Month: May 2023

The kids were gifted a plastic skateboard by my wife’s aunt over the Christmas holidays, and we found it in the garage this morning, so obviously we had to try it out. It’s far too small compared to my longboard for it to do me much good, so the girls are giving it a whirl. Our three wheeled scooter has made a brief appearance this morning too. Helmets on for safety, and away we go.

I was just moments from falling asleep last night when I suddenly remembered the longest bike ride I’ve ever taken by myself, and with limited water on hand too. It was the day after a big break up and I took a bike 32.3Km one way from our home in Erin Ontario, out to Belwood lake. I was gone for the whole day. Caught the sun real bad. I just had to stay busy & tired in order to not get too wrapped up in my break up, at the time. Had one water bottle, and finished it once I reached the lake. Took off my shoes and socks and waded into the water. Sat there for about an hour. Then suited up to ride back home. I recall stopping off at a former work friends farm along Hwy 26 to have a rest & refill my water. I just wanted to die by that point. Still had like 2 hours left on my ride home too. We chatted for a bit, and I sat on a comfy chair to rest my groin from the rock hard seat old mountain bikes used to come with. Then rode on home, and showered and collapsed. 64 plus Km in a single day. I have never done anywhere near as much riding in a single day since. I was very dehydrated the next day or two, and had some horrendous leg cramps that night. I’m not sure why I thought of it. Why it came up. I do know I wore my hand me down red Sir Oliver Mowat gym t-shirt for the whole ride, and my yellow & black soccer shorts. A white & red cap on backwards under my helmet to try and stop my neck from burning (unsuccessfully I might add). It all came to me, and then I just couldn’t fall asleep for several hours after that. I hate taking those solo trips down memory lane. One thing cascades into another, and then lots of details come flooding in, and what? What am I to do with these details? Revelations, forgotten memories. Just sit with them, let them wash over me, and carry on. Not much else you can do when that stuff comes flooding in unbidden like that. Weird feeling that is. It’s like how I used to forget where my locker was, like every year there would be a stretch where I would be like, “where the fuck is this locker!?!”, and wander around until it would come to me weeks later. Like oh yeah. Here it is, exactly where it was. Same combo from year to year. You were just three down or three up the row. Idiot boy. I was distracted ok. I was sickly, depressed, tired, and an insomniac. Not surprised that stuff would vaporize out of my brain and then spontaneously reappear as though I hadn’t totally lost my mind for a few weeks about this one thing. Life is messy. Let me tell you. Or not. I’m not your guardian.

There are currently more coaches, and coaching assistants on the ice, than all the kids combined from all three levels of Ringette skills groups. Can’t say I blame those whom didn’t show up today. Dank, dark, grey rain outside, and the first big holiday of the summer season. I’d be in bed too if I could be.

The kids are tired after being out until after 10:00pm to watch the town fireworks show last night. I incorrectly thought it started at 8pm, the fireworks that is, not the event as a whole, so the actual 9:30pm starting to the light show was not my favourite thing. Oh well. Gotta read the fine print. My bad.

Glad I cut the grass yesterday because after this long drizzle into a downpour the grass will be a foot tall before you know it. Blink of an eye it’s a wheat field with tall seedling grasses. Yikes!

But one that has been challenging to achieve has been my weight loss. I have been angling to get down to 195lbs, and then reassess, tweak my plans to get to 175lbs. But due to our March Covid infection I’ve had to put my physical weight training on hold, as from what I’m reading out of the EU is that I need to go very slow for 3 months post infection, so as to reduce a late stage swing into ME/CFS, or Long Covid symptoms, or reactivating the Epstein Barr virus I had in 2015, which was super unpleasant. So I haven’t lifted any weights, been running/jogging, or done push ups, squats or anything of the sort since mid March. We will start swimming in the next three weeks, and I’d like to get out on my bike too. Had some new, weird pains in the body, chest, and back since the infection, so I’m holding off for now. Do I like being pudgy and inactive? No, not really. Do I hate it enough to risk major complications over and above my Crohn’s Disease? No, not at all.

So a tough spot to be in. No summer body this year. Ha. As if. I’m not aiming at Adonis, just less spare tire around the middle, less lethargy, and the ability to lift my kids from the couch to bed when they fall asleep. All without putting my back out would be a nice touch too.

As far as the weight goes, I dropped down from 213lbs to 203-205lbs hovering there for the last few weeks at least. More water intake, keep myself busy, and try to integrate physical activity when it is safer to do so. Slow & steady, with long term behavioral changes, just like my 521 day streak of writing. It’s not all Grapes of Wrath, sometimes it’s just ad copy for toilet paper, you know. But I’m doing it, daily.

And hours have gone by, whoops! Designed that way, and very effective. Taken a number of trips there by following a stream of funny videos, one after the other, on and on it goes. Time vampires, the lot of them. Ha.

