goodbye spectacles! thanks for the years of service.


tomorrow i go for my laser eye surgery to upgrade to some better eyeballs.

i hope the new ones have x-ray vision! or super far away binocular vision! or crazy blue eyeshadow cartoon character vision!

i bet those are all 'extra'.

also

do i tell my monday ballet teacher i've been cheating on her?
will she smell the studio on me like someone else's cologne?
IS THAT LIPSTICK ON YOUR COLLAR?

i'll tell her it didn't mean anything.

this is now a ballet blog

do you remember the fresh prince episode where aunt vivian takes the ballet class cause she used to take ballet when she was younger and she falls all over the place and ends up crawling on the floor to get to the door? or the friends episode where monica takes the tap dance class? or billy elliot before he gets good when he’s walking/kicking/having an adolescent flip out down the road?

yeah those people are all better than i was last night in the drop-in class.


let me tell you a little secret about ‘beginner ballet’. it’s not actually for beginners. it’s ‘beginner technique’ meaning actual dancers in POINTE shoes are taking these classes to brush up on their (not at all) basic skills.

i knew i was in trouble when i walked into the class to people doing stretches in splits. yeah no problem i’m wearing a bun and my monday teacher says i have pleasing arms.

NO DICE HERE FOLKS. i had my leg up on the barre/air/behind me somewhere i didn't know was there; i danced across the floor in groups of 4 in what can only be described as a flying banshee doing a crab walk. i was AWFUL. just awful. and it was still awesome.


whenever i did somewhat manage to get one of the fifty five footwork movements to correspond with one of the hundred and fifty five different arm movements, i felt like i’d won the lottery. and with the lottery had bought myself some dance skills.

THIS STUFF IS HARD. and here i thought nearly 9 months of beginner ballet at the other place would have prepared me for something. i did bump into a real ballet dancer in the washroom! that's something! i said 'excuse me' and she said nothing but still. nice little exchange i think.


AND i sweated right through my shirt. AND i ran into the girl beside me while attempting my fifteenth consecutive pirouette. AND the class had to be stopped, just for me, more than once so i could be moved to a safe distance where my kicking and jumping and arabesques couldn’t endanger the lives of any more people.

i felt EVERY centimetre of my body. every flailing, leaping, backwards bending centimeter and even though it was the most embarrassing, exposing, completely revealing hour and a half of my life, i can’t wait to go back next week and make even more of a leaping, flailing, backwards bending fool of myself.

other dancers beware. no really stand back.


x

tippy trippy tip toes


on monday while waiting for my ballet class to begin i overheard one of the pilates instructors (the studio is for both dance and pilates) talking to her students about how she teaches ballet at a place in toronto called dance teq.

when i got home i looked it up and not only is it a beautiful studio by the waterfront with real sprung wooden floors and live piano accompaniment, it’s also where the national ballet of canada dancers go to rehearse. UH, NEATO BANDITO! and the teachers are all former national ballet dancers. so like three strikes you’re cool and i’m totally going tonight for a drop-in to see what this joint is all about.

maybe i'll meet some professional dancers and we'll become life long dancer friends and every time we go anywhere together we'll pirouette down the sidewalk hand in hand. like how me and jared do.

WOAH, that's deep.

i think my favourite thing about these fridge magnets is they make you feel like an actual poet and all you have to do is ram words together. in jeremy's case they make him feel like a regular comedian. xx

i can't wait! (icantwaiticantwaiticantwait).


today upon returning home from work i was greeted with an envelope full of mail from our new apartment!

all of which had been personalized by method of TYPEWRITER. no guff.

included in the cheery envelope that had arrived from a time of simple pleasantries was a welcome letter from the apartment, a copy of information for new tenants from the landlord and tenant board which (as mentioned in the letter) is something a good and responsible landlord should provide to all newcomers, and a pamphlet for tenant insurance.

