila keeps surprising us. We have to keep watching out for her and making sure that her brain troubles don't come back, but she's determined to be a healthy, happy baby.

How is it five months already?

Laila is big enough now that we can't in good conscience call her Little Baby Laila anymore and have started calling her Big Baby Laila. I can't carry her in the crook of my arm when I'm walking around with her, but she's wiggly enough that even if I could hold her there it wouldn't work. She can't crawl yet--she still doesn't have the muscle coordination to move her arms and legs in the right pattern--but her attempts have her slowly scooting backward when she's on the floor, and she'll often drift in a circle when she's rolling over. She can't sit up on her own either but she needs less and less help as time goes on. Even though she can't do it on her own, she loves standing up and jumping.

She has much more interest in our comings and goings. There are times when I'll enter the room and she'll clearly have been wanting to see me because she starts wiggling much harder and smiles at me. She doesn't know how to laugh yet, and she's actually pulled back from some of her earlier attempts to. She used to have a strange gasping laugh that sashagee is pretty sure from trying to imitate her, but she hasn't done that in weeks. She just silently giggles, but that doesn't mean she's silent. She's over in her swing babbling right now as sashagee plays with her.

The biggest change though is that now she's eating!


In the last month we served Laila her first meal and reviews were mixed. She loved eating it but her tummy had a lot of trouble with her food--the oatmeal was especially bad but even the applesauce didn't go down smoothly--so we waited a couple weeks to try again. When we went to the apple orchard last weekend, sashagee's father offered Laila an apple and she spent several minutes just sucking on it and trying to get as much of her mouth on it as she could, so yesterday sashagee made some pumpkin purée and Laila eagerly ate it, and she didn't have any more stomach trouble than usual! All of her fussing at night was well within the expected degree of night fussing.

She has more awareness of the world around her. Originally she used to stare at mirrors and probably thought there was another baby there looking at her, but recently sashagee saw her looking at various objects in the mirror and then looking at the objects around her, so she's realizing that the mirror reflects the world rather than being a portal to another one. She loves watching the sky, and when we go for walks in the evening she'll often stare up at the clouds rather than looking at us or the buildings around her.

What changes will come next?