There was something I was going to do today, but I can’t remember what that is now. We had to go out last night to cover all the newly planted flowers in order to protect them from yet another frost warning. So I have uncovered them, but that wasn’t the ‘thing’. It just needed to be done. Spent two hours getting the new water softener set up yesterday with the Plummer. I just moved stuff when he pointed at it, and handed the man tools, and chatted for a bit. So that isn’t the ‘thing’ either. Although I do now have access to large chunks of cardboard with which to make my own custom box for my Moose Fence Topper. I have bubble wrap too. Lots of it. Taking up space behind my wood stock pile. I washed the resin pieces for my model kit on Monday, and I’m still not in the mood to paint, so that ain’t it either. At some point it has to come to me doesn’t it? Yeah – likely at 2:40pm as I gearing up to go grab my kids from school for the day.

Was it to power wash the exterior windows? Was that it? I know I was thinking about it. Not sure it’s warm enough to get all these fresh flowers wet right this second. Cars need a wash too, but that isn’t it. God damn! What was I thinking of. Memory holed once again.

Was it the floors? Laundry? Grocery shopping? Dishes? Nothing is ringing any bells here. Did a lot of that on Monday & Tuesday anyway. I’ve pruned trees and shrubs, cut grass, weeded the beds, sent stuff down to the compost pile… what the hell am I missing? Waiting on review for paid work. Hmm. I just can’t think of what was coming to mind yesterday. We talked about the hedge row, was that it? I don’t really know. It’s not twigging any alarm bells. I’ll take a look outside again, see if that triggers anything. Have a good day all. Ciao Bella!

Gotta love the reco to wear masks and utilize ventilation against an aerosolized danger coming AFTER the emergency is declared over. One reason for that, and one only. To save money. If they’d have said it during the emergency then the governments would be liable, and on the hook to pay for ventilation upgrades across the board, and be liable financially for all those hurt, injured, or killed through their inaction. So the reco comes in the day after the emergency order is dropped. Gotta love it. Text book. Take care of yourselves because nobody else is going to. Assess your risk with no data reported. Like playing blind folded poker against a house that has marked the cards and won’t let you see if they are blind folded too. Put yours on first they say. Such is life.

I had a thought late last night about a short story idea. No, I didn’t have anything to do with Covid. It started because I sort of remembered this catch phrase one of my brothers used to use when we were kids, and into our teens, but I’m not sure if it came from TV, or a movie, or was something weirdly local to where we grew up in Scarborough. I’m just about to go and look to see where (if at all possible) it originated from. Gimme a sec to go check… So it originates from an old Adam Sandler comedy tape. Not local to us. Good to know, so if you shout “Fuck me in the goat ass!”, a few people out there might get the reference, or at least kind of remember hearing that in their youth. Not sure why it came to me yesterday, but it did. I was too tired to go look it up. Glad I did though. Moving on.

Wed-NES-day, Hump Day, Middle of the Week Day, again. What a blustery cold day at that. I saw kinds in shorts and t-shirts at 8:00am when it was 4°C outside. Yikes. I was in a jacket and the icy wind was cutting right through me. Silly sods. Gotta watch the thermometer, and not the calendar there bud. In years gone by we’ve had snow this deep into spring. Gotta dress for the conditions on the day, not the average for the month. A hard lesson learned across the land. Not that I enjoy fighting with my kids to look beyond the sunshine and green grass. Look at the temperature though! Look at it, closer to Zero than any other number! Gotta wear long pants, a sweater, and a light jacket. Trust me. Given the cold ears, and trembling while waiting in line to go in, my kids should be thrilled that I pushed for the weather specific clothing options today. They aren’t, but they should be, dag nab it!

Did the grocery shopping this morning too. Might even run the dish washer. WATCH OUT!, crazy fun times guy over here! Whoa. Going to have to ask you all to keep it down. Might start a block party with all this JAM. What with the dishes, the groceries, the floor cleaning, and laundry. When does the fun stop? I don’t know. I just don’t know. Next thing you know I’ll be outside power washing the windows or the cars. I can’t help myself. Somebody stop me!!!

In alternate news I’m halfway through book 13 for the year. I picked up Don Winslow’s “City of Dreams“, the second part of the Danny Ryan trilogy. Last book comes out in 2024 from what I hear on the Twitter. Just as fast paced, suspenseful as the first book. I don’t know what to read next.

Maybe I’ll go pick up sculpting another monster, haven’t done that in quite some time. I have been slowly picking away at the resin model kit for all these weeks. I have everything I need to complete the feet up to the waist. Then it’ll be head, chest, arms and backpack. I think it has a fairly large rifle packed along in there somewhere too. I’m just not in a painting mood yet. I got a fix of that doing up the details on my mum’s Moose Fence Topper. Waiting for the clear coat to fully cure before I break it down, and sort out the shipping. Not looking forward to that bill. Yeesh. Glad I made it from pine, and not ultra heavy hard woods. That’s all the rambling I have for today. Take care out there. Ciao Bella!