WELL WOAH!

knock my socks off with your professionalism and 50's approach to doing business! i like it. also i love how many times the welcome letter says 'welcome to your new home'. it's in like 3 different paragraphs.

this is going to be the nicest apartment in the world! picnics on our lawn all summer!

and you don't need to worry about bringing the lemonade, our new place grows that on trees.

on the topic of art

yesterday we saw police captain mcgoose (may not be his real name) on top of the cop shop near our place. so glad to see geese are finally making careers for themselves!

one time a canada goose bit my thumb when i was a little slow in handing him over some breadcrumbs so hopefully they're obligated to take some courses in manners as part of their job training.

culture vulture art fart

hello! welcome to the ago! my name is jennifer robeson and i'll be your docent today. we're going to take a little look at the highlights of the ago or what i like to call 'the tour of things jeremy and i found interesting'.

admission is free!

this painting entitled 'isaak abrahamsz massa' is by frans hals. frans was a dutch painter during the dutch golden ages which is a time in history when dutch people were wearing a lot of gold accessories. JUST KIDDING! it was a time in the 17th century when the dutch were doing a lot of neat stuff, scientifically and artistically speaking.

most famous for his portrait painting, frans works were special because they often showed his subjects in very relaxed and expressive poses when typically portraits at the time were very proper and posed. why just look at isaak here! i bet he's so glad frans is painting him and not some one else who would most definitely pooh pooh his wild sideways chair sitting.

also interesting, the holly sprig that isaak is holding is a sign of fidelity meaning if isaaks wife saw this painting she could immediately shelve any fears of isaak getting a little side action with the ladies (possibly also cause he's gay though). (but that is my own assumption based on his blusher).

next we have 'the peasants wedding' by pieter brueghel the elder. old pieter was a renaissance painter which means he's probably had a beard since he was four and he always opens up doors for old ladies.

pieter was very interested in peasants and the daily life of peasants which is interesting because most painters up until that time were interested more in rich people and rich people activities. they thought the poor were uncouth drunkards who threw wild wanton parties.


sounds like fun to me!

i like this piece in particular because it's how i hope our wedding turns out. a drunken mess of people with their pants unbuttoned.

this is my favourite painting in all the ago! if you go and see it in real life the colours of the skin are so amazingly realistic. like you can see veins and real variations of flesh tones and she really looks and seems real. she's called 'the little shepherdess' painted by a man named paul peel and i think she must like living at the art gallery sitting around nude all day not paying any attention to her sheep whatsoever.

NEXT! now we move onto contemporary works which in my opinion means stuff people salvaged from the recycle bin but there definitely are some interesting works so maybe i just don't get most of it? also visiting this section of the gallery did inspire me to make some rather unique art of my own out of kleenex so maybe the point is that art is in everything? or don't ask questions cause it makes you seem uncultured. or i forgot my art supplies at home but look what i made out of coke cans.

this piece is called 'helga matura' done by gerhard richter. helga was a high class prostitute who was killed mysteriously and gerhard did this work as a tribute to her upon her death. i like that story. not the death part but the pretty picture tribute part.

gerhard projected photos he had taken onto canvas and painted them and blurred them and out comes this nifty smudgy oh so dreamy effect.

jeremy and i both loved the wall of marcel dzama's pictures. from far away they have this adorable quality like you think it's going to be a picture of sunshine and lollipops and sleeping beauty on horseback and you get up close and they're these extremely graphic sometimes pornographic images paired with vampires and cowboys and bats and animals with people legs.

also he's from winnipeg! go winnipeg! i've never been to winnipeg. maybe the cold air makes you draw things weird so he isn't actually talented just his brain is frostbitten.

this last piece is called 'forget it' by yoko ono and it really busts my chops. forget what? cause if you mean this art piece i would be able to forget if you'd just tell me what i'm supposed to be forgetting.


