How to Boston in the Winter with a Little One

With its rich history, vibrant population, thriving industries, and adequate public transportation system, Boston is a great place to live. Junior is now almost four, and in that time I’ve discovered several places that offer space or activities ideal for expending a youngster’s boundless energy. This is especially crucial in the depths of our miserable gray winters. Below is a brief list of Boston landmarks that Junior and I visit on rotation during my days off with him. All these places are easily accessible via the T.

Image source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/masstravel/7115836379

Boston Children’s Museum—Junior’s favorite. We became members since we go at least once a month. His favorite area is the Construction Zone, with the grocery and barbershop of “Boston Black” as close seconds. There’s currently a dinosaur exhibit that has him literally screaming in terror whenever I go near the life-size dinosaur model. I’m sure the museum will become even more exciting for him once he starts getting into the climbing structure that spans all three floors.

Image source: Wikimedia Commons

Boston Public Library—The main branch at Copley Square is a stately structure that seamlessly mixes classical and modern aesthetics. Our usual destination is the dedicated Children’s Library with all sorts of kid-friendly events every day, like Toddler Time and Baby Dance.

By NewtonCourt - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=42402964

Boston Public Market—This newly-completed drain on my wallet (because I have weak resistance to food, you see) has a sizable Kids Corner hidden in the back, where Junior spends his time organizing the cash register and food stall, cooking a meal, or playing with trucks. Bonus: the Greenway Carousel and North End Playground are across the street!

Image source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/ekilby/10683053983

Boston Common—The Boston Common Carousel is a big draw for kids when it’s warm. The nearby Frog Pond is a wading pool during the summer and an ice skating rink in the winter. The Common also has a playground, which I must say requires a lot of vigilance if you have a younger kid—it’s more of an “ages 5+” setup. Close to that is a great big fountain and some food trucks, and it’s nice to eat at the tables in that spot, weather permitting. Bonus: sometimes park rangers on horses go on patrol and say hi!

Image source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/matty1378/6896707768

Prudential Center—Fancy shopping! Fancy restaurants! The Skywalk Observatory! But, really, Junior’s favorite here is Barnes & Noble. No, not because he can read already (don’t judge me, my family already does that), but because it sells toys, too! Speaking of toys—the Magic Beans at the Pru is tiny, innit?

By Tim Pierce (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Boston Fire Museum—Speaking of tiny, this little building a couple of blocks from the Children’s Museum is a cute 10-minute stop for the interested. It’s mostly great for kid birthday parties. I know I had fun! Also: they have an actual Dalmatian to greet visitors! Note: this is not one of our regular places, since it’s so small. I just thought I’d mention it.

TL;DR: Nearby local parks and playgrounds are your best bet for getting little ones ready to nap. But if you’re inclined to make the trip, I recommend the places above! 

Go Pats! (obligatory)

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This post brought to you by ube halaya!

Paint Nite!

Last night I joined the "Oops" Paint Nite event hosted by the Club Cafe in Back Bay. About 12+ people came to relax and have two artists guide them through painting this original work:

The point was not to slavishly duplicate "Oops" -- we were instructed to make it our own, to relax, and not to utter the words, "Mine sucks," "Can you do this for me?" or "I thought this was paint-by-numbers!"

Speaking of dashed hopes, I had assumed that wine was included. I had done something like this before, only it was in the morning and we all got mimosas. Not so here! While the artists were setting up, I schlepped over to the bar and was rewarded with a generous pour of Cabernet. Now I was ready.

The setup: Everyone got a 16" x 20" canvas, three paint brushes, and a palette (a paper plate) with red, yellow, blue, and white paint. One artist (Brian) had the microphone and would paint with us, while the other was the assistant (Kory) who would patrol the room and offer guidance.

Pre-painting tips: 

• Use water to keep the paint creamy
• Allocate space well on the palette for mixing 
• Use the lighter color first when mixing
• Streaks are good

The structure: Brian would explain how to paint a section, and blast awesome music while we went at it. 

Phase 1: To make the background, we mixed white and blue and streaked away. The light source was meant to come from the upper left, so we had to go lighter in that area. If the background got too dark, we could add white to the canvas to lighten it up.

Phase 2: For the ground, we made purple by combining red and blue. Since there would be a tree between the ground and the light source, the right side would be darker.

Intermission: Since the event was supposed to take two hours, we got a break about halfway through. Below is an actual conversation I had with a man peering into the event space:

Him: What's going on in there?
Me: Paint Nite!
Him: What do you do on Paint Nite?
Me: (oblivious) We paint!
My friend M: Did he just ask you what happens on Paint Nite?
Me: (realization dawning) Oh, yeah. That was kinda dumb, wasn't it.