Is upon us, at least in Alberta anyway. The billowing smoke is affecting our weather, and giving us flaming red sunsets aswell. The air smelled a wee bit smokey this morning at the school drop off, but my thinking is that was more locally sourced due to the overnight frost warnings, and chill air this AM. And not a scented carry over from out west.

In other scented news our Lilacs are about 2 to 3 weeks early this year, and there is zero chance any will still be open and perfumed by the time my wife’s 40th birthday rolls around. A shame that. Usually the Lilacs only need to hold on for a couple days, but seeing as how half are already spent here, we’ll have no luck keeping the aroma until early June. Which sucks.

Makes me wish I could find a Russian Olive tree to plant around here, I love the way those smell. Or get some Jasmine planted near by. Anything with a pleasing aroma to make being outside on our property more appealing. As far as being visually appealing the apple tree blooms are going all out this year. Half of the cherry tree is blooming now too. The tulips, those now dead headed & eaten by the local squirrels, are looking good this year. We bought and planted about 50-75 last year, and the chipmunks, squirrels, and bunnies ate most of them. We had twenty five, twenty eight actually bloom this year, and a portion of those got gobbled by the wee bastards. Little shit heads.

I have a few Glads to plant, so let us see if any of those come up later next month. Ciao Bella.

I didn’t want to have two consecutive high spend months in a row, but when big items come up for sale at a significant discount you’re best to strike while the iron is hot. Usually what I would do is wait until I’ve had some calmer weeks or months under my belt, and then spend full price on larger ticket items. But I’m taking the opportunists approach, and grabbing things we need when they are on sale or clearance (like a last years model type of thing) and saving in the long run, while feeling the pinch right this second. We have the water softener in hand now, just waiting on installation. Not a problem. I fear the water heater tank needs seeing too aswell. The overflow is pumping out a great deal of water once the outside temperatures go up. I’m not sure why that is, hence the need to have it seen to by a professional. Yet another expense. Good part is that now we have the softener it should be good for 12-15 years if we maintain it, and don’t abuse it. Hopefully.

Luckily I’m expecting a few more invoices to get paid in the next several weeks, with more going out each month, so we’re not in a bad place. I just need to reign in my spending, and focus on food, and the household basics only. Plus gas for the car, but that’s a given for as long as we have the kids in after school extracurriculars all over town, and in different surrounding cities. Oof. It’s kinds nice when summer rolls around and we don’t have to go all over gods green earth to get to one thing or another. A nine week respite in programming if you will. Actually a number of the kids programs end on the first week or June, so that month will quiet down considerably. We’ll put far fewer miles on the van starting June 1st.

Had a very eventful weekend, starting off with Ringette at 8:00am, dressed and on the ice on Saturday, then to the care home to visit great grandma, then grandmas house, then the park for a few hours. It was a long, outdoorsy kind of day. I cut the grass and weeded the front garden beds. And then yesterday I took the kids to the Zoo for three hours, and then we had lunch & dinner at grandmas where the kids spent hours jumping on the trampoline. Sun dried and crispy spent children after that weekend. The oldest was so over tired and amped up she didn’t go to sleep until well after 11:00pm. Crazy.

Domestic Duties Monday is going a bit slower today. I picked up all kinds of messes this morning, and don’t feel much like sorting toys right this second. I have a chapter to go to finish book #12 this year, and then I’ll sort out the house. Sounds like a suitable plan to me! Ciao Bella!

Around the Metro Toronto Zoo for a quiet Mother’s Day morning. Got there just in time to see the Sting Rays get fed, and see a few animals we never usually get to see, like the Sloth, and some Golden Lion Tamarins. Took a quick jump over to the poison dart frogs, and an activity table with turtle eggs and trivia. We walked the new wooden trail up towards Africa, and we also visited the gift shop to grab a thermos mug for mum. Three hours of walking, driving, and looking around. I even brought snacks for the kids, so we were well provisioned for our travels. A nicely sunny, and cool morning.

It drifts in from out of the distance. At first you’re not sure of what it is. And then it rises in pitch, and the kids begin the circle the yard. Jumping and screeching themselves hoarse. The source is no where in sight, but those kids don’t care. Yelps and screams and tears of frustration cloud their faces. Demands and shouts of “I need it!” Fill the air. Then on the edge of your street you see it, as it turns in from off of the main road, it all its white, chrome, metallic gaudy glory. The mother fucking ice cream truck. Fuck!

It’s that time of year again. Time to buy over priced, low quality ice cream goods at a time that will spoil dinner or lunch, or both. Cash only. Arrives when you don’t want him, takes forever to fill your order, and the kids just can’t get enough. FML.