the docent we had said she wrote a letter to yoko asking what the piece meant and yoko wrote back that 'art was subjective' and 'what did she think the piece meant to her'. i hate those sorts of answers! does that mean you don't know? i'm going to write yoko ono a letter myself and tell her i think this piece is sad because it has no identity and could she please give it one so it won't feel so lost in a universe where everyone clings to definitions. and then if she writes back that subjective blah blah answer i'm going to send her an apple with a paperclip in an unmarked manila envelope.

and that concludes our tour! i sure hope you've enjoyed yourself. be sure to visit our gift store on your way out! we have a special on kleenex art.

pitter patter let's get at er!

i love that it takes me no more than 35 minutes to get home from work every day and i love that jeremy and i walk part way together in the morning and i love that i squeeze out every possible moment of life living outside of work living like how you get every last smidge of toothpaste out of the tube even if it involves using some sort of smidge coercing contraption.

i hope i'm always this lucky. or i hope if i ever have to commute it will be the year 2035 which would mean transporter pods will have been invented.

dear yesterday and today, thank you.


i can't wait to tell you about our wonderful trip to the art gallery and how we spent all weekend apart from that out of doors and i just have so many other things to tell you too cause the sun is shining and my brain bean sprouts are just popping up all over the place! brain bean sprouts is a tongue twister.

sunday evening's are perfect for eating something really delicious and watching weird made for tv movies aren't they? yeah i so agree. talk soon.

x

seasons

i love jeremy.

if anyone wonders i still love him with the same feelings of intensity i felt when i knew i loved him those years back. well that's not even true cause i love him more. and tomorrow more than that and two years from now i'll probably love him so much that my head will be a giant heart shaped melon and jeremy will be embarrassed to go places with me or he'll buy me some sort of corrective baseball cap to cover up my heart shaped deformity.

and i also love spring/summer.

i feel like i've woken up from a slumber these last two weekends with this warmer weather and this influx of happy city people and the world has again come alive and the trees have again grown their little green solar panels and i feel NEW. refreshed.

i said to jeremy just yesterday that being outside makes me feel like a real human being. i feel air going in and out of my lungs fresh from the trees that have made it. i feel the weather coming before it's here. i hear birds. i see sky and remember my size and am awed.

i hope everyone is having a grand ol weekend and if it's not up to snuff just get outside and close your eyes and take a big ol breathe in of the season that's coming cause it's going to be a goodie.

x

chubby wubby wasn't chubby wub he?


how cute is this little guy? we took a picture of him during his daily 3 second rest from pile driving sunflower seeds.

i want to poke him and see if he's that round for real or if he just has his winter parka on. or shake him (carefully) and use him as a maraca.

here we go again!

most of you know that we've been unhappy with our elephant neighbour situation so we've made a decision to change our space and anyways steph has left the building so what incentive is there to stay?

we found this place and at first were thinking the description must be some sort of hilarious rental joke. estate? lawns? i was sure we'd have to walk through the back of a magic wardrobe to get there.

but no jokes here! only sprawling lawns and oaks.

also, we're only ever renting places with cool slogans now.

i can't wait to have you all over! well one at a time, the estate has strict rules about overloading the grounds.

x

happy earth day!

if anyone needs me, i'll be hanging out in the google lagoon.

family ties

a while ago my uncle sent me a cd full of old family photos. mostly these were fascinating to me because there were all sorts of photos of my dad when he was young but recently i came upon a section entitled 'robeson wedding' and boy what a treat! this is edith and carmen, my grandma and my grandpa on my dad's side, and not only was their wedding one classy affair, their honeymoon couldn't be closer to how we hope to spend ours. it's uncanny really!


let's take a look see. . .


aw!! i love her hat veil and her cute little shoes and her ginormous flower arrangement. i hope my grandpa helped her lug that sucker around.

looking at old family photos is so COOL. like who the heck are these people? also the lady on the right needs a smile and an underwire STAT!


