Month: March 2023

Writing terrible poetry was a favored pastime of mine many moons ago. And boy did I put pen to paper for some serious cheese. Reams of paper full of awful slang, and mixed malaphors. We’ll burn that bridge when we get to it. She’s moist like a damp towel type nonsense. It was gloriously freeing in how terrible it all was. Wish I’d had the confidence to keep more of it than I chose to. It would have played well with the cringe crowd. I could’a been internet famous for all the wrong reasons. No matter.

I think today is Monday. I do have a few work emails to attend to today. Just in the process of making and consuming pancakes with my kids. No Domestic Duties entry for today. Ahhhhhh… the crowd moans. There’s always next week! Stay safe out there this March Break. Ciao Bella.

Glad that we don’t have to get the children up for school tomorrow. Thank heavens for the March Break! No early Monday morning fight in the darkness, trying to the kids out of bed and off to school. It is nice to have more sun in the evenings, but waling up in the dark – again, for a few more weeks is something I could do without. However, I say bring on the sunshine, green grass & flowers. We can get active outdoors once more as the temperatures shift above zero.

Otherwise it’s another lazy Sunday morning in March. Nothing much planned for today. Ciao Bella.

Donating some old winter gear to the unfortunate folks whom have suffered great loss & tragedy in Syria and Turkey. Sending along old winter coats for adults and children. Snowpants, hats, mitts, gloves, neck warmers, an old sleeping bag, and one blanket. Hopefully it does someone else more good, rather than sitting, getting dusty at the very back in a basement closet, or tucked away in a tub. Now don’t go thinking that I ransacked the house. No-no. If it wasn’t worn in the last several years, or I know it no longer fits, it was fine to be passed along. I didn’t raid their current closets, though lord knows I could have. I kept it to just that which had been gathering dust, or had been hidden away for two or three years or more. Some of the snow pants are less gently used than others. But on the whole, 100% better than nothing, and in 95% of the items, 1000% better than nothing. It may not be stylish, but it’ll keep people warm and dry!

Great grandma is back in the hospital – again. Seems like atleast one week out of every four she’s on deaths door in the hospital. Caught Covid just before her 95th birthday, and has been rapidly deteriorating ever since. Lost her mobility. Dementia has reared its head making things even harder. A very stressful, and emotionally draining last few months. My MIL seems to take the brunt of it, as her siblings don’t do much of anything in regards to her being in a home now, in need of constant care. That’s a lot of extra mental work, and emotional labour she’s had to take on due to the state of her own mother. I hate to say it, but I do pray she goes quickly, in her sleep one night, and not dragging this on over the whole year or more. Will feel devastating either way, once she passes, or declines into a state where life isn’t more than tubes, and permanent immobility. Horrible. Just horrible.

It’s the Friday before March Break. School attendance looked a tad light today, but more 24 hr bugs are passing through – yet again. The next nine days could be ugly, if the kids have brought home a tummy bug, cough, cold, flu or Covid. Isn’t that a great way to celebrate the coming of Spring Time. Holed up, bed ridden in isolation. Boo-Urns! Boo! I say.

Cable box has been on the fritz as of late. May finally have to give in and upgrade to the Ignite level of television cable boxes. Definitely need a new working remote. We’ll see what’s what with March Break plans, and then perhaps I’ll go and get it all sorted out. Every time I go in the Roger’s store my bill only ever goes up. They cut me no breaks, no deals, no thanks for sticking around discounts. The joys of Ontario telecoms. Bull shit is what it is.

In other news my oldest has obtained a full Yellow Belt in Taekwondo. Was very proud to watch the promotion ceremony. Took a lot of photos. Some good, some less so. I look forward to watching her move up through the belts over the coming years.

So many options and so little time. It was a dream I was having about offering a free booklet on buying a brief severance from your given religion for a guilt free 48 hours of whatever you felt like doing. $12.99 plus $7.00 for shipping & handling. Get your free package and a brief severance – Guilt Free! Came with an 8.5×11″wide document, a wallet sized card, and a double sided coaster. It was $20.00 because “You’re going to pay for it!” To get the Guilt Free pass on whatever moral authority you could imagine, but the actual package was free.  It was a weird circular thinking, self referential, mess made to make money. I have odd dreams ok. I did have an alcoholic beverage yesterday, so that might have something to do with it.

And then I was thinking about moving around in space, by pushing off of objects, but then there is definitely math involved regarding inertia, mass, forces for & against the pusher and object being pushed etc etc… over my head, and above my volunteer pay grade. Then I got to thinking about trying to move much larger items in space by human effort. And then imagined slowly being crushed to death by a massive object just floating around really slowly. It was unpleasant. To say the least.

Here we are, Thursday! Late in the week, and March Break just over the horizon. And a hint of bitterly cold winds and icy temperature for our efforts. Should be a fun nine days with these lunatic minions running around. As much as I miss having very little children, it gets way more fun as they get older, and slightly more independent. They develope new interests, and sometimes those overlap with things you already enjoy. Plus you can go to new places, and try newer my challenging things. Soon, we can try rock climbing, do more bowling, paint ball, bike trails, hiking, and tougher & more rigorous water sports, or snow sports. I detest the cold, but winter is way more fun if you get to skate, ski, snowshoe, snowmobile and do things of that nature. It sucks if all you get to do is stand around freezing your ass solid in the wind. Money can’t buy happiness, they say, but it can sure as shit rent it for an hour or two at a time, provided you don’t experience any sort of calamity in the process. But I digress.

