Month: September 2024

For those following along playing the home game this is day 23, and I am finally feeling a bit better after this cough came into my life in late August. I’m still prone to a good cough, but it has been few and far between so far today. I also woke up this morning and my chest innards didn’t hurt (any where near as much as they have done). I believe this signals that I am on the mend. Thankfully. Glad for it. The nasal congestion didn’t stick around for more than one day, so that’s a tick in the win column aswell. Yay!

Dropped the kids at school, and had a very peaceful stroll around the farm. Have fed the dog his breakfast while I digest mine. This is living. Not much on the docket today. We are about to shift into a week of solid rain, so many more leaves will start to come down. It won’t feel so strained to start picking them up if my trees drop a good percentage over the course of the week. I just hate to start while the trees are still 95% full. Waste of time & effort if you ask me. Now if you can see sky, or the neighbours homes through gaps in the foliage then that’s a different story.

I started to wash the walls and baseboards yesterday and was surprised at the state of the main bathroom walls. Yikes. My kids must touch the back wall almost constantly given the level of colour change I saw after washing. Not to mention the colour of the rinse water for the sponge I was using. Ugh. Positively heinous. I’m going to pull the letters off the main hall, and move the goal tracking reading chart onto a door, rather than on the drywall/paint. Should clean up the look of the hall a wee bit.

Then it’ll be the living room art wall. That might cause a few tears if I know my kids at all. Too much change all at once will set them to spiraling out of emotional control. It’s fun, you should try it. Or not. You do you. Ok, I’m going to get started now. Ciao Bella!

Took the puppy for a longer than usual walk at the farm again today, after Tuesdays got cut short by an uncommonly fast appointment at the hospital we were killing time for. So I had heard that they had cut a path between the beans and the pumpkins/gourds and sunflowers and went to have a mosey about. We walked elsewhere on the farm first, got to park somewhere not in a field, and came about from over the far side of the property. Found the new path through the nine foot tall weeds and got about five hundred paces on when I see a perfectly round shape sitting up on the mulched weeds. I thought it was plastic initially and wasn’t going to touch it, but upon closer inspection it was in fact a dull brushed nickel looking cap for the anti-surge. Vented even! So since it was on top of all the brush and debris I assumed (correctly) that it must have come off one of the tractors or the bush hog they used to knock down all the brush and create the path. That’s my good deed for the day sorted out then.

Puppy had a good long walk where he is free to run without fear of traffic, other dogs, or random people/small children. He chased squirrels, chipmunks, and rabbits alike. All with reckless abandon. We even did a quick tour inside great grandmas house to nose around a bit. I’m still scared he’d try to pee on anything too rustic smelling in that old farm house. So I took him out as quickly as we went in. Found one of the older farm hands and stopped for a quick chat. Some had not met the puppy yet, so I introduced them.

It’s Thursday today. Getting very close to the end of the first month back to school. Testing, and homework have started up again, so things are in full swing. Looks as though things are going about as well as can be expected for two kids whom refused to do any reading, writing, or mathematics for two months straight. Have to get their thinking caps on! My wife and I love to read, and we read to them nightly. Not sure where the resistance to it comes from. I like gaming too, but not to the detriment of my IQ / learning capabilities. I’m sure it isn’t that bad, but it can sometimes feel that way. But I digress.

I can hear the laundry peeping, so I best go gather the laundry from out of the dryer. Ciao Bella!

And it feels like I am making some small headway towards getting rid of it. The coughing fits are fewer in number, and don’t last as long. Which is a welcome change. However, my nose/nasal passages feel blocked up, and everything sounds like I have cotton in my ears (more so than usual, since I am hearing impaired to begin with). So that’s a new development I could do without.

I have played Diablo 4 a good deal in the last four days or so. I was going to buy Space Marine 2, but opted the just get further into a game I already own, and sort of enjoyed. The mechanics are deep, and confusing, but now that I have my plan of attack in place I am progressing more smoothly. Still taking me a while to move along, but I’m having a better time of it. Happily.

My front garden nolonger looks like the day of the triffids, which is fantastic. Strike that off the lost. Cherry tomatoes are harvested, and chilling in the sunshine to ripen on their own. The variegated maple tree is dropping leaves like it’s October 21st, so before you know it I will have to start bagging and tagging the leaves. Or mulching and forgetting about them. That sounds more like me. It’s a long, drawn out process that will still be going on in November unless the snow comes early. Still have to rake piles, but the back pack mulched does the rest. I just have to empty it every so often. That, and look down endlessly as I work.