i love the looks on their wee faces. maybe this was grandma's best friend? hard to tell but i think one bouquet is slightly less massive than the other. i guess allergies weren't really a thing in the olden days.


sometimes i can't decide who is cuter between my grandma and my grandpa.

grandma wins!
ok here they are on their honeymoon. i love the rustic look of this cabin. when we were booking our honeymoon we kept passing up things that offered turn down service for things with outdoor fire pits.


i love this shot!! and i love how they incorporated shooting things into their honeymoon.



i think this one (above) looks like me!




jeremy loved these canoe ones. he also said you can tell they were into photography cause they took some pretty cool shots and i can't imagine cameras were as easy to operate as they are now. HOLD IT! HOLD IT! i like this canoe.

i wonder if grandpa did most of the rowing and grandma just fussed with her hair.

beautiful. even in sepia tone.

i wonder if you had to wear sunblock in the olden days? i bet not. i bet you could roll around in butter and lay there until supper and come out perfectly done just like a turkey.



that's it, jer and i need matching cottage pant suits!

love love love it. these photos just scream me and jer to me and jer. but maybe it's one of those things were you believe a thing so that's what you see cause you believe it to be so. but i believe that i am meant to spend my honeymoon with jeremy laying on rocks in much this fashion. and i believe it even more after seeing photos of family before me doing that same thing.

fun before work activity

this morning me and jeremy took turns standing behind each other and letting the other fall into each others arms, which is a game of falling and trust.

i fell easily and jeremy not so easily but this could be due to the ease in which i will fall on anyone and the nervousness of jeremy to drop himself on little ol me despite my insistence that 'i can take it'.

i think people do this exercise at re-hab? to me it seemed a fun thing to do at quarter to eight in the morning.

I TRUST YOUUUUUUU WEEEEEEEEEE

also it would have been funny if jeremy hadn't have caught me and i bonked my head on the ground and had to call in a sick day cause our trust exercise went awry.

has everyone seen this already?


holy crumb doodle bells! get out your tish-yous!

stuff like this gets me every time. right in the ticker.

poem


fuzzy wuzzy was a tree

fuzzy wuzzy had no leaves

fuzzy wuzzy wasn't fuzzy was he?

yes he was fuzzy that's what i already said.

i am a registration volunteer/super hero


yesterday, lucy joined me on my second annual volunteering adventure for the world wildlife fund cn tower climb for climate change. this year, as last, i was a registration volunteer registering helping to register between 5000-6000 climbers who all raised a minimum of $75.00 going directly to help fight climate change by punching it's lights out with huge wads of cash.

even though i felt like i was going to ralph about halfway through (blame it on the magnum of wine and 3 hours of sleep the night before) it was, as last year, a really wonderful community experience. to volunteer is to give of your time and your skills to a greater good but more than that it's to be part of a group of people who want to do something outside of what is required. who want to work not for money, but for the pleasure of knowing that your efforts are important and invaluable.

because i'm ridiculous i like to think things like 'i am helping to save the world!' and 'today i took on climate change and won' but truthfully, you can think whatever you want. and you can feel as good as you want. because what you're doing is good. and is helping. and is, in part, saving the world.

what a wonderful word


i like to contemplate on the loveliness of this word and its meaning and its importance and its value and its worth and i like how it is made out 'cheer' and 'full' which are also nice just by themselves.

i bet 'cheer' and 'full' met, moved into together rather quickly and got married at a lovely seaside resort on the sunniest day of the year.

letters

dear wedding dress,

last night when i went to see you for the first time i was a little nervous. even though i tried on your much bigger sibling sample dress in the store a few months ago i was worried the smaller you from spain wouldn't know me or like me or would feel a little disoriented from your journey overseas.

it seems though, that you were actually made for me. you're a bit roomy in the bust and the sides but i can tell you really want to be perfect and already, you are.