Phase 3: Time for the tree! We mixed white, yellow, and blue to make an intermediate green shade as the base. Then we went for darker on the left side. Finally, a bit of yellow to lighten the right side. The unfinished work below gave me Chewbacca vibes:

Phase 4: Decorate the tree! Here, I chose to honor Sheba's memory by having her be the star. We also made round ornaments colored red, yellow, and orange.

Phase 5: The painting's subject is supposed to be a dog, but since we were to make "Oops" our own, I painted my little peanut instead. When I asked Kory how to make black, she gave me black paint. Ask and ye shall receive!

Phase 6: The pièce de résistance: the cord wrapped around the tree and the seated observer. I used my black paint for this one. Since apparently old-school artists signed their work using the last color they painted with, I signed in black under my spawn's derrière.

Here is the finished product:

Brian ended the night with a call to action: be kind in the face of all the anger and hate floating around out there.

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The next morning, I asked Junior where he was in the painting, and he said, "Right there!" And then he flipped it over onto the floor and announced, "I'm going to hammer it!"

Toddlers, amirite?

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TL;DR: I went to a Paint Nite and painted a thing.

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This post brought to you by winter sniffles! Poor Junior is miserable.

A Review of the Back Bay Chocolate Tour, by a Non-Lover of Chocolate

The Back Bay Chocolate Tour is a two-hour journey to several locations that either specialize in chocolate, or use some sort of special chocolate as an ingredient. The two rules of the tour are:

#1: No chocolate left behind.
#2: Be friendly.

My group had almost 20 people. Here is a summary of our choc-tivities:

Location	Choc-tivity	Reaction
Flour Bakery	Learned history of chocolate chip cookies. Ate chocolate chip cookies.	Publicly declared my love for the tour.
L.A. Burdicks	Told of marriage between interior decoration and chocolate craftsmanship. Given tiny wrapped white chocolate mouse.	Carefully placed mouse in backpack for later. Somehow lost mouse at next stop.
Georgetown Cupcakes	Handed insane menu of specialty cupcakes. Had to protect tour guide from tourists/vultures trying to see what was being handed out.	Ate two chocolate2 cupcakes.
Ben and Jerry's	Lecture about ethical sourcing. Ate brownie fudge ice cream. Easily the best thing I ate on the tour.	Froze to death during lecture due to intense a/c.
Teuscher	Lined up to eat mini champagne truffles.	$30 for 9 tiny balls. No.
Sugar Heaven	Ran wild in the shop.	Will take Junior there if he is especially good.
Gourmet Boutique	Ate a selection of imported chocolates.	Brought extras home for Husband. Forgot to give to him.

I mentioned in the title that I'm a non-lover of chocolate. Let me explain in terms of ice cream: I prefer vanilla. So this tour was fun but my mouth would have been happier consuming every single item on the menu of the Roving Lunch Box food truck.

Every. Single. Item. It will happen, I promise.

TL;DR: Ben & Jerry's ice cream RULES.

This post brought to you by Hump Day!

very polar such vortex wow

Hello. This is Fragrant Elephant reporting from the Northeast, where we got a lovely 10 inches of snow today. The storm started around the same time as the crushing of my hopes for a late office opening. No, we here in Boston are far too stoic to be stopped by piffling frozen condensation. And so we dress in layers, strap ourselves into our hats and boots, and trudge to our paychecks.

This latest storm was special in that the sidewalks hadn't seen a shovel by the time I hit them with my mom's fluffy and possibly witchcraft-enhanced waterproof winter boots. I could feel the burn in my calves as I slogged up the streets to the train station, and from my stop to the office.

This season, comfort may be found by wearing two winter coats: a windproof layer followed by your main coat of choice. I dress in red so that I stand out like a raw, open wound upon the frozen streets. This decreases my risk of getting run over by Boston drivers, who admittedly do slow down and act less (M)asshole-y when it snows this much.

Also key: sweater tights. They are a thing and they are glorious.

Fortunately, the city is less likely to suffer power outages during winter storms, although our TV at work does get the signal knocked out. So there's the silver lining!

Now if you'll excuse me, I must eat my feelings.

This post brought to you by Japanese curry.

Does This Country Make Me Look Fat?

"There are a lot of fat people here," I whispered to Boyfriend as we walked out of the Gillette Stadium after a soccer game last week. "This is America," he replied. 

In the following days, tourists swarmed Boston for the 4th of July celebrations, and I saw parents who looked like they'd eaten their children, and children who looked like they ate their parents. One guy's shirt buttons in the gut area had fled from sheer terror. It was madness!