The Markham Fair 2024 approaches! Get your fall digs ready, as its prime pumpkin spice consuming time! That, and blooming onions, candy floss, corn dogs, smashed burgers, chicken tenders with fries, candy apples, and whatever else takes your fancy at these sort of things. A cool evening breeze that smells like coffee, dust, and smoked meats, and bbq chicken. Fresh cut grass, mud, and grilled corn on the cob. It sets a picture doesn’t it. Fantastic time of the year. I’ve grown to love it. My kids have too.

Of the four plants I had growing in the front garden I only wound up with five tomatoes that are useable for making sauce, and a monstrous mound of as of yet unopened Cherry tomatoes. Not my best work. Had all of the larger ones still been good, and not rotting on the vine, I’d have had almost thirty to make Salsa with. No such luck this year. The vines took off, but the fruits were lacking. Oh well. Now that the leaves are coming off the trees it’s better if the garden is cleared of useless foliage so I can mulch the leaves and place them over my garden beds.

Active morning today. Hospital run, farm walk, and harvesting my tomatoes too. Then volunteer work, and some paid work added into the mix too. The fair will be here before you know it! Which means the rains are coming! Mini donuts, horse pulls, fireworks, and rides, rides, rides. I love this time of year. Hanging out with my daughters, enjoying the sights, and sounds of the fair. Eating all of those wonderful snacks and treats. Oh my! Then it’s Thanksgiving the following weekend. Time starts to move quickly towards Halloween, then to Christmas. It’s like a blur.

Best not to get caught up in it. Smell the roses, take a walk, slow down! Be in the present, not just looking forward towards the next big thing.  But I digress.

Yesterday I played Diablo 4 again. I’m up to a level 30 now, so things are getting tougher, as I play solo. I’m trying to destroy a strong hold and not having much luck. Well I got cut off and it logged me out, but it was a welcome reprieve as I was not faring so well. No matter. Lots of time for that sort of fun.

This new pup is a wiley one. At first he would eat his heart worm pile straight from my hand. Then it had to be inside cheese, now it’s slathered in peanut butter and wrapped in duck jerky/bacon (fit for dogs). I think he ate it, I don’t want to go snoop at the bowl just yet as he will know something is up. He enjoys taking the kids to school, but wandering through the parking lot to the vet’s office set him on edge a wee bit. But it was a short, and good visit. Only a weigh in, and the next round of Nexus for heartworm, fleas, and ticks. Not exactly cheap stuff. He has dropped 2 lbs since August, so we are going to continue to weigh him until he levels out a bit. I’m not worried. I know he eats, just not as routinely as I’d like. Oh well! Pups be pups.

Back to Monday. I still have this cough eighteen days in. Less thrilled about that, as you could imagine. Stayed up a bit later the last few nights due to being home alone. But the dog still had me up by 7:30am, so I could do with a nap! My youngest had a fun filled weekend, but a little too much fun, with no down time to “chill” as she put it. And was adamant that she not go to school today because she needed a quiet day to get over the weekends activities. I understand how she feels, but a bad case of the Monday’s is no reason to miss class in September! Not even a full month in yet and you want to “take a day”? No sir. No chance. That’s reserved for a Jan/Feb blues scenario. Not opening days of the new school year. Sheesh. Use up all your good graces now and there’ll be no good will left if something important happens.

I’d love to say that the laundry is done but a bag of Dirty clothes seems to have followed my family home from the cottage. So one basket is right full – again. It never ends. I’m also dangerously low on detergent, and fabric softener. So perhaps I will hold off on any cleaning along those lines today. All the tidying up went to pot once the family came home anyway. They dumped their belongings on the floors, and tables, and in the hall. Dropping crumbs and grass clippings/sand debris as they walked throughout the house. It was tidy for a few short hours that I alone to see, and splendor in.

