We needed to grab about 150, but I lost count after 45 or so, as the kids were too fast for me. But we got the van loaded to the hills, and I think as far as a donation goes, we’re on the money!
Still have to save enough room for the kids who picked them. Gotta be able to reach their seats, belts and not be a Twisted up pretzel in the process. No harm done! Return each child in the same or better condition.
Not exactly a lazy Sunday on my behalf. Funny how other people’s plans tend to become my problem once feet have to hit pavement. Everybody loves to plan, but it falls to me to execute it, without fail. Whether I had a stake in the outcome or not!
Atleast I slept in until 8:30am or so, and actually felt rested when I woke up. Might have been due to the 5 mg of Spinach branded chewy gummies I ingested after I pit my kids to bed. Not out of the question.
The oldest is finally 54″ tall, so today we tackled all three super coasters at Wonderland in the cool drizzle. YukonStriker: check! Behemoth: check! And the big kahuna Leviathan: check! Plus a bunch of our old favourites aswell. We did three times as many rides in half the time, and then a whole bunch more after that. Way more fun when you can just walk on as opposed to a 45-60 minute plus wait for one roller coaster.
Then we stopped off for flu shots, and my youngest has lost her god damn mind. So that’s been our Saturday. Very eventful. Loads of heart racing fun.
For the life of me I can not recall a reason as to why I kept this writing streak going, other than compulsion, and daily habit. Even so, I’m awfully close to going a whole year without writing any short stories. I have written copious amounts of nonsense, and silliness though. Funny to think I felt my numbers of views were down in the year to year review, so I tried to write every day for a few weeks before I hit New Years Eve and was going to stop. Then the next calendar year had the best showing ever, and then dropped off again. Not as low as in years I posted almost nothing, but I failed to gain enough traction to warrant making the writing streak a compulsion. So what do I do now?
Did a few other things as of late too. I finished my sixteenth book this year, by John Scalzi, called “Starter Villain”. It was a fun little jaunt in a mixed up James Bondesque world of mischief and mayhem. Finished it in just a day or two. Very pleasant read. I’m back to the Adrian Tchaikovsky novel I tried to start several weeks ago. Hopefully now I’ll have the available concentration to read five or six hundred pages of science fiction. I’m still halfway through “American Prometheus “, so I should either finish that or hang up that particular book mark, and call it a day. It’s good, and thorough to say the least. A bit like reading a textbook. Something I haven’t needed to do in close to twenty years. I feel as though I should read it at a desk with a highlighter in hand. Gives off those kinds of vibes. Still a good read. Just more dense than I care for right this minute.
I got into the shop this week to work on my pine framed bed. I have some work to do on the box joints, as I didn’t go deep enough, and I need to square off the bottom of each joint, as I left them rounded over. But on the bright side I did some bandsaw work, some hand saw work, and got the project just a little closer to finished. I’ll take it!
We have a PA Day today, so the kids are up early, of course, not that we have to shake them and roll them around their beds to wake them up on a regular school day. Where they cry and moan about wanting to sleep in, but on the days they can do so, they are up earlier than usual without a problem. I can’t tell you what a surprise it will be once either, or both start to sleep in on weekends, summer days, and holidays. I imagine they’ll be up late making a racket around the house so not much of a win there anyway.
The other day I went out and picked all of the remaining apples off of our two fruit trees to send to my friends horses. I had a fair amount of quality sized apples this year. The red ones all fell off earlier, and the wasps terrorized those for weeks. Once the temp dropped enough to drive them away I came to claim what was left. A half a grain bags worth. No where near what was on both trees, but I don’t fancy getting swarmed and stung for apples. I thought we were going to get a bunch last year with all the blooms the trees had, but then no fruit was produced. This year however, whoo boy! If I had a bee suit and a cider press I could have picked all 2-300 apples between the two trees and made some cider or fresh apple juice!
Apple picking on the side yard.
Funnily enough I recently saw that an old acquaintance of mine was coming to the end of a contract position, and i saw a job posting that i thought could be right up their alley, and they complained to me about it. So don’t be alarmed should i not do things of that nature for other people. This year has really reiterated how bad of an idea it is to do anything nice for other people. Yet i keep on doing it. Going to learn my lesson at some point. Or become a jaded prick about it. Either way – we all win!