Know what else is crazy? Here are the Center for Disease Control (CDC) statistics from 2008:

Now, because I live in Boston, whose population typically looks like this--

--I'm used to seeing people whose body types range from skinny to svelte to fill-me-with-raging-jealousy. According to research done by the Pew-Pew-Pew Center for Fragrant Elephants, trust-fund hipsters and students have between them an average body mass index of 18, yuppies generally land around the 21-22 mark, and retirees are notorious for being obnoxiously fit due to playing tennis and/or jet-setting around the world during the miserable winter months.

During the tourist rampage, I was so mesmerized by the all the rolls of visceral and subcutaneous fat on display that I forgot to be smug about being thin (by comparison). Then two days ago, I went on the weighing scale and felt my world collapse into a bleak, howling wilderness of misery. I had gained weight after two months of sitting on my bum playing Xenoblade! NOOOOOO!!!  

Naturally, I consoled myself by going to two barbecues and despondently eating my feelings, which took on the form of pork chops, bratwursts, cheddar hot dogs, couscous salad, chips, carrot sticks, and hummus. To wash it all down, I chugged beers, sangria, and champagne.

Then I resolved to become a better person: sleek and lean, with a side order of sexy. But how?

My previous go-to tactic of running like I'm chasing a shirtless Luke Evans carrying an avocado shake was obviously insufficient. I took to the internet and found this JCD Fitness post that had reasonable, easy-to-digest tips on how to build lean muscle. See, muscle burns more calories, even when at rest. Cardio activities only burn fat. So I have to build! Here's the plan: hit the gym every weekday and work out the target areas. Since my torso currently looks like a water balloon, that gets 3x/week attention. My Amazonian arms will be targeted twice a week, and I'll switch that up with my thunder thighs. Boyfriend and I will do laps in the community pee-spot pool on Saturdays, and rest on Sundays.

Of course, we'll also eat right: good protein, lots of fruits and veggies, and healthy fat.

It will take years of discipline and grueling work, but one day you will see me on the street and say to yourself, "That girl has a fantastic physique, I simply must be her friend, she is obviously a charming and elegant human being."

This I swear, by the Power of Grayskull!

Happy Friday!

Boston Fog!

To think we were worrying about needing rain just a month ago. The New England spring descended soon after Boyfriend proclaimed that we've only had 9% of the rainfall we had last year, because nature hates statistics, apparently. Nature also overachieves, at least around these parts. Not only did we get continuous rain, we also had some terrific fog. Check out this baby from last week:

And here's that same area, today:

Yeahhhh sunshine! Uh, and please ignore my finger on the upper left. kthxbai

Happy Friday! I've got a white sangria with my name on it. What about you?

How to Tell the Seasons in Boston

Here's a handy guide:

TEAM	REGULAR SEASON	BEST ENJOYED...
Celtics (NBA)	November - April	During rainy and windy spring!
Red Sox (MLB)	April - October	During summers with a beer! Or ten!
Patriots (NFL)	September - February	During pretty fall!
Bruins (NHL)	October - April	During the frozen winter!

Feel free to correct me if I got it wrong up there!

News flash: Bostonians love them their sports.

Happy Friday!!!

Morning Walk through Boston

Here are some of the sights that I take in as I make the 25-minute trek to work in the mornings. I usually go up Surface Road, along the wharf.

First, we have a group of buildings just past Fanueil Hall. I took this photo as I emerged from the narrow streets of the North End. The clock tower on the left was the Custom House Tower. Now it's Marriott's Custom House Hotel. Fun fact: it's cheaper than the Marriott!

Here is Tetanus Bridge, which I cross to avoid waiting for the traffic light on a major intersection just up the street. It adds a dash of danger at each crossing: will I snag my hand on a rusty nail and die? Will a flake of oxidized metal gently detach from the bridge and find its way into my open mouth? Will it rot away from its piers and plummet into the icy waters below? So thrilling!

Here is the Barking Crab, which serves its own beer, and also probably seafood, very likely crabs. I don't like having to defeat shelled creatures for my meals, so I usually just get a fish sandwich. This is the place to go for your french fries fix. Sadly, they are not open at 8:50 am when I walk by. I would totes have fries in the office at 9 am.

The final leg of my daily pilgrimage to the paycheck is the Four Point Harborwalk. To the left is the Children's Museum, so there are plenty of snacks children around come opening time.

Here is the Intercontinental Hotel--the glass-faced concave buildings right beside the red-and-glass building that's beside the building that looks like a giant skinny hair roller. Only $300 a night!

And finally, here is the delicious lobster and crab ravioli with shrimp that I had for dinner last night. I believe that shelled creatures are best eaten while stuffed in pasta and swimming in tomato sauce. It was part of my walk home last night so I thought I'd throw it in.

A picture is worth a thousand words. So this post has 6,000 words! You're welcome.