I don’t have much of a plan for the week right now. I got ahead of myself in August doing the bulk of what I had planned to do this fall. Then those first two weeks of school I was really cooking. I got on a roll, and in the zone, and I was just ticking items off the list daily. Laundry room, closets, drawers, walls, baseboards, cabinetry doors, kitchen, sinks, tubes, floors, cobwebs on the ceilings, toy boxes, clothing, boats & coats. I was able to organize it all. Also means work was slow, but still BAM! POW! I was getting it done. Not to mention my books, and cd collections, and the older video game stuff I was able to get rid of. There is still more, but the remaining items requires a plan. Doors and the old broken water softener, multiple cans of paint, styrofoam, old luggage and computer bags, all need to go somewhere. Garbage man won’t take it all at once. I need a bin or dumpster to come so I could spend a day throwing all of our junk away. I’m obsessed with the idea of finally purging all of the items which plague me. I won’t, but a man can dream.

Thought the wife and kids were going away just for the night, and it stretched into two. No problem! I found a bunch more cleaning I could do without anyone else here. Well, besides the dog nobody else is here. He isn’t a fan of either the mop or the vacuum, so he didn’t care for my ground game Friday evening, and then again yesterday afternoon. What a tiny baby, puppy, wiener. I still managed to clean a lot while the dog was being anxious and silly. Throw in a bunch more laundry, and the dishwasher, as well as outdoor stuff and I kept busy inbetween my Diablo 4 session(s). Finished one book in the Alien omnibus, with several more to go. I even found a few moments to begin a very small painting I am doing with my daughter. Otherwise I have watched several movies, eaten pizza, walked the dog, and scrolled endlessly on my phone.

I didn’t really plan for this much time alone. If I’d had known for certain I would have tried to go and do more outside of the house, rather than clean & organize closets, and whatnot. I did have my friend over for two hours on Friday evening which was pleasant. I guess I just don’t like to leave the puppy if I don’t actually have to. Most movies will be out on VOD somewhere in the next three to six months, and I’ll have my own bathroom, snacks, and no driving to do. Plus I can pause, rewind, and use the subtitles here in my living room. Ah. I do still love the movie going experience, I’m just less motivated to drive anywhere while gas is expensive, and work has slowed down – again.

I did finish a book, so that’s something I’m happy with. I started in the painting. It all stems from me remembering to clear coat the canvas last week. We are trying to paint the same thing, on both halves of a canvas, with a dead straight tape dividing line between us. The background pea colour went on smooth enough. My blue icecream leaves a lot to be desired. Haven’t painted in a long long time. I’ve lost my sense of touch, with brush handling or control. Do it enough and it might come back. It’s just one more hobby among many that I don’t do all the time.

Hard to choose between so many good options. Sculpting, painting, miniatures painting, drawing, writing short stories, reading, playing the guitar/bass, wood working, leather crafting, cycling, long board skate boarding, roller blading, model kit building/painting/modifications, Lego assembly… add in my deep desire to purge & organize, and I have too many options. House hold chores take up some time too, and paid work when I have it on the schedule. I am a scatter brained fool with too many hobbies and interests. I also like metal fabrication, and pottery too. Screen printing, glass blowing and various other activities were explored when I was at Sheridan College doing the Art Fundamentals Program while I tried to boost my portfolio to do animation or illustration for a living. Landed journalism instead, which was like, right, ok… wait what? I was heartbroken not to pursue fine art, but I came back around to it via graphic design eventually. Like five years later. So it all worked out in the end. Mostly.

Half the family are now home briefly while they prepare to go to a childrens birthday party at a theater out of town. So for a shiny flash of a moment the house was a flurry of activity, now still once more. My youngest has started to text me chunky boi toad gifs from my wife’s phone. At first I feared my wife was having a stroke, but it turned out to just be my youngest being goofy. That was a fun few minutes until we figured that out. Should be careful as there’s a number of spicy texts I’ve sent to my wife just this summer. Let’s hope she wasn’t reading anything, and was only adding more lines to the queue of messages.

Well it’s almost noon on this lazy sunday. I should think about eating soon, or finding something else to do besides lounge on the couch web surfing. Watch another movie!

We were up by 7:30am, and then off for a morning walk before 8:00am. The grass is positively wet from all of the dew, and all of the runners were out. Every single one. Nobody missed it apparently. Gold star morning for joggers and runners alike. Oh, and us dog walkers. Lots of spray patterns around to keep the mutts interested. Not too hot, not too cold, and with those golden rays at our backs for a good half hour trot about the neighbourhood. To the park, up the street, through, and around the cemetery. Back home by the opposite route to smell something new every ten feet.