you're going to live with lucy for a few months and i promise she'll take very good care of you. i'll visit when i can and soon we'll be at the alteration place together where you'll be taken in and sewn up and you and i will at last be one and i will never take you off ever even in the shower.

welcome to canada dress! i love you already.

x

in case you ever wondered...


you live here with us still. xo

an easy country charm

i know it will come as no surprise that jeremy and i had another lovely weekend at our country home but we DID. and it was just as wonderful as it always is. this weekend we actually had it to ourselves cause jer's dad is in the uk visiting family which makes the whole 'we like to pretend the place is actually ours' much less awkward.

here's jeremy firing up the ol hot tub. and my coat in the background after its first ever go round in the washing machine. we did about a years worth of laundry this weekend. some people spend long weekends at a place like this having wild naked hot tub parties, while others do laundry and attempt to feed birds off their head! to each his own is what i always say. or to each its own. whichever is the correct way to say that is how i always say it.

also i bet jeremy would like to vote for the naked hot tub party for next time.

we like to play a game where you go around your parents house and pick the things you'd get rid of and what things you kinda like cause sometimes parents hit the nail on the head with decorating and sometimes they make a weird garden decoration out of the nail by shaping it into a dragonfly. i like these things though. i think they're old wash basin thingers? i wonder if i'd have washed my face more in the olden days cause the necessary utensils were so cute. i guess we'll never know!

soup before creation.

soup during creation.

soup after completion of creation! it's potato leek and bacon and it's just one more thing jeremy can do with his eyes shut, balancing on a ball, while he whistles show tunes.


fireplace, hot toddy, slippers, dog bed..this is all a bit ridiculous. there actually was no dog this weekend as she's gone on holidays too. i had a little lie down on the dog pillow to fill the void though and jeremy scratched my ear and gave me a treat. WOOF WOOF WOOF WOOF i love weekends.

i hope everyone else got a biscuit and an ear scratch too.

x

we're getting married in pleasantville


it's just SO cute here.

i can't wait for when all our family and friends join us in 1952 to celebrate this joyous occasion.

remember in who framed roger rabbit when they're driving through the tunnel and they come out in toon town and it's all sunny and singing? that's actually bloomfield. they just changed its name to protect the identity of the village so it could continue with its business of being the darlingest town in southern ontario.

peanut butter partners

we made these this weekend partly because the name of the recipe was so cute. it reminds me of cowboys and holding hands. when we'd finished them i thought this would be something i bet i'll make for our children that they'll really love. these and the castles of hardened sugar i hope to master.

you take a baguette, slice into 1 inch thick pieces, make sandwiches of the slices with peanut butter and banana, put them in a baking dish, dump magic sauce on them (eggs, milk, vanilla, nutmeg, cinnamon, brown sugar, dash of salt), refrigerate overnight, bake the next morning in a 450 degree oven for 12 minutes, (turning after 6 minutes), plate them (more banana slices on top and some maple syrup) and buckle up for the tastiest thing you've had before 11 am since forever.

they're seriously something that should be served at a fair next to the funnel cake except most people would tell you that you can't eat funnel cake for breakfast and i'm here to tell you peanut butter partners are definitely for dessert. i mean breakfast.

here they are all stacked up and really excited about the future that awaits them.

bathing in the magic sauce. when you take them out the next morning they've pretty much soaked it all up. pigs!

ohhhhhhh yeahhhhhhhhhh. also real maple syrup? you know you're at a parents place when...



one bite in! sometimes when you cut a piece off, melted peanut butter oozes out the sides and you think you've died and gone to heaven and you feel relieved knowing heaven serves really decadent breakfasts.

having long hair on a windy day is fun and a little bit dangerous


for a moment i thought HEY THIS IS GOING EVERYWHERE and then i realized HEY THAT'S NEAT NOW I CAN BUMP INTO PEOPLE AND BLAME IT ON THE WIND/MY HAIR.

so good news, all in all.