Wednesday – HumpDay, Middle of the week day! Yahoo. Hard to beat those azul cloudless skies, but damn is that wind cold today. And I thought yesterday’s wind storm conditions were cold. Brrr. Nastiness outdoors today. Not going to lie.

So what’s going on with you lot out there in internet land? Come across anything really special lately? Learned any new facts that left you speechless? I’m finding social media becoming almost too clogged with ads to be useable now. YouTube has ads every fourth or fifth video window, plus pre roll, plus mid video ads, and those web banner ad pop ups. Facebook promotes anything and everything it can get paid to shill in my feeds. Instagram seems to be ok still, but it has random ads mixed in too. Just feels like fewer of them, maybe because I don’t spend as much time there. Twitter has gone pretty glitchy. I can atleast block the unwanted ads and advertisers if I wish. I don’t follow that many people so I still see roughly 80% of what I go there for. Comedians, politics and war correspondents mainly. So still within reason there. I stopped using Imgur because the Android App version is dog shit. I haven’t signed on to anything else, so once these wind down that may be it, unless something truly massive and all encompassing comes along.

With work being fairly consistent I’m not able to waste all day scrolling, so perhaps my view of the social media world is skewed. Could be. Wouldn’t be the first time that I have drifted out of a demographic for something that I loved. Think Marvel movies. I get older, they stay the same age, and I grow less interested in what they’ve got going on. Back in my day, we’d hang an onion from our belts, which was the style at the time… indeed.

It will give me more time to write, read, sculpt,build model kits, paint, play music, and do my wood working projects if I give up on social media a bit more each week. Welp. That’s my time. Thanks for coming to my TedX talk. Ciao Bella!

And another birthday in the bag. A rather quiet, but successful weekend. Could have done without the 40+ centimeters of wet & heavy snow, but otherwise time well spent. Glad to be here, and have another day at my disposal.

Had a conference call video meeting, did some paid work on Sunday to clear room in today’s schedule for grocery shopping, and paying the mechanic for my wife’s car. Doing the school drop off as per usual, and getting those must have Domestic Duties done, namely laundry. I went through my oldest child’s closet and found 52 pairs of pants! 52! Can you believe it? Not including those already out for wash. Good god man. After removing all the pairs one size too small we have 33 pairs left. Still, that’s alot. Don’t get me started on the sweaters! Oh my. I thinned out the t-shirts last week, so that’s no longer an issue. Thankfully.

Earlier today I saw a gentleman wearing a ball cap, a grown man mind you, with the tops of his ears tucked into the brim of the cap. Is this a thing? Is this new, or have I missed a new hat wearing trend. Good god some times I feel old and/or out of touch. It wasn’t a toque or a beanie mind, it was a ball cap, flat bill and everything. Not that it matters to me, but I hope that isn’t how we’re all supposed to be wearing our hats now. I look dopey enough in most ball caps, and that would just about sink the experience for me. You can wear it however it feels comfortable. I guess I’m less, “Look’it this feller” finger pointing and more “oh is this what we’re doing now?” Shoulder shrugged, hands raised kind of a thing.

So, back to monday, with March break next week. Five more school days until all hell breaks loose. I’m thinking warm mall walks, matinee movie, spring cleaning of the bedrooms, possibly a day on the slopes, and cottage maple syrup duties. I’ll still have work, because of course I will. Can’t send out invoices for payment if you aren’t also doing the required work.

Speaking of which, I have some illustrations to go and draw. Best be about it then. Ciao Bella!

I used to have this reoccurring nightmare about finding a parasitic tree growing just under the surface of the skin on my knee. Under an angry red bump, after I’d popped it like an excruciating zit, I’d find a tiny green stump, that looked like the stalk of a bamboo shoot. I’d grab tweezers and try to pull it out, and along with that tiny green tuberous thing would be this long fibrous fish net of red blood soaked tree roots, branching, and branching out, to match my blood vessels and arteries. I’d pull and tug, and eventually pass out. I’d awaken in a hospital where some masked up faceless surgeon would tell me they’d continued to pull on the parasitic growth until they had managed to extricate twenty or so meters of the root system from inside my veins. It never changed. I never saw what could have happened if I didn’t pull on it, and in my dream I always fainted from the pain. It never took root or sprouted from my knee. And I never had it growing from anywhere but my right knee. A strange, and horrible reoccurring dream to have as a child. It wasn’t worms or crawling bugs in that wound, but fibrous tree roots wending their way through my vascular system, silently. The only tell was the painful zit like lump where the merest stump of a stalk was. Ugh. Gives me the Willy’s thinking about it now. Not sure why that came to mind this morning, but here we are. A deep dark thought of my own. Just thought I’d share so you can be plagued by that same night terror off and on for years to come. Ciao Bella!

I definitely would have done so today when I cursed it out with a blue streak while shoveling several hundreds, if not multiple thousands of pounds of snow. I’m very glad my kids helped to shovel the front walk, so I wasn’t responsible for 100% of the property, but it was still a very high percentage that I cleared myself, over two or three attempts throughout the day. I hope I made it cry. That I ruined it’s self esteem, and made it feel like less of a thing. By this point in the winter, I fucking hate snow.

My back feels like shit, and I had to take a much needed nap today. I am exhausted nonetheless. I pray we get rid of 90% of it before we get any more this winter. UV must have been high today because we had significant snow melt today aswell.