It is currently raining. It started to rain several hours ahead of schedule so I am happy we decided not to go back to Canada’s Wonderland for another Halloween Haunt adventure. Was supposed to start between eleven and midnight, but was softly pattering on the ground by eight o’clock. We’d have been there for little more than an hour and it would totally kill the vibe. Mist is one thing, but a full on rain would end the night. Precious few available days left this season. I think we might be finished, but perhaps we can get one last visit under our belts this year. I’d very much like to ride Yukon Striker one more time. It’s such a smooth ride. I like the articulated carriages. Plus I feel as though they weren’t concerned about the footprint so they were able to make softer transitions between tricks/gimmicks, and your neck and back are all the better for it. Five stars, do reccomend! Try it at night in the dark.
Off to a quick start this morning. Not a good week for meetings. Two ghosted, and one canceled. Hard to beat oh for three in the same week, and it is only Thursday morning. Had to miss school drop off today, and that’s proven to have been a mistake – again. Ghosted. Aggravating to say the least. An email notification of pushing the time, or canceling would have been much preferred. Oh well. The times they are a changing.
Nothing much on the radar today beyond this rescheduled meeting, moved over from Tuesday afternoon. But it looks to be a bust. 40 minutes late to starting. Not a good sign. I’ll go have breakfast shortly if I hit 8:50am and nobody shows.
How has your week been? We have a PA Day tomorrow, so a long weekend for us York Region folks. I think the kids have a crafting session planned elsewhere for part of the day. Should be fun. Have a good one.
It has the potential to clear a room immediately. Tooth paste and bowel movement. Fresh as the day is long. Long lasting. Catches in your sinuses and hangs in the back of your throat. Like going ninth man in on a port o potty on a July day, with a handful of breathmints in your mouth.
Which means that at some point in mid November we will get to see whether or not our kids smiled in a reasonable fashion for their class photos. Gotta love the gamble. Will it be sweet, sinister, laughable, cringe worthy? Who knows? I certainly don’t. And it will be a long while yet before we find out one way or the other. That’s part of the fun! I should start a betting app based on the best/worst case scenario for children’s pictures, open only to parents of school aged children, in your friend group. Like a football pool, but you’re all betting on good/bad/hilarious photos being taken. Spend hours on your kids hair for them to wear a toque and not check before sitting down? Make a wager! Did your child eat bright orange soup messily before the snap? Did they blink, sneeze, half shut an eye, or become startled or blinded by the flash? Come in and lay your money down. It’s a hoot for the whole family. Best get coding!
I often have many gripes about having IBS, and Crohn’s Disease, but by far the worst is the 10 sec warning I have before catastrophe strikes. So I had to pay & run for the toilets here in the store I’m in. Pinch & sprint. Nervous flop sweat beading upon my brow. Made it with nary a heartbeat to spare. Good lord I detest this particular need of mine. It was either dart for the stalls in here, or make a mess inside my car, as there was no way I’d get all the way across town to my home in time. At best I’d sully my front porch, at worst I’d befoul my drivers seat, shorts, and joggers, socks, shoes and potentially even my t-shirt, sweater and jacket. There’s just no compromising with the forces of nature. When nature calls, it bellows, and my insides quake. Bah!
So how is your Monday starting? I did manage to run a few errands first. That is a check in the plus column atleast. Ha.
Take care out there. It can always get worse. Ciao Bella!
Tried another go at Canada’s Wonderland and their Halloween Haunt spectacle last night, and dear god, so damn busy. Clue number one was the queue to got off highway 400 at Rutherford. Second was the traffic across Rutherford itself. Third was the forty minutes it took us to crawl up and along Jane Street to Springfield to get to the parking lot. Parking was a chaotic mess, but we found a spot about a six walk from the gates, so not awful. But I have never been to Wonderland and seen it this busy before. This blows all other “busy” days out of the water. Due to traffic we were only at the park for three hours, and thus managed to get on only three rides. Nearly an hours wait for each one. Tough luck kiddo. Plus it drizzled and sort of snowed just a touch. Thought that might clear a few folks out, but nope. Busy, busy, busy.
I drove all over York Region yesterday. Stouffville, Markham, Newmarket, back to Markham, across Markham, back to Stouffville, then out to Vaughn and back again. I’m positively pooped. Slept like shit last night too. Fun times.
Nothing spells out the weekend quite like waking up just as, or more exhausted than when you went to bed the night before. I even slept in until 9:00am before crawling out of bed. The extra two hours of sleep did not do much in the way of helping me out, at all. Possibly made it worse. Yay.