Then home for breakfast, made up of duck jerky strips for the dog, and a bowl of cereal for myself. Polished off the last of the Trix. Not my favourite cereal ever. Not by any stretch of the imagination. Then I answered an email, filed some paperwork for the board, and then went to cut the grass. The front yard takes about 45 minutes or so. Depends on whether or not I also do the back yard,  plus any weed eating (which I skipped this time around).

Now I’m sat down debating what else to do. I swept, vacuumed, and mopped the floors yesterday. I cleaned the kitchen sink, counters, doors, and kick plates. I cleaned up a portion of the island. I cleaned the bathroom toilet, sink, and floors. I could wash some sheets,  towels and utility items. I washed doors, and walls too (in spots, not the whole lot). My quiet purging has taken me all over the house in a criss cross pattern. If I could call a dumpster I’d fill it in a snap with random junk. But alas I cannot, so I will not.

It worked out that my wife and kids went to the cottage for the night, and the dog & I stayed home. I kept cleaning, and then had my friend, along with his girlfriend over for a very pleasant two hour or so chat. They’ve never been to our house, not together anyway. My friend has, his girlfriend hadn’t.  So I gave them the ten cent tour, and we talked over drinks, and a bowl of chips. Out by ten pm, and no mess to pick up after. Great!

Sounds as though a breeze is kicking up, welcome around here now that I’m so sweaty from mowing the lawn. It gets so warm in the day, but so cool at night I don’t want to turn the AC unit on. If the breeze can move through the house it’ll remain a good 23-24°C in here which is very reasonable. Space smells better with all the windows and doors open. The Honeywell air purifier goes a real long way towards keeping our house smelling neutral over the winter months when an open window isn’t something you want to do. The last two years that we’ve had one the air quality has been, I don’t know if it’s any “cleaner“, but certainly less odorous. Which, not for nothing, is a total step up in my book.

Happy sunny Saturday. Hope it’s a good one!

Used a bunch of Xbox points to help me with my Diablo 4 questing, but it turns out I have to activate a battle pass in order to claim them. I’m playing offline, and not on multiplayer, so basically I’ve wasted about 6,000 points. Damn. On the other hand I downloaded Minecradt to the local Xbox so that should keep my youngest occupied while I attempt to fix her busted gaming cell phone. She’s notorious for dropping it off of every bed she can climb up onto, so even with the Tuff case it didn’t stand a chance. I already paid to swap out the front screen because she shattered the first one. Now this second screen is cracked too. Oh and the entire rear panel has popped off. Battery doesn’t look like it ruptured or ballooned, but somethings going on. I wonder if the phone has twisted, bent, or bowed so now the backing plate won’t stay put. Conundrum.

I’m toying with purchasing Space Marine 2, but I know I’ll either play it every second for a week straight, or I’ll grow bored of it almost immediately and won’t play it all that much. I got a few hours into Gears of War 4, and  Star Wars Jedi Fallen Order, but haven’t gone back to either game in a while. Hell I’ve bought and played Slien Fire Team Elite a bit in the last couple of weeks, so there’s that to consider too. I do enjoy Diablo 4 a fair deal. I just get lost in all of the detail. I never know if I’m going about the skill tree correctly or not. I’ll play until I get stuck and then will put it down for a month of two, like usual.

Oh man, 1:00pm all ready! I need to eat and fast. I knew I put more into that Diablo play through than I had first thought. It was 10:00am just a few moments ago. Damn. Time vampire got me again. Ha. Maybe I’ll have some time tonight to devote to gaming if the kids go off to the cottage for a night or two with my inlaws. Who knows, stranger things have happened.

Happy sunny Friday to you all. Take care. Ciao Bella.

Thursday is in the house, and I have had this cough for fifteen days now. It is very slowly getting better, but taking its sweet time in doing so. I felt well enough to hit the driving range yesterday morning to test out my new chipping wedge, and it works! Whee! Has a pretty good loft to it. Nice. I then proceeded to hit two large buckets of balls alternating between my nine iron, and a #1 driver from my partial set of clubs. It was warm but not hot. Sunny with a slight breeze. Really just a lovely morning at the range. Made me want to hit the links, but I’m a terrible golfer without the attention span to play 18 holes. But I find a nine hole par three course to be too short. If after every third shot I had to mini putt a hole too that might be a better simulation of the real thing. What a hoot of an endeavour that would be.

The dog has been walked, I’ve dropped the kids off, and eaten breakfast. Shortly I’ll had down into my office to build some artwork for the rest of the morning. Not sure what to do about lunch today. That’s future me’s problem to solve.

Although it was rather painful at the time of impact I don’t think it was bad enough that I will lose the nail. That’s a good start. Also, not broken! Yay. I can bend it, and put pressure on it without wanting to pass out, so definitely not broken. Love it. While there is a good patch of skin & tissue that has changed colour and looks pretty angry, the whole toe didn’t change colour or swell up so I’m happy about that. I can also walk about freely, which is handy. So not my strongest performance ever, but one I will walk away from – mostly. Ha!

While cleaning and reorganizing a basement closet (or one of them anyway) I found a garbage bag, and a carrier bag full of trash. Damn. I was already at our town limit for items to go to the curb yesterday, so it’ll be two weeks until I can toss this new found stuff. Gah! The closer I get to cleaning this house top to bottom, the more I find random hidden garbage caches. I’m happy with the progress, but short of calling in a dumpster or bin, and hauling away everything all at once, I think there will always be something hanging around that I don’t want to keep holding on to. We have storm doors, closet doors, a fire door, paint cans from multiple decades, different flooring tiles or laminate, and vinyl planks. Bins of random junk. I hate all of it. Well the vinyl tiles should be kept, as that’s our current flooring choice, so those boxes make sense to have. But… always so much accumulated crap. I still have an old water softener and brine tank. Which were too heavy for me to lift without my dolly last year when we replaced them. Though now after evaporating all of the water inside the brine tank, it could go upstairs in a pinch. But I need to put it somewhere (not in the garage). Drop ceiling tile bundles hidden in the back of the laundry/furnace room. Old bits of trim mouldings scattered about the property. I’m certain I could nearly fill a dumpster if I included items from out of the garage too.

Where does it end! A lot of those items are an annoyance, but beyond select times when I see them they don’t impact the operation of the house. More of an eyesore than anything else. Even if I scaled way, way back on the things that occupy the interior spaces, our house wouldn’t get any bigger. I may have minimalist leanings sometimes, the rest of my family sure as hell doesn’t. And though it may feel like it, I am NOT throwing things away just for the sake of throwing things away, nor to create the excuse that I must now go shop for replacements.

I have reasons, and a logical rationale for what I’m choosing to toss away. I’d rather be in control over what items of mine get thrown out now, than have my kids or spouse do it under duress when I’m sick, incapacitated, or dead. A touch morbid, but if I can reduce the amount of headache now, and it’s my choice, my decision then I feel pretty good about it. I have no delusions that my kids or spouse will want to keep a hold of every single thing I’ve accumulated over the course of my adult life. I’d hope they would keep some items, but I go whole hog, and my collections get big – fast. So if I can pare it down to just the best, or most meaningful items to me, then there’s less to worry about, and an easier job to clean up after me if/when I’m gone.

In my office I was most saddened to see that two tubes of modelibg/air dry clay had gone off. That was about seven pounds of unused clay that went in the trash. No point holding on to that. It was cheap when I bought it, bust ultimately wasted. That stuff has doubled, nearly tripled in price if I did want to replace it. So not the bargain it once was. I had dreams of using that stuff on my next war gaming terrain build. But you can’t really expect this stuff to sit tight and last for years on end while I get my thoughts together. Oh well. To what might have been! **sobs emphatically **

I am kind of surprised that when I dropped the entire table on my foot it all managed to land, and strike but one single solitary toe with all of the impact force. My big toe on my left foot to be exact. I must have had it raise up in order for it to be the sole benefactor of the blunt force trauma. I would have thought it would strike all the toes excepting maybe the baby toe. But what do I know. I’m a guy whom dropped a hard wood table on his foot, and managed to change the colour of one individual toe in the process. Oh boy did that smart. Kept me awake the first night when my sheets caused that toe to flex or move unexpectedly. Then there is the dog which layed down on it in the middle of the night. And then proceeded to find multiple causes throughout the day to stand directly on top of my bad toe. What a douche. Loveable eight month old puppy doucher.

We’ve reached day fourteen of the cough. Far fewer bouts of extreme coughing now. Still feeling a bit off because of it. When I get going my throat gets sore, and my ribs/abs ache, but it is slowly going away. Thank god. It could have been worse, much worse. Have a wonderful Wednesday everybody. Ciao Bella.