The Land of the Rising Rice Cake, and Beantown

I miss Japan. I'm all natsukashii (nostalgic) for the good ol' times in Kyoto. I spent all morning parallel processing -- working on a spreadsheet and also wracking my brain to see which part of my year abroad rocked the most. So many things instantly come to mind: the mouth-wateringly delicious yet simple food (takoyaki, onigiri, donburi); the social acceptance of youthful raging alcoholism; the hyaku-en (dollar) store where I bought the cute tupperware that still gets compliments to this day; the all-night karaoke joints; the free packets of tissue passed out in street corners; the giant manga stores... AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH SO WONDERFUL

It could be any and all of these things, but I think it's the intertwining of nature and food that featured so prominently during my stay there. Lemme 'splain.

We once trekked up a mountain during fall to visit three temples. I remember a certain someone having to be bribed with chocolate to make that first daunting ascent up a sixty-degree slope, I kid you not, we needed ladders for this hike. The sporty boys were bounding along like mountain goats, while Smoker Me (alas! I used to smoke ze cigarette, je suis désolée) wheezed my way up the "trail." Then we got to the top and the damn temples were waaaaay up a whole bunch of stairs, dagnabit! Fortunately, you could clearly see the temple gift shop from the bottom, so we raced up the steps to get our boxes of traditional fall chestnut buns.

Yours for only ¥3,300!

And then there was the time my host mommy took me to a bamboo forest near our home in the Ukyo-ku area. 'twas fabulous and breathtaking, and at no time did I feel like chopping down bamboo with my samurai sword, not that I had one at the time, how ironic. I ate freshly-pounded mochi afterwards, mochi being an all-season food choice (I'm guessing). Host mom also took me to tsukimi, or moon viewing, and we sat on a boat out on a lake and stared at the moon and ate moon dumplings.

Tsukimi dango: for your moon-viewing pleasure.

There was plenty of home cooked goodness, too, especially when winter came. As temporary adoptive foreign daughter, my job was to make the miso soup every night. After school, I would dutifully take miso paste and dissolve it in boiling water via chopstick. One night, I was told I didn't have to do that, and then they busted out this beauty:

Have you ever seen anything so glorious?

Nabe is a big ol' hot pot with tofu, chicken/beef/seafood, and fresh vegetables in a gently simmering soup stock. Ironically, the best nabe I've ever had was here in the US, but it was made by a Japanese government worker so it totally counts. And we drank sake with gold flakes! Such decadence!

Anyway, back in the land of the rising rice cake, come spring my host mom whisked me to see all the cherry blossoms and OMG THEY ARE SO BEAUTIFUL. Previously, I had been like, "Oh, I've seen this in Washington D.C., I'm sure it's the same in Japan." Readers, I was so very, very wrong. The beauty of the sakura enraptured me. There are a bunch of spots in the neighborhoods of Ukyo-ku with canals and narrow streets and all you see is a tunnel of sakura, their delicate leaves spiraling gently to the ground, quick, get me a calligraphy brush, I am about to compose a poem about beauty and transcendence.

SAKURAMOCHI OMNOMNOM

It's traditional to eat sakuramochi during spring time, so we did that too, with a dash of tea ceremony included. I did not know tea could be foamy, but there you have it. It was, of course, delicious.

Basically, it boils down to this: the Japanese make it a point appreciate the turning of the seasons with season-specific foods. They prepare dishes that take advantage of whatever is plentiful that time of year. Brilliant!

Boston has a similar tradition, except with beer: Samuel Adams brews Summer Ale, OctoberFest, Winter Lager, and Noble Pils. Incidentally, did you know Boston is the sister city of Kyoto? I found out while having this convo with two instructors at the start of grad school:

Fragrant Elephant: 京都の同志社大学で日本語を勉強しました。(I studied Japanese at Doshisha University in Kyoto.)
Instructor: おお！京都はボストンの姉妹ですよね。(Oh! Kyoto is Boston's [unknown word], isn't it.)
Fragrant Elephant: (rictus smile) そーそうですね。(Y-yes, it is, isn't it.)

Then I completely spaced out of the conversation in a futile attempt to figure out what "shimai" means. But do not fear! I still placed into the Can Ask For Directions level of Japanese, which is a step up from Possibly Not A Total Moron, which in turn is an upgrade from I Declare War On Your Accent, hurray.

And so it is my pleasure and privilege to have lived/live in Kyoto and Boston, two cities that know what the hell they're doing when it comes to gastronomic delights. If they are indeed sisters, Kyoto would be the prettier older sister, demure and proper and slightly mysterious, and Boston is the younger sister who alternates between grouchy and overly friendly, but always, always welcomes another drink.

かんぱい！CHEERS!!!