Good morning Saturday. How are you all doing? Just walked up the road to pick up my eldest from a sleep over. Nice that it’s so close by. Just over my in-laws fence, and up the way from us. She had a fabulous time, sounded like non stop fun and excitement when she explained it all to me in a flurry of hand gestures, partial dance steps, and “um, actually” as is her current affectation. The youngest however howled about having no sleep overs, fire side play dates, or parties to attend. She carried on that way until about 10pm, when she crashed, hard. So our evening with one child out for the night was a bust. No movie date night for us. Glad we had lunch together earlier in the day, otherwise that time would have been sorely missed. Hard to plan with two living chaos machines in the house. Little whirlwinds of destruction, and mess making. Are they friends today, mortal enemies, enemy combatants, best buddies joined at the hip? Or mortal kombat avatars looking to score a near fatality? Spin the wheel, take a guess, it’s anybody’s game!
What are the rest of todays plans you ask? Well, my wife and youngest child went to the Zoo for a walk about. My guess is to go see the poison dart frogs and snakes which my youngest likes so much. Reptiles are her jam, right now anyway. Used to be chickens(?) for some reason, then hamsters in mazes, and now snakes and such. The oldest is going bowling for 2 hours mid day, so I’ll be off taking her to that, then wandering the nearby mall to occupy myself.
If the weather holds I wouldn’t mind doing another Halloween Haunt at Wonderland before it gets really really cold at night. But truth be told we did go seven times this year, and I got one of my big wish rides in, so I’m pretty good on the thrill ride front. I’d love to ride Leviathan next spring if my oldest is finally tall enough to join me. And then Behemoth too. That would mean we can ride all of the largest coasters in the park height restriction free! Giv’er!
Made the effort in yesterdays surprise sunshine to start the leaves in the yard. Managed nine full bags of mulched up leaves. I’d much prefer to do it once on a long day, but only 30% of our leaves have come down so far. Enough to be noticeable compared to our neighbours whom pay people to maintain their property. But not enough to be a major problem. We need another one or two big wind/rain storms to bring the rest down. My vacuum bag mulcher needs leaves on the dryer side of the spectrum to work without clogging. So I need a storm to bring them down, and then two days of sunshine and breezes to dry those leaves off so that I can work them over and dress my front bed with the resulting mulch. I prefer it to hand bagging, by a very wide margin. It also requires less raking, which I also prefer. Very little leaning over or bending. Hardly any squatting so my thighs don’t scream at me for days afterwards. Plus I keep all the leaf moisture and biomass here where the trees are. Works for me. We used to have this toad that spent the spring/summer/fall in our garbage box, and he liked the leaf cover. Didn’t see him much this year, but we’ll keep it up in hopes the wee guy will come back. Keeping the leaf mulch is good for butterflies and helping acorns, walnuts to germinate. I like having trees on the property. I’d turn it into a small scale arboretum if I could! Rotating trees through as I need them. Mainly I want to keep the trees for 10-15 years, and then harvest them for wood stock for my furniture projects. I have my eyes on a saw mill, or chainsaw mill operation of my own to process the few logs I will have over the coming years. To dream a dream of wood. Ha.
Not sure why but it doesn’t feel much like a Saturday to me – yet. Hard to describe how a specific day of the week feels. But they certainly have one. I know that much. I’m just having difficulty putting the “feel” of it into coherent words. Maybe some other time. Have a good one. Ciao Bella.
A day much like any other, except I’m putting in an hour or so puttering about the house tidying up all of our “stuff”. So much. Just so much stuff, crap, garbage, things, accumulated possessions. Filling up every corner, piling up on top of each other, hiding table surfaces, chair seats, floor space, wall space, closets and nooks as well as crannies. Too much! The physical NEED to purge is growing stronger every time I pass by a mound of things left untouched for days or weeks, even months on end. Gag! Fit to burst I am.
In other news it is Friday yet again. Today is the day of the 13th. Kids ate at school, I’m cleaning up, family are moving about in various stages of health care treatment. It’s been a lot. Lots going on with the extended family here health wise. Not too sure what’s what at the moment. Those who are in the lead probably should not be. Not out of spite or malice, but… ineptitude to put it nicely I suppose. Failing to ask pertinent questions. Not passing vital info along. Unwillingness or inability to perform much needed tasks. It’s a lot, as I have said previously. So we sit and wait with a whole slew of questions left unanswered, or just don’t know the answer to because… inept person at the lead. I feel bad. It is a lot to take on. Stressful. Worrisome. Hard on the soul, I get it. But, on the other hand… I digress.
Birthday parties are all a flutter now that we are into the school year, and the social lives of our kids are starting to emerge. Happy to see it. Sleep overs, play dates, birthdays, so much going on. The manned coverage is proving useful with all of our scheduled extracurriculars. Getting gired by always being on the go. I am hoping that we can tone it down a bit in the new year as this has been a lot. Have a terrific weekend y’all. Ciao Bella.
Greatwall Studios Graphic Design 
You must be logged in